The History of Roman Literature Part 5

"HEC.

"Sed quid oculis rabere visa es derepente ar dentibus?

Ubi tua illa paulo ante sapiens virginali' modestia?

CAS.

Mater optumarum multo mulier melior mulierum, Missa sum superst.i.tiosis ariolationibus.

Namque Apollo fatis fandis dementem invitam ciret: Virgines aequales vereor, patris mei meum factmn pudet, Optimi viri. Mea mater, tui me miseret, me piget: Optumam progeniem Priamo peperisti extra me: hoc dolet: Men obesse, illos prodesse, me obstare, illos obsequi!"

She then sees the vision--

"Adest adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio!

Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite!

Iamque mari magno cla.s.sis cita Texitur: exitium examen rapit: Advenit, et fera velivolantibus Navibus complebit ma.n.u.s litora."

This is n.o.ble poetry. Another pa.s.sage from the _Telamo_ is as follows:--

"Sed superst.i.tiosi vates impudentesque arioli, Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat, Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam, Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.

De his divitiis sibi deducant drachumam, reddant cetera."

Here he shows, like so many of his countrymen, a strong vein of satire.

The metre is trochaic, scanned, like these of Plautus and Terence, by accent as much as by quant.i.ty, and noticeable for the careless way in which whole syllables are slurred over. In the former fragment the fourth line must be scanned--

___ ___ ____ "Virgi | nes ae | quales | vercor | patris mei | meum fac | tum pudet."

Horace mentions the ponderous weight of his iambic lines, which were loaded with spondees. The anapaestic measure, of which he was a master, has an impetuous swing that carries the reader away, and, while producing a different effect from its Greek equivalent, in capacity is not much inferior to it. Many of his phrases and metrical terms are imitated in Virgil, though such imitation is much more frequently drawn from his hexameter poems. He wrote one _Praetexta_ and several comedies, but these latter were uncongenial to his temperament, and by no means successful. He had little or no humour. His poetical genius was earnest rather than powerful; probably he had less than either Naevius or Plautus; but his higher cultivation, his serious view of his art, and the consistent pursuit of a well-conceived aim, placed him on a dramatic level nearly as high as Plautus in the opinion of the Ciceronian critics. His literary influence will be more fully discussed under his epic poems.

His sister's son PACUVIUS (220-132 B.C.), next claims our attention. This celebrated tragedian, on whom the complimentary epithet _doctus_ [9] was by general consent bestowed, was brought up at Brundisium, where amid congenial influences he practised with success the art of a painter. At what time he came to Rome is not known, but he gained great renown there by his paintings before attaining the position of chief tragic poet. Pliny tells us of a picture in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium, which was considered as only second to that of Fabius Pictor. With the enthusiasm of the poet he united that genial breadth of temper which among artists seems peculiarly the painter's gift. Happy in his twofold career (for he continued to paint as well as to write), [10] free from jealousy as from want, successful as a poet and as a man, he lived at Rome until his eightieth year, the friend of Laelius and of his younger rival Accius, and retired soon after to his native city where he received the visits of younger writers, and died at the great age of eighty-eight (132 B.C.). His long career was not productive of a large number of works. We know of but twelve tragedies and one _praetexta_ by him. The latter was called _Paullus_, and had for its hero the conqueror of Perseus, King of Macedonia, but no fragments of it survive. The great authority which the name of Pacuvius possessed was due to the care with which he elaborated his writings. Thirteen plays and a few _saturae_ in a period of at least thirty years [11] seems but a small result; but the admirable way in which he sustained the dramatic situations made every one of them popular with the nation. There were two, however, that stood decidedly above the rest-- the _Antiopa_ and the _Dulorestes_. Of the latter Cicero tells the anecdote that the people rose as one man to applaud the n.o.ble pa.s.sage in which Pylades and Orestes contend for the honour of dying for one another.

[12] Of the former he speaks in the highest terms, though it is possible that in his admiration for the severe and truly Roman sentiments it inculcated, he may have been indulgent to its artistic defects. The few lines that have come down to us resemble that ridiculed by Persius [13]

for its turgid mannerisms. A good instance of the excellences which a Roman critic looked for in tragedy is afforded by the praise Cicero bestows on the _Niptra_, a play imitated from Sophocles. The pa.s.sage is so interesting that it may well be added here. [14] Cicero's words are--

"The wise Greek (Ulysses) when severely wounded does not lament overmuch; he curbs the expression of his pain. 'Forward gently,' he says, 'and with quiet effort, lest by jolting me you increase the pangs of my wound.' Now, in this Pacuvius excels Sophocles, who makes Ulysses give way to cries and tears. And yet those who are carrying him, out of consideration for the majesty of him they bear, do not hesitate to rebuke even this moderate lamentation. 'We see indeed, Ulysses, that you have suffered grievous hurt, but methinks for one who has pa.s.sed his life in arms, you show too soft a spirit.' The skilful poet knows that habit is a good teacher how to bear pain. And so Ulysses, though in extreme agony, still keeps command over his words. 'Stop! hold, I say! the ulcer has got the better of me.

Strip off my clothes. O, woe is me! I am in torture.' Here he begins to give way; but in a moment he stops--'Cover me; depart, now leave me in peace; for by handling me and jolting me you increase the cruel pain.' Do you observe how it is not the cessation of bodily anguish, but the necessity of chastening the expression of it that keeps him silent? And so, at the close of the play, while himself dying, he has so far conquered himself that he can reprove others in words like these,--'It is meet to complain of adverse fortune, but not to bewail it. That is the part of a man; but weeping is granted to the nature of woman.' The softer feelings here obey the other part of the mind, as a dutiful soldier obeys a stern commander."

We can go with Cicero in admiring the manly spirit that breathes through these lines, and feel that the poet was justified in so far leaving the original as without prejudice to the dramatic effect to inculcate a higher moral lesson.

As to the treatment of his models we may say, generally, that Pacuvius used more freedom than Ennius. He was more of an adapter and less of a translator. Nevertheless this dependence on his own resources for description appears to have cramped rather than freed his style. The early Latin writers seem to move more easily when rendering the familiar Greek originals than when essaying to steer their own path. He also committed the mistake of generally imitating Sophocles, the untransplantable child of Athens, instead of Euripides, to whom he could do better justice, as the success of his Euripidean plays prove. [15] His style, though emphatic, was wanting in naturalness. The author of the treatise to Herennius contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_ of Pacuvius; and Lucilius speaks of a word "contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio."

Quintilian [16] notices the inelegance of his compounds, and makes the just remark that the old writers attempted to reproduce Greek a.n.a.logies without sufficient regard for the capacities of their language; thus while the word _kyrtauchaen_ is elegant and natural, its Latin equivalent _incurvicervicus_, borders on the ludicrous. [17] Some of his fragments show the same sceptical tendencies that are prominent in Ennius. One of them contains a comprehensive survey of the different philosophic systems, and decides in favour of blind chance (_temeritas_) as the ruling power, on the ground of sudden changes in fortune like that of Orestes, who in one day was metamorphosed from a king into a beggar. Pacuvius either improved his later style, or else confined its worst points to his tragedies, for nothing can be more cla.s.sical and elegant than his epitaph, which is couched in diction as refined as that of Terence--

Adulescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum vocat Ut sese aspicias, delude quod scriptumst legas.

Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.

When Pacuvius retired to Brundisium he left a worthy successor in L.

ATTIUS or ACCIUS (170-94 B.C.), whom, as before observed, he had a.s.sisted with his advice, showing kindly interest as a fellow-workman rather than jealousy as a rival. Accius's parents belonged to the cla.s.s of _libertini_; they settled at Pisaurum. The poet began his dramatic career at the age of thirty with the _Atreus_, and continued to exhibit until his death. He forms the link between the ante-cla.s.sical and Ciceronian epochs; for Cicero when a boy [18] conversed with him, and retained always a strong admiration for his works. [19] He had a high notion of the dignity of his calling. There is a story told of his refusing to rise to Caesar when he entered the Collegium Poetarum; but if by this Julius be meant, the chronology makes the occurrence impossible. Besides thirty-seven tragedies, he wrote _Annales_ (apparently mythological histories in hexameters, something of the character of Ovid's _Fasti_), _Didascalia_, or a history of Greek and Roman poetry, and other kindred works, as well as two _Praetextae_.

The fragments that have reached us are tolerably numerous, and enable us to select certain prominent characteristics of his style. The loftiness for which he is celebrated seems to be of expression rather than of thought, _e.g._

"Quid? quod videbis laetum in Parnasi iugo Bicipi inter pinos tripudiantem in circulis Concutere thyrsos ludo, taedis fulgere;"

but sometimes a n.o.ble sentiment is simply and emphatically expressed--

"Non genus virum ornat, generi vir fortis loco." [20]

He was a careful chooser of words, _e.g._

"Tu _pertinaciam_ esse, Antiloche, hanc praedicas, Ego _pervicaciam_ aio et ea me uti volo: Haec fortis sequitur, illam indocti possident....

Nam pervicacem dici me esse et vincere Perfacile patior, pertinaciam nil moror." [21]

These distinctions, obvious as they are to us, were by no means so to the early Romans. Close resemblance in sound seemed irresistibly to imply some connexion more than that of mere accident; and that turning over the properties of words, which in philosophy as well as poetry seems to us to have something childish in it, had its legitimate place in the development of each language. Accius paints action with vigour. We have the following spirited fragment--

"Const.i.tuit, cognovit, sensit, conlocat sese in loc.u.m Celsum: hinc manibus rapere raudus saxeum et grave."

and again--

"Heus vigiles properate, expergite, Pectora tarda, sopore exsurgite!"

He was conspicuous among tragedians for a power of reasoned eloquence of the forensic type; and delighted in making two rival pleaders state their case, some of his most successful scenes being of this kind. His opinions resembled those of Ennius, but were less irreverent. He acknowledges the interest of the G.o.ds in human things--

"Nam non facile sine deum opera humana propria [22] sunt bona,"

and in a fragment of the _Brutus_ he enforces the doctrine that dreams are often heaven-sent warnings, full of meaning to those that will understand them. Nevertheless his contempt for augury was equal to that of his master--

"Nil credo auguribus qui auris verbis divitant Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos."

The often-quoted maxim of the tyrant _oderint dum metuant_ is first found in him. Altogether, he was a powerful writer, with less strength perhaps, but more polish than Ennius; and while manipulating words with greater dexterity, losing but little of that stern grandeur which comes from the plain utterance of conviction. His general characteristics place him altogether within the archaic age. In point of time little anterior to Cicero, in style he is almost a contemporary of Ennius. The very slight increase of linguistic polish during the century and a quarter which comprises the tragic art of Rome, is somewhat remarkable. The old- fashioned ornaments of a.s.sonance, alliteration, and plays upon words are as frequent in Accius as in Livius, or rather more so; and the number of archaic forms is scarcely smaller. We see words like _noxitudo, honest.i.tudo, sanctescat, topper, domuitio, redhostire_, and wonder that they could have only preceded by a few years the Latin of Cicero, and were contemporary with that of Gracchus. Accius, like so many Romans, was a grammarian; he introduced certain changes into the received spelling, _e.g._ he wrote _aa, ee_, etc. when the vowel was long, reserving the single _a, e_, etc. for the short quant.i.ty. It was in acknowledgment of the interest taken by him in these studies that Varro dedicated to him one of his many philological treatises. The date of his death is not quite certain; but it may be safely a.s.signed to about 90 B.C. With him died tragic writing at Rome: scarcely a generation after we find tragedy has donned the form of the closet drama, written only for recitation. Cicero and his brother a.s.siduously cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an object, and declamatory force or fine point was the chief end pursued.

CHAPTER VI.

EPIC POETRY. ENNIUS--FURIUS (200-100 B.C.)

We must now retrace our steps, and consider Ennius in the capacity of epic poet. It was in this light that he acquired his chief contemporary renown, that he accredits himself to posterity in his epitaph, and that he obtained that commanding influence over subsequent poetic literature, which, stereotyped in Virgil, was never afterwards lost. The merit of discerning the most favourable subject for a Roman epic belongs to Naevius; in this department Ennius did but borrow of him; it was in the form in which he cast his poem that his originality was shown. The legendary history of Rome, her supposed connection with the issues of the Trojan war, and her subsequent military achievements in the sphere of history, such was the groundwork both of Naevius's and Ennius's conception. And, however unsuitable such a consecutive narrative might be for a heroic poem, there was something in it that corresponded with the national sentiment, and in a changed form it re-appears in the _Aeneid_.

Naevius had been contented with a single episode in Rome's career of conquest. Ennius, with more ambition but less judgment, aspired to grasp in an epic unity the entire history of the nation; and to achieve this, no better method occurred to him than the time-honoured and prosaic system of annals. The difficulty of recasting these in a poetic mould might well have staggered a more accomplished master of song; but to the enthusiastic and laborious bard the task did not seem too great. He lived to complete his work in accordance with the plan he had proposed, and though, perhaps, the _ma.n.u.s ultima_ may have been wanting, there is nothing to show that he was dissatisfied with his results. We may perhaps smile at the vanity which aspired to the t.i.tle of Roman Homer, and still more at the partiality which so willingly granted it; nevertheless, with all deductions on the score of rude conception and ruder execution, the fragments that remain incline us to concur with Scaliger in wishing that fate had spared us the whole, and denied us Silius, Statius, Lucan, "et tous ces garcons la." The whole was divided into eighteen books, of which the first contained the introduction, the earliest traditions, the foundation of Rome, and the deification of Romulus; the second and third contained the regal period; the fourth began the history of the Republic and carried it down to the burning of the city by the Gauls; the fifth comprised the Samnite wars; the sixth, that with Pyrrhus; the seventh, the first Punic war; the eighth and ninth, the war with Hannibal; the tenth and eleventh, that with Macedonia; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, that with Syria; the fifteenth, the campaign of Fulvius n.o.bilior in Aetolia, and ended apparently with the death of the great Scipio. The work then received a new preface, and continued the history down to the poet's last years, containing many personal notices, until it was finally brought to a close in 172 B.C. after having occupied its author eighteen years. [1] "The interest of this last book," says Conington, [2] "must have centred, at least to us, in the discourse about himself, in which the old bard seems to have indulged in closing this his greatest poem. Even now we may read with sympathy his boastful allusion to his late enrolment among the citizens of the conquering city; we may be touched by the mention he appears to have made of the year of his age in which he wrote, bordering closely on the appointed term of man's life; and we may applaud as the curtain falls on his grand comparison of himself to a victorious racer laden with Olympian honours, and now at last consigned to repose:--

'Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.'"

He was thus nearly fifty when he began to write, a fact which strikes us as remarkable. We are accustomed to a.s.sociate the poetic gift with a highly-strung nervous system, and unusual bodily conditions not favourable to long life, as well as with a precocious special development which proclaims unmistakably in the boy the future greatness of the man. None of these conditions seem to have been present in the early Roman school.

Livius was a quiet schoolmaster, Naevius a vigorous soldier, Ennius a self-indulgent but hard-working _litterateur_, Plautus an active man, whose animal spirits not even the flour-mill could quench, Pacuvius a steady but genial student, Accius and Terence finished men of the world; and all, except Terence (and he probably met his early death through an accident), enjoyed the full term of man's existence. Moreover, few of them began life by being poets, and some, as Ennius and Plautus, did not apply themselves to poetry until they had reached mature years. With these facts the character of their genius as a rule agrees. We should not expect in such men the fine inspiration of a Sophocles, a Goethe, or a Sh.e.l.ley, and we do not find it. The poetic frenzy, so magnificently described in the _Phaedrus_ of Plato, which caused the Greeks to regard the poet in his moments of creation as actually possessed by the G.o.d, is nowhere manifest among the early Romans; and if it claims to appear in their later literature, we find it after all a spurious subst.i.tute, differing widely from the emotion of creative genius. It is not mere accident that Rome is as little productive in the sphere of speculative philosophy as she is in that of the highest poetry, for the two endowments are closely allied. The problem each sets before itself is the same; to arrest and embody in an intelligible shape the idea that shall give light to the dark questionings of the intellect, or the vague yearnings of the heart. To Rome it has not been given to open a new sphere of truth, or to add one more to the mystic voices of pa.s.sion; her epic mission is the humbler but still not ign.o.ble one of bracing the mind by her masculine good sense, and linking together golden chains of memory by the majestic music of her verse.

There were two important elements introduced into the mechanism of the story by Ennius; the Olympic Pantheon, and the presentation of the Roman worthies as heroes a.n.a.logous to those of Greece. The latter innovation was only possible within narrow limits, for the idea formed by the Romans even of their greatest heroes, as Romulus, Numa, or Camillus was different in kind from that of the Greek hero-worshipper. Thus we see that Virgil abstains from applying the name to any of his Italian characters, confining it to such as are mentioned in Homer, or are connected with the Homeric legends. Still we find at a later period Julius Caesar publicly professing his descent on both sides from a superhuman ancestor, for such he practically admits Ancus Martius to be. [3] And in the epic of Silius Italicus the Roman generals occupy quite the conventional position of the hero-leader.

The admission of the Olympic deities as a kind of divine machinery for diversifying and explaining the narrative was much more pregnant with consequences. Outwardly, it is simply adopted from Homer, but the spirit which animates it is altogether different. The Greek, in spite of his intellectual scepticism, retained an aesthetic and emotional belief in his national G.o.ds, and at any rate it was natural that he should celebrate them in his verse; but the Roman poet claimed to utilize the Greek Pantheon for artistic purposes alone. He professed no belief in the beings he depicted. They were merely an ornamental, supernatural element, either introduced at will, as in Horace, or regulated according to traditional conceptions, as in Ennius and Virgil. Apollo, Minerva, and Bacchus, were probably no more to him than they are to us. They were names, consecrated by genius and convenient for art, under which could be combined the maximum of beautiful a.s.sociations with the minimum of trouble to the poet.

The custom, which perpetuated itself in Latin poetry, revived again with the rise of Italian art; and under a modified form its influence may be seen in the grand conceptions of Milton. The true nature of romantic poetry is, however, alien to any such mechanical employment of the supernatural, and its comparative infrequency in the highest English and German poetry, stamps these as products of the modern spirit. Had the Romans left Olympus to itself, and occupied themselves only with the rhetorical delineation of human action and feeling, they would have chosen a less ambitious but certainly more original path. Lucretius struggles against the prevailing tendency; but so unable were the Romans to invest their finer fancies with any other shape, that even while he is blaming the custom he unawares falls into it.

It was in the metrical treatment that Ennius's greatest achievement lay.