Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 14

On me, too, has the Cynthian G.o.d cast his starry glance and bidden me accompany the lyre he praised with diverse song.

Whether the author be Piso or another, the poems do him small credit.

The _Panegyricus in Pisonem_ remains to be considered. Attributed to Vergil by one MS.,[387] to Lucan by another,[388] the poem is certainly by neither. Quite apart from stylistic evidence, which is convincing against its attribution to Lucan, it is almost certain that the name of Lucan has been wrongly inserted for that of Vergil. That it is not by Vergil would be clear from the very inferior nature of the verse, but it can further be shown that the Piso addressed is the Calpurnius Piso of the reigns of Claudius and Nero to whom we have alluded above. If the account of Piso given by Tacitus be compared with the characteristics described in the _Panegyricus_, it will be found that both alike refer in strong terms to his eloquence in the law courts so readily exercised in defence of accused persons, and also to his affability and capacity for friendship.[389] Further, we have the evidence of a scholium on Juvenal as to his skill in the game of draughts.[390] He played so well that crowds would throng to see him. One of the chief points mentioned in the _Panegyricus_ is the skill of Piso at the same game.[391] Nor is it a mere casual allusion; on the contrary, the writer treats this portion of his eulogy with even greater elaboration than the rest. There can, therefore, be little doubt as to the date of the poem. It is addressed to Calpurnius Piso after his rise to fame (i.e. during the latter portion of the princ.i.p.ate of Claudius, or during the earlier part of the reign of Nero). The poet prays that Piso may be to him what Maecenas was to Vergil. It is hardly possible for a poem of this type to possess any real interest for others than the recipient of the flattery and its author. But in this case the poet has done his work well. The flattery never becomes outrageous and is expressed in easy flowing verse and graceful diction. At times the language is genuinely felicitous. Any great man might be proud to receive such a tribute as (129)--

tu mitis et acri asperitate carens positoque per omnia fastu inter ut aequales unus numeraris amicos, obsequiumque doces et amorem quaeris amando.

Mild is thy temper and free from sharp harshness. Thou layest aside thy pride in thy every act, and among thy friends thou art counted a friend and equal, thou teachest men to follow thee and seekest to be loved by loving.

There is, moreover, little straining after effect and little real obscurity. The difficulties of the description of Piso's draught-playing are due to our ignorance of the exact nature of the game.[392] The actual language is at least as lucid as Pope's famous description of the game of ombre in _The Rape of the Lock_. The verse is of the usual post-Augustan type, showing strongly the primary influence of Vergil modified by the secondary influence of Ovid. It is light and easy and not ill-suited to its subject. It has distinct affinities, both in metre and diction, with the verse of Calpurnius Siculus, and may be by the same hand; but the resemblance is not so close as to afford anything approaching positive proof. Minor poets, lacking all individuality, the victims and not the controlling forces of the tendencies of the age, are apt to resemble one another. There are, however, two noteworthy pa.s.sages which point strongly to the ident.i.ty of the author of the _Panegyricus_ with the Bucolic poet. The former, addressing Piso as his patron (246), says:

mea vota si mentem subiere tuam, memorabilis olim tu mihi Maecenas tereti cantabere versu.

If my prayers reach thy mind, thou shalt be sung of as Maecenas in my slender verse, and future ages shall tell of thy glory.

The latter, addressing his patron Meliboeus and begging him to commend him to Caesar, exclaims (iv. 152):

o mihi quae tereti decurrent carmina versu tunc, Meliboee, meum si quando montibus istis (i.e. at Rome) dicar habere larem.

O how shall my songs trip in slender verse then, Meliboeus, if ever men shall say of me 'He has a house on yonder mountain'.

Is it a mere coincidence, a plagiarism, or a direct allusion? There is no certainty, but the coincidence is--to say the least--suggestive. If the ident.i.ty of authorship be a.s.sumed as correct, it is probable that the eclogues are the later production. To place one's patron among the _dramatis personae_ of an eclogue argues a nearer intimacy than the writing of a formal panegyric. That the poet is more at home as a panegyrist than as a writer of idylls does not affect the question. In such an age such a result was to be expected.

