MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 91-80201 MICROFILMED 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilii^ation Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States — Title 17, United States Code — concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. AUTHOR: SIMCOX, GEORGE AUGUSTUS TITLE: STORY OF LATIN LITERATURE FROM.. PLACE: NEW YORK DA TE : 1883 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARHFT Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record ; oVo.O Gi4 Simcox, George Augustus, 1841 T- 1^05, \ liistory of Latin litoraturo from Ennius to Boetliins, by Geor^^e* Augustus Simcox ... New York, Harper & l)rotliers, 1883. ?. v.'lO''; cm. ^ S ?0. 9 Copy •^vir-Z.<>i\f>oX'-<>^^--h^r€ t ^ ■ "fl fV^:c^i\^^ *'V \T^ » A^7^ •'h- ^ • <.' 'M r 'k^'V i:^C^^'!^;^r//. L^^'N'^ ■ ^, c. * >•'% >' ..ti -''o'^f, T-?ih;^' ,)^- ■•^v It* 5-^^:1 * V. • f^ ^y^r *i^ ■/• ', » W-i' ^•^ ij XSl '. *. -^'•^'■ ^-*^v. S'^ yr ^.i^ i/'i-'^. i x^^??ii 0>\ '^Xo.^e) ■::> ^;^»Z mi Columbia Bnibersfttp mtl)f(£itpofllrtu?)Drk \ -V^i A'i it ;.ftVt' liMH LATIN LITERATURE Vol. I. i#: A HISTORY OF LATIN LITERATURE FROM ENNIUS TO BOETHIUS BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX, M.A. FELLOW OF queen's COLLEGE, OXFORD IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I. V NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1883 PREFACE. An ideal history of anything would tend to be a his- tory of everything ; w hether the primary subject were letters, institutions, manners, wars, or arts, the same figures, the same facts would present themselves over and over again in slightly different lights. In illustrat- ing a truism, one period or one subject is as good as another. Take the days of Domitian. His colossal equestrian statue, the Hercules which held the dessert of Vindex, the sculpture gallery of Vopiscus, which were celebrated by Martial and Statins, all ought to find their place in a perfect history of arts, of manners, or of letters. Was Domitian's effigy less ridiculous than the Duke of Wellington's? Was Vindex the happy pos- sessor of an original of Lysippus inherited from Sulla, and Hannibal and Alexander the Great ? Was Statins enthusiastic over a collection of skilful reductions from ancient masterpieces or a collection of audacious forg- eries that professed to be original models ? It is hardly his fault that we have to guess; contemporaries knew. Again, take Roman law ; it would find a place in a his- tory of Roman style, of Roman science, of Roman soci- ety, for jurists developed a style of their own, elabo- rated their science for its own sake, accommodated its matter to the movement of society and the needs of 391023 VI PREFACE. the day; but the monuments are hopelessly defective. Almost all the positive law of the great writers of the second and third centuries is lost ; we have only two elementary treatises, both mutilated, and the miserable fragments of the Digest selected, not because they were representative, but because they could be clipped to fit into the motley mosaic. The laws of the republic have perished, from the twelve tables downward. The great lawyers of the republic hardly wrote at all ; the great lawyers of the early empire were superseded. Once more, a history of Roman grammar ought to include a history of Roman schools and schoolmasters from the Decemvirs to Cassiodorus, which would be equally in- teresting to the student of literature, of manners, and of institutions ; for the teaching of grammar up to a point which often varied was endowed in various ways. But here, too, the greater part of the evidence has dis- appeared. Most of what we know, of the Latin gram- marians is in the shape of glossarial notes reduced to the curtest shape by the laziness of successive copyists ; the rest is partly a few minor treatises of good times, pre- served quite at hap-hazard, and rather more extensive treatises of worse times, preserved because they were written last ; partly meagre biographical notices due to writers increasingly inclined to abbreviate. We ask almost in vain what books the grammarians of a given day read, how much of their reading they communi- cated to their pupils, or, indeed, to anybody but their note-books. True, matters might be worse : there are no such de- plorable gaps in Latin literature as in Greek. The loss of the lyric po€try of Lesbos outweighs the loss of all PREFACE, Vll the dramatic poetry of the age of Augustus, of almost all the tragic poetry of the age of Nero and Vespasian ; the New Comedy is better worth regretting than the covicedia togata, and the mimes of Sophron than the mimes of Laberius. We can spare the predecessors of Livy better than Philistus, Ephorus, and Timaeus, or even Theopompus, and the gaps in Polybius may be set against the gaps in Tacitus. Still, we can follow the movement of Greek literature, as a whole, more easily than that of Latin. Hardly any period of Greek literature, except that between the death of Cimon and the death of Demos- thenes, is so well known as the periods of Latin litera- ture from the death of Sulla to the death of Augustus, from the death of Nero to the death of Trajan ; but at Rome all is darkness before and between and beyond, till one comes to the days of Diocletian. Even the days of Augustus are full of insoluble problems. What were the tragedies of Varius or the comedies of Melis- sus, the freedman of Maecenas, like? We are just told that Melissus tried to reproduce the tone of a better society than his predecessors ; we cannot tell, if he was ever acted, how his plays were received, whether they had more literary value than '' Caste " or " Ours." Did Horace, in his satire on legacy-hunters, imitate the ** Necyomantia" of Laberius, as we happen to know that Theocritus imitated Sophron ? What was Augus- tan oratory like ? Even Antiphon is an intelligible per- sonality, while Cassius, Messalla, and Pollio are names, and nothing more. Before Ennius we hardly know whether there was a vernacular literature at all, whether the Fauni and Carmentes were, as Professor Nettleship VI 11 PREFACE, PREFACE. IX has suf^gested, its official guardians, or whether they were supernatural beings who inspired it. There are other difficulties less directly due to our ignorance. How shall we separate what belongs to biography, what belongs to philosophy, what belongs to history in the narrower sense from what belongs to literature? The history of the talent of Tacitus is complete without the history of his career, even if we guess that his enforced compliances under Domitian imbittered him. Can we say the same of the talent of Horace? Can one judge fairly of the intention, the good faith, the effectiveness of speeches like Cicero's and apologetical memoirs like Caesar's without some appreciation of the political situation? If political his- torians have done something less than justice to Cicero, something else than justice to Cx^sar, can one take the political history for granted? Can one even take for granted the convenient classification of orators as adher- ents of assumed aristocratical and democratical parties? Can one discuss the method of Lucretius's philosophi- cal poem, or even Cicero's philosophical tracts, without trenching a little upon their matter? We need a fur- ther knowledge of early Roman history to form an adequate opinion of the unconscious hypocrisy of Livy, who neglects, to an extent we do not know, the real springs of affairs — of which we generally know just as much as he allows us to guess — in favor of all sorts of imaginary motives, coined sometimes in the interests of edification, sometimes in the interests of family or national vainglor^^ When we come to the fourth century and to a litera- ture mainly Christian, it is far more puzzling to draw the line between the history of literature and the his- tory of theology than it was before to draw the line between the history of literature and the history of philosophy. Professor Ebert, in his history of Christian Latin literature, cuts the knot by excluding dogmatic theology and admitting everything else. Such a rule ex- cludes a book as well worth reading as the *' De Trini- tate " of St. Augustin, and includes the dreary chron- icle of Prosper, and other chronicles more dreary still. It tells us much more of St. Jerome as a continuator of Suetonius and Eusebius than of his quaint and passion- ate controversies, which never had the misfortune to become text-books in Carlovingian or mediaeval schools. Of course, it is a confession of defeat to despair of organic unity and fall back upon a sort of comparative portrait-gallery, or rather, perhaps, one should say, a series of sketches, now slighter and now fuller, contrast- ed ill or well, with more or less of background to throw them up. Even then it is not easy to settle the ques- tion of scale. Some of my readers may think that overmuch space has been given to a writer like Horace, because the historian found him sympathetic; to a writ- er like Ovid, for an opposite reason, because it seemed necessary to sample a large assortment of wares repeat- edly if it was too difficult to analyze them ; while a writer like Ouinctilian may have received less than his due because the form of his work is hardly separable in any degree from the matter, and it seems as if any space reserved for him would be absorbed by a colorless, un- profitable pr(fcis. My original aim in writing was to do something tow- ards making Latin literature intelligible and interesting A* ..; PREFACE. as a whole to the cultivated laity who might like to realize its literary worth, whether they read Latin or no. It seemed impossible to do this in any adequate measure within the limits of a hand-book for beginners. Hand-books for advanced students exist already, but their necessary severity of method reduces every au- thor to a skeleton, and almost excludes literary criti- cism. Perhaps one may hope that even scholars famil- iar with the masterly outline of Bernhardy, and the rich storehouse which we owe to the self-denying diligence of Professor Teuffel, may find these volumes serviceable in their way. My own obligations are greatest to Pro- fessor Teuffel, from whom (and in a less degree from Professor Ebert) I have borrowed largely for details in the chronological tables which have been prefixed to each volume in order to compensate, in some measure, for any want of precision in the text. My best thanks are due to the Rev. R. L. Clarke, of Queen's College, Oxford, and to my brother, the Rev. W. H. Simcox, of Weyhill, who have read the proof- sheets and enabled me to correct many inaccuracies, also to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox for much valuable ad- vice. I am also indebted to a very suggestive paper by Professor Nettleship, upon Roman satire, and to the author of an article in the CornJiill Magazine, who con- victed Aulus Gellius of boasting that he had picked up on a second-hand book -stall the erudition he really owed to Pliny. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Chronological Table PAGE XV INTRODUCTION. Italian Races : Latin — Sabellian — Etruscan .... Some Contrasts of Italian and Greek Culture Latin Literature as Classical PAGE 2 7 Latin Literature as Dependent upon Greece : its Epochs The Actual Beginning of Latin Literature : Livius Androni- cus and Nasvius 10 i6 PART I. early literature of the republic. CHAPTER L Ennius : the ** Annals " 22 CHAPTER IL latin tragedy under the republic. Ennius 34 Pacuvius . . . . • 37 Accius . . . . '41 His Successors .... 42 CHAPTER HL EARLY LATIN COMEDY. Plautus .... Caecilius .... 46 53 Terence 54 Afranius 60 CHAPTER IV. ROMAN SATIRE. Ennius 62 Luciiius 63 CHAPTER V. EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. The "Annals" . . 69 Fabius and Cincius . • 73 Glabrio and Scipio . . 74 Cato and his Imitators • 75 Caelius .... • 79 XII CONTENTS. PART II. LATER LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC. CHAPTER L LAST POETRY OF THE REPUBLIC. Lucretius . . . . _ Catullus CHAPTER H. ORATORY OF THE REPUBLIC. Cicero's Predecessors M. Cornelius Cethegus . Cato C. La^lius .... Scipio: Galba . Porcina : Fannius : Carbo Scaurus .... G. Gracchus C. Galba: C. Fimbria Antonius and Crassus Crassus .... L. Marcius Philippus C. Aurelius Cotta P. Sulpicius Rufus: Curio: C. Julius Cx sar .... Hortensius Cicero .... His Position and Training His Poetry Early Speeches Prosecution of Vcrres : other Speeches Consulship Contest with Cati lina .... " Pro Murena :" Quarrel with Clodius. Exile of Cicero. His Return and Subsequent Policy . . . .157 Cicero's Struggle with Anto- nius PAGE 84 107 122 122 123 126 128 129 130 132 134 136 136 137 139 146 147 152 155 ^11 His Death Cicero's Philosophy . Minor Works . Political Treatises . Rhetorical Works . Oratorical Characteristics Cicero's Contemporaries and Successors: Auctor ad He - rennium M. Claudius Marcellus : Cae sar .... M. Calidius : C. Curio : M. Cai lius Rufus: C. Licinius Cal vus .... M. Brutus Pollio and Messalla . PAcr it)3 165 174 175 177 iSc 186 1 88 191 192 15S 163 CHAPTER IH. LATER HISTORIANS OF THE PUBLIC. Later Annalists and Memoir Writers : Cn. Gellius : M i^2milius Scaurus, etc. . Q.Claudius Quadrigarius Valerius Antias Cornelius Sisenna . Licinius Macer /Eli us Tubero . T. Pomponius Atticus Cornelius Nepos Varro .... Caesar's Commentaries . Gallic War Civil Wars Hirtius .... Hirtius's Continuators Sallust .... The "Catilina" The "Jugurtha" RE- 195 196 198 200 201 202 203 203 206 208 210 216 219 224 229 CONTENTS. xiu PART IIL AUGUSTAN AGE. CHAPTER L General Considerations . PAGE 244 CHAPTER H. VERGIL. Early Writings . 256 l)Ucolics .... • 259 Georgics .... . 264 yEneid .... . 271 CHAPTER HL HORACE. Satires .... . 287 Second Book of Satires . . 294 Epodes .... • 300 First Three Books of Odes • 305 First Book of Epistles . 314 Last Lyrics . 318 Second Book of Epistles and his Poetica . 319,320 CHAPTER V. THE LAST POETS OF THE AGE OF AU- GUSTUS, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS. PAGE 374 Cornelius Severus and Marsus Pedo Gratius Faliscus Manilius . Phaedrus . T. Calpurnius Siculus CHAPTER VL LIVY. CHAPTER IV. TIBULLUS: PROPERTIUS: OVID Tibullus . Third and Fourth Books Propertius Second Book . Third Book Fourth and Fifth Books Ovid " Letters of Heroines" " Amores " "Art of Love" *' Remedies of Love " " Metamorphoses " . The " Fasti " . Exile of Ovid . *'Ibis" . •' Tristia " and Letters from Pontus ..... 324 326 327 330 331 332 334 335 341 347 352 354 367 369 370 370 377 Zll 379 385 389 Dionysius of Halicarnassns 426 Pompeius Trogus . 426 CHAPTER VH. TECHNICAL LITERATURE Hyginus .... . 428 Fenestella 428 M. Verrius Flaccus . . 428 Vitruvius .... 430 Pompeius Mela 431 The Sextii . . . . 431 CHAPTER VHL THE DECLAIMERS. The Elder Seneca . 433 M. Porcius Latro 434 The Character of the Themes • 435 Latro .... 443 Gallio .... 445 Albucius .... . 445 Mamercus Scaurus . ■ 447 Labienus and Cassius Severus ■ 447 CHAPTER IX. HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS. M. Velleius Paterculus . .451 . 452 Valerius Maximus INDEX 461 A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Rome founded .... Accession of Numa . .' I Tarquin expelled . . . ? L. Cornelius Scipio Bar- batus, consul . . . , L. Cornelius Scipio, son of above consul . . . Naval victory of C. Duil- lius Close of the first Punic War P. Cornelius Scipio Afri- canus born . . . . B.C. ? 753 ? 713 753-5 505 Salian song (only known in fragments). Liturgy of Arval brothers (preserved i in an inscription of a.d. 218). 12 Leges Regime (in fragments). Treaty with Carthage (translated by Polybius from the inscription ac- cepted /y ///;/; as contemporary). 320 Decree to reassure the people of Tibur, who imagined they were suspected of an intention to revolt : from an inscription not contemporary, found at Tibur ; formerly in the Barberini collection, now lost. 298 CI rc3. 280-1 CQ^P'^^P^^s of the Scipios. 272 260 ? 254 244 243 241 240 239 235 Livius Andronicus came to Rome. Columna Rostrata. The inscription is an ancient restoration, and is now defaced in several places. T. Maccius Plautus born. Lex Silia de Ponderibus (on weights and measures), quoted by Festus. Lex Papiria de Sacramentt), providing that the city praetor on coming into office should hold an election of three officials, charged to see that all liti- gants should pay into court the sums they staked to be consecrated (/. ^. confiscated) if they failed to make good their plea. First play performed at Rome. .Birth of Q. Ennius. i Cn. Naevius first exhibits, according to A. Gellius. XVI CHKOXOLOGICAL TABLE. CHROXOLOGfCAL TABLE. xvii M. Porcius Cato born . Hannibal besieges Sa- guntum Hannibal crosses the Alps Battle of Cannae . . . Oppian law passed to forbid women to i)os- sess more than half an ounce of gold jewel- lery Defeat and death of I las- drubal at bena (Jallica. M. Cornelius Cethegus (whom Knnius praises as an orator) is con- sul Battle of Zama .... 15. c. 234 219 21S 216 »< 215 210 207 205 204 203 202 199 IJirth of M. Pacuvius, sister's son of Knnius. Q. Fabius Pictor, the historian, is sent I as ambassador to Delphi. First known play of Plautus,the Sticluis. Thanksgiving ode by L. Livius Andro- nicus, who also wrote (a) abridged translation of the Odyssey; (/■-) trage- dies — Achilles (ti. Karkinos), tAjax Mastigophorus ' (So|)hocles), Armo- rum Judicium (/lischylus and Sopho- cles ?), *Fc|Uos Trojanos''* {} Sinon of Sophocles), /ILgisthus, *Hermi<)ne (Sophocles?), Andromeda (? huripi- des), *Hanae {} Sophocles), Ino ( ? yEschylus), Tcreus ; {c) comedies — Gladi(»lus (perhaps an historical play), Ludius, Verpus (or Virgas or Auriga). Editions : all fragments — H. liiintzer, Berlin, 1835 : fragments of plays in O. Ribbeck, Scaenicce Poe- sis Romanorum relliquiie, Berlin, 1871, 1873 : fragments of tragedies are exi)lained in " Die Romische Tragodie im Zeitalter der Republik dargcstellt," O.Ribbeck,Berlin, 1872. Death of P. Licinius Crassus Dives, a celebrated orator. ILnnius comes to Rome. Cn. Noevius dies in exile : he wrote {a) History of the first Punic War in Sa- turnian verse (the first two books treated of the mythical history of Rome and Carthage) ; (/') tragedies — * Andromache, Daiiae^ Eqitos Ttq- * Plavs where the Greek original is extant are marked with an obelus. 2 Plays possibly repeated by later writers are marked with an asterisk. 3 Plays possibly based on an earlier Latin work are printed in italics. li.C. Battle of Cynoscephalae, end of war with Philip. Battle of Magnesia Campaign of M. Fulvius Nobilior, patron of Kn- nius in --Etolia . . . 197 196 195 190 189 Jdniis, Hector Proficiscens ( } Asty- damus), /l^sione (.-^ Philocles), Ij^hi- genia (Euripides and Sophocles), Lucurgus (? /Eschylus and Poly- phradmon), on the Thracian legend * of Bacchus and his enemies ; (r) his- torical plays — Clastidium, on the conquest of Cisalpine Gaul, Romu- lus, perhaps Lupus, /. e. Alimonium Ronuili et Remi ; (d) comedies — Acontizomenos (the javelin trick like the Chinese knife trick), Agitatoria, Agrypnuntes (the Wideawakes.?), Appella, Ariolus, *Carb()naria, Chla- niydaria,*Colax (the Flatterer),Com- motria (the Waiting - woman), Co- rollaria (which turned upon a gar- land), Dementes, Demetrius (/. ^., .'' Diobohuia), Dolus, Figulus, Glau- coma (in which some old man had dust thrown in his eyes), Gymnas- ticus, Lampadio, Leo, Ludus (per- haps rather Lupus), Nagido, Nautae, *Nervolaria (in which some one was bo-imd), Pcclex (the concubine), Per- sonata (which turned on a mask), Pro- jectus (an abandoned child), Quadri- gemini, Stalagmonissa (either on an earring or a slave named Stalagmus), Stigmatias (on a slave who wiis branded), Tarentilla (the scene or the heroine came from 'l'arentum),Tech- nicus, Testicularia, Tribacchus, Tri- phallus, Tunicularia. The text of the authors who quote these plays is uncertain, as often to leave it doubt- ful whether a play belongs to Livius or Na2vius or Novius. Editions — all the fragments by E. Klussman, Jena, 1843. l*""ic War, H. Vahlen, ( Leipsic, 1853). Plays — O. Rib- beck. Birth of Terence ; death of M. Corne- lius Cethegus. Speech of Cato in defence of the Op- pian law. Alleged date of interview between P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus and Han- nibal, recorded by Acilius Glabrio. XVI 11 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. M. Porcius Cato, Censor. 15. c. 1 86 184 Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus, known from a copy found at Teriolo in Calabria, now at Vienna. Death of Plautus ; Stichus (from Me- nander), 210 K.C., Miles Gloriosus '(from the Alazon of Menander), per- formed 204 and 186, Cistellaria (un- certain original), 199 B.C., Persa, 196 K.C., Aulularia, after 195 B.C., Mer- cator, not before 195 B.C., Asinaria (from the Onagus of Diphilus), 194 B.C., Curculio, after 193 B.C., Rudens (uncertain original), 192 B.C., Pseudu- lus, after 192 B.C., Truculentus, 190 B.C., Bacchides (from Menander, with additions), 189 B.C., Poenulus (from Menander), Casina (from Diphilus), beft)re 186 B.C., Trinummus (from Philemon), 186 B.C., Epidicus in pres- ent form, after 165 B.C. Other plays of uncertain date recognized by Varro are the Amphitruo (of uncertain ori- gin), Menaechmei, Mostellaria (from the Phasma of xMenander), Capteivei, Vidularia: the latter has been lost. L. /4illius Stilo recognized twenty-five plays as genuine, probably including those marked below in quotations, of which the Conmorientes is at- tested by the prologue of the Adel- phi, the Saturio, and Addictus, by Aulus Gellius, VI. iii. 4 (on the au- thority of Varro), as written, like an- other play (not named), in the mil- ler's shop. Kitschl thinks the fol- lowing may be the nineteen plays about which Varro hesitated on the ground that the style was like Plau- tus's : " vSaturio," " Addictus " (on his own experience as a bankrupt .-'), P>oeotia, N'eyi'olaria^ F'retum, Trige- mini, .'* Acharistio Astragalizontes, Parasitus Piger, Parasitus Medicus, *' Conmorientes " (from Diphilus), Condalius, Gemini lyenones, Fenera- trix, Frivolaria, Sitellitergus, Fugi- tivi, Cacistio, Ilortulus, Artemo — all most likely stock plays, more or less touched up by Plautus when revived. Other plays attributed to Plautus are *' Coliix,'" attested by the prologue of the Eunuchus, Carbonaria^ Acharis- tio, Bis Compressa, Aruns, Agroecus, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XIX Hannibal dies at the Court of Prusias . . P. Scii)io Africanus in exile in Campania . . Istrian campaign cele- brated by Ennius . . Cato speaks in favor of the Voconian law, which restricted wom- en's right to inherit B.C. ?i83 181 180 170 169 Dyscolus, Phlegon, Cornicula, Col- cestis, Baccaria, Caucus, vel Praedones. There is no satisfactory edition of Plautus later than that of Grono- vius, reissued by Ernesti, 1760 a.d. ; Weise's edition (Leipsic, 1847) ^"^^s been generally condemned. Ritschl's three editions, one mostly posthu- mous, are all incomplete ; so is the smaller edition of Fleckeisen, which is based upon Ritschl's. The MSS. fall into two families, one represented by the Ambrosian palimpsest, the rest represent the Calliopian recen- sion, undertaken at the end of the fourth century a.d. •^ Birth of Lucilius. Birth of L. Accius, or Attius, the tragic poet, son of a freedman of Pisaurum. Birth of Tiberius Gracchus. Death of Q. Ennius. The Annals form eigh- teen books — I. to death of Romulus ; II. Numa, Tullus, and Ancus ; III. the story of the Tarqnins to the end of the monarchy ; IV. the history of the Republic till the capture of Rome by the Gauls ; V. the Samnite Wars ; VI. the war with Pyrrhus ; VII. first Punic War ; VIII. IX. war with Hannibal ; X. XI. war with Philip; XII. uncertain ; XIII. XIV. war with Antiochus ; XV. the war of Fulvius in /Etolia, and the death of the elder Africanus ; XVI. in honor of the Denter brothers, who distinguished themselves in the Istrian wars ; XVII. XVIII., a continuation to 1 74 B.C., with an autobiography. The last three books seem to form an ap- pendix, the death of Scipio being the original conclusion. Of the tragedies of Ennius, Alexander, Andromeda ( .'' Athamas), * Hecuba, t Iphigenia, tMedea Exul, Melanippa, Telephus, ^Aiidromacha ^chmalotis are taken from Euripides, so probably Nemea, Alcumaeo, Athamas, Thyestes (great- ly simplified), Cresphontes, Erech- XX CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXI i;.f" Battle of Pydna; downfall, of Macedonian mon- archy 1 68 t( 165 164 161 159 theus, Medea Atheniensis, and tPhoe- ni>-sx'. Achilles was from Homer, and another from Aristarchus (an Alexandrine poet), the tKumenides from /Kschylus, the t Ajax from Sophocles. The Ambracia, an his- torical play probably on the capture of the town by Fulvius, i)ossibly on the war with Pyrrhus, whf)se capital was there. The Cupuncula and the Pancratiastes are the only known titks ot comedies. All the frag- ments, including the Satires and Hedyi)hau;ctica, have been edited by Vahien (Lei|)sic, 1856), the dramatic fragments by Kibbeck,Scxnic3L- Poe- sis Romanorum Kelliquiac. Cato's speech in defence of the Rho- dians. Death of CaL'cilius Statins. ( )f his known coniedies, Andria, An- drogynos, Chalcia, Chryseon, Dar- danus, Kphesio, Hymnis, Hypoboli- maanis (there seem to have been at least three plays under this title), Rastraria, Imbrii, Karine, Nauclerus, Ol)olostates, Pausimachos, Philu- mena, Plorium, Polumeni (on the same plot as the Persa of Plantus?), Progamos, Synaristosac, Synci^hebi, Syracus)n,Titthe, are taken from Me- nander, Chrysis and Epiclcros.'' from Antiphancs, Kpislolograpluis from PositMppus, Epistula from Alexis. Acpiilius, author of the Boeotia ascribed to Plautus. r>irth of I'apirius Carbo, the orator. M. /Kmilius Scaurus, the orator and princeps senatus, born. C. Titius's speech on the laziness of the Senatorian courts. Death of Terence. The Andria from Menander's Andria and Perinthia,i66 \\x.\ Ilecyra from A])ollodorus, ac- cording to Donatus, 165 n.c. ; Ileau- tontimorumenos from Menander ac- cording to the argument 163 H.c, re- peated 146 and 138 l!.c. ; Kunuchus tVom Menander's Colax (prologue to Kunuchus), 161 H.c, Adclphoe" from Menander, with a scene from the CTj'i'aTrof^i'i/avojTfc of Diphiius, 166 B.C.; Phormio from the kTTiciKaZ.'\- /ifi'ofof Apollodorus, 159B.C.; edited b.C. 155 15S 154 151 150 Institution of Quaestiones Perpetuae 149 by W. Wagner, London and Cam- bridge, 1875. Embassy of Diogenes the Stoic, Crito- laus the Peripatetic, Carneades the Academic. P>irth of P. Rutilius, a Stoic orator. Birth of C. Gracchus. L. Afranius born ? Known titles of plays — (To gat2e), Abducta, /Equilia, Auctoratus, Augur, lirundisinae, Bucco Adopta- tus ( } a transition to the Atellan farces), Cinerarius, Compitalia, Con- sobrini. Crimen, Deditio, Deposilum, Divortium, Emancipatus, Epistola, Exceptus, Fratriae, Ida, Incendium, Libertus, Mariti, Matertenr, Mcgalcn- siii, Omen, Pantelius, Pomi)a, Pri- vignus, Prodigus, Proditus, Promus, Perosa, Purgamentum, Repudiatus, Sella, Sorores, Quinctia^ Suspecta, Talio, Temerarius, Thais, Titulus, Virgo, Vopiscus ; fragments in Rib- beck. Cato's speech against Servius Sulpi- cius (ialba. Galba's speech in his own defence. L. Titinius, a contemporary of Terence : the earliest writer of Comoediae 'I'o- gatae. The known titles of his plays arc : Barbatus, Caecus, Fullonia, Ge- mina, Privigna, Psaltria, *Quinctia, Veliterna, Insubra ; fragments in Ribbeck. Death of Cato the Censor. We have fragments or titles of ninety-three out of one hundred and fifty speeches which circulated in his name ; six out of the forty which he made in his own defence ; the most interest- ing fragments belong to the De Sumtu Suo, In A. Minucium, De Falsis Pugnis, Suasio Legis Vo- coniae, De Dote, Contra Ser.Galbam ad Milites,Pro Libertate Rhodiorum. All his speeches were edited in his old age. His "Origines," undertaken 174 B.C., were carried down to 149 B.C., to the prosecution of Galba, '■'Qui diripiiit Liisitanos ;" the first bo(jk dealt with Rome and its institutions, the second and third with the origins of all Italian states, the fourth and fifth with the first and second Punic XXll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. B.C. C. Laelius the younger, consul 146 143 Scipio /Emilianus before Numantia Capture of Numantia Election ofTiberiusGrac- chus as tribune, who is murdered on his re-! eleciion Death of P. Scipio /Emi- lianus 139 134 ^11 129 wars respectively ; the last two are an after-thought. His chronology was without synchronisms; it was only by comparing his chronology with others that brougiit out that he fixed the foundation of the city 750 B.C. He wrote also 'ATroipO^y^ara, alter his study of Greek. I'raecepta ad P'ilium, besides an encyclopaedia of agricult- ure, soldiery, and oratory, included probably a Carmen de Moribus, in uncertain metre: the fragments are variously scanned, as Saturnian, or trochaic, or Sotadean. Editions : fragments in H. Jordan, Leipsic, 1869: the work " De Re Rustica," addressed to T. Manlius on a definite estate, in the first volume of Gesner's '• Rei Rusticae Scriptores." Capture of Carthage and Corinth. Birth of M. Antonius, the orator. 140 Pacuvius and Accius each have a tragedy performed. T. Quinctius Atta. The known titles of his plays ( Togatae ) are Addictus, /Edilicea, Aquae Caldae, Conciliatrix, Gratu- I latio, Lucubratio, *Materterae, *Me- I galensia, Nurus, Saturq, Socrus,Sup- I plicatio. Tiro Proficiscens ; frag- ! ments in Ribbeck. Birth of L. Licinius Crassus, the orator. First writings of Lucilius. Publication of the " Annales Maximi" in eighty books by Mucins Scaevola, Pontifex Maxim us. C. Sempronius Tuditanus,the historian, is consul. Death of M. Pacuvius. Ar/nor-iim yudiciiim (/Eschylus), Teucer (Sophocles), Iliona, Dulo- restes (Chrysippus, Euripides),Chry- ses ( .'' Sophocles), Herviiojia (Sopho- cles), Niptra (the death of Ulysses, Sophocles), Pentheus, Antiopa (Eu- ripides), Periboea ( .'' Euripides), Ata- ianta, ? Amphitruo, Medus, Protesi- laus (Euripides), Paullus, an histori- cal play ; fragments in Ribbeck. The quotations from the Annals and CHRO.YOLOGICAL TABLE. XXIU C. Gracchus is elected tribune C. Fannius is elected con- sul C. Scribonius Curio, the orator,praetor. C.Grac- chus is slain . . . Cn. Pompeius born. Ma- rius consul . . . . Consulate of C. Fimbria. Triumph of M. Antonius, the orator Defeat of the Cimbri by Marius at Aquae Sex- tiae, by Marius and Catulus at Vercellae . B.C. 125 124 123 122 121 120 119 114 III 106 103 104 102 lOI Satires are insignificant and uncer- tain. Hostius writes "De Bello Istrico," in three books. P. Sulpicius, the orator, born. C. Aure- lius Cotta, the orator, born. L. Caelius Antij)ater, the historian, is praetor. His speech against Gracchus. L. Calpurnius Piso, the annalist, is cen- sor. L. Crassus, the orator, accuses Carbo, the orator, who commits suicide. L. Cornelius Sisenna born. Q. Hortensius, the orator, born. L. Crassus, the orator, defends Lucinia, the vestal. M. Antonius, the orator, defends him- self on a charge of incest with a vestal. He prosecutes Cn. Papirius Carbo, who had been defeated by the Cimbri two years previously. M. Tullius Cicero and P. Canutius, the most eloquent speaker not of sena- torial rank, born. Tereus, last known play of Accius. Death of Sex. Turpilius, author of Boethuntes, Canephorus (from Me- nander), Demetrius (from Alexis), Demiurgus and Epiclerus (from Me- nander), Hetaera, Lindia, Paedium, Thrasylion, Paratemnon, Philopater (from Antiphanes), Ictria. Frag- ments in Ribbeck. P. Eicinius Crassus speaks in favor of the Servilian laws. Death of Lucilius ; birth of A. Furius, who celebrated the victories of Catu- lus. Novius, first known writer of Atellan farces ? 120 B.C. The titles known are Agricola, Asinarius, Bubulcus, Bubulcus Cerdo, Dotata, Duo Dos- senni, Eculeus, Fullones, Fullones Feriantes, Hercules Coactor, Maccus Copo, Maccus Exul., Milites Pome- tinenses, Mortis et Vitae Judicium, Tabellaria, Togularia, Vindemiator ; fragments in Ribbeck. XXIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXV Consulate of M. Ante nius, the orator . . . Consulate of L. Crassus, the orator, who carriesj the law ajjainst usur-( pation of Roman citi- zenship lOO l)irth of Lucretius. M. Antonius de- fends M. Aquillius, and resists Satur- 1 ninus the tribune, who brought up old charges of misconduct in the Cimbrian war to damage a political opponent. 99 95 Death of Crassus. Tri- bunate and death of Dru>us The Marsic war beszins . M. Antonius defends Xorbanus, who is prosecuted by P. Sulpicius Rufus for alleged misconduct. 94 Death of .Eniilius Scaurus. Death of Accius ? Tragedies,'! elephus ( ? /^vs- chylus), Myrmidones ( /Kschylus ), Epinau>imache ( ? .i'^schylusl.Xycte- gresia (the tenth book of the Iliad), Armonim Jiidnium, IMiilocteta (.^is- chyliis, Sophocles, and lunipides were all used), Neoptolemus (uncer- tain), Antenoridae, Deiphobus (both perhajis from Sophocles), Astyanax, Troades, Hecuba, Kurysaces (So])ho- cles), Hellenes (the tlect at Aulis trt)m A pollodorus),(Enomaus( Sophocles), Chrysippus, Atreus ( ? Soj^hocles), Pelopida, Clytemnestra, ^-l-^gisthus, Agamemnonidx ( ? /. q. Erigona), Thebais, IMitcnissae (Ji^uripides), An- tigonaand Epigoni (from Sophocles), Erii)hyla (Sophocles), ALiiiito (Eu- ripides), Ali)hesiboea, Meleager, Me- lanippus( turipides), Diomedes, Ath- amas, Medea ( ? /. q. Argonautas), Phinidx (from an earlier stage of the voyage), Prometheus (/Eschylus), lo (Chceremon), Alcestis, Amphitiuo, Persidae, Heraclidae (Euripides), An- dromeda, Minos, /. q. Minotaurus (Euripides), t Bacchae ( Euripides), Stasiastne /. q. 'I'ropaeum Liberi — Praetextata^ ; Brutus, /Eneadae sive Decius — Annales, Saturae ; insig- nificant fragments. Eragments of plays in Ribbeck. 91 Cicero takes the toga virilis ; writes his poems on Glaucus and Marius. Cn. " Varius prosecutes M, Antonius. 90 Cicero translates the Phasnomena of A rat us. 89 [.. Pomponius Eononiensis, celebrated 89 B.C., according to Jerome, as a 1 writer of Atellan farces. The titles \ Exile of Marius . . ., Cinna is consul, and mas-i sacres the nobility, in- cluding M. Antonius, the orator j Return, 7th Consulate,! and death of C. Ma- rius Sulla makes peace with Mithridates . . . . Sulla conquers Rome Sulla's legislation . . , Sulla abdicates . . . . Caesar prosecutes Dola- bella War with Sertorius in Spain C. Aurelius Cotta, the orator, is consul . . B B.C. 88 (( 86 84 f3 82 81 79 78 76 75 74? known are ^toli, Agamemno Sup- positus, Aleones, Annulus Posterior, Armorum Judicium, Aruspex, Asina! Augur Bucco, Campana CapelJa, Ci- thanstna, Dotalis, Fuliones, Hirnea Pappi, Kalendae Martiae, Labicana, Leno, Maccus, Macci Gemini, Mac- cus Miles, Maccus Sequester, Mac- cus Virgo, Marsya Medicus, Pan- nuceata. Pappus Agricola, Pappus 1 rasteritus, Pappus I^atruus, Phi- losophia, Prasco Posterior, Pisca- tores, Pistor, Sponsa Pappi, Prsefec- tus Morum, Pytho Gorgonius,Vacca vel Marsuppium, Vermones ( > the slave-breeders), Verres.Egrotus,Ver- res Salvus. Fragments in Ribbeck. 1 nlxinate and massacre of P. Sulpicius Birth ot Catullus. Cicero studies un- I der Apollonius Malo at Rome, Sallust born. Cicero writes four books on rhetoric, of which the two now extant (De Inventione) form part Hortensius defends Cn. Pomi^eius on a charge of embezzlement. Birth of Brutus. Cicero translates Xenophon and Plato ; studies with Diodotus, the Stoia Confiscation of the property of Valerius Cato, the grammarian and poet, and friend of Catullus. Cotta, the orator returns to Rome. Varro of Atax is J3orn. M. Ca^lius Rufus, the orator, born. C, Licinius Calvus, the orator, born, Cicero's first extant speech. Cicero travels in Greece. L. Cornelius Sisenna, the historian, is prastor. P. Rutilius, the Stoic and orator, dies. The works of Q. Clau- dius, L. Valerius Antias, C. Licinius Macer, and L. Cornelius Sisenna all belong to this period. Cicero returns to Rome. C. Asinius Pollio, the orator and his- torian, born. XXVI CIIRONOLOGfCAL TABLK. CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE xxvu War with Spartacus. Lu- cullus relieves Cyziciis, blockaded by Mithri- dates Defeat and death of Spar - tacus ; Mithridates is driven into Armenia . rompeius and Crassus consuls. L. Aurelius Cotta, the brother of the orator, is prxtor. and carries a refoini in the law courts . . . B.C. 73 The Galiinian law gives Pompeius chief ct)m- niand against the pi- rates L. Koscius Otho carries a law reserving four- teen rows of seats tor the kniiihts. Manilian law,sni)i)orted by Cice- ro,gi ves Pompeiusconi- niand against Mithri-' dates Cicero stands for consul. Agrarian law of Rul- lus. Conspiracy of Catilina Ccesar contrives to have Rabirius Postumus ac- cused of treason be- cause he was suspected of being concerned in the death of Sat urn i- nus wiien tribune of the commons Alleged incest and sacri-i lege of Clodius . . . Triumph of Pompeius. Q. Cicero sent to Asia! as propraetor. Clodius is accused of incest Coalition of Caesar, Pom- peius, and Crassus . . 71 70 69 C8 67 66 64 6; 61 60 Death of Cotta, the orator, and of C. Licmius Macer. Cicero designated asdile, prosecutes Verres. Cicero is aedile. Hortensius is con- sul. Cicero begins his correspondence with Atticus. M.Valerius Messalla born. Cicero elected praetor. Birth of Horace. Cicero's speech in the White Gown j against the coalition between An- I tonius and Catilina. Cicero consul. Defends Rabirius Pos- ! tumusandL.Mura?na. Speaks agaiivst ' Rullus and Catilina. 62 Q. Cicero is elected praetor. Cicero writes a poem in three books on his consulate, and a Latin memoir and a Greek history on the same subject. At this time Q. .tlius Tu* Caesar is consul : is ap- pointed to command in Gaul. Cicero re- fuses to act as his lieu- tenant or to serve on the Campanian Com- mission, whereon Cae- sar procures the elec- tion of Clodius as tri bune Cicero is banished at the end of March. M. Ca- lidius is elected prae- tor Cicero is recalled, August 4 ; returns to Rome, September 4 . . . . Caesar meets Pompeius and Crassus at Lucca, and arranges that each of them shall hold an important province for five years Crassus and Pompeius are elected consuls and carry out the arrange- ment Cicero sends his brother' to serve under Cxsar in Gaul I B.C. 59 58 <{ 57 56 55 <( 54 hero, one of Q. Cicero's lieutenants, is engaged upon his historical work. M. Caelius prosecutes C. Antonius (Cicero's colleague four years be- fore), who is unsuccessfully defended by Cicero. Cxsar commences his Commentaries on the Gallic war when going into winter-quarters. P. Nigidius Figu- lus is praetor. On September 30 Cicero speaks be- fore the Pontifices for the restora- tion of his house, consecrated upon the motion of Clodius. Death of Lucretius, whose works were published after his death ; best edi- tion by H. Munro, Cambridge. Best MS., Leyden A., ninth century. Calvus accuses Vatinius, who is de- fended by Cicero. C. Asinius Pollio prosecutes C. Cato, who had been tribune 56 B.C. Possibly in this year Catullus dies. The poems to Lesbia seem to fall into the following order —61 B.C., Metellus (Lesbia's hus- band.?) returns to Rome; Catullus tninslates Sappho, Ille mi par esse deo videtur ; 2, Passer deliciae meae puellae ; then the intimacy in the house of Mallius, to which belong, 5, Vivamus mea Lesbia atque ame- mus ; 7, Quaeris quot mihi basia- tiones ; then the quarrel: 8, Miser Catulle desinas ineptire ; 83, Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit ; 92, Lesbia mi dicit semj^er mala nee tacet unquam. Reconciliation : 104, Credis me potuisse meae maledicere vitae ; 107, Si quidquam cupidoque optantique obtigit unquam ; 109, Jo- cundum mea vita mihi proponis XXVIU CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. B.C. Defeat and death of Cras-| siis ! Clodins is slain by order of Milo; Pompeius is appointed sole consul. Outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompeius . . . 52 50 49 t( amorem ; 36, Annales Volusi, cacata chaita ; 60 B.C., the death of his brother ; 66, 65, 68 a, Quod mihi For- tuna casuque oppressus acerbo; June 9, Veranni omnibus e meis amicis ; 13, Cenabis bene mi Fabulle apud me ; 12, Marrucine Asini. 59, June ? death of Metellus ; 68 b, Non pos- sum reticere Dex qua Mallius in re ; 3, Lugete o Veneres Cupidinesque ; 86, Quintia firmosa est multis : mihi Candida, longa ; 78, Galliis habet fratres quorum est lepidissima con- jux; 98, 70, Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle ; 72, Dicebas quondam solam te nosse Catulium ; 35, Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam ; 85, Odi et amo : quare id faciam fortasse requiris ; 76, Si qua recordanti bene facta priora voluptas ; 64, The marriage of Peleus and Thetis is assigned to this date. 56 B.C., 46, Jam ver egelidos refert tepores ; loi. Arrival; 31, Penin- sularum Sirmio insularumque ; 4, Phaselus ille quern videtis hospites. Of poems connected with his quar- rel with " GelHus," who did him harm with " Lesbia," 74, 80, 116 seem to date soon after his brother's death, 91, 90, 89, and 80 after his voyage in the east, 55 B.C. The poems on Aufilenus and Aufilena date from this year ; also that on the second consulate of Pompeius; the poem on the prosecution of Va- tinius is the latest we can date. Etiitcd R. Ellis, Oxford. Cicero is appointed augur. Cicero defends Milo. Cicero goes to Cilicia as proconsul. M. Hortensius defends Messalla. Brutus and Hortensius defend Appius Claudius. Sallust, expelled from the senate, devotes himself to history. Curio is tribune, and allies himself with Caesar. Cicero returns to Rome. ? Birth of Tibullus. Q. Cornificius ( ? Auctor ad llcrennium) commands in Illyricum. CHKOXOLOGICAL TABLE. XXIX Battle of Pharsalia, Aug. 9. Death of Pompeius, Oct. 6. Cxsar at A lex- andria Caesar subdues Egy]H, March ; Cassar defeats Pharnaces, Aug, 2 . . Battle of Thai)sus, April 6. Death of Cnto . . Battle of Munda, March Death of Caesar, March 15 B.C. 48 47 46 Death of Hirtius before Mutina, April 27 . . 45 44 43 Caesar's Commentaries on the Civil Wars. Hirtius de Bello Alexandrino. } Birth of Propertius. Death of P. Nigidius Figuhis, a grammarian ; he devoted himself to Pythagoreanism and the Mysteries. Vitruvius serves in Africa. Death of Tullia, Cicero's daughter. June and July, Cicero goes to Sicily. Aug. 31, returns to Rome. From Sept. 2 to April 2 (43 B.C.) he de- livers his Philippics. D. Laberius, writer of mimes : best known titles, Alexandrea, Anna Perenna,//r//j-/-^jr, Auliilaria, Centonarius, Colorator, Necyomantia, Rcstio. Protest against being compelled to perform in per- son. In Ribbeck. Publilius Syrus, celebrated 44 B.C., no known tides ; in Petronius we have a long frag- ment ; we have also an anthology of proverbial sayings, all of which are attril)uted to him, and most may be taken from him or other writers of mimiambi. Fragments in Rib- beck. Sallust publishes his " Catiline." Birth of Ovid. Dec. 8, death of Cicero. The lost poems " De Glauco " in trochaic tetrameters, '* De Mario " in hexameters, 91 B.C. ; translation from Aratus, of which we have large fragments, 90 B.C.; translations, mostly lost, from Plato and Xeno- phon, 84 B.C. Speech for P. Quin- tius (on a dispute between partners), 81 B.C. ; for Sex. Roscius Amerinus (accused of parricide in the interest of Chrysogonus, Sulla's freedman), } and for L. Varenus, accused of as- sassination, 80 B.C. ; lost speech for the freedom of a woman of Arretium, 76 B.C., for Roscius, the actor (who had taken a slave to train for the stage on condition of sharing the profits with his owner. The slave XXX CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXXI III B.C. I was killed and the partners had a lung series of disputes about how the compensation was to be apportioned), 76 B.C. ; against Naivius ; fragmen- tary speech for M. Tullins, who brought an action for too forcible ejectment ; speeches against Verres, of which two were delivered, five were composed after the exile of \ erres, 70 B.C. ; speech for Fonteius, proconsul in Gaul, for A. Caecina (another case turning upon the de- gree of force allowable in an eject- ment intended to raise a question of title), 69 B.C. ; for P. C)i)p)us, a quaes- tor of M.Cotta, who aceused him of malversation and attempted assassi- nation, 67 15.C. ; for xX.Clucntius, in danger of being convicted of poison- ing, lx?causc universally believed to be guilty of bribery ; for M. Funda- nius (lost), and for the Manilian law, 66 B.C. ; for C. Cornelius Gallus, ac- cused of treason for a bill to deprive the senate of its dispensing power, oration in the White Gown, 64 B.C., in fragments. A speech in the sen- ate (very fragmentary) against the law of KuUus ; two speeches before the people on the same question ; lost si:>eech for Koscius Otho ; for C. Rabirius Postumus (very fragmen- tary) ; on the disabilities of the sons of the proscribed, on his renuncia- tion of a province ; the four speeches against Catilina ; for L. Murasna, 63 B.C. ; for P. Sulla, accused of com- plicity with Catilina ; for Archias, the poet, accused of usurping the privileges of a Roman citizen ; speeches against Clodius and Curio, who had attacked him in the senate after the abortive prosecution, before Clodius had transferred himself to the Commons, 61 B.C. ; for C. Anto- nius (unsuccessful and unpublished) ; for MinuciusThermus (unpublished); for L. \'alerius Fiaccus, 59 B.C. (in fragmentary condition) ; for P. Ses- tius, accused of violence because, as one of the tribunes who carried Cice- ro's restoration, he had surrounded himself with a body-guard; for Cor- B.c. nelius Balbus, accused of usurping Roman citizenship ; for M. Caelius, accused, at the instigation of Clodius, of sedition in Naples; for Ascitius, accused of " prevarication," taking up a cause he did not mean to suc- ceed, and attempting to procure the assassination of certain Egyptian am- bassadors ; on the Consular prov- inces ; on the answer of the Ilaru- spices, B.C. 56 ; the invective against Piso in the senate ; the treatise De Oratore, B.C. 55 ; speeches for Vati- nius and Gabinius, lost, with the ex- ception of a fragment of each ; for C. Rabirius Postumus, accused for receiving moneys which, according to the prosecution, Gabinius had wrongly extracted from Ptolemaeus on his restoration — according toCice- ro, did not nearly cover Rabirius's lawful advances to the king ; for M. ylimilius Scaurus (the son of the famous Princeps Senatus), who was accused of extortion and cruelty in Sardinia : the cause was hurried on without evidence, to prejudice his election to the consulate : the speech survives in large fragments ; the six books on the Republic, of which we •have large fragments besides theSom- nium Scipionis ; speeches for Milo; the first (actually delivered) is only known from one or two quotations in Quinctilian ; books of the Laws (of which we have fragments), 52 B.C. M. Caelius's letters to Cicero (Ad Familiares, lib. viii.) during Cicero's command in Cilicia. Partitiones ora- torio;, Paradoxa (six rhetorical exer- cises on Stoic themes ; in one he proves that Crassus was poor); Laus Catonis ; Orator ad M. Brutum,speech for C. Ligarius, who had been left in Africa when the civil war broke out, and was attacked by another par- doned Pompeian for obeying the Pompeian governor ; 46 B.C., thanks for the permission given to M. Mar- cellus to return to Rome, for King Deiotarus, accused of attempting Cae- sar's life in Pontus ; De Consola- tione (on the death of Tullia, now XXXI I CIIROXOLOGICAL TABLE. B.C. Battle of Philippi War of Pel usia Defeat and flight of Sex- tus I'oinpeius . . . Battle of Actium . . . The Temple of Janus is closed 42 41 40 39 1 -> J/ 33 3- 31 29 28 lost), De Finibiis I'onorum et Malo- luiu, Acadeniica, 45 B.C., Tusculan Disputations, Tlie Nature of the (i()ci^, Divination, Fate (fragmentary), Friendship, Old Age, and Glory (lost), between January and the n^.id- dle of July, 44; the 1 opics, and Dc Officiis, between July and the end of \oven)ber, the Piiilippics between September 2, 44 r..( ., and April 21, 43 B.C. The latest letter to Atticus dates from 44 B.C. : there are letters to D. Brutus, to Plancus, to Ltpidus, and to Corniticius as late as May, 43- Confiscation and restoration of Vergil's land. F'iist Eclogue. Ninth Eclogue. Horace's intimacy with Maecenas be- gins. Vano De Re Rustica. Horace's jour- ney to Brundisium. .'* Death of P. Tcrentius Varro Atacinus. His Bel- luni Secjuanorum and Satuioe are sui)posed to be early. His other works are Argonautica, Ephemeris, Chronographia, all probably transla- tions from the Greek. Death of Sallust. The exact subject of his last work, the Histories of the Twelve Years from the Consulate of Lepidus, 78 B.C., is known fiom Au- sonius, Id. iv. 62. It appears to have been a continuation of Sisenna. Commencement of Georgics. Death of Atticus. This is sometimes assigned as the date of Pollio's publication of his history. Death of Varro. The fullest list of his writings is given by Jerome in his preface to Origen's Commentary on Genesis. He wrote 74 works in 620 books ; wc know the folh)wing : 6 books of pseudo-tragedies ; 10 books Poematorum ; 1 < )raiionum, proba- bly early: 4 Saturarum, 150 Saturae Menippeae (imitated from Menippus, a pupil of Diogenes, and from these CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXXIil Expedition against Ara- bia B.C. Second closing of the Temple of Janus . . Phraates expels Tiridates and endeavors to pro- pitiate Augustus . . Death of Marcellus . . Conspiracy of Miirasna and Caepio,the brother- in - law of Maecenas, against Augustus . . Actual restoration of the standards taken at Can- nae ; Tiberius in Ar- menia Lex Julia de Maritandis Ordinibus. . • . 27 26 25 24 23 22 (t 20 19 18 17 we have the largest fragments : one book, rpiKaprjpoi^y dates trom 64 B.C., and is an anticipation of the trium- virate) ; 76 XoyiaTopiKiov (essays on different subjects connected more or less closely with some well-known historical character), 56-50 B.C. 41 Antiquitatum : supplementary works De Gente Populi Romani : chrono- logical. Imagines : 9 Disciplinarum Eibri. A cyclopaedia of the seven liberal arts, with medicine and sol- diery added. 