The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 31

were written, even Cicero regarded him as one of the bulwarks of the senatorian cause against Clodius and his influential supporters. And neither the scandal of his private nor of his public life prevented his being in later years among the orator's correspondents.

This relation to Memmius is the only additional fact which an examination of the poem brings into light. Nothing is learned from it of the poet's parentage, his education, his favourite places of residence, of his career, of his good or evil fortune. There were eminent Epicurean teachers at Athens and Rome (Patro, Phaedrus, Philodemus, etc.) during his youth and manhood, but it is useless to ask what influence of teachers or personal experience induced him to become so pa.s.sionate a devotee of the doctrines of Epicurus.

Yet though no direct reference to his circ.u.mstances is found in his writings, we may yet mark indirect traces of the impression produced upon him by the age in which his youth and manhood were pa.s.sed; we seem to catch some glimpses of his habitual pursuits and tastes, to gain some real insight into his being, to apprehend the att.i.tude in which he stood to the great teachers of the past, and to know the man by knowing the objects in life which most deeply interested him.

Nothing, we may well believe, was further from his wish or intention than to leave behind him any record of himself. No Roman poet has so entirely sunk himself and the remembrance of his own fortunes in absorption in his subject. But his strong personal force and individuality have penetrated deeply into all his representation, his reasoning, and his exhortation. From the beginning to the end of the poem we feel that we are listening to a living voice speaking to us with the direct impressiveness of personal experience and conviction.

No writer ever used words more clearly or more sincerely: no one shows a greater scorn for the rhetorical artifices which disguise the lack of meaning or insinuate a false conclusion by fine-sounding phrases:--

Quae belle tangere possunt Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore[12].

The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both, notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of a direct personal revelation.

The tone of many pa.s.sages in the poem clearly indicates that Lucretius, though taking no personal part in the active politics of his age, was profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on human happiness and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74--

Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.--

recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[12]. Other pa.s.sages are an immediate reflexion of the disturbance and alarm of the times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of the second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative life with the strife of political and military ambition, seem to be suggested by the action of what is sometimes called the first triumvirate. The lines--

Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.--

have been noted[14] as a probable allusion to the position actually taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the year 58 B.C. Some earlier lines of the same pa.s.sage--

Certare ingenio, contendere n.o.bilitate, Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri,--

have a resemblance to words directly applied by Cicero to Caesar[15], and are certainly more applicable to him than to any other of the poet's contemporaries. The political reflexions in the poem, as for instance that at v. 1123, seem, in almost all cases, to be forced from him by the memory of the first civil war, or the vague dread of that which was impending. It is not from any effeminate recoil from danger, but rather from horror of the turbulence, disorder, and crimes against the sanct.i.ties of human life, involved in the strife of ambition, that Lucretius preaches the lessons of political quietism. And while his humanity of feeling makes him shrink from the prospect of evil days, like those which he well remembered, again awaiting his country, his capacity for pure and simple pleasures makes him equally shrink from the spectacle of prodigal luxury which Rome then presented in a degree never before witnessed in the world.

Thus the first general impression of Lucretius which we form from his poem is that of one who, from a strong distaste to the life of action and social pleasure, deliberately chose the life of contemplation,--the 'fallentis semita vitae.' Some ill.u.s.trations of his argument--as, for instance, a description of the state of mental tension produced by witnessing public games and spectacles for many days in succession[16], of the reflexion of the colours cast on the stage by the awnings of the theatre[17], of the works of art adorning the houses of the great[18], etc.--imply that he had not always been a stranger to the enjoyments of city life, and that they attracted him by a certain fascination of pomp and novelty. His pictures of the follies of the 'jeunesse doree' (at iv. 1121, etc.), and of sated luxury (at iii. 1060, etc.), show that he had been a witness of the conditions of life out of which they were engendered. At iv. 784, in speaking of the power of the mind to call up images, he specifies 'conventus hominum, pompam, convivia, pugnas.' But such ill.u.s.trations are rare when compared with those which speak of a life pa.s.sed in the open air, and of intimate familiarity with many aspects of Nature. The vivid minuteness with which outward things are described, as well as the occasional use of such words as _vidi_[19], show that though a few of the sights observed by him may have been drawn from the physics of Epicurus[20], the great ma.s.s of them had either been originally observed by himself or at least had been verified in his own experience. He was endowed not only with the poet's susceptibility to the beauty and movement of the outward world, but also with the observing faculty and curiosity of a naturalist: and by both impulses he was more attracted to the solitudes of Nature than to the haunts of men. Many bright ill.u.s.trations of his argument tell of hours spent by the sea sh.o.r.e. Thus he notes minutely the effect of the exhalations from the salt water in wearing away rocks and walls (i. 336; iv. 220), of the invisible influence of the sea-air in producing moisture in clothes (i. 305; vi. 472), or a salt taste in the mouth (iv. 222), of the varied forms of sh.e.l.ls paving the sh.o.r.e (ii. 374), of the sudden change of colour when the winds raise the white crest of the waves (ii. 765), of the appearance of sky and water produced by a black storm-cloud pa.s.sing over the sea (vi. 256). Other pa.s.sages show his familiarity with inland scenes,--with the violent rush of rivers in flood (i. 280, etc.), or their stately flow through fresh meadows (ii.

362), or their ceaseless unperceived action in eating away their banks (v. 256);--or again, with all the processes of husbandry, the growth of plants and trees, the ways of flocks and herds in their pastures, and the sounds and sights of the pathless woods. While he antic.i.p.ates Virgil in his Italian love of peaceful landscape, he shows some foretaste of the modern pa.s.sion for the mountains,--as (at ii. 331) where he speaks of 'some spot among the lofty hills,' commanding a distant view of a wide expanse of plain, and (at iv. 575) where he recalls the memory of wanderings among mountain solitudes--

Palantis comites c.u.m montis inter opacos Quaerimus et magna dispersos voce ciemus,--

and (at vi. 469) where he notices the more powerful action of the wind on the movements of the clouds at high alt.i.tudes--

Nam loca declarat sursum ventosa patere Res ipsa et sensus, montis c.u.m ascendimus altos.

Even some of the metaphorical phrases in which he figures forth the pursuit of truth seem to be taken from mountain adventure[21]. The mention of companionship in some of these wanderings, and in other scenes in which the charm of Nature is represented as enhancing the enjoyment of a simple meal--

Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae,--

enables us to think of him as, although isolated in his thoughts from other men, yet not separated from them in the daily intercourse of life by any unsocial austerity. Such separation would have been quite opposed both to the teaching and the example of his master. Some remembrance of active adventure is suggested by ill.u.s.trations of his philosophy drawn from the experience of a sea-voyage (iv. 387, etc., 432), of riding through a rapid stream (iv. 420), of watching the action of dogs tracking their game through woods and over mountains (i. 404), or renewing the memories of the chase in their dreams (v.

991, etc.). The lines (at ii. 40, etc., and 323, etc.) show that his imagination had been moved by witnessing the evolutions of armies, not indeed in actual warfare, but in the pomp and pageantry of martial spectacles,--'belli simulacra cientes.' These and many other indirect indications afford some glimpses of his habitual manner of life and of the pursuits that gave him most lively pleasure: but they do not give us any special knowledge of the particular districts of Italy in which he lived, or of the scenes in foreign lands which he may have visited.

The poem tells us nothing immediately of the trials or pa.s.sions of his life, though of both he seems to bear the scars. But as pa.s.sages in which he reveals the deep secrets of human pa.s.sion and suffering prove him to have been a man of strong, ardent, and vividly susceptible temperament, so the numerous ill.u.s.trations drawn from the repertory of his personal observation tell of an eye trained to take delight in the outward face of Nature as well as of a mind unwearied in its search into her hidden laws. One great charm of his work is that it breathes of the open air more than of the library. If, in dealing with the problems of human life, his strain--

'Is fraught too deep with pain,'

yet to him too might be applied the lines written of one who, though not comparable to him in intellectual and imaginative power, yet, in his spiritual isolation from the world, seems almost like his modern counterpart--

'And thou hast pleasures too to share With those who come to thee, Balms floating on thy mountain air And healing sights to see[22].'

