Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities Part 11

Terence (193-158 B.C.) was a slave in the family of a Roman senator, and was probably a native of Carthage. His genius presented the rare combination of all the fine and delicate qualities which characterized Attic sentiment, without corrupting the native purity of the Latin language. The elegance and gracefulness of his style show that the conversation of the accomplished society, in which he was a welcome guest, was not lost upon his correct ear and quick intuition. So far as it can be so, comedy was, in the hands of Terence, an instrument of moral teaching.

Six of his comedies only remain, of which the Andrian and the Adelphi are the most interesting. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in life, bustle, and intrigue, and in the delineation of national character, he is superior in elegance of language and refinement of taste. The justness of his reflections more than compensates for the absence of his predecessor's humor; he touches the heart as well as gratifies the intellect.

Of the few other writers of comedy among the Romans, Statius may be mentioned, who flourished between Plautus and Terence. He was an emanc.i.p.ated slave, born in Milan. Cicero and Varro have p.r.o.nounced judgment upon his merits, the substance of which appears to be, that his excellences consisted in the conduct of the plot, in dignity, and in pathos, while his fault was too little care in preserving the purity of the Latin style. The fragments, however, of his works, which remain are not sufficient to test the opinion of the ancient critics.

5. ROMAN TRAGEDY.--While Roman comedy was brought to perfection under the influence of Greek literature, Roman tragedy, on the other hand, was transplanted from Athens, and, with few exceptions, was never anything more than translation or imitation. In the century during which, together with comedy, it flourished and decayed, it boasted of five distinguished writers, Livius, Naevius, Ennius (already spoken of), Pacuvius, and Attius. In after ages, Rome did not produce one tragic poet, unless Varius be considered an exception. The tragedies attributed to Seneca were never acted, and were only composed for reading and recitation.

Among the causes which prevented tragedy from flourishing at Rome was the little influence the national legends exerted over the people. These legends were more often private than public property, and ministered more to the glory of private families than to that of the nation at large. They were embalmed by their poets as curious records of antiquity, but they did not, like the venerable traditions of Greece, twine themselves around the heart of the nation. Another reason why Roman legends had not the power to move the affections of the Roman populace is to be found in the changes the ma.s.ses had undergone. The Roman people were no longer the descendants of those who had maintained the national glory in the early period; the patrician families were almost extinct; war and poverty had extinguished the middle cla.s.ses and miserably thinned the lower orders. Into the vacancy thus caused, poured thousands of slaves, captives in the b.l.o.o.d.y wars of Gaul, Spain, Greece, and Africa. These and their descendants replaced the ancient people, and while many of them by their talents and energy arrived at wealth and station, they could not possibly be Romans at heart, or consider the past glories of their adopted country as their own.

It was to the rise of this new element of population, and the displacement or absorption of the old race, that the decline of patriotism was owing, and the disregard of everything except daily sustenance and daily amus.e.m.e.nt, which paved the way for the empire and marked the downfall of liberty. With the people of Athens, tragedy formed a part of the national religion. By it the people were taught to sympathize with their heroic ancestors; the poet was held to be inspired, and poetry the tongue in which the natural held communion with the supernatural. With the Romans, the theatre was merely a place for secular amus.e.m.e.nt, and poetry only an exercise of the fancy. Again, the religion of the Romans was not ideal, like that of the Greeks. The old national faith of Italy, not being rooted in the heart, soon became obsolete, and readily admitted the ingrafting of foreign superst.i.tions, which had no hold on the belief or love of the people. Nor was the genius of the Roman people such as to sympathize with the legends of the past; they lived only in the present and the future; they did not look back on their national heroes as demiG.o.ds; they were pressing forward to extend the frontiers of their empire, to bring under their yoke nations which their forefathers had not known. If they regarded their ancestors at all, it was not in the light of men of heroic stature as compared with themselves, but as those whom they could equal or even surpa.s.s.

The scenes of real life, the b.l.o.o.d.y combats of the gladiators, the captives, and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies or mangled by wild beasts, were the tragedies which most deeply interested a Roman audience.

