The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 14

The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it deserving of being written in front of every temple':--

Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia.

There are other fragments the significance of which is political rather than ethical, as for instance the following:--

Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere.

A pa.s.sage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The prominent words of the pa.s.sage were,--

Men' serva.s.se ut essent qui me perderent?[24]

Other pa.s.sages again appear to be fragments of spirited dialogue, and well adapted to show the art and the elocution of the actor.

Cicero[25] quotes from the Teucer of Pacuvius the reproach of Telamon, couched in much the same terms as those which Teucer himself antic.i.p.ates in the Ajax of Sophocles:--

Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi, Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis Neque ejus gnati parvi, qui tibi in tutelam est traditus--[26]?

In commenting on these lines, Cicero speaks of the pa.s.sion displayed by the actor ('so that even out of his mask the eyes of the actor appeared to me to burn'), and of the sudden change to pathos in his voice as he proceeded. He adds the further comment, 'Do we suppose that Pacuvius, in writing this pa.s.sage, was in a calm and pa.s.sionless mood?'--one of many proofs that the 'gravity' of the old tragedians was that of strong and ardent, not of phlegmatic natures, and that their strength was tempered by a pathos and humanity of feeling which were gradually gaining ascendency over the old Roman austerity. The language in such pa.s.sages has not only the straightforward directness which is the general characteristic of the early literature, but a force and impetuosity added to its gravity, recalling the style of some fragments of the older orators[27].

The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age; but one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several pa.s.sages in Ennius, show the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible aspects of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the Greek army after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in this style:--

Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.

Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare, Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimb.u.m occaecat nigror, Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit, Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit, Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines, Fervit aestu pelagus[28].

There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines, exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'--

Armamentum stridor, flictus navium, Strepitus fremitus clamor tonitruum et rudentum sibilus[29].

Virgil must have had this pa.s.sage in his mind when he wrote the line--

Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum.

The effect of alliteration and a.s.sonance may be ill.u.s.trated by a pa.s.sage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised Ulysses:--

Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam, La.s.situdinemque minuam manuum mollitudine[30].

Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the t.i.tle of which was 'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the princ.i.p.al character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae, whom Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words--

Animaeque magnae Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno,

or his more fortunate son who conquered the Macedonians at Pydna, yet it would seem much more probable that the poet should celebrate a great triumph of his own time, achieved by one in whom, from his connexion with Scipio, the nephew of Ennius would feel a special interest, than that he should recall a great calamity of a past generation, neither near enough to excite immediate attention, nor sufficiently remote to justify an imaginative treatment. The Fabulae Praetextatae, of which this was one, were, as Niebuhr[31] has pointed out, historical plays rather than tragedies. Such a drama would not naturally or necessarily require a tragic catastrophe, but would represent the traditions of the earlier annals, or the great events of current history, in accordance with the dictates of national feeling.

No important fragment of this drama has been preserved, but the fact of its having been written by Pacuvius is interesting, as affording a parallel to the celebration of the victory of Marcellus in the Clastidium of Naevius, and of the success of M. Fulvius n.o.bilior in the Ambracia of Ennius.

Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce on a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius.

His remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general features of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to determine from internal evidence alone whether any particular pa.s.sage came from the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points that are known in his life are his provincial origin, and his relationship to Ennius; the fact of his supporting himself, first by painting, afterwards by the payment he received from the Aediles for his plays; his friendship with Laelius, the centre of the literary circle in Rome during the latter part of the second century B.C.; his intimacy with his younger rival Accius; the facts also that, like Sophocles, he preserved his poetical power unabated till a great age, and that, like Shakspeare, he retired to spend his last years in his native district. The language of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly and modest temper, and of the calm and serious spirit of age; while that of many of his dramatic fragments bears evidence of his moral strength and worth, and to the manly fervour as well as the gentle humanity of his temperament.

L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 B.C., of parentage similar to that of Horace--'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 B.C.; and an estate in that district was known in after times by the name 'fundus Accia.n.u.s.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the exact date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born B.C. 106, speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius Brutus--Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, B.C. 138, and one of the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that age--on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the poet: 'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus[32].'

The meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is remarkable, as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which stand so widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are respectively characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Archias, mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the poet[33]. The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,'

like that of 'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's dialogue, to Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets (men of humble or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and soldiers, was in that age one of familiar intimacy rather than of patronage and dependence.