3 Suasion um Libri, political essays. All the above are lost. 25 books on the Latin Lan- guage, 44 B.C. 3 books Rerum Rus- ticarum, 37 B.C. Prop. iv. I. Comi)letion of the Georgics ; suicide of Gall us. Hor. Carm. II. xiv. L. Arruntius, the orator and historian, is consul. Death of Vergil and Tibullus. Editions of Vergil, Conington : for the /Eneid, Gossrau, who has used l>a Cerda largely. MSS. : a fragment of the Vatican, the oldest of the fifth cen- tury, contains good ancient illustra- tions. The Codex Romanus, of the seventh century ? also in the Vati- can, is complete and illustrated. Written by an ignorant scribe, and uncorrected. The Palatinus is of the fourth or fifth century : the best M.S. is the Medicean, corrected up to the end of the Bucolics, by Tur- cius Rufus Apronianus Asterius, Cons, of 494 A. D. Tibullus Dissen. The MSS. are all late, and most in- terpolated. Alluded to by Livy, Ep. lix. Carmen Saeculare. AXXIV CJ/KOAOLOG/CAL TABLE. Victories of Tiberius and Drusus over the Catti and V'indclici, also C lades Lol liana pre- 1 supposed in the 9th ode of the 4th book of Horace Tiberius is consul ; Au- gustus returns from Gaul ; Lepidus dies ; A ugustu> succeeds him as Chief Pontitf . . . B.C. 16 13 12 10 Death of Drusus . . . 9 Death of Maecenas . . 8 Death of Cornelia, celebrated bv Pro- pertius, and of /Kniilius Slacer. " lliacus Macer," Ov. Epp. ex Pont. IV. xvi. 6. Death of Propertius. His first book was published 26 B.C. 'I'he poetical guide-book to Rome, from which we have fragments in the fifth book, was begun before the poet fell in love. V. i. 71 sqq. Most of the poems in the second and third books are early; e. f^.^ HI. xxiii. is written just after the dedication of the tem- ple of Apollo, Oct. 24, 28 B.C. The fourth book is composed 23 and 22 B.C. IV. iv., IV. xii. refer to the ex- pedition against I'arthia, 22 B.C. V. vi. refers to the fourth celebration of the Actian games, 16 B.C. V. xi. has the same date. Fuscus and Arellius, of Asia, are cele- brated as declaimers. Horace pub- lishes the fourth book of Odes at the request of Augustus. Vitruvius writes after this year, when two stone theatres had been built in Rome. L. Cestius Pius settles in Rome. Verrius Flaccus is ai)pointed tutor to the grandchildren <»f Augustus. Epicedion by C. Pedo Albinovanus. Death of Horace. The Epodcs seem to date between the war of Perusia, 40 B.C. (cf. I'^pp. vii. xvi.), and the conquest of Egypt ; i. and ix. date frojn the war of .Actium, 31 B.C. They were probably published 29 B.C. The first book of Satires was j^robably pul)lished 35 B.C. Ky 32 B.C. he had received the Sabine farm. The sec- ond l)ook of Satires was probably published 30 B.C. The first three books of the Odes were published 24-23 B.C. The chief dates alluded to are the battle of Actium, I. xxxvii, ; the illness of .Maecenas, and Horace's escape from the fallen tree, 28 B.C., I. XX., II. xii., H. xvii. The Arabian expedition, 27 B.C., I. xxix., HI. xxiv, Cantabrian expedition and intended expedition against Britain, 25 and 27 B.C., I. XXXV., I. xxxvi., .' H. vi., } II. xi., HI. xiv. Dedication of the tem- ple to Apollo on the Palatine, 26 B.C., CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE. XXXV Tiberius retiresto Rhodes Banishment of Julia, the daughter of Augustus. Recall of Tiberius. . . Banishment of Julia, the granddaughter of Au- B.c. 7 6 ? I 2 A.D. 4 gustus Death of Augustus 8 II Circa ' 14 IS 18 I. xxxi. ; Lib. HI. i.-vi., circ. 26 B.C. ? Marriage of Marcellus, 25 B.C., I. xii. 45. Expulsion of Tiridates, 23 B.C., I.xxvi., II. xi., 1 1 1. vii., HI. xxix. First book of Epistles published after 21 B.C.; iii.,viii.,ix. refer to the Asiatic campaign of Tiberius, xvi. and xi. seem early. Carmen Saeculare and IV. vi., 17 B.C. ; IV. ii., iv.,ix., xiv., 14 B.C. Second Book of Epistles after 13 B.C. (when Augustus was Pontilex Maxinnis), and Ars Poetica. Death of M. Passienus, the declaimer. Birth of M. Annaeus Seneca, the phi- losopher. T. Albucius Silo, the declaimer, settles at Rome. Suicide of Porcius Latro, the declaimer. I Art of Love completed soon after this date. 'Death of Pollio. Meyer. Fragments in H. Banishment of Ovid. Close of the j History of Pompeius Trogus. {Death of Messalla. Fragments in H. i Meyer. 12 Graiius Faliscus and Manilius begin to 1 write. Tiberius confirms his nomination of j Velleius as prastor. Romanus Hispo, the declaimer, who always liked harsh theses, takes to the practice of denouncing alleged state crimes. Death of Livy ; best edition, Draken- borch. Death of Ovid ; best edition, Burmann,R.Merke],Leipsic,fortext; R. Ellis, Ibis. The date of the He- roides is uncertain. The Amores are said to have been completed 9 B.C. The Art of Love and its ap- j>endices were finished by i A.D. The Metamorphoses were not enlarged after his exile. The Fasti were re- vised and dedicated to Germanicus, 16 A.D. The Ibis and the first two books of the Tristia date from 9 A.D. ; the remaining three were completed by 12 A.D. Probably the first books of Letters from Pontus were sent f XXX VI CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, Fall of Scjanus A.D. '>'> 24 25 27 34 39 home in 16 a.d. with the Fasti. In the last letter he enumerates his con- temporaries, including " Kabirius i.A \ the mighty mouth/' who wrote upon ! the war ot Actium. Death of Fenestella, the grammarian. j Death of Aetius Capito, the liberal and imperialist jurist, the rival of I Antistius Labeo, the republican and pedantic jurist. Cassius Sevei us in exile. Haterius Agrippa, the so-called orator, is consul. Death of Cremutius Cor- j dus, the Stoic orator and historian. Banishment of Votienus Montanus. Suicide of Votienus Montanus in the Balearic Isles. Completion of Velleius's history. Plux'drus, Prol. iii. 41. Valerius Maxi- nuis finishes his Collection. Death of Mamercus Scaurus. Death of the elder Seneca, who wrote a large and admirable historical work which his son did not edit. Rhetori- cal works edited by Bursian, 1855. LATIN LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION. Latin is the language of Latium, the rolling plain round the Alban hills. These hills were recognized from very early times as the centre of the Latin nation, whose older i^^xxz.n settlements were close to the coast. It became the r^"*"/ h^'^' 1 r y t ,/. in,Sabellian, language of the western half of the civilized world, i^truscan. because it was the language of Rome; and Rome seems to have become the mistress of the world by reason of its im- portant position on the lower Tiber, at the meeting-point of the people of the Alban hills, the people of the central moun- tains, and the strange people who held the valley of the Arno and the heights around it. Both the Alban hills and the central mountains were set- tled by branches of the Aryan race. Among the Alban hills, such Aryans as entered Italy by the western coast would meet those who entered it by the eastern passes. This may explain the fact (upon which Niebuhr founded an elaborate theory, now universally abandoned, and never yet refuted) that the people of the Alban hills, who called themselves Latins, were nearer the Greeks in many ways than the people of the cen- tral mountains, who called themselves Sabines, Samnites, or Saunites. It is a plausible conjecture that these latter stood specially near to the Aryans now known as Celts, whose first seats were on the Danube and its tributaries, and who held their ground longest on the great rivers of Southeastern and L— I LATIN LITERATURE. Central France, and in Ireland, and to the west and northwest of the central range of Britain. The Etruscans, or Rasena, as they called themselves, do not seem to have been Aryans at all. The ancients were ac- quainted with two accounts of them: neither account had been tested — both were sometimes uncritically combined. Accord- ing to one, a race, alien to other Italian races, had entered Italy from the coast, having sailed from Lydia, which was occupied in historical times by a Semitic race. According to the other, the Rasena were akin to the Ra^tians, who in the days of Augustus held the passes of what are now the Grisons and the Tyrol, as the Rasena had once held the plain of the Po round Mantua. Hence we should naturally infer that they crossed the Alps before they crossed the Apennines; but the ancients held that their settlements in what is now Tuscany were more ancient, as they were more important, than their settlements on the Po. The two stories do not exclude each other; but those who admit both must give most weight to the second. Whatever their origin, the Etruscans, whom the Greeks called Tyrrhenians, appear in history as rivals of the Greek colonists in the western sea, and as diligent importers and continuators of certain archaic forms of Greek art. The Italians were much more backward than the Greeks, for their land is turned to the west — to Spain, to Gaul, to Africa, „ which could teach them nothinjj ; while Greece is Some con- o j trastsof turned to the east, to the coasts alonji which the Italian and .... . i , n-.- • i , t Greek cult- civiiizatious ot the Nile and the 1 igris spread through so many channels. Besides, the country itself is far less stimulating to its inhabitants: compared to Greece, Italy is a continental country whose inhabitants communicate more easily by land than by sea, except in the two extreme southern peninsulas, which characteristically were occupied by Greek colonies whose earlier development was more brilliant than that of the mother country. Hence, perhaps, the mythology of Italy is even more rudi- mentary compared with the mythology of Greece than the mythology of Germany compared with the mythology of Scandinavia. It is at least a curious coincidence (since the INTRO D UCTION. archipelagoes of Greece, Scandinavia, and Polynesia have all a rich mythology) that such mythology as Italy had settled chiefly in the Campagna, which may almost be called an arch- ipelago above water. The later Romans were familiar with Sabine spells, but not with Sabine legends. The intellectual development of Italy was backward, like the imaginative. The equable fertility of the land was itself a hinderance. As far back as we can form any conjecture, the bulk of the people were shepherds or husbandmen ; we can- not trace a time like that reflected in the Homeric poems, when high-born men of spirit went roving in their youth by land and sea, and settled down in their prime with a large stock of cattle and a fair stud of horses, to act as referees in peace and leaders in war to the cotters around. Gifts came to them from the cotters and from passing