The Romans were a rough people, full of physical rather than of intellectual energy, courting peril and setting no value on human life or suffering. Their very virtues were stern and severe; they were strangers to both the pa.s.sions which it was the object of tragedy to excite--pity and terror. In the public games of Greece, the refinements of poetry mingled with those exercises which were calculated to invigorate the physical powers, and develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were sanguinary and brutalizing, the amus.e.m.e.nts of a nation to whom war was a pleasure and a pastime.

It cannot be a.s.serted, however, that tragedy was never to a certain extent an acceptable entertainment at Rome, but only that it never flourished there as it did at Athens, and that no Roman tragedies can be compared with those of Greece.

6. TRAGIC POETS.--Three separate eras produced tragic poets. In the first flourished Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius; in the second, Pacuvius and Attius; in the third, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies, the plots of which seem to have been taken from Roman history. Ovid attempted a "Medea," and even the Emperor Augustus, with other men of genius, tried his hand, though unsuccessfully, at tragedy.

In the second of the eras mentioned, Roman tragedy reached its highest degree of perfection simultaneously with that of comedy. While Terence was successfully reproducing the wit and manners of the new Attic comedy, Pacuvius (220-130 B.C.) was enriching the Roman drama with free translations of the Greek tragedians. He was a native of Brundusium and a grandson of the poet Ennius. At Rome he distinguished himself as a painter as well as a dramatic poet. His tragedies were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts, and the very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of Attic tragedy.

Attius (fl. 138 B.C.), though born later than Pacuvius, was almost his contemporary, and a compet.i.tor for popular applause. He is said to have written more than fifty tragedies, of which fragments only remain. His taste is chastened, his sentiments n.o.ble, and his versification elegant.

With him, Latin tragedy disappeared. The tragedies of the third period were written expressly for reading and recitation, and not for the stage: they were dramatic poems, not dramas. Amidst the scenes of horror and violence which followed, the voice of the tragic muse was hushed. Ma.s.sacre and rapine raged through the streets of Rome, itself a theatre where the most terrible scenes were daily enacted.

7. SATIRE.--The invention of satire is universally attributed to the Romans, and this is true as far as the external form is concerned, but the spirit is found in many parts of the literature of Greece. Ennius was the inventor of the name, but Lucilius (148-102 B.C.) was the father of satire, in the proper sense. His satires mark an era in Roman literature, and prove that a love for this species of poetry had already made great progress. Hitherto, literature, science, and art had been considered the province of slaves and freedmen. The stern old Roman virtue despised such sedentary employment as intellectual cultivation, and thought it unworthy of the warrior and statesman. Some of the higher cla.s.ses loved literature and patronized it, but did not make it their pursuit. Lucilius was a Roman knight, as well as a poet. His satires were comprised in thirty books, numerous fragments of which are still extant. He was a man of high moral principle, though stern and stoical; a relentless enemy of vice and profligacy, and a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty.

After the death of Lucilius satire languished, until half a century later, when it a.s.sumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put forth its original vigor in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.

8. HISTORY AND ORATORY.--Prose was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation, they had little or no imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, and no acute perception of the sympathy between man and the external world. The favorite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman was statesmanship, and the subjects akin to it, history, jurisprudence, and oratory, the natural language of which was prose, not poetry. And their practical statesmanship gave an early encouragement to oratory, which is peculiarly the literature of active life. As matter was more valued than manner by this utilitarian people, it was long before it was thought necessary to embellish prose composition with the graces of rhetoric. The fact that Roman literature was imitative rather than inventive, gave a historical bias to the Roman intellect, and a tendency to study subjects from an historical point of view. But even in history, they never attained that comprehensive and philosophical spirit which distinguished the Greek historians.

The most ancient writer of Roman history was Fabius Pictor (fl. 219 B.C.).

His princ.i.p.al work, written in Greek, was a history of the first and second Punic war, to which subsequent writers were much indebted.