Although Cicero's notice of his own acquaintance with Accius, which is not likely to have existed before the former a.s.sumed the toga virilis, is a proof of the great age which the poet attained, it is not certain how long he continued the practice of his art. Seneca, in quoting from the Atreus of this poet the well-known tyrant's maxim, 'oderint dum metuant'--a maxim, according to Suetonius, constantly in the mouth of Caligula,--adds the remark that 'any one could see that it was written in the days of Sulla.' But Aulus Gellius, on the other hand, states that the Atreus was the play which had been read by the poet in his youth to Pacuvius at Tarentum. The termination of the literary career of Accius must have been soon after the beginning of the first century B.C., so that nearly half a century elapses between the last of the works of the older poets and the appearance of the great poem of Lucretius. The journey of Accius to Asia shows the beginning of that taste for foreign travel which became prevalent among the most educated men in a generation later, and grew more and more easy with the advance of Roman conquest, and more attractive from the increased cultivation of Greek literature. Accius is the first of the Roman poets who seems to have possessed a country residence; and some taste for country life and the beauties of Nature first betrays itself in one or two of his fragments. He possessed apparently all the self-esteem and high spirit of the earlier poets. Pliny mentions that though a very little man, he placed a colossal statue of himself in a temple of the Muses[34].

Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C.

Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets'

Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference, thus a.s.serting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival.

He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The t.i.tles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50 in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan cycle of events; and, in his representation of character and action, to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies of the Romans. Two of his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged to the cla.s.s of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of Ennius in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books.

He was the author also of what seem to have been works on grammar and literary criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres, and known by the names Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The subjects of these last works, as well as those of some of the satires of Lucilius, and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius Sedigitus, written in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the attention which was given about this time by Roman authors to the principles of composition. The literary and grammatical studies of the time of Accius must have prepared the way for the rapid development of style which characterised the first half of the first century B.C.

In some of the fragments of Accius distinctions in the meaning of words--e.g. of 'pertinacia' and 'pervicacia'--are prominently brought out. We note also in his remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great access of formative energy in the language, especially in abstract words in _-tas_ and _-tudo_, many of which afterwards dropped out of use. The antagonism manifested by Lucilius to Accius seems in a great measure to have arisen from his claims to a kind of literary dictatorship in questions of criticism and style.

The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius, and attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as those which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit.

Cicero testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and to the didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains ill.u.s.trate these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense and vigorous understanding of the older writers, and afford some traces of a new vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable in earlier fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that of 'animosus' to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et ingeniosus poeta,' and attests the didactic purpose of a particular pa.s.sage in the words, 'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with the view of stimulating, not those princes who no longer existed, but us and our children to energy and honourable ambition[35].' The style of a pa.s.sage from the Atreus is described by the same author in the dialogue '_De Oratore_,' as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a certain impa.s.sioned gravity of feeling[36].' Oratorical fervour and dignity seem thus to have been the most distinctive characteristic of his style. Virgil, whose genius made as free use of the diction and sentiment of native as of Greek poets, has cast the ruder language of the old poet into a new mould in some of the greatest speeches of the Aeneid, and seems to have drawn from the same source something of the high spirit and lofty pathos with which he has animated the personages of his story. The famous address, for instance--

Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis,

though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to Virgil in the line of Accius--

Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.

The address of Latinus to Turnus--

O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus,

is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic poet--

Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo, Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere.

The same author quotes two other pa.s.sages, in which the sentiment and something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike the debates, the outbursts of pa.s.sion, and the natural interchange of speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius.

The following lines may give some idea of the pa.s.sionate energy which may be recognised in many other fragments of Accius:--

Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo, Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia Confingit[37].

He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that most powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of compa.s.sion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,--

Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine Commovit animum excelsa aspecti dignitas[38];

and--

Nam huius demum miseret, cuius n.o.bilitas miserias n.o.bilitat[39].

He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity, and direct force of understanding:--

Scin' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem, Nunquam ulla humilitas ingenium infirmat bonum[40].

Erat istuc virile, ferre advorsam fortunam facul[41].

Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes Eripere quivit, at virtutem non quit[42].

Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum, Quod non labascat lingua, mitiscat malo[43].