traders; minstrels were welcome at their courts; altogether they lived a life of more ease and splendor than we can imagine in primitive Italy. Other differences less intelligible to us were not less weighty: the volcanic character of the western plain of Cen- tral Italy, the want of a fall to the coast (which caused some of the water-courses to form marshes, and made the Tiber a terror to the Romans for its floods), told in ways as yet un- traced on the character of the inliabitants. For one thing, the ancient worship of Febris and Mefitis indicates a constant liability to fever; then the air of Greece is lighter than the air of Italy, and this may be the reason that it was more inspir- ing. The breezes of the hill-side are to primitive Greek po- etry the breath of wise maidens who bring the glorified past to mind ; the early sages of Italy met their inspiration where water babbles in a shady glade, or leaps down a rocky dell. The Greek needed no sedative except solitude to lull the natural man to a half-sleep and let the singer awake; the Italian was more sensuous or more frivolous. His musings needed the hush and the shadow, while it was only for proph- ecy that the Pythia needed the vapor of the sacred cavern— as bewildering, as exalting, as the heavy air of a crowded church. An inspiration not unlike that of Delphi, but less LATIN LITERATURE. N I'M elements ot Italian literature. ethereal, dwelt in " the house of echoing Albunea '' by the falls of Anio, and many of the spots where sulphurous vapors rise through the ground were reckoned oracular. The Italians were not long in reaching the stage at which women are more idealist than men; the Sibylline books appear in Italy ear- lier in proportion than the prophecies of Bacis and other male prophets in Greece. So, too, the walling woman keeps her place at Roman funerals; while in historical Greece the haughty smiles of Sparta and the decorous silence of Ath- ens take the place of the loud laments of Helen and Androm- ache. Such traits are a sign rather that Italian men were lacking in ideality than that Italian women abounded in it. Italian indigenous literature was of the very scantiest; its oldest element was to be found in hymns, barely metrical, and Indigenous SO fuU of repetitions as to dispense with metre. The hymns were more like spells than psalms ; the singers had an object to gain rather than feelings to express. The public hymns were prayers for blessing : there were pri- vate chants to charm crops out of a neighbor's field, and bring other mischief to pass against him. Such "evil songs" were a capital oftence, though there was little, perhaps, in their form to suggest a distinction whether the victim was being bewitched or satirized. The deliberate articulate expression of spite seemed a guilt and power of itself. Besides these, there were dirges at funerals, ranging between commemora- tion of the deceased and his ancestors, propitiation of the de- parted spirit, and simple lamentation. There were songs at banquets in praise of ancient worthies. Cato had heard them, Cicero regretted them with a fervor that imposed upon Niebuhr. The songs themselves can hardlv have been better than the epitaphs of the Scipios. The elegance of the ma- terial monuments shows the influence of the new culture, so that it is likely the verses — some of them a survival from days when Rome had no literature — are a very favorable specimen of the oral compositions out of which they grew. We find no trace of any poet who composed what free-born youths recited at feasts ; probably they extemporized without training, and attained no mastery. If a nation has strong mil- ! I INTRODUCTION-. itary instincts, we find legendary or historical heroes in its very oldest traditions ; if a nation has strong poetical in- stincts, we find the names of historical or legendary poets. In Italy we only meet with nameless fiiuns and pVophets* whose inspired verses were perhaps on the level of " Mother Shipton." For it is not likely that the Italians had as much poetical talent as is now diffused among their descendants, whose literary poetry has always been exotic,' though their popular poetry is full of feeling and delicacy. The traditional comic drama was indigenous in Italy. The tricks and jests of a limited number of strictly conventional characters cannot have had a wider range than that of a har- lequinade, which is the lineal descendant of the native Italian drama. Such as it is, it has always been a very vigorous form of art. After the Renaissance it gradually spread over Eu- rope; it is an interesting question whether it did not influ- ence Greek literature through Epicharmus, who may very likely have found something like it at home in Sicily. Besides these rudiments of literature, the Romans, and no doubt the other Italians, had some kind of annals, beginning perhaps, with a bare record of prodigies. The Romans had from a comparatively early period a written code of laws and an elaborate system of legal pleading, full of needless techni- calities, which were long the secret of the patricians, and even after their publication had to be observed with the most mi- nute and wearisome exactness. This, of course, was a check upon judicial oratory, and political oratory was restrained by respect for authority, which forbade any speaker to address his peers in the senate, the assembly, or the public meetin-'' without the formal sanction of the convener. ^ The curious feature of Latin literature is that it is in its best days a Roman literature without being the work of Ro- mans. From Ennius to Martial, a succession of writ- Latin litera- ers who were not natives of Rome lived and worked Zt^l^^' there, and owed their fame to the Roman public. The "'{Jrfanhy" ^ The " Divine Comedy " is a weighty but a solitary exception, bummoned by tribunes and other magistrates to work up public opinion in favor of a particular measure. LATIN LITERATURE. INTR OD UC TION. 111 great writers of Athens were Athenians ; great Greek writers who were not Athenians did not owe their reputation to Ath- ens, unless they were rhetoricians or philosophers. In the Middle Ages poets scarcely fixed themselves at a single cen-, tre : they and their reputation travelled together. Even then one notes that Florentine poetry was founded by natives of Florence who passed their lives there. When we come to the modern literatures of England and France, we find, as might be expected, that the capital collects most literary men (though there are exceptions, like the Pleiad in France and the Lake Poets in England); but the capital itself is not barren. In Germany the same holds good of a number of local capitals. One reason of this peculiarity may have been that Rome as a city had never much life of its own ; it was the seat of an aristocracy who owed their importance to its value as a com- mercial and then as a military centre, and to the hereditary temper fostered by the actions which the possession of such a site made possible or desirable. It was never a town of sailors or of artisans : its rulers had dependants, but not work- men ; and their own life was too difficult and absorbing to leave any surplus energy for literature, while at the same time their faculties were sufficientlv stimulated to make them easrer and intelligent critics. In the history of Latin literature, at any rate from the time of Lucilius, Urbanitas is more impor- tant than " Atticism " ever became in Greek. A writer could not really succeed without the style of a well-bred man about town; the opposite to this was not, as a rule, "provinciality," but "rusticity." It does not seem as if "urbanity" necessa- rily included any idea of culture or distinction or refinement; it was a quality which a buffoon might possess in perfection : what it excluded was clumsiness, obscurity, saying what need not be said ; what it implied was being in complete posses- sion of what one had to say, and completely appreciating the intelligence of one's public. At this point " urbanity " comes nearest to " Atticism ;" but an Athenian public was much quicker withal, and more fastidious, than an Italian, and would certainly have been impatient of Cicero's prolonged "urbani- ty," which the Roman public of his day enjoyed till the end. r L I Down to the days of the Empire " prolixity " was not a word of blame; on the contrary, we find phrases like verbis prolix- issimis graiias cgit (where prolixissimis might be exchanged for ainpiissimis), the idea being that to develop a subject at the greatest length possible is an appropriate way of showing respect to the subject and to the person addressed — an idea which, since the Renaissance, has had a very considerable in- fluence on Italian eloquence. Nor, indeed, has Italian litera- ture ever aimed at terseness and brevity, except when its cen- tre was the Florentine republic, and during the earlier period when it was the organ of the opposition of epigrams carried on by an indolent and fastidious aristocracy and their literary retainers under the Claudian and Flavian emperors. After we have analyzed the meagreness of its original ele- ments, after we have recognized the complacent amplitude of its later development, we have still to remember that Latin litera- Latin literature is classical as Greek literature is clas- ££1. sical. The general level of finish, elegance, and richness is higher, though the masterpieces are less exquisite, less su- preme, as well as less original. Where Greek literature fails, it is apt to become dull and empty; where Latin literature fails, it is apt to become heavy and florid. Even the greatest Greek writers are not free from incompleteness and obscuri- ties, which show that the writer's grasp, not merely of his sub- ject, but of his own conception, is imperfect. Even a great Latin writer is seldom in such close, direct, penetrating- contact with his subject as a great Greek writer or a grea^t modern writer, but he is in much more complete possession of what he has to communicate about it. A Latin historian, for instance, never makes us say, as modern historians make us say, that we cannot see the wood for