The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 23

Serit arbores quae alteri saeclo prosint,

quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, and this line--

Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia.

He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus, nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life.

With Terence Roman literature enters on a new stage of its development. When he appeared, a younger generation had grown up, who not only inherited the enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the older generation,--of men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Aemilius Paulus, T. Quintius Flamininus,--but who had been carefully educated from their boyhood in Greek accomplishments. The leading representative of this younger generation, Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, was about the same age as Terence, and admitted him to his intimacy; thus showing in his early youth the same enlightened and tolerant spirit and the same cultivated aspiration which made him choose Panaetius and Polybius as the a.s.sociates of his manhood, and induced him to live in relations of frank unreserve with Lucilius during the latter years of his life. Among the members of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and Furius Philo were also closely a.s.sociated with Terence; and he is said to have enjoyed the favour of older men of distinction and culture, Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular rank and of literary and poetic accomplishment[4]. In the interval between Plautus and Terence, the great gap which was never again to be bridged over had been made between the ma.s.s of the people and a small educated cla.s.s. While the former became less capable of intellectual pleasure, and were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers, rope-dancers, and gladiators[5], to the comedies which had delighted their fathers, the latter became more exacting than the men of a former generation, in their demands for correctness and elegance. They had acquired through education the fastidiousness of men of culture, a quality not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice of native force and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense superiority of the Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman copies, they believed that the best way to create a national Latin literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and substance, from the works of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan, or rather purely Greek, in their literary tastes, they were thoroughly patriotic in devotion to their country's interests. They cherished their native language as the great instrument of social and political life; and they recognised the influence which a cultivated literature might have in rendering that instrument finer and more flexible than natural use had made it. By concentrating attention on form and style, without aiming at originality of invention, Latin literature might become a truer medium of Greek culture, and might, at the same time, impart a finer edge and temper to the rude ore of Latin speech.

The task which awaited Terence was the complete h.e.l.lenising of Roman comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the Latin spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by intellectual education a Greek, by the a.s.sociations of his daily life a foreigner living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the cosmopolitan mode of thought and feeling which Greek culture was diffusing over the civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman austerity or the homely humours of Italian life. As a dependent and a.s.sociate of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had neither that contact with the many sides of life, nor that familiarity with the animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion the style of Plautus: but by a.s.similating the literary grace of the Athenian comedy and the familiar manner of a high-bred, friendly, and intelligent society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in ancient and the French in modern times have had pre-eminently, a style which gives dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and simplicity to literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and training of the Romans make the absence of these last qualities perceptible in much both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm of their presence in the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of Catullus, the Epistles of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was owing to the social and intellectual position of Terence that this secret of combining consummate literary grace with conversational ease and spontaneity was discovered.

Our knowledge of the life of Terence is derived chiefly from a fragment of the lost work of Suetonius, _De viris ill.u.s.tribus_, preserved in the commentary of Donatus. Confirmation of some of the statements contained in the life is obtained from later writers and speakers, and also from the prologues to the different plays, which throw light on the literary and personal relations of the poet. These prologues were among the original sources of Suetonius: but he quotes or refers to the works of various grammarians and antiquarians--Porcius Licinus, Volcatius Sedigitus, Santra, Nepos, Fenestella, Q. Cosconius--as his authorities. The first two lived within a generation or two after the death of Terence, and the first of them shows a distinct animus against him and his patrons. But notwithstanding the abundance of authorities, there is uncertainty as to both the date of his birth and the place and manner of his death.

The doubt as to the former arises from the discrepancy of the MSS. His last play, the Adelphoe, was exhibited in 160 B.C. Shortly after its production he went to Greece, being then, according to the best MSS., in his twenty-fifth ('nondum quintum atque vicesimum egressus[6]

annum'), according to inferior MSS., in his thirty-fifth year. This uncertainty is increased by a discrepancy between the authorities quoted by Suetonius. Cornelius Nepos is quoted for the statement that he was about the same age as Scipio (born 185 B.C.) and Laelius, while Fenestella, an antiquarian of the later Augustan period, represented him as older. As the authority of the MSS. coincides with that of the older record, the year 185 B.C. may be taken as the most probable date of his birth. In the case of an author drawing originally from life, it might seem improbable that he should have written six comedies, so true in their apprehension and delineation of various phases of human nature, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. But the case of an imitative artist reproducing impressions derived from literature is different; and the circ.u.mstances of Terence's Phoenician origin and early life may well have developed in him a precocity of talent. His acknowledged intimacy with Scipio and Laelius, and the general belief that they a.s.sisted him in the composition of his plays, agree better with the statement that he was about their own age than that he was ten years older. The lines at the end of the prologue to the Heauton Timorumenos--

Exemplum statuite in me ut _adulescentuli_ Vobis placere studeant potius quam sibi,

indicate that he was a very young man when they were written. Thus Terence may, more even than Catullus or Lucan, be ranked among 'the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.'

He is said to have been born at Carthage, brought to Rome as a slave, and carefully educated in the house of M. Terentius Luca.n.u.s, by whom he was soon emanc.i.p.ated. A difficulty was felt in ancient times as to how he originally became a slave, as there was no war between Rome and Carthage between the Second and Third Punic Wars, and no commercial relations with Rome and Italy till after the destruction of Carthage.

But there was no doubt as to his Phoenician origin. It has been suggested that his Carthaginian origin perhaps explains the interest which the family of the Scipios first took in him. He was of slender figure and dark complexion. He is said to have owed the favour of his great friends as much to his personal gifts and graces as to his literary distinction. In one of his prologues he declares it to be his ambition, while not offending the many, to please the 'boni.'

His earliest play was the 'Andria,' exhibited in 166 B.C., when he could only have been about the age of nineteen. A pretty, but probably apocryphal, story is told of his having read the play, before its exhibition, to Caecilius--who however is said to have died in 168 B.C., the year after the death of Ennius--and of the generous admiration manifested by Caecilius. The story probably owes its origin to the same impulse which gave birth to that of the visit of Accius on his journey to Asia to the veteran Pacuvius. The next play exhibited by Terence was the 'Hecyra,' first produced in 165, but withdrawn in consequence of the bad reception which it met with, and afterwards reproduced in 160. The 'Heauton Timorumenos' appeared in 163, the 'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio' in 161, and the 'Adelphoe' in 160, at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus.

After bringing out these plays Terence sailed for Greece, whether, as it is said, to escape from the suspicion of publishing the works of others as his own, or, as is more probable, from the desire to obtain a more intimate knowledge of that Greek life which had hitherto been known to him only in literature, and which it was his professed aim to reproduce in his comedies. From the voyage to Greece Terence never returned. According to one account he was lost at sea, according to another he died at Stymphalus in Arcadia, and according to a third at Leucadia, from grief at the loss by shipwreck of his baggage, containing a number of new plays which he had translated from Menander. The old grammarian quoted by Suetonius states that he was ruined in fortune through his intimacy with his n.o.ble friends. Another account spoke of him as having left behind him property consisting of gardens, to the extent of twenty acres, close to the Appian Way. It is further stated that his daughter was so well provided for that she married a Roman knight.

As his art is purely dramatic and also imitative, for any further knowledge of his character and circ.u.mstances we have to rely on his prologues in which he speaks in his own person. They give the impression of a man of frank and ingenuous nature, with a high idea of his art, very sensitive to criticism, and proud, though not ostentatiously so, of the favour he enjoyed with the best men of his time. The tone of all his prologues is apologetic. In this respect, as well as in his relation to his patrons, he reminds us of the tone of some of the Satires of Horace. But there is a robuster force both of defence and of offence in the son of the Venusian freedman than in the young Phoenician freedman. In nearly all his prologues he defends himself against the malevolence and detraction of an old poet, 'malevolus vetus poeta,' whose name is said to have been Luscius Lavinius, or Lanuvinus. The chief charge which his detractor brings against him is that of _contaminatio_, the combining in one play of scenes out of different Greek plays. Terence justifies his practice by that of the older poets, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, whose careless freedom he follows in preference to the dull pedantry of his detractor[7]. He recriminates on his adversary as one who, by his literal adherence to his original, had turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones. He justifies himself from the charge of plagiarising from Plautus and Naevius[8]. In another pa.s.sage he contrasts his own quiet treatment of his subjects with the sensational extravagance of other play-wrights[9]. He meets the charge of receiving a.s.sistance in the composition of his plays by claiming, as a great honour, the favour which he enjoyed with those who deservedly were the favourites of the Roman people[10].

He was not a popular poet, in the sense in which Plautus was popular; he made no claim to original invention, or even original treatment of his materials: he was however not a mere translator but rather an adapter from the Greek; and his aim was to give a true picture of Greek life and manners in the purest Latin style. He stands in much the same relation to Menander and other writers of the new comedy[11], as that in which a fine engraver stands to a great painter. He speaks with the enthusiasm not of a creative genius, but of an imitative artist, inspired by a strong admiration of his models. And this view of his aim is confirmed by the result which he attained. He has none of the purely Roman characteristics of Plautus, in sentiment, allusion, or style[12]; none of his extravagance, and none of his creative exuberance of fancy. The law which Terence always imposes on himself is the 'ne quid nimis.' He aims at correctness and consistency, and rejects nearly every expression or allusion which might remind his hearers that they were in Rome and not in Athens.

His plots are tamer and less varied in their interest than those of Plautus, but they are worked out much more carefully and artistically.

He takes great pains in the opening scenes to make the situation in which the play begins clear, and he allows the action to proceed to the _denouement_ through the medium of the natural play of character and motive. As a painter of life it is not by striking effects, but by his truth in detail, and his power of delineating the finer distinctions in varying specimens of the same type, that he gains the admiration of the reader. There are no strongly-drawn or vividly conceived personages in his plays, but they all act and speak in the most natural manner. Though he has left no trace in any of his plays of one drawing directly from the life, there is no more truthful, natural, and delicate delineator of human nature, in its ordinary and more level moods, within the whole range of cla.s.sical literature.

Characters, circ.u.mstances, motives, etc., are all in keeping with a cosmopolitan type of citizen or family life, courteous and humane, taking the world easily, and outwardly decorous in its pleasures, but without serious interests, or high aspirations.

Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, a 'dimidiatus Menander,'--a Roman only in his language. The aim of his art was to be as purely Athenian as it was possible for one writing in Latin to be. While his great gift to Roman literature is that he first made it artistic, that he imparted to rude Latium the sense of elegance, consistency, and moderation, his gift to the world is that, through him, it possesses a living image of Greek society in the third century B.C. presented in the purest Latin idiom. The life of Athens after the loss of her religious belief, her great political activity, and speculative and artistic energy,--or, rather, one of the phases of that life, as it was shaped by Menander for dramatic purposes--supplies the material of all his plays. It is the embodiment of the lighter side of the philosophy of Epicurus, without the elevation of the speculative and scientific curiosity which gave serious interest even to that form of the philosophic life. There is a charm of friendliness, urbanity, social enjoyment, superficial kindness of heart, in the picture presented: and it was a necessary stage in the culture of the best Romans that they should learn to appreciate this charm, and a.s.similate its influence in their intercourse with one another. The Greek comedy of Menander was a lesson to the Romans in manners, in tolerance, in kindly indulgence to equals and inferiors, and in the cultivation of pleasant relations with one another. The often quoted line,--

h.o.m.o sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,

might be taken as its motto. The idea of 'human nature,' in its weakness and in its sympathy with weakness, may be said to be the new element introduced into Roman life by the comedy of Terence. The qualities of 'humanitas, clementia, facilitas,'--general amiability and good nature,--are the virtues which it exemplifies. The indulgence of the old to the follies or pleasures of the young is often contrasted with the stricter view of the obligations of life, entertained by an earlier generation, and always in favour of the former. The plea of the pa.s.sionate modern poet--

'To step aside is human.'--

is often urged, but without any feeling that this divergence needs an apology. The hollowness of the social conditions on which this superficial agreeability and humanity rested is revealed by pa.s.sages in these plays which prove that the habitual comfort of a moderately wealthy cla.s.s was maintained by the practice of infanticide: and a virtuous wife is represented as begging the forgiveness of her husband for having given her child away instead of ordering it to be put to death[13]. In its outward amenity, as well as its inward hollowness, the social and family life depicted in the comedies of Terence was the very ant.i.thesis of the old Roman austere and formal discipline. How far this new view of life contributed to the subsequent deterioration of Roman character, it is difficult to say. The writings of Cicero and Horace show that the receptive Italian intellect was able to extract the elements of courtesy, tolerance, and social amiability out of such a delineation without any loss of native manliness and strength of affection. And thus perhaps, apart from their literary charm, the permanent gain to the world from the comedies of Terence and the philosophy which they embody, has been greater than the immediate loss to the weaker members of the Roman youth who may have been misled by the view of life presented in them.

Love, generally in the form of pathetic sentiment rather than of irregular pa.s.sion, is the motive of all the pieces. There is generally a double love-story; one, an attachment, which, if not virtuous in the beginning, has become so afterwards, and which ends in marriage and the discovery that the lady is the daughter of a citizen, who has been exposed or carried away in her infancy; the other, an ordinary intrigue, like those which form the subject of most of the comedies of Plautus. In his treatment of love, Terence may be said to be the precursor of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. He has the serious sense of its pains and pleasures which they display, though he wants the pa.s.sionate intensity of the two first of these. The greatest attraction of his love pa.s.sages arises from his tenderness of feeling.

In this he is like Tibullus. Although the origin of the sentiment, in most of his plays, is nothing deeper than desire, inspired by outward charms and enhanced by compa.s.sion, yet we recognise in him, or in the model which he followed, much more than in Plautus, a belief in and appreciation of constancy and fidelity. In his treatment of his 'amantes ephebi' he shows sympathy with, rather than the humorous superiority to, their weaknesses which we find in Plautus. But though there is more grossness in the older poet, yet there is occasionally more real indelicacy in Terence; as in the subject of the 'Eunuchus'

and in the acceptance by Phaedria, at the end of that play, of the suggestion of Gnatho, which, in its union of mercenary with sentimental motives, is almost more repugnant to natural feeling than the conclusion of the 'Asinaria' and 'Bacchides.'

The characters in Terence, although more consistent and more true to ordinary life, are more faintly drawn than those of Plautus. None of them stand out in our memory with the distinctness and individuality of Euclio, Pseudolus, Ballio, or Tyndarus. The want of definite personality which they had to the poet himself is implied in the frequent recurrence of the same names in his different pieces. They are products of a.n.a.lysis and reflexion, not of bold invention and creative sympathy. They are embodiments of the good sense which keeps a conventional society together, or of the tamer impulses by which the surface of that society is temporarily ruffled. The predominant tone in their intercourse with one another is one of urbanity. We find none of the rollicking vituperation and execration in which Plautus revels.

Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour.

The encounter of wits between slaves and fathers is conducted with the weapons of polished repartee and mutual deference to one another.

Davus, Parmeno, Syrus, Geta, speak in the terse and epigrammatic language of gentlemen and men of the world.

While the 'Andria' has more pathetic situations, and the 'Adelphoe'

is on the whole more true to human nature, the 'Eunuchus' presents the greatest number of interesting personages. The Thais of that play is the most favourable delineation of the Athenian 'Hetaera' in ancient literature. She has grace and dignity, a consciousness of her charms combined with a proud humility, and not only kindliness of nature, but real goodness of heart. The natural dignity of her nature, tempered by the sense of her position, appears in her rebuke to Chaerea,--

Non te dignum, Chaerea, Fecisti: nam si ego digna hac contumelia Sum maxume, at tu indignus qui faceres tamen[14];

and her kindness is equally manifest in her ready admission of his excuse,

Non adeo inhumano ingenio sum, Chaerea, Neque ita imperita, ut quid amor valeat, nesciam[15].

Gnatho is a new and more subtly conceived type of the parasite, and in Thraso the 'Miles Gloriosus' does not transcend the limits of credibility. Parmeno and Phaedria are natural embodiments of the confidential slave and the weak lover. Their relations to one another are brought out with more delicate irony and finer psychological a.n.a.lysis, though with less vigour than those of Pseudolus and Calidorus, or of Ludus and Pistoclerus in the Pseudolus and Bacchides of Plautus. The Davus, Geta, and Syrus of the other plays are tamer and less humorous than the slaves of Plautus; but they play their part with wit and liveliness, and the _role_ which they have to perform is not felt to be incompatible with the ordinary conditions of life.

Aeschinus, in the Adelphoe, shows a higher spirit and more energy of character than most of the other lovers in Plautus or Terence. The contrast between the genial, indulgent, selfish man of the world, and the harder type of character produced by exclusive devotion to business, is well brought out in the Micio and Demea of the Adelphoe, and in the Chremes and Menedemus of the Heauton Timorumenos. The two brothers in the 'Phormio,' Demipho and Chremes, are also happily characterised and distinguished from one another; and Phormio is himself a type of the parasite, as distinct from Gnatho, as he is from the Gelasimus or Curculio of Plautus. The character-painting in Terence is altogether free from the tendency to exaggeration and caricature which is the besetting fault of some of the greatest humourists. Yet with all his truth of detail, his careful avoidance of the extreme forms of villainy, roguery, and inhuman hardness, it may be doubted whether the life represented by Terence is not on the whole more purely conventional than that represented by Plautus. His personages seem to move about in a kind of 'Fools' paradise' without the knowledge of good or evil. All the sentimental virtues seem to flourish spontaneously, even in the hearts of his courtesans: and though he holds up a true ideal of fidelity in love and loyalty in friendship, yet the chief practical lesson that seems to be suggested is the necessity of overcoming the restraints imposed by prudence and conscience on the indulgence of natural inclination.

If we consider the form, substance, and spirit of these six plays, we find that their merit consists in the art with which the situation is unfolded and the plot developed, the consistency and moderation with which a conventional view of life and various types of character are set before us, and in the large part played in them by the tender and sympathetic emotions. But their great attraction, both to ancient and modern readers, has been their charm of style. The diction of Terence, while it wants the creativeness and exuberance of Plautus, is free from the mannerisms which accompanied these large endowments of the older poet. The superiority of his style over that of Lucilius, who wrote a generation after him, is almost immeasurable. The fine Attic flavour is more perceptible in his Latin, than in the Greek of his contemporaries. He does not attempt to emulate the 'numeri innumeri'

of Plautus, but limits himself almost entirely to those metres which suit the natural flow of placid or more animated conversation, viz.

the iambic (senarian or septenarian) and the trochaic septenarian.

The effect of his metre is to introduce measure, propriety, grace, and point into ordinary speech without impairing its ease and spontaneousness. The natural vivacity and urbanity of his style is equally apparent in dialogue, or in rapid and picturesque narrative of incidents and pathetic situations[16]. He is full of happy often-quoted sayings, such as

Hinc illae lacrimae. Amantium irae amoris integratiost.

Quot homines, tot sententiae.

h.o.m.o sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

Tacent: satis laudant.

Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis.

Cantilenam eandem canis--laterem lavem,--etc. etc.

Many of these--such as 'ne quid nimis,' 'ad restim res redit mihi,'

'auribus teneo lupum,' etc.--are obviously translations from Greek proverbial sayings; and in all his use of language we may trace the influence of a close observation and sympathetic enjoyment of Greek subtlety, reserve, delicate allusiveness, curious felicity in union with direct simplicity. These qualities of style, reproduced in the purest Latin idiom, had a great influence on the familiar style of Horace. Expressions in his Satires and Epistles, and even in his Odes, show how closely he studied the language of Terence[17]. It is from a scene in Terence that Horace takes his example of the weakness of pa.s.sion[18]; and the mode in which he tells how his father trained him to correct his own faults by observing other men must have been suggested by the conversation between Demea and Syrus in the Adelphoe[19]:--

_De._ Denique Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium Iubeo atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi.

'Hoc facito.' _Sy._ Recte sane. _De._ 'Hoc fugito.' _Sy._ Callide.

_De._ 'Hoc laudist.' _Sy._ 'Istaec res est.' _De._ 'Hoc vitio datur.'[20]

Again, the remonstrance of Micio to Demea,

Si esses h.o.m.o, Sineres nunc facere, dum per aetatem licet,

expresses the philosophy of many of his love poems and his drinking songs. The Epicurean sentiment and reflexion borrowed from Menander were congenial to one side of Horace's nature, as the manly independence and serious spirit of Lucilius were to another: and in his own style he has incorporated the conversational urbanity of the one writer no less than the intellectual vigour of the other. But Horace was much richer and more varied in the subjects of his art, as he was larger and more penetrating in his knowledge of the world, and more manly and serious in his view of life, than the comic poet who died so early in his career.

But not Horace only, but some of the best judges and greatest masters of style both in ancient and modern times have been among his chief admirers. Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies pa.s.sages in his plays to his own circ.u.mstances, and refers to his personages as typical representatives of character[21]. Julius Caesar characterises him as 'puri sermonis amator.' Quintilian applies to his writing the epithet 'elegantissimus,' and in that connexion refers to the belief that his plays were the work of Scipio Africa.n.u.s. Cicero, on the other hand, speaks of the belief that they were the work of Laelius, 'cuius fabellae propter elegantiam sermonis putabantur a C.

Laelio scribi[22].' The imputation in the poet's own time, which he does not altogether disclaim, appears to have been that both friends a.s.sisted him in his task.

His works were studied and learned by heart by the great Latin writers of the Renaissance, such as Erasmus and Melanchthon: and Casaubon, in his anxiety that his son should write a pure style, inculcates on him the constant study of Terence. Montaigne applies to him the phrase of Horace,--

Liquidus puroque simillimus amni.

He speaks of 'his fine expression, elegancy, and quaintness,' and adds, 'he does so possess the soul with his graces that we forget those of his fable[23].' It is among the French, the great masters of the prose of refined conversation, that his merits have been most appreciated in modern times. Sainte-Beuve, in his 'Nouveaux Lundis,'

devotes to him two papers of delicate and admiring criticism. He quotes Fenelon and Addison, 'deux esprits polis et doux, de la meme famille litteraire,' as expressing their admiration for the illimitable beauty and naturalness of one of his scenes. Fenelon is said to have preferred him even to Moliere. Sainte-Beuve calls Terence the bond of union between Roman urbanity and the Atticism of the Greeks, and adds that it was in the seventeenth century, when French literature was most truly Attic, that he was most appreciated. M.

Joubert is quoted[24] as applying to him the words 'Le miel Attique est sur ses levres; on croirait ais.e.m.e.nt qu'il naquit sur le mont Hymette.'