III

THE ILIAS LATINA

Latin poetry may almost be said to have begun with Livius Andronicus'

translation of the _Odyssey_ into the rude Saturnian metre. This translation had great vogue as a school book. But the _Iliad_ remained untranslated, and it was only natural that later authors should try their hand upon it. Translations were produced in Republican times by Cn. Matius[393] and Ninnius Cra.s.sus,[394] but neither work attained to any popularity.

With the growth of the knowledge of Greek and its increasing use as a medium of instruction in the schools on the one hand, and the appearance of Vergil and the rise of the Aeneas saga on the other, the demand for a translation of the _Iliad_ naturally became less. The Silver Age arrived with the problem unsolved. It was a period when writers abounded who would have been better employed on translation than on any attempt at original work. Further, in spite of the general knowledge of Greek, a translation of Homer would have its value in the schools both as a handbook for the subject-matter and as a 'crib '.

Three works of the kind seem to have been produced between the reigns of Tiberius and Nero.

Attius Labeo[395] translated not only the _Iliad_ but also the _Odyssey_ into hexameters. But it was a poor performance. It was a baldly literal translation, paying small attention to the meaning of the original.[396]

Persius pours scorn upon it, and one verse has survived to confirm our worst suspicions[397]--

crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos.

Polybius, the well-known freedman of Claudius, also produced a work, which is praised by Seneca as having introduced Homer and Vergil to a yet larger public than they already enjoyed, and as preserving the charm of the original in an altered form.[398] As Polybius had dealt with Vergil as well as Homer, it may be conjectured that the work praised by Seneca was a prose paraphrase. Lastly, there is the _Ilias Latina_, which has been preserved to the present day. It is written in graceful hexameter verse, and is an abridgement rather than a translation. It consists of 1,070 lines, of which the first five books in fact claim a little more than half. The author wearied of his task and finished off the remaining nineteen books in summary fashion. While the twenty-second occupies as much as sixty lines, the abridgements of the thirteenth and seventeenth are reduced to a meagre seven and three lines respectively.

That such work is of small importance is obvious. It must have been useless from its birth save as a handbook for the schools, and even for this purpose its value must have been greatly impaired by its lack of proportion. Its survival can only be accounted for on the a.s.sumption that it was written and employed as a textbook. In fact, during the Middle Ages, when the original was a sealed book, there is definite evidence that it was so used.[399] The work is trivial, but might well have been worse. The language is clear and often vigorous, and there is an easy grace about the verse which shows that the author was a man of culture, knowing his Vergil well and his Ovid better. The date cannot be proved with certainty, but there can be no doubt that it was written before the death of Nero.

The lines (899),

quem (Aenean) nisi serva.s.set magnarum rector aquarum ut profugus laetis Troiam repararet in arvis, augustumque genus claris submitteret astris, non carae gentis n.o.bis mansisset origo,

Unless the ruler of the mighty deep had preserved Aeneas to found in exile a new Troy in happier fields, and beget a line of princes to shine among the stars, the stock of the race we love would not have endured to bless us.

can only have been written under the Julian Dynasty.

The work is clearly post-Ovidian and must therefore be attributed to the princ.i.p.ates of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, or Nero. Further evidence of date is entirely wanting. No meaning can be attached to the heading Pindarus found in certain MSS.[400] There is, however, an interesting though scarcely more fruitful problem presented by the possible existence of two acrostics in the course of the poem.[401] The initial letters of the first nine lines spell the name 'Italices', while the last eight lines yield the word 'scqipsit'. Baehrens, by a not very probable alteration in the eighth line, procures the name 'Italicus', while a slighter and more natural change yields 'scripsit' at the close.[402] Further, a late MS. gives Bebius Italicus as the name of the author.[403] On these grounds the poem has been attributed to Silius Italicus. But Martial makes no reference to the existence of this work in any of his references to Silius, and indeed suggests that Silius only took to writing poetry after his withdrawal from public life.[404] This would make the poem post-Neronian, which, as we have seen, is most improbable. Further, the style of the verse is very different from that of the _Punica_. When, over and above these considerations, it is remembered that the acrostics can only be produced by emendation of the text, the critic has no course open to him but to abandon the attribution to Silius and to give up the problem of the acrostics as an unprofitable curiosity of literature.