But we may trust with even more confidence to the indications of his inner than of his outward life. The spirit and purpose which impelled Lucretius to expound his philosophy can be understood without any collateral knowledge of his history. The dominant impulse of his being is the ardent desire to emanc.i.p.ate human life from the fears and pa.s.sions by which it is marred and degraded. He has more of the zeal of a religious reformer than any other ancient thinker, except one who in all his ways of life was most unlike him, the Athenian Socrates.

The speculative enthusiasm which bears him along through his argument is altogether subsidiary to the furtherance of his practical purpose.

Even the poetical power to which the work owes its immortality was valued chiefly as a pleasing means of instilling the unpalatable medicine of his philosophy[23] into the minds and hearts of unwilling hearers. It is the constant presence of this practical purpose, and the profound sense which he has of the actual misery and degradation of human life, and of the peace and dignity which are attainable by man, that impart to his words the peculiar tone of impa.s.sioned earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient literature.

Among his personal characteristics none is more prominent than his consciousness both of the greatness of the work on which he was engaged, and of his own power to cope with it. The pa.s.sage in which his high self-confidence is most powerfully proclaimed (i. 920, etc.) has been imitated both by Virgil and Milton. The sense of novelty, adventure, and high aspiration expressed in the lines--

Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante Trita solo--

moved Virgil less powerfully in speaking of his humbler theme--

Sed me Parna.s.si deserta per ardua dulcis Raptat amor;

and inspired the English poet in his great invocation:--

'I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.

The sense of difficulty and the joy of overcoming it meet us with a keen bracing effect in many pa.s.sages of the poem. He speaks disdainfully of those enquirers who fall into error by shrinking from the more adventurous paths that lead to truth--

Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai.

Without disowning the pa.s.sion for fame,--'laudis spes magna,' so powerful an incentive to the Roman temperament,--he is more inspired and supported in his arduous task by 'the sweet love of the Muses.'

The delight in the exercise of his art and the joyful energy sustained through the long processes of gathering and arranging his materials appear in such pa.s.sages as iii. 419-20:--

Conquisita diu dulcique reperta labore Digna tua pergam disponere carmina cura:

and again at ii. 730--

Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore Percipe.

The thoroughness and devotion of a student tell their own tale in such expressions as the 'studio disposta fideli,' and the 'noctes vigilare serenas' in the dedication to Memmius, and in the more enthusiastic acknowledgment of the source from which he drew his philosophy at iii.

29, etc.--

Tuisque ex, inclute, chartis, Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant, Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.

The absorbing interest with which he carried on the work of enquiry and of composition appears in ill.u.s.trations of his argument drawn from his own pursuits; as where (ii. 979) in arguing that, if the atoms have the properties of sense, those of which man is compounded must have the intellectual attributes of man, he says,--

Multaque de rerum mixtura dicere callent Et sibi proporro quae sint primordia quaerunt[24];

and, again (at iv. 969), in explaining how men in their dreams seem to carry on the pursuits to which they are most devoted, how lawyers seem to plead their causes, generals to fight their battles over again, sailors to contend with the elements, he adds these lines:--

Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis[25].

His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his task.

The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,--through the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it leads him,--is something different from the delight of a poet in his art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are combined with the pa.s.sion of his whole moral and intellectual being, aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes--'maiestas cognita rerum'--and concentrated on the greatest of practical ends, the emanc.i.p.ation and elevation of human life. The life of contemplation which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and realised he carried out with Roman energy and fort.i.tude. It was with him no life of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied and braced by original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous literary effort employed in giving clearness to obscure materials, and in eliciting poetical charm from a language to which the musical cadences of verse had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was the life of one who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly than any poet who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture forget

'The human heart by which we live.'

His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism, as well as against popular ignorance and superst.i.tion. His polemical att.i.tude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,'

'dede ma.n.u.s,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion of topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised with the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such frequently recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum esse videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[26]. Of other early philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks in terms of admiration and reverence: but Herac.l.i.tus, whose physical explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers as against himself, as--

Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt.