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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Some have considered this extravagant story to be an allegory, [54]
others, again, a covert satire on the vices of his countrymen. This latter
supposition we may at once discard. The former is not unlikely, though the
exact explanation of it will be a matter of uncertainty. Perhaps the ass
symbolizes sensuality; the rose-leaves, science; the priests of Isis,
either the Platonic philosophy, or the Mysteries; the return to human
shape, holiness or virtue. It is also possible that it may be a plea for
paganism against the new religious elements that were gathering strength
at Carthage; but if so, it is hard to see why he should have chosen as his
model the atheistic story of Lucian. In a similar manner the story of
Cupid and Psyche has been made a type of the progress of the soul.
Apuleius was one of those minds not uncommon in a decaying civilization,
in which extreme quasi-religious exaltation alternates with impure
hilarity. He is a licentious mystic; a would-be magician; [55] a
hierophant of pretentious sanctity, something between a Cagliostro and a
Swedenborg; a type altogether new in Roman literature, and a gloomy index
of its speedy fall.
Besides these works of Apuleius, we possess some short philosophical
tracts, embodying some of his Platonist and Pythagorean doctrines. They
are _De deo Socratis_, _De Dogmate Platonis_ in three books, and the _De
Mundo_, a popular theologico-scientific exposition, drawn from Aristotle.
The general tenor of these works will be considered in the next chapter,
as their bearing on the thought of the times gives them considerable
importance.
CHAPTER IX.
STATE OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT DURING THE PERIOD OF THE
ANTONINES--CONCLUSION.
During the second century after Christ we have the remarkable spectacle of
the renaissance of Greek literature. The eloquence which had so long been
silent now was heard again in Dio Chrysostom, the delicate artillery of
Attic wit was revived by Lucian, the dignity of sublime thought was upheld
by Arrian and Marcus Aurelius. It should be remarked that the Greeks had
never quite discontinued the art of eloquence. When their own political
independence ended, they carried their talents into other lands, into
Egypt, India, Asia Minor, sowing colonies of intelligence wherever they
went; but the chief place to which they flocked was Rome. At Rome the hold
they gained was such that even tyranny itself could not loosen it. Their
light spirits and plastic nature made them adapt themselves to every
fashion without difficulty and without regret; even under Tiberius or
Domitian there was always something for a cultured Greek to do. [1]
Rhetoric was the inheritance of the dethroned Greek nation, and they clung
to it with all the fondness of gratitude. Long after the pacification of
the world had destroyed all the subject-matter of oratory, they cherished
the form of it, and practised it with a zeal proportioned to its
worthlessness. Even in her best days, as we know from Thucydides, Greece
had been a victim to fine talking; the words of her delicious language
seemed by their mere sound to have power over those that used them; and
now that patriotism had ceased to inspire her orators, they naturally
sought in the splendour of the Asiatic style an equivalent for the chaste
beauties of ancient national eloquence. There were two classes of Greeks
at this period who effected in no small degree the general spread of
culture. These were the rhetors and the sophists; properly speaking
distinct, but often confounded under the general name of sophist.
The rhetors proper have been already described. We need only notice here
the gradually increasing insignificance of the themes they chose. In the
Claudian era the points discussed were either historical, mythical, or
legal. All had some reference, however distant, to actual pleading before
a court of law. But now even this element of reality has disappeared. The
poetical readings which had been the fashion under Domitian gave place to
rhetorical _ostentations_ which were popular in proportion to their
frivolity or misplaced ingenuity. The heroes of Marathon, [2] the sages of
ancient Greece, had once been the objects of praise. They were now made
the objects of derision and invective. [3] Speeches against Socrates,
Achilles, or Homer, and in favour of Busiris, were commonly delivered, in
which every argument was acutely misapplied, and every established belief
acutely combated. Panegyrics of cities, gods, or heroes, had been a
favourite exercise of the orator's art. Now these panegyrics were expended
upon the most contemptible themes, _infames materiae_ as they were called.
Fronto sang the praises of idleness, of fever, of the vomit, of gout, of
smoke, of dust; Lucian, in a speech still extant, of the fly; others of
the ass, the mouse, the flea! Such were the detestable travesties into
which Greek eloquence had sunk. Roman statesmen frequently displayed their
talents in this way; but as a rule they declaimed in Greek. These orations
were delivered in a basilica or theatre, and for two days previously
criers ranged through the city, advertising the inhabitants of the
lecturer's name and subject.
Other aspirants to fame, gifted with less refinement, paraded the streets
in rags and filth, and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling
flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions
of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their
trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid
abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them
to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days
in the vicious self-indulgence which was the original inspirer of their
tirades.
Every great city was full of these caterers for itching ears, the one sort
fashionable, the other vulgar, but both equally acceptable to their
audience. Some more ambitious spirits, of whom Apuleius is the type, not
content with success in a single town, moved from place to place,
challenging the chief sophist in each city to enter the lists against
them. If he declined the contest, his popularity was at an end for ever.
If he accepted it, the risk was enormous, lest a people tired of his
eloquence might prefer the sound of a new voice, and thus force on him the
humiliation of surrendering his crown and his titles to another. For in
their delirious enthusiasm the cities of Greece and Asia lavished money,
honours, immunities, and statues, upon the mountebank orators who pleased
them. Emperors saluted them as equals; the people chose them for
ambassadors; until their conceit rose to such a height as almost to pass
the bounds of belief. [4] And their morals, it will readily be guessed,
did not rise above their intellectual capacities. Instead of setting an
example of virtue, they were below the average in licentiousness, avarice,
and envy. Effeminate in mind, extravagant in purse, they are perhaps the
most contemptible of all those who have set themselves up as the
instructors of mankind.
But all were not equally debased. Side by side with this truckling to
popular favour was a genuine attempt to preach the simple truths of
morality and religion. For near a century it had been recognised that
certain elements of philosophy should be given forth to the world. Even
the Stoics, according to Lactantius, [5] had declared that women and
slaves were capable of philosophical pursuits. Apuleius, conspicuous in
this department also, was a distinguished itinerant teacher of wisdom.
Lucian at one time lectured in this way. But the most eloquent and natural
of all was Dio Chrysostom, who, though a Greek, is so pleasing a type of
the best popular morals of the time, that we may, perhaps, be excused for
referring to him. He was a native of Bithynia, but in consequence of some
disagreement with his countrymen, he came to Rome during the reign of
Domitian. Having offended the tyrant by his freedom of speech, he was
compelled to flee for his life. For years he wandered through Greece and
Macedonia in the guise of a beggar, doing menial work for his bread, but
often asked to display his eloquence for the benefit of those with whom he
came in contact. Once while present at the Olympic festival and silently
standing among the throng, he was recognised as one who could speak well,
and compelled to harangue the assembled multitudes. He chose for his
subject the praises of Jupiter Olympius, which he set forth with such
majestic eloquence that all who heard him were deeply moved, and a
profound silence, broken only by sobs of emotion, reigned throughout the
vast crowd. Other stories are told showing the effect of his words. On one
occasion he recalled a body of soldiers to their allegiance; on another he
quelled a sedition; on a third he rebuked the mob of Alexandria for its
immoral conduct, and, strange as it may seem, was listened to without
interruption. When Domitian's death allowed him to return to Rome, he
maintained the same courageous attitude. Trajan often asked his advice,
and he discoursed to him freely on the greatness of royalty and its
duties. He seems to have held a lofty view of his mission; he calls it a
_proppaesis iera_, [6] or holy proclamation, and he speaks of himself as a
_prophaetaes alaethestatos taes athanatou physeus_. [7]
What he taught, therefore, was a popular moral doctrine, based upon some
of the simpler theories of philosophy, such as were easily intelligible to
the unlearned, and admitted of rhetorical amplification and illustration
by mythology and anecdote. Considered in one way, this was a great step in
advance from the total neglect of the people by the earlier teachers of
virtue. It shows the more humane spirit which was slowly leavening the
once proud and exclusive possessors of intellectual culture. By exciting a
general interest in the great questions of our being, it paved the way for
a readier reception of the Gospel among those classes to whom it was
chiefly preached. But at the same time by its want of authority, depending
as it did solely on the eloquence or benevolence of the individual
sophist, it prevented the possibility of anything like a systematic
amelioration of the people's character. This side of the question,
however, is too wide to be more than alluded to here, and it is besides
foreign to our present subject. We must turn to consider the state of
cultured thought on matters philosophical and religious; a point of great
importance as bearing on the decline and speedy extinction of literary
effort in Rome.
To begin with philosophy. We have seen that Rome had gradually become a
centre of free thought, as it had become a centre of vice and luxury. The
prejudices against philosophy complained of by Cicero, and even by Seneca,
had now almost vanished. Instead of being indifferent, men took to it so
readily as to excite the fears of more than one emperor. Nero had
persecuted philosophers; Vespasian had removed them from Rome, Domitian
from Italy. After Domitian's death, they returned with greater influence
than ever. Hadrian and Antoninus were favourable to them. Aurelius was
himself one of their number. Philosophy had had its martyrs; [8] and,
after suffering, it had turned towards proselytism. The provinces had
embraced it with enthusiasm. The narrow prejudice which had envied their
intellectual culture [9] now envied their moral advancement; but equally
without effect. Long before this, Musonius Rufus, an aristocratic Stoic,
had admitted slaves to his lectures, [10] and at the risk of his life had
preached peace to the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian. [11] And this
wide-spread movement had, as we have seen, been continued by men like Dio,
and later still by Apuleius.
But by thus gaining in width it lost greatly in depth. There is a danger
when teaching becomes mainly practical of its losing sight of the
fundamental laws amid the multitude of details, and attaching itself to
trifles. There is a superstition in philosophy as well as in religion.
Epictetus gives directions for the trimming of the beard in a tone as
serious as if he were speaking of the _summum bonum_. And stoicism from
the very first, by its absurd paradox that all faults are equal, obviously
fell into this very snare, which, the moment it was popularized, could not
fail with disastrous effect to come to the surface.
Again, the intrusive element of rhetoric greatly impeded strength of
argument. In all practical teaching the point of the lesson is known
beforehand; it is the manner of enforcing it that alone excites interest.
Thus philosophy and rhetoric, which had hitherto been implacable foes,
became reconciled in the furtherance of a common object. Seneca had
affected to despise learning; Gellius and Favorinus, on the contrary,
delighted in its minutest subtleties. Philosophers now declaimed like
rhetoricians, and indifferently in either language. But in proportion as
they addressed a larger public, it became more necessary to use the Greek,
which was now the language of the civilized world. Favorinus, Epictetus,
M. Aurelius himself, all wrote and generally spoke in it.
The reconciliation between philosophy and religion was not less remarkable
than that between philosophy and rhetoric. It seemed as if all the
separate domains of thought were gradually being fused into a kind of
popular moral culture. The old philosophers had as a rule kept morals
altogether distinct from religion. Epictetus and Aurelius make the two
altogether identical. The old philosophers had kept away from the temples,
or, if they went, had taken pains to mock the ceremonies they performed
and to announce that their conformity was a pure matter of custom. The new
philosophers were strictly regular in their religious worship, and not
only observed and respected, but earnestly defended the entire popular
cult. The nobler side of this "reconciliation" is shown in Plutarch, the
grosser and more material side in Apuleius; but in both there is no
mistaking its reality. Plutarch's idea of philosophy is "to attain a truer
knowledge of God." [12] Philostratus, when asked what wisdom was, replied,
"the science of prayers and sacrifices." [13] These men sought their
knowledge of the Divine, not, as did Aristotle, in speculative thought,
but in the collecting and explaining of legends. Stoicism had sought by
compromise after compromise to satisfy the general craving for a religious
philosophy reconcilable with the popular superstition. Its great exponents
had stretched the elasticity of their system to the uttermost. They had
given to their Supreme Being the name of Jove, they had admitted all the
other deities of the Pantheon as emanations or attributes of the Supreme,
they had justified augury by their theory of fate, they had explained away
all the inconsistencies and immoralities of the popular creed by an
elaborate system of allegory; but yet they had failed to content the
religious masses, who divined as by an instinct the hollow and artificial
character of this fabric of compromise. Hence there arose a new school
more suited to the requirements of the time, which gave itself out as
Platonist. This new philosophy was anything but a genuine reproduction of
the thought of the great Athenian. With some of his more popular and
especially his oriental conceptions, it combined a mass of alien
importations drawn from foreign cults, and in particular from Egypt.
We read how Juvenal deplores the inroads of Eastern superstition into
Rome. [14] Syria, Babylon, and Asia Minor had added their mysteries to the
Roman ceremonial. Astrologers were consulted by small and great; the Galli
or eunuch-priests of Cybele were among the most influential bodies in
Rome; and the impure goddess Isis was universally worshipped. [15] Egypt,
which in classic times had been held as the stronghold of bestial
superstition, was now spoken of as a "Holy Land," and "the temple of the
universe." [16] The Stoics had studied in books, or by questioning their
own mind; the Platonists sought for wisdom by travelling all over the
world. Not content with the rites already known, they raked up obscure
ceremonies and imported strange mysteries. Reflection and dialectic were
no longer sufficient to ensure knowledge; asceticism, devotion, and
initiation, were necessary for divine science. The idea broached by Plato
in the _Timaeus_ of intermediate beings between the gods and man, seemed
to meet their requirements; and accordingly they at once adopted it. An
entire hierarchy of _daimones_ was imagined, and on this a system of
quasi-religious philosophy was founded, of which Apuleius is the popular
exponent.
The main tenets of this, the last attempt to explain the mystery of the
universe which gained currency in Rome, were as follows--it will be seen
how completely it had passed from philosophy to theosophy:--The supreme
being is one, eternal, absolute, indescribable, and incomprehensible; but
may be envisaged by the soul for a moment like a flash of lightning. [17]
The great gods are of two kinds, visible, as the sun and stars, and
invisible, as Jupiter and the rest; both these are inaccessible to human
communion. Then come the daemons in their order, and with these man holds
intercourse. Plutarch had adopted a tentative and incomplete form of this
doctrine, _e.g._ he denied the visibility of Socrate's daemon, and spoke
of the death of Pan. But Apuleius is much more thorough-going; he supposes
all the daemons to be at once immortal and visible. Each great god has a
daemon or double, who loves to use his name; and all the stories of the
gods are in reality true of their daemons. In a moral point of view,
daemons are of all characters--good and bad, cheerful and gloomy. [18]
Their interventions, which are perpetual, explain what the stories could
not explain, viz. the idea of Providence. In fact the whole current theory
of the supernatural is easily explained when the existence of these
intermediate beings is admitted. Aware that this theory wandered far from
Roman ideas, Apuleius tries to reconcile it with the national religion by
calling the daemons _genii_, _lares_, and _manes_, which are true Italian
conceptions. To a certain extent the device succeeded; at any rate the new
philosophy resulted in making devotees of the higher classes, as
superstition had long since done with the people.
It seems incredible that any one who had studied the Platonic dialogues
should have fancied theories like these to be their essence. Nevertheless,
so it was. Men found in them what they wished to find, and perhaps no
greater witness could be given to the immense fertility of Plato's
thought. However, when these conceptions came to be imported into
philosophy, it is clear that philosophy no longer knew herself. She had
become hopelessly unable to cope with the problems of actual life;
henceforth there was nothing left but the rigours of the ascetic or the
ecstacy of the mystic. Into these still later paths we shall not follow
it. Apuleius is the last Roman who, writing in the Latin language,
pretends to succeed to the line of thinkers of whom Varro, Cicero, and
Seneca, were the chief. It is true he is immeasurably below them. In his
effeminate union of licentiousness and mysticism he is far removed from
the masculine, if inconsistent, practical wisdom of Seneca, further still
from the glowing patriotism and lofty aspirations of Cicero. Still as a
type of his age, of that country which already exercised, and was soon to
exercise in a far higher degree, an influence on the thought of the world,
[19] he is well worthy of attentive study.
We may now, in conclusion, very shortly review the main features in the
history of Roman literature from Ennius, its first conscious originator,
until the close of the Antonine period.
The end which Ennius had set before him was two-fold, to familiarise his
countrymen with Greek culture, and to enlighten their minds from error.
And to this double object the great masters of Roman literature remained
always faithful. With more or less power and success, Terence, Lucilius,
the tragedians, and even the mimists, elevated while they amused their
popular audiences. In the last century of the Republic, literature still
addressed, in the form of oratory, the great masses to whom scarce any
other culture was accessible. But in poetry and philosophy it had broken
with them, and thus showed the first sign of withdrawal from that
thoroughly national mission with which the old father of Latin poetry had
set out. Yet this very exclusiveness was not without its use. It enabled
the best writers to aim at a far higher ideal of perfection than would
have been possible for a popular author, however scrupulously he might
strive for excellence. It enabled the best minds to concentrate their
efforts upon all that was most strictly national because most strictly
aristocratic, and thus to form those great representative works of Roman
thought and style which are found in the writings of Cicero and Livy, and
the poetry of Horace and Virgil. The responsibility which the possession
of culture involves was now acknowledged only within narrow limits. The
motto, "pingui nil mihi cum populo," was strictly followed, and all the
best literature addressed only to a select circle. Meanwhile the people,
for whom tragedy and comedy had done something, however little, that was
good, neglected by the literary world, debased by bribery and the coarse
pleasures of conquest, sunk lower and lower until they had become the
brutal, sensual mob, inaccessible to all higher influences, which
satirists and philosophers paint in such hideous colours, but which they
did nothing and wrote nothing to improve. Then came the era of the
decline, in which, for the first time, we observe that literature has lost
its supremacy. It is still cultivated with enthusiasm, and numbers many
more votaries than it had ever done before; nevertheless, its influence is
disputed, and with success, by other forces; by tyranny in the first
place, by a defiant philosophy which set itself against aesthetic culture
in the second, and by revived and daily increasing superstition in the
third. This is the beginning of the people's retaliation on those who
should have enlightened them. In vain do emperors issue edicts for the
suppression of foreign rites; in vain do courtly satirists or fierce
declaimers complain that Rome will not be satisfied with ancestral beliefs
and ancestral virtues. The people are asserting themselves in the sphere
of thought, as they had asserted themselves in the sphere of politics ages
before. But the difference between the two peoples was immense. The one
had consisted of virtuous peasants and industrious tradesmen, working for
generations to attain what they knew to be their right; the other was
formed of slaves, of freedmen, many of them foreigners, and others engaged
in occupations by no means honourable; of all that motley multitude who
lived on Caesar's rations and spent their days in idleness, in the circus,
and in crime. Rotten in its highest circles, equally rotten in its lowest,
society could no longer be regenerated by any of the forces then known to
it. The national superstitions, out of which literature had at first
emerged, were replaced by cosmopolitan superstitions of an infinitely
worse kind, which threatened to engulf it at its close, and against which
in the persons of such men as Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus, it strove for
a while with convulsive vigour to make head. But these great spirits only
arrested, they could not avert, the inevitable decay. Where public morals
are corrupt, where national life is diseased, it is impossible that
literature can show a healthy life. The despair that has taken possession
of men's souls, which sheds a misanthropic gloom over the writings of the
elder Pliny and embitters even the noble mind of Tacitus, results from a
conviction that things are incurably wrong, and from a feeling that there
is no conceivable remedy. Men of feebler mould strive to forget themselves
in exciting pleasures, as Statius and Martial; or in courtly society, as
the younger Pliny; or in fond study of the past, as Quintilian; or in
minute and pedantic erudition, as Aulus Gellius. The literature of the
Silver Age is throughout conscious of its powerlessness; and this
consciousness deadens it into tame acquiescence or galls it into
hysterical effort, according to the time and temperament of the author.
Pliny the younger and Quintilian alone show the happily-balanced
disposition of the Golden Age; but what they gain in classic finish they
lose in human interest. The decay of Greece had been insignificant, pretty
but paltry; the decay of Rome on the other hand is unlovely but colossal.
Perhaps in native strength none of her earlier authors equal Juvenal and
Tacitus; none certainly exceed them. But they are the last barriers that
stem the tide. After them the flood has already rushed in, and before long
comes the collapse. In Suetonius and Florus we already see the pioneers of
a pigmy race; in Gellius, Fronto, and Apuleius, they are present in all
their uncouth dwarfishness. Meanwhile the clamours of the world for
guidance grow louder and louder, and there is no one great enough or bold
enough to respond to them. The good emperor would do so if he could; but
in his perplexity he looks this way and that, bringing into one focus all
the cults and ceremonies of the known world, in the vain hope that by
indiscriminate piety he may avert the calamities under which his empire
groans. But nothing is of any avail. The barbarians without, the
pestilence within, decimate his subjects, the hostile gods seem to mock
his goodness, and the simple people who look up to him as their tutelary
power wonder hopelessly why he cannot save them. And thus on all sides the
incapacity of the world to right itself is made clearer and clearer. The
gross darkness that had been once partly put to flight by the light of
Greek genius when philosophy rose upon the world, and once again had been
retarded by the heroic examples of Roman conduct and Roman wisdom, now
closed murkily over the whole world. It was indeed time that a new order
of thought should arise, which should recreate the dead matter and bring
out of it a new and more enduring principle of life, which should give the
past its meaning and the future its hope; and, in especial, should reveal
to literature its true end, the enlightenment and elevation, not of one
class nor of one nation, but of every heart and every intellect that can
be made to respond to its influence among all the nations of the earth.
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