IV

LOST MINOR POETS

In addition to the poets of whom we have already treated as writing under the Julian Dynasty there must have been many others of whom chance or their own insignificance has deprived us. But few names have survived,[405] and only two of these lost poets merit mention here, the erotic poet Lentulus Gaetulicus and the lyric writer Caesius Ba.s.sus.

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus was consul in 26 A.D.,[406] and for ten years was legatus in Upper Germany, where his combination of firmness and clemency won him great popularity.[407] He conspired against Caligula while holding this command, and was put to death.[408]

Pliny the younger speaks of him as the writer of sportive and lascivious erotic verse, and Martial writes of him in very similar terms.[409] His mistress was named Caesennia, and was herself a poetess.[410] It is possible that the poems in the Greek Anthology under the t.i.tle [Greek: Gaitoulikou][411] may be from his pen, but the only fragment of his Latin poems which survives is from a work in hexameters, and describes the geographical situation of Britain.[412]

More important is the lyric poet Caesius Ba.s.sus,[413] whose loss is the more to be regretted because of the very scanty remains of Roman lyric verse that have survived to modern times. Statius attempted with but indifferent success to imitate the Sapphics and Alcaics of Horace, while the plays of Seneca provide a considerable quant.i.ty of lyric choruses of varying degrees of merit. But of lyric writers pure and simple there is scarcely a trace. That they existed we know from Quintilian. If we may trust him, certain of his contemporaries[414] attained to considerable distinction in this branch of poetry--that is to say, they surpa.s.sed all Roman lyric poets subsequent to Horace. But when all is said, it is scarcely possible to go beyond Quintilian's emphatic statement, that of Roman lyricists Horace alone repays reading. If any other name deserves mention it is that of Caesius Ba.s.sus, but he is inferior to Quintilian's own contemporaries. Caesius Ba.s.sus is best known to us as the editor of the satires of Persius. The sixth satire is actually addressed to him:

admovit iam bruma foco te, Ba.s.se, Sabino?

iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae?

mire opifex numeris veterum primordia voc.u.m atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senex.[415]

Has winter made you move yet to your Sabine fireside, dear Ba.s.sus? Are your lyre and its strings and the austere quill that runs over them yet in force? Marvellous artist as you are at setting to music the primitive antiquities of our language, the manly utterance of the Latian harp, and then showing yourself excellent in your old age at wakening young loves and frolicking over the chords with a virtuous touch.

CONINGTON.

The only information yielded by this pa.s.sage is that Ba.s.sus had a Sabine villa, that he was already advanced in years, that he affected 'the simple and manly versification of antiquity', and that he dealt also with erotic themes. But few other facts are known to us. He wrote a treatise on metre--a portion of which has been preserved to the present day,[416] and he perished at his Campanian villa in 79 A.D., during the great eruption of Vesuvius.[417] The fragments of verse enshrined in his metrical treatise suggest that he wrote in a large variety of metres,[418] but they may be no more than examples invented solely to ill.u.s.trate metres unfamiliar in Latin. The one quotation that is explicitly made from his lyrical poems is, curiously enough, a hexameter line. As to his literary merits or defects, it is now impossible even to guess.

CHAPTER VII

THE EMPERORS FROM VESPASIAN TO TRAJAN AND MINOR POETS

I

THE EMPERORS AND POETS WHOSE WORKS ARE LOST

After the death of Nero and the close of the Civil War a happier era, both for literature and the world at large, was inaugurated by the accession of Vespasian in 69 A.D. A man of low birth and of little culture, he yet had a true appreciation of art and literature. Of his own writing we know nothing save that he left behind him memoirs.[419]

