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Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

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Title: Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

Author: Harold Edgeworth Butler


        
Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9303]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

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Produced by Keren Vergon, Tapio Riikonen, and PG Distributed Proofreaders.




POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY

From Seneca to Juvenal

By

H.E. BUTLER, Fellow of New College



PREFACE


I have attempted in this book to provide something of an introduction
to the poetical literature of the post-Augustan age. Although few of
the writers dealt with have any claim to be called poets of the first
order, and some stand very low in the scale of poetry, as a whole the
poets of this period have suffered greater neglect than they deserve.
Their undeniable weaknesses tend in many cases to obscure their real
merits, with the result that they are at times either ignored or
subjected to unduly sweeping condemnation. I have attempted in these
pages to detach and illustrate their excellences without in any way
passing over their defects.

Manilius and Phaedrus have been omitted on the ground that as regards
the general character of their writings they belong rather to the
Augustan period than to the subsequent age of decadence. Manilius indeed
composed a considerable portion of his work during the lifetime of
Augustus, while Phaedrus, though somewhat later in date, showed a
sobriety of thought and an antique simplicity of style that place him at
least a generation away from his contemporaries. The authorities to
whose works I am indebted are duly acknowledged in the course of the
work. I owe a special debt, however, to those great works of reference,
the Histories of Roman Literature by Schanz and Teuffel, to
Friedländer's _Sittengeschichte_, and, for the chapters on Lucan and
Statius, to Heitland's _Introduction to Haskin's edition of Lucan_ and
Legras' _Thébaïde de Stace_. I wish particularly to express my
indebtedness to Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. Nowell Smith, who read
the book in manuscript and made many valuable suggestions and
corrections. I also have to thank Mr. A.S. Owen for much assistance in
the corrections of the proofs.

My thanks are owing to Professor Goldwin Smith for permission to print
translations from 'Bay Leaves', and to Mr. A.E. Street and Mr. F.J.
Miller and their publishers, for permission to quote from their
translations of Martial (Messrs. Spottiswoode) and Seneca (Chicago
University Press) respectively.

H.E. BUTLER.

_November_, 1908.



CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY

Main characteristics, p. 1.
The influence of the principate, p. 1.
Tiberius, p. 2.
Caligula, p. 4.
Claudius, p. 5.
Nero, p. 6.
Decay of Roman character, p. 9.
Peculiar nature of Roman literature, p. 10.
Greatness of Augustan poets a bar to farther advance, p. 11.
Roman education: literary, p. 12;
  rhetorical, p. 14.
Absence of true educational spirit, p. 16.
Recitations, p. 18.
Results of these influences, p. 19.

CHAPTER II

DRAMA

i. THE STAGE.
Drama never really flourishing at Rome, p. 23.
Comedy, represented by Mime and Atellan farce, p. 24.
Legitimate comedy nearly extinct, p. 25.
Tragedy replaced by _salticae fabulae_, p. 26;
  or musical recitations, p. 28.
Pomponius Secundus, p. 29.
Curiatius Maternus, p. 30.

ii. SENECA: his life and character, p. 31.
His position in literature, p. 35.
His epigrams, p. 36.
His plays, p. 39.
Their genuineness, p. 40.
The _Octavia, Oedipus, Agamemnon,_ and _Hercules Oetaeus,_ p. 41.
Date of the plays, p. 43.
Their dramatic value, p. 44.
Plot, p. 45.
Descriptions, p. 48.
Declamation, p. 49;
  at its best in _Troades_ and _Phaedra_, p. 51.
Dialogue, p. 55.
Stoicism, p. 58.
Poetry (confined mainly to lyrics), p. 63.
Cleverness of the rhetoric, p. 65.
_Sententiae_, p. 68.
Hyperbole, p. 69.
Diction and metre; iambics, p. 70;
  lyrics, p. 71.
Plays not written for the stage, p. 72.
Influence on later drama, p. 74.

iii. THE OCTAVIA. Sole example of _fabula praetexta_, p. 74.

Plot, p. 75.
Characteristics, p. 76.
Date and authorship, p. 77.

CHAPTER III

PERSIUS

Life, p. 79.
Works, p. 81.
Influence of Lucilius, p. 83;
  of Horace, p. 84.
Obscurity, p. 85.
Qualifications necessary for a satirist; Persius' weakness through
  lack of them, p. 87.
Success in purely literary satire, p. 88.
Lack of close observation of life, p. 90.
Persius' nobility of character, p. 91.
His Stoicism, p. 93.
His capacity for friendship, p. 95.

CHAPTER IV

LUCAN

Life, p. 97.
Minor works, p. 99.
His choice of a subject, p. 101,
Choice of epic methods, p. 102.
Petronius' criticism of historical epic, p. 103.
Difficulties of the subject, p. 104.
Design of the poem, p. 106.
Characters: Pompey, p. 106.
Caesar, p. 108.
Cato, p. 109.
Descriptive passages, p. 112.
Hyperbole, p. 115.
Irrelevance, p. 116.
Lack of poetic vocabulary, p. 116.
Tendency to political satire, p. 117.
Speeches, p. 120.
_Sententiae,_ p. 122.
Metre, p. 123.
Summary, p. 123.

CHAPTER V

PETRONIUS

Authorship of _Satyricon:_ character of Titus Petronius, p. 125.
Literary criticism, p. 127.
Attack on contemporary rhetoric, p. 128.
Eumolpus the poet, p. 129;
laments the decay of art, p. 130.
Poem on the Sack of Troy, p. 130.
Criticism of historical epic, p. 131.
The poetic fragments, p. 133.
Epigrams, p. 134.
Question of genuineness, p. 135.
Their high poetic level, p. 136.

CHAPTER VI

MINOR POETRY, 14-69 A.D.

I. DIDACTIC POETRY

i. THE AETNA. Its design, p. 140.
Characteristics of the poem, p. 141.
Authorship, p. 143.
Date, p. 145.

ii. COLUMELLA. Life and works, p. 146.
His tenth book, a fifth Georgic on gardening, p. 147.
His enthusiasm and descriptive power, p. 148.

II. CALPURNIUS SICULUS, THE EINSIEDELN FRAGMENTS, AND THE
    PANEGYRICUS IN PISONEM

Pastoral poetry, p. 150.
Calpurnius Siculus; date, p. 151.
Who was he? p. 152.
Debt to Vergil, p. 152.
Elaboration of style, p. 153.
Obscurity, affectation and insignificance, p. 154.
Einsiedeln fragments; was the author Calpurnius Piso? p. 156.
_Panegyricus in Pisonem,_ p. 157.
Graceful elaboration, p. 158.
Was the author Calpurnius Siculus? p. 159.

III. ILIAS LATINA

Early translations of _Iliad,_ p. 160.
Attius Labeo, p. 160. Polybius p. 161.
_Ilias Latina,_ a summary in verse, p. 161.
Date, p. 162. Authorship: the question of the acrostic, p. 162.
Wrongly attributed to Silius Italicus. p. 163.

IV. MINOR POETS

Gaetulicus, p. 163.
Caesius Bassua, p. 164.

CHAPTER VII

EMPERORS AND MINOR POETS, 70-117 A.D.

I. EMPERORS AND POETS WHOSE WORKS ARE LOST

Vespasian and Titus, p. 166.
Domitian. The Agon Capitolinus and Agon Albanus, p. 167.
Literary characteristics of the Flavian age, p. 168.
Saleius Bassus, Serranus, and others, p. 169.
Nerva, p. 169.
Trajan, p. 170.
Passennus Paulus, p. 170.
Sentius Augurinus, p. 171.
Pliny the Younger, p. 172.
Almost entire disappearance of poetry after Hadrian. p. 174.

II. SULPICIA

Sulpicia, a lyric poetess, p. 174.
Martial's admiration for her, p. 175.
Characteristics of her work, p. 176.
Her Satire, p. 176.
Is it genuine? p. 177.

CHAPTER VIII

VALERIUS FLACCUS

Epic in the Flavian age, p. 179.
Who was Valerius? His date, p. 180.
The _Argonautica_, unfinished, p. 181.
Its general design, p. 182.
Merits and defects of the Argonaut-saga as a subject for epic, p. 183.
Valerius' debt to Apollonius Rhodius, p. 183.
Novelties introduced in treatment; Jason, p. 184;
Medea, p. 185.
Valerius has a better general conception as to how the story should be
  told, but is far inferior as a poet, p. 186.
Obscure learning; lack of humour, p. 187.
Involved language, p. 188.
Preciosity; compression, p. 189.
Real poetic merit: compared with Statius and Lucan, p. 191.
Debt to Vergil, p. 191.
Metre, p. 192.
Brilliant descriptive power, p. 193.
Suggestion of mystery, p. 193.
Sense of colour, p. 195.
Similes, p. 195.
Speeches, p. 197.
The loves of Jason and Medea, p. 198.
General estimate, p. 200.

CHAPTER IX

STATIUS

Life, p. 202.
Character, p. 205.
The _Thebais_; its high average level, p. 206.
Statius a miniature painter, p, 207.
Weakness of the Theban-saga as a subject for epic, p. 208.
Consequent lack of proportion and unity in _Thebais_, p. 210.
Vergil too closely imitated, p. 211.
Digressions, p. 212.
Character-drawing superficial, p. 213.
Tydeus, p. 214.
Amphiaraus, p. 216.
Parthenopaeus and other characters, p. 218.
Atmosphere that of literature rather than life, p. 220.
Fine descriptive passages, p. 221.
Dexterity, often degenerating into preciosity, p. 224.
Similes, p. 225.
Metre, p. 226.
The _Achilleis_, p. 227.
The _Silvae_, p. 227.
Flattery of Domitian, p. 228.
Extraordinary preciosity, p. 229.
Prettiness and insincerity, p. 230.
Brilliant miniature-painting, p. 232.
The _Genethliacon Lucani_, p. 233.
Invocation to Sleep, p. 234.
Conclusion, p. 235.

CHAPTER X

SILIUS ITALlCUS

Life, p. 236.
Weakness of historical epic, p. 238.
Disastrous intrusion of mythology, p. 239.
Plagiarism from Vergil, p. 240.
Skill in composition of early books, p. 240.
Inadequate treatment of closing scenes of the war, p. 241.
The characters, p. 241.
Total absence of any real poetic gifts, p. 242.
Regulus, p. 244.
The death of Paulus, p. 246.
Fabius Cunctator, p. 247.
Conclusion, p. 249.

CHAPTER XI

MARTIAL

Life, p. 251.
The epigram, p. 258.
Martial's temperament, p. 259.
Gift of style, p. 260.
Satirical tone, good-humoured and non-moral, p. 261.
Obscenity, p. 263.
Capacity for friendship, p. 264.
His dislike of Rome, p. 267.
His love of the country, p. 268.
Comparison with Silvae of Statius, p. 271.
Flattery of Domitian, p. 271.
Laments for the dead, p. 272.
Emotion as a rule sacrificed to point, p. 275.
The laureate of triviality, p. 276.
Martial as a client, p. 277.
His snobbery, p. 279.
Redeeming features; polish and wit, p. 281.
The one perfect post-Augustan stylist, p. 284.
Vivid picture of contemporary society, p. 285.

CHAPTER XII

JUVENAL

Life, p. 287.
Date of satires, p. 289.
Motives (Sat, i), p. 291.
Themes of the various satires; third satire, p. 293;
  fourth, fifth, and sixth satires, p. 294;
  seventh and eighth satires; signs of waning power, p. 295;
  tenth satire, p. 296;
  eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth satires, p. 297;
  fifteenth and sixteenth satires, showing further decline of
  power, p. 298.
Juvenal's narrow Roman ideals; hatred of the foreigner, p. 299.
Exaggeration, p. 301.
Coarseness, p. 303.
Vividness of description, p. 304.
Mordant epigram and rhetoric, p. 308.
Moral and religious ideals, p. 311.
_Sententiae_, p. 315.
Poetry, p. 316.
Metre, p. 317.
The one great poet of the Silver Age, p. 317.

INDEX OF NAMES, p. 321

FOOTNOTES



CHAPTER I


THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY

During the latter years of the principate of Augustus a remarkable
change in literary methods and style begins to make itself felt. The
gradual extinction of the great luminaries is followed by a gradual
disappearance of originality and of the natural and easy-flowing style
whose phrases and felicities adorn, without overloading or obscuring the
sense. In their place comes a straining after effect, a love of
startling colour, produced now by over-gorgeous or over-minute imagery,
now by a surfeit of brilliant epigram, while controlling good sense and
observance of due proportion are often absent and imitative preciosity
too frequently masquerades as originality. Further, in too many cases
there is a complete absence of moral enthusiasm, close observation, and
genuine insight.

What were the causes of this change? Was it due mainly to the evil
influence of the principate or to more subtle and deep-rooted causes?

The principate had been denounced as the _fons et origo mali_.[1] That
its influence was for evil can hardly be denied. But it was rather a
symptom, an outward and visible sign of a deep-engrained decay, which it
accentuated and brought to the surface, but in no way originated. We are
told that the principate 'created around itself the quiet of the
graveyard, since all independence was compelled under threat of death to
hypocritical silence or subterfuge; servility alone was allowed to
speak; the rest submitted to what was inevitable, nay, even endeavoured
to accommodate their minds to it as much as possible.' Even if this
highly coloured statement were true, the influence of such tyrannical
suppression of free thinking and free speaking could only have
_directly_ affected certain forms of literature, such as satire, recent
history,[2] and political oratory, while even in these branches of
literature a wide field was left over which an intending author might
safely range. The _direct_ influence on poetry must have been
exceedingly small. If we review the great poets of the Augustan and
republican periods, we shall find little save certain epigrams of
Catullus that could not safely have been produced in post-Augustan
times. Moreover, when we turn to what is actually known of the attitude
of the early emperors towards literature, the balance does not seriously
incline against them. It may be said without hesitation of the four
emperors succeeding Augustus that they had a genuine taste and some
capacity for literature.

Of two only is it true that their influence was in any way repressive.
The principate of Tiberius is notorious for the silence of literature;
whether the fact is due as much to the character of Tiberius as to the
temporary exhaustion of genius following naturally on the brilliance of
the Augustan period, is more than doubtful. But Tiberius cannot be
acquitted of all blame. The cynical humour with which it pleased him to
mark the steady advance of autocracy, the _lentae maxillae_ which
Augustus attributed to his adopted son,[3] the icy and ironic cruelty
which was--on the most favourable estimate--a not inconsiderable element
in his character, no doubt all exercised a chilling influence, not only
on politics but on all spontaneous expression of human character.
Further, we find a few instances of active and cruel repression.
Lampoons against the emperor were punished with death.[4] Cremutius
Cordus was driven to suicide for styling 'Brutus and Cassius the last of
all the Romans'.[5] Mamercus Scaurus had the misfortune to write a
tragedy on the subject of Atreus in which he advised submission to
Atreus in a version of the Euripidean

    [Greek: tas t_on turann_on amathias pherein chre_on][6]

He too fell a victim to the Emperor's displeasure, though the chief
charges actually brought against him were of adultery with the Princess
Livilla and practice of the black art. We hear also of another case in
which _obiectum est poetae quod in tragoedia Agamemnonem probris
lacessisset_ (Suet. _Tib_. 61). It is worthy of notice that actors also
came under Tiberius's displeasure.[7] The mime and the Atellan farce
afforded too free an opportunity for improvisation against the emperor.
Even the harmless Phaedrus seems to have incurred the anger of Sejanus,
and to have suffered thereby.[8] Nor do the few instances in which
Tiberius appears as a patron of literature fill us with great respect
for his taste. He is said to have given one Asellius Sabinus 100,000
sesterces for a dialogue between a mushroom, a finch, an oyster, and a
thrush,[9] and to have rewarded a worthless writer,[10] Clutorius
Priscus, for a poem composed on the death of Germanicus. On the other
hand, he seems to have had a sincere love of literature,[11] though he
wrote in a crabbed and affected style. He was a purist in language with
a taste for archaism,[12] left a brief autobiography[13] and dabbled in
poetry, writing epigrams,[14] a lyric _conquestio de morte Lucii
Caesaris_[15] and Greek imitations of Euphorion, Rhianus, and
Parthenius, the learned poets of Alexandria. His taste was bad: he went
even farther than his beloved Alexandrians, awaking the laughter of his
contemporaries even in an age when obscure mythological learning was at
a premium. The questions which delighted him were--'Who was the mother
of Hecuba?' 'What was the name of Achilles when disguised as a girl?'
'What did the sirens sing?'[16] Literature had little to learn from
Tiberius, but it should have had something to gain from the fact that he
was not blind to its charms: at the worst it cannot have required
abnormal skill to avoid incurring a charge of _lèse-majesté_.

The reign of the lunatic Caligula is of small importance, thanks to its
extreme brevity. For all his madness he had considerable ability; he was
ready of speech to a remarkable degree, though his oratory suffered from
extravagant ornament[17] and lack of restraint. He had, however, some
literary insight: in his description of Seneca's rhetoric as _merae
commissiones_, 'prize declamations,' and 'sand without lime' he gave an
admirable summary of that writer's chief weaknesses.[18] But he would in
all probability have proved a greater danger to literature than
Tiberius. It is true that in his desire to compare favourably with his
predecessors he allowed the writings of T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus,
and Cassius Severus, which had fallen under the senate's ban in the two
preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no
means abandoned trials for _lèse-majesté_. The rhetorician Carinas
Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a _suasoria_
on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an Atellan farce
was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a treasonable jest, and
Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a brilliant display of
oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously meditated the destruction
of the works of Homer. Plato had banished Homer from his ideal state.
Why should not Caligula? He was with difficulty restrained from doing
the like for Vergil and Livy. The former, he said, was a man of little
learning and less wit;[23] the latter was verbose and careless. Even
when he attempted to encourage literature, his eccentricity carried him
to such extremes that the competitors shrank in horror from entering the
lists. He instituted a contest at Lugudunum in which prizes were offered
for declamations in Greek and Latin. The prizes were presented to the
victors by the vanquished, who were ordered to write panegyrics in
honour of their successful rivals, while in cases where the declamations
were decided to be unusually poor, the unhappy authors were ordered to
obliterate their writings with a sponge or even with their own tongues,
under penalty of being caned or ducked in the Rhone.[24]

Literature had some reason to be thankful for his early assassination.
The lunatic was succeeded by a fool, but a learned fool. Claudius was
historian, antiquary, and philologist. He wrote two books on the civil
war, forty-one on the principate of Augustus, a defence of Cicero, eight
books of autobiography,[25] an official diary,[26] a treatise on
dicing.[27] To this must be added his writings in Greek, twenty books of
Etruscan history, eight of Carthaginian,[28] together with a comedy
performed and crowned at Naples in honour of the memory of
Germanicus.[29] His style, according to Suetonius, was _magis ineptus
quam inelegans_.[30] He did more than write: he attempted a reform of
spelling, by introducing three new letters into the Latin alphabet. His
enthusiasm and industry were exemplary. Such indeed was his activity
that a special office,[31] _a studiis_, was established, which was
filled for the first time by the influential freedman Polybius. Claudius
lacked the saving grace of good sense, but in happier days might have
been a useful professor: at any rate his interest in literature was
whole-hearted and disinterested. His own writing was too feeble to
influence contemporaries for ill and he had the merit of having given
literature room to move. Seneca might mock at him after his death,[32]
but he had done good service.

Nero, Claudius' successor, was also a liberal, if embarrassing, patron
of literature. His tastes were more purely literary. He had received an
elaborate and diversified education. He had even enjoyed the privilege
of having Seneca--the head of the literary profession--for his tutor.
These influences were not wholly for the good: Agrippina dissuaded him
from the study of philosophy as being unsuited for a future emperor,
Seneca from the study of earlier and saner orators that he might himself
have a longer lease of Nero's admiration.[33] The result was that a
temperament, perhaps falsely styled artistic,[34] was deprived of the
solid nutriment required to give it stability. Nero's great ambition was
to be supreme in poetry and art as he was supreme in empire. He composed
rapidly and with some technical skill,[35] but his work lacked
distinction, connexion of thought, and unity of style.[36] Satirical[37]
and erotic[38] epigrams, learned mythological poems on Attis and the
Bacchae,[39] all flowed from his pen. But his most famous works were his
_Troica_,[40] an epic on the Trojan legend, which he recited before the
people in the theatre,[41] and his [Greek: Iion al_osis], which may
perhaps have been included in the _Troica_, and is famous as having--so
scandal ran--been declaimed over burning Rome.[42] But his ambition
soared higher. He contemplated an epic on the whole of Roman history. It
was estimated that 400 books would be required. The Stoic Annaeus
Cornutus justly remarked that no one would read so many. It was pointed
out that the Stoic's master, Chrysippus, had written even more. 'Yes,'
said Cornutus, 'but they were of some use to humanity.' Cornutus was
banished, but he saved Rome from the epic. Nero was also prolific in
speeches and, proud of his voice, often appeared on the stage. He
impersonated Orestes matricida, Canace parturiens, Oedipus blind, and
Hercules mad.[43] It is not improbable that the words declaimed or sung
in these scenes were composed by Nero himself.[44] For the encouragement
of music and poetry he had established quinquennial games known as the
Neronia. How far his motives for so doing were interested it is hard to
say. But there is no doubt that he had a passionate ambition to win the
prize at the contest instituted by himself. In A.D. 60, on the first
occasion of the celebration of these games, the prize was won by Lucan
with a poem in praise of Nero.[45] Vacca, in his life of Lucan, states
that this lost him Nero's favour, the emperor being jealous of his
success. The story is demonstrably false,[46] but that Nero subsequently
became jealous of Lucan is undoubted. Till Lucan's fame was assured,
Nero extended his favour to him: then partly through Lucan's extreme
vanity and want of tact, partly through Nero's jealousy of Lucan's
pre-eminence that favour was wholly withdrawn.[47] Nevertheless, though
Nero may have shown jealousy of successful rivals, he seems to have had
sufficient respect for literature to refrain from persecution. He did
not go out of his way to punish personal attacks on himself. If names
were delated to the senate on such a charge, he inclined to mercy. Even
the introduction into an Atellan farce of jests on the deaths of
Claudius and Agrippina was only punished with exile.[48] Only after the
detection of Piso's conspiracy in 65 did his anger vent itself on
writers: towards the end of his reign the distinguished authors,
Virginius Flavus and the Stoic Musonius Rufus, were both driven into
exile. As for the deaths of Seneca and Lucan, the two most distinguished
writers of the day, though both perished at Nero's hands, it was their
conduct, not their writings, that brought them to destruction. Both were
implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy. If, then, Nero's direct influence
on literature was for the bad, it was not because he was adverse: it
suffered rather from his favour: the extravagant tastes of the princeps
and the many eccentricities of his life and character may perhaps find a
reflection in some of the more grotesque extravagances of Lucan, such
for instance as the absurdly servile dedication of the _Pharsalia_. But
even in this direction his influence was probably comparatively small.

In view, then, of what is known of the attitude of the four emperors of
the period most critical for Silver Latin literature, the period of its
birth, it may be said that, on the worst estimate, their direct
influence is not an important factor in the decline.[49] On the other
hand, the indirect influence of the principate was beyond doubt evil.
Society was corrupt enough and public life sufficiently uninspiring
under Augustus. After the first glow of enthusiasm over the restoration
of peace and order, and over the vindication of the Roman power on the
frontiers of empire had passed away, men felt how thinly veiled was
their slavery. Liberty was gradually restricted, autocracy cast off its
mask: the sense of power that goes with freedom dwindled; little was
left to waken man's enthusiasm, and the servility exacted by the
emperors became more and more degrading. Unpleasing as are the
flatteries addressed to Augustus by Vergil and Horace, they fade into
insignificance compared with Lucan's apotheosis of Nero; or to take
later and yet more revolting examples, the poems of the Silvae addressed
by Statius to Domitian or his favourites. Further, these four emperors
of the Julio-Claudian dynasty set a low standard of private life: they
might command flattery, they could hardly exact respect. Two clever
lunatics, a learned fool, and a morose cynic are not inspiring.

Nevertheless, however unhealthy its influence may have been--and there
has been much exaggeration on this point--it must be remembered that the
principate found ready to its hand a society with all the seeds of decay
implanted deep within it. Even a succession of sane and virtuous Caesars
might well have failed, with the machinery and material at their
disposal, to put new and vigorous life into the aristocracy and people
of Rome. Even the encroachments of despotism on popular liberty must be
attributed in no small degree to the incapacity of what should have been
the ruling class at Rome. Despotism was in a sense forced upon the
emperors: they were not reluctant, but, had they been so, they would
still have had little choice. The primary causes of the decline of
literature, as of the decay of life and morals, lie much deeper. The
influence of princeps and principate, though not negligible, is
_comparatively_ small.

The really important causes are to be found first in the general decay
of Roman character--far-advanced before the coming of Caesarism,
secondly in the peculiar nature of Roman literature, and thirdly in the
vicious system of Roman education.

It was the first of these factors that produced the lubricity that
defiles and the lack of moral earnestness that weakens such a large
proportion of the literature of this age. It is not necessary to
illustrate this point in any detail.[50] The record of Rome, alike in
home and foreign politics, during the hundred and twenty years preceding
the foundation of the principate forms one of the most fascinating, but
in many respects one of the most profoundly melancholy pages in history.
The poems of Catullus and the speeches of Cicero serve equally to
illustrate the wholesale corruption alike of public and private
morality. The Roman character had broken down before the gradual inroads
of an alien luxury and the opening of wide fields of empire to plunder.
It is an age of incredible scandal, of mob law, of _coups d'état_ and
proscriptions, saved only from utter gloom by the illusory light shed
from the figures of a few great men and by the never absent sense of
freedom and expansion. There still remained a republican liberty of
action, an inspiring possibility of reform, an outlet for personal
ambition, which facilitated the rise of great leaders and writers. And
Rome was now bringing to ripeness fruit sprung from the seed of
Hellenism, a decadent and meretricious Hellenism, but even in its decay
the greatest intellectual force of the world.

Wonderful as was the fruit produced by the graft of Hellenism, it too
contained the seeds of decay. For Rome owed too little to early Greek
epic and to the golden literature of Athens, too much to the later age
when rhetoric had become a knack, and

            the love of letters overdone
    Had swamped the sacred poets with themselves.[51]

Roman literature came too late: that it reached such heights is a
remarkable tribute to the greatness of Roman genius, even in its
decline. With the exception of the satires of Lucilius and Horace there
was practically no branch of literature that did not owe its inspiration
and form to Greek models. Even the primitive national metre had died
out. Roman literature--more especially poetry--was therefore bound to be
unduly self-conscious and was always in danger of a lack of spontaneity.
That Rome produced great prose writers is not surprising; they had
copious and untouched material to deal with, and prose structure was
naturally less rapidly and less radically affected by Greek influence.
That she should have produced a Catullus, a Lucretius, a Vergil, a
Horace, and--most wonderful of all--an Ovid was an amazing achievement,
rendered not the less astonishing when it is remembered that the stern
bent of the practical Roman mind did not in earlier days give high
promise of poetry. The marvel is not wholly to be explained by the
circumstances of the age. The new sense of power, the revival of the
national spirit under the warming influence of peace and hope, that
characterize the brilliant interval between the fall of the republic and
the turbid stagnation of the empire, are not enough to account for it.
Their influence would have been in vain had they not found remarkable
genius ready for the kindling.

The whole field of literature had been so thoroughly covered by the
great writers of Hellas, that it was hard for the imitative Roman to be
original. As far as epic poetry was concerned, Rome had poor material
with which to deal: neither her mythology--the most prosaic and
business-like of all mythologies--nor her history seemed to give any
real scope for the epic writer. The Greek mythology was ready to hand,
but it was hard for a Roman to treat it with high enthusiasm, and still
harder to handle it with freshness and individuality. The purely
historical epic is from its very nature doomed to failure. Treated with
accuracy it becomes prosy, treated with fancy it becomes ridiculous.
Vergil saw the one possible avenue to epic greatness. He went back into
the legendary past where imagination could have free play, linked
together the great heroic sagas of Greece with the scanty materials
presented by the prehistoric legends of Rome, and kindled the whole work
to life by his rich historical imagination and his sense of the grandeur
of the Rome that was to be. His unerring choice of subject and his
brilliant execution seemed to close to his successors all paths to epic
fame. They had but well-worn and inferior themes wherefrom to choose,
and the supremacy of Vergil's genius dominated their minds, becoming an
obsession and a clog rather than an assistance to such poetic genius as
they possessed. The same is true of Horace. As complete a master in
lyric verse as Vergil in heroic, he left the after-comer no possibility
of advance. As for Ovid, there could be only one Ovid: the cleverest and
most heartless of poets, he at once challenged and defied imitation.
Satire alone was left with real chance of success: while the human race
exists, there will always be fresh material for satire, and the imperial
age was destined to give it peculiar force and scope. Further, satire
and its nearest kin, the epigram, were the only forms of literature that
were not seriously impaired by the artificial system of education that
had struck root in Rome.

Otherwise the tendency to artificiality on the one hand and inadequacy
of thought on the other, to which the conditions of its birth and growth
exposed Roman literature, were aggravated to an almost incredible extent
by the absurd system of education to which the unformed mind of the
young Roman was subjected. It will be seen that what Greece gave with
the right hand she took away with the left.

There were three stages in Roman education, the elementary, the
literary, the rhetorical. The first, in which the _litterator_ taught
the three R's, does not concern us here. In the second stage the
_grammaticus_ gave instruction in Greek and Latin literature, together
with the elements of grammar and style. The profound influence of Greece
is shown by Quintilian's recommendation[52] that a boy should start on
Greek literature, and by the fact that boys began with Homer.[53] Greek
authors, particularly studied, were Aesop, Hesiod, the tragedians, and
Menander.[54] Among Roman authors Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius,
Afranius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence were much read, though there
was a reaction against these early authors under the empire, and they
were partly replaced by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.[55] These authors were
made vehicles for the teaching of grammar and of style. The latter point
alone concerns us here. The Roman boy was taught to read aloud
intelligently and artistically with the proper modulation of the voice.
For this purpose he was carefully taught the laws of metre, with special
reference to the peculiarities of particular poets. After the reading
aloud (_lectio_) came the _enarratio_ or explanation of the text. The
educational value of this was doubtless considerable, though it was
impaired by the importance assigned to obscure mythological knowledge
and unscientific archaeology.[56] The pupil would be further instructed
by exercises in paraphrase and by the treatment in simple essay form of
themes (_sententiae_). 'Great store was set both in speaking and writing
on a command of an abundance of general truths or commonplaces, and even
at school boys were trained to commit them to memory, to expand them,
and illustrate them from history.'[57] Finally they were taught to write
verse. Such at least is a legitimate inference from the extraordinary
precocity shown by many Roman authors.[58] This literary training
contained much that was of great value, but it also had grave
disadvantages. There seems in the first place to have been too much
'spoon-feeding', and too little genuine brain exercise for the
pupil.[59] Secondly, the fact that at this stage boys were nurtured
almost entirely on poetry requires serious consideration. The quality of
the food supplied to the mind, though pre-eminently palatable, must have
tended to be somewhat thin. The elaborate instruction in mythological
erudition was devoid of religious value; and indeed of any value, save
the training of a purely mechanical memory. Attention was called too
much to the form, too little to the substance. Style has its value, but
it is after all only a secondary consideration in education. The effect
upon literature of this poetical training was twofold. It caused an
undue demand for poetical colour in prose, and produced a horrible
precocity and _cacoethes scribendi_[60] in verse, together with an
abnormal tendency to imitation of the great writers of previous
generations.[61]

But the rhetorical training which succeeded was responsible for far
worse evils. The importance of rhetoric in ancient education is easily
explained. The Greek or Roman gentleman was destined to play a part in
the public life of the city state. For this purpose the art of speaking
was of enormous value alike in politics and in the law courts. Hence the
universal predominance of rhetoric in higher education both in Rome and
Greece.[62] The main instrument of instruction was the writing of themes
for declamation. These exercises were divided into _suasoriae_--
deliberative speeches in which some course of action was discussed--
and _controversiae_--where some proposition was maintained or denied.
Pupils began with _suasoriae_ and went on to _controversiae_. Regarded
as a mental gymnastic, these themes may have possessed some value. But
they were hackneyed and absurdly remote from real life, as can be judged
from the examples collected by the elder Seneca. Typical subjects of the
_suasoria_ are--'Agamemnon deliberates whether to slay Iphigenia';[63]
'Cicero deliberates whether to burn his writings, Antony having promised
to spare him on that condition';[64] 'Three hundred Spartans sent against
Xerxes after the flight of troops sent from the rest of Greece deliberate
whether to stand or fly.'[65]

The _controversia_ requires further explanation. A general law is
stated, e.g. _incesta saxo deiciatur_. A special case follows, e.g.
_incesti damnata antequam deiceretur invocavit Vestam: deiecta vixit_.
The special case had to be brought under the general rule; _repetitur ad
poenam_.[66] Other examples are equally absurd:[67] one and all are
ridiculously remote from real life. It was bad enough that boys' time
should be wasted thus, but the evil was further emphasized by the
practice of recitation. These exercises, duly corrected and elaborated,
were often recited by their youthful authors to an audience of
complaisant friends and relations. Of such training there could be but
one possible result. 'Less and less attention was paid to the substance
of the speech, more and more to the language; justness and
appropriateness of thought came to be less esteemed than brilliance and
novelty of expression.'[68]

These formal defects of education were accompanied by a widespread
neglect of the true educational spirit. The development on healthy lines
of the _morale_, and intellect of the young became in too many instances
a matter of indifference. Throughout the great work of Quintilian we
have continued evidence of the lack of moral and intellectual enthusiasm
that characterized the schools of his day. Even more passionate are the
denunciations levelled against contemporary education by Messala in the
_Dialogus_ of Tacitus.[69] Parents neglect their children from their
earliest years: they place them in the charge of foreign slaves, often
of the most degraded character; or if they do pay any personal attention
to their upbringing, it is to teach them not honesty, purity, and
respect for themselves and their elders, but pertness, luxurious habits,
and neglect alike of themselves and of others. The schools moreover,
apart from their faulty methods and ideals of instruction, encourage
other faults. The boys' interests lie not in their work, but in the
theatres, the gladiatorial games, the races in the circus--those ancient
equivalents of twentieth-century athleticism. Their minds are utterly
absorbed by these pursuits, and there is little room left for nobler
studies. 'How few boys will talk of anything else at home? What topic of
conversation is so frequent in the lecture-room; what other subject so
frequently on the lips of the masters, who collect pupils not by the
thoroughness of their teaching or by giving proof of their powers of
instruction, but by interested visits and all the tricks of
toadyism?'[70] Messala goes on[71] to denounce the unreality of the
exercises in the schools, whose deleterious effect is aggravated by the
low standard exacted. 'Boys and young men are the speakers, boys and
young men the audience, and their efforts are received with
undiscriminating praise.'

The same faults that were generated in the schools were intensified in
after-life. In the law courts the same smart epigrams, the same
meretricious style were required. No true method had been taught, with
the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly
structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and
actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting
accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that 'our
orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72]
Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the
poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education reacted on one
another.[73]

Further, just as the young poet had to his great detriment been
encouraged to recite at school, so he had to recite if he was to win
fame for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry
written primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a
rhetorical age the result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of
cases the poet of the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great
as were the facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name,
not by the gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but
by declaiming before public or private audiences. The practice of
gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the
recitations of a poet is said first to have been instituted by Asinius
Pollio, the patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the
poets of the Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice
gradually increased and became a nuisance to all save the few who had
the courage to stand aloof from these mutual admiration societies.
Indiscriminate praise was lavished on good and bad work alike. Even
Pliny the younger, whose cultivation and literary taste place him high
above the average literary level of his day, approves of the increase of
this melancholy harvest of minor poetry declaimed by uninspired
bards.[75] The effect was lamentable. All the faults of the _suasoria_
and _controversia_ made their appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had
continually to be performing acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or
epigram, now of learning, or again in the description of blood-curdling
horrors, monstrous deaths and prodigious sorceries. Each work was
overloaded with _sententiae_ and purple patches.[77] So only could the
author keep the attention of his audience. The results were disastrous
for literature and not too satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves,
as the following curious passage from Tacitus (_Dial._ 9) shows:

Bassus is a genuine poet, and his verse possesses both beauty and
charm: but the only result is that, when after a whole year, working
every day and often well into the night, he has hammered out one
book of poems, he must needs go about requesting people to be
good enough to give him a hearing: and what is more he has to
pay for it: for he borrows a house, constructs an auditorium,
hires benches and distributes programmes. And then--admitting
his recitations to be highly successful--yet all that honour and
glory falls within one or two days, prematurely gathered like grass
in the blade or flowers in their earliest bloom: it has no sure or
solid reward, wins no friendship or following or lasting gratitude,
naught save a transient applause, empty words of praise and a
fleeting enthusiasm.

The less fortunate poet had to betake himself to the forum or the public
baths or some temple, there to inflict his tawdry wares upon the ears of
a chance audience.[79] Others more fortunate would be lent a room by
some rich patron.[80] Under Nero and Domitian we get the apotheosis of
recitation. Nero, we have seen, established the Neronia in 60 and
himself competed. Domitian established a quinquennial competition in
honour of Jupiter Capitolinus in 86 and an annual competition held every
Quinquatria Minervae at his palace on the Alban mount.[81] From that
time forward it became the ambition of every poet to be crowned at these
grotesque competitions.

The result of all these co-operating influences will be evident as we
deal with the individual poets. Here we can only give a brief summary
of the general characteristics of this fantastic literature. We have a
striving after originality that ends in eccentricity: writers were
steeped in the great poets of the Augustan age: men of comparatively
small creative imagination, but, thanks to their education, possessed
of great technical skill, they ran into violent extremes to avoid the
charge of imitating the great predecessors whom they could not help but
imitate; hence the obscurity of Persius--the disciple of Horace--and of
Statins and Valerius Flaccus--the followers of Vergil. Hence Lucan's
bold attempt to strike out a new type of epic, an attempt that ended in
a wild orgy of brilliant yet turbid rhetoric. The simple and natural
was at a discount: brilliance of point, bombastic description, gorgeous
colour were preferred to quiet power. Alexandrian learning, already too
much in evidence in the Augustan age, becomes more prominent and more
oppressive. For men of second-rate talent it served to give their work
a spurious air of depth and originality to which it was not entitled.
The necessity of patronage engendered a fulsome flattery, while the
false tone of the schools of rhetoric,[82] aided perhaps by the
influence of the Stoical training so fashionable at Rome, led to a
marvellous conceit and self-complacency, of which a lack of humour was
a necessary corollary. These symptoms are seen at their worst during
the extravagant reign of Nero, though the blame attaches as much to
Seneca as to his pupil and emperor. Traces of a reaction against this
wild unreality are perhaps to be found in the literary criticism
scattered tip and down the pages of Petronius,[83] but it was not till
the extinction of Nero and Seneca that any strong revolt in the
direction of sanity can be traced. Even then it is rather in the sphere
of prose than of poetry that it is manifest. Quintilian headed a
Ciceronian reaction and was followed by Pliny the younger and for a
time by Tacitus. But we may perhaps trace a similar Vergilian reaction
in the verse of Silius, Statius, and Valerius.[84] Their faults do not
nauseate to the same extent of those of their predecessors. But the
mischief was done, and in point of extravagance and meretricious taste
the differense is only one of degree.

Satire alone attains to real eminence: rhetoric and epigram are its most
mordant weapons, and the schools of rhetoric, if they did nothing else,
kept those weapons well sharpened: the gross evils of the age opened an
ample field for the satirist. Hence it is that all or almost all that is
best in the literature of the Silver Age is satirical or strongly tinged
with satire. Tacitus, who had many of the noblest qualifications of a
poet, almost deserves the title of Rome's greatest satirist; the works
of Persius and Juvenal speak openly for themselves while many of the
finest passages in Lucans are most near akin to satire. It is true that
under the principate satire had to be employed with caution; under the
first two dynasties it was compelled to be general in tone: it was not
until after the fall of Domitian, under the enlightened rule of Nerva
and Trajan, that it found a freer scope and was at least allowed to lash
the vices of the present under the names of the past.

It is in satire alone that we find any trace of genuine moral
earnestness and enthusiasm; and the reason for this is primarily that
the satirists wrote under the influence of the one force that definitely
and steadily made for righteousness. It is the Stoic philosophy that
kindles Persius and Lucan, while Tacitus and Juvenal, even if they make
no profession of Stoicism, have yet been profoundly influenced by its
teaching. Their morality takes its colour, if not its form, from the
philosophy oh the 'Porch'. The only non-satirical poetry primarily
inspired by Stoicism is the dramatic verse of Seneca. That its influence
here is not wholly for the best is due only in part to the intrinsic
qualities of its teaching. It is rather in its application that the
fault lies; it dominates and crushes the drama instead of suffusing it
and lending it wings; it insists on preaching instead of suggesting. It
is too insistent and aggressive a creed to harmonize with poetry, unless
that poetry be definitely didactic in type and aim. But it is admirably
suited to be the inspiration of satire, and it is therefore that the
satire makes a far stronger moral appeal than any other form of
post-Augustan literature.

Satire apart, the period is in the main an age of _belles lettres_, of
'the literary _gourmet_, the connoisseur, the _blasé_ and disillusioned
man of society, passionately appreciative of detail, difficulties
overcome, and petty felicities of expression.'[85] It is the fashion to
despise its works, and the fashion cannot be described as unhealthy or
unjust. Yet it produced a few men of genius, while even in the works of
those who were far removed from genius, the very fact that there is much
refinement of wit, much triumphing over technical difficulties, much
elaborate felicity of expression, makes them always a curious and at
times a remunerative study. But perhaps its greatest claim upon us lies
in the unexpected service that it rendered to the cause of culture. In
the darkness of the Middle Ages when Greek was a hidden mystery to the
western world, Lucan and Statius, Juvenal and Persius, and even the
humble and unknown author of the _Ilias Latina_, did their part in
keeping the lamp alive and illumining the midnight in which lay hidden
the 'budding morrow' of the Renaissance.



CHAPTER II

DRAMA


I

THE STAGE

The drama proper had never flourished at Rome. The causes are not far
to seek. Tragic drama was dead in Greece by the time Greek influence
made itself felt, while the New Comedy which then held the stage was of
too quietly realistic a type and of too refined a wit and humour to be
attractive to the coarser and less intelligent audiences of Rome.
Terence, the _dimidiatus Menander_, as Caesar called him, though he won
himself a great name with the cultured classes by the purity and
elegance of his Latin and the fine drawing of his characters, was a
failure with popular audiences owing to his lack of broad farcical
humour. Plautus with his coarse geniality and lumbering wit made a
greater success. He had grafted the festive spirit of Roman farce on to
the more artistic comedy of Athens. Tragedy obtained but a passing
vogue. Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius were read and enjoyed by not a few
educated readers, but for the Augustan age, as far as the stage was
concerned, they were practically dead and buried. The Roman populace
had by that period lost all taste for the highest and most refined
forms of art. The races in the circus, the variety entertainments and
bloodshed of the amphitheatre had captured the favour of the polyglot,
pampered multitude that must have formed such a large proportion of a
Roman audience.

Still, dramatic entertainments had by no means wholly disappeared by the
time of the Empire. But what remained was of a degraded type. The New
Comedy of Athens, as transferred to the Roman stage, had given ground
before the advance of the mime and the _fabula Atellana_. The history of
both these forms of comedy belongs to an earlier period. For the
post-Augustan age our evidence as to their development is very scanty.
Little is known save that they were exceedingly popular. Both were
characterized by the broadest farce and great looseness of construction;
both were brief one-act pieces and served as interludes or conclusions
to other forms of spectacle.

The Atellan was of Italian origin and contained four stock characters,
Pappus the old man or pantaloon, Dossennus the wise man, corresponding
to the _dottore_ of modern Italian popular comedy, Bucco the clown, and
Maccus the fool. It dealt with every kind of theme, parodied the legends
of the gods, laughed at the provincial's manners or at the inhabitants
of Italian country towns, or depicted in broad comic style incidents in
the life of farmer and artisan. Maccus appeared as a young girl, as a
soldier, as an innkeeper; Pappus became engaged to be married; Bucco
turned gladiator; and in the rough and tumble of these old friends the
Roman mob found rich food for laughter.[86]

The mime was of a very similar character, but freer in point of form. It
renounced the use of masks and reached, it would seem, an even greater
pitch of indecency than the Atellan. The subjects of a few mimes are
known to us. Among the most popular were the _Phasma_ or _Ghost_[87] and
the _Laureolus_[888] of Catullus, a writer of the reign of Caligula. In
the latter play was represented the death by crucifixion of the famous
brigand 'Laureolus'; so degraded was popular taste that on one occasion
it is recorded that a criminal was made to take the part of Laureolus
and was crucified in grim earnest upon the stage.[89] In another mime of
the principate of Vespasian the chief attraction was a performing
dog,[90] which, on being given a pretended opiate, went to sleep and
later feigned a gradual revival in such a realistic manner as to rouse
the wildest applause on the part of the audience.

Both Atellan and mime abounded in topical allusions and spared not even
the emperors. Allusion was made to the unnatural vices attributed to
Tiberius,[91] to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina,[92] to the
avarice of Galba,[93] to the divorce of Domitian,[94] and on more than
one occasion heavy punishment was meted out to authors and actors
alike.[95]

Legitimate comedy led a struggling existence. An inscription at
Aeclanum[96] records the memory of a certain Pomponius Bassulus, who not
only translated certain comedies of Menander but himself wrote original
comedies; while in the letters of Pliny[97] we meet with Vergilius
Romanus, a writer of comedies of 'the old style' and of _mimiambi_. He
possessed, so Pliny writes, 'vigour, pungency, and wit. He gave honour
to virtue and attacked vice.' It is to be feared that such a form of
comedy can hardly have been intended for the public stage, and that
Vergilius, like so many poets of his age, wrote for private performance
or recitation. These two writers are the only authors of legitimate
comedies known to us during the Silver Age. But both _fabulae palliatae_
and _togatae_, that is to say, comedies representing Greek and Roman
life respectively, continued to be acted on the public stage. The
_Incendium_[98] of Afranius, a _fabula togata_, was performed in the
reign of Nero, and the evidence of Quintilian[99] and Juvenal[100] shows
that _palliatae_ also continued to be performed. But true comedy had
been relegated to a back place and the Silver Age did nothing to modify
the dictum of Quintilian,[101] _in comoedia maxime claudicamus_.

As with comedy so with tragedy. Popular taste rejected the Graeco-Roman
tragedy as tedious, and it was replaced by a more sensuous and
sensational form of entertainment. The intenser passions and emotions
were not banished from the stage, but survived in the _salticae fabulae_
and a peculiar species of dramatic recitation. Infinitely debased as
were these substitutes for true drama, the forms assumed by the
decomposition of tragedy are yet curious and interesting. The first step
was the separation of the _cantica_ from the _diverbia._ Lyric scenes or
even important iambic monologues were taken from their setting and sung
as solos upon the stage.[102] It was found difficult to combine
effective singing with effective gesture and dancing, for music had
become more florid and exacting than in the days of Euripides. A second
actor appeared who supplied the gesture to illustrate the first actor's
song.[103] From this peculiar and to us ridiculous form of entertainment
it is a small step to the _fabula saltica,_ which was at once nearer the
legitimate drama and further from it. It was nearer in that the scenes
were not isolated, but formed part of a more or less carefully
constructed whole. It was further inasmuch as the actor disappeared,
only the dancer remaining upon the stage. The words of the play were
relegated to a chorus, while the character, actions, and emotions of the
person represented by the words of the chorus were set forth by the
dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the _pantomimus_. How the various
scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary
inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern
oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic posturing of the _pantomimus_
appears an almost ridiculous substitute for drama; but the dancing of
the actors seems to have been extraordinarily artistic and at times to
have had a profound effect upon the emotions of the audience,[104] while
the brilliant success in our own time of plays in dumb show, such as the
famous _Enfant Prodigue,_ should be a warning against treating the
_pantomimus_ with contempt.

This form of entertainment was first introduced at Rome in 22 B.C. by
the actors Pylades and Bathyllus,[105] the former being famed for his
tragic dancing, the latter for a broader and more comic style, whose
dramatic counterpart would seem to have been the satyric drama.[106] The
satyric element seems, however, never to have become really popular, the
_fabula saltica_ as we know it dealing mainly with tragic or highly
emotional themes. Indeed, to judge from Lucian's disquisition on the art
of dancing, the subjects seem to have been drawn from almost every
conceivable source both of history and mythology.[107] Many of these
_salticae fabulae_ must have been mere adaptations of existing
tragedies. Their literary value was, according to Plutarch, by no means
high;[108] it was sacrificed to the music and the dancing, for the
emotional effect of which Lucian can scarcely find sufficiently high
terms of praise.[109] The themes appear to have been drawn from the more
lurid passages in mythology and history. If the libretto was not coarse
in itself, there is abundant evidence to show that the subjects chosen
were often highly lascivious, while the movements of the dancers--not
seldom men of the vilest character--were frequently to the last degree
obscene.[110] Inadequate as this substitute for the drama must seem to
us, we must remember that southern peoples were--and indeed are--far
more sensitive to the language of signs, to expressive gesticulation and
the sensuous movements of the body[111] than are the less quick-witted
and emotional peoples of the North; and further, even if for the most
part these _fabulae salticae_ had small literary value, distinguished
poets did not disdain to write librettos for popular actors. Passages
from the works of Vergil were adapted for such performances;[112] Lucan
wrote no less than fourteen _fabulae salticae,_[113] while the _Agave_
of Statius,[114] written for the dancer Paris, is famous from the
well-known passage in the seventh satire of Juvenal. Nothing survives of
these librettos to enlighten us as to their literary characteristics,
and the other details of the performance do not concern us here.[115] It
is sufficient to say that the _pantomimus_ had an enormous vogue in the
Silver Age, and won a rich harvest by his efforts, and that the factions
of the theatre, composed of the partisans of this or that actor, were
scarcely less notorious than the factions of the circus for the
disturbances to which they gave rise.[116]

Of the musical recitations of portions of existing tragedies or of
tragic episodes written for the occasion we possess even less knowledge.
The passages selected or composed for this purpose were in all
probability usually lyric, but we hear also of the chanting of iambics,
as, for instance, in the case of the _Oedipus in Exile,_ in which Nero
made his last appearance on the stage.[117] Of the part played by the
chorus and of the structure of the librettos we know nothing; they may
have been purely episodic and isolated or may, as in the _salticae
fabulae,_ have been loosely strung together into the form of an
ill-constructed play. That they were sometimes written in Greek is known
from the fact that the line quoted by Suetonius from the _Oedipus in
Exile_ mentioned above is in that language. Of the writers of this
debased and bastard offspring of drama we know nothing save that Nero,
who was passionately fond of appearing in them, seems also to have
written them. (Suet. Ner. 39.)

The tragic stage had indeed sunk low, when it served almost entirely for
exhibitions such as these. Nevertheless tragedy had not ceased to exist
even if it had ceased to hold the stage.[118] Varius and Ovid had won
fame in the Augustan age by their Thyestes and Medea, and the
post-Augustan decadence was not without its tragedians. One only is
mentioned by Quintilian in his survey of Roman poetry, Pomponius
Secundus. Of him he says (x. 1. 98), 'Of the tragedians whom I myself
have seen, Pomponius Secundus is by far the most eminent; a writer whom
the oldest men of the day thought not quite tragic enough, but
acknowledged that he excelled in learning and elegance of style.'
Pomponius was a man of great distinction.[119] His friendship for Aelius
Gallus, the son of Sejanus, had brought him into disgrace with Tiberius,
but he recovered his position under Claudius. He attained to the
consulship, and commanded with distinction in a war against the Chatti
in A.D. 50. Of his writings we know but very little. Of his plays
nothing is left save a brief fragment[120] from a play entitled
_Aeneas_; whether it dealt with the deeds of Aeneas in his native land
or in the land of his adoption is uncertain, though it is on the whole
probable that the scene was Italian and that the drama was therefore a
_fabula praetexta_. Whether his plays were performed on the public stage
is not quite clear. Tacitus tells us of riots in the theatre in A.D.
44,[121] when 'poems' by Pomponius were being recited on the stage. But
the words used by the historian (_is carmina scaenae dabat_) point
rather to the recitation of a dramatic solo than to a complete tragedy
of the orthodox type. Pomponius, dramatist and philologist,[122] remains
a mere name for us.

Another distinguished writer of plays was Curiatius Maternus, a
well-known orator; it is in his house that Tacitus places the scene of
the _Dialogus_, and he is the chief character of the conversation. He
had written his first tragedy under Nero,[123] and at the time of the
_Dialogus_ (A.D. 79-81) his _Cato_--a _fabula praetexta_--was the talk
of Rome.[124] He had written another historical drama on the ancestor of
Nero, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, the persistent foe of Julius Caesar, who
perished on the field of Pharsalia.[125] He had also written plays on
the more hackneyed themes of Medea and Thyestes.[126] He had all the
opportunities and all the requisite gifts for a successful public
career, but his heart was with the Muses, and he resolved to quit public
life and to devote himself wholly to poetry, for there, in his
estimation, the truest fame was to be found.[127] Here our knowledge
ends. Of the details of his life we are as ignorant as of his plays.

A few other names of tragic poets are known to us. Paccius wrote an
_Alcithoe_,[128] Faustus a _Thebais_ and a _Tereus_,[129] Rubrenus Lappa
an _Atreus_,[130] while Scaevus Memor,[131] victor at the Agon
Capitolinus and brother of Turnus the satirist, wrote a _Hercules_ and a
_Hecuba_ or _Troades_.[132] Martial (xi. 9) styles him the 'glory of the
Roman buskin', but he too is but the shadow of an empty name. The
tragedies of the age are lost to us, all save the tragedies of the
philosopher Seneca, plays of which, save for one casual reference[133]
in Quintilian, contemporary literature gives no hint, but which, however
little they may have deserved it, were destined to have no negligible
influence on the subsequent history of the world's drama.


II

SENECA

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, one of the most striking figures among the great
writers of Rome, was born at Cordova[134] about the opening of the
Christian era, to be the most remarkable member of a remarkable family.
His father, who bore the same name, was the famous rhetorician to whom
we have already referred. His elder brother, M. Annaeus Novatus,[135]
was adopted by L. Iunius Gallio, whose name he assumed, had a
distinguished public career, and is best known to us, in his capacity of
governor of Achaea, as the 'Gallio' of the Acts. The youngest of the
family, M. Annaeus Mela,[136] remained in the equestrian order and
devoted himself to the acquisition of wealth, regarding this as the
safest path to fame. He succeeded to some extent in his object, but his
main claim upon our remembrance is as the father of the poet Lucan.
Lucius Seneca came to Rome at an early age,[137] and, in spite of the
bad health which afflicted him all his life long,[138] soon made his
mark as an orator. Indeed, so striking was his success that--although he
showed no particular eagerness for a political career--his sheer mastery
of the Roman speech wakened the jealousy of Caligula,[139] who only
spared his life on the ground that he suffered from chronic asthma and
was not likely to live long, and contented himself, therefore, with
mordant but not unjust criticism of the style of his intended
victim.[140] But though oratory provided Seneca with the readiest means
for the gratification of his not inconsiderable vanity, and for the
exercise of his marvellous powers of wit and epigram, it was not the
pursuit of rhetoric and its prizes that really held the first place in
his heart. That place was claimed by philosophy. His first love was
Pythagoreanism, which he studied under Sotion[14l] of Alexandria, whose
influence was sufficient to induce his youthful pupil to become a
convinced vegetarian. But his father, who hated fads and philosophers,
persuaded Seneca without much difficulty to 'dine better', and the
doctrines of Pythagoras were soon displaced by the more fashionable
teaching of the Stoics. From the lips of Attalus[142] he learned all the
principles of that ascetic school. 'I besieged his class-room,' he
writes; 'I was the first to come, the last to go; I would waylay him
when out walking and lead him to discuss serious problems.' Whether he
denounced vice and luxury, or extolled poverty, Attalus found a
convinced disciple in Seneca. His convictions did not possess sufficient
weight to lead him to embrace a life of austere poverty, but he at least
learned to sleep on a hard mattress, and to eschew hot baths, wine,
unguents, oysters, and mushrooms. How far his life conformed to the
highest principles of his creed, it is hard to say. If we are to believe
his detractors, he was guilty of committing adultery with the Princess
Julia Livilla, was surrounded with all the luxuries that the age could
supply, and drained the life-blood of Italy and the provinces by
extortionate usury.[143] During his long exile in Corsica he could write
a consolatory treatise to his mother on the thesis that the true
philosopher is never an exile;[144] wherever he is, there he is at home;
but little more than a year later he writes another consolatory treatise
to the imperial freedman Polybius, full of the most grovelling flattery
of Polybius himself and of the Emperor Claudius,[145] the same Claudius
whom he afterwards bespattered with the coarse, if occasionally
humorous, vulgarity of the _Apocolocyntosis_.[146] He was tutor to the
young Nero, but had not the strength to check his vices. He sought to
control him by flattery and platitudes rather than by the high example
of the philosophy which he professed.[147] The composition of the
treatise _ad Neronem de Clementia_ was a poor reply to Nero's murder of
Britannicus.[148] He could write eloquently of Stoic virtue, but when he
himself was confronted with the hard facts of life over which Stoicism
claimed to triumph, he proved no more than a 'lath painted to look like
iron'. Such is the case against Seneca. That it can be rebutted entirely
it is impossible to claim. But we must remember the age in which he
lived. Its love of debauchery was only equalled by its prurient love of
scandal. Seneca's banishment on the charge of an intrigue with Livilla
is not seriously damaging. The accusation _may_ have been true: it is at
least as likely to have been false, for it was instigated by Messalina.
That he lived in wealth and luxury is undoubted: his only defence was
that he was really indifferent to it; he could face any future; he had,
therefore, a right to enjoy the present.[149] That he ground down the
provincials by his usury is possible; the standard in such matters was
low, and the real nature of his extortions may never have come home to
him; he must have depended largely on his agents. With regard to his
management of the young princeps the case is different. Seneca was given
an almost impossible task. Neither his nature nor his surroundings made
Nero a suitable subject for moral instruction. Seneca must have been
hampered at every turn. He must either bend or break. At least he won
the respect of his pupil, and the good governance of the empire during
the first five years of Nero's reign was due largely to the fact that
the power was really in the hands of Seneca and Burrus.[150] Many of the
weaknesses of his character may be accounted for by physical debility,
and we must further remember that a Stoic of the age of Nero found
himself in a most difficult position. He could not put his principles
into full practice in public life without incurring the certain
displeasure of the emperor. The stricter Stoic, therefore, like Thrasea,
retired to the seclusion of his estates 'condemning the wicked world of
Rome by his absence from it'.[151] Seneca, weaker, but possessed of
greater common sense, chose the _via media_. He was content to sacrifice
something of his principles to the service of Rome--and of himself. It
is not necessary to regard him as wholly disinterested in his conduct;
it is unjust and absurd to regard him as a glorified Tartuffe.[152] Such
a supposition is adequately refuted by his writings. It is easy for a
writer at once so fluent and so brilliant to give the impression of
insincerity; but the philosophical works of Seneca ring surprisingly
true. We cannot doubt his faith, though his life may at times have
belied it. He reveals a warmth of human feeling, a richness of
imagination, a comprehension of human failings and sorrows, that make
him rank high among the great preachers of the world. Even here, it is
true, he has his failings; he repeats himself, has little constructive
talent, and fails at times to conceal a passion for the obvious beneath
the brilliance of his epigram. But alike in the spheres of politics and
literature he is the greatest man of his age. In literature he stands
alone: he is a prose Ovid, with the saving gift of moral fervour. His
style is terse and epigrammatic, but never obscure; it lacks the roll of
the continuous prose of the Augustan age, but its phrases have a beauty
and a music of their own: at their best they are touched with a genuine
vein of poetry, at their worst they have a hard brilliance against the
attractions of which only the most fastidious eye is proof. He towered
over all his contemporaries. In him were concentrated all the
excellences of the rhetorical schools of the day. Seneca became the
model for literary aspirants to copy. But he was a dangerous model. His
lack of connexion and rhythm became exaggerated by his followers, and
the slightest lack of dexterity in the imitator led to a flashy
tawdriness such as Seneca himself had as a rule avoided. He was too
facile and careless a composer to yield a canon for style. The reaction
came soon. Involved, whether justly or not, in the Pisonian conspiracy
of 65 A.D., he was forced to commit suicide. He died as the Stoics of
the age were wont to die, cheerfully, courageously, and with
self-conscious ostentation.[153] Within a few years of his death the
great Ciceronian reaction headed by Quintilian began. The very vehemence
with which the Senecan style was attacked, now by Quintilian[154] and
later by Fronto,[155] shows what a commanding position he held.

He was poet as well as philosopher. Quintilian tells us that he left
scarcely any branch of literature untouched. 'We possess,' he says, 'his
speeches, poems, letters, and dialogues.'[156] Two collections of poems
attributed to Seneca have come down to us, a collection of epigrams and
a collection of dramas. There is strangely little external evidence to
support either attribution, but in neither case can there be any serious
doubt as to the general correctness of the tradition.

The _Anthologia Latina_, compiled at Carthage in the sixth century,
opens with seventy-three epigrams, of which three are attributed by the
MSS. to Seneca (_Poet. Lat. Min._ 1-3, Baehrens). The first is entitled
_de qualitate temporis_ and descants on the ultimate destruction of the
world by fire--a well-known Stoical doctrine. The second and third are
fierce denunciations of Corsica, his place of exile. The rest are
nameless. But there are several which can only be attributed to Seneca.
The ninth is entitled _de se ad patriam_, and is addressed to Cordova by
one plunged in deep misfortune--a clear reference to his banishment in
Corsica. The fifty-first is a prayer that the author's two brothers may
be happier than himself, and that 'the little Marcus may rival his
uncles in eloquence'. The brothers are described one as older, the other
as younger than the author. It is an obvious inference that the brothers
referred to are Gallio and Mela, while it is possible that the little
Marcus is no other than the gifted son of Mela, Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,
the epic poet.[157] The fifteenth represents him as an exile in a barren
land: he appeals to a faithful friend named Crispus, probably the
distinguished orator Passienus Crispus, the younger, who was consul for
the second time in 44 A.D.[158] There are also other epigrams which,
though less explicit, suit the circumstances of Seneca's exile. The
fifth is written in praise of the quiet life. The author has two
brothers (l. 14), and at the opening of the poem cries, 'let others seek
the praetorship!' In this connexion it is noteworthy that at the time of
his banishment Seneca had held no higher office than the quaestorship.
The seventeenth and eighteenth are on the same subject, and contain a
solemn warning against _regum amicitiae_, appropriate enough in the
mouth of the victim of a court intrigue. Epigrams 29-36 are devoted to
the praises of Claudius for his conquest of Britain. Claudius had
banished him and was a suitable subject for flattery. For the rest the
poems are largely of the republican character so fashionable in Stoic
circles during the first century of the empire. There are many epigrams
on Cato [159] and the Pompeys. Others, again, are of a rhetorical
nature, dealing with scholastic themes;[160] others of an erotic and
even scandalous character. We can claim no certainty for the view that
all these poems are by Seneca, but there is a general resemblance of
style throughout, and probability points to the whole collection being
by the same author. The fact that the same theme is treated more than
once scarcely stands in the way. We cannot dictate the amusements of a
weary exile. It would be rash even to deny the possibility of his being
the author of the erotic poems.[161] Philosopher as he was, he had been
banished on a charge of adultery: without in any way admitting the truth
of that accusation, we may readily believe that he stooped to one of the
fashionable amusements of the day, the composition of pointed and
unsavoury verse; for the standard of morality in writing was far lower
than the standard of morals in actual life.[162]

The poems repay reading, but call for little comment. They lack
originality. The thought is thin, the expression neat, though scarcely
as pointed as we might expect from such an author, while the metre is
graceful: the treatment of the elegiac is freer than that of Ovid, but
pleasing and melodious. At times powerful lines flash out.

                  qua frigida semper
    praefulget stellis Arctos inocciduis (xxxvi. 6)

    Where the cold constellation of the heaven gleams
    ever with unsetting stars.

shines out from the midst of banal flattery of the emperor with
astonishing splendour. The poem _de qualitate temporis_ (4) closes with
four fine lines with the unmistakable Senecan ring about them--

    quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcerrima caeli
      ardebit flammis tota repente suis.
    omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire:
      hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit.

    Why speak of things so small? The glorious vault of
    heaven one day shall blaze with sudden self-kindled
    flame. Death calls for all creation. 'Tis a law, not
    a penalty to perish. The universe itself shall one day
    be as though it had never been.

Cato (9) deliberates on suicide with characteristic rhetoric, artificial
in the extreme, but not devoid of dignity--

        estne aliquid, quod Cato non potuit?
    dextera, me vitas? durum est iugulasse Catonem?
      sed, quia liber erit, iam puto, non dubitas.
    fas non est vivum cuiquam servire Catonem:
      quinctiam vivit nunc Cato, si moritur.[2]

    Is there then that which Cato had not the heart to do?
    Right-hand, dost thou shrink from me? Is it hard to slay
    Cato? Nay, methinks thou dost hesitate no more, for thou
    shalt set Cato free. 'Tis a crime that Cato should live
    to be any man's slave; nay, Cato truly lives if Cato die.

Cleverest of all is the treatment of the rhetorical theme of the two
brothers who meet in battle in the civil war (72). The one unwittingly
slays the other, strips the slain, and discovers what he has done--

    quod fuerat virtus, factum est scelus. haeret in hoste
      miles et e manibus mittere tela timet.
    inde ferox: 'quid, lenta manus, nunc denique cessas?
      iustius hoste tibi qui moriatur adest.
    fraternam res nulla potest defendere caedem;
      mors tua sola potest: morte luenda tua est,
    scilicet ad patrios referes spolia ampla penates?
      ad patrem victor non potes ire tuum.
    sed potes ad fratrem: nunc fortiter utere telo!
      impius hoc telo es, hoc potes esse pius.
    vivere si poteris, potuisti occidere fratrem!
      nescisti: sed scis: haec mora culpa tua est.
    viximus adversis, iaccamus partibus isdem
      (dixit et in dubio est utrius ense cadat).
    ense meo moriar, maculato morte nefanda?
      cui moreris, ferrum quo moriare dabit.'
    dixit et in fratrem fraterno concidit ense:
      victorem et victum condidit una manus.[163]

    What had been valour now is made a crime. The soldier
    halts by his foe and fears to launch his shafts. Then
    his courage rekindled. 'What! coward hand, dost thou
    delay _now_? There is one here whom thou shouldst slay
    sooner than the foe. Naught can assoil of the guilt of
    a brother's blood save only death; 'tis thy death must
    atone. Shalt thou bear home to thy father's halls rich
    spoil of war? Nay, victor thus, thou canst not go to meet
    thy sire. But victor thou canst go to meet thy brother;
   _now_ use thy weapon bravely. This weapon stained thee with
    crime, 'tis this weapon shall make thee clean. If thou hast
    heart to live, thou hadst the heart to slay thy brother;
    thou _hadst_ no such murderous thought, but _now_ thou hast;
    this thy tarrying brings thee guilt. We have lived foes, let
    us lie united in the peace of the grave.' He ceased and
    doubted on whose sword to fall.' Shall I die by mine own
    sword, thus foul with shameful murder. He for whom thou diest
    shall give thee the steel wherewith to die.' He ceased, and
    fell dead upon his brother, slain by his brother's sword.
    The same hand slew both victor and vanquished.

This is not poetry of the first class, if indeed it is poetry at all.
But it is trick-rhetoric of the most brilliant kind without degenerating
into bombastic absurdity. There is, in fact, a restraint in these
epigrams which provides a remarkable contrast with the turgid
extravagance that defaces so much of the dramas. This is in part due to
the difference of the moulds into which the rhetoric is run, but it is
hard to resist the belief that the epigrams--written mainly during the
exile in Corsica--are considerably later than the plays. They are in
themselves insignificant; they show no advance in dexterity upon the
dramas, but they do show a distinct increase of maturity.

The plays are ten in number; they comprise a _Hercules Furens, Troades,
Phoenissae_ (or _Thebais_), _Medea, Phaedra_ (or _Hippolytus_),
_Oedipus, Agamemnon, Thyestes, Hercules Oetaeus_, and--sole example of
the _fabula praetexta_--the _Octavia_. Despite the curious silence of
Seneca himself and of his contemporaries, there can be little doubt as
to the general correctness of the attribution which assigns to Seneca
the only Latin tragedies that grudging time has spared us. The _Medea,
Hercules Furens, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon_, and _Thyestes_ are all
cited by late writers, while Quintilian[164] himself cites a line from
the Medea as the work of Seneca. The name Seneca, without any further
specification, points as clearly to Seneca, the philosopher, as the name
Cicero to the great orator. The absence of any further or more explicit
reference on the part of Quintilian to Seneca's achievements as a
tragedian is easily explained on the supposition that the critic
regarded them as but an insignificant portion of his work. Yet stronger
confirmation is afforded by the internal evidence. The verse is marked
by the same brilliant but fatiguing terseness, the same polish and
point, the same sententiousness, the same succession of short stabbing
sentences, that mark the prose works of Seneca.[165] More remarkable
still is the close parallelism of thought. The plays are permeated
through and through with Stoicism, and the expression given to certain
Stoical doctrines is often almost identical with passages from the
philosophical works.[166] Against these evidences the silence of Seneca
himself counts for little. We may charitably suppose that he rated his
plays at their just value. In any case a poet is under no compulsion to
quote his own verses, or even to refer to them, in works of a totally
different nature.[167]

A more serious question is whether Seneca is the author of all the plays
transmitted to us under his name. The authenticity of four of these
dramas has been seriously questioned. That the _Octavia_ is by a later
hand may be regarded as certain. Seneca could hardly have dared to write
a play on so dangerous a theme--the brutal treatment by Nero of his
young wife Octavia. Moreover, Seneca himself is one of the dramatis
personae, and there are clear references to the death of Nero, while the
style is simple and restrained, and wholly unlike that of the other
plays. It is the work of a saner and less flamboyant age.[168] The
_Agamemnon_ and the _Oedipus_ have been suspected on the ground that
certain of the lyric portions are written in a curious patchwork metre
of a character fortunately unique in Latin lyric verse. The _Agamemnon_
further has two choruses.[169] But in all other respects the language,
technique, and metre closely resemble the other dramas. Neither
objection need carry any weight. There is no reason why Seneca should
not have introduced a double chorus or have indulged in unsuccessful
metrical experiments.[170] Far more difficult is the problem presented
by the _Hercules Oetaeus_. It presents many anomalies, of which the
least are a double chorus and a change of scene from Oechalia to
Trachis. Imitations and plagiarisms from the other plays abound, and the
work has more than its fair share of vain repetitions and tasteless
absurdities. On the other hand, metre and diction closely recall the
dramas accepted as genuine. It is hard to give any certain answer to
such a complicated problem, but it is noteworthy that all the worst
defects in this play (which among its other peculiarities possesses
abnormal length) occur after l. 705, while the earlier scenes depicting
the jealousy of Deianira show the Senecan dramatic style almost at its
best. Even in the later portion of the play there is much that may be by
the hand of Seneca. It is impossible to brand the drama as wholly
spurious. The opening lines (1-232) may not belong to the play, but may
form an entirely separate scene dealing with the capture of Oechalia:
there is no reason to suppose that they are not by Seneca, and the same
statement applies to the great bulk of ll. 233-705. The remainder has in
all probability suffered largely from interpolation, but its general
resemblance to Seneca in style and diction is too strongly marked to
permit us to reject it _en bloc_. The problem is too obscure to repay
detailed discussion.[171] The most probable solution of the question
would seem to be that the work was left in an unfinished condition with
inconsistencies, self-plagiarisms, repetitions, and absurdities which
revision would have removed; this unfinished drama was then worked over
and corrected by a stupid, but careful student of Seneca.

There is such a complete absence of evidence as to the period of
Seneca's life during which these dramas were composed, that much
ingenuity has been wasted in attempts to solve the problem. The view
most widely held--why it should be held is a mystery--is that they were
composed during Seneca's exile in Corsica (41-9 A.D.).[172] Others,
again, hold that they were written for the delectation of the young
Nero, who had early betrayed a taste for the stage. This view has
nothing to support it save the accusation mentioned by Tacitus,[173] to
the effect that the patronage and approval of Nero led Seneca to write
verse more frequently than his wont. Direct evidence there is none, but
the general crudity of the work, coupled with the pedantic hardness and
rigidity of the Stoicism which pervades the plays, points strongly to an
early date, considerably earlier than the exile in Corsica. There is no
trace of the mature experience and feeling for humanity that
characterize the later philosophical works. On the contrary, these plays
are just what might be expected of a young man fresh from the schools of
rhetoric and philosophy.[174] As to the order in which the plays were
written there is practically nothing to guide us.[175] The _Hercules
Oetaeus_ is probably the latest, for in it we find plagiarisms from the
_Hercules Furens, Oedipus, Thyestes, Phoenissae, Phaedra_, and
_Troades_. Even here, however, there is an element of uncertainty, for
it is impossible to ascertain whether any given plagiarism is due to
Seneca or to his interpolators.

Leaving such barren and unprofitable ground, what can we say of the
plays themselves? Even after making due allowance for the hopeless
decline of dramatic taste and for the ruin wrought by the schools of
rhetoric, it is hard to speak with patience of such productions, when we
recall the brilliance and charm of the prose works of Seneca. We can
forgive him being rhetorical when he speaks for himself; when he speaks
through the lips of others he is less easily tolerable.

Drama is a reading of human life: if it is to hold one's interest it
must deal with the feelings, thought, and action of genuine human beings
and represent their complex interaction: the characters must be real and
must differ one from the other, so that by force of contrast and by the
continued play of diverse aspects and developments of the human soul,
the significance, the pathos, and the power of the fragment of human
life selected for representation may be fully brought out and set before
our eyes. If these characteristics be absent, the drama must of
necessity be an artistic failure by reason of its lack of truth. But it
requires also plot, with a logical growth leading to some great climax
and developing a growing suspense in the spectator as to what shall be
the end. It is true that plot without reality may give us a successful
melodrama, that truth of character-drawing with a minimum of plot may
move and interest us. But in neither case shall we have drama in its
truest and noblest form.

Seneca gives us neither the half nor the whole. The stage is ultimately
the touchstone of dramatic excellence. But if it is to be such a
touchstone, it must have an audience with a penetration of intelligence
and a soundness of taste such as had long ceased to characterize Roman
audiences. The Senecan drama has lost touch with the stage and lacks
both unity and life. Such superficial unity as his plots possess is due
to the fact that they are ultimately imitations of Greek[176] drama. A
full discussion of the plots is neither necessary here nor possible. A
few instances of Seneca's treatment of his material must suffice.[177]
He has no sense of logical development; the lack of sequence and of
proportion traceable in the letters is more painfully evident in the
tragedies.

The _Hercules Furens_ supplies an excellent example of the weakness of
the Senecan plot. It is based on the [Greek: H_erakl_es mainomenos] of
Euripides, and such unity as it possesses is in the main due to that
fact. It is in his chief divergences from the Euripidean treatment of
the story that his deficiencies become most apparent. Theseus appears
early in the play merely that he may deliver a long rhodomontade on the
appearance of the underworld, whence Hercules has rescued him; and,
worst of all, the return of Hercules is rendered wholly ineffective.
Amphitryon hears the approaching steps of Hercules as he bursts his way
to the upper world and cries (523)--

    est est sonitus Herculei gradus.

The chorus then, as if they had heard nothing, deliver themselves of a
chant that describes Hercules as still a prisoner in Hades. When
Hercules at last is allowed to appear, he appears alone, and delivers a
long ranting glorification of himself (592-617) before he is joined by
his father, wife, and children. As Leo has remarked,[178] this episode
has been tastelessly torn into two fragments merely to give Hercules an
opportunity for turgid declamation.

The _Medea_, again, is, on the whole, Euripidean in form, though it
probably owes much to the influence of Ovid.[179] It is, moreover, the
least tasteless and best constructed of his tragedies. It loses
comparatively little by the omission of the Aegeus episode, but suffers
terribly by the insertion of a bombastic description of Medea's
incantations. The love of the Silver Age for rhetoric has converted
Medea into a skilful rhetorician, its love for the black art has
degraded her to a vulgar sorceress. Nothing, again, can be cruder or
more awkward than the manner in which the news of the death of Creon and
his daughter is announced. After an interval so brief as scarcely to
suffice even for the conveyance of the poisoned gifts to the palace, in
rushes a messenger crying (879)--

    periere cuncta, concidit regni status.
    nata atque genitor cinere permixto iacent.

    _Cho_. qua fraude capti? _Nunt_. qua solent
    reges capi, donis.

   _Cho_. in illis esse quis potuit dolus?

    _Nunt_. et ipse miror vixque iam facto malo
    potuisse fieri credo; quis cladis modus?
    avidus per omnem regiae partem furit
    ut iussus ignis: iam domus tota occidit,
    urbi timetur.

    _Cho_. unda flammas opprimat.

    _Nunt_. et hoc in ista clade mirandum accidit,
    alit unda flammas, quoque prohibetur magis,
    magis ardet ignis: ipsa praesidia occupat.


    All is lost! the kingdom's fallen! Father and
    daughter lie in mingled dust!

    _Ch_. By what snare taken?

    _Mess_. By gifts, the snare of kings.

    _Ch_. What harm could lurk in them?

    _Mess_. Myself I marvel, and scarce though the deed
    is done can I believe it possible. How died they?
    Devouring flames rage through all the palace as at
    her command. Now the whole house is fallen and men
    fear for the city.

    _Ch_. Let water quench the flames.

    _Mess_. Nay, in this overthrow is this added wonder.
    Water feeds the flames and opposition makes the fire
    burn fiercer. It hath seared even that which should
    have stayed its power.

That is all: if we had not read Euripides we should scarcely understand
the connexion between the gifts and the mysterious fire. Seneca, with
the lack of proportion displayed in nearly all his dramas, has spent so
much time in describing the wholly irrelevant and absurd details of
Medea's incantations that he finds no room to give what might be a
really dramatic description of the all-important catastrophe in which
Medea's vengeance finds issue. There is hardly a play which will not
provide similar instances of the lack of genuine constructive power. In
the _Oedipus_ we get the same long narrative of horror that has
disfigured the _Hercules Furens_ and the _Medea_. Creon describes to us
the dark rites of incantation used to evoke the shade of Laius.[180] In
the _Phaedra_ we find what at first would seem to be a clever piece of
stagecraft. Hippolytus, scandalized at Phaedra's avowal of her
incestuous passion, seizes her by the hair and draws his sword as though
to slay her. He changes his purpose, but the nurse has seen him and
calls for aid, denouncing Hippolytus' violence and clearly intending to
make use of it as damning evidence against him. But the chorus refuse to
credit her, and the incident falls flat.[181] Everywhere there is the
same casual workmanship. If we stop short of denying to Seneca the
possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the
conviction that he treated the plays as a _parergon_, spending little
thought or care on their _ensemble_, though at times working up a scene
or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often
misdirected.

The plays are, in fact, as Nisard has admirably put it, _drames de
recette_. The recipe consists in the employment of three
ingredients--description, declamation, and philosophic aphorism. There
is room for all these ingredients in drama as in human life, but in
Seneca there is little else: these three elements conspire together to
swamp the drama, and they do this the more effectively because, for
all their cleverness, Seneca's description and declamation are
radically bad. It is but rarely that he shows himself capable of
simple and natural language. If a tragic event enacted off the stage
requires description, it must outdo all other descriptions of the same
type. And seeing that one of the chief uses of narrative in tragedy is
to present to the imagination of the audience events which are too
horrible for their eyes, the result in Seneca's hands is often little
less than revolting. For example, the self-blinding of Oedipus is set
forth with every detail of horror, possible and impossible, till the
imagination sickens.

(961)                 gemuit et dirum fremens
      manus in ora torsit, at contra truces
      oculi steterunt et suam intenti manum
      ultro insequuntur, vulneri occurrunt suo.
      scrutatur avidus manibus uncis lumina,
      radice ab ima funditus vulsos simul
      evolvit orbes; haeret in vacuo manus
      et fixa penitus unguibus lacerat cavos
      alte recessus luminum et inanes sinus
      saevitque frustra plusque quam satis est furit.

