A History of Roman Literature by Charles Thomas Cruttwell
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Charles Thomas Cruttwell >> A History of Roman Literature
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There are certain common features shared by the chief Augustan authors
which distinguish them from those of the closing Republic. While the
latter were men of birth and eminence in the state, the former were mostly
Italians or provincials, [1] often of humble origin, neither warriors nor
statesmen, but peaceful, quiet natures, devoid of ambition, and desiring
only a modest independence and success in prosecuting their art. Horace
had indeed fought for Brutus; but he was no soldier, and alludes with
humorous irony to his flight from the field of battle. [2] Virgil prays
that he may live without glory among the forests and streams he loves. [3]
Tibullus [4] and Propertius [5] assert in the strongest terms their
incapacity for an active career, praying for nothing more than enjoyment
of the pleasures of love and song. Spirits like these would have had no
chance of rising to eminence amid the fierce contests of the Republic.
Gentle and diffident, they needed a patron to call out their powers or
protect their interests; and when, under the sway of Augustus, such a
patron was found, the rich harvest of talent that arose showed how much
letters had hitherto suffered from the unsettled state of the times. [6]
It is true that several writers of the preceding period survived into
this. Men like Varro, who kept aloof from the city, nursing in retirement
a hopeless loyalty to the past; men like Pollio and Messala, who accepted
the monarchy without compromising their principles, and who still appeared
in public as orators or jurists; these, together with a few poets of the
older school, such as Furius Bibaculus, continued to write during the
first few years of the Augustan epoch, but cannot properly be regarded as
belonging to it. [7] They pursued their own lines of thought, uninfluenced
by the Empire, except in so far as it forced them to select more trivial
themes, or to use greater caution in expressing their thoughts. But the
great authors who are the true representatives of Augustus's reign,
Virgil, Livy, and Horace, were brought into direct contact with the
emperor, and much of their inspiration centres round his office and
person.
The conqueror of Actium was welcomed by all classes with real or feigned
enthusiasm. To the remnant of the republican families, indeed, he was an
object partly of flattery, partly of hatred, in no case, probably, of
hearty approval or admiration; but by the literary class, as by the great
mass of the people, he was hailed as the restorer of peace and good
government, of order and religion, the patron of all that was best in
literature and art, the adopted son of that great man whose name was
already a mighty power, and whose spirit was believed to watch over Rome
as one of her presiding deities. It is no wonder if his opening reign
stamped literature with new and imposing features, or if literature
expressed her sense of his protection by a constant appeal to his name.
Augustus has been the most fortunate of despots, for he has met with
nothing but praise. A few harsh spirits, it seems, blamed him in no
measured terms; but he repaid them by a wise neglect, at least as long as
Maecenas lived, who well knew, from temperament as well as experience, the
value of seasonable inactivity. As it is, all the authors that have come
to us are panegyrists. None seem to remember his early days; all centre
their thoughts on the success of the present and the promise of the
future. Yet Augustus himself could not forget those times. As chief of the
proscription, as the betrayer of Cicero, as the suspected murderer of the
consul Hirtius, as the pitiless destroyer of Cleopatra's children, he must
have found it no easy task to act the mild ruler; as a man of profligate
conduct he must have found it still less easy to come forward as the
champion of decency and morals. He was assisted by the confidence which
all, weary of war and bloodshed, were willing to repose in him, even to an
unlimited extent. He was assisted also by able administrators, Maecenas in
civil, and Agrippa in military affairs. But there were other forces making
themselves felt in the great city. One of these was literature, as
represented by the literary class, consisting of men to whom letters were
a profession not a relaxation, and who now first appear prominently in
Rome. Augustus saw the immense advantage of enlisting these on his side.
He could pass laws through the senate; he could check vice by punishment;
but neither his character nor his history could make him influence the
heart of the people. To effect real reforms persuasive voice must be found
to preach them. And who so efficacious as the band of cultured poets whom
he saw collecting round him? These he deliberately set himself to win; and
that he did win then, some to a half-hearted, others to an absolute
allegiance, is one of the best testimonies to his enlightened policy. Yet
he could hardly have effected his object had it not been for the able co-
operation of Maecenas, whose conciliatory manners well fitted him to be
the friend of literary men. This astute minister formed a select circle of
gifted authors, chiefly poets, whom he endeavoured to animate with the
enthusiasm of succouring the state. He is said to have suggested to
Augustus the necessity of restoring the decayed grandeur of the national
religion. The open disregard of morality and religion evinced by the
ambitious party-leaders during the Civil Wars had brought the public
worship into contempt and the temples into ruin. Augustus determined that
civil order should once more repose upon that reverence for the gods which
had made Rome great. [8] Accordingly, he repaired or rebuilt many temples,
and both by precept and example strove to restore the traditional respect
for divine things. But he must have experienced a grave difficulty in the
utter absence of religious conviction which had become general in Rome.
The authors of the _De Divinatione_ and the _De Rerum Natura_ could not
have written as they did, without influencing many minds. And if men so
admirable as Cicero and Lucretius denied, the one the possibility of the
science he professed, [9] the other the doctrine of Providence on which
all religion rests, it was little likely that ordinary minds should retain
much belief in such things. Augustus was relieved from this strait by the
appearance of a new literary class in Rome, young authors from the country
districts, with simpler views of life and more enthusiasm, of whom some at
least might be willing to consecrate their talents to furthering the
sacred interests on which social order depends. The author who fully
responded to his appeal, and probably exceeded his highest hopes, was
Virgil; but Horace, Livy, and Propertius, showed themselves not unwilling
to espouse the same cause. Never was power more ably seconded by
persuasion; the laws of Augustus and the writings of Virgil, Horace, and
Livy, in order to be fully appreciated, must be considered in their
connection, political and religious, with each other.
The emperor, his minister, and his advocates, thus working for the same
end, beyond doubt produced some effect. The _Odes_ of Horace in the first
three books, which are devoted to politics, show an attitude of antagonism
and severe expostulation; he boldly rebukes vice, and calls upon the
strong hand to punish it:
"Quid tristes querimoniae,
Si non supplicio culpa reciditur?
Quid leges sine moribus
Vanae proficiunt?" [10]
But when, some years later, he wrote the _Carmen Saeculare_, and the
fourth book of the Odes, his voice is raised in a paean of unmixed
triumph. "The pure home is polluted by no unchastity; law and morality
have destroyed crime; matrons are blessed with children resembling their
fathers; already faith and peace, honour and maiden modesty, have returned
to us," &c. [11] This can hardly be mere exaggeration, though no doubt the
picture is coloured, since the popularity of Ovid's _Art of Love_, even
during Horace's lifetime, is a sufficient proof that profligacy did not
lack its votaries.
To the student of human development the most interesting feature in this
attempted reform of manners is the universal tendency to connect it with
the deification of the emperor. It was in vain that Augustus claimed to
return to the old paths; everywhere he met this new apotheosis of himself
crowning the restored edifice of belief; so impossible was it for him, as
for others, to reconstruct the past. As the guardian of the people's
material welfare, he became, despite of himself, the people's chief
divinity. From the time that Virgil's gratitude expressed itself in the
first Eclogue--
"Namque erit ille mihi semper deus: illius aram
Saepe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuet agnus," [12]
the emperor was marked out for this new form of adulation, and succeeding
poets only added to what Virgil had begun. Even in his _Epistles_, where
the conventionalities of mythology are never employed, Horace compares him
with the greatest deities, and declares that altars are raised to his
name, while all confess him to be the greatest person that has been or
will be among mankind. [13] Propertius and Ovid [14] accept this language
as proper and natural, and the striking rapidity with which it established
itself in universal use is one of the most speaking signs of the growing
degeneracy. Augustus himself was not cajoled, Tiberius still less, but
Caius and his successors were; even Vespasian, when dying, in jest or
earnest used the words "ut puto deus fio." As the satirist says, "Power
will believe anything that Flattery suggests." [15]
Side by side with this religious cultus of the emperor was a willingness
to surrender all political power into his hands. Little by little he
engrossed all the offices of state, and so completely had proscription and
indulgence in turn done their work that none were found bold enough to
resist these insidious encroachments. [16] The privileges of the senate
and the rights of the people were gradually abridged; and that pernicious
policy so congenial to a despotism, of satisfying the appetite for food
and amusement and so keeping the people quiet, was inaugurated early in
his reign, and set moving in the lines which it long afterwards followed.
Freedom of debate, which had been universal in the senate, was curtailed
by the knowledge that, as often as not, the business was being decided by
a secret council held within the palace. Eloquence could not waste itself
in abstract discussions; and even if it attempted to speak, the growing
servility made it perilous to utter plain truths. Thus the sphere of
public speaking was greatly restricted. Those who had poured forth before
the assembled people the torrents of their oratory were now by what
Tacitus so graphically calls the _pacification_ of eloquence [17] confined
to the tamer arena of the civil law courts. All those who felt that
without a practical object eloquence cannot exist, had to resign
themselves to silence. Others less serious-minded found a sphere for their
natural gift of speech in the halls of the rhetoricians. It is pitiable to
see men like Pollio content to give up all higher aims, and for want of
healthier exercise waste their powers in noisy declamation.
History, if treated with dignity and candour, was almost as dangerous a
field as eloquence. Hence we find that few were bold enough to cultivate
it. Livy, indeed, succeeded in producing a great masterwork, which, while
it did not conceal his Pompeian sympathies, entered so heartily into the
emperor's general point of view as to receive high praise at his hands.
But Livy was not a politician. Those who had been politicians found it
unwise to provoke the jealousy of Augustus by expressing their sentiments.
Hence neither Messala nor Pollio continued their works on contemporary
history; a deprivation which we cannot but strongly feel, as we have few
trustworthy accounts of those, times.
In law Augustus trenched less on the independent thought of the jurists,
but at the same time was better able to put forth his prerogative when
occasion was really needed. His method of accrediting the _Responsa
Prudentum_, by permitting only those who had his authorisation to exercise
that profession, was an able stroke of policy. [18] It gave the profession
as it were the safeguard of a diploma, and veiled an act of despotic power
under the form of a greater respect for law. The science of jurisprudence
was ably represented by various professors, but it became more and more
involved and difficult, and frequently draws forth from the satirists
abuse of its quibbling intricacies.
Poetry was the form of literature to which most favour was shown, and
which flourished more vigorously than any other. The pastoral, and the
metrical epistle, were now first introduced. The former was based on the
Theocritean idyll, but does not seem to have been well adapted to Roman
treatment; the latter was of two kinds; it was either a real communication
on some subject of mutual interest, as that of Horace, or else an
imaginary expression of feeling put into the mouth of a mythical hero or
heroine, of which the most brilliant examples are those of Ovid.
Philosophy and science flourished to a considerable extent. The desire to
find some compensation for the loss of all outward activity led many to
strive after the ideal of conduct presented by stoicism: and nearly all
earnest minds were more or less affected by this great system. Livy is
reported to have been an eloquent expounder of philosophical doctrines,
and most of the poets show a strong leaning to its study. Augustus wrote
_adhortationes_, and beyond doubt his example was often followed. The
speculative and therefore inoffensive topics of natural science were
neither encouraged nor neglected by Augustus; Vitruvius, the architect,
having showed some capacity for engineering, was kindly received by him,
but his treatise, admirable as it is, does not seem to have secured him
any special favour. It was such writers as he thought might be made
instruments of his policy that Augustus set himself specially to encourage
by every means in his power. The result of this patronage was an
increasing divergence from the popular taste on the part of the poets, who
now aspired only to please the great and learned. [19] It is pleasing,
however, to observe the entire absence of ill-feeling that reigned in this
society of _beaux esprits_ with regard to one another. Each held his own
special position, but all were equally welcome at the great man's
reunions, equally acceptable to one another; and each criticised the
other's works with the freedom of a literary freemasonry. [20] This select
cultivation of poetry reacted unfavourably on the thought and imagination,
though it greatly elevated the style of those that employed it. The
extreme delicacy of the artistic product shows it to have been due to some
extent to careful nursing, and its almost immediate collapse confirms this
conclusion.
While Augustus, through Maecenas, united men eminent for taste and culture
in a literary coterie, Messala, who had never joined the successful side,
had a similar but smaller following, among whom was numbered the poet
Tibullus. At the tables of these great men met on terms of equal
companionship their own friends and the authors whom they favoured or
assisted. For though the provincial poet could not, like those of the last
age, assume the air of one who owned no superior, but was bound by ties of
obligation as well as gratitude to his patron, still the works of Horace
and Virgil abundantly prove that servile compliment was neither expected
by him nor would have been given by them, as it was too frequently in the
later period to the lasting injury of literature as well as of character.
The great patrons were themselves men of letters. Augustus was a severe
critic of style, and, when he wrote or spoke, did not fall below the high
standard he exacted from others. Suetonius and Tacitus bear witness to the
clearness and dignity of his public speaking. [21]
MAECENAS, as we shall notice immediately, was, or affected to be, a writer
of some pretension; and MESSALA'S eloquence was of so high an order, that
had he been allowed the opportunity of freely using it, he would beyond
doubt have been numbered among the great orators of Rome.
Such was the state of thought and politics which surrounded and brought
out the celebrated writers whom we shall now proceed to criticise, a task
the more delightful, as these writers are household words, and their best
works familiar from childhood to all who have been educated to love the
beautiful in literature.
The excellent literary judgment shown by Augustus contributed to encourage
a high standard of taste among the rival authors. How weighty the
sovereign's influence was may be gathered from the extravagancies into
which the Neronian and Flavian authors fell through anxiety to please
monarchs of corrupt taste. The advantages of patronage to literature are
immense; but it is indispensable that the patron should himself be great.
The people were now so totally without literary culture that a popular
poet would necessarily have been a bad poet; careful writers turned from
them to the few who could appreciate what was excellent. Yet Maecenas, so
judicious as a patron, fell as an author into the very faults he blamed.
During the years he held office (30-8 B.C.) he devoted some fragments of
his busy days to composing in prose and verse writings which Augustus
spoke of as "_murobrecheis cincinni_," "curled locks reeking with
ointment." We hear of a treatise called _Prometheus_, certain dialogues,
among them a _Symposium_, in which Messala, Virgil, and Horace were
introduced; and Horace implies that he had planned a prose history of
Augustus's wars. [22] He did not shrink from attempting, and what was
worse, publishing, poetry, which bore imprinted on it the characteristics
of his effeminate mind. Seneca quotes one passage [23] from which we may
form an estimate of his level as a versifier. But, however feeble in
execution, he was a skilful adviser of others. The wisdom of his counsels
to Augustus is known; those he offered to Virgil were equally sound. It
was he who suggested the plan of the _Georgics_, and the poet acknowledges
his debt for a great idea in the words "_Nil altum sine te meas inchoat_."
He was at once cautious and liberal in bestowing his friendship. The
length of time that elapsed between his first reception of Horace and his
final enrolment of the poet among his intimates, shows that he was not
hasty in awarding patronage. And the difficulty which Propertius
encountered in gaining a footing among his circle proves that even great
talent was not by itself a sufficient claim on his regard. As we shall
have occasion to mention him again, we shall pass him over here, and
conclude the chapter with a short account of the earliest Augustan poet
whose name has come to us, L. VARIUS RUFUS (64 B.C.-9 A.D.), the friend of
Virgil, who introduced both him and Horace to Maecenas's notice, and who
was for some years accounted the chief epic poet of Rome. [24]
Born in Cisalpine Gaul, Varius was, like all his countrymen, warmly
attached to Caesar's cause, and seems to have made his reputation by an
epic on Caesar's death. [25] Of this poem we have scattered notices
implying that it was held in high esteem, and a fragment is preserved by
Macrobius, [26] which it is worth while to quote:
"Ceu canis umbrosam lustrans Gortynia vallem,
Si veteris potuit cervae comprendere lustra,
Saevit in absentem, et circum vestigia lustrans
Aethera per nitidum tenues sectatur odores;
Non amnes illam medii non ardua tentant,
Perdita nec serae meminit decedere nocti."
The rhythm here is midway between Lucretius and Virgil; the inartistic
repetition of _lustrans_ together with the use immediately before of the
cognate word _lustra_ point to a certain carelessness in composition; the
employment of epithets is less delicate than in Horace and Virgil; the
last line is familiar from its introduction unaltered, except by an
improved punctuation, into the _Eclogues_. [27] Two fine verses, slightly
modified in expression but not in rhythm, have found their way into the
_Aeneid_. [28]
"Vendidit hic Latium populis, agrosque Quiritum
Eripuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit."