Contemporary with Fabius was Cincius Alimentus, also an annalist of the Punic war, in which he was personally engaged. He was a prisoner of Hannibal, who delighted in the society of literary men, and treated him with great kindness and consideration, and himself communicated to him the details of his pa.s.sage across the Alps. Like Fabius, he wrote his work in Greek, and prefixed to it a brief abstract of Roman history. Though the works of these annalists are valuable as furnishing materials for more philosophical minds, they are such as could have existed only in the infancy of a national literature. They were a bare compilation of facts-- the mere framework of history--diversified by no critical remarks or political reflections, and meagre and insipid in style.

The versatility of talent displayed by Cato the censor (224-144 B.C.) ent.i.tles him to a place among orators, jurists, economists, and historians. His life extends over a wide and important period of literary history, when everything was in a state of change,--morals, social habits, and literary taste. Cato was born in Tusculum, and pa.s.sed his boyhood in the pursuits of rural life at a small Sabine farm belonging to his father.

The skill with which he pleaded the causes of his clients before the rural magistracy made his abilities known, and he rose rapidly to eminence as a pleader. He filled many high offices of state. His energies were not weakened by advancing age, and he was always ready as the advocate of virtue, the champion of the oppressed, and the punisher of vice. With many defects, Cato was morally and intellectually one of the greatest men Rome ever produced. He had the ability and the determination to excel in everything which he undertook. His style is rude, unpolished, ungraceful, because to him polish was superficial, and, therefore, unreal. His statements, however, were clear, his ill.u.s.trations striking; the words with which he enriched his native tongue were full of meaning; his wit was keen and lively, and his arguments went straight to the intellect, and carried conviction with them.

Cato's great historical and antiquarian work, "The Origins," was a history of Italy and Rome from the earliest times to the latest events which occurred in his own lifetime. It was a work of great research and originality, but only brief fragments of it remain. In the "De Re Rustica," which has come down to us in form and substance as it was written, Cato maintains, in the introduction, the superiority of agriculture over other modes of gaining a livelihood. The work itself is a commonplace book of agriculture and domestic economy; its object is utility, not science: it serves the purpose of a farmer's and gardener's manual, a domestic medicine, herbal, and cookery book. Cato teaches his readers, for example, how to plant osier beds, to cultivate vegetables, to preserve the health of cattle, to pickle pork, and to make savory dishes.

Of the "Orations" of Cato, ninety t.i.tles are extant, together with numerous fragments. In style he despised art. He was too fearless and upright, too confident in the justness of his cause to be a rhetorician; he imitated no one, and no one was ever able to imitate him. Niebuhr p.r.o.nounces him to be the only great man in his generation, and one of the greatest and most honorable characters in Roman history.

Varro (116-28 B.C.) was an agriculturist, a grammarian, a critic, a theologian, a historian, a philosopher, a satirist. Of his miscellaneous works considerable portions are extant, sufficient to display his erudition and acuteness, yet, in themselves, more curious than attractive.

Eloquence, though of a rude, unpolished kind, must have been, in the very earliest times, a characteristic of the Roman people. It is a plant indigenous to a free soil. As in modern times it has flourished especially in England and America, fostered by the unfettered freedom of debate, so it found a congenial home in free Greece and republican Rome. Oratory was, in Rome, the unwritten literature of active life, and recommended itself to a warlike and utilitarian people by its utility and its antagonistic spirit. Long before the art of the historian was sufficiently advanced to record a speech, the forum, the senate, the battlefield, and the threshold of the jurisconsult had been nurseries of Roman eloquence, or schools in which oratory attained a vigorous youth, and prepared for its subsequent maturity.

While the legal and political const.i.tution of the Roman people gave direct encouragement to deliberative and judicial oratory, respect for the ill.u.s.trious dead furnished opportunities for panegyric. The song of the bard in honor of the departed warrior gave place to the funeral oration.

Among the orators of this time were the two Scipios, and Galba, whom Cicero praises as having been the first Roman who understood how to apply the theoretical principles of Greek rhetoric.

All periods of political disquiet are necessarily favorable to eloquence, and the era of the Gracchi was especially so. After a struggle of nearly four centuries the old distinction of plebeian and patrician no longer existed. Plebeians held high offices, and patricians, like the Gracchi, stood forward as champions of popular rights. These stirring times produced many celebrated orators. The Gracchi themselves were both eloquent and possessed of those qualities and endowments which would recommend their eloquence to their countrymen. Oratory began now to be studied more as an art, and the interval between the Gracchi and Cicero boasted of many distinguished names; the most ill.u.s.trious among them are M. Antonius, Cra.s.sus, and Cicero's contemporary and most formidable rival, Hortensius.

M. Antonius (fl. 119 B.C.) entered public life as a pleader, and thus laid the foundation of his brilliant career; but he was through life greater as a judicial than as a deliberative orator. He was indefatigable in preparing his case, and made every point tell. He was a great master of the pathetic, and knew the way to the heart. Although he did not himself give his speeches to posterity, some of his most pointed expressions and favorite pa.s.sages left an indelible impression on the memories of his hearers, and many of them were preserved by Cicero. In the prime of life he fell a victim to political fury, and his bleeding head was placed upon the rostrum, which was so frequently the scene of his eloquent triumphs.

L. Licinius Cra.s.sus was four years younger than Antonius, and acquired great reputation for his knowledge of jurisprudence, for his eminence as a pleader, and, above all, for his powerful and triumphant orations in support of the restoration of the judicial office to the senators. From among the crowd of orators, who were then flourishing in the last days of expiring Roman liberty, Cicero selected Cra.s.sus to be the representative of his sentiments in his imaginary conversation in "The Orator." Like Lord Chatham, Cra.s.sus almost died on the floor of the Senate house, and his last effort was in support of the aristocratic party.

Q. Hortensius was born 114 B.C. He was only eight years senior to the greatest of all Roman orators. He early commenced his career as a pleader, and he was the acknowledged leader of the Roman bar, until the star of Cicero arose. His political connection with the faction of Sylla, and his unscrupulous support of the profligate corruption which characterized that administration, both at home and abroad, enlisted his legal talents in defense of the infamous Verres; but the eloquence of Cicero, together with the justice of the cause which he espoused, prevailed; and from that time forward his superiority over Hortensius was established and complete. The style of Hortensius was Asiatic--more florid and ornate than polished and refined.

9. ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.--The framework of their jurisprudence the Romans derived from Athens, but the complete structure was built up by their own hands. They were the authors of a system possessing such stability that they bequeathed it, as an inheritance, to modern Europe, and traces of Roman law are visible in the legal systems of the whole civilized world.

The complicated principles of jurisprudence of the Roman const.i.tution became, in Rome, a necessary part of a liberal education. When a Roman youth had completed his studies, under his teacher of rhetoric, he not only frequented the forum, in order to learn the application of the rhetorical principles he had acquired, and frequently took some celebrated orator as a model, but also studied the principles of jurisprudence under eminent jurists, and attended the consultations in which they gave to their clients their expositions of law.

The earliest systematic works on Roman law were the "Manual" of Pomponius, and the "Inst.i.tutes" of Gaius, who flourished in the time of Hadrian and the Antonines. Both of these works were, for a long time, lost, though fragments were preserved in the pandects of Justinian. In 1816, however, Niebuhr discovered a palimpsest MS., in which the epistles of St. Jerome were written over the erased "Inst.i.tutes" of Gaius. From the numerous misunderstandings of the Roman historians respecting the laws and const.i.tutional history of their country, the subject continued long in a state of confusion, until Vico, in his "Scienza nuova," dispelled the clouds of error, and reduced it to a system; and he was followed so successfully by Niebuhr, that modern students can have a more comprehensive and antiquarian knowledge of the subject than the writers of the Augustan age.

The earliest Roman laws were the "Leges Regiae," which were collected and codified by s.e.xtus Papirius, and were hence called the Papirian code; but these were rude and unconnected--simply a collection of isolated enactments. The laws of the "Twelve Tables" stand next in point of antiquity. They exhibited the first attempt at regular system, and embodied not only legislative enactments, but legal principles. So popular were they that when Cicero was a child every Roman boy committed them to memory, as our children do their catechism, and the great orator laments that in the course of his lifetime this practice had become obsolete.

The oral traditional expositions of these laws formed the groundwork of the Roman civil law. To these were added, from time to time, the decrees of the people, the acts of the senate, and praetorian edicts, and from these various elements the whole body of Roman law was composed. So early was the subject diligently studied, that the age preceding the first two centuries of our era was rich in jurists whose powers are celebrated in history.

The most eminent jurists who adorned this period were the Scaevolae, a family in whom the profession seems to have been hereditary. After them flourished Aelius Gallus (123-67 B.C.), eminent as a law reformer, C.

Juventius, s.e.xtus Papirius, and L. Lucilius Balbus, three distinguished jurists, who were a few years senior to Cicero.

10. GRAMMARIANS.--Towards the conclusion of this literary period a great increase took place in the numbers of those learned men whom the Romans at first termed _literati_, but afterwards, following the custom of the Greeks, grammarians. To them literature was under great obligations.

Although few of them were authors, and all of them possessed acquired learning rather than original genius, they exercised a powerful influence over the public mind as professors, lecturers, critics, and schoolmasters.

By them the youths of the best families not only were imbued with a taste for Greek philosophy and poetry, but were also taught to appreciate the literature of their own country. Livius Andronicus and Ennius may be placed at the head of this cla.s.s, followed by Crates Mallotes, C. Octavius Lampadio, Laelius, Archelaus, and others, most of whom were emanc.i.p.ated slaves, either from Greece or from other foreign countries.

PERIOD SECOND.

FROM THE AGE OF CICERO TO THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS (74 B.C.-14 A.D.)

1. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ROMAN LITERATURE.--Latin literature, at first rude, and, for five centuries, unable to reach any high excellence, was, as we have seen, gradually developed by the example and tendency of the Greek mind, which moulded Roman civilization anew. The earliest Latin poets, historians, and grammarians were Greeks. The metre which was brought to such perfection by the Latin poets was formed from the Greek, and the Latin language more and more a.s.similated to the h.e.l.lenic tongue.

As civilization advanced, the rude literature of Rome was compared with the great monuments of Greek genius, their superiority was acknowledged, and the study of them encouraged. The Roman youth not only attended the schools of the Greeks, in Rome, but their education was considered incomplete, unless they repaired to those of Athens, Rhodes, and Mytilene.

Thus, whatever of national character existed in the literature was gradually obliterated, and what it gained in harmony and finish it lost in originality. The Roman writers imitated more particularly the writers of the Alexandrian school, who, being more artificial, were more congenial than the great writers of the age of Pericles.

Roman genius, serious, majestic, and perhaps more original than at a later period, was manifest even at the time of the Punic wars, but it had not yet taken form; and while thought was vigorous and powerful, expression remained weak and uncertain. But, under the Greek influence, and aided by the vigor imparted by free inst.i.tutions, the union of thought and form was at length consummated, and the literature reached its culminating point in the great Roman orator. The fruits which had grown and matured in the centuries preceding were gathered by Augustus; but the influences that contributed to the splendor of his age belong rather to the republic than the empire, and with the fall of the liberties of Rome, Roman literature declined.

2. MIMES, MIMOGRAPHERS, AND PANTOMIME.--Amidst all the splendor of the Latin literature of this period, dramatic poetry never recovered from the trance into which it had fallen, though the stage had not altogether lost its popularity. Aesopus and Roscius, the former the great tragic actor, and the latter the favorite comedian, in the time of Cicero, enjoyed his friendship and that of other great men, and both ama.s.sed large fortunes.

But although the standard Roman plays were constantly represented, dramatic literature had become extinct. The entertainments, which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy, were termed _mimes_. These were laughable imitations of manners and persons, combining the features of comedy and farce, for comedy represents the characters of a cla.s.s, farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime, and their coa.r.s.eness, and even indecency, gratified the love of broad humor which characterized the Roman people. After a time, when they became established as popular favorites, the dialogue occupied a more prominent position, and was written in verse, like that of tragedy and comedy.

During the dictatorship of Caesar, a Roman knight named Laberius (107-45 B.C.) became famous for his mimes. The profession of an actor of mimes was infamous, but Laberius was a writer, not an actor. On one occasion, Caesar offered him a large sum of money to enter the lists in a trial of his improvisatorial skill. Laberius did not submit to the degradation for the sake of the money, but he was afraid to refuse. The only method of retaliation in his power was sarcasm. His part was that of a slave; and when his master scourged him, he exclaimed: "Porro, Quirites, libertatem perdimus!" His words were received with a round of applause, and all eyes were fixed on Caesar. The dictator restored him to the rank of which his act had deprived him, but he could never recover the respect of his countrymen. As he pa.s.sed the orchestra, on his way to the stalls of the knights, Cicero cried out: "If we were not so crowded, I would make room for you here." Laberius replied, alluding to Cicero's lukewarmness as a political partisan: "I am astonished that you should be crowded, as you generally sit on two stools."

Another writer and actor of mimes was Publius Syrus, originally a Syrian slave. Tradition has recorded a _bon mot_ of his which is as witty as it is severe. Seeing an ill-tempered man named Mucius in low spirits, he exclaimed: "Either some ill fortune has happened to Mucius, or some good fortune to one of his friends!"

The Roman pantomime differed somewhat from the mime. It was a ballet of action, performed by a single dancer, who not only exhibited the human figure in its most graceful att.i.tudes, but represented every pa.s.sion and emotion with such truth that the spectators could, without difficulty, understand the story. The pantomime was licentious in its character, and the actors were forbidden by Tiberius to hold any intercourse with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity.

These were the exhibitions which threw such discredit on the stage, which called forth the well-deserved attacks of the early Christian fathers, and caused them to declare that whoever attended them was unworthy of the name of Christian. Had the drama not been so abused, had it retained its original purity, and carried out the object attributed to it by Aristotle, they would have seen it, not a nursery of vice, but a school of virtue; not only an innocent amus.e.m.e.nt, but a powerful engine to form the taste, to improve the morals, and to purify the feelings of a people.

3. EPIC POETRY.--The epic poets of this period selected their subjects either from the heroic age and the mythology of Greece, or from their own national history. The Augustan age abounds in representatives of these two poetical schools, though possessing little merit. But the Romans, essentially practical and positive in their character, felt little interest in the descriptions of manners and events remote from their a.s.sociations, and poetry, restrained within the limits of their history, could not rise to that height of imagination demanded by the epic muse.

Virgil united the two forms by selecting his subject from the national history, and adorning the ancient traditions of Rome with the splendor of Greek imagination.

Virgil (70-19 B.C.) was born at Andes, near Mantua; he was educated at Cremona and at Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy.

After this he came to Rome, where, through Maecenas, he became known to Octavius, and basked in the sunshine of court favor. His favorite residence was Naples. On his return from Athens, in company with Augustus, he was seized with an illness of which he died. He was buried about a mile from Naples, on the road to Pozzuoli; and a tomb is still pointed out to the traveler which is said to be that of the poet. Virgil was deservedly popular both as a poet and as a man. The emperor esteemed him and people respected him; he was const.i.tutionally pensive and melancholy, temperate, and pure-minded in a profligate age, and his popularity never spoiled his simplicity and modesty. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole ma.n.u.script of the Aeneid, and directed his executors either to improve it or commit it to the flames.

The idea and plan of the Aeneid are derived from Homer. As the wrath of Achilles is the mainspring of the Iliad, so the unity of the Aeneid results from the anger of Juno. The arrival of Aeneas in Italy after the destruction of Troy, the obstacles that opposed him through the intervention of Juno, and the adventures and the victories of the hero form the subject of the poem. Leaving Sicily for Latium, Aeneas is driven on the coast of Africa by a tempest raised against him by Juno; at Carthage he is welcomed by the queen, Dido, to whom he relates his past adventures and sufferings. By his narrative he wins her love, but at the command of Jupiter abandons her. Unable to retain him, Dido, in the despair of her pa.s.sion, destroys herself. After pa.s.sing through many dangers, under the guidance of the Sibyl of c.u.mae, he descends into the kingdom of the dead to consult the shade of his father. There appear to him the souls of the future heroes of Rome. On his return, he becomes a friend of the king of Latium, who promises to him the hand of his daughter, which is eagerly sought by King Turnus. A fearful war ensues between the rival lovers, which ends in the victory of Aeneas.