But we have abundant evidence that he showed himself a liberal patron of the arts. He gave rich rewards to poets and sculptors,[420] effected all that was possible to repair the great loss of works of art occasioned by the burning of the Capitol,[421] and did what he could for the stage, perhaps even attempting to revive the legitimate drama.[422] Above all, he set aside a large sum annually for the support of Greek and Latin professors of rhetoric,[423] the first instance in the history of Rome of State endowment of education. Against this we must set his expulsion from Italy of philosophers and astrologers, an intemperate and presumably ineffective act, prompted by reasons of State and probably without any appreciable influence on literature.[424] His sons, however, had received all the advantages of the highest education. Of t.i.tus'

(79-81 A.D.) achievements in literature we have no information save that he aspired to be both orator and poet. The language used in praise of his efforts by Pliny the elder, our one authority on this point, is so extravagant as to be virtually meaningless.[425] Of the literary exploits of his brother Domitian (81-96 A.D.) there is more to be said.

It pleased him to lay claim to distinction both in prose and verse.[426]

His only prose work of which any record remains was a treatise on the care of the hair;[427] his own baldness rankled in his mind and turned the _calvus Nero_ of Juvenal into a hair specialist. As to his poems it is almost doubtful if he ever wrote any. He professed an enthusiasm for poetry, an art which, according to Suetonius, he had neglected in his youth and despised when he came to the throne. But Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Martial[428] all load him with praise of various degrees of fulsomeness, though, reading between the lines of Quintilian, it is easy to see that Domitian's output must have been exceedingly small. The evidence of these three authors goes to show that he had contemplated, perhaps even begun, an epic on the achievements of his brother t.i.tus in the Judaic War. Whether these _caelestia carmina belli_, as Martial calls them, ever existed, save in the imagination of courtiers and servile poets, there is nothing to show. If they did exist there seems no reason to regret their loss.

Domitian's chief service to literature, if indeed it was a true service, was the establishment of the Agon Capitolinus in 86, a quinquennial festival at which prizes were awarded not only for athletics and chariot-racing, but for declamations in verse and prose,[429] and the inst.i.tution of a similar, though annual, contest at his own palace on the Alban Mount, which took place as often as the great festival of Minerva, known as the Quinquatria, came round.[430] But his interest in literature was only superficial; he had no originality and read nothing save the memoirs and edicts of Tiberius.[431] His capricious cruelty extended itself to artists and authors;[432] twice (in 89 and 93 A.D.), following his father's example, he banished philosophers and astrologers from Rome;[433] the crime of having written laudatory biographies of the Stoics Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus brought Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio to their deaths.[434] But Domitian's tyranny had little effect on _belles-lettres_, however adverse it may have been to free-spoken philosophy, rhetoric, or history. Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Statius, and Martial, all wrote during his reign, and the works of the last-named poet and Quintilian give ample evidence of widespread literary activity. The minor poet replenished the earth, and the prizes for literature awarded at the Agon Capitolinus and the festival of the Alban Mount must have been a real stimulus to writing, even though the type of literature produced by such a stimulus may have been scarcely worth producing. The worst feature of the poetry of the time is the almost incredibly fulsome flattery to which the tyranny of Domitian gave rise. As a compensation we have in the two succeeding reigns the biting satire of Juvenal and Tacitus, rendered all the keener by its long suppression under the last of the Flavian dynasty.

But, however impossible it may have been to write really effective satire during the Flavian dynasty, of poets there was no lack. It was, moreover, under the Flavians that there sprang up that reaction towards a saner style to which we have already referred as finding its expression in the Ciceronianism of Quintilian, and to a lesser degree in the Vergilianism of Valerius, Statius, and Silius. Of lesser luminaries there were enough and to spare. Serra.n.u.s and Saleius Ba.s.sus are both warmly commended by Quintilian for their achievements in Epic. The former died young, before his powers had ripened to maturity, but showed great soundness of style and high promise.[435] Of Saleius Quintilian[436] says, 'He had a vigorous and poetic genius, but it was not mellowed by age.' That is to say, he died young, like Serra.n.u.s. In the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus he is spoken of as the best of men and the most finished of poets. He won Vespasian's favour and received a gift from him of five hundred thousand sesterces. His poems brought him no material profit; both Tacitus and Juvenal emphasize this point: