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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Besides the scanty traces of written memorials, there were various
elements in Roman civilisation which received a speedy development in the
direction of literature and science as soon as Greek influence was brought
to bear on them. These may be divided into three classes, viz. rudimentary
dramatic performances, public speaking in the senate and forum, and the
study of jurisprudence.
The capacity of the Italian nations for the drama is attested by the fact
that three kinds of dramatic composition were cultivated in Rome, and if
we add to these the semi-dramatic _Fescenninae_, we shall complete the
list of that department of literature. This very primitive type of song
took its rise in Etruria; it derives its name from Fescennium, an Etrurian
town, though others connect it with _fascinum_, as if originally it were
an attempt to avert the evil eye. [13] Horace traces the history of this
rude banter from its source in the harvest field to its city developments
of slander and abuse, [14] which needed the restraint of the law. Livy, in
his sketch of the rise of Roman drama, [15] alludes to these verses as
altogether unpolished, and for the most part extemporaneous. He agrees
with Horace in describing them as taking the form of dialogue
(_alternis_), but his account is meagre in the extreme. In process of time
the Fescennines seem to have modified both their form and character. From
being in alternate strains, they admitted a treatment as if uttered by a
single speaker,--so at least we should infer from Macrobius's notice of
the Fescennines sent by Augustus to Pollio, [16] which were either lines
of extempore raillery, or short biting epigrams, like that of Catullus on
Vatinius, [17] owing their title to the name solely to the pungency of
their contents. In a general way they were restricted to weddings, and we
have in the first _Epithalamium_ of Catullus, [18] and some poems by
Claudian, highly-refined specimens of this class of composition. The
Fescennines owed their popularity to the light-hearted temper of the old
Italians, and to a readiness at repartee which is still conspicuous at the
present day in many parts of Italy.
With more of the dramatic element than the Fescennines, the _Saturae_
appear to have early found a footing in Rome, though their history is
difficult to trace. We gather from Livy [19] that they were acted on the
stage as early as 359 B.C. Before this the boards had been occupied by
Etruscan dancers, and possibly, though not certainly, by improvisers of
Fescennine buffooneries; but soon after this date _Saturae_ were performed
by one or more actors to the accompaniment of the flute. The actors, it
appears, sang as well as gesticulated, until the time of Livius, who set
apart a singer for the interludes, while he himself only used his voice in
the dialogue. The unrestrained and merry character of the _Saturae_ fitted
them for the after-pieces, which broke up the day's proceedings
(_exodium_); but in later times, when tragedies were performed, this
position was generally taken by the _Atellana_ or the _Mime_. The name
_Satura_ (or _Satira_) is from _lanx saturu_, the medley or hodge-podge,
"quae referta variis multisque primitiis in sacro apud priscos diis
inferebatur." Mommsen supposes it to have been the "masque of the full
men" (_saturi_), enacted at a popular festival, while others have
connected it with the Greek Satyric Drama. In its dramatic form it
disappears early from history, and assumes with Ennius a different
character, which has clung to it ever since.
Besides these we have to notice the _Mime_ and the _Atellanae_. The former
corresponds roughly with our farce, though the pantomimic element is also
present, and in the most recent period gained the ascendancy. Its true
Latin name is _Planipes_ (so Juvenal _Planipedes audit Fabios_ [20] in
allusion to the actor's entering the stage barefoot, no doubt for the
better exhibition of his agility). Mimes must have existed from very
remote times in Italy, but they did not come into prominence until the
later days of the Republic, when Laberius and Syrus cultivated them with
marked success. We therefore defer noticing them until our account of
that period.
There still remain the _fabulae Atellanae_, so called from Atella, an
Oscan town of Campania, and often mentioned as _Osci Ludi_. These were
more honourable than the other kinds, inasmuch as they were performed by
the young nobles, wearing masks, and giving the reins to their power of
improvisation. Teuffel (L. L. S 9) considers the subjects to have been
"comic descriptions of life in small towns, in which the chief personages
gradually assumed a fixed character." In the period of which we are now
treating, _i.e._ before the time of a written literature, they were
exclusively in the hands of free-born citizens, and, to use Livy's
expression, were not allowed to be polluted by professional actors. But
this hindered their progress, and it was not until several centuries after
their introduction, viz., in the time of Sulla, that they received
literary treatment. They adopted the dialect of the common people, and
were more or less popular in their character. More details will be given
when we examine them in their completer form. All such parts of these
early scenic entertainments as were not mere conversation or ribaldry,
were probably composed in the Saturnian metre.
This ancient rhythm, the only one indigenous to Italy, presents some
points worthy of discussion. The original application of the name is not
agreed upon. Thompson says, "The term Saturnius seems to have possessed
two distinct applications. In both of these, however, it simply meant 'as
old as the days of Saturn,' and, like the Greek _Ogugios_, was a kind of
proverbial expression for something antiquated. Hence (1) the rude
rhythmical effusions, which contained the early Roman story, might be
called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their
_antiquity_; and (2) the term _Saturnius_ was also applied to a definite
measure on the principles of Greek prosody, though rudely and loosely
moulded--the measure employed by Naevius, which soon became _antiquated_,
when Ennius introduced the hexameter--and which is the _metrum Saturnium_
recognised by the grammarians." [21] Whether this measure was of Italian
origin, as Niebuhr and Macaulay think, or was introduced from Greece at an
early period, it never attained to anything like Greek strictness of
metrical rules. To scan a line of Livius or Naevius, in the strict sense
of the word, is by no means an easy task, since there was not the same
constancy of usage with regard to quantity as prevailed after Ennius, and
the relative prominence of syllables was determined by accent, either
natural or metrical. By natural accent is meant the higher or lower pitch
of the voice, which rests on a particular syllable of each word _e.g.
Lucius_; by metrical accent the _ictus_ or beat of the verse, which in the
Greek rhythms implies a long _quantity_, but in the Saturnian measure has
nothing to do with quantity. The principle underlying the structure of the
measure is as follows. It is a succession of trochaic beats, six in all,
preceded by a single syllable, as in the instance quoted by
Macaulay:
"The | queen was in her chamber eating bread and honey,"
So in the Scipionic epitaph,
"Qui | bus si in longa licuiset tibi utier vita."
These are, doubtless, the purest form of the measure. In these there is no
break, but an even continuous flow of trochaic rhythm. But even in the
earliest examples of Saturnians there is a very strong tendency to form a
break by making the third trochaic beat close a word, _e.g._
"Cor | nelius Lucius || Scipio Barbatus,"
and this structure prevailed, so that in the fragments of Livius and
Naevius by far the greater number exhibit it.
When Greek patterns of versification were introduced, the Saturnian rhythm
seems to have received a different explanation. It was considered as a
compound of the iambic and trochaic systems. It might be described as an
_iambic hepthemimer_ followed by a _trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic_.
The latter portion was preserved with something like regularity, but the
former admitted many variations. The best example of this _Graecised_
metre is the celebrated line--
"Dabunt malum Metelli | Naevio poetae."
If, however, we look into the existing fragments of Naevius and Livius,
and compare them with the Scipionic epitaphs, we shall find that there is
no appreciable difference in the rhythm; that whatever theory grammarians
might adopt to explain it, the measure of these poets is the genuine
trochaic beat, so natural to a primitive people, [22] and only so far
elaborated as to have in most cases a pause after the first half of the
line. The idea that the metre had prosodiacal laws, which, nevertheless,
its greatest masters habitually violated, [23] is one that would never
have been maintained had not the desire to systematise all Latin prosody
on a Greek basis prevailed almost universally. The true theory of early
Latin scansion is established beyond a doubt by the labours of Ritschl in
regard to Plautus. This great scholar shows that, whereas after Ennius
classic poetry was based on quantity alone, before him accent had at least
as important a place; and, indeed, that in the determination of quantity,
the main results in many cases were produced by the influence of accent.
Accent (Gr. _prosodia_) implied that the pronunciation of the accented
syllable was on a higher or lower note than the rest of the word. It was
therefore a musical, not a quantitative symbol. The rules for its position
are briefly as follows. No words but monosyllables or contracted forms
have the accent on the last; dissyllables are therefore always accented on
the first, and polysyllables on the first or second, according as the
penultimate is short or long, _Lucius, cecidi_. At the same time, old
Latin was burdened with a vast number of suffixes with a long final vowel.
The result of the non-accentuation of the last syllable was a continual
tendency to slur over and so shorten these suffixes. And this tendency was
carried in later times to such an extent as to make the quantity of all
final vowels after a short syllable bearing the accent indifferent. There
were therefore two opposing considerations which met the poet in his
capacity of versifier. There was the desire to retain the accent of every-
day life, and so make his language easy and natural, and the desire to
conform to the true quantity, and so make it strictly correct. In the
early poets this struggle of opposing principles is clearly seen. Many
apparent anomalies in versification are due to the influence of accent
over-riding quantity, and many again to the preservation of the original
quantity in spite of the accent. Ennius harmonised with great skill the
claims of both, doing little more violence to the natural accent in his
elaborate system of quantity than was done by the Saturnian and comic
poets with their fluctuating usage. [24]
To apply these results to the Saturnian verses extant, let us select a few
examples:
"Gnaivod patre prognatus | fortis vir sapiensque."
_patre_ or _patred_ retains its length by position, _i.e._ its metrical
accent, against the natural accent _patre_. In the case of syllables on
which the _ictus_ does not fall the quantity and accent are indifferent.
They are always counted as short, two syllables may stand instead of one--
per liquidum mare sudantes | ditem vexarant.
or the unaccented syllable may be altogether omitted, as in the second
half of the line--
"ditem vexarant."
In a line of Naevius--
"Runcus atque Purpureus | filii terras."
we have in _Purpureus_ an instance of accent dominating over quantity. But
the first two words, in which the _ictus_ is at variance with both accent
and quantity, show the loose character of the metre. An interesting table
is given by Corssen proving that the variance between natural and metrical
accent is greater in the Saturnian verses than in any others, and in
Plautus than in subsequent poets, and in iambics than in trochaics. [25]
We should infer from these facts (1) that the trochaic metre was the one
most naturally suited to the Latin language; (2) that the progress in
uniting quantity and accent, which went on in spite of the great
inferiority of the poets, proves that the early poets did not understand
the conditions of the problem which they had set before them. To follow
out this subject into detail would be out of place here. The main point
that concerns our present purpose is, that the great want of skill
displayed in the construction of the Saturnian verse [26] shows the Romans
to have been mere novices in the art of poetical composition.
The Romans, as a people, possessed a peculiar talent for public speaking.
Their active interest in political life, their youthful training and the
necessity of managing their own affairs at an age which in most countries
would be wholly engrossed with boyish sports, all combined to make
readiness of speech an almost universal acquirement. The weighty
earnestness (_gravitas_) peculiar to the national character was nowhere
more conspicuously displayed than in the impassioned and yet strictly
practical discussions of the senate. Taught as boys to follow at their
father's side, whether in the forum, at the law courts, in the senate at a
great debate, or at home among his agricultural duties, they gained at an
early age an insight into public business and a patient aptitude for work,
combined with a power of manly and natural eloquence, which nothing but
such daily familiarity could have bestowed. In the earlier centuries of
Rome the power of speaking was acquired solely by practice. Eloquence was
not reduced to the rules of an art, far less studied through manuals of
rhetoric. The celebrated speech of Appius Claudius when, blind, aged, and
infirm, he was borne in a litter to the senate-house, and by his burning
words shamed the wavering fathers into an attitude worthy of their
country, was the greatest memorial of this unstudied native eloquence.
When Greek letters were introduced, oratory, like everything else, was
profoundly influenced by them; and although it never, during the
republican period, lost its national character, yet too much of mere
display was undoubtedly mixed up with it, and the severe self-restraint of
the native school disappeared, or was caricatured by antiquarian
imitators. The great nurse of Roman eloquence was Freedom; when that was
lost, eloquence sank, and while that existed, the mere lack of technical
dexterity cannot have greatly abated from the real power of the speakers.
The subject which the Romans wrought out for themselves with the least
assistance from Greek thought, was Jurisprudence. In this they surpassed
not only the Greeks, but all nations ancient and modern. From the early
formulae, mostly of a religious character, which existed in the regal
period, until the publication of the Decemviral code, conservatism and
progress went hand in hand. [27] After that epoch elementary legal
knowledge began to be diffused, though the interpretation of the Twelve
Tables was exclusively in the hands of the Patricians. But the limitation
of the judicial power by the establishment of a fixed code, and the
obligation of the magistrate to decide according to the written letter,
naturally encouraged a keen study of the sources which in later times
expanded into the splendid developments of Roman legal science. The first
institution of the table of _legis actiones_, attributed to Appius
Claudius (304 B.C.), must be considered as the commencement of judicial
knowledge proper. The _responsa prudentium_, at the giving of which
younger men were present as listeners, must have contributed to form a
legal habit of thought among the citizens, and prepared a vast mass of
material for the labours of the philosophic jurists of a later age.
But inasmuch as neither speeches nor legal decisions were generally
committed to writing, except in the bare form of registers, we do not find
that there was any growth of regular prose composition. The rule that
prose is posterior to poetry holds good in Rome, in spite of the
essentially prosaic character of the people. It has been already said that
religious, legal, and other formulae were arranged in rhythmical fashion,
so as to be known by the name of _carmina_. And conformably to this we see
that the earliest composers of history, who are in point of time the first
prose writers of Rome, did not write in Latin at all, but in Greek. The
history of Latin prose begins with Cato. He gave it that peculiar
colouring which it never afterwards entirely lost. Having now completed
our preliminary remarks, we shall proceed to a more detailed account of
the earliest writers whose names or works have come down to us.
CHAPTER III.
THE INTRODUCTION OF GREEK LITERATURE--LIVIUS AND NAEVIUS (240-204 B.C.).
It is not easy for us to realise the effect produced on the Romans by
their first acquaintance with Greek civilisation. The debt incurred by
English theology, philosophy, and music, to Germany, offers but a faint
parallel. If we add to this our obligations to Italy for painting and
sculpture, to France for mathematical science, popular comedy, and the
culture of the _salon_, to the Jews for finance, and to other nations for
those town amusements which we are so slow to invent for ourselves, we
shall still not have exhausted or even adequately illustrated the
multifarious influences shed on every department of Roman life by the
newly transplanted genius of Hellas. It was not that she merely lent an
impulse or gave a direction to elements already existing. She did this;
but she did far more. She kindled into life by her fruitful contact a
literature in prose and verse which flourished for centuries. She
completely undermined the general belief in the state religion,
substituting for it the fair creations of her finer fancy, or when she did
not substitute, blending the two faiths together with sympathetic skill;
she entwined herself round the earliest legends of Italy, and so moulded
the historical aspirations of Rome that the great patrician came to pride
himself on his own ancestral connection with Greece, and the descent of
his founder from the race whom Greece had conquered. Her philosophers
ruled the speculations, as her artists determined the aesthetics, of all
Roman amateurs. Her physicians held for centuries the exclusive practice
of scientific medicine; while in music, singing, dancing, to say nothing
of the lighter or less reputable arts of ingratiation, her professors had
no rivals. The great field of education, after the break up of the ancient
system, was mainly in Greek hands; while her literature and language were
so familiar to the educated Roman that in his moments of intensest feeling
it was generally in some Greek apophthegm that he expressed the passion
which moved him. [1]
It would, therefore, be scarcely too much to assert that in every field of
thought (except that of law, where Rome remained strictly national) the
Roman intellect was entirely under the ascendancy of the Greek. There are,
of course, individual exceptions. Men like Cato, Varro, and in a later age
perhaps Juvenal, could understand and digest Greek culture without thereby
losing their peculiarly Roman ways of thought; but these patriots in
literature, while rewarded with the highest praise, did not exert a
proportionate influence on the development of the national mind. They
remained like comets moving in eccentric orbs outside the regular and
observed motion of the celestial system.
The strongly felt desire to know something about Greek literature must
have produced within a few years a pioneer bold enough to make the
attempt, if the accident of a schoolmaster needing text-books in the
vernacular for his scholars had not brought it about. The man who thus
first clothed Greek poetry in a Latin dress, and who was always gratefully
remembered by the Romans in spite of his sorry performance of the task,
was LIVIUS ANDRONICUS (285-204? B.C.), a Greek from Tarentum, brought to
Rome 275 B.C., and made the slave probably of M. Livius Salinator. Having
received his freedom, he set up a school, and for the benefit of his
pupils translated the Odyssey into Saturnian verse. A few fragments of
this version survive, but they are of no merit either from a poetical or a
scholastic point of view, being at once bald and incorrect. [2] Cicero [3]
speaks slightingly of his poems, as also does Horace, [4] from boyish
experience of their contents. It is curious that productions so immature
should have kept their position as text-books for near two centuries; the
fact shows how conservative the Romans were in such matters.
Livius also translated tragedies from the Greek. We have the names of the
_Achilles_, _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Andromeda_, _Danae, _Equus Trojanus_,
_Tereus_, _Hermione_. In this sphere also he seems to have written from a
commendable motive, to supply the popular want of a legitimate drama. His
first play was represented in 240 B.C. He himself followed the custom,
universal in the early period, [5] of acting in his own dramas. In them he
reproduced some of the simpler Greek metres, especially the trochaic; and
Terentianus Maurus [6] gives from the _Ino_ specimens of a curious
experiment in metre, viz. the substitution of an iambus for a spondee in
the last foot of a hexameter. As memorials of the old language these
fragments present some interest; words like _perbitere (= perire),
anculabant ( =hauriebant), nefrendem (= infantem), dusmus (= dumosus)_,
disappeared long before the classical period.
His plodding industry and laudable aims obtained him the respect of the
people. He was not only selected by the Pontifices to write the poem on
the victory of Sena (207 B.C.), [7] but was the means of acquiring for the
class of poets a recognised position in the body corporate of the state.
His name was handed down to later times as the first awakener of literary
effort at Rome, but he hardly deserves to be ranked among the body of
Roman authors. The impulse which he had communicated rapidly bore fruit.
Dramatic literature was proved to be popular, and a poet soon arose who
was fully capable of fixing its character in the lines which its after
successful cultivation mainly pursued. CN. NAEVIUS, (269?-204 B.C.) a
Campanian of Latin extraction and probably not a Roman citizen, had in his
early manhood fought in the first Punic war. [8] At its conclusion he came
to Rome and applied himself to literary work. He seems to have brought out
his first play as early as 235 B.C. His work mainly consisted of
translations from the Greek; he essayed both tragedy and comedy, but his
genius inclined him to prefer the latter. Many of his comedies have Latin
names, _Dolus_, _Figulus_, _Nautae_, &c. These, however, were not
_togatae_ but _palliatae_, [9] treated after the same manner as those of
Plautus, with Greek costumes and surroundings. His original contribution
to the stage was the _Praetexta_, or national historical drama, which
thenceforth established itself as a legitimate, though rarely practised,
branch of dramatic art. We have the names of two _Praetextae_ by him,
_Clastidium_ and _Romulus_ or _Alimonium Romuli et Remi_.
The style of his plays can only be roughly inferred from the few passages
which time has spared us. That it was masculine and vigorous is clear; we
should expect also to find from the remarks of Horace as well as from his
great antiquity, considerable roughness. But on referring to the fragments
we do not observe this. On the contrary, the style both in tragedy and
comedy is simple, natural, and in good taste. It is certainly less
laboured than that of Ennius, and though it lacks the racy flavour of
Plautus, shows no inferiority to his in command of the resources of the
language. [10] On the whole, we are inclined to justify the people in
their admiration for him as a genuine exponent of the strong native humour
of his day, which the refined poets of a later age could not appreciate.
Naevius did not only occupy himself with writing plays. He took a keen
interest in politics, and brought himself into trouble by the freedom with
which he lampooned some of the leading families. The Metelli, especially,
were assailed by him, and it was probably through their resentment that he
was sent to prison, where he solaced himself by composing two comedies.
[11] Plautus, who was more cautious, and is by some thought to have had
for Naevius some of the jealousy of a rival craftsman, alludes to this
imprisonment [12]:--
"Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro,
Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis accubant."
The poet, however, did not learn wisdom from experience. He lampooned the
great Scipio in some spirited verses still extant, and doubtless made many
others feel the shafts of his ridicule. But the censorship of literary
opinion was very strict in Rome, and when he again fell under it, he was
obliged to leave the city. He is said to have retired to Utica, where he
spent the rest of his life and died (circ. 204 B.C.). It was probably
there that he wrote the poem which gives him the chief interest for us,
and the loss of which by the hand of time is deeply to be regretted.
Debarred from the stage, he turned to his own military experience for a
subject, and chose the first Punic war. He thus laid the foundation of the
class of poetry known as the "National Epic," which received its final
development in the hands of Virgil. The poem was written in Saturnian
verse, perhaps from a patriotic motive; and was not divided into books
until a century after the poet's death, when the grammarian Lampadio
arranged it in seven books, assigning two to the mythical relations of
Rome and Carthage, and the remainder to the history of the war. The
narrative seems to have been vivid, truthful, and free from exaggerations
of language. The legendary portion contained the story of Aeneas's visit
to Carthage, which Virgil adopted, besides borrowing other single
incidents. What fragments remain are not very interesting and do not
enable us to pronounce any judgment. But Cicero's epithet "_luculente_
scripsit" [13] is sufficient to show that he highly appreciated the poet's
powers; and the popularity which he obtained in his life-time and for
centuries after his death, attests his capacity of seizing the national
modes of thought. He had a high opinion of himself; he held himself to be
the champion of the old Italian school as opposed to the Graecising
innovators. His epitaph is very characteristic: [14]
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