The last line is an epitome of Seneca's methods of description. Yet more
revolting is the speech of the messenger describing the banquet, at
which Atreus placed the flesh of Thyestes' murdered sons before their
father (623-788). Nothing is spared us, much that is impossible is
added.[182] At times, moreover, this love of horrors leads to the
introduction of descriptions wholly alien to the play. In the _Hercules
Furens_ the time during which Hercules is absent from the scene, engaged
in the slaying of the tyrant Lycus, is filled by a description of Hades
from the mouth of Theseus, who is fresh-come from the underworld. The
speech is not peculiarly bad in itself; it is only very long[183]
(658-829) and very irrelevant.

The effect of the declamation is not less unhappy. Seneca's dramatis
personae rarely speak like reasoning human beings: they rant at one
another or at the audience with such overwrought subtleties of speech
and rhetorical perversions that they give the impression of being no
more than mechanical puppets handled by a crafty but inartistic showman.
All speak the same strange language, a language born in the rhetorical
schools of Greece and Rome. Gods and mortals alike suffer the same
melancholy fate. Juno, when she declares her resolve to afflict Hercules
with madness, addresses the furies who are to be her ministers as
follows (_H.F._ 105):

    concutite pectus, acrior mentem excoquat
    quam qui caminis ignis Aetnaeis furit:
    ut possit animo captus Alcides agi
    magno furore percitus, nobis prius
    insaniendum est--Iuno, cur nondum furis?
    me me, sorores, mente deiectam mea
    versate primam, facere si quicquam apparo
    dignum noverca; vota mutentur mea:
    natos reversus videat incolumes precor
    manuque fortis redeat: inveni diem
    invisa quo nos Herculis virtus iuvet.
    me vicit et se vincat et cupiat mori
    ab inferis reversus....
                           pugnanti Herculi
    tandem favebo.

    Distract his heart with madness: let his soul
    More fiercely burn than that hot fire which glows
    On Aetna's forge. But first, that Hercules
    May be to madness driven, smitten through
    With mighty passion, I must be insane.
    Why rav'st thou not, O Juno? Me, oh, me,
    Ye sisters, first of sanity deprive,
    That something worthy of a stepdame's wrath
    I may prepare. Let all my hate be change
    To favour. Now I pray that he may come
    To earth again, and see his sons unharmed;
    May he return with all his old time strength.
    Now have I found a day when Hercules
    May help me with his strength that I deplore.
    Now let him equally o'ercome himself
    And me; and let him, late escaped from death,
    Desire to die... And so at last I'll help
    Alcides in his wars.                    MILLER.

She is clearly a near relative of that Oedipus who, in the _Phoenissae_,
begs Antigone to lead him to the rock where the Sphinx sat of old (120):

                     dirige huc gressus pedum,
    hic siste patrem. dira ne sedes vacet.
    monstrum repone maius. hoc saxum insidens
    obscura nostrae verba fortunae loquar,
    quae nemo solvat.
                      ... saeva Thebarum lues
    luctifica caecis verba committens modis
    quid simile posuit? quid tam inextricabile?
    avi gener patrisque rivalis sui
    frater suorum liberum et fratrum parens;
    uno avia partu liberos. peperit viro,
    sibi et nepotes. monstra quis tanta explicat?
    ego ipse, victae spolia qui Sphingis tuli,
    haerebo fati tardus interpres mei.


    Direct me thither, set thy father there.
    Let not that dreadful seat be empty long,
    But place me there a greater monster still.
    There will I sit and of my fate propose
    A riddle dark that no man shall resolve.
       *       *       *       *       *
    What riddle like to this could she propose,
    That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words
    In puzzling measures? What so dark as this?
    _He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet
    His father's rival; brother of his sons,
    And father of his brothers: at one birth
    The grandame bore unto her husband sons,
    And grandsons to herself_. Who can unwind
    A tangle such as this? E'en I myself,
    Who bore the spoils of triumph o'er the Sphinx,
    Stand mute before the riddle of my fate.
                                              MILLER.

There is no need to multiply instances; each play will supply many. Only
in the _Troades_[184] and the _Phaedra_ does this declamatory rhetoric
rise to something higher than mere declamation and near akin to true
poetry. In these plays there are two speeches standing on a different
plane to anything else in Seneca's iambics. In the _Troades_ Agamemnon
is protesting against the proposed sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit
of the dead Achilles (255).

    quid caede dira nobiles clari ducis
    aspergis umbras? noscere hoc primum decet,
    quid facere victor debeat, victus pati.
    violenta nemo imperia continuit diu,
    moderata durant; ...
                         magna momento obrui
    vincendo didici. Troia nos tumidos facit
    nimium ac feroces? stamus hoc Danai loco,
    unde illa cecidit. fateor, aliquando impotens
    regno ac superbus altius memet tuli;
    sed fregit illos spiritus haec quae dare
    potuisset aliis causa, Fortunae favor.
    tu me superbum, Priame, tu timidum facis.
    ego esse quicquam sceptra nisi vano putem
    fulgore tectum nomen et falso comam
    vinclo decentem? casus haec rapiet brevis,
    nec mille forsan ratibus aut annis decem.
    ... fatebor ... affligi Phrygas
    vincique volui; ruere et aequari solo
    utinam arcuissem.

    Why besmirch with murder foul the noble shade of that
    renowned chief? First must thou learn the bounds of a
    victor's power, of the vanquished's suffering. No man
    for long has held unbridled sway; only self-control may
    endure ... I myself have conquered and have learned
    thereby that man's mightiness may fall in the twinkling
    of an eye. Shall Troy o'erthrown exalt our pride and make
    us overbold? Here we the Danaans stand on the spot whence
    she has fallen. Of old, I own, I have borne myself too
    haughtily, self-willed and proud of my power. But Fortune's
    favour, which had made another proud, has broken my pride.
    Priam, thou makest me proud, thou makest me tremble. I count
    the sceptre naught save a glory bright with worthless tinsel
    that sets the vain splendour of a crown upon my brow. All
    this the chance of one short hour may take from me without
    the aid of a thousand ships and ten long years of siege ...
    I will own my fault ... I desired to crush and conquer Troy.
    Would I had forbidden to lay her low and raze her walls to
    the ground!

The thought is not deep: the speech might serve for a model for a
_suasoria_ in the schools of rhetoric. But there is a stateliness and
dignity about it that is most rare in these plays. At last after dreary
tracts of empty rant we meet Seneca, the spiritual guide of the epistles
and the treatises.

Far more striking, however, from the dramatic standpoint, are the great
speeches in the _Phaedra_, where the heroine makes known her passion for
Hippolytus (600 sqq.). They are frankly rhetorical, but direct,
passionate, and to the point. They contain few striking lines or
sentiments, but they are clear and comparatively free from affectation.
Theseus has maddened Phaedra by his infidelities, and has long been
absent from her, imprisoned in the underworld. An uncontrollable passion
for her stepson has come upon her. She appeals to the unsuspecting
Hippolytus for pity and protection (619):

    muliebre non est regna tutari urbium;
    tu qui iuventae flore primaevo viges
    cives paterno fortis imperio rege,
    sinu receptam supplicem ac servam tege.
    miserere viduae.

    _Hipp_. Summus hoc omen deus avertat.
    aderit sospes actutum parens.

    'Tis no woman's task to rule cities. Do thou,
    strong in the flower of thy first youth, flinch
    not, but govern the state by the power thy father
    held. Take me and shield me in thy bosom, thy
    suppliant and thy slave! Pity thy father's widow.

    _Hipp_. Nay, high heaven avert the omen. Soon shall
    my father return unscathed.

Phaedra then begins to show her true colours. 'Nay!' she replies, 'he
will not come. Pluto holds him fast, the would-be ravisher of his bride,
unless indeed Pluto, like others I wot of, is indifferent to love.'
Hippolytus attempts to console her: he will do all in his power to make
life easy for her:

    et te merebor esse ne viduam putes
    ac tibi parentis ipse supplebo locum.

    I shall prove me worthy of thee: so thou shalt not deem
    thyself a widow. I will fill up my absent father's room.

These innocent words are as fuel to Phaedra's passion. She turns to him
again appealing for pity, pity for an ill she dare not name--

    quod in novercam cadere vix credas malum.

He bids her speak out. She replies, 'Love consumes me with an
all-devouring flame. 'He still fails to catch her meaning, supposing
that the passion of which she speaks is for the absent Theseus. She can
restrain herself no longer: 'Aye, 'tis for Theseus!' she cries (646):

    Hippolyte, sic est; Thesei vultus amo [185]
    illos priores quos tulit quondam puer,
    cum prima puras barba signaret genas
    monstrique caecam Cnosii vidit domum
    et longa curva fila collegit via.
    quis tum ille fulsit! presserant vittae comam
    et ora flavus tenera tinguebat pudor;
    inerant lacertis mollibus fortes tori;
    tuaeque Phoebes vultus aut Phoebi mei,
    tuusque potius--talis, en talis fuit
    cum placuit hosti, sic tulit celsum caput:
    in te magis refulget incomptus decor;
    est genitor in te totus et torvae tamen
    pars aliqua matris miscet ex aequo decus;
    in ore Graio Scythicus apparet rigor.
    si cum parente Creticum intrasses fretum,
    tibi fila potius nostra nevisset soror.
    te te, soror, quacumque siderei poli
    in parte fulges, invoco ad causam parem:
    domus sorores una corripuit duas,
    te genitor, at me natus. en supplex iacet
    adlapsa genibus regiae proles domus,
    respersa nulla labe et intacta, innocens
    tibi mutor uni. certa descendi ad preces:
    finem hic dolori faciet aut vitae dies,
    miserere amantis.[186]

    Even so, Hippolytus; I love the face that Theseus wore,
    in the days of old while yet he was a boy, when the first
    down marked his bright cheeks and he looked on the dark
    home of the Cretan monster and gathered the long magic
    thread along the winding way. Ah! how then he shone upon my
    eyes. A wreath was about his hair and his delicate cheeks
    glowed with the golden bloom of modesty. Strong sinews stood
    out upon his shapely arms and his countenance was the
    countenance of the goddess that thou servest or of mine own
    bright sun-god; nay, rather 'twas as thine own. Even so, even
    so looked he when he won the heart of her that was his foe,
    and lofty was his carriage like to thine. But in thee still
    brighter shines an artless glory, and on thee is all thy
    father's beauty. Yet mingled therewith in equal portion is
    something of thy wild mother's fairness. On thy Greek face is
    seen the fierceness of the Scythian. Hadst thou sailed o'er
    the sea with thy sire to Crete, for thee rather had my sister
    spun the magic thread. On thee, on thee, my sister, I call
    where'er thou shinest in the starry heaven, on thee I call
    to aid my cause. Lo! sisters twain hath one house brought to
    naught--thee did the father ruin, me the son. Lo! suppliant at
    thy knees I fall, the daughter of a king, stainless and pure
    and innocent. For thee alone I swerve from my course. I have
    steeled my soul and stooped to beg of thee. Today shall end
    either my sorrow or my life. Pity, have pity, on her that
    loves thee.

Then the storm of Hippolytus' anger breaks. Here at least Seneca has
used his great rhetorical gifts to good effect. The passion may be
highly artificial when compared with the passion of the genuinely human
Phaedra of Euripides, but it is nevertheless passion and not bombast:
crudity there may be, but there is no real irrelevance.

There is less to praise and more to wonder at in Seneca's dialogue.
Instead of rational conversation or controversy, he gives us a brilliant
but meretricious display of epigram, the mechanical nature of which is
often emphasized by a curious symmetry of structure. For line after line
one character takes up the words of another and turns them against him
with dexterity as extraordinary as it is monotonous. The resulting
artificiality is almost incredible. It appears in its most extravagant
form in the _Thyestes_.[187] Scarcely less strained, though from the
nature of the subject the extravagance is less repellent, is a passage
in the _Troades_. Achilles' ghost has demanded the sacrifice of
Polyxena. Agamemnon hesitates to give orders for the sacrifice. Pyrrhus,
Achilles' son, enumerates the great deeds of his father, and asks,
indignantly, if such glory is to win naught save neglect after death.
Agamemnon has sacrificed his own daughter, why should he not sacrifice
Priam's? Agamemnon--in the speech quoted above--refuses indignantly.
'Sacrifice oxen if you will: no human blood shall be shed!' Pyrrhus
replies (306):

         hac dextra Achilli victimam reddam suam.
         quam si negas retinesque, maiorem dabo
         dignamque quam det Pyrrhus; et nimium diu
         a caede nostra regia cessat manus
         paremque poscit Priamus.

_Agam_.  haud equidem nego hoc esse Pyrrhi
         maximum in bello decus, saevo peremptus
         ense quod Priamus iacet, _supplex paternus.

_Pyrrh_. _supplices_ nostri _patris_
         hostesque eosdem novimus. Priamus tamen
         praesens rogavit; tu gravi pavidus metu,
         nec ad rogandum fortis Aiaci preces
         Ithacoque mandas clausus atque hostem tremens.


         By this right hand he shall receive his own.
         And if thou dost refuse and keep the maid,
         A greater victim will I slay, and one
         More worthy Pyrrhus' gift: for all too long
         From royal slaughter hath my hand been free,
         And Priam asks an equal sacrifice.

_Agam_.  Far be it from my wish to dim the praise
         That thou dost claim for this most glorious deed--
         Old Priam slain by thy barbaric sword,
         Thy father's suppliant.

_Pyrrh_. I know full well
         My father's suppliants--and well I know
         His enemies. Yet royal Priam came
         And made his plea before my father's face;
         But thou, o'ercome with fear, not brave enough
         Thyself to make request, within thy tent
         Did trembling hide, and thy desires consign
         To braver men, that they might plead for thee.
                                              MILLER.

Agamemnon retorts, 'What of your father, when he shirked the toils of
war and lay idly in his tent?'--

         levi canoram verberans plectro chelyn.

_Pyrrh_. tunc magnus Hector, arma contemnens tua,
         cantus Achillis timuit et tanto in metu
         _navalibus pax alta Thessalicis fuit_.

_Agam_.  nempe isdem in _istis Thessalis navalibus
         pax alta_ rursus Hectoris patri _fuit_.

_Pyrrh_. est _regis_ alti _spiritum_ regi dare.

_Agam_.  cur dextra _regi spiritum_ eripuit tua?

_Pyrrh_. mortem _misericors_ saepe pro vita dabit.

_Agam_.  et nunc _misericors_ virginem busto petis?

_Pyrrh_. iamne immolari virgines credis nefas?

_Agam_.  praeferre patriam liberis regem decet.

_Pyrrh_. _lex_ nulla capto parcit aut poenam impedit.

_Agam_.  quod non vetat _lex_, hoc vetat fieri pudor.

_Pyrrh_. quodcumque _libuit_ facere victori _licet_.

_Agam_.  minimum decet _libere_ cui multum _licet_.


         Idly strumming on his tuneful lyre.

_Pyrrh_. Then mighty Hector, scornful of thy arms,
         Yet felt such wholesome fear of that same lyre,
         That our _Thessalian ships_ were left in _peace_.

_Agam_.  An equal _peace_ did Hector's father find,
         When he betook him to Achilles' _ships_.

_Pyrrh_. 'Tis regal thus to spare a _kingly life_.

_Agam_.  Why then didst thou a _kingly life_ despoil?

_Pyrrh_. But _mercy_ oft doth offer death for life.

_Agam_.  Doth _mercy_ now demand a maiden's blood?

_Pyrrh_. Canst thou proclaim such sacrifice a sin?

_Agam_.  A king must love his country more than child.

_Pyrrh_. No _law_ the wretched captive's life doth spare.

_Agam_.  What _law_ forbids not, yet may shame forbid.

_Pyrrh_. 'Tis victor's right to do whate'er he _will_.

_Agam_. Then should he _will_ the least, who most can do.
                                                     MILLER.

The cleverness of this is undeniable: individual lines (e.g. the last)
are striking. Taken collectively they are ineffective; we feel,
moreover, that the cleverness is mere knack: the continued picking up of
the adversary's words to be used as weapons against himself is
wearisome. It would be nearly as great a strain to listen to such a
dialogue as to take part in it: the atmosphere is that of the school of
rhetoric, an atmosphere in which sensible and natural dialogue is
impossible.[188]

The characters naturally suffer from this continued display of
declamatory rhetoric. They have but one voice and language; they differ
from one another only in their clothes and the situations in which they
are placed. It is true that some of them are patterns of virtue and
others monsters of iniquity. But strip off the coating of paint, and
within the limits of these two types--for there are but two--the puppets
are precisely the same. There is none of the play of light and shade so
essential to drama: all is agonizingly crude and lurid. This is not due
to the rhetoric alone, there is another influence at work. The plays are
permeated by a strong vein of Stoicism. Carried to its logical
conclusion Stoicism lays itself open to taunts such as Cicero levels at
his friend Cato in the _pro Murena_,[189] where he delivers a humorous
_reductio ad absurdum_ of its tenets. Such a philosophy is fatal to the
drama. It allows no room for human sentiment or human weakness; the most
virtuous affections are chilled and robbed of their attractiveness:
there are no gradations of temperament, intellect, or character: pathos
disappears. The Stoic ideal was a being in whom the natural impulses and
desires should be completely subjected to the laws of pure reason. It
tends in its intensity to a narrowness, an abstract unreality which is
unfavourable to the development of the more human virtues. What it gave
with one hand the more rigid Stoic philosophy took away with the other.
It preached the brotherhood of man and took away half the value of
sympathy. And here in the plays there is nothing of the _mitis
sapientia_, the concessions to mortal weakness, the humanity, which
characterize the prose works of Seneca and have won the hearts of many
generations of men. There the hardness of Stoicism is softened by ripe
experience and a tendency to eclecticism, and the doctrinaire stands
less sharply revealed. 'Sous l'austérité du philosophe, on trouve un
homme.' The most noteworthy result of this hard Stoicism upon the plays
is the almost complete absence of pathos springing from the tenderer
human affections. Seneca's tragedy may sometimes succeed in horrifying
us, as in the ghastly rhetoric of the _Thyestes_ or the _Medea_. He
moves us rarely.

But there are a few striking exceptions to the rule, notably the
beautiful passage of the _Troades_, where Andromache bids her companions
in misfortune cease from useless lamentation[190] (409):

    quid, maesta Phrygiae turba, laceratis comas
    miserumque tunsae pectus effuso genas
    fletu rigatis? levia perpessae sumus,
    si flenda patimur. Ilium vobis modo,
    mihi cecidit olim, cum ferus curru incito
    mea membra raperet et gravi gemeret sono
    Peliacis axis pondere Hectoreo tremens.
    tunc obruta atque eversa quodcumque accidit
    torpens malis rigeusque sine sensu fero.
    iam erepta Danais coniugem sequerer meum,
    nisi hic teneret: hic meos animos domat
    morique prohibet; cogit hic aliquid deos
    adhuc rogare--tempus aerumnae addidit.

    Why, ye sad Phrygian women, do ye rend your hair and
    beat your woeful breasts and bedew your cheeks with
    streaming tears? But light is our sorrow, if it lies
    not too deep for tears. For you Ilium but now has fallen,
    for me it fell long ago, when the cruel wheels of the
    swift ear of Peleus' son dragged in the dust the limbs of
    him I loved, and groaned loud as they quivered beneath
    the weight of Hector dead. Then was I overthrown, then
    cast to utter ruin, and since then I bear whatso falleth
    upon me, with a heart that is numb with grief, chilled and
    insensible, and long since had I snatched myself from the
    hands of the Greeks and followed my husband, did not my
    child keep me among the living: he checks my purpose and
    forbids me to die; he constrains me still to make
    supplication to heaven and prolongs my anguish.

Even here the pathos is the calm and reasoned pathos of hopelessness,
the pathos of a Stoic who preaches endurance of evils against which his
philosophy is not proof. Here, too, we find the Stoic attitude towards
death. Death is the end of all; there is naught to dread; death puts an
end to hope and fear: to die is to be as though we had never been (394):

    post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.
    velocis spatii meta novissima;
    spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum.
    tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos:
    mors individua est, noxia corpori
    nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero
    regnum sub domino limen et obsidens
    custos non facili Cerberus ostio
    rumores vacui verbaque inania
    et par sollicito fabula somnio.
    quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco?
    quo non nata iacent.

    Since naught remains, and death is naught
    But life's last goal, so swiftly sought:
    Let those who cling to life abate
    Their fond desires, and yield to fate;
    Soon shall grim time and yawning night
    In their vast depths engulf us quite;
    Impartial death demands the whole--
    The body slays nor spares the soul.
    Dark Taenara and Pluto fell,
    And Cerberus, grim guard of hell--
    All these but empty rumours seem,
    The pictures of a troubled dream.
    Where then will the departed spirit dwell?
    Let those who never came to being tell.
                                             MILLER.

Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced
to live on in the midst of woe--

    mors votum meum--cries Hecuba--(1171)
    infantibus violenta, virginibus venis,
    ubique properas, saeva: me solam times.

    O death, my sole desire, for boys and maids
    Thou com'st with hurried step and savage mien:
    But me alone of mortals dost thou fear.
                                        MILLER.

So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for
not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with
exultation (_Tro_. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected
with Stoic passion for suicide (1090):

               nec gradu segni puer
    ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit
    pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit
    intrepidus animo....
                  non flet e turba omnium
    qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces
    concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet
    ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua
    in media Priami regna.

    And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty
    battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with
    dauntless soul.... But he alone of all the throng who
    wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered
    in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called
    the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will
    cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled.

The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of the
_Troades_ fails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our
sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in the _Hercules Furens_ we have
the virtuous Stoic--in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon--confronting
the _instans tyrannus_ in the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme
of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from
Stoicism (426):

_Lyc_. cogere.
_Meg_. cogi qui potest nescit mori.
_Lyc_. effare potius, quod novis thalamis parem
       regale munus.
_Meg_. aut tuam mortem aut meam.
_Lyc_. moriere demens.
_Meg_. coniugi occurram meo.
_Lyc_. sceptrone nostro famulus est potior tibi?
_Meg_. quot iste famulus tradidit reges neci.
_Lyc_. cur ergo regi servit et patitur iugum?
_Meg_. imperia dura tolle: quid virtus erit?[193]
_Lyc_. obici feris monstrisque virtutem putas?
_Meg_. virtutis est domare quae cuncti pavent.
_Lyc_. tenebrae loquentem magna Tartareae premunt.
_Meg_. non est ad astra mollis e terris via.[194]
_Lyc_. Thou shalt be forced.
_Meg_. He can be forced, who knows not how to die.
_Lyc_. Tell me what gift I could bestow more rich
       Than royal wedlock?
_Meg_. Or thy death or mine.
_Lyc_. Then die, thou fool.
_Meg_. 'Tis thus I'll meet my lord.
_Lyc_. Is that slave more to thee than I, a king?
_Meg_. How many kings has that slave given to death!
_Lyc_. Why does he serve a king and bear the yoke?
_Meg_. Remove hard tasks, and where would valour be?
_Lyc_. To conquer monsters call'st thou valour then?
_Meg_. 'Tis valour to subdue what all men fear.
_Lyc_. The shades of Hades hold that boaster fast.
_Meg_. No easy way leads from the earth to heaven.
                                              MILLER

So, too, a little later (463) Amphitryon crushes Lycus with a true
Stoic retort:--

_Lyc_. quemcumque miserum videris, hominem scias.
_Amph_. quemcumque fortem videris, miserum neges.[195]

_Lyc_. Whoe'er is wretched, him mayst thou know for mortal.
_Amph_. Whoe'er is brave, thou mayst not call him wretched.

Admirable as are the sentiments expressed by these virtuous and
calamitous persons, they leave us cold: they are too self-sufficient to
need our sympathy. Pain and death have no terrors for them; why should
we pity them? But it would be unjust to lay the blame for this absence
of pathetic power entirely on the influence of Stoicism. The scholastic
rhetoric is not a good vehicle for pathos, and must bear a large portion
of the blame, though even the rhetoric is due in no small degree to the
Stoic type of dialectic. As Seneca himself says, speaking of others than
himself, 'Philosophia quae fuit, facta philologia est.'[196] And it must
further be remembered that of the few flights of real poetry in these
plays some of the finest were inspired by Stoicism. The drama cannot
nourish in the Stoic atmosphere, poetry can. Seneca was sometimes a
poet. His best-known chorus, the famous _regem non faciunt opes_ of the
_Thyestes_ (345), is directly inspired by Stoicism. The speeches of
Agamemnon and Andromache, together with the chorus already quoted from
the _Troades_, all bear the impress of the Stoic philosophy. The same is
true of the scarcely inferior chorus on fate from the _Oedipus_ (980).

But there are other passages of genuine poetry where the Stoic is
silent. The chorus in the _Hercules Furens_ (838), giving the
conventional view of death, will stand comparison with the chorus of the
_Troades_, giving the philosophic view. The chorus on the dawn (_H.F._
125) brings the fresh sounds and breezes of early morning into the
atmosphere of the rhetorician's lecture-room. The celebrated

    venient annis saecula seris
    quibus Oceanus vincula rerum
    laxet et ingens pateat tellus
    Tethysque novos detegat orbes
    nec sit terris ultima Thule (_Med._ 375)

    Late in time shall come an age, when Ocean shall
    unbar the world, and the whole wide earth be
    revealed, and Tethys shall show forth a new world,
    nor Thule be earth's limit any more.

has acquired a fictitious importance since the discovery of the new
world, but shows a fine imagination, even if--as has been maintained--it
is merely a courtly reference to the British expedition of Claudius. And
the invocation to sleep in the _Hercules Furens_ proved worthy to
provide an inspiration for Shakespeare[197] (1063):

    solvite tantis animum monstris
    solvite superi, caecam in melius
    flectite mentem. tuque, o domitor
    Somne malorum, requies animi,
    pars humanae melior vitae,
    volucre o matris genus Astracae,
    frater durae languide Mortis,
    veris miscens falsa, futuri
    certus et idem pessimus auctor,
    pax errorum, portus vitae,
    lucis requies noctisque comes,
    qui par regi famuloque venis,
    pavidum leti genus humanum
    cogis longam discere noctem:
    placidus fessum lenisque fove,
    preme devinctum torpore gravi.

    Save him, ye gods, from monstrous madness, save
    him, restore his darkened mind to sanity. And thou,
    O sleep, subduer of ill, the spirit's repose, thou
    better part of human life, swift-winged child of
    Astraca, drowsy brother of cruel death, mixing
    false with true, prescient of what shall be, yet
    oftener prescient of sorrow, peace mid our wanderings,
    haven of man's life, day's respite, night's companion,
    that comest impartially to king and slave, thou that
    makest trembling mankind to gain a foretaste of the
    long night of death; do thou bring gentle rest to his
    weariness, and sweet balm to his anguish, and overwhelm
    him with heavy stupor.

But the poetry is confined mainly to the lyrics. In them, though the
metre be monotonous and the thought rarely more than commonplace, the
feeling rings true, the expression is brilliant, and the never absent
rhetoric is sometimes transmuted to a more precious substance with a
far-off resemblance to true lyrical passion. In the iambics, with the
exception of the passages already quoted from the _Troades_ and the
_Phaedra_, touches of genuine poetry are most rare.[198] In certain of
the long descriptive passages (_H.F._ 658 sqq., _Oed._ 530 sqq.) we get
a stagey picturesqueness, but no more. It is for different qualities
that we read the iambics of Seneca, if we read them at all.

Even in its worst moments the rhetoric is capable of extorting our
unwilling admiration by its sheer cleverness and audacity. A good
example is to be found in the passage of the _Thyestes_, where Atreus
meditates whether he shall call upon his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon to
aid him in his unnatural vengeance on Thyestes. He has doubts as to
whether he is their father, for Thyestes had seduced their mother
Aerope (327):--

             prolis incertae fides
    ex hoc petatur scelere: si bella abnuunt
    et gerere nolunt odia, si patruum vocant,
    pater est. eatur.

    And by this test of crime,
    Let their uncertain birth be put to proof:
    If they refuse to wage this war of death
    And will not serve my hatred; if they plead
    He is their uncle--then he is their sire.
    So to my work!
               MILLER'S translation slightly altered.

Equally ingenious is the closing scene between Atreus and Thyestes after
the vengeance is accomplished and Thyestes has feasted on the flesh of
his own sons (1100):

_Thy_. quid liberi meruere?
_Atr_. quod fuerant tui.
_Thy_. natos parenti--
_Atr_. fateor et, quod me iuvat, certos.
_Thy_. piorum praesides testor deos.
_Atr_. quin coniugales?
_Thy_. scelere quid pensas scelus?
_Atr_. scio quid queraris: scelere praerepto doles,
       nec quod nefandas hauseris angit dapes;
       quod non pararis: fuerat hic animus tibi
       instruere similes inscio fratri cibos
       et adiuvante liberos matre aggredi
       similique leto sternere--hoc unum obstitit:
       _tuos_ putasti.
_Thy_. What was my children's sin?
_Atr_. This, that they were thy children.
_Thy_.                       But to think
       That children to the father--
_Atr_.                       That indeed,
       I do confess it, gives me greatest joy,
       That thou art well assured they were thy sons.
_Thy_. I call upon the gods of innocence--
_Atr_. Why not upon the gods of marriage call?
_Thy_. Why dost thou seek to punish crime with crime?
_Atr_. Well do I know the cause of thy complaint:
       Because I have forestalled thee in the deed.
       Thou grievest, not because thou hast consumed
       This horrid feast, but that thou wast not first
       To set it forth. This was thy fell intent,
       To arrange a feast like this unknown to me,
       And with their mother's aid attack my sons,
       And with a like destruction lay them low.
       But this one thing opposed--thou thought'st them thine.
                                MILLER.

These passages are as unreal as they are repulsive, but they are
diabolically clever. Seneca's rhetoric is, however, as we have already
seen, capable of rising to higher things, and even where he does not
succeed, as in the passages quoted above from the _Phaedra_ and
_Troades_,[199] in introducing a genuine poetic element, he often
produces striking declamatory effects. The exit of the blind Oedipus, as
he goes forth into life-long banishment, bringing peace to Thebes at the
last, is highly artificial in form, but, given the rhetorical drama, is
not easily surpassed as a conclusion--

    mortifera mecum vitia terrarum extraho.
    violenta Fata et horridus Morbi tremor,
    Maciesque et atra Pestis et rabidus Dolor,
    mecum ite, mecum. ducibus his uti libet (1058).

    With me to exile lead I forth 'all pestilential humours of
    the land. Ye blasting fates', ye trembling agues, famine and
    deadly plague and maddened grief, go forth with me, with me!
    My heart rejoices to follow in your train.

So likewise the last despairing cry of Jason, as Medea sails
victoriously away in her magic car--

    per alta vade spatia sublimi aethere,
    testare nullos esse qua veheris deos

    Sail on through the airy depths of highest heaven, and
    bear witness that, where thou soarest, no gods can be.

forms a magnificent ending to a play which, for all its unreality,
succeeds for more than half its length (l 578) in arresting our
attention by its ingenious rhetoric and its comparative freedom from
mere bombast. Excellent, too, is the speech (_Phoen_. 193) in which
Antigone dissuades her father from suicide. 'What ills can time have in
store for him compared to those he has endured?'--

    qui fata proculcavit ac vitae bona
    proiecit atque abscidit et casus suos
    oneravit ipse, cui deo nullo est opus,
    quare ille mortem cupiat aut quare petat?
    utrumque timidi est: nemo contempsit mori
    qui concupivit. cuius haut ultra mala
    exire possunt, in loco tuto est situs,
    quis iam deorum, velle fac, quicquam potest
    malis tuis adicere? iam nec tu potes
    nisi hoc, ut esse te putes dignum nece--
    non es nec ulla pectus hoc culpa attigit.
    et hoc magis te, genitor, insontem voca,
    quod innocens es dis quoque invitis....
    ... ... quidquid potest
    auferre cuiquam mors, tibi hoc vita abstulit.

    Who tramples under foot his destiny,
    Who disregards and scorns the goods of life,
    And aggravates the evils of his lot,
    Who has no further need of Providence:
    Wherefore should such a man desire to die,
    Or seek for death? Each is the coward's act.
    No one holds death in scorn who seeks to die.
    The man whose evils can no further go
    Is safely lodged. Who of the gods, think'st thou,
    Grant that he wills it so, can add one jot
    Unto thy sum of trouble? Nor canst thou,
    Save that thou deem'st thyself unfit to live.
    But thou art not unfit, for in thy breast
    No taint of sin has come. And all the more,
    My father, art thou free from taint of sin,
    Because, though heaven willed it otherwise,
    Thou still art innocent....
                                Whatever death
    From any man can take, thy life hath taken.
                                       MILLER

It is, however, in isolated lines and striking _sententiae_ that
Seneca's gift for rhetorical epigram is seen at its best. Nothing could
be better turned than

    quaeris Alcidae parem?
    nemo est nisi ipse: (_H.F_. 84).[A]
    curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent (_Phaedra_ 607).[B]
    fortem facit vicina libertas senem (_Phaedra_ 139).[C]
    qui genus iactat suum,
    aliena laudat (_H.F_. 340).
    fortuna fortes metuit, ignavos premit (_Med_. 159).
    fortuna opes auferre, non animum potest (_Med_. 176).
    maius est monstro nefas:[D]
    nam monstra fato, moribus scelera imputes (_Phaedra_ 143).

[A] Cp. Theobald: None but himself can be his parallel.

[B] Cp. Sir W. Raleigh: Passions are best compared with floods and
streams, The shallow murmur but the deep are dumb.

[C] For dawning freedom makes the aged brave. MILLER.

[D] For thy impious love is worse
    Than her unnatural and impious love.
    The first you would impute to character,
    The last to fate.
                         MILLER.

If nothing had survived of Seneca's plays but a collection of
_sententiae_, we might have regretted his loss almost as we regret the
loss of Menander.

Here his merits, such as they are, end: they fail to justify us in
placing him high as a dramatist; and he has many faults over and above
those incidental to his style and modes of thought. While freer than
most of his contemporaries from the vain display of obscure erudition,
he falls into the common vice of introducing 'catalogues'. They are dull
in epic: in drama they are worse than dull. The _Hercules Furens_ is no
place for a matter-of-fact catalogue of the hero's labours, set forth
(210-248) in monotonous iambics from the mouth of Amphitryon. If they
are to be described at all, they demand the decorative treatment of
lyric verse,[200] nor is a catalogue of the herbs used by Medea to
poison the robe destined for her rival any more excusable.[201] Again,
like his contemporaries, he shows a lack of taste and humour which in
its worst manifestations passes belief. Not a few of the passages
already quoted serve to illustrate the point. But for fatuity it would
be hard to surpass the words with which Amphitryon interrupts Theseus'
account of the horrors of the underworld:

    estne aliqua tellus Cereris aut Bacchi ferax? (_H.F._ 697.)

Scarcely less absurd is the chorus in the _Phaedra_, who, when hymning
the power of love, give a long list of animals subject to such passion:
the catalogue culminates with the statement that even whales and
elephants fall in love (351):

    amat insani belua ponti
    Lucaeque boves.

But all such instances pale before the conclusion of the _Phaedra_. Not
content with giving a ghastly and exaggerated account of the death of
Hippolytus, Seneca must needs bring the fragments of his mutilated body
upon the scene. Theseus, at the suggestion of the chorus, attempts to
put them together again. The climax comes when, finding an
unidentifiable portion, he cries (1267):

quae pars tui sit dubito, sed pars est tui!

The actual language of the plays is pure and classical. There is no
trace of provincialism, nothing to suggest that Seneca was a Spaniard.
Its vices proceed from the false mould in which it has been cast. There
is a lack of connecting particles, and we proceed by a series of short
rhetorical jerks.[202] It is the style that Seneca himself condemns in
his letters (114. 1). Its faults are further aggravated by the metre:
taken line by line, the iambics of Seneca are impressive: taken
collectively they are monotonous in the extreme. The ear suffers a
continual series of stabs, which are not the less unpleasant because
none of them go deep. The verse seems formed, one might almost say
punched out, by a relentless machine. It is never modified by
circumstances; it is the same in narrative and dialogue, the same in
passion and in calm, if indeed Seneca can ever be said to be either
passionate or calm. Its pauses come with monotonous regularity at the
end of the line, diversified only by an occasional break at the caesura
in the third foot. Nor does the rule[203] observed by Seneca, that only
a spondee or anapaest is permitted in the fifth foot, tend to relieve
the monotony, though it does much to give the individual lines such
weight as they possess. A more complete contrast with the iambics of the
early Latin Tragedies cannot be imagined. What has been gained in polish
has been lost in dignity. Whence the Senecan iambic is derived, is a
question which cannot be answered with certainty. It is wholly unlike
the early Roman tragic iambic. Elision is rare, and there is little
variety. Instead of the massive and rugged measure of Pacuvius or
Accius, we have a finished and elegant monotony. In all likelihood it is
the lineal descendant of the iambic of Ovid.[204] In view of Seneca's
great admiration for Ovid--he quotes him continually in his prose
works--of Ovid's mastery of rhetoric and epigram, and yet more of the
distinct parallels traceable between the _Phaedra_ and _Medea_ of Seneca
and the corresponding _Heroides_ of Ovid, it becomes a strong
probability that the Senecan iambic was deeply influenced--if not
actually created--by the iambic style of the earlier poet's lost drama,
the famous _Medea_.[205]

As to the models to which he is indebted for his treatment of choric
metres we know nothing. In spite of the fact that he employs a large
variety of metres, and that his choruses at times stray from rhetoric
into poetry of a high order, there is in them a still more deadly
monotony than in his iambics. The chorus are devoid of life; they are
there partly as a concession to convention, but mainly to supply
incidental music. Their inherent dullness is not relieved by the metre.
Of strophic arrangement there is no clear trace; in a large proportion
of cases the choruses are written in one fixed and rigid metre admitting
of no variety: even where different metres alternate, the relaxation is
but small, for the same monotony reigns unchecked within the limits of
each section. The strange experiments in mixed metres in the _Agamemnon_
and _Oedipus_ show Seneca's technique at its worst: they are composed of
fragments of Horatian metres, thinly disguised by inversions and
resolutions of feet: they lack all governing principle and are an
unqualified failure. Of the remaining metres the Anapaestic, Asclepiad,
Sapphic, and Glyconic predominate. He is, perhaps, least unsuccessful in
his treatment of the Anapaest: the lines do not lack melody, and the
natural flexibility of the metre saves them from extreme monotony,
though they would have been more successful had he employed the
paroemiac line as a solemn and resonant close to the march of the
dimeter. But one wearies soon of the eternal Asclepiads and Glyconics
which he often allows to continue in unbroken and unvaried series for
seventy or eighty lines together. He rarely allows any variation within
the Glyconic and never makes use of it to break the monotony of the
Asclepiad. Still worse are his Sapphics. Abandoning the usual
arrangement in stanzas of three lesser Sapphics followed by an Adonic
verse, his Sapphic choruses consist almost entirely of the lesser
Sapphic varied by a very occasional Adonic. The continual succession of
these lines without so much as an occasional change of caesura to
diversify the rhythm is at times almost intolerable. At the close of
such choruses we feel as though we had jogged at a rapid trot for long
miles on a very hard and featureless road.

Language and metre work hand in hand with rhetoric to make these
strange plays dramatically ineffective. So strange are they and in many
ways so unlike anything else in Classical literature, that the question
as to the purpose with which they were written and the place they
occupied in the literature of their day affords an interesting subject
for speculation. Were they written for the stage? Decayed as was the
taste for tragedy, tragedies may occasionally have been acted.[206] But
there are considerations which suggest doubt as to whether the plays of
Seneca were written with any such purpose. Even under Nero it is
scarcely credible that the introduction of the mangled fragments of
Hippolytus upon the stage would be possible or palatable.[207] Medea
kills her children _coram populo_, and, not content with killing them,
flings their bodies at Jason from her magic chariot high in air.
Hercules kills his children in full view of the audience, not within the
house as in the corresponding drama of Euripides. Such scenes suggest
that the plays were written not for the stage but for recitation with
musical interludes from a trained choir. Indications that this was the
case are to be found in the _Hercules Furens_. While the hero is engaged
in slaying his children, Amphitryon, in a succession of short speeches,
gives the details of the murder. This would be ridiculous and
unnecessary were the scene actually presented on the stage, whereas they
become absolutely necessary on the assumption that the play was written
for recitation.[208] This assumption has the further merit of being
charitable; skilful recitation would cover many defects that would be
almost intolerable on the stage.

It is improbable, however, that the drama of Seneca occupied an
important position in the literature of their day. The golden age of
tragedy was past, and it is hard to believe that these plays are
favourable specimens even of their own age. The authors of the Silver
Age virtually ignore their existence, and, with the exception of two
references in Tertullian and one in Apollinaris Sidonius, they are
quoted only by scholars and grammarians.

They have small intrinsic value: but they afford interesting evidence
for the taste[209] of their own day, and their influence on modern drama
has been enormous. In the Renaissance at the dawn of the drama's
revival, Seneca was regarded as a dramatist of the first order. Scaliger
ranked him above Euripides: it was to him men turned to find models for
tragedy. Everywhere we see traces of the Senecan drama.[210] It is a
tribute to the dexterity of his rhetoric that his influence should have
been so enormous, but it is to be regretted in the interests of the
drama. For to Seneca more than to any other man is due the excessive
prominence of declamatory rhetoric, which has characterized the drama
throughout Western Europe from the Renaissance down to the latter half
of the nineteenth century, and has proved a blemish to the work of all
save a few great writers who recognized the value of rhetoric, but never
mistook the shadow for the substance.


III

THE 'OCTAVIA'

A tragedy with this title is included by the MSS. among the plays of
Seneca. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it is the one surviving
example of a _fabula praetexta_, or tragedy, drawn from Roman life. It
deals with a tragic incident of Nero's reign, the final extinction of
the Claudian house. Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina, is the
heroine. Her life was one long tragedy. Her childhood was darkened by
the disaster that befell her unworthy mother, her maturer years by her
marriage to Nero. She was a mere pawn in the game of politics. The
marriage was brought about by the designs of Agrippina, to render Nero
secure of the principate. To effect this end her betrothed Silanus was
killed, Claudius, her father, and Britannicus, her brother, dispatched
by poison. Soon her own wedded life turned to tragedy. Nero fell madly
in love with Poppaea, and resolved to put away Octavia. At Poppaea's
instigation she was accused of a base intrigue. The plot failed; the
false charge could not be pressed home; she was divorced on the ground
of sterility, and imprisoned in a town of Campania. A rumour arose that
she was to be reinstated; the mob of Rome declared itself in her favour
and gave wild expression to its joy. Poppaea's statues were cast down,
Octavia's replaced. Poppaea was furious. She laid siege to Nero and won
him to her will. The old false charge of adultery was trumped up; a
complaisant freed man was found to confess himself Octavia's lover. She
was banished to Pandataria and slain (June 9, 62 A.D.).

The play gives us a compressed version of the tragedy. It opens with a
speech by Octavia's nurse, setting forth the sorrows of her young
mistress. The speech over, she leaves the stage to be succeeded by
Octavia, who, in a lament closely modelled on the lament of the
Sophoclean Electra,[211] bewails the sorrows of her house, the deaths of
Messalina, Claudius, and Britannicus. The nurse reappears, attempts to
console her, and counsels submission to fate. Octavia changes her strain
and prays for death. After a lament from the chorus, Nero and Seneca
enter on the scene. Seneca urges moderation and sets forth his ideal of
monarchy. Nero is quite his match in argument, rejects his advice, and,
concluding with the words

    desiste tandem, iam gravis nimium mihi,
    instare: liceat facere quod Seneca improbat (588).

               Have done at last,
    For wearisome has thine insistence grown;
    One still may do what Seneca condemns ...
                                   MILLER.

declares his intention of marrying Poppaea without delay. An interesting
chorus follows, describing how Rome of old expelled the kings for their
crimes. Nero has sinned even more than they. Has he not slain even his
mother? There follows a long and interesting description of the
murder,[212] which serves as an introduction to the entrance of the
ghost of Agrippina in the guise of an avenging fury, prophesying the
dethronement and death of her unnatural son. She is succeeded on the
stage by Octavia, resigned to the surrender of her position and content
to be no more than Nero's sister; once more the chorus bewail her fate.
At last her rival Poppaea appears in conversation with her nurse. The
nurse congratulates her, but Poppaea has been terrified by visions of
the night and is ill at ease. Her rival is not yet removed and her own
place is still insecure. At this point comes the one ray of hope that
illumines this sombre drama. A messenger arrives with the news that the
people have risen in Octavia's favour. But the reader is not left in
suspense for a moment. Nero appears and orders the suppression of the
_émeute_ and the execution of Octavia. The chorus mourn the fate of the
beloved of the Roman people. Their power and splendour is but brief:
Octavia perishes untimely, like Gracchus and Livius Drusus. She herself
appears in the hands of soldiers, being dragged off to execution and
death. Like Cassandra,[213] she compares her fate with that of the
nightingale, to whom the gods gave a new life of peace full of sweet
lamentation as a close to her troubled human existence. One more song of
condolence from the chorus, one more song of sorrow from Octavia, and
she is taken from our sight, and the play closes with a denunciation by
the chorus of the hardness of heart and the insatiate cruelty of Rome.

It is not hard to summarize the general effect of this curious drama.
Its author has read the Greek tragedians carefully and to some purpose;
he has studied the characters of Electra, Cassandra, and Antigone with
diligence, if without insight. He clearly feels deep sympathy for
Octavia, and to some extent succeeds in communicating this sympathy to
the audience. His heroine speaks in character: she is never a male
Stoic, flaunting in female garb, she is a genuine woman, a gentle,
lovable creature broken down by misfortune. The other characters are
uninteresting. Nero is an academic tyrant, Seneca an academic adviser,
Poppaea is little more than a lay figure. The most that can be said for
them is that they do not rant. The chorus are on the whole a fairly
satisfactory imitation of a chorus of sympathetic Greek women.[214]
There is nothing forced or unnatural about them; they are real human
beings; their sympathy is genuine, and its expression appropriate. But
they are dull; monotonous lamentation in monotonous anapaests is the
height of their capacity. The play is a failure: the subject is not in
itself dramatic; if it had been, it would have been spoiled by the
treatment it receives. We are never in suspense; Octavia has never the
remotest chance of escape; our pity for her is genuine enough, but her
character lacks both grandeur and psychological interest: the pathos of
her situation will not compensate us for the absence of a dramatic plot.
The fall of the house of Claudius compares ill with the tragedy of the
Pelopidae. And the treatment of the story, from the dramatic standpoint,
is childish. The play is scarcely more than a series of melancholy
monologues interspersed with not less melancholy dirges from the chorus.
The most we can say of it is that it is simple and unaffected: if it
lacks brilliance, it also lacks exaggeration. Thought and diction are
commonplace and uninspired, but they are never absurd--an extraordinary
merit in a poet of the Silver Age.

It will have been sufficiently evident from this brief sketch that
the _Octavia_ is in all respects very different indeed from the other
plays that claim Seneca for their author. It is free from their
faults and their merits alike. It never sinks to their depths, but
it never rises to their heights. Apart, however, from these general
considerations,[215] there is evidence amounting almost to certainty
that the _Octavia_ is not by Seneca. The tragedy takes place in the
lifetime of Seneca. Seneca himself figures in the play. The story is of
such a nature that it could hardly have been written, much less
published, in the reign of Nero. Yet more conclusive is the fact that
the ghost of Agrippina prophesies the fate of Nero in such a way as to
make it certain that the author outlived the emperor and was acquainted
with the facts of his death.[216]

Who then was the author? When did he write? Evidence is almost
absolutely lacking. From its comparative sanity and simplicity and its
intense hatred of Nero it may reasonably be conjectured that it is the
work of the Flavian age; the age of the anti-Neronian reaction and of
the return to saner models in life and literature. But there is no
certainty; it may have been written under Nerva, Trajan, or Hadrian. It
stands detached and aloof from the literature of its age.



CHAPTER III


PERSIUS

It is possible to form a clearer picture of the personality of Aulus
Persius Flaccus, the satirist, than of any other poet of the Silver Age.
Not only are the essential facts of his brief career preserved for us in
a concise, but extremely relevant biography taken from the commentary of
the famous critic Valerius Probus, but there are few poets whose works
so clearly reveal the character of their author.

Persius was born at the lofty hill-town of Volaterrae, in Tuscany, on
the 4th of December, 34 A.D.[217] He was scarcely six years old when he
lost his father, a wealthy Roman knight, named Flaccus. His mother,
Fulvia Sisennia, married again, but her second husband, a knight named
Fusius, died after a few years of wedded life. Persius was educated at
home up to the age of twelve, when he was taken to Rome to be taught
literature by Remmius Palaemon and rhetoric by Verginius Flavus. Of the
latter nothing is known save that he wrote a much-approved textbook on
rhetoric and was exiled by Nero;[218] the former was a freedman whose
remarkable talents were only equalled by his gross vices; he had a
prodigious memory, was a skilful _improvvisatore_, and the most
distinguished teacher of the day.[219] At the age of sixteen, shortly
after his assumption of the _toga virilis_, the young Persius made the
friendship which was to be the ruling influence of his life. He learned
to know and love the great Stoic teacher, Cornutus, with an attachment
that was broken only by death. It was from Cornutus that he imbibed the
principles of Stoicism, and at his house that he met the Greek
philosophers, Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia and the Lacedaemonian
physician, Claudius Agathurnus, whose influence upon his character was
only less than that of Cornutus. Among his intimates he counted
Calpurnius Statura, who died in early youth, and the famous lyric poet,
Caesius Bassus,[220] who was destined long to survive his friend and to
do him the last service of editing the satires, which his premature
death left unpublished and unfinished. Lucan also was one of his fellow
students in the house of Cornutus,[221] while at a later date he made
the acquaintance of Seneca, the leading writer of the day, although he
never felt the seductive attractions of his fluent style and subtle
intellect. More important influences were his almost filial respect and
affection for the distinguished orator,[222] M. Servilius Nonianus, and
his close companionship with Thrasea Paetus, the leader of the Stoic
opposition.[223] At one time Persius, if the scholiast may be
believed,[224] contemplated a military career. The statement is scarcely
probable in view of the contempt and dislike with which he invariably
speaks of soldiers, nor is it easy to conceive a profession less suited
to the temperament of the quiet and retiring poet. Whatever his original
intentions may have been, he actually chose the secluded life of study,
the _vita umbratilis_, as the Romans called it, remote from the dust and
heat of the great world. That he was wise we cannot doubt. It was the
only life possible in those days for a man of his character. 'Fuit morum
lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, pietatis erga matrem et sororem et
amitam exemplo sufficientis: fuit frugi, pudicus.' Even in a saner,
purer, and less turbulent age, such a one would have been more fitted
for the paths of study than for any branch of public life. He died of a
disease of the stomach on the 24th of November, 62 A.D., in his villa on
the Appian Way, some eight miles south of Rome,[225] leaving behind him
a valuable library, a small amount of unpublished verse, and a
considerable fortune, amounting to 2,000,000 sesterces. The whole of
this fortune he bequeathed to his mother and sister, only begging them
to give to his friend Cornutus a sum of 100,000 sesterces, twenty pounds
weight of silver plate, and the whole of his library, containing no less
than 700 volumes by the Stoic Chrysippus. Cornutus accepted the books,
but refused the rest, showing that indifference to wealth that was to be
looked for, though not always to be found, in professors of the Stoic
philosophy. The literary work left by the dead poet was submitted by his
mother to the judgement of Cornutus, himself a poet.[226] The bulk of
the work was not great. Persius had in his boyhood written a _praetexta_
or tragedy with a Roman plot, a book of poems describing his journeys
with Thrasea,[227] and a few verses on his kinswoman Arria, the wife of
Caecina Paetus, immortalized by her devotion to her husband and her
heroic death.[228] As the work of his maturer years he left his satires.
Cornutus recommended that all save the satires should be destroyed; they
alone, unfinished though they might be, were worthy of the memory of his
dead friend. He began the task of correcting them for publication, but
transferred it to Caesius Bassus, at the latter's earnest entreaty. Of
the nature of the correction and editing required we are ignorant, save
for the statement of Probus that a few lines were removed from the end
of the book to give it an appearance of completion.[229] The poems met
with instant success;[230] they excited both wonder and criticism; that
they continued to be read is shown by the existence of copious scholia,
which must, indeed, have been almost necessary for such continuance of
their popularity.[231]

The slender volume of Persius' works is composed of six satires in
hexameter verse and a prologue written in choliambi. The first deals
with the corruption of literature; the second, addressed to Macrinus on
his birthday, treats of the right and wrong objects of prayer; the third
is an appeal to an indolent young man for energy and earnestness; the
fourth, almost a continuation of the third, attacks the lack of
'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control', in public men; the
fifth, addressed to his friend and teacher Cornutus, maintains the Stoic
doctrine that all the world are slaves; only the righteous man attains
to freedom; in the sixth, addressed to Caesius Bassus, the poet claims
the right to spend his wealth in reasonable enjoyment, and denounces the
grasping and unseemly selfishness of an imaginary heir to his fortune.
In the prologue--or epilogue as it is sometimes regarded[232]--he
sarcastically disclaims any pretensions to poetic inspiration, and hints
ironically that, in view of the number of poets who write merely to win
their bread, inspiration may be regarded as unnecessary.

The ambition to win fame as a satirist was first fired in Persius by his
reading the tenth book of the satires of Lucilius. If we may believe
Probus, he imitated the opening of that book in his first satire,
beginning like Lucilius by detracting from himself and proceeding to
attack other authors indiscriminately.[233] Not enough of the tenth book
of Lucilius has survived to enable us to check the accuracy of this
statement, though it finds independent testimony in a remark of the
scholiast on Horace, that the tenth book of Lucilius contained free
criticisms of the early poets of Rome.[234] Further, the third satire is
said by the scholiast to have been modelled on the fourth book of
Lucilius, and there is a certain amount of evidence for supposing the
choliambi of the epilogue to be an imitation of a Lucilian model.[235]
We have, however, no means of testing the truth of these assertions: the
debt of Persius to Lucilius must be taken on trust. Of his enormous
indebtedness to Horace we have, on the other hand, the clearest
evidence. It is hard to conceive two poets with less in common as
regards ideals, temperament, and technique; and yet throughout Persius
we are startled by strange, though unmistakable, echoes of Horace.

He knows his Horace by heart, and Horace has become a veritable
obsession. He is not content with giving his characters Horatian
names.[236] That might be convention, not plagiarism. But phrase after
phrase calls up the Horatian original. He runs through the whole gamut
of plagiarism. There is plagiarism, simple and direct.

                                         O si
    sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria, dextro
    Hercule! (2. 10)

    O that I could hear a crock of silver chinking under
    my harrow, by the blessing of Hercules.    CONINGTON.

is undisguisedly copied from Horace (_Sat._ ii. 6. 10).

    O si urnam argenti fors quae mihi monstret, ut illi,
    thesauro invento, qui mercennarius agrum
    ilium ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico
    Hercule!

But as a rule, since he cannot keep Horace out, he strives to disguise
him. The familiar

          si vis me flere, dolendum est
    primum ipsi tibi


of the _Ars Poetica_ (102) reappears in the far less natural

            verum nec nocte paratum
    plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela (_Pers_. i. 91).

    A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not
    from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down
    beneath his piteous tale.    CONINGTON.

He speaks of his verses so finely turned and polished--

               ut per leve severos
    effundat iunctura unguis (i. 64).

        So that the critical nail runs glibly along even where the
    parts join.    CONINGTON.

In this fantastically contorted and affected phrase we may espy an
ingenious blending of two Horatian phrases,

                         totus teres atque rotundus,
    externi ne quid valeat per leve morari (_Sat._ ii. 7. 86),

and the simple

    ad unguem factus

f _Sat._ i. 5. 32.[237]

There is no need to multiply instances. Horace appears everywhere, but
_quantum mutatus ab illo!_ As the result of this particular method of
borrowing, assisted by affectations and obscurities which are all his
own, Persius attains to a kind of spurious originality of diction, which
often degenerates into sheer eccentricity. In spite of the fact that the
original text can almost everywhere be reconstructed with certainty, he
is almost the most obscure of Latin poets to the modern reader. A few
instances will suffice. There were, it appears, three ways of mocking a
person behind his back: one might tap the fingers against the lower
portion of the hand in imitation of a stork's beak, one might imitate a
donkey's ears, or one might put out one's tongue. When Persius wishes to
say 'Janus, I envy you your luck, for no one can mock at you behind your
back!' he writes (i. 58):

    O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit,
    nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas,
    nec linguae, quantum sitiat canis Apula, tantae.

    Happy Janus, whom no stork's bill batters from behind,
    no nimble hand quick to imitate the ass's white ears,
    no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty
    Apulian bitch.

The obscurity of the first line springs in part from the fact that the
custom is not elsewhere spoken of. The second line may pass. The third
defies literal translation. It means 'no long tongues thrust out like
the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch'. But the omission of all mention
both of 'protrusion' and of the 'dog days' makes the Latin almost
without meaning. The epithet _Apula_ becomes absurd. A 'thirsty Apulian
dog' is barely sufficient to suggest the midsummer drought of Apulia.
This is an extreme case; it is perhaps fairer to quote lines such as

    si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas (iv. 49),

'if in your zeal for the main chance you flog the exchange with many a
stripe,' a mysterious passage generally supposed to mean 'if you exact
exorbitant usury'. A little less enigmatic, but fully as forced and
unnatural is

    dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (v. 92),

'while I pull your old grandmotherly views from your heart,' or the
extraordinarily harsh metaphor of the first satire (24)--

    quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus
    innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?

    What is the good of past study, unless this leaven--unless
    the wild fig-tree which has once struck its root into the
    breast, break through and come out?    CONINGTON.

which means nothing more than 'What is the good of study unless a man
brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity,
however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual
lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the
passage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in
the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that
the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This
Persius refuses us. The difficulties which he presents are--as in the
case of Robert Browning--in part due to his adoption of the traditional
dramatic form in satire, a form in which clearness of expression is as
difficult as it is desirable. But we cannot excuse his obscurity as we
sometimes can in Browning--either as being to some extent a realistic
representation of the discursiveness and lack of method that
characterize the reasonings of the average intelligent man, or on the
other hand as springing from the intensity of the poet's thought. It is
not the case with Persius that his thoughts press so thick and quick
upon him, or are of so deep and complicated a character, as to be
incapable of simple and lucid expression. It is sheer waywardness and
perversity springing from the absence of true artistic feeling to which
we must attribute this cardinal defect. For his thought is commonplace,
and his observation of the minds and ways of men is limited.

The qualities that go to the making of the true satirist are many. He
must be dominated by a moral ideal, not necessarily of the highest kind,
but sufficiently exalted to lend dignity to his work and sufficiently
strongly realized to permeate it. He must have a wide and comprehensive
knowledge of his fellow men. A knowledge of the broad outlines of the
cardinal virtues and of the deadly sins is not sufficient. The satirist
must know them in their countless manifestations in the life of man, as
they move our awe or our contempt, our admiration or our terror, our
love or our loathing, our laughter or our tears. He must be able to
paint society in all its myriad hues. He must have a sense of humour,
even if he lacks the sense of proportion; he must have the gift of
laughter, even though his laughter ring harsh and painful. He must have
the gift of mordant speech, of epigram, and of rhetoric. He must drive
his points home with directness and lucidity. Mere denunciation of vice
is not enough. Few prophets are satirists; few satirists are prophets.

Of these qualities Persius has all too few. The man who has become the
pupil of a Cornutus at the age of sixteen, who has shunned a public
career, and is characterized by a _virginalis verecundia_, is not
likely, even in a long life, to acquire the knowledge of the world
required for genuine satire. The satirist, it might almost be said, must
not only have walked abroad in the great world, but must have passed
through the fire himself, and in some sense experienced the vices he has
set himself to lash. But Persius is young and, as far as might be in
that age, innocent. His outlook is from the seclusion of literary and
philosophic circles, and his satire lacks the peculiar vigour that can
only be got from jostling one's way in the wider world. In consequence
the picture of life which he presents lacks vividness. A few brilliant
sketches there are; but they are drawn from but a narrow range of
experience. There is nothing better of its kind than the description in
the first satire of the omnipresent poetaster of the reign of Nero, with
his affected recitations of tawdry, sensuous, and soulless verse (15):

    Scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti
    et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus
    sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur
    mobile conlueris, patranti fractus ocello.
    tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena
    ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum
    intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.

    Yes--you hope to read this out some day, got up sprucely with
    a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last,
    perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by
    a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your
    wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in
    a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as
    the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is
    tickled by the ripple of the measure.    CONINGTON.

A few lines later comes a similar and equally vivid picture (30):

                ecce inter pocula quaerunt
    Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent.
    hic aliquis, cui circum umeros hyacinthina laena est,
    rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus,
    Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile siquid,
    cliquat ac tenero subplantat verba palato.

    Listen. The sons of Rome are sitting after a full meal, and
    inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of
    poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle
    over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with
    a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles,
    or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled,
    filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the
    roof of his delicate mouth.    CONINGTON.

Here the poet is describing what he has seen; in the world of letters he
is at home. He can laugh pungently enough at the style of oratory
prevailing in the courts--

    nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano
    pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire 'decenter'.
    'fur es', ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis
    librat in antithetis, doctas posuisse figuras
    laudatur, 'bellum hoc?' (i. 83).

    Are you not ashamed not to be able to plead against perils
    threatening your grey hairs, but you must needs be ambitious
    of hearing mawkish compliments to your 'good taste'? The
    accuser tells Pedius point blank, 'You are a thief.' What does
    Pedius do? Oh, he balances the charges in polished antitheses--
    he is deservedly praised for the artfulness of his tropes.
    Monstrous fine that!    CONINGTON.

He can parody the decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their
absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius
and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary
of the genius of Lucilius and Horace--

                     secuit Lucilius urbem,
    te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis;
    omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
    tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit,
    callidus excusso populum suspendere naso (i. 114).

    Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and
    Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue,
    manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he
    gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly
    talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it.
                                                     CONINGTON.

But the first satire stands alone _qua_ satire. It is not, perhaps, the
most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary
fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in
this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity
and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it
shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of
humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of
actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life
of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead,
he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in
language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it
with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a
certain violence and even coarseness[241] of description which does duty
for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described
or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and
common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit,
the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal.
We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the
trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers
to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the
same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to
be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal
makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of
style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and
splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory
power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme
that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares
ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same
subject (_Sat._ ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and
bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the
easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure;
and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his
more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home
his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has
neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal.

But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in
one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler
man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted
ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of
difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of
virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater
gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base
and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal,
that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at
times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an
unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine.
Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the
conclusion of the second satire (61):

    O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes,
    quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores
    et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?
    haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo
    et Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus,
    haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas
    ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit.
    peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen utitur. at vos
    dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum?
    nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae.
    quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance
    non possit magni Messalae lippa propago?
    compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus
    mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto:
    haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo.

    O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly
    in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age
    into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from
    this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has
    got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it--to steep
    Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that
    has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the
    veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins--yes,
    it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you,
    reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy
    place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young
    girl offers to Venus. Give _we_ rather to the gods such an
    offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no
    means of giving, even out of his great dish--duty to God and
    man well blended in the mind--purity in the shrine of the heart,
    and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me
    have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall
    win me acceptance.    CONINGTON.

This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is
noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes
straight to the point without obscurity or circumlocution. Here alone
does the second satire of Persius surpass the more famous tenth satire
of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpassed by the deservedly
well-known passage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a
young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and
strenuously (23):

    udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri
    fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno
    est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum
    (quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est.
    hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis,
    stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis,
    censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas?
    ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi.
    non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae.
    sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum
    pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto
    demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda.
      magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos
    haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido
    moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno:
    virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.
    anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci,
    et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis
    purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus,
    imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus
    palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor?

    You are moist soft earth, you ought to be taken instantly,
    instantly, and fashioned without end by the rapid wheel. But you
    have a paternal estate with a fair crop of corn, a salt-cellar
    of unsullied brightness (no fear of ruin surely!), and a snug
    dish for fireside service. Are you to be satisfied with this? or
    would it be decent to puff yourself and vapour because your branch
    is connected with a Tuscan stem, and you are thousandth in the line,
    or because you wear purple on review days and salute your censor?
   Off with your trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see
   your skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But he
   is paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat;
   he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in the
   depth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of the
   Gods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monsters
   of tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, that
   has the taint of fiery poison--let them look upon virtue and pine that
   they have lost her for ever! Were the groans from the brazen bull of
   Sicily more terrible, or did the sword that hung from the gilded cornice
   strike more dread into the princely neck beneath it, than the voice
   which whispers to the heart, 'We are going, going down a precipice,' and
   the ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of our
   heart?    CONINGTON.

The man who wrote this has 'loved righteousness and hated iniquity'. In
the work of Persius' rivals it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
it is the hatred of iniquity that is most prominent; the love of
righteousness holds but a secondary place.

Persius is uncompromising; he is the true Stoic with the motto 'all or
nothing'. But he has nothing of the stilted Stoicism that is such a
painful feature of the plays of Seneca; nor, however perverse and
affected he may be in diction, do we ever feel that his Stoicism is in
some respects no better than a moral pose, a distressing feeling that
sometimes afflicts as we read Seneca's letters or consolatory treatises.
He speaks straight from the heart. His faults are more often the faults
of the school of philosophy than of the schools of rhetoric. The young
Lucan is said to have exclaimed, after hearing a recitation given by
Persius:[243] 'That is real poetry, my verses are mere _jeux d'esprit_.'

If we take Persius at his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these
passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the
expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the
high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other
writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase
of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and
dignity, together with a variety, that can hardly be found in any other
poetry of the Silver Age. It is the existence of passages such as
these, and the high unswerving moral enthusiasm characterizing all his
work, that have made Persius live through the centuries. It is
fashionable for the critic to say, 'We lay down Persius with a sigh of
relief.' That is true, but we feel the better for reading him. He is
one of the few writers of Rome whose personality awakens a feeling of
warm affection. He was a rigid Stoic, yet not proud or cold. In an age
of almost universal corruption he kept himself unspotted from the
world. He had a rare capacity for whole-hearted friendship. If his
teacher Cornutus had never made another convert, and his preaching had
been vain, it would have been ample reward to have won such a tribute
of affection and gratitude as the lines in which Persius pours forth
his soul to him (v. 21):

                 tibi nunc hortante Camena
    excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae
    pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice,
    ostendisse iuvat. pulsa dinoscere cautus
    quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae.
    hic ego centenas ausim deposcere fauces,
    ut quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi,
    voce traham pura, totumque hoc verba resignent,
    quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra.
      cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit
    bullaque subcinctis Laribus donata pependit,
    cum blandi comites totaque inpune Subura
    permisit sparsisse oculos iam candidus umbo,
    cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error
    deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes,
    me tibi supposui. teneros tu suscipis annos
    Socratico, Cornute, sinu. tune fallere sollers
    adposita intortos extendit regula mores,
    et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
    artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum.
    tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles,
    et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes.
    unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo,
    atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa.
    non equidem hoc dubites, amborum foedere certo
    consentire dies et ab uno sidere duci:
    nostra vel aequali suspendit tempora libra
    Parca tenax veri, seu nata fidelibus hora
    dividit in geminos concordia fata duorum,
    Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una:
    nescio quod certe est quod me tibi temperat astrum.

    It is to you, at the instance of the muse within me, that I
    would offer my heart to be sifted thoroughly; my passion is to
    show you, Cornutus, how large a share of my inmost being is
    yours, my beloved friend; strike it, use every test to tell what
    rings sound, and what is the mere plaster of a varnished tongue.
    An occasion indeed it is for which I may well venture to ask a
    hundred voices, that I may bring out in clear utterance how
    thoroughly I have lodged you in the very corners of my breast, and
    unfold in words all the unutterable feelings which lie entwined
    deep down among my heart-strings. When first the guardianship of the
    purple ceased to awe me and the band of boyhood was hung up as an
    offering to the quaint old household gods, when my companions made
    themselves pleasant, and the folds of my gown, now white, the stripe
    of purple gone, left me free to cast my eyes at will over the whole
    Subura--just when the way of life begins to be uncertain, and the
    bewildered mind finds that its ignorant ramblings have brought it to
    a point where roads branch off--then it was that I made myself your
    adopted child. You at once received the young foundling into the
    bosom of a second Socrates; and soon your rule, with artful surprise,
    straightens the moral twists that it detects, and my spirit becomes
    moulded by reason and struggles to be subdued, and assumes plastic
    features under your hand. Aye, I mind well how I used to wear away
    long summer suns with you, and with you pluck the early bloom of the
    night for feasting. We twain have one work and one set time for rest,
    and the enjoyment of a moderate table unbends our gravity. No, I would
    not have you doubt that there is a fixed law that brings our lives
    into one accord, and one star that guides them. Whether it be in the
    equal balance that truthful Destiny hangs our days, or whether the
    birth-hour sacred to faithful friends shares our united fates between
    the Heavenly Twins, and we break the shock of Saturn together by the
    common shield of Jupiter, some star, I am assured, there is which
    fuses me with you.    CONINGTON.

There is a sincerity about these beautiful lines that is as rare as it
is welcome in the poetry of this period. Much may be forgiven to the
poet who could write thus, even though rarely. And it must be remembered
that Persius is free from the worst of the besetting sins of his age,
the love of rhetorical brilliance at the expense of sense, a failing
that he criticizes with no little force in his opening satire. His
harshness and obscurity are due in part to lack of sufficient literary
skill, but still more to his attempt to assert his originality against
the insistent obsession of the satires of Horace. As in the case of so
many of his contemporaries, his literary fame must depend in the main on
his 'purple patches'.

But he does what few of his fellow poets do; he leaves a vivid
impression of his personality, and reveals a genuine moral ardour and
nobility of character that refuse to be clouded or hidden by his dark
sayings and his perverse obscurity.



CHAPTER IV


LUCAN

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,[244] the poet who more than any other exhibits
the typical excellences and defects of the Silver Age, was born at
Cordova on November 3, in the year 39 A.D.[245] He came of a
distinguished line. He was the son of M. Annaeus Mela, brother of Seneca
the philosopher and dramatist, and son of Seneca the rhetorician. Mela
was a wealthy man,[246] and in 40 A.D. removed with his family to Rome.
His son (whose future as a great poet is said to have been portended by
a swarm of bees that settled on the cradle and the lips of the bard that
was to be[247]) received the best education that Rome could bestow. He
showed extraordinary precocity in all the tricks of declamatory
rhetoric, soon equalling his instructors in skill and far out-distancing
his fellow pupils.[248] Among his preceptors was his kinsman, the famous
Stoic, L. Annaeus Cornutus, well known as the friend and teacher of
Persius.[249] His first appearance before the public was at the Neronia
in 60 A.D., when he won the prize for Latin verse with a poem in praise
of Nero.[250] Immediately afterwards he seems to have proceeded to
Athens. But his talents had attracted the attention and patronage of
Nero. He was recalled to Rome,[251] and at the nomination of the
princeps became Quaestor, although he had not yet attained the requisite
age of twenty-five.[252] He was also admitted to the College of Augurs,
and for some time continued to enjoy Nero's friendship. But it was not
to last. Lucan had been educated in Stoic surroundings. Though his own
relatives managed to combine the service of the emperor with their Stoic
principles, Lucan had not failed to imbibe the passionate regret for the
lost liberty of the republic that was so prominent a feature in Stoic
circles. It was not a mere pose that led him to select the civil war as
the subject of his poem. His enthusiasm for liberty may have been
literary rather than political in character. But when we are dealing
with an artistic temperament we must bear in mind that the ideals which
were primarily inspiration for art may on slight provocation become
incentives to action. And in the case of Lucan that provocation was not
lacking. As his fame increased, Nero's friendship was replaced by
jealousy. The protégé had become too serious a rival to the patron.[253]
Lucan's vanity was injured by Nero's sudden withdrawal from a
recitation.[254] From servile flattery he turned to violent criticism:
he spared his former patron neither in word nor deed. He turned the
sharp edge of his satire against him in various pungent epigrams, and
was forbidden to recite poetry or to plead in the law courts.[255] But
it would be unjust to Lucan to attribute his changed attitude purely to
wounded vanity. Seneca was at this very moment attempting to retire from
public life. The court of Nero had become no place for him. Lucan cannot
have been unaffected by the action of his uncle, and it is only just to
him to admit the possibility that the change in his attitude may have
been due, at any rate in part, to a change in character, an awakening to
the needs of the State and the needs of his own soul. There is no need
to question the genuineness of his political enthusiasm, even though it
tended to be theatrical and may have been largely kindled by motives not
wholly disinterested. The Pisonian conspiracy found in him a ready
coadjutor. He became one of the ringleaders of the plot ('paene signifer
coniurationis'), and in a bombastic vein would promise Nero's head to
his fellow-conspirators.[256] On the detection of the plot, in 65 A. D.,
he, with the other chiefs of the conspiracy, was arrested. For long he
denied his complicity; at last, perhaps on the threat or application of
torture, his nerve failed him; he descended to grovelling entreaties,
and to win himself a reprieve accused his innocent mother, Acilia, of
complicity in the plot.[257] His conduct does not admit of excuse. But
it is not for the plain, matter-of-fact man to pass judgement lightly on
the weakness of a highly-strung, nervous, artistic temperament; the
artist's imagination may transmute pain such as others might hope to
bear, to anguish such as they cannot even imagine. There lies the
palliation, if palliation it be, of Lucan's crime. But it availed him
nothing: the reprieve was never won; he was condemned to die, the manner
of his death being left to his free choice. He wrote a few instructions
for his father as to the editing of his poems, partook of a sumptuous
dinner, and then, adopting the fashionable form of suicide, cut the
arteries of his arms and bled to death. He died declaiming a passage
from his own poetry in which he had described the death of a soldier
from loss of blood.[258] It was a theatrical end, and not out of keeping
with his life.

He lived but a little over twenty-five years and five months, but he
left behind him a vast amount of poetry and an extraordinary reputation.
His earliest work[259] seems to have been the _Iliacon_, describing the
death of Hector, his ransom and burial. Next came the _Catachthonion_, a
short work on the underworld. This was followed by the _laudes Neronis_,
to which reference has already been made, and the _Orpheus_, which was
extemporized in a competition with other poets.[260] If we follow the
order given by Statius, his next work was the prose declamation on the
burning of the city (64 A.D.) and a poem addressed to his wife Polla
(_adlocutio ad Pollam_). Then comes his _chef d'oeuvre_, the
_Pharsalia_, to which we shall return. Of the other works mentioned by
Vacca, the _Silvae_ must have been, like the _Silvae_ of Statius,
trifles thrown off hurriedly for the gratification of friends or for the
celebration of some great occasion.[261] The _salticae fabulae_ were
_libretti_ written for the _pantomimus_,[262] while the _Saturnalia_
were light verse sent as presents to friends on the festival of
Saturn.[263] Of these works nothing has come down to us save a few
scanty fragments, not in any way calculated to make us regret their
loss.[264] Even Vacca can find no very high praise for them. Judging
alike from the probabilities of the case and from the _Pharsalia_
itself, they must have suffered from Lucan's fatal gift of fluency.

It was the _Pharsalia_ that won Lucan undying fame. Three books of this
ambitious historical epic were finished and given to the world during
the poet's lifetime.[265] These the poet had, at any rate in part,
recited in public, calling attention, with a vanity worthy of himself
and of the age, to his extreme youth; he was younger than Vergil when
he composed the _Culex_![266] The remaining seven books never had the
benefit of revision, owing to the poet's untimely end,[267] though
curiously enough they show no special signs of lack of finish, and
contain some of the finest passages in the whole work. The composition
of all ten books falls between 60 and 65 A.D. Lucan had chosen for his
theme the death-struggle of the republic. It was a daring choice for
more reasons than one. There were elements of danger in singing the
praises of Pompey and Cato under the principate. To that the fate of
Cremutius Cordus bore eloquent testimony.[268] But Nero was less
sensitive about the past than Tiberius. The republic had never become
officially extinct. Tyrannicide was a licensed and hackneyed theme of
the schools of rhetoric; in skilful hands it might be a subtle
instrument of flattery. Moreover, Nero was descended in direct line
from Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had fought and died for Pompey on the
field of Pharsalus. In the books published during Lucan's lifetime
there is not a line that could have given personal offence to the
princeps, while the fulsome dedication would have covered a multitude
of indiscretions.[269] Far more serious were the difficulties presented
by the nature of the story itself. Historical epic rarely admits of
artistic treatment, and the nearer the date of the events described,
the more insoluble is the problem.

Two courses were open to Lucan: he might treat the story with
comparative fidelity to truth, avoiding all supernatural machinery, save
such as was justified by historical tradition; on the other hand he
might adopt the course subsequently pursued by Silius Italicus in his
poem on the Punic War, and introduce all the hackneyed interventions of
Olympus, sanctioned by Vergil and followed by many a poet since. The
latter method is obviously only suited for a purely legendary epic,
though even the legendary epic can well dispense with it, and it might
have been supposed that an age so sceptical and careless of the orthodox
theology, as that into which Lucan was born, would have felt the full
absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise
in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused
contemporary criticism. In the _Satyricon_ of Petronius we find a
defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a
shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that
young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no
more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do
not realize that to be a successful poet one must be steeped in the
great ocean of literature. They do not recognize that there is such a
thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of
rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the
fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would
turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he
takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and
through with literature. You must not simply turn history into verse:
historians do it better in prose. Rather the poet should sweep on his
way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled by hard fact,
making use of cunning artifice and divine intervention, and interfusing
his "commonplaces" with legendary lore; only so will his work seem to be
the fine frenzy of an inspired bard rather than the exactitude of one
who is giving sworn evidence before a judge'. He then proceeds in 295
verses to deal, after the manner he has prescribed, with the events
contained in the first three books of the _Pharsalia_, the only books
that had been made public at the time when Petronius' romance was
composed. Pluto inspires Caesar to the crime of civil war. Peace,
Fidelity, and Concord fly from the earth at his approach. The gods range
themselves on this side and on that. Discord perched high on Apennine
incites the peoples of Italy to war. The verse is uninspired, the method
is impossible, the remedy is worse than the disease. The last hope of
our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of
Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history
does _not_ admit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an
historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description
and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and
'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns.[27l] Petronius sees the weakness
of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he
has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent
in the subject chosen; they will stand out clearly as we review the
structure and style of the work.

In taking the whole of the Civil War for his subject Lucan was
confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced
Shakespeare in his _Julius Caesar_. The problem that Shakespeare had to
meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the
death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The
difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path
were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty
as to its intended scope. That it was planned to include the death of
Cato is clear from the importance assigned him in the existing books.
But could the work have concluded on such a note of gloom as the death
of the staunchest champion of the republic? The whole tone of the poem
is republican in the extreme. If the republic must perish, it should not
perish unavenged. There are, moreover, many prophetic allusions to the
death of Caesar,[272] which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to
have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem.
The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the
interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the
triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the
outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he
claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in
flight to die an unheroic death. It is only at this point that Cato
leaps into prominence. But though he has a firmness of purpose and a
grandeur of character that Lucan could not give Pompey, he never has the
chance to become the protagonist. Both Pompey and Cato, for all the fine
rhetoric bestowed on them, fail to grip the reader, while from the very
facts of history it is impossible for either of them to lend unity to
the plot. Both are dwarfed by the character of Caesar. Caesar is the
villain of the piece; he is a monster athirst for blood, he will not
permit the corpses of his enemies (over which he is made to gloat) to be
buried after the great battle, and when on his coming to Egypt the head
of his rival is brought him, his grief and indignation are represented
as being a mere blind to conceal his real joy. The successes are often
merely the result of good fortune. Lucan is loth to admit even his
greatness as a general. And yet, blacken his character as he may, he
feels that greatness. From the moment of his brilliant characterization
of Caesar in the first book[273] we feel we have a man who knows what he
desires and will shrink from nothing to attain his ends; he 'thinks
naught yet done while aught remains to do',[274] he 'strikes fear into
men's hearts because he knows not the meaning of fear',[275] and through
all the melodramatic rhetoric with which he addresses his soldiers,
there shines clear the spirit of a great leader of men. Whoever was
intended by the poet for his hero, the fact remains that Caesar
dominates the poem as none save the hero should do. He is the hero of
the _Pharsalia_ as Satan is the hero of _Paradise Lost_.[276] It is
through him above all that Lucan retains our interest. The result is
fatal for the proper proportion of the plot. Lucan does not actually
alienate our sympathies from the republic, but, whatever our moral
judgement on the conflict may be, our interest centres on Caesar, and it
is hardly an exaggeration to say that the true tragedy of the epic would
have come with his death. The _Pharsalia_ fails of its object as a
republican epic; its success comes largely from an unintended quarter.

What the exact scale of the poem was meant to be it is hard to 

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