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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* * * * *
"Adest adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio!
Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite!
Iamque mari magno classis cita
Texitur: exitium examen rapit:
Advenit, et fera velivolantibus
Navibus complebit manus litora."
This is noble poetry. Another passage from the _Telamo_ is as follows:--
"Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.
De his divitiis sibi deducant drachumam, reddant cetera."
Here he shows, like so many of his countrymen, a strong vein of satire.
The metre is trochaic, scanned, like these of Plautus and Terence, by
accent as much as by quantity, and noticeable for the careless way in
which whole syllables are slurred over. In the former fragment the fourth
line must be scanned--
___ ___ ____
"Virgi | nes ae | quales | vercor | patris mei | meum fac | tum pudet."
Horace mentions the ponderous weight of his iambic lines, which were
loaded with spondees. The anapaestic measure, of which he was a master,
has an impetuous swing that carries the reader away, and, while producing
a different effect from its Greek equivalent, in capacity is not much
inferior to it. Many of his phrases and metrical terms are imitated in
Virgil, though such imitation is much more frequently drawn from his
hexameter poems. He wrote one _Praetexta_ and several comedies, but these
latter were uncongenial to his temperament, and by no means successful. He
had little or no humour. His poetical genius was earnest rather than
powerful; probably he had less than either Naevius or Plautus; but his
higher cultivation, his serious view of his art, and the consistent
pursuit of a well-conceived aim, placed him on a dramatic level nearly as
high as Plautus in the opinion of the Ciceronian critics. His literary
influence will be more fully discussed under his epic poems.
His sister's son PACUVIUS (220-132 B.C.), next claims our attention. This
celebrated tragedian, on whom the complimentary epithet _doctus_ [9] was
by general consent bestowed, was brought up at Brundisium, where amid
congenial influences he practised with success the art of a painter. At
what time he came to Rome is not known, but he gained great renown there
by his paintings before attaining the position of chief tragic poet. Pliny
tells us of a picture in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium,
which was considered as only second to that of Fabius Pictor. With the
enthusiasm of the poet he united that genial breadth of temper which among
artists seems peculiarly the painter's gift. Happy in his twofold career
(for he continued to paint as well as to write), [10] free from jealousy
as from want, successful as a poet and as a man, he lived at Rome until
his eightieth year, the friend of Laelius and of his younger rival Accius,
and retired soon after to his native city where he received the visits of
younger writers, and died at the great age of eighty-eight (132 B.C.). His
long career was not productive of a large number of works. We know of but
twelve tragedies and one _praetexta_ by him. The latter was called
_Paullus_, and had for its hero the conqueror of Perseus, King of
Macedonia, but no fragments of it survive. The great authority which the
name of Pacuvius possessed was due to the care with which he elaborated
his writings. Thirteen plays and a few _saturae_ in a period of at least
thirty years [11] seems but a small result; but the admirable way in which
he sustained the dramatic situations made every one of them popular with
the nation. There were two, however, that stood decidedly above the rest--
the _Antiopa_ and the _Dulorestes_. Of the latter Cicero tells the
anecdote that the people rose as one man to applaud the noble passage in
which Pylades and Orestes contend for the honour of dying for one another.
[12] Of the former he speaks in the highest terms, though it is possible
that in his admiration for the severe and truly Roman sentiments it
inculcated, he may have been indulgent to its artistic defects. The few
lines that have come down to us resemble that ridiculed by Persius [13]
for its turgid mannerisms. A good instance of the excellences which a
Roman critic looked for in tragedy is afforded by the praise Cicero
bestows on the _Niptra_, a play imitated from Sophocles. The passage is so
interesting that it may well be added here. [14] Cicero's words are--
"The wise Greek (Ulysses) when severely wounded does not lament overmuch;
he curbs the expression of his pain. 'Forward gently,' he says, 'and with
quiet effort, lest by jolting me you increase the pangs of my wound.' Now,
in this Pacuvius excels Sophocles, who makes Ulysses give way to cries and
tears. And yet those who are carrying him, out of consideration for the
majesty of him they bear, do not hesitate to rebuke even this moderate
lamentation. 'We see indeed, Ulysses, that you have suffered grievous
hurt, but methinks for one who has passed his life in arms, you show too
soft a spirit.' The skilful poet knows that habit is a good teacher how to
bear pain. And so Ulysses, though in extreme agony, still keeps command
over his words. 'Stop! hold, I say! the ulcer has got the better of me.
Strip off my clothes. O, woe is me! I am in torture.' Here he begins to
give way; but in a moment he stops--'Cover me; depart, now leave me in
peace; for by handling me and jolting me you increase the cruel pain.' Do
you observe how it is not the cessation of bodily anguish, but the
necessity of chastening the expression of it that keeps him silent? And
so, at the close of the play, while himself dying, he has so far conquered
himself that he can reprove others in words like these,--'It is meet to
complain of adverse fortune, but not to bewail it. That is the part of a
man; but weeping is granted to the nature of woman.' The softer feelings
here obey the other part of the mind, as a dutiful soldier obeys a stern
commander."
We can go with Cicero in admiring the manly spirit that breathes through
these lines, and feel that the poet was justified in so far leaving the
original as without prejudice to the dramatic effect to inculcate a higher
moral lesson.
As to the treatment of his models we may say, generally, that Pacuvius
used more freedom than Ennius. He was more of an adapter and less of a
translator. Nevertheless this dependence on his own resources for
description appears to have cramped rather than freed his style. The early
Latin writers seem to move more easily when rendering the familiar Greek
originals than when essaying to steer their own path. He also committed
the mistake of generally imitating Sophocles, the untransplantable child
of Athens, instead of Euripides, to whom he could do better justice, as
the success of his Euripidean plays prove. [15] His style, though
emphatic, was wanting in naturalness. The author of the treatise to
Herennius contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_ of
Pacuvius; and Lucilius speaks of a word "contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano
exordio."
Quintilian [16] notices the inelegance of his compounds, and makes the
just remark that the old writers attempted to reproduce Greek analogies
without sufficient regard for the capacities of their language; thus while
the word _kyrtauchaen_ is elegant and natural, its Latin equivalent
_incurvicervicus_, borders on the ludicrous. [17] Some of his fragments
show the same sceptical tendencies that are prominent in Ennius. One of
them contains a comprehensive survey of the different philosophic systems,
and decides in favour of blind chance (_temeritas_) as the ruling power,
on the ground of sudden changes in fortune like that of Orestes, who in
one day was metamorphosed from a king into a beggar. Pacuvius either
improved his later style, or else confined its worst points to his
tragedies, for nothing can be more classical and elegant than his epitaph,
which is couched in diction as refined as that of Terence--
Adulescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum vocat
Ut sese aspicias, delude quod scriptumst legas.
Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.
When Pacuvius retired to Brundisium he left a worthy successor in L.
ATTIUS or ACCIUS (170-94 B.C.), whom, as before observed, he had assisted
with his advice, showing kindly interest as a fellow-workman rather than
jealousy as a rival. Accius's parents belonged to the class of
_libertini_; they settled at Pisaurum. The poet began his dramatic career
at the age of thirty with the _Atreus_, and continued to exhibit until his
death. He forms the link between the ante-classical and Ciceronian epochs;
for Cicero when a boy [18] conversed with him, and retained always a
strong admiration for his works. [19] He had a high notion of the dignity
of his calling. There is a story told of his refusing to rise to Caesar
when he entered the Collegium Poetarum; but if by this Julius be meant,
the chronology makes the occurrence impossible. Besides thirty-seven
tragedies, he wrote _Annales_ (apparently mythological histories in
hexameters, something of the character of Ovid's _Fasti_), _Didascalia_,
or a history of Greek and Roman poetry, and other kindred works, as well
as two _Praetextae_.
The fragments that have reached us are tolerably numerous, and enable us
to select certain prominent characteristics of his style. The loftiness
for which he is celebrated seems to be of expression rather than of
thought, _e.g._
"Quid? quod videbis laetum in Parnasi iugo
Bicipi inter pinos tripudiantem in circulis
Concutere thyrsos ludo, taedis fulgere;"
but sometimes a noble sentiment is simply and emphatically expressed--
"Non genus virum ornat, generi vir fortis loco." [20]
He was a careful chooser of words, _e.g._
"Tu _pertinaciam_ esse, Antiloche, hanc praedicas,
Ego _pervicaciam_ aio et ea me uti volo:
Haec fortis sequitur, illam indocti possident....
Nam pervicacem dici me esse et vincere
Perfacile patior, pertinaciam nil moror." [21]
These distinctions, obvious as they are to us, were by no means so to the
early Romans. Close resemblance in sound seemed irresistibly to imply some
connexion more than that of mere accident; and that turning over the
properties of words, which in philosophy as well as poetry seems to us to
have something childish in it, had its legitimate place in the development
of each language. Accius paints action with vigour. We have the following
spirited fragment--
"Constituit, cognovit, sensit, conlocat sese in locum
Celsum: hinc manibus rapere raudus saxeum et grave."
and again--
"Heus vigiles properate, expergite,
Pectora tarda, sopore exsurgite!"
He was conspicuous among tragedians for a power of reasoned eloquence of
the forensic type; and delighted in making two rival pleaders state their
case, some of his most successful scenes being of this kind. His opinions
resembled those of Ennius, but were less irreverent. He acknowledges the
interest of the gods in human things--
"Nam non facile sine deum opera humana propria [22] sunt bona,"
and in a fragment of the _Brutus_ he enforces the doctrine that dreams are
often heaven-sent warnings, full of meaning to those that will understand
them. Nevertheless his contempt for augury was equal to that of his
master--
"Nil credo auguribus qui auris verbis divitant
Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos."
The often-quoted maxim of the tyrant _oderint dum metuant_ is first found
in him. Altogether, he was a powerful writer, with less strength perhaps,
but more polish than Ennius; and while manipulating words with greater
dexterity, losing but little of that stern grandeur which comes from the
plain utterance of conviction. His general characteristics place him
altogether within the archaic age. In point of time little anterior to
Cicero, in style he is almost a contemporary of Ennius. The very slight
increase of linguistic polish during the century and a quarter which
comprises the tragic art of Rome, is somewhat remarkable. The old-
fashioned ornaments of assonance, alliteration, and plays upon words are
as frequent in Accius as in Livius, or rather more so; and the number of
archaic forms is scarcely smaller. We see words like _noxitudo,
honestitudo, sanctescat, topper, domuitio, redhostire_, and wonder that
they could have only preceded by a few years the Latin of Cicero, and were
contemporary with that of Gracchus. Accius, like so many Romans, was a
grammarian; he introduced certain changes into the received spelling,
_e.g._ he wrote _aa, ee_, etc. when the vowel was long, reserving the
single _a, e_, etc. for the short quantity. It was in acknowledgment of
the interest taken by him in these studies that Varro dedicated to him one
of his many philological treatises. The date of his death is not quite
certain; but it may be safely assigned to about 90 B.C. With him died
tragic writing at Rome: scarcely a generation after we find tragedy has
donned the form of the closet drama, written only for recitation. Cicero
and his brother assiduously cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing
failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus
and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius
and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under
Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early
but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more
confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an
object, and declamatory force or fine point was the chief end pursued.
CHAPTER VI.
EPIC POETRY. ENNIUS--FURIUS (200-100 B.C.)
We must now retrace our steps, and consider Ennius in the capacity of epic
poet. It was in this light that he acquired his chief contemporary renown,
that he accredits himself to posterity in his epitaph, and that he
obtained that commanding influence over subsequent poetic literature,
which, stereotyped in Virgil, was never afterwards lost. The merit of
discerning the most favourable subject for a Roman epic belongs to
Naevius; in this department Ennius did but borrow of him; it was in the
form in which he cast his poem that his originality was shown. The
legendary history of Rome, her supposed connection with the issues of the
Trojan war, and her subsequent military achievements in the sphere of
history, such was the groundwork both of Naevius's and Ennius's
conception. And, however unsuitable such a consecutive narrative might be
for a heroic poem, there was something in it that corresponded with the
national sentiment, and in a changed form it re-appears in the _Aeneid_.
Naevius had been contented with a single episode in Rome's career of
conquest. Ennius, with more ambition but less judgment, aspired to grasp
in an epic unity the entire history of the nation; and to achieve this, no
better method occurred to him than the time-honoured and prosaic system of
annals. The difficulty of recasting these in a poetic mould might well
have staggered a more accomplished master of song; but to the enthusiastic
and laborious bard the task did not seem too great. He lived to complete
his work in accordance with the plan he had proposed, and though, perhaps,
the _manus ultima_ may have been wanting, there is nothing to show that he
was dissatisfied with his results. We may perhaps smile at the vanity
which aspired to the title of Roman Homer, and still more at the
partiality which so willingly granted it; nevertheless, with all
deductions on the score of rude conception and ruder execution, the
fragments that remain incline us to concur with Scaliger in wishing that
fate had spared us the whole, and denied us Silius, Statius, Lucan, "et
tous ces garcons la." The whole was divided into eighteen books, of which
the first contained the introduction, the earliest traditions, the
foundation of Rome, and the deification of Romulus; the second and third
contained the regal period; the fourth began the history of the Republic
and carried it down to the burning of the city by the Gauls; the fifth
comprised the Samnite wars; the sixth, that with Pyrrhus; the seventh, the
first Punic war; the eighth and ninth, the war with Hannibal; the tenth
and eleventh, that with Macedonia; the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth, that with Syria; the fifteenth, the campaign of Fulvius
Nobilior in Aetolia, and ended apparently with the death of the great
Scipio. The work then received a new preface, and continued the history
down to the poet's last years, containing many personal notices, until it
was finally brought to a close in 172 B.C. after having occupied its
author eighteen years. [1] "The interest of this last book," says
Conington, [2] "must have centred, at least to us, in the discourse about
himself, in which the old bard seems to have indulged in closing this his
greatest poem. Even now we may read with sympathy his boastful allusion to
his late enrolment among the citizens of the conquering city; we may be
touched by the mention he appears to have made of the year of his age in
which he wrote, bordering closely on the appointed term of man's life; and
we may applaud as the curtain falls on his grand comparison of himself to
a victorious racer laden with Olympian honours, and now at last consigned
to repose:--
'Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.'"
He was thus nearly fifty when he began to write, a fact which strikes us
as remarkable. We are accustomed to associate the poetic gift with a
highly-strung nervous system, and unusual bodily conditions not favourable
to long life, as well as with a precocious special development which
proclaims unmistakably in the boy the future greatness of the man. None of
these conditions seem to have been present in the early Roman school.
Livius was a quiet schoolmaster, Naevius a vigorous soldier, Ennius a
self-indulgent but hard-working _litterateur_, Plautus an active man,
whose animal spirits not even the flour-mill could quench, Pacuvius a
steady but genial student, Accius and Terence finished men of the world;
and all, except Terence (and he probably met his early death through an
accident), enjoyed the full term of man's existence. Moreover, few of them
began life by being poets, and some, as Ennius and Plautus, did not apply
themselves to poetry until they had reached mature years. With these facts
the character of their genius as a rule agrees. We should not expect in
such men the fine inspiration of a Sophocles, a Goethe, or a Shelley, and
we do not find it. The poetic frenzy, so magnificently described in the
_Phaedrus_ of Plato, which caused the Greeks to regard the poet in his
moments of creation as actually possessed by the god, is nowhere manifest
among the early Romans; and if it claims to appear in their later
literature, we find it after all a spurious substitute, differing widely
from the emotion of creative genius. It is not mere accident that Rome is
as little productive in the sphere of speculative philosophy as she is in
that of the highest poetry, for the two endowments are closely allied. The
problem each sets before itself is the same; to arrest and embody in an
intelligible shape the idea that shall give light to the dark questionings
of the intellect, or the vague yearnings of the heart. To Rome it has not
been given to open a new sphere of truth, or to add one more to the mystic
voices of passion; her epic mission is the humbler but still not ignoble
one of bracing the mind by her masculine good sense, and linking together
golden chains of memory by the majestic music of her verse.
There were two important elements introduced into the mechanism of the
story by Ennius; the Olympic Pantheon, and the presentation of the Roman
worthies as heroes analogous to those of Greece. The latter innovation was
only possible within narrow limits, for the idea formed by the Romans even
of their greatest heroes, as Romulus, Numa, or Camillus was different in
kind from that of the Greek hero-worshipper. Thus we see that Virgil
abstains from applying the name to any of his Italian characters,
confining it to such as are mentioned in Homer, or are connected with the
Homeric legends. Still we find at a later period Julius Caesar publicly
professing his descent on both sides from a superhuman ancestor, for such
he practically admits Ancus Martius to be. [3] And in the epic of Silius
Italicus the Roman generals occupy quite the conventional position of the
hero-leader.
The admission of the Olympic deities as a kind of divine machinery for
diversifying and explaining the narrative was much more pregnant with
consequences. Outwardly, it is simply adopted from Homer, but the spirit
which animates it is altogether different. The Greek, in spite of his
intellectual scepticism, retained an aesthetic and emotional belief in his
national gods, and at any rate it was natural that he should celebrate
them in his verse; but the Roman poet claimed to utilize the Greek
Pantheon for artistic purposes alone. He professed no belief in the beings
he depicted. They were merely an ornamental, supernatural element, either
introduced at will, as in Horace, or regulated according to traditional
conceptions, as in Ennius and Virgil. Apollo, Minerva, and Bacchus, were
probably no more to him than they are to us. They were names, consecrated
by genius and convenient for art, under which could be combined the
maximum of beautiful associations with the minimum of trouble to the poet.
The custom, which perpetuated itself in Latin poetry, revived again with
the rise of Italian art; and under a modified form its influence may be
seen in the grand conceptions of Milton. The true nature of romantic
poetry is, however, alien to any such mechanical employment of the
supernatural, and its comparative infrequency in the highest English and
German poetry, stamps these as products of the modern spirit. Had the
Romans left Olympus to itself, and occupied themselves only with the
rhetorical delineation of human action and feeling, they would have chosen
a less ambitious but certainly more original path. Lucretius struggles
against the prevailing tendency; but so unable were the Romans to invest
their finer fancies with any other shape, that even while he is blaming
the custom he unawares falls into it.
It was in the metrical treatment that Ennius's greatest achievement lay.
For the first time in any consecutive way he introduced the hexameter into
Latin poetry. It is true that Plautus had composed his epitaph in that
measure, if we may trust Varro's judgment on its genuineness. [4] And the
Marcian oracles, though their rhythm has been disputed, were in all
probability written in the same. [5] But these last were translations, and
were in no sense an epoch in literature. Ennius compelled the intractable
forms of Latin speech to accommodate themselves to the dactylic rhythm.
Difficulties of two kinds met him, those of accent and those of quantity.
The former had been partially surmounted by the comic writers, and it only
required a careful extension of their method to render the deviations from
the familiar emphasis of daily life harmonious and acceptable. In respect
of quantity the problem was more complex. Plautus had disregarded it in
numerous instances (_e.g. dari_), and in others had been content to
recognize the natural length or shortness of a vowel (_e.g. senex ipse_),
neglecting the subordinate laws of position, &c. This custom had, as far
as we know, guided Ennius himself in his dramatic poems; but for the epos
he adopted a different principle. Taking advantage of the tendency to
shorten final vowels, he fixed almost every doubtful case as short, _e.g.
musa, patre, dare, omnibus, amaveris, pater_, only leaving the long
syllable where the metre required it, as _condiderit_. By this means he
gave a dactylic direction to Latin prosody which it afterwards, though
only slightly, extended. At the same time he observed carefully the Greek
laws of position and the doubled letters. He admitted hiatus, but not to
any great extent, and chiefly in the caesura. The lengthening of a short
vowel by the ictus occurs occasionally in his verses, but almost always in
words where it was originally by nature long. In such words the
lengthening may take place even in the thesis of the foot, as in--
"non enim rumores ponebat ante salutem."
Elision played a prominent part in his system. This was natural,
since with all his changes many long or intractable terminations
remained, _e.g. enim, quidem, omnium_, &c. These were generally
elided, sometimes shortened as in the line quoted, sometimes
lengthened as in the comedians,--
"inimicitiam agitantes."
Very rarely does he improperly shorten a naturally long vowel, _e.g.
contra_ (twice); terminations in _o_ he invariably retains, except _ego_
and _modo_. The final _s_ is generally elided before a consonant when in
the thesis of the foot, but often remains in the arsis (_e.g. plenu'
fidei, Isque dies_). The two chief blots on his versification are his
barbarous examples of tmesis,--_saxo cere comminuit brum: Massili portant
invenes ad litora tanas_ (= cerebrum, Massilitanas), and his quaint
apocope, _cael, gau, do_ (_caelum, gaudium, domum_), probably reflected
from the Homeric _do, kri_, in which Lucilius imitates him, _e.g. nol._
(for _nolueris_). The caesura, which forms the chief feature in each
verse, was not understood by Ennius. Several of his lines have no caesura
at all; and that delicate alternation of its many varieties which charms
us in Homer and Virgil, is foreign to the conception, as it would have
been unattainable by the efforts, of the rugged epic bard. Nevertheless
his labour achieved a great result. He stamped for centuries the character
and almost the details of subsequent versification. [6] If we study the
effect of his passages, we shall observe far greater power in single lines
or sentences than in a continuous description. The solemn grandeur of some
of his verses is unsurpassable, and, enshrined in the Aeneid, their
dignity seems enhanced by their surroundings. Such are--
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