Besides this poem he wrote another on the praises of Augustus, for which
Horace testifies his fitness while excusing himself from approaching the
same subject. [29] From this were taken two lines [30] appropriated by
Horace, and instanced as models of graceful flattery:
"Tene magis salvum populus velit, an populum tu,
Servet in ambiguum qui consulit et tibi et Urbi,
Iupiter."
After the pre-eminence of Virgil began to be recognised, Varius seems to
have deserted epic poetry and turned his attention to tragedy, and that
with so much success, that his great work, the _Thyestes_, was that on
which his fame with posterity chiefly rested. This drama, considered by
Quintilian [31.] equal to any of the Greek masterpieces, was performed at
the games after the battle of Actium; but it was probably better adapted
for declaiming than acting. Its high reputation makes its loss a serious
one--not for its intrinsic value, but for its position in the history of
literature as the first of those rhetorical dramas of which we possess
examples in those of Seneca, and which, with certain modifications, have
been cultivated in our own century with so much spirit by Byron, Shelley,
and Swinburne. The main interest which Varius has for us arises from his
having, in company with Plotius Tucca, edited the Aeneid after Virgil's
death. The intimate friendship that existed between the two poets enabled
Varius to give to the world many particulars as to Virgil's character and
habits of life; this biographical sketch, which formed probably an
introduction to the volume, is referred to by Quintilian [32] and others.
A poet of inferior note, but perhaps handed down to unenviable immortality
in the line of Virgil--
"Argutos inter strepere Anser olores," [33]
was ANSER. He was a partisan of Antony, and from this fact, together with
the possible allusion in the _Eclogues_, later grammarians discovered that
he was, like Bavius and Maevius, unhappy bards only known from the
contemptuous allusions of their betters, [34] an _obtrectator Virgilii_.
As such he of course called down the vials of their wrath. But there is no
real evidence for the charge. He seems to have been an unambitious poet,
who indulged light and wanton themes. [35] AEMILIUS MACER, of Verona, who
died 16 B.C., was certainly a friend of Virgil, and has been supposed to
be the Mopsus of the _Eclogues_. He devoted his very moderate talents to
minute and technical didactic poems. The _Ornithogonias_ of Nicander was
imitated or translated by him, as well as the _Thaeriaka_ of the same
writer. Ovid mentions having been frequently present at the poet's
recitations, but as he does not praise them, [36] we may infer that Macer
had no great name among his contemporaries, but owed his consideration and
perhaps his literary impulse to his friendship for Virgil.
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).
PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS, or more correctly, VERGILIUS [1] MARO, was born in the
village or district [2] of Andes, near Mantua, sixteen years after the
birth of Catullus, of whom he was a compatriot as well as an admirer. [3]
As the citizenship was not conferred on Gallia Transpadana, of which
Mantua was a chief town, until 49 B.C., when Virgil was nearly twenty-one
years old, he had no claim by birth to the name of Roman. And yet so
intense is the patriotism which animates his poems, that no other Roman
writer, patrician or plebeian, surpasses or even equals it in depth of
feeling. It is one proof out of many how completely the power of Rome
satisfied the desire of the Italians for a great common head whom they
might reverence as the heaven-appointed representative of their race. And
it leads us to reflect on the narrow pride of the great city in not
earlier extending her full franchise to all those gallant tribes who
fought so well for her, and who at last extorted their demand with
grievous loss to themselves as to her, by the harsh argument of the sword.
To return to Virgil. We learn nothing from his own works as to his early
life and parentage. Our chief authority is Donatus. His father, Maro, was
in humble circumstances; according to some he followed the trade of a
potter. But as he farmed his own little estate, he must have been far
removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his
illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the
simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his
admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had
there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in
stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he
assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition
assigns the death of the poet Lucretius. Some time later (53 B.C.), we
find him at Rome studying rhetoric under Epidius, and soon afterwards
philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. The recent publication of Lucretius's
poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the
eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful,
and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth,"
The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling,
deserves to be quoted:--
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