The Roman Poets of the Republic, 3rd edition
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Title: The Roman Poets of the Republic, 3rd edition
Author: W. Y. Sellar
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC, 3RD EDITION ***
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THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC
BY
W. Y. SELLAR, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
RE-ISSUE OF THE THIRD EDITION
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCCC V
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO
[_Dedication of the Edition of 1881._]
TO
J. C. SHAIRP, M.A., LL.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS,
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF MUCH ACTIVE AND GENEROUS KINDNESS,
AND OF
A LONG AND STEADY FRIENDSHIP,
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In preparing a second edition of this volume, which has been for some
years out of print, I have, with the exception of a few pages added to
Chapter IV, retained the first five chapters substantially unchanged.
Chapters VI and VII, on Roman Comedy, are entirely new. I have
enlarged the account formerly given of Lucilius in Chapter VIII, and
modified the Review of the First Period, contained in Chapter IX.
The short introductory chapter to the Second Period is new. The four
chapters on Lucretius have been carefully revised, and, in part,
re-written. The chapter on Catullus has been re-written and enlarged,
and the views formerly expressed in it have been modified.
In the preface to the first edition I acknowledged the assistance I
had derived from the editions of the Fragments of the early writers
by Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach; from the Histories of Roman
Literature by Bernhardy, Baehr, and Munk, and from the chapters on
Roman Literature in Mommsen's Roman History; from a treatise on the
origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen; from Sir G. C. Lewis's work on
'The Credibility of Early Roman History'; from the Articles on
the Roman Poets by the late Professor Ramsay, contained in Smith's
'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'; and from
Articles by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology.' In addition to these I have, in the present edition, to
acknowledge my indebtedness to the History of Roman Literature by W.
S. Teuffel, to Ribbeck's 'Roemische Tragoedie,' to Ritschl's 'Opuscula,'
to the editions of some of the Plays of Plautus by Brix and Lorenz, to
that of the Fragments of Lucilius by L. Mueller, to the Thesis of M. G.
Boissier, entitled 'Quomodo Graecos Poetas Plautus Transtulerit,' to
Articles on Lucilius by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Philology,' and
to the edition of Lucretius, and the 'Criticisms and Elucidations of
Catullus' by the same writer, to Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,'
to Mr. Ellis's 'Commentary on Catullus,' to R. Westphal's 'Catull's
Gedichte,' and to M. A. Couat's 'Etude sur Catulle.' I have more
especially to express my sense of obligation to Mr. Munro's writings
on Lucretius and Catullus. In so far as the chapters on these poets in
this edition may be improved, this will, in a great measure, be due to
the new knowledge of the subject I have gained from the study of his
works.
I have retained, with some corrections, the translations of the longer
quotations, contained in the first edition, and have added a literal
prose version of some passages quoted from Plautus and Terence.
Instead of offering a prose version of the longer passages quoted from
Catullus, I have again availed myself of the kind permission formerly
given me by Sir Theodore Martin to make use of his translation.
EDINBURGH, _Dec. 1880_.
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
In revising this work for a new edition the most important change I
have made is in the account of Terence, contained in Chapter VII. I
have to acknowledge the kind permission of Messrs. A. & C. Black to
make use of the article on Terence which I wrote for the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, in which I first expressed the modification of my views
on that author. I have added some notes to the Chapter on Catullus,
suggested by the opinions expressed in the Prolegomena to the Edition
of B. Schmidt. In the Chapter on Naevius I have availed myself of a
suggestion contained in a paper by Prof. A. F. West, 'On a Patriotic
Passage in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus,' which appeared in the
American Journal of Philology, for my knowledge of which I am indebted
to his courtesy in sending the article to me. I have introduced
various verbal changes in different parts of the book, implying some
slight modification of the opinions originally expressed. Several of
these were suggested by critics who noticed the earlier editions of
the book, to whom I beg to express my thanks.
W. Y. S.
_January, 1889._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
PAGE
Recent change in the estimate of Roman Poetry 1
Want of originality 2
As compared with Greek Poetry 2
" " with Roman Oratory and History 3
The most complete literary monument of Rome 5
Partly imitative, partly original 6
Imitative in forms 7
" in metres 8
Imitative element in diction 9
" " in matter 11
Original character, partly Roman, partly Italian 13
National spirit 14
Imaginative sentiment 15
Moral feeling 16
Italian element in Roman Poetry 17
Love of Nature 17
Passion of Love 19
Personal element in Roman Poetry 20
Four Periods of Roman Poetry 23
Character of each 24
Conclusion 26
CHAPTER II.
VESTIGES OF INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY.
Niebuhr's theory of a Ballad-Poetry 28
The Saturnian metre 29
Ritual Hymns 31
Prophetic verses 33
Fescennine verses 34
Saturae 36
Gnomic verses 37
Commemorative verses 37
Inferences as to their character 38
" from early state of the language 39
No public recognition of Poetry 40
Roman story result of tradition and reflection 41
Inferences from the nature of Roman religion 43
" from the character and pursuits of the people 44
Roman Poetry of Italian rather than Roman origin 45
FIRST PERIOD.
FROM LIVIUS ANDRONICUS TO LUCILIUS.
CHAPTER III.
BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS,
CN. NAEVIUS, 240-202 B.C.
Contact with Greece after capture of Tarentum 47
First period of Roman literature 49
Forms of Poetry during this period 50
Livius Andronicus 51
Cn. Naevius, his life 52
Dramas 55
Epic poem 57
Style 59
Conclusion 60
CHAPTER IV.
Q. ENNIUS, 239-170 B.C., LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
VARIOUS WORKS. GENIUS AND INTELLECT.
Importance of Ennius 62
Notices of his life 63
Influences affecting his career 64
Italian birth-place 64
Greek education 65
Service in Roman army 66
Historical importance of his age 68
Intellectual character of his age 69
Personal traits 71
Description of himself in the Annals 72
Intimacy with Scipio 74
His enthusiastic temperament 75
Religious spirit and convictions 77
Miscellaneous works 79
Saturae 81
Dramas 83
Annals 88
Outline of the Poem 89
Idea by which it is animated 92
Artistic defects 93
Roman character of the work 94
Contrast with the Greek Epic 96
Contrast in its personages 96
Contrast in supernatural element 97
Oratory in the Annals 98
Description and imagery 100
Rhythm and diction 102
Chief literary characteristics of Ennius 106
Energy of conception 107
Patriotic and imaginative sentiment 110
Moral emotion 112
Practical understanding 113
Estimate in ancient times 116
Disparaging criticism of Niebuhr 118
CHAPTER V
EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY. M. PACUVIUS, 219-129 B.C.
L. ACCIUS, 170-ABOUT 90 B.C.
Popularity of early Roman Tragedy 120
Partial adaptation of Athenian drama 121
Inability to reproduce its pure Hellenic character 123
Nearer approach to the spirit of Euripides than of Sophocles 125
Grounds of popularity of Roman Tragedy 126
Moral tone and oratorical spirit 129
Causes of its decline 131
M. Pacuvius, notices of his life 133
Ancient testimonies 135
His dramas 136
Passages illustrative of his thought 137
" " of his moral and oratorical spirit 139
Descriptive passages 141
Drama on a Roman subject 142
Character 142
L. Accius, notices of his life 143
His various works 145
Fragments illustrative of his oratorical spirit 147
" " of his moral fervour 148
" " of his sense of natural beauty 149
Conclusion as to character of Roman Tragedy 150
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN COMEDY. T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C.
Flourishing era of Roman Comedy 153
How far any claim to originality? 154
Disparaging judgment of later Roman critics 155
Connection with earlier Saturae 156
Naevius and Plautus popular poets 157
Facts in the life of Plautus 158
Attempt to fill up the outline from his works 160
Familiarity with town-life 161
Traces of maritime adventure 162
Life of the lower and middle classes represented in his plays 163
Love of good living 164
Love of money 166
Artistic indifference 166
Knowledge of Greek 167
Influence of the spirit of his age 167
Dramas adaptations of outward conditions of Athenian New Comedy 169
Manner and spirit, Roman and original 172
Indications of originality in his language 173
" " in his Roman allusions and national characteristics 174
Favourite plots of his plays 178
Pseudolus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria 179
Aulularia, Trinummus, Menaechmi, Rudens, Captivi, Amphitryo 182
Mode of dealing with his characters 191
Moral and political indifference of his plays 192
Value as a poetic artist 195
Power of expression by action, rhythm, diction 200
CHAPTER VII.
TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS.
Comedy between the time of Plautus and Terence 204
Caecilius Statius 204
Scipionic Circle 206
Complete Hellenising of Roman Comedy 207
Conflicting accounts of life of Terence 207
Order in which his Plays were produced 209
His 'prologues' as indicative of his individuality 210
'Dimidiatus Menander' 212
Epicurean 'humanity' chief characteristic 213
Sentimental motive of his pieces 214
Minute delineations of character 215
Diction and rhythm 217
Influence on the style and sentiment of Horace 218
Modern estimates of Terence 220
Comoedia Togata, Atellanae, Mimus 220
CHAPTER VIII.
EARLY ROMAN SATIRE. C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.
Independent origin of Roman satire 222
Essentially Roman in form and spirit 224
" " in its political and censorial function 225
Personal and miscellaneous character of early satire 227
Critical epoch at which Lucilius appeared 229
Question as to the date of his birth 229
Fragments chiefly preserved by grammarians 232
Miscellaneous character and desultory treatment of subjects 233
Traces of subjects treated in different books 234
Impression of the author's personality 236
Political character of Lucilian satire 238
Social vices satirised in it 239
Intellectual peculiarities 243
Literary criticism 245
His style 246
Grounds of his popularity 249
CHAPTER IX.
REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.
Common aspects in the lives of poets in the second century B.C. 253
Popular and national character of their works 256
Political condition of the time reflected in its literature 257
Defects of the poetic literature in form and style 259
Other forms of literature cultivated in that age 260
Oratory and history 260
Familiar letters 262
Critical and grammatical studies 263
Summary of character of the first period 264
SECOND PERIOD.
THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER X.
TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS.
Dearth of poetical works during the next half century 269
Literary taste confined to the upper classes 271
Great advance in Latin prose writing 272
Influence of this on the style of Lucretius and Catullus 273
Closer contact with the mind and art of Greece 273
Effects of the political unsettlement on the contemplative life
and thought 275
" on the life of pleasure, and the art founded on it 277
The two representatives of the thought and art of the time 278
CHAPTER XI.
LUCRETIUS. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Little known of him from external sources 280
Examination of Jerome's statement 284
Inferences as to his national and social position 287
Relation to Memmius 288
Impression of the author to be traced in his poem 290
Influence produced by the action of his age 290
Minute familiarity with Nature and country life 292
Spirit in which he wrote his work 294
His consciousness of power and delight in his task 295
His polemical spirit 298
Reverence for Epicurus 299
Affinity to Empedocles 300
Influence of other Greek writers 302
" of Ennius 303
His interests speculative, not national 304
His Roman temperament 305
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.
Three aspects of the poem 307
General scope of the argument 308
Analysis of the poem 308
Question as to its unfinished condition 321
What is the value of the argument? 324
Weakness of his science 329
Interest of the work as an exposition of ancient physical enquiry 331
" from its bearing on modern questions 332
Power of scientific reasoning, observation, and expression 335
Connecting links between his philosophy and poetry 340
Idea of law 341
" of change 344
" of the infinite 347
" of the individual 348
" of the subtlety of Nature 349
" of Nature as a living power 350
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS.
General character of Greek epicureanism 356
Prevalence at Rome in the last age of the Republic 358
New type of epicureanism in Lucretius 360
Forms of evil against which his teaching was directed 363
Superstition 364
Fear of death 369
Ambition 374
Luxury 375
Passion of love 376
Limitation of his ethical views 378
His literary power as a moralist 381
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.
Artistic defects of the work 384
" arising from the nature of the subject 385
" from inequality in its execution 387
Intensity of feeling pervading the argument 388
Cumulative force in his rhythm 389
Qualities of his style 390
Freshness and sincerity of expression 392
Imaginative suggestiveness and creativeness 394
Use of analogies 395
Pictorial power 397
Poetical interpretation of Nature 398
Energy of movement in his descriptions 400
Poetic aspect of Nature influenced by his philosophy 402
Poetical interpretation of life 403
Modern interest of his poem 406
CHAPTER XV.
CATULLUS.
Contrast to the poetry of Lucretius 408
The poetry of youth 409
Accidental preservation of the poems 410
Principle of their arrangement 412
Vivid personal revelation afforded by them 413
Uncertainty as to the date of his birth 414
Birth-place and social standing 417
Influences of his native district 419
Identity of Lesbia and Clodia 422
Poems written between 61 and 57 B.C. 425
Poems connected with his Bithynian journey 429
Poems written between 56 and 54 B.C. 433
Character of his poems, founded on the passion of love 436
" " " on friendship and affection 439
His short satirical pieces 444
Other poems expressive of personal feeling 450
Qualities of style in these poems 452
" of rhythm 453
" of form 454
The Hymn to Diana 455
His longer and more purely artistic pieces 456
His Epithalamia 457
His Attis 461
The Peleus and Thetis 462
The longer elegiac poems 469
Rank of Catullus among the poets of the world 472
THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
A great fluctuation of opinion has taken place, among scholars and
critics, in regard to the worth of Latin Poetry. From the revival of
learning till the end of last century, the poets of ancient Rome, and
especially those of the Augustan age, were esteemed the purest models
of literary art, and were the most familiar exponents of the life and
spirit of antiquity. Their works were the chief instruments of the
higher education. They were studied, imitated, and translated by
some of the greatest poets of modern Europe; and they supplied their
favourite texts and illustrations to moralists and humourists, from
Montaigne to the famous English essayists who flourished during the
last century. Up to a still later period, their words were habitually
used in political debate to add weight to argument and point to
invective. Perhaps no other writers, during so long a period,
exercised so powerful an influence, not on literary style and taste
only, but on the character and understanding, of educated men in the
leading nations of the modern world.
It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should
be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern
poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They
have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change
in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present
century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of
the great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They were thus,
for some time, the objects of undue disparagement rather than of undue
admiration. The perception of the large debt which they owed to their
Greek masters, led to some forgetfulness of their original merits.
Their Roman character and Italian feeling were insufficiently
recognised under the foreign forms and metres in which these
qualities were expressed. It used to be said, with some appearance of
plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only much inferior in
interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a work of cultivated
imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of literature were
the true expression of the genius of the Roman people; that their
poets brought nothing new into the world; that they enriched the life
of after times with no pure vein of native feeling, nor any impressive
record of national experience.
It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed
glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the
genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be
applied,
[Greek:
autodidaktos d' eimi, theos de moi en phresin oimas
pantoias enephysen[1].]
Besides possessing the charm of poetical feeling and artistic form in
unequalled measure, Greek poetry is to modern readers the immediate
revelation of a new world of thought and action, in all its lights and
shadows and moving life. Like their politics, the poetry of the Greeks
sprang from many independent centres, and renewed itself in every
epoch of the national civilisation. Roman poetry, on the other hand,
has neither the same novelty nor variety of matter; nor did it, like
the epic, lyric, dramatic, and idyllic poetry of Greece, adapt itself
to the changing phases of human life in different generations and
different States. But the poets of Rome have another kind of value.
There is a charm in their language and sentiment distinct from that
which is found in any other literature of the world. Certain deep
and abiding impressions are stamped upon their works, which have
penetrated into the cultivated sentiment of modern times. If, as we
read them, the imagination is not so powerfully stimulated by the
revelation of a new world, yet, in the elevated tones of Roman poetry,
there is felt to be a permanent affinity with the strength and dignity
of man's moral nature; and, in the finer and softer tones, a power
to move the heart to sympathy with the beauty, the enjoyment, and the
natural sorrows of a bygone life. If we are no longer moved by the
eager hopes and buoyant fancies of the youthful prime of the ancient
world, we seem to gather up, with a more sober sympathy, the fruits of
its mature experience and mellowed reflexion.
While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown
to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical
composition; they preserved some knowledge of their history in various
kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some
skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice
of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men.
But they cannot be said to have produced spontaneously any works of
literary art. Their oratory, history, poetry, and philosophy owed
their first impulse to their intellectual contact with Greece. And
while the form and expression of all Roman literature were moulded
by the teaching of Greek masters and the study of Greek writings, the
debt incurred by the poetry and philosophy of Rome was greater than
that incurred by her oratory and history. The two latter assumed
a more distinct type, and adapted themselves more naturally to the
genius of the people and the circumstances of the State. They were
the work of men for the most part eminent in the State; and they
bore directly on the practical wants of the times in which they were
cultivated. Even the structure of the Latin language testifies to the
oratorical force and ardour by which it was moulded into symmetry; as
the language of Greece betrays the plastic and harmonising power of
her early poetry. There is no improbability in the supposition that,
if Greek literature had never existed, or had remained unknown to the
Romans, the political passions and necessities of the Republic would
have called forth a series of powerful orators; and that the national
instinct, which clung with such strong tenacity to the past, would,
with the advance of power and civilisation, have produced a type of
history, capable of giving adequate expression to the traditions and
continuous annals of the commonwealth.
But their poetry, on the other hand, came to the Romans after their
habits were fully formed[2], as an ornamental addition to their
power,--[Greek: kepion kai enkallopisma ploytou]. Unlike the poetry
of Greece, it was not addressed to the popular ear, nor was it an
immediate emanation from the popular heart. The poets who commemorated
the greatness of Rome, or who sang of the passions and pleasures
of private life, in the ages immediately before and after the
establishment of the Empire, were, for the most part, men born in the
provinces of Italy, neither trained in the formal discipline of Rome,
nor taking any active part in practical affairs. Their tastes and
feelings are, in some ways, rather Italian than purely Roman; their
thoughts and convictions are rather of a cosmopolitan type than
moulded on the national traditions. They drew the materials of their
art as much from the stores of Greek poetry as from the life and
action of their own times. Their art is thus a composite structure,
in which old forms are combined with altered conditions; in which the
fancies of earlier times reappear in a new language, and the spirit of
Greece is seen interpenetrating the grave temperament of Rome, and the
genial nature of Italy.
But, although oratory and history may have been more essential to the
national life of the Romans, and more adapted to their genius, their
poetry still remains their most complete literary expression. Of the
many famous orators of the Republic one only has left his speeches
to modern times. The works of the two greatest Roman historians have
reached us in a mutilated shape; and the most important periods in the
later history of the Republic are not represented in what remains of
the works of any Latin writer. Tacitus records only the sombre and
monotonous annals of the early Empire; and the extant books of Livy
contain the account of times and events from which he himself was
separated by many generations. Roman poetry, on the other hand, is the
contemporary witness of several important eras in the history of the
Republic and the Empire. It includes many authentic and characteristic
fragments from the great times of the Scipios,--the complete works of
the two poets of finest genius, who flourished in the last days of the
Republic,--the masterpieces of the brilliant Augustan era;--and, of
the works of the Empire, more than are needed to exemplify the decay
of natural feeling and of poetical inspiration under the deadening
pressure of Imperialism. And, besides illustrating different eras, the
Roman poets throw light on the most various aspects of Roman life and
character. They are the most authentic witnesses both of the national
sentiment and ideas, and of the feelings and interests of private
life. They stamp on the imagination the ideal of Roman majesty; and
they bring home to modern sympathies the charm and the pathos of the
old Italian life, and the activities and humours of society in the
great capital of pleasure and business.
Roman poetry was the living heir, not the lifeless reproduction of
the genius of Greece. If it seems to have been a highly-trained
accomplishment rather than the irrepressible outpouring of a natural
faculty, still this accomplishment was based upon original gifts of
feeling and character, and was marked by its own peculiar features.
The creative energy of the Greeks died out with Theocritus; but their
learning and taste, surviving the decay of their political existence,
passed into the education of a kindred race, endowed, above all other
races of antiquity, with the capacity of receiving and assimilating
alien influences, and of producing, alike in action and in literature,
great results through persistent purpose and concentrated industry.
It was owing to their gifts of appreciation and their capacity for
labour, that the Roman poets, in the era of the transition from
the freedom and vigour of the Republic to the pomp and order of the
Empire, succeeded in producing works which, in point of execution,
are not much inferior to the masterpieces of Greece. It was due to the
spirit of a new race,--speaking a new language, living among different
scenes, acting their own part in the history of the world,--that the
ancient inspiration survived the extinction of Greek liberty, and
reappeared, under altered conditions, in a fresh succession of
powerful works, which owe their long existence as much to the vivid
feeling as to the artistic perfection by which they are characterised.
From one point of view, therefore, Roman poetry may be regarded as an
imitative reproduction, from another, as a new revelation of the human
spirit. For the form, and for some part of the substance, of their
works, the Roman poets were indebted to Greece: the spirit and
character, and much also of the substance of their poetry, are native
in their origin. They betray their want of inventiveness chiefly
in the forms of composition and the metres which they employed;
occasionally also in the cast of their poetic diction, and in their
conventional treatment of foreign materials. But, in even the least
original aspects of their art, they still bear the impress of their
nationality. Although, with the exception of Satire and the poetic
Epistle, they struck out no new forms of poetic composition, yet those
adopted by them assumed something of a new type, owing to the weight
of their contents, the massive structure of the Roman language, the
fervour and gravity of the Roman temperament, the practical bent and
logical mould of the Roman understanding, the strong vitality and the
emotional susceptibility of the Italian race.
They were not equally successful in all the forms which they attempted
to reproduce. They were especially inferior to their masters in
tragedy. They betray the inferiority of their dramatic genius also in
other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic poetry, and
in philosophical dialogues. They express passion and feeling either
directly from their own hearts and experience, or in great rhetorical
passages, attributed to the imaginary personages of their story--to
Ariadne or Dido, to Turnus or Mezentius. But this occasional
utterance of passion and sentiment is not united in them with a vivid
delineation of the complex characters of men; and it is only in their
comic poetry that they are quite successful in reproducing the natural
and lively interchange of speech. There is thus, as compared with
Homer and Theocritus, some want of personal interest in the epic,
descriptive, and idyllic poetry of Virgil. The natural play of
characters, acting and reacting upon one another, enlivens the
divinely-appointed action of the Aeneid, only in such exceptional
passages as the episode of Dido; nor does it add the charm of human
associations to the poet's deep and quiet pictures of rural beauty,
and to his graceful expression of pensive and tender feeling.
The Romans, as a race, were wanting in speculative capacity; and
thus their poetry does not rise, or rises only in Lucretius, to those
imaginative heights from which the great lyrical and dramatic poets of
Greece contemplated the spectacle of human life in all its wonder and
solemnity. Yet both the epic and the lyrical poetry of Rome have
a character and perfection of their own. The Aeneid, with many
resemblances in points of detail to the poems of Homer, is yet, in
design and execution, a true national monument. The lyrical poetry of
Rome, if inferior to the choral poetry of Greece in range of thought
and in ethereal grace of expression, and, apparently, to the early
Iambic and Melic poetry of Greece in the range of the emotions to
which it appeals, is yet an instrument of varied power, capable of
investing the more serious or more transient joys and sorrows of life
with an unfading charm, and rising into fuller and more commanding
tones to express the national sentiment and moral dignity of Rome.
Didactic poetry obtained in Lucretius and Virgil ampler volume and
profounder meaning than in their Greek models, Empedocles and Hesiod.
It was by the skill of the two great Latin poets that poetic art
was made to embrace within its province the treatment of a great
philosophical argument, and of a great and ancient form of human
industry. The Satires and Epistles of Horace showed, for the first
time, how the didactic spirit could deal in poetry with the whole
conduct and familiar experience of life. The elegiac poets of the
Augustan age, while borrowing the metre of their compositions from the
early poets of Ionia and the later writers at the court of Alexandria,
have taken the substance of their poetry to a great extent from their
own lives and interests; and have treated their materials with a
fluent and varied brilliancy of style, and often with a graceful
tenderness and sincerity of feeling, unborrowed from any foreign
source. It may thus be generally affirmed that the Roman poets,
although adding little to the great discoveries or inventions
in literature, and although not equally successful in all their
adaptations of the inventions of their predecessors, have yet left
the stamp of their own genius and character on some of the great forms
which poetry has assumed.
The metres of Roman poetry are also adaptations to the Latin language
of the metres previously employed in the epic, lyrical, dramatic and
elegiac poetry of Greece. The Italian race had, in earlier times,
struck out a native measure, called the Saturnian,--of a rapid and
irregular movement,--in which their religious emotions, their festive
and satiric raillery, and their commemorative instincts found a rude
expression. But after this measure had been rejected by Ennius,
as unsuited to the gravity of his greatest work, the Roman poets
continued to imitate the metres of their Greek predecessors. But, in
their hands, these became characterised by a slower, more stately,
and regular movement, not only differing widely from the ring of the
native Saturnian rhythm, but also, with every improvement in poetic
accomplishment, receding further and further from the freedom and
variety of the Greek measures. The comic and tragic measures, in which
alone the Roman writers observed a less strict rule than their models,
never attained among them to any high metrical excellence. The rhythm
of the Greek poets, owing in a great measure to the frequency of
vowel sounds in their language, is more flowing, more varied, and more
richly musical than that of Roman poetry. Thus, although their verse
is constructed on the same metrical laws, there is the most marked
contrast between the rapidity and buoyancy of the Iliad or
the Odyssey, and the stately and weighty march of the Aeneid.
Notwithstanding their outward conformity to the canons of a foreign
language, the most powerful and characteristic measures of Roman
poetry,--such as the Lucretian and the Virgilian hexameter, and
the Horatian alcaic,--are distinguished by a grave, orderly, and
commanding tone, symbolical of the genius and the majesty of Rome. In
such cases, as the Horatian sapphic and the Ovidian elegiac, where
the structure of the verse is too slight to produce this impressive
effect, there is still a remarkable divergence from the freedom
and manifold harmony of the early Greek poets to a more uniform and
monotonous cadence.
The diction also of Roman poetry betrays many traces of imitation.
Some of the early Latin tragedies were literal translations from the
works of the Athenian dramatists; and fragments of the rude Roman copy
may still be compared with the polished expression of the original.
Some familiar passages of the Iliad may be traced among the rough-hewn
fragments of the Annals of Ennius. Even Lucretius, whose diction,
more than that of most poets, produces the impression of being the
immediate creation of his own mind, has described outward objects, and
clothed his thoughts, in language borrowed from Homer, Empedocles,
and Euripides. The short volume of Catullus contains translations from
Sappho and Callimachus, and frequent imitations of other Greek poets;
and, from the extant fragments of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others of
the Greek lyric poets, it may be seen how frequently Horace availed
himself of some turn of their expression to invest his own experience
with old poetic associations. Virgil, whose great success is, in no
slight measure, due to the skill and taste with which he used the
materials of earlier Greek and native writers, has reproduced
the heroic tones of Homer in his epic, and the mellow cadences of
Theocritus in his pastoral poems; and has blended something of the
antique quaintness and oracular sanctity of Hesiod with the golden
perfection of his Georgics.
But besides the direct debt which each Roman poet owed to the Greek
author or authors whom he imitated, it is difficult to estimate
the extent to which the taste of the later Romans was formed by the
familiar study of Greek literature. The habitual study of any foreign
language has an influence not on style only, but even on the structure
of thought and the development of emotion. The Roman poets first
learned, from the study of Greek poetry, to feel the graceful
combinations and the musical power of expression, and were thus
stimulated and trained to elicit similar effects from their native
language. It is for this gift, or power over language, that Lucretius
prays in his invocation to the creative power of Nature,--
Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem;
and those who came after him devoted still greater study to attain
perfection in the diction and rhythm of poetry. But their success was
gained with some loss of direct force and freshness in the expression
of feeling. In Virgil and in Horace words are combined in a less
natural order than in Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language
does not strike the mind with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry,
nor does it seem equally capable of gaining and retaining the ear of a
popular audience. Catullus alone among the great Roman poets combines
in those short poems, which are the direct expression of his feeling,
perfect grace with the happiest freedom and simplicity. Yet the
studied and compact diction of Latin poetry, if wanting in fluency,
ease, and directness, lays a strong hold upon the mind, by its power
of marking with emphasis what is most essential and prominent in
the ideas and objects presented to the imagination. The thought and
sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved on her poetical literature,
in deep and enduring characters. And, notwithstanding all manifest
traces of imitation, the diction of the greatest Roman poets attests
the presence of genuine creative power. A strong vital force is
recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of Ennius and Lucretius;
and, though more latent, it is felt no less really to pervade
the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and the subtle
moderation of Horace.
Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its substance to Greek
thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that
conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of
the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome and
Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian Gods;
the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected with
the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late
civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised
features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling,
experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from
earlier representations. Hence a good deal of Latin poetry appears to
fit less closely to the facts of human life, than the best poetry of
Greece and of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship
is more apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance
and thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they
reproduce Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own
feeling than the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The
beautiful and stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second
life in the young imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and
conventional to Virgil:--
Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes,
Omnia jam vulgata.
The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized
with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in
the episode of the 'Pastor Aristaeus' in the Georgics. Not only are
the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but
the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with
the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is
a religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed
which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of
Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy. The
manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and of
the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists
of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek
traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world,
and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted
itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil.
Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the
great Roman epics, bears the mark of the artificial construction of
a late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative
legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of
poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes of
Horace, yet the reproduction of Greek mythology which plays so large a
part in many of them is a result of his artistic sympathy, and has not
any vital root in his own belief or the beliefs of his age.
Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek
art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the
civilised world, after it had been leavened by Greek thought, taste,
and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a living power,
after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so that, were it
nothing more, that literature would still be valuable as the fruit of
the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the earliest poet of the
ancient world, there is a kind of promise of the great life that
was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a retrospective
contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art of the past,--a
gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the Roman poets had
also a strong vein of original character and feeling, and many phases
of national and personal experience to reveal. They had to give a
permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to perpetuate the charm
of the land and life of Italy. In their highest tones, they give
utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified and commanding
attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial Republic. But
other elements in their art proclaim their large inheritance of the
receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient as in modern times,
has characterised the Southern nations. As the patrician and plebeian
orders were united in the imperial greatness of the commonwealth, as
the energy of Rome and of the other Italian communities was welded
together to form a mighty national life, so these apparently
antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty and beauty of
Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself have been
unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was too
austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create and
foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the south,
when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and the
elevation of higher ideals, tended to degenerate into licentious
effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier
tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and
the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the
exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand,
gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight
restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline.
In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of
character are most happily combined with susceptibility to the
charm and the power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the
Augustan age abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their
lives, under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue
of their forefathers. Their faults and weaknesses are of a type
apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman
character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect
testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very
coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which the
freedom and energy of the Republic had been developed. Ovid, in
his libertinism, displays his vigorous and ardent vitality. The
indifference of Tibullus and Propertius to the graver duties and
interests of life, looks like a reaction from a standard of manliness
too high to be permanently upheld.
Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national
and patriotic sentiment is conspicuous. Among the poets of the
Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by political as well
as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to the
commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions, the
advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the
works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the
whole plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell
exercised over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the
great destiny of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of
Italy, and his pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of
men. Horace rises above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the
imperial majesty of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the
Sabine households, and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of
Roman character. The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing
its existence to the renewed interest imparted to the mythical and
early story of Rome by the establishment of the Empire. The other
elegiac poets, though they devote much less of their writings to the
subject, yet betray a graver and deeper feeling in the rare passages
in which they appeal to patriotic memories.
The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little
sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they
flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to
political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated
him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the
lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage
in the strife of personal ambition:--
Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.
Catullus, while eagerly enjoying his life, seems, in regard to the
political turmoil of his time, to 'daff the world aside, and bid it
pass': yet there is, as has been well said[3], a rough republican
flavour in his careless satire; and he retained to the last, and
boldly asserted, what was the earliest, as well as the latest,
instinct of ancient liberty--the spirit of resistance to the arbitrary
rule of any single man.
Roman poetry is pervaded also by a peculiar vein of imaginative
emotion. There is no feeling so characteristic of the higher works of
Roman genius as the sense of majesty. This feeling is called forth by
the idea or outward manifestation of strength, stability, vastness,
and order; by whatever impresses the imagination as the symbol of
power and authority, whether in the aspect of Nature, or in the works,
actions, and institutions of man. It is in their most serious and
elevated writings, and chiefly in their epic and didactic poetry,
that the Romans show their peculiar susceptibility to this grave and
dignified emotion. Even the plain and rude diction of Ennius rises
into rugged grandeur when he is moved by the vastness or massive
strength of outward things, by 'the pomp and circumstance' of war, or
by the august forms and symbols of government. The majestic tones of
Lucretius seem to give a voice to the deep feeling of the order and
immensity of the universe which possessed him. The sustained dignity
of the Aeneid, and the splendour of some of its finest passages--such
for instance as that which brings before us the solemn and magnificent
spectacle of the fall of Troy--attest how the imagination of Virgil
was moved to sympathy with the attributes of ancient and powerful
sovereignty.
Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman
poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is more
authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry. They
speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom that
has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry
strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful
representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry
appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous
impulses of our nature. This glow of moral emotion pervades not the
poetry only, but the oratory, history, and philosophy of Rome. It has
cast a kind of religious solemnity around the fragments of the early
epic, tragic, and satiric poetry: it has given an intenser fervour
to the stern consistency and desperate fortitude of Lucretius: it has
added the element of strength to the pathos and fine humanity in the
Aeneid. It is by his moral, as well as his national enthusiasm, that
Horace reveals the Roman gravity that tempered his genial nature. The
language of Lucan, Persius, and Juvenal still breathed the same spirit
in the deadening atmosphere of the Empire. Of the greater poets
of Rome, Catullus alone shows little trace of this grave ardour of
feeling, the more usual accompaniment of the firm temper of manhood
than of the prodigal genius of youth.
There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in
Roman poetry, more akin to modern sympathies. In no other branch of
ancient literature is so much prominence given to the enjoyment
of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows, tastes, and
pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity of the old Roman
life, and the predominance of public over private interest in the best
days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather than to foster, the
birth of these new modes of emotion. They are like the flower of
that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life which spread itself
abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and came to a rapid
maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the accumulated
treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons ample
leisure to enjoy them.
The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more
prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed,
among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true
description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and
the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly,
affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of
Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the
Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and
to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs
and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature
as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era.
The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the
thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much
on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of
beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they
breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do
not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from
contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the
happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful
security of the country. The difference between the two nations in
social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their
aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his
leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his
constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition
which made the [Greek: lesche] a favourite resort so early as the
time of Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most
typical representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman
statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy
repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and
self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with
his household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and
retirement was one great element in the Roman taste for country
life;--a taste which was manifested among the foremost public men,
such as the Scipios and Laelius, long before any trace of it is
betrayed in Roman poetry. But, as the practice of spending the
unhealthy months of autumn away from Rome became general among the
wealthier classes, and as new modes of sentiment were fostered
by greater leisure and finer cultivation, a genuine love of
Nature,--taking the form either of attachment to particular places,
or of enjoyment in the life and beautiful spectacle of the outward
world,--was gradually awakened in the more refined spirits of the
Italian race.
The poetry of the Augustan age and of that immediately preceding it
is deeply pervaded by this new sentiment. Each of the great poets
manifests the feeling in his own way. Lucretius, while contemplating
the majesty of Nature's laws, and the immensity of her range, is at
the same time powerfully moved to sympathy with her ever-varying life.
He feels the charm of simply living in fine weather, and looking
on the common aspects of the world,--such as the sea-shore, fresh
pastures and full-flowing rivers, or the new loveliness of the early
morning. He represents the punishment of the Danaides as a symbol of
the incapacity of the human spirit to enjoy the natural charm of the
recurring seasons of the year. Catullus, too, although his active
social temper did not respond to the spell which Nature exercised over
the contemplative and pensive spirits of Lucretius and Virgil, has
many fine images from the outward world in his poems. He delights in
comparing the grace and the passion of youth with the bloom of flowers
and the stateliness of trees; he associates the beauty of Sirmio with
his bright picture of the happiness of home; he feels the return of
the genial breezes of spring as enhancing his delight in leaving the
dull plains of Phrygia, and in hastening to visit the famous cities of
Asia. Virgil's early art was characterised by his friend and brother
poet in the lines,--
Molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camenae[4].
The love of natural, and especially of Italian, beauty blends with all
his patriotic memories, and with the charm which he has cast around
the common operations of rustic industry. The freedom and peace of his
country life, among the Sabine hills, kept the heart of Horace fresh
and simple, in spite of all the pleasures and flatteries to which he
was exposed; and enabled him, till the end of his course, to mingle
the clear fountain of native poetry,--'ingeni benigna vena,'--with the
stiller current of his meditative wisdom.
The passion of love was a favourite theme both of the early lyrical
poets of Greece, and of the courtly writers of Alexandria; but the
works of the former have reached us only in inconsiderable fragments;
and the latter, with the exception of Theocritus, are much inferior to
the Roman poets who made them their models. It is in Latin literature
that we are brought most near to the power of this passion in the
ancient world. Few among the poets who have recorded their own
experience of love, in any age, have expressed a feeling so true or so
intense as Catullus. He has all the ardent, self-forgetful devotion,
if he wants the chivalry and purity, of modern sentiment. He has
painted the love of others also with grateful fidelity. He has shown
the finest sense in discerning, and the finest power in delineating
the charm of youthful passion, when first awakening into life, or
first unfolding into true affection. It is by his delineation of the
agony of Dido that Virgil has imparted the chief personal interest
to the story of the Aeneid; and the love which finds a voice in his
pastoral poems is as ideal as that which has found its truest voice in
some of our great modern poets. Horace is the poet of the lighter and
gayer moods of the passion. Without ever becoming a slave to it, he
experienced enough of its pains and pleasures to enable him to paint
the fascination or the waywardness of a mistress with the equable
feeling of an epicurean, but, at the same time, with the refined
observation of a poet. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, making
pleasure the chief pursuit of their lives, have made the more sensuous
phases of this passion the predominant motive of their poetry. Yet
the tenderness of Tibullus is as genuine as that of Virgil; there is
ardent emotion expressed by Propertius for his living mistress, and
deep feeling in the lines in which he recalls her memory after death;
the license of Ovid is, if not redeemed, at least relieved, by his
buoyant wit and his brilliant fancy.
Roman poetry is also interesting as the revelation of personal
experience and character. The biographies of ancient authors are,
for the most part, meagre and untrustworthy; and thus it is chiefly
through the conscious or unconscious self-portraiture in their
writings that the actual men of antiquity are brought into close
contact with the modern world. Few men of any age or country are
so well known to us as Horace; and it is from his own writings,
exclusively, that this intimate knowledge has been obtained. The lines
in which he describes Lucilius are more applicable to himself than to
any extant writer of Greece or Rome,--
Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat, unquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis[5].
He has described himself, his tastes and pursuits, his thoughts and
convictions, with perfect frankness and candour, and without any of
the triviality or affectation of literary egotism. Catullus, although
sometimes wanting in proper reticence, and altogether devoid of that
meditative art with which Horace transmutes his own experience into
the common experience of human nature, is known also as a familiar
friend, from the force of feeling with which he realised, and the
transparent sincerity with which he recorded, all the pain and the
pleasure of his life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age have
written, neither from so strong a heart as that of Catullus, nor with
the self-restraint and self-respect of Horace; but yet one of the
chief sources of interest in their poetry, as of that of Martial in
a later age, arises from their strong realisation of life, their
unreserved communicativeness, and the light they thus throw on one
phase of personal and social manners in ancient times.
Nor are these indications of individual character confined to the
poets who profess to communicate their own feelings, and to record
their own fortunes. All the works of Roman poetry bear emphatically
the impress of their authors. While the finest Greek poetry seems like
an almost impersonal emanation of genius, Roman poetry is, to a much
greater extent, the impression of character. The great Roman writers
manifest that kind of self-consciousness which accompanies
resolute and successful effort; while the Greeks enjoy that happy
self-forgetfulness which attends the unimpeded exercise of a natural
gift. The epitaphs composed for themselves by Naevius, Plautus,
Ennius, and Pacuvius, and the assertion of their own originality
and of their hopes of fame which occurs in the poetry of Lucretius,
Virgil, and Horace, were dictated by a strong sense of their own
personality, and of the importance of the task on which they were
engaged. Catullus, although he is much preoccupied with, and most
frank in communicating his feelings and pursuits, has much less of the
consciousness of genius, is much more humble in his aspirations, and
more modest in his estimate of himself. In this, as in other respects,
he approaches nearer to the type of Greek art than any of his
brother-poets of Rome.
It is a common remark that the very greatest poets are those about
whose personal characteristics least is known. It is impossible
in their case to determine how far they have expressed their real
sympathies or convictions. They rise above the prejudices of their
country and the accidents of their time, and can see the good and
evil inseparably mixed in all human action. No criticism can throw any
trustworthy light on the personal position, the pursuits and aims, the
outward and inward experience of Homer. It cannot even be determined
with certainty how much of the poetry which bears his name is the
creation of one, seemingly, inexhaustible genius; and how much is the
'divine voice' of earlier singers still 'floating around him.' Such
inquiries are ever attracting and ever baffling a high curiosity. They
leave the mind perplexed with the doubt whether it is discerning,
in the far distance, the outline of solid mountain-land, or only the
transient shapes of the clouds. Hesiod, on the other hand, a poet of
perhaps equal antiquity, but of an infinitely lower order of genius,
has left his own likeness graphically delineated on his remains. There
is much to interest a reader in the old didactic poem, 'The Works
and Days,' but it is not the interest of studying a work of art or of
creative genius. The charm of the book consists partly in its power
of calling up the ideas of a remote antiquity and of human life in its
most elemental conditions; partly in the distinct impression which
it bears of a character of an antique and primitive and yet not
unfamiliar type;--a character of deep natural piety and righteousness,
but with a quaint intermixture of other qualities;--homespun sagacity
and worldly wisdom; genuine thrift, and horror of idleness, of war,
of seafaring enterprise;--sardonic dislike of the airs and vices of
women, and a grim discontent with his own condition, and with the poor
soil which it was his lot to till[6]. It is through his want of those
gifts of genius which have made Homer immortal as a poet, and a mere
name as a man, that Hesiod has left so distinct a picture of himself
to the latest times. In like manner Roman poetry, while never rising
to the heights of purely creative and impersonal genius, from this
very defect, is a truer revelation of the poets themselves. The
Aeneid supplies ample materials for understanding the affections and
convictions of Virgil. Lucretius makes his personal presence felt
through the whole march of his argument, and supports every position
of his system not with his logic only, but with the whole force of his
nature. The fragments of Ennius and of Lucilius afford ample evidence
by which we may judge what kind of men they were.
It thus appears that, over and above their higher and finer
excellences, the Roman poets have this additional source of interest,
that, more than any other authors in the vigorous times of antiquity,
they satisfy the modern curiosity in regard to personal character
and experience. These poets have themselves left the most trustworthy
record of their happiest hours and most real interests; of their
standard of conduct, their personal worth, and their strength of
affection; of the studies and the occupations in which they passed
their lives, and of the spirit in which they awaited the certainty of
their end.
It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of
this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided
into four great periods:--
I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about
B.C. 240 till about B.C. 100:
II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical career
belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the
outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey:
III. The Augustan age:
IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus.
The poetry of each of these periods is distinctly marked in form,
style, and character. There is evidently a great advance in artistic
accomplishment and in poetical feeling, from the rude cyclopean
remains of the annals of Ennius to the stately proportions and
elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid. Yet this advance was attended
with some loss as well as gain. With infinitely less accomplishment
and less variety, the older writers show signs of a robuster life and
a more vigorous understanding than some at least of those who adorn
the Augustan era. They endeavoured to work in the spirit of the
great masters, who had made the most heroic passions and most serious
interests of men the subject of their art. They were men also of the
same fibre as the chief actors on the stage of public affairs, living
with them in familiar friendship, while at the same time maintaining
a close sympathy with popular feeling and the national life. Their
fragments are thus, apart from their intrinsic merits, especially
valuable as the contemporary language of that great time, and as
giving some expression to the strength, the dignity, and the freedom
which were stamped upon the old Republic.
For more than a generation after the death of Accius and Lucilius, no
new poet of any eminence appeared at Rome. The vivid enjoyment of
life and the sense of security which usually accompany and foster
the successful cultivation of art had been rudely interrupted by
the convulsions of the State. A new birth of Roman poetry took place
during the brief lull between the storms of the first and second civil
wars. The new poets arose independently of the old literature. They
appealed not to popular favour, but to the tastes of the few and
the educated; they gave expression not to any public or national
sentiment, but to their individual thought and feeling. Their works
reflect the restless agitation of a time of revolution; but they show
also all the vigour and sincerity of republican freedom. While greatly
superior to the fragments of the older poetry in refinement of style,
and in depth and variety of poetical feeling, they want the simple
strength of moral conviction, and the interest in great practical
affairs, which characterised their predecessors. They are inferior to
the poets of the Augustan age in artistic skill; but they show
more force of thought, or more intensity of passion, a stronger and
livelier inspiration, a bolder and more independent character.
The short interval between the death of Catullus and the appearance of
the Bucolics of Virgil marks the beginning of a new era in literature
and in history:
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Catullus, dying only a few years before the extinction of popular
freedom, is, in every nerve and fibre, the poet of a republic. Virgil,
even before the final success of Augustus, proclaimed the advent of
the new Empire; and he became the sincere admirer and interpreter
of its order and magnificence. Most of the other poets of that age,
though born before the overthrow of the Republic, show the influence
of their time, not only by sympathy with or acquiescence in the new
order of things, but by a perceptible lowering in the higher energies
of life. Still, the poetry of the Augustan age, if inferior in natural
force to that of the Republic, is the culmination of all the previous
efforts of Roman art; and presents at the same time the most complete
and elaborate picture of Roman and Italian life.
The chief interest of Roman poetry, considered as the work of men of
natural genius and cultivated taste, and as the expression of great
national ideas or of individual thought and impulse, ceases with the
end of the Augustan age. Under the continued pressure of the Empire,
true poetical inspiration and pure feeling for art were lost. One
certain test of this decay is the absence of musical power and
sweetness from the verse of the later poets. Yet some of the poets of
the Empire have their own peculiar value. Lucan and Juvenal recall in
their vigorous rhetoric the masculine tone and fervid feeling of
the old Roman character, liberalised by the progress of thought and
education. In the Satires of Persius, there is an atmosphere of purer
morality than in any earlier Roman writer, with the exception of
Cicero. There is much vigour, sense, wit, and a keen appreciation of
life, intermingled with the coarseness of Martial. Yet it is owing
rather to their rhetorical or their intellectual ability and to their
historical interest, than to their poetical genius, that these writers
are still read and admired. If good taste, culture, and devotion to
the Muses could make a man a poet in an unpoetical age, Statius would
be counted among the great poets of Rome. The artificial epics of
Silius Italicus and Valerius Flaccus may be occasionally read in the
interests of learning: but it is hardly probable that they will, or
desirable that they should, ever be permanently restored from the
neglect and oblivion into which they have long been sinking.
This review of Roman poetry will bring before us the origin and
progressive growth of a branch of literature, moulded, indeed, on
the forms of a foreign art, but executed with native energy, and
expressive of native character. In this poetry not the genius only,
but the whole nature and sympathies of some of the more interesting
men of antiquity are displayed. It throws light on the impulses of
thought and feeling which influenced the action of different epochs
in Roman history. The great qualities of Rome are seen to mould and
animate her poetry. These qualities are found in harmonious union with
the spirit of enjoyment and the sense of exuberant life, fostered by
the genial air of Italy; and with a refinement of taste drawn from the
purest source of human culture which the world has ever enjoyed. After
all deductions have been made for their want of inventiveness, it
still remains true, that the Roman poets of the last days of the
Republic and of the Augustan age have added to the masterpieces of
literature some great works of native feeling as well as of finished
execution.
[Footnote 1: Hom. Od. xxii. 347.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 2, 3. Sero igitur a
nostris poetae vel cogniti vel recepti. At contra oratorem
celeriter complexi sumus: nec cum primo eruditum, aptum tamen
ad dicendum.]
[Footnote 3: Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography, art.
Catullus.]
[Footnote 4: Horace, Sat. i. 10. 45.]
[Footnote 5: 'He used from time to time to intrust all his
secret thoughts to his books, as to trusty friends; it was to
them only he turned in evil fortune or in good; and thus it
is, that the whole life of the old poet lies before our eyes,
as if it were portrayed on a votive picture.'--Sat. ii. 1.
30.]
[Footnote 6: The parallel which Mr. Ruskin draws (Modern
Painters, vol. iii. p. 194) between an ancient Greek and 'a
good, conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border
farmer of a century or two back,' becomes intelligible if we
regard Hesiod as a normal type of the Greek mind.]
CHAPTER II.
VESTIGES OF EARLY INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY.
The Romans themselves traced the origin of their poetry, as of all
their literary culture, to their contact with the mind of Greece.
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
The first productive literary impulse was communicated to the Roman
mind by the Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who, in the year B.C.
240--one year after the end of the First Punic War--brought out,
before a Roman audience, a drama translated or imitated from the
Greek. From this time Roman poetry advanced along the various channels
which the creative energy of Greek genius had formed.
But it has been maintained, in recent times, that this was but
the second birth of Roman poetry, and that a golden age of native
minstrelsy had preceded this historical development of literature.
The most distinguished supporters of this theory were Niebuhr and
Macaulay. In the preface to his _Lays of Rome_, Macaulay says that
'this early literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are
found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence,
but little reading and writing.' Niebuhr went so far as to assert that
the Romans in early times possessed epic poems, 'which in power and
brilliance of imagination leave everything produced by the Romans in
later times far behind them.' He held that the flourishing period of
this native poetry was the fifth century after the foundation of
the city. He supposed that the early lays were of plebeian origin,
strongly animated by plebeian sentiment, and familiarly known among
the mass of the people; that they disappeared after the ascendency of
the new literature, chiefly through the influence of Ennius; and that
his immediate predecessor, Naevius, was the last of the genuine native
minstrels. He professed to find clear traces of these ballads and
epic poems in the fine legends of early Roman history. His theory was
supported by arguments founded on the testimony of ancient writers, on
indications of the early recognition of poetry by the Roman State (as,
for instance, the worship of the Camenae), on the poetical character
of early Roman story, and on the analogy of other nations.
Although there may be no more ground for believing in a golden age of
early Roman poetry than in a golden age of innocence and happiness,
yet the question raised by Niebuhr deserves attention, not only on
account of the celebrity which it obtained, but also as opening up
an inquiry into the nature and value of the rude germs of literature
which the Latin soil spontaneously produced. Though there is no
substantial evidence of the existence among the Romans of anything
corresponding to the modern ballad or the early epic of Greece, yet
certain kinds of metrical composition did spring up and flourish among
the Italians, previous to and independent of their knowledge of
Greek literature. It is worth while to ascertain what these kinds of
composition were, as they throw light on some natural tendencies of
the race, which ultimately obtained their adequate expression, and
helped to impart a native and original character to Latin literature.
It was observed in the former chapter that while the metres of all the
great Roman poets were founded on the earlier metres of Greece, there
was a native Italian metre, called the Saturnian, which was employed
apparently in various kinds of composition, and was quite different in
character from the heroic and lyric measures adopted by the
cultivated poets of a later age. This metre was used not only in rude
extemporaneous effusions, but also in the long poem of Naevius, on
the First Punic War. Horace indicates his sense of the roughness and
barbarism of the metre, in the lines,
Sic horridus ille
Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus
Munditiae pepulere[1].
Ennius speaks contemptuously of the verse of Naevius, as that employed
by the old prophetic bards, before any of the gifts of poetry had been
received or cultivated--
Quum neque musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
Nec dicti studiosus erat.
The irregularity of the metre may be inferred from a saying of an
ancient grammarian, that, in the long epic of Naevius he could find no
single line to serve as a normal specimen of its structure. From the
few Saturnian lines remaining, it may be inferred that the verse had
an irregular trochaic movement; and it seems first to have come into
use as an accompaniment to the beating of the foot in a primitive
rustic dance. The name, connected with Saturnus, the old Land-God of
Italy, points to the rustic origin of the metre. It was known also by
the name Faunian, derived from another of the Divinities worshipped in
the rural districts of Italy. It seems first to have been employed in
ritual prayers and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth, and in
the grotesque raillery accompanying the merriment and license of the
harvest-home. It is of the Saturnian verse that Virgil speaks in the
lines of the second Georgic--
Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni
Versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto[2].
As the long roll of the hexameter and the stately march of the alcaic
were expressive of the gravity and majesty of the Roman State, so the
ring and flow of the Saturnian verse may be regarded as indicative
of the freedom and genial enjoyment of life, characterising the old
Italian peasantry.
The most important kinds of compositions produced in this metre, under
purely native influences, may be classed as,
1. Hymns or ritual verses.
2. Prophetic verses.
3. Festive and satiric verses, uttered in dialogue or in rude mimetic
drama.
4. Short gnomic or didactic verses.
5. Commemorative odes sung or recited at banquets and funerals.
1. The earliest extant specimen of the Latin language is a fragment of
the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, a priestly brotherhood, who offered,
on every 15th of May, public sacrifices for the fertility of the
fields. This fragment is variously written and interpreted, but there
can be no doubt that it is the expression of a prayer for protection
against pestilence, addressed to the Lares and the god Mars, and that
it was uttered with the accompaniment of dancing. The following is the
reading of the fragment, as given by Mommsen:--
Enos, Lases, juvate.
Ne veluerve, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores.
Satur fu, fere Mars.
Limen sali.
Sta berber.
Semunis alternis advocapit conctos.
Enos, Marmar, juvato.
Triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe[3].
The address to Mars 'Satur fu,' or, according to another reading,
'Satur furere,' 'be satisfied or done with raging,' probably refers
to the severity of the winter and early spring[4]. The words have
reference to the attributes of the God in the old Italian religion,
in which the powers of Nature were deified and worshipped long before
Mars was identified with the Greek Ares. The other expressions in the
prayer appear to be, either directions given to the dancers, or the
sounds uttered as the dance proceeded.
Another short fragment has been preserved from the hymn of the Salii,
also an ancient priesthood, supposed to date from the times of
the early kings. The hymn is characterised by Horace, among other
specimens of ancient literature, as equally unintelligible to himself
and to its affected admirers[5].
From the extreme antiquity of these ceremonial chants it may be
inferred that metrical expression among the Romans, as among the
Greeks and other ancient nations, owed its origin to a primitive
religious worship. But while the early Greek hymns or chants in
honour of the Gods soon assumed the forms of pleasant tales of
human adventure, or tragic tales of human suffering, the Roman hymns
retained their formal and ritual character unchanged among all the
changes of creed and language. In the lines just quoted there is no
trace of creative fancy, nor any germ of devotional feeling, which
might have matured into lyrical or contemplative poetry. They sound
like the words of a rude incantation. They are the obscure memorial
of a primitive, agricultural people, living in a blind sense of
dependence on their gods, and restrained by a superstitious formalism
from all activity of thought or fancy. Such compositions cannot be
attributed to the inspiration or skill of any early poet, but seem to
have been copied from the uncouth and spontaneous shouts of a simple,
unsophisticated priesthood, engaged in a rude ceremonial dance.
If these hymns stand in any relation to Latin literature, they
may perhaps be regarded as springing from the same vein of public
sentiment, as called forth the hymn composed by Livius Andronicus
during the Second Punic War, and as rude precursors of those composed
by Catullus and Horace, and chanted by a chorus of youths and maidens
in honour of the protecting Deities of Rome.
2. The verses of the Fauns and Vates spoken of by Ennius, with
allusion to the poem of Naevius, in the lines,
Scripsere alii rem,
Versibu' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
were probably as far removed from poetry as the ritual chants of the
Salii and the Fratres Arvales. The Fauni were the woodland gods of
Italy, and were, besides their other functions, supposed to be endowed
with prophetic power[6]. The word _Vates_, till the Augustan age,
meant not a poet but a soothsayer. The Camenae or Casmenae (another
form of which word appears in Carmenta, the prophetic mother of
Evander) were worshipped, not as the inspirers of poetry, but as the
foretellers of future events[7]. Both Greeks and Romans sought to
obtain a knowledge of the future, either through the interpretation of
omens, or through the voice of persons supposed to be divinely endowed
with foresight. But the Greeks, even in the regard which they paid
to auguries and oracles, were influenced, for the most part, by their
lively imagination; while the Romans, from the earliest to the latest
eras of their history, in all their relations to the supernatural
world, adhered to a scrupulous and unimaginative ceremonialism. The
notices in Latin literature of the functions of these early Vates--as,
for instance, the counsel of the Etrurian seer to drain the Alban Lake
during the war with Veii, and the prophecy of Marcius uttered during
the Second Punic War,
Amnem Trojugena Cannam Romane fuge, etc.[8],
suggest no more idea of poetical inspiration than the occasional
notices, in Latin authors, of the oracles of the Sibylline books. The
language of prophecy naturally assumes a metrical or rhythmical form,
partly as an aid to the memory, partly, perhaps, as a means of giving
to the words uttered the effect of a more solemn intonation. In
Greece, the oracles of the Delphian priestess, and the predictions
of soothsayers, collected in books or circulating orally among the
people, were expressed in hexameter verse and in the traditional
diction of epic poetry; but they were never ranked under any form of
poetic art. The verses of the Vates, so far as any inference can be
formed as to their nature, appear to have been products and proofs
of unimaginative superstition or imposture, rather than of any
imaginative inspiration among the early inhabitants of Latium.
3. Another class of metrical compositions, of native origin, but of a
totally opposite character, was known by the name of the 'Fescennine
verses.' These arose out of a very different class of feelings and
circumstances. Horace attributes their origin to the festive meetings
and exuberant mirth of the harvest-home among a primitive, strong, and
cheerful race of husbandmen. He points out how this rustic raillery
gradually assumed the character of fierce lampoons, and had to be
restrained by law:--
Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit;
Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos
Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam
In rabiem coepit verti jocus et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax. Doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi; quin etiam lex
Poenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quemquam
Describi; vertere modum, formidine fustis
Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti[9].
The change in character, here described, from coarse and good-humoured
bantering to libellous scurrility, may be conjectured to have taken
place when the Fescennine freedom passed from villages and country
districts to the active social and political life within the city.
That this change had taken place in Rome at an early period, is proved
by the fact that libellous verses were forbidden by the laws of the
Twelve Tables[10]. The original Fescennine verse appears, from the
testimony of Horace, to have been in metrical dialogue. This rude
amusement, in which a coarse kind of banter was interchanged during
their festive gatherings, was in early times characteristic of the
rural populations of Greece and Sicily, as well as Italy, and was one
of the original elements out of which Greek comedy and Greek pastoral
poetry were developed. These verses had a kindred origin with that of
the Phallic Odes among the Greeks. They both appear to have sprung out
of the rudest rites and the grossest symbolism of rustic paganism. The
Fescennine raillery long retained traces of this original character.
Catullus mentions the 'procax Fescennina locutio,' among the
accompaniments of marriage festivals; and the songs of the soldiers,
in the extravagant license of the triumphal procession, betrayed
unmistakably this primitive coarseness.
These rude and inartistic verses, which took their name either from
the town of Fescennia in Etruria or from the word fascinum[11], were
the first expression of that aggressive and censorious spirit which
ultimately animated Roman satire. But the original satura, which also
was familiar to the Romans before they became acquainted with Greek
literature, was somewhat different both from the Fescennine verses,
and from the lampoons which arose out of them. The more probable
etymology[12] of the word _satura_ connects it in origin with the
_satura lanx_, a plate filled with various kinds of fruit offered to
the gods. If this etymology be the true one, the word meant originally
a medley of various contents, like the Italian _farsa_[13], and it
evidently had not lost this meaning when first employed in regular
literature by Ennius and Lucilius. The original satura was a kind of
dramatic entertainment, accompanied with music and dancing, differing
from the Fescennine verses in being regularly composed and not
extemporaneous, and from the drama, in being without a connected
plot. The origin of this composition is traced by Livy[14] to the
representation of Etrurian dancers, who were brought to Rome during a
pestilence. The Roman youth, according to his account, being moved to
imitation of these representations, in which there was neither acting
nor speaking, added to them the accompaniment of verses of a humorous
character; and continued to represent these jocular medleys, combined
with music (_saturas impletas modis_), even after the introduction of
the regular drama.
These scenic saturae, which, from Livy's notice, appear to have been
accompanied with good-humoured hilarity rather than with scurrilous
raillery, prepared the way for the reception of the regular drama
among the Romans, and will, to some extent, account for its early
popularity among them. The later Roman satire long retained traces of
a connexion with this primitive and indigenous satura, evinced both
by the miscellaneous character of its topics, and by its frequent
employment of dramatic dialogue.
4. The didactic tendency which is so conspicuous in the cultivated
literature of Rome manifested itself also in the indigenous
compositions of Italy. The popular maxims and precepts preserved by
the old agricultural writers and afterwards embodied by Virgil in
his Georgics, were handed down from generation to generation in the
Saturnian rhythm. But, apparently, the first metrical composition
committed to writing was a poem of an ethical or didactic character,
written two generations before the first dramatic representation of
Livius Andronicus, by Appius Claudius Caecus, who is also the earliest
known to us in the long line of Roman orators[15].
5. But it was not from any of these sources that Niebuhr supposed the
poetical character of early Roman history to be derived. Nor is there
any analogy between the religious hymns, or the Fescennine verses of
Italy, and the modern ballad. But there is evidence of the existence,
at one time, of other metrical compositions of which scarcely anything
is definitely ascertained, except that they were sung at banquets, to
the accompaniment of the flute, in celebration of the praises of great
men. There is no direct evidence of the time when these compositions,
some of which were believed by Niebuhr to have attained the dimensions
of Epic poems, existed, or when they fell into disuse. Cato, as quoted
by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, and in the Brutus[16], is our
earliest authority on the subject. His testimony is to the effect that
many generations before his time, the guests at banquets were in the
habit of singing, in succession, the praises of great men, to the
music of the flute. Cicero, in the Brutus, expresses a wish that these
songs still existed in his own day; 'utinam exstarent illa carmina,
quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a
singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus scriptum
reliquit Cato.' Varro again is quoted, to the effect that boys used
to be present at banquets, for the purpose of singing 'ancient poems,'
celebrating the praises of their ancestors. Valerius Maximus mentions
'that the older men used at banquets to celebrate in song the
illustrious deeds of their ancestors, in order to stimulate the
youth to imitate them.' Passages are quoted also from Horace,
from Dionysius, and from Tacitus, implying a belief in the ancient
existence of these compositions.
Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain
funeral poems, called _Naeniae_, originally chanted by the female
relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the
practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a
mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations.
The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no
more than this,--that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of
great men--that they were of such length as to admit of several being
sung in succession,--and that they fell into disuse some generations
before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from
these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr.
The evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical
pieces, and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great
banquets and funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of
exhibiting the ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their
origin to the patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have
been animated by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved
at all, they were thus more likely to have been preserved by members
of the great houses living within the city walls, than by the
peasantry living among the outlying hills and country districts. If
ever there were any golden age of early Roman poetry, it had passed
away long before the time of Ennius and Cato.
The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early
times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the
memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of
hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic
poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions
were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and had
any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult to
believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination, pouring
itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems, could have
been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular poetry, not
scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the possession of
a great commonwealth--one most tenacious of every national
memorial--could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign
influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the
supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the
memory of men--as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of
Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the Iliad
and the Odyssey--this early poetry could not have perished without
leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth of
poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical
feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force
by which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from
one generation of poets to another. The language of Homer, by its
natural and musical flow, by its accumulated wealth of meaning, by the
use of traditional epithets and modes of expression, that penetrate
far back into the belief, the feelings, and the life of an earlier
time, implies the existence of a long line of poets who preceded him.
On the other hand, the diction of the fragments of Ennius, in its
strength and in its rudeness, is evidently, in great measure, the
creation of his own time and his own mind. He has no true discernment
of the characteristic difference between the language of prose and of
poetry. The materials of his art had not been smoothed and polished
by any long, continuous stream of national melody, but were rough-hewn
and adapted by his own energy to the rugged structure of his poem.
While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early
commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of
imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular
enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their
entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains,
and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language
and rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to
the presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any
time, and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art.
This presumption is further strengthened by such indications as there
are of the recognition, or rather the non-recognition, of poets or of
the poetic character at Rome in early times.
The worship of the Camenae was indeed an old and genuine part of the
Roman or Italian religion; but, as was said before, their original
function was to predict future events, and to communicate the
knowledge of divination; not like that of the Greek Muses, to imagine
bright stories of divine and human adventure,--
[Greek: lesmosynen te kakon ampauma te mermeraon.]
Even the names by which two of the Camenae were known--Postvorta and
Antevorta--suggest the prosaic and practical functions which they were
supposed to fulfil. The Romans had no native word equivalent to the
Greek word [Greek: aoidos], denoting the primary and most essential
of all poetical gifts, the power to awaken the music of language. The
word _vates_, as was seen, denoted a prophet. The title of _scriba_
was applied to Livius Andronicus; and Naevius, who has by some been
regarded as the last of the old race of Roman bards, applies to
himself the Greek name of _poeta_,--
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam.
The commemorative odes appear to have been recited or sung at
banquets, not by poets or rhapsodists, but by boys or guests. There is
one notice, indeed, of a class of men who practised the profession of
minstrelsy. This passage, which is quoted by Aulus Gellius from the
writings of Cato, implies the very lowest estimation of the position
and character of the poet, and points more naturally to the composers
of the libellous verses forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables,
than to the authors of heroic and national lays:--'Poetry was not held
in honour; if anyone devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets,
he was called a vagabond[17].'
It appears that, on this ground also, there is no reason for believing
in the existence of any golden age of Roman poetry before the time
of Ennius, or in the theory that the legendary tales of Roman history
were created and shaped by native minstrels. To what cause, then, can
we attribute their origin? These tales have a strong human interest,
and represent marked and original types of antique heroism. They have
the elements of true tragic pathos and moral grandeur. They could
neither have arisen nor been preserved except among a people endowed
with strong capacities of feeling and action. But the strength of
the Roman mind consisted more in retentive capacity than in creative
energy. Their art and their religion, their family and national
customs, aimed at preserving the actual memory of men and of their
actions: not like the arts, ceremonies, and customs of the Greeks,
which aimed at lifting the mind out of reality into an ideal world. As
one of the chief difficulties of the Homeric controversy arises from
our ignorance of the power of the memory during an age when poetry
and song were in the fullest life, but the use of letters was either
unknown, or extremely limited; so there is a parallel difficulty in
all attempts to explain the origin of early Roman history, from our
ignorance of the power of oral tradition in a time of long established
order, but yet unacquainted with any of the forms of literature.
The indifference of barbarous tribes to their past history can prove
little or nothing as to the tenacity of the national memory among a
people far advanced towards civilisation like the Romans after the
establishment of their Republican form of government. Nor can the
analogy of early Greek traditions be fairly applied to those of Rome,
owing to the great difference in the circumstances and the genius
of the two nations. Many real impressions of the past might fix
themselves indelibly in the grave and solid temperament of the Romans,
which would have been lost amid the inexhaustible wealth of fancy
that had been lavished upon the Greeks. The strict family life and
discipline of the Romans, the continuity of their religious colleges,
the unity of a single state as the common centre of all their
interests, the slow and steady growth of their institutions, their
strong regard for precedent, were all conditions more favourable
to the preservation of tradition than the lively social life, the
numerous centres of political organisation, and the rapid growth and
vicissitudes of the Greek Republics.
It cannot, indeed, be disputed that although the legendary tales of
Roman history may have drawn more of their colour from life than from
imagination, yet there is no criterion by which the amount of fact
contained in them can be separated from the other elements of which
they were composed. Oral tradition among the Romans, as among other
nations, was founded on impressions originally received without
any careful sifting of evidence; and these first impressions would
naturally be modified in accordance with the feelings and opinions
of each generation, through which they were transmitted. Aetiological
myths, or the attempt to explain some institution or memorial by some
concrete fact, and the systematic reconstruction of forgotten events,
have also entered largely into the composition of Roman history. But
these admissions do not lead to the conclusion that the art or fancy
of any class of early poets was added to the unconscious operation
of popular feeling in moulding the impressive tales of early heroism,
partly out of the memory of real events and personages, partly out
of the ideal of character, latent in the national mind. It has
been remarked by Sir G. C. Lewis that many even of the Greek myths,
abounding 'in striking, pathetic, and interesting events,' existed
as prose legends, and were handed down in the common speech of the
people. In like manner, such tales as those of Lucretia and Virginia,
of Horatius and the Fabii, of Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, and Camillus,
which stand out prominently in the twilight of Roman history, may have
been preserved in _fama vulgaris_, or among the family traditions of
the great houses, till they were gathered into the poem of Ennius and
the prose narratives of the early annalists[18]. In so far as they
are shaped or coloured by imagination, they do not bear traces of the
conscious art of a poet, but rather of an unconscious conformity
to the national ideal of character. The most impressive of these
legendary stories illustrate the primitive virtues of the Roman
character, such as chastity, frugality, fortitude, and self-devotion;
or the national characteristics of patrician pride and a stern
exercise of parental authority. There is certainly no internal
evidence that any of them originated in a pure poetic impulse, or gave
birth to any work of poetic art deserving a permanent existence in
literature.
The analogy of other nations might suggest the inference that a race
which in its maturity produced a genuine poetic literature must,
in the early stages of its history, have given some proof of poetic
inspiration. It is natural to associate the idea of poetry with youth
both in nations and individuals. Yet the evidence of their language,
of their religion, and of their customs, leads to the conclusion that
the Romans, while prematurely great in action and government, were, in
the earlier stages of their national life, little moved by any kind of
poetical imagination. The state of religious feeling or belief which
gives birth to or co-exists with primitive poetry has left no trace
of itself upon the early Roman annals. It is generally found that a
fanciful mythology, of a bright, gloomy, or grotesque character, in
accordance with the outward circumstances and latent spirit or humour
of the particular race among whom it originates, precedes and for a
time accompanies the poetry of romantic action. The creative faculty
produces strange forms and conditions of supernatural life out of its
own mysterious sympathy with Nature, before it learns to invent tales
of heroic action and of tragic calamity out of its sympathy with human
energy and passion, and its interest in marking the course of destiny,
and the vicissitudes of life. The development of the Roman religion
betrays the absence, or at least the weaker influence of that
imaginative power which shaped the great mythologies of different
races out of the primeval worship of nature. The later element
introduced into Roman religion was due not to imagination but to
reflection. The worship of Fides, Concordia, Pudicitia, and the like,
marks a great progress from the early adoration of the sun, the earth,
the vault of heaven, and the productive power of nature; but it is
a progress in understanding and moral consciousness, not in poetical
feeling nor imaginative power. It shows that Roman civilisation
advanced without this vivifying influence,--that the mind of the race
early reached the maturity of manhood, without passing through the
dreams of childhood or the buoyant fancies of youth.
The circumstances of the Romans, in early times, were also different
from those by which the growth of a romantic poetry has usually been
accompanied. Though, like all races born to a great destiny, they had
much latent imaginative ardour of feeling, this was employed by them,
unconsciously, in elevating and purifying the ideal of the State
and the family, as actually realised in experience. Their orderly
organisation,--the early establishment of their civic forms,--the
strict discipline of family life among them,--the formal and
ceremonial character of their national religion,--and their strong
interest in practical affairs,--were not calculated either to kindle
the glow of individual genius, or to dispose the mass of the people to
listen to the charm of musical verse. The wars of the young Republic,
carried on by a well-trained militia, for the acquisition of
new territory, formed the character to solid strength and steady
discipline, but could not act upon the fancy in the same way as the
distant enterprise, the long struggles for national independence, or
the daring forays, which have thrown the light of romance around the
warlike youth of other races. The tillage of the soil, in which
the brief intervals between their wars were passed, was a tame and
monotonous pursuit compared with the maritime adventure which awoke
the energies of Greece, or with the wild and lonely, half-pastoral,
half-marauding life, out of which a true ballad poetry arose in modern
times. Some traces of a wilder life, or some faint memories of their
Sabine forefathers, may be dimly discerned in the earliest traditions
of the Roman people; but their youth was essentially practical,--great
and strong in the virtues of temperance, gravity, fortitude, reverence
for law and the majesty of the State, combined with a strong love
of liberty and sturdy resistance to wrong. These qualities are the
foundations of a powerful and orderly State, not the root or the sap
by which a great national poetry is nourished[19].
If the pure Roman intellect and discipline had spontaneously produced
any kind of literature, it would have been more likely to have taken
the form of history or oratory than of national song or ballad. It
was from men of the Italian provinces, and not from her own sons, that
Rome received her poetry. The men of the most genuinely Roman type and
character long resisted all literary progress. The patrons and friends
of the early poets were the more liberal members of the aristocracy,
in whom the austerity of the national character and narrowness of the
national mind had yielded to new ideas and a wider experience. The
art of Greece was communicated to 'rude Latium,' through the medium of
those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the Greek
language and civilisation. With less native strength, but with
greater flexibility, these races were more readily moulded by foreign
influences; and, leading a life of greater ease and freedom, they were
more susceptible to all the impulses of Nature. While they were thus
more readily prepared to catch the spirit of Greek culture, they
had learned, through long years of war and subsequent dependence,
to understand and respect the imperial State in which their own
nationality had been merged. It is important to remember that the time
in which Roman literature arose was not only that of the first active
intercourse between Greeks and Romans, but also that in which a great
war, against the most powerful State outside of Italy, had awakened
the sense of an Italian nationality, of which Rome was the centre.
The great Republic derived her education and literature from the
accumulated stores of Greek thought and feeling; but these were made
available to her through the willing service of poets who, though born
in other parts of Italy, looked to Rome as the head and representative
of their common country.
[Footnote 1: Epist. ii. 1. 157.]
[Footnote 2: Georg. ii. 385.]
[Footnote 3: It is thus interpreted by the same author:--Nos, lares,
juvate. Ne malam luem, Mamers, sinas incurrere in plures. Satur esto,
fere Mars. In limen insili. Desiste verberare (limen)! Semones
alterni advocate cunctos. Nos, Mamers, juvato. Tripudia.
'Help us, Lares. Suffer not, Mamers, pestilence to fall on
the people. Be satisfied, fierce Mars. Leap on the threshold.
Cease beating it. Call, in turn, on all the demigods. Help us,
Mamers.'--Mommsen, Roem. Geschichte, vol. i. ch. xv.]
[Footnote 4: Such is the interpretation of Corssen, Origines
Poesis Romanae.]
[Footnote 5: Epist. ii. 1. 86.]
[Footnote 6: Cf. Virg. Aen. vii. 81, 82:--
At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni,
Fatidici genitoris, adit.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. Schwegler, Roem. Gesch. i. 24, note 1.]
[Footnote 8: Livy xxv. 12.]
[Footnote 9: 'Through this fashion the Fescennine raillery
arose and poured forth rustic banter in responsive verse; the
spirit of freedom, made welcome, as the season came round,
first played its part genially; but soon the jests grew cruel,
then changed into sheer fury, and began, with impunity, to
threaten and assail honourable households. Men smarted
under the sharp edge of its cruel tooth: even those who were
unassailed felt concern for the common weal. A law was passed,
and a penalty enforced, forbidding any one to be lampooned
in scurrilous verses. Thus they changed their style, and were
brought back to a kindly and pleasant tone, under fear of a
beating.'--Epist. ii. 1. 144-55.]
[Footnote 10: Sei quis ocentasit, casmenue condisit, quod
infamiam faxsit flacitiomque alterei, fuste feritor.]
[Footnote 11: Teuffel quotes from Festus: Fescennini versus
qui canebantur in nuptiis, ex urbe Fescennina dicuntur allati,
sive ideo dicti quia fascinum putabantur arcere. It seems
more natural to connect the name of these verses, which
were especially characteristic of the Latin peasantry, with
fascinum (the phallic symbol) than with any particular town
of Etruria, though the name of that town may perhaps have the
same origin.]
[Footnote 12: Mommsen's explanation, 'the masque of the
full men' ('saturi'), does not seem to meet with general
acceptance.]
[Footnote 13: Cf. Teuffel, vi. 2.]
[Footnote 14: vii. 2.]
[Footnote 15: Cf. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p. 102.]
[Footnote 16: Tusc. Disp. iv. 2; Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 17: Noct. Att. xi. 2. A similar character at one
time attached to minstrels in Scotland.]
[Footnote 18: Some of these tales may have been originally
aetiological, but the human interest even in these was
probably drawn originally from actual incidents and personages
of the Early Republic. Some of the aetiological myths, such as
that of Attus Navius the augur, have no human interest, though
they have an historical interest in connexion with early Roman
religion or institutions.]
[Footnote 19: Cf. Schwegler, Roem. Gesch. i. 1. 24.]
CHAPTER III.
THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS,
B.C. 240-202.
The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar
contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum,
the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies
in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional
communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in
Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of
Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from
Epidaurus in B.C. 293, and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by
the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to
have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either
Greeks or men acquainted with that language[1]. The identification of
the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before Greek
literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius and
Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process. Greek
civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close
relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district,
such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of
by the Romans as 'Semi-Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum,
there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two
great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with
Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was
slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of
Rome began to attract the attention of Greek historians[2], and the
Romans, though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the
language and literature of Greece.
Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed
before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman
audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to
B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not
till the successful close of that war, and the commencement of
the following years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and
instruction was made familiar to the Romans.
Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis;
Et post Punica bella quietus quaerere coepit,
Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[3].
Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the
minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily
had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their
intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities
for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent
opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. There was
a theatre in every important town of Sicily, as may be seen in the
ruins still remaining on the sites of Segesta, Syracuse, Tauromenium,
and Catana; and the enjoyment of the drama entered largely into the
life of the Sicilian, as it had into that of the Italian Greeks. Many
Greeks also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of
Tarentum, and were employed in educating the young among the
higher classes. Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their
circumstances and education, to take interest in the legends and in
the dramatic form of literature introduced from Greece; while the
previous existence of the saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at
Rome, tended to make the new comic drama at least acceptable to the
mass of the population.
The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the
First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During
this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory,
history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of
five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The
whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered
people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved
upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and
great productive energy, but with little sense of art, and endowed
with faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of
life than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle
against the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art
and to the rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to
other disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass
of the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference
of the educated class for the more finished works already existing in
Greek literature.
Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and
such scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected
with the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity.
Naevius, the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native
poet, was actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the
time of his death; about which period his greater successor first
appeared at Rome. For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic
and tragic poetry. The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew,
Pacuvius. He, in the later years of his life, lived in friendly
intercourse with his younger rival Accius, who, again, in his old age,
had frequently conversed with Cicero[4]. The torch, which was first
lighted by Livius Andronicus from the decaying fires of Greece, was
thus handed down by these few men, through this long period, until it
was extinguished during the stormy times which fell in the youth of
the great orator and prose writer of the Republic.
The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the
tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest
introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all
the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the
comic writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and
Ennius. It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both
in form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on
the later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the
time. The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three,
is generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown
earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification
of the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius,
who was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius.
No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern
times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this
long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly
from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been
preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but
by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech
contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to
the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that
which really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting
fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient
poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can
be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity, be
incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a consistent
impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought and
sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic
worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their
antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral
and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the
strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time
when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness.
The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the
literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the
end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius. Of
the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are scanty
and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely as
illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius
and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older
dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are
not worth reading a second time[5].' The importance which attaches
to Livius consists in his being the accidental medium through which
literary art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and,
as is generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. He educated the sons
of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from whom he afterwards received
his freedom. The last thirty years of his life were devoted to
literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the Greek drama in a
Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been founded on Greek
subjects; most of them, probably, were translations. Among the titles,
we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Tereus_,
_Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be popular
with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved sufficient
to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of his general
mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from the scanty
remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and inelegance
of his diction.
In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian
verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is
spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under the
rod of Orbilius[6]. One or two lines of the translation still
remain, and exemplify its rough and prosaic diction, and the extreme
irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[7],
[Greek:
ou gar egoge ti phemi kakoteron allo thalasses
andra ge syncheuai, ei kai mala karteros eie],
are thus rendered:--
Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi
Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae.
He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second
Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter
novenae,' which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and
unpolished[8].
Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father
of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original
genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated
man. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign language,
and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to give the
direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a new
interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary that
the Romans should be educated before they could either produce or
appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a
brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study
and imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable
grace and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial
to the better side of Roman character.
Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the
first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of
original power. It has been supposed that he was a Campanian by
birth, on the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous
epitaph as 'plenum superbiae Campanae.' But the phrase 'Campanian
arrogance' seems to have been used proverbially for 'gasconade'; and
as there was a plebeian _Gens Naevia_ in Rome, it is quite as
probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. The strong political
partisanship displayed in his plays seems favourable to this
supposition, as is also the active interference of the tribunes on his
behalf. Weight must however be given to the remark of Mommsen, 'the
hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a citizen of
Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact
that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of
explanation.' On the other hand it has been observed that had he been
an alien the tribunes could not have interfered on his behalf. He
served either in the Roman army or among the _Socii_ in the First
Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before the year 241 B.C.
Cicero mentions that he lived to a good old age, and that he died
in exile about the end of the third century B.C.[9]. The date of his
birth may thus be fixed with approximate probability about the year
265 B.C. No particulars of his military service are recorded, but it
is most probable that the scene of his service was the west of Sicily,
on which the struggle was concentrated during the later years of the
war. If we connect the newly developed taste for the drama with the
intercourse of Romans with Sicilian Greeks during the war, we may
connect another important influence on Roman literature and Roman
belief which first appeared in the epic poem of Naevius with the
Phoenician settlements in the west of Sicily. The origin of the
belief in the mythical connexion of Aeneas and his Trojans with
the foundation of Rome may probably be attributed to the Sicilian
historian Timaeus; but the contact of the Romans and the Carthaginians
in the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx, may have suggested that part of
the legend which plays so large a part in the Aeneid, which brings
Aeneas from Sicily to Carthage and back again to the neighbourhood
of Mount Eryx. The actual collision of Roman and Phoenician on the
western shores of Sicily, of which Naevius may well have been a
witness, if it did not originate, gave a living interest to the
mythical origin of that antagonism in the relations of Aeneas and
Dido.
The earliest drama of Naevius was brought out in B.C. 235, five years
after the first representation of Livius Andronicus. The number of
dramas which he is known to have composed affords proof of great
industry and activity, from that time till the time of his banishment
from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than in tragedy, and he
used the stage, as it had been used by the writers of the old Attic
comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political warfare. A keen
partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence some of the
chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had passed into a
proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,--
Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules;
to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian,
Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.
In the year 206 B.C. Q. Caecilius Metellus was Consul, his brother M.
Metellus Praetor Urbanus, an office that held out an almost certain
prospect of the Consulship; and it has been suggested[10], with much
probability, that it was against them that this sneer was directed.
The Metelli carried out their threat, as Naevius was imprisoned, a
circumstance to which Plautus[11] alludes in one of the few passages
in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of Athenian
manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While in
prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which
contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was
liberated through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. But
he was soon after banished, and took up his residence at Utica, where
he is said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have
died, in B.C. 204[12], though the same author adds that Varro,
'diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was
still alive for some time after that date[13]. It is inferred, from
a passage in Cicero[14], that his poem on the First Punic War was
composed in his old age. Probably it was written in his exile, when
removed from the sphere of his active literary efforts. As he served
in that war, some time between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have
been well advanced in years at the time of his death.
The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most
favourable specimen of his style, is his epitaph:--
Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam,
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua.
It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest
against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to
Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the
life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame
and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to
disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly be
regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus, as
from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of
the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and
independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and
somewhat turbulent career.
He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except
the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector
Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as
the Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as
well as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken
in the Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the
Trojan War. The following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as
containing the germs of poetical diction:--
Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[15].
He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays,
founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or
_Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to
him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability,
attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows
considerable power of close satiric observation:--
Quasi pila
In choro ludens datatim dat se, et communem facit:
Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet;
Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem;
Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat;
Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[16].
The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his
dramas is the political spirit by which they were animated. Thus
Cicero[17] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii
ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time,
destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given,
Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[18].
The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him
in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which a
failing of the great Scipio is exposed[19]. Other fragments are
found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of
character:--
Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus[20]?
and this also[21]:--
Semper pluris feci potioremque ego
Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.
He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after
Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of
Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and
aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his
strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit
of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place
in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.
He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the
Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may
be regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the
Roman Senate ruled the world.
But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly
rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The
poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian
metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The
earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and of
Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court
of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the
poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main
substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and
tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from
the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and
literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic
representation.
Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem
of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil
followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius
(as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises,
leaving Troy in the night-time,--
Amborum
Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus
Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.
He represents Aeneas as having only one ship, built by Mercury,--a
limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which
the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the
storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus
complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of
the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's
epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He
speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there is
no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale
of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the
worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great
national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing
Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology
compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the
shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.
Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of
Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was
composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants
of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their
common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas
and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between
Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the
time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius,
that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter, and
promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the Romans
were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny. How
much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of
Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical
part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of
Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention, and
of a real adaptation to his main subject.
The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the
events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among
the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and
of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles
without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the
Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this
respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history,
and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The
slight and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the
poem, are expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with
the fidelity of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and
vigorous, but are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid
and graphic condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of
impetuosity in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and
energetic temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines,
Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram
Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[22].
But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford
ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some
evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was
written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be
inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every
fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old
grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he
could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as
a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong
testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one
place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[23].' In
the dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing
the idiomatic purity which distinguished the conversation of his
mother-in-law, Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of
Plautus and Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius
enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum
sermonis expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam
sic audio, ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis
ita recto et simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis
afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic
majores[24].' Expressions from his plays were, from their weight and
compact brevity, quoted familiarly in the days of Cicero, such as
'sero sapiunt Phryges' and 'laudari a laudato viro,' which, like
so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to express a
distinction that could not be characterised in happier or shorter
terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he assumes to
himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote the Latin
language.
Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and
fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be
gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented
the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman
character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as
a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national
feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a
strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed
great productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and
vigorous lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper
have left their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his
epic poem. Probably his most important service to Roman literature
consisted in the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin
language. But the conception of his epic poem seems to imply some
share of the higher gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head
of the line of Roman poets, distinguished by that force of speech and
vehemence of temper, which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and
Juvenal; distinguished also by that national spirit which moved Ennius
and, after him, Virgil, to employ their poetical faculty in raising a
monument to commemorate the power and glory of Rome.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 3: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]
[Footnote 4: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]
[Footnote 5: Brutus, 18.]
[Footnote 6: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]
[Footnote 7: viii. 138.]
[Footnote 8: xxvii. 17.]
[Footnote 9: Brutus 15.]
[Footnote 10: By Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College, U.S.
'On a patriotic passage of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.']
[Footnote 11: Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]
[Footnote 12: Brutus, 15.]
[Footnote 13: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired
to Utica till after it fell into the possession of the
Romans.]
[Footnote 14: De Senectute, 14.]
[Footnote 15: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king,
hasten straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is
of nature's growth, not planted by man.']
[Footnote 16: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses
about from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she
nods, to another winks; she makes love to one, clasps another.
Her hand is busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring
to look at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with
another corresponds by signs.']
[Footnote 17: The reading of the passage here adopted is that
given by Munk.]
[Footnote 18: De Senectute, 6.]
[Footnote 19:
Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.]
[Footnote 20: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by
the applause given to me, to think that any of these great
people should now dare to interfere with! How much better
thing is the slavery _here_' (_i.e._ represented in this
play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?']
[Footnote 21: 'I have always held liberty to be of more value
and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by
Munk.]
[Footnote 22: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this
poem, the action is generally represented in the _present
tense_.]
[Footnote 23: Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 24: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my
mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure
idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse
with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions),
in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to
Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural
and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or
imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and
her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De
Oratore iii. 12.]
CHAPTER IV.
ENNIUS.
The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two
directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its
subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the
work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his
younger contemporary Plautus; and, in a strictly chronological history
of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in
order. But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of
Roman comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to
direct attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of
Naevius in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.
The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than
those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature.
They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the
spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to
Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their
literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language
a vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the
metrical conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully
to elicit the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national
imagination. The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance
with Greek literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of
his time, the serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which
he carried out his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was
in action, the most vital representative of his epoch. It has
happened too that the fragments from his writings and the testimonies
concerning him are more expressive and characteristic than in the
case of any other among the early writers. There are none of his
contemporaries, playing their part in war or politics, and not many
among the writers of later times, of whom we can form so distinct an
image.
I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year
after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first
entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as
quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the
rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus,
he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal
combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he
resided at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome,
'very plainly, on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city),
'attended only by a single maid-servant[1],' and supporting himself by
teaching Greek and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior
in his Aetolian campaign. Through the influence of his son, he
obtained the honour of Roman citizenship, probably at the time when
the colony of Pisaurum was planted in B.C. 184. This distinction
Ennius has himself recorded in a line of the Annals which indicates
the high value which the Roman allies attached to this privilege:--
Nos sumu' Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini.
He lived on terms of intimacy with influential members of the noblest
families in Rome, and became the familiar friend of the great Scipio.
When he died at the age of seventy, his bust was believed to be placed
in the tomb of the Scipios, between those of the conqueror of Hannibal
and of the conqueror of Antiochus. He died in the year B.C. 169. The
most famous of his works were his Tragedies and the Annals, a long
historical poem written in eighteen books. But, in addition to these,
he composed several miscellaneous works, of which only very scanty
fragments have been preserved.
Among the circumstances which prepared him to be the principal creator
of the national literature, his birthplace and origin, the kind of
education available to him in his early years, and the experience
which awaited him when first entering on life, had a strong
determining influence. His birthplace, Rudiae, is called by Strabo
'a Greek city'; but it was not a Greek colony, like Tarentum and the
other cities of Magna Graecia, but an old Italian town, (the epithet
_vetustae_ is applied to it by Silius) which had been partially
Hellenised, but still retained its native traditions and the use of
the Oscan language. Ennius is thus spoken of as 'Semi-Graecus.' He
laid claim to be descended from the old Messapian kings, a claim which
Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the introduction of Messapus
leading his followers in the gathering of the Italian races,
Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant.
This claim to royal descent indicates that the poet was a member
of the better class of families in his native district; and the
consciousness of old lineage, which prompted the claim, probably
strengthened the high self-confidence by which he was animated, and
helped to determine the strong aristocratic bias of his sympathies.
He bore witness to his nationality in the saying quoted by Gellius[2]
that 'in the possession of the Greek, Oscan, and Latin speech, he
possessed three hearts.' Of these three languages the Oscan, as the
one of least value to acquire for the purposes of literature or of
social intercourse, was most likely to have been his inherited tongue.
Rudiae, from its Italian nationality, from its neighbourhood to the
cities of Magna Graecia, and from its relation of dependence on Rome,
must have been in the time of the boyhood of Ennius a meeting-place,
not only of three different languages,--that of common life, that
of culture and education, that of military service--but of the three
different spirits or tendencies which were operative in the creation
of the new literature. To his home among the hills overlooking the
Grecian seas[3]--referred to in the expression of Ovid,--
Calabris in montibus ortus--
and in the phrase of Silius,--
Hispida tellus
Miserunt Calabri; Rudiae genuere vetustae,
the poet owed the 'Italian heart,' the virtue of a race still
uncorrupted and unsophisticated, the buoyant energy and freshness
of feeling which enabled him to apprehend all the novelty and the
greatness of the momentous age through which he lived. The South of
Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied to
Rome or Latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for the
first twenty years of his life granted to Ennius leisure to avail
himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been
born a few years later. In the short account of his life in Jerome's
continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, it is stated that he was born
at Tarentum. Though this is clearly an error, it seems probable that
the poet may have spent the years of his education there. Though
Tarentum, since its capture by the Romans, had lost its political
importance, it still continued to be a centre of Greek culture and of
social pleasure. Dramatic representations had been especially popular
among a people who had drifted far away 'ex Spartana dura illa et
horrida disciplina[4]' of their ancestors. From the knowledge of the
Attic tragedians displayed by Ennius in his later career it is likely
that he had witnessed representations of their works on a Greek stage,
before he began, in middle life, to direct his own genius to dramatic
composition. The knowledge and admiration of Homer which stimulated
him to the composition of his greatest work, might have been acquired
in any centre of Greek culture. But the intellectual interests
indicated in some of his miscellaneous writings have a kind of local
character, distinguishing them alike from the older philosophies of
Athens and from the more recent science of Alexandria. His acceptance
of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the physical
fancies expressed in some of the fragments of the Epicharmus probably
came to him from the teaching of the Neo-Pythagoreans, who were
widely spread among the Greeks of Southern Italy. The rationalistic
speculations of Euhemerus, which appear in strange union with the
'somnia Pythagorea' of the Annals, were of Sicilian origin. The
gastronomic treatise, which Ennius afterwards translated into Latin,
was the work of Archestratus of Gela. The class of persons for whom
such a work would originally be written was likely to be found among
the luxurious livers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Thus while the
serious poetry of Ennius was inspired by the older and nobler works
of Greek genius, the influence of a more vulgar and prosaic class
of teachers, transmitted by him to Roman thought and literature, was
probably derived from the place of his early education.
His Italian spirit, and the Greek culture acquired by him in early
youth, were two of the conditions out of which the new literature was
destined to arise. The third condition was his steadfast and ardent
Roman patriotism. Born more than a generation after his native
district had ceased to be at war with Rome, he grew up to manhood
during the years of peace between the first and second Carthaginian
wars, when the supremacy of Rome was loyally accepted. Between early
manhood and middle life he was a witness of and an actor in the
protracted and long doubtful struggle between the two great Imperial
States, on the issue of which hung the future destinies of the
world:--
Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris;
In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique[5].
Though during that struggle the loyalty of some of the Italian
communities was shaken, yet the aristocratic party in every city, and
the Greek States generally, were true to the Roman alliance[6].
Thus his political sympathies, as well as his Greek education, would
incline Ennius to identify himself with the cause of Rome, and his
ardent imagination apprehended the grandeur and majesty with which she
played her part in the contest. It was in the Second Punic War that
the ideal of what was greatest in the character and institutions of
Rome was most fully realised. Her good fortune supplied from among
the contingent furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of
a nature so sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to
gain for the ideal thus created a permanent realisation.
Of the share which Ennius had in the war we know only that he served
in Sardinia with the rank of centurion. That he had become a man of
some note in that capacity is suggested by the fact that he attracted
the attention of the Roman quaestor Cato, and accompanied him to Rome.
A certain dramatic interest attaches to this first meeting of the
typical representative of Roman manners and traditions and great enemy
of foreign innovations, with the man by whom, more than by any one
else, the mind of Rome was enlarged and liberalised, and many of her
most cherished convictions were most seriously undermined. This actual
service in a great war left its impress on the work done by Ennius.
Fragments both of his tragedies and his Annals prove how thoroughly
he understood and appreciated the best qualities of the soldierly
character. This fellowship in hardship and danger fitted him to become
the national poet of a race of soldiers. He has drawn from his own
observation an image of the fortitude and discipline of the Roman
armies, and of the patriotic devotion and resolution of the men
by whom these armies were led. There is a strong realism in the
expression of martial sentiment in Ennius, marking him out as a man
familiar with the life of the camp and the battle-field, and quite
distinct from the idealising enthusiasm of Livy and Virgil[7].
Ennius entered on his career as a writer at a time when the long
strain of a great struggle was giving place to the confidence and
security of a great triumph. He lived for thirty-five years longer,
witnessing the rapid advance of Roman conquest in Greece and Asia,
and over the barbarous tribes of the West. He died one year before
the crowning victory of Pydna. During all his later life his sanguine
spirit and patriotic enthusiasm were buoyed up by the success of the
Roman and Italian arms abroad; while his political sympathies were in
thorough accord with the dominant influences in the government of the
State. At no other period of Roman history was the ascendency of the
Senate and of the great houses more undisputed, or, on the whole, more
wisely and ably exercised. In the lists of those who successively fill
the great curule magistracies, we find almost exclusively the names of
members of the old patrician or of the more recent plebeian nobility.
At no other period does the tribunician opposition to the senatorian
direction of affairs and to the authority of the magistrate appear
weaker or more intermittent. It was not till a generation after the
death of Ennius that the moral corruption and political and social
disorganisation--the ultimate results of the great military successes
gained under the absolute ascendency of the Senate,--became fully
manifest. It is difficult to say how far the aristocratic and
antipopular bias of all Roman literature may have been determined by
the political conditions of the time in which that literature received
the most powerful impulse, and by the personal relations and peculiar
stamp of character of the man by whom that impulse was given.
Along with the military and political activity of the time, during
which Ennius lived in Rome, the stirring of a new intellectual life
was apparent. Even during the war dramatic representations continued
to take place, and the most active part of the career of Naevius, and
a considerable part of that of Plautus, belong to the years during
which Hannibal was still in Italy. After the cessation of the war, we
note in the pages of Livy that much greater prominence is given to
the celebration of public games, of which at this time dramatic
representations formed the chief part. The regular holidays for which
the Aediles provided these entertainments became more numerous; and
the art of the dramatist was employed to enhance the pomp of the
spectacle on the occasion of a great triumph, or of the funeral of an
illustrious man. The death of Livius Andronicus and the banishment of
Naevius, which must have happened about the time that Ennius arrived
at Rome, had deprived the Roman stage of the only writers of any
name, who had attempted to introduce upon it the works of the Greek
tragedians. Ennius had, indeed, rather to create than to revive the
taste for tragedy. The prologue to the Amphitryo[8] shows how much
more congenial the reproduction of the ordinary life of the Greeks
was to the uneducated audiences of Rome than the higher effort to
familiarise them with the personages and adventures of the heroic age.
The great era of Roman comedy was coincident with the literary career
of Ennius. It was then that the best extant plays of Plautus were
produced, and that Caecilius Statius, whom ancient critics ranked as
his superior, flourished. The quality attributed to the latter in the
line of Horace,
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte,
indicates a closer affinity with the spirit of Ennius, than the moral
and political indifference of the older dramatist. The aim of Ennius
was to raise literature from being a mere popular recreation, and to
bring it into accord with the higher mood of the nation; to use it as
a medium both of elevation and enlightenment. In carrying out this
aim he appealed to the temper and to the newly awakened interests of
members of the aristocratic class, who were coming into close contact
with educated Greeks, and were beginning to appreciate the treasures
of art and literature now opened up to them. The career of Q. Fabius
Pictor, the first historian of Rome, and the first who made a name
for himself in painting, who lived at this time, attests this twofold
attraction. The friendly relations which Roman generals, such as T.
Quintius Flamininus, established with the famous Greek cities, in
which they appeared as liberators rather than conquerors, were the
result of intellectual enthusiasm as much as of a definite policy.
With the wars of Pyrrhus and the capture of Tarentum, the first stage
of the process described in the lines of Horace began[9]: the end of
the Second Punic War was the second stage in the process. It is to
this period, rather than to the progress of the war, that the words of
the Grammarian, Porcius Licinus, most truly apply,
Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.
The more frequent and closer contact with the mind of Greece not only
refined the taste and enlarged the intelligence of those capable of
feeling its influence, but produced at the same time a change in
men's deepest convictions. Though the definite tenets of Stoicism
and Epicureanism did not acquire ascendency till a later time, the
dissolving force of Greek speculative thought and Greek views of life
forced its way into Rome through various channels,--especially through
the adaptations of the tragedies of Euripides and of the comedy
of Menander. All these tendencies of the time acted on Ennius,
stimulating his mental activity in various directions. His natural
temperament and his acquired culture brought him into harmony with
the spirit of his age without raising him too much above it. A poet
of more delicacy of taste and perfection of execution would have been
unintelligible to his contemporaries. A more systematic thinker would
have been out of harmony with the conditions of life by which he was
surrounded. Breadth, vigour, a spirit clinging to what was most vital
in the old state of things, and yet readily adapting itself to what
was new, were the qualities needed to establish a literature true
to the genius of Rome in the second century B.C., and containing the
promise of the more perfect accomplishment of a later age. And these
qualities belonged to Ennius by natural gifts and the experience and
culture of his earlier years.
There is no reason to believe that he had obtained any eminence in
literature before he settled in middle age at Rome. His genius was
of that robust order which grows richer and livelier with advancing
years. The Annals was the work of his old age,--the ripe fruit of
a strong and energetic manhood, prolonged to the last in hopeful
activity. Cicero speaks of 'the cheerfulness with which he bore the
two evils of old age and poverty[10].' Wherever the poet speaks of
himself, his words reveal a sanguine and contented spirit; as, in that
fine simile, where he compares himself, at the close of his active and
successful career, to a brave horse which has often won the prize at
the Olympian games, and in old age obtains his well-deserved repose:--
Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectu' quiescit.
In none of his fragments is there any trace of that melancholy
after-thought which pervades the poetry of his greatest successors,
Lucretius and Virgil. From the humorous exaggeration of Horace,
Ennius ipse pater nunquam, nisi potus, ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda;
and from the poet's own confession,
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager,
it may be inferred that he belonged to the class of poets of a lusty
and social nature, of which Dryden is a type in modern times, who
enjoyed the pleasures of wine and good fellowship. The well-known
anecdote, told by Cicero, of the interchange of visits between Scipio
Nasica and Ennius[11], though not a brilliant specimen of Roman wit,
is interesting from the light which it throws on the easy terms of
intimacy in which the poet lived with the members of the most eminent
Roman families. Such testimonies and traits of personal character make
us think of Ennius as a man of genial and social temper, as well as of
'an intense and glowing mind.'
It was probably through his position as a teacher of Greek that Ennius
first became known to the leading men of Rome. If this position was at
first one of dependence, similar to that in which in earlier times the
client stood to his patron, it soon changed into one of mutual esteem
and admiration. We can best understand the relation in which he stood
to men eminent in the state and in the camp, from a passage from the
seventh book of the Annals quoted by Aulus Gellius. In that passage
the poet is stated, on the authority of L. Aelius Stilo[12] (an early
grammarian, a friend of Lucilius, and one of Cicero's teachers),
to have drawn his own portrait, under an imaginary description of
a confidential friend of the Roman general, Servilius Geminus. The
portrait has the air of being drawn from the life, with a rapid and
forcible hand, and with a minuteness of detail significant of close
personal observation:--
Haece locutu' vocat quocum bene saepe libenter
Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassu' diei
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis
Consilio, indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
Cui res audacter magnas parvasque jocumque
Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque!
Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
Ut faceret facinus levis aut malu', doctu', fidelis,
Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus,
Scitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum
Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem,
Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque;
Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.
Hunc inter pugnas Servilius sic compellat[13].
There are many touches in this picture, which suggest the kind of
intimacy in which Ennius may have lived with Fulvius Nobilior when
accompanying him in his Aetolian campaign, or his bearing when taking
part in the light or serious talk of the Scipios. The learning and
power of speech, the knowledge of antiquity and of the manners of the
day, attributed to this friend of Servilius, were gifts which we may
attribute to the poet both on ancient testimony and on the evidence
afforded by the fragments of his writings. The good sense, tact, and
knowledge of the world, the cheerfulness in life and conversation, the
honour and integrity of character represented in the same passage, are
among the personal qualities which, in all ages, form a bond of union
between men eminent in great practical affairs and men eminent in
literature. Such were the qualities which, according to his own
account, recommended Horace to the intimate friendship of Maecenas.
Many expressive fragments from the lost poetry of Ennius give
assurance that he was a man in whom learning and the ardent
temperament of genius were happily united with the worth and sense
described in this nameless portrait.
By his personal merit he broke through the strongest barriers ever
raised by national and family pride, and made the name of poet,
instead of a reproach, a name of honour with the ruling class at Rome.
The favourable impression which he produced on the 'primitive virtue'
of Cato, by whom he was first brought to Rome, was more probably due
to his force of character and social qualities than to his genius and
literary accomplishment,--qualities seemingly little valued by his
earliest patron, who, in one of his speeches, reproached Fulvius
Nobilior with allowing himself to be accompanied by a poet in his
campaign. But the strongest proof of the worth and the wisdom of
Ennius is his intimate friendship with the greatest Roman of the
age, and the conqueror of the greatest soldier of antiquity. It
is honourable to the friendship of generous natures, that the poet
neither sought nor gained wealth from this intimacy, but continued to
live plainly and contentedly on the Aventine. Yet after death it was
believed that the two friends were not divided; and the bust of the
provincial poet found a place among the remains of that time-honoured
family, the record of whose grandeur has been preserved, even to
the present day, in the august simplicity of their monumental
inscriptions.
The elder Africanus may have been attracted to Ennius not only by his
passion for Greek culture, but by a certain community of nature. The
mystical enthusiasm, the high self-confidence, the direct simplicity
combined with majesty of character, impressed on the language of the
poet were equally impressed on the action and bearing of the soldier.
The feeling which Ennius in his turn entertained for Scipio was one
of enthusiastic admiration. While paying due honour to the merits and
services of other famous men, even of such as Cato and Fabius, who
were most opposed to his idol, of Scipio he said that Homer alone
could worthily have uttered his praises[14].
In addition to the part which he assigned to him in the Ninth Book
of the Annals, he devoted a separate poem to commemorate his
achievements. He has left also two short inscriptions, written in
elegiac verse, in which he proclaims in words of burning enthusiasm
the momentous services and transcendent superiority of the 'great
world's victor's victor'--
Hic est ille situs cui nemo civi' neque hostis
Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium[15];
and this also,
A sole exoriente supra Maeoti' paludes
Nemo est qui factis me aequiperare queat.
Si fas endo plagas caelestium ascendere cuiquam est,
Mi soli caeli maxima porta patet[16].
With many marked differences, which distinguish a man of active,
social, and national sympathies from a student of Nature and a thinker
on human life, there is a certain affinity of character and genius
between Ennius and Lucretius. Enthusiastic admiration of personal
greatness is one prominent feature in which they resemble one another.
But while Lucretius is the ardent admirer of contemplative and
imaginative greatness, it is greatness in action and character which
moves the admiration of Ennius. They resemble each other also in their
strong consciousness of genius and their high estimate of its function
and value. Cicero mentions that Ennius applied the epithet _sanctus_
to poets. Lucretius applies the same epithet to the old philosophic
poets, as in the lines of strong affection and reverence which he
dedicates to Empedocles,
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se,
Nec _sanctum_ magis, et mirum carumque videtur[17].
The inscription which Ennius composed for his own bust directly
expresses his sense of the greatness of his work, and his confident
assurance of fame, and of the lasting sympathy of his countrymen--
Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam,
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum.
Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu
Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[18].
Two lines from one of his satires--
Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[19],
indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power.
Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by
Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the
self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in
Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful
of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature
and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or
political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in
men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect
sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or
antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the
disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:--
Scripsere alii rem
Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
Nec dicti studiosus erat[20].
The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet
seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first
to introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature.
Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and
Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed
no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius,
nor in Lucretius any sympathy with those mystic speculations which
Ennius derived from the lore attributed to Pythagoras. But in both
deep feelings of awe and reverence are combined with a scornful
disbelief of the superstition of their time. They both apply the
principles of Euhemerism to resolve the bright creations of the old
mythology into their original elements. Ennius, like Lucretius, seems
to deny the providence of the gods. He makes one of the personages of
his dramas give expression to the thought which perplexed the minds
of Thucydides and Tacitus--the thought, namely, of the apparent
disconnexion between prosperity and goodness, as affording proof of
the divine indifference to human well-being--
Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[21]:
and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs,
prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of
Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions
of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit
of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he
believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued
existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the
spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a
peacock[22], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had
finally passed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he
regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype
had appeared to him from the invisible world,--
Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra
Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris,
and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the
imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to
escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to
Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was
that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism.
He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of
Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime
of Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold
fancies of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their
later speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus
to have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance
of tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency.
II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.
II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius
displayed not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of
genius, but also great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning.
The composition of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most
demand on his original gifts, implied also a diligent study of
Homer and of the Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the
traditions and antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which
his highest poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a
philosophical, didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of
the versatility of his powers and interests. It does not appear that
he was the author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred
Chronicle of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than
a literal prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was
conceived in that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by
Plato in the Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology,
by representing them as a supernatural account of historical events.
Several extracts of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the
translation of Ennius, look as if they had been reduced from a form
originally metrical into the prose of a later era[23]. There is thus
no evidence, direct or indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in
forming the style of Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument
which he used, this was certainly not due to the poetical character
of all the topics which he treated, but, more likely, to the fact
that his acquired aptitude, and the state of the Latin language in
his time, made metrical writing more natural and easy than prose
composition.
One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called
Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus
of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of
everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have
recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of
epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius,
giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be
found, have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as
exemplifying that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who
treat, either in prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem
naturally to adopt, as for instance the Catius of Horace in his
discourse on gastronomy[24]. The language in which the _scarus_, a
fish unhappily lost to the modern epicure, is described as 'the brain
almost of almighty Jove,' fits all the requirements of gastronomic
rapture:--
Quid turdum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam
Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi?
Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque.
He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse,
called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian
poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology
into natural substances[25]. A few slight fragments have been
preserved from this poem. They speak of the four elements or
principles of the universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the
blending of heat with cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth
bearing and supporting all nations and receiving them again back into
herself.' The following is the longest fragment from the poem:--
Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant
Aerem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea
Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aer denuo,
Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi,
Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[26].
These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals,
where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius
(like the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are
specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature,
which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge.
Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the
Roman poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred
Chronicle of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was
the first among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the
ultimate facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the
universe, which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the
mind of Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.
Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic
character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that
all of these works[27], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the
Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which title Ennius composed four,
or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked
upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that
word[28];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the
character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time.
But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in
early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the
principal authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various
subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written
partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well
as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or
dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of
Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was
superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name
was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which
ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory
way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained
much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written
in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of
various topics of personal and public interest. The few passages which
ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value
in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to
their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind
of composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura
and the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one
of these pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and
Death;--thus transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very
frequently in Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original
scenic medley. Ennius also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have
communicated in his satires his own personal feelings and experience,
as in the fragment already quoted:--
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager.
Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical
moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and
by portraiture of individuals and of types, but also by the use of
anecdotes and fables. This last mode of inculcating homely lessons on
the conduct of life is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have
been first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable
of the field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully
told by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice appended to
the fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do
for yourself':
Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm:
Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[29].
These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning
and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might
have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been
as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas,
and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent,
and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and
literature is discerned.
(2) DRAMAS.
(2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic,
had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy
and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully
cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The
advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due to
the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried, though
without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in favour
of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_ and
_Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too
insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits.
His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim
to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a
work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as assigning
the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius
as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that
might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments of
Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence
of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in
common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally
the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour.
The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave
and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits,
strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply
want of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the
following fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the passage
is more obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon
the word _frustra_:--
Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari,
Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse.
Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sentit,
Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[30].
The love of alliteration and assonance, which is conspicuous also in
Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems
to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy
imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators,
appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the
O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti,
quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he
possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light
of common sense, not of humour, that he regarded the follies of the
world.
The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be
ascertained from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the
early tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not
possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed in
the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters. His
peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his
dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of
conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality,
are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman
temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in
the sequel, along with passages from the Annals, as important
contributions to our estimate of the poet's genius and intellect.
It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to
that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero.
While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried
on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his
life. Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the
celebration of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's
death[31]. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known,
and a few fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these
bear the titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan
cycle of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_,
_Ajax_, _Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_,
_Hecuba_, _Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his
tragedies, the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of
Euripides, whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to
the older Attic dramatists. Cicero[32] speaks of it, along with the
Antiope of Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek;
and a comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in
the Medea of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original.
In one place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med.
215),
[Greek:
oida gar pollous broton
semnous gegotas, tous men ommaton apo
tous d' en thyraiois],
being thus rendered in Latin,--
Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul.
The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a
fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman
tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous
force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the
language:--
Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum;
Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem
Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[33].
In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free
use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in
many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly
that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[34]. The subjects of many of
his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the
Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the
soldierly character. Cicero[35] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an
example of the kind of fortitude and superiority to pain produced by
the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with
great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache
Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to
his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle';
and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis
contemnitur! Sentit omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ...
praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[36].'
In the former of these scenes Cassandra, under the influence of
Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a
Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by
prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:--
Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio:
Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite.
Iamque mari magno classis cita
Texitur: exitium examen rapit.
Advenit, et fera velivolantibus
Navibus complevit manus litora[37].
We see in this passage how the passionate character of the situation
is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Cassandra. A similar
excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in a
fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another the
motive is the awe associated with the dim and pale realms of
the dead[38]. In these and similar passages we note the power of
expressing the varying moods of passion by varied effects of metre.
Horace characterises his ordinary verse in the line,
In scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus;
and this slow and weighty movement seems to have been the general
character of his metre in the calmer parts of his dramas. But in a
large number of the fragments of the dialogue, where there is any
excitement of feeling or intensity of thought, we find him using
the more rapid trochaic septenarian, with quick transitions to the
anapaestic dimeter, or tetrameter, as the passion passes beyond the
control of the speaker.
In two of his dramas, the Sabinae and Ambracia, he made use of
materials supplied by the early legendary history of Rome, and by
a great contemporary event. The first of these, like the Romulus of
Naevius, belonged to the class of 'fabulae Praetextatae,' and was
founded on the intervention of the Sabine women in the war between
Romulus and Tatius. The second, representing the capture of the town
of Ambracia, in the Aetolian war, may, like the Clastidium of the
older poet (written in celebration of the victory of Marcellus over
the Gauls), have had more of the character of a military pageant
and, in all probability, was composed for representation at the games
celebrated on the triumphal return of M. Fulvius Nobilior from that
war.
(3) THE ANNALS.
(3) But the poem which was the chief result of his life, and made an
epoch in Latin literature, was the Annals. On the composition of this
work he rested his hopes of popular and permanent fame--
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum:
and again, apparently at the opening of the poem, he wrote,--
Latos per populos terrasque poemata nostra
Clara cluebunt.
At its conclusion, he claimed for his old age the repose due to a
brave and triumphant career. He composed the eighteenth book, the
last, in his sixty-seventh year, three years before his death[39].
The great length to which the poem extended, and the vast amount of
materials which it embraced, imply a long and steady concentration of
his powers on the task. It was one requiring much learning as well
as original conception. The fragments of the poem afford proofs of a
familiarity with Homer, and of acquaintance with the Cyclic poets[40].
It is impossible to say how much of the early Roman history, as it
has come down to modern times, is due to the diligence of Ennius in
collecting, and to his genius in giving life to the traditions and
ancient records of Rome. He was certainly the earliest writer who
gathered them up, and united them in a continuous narrative. The work
accomplished by him required not only the antiquarian lore of a man
Multa tenens, antiqua, sepulta,
and the power of imagination to give a new shape to the past, but an
intimate knowledge of the great events and the great men of his own
time, and a strong sympathy with the best spirit of his age.
The poem was written in eighteen books. Of these books about six
hundred lines have been preserved in fragments, varying from about
twenty lines to half a line in length. From the minuteness with which
comparatively unimportant matters are described, it is inferred that
the separate books extended to a much greater length than those either
of the Iliad or of the Aeneid. Of the first book there remain about
120 lines, including the dream of Ilia in seventeen lines, and the
auspices of Romulus in twenty lines. In it were narrated the mythical
events from the time
Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub marte Pelasgo,
to the death and deification of Romulus;
Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus aevum
Degit.
There is no allusion in these fragments to the Carthaginian adventures
of Aeneas, which Naevius had introduced into his poem on the First
Punic War. Aeneas seems at once to have been brought to Hesperia, a
land,
Quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.
Ilia is represented as the daughter of Aeneas. The birth and infancy
of Romulus and Remus appear to have been described at great length. In
commenting on Virgil's lines at Aeneid viii. 630--
Fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro
Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos; illam tereti cervice reflexam
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua,--
Servius says 'Sane totus hic locus Ennianus est.' The second and
third books contained the history of the remaining Roman kings. Virgil
imit
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