the trees ; he hardly ever makes us say, as a Greek historian makes us say, that he shows us a brick for a house. His representation may be superfi- cial, but it has the completeness of view which results from standing far enough off to get things into focus. One effect of this is that, as compared with the literature of independent Greece, Latin literature is reflective and sentimental. It still deals with genuine perceptions and emotions, but there is an 8 LATIN LITERATURE. added sense of what it looks like to experience them ; the representation is in only mediate relation to the experience, and in immediate relation to the vvritefs thought about it! This is a point of analogy with the Engh'sh literature of the first half of last century; another is that in both to think about experience and express one's thoughts has still the in- terest of novelty for the writers and their public. Consequent- ly there is no need to go beyond what is common and general in experience. Both, even at their highest, are content with an exaltation in degree of what is familiar in kind; and this marks off both from modern literature, which tends to seek out what is rare and singular in experience, which, being un- familiar, has to be thought out before it is intelligible. .A^cog- nate tendency of modern literature is to make a more or less imaginary experience serve as foundation for ideals. Classical literatures go back to an heroic age in search of something grander and simpler than the present age supplies; romantic literatures go back in search of the picturesque : in this, as in much else, Vergil is a precursor of the modern and romantic spirit. But Vergil is an exception ; and, in the sense in which "classical" is opposed to *' romantic," Latin literature as a whole is more classical than Greek. The revolt against "classicism" is also a revolt from Latin literature to Greek, if the revolter be able to study both. And Latin literature is eminently classical in the primitive sense of the word : its representative writers fall into fixed "classes;" each has his well-marked rank ; it is a literature of fixed standards fit to become the foundation of an aesthetic tradition. Its generali- ty, its clearness, its finish, and its dignity are all element which give it a permanent educational value, and make it interesting to races and generations very different from those which orig- inated it. English literature is hardly likely to fill the sam^e place in the training of the communities which owe their civil- ization to England as Latin literature has filled in the train- ing of the communities which owe their civilization to Rome. So fiir as this space is filled by English literature, it is mainly filled by "classical" writings like those of Pope and ALacau- INTRODUCTION, \ lay, which come in this way to have a greater relative impor- tance than they have for the cultivated public at home A literature may be classical without being supremely ex- cellent ; a literature may come near to supreme excellence without being classical. The test of supreme excellence is the admiration and delight of sane, well-trained minds of very high calibre. Tried by this test, it would be impossible to set the "Duchess of Malfy" or "Vittoria Corombona " below r Mr T^r ^"^^-^""^^"^'^ o^ the " Golden Ass " below the fables of Phxdrus. Yet Racine and Pha^drus are both clas- sics m a sense that Webster and Apuleius are not. Ph^edrus at any rate, is a classic simply in virtue of his generalitv his rationality, his clearness. ' ' This reflection explains the impatience with which many aesthetic critics are apt to approach Latin literature Gener- ality, clearness, rationality, are not attractive literary qualities to a cultivated class weary of old traditions, pining for fresh, strong, highly specialized emotions. The appetite for subtlety IS at Its height; the clearness of Latin literature readily passes for shallowness, while the simplicity of Greek literature is par- doned for its directness and intensity. On another side Latin literature is'classical, as opposed to romantic: it is an eminently social literature— the work of men who wrote under a strong regard for all that tends to promote fellow-feeling among mankind. Romantic literature IS eminently personal-as personal in the expression of moods of passionate sympathy with the many or the miserable which can seldom be permanently felt, and never generally felt as in the expression of solitary rapture in the presence of inor- gamc nature. In both there is always a touch of revolt against the concrete claims which society as it is requires us to enforce and accept by turns.' Latin literature throughout as- sumes and enforces social rights and duties: even in the mal- content literature of the Claudian and Flavian period there is ^ The proper effect of public spirit and generosity is not so much to lift a man above being occupied with either set of claims as to make him mag- nify the claims others have upon him and minimize the claims he has UDon others; but, after all, both sets of claims are correlative. ^ I.— I* lO LATIN LITERATURE. tl far less freedom of discussion than in the Greek literature of the Attic and Macedonian period, though that is less bitter. In fact, Greek literature is the expression of a social life never perfectly consolidated ; while Latin literature is addressed to a society solidly constituted, though out of much less genial elements. For one reason or other, the Italian household dis- cipline was much stricter than the Greek ; while there was much less intercourse between men, except at rarely recurring festivals. The occupations of agriculture, at once more ab- sorbing and more profitable, left no leisure for the elaborate system of musical and gymnastic training which more than anything else gave its pecuh'ar character to the civilization of historical Greece. Italian civilization was comparatively advanced long before Italy had a literature worthy of the military, commercial, and Latin litera. po^'^jcal position of the race. The training, the tem- *Tdenw.n P^^' ^^^^ Opportunities, which literary display requires, Greece: its wcrc all abscnt alike. On holidays, better food, more drink and company, than common made merriment enough ; on great days the State provided tumblers and horse and foot races ; and at any feast those who wished could provide a masquerade for themselves, and bandy satirical impromptus. Accordingly we find that, while the great epochs in the de- velopment of Greek literature correspond to epochs in the internal development of Greek civilization, the epochs in the early development of Latin literature correspond to the succes- sive stages of the intercourse between Italy and Greece. In the royal and early republican days this intercourse may have been more frequent than afterwards, when the seaward press- ure of the tribes of the Southern Apennines had separated and weakened the Greek towns which, in the first quarter of the fifth century B.C., seemed likely to Hellenize the two southern peninsulas of Italy and the space between them. But all is uncertain about this intercourse: we never know whether we are dealing at second-hand with the conjectures of the first Latin writers after its renewal, or with more or less distorted echoes of theories which the Greeks mistook for traditions. INTRO D UCTION. II [ Certainty begins when the Greek towns on the Campanian coast, hard pressed by the Sabellians, who had established themselves in the plain, threw themselves into the arms of Rome, after some appeals to the Sabellians, who were still descending from the hills. Few, if any, of these towns shared the literary movement of Greece, but the familiarity which leading Romans gained with the new clients of the State made it easier for the culture of the great Greek cities of the south to take full effect after the conquest of Tarentum. Thenceforward Rome was full of Greek slaves and Greek refugees, anxious to avail themselves of their one superiority. For some time it was uncertain whether the process of Greeks learning Latin or Latins learning Greek would prove the more important. It was not impossible that educated Latins would be simply Hellenized, as Macedonians had been, and address their first literary efforts to the great Greek public, which was quite willing to be informed of the character of the State then rising into consequence in the West. As yet the Roman public made no demand for literature of a kind which Romans of position could think it worth while to satisfy. As late as Lu- cullus and Cicero, Roman nobles still wrote historical works ~-on their own life and times in Greek. As late as Horace Roman men of letters were still tempted to continue Greek literature in Greek, instead of trying to naturalize it in Latin. The two conditions which made Latin literature possible were, first, the stimulus to national life during the two great Punic wars, which carried many Italians beyond the bounds of Italy, and widened the national horizon without transferring the centre of national interests; and, second (and this was^even more important), the good-will with which for about a century the public received the efforts made to amuse or educate it by Latin adaptations or imitations of Greek plays. This literature was carried on by men in a lower social position than most Greek writers. The social equals of the old Greek writers wrote nothing at Rome during this period, or else wrote Greek. But they were not indifferent to the vernacular literature: they patronized, criticised it, read it perhaps more easily than its Greek originals, which, if they knew them, they thought in- 12 LATIN LITERATURE. i comparably superior. Their disdain might have killed Latin literature ; but vernacular text-books were needed for the liter- ary and rhetorical education which came into vigor just as the dramatic poets (and the public) were getting tired of their poetry. All who profited by this education were f;imiliar with the analysis of literary eftects in their own language, and naturally turned to their own language if they wished to pro- duce literary elTects of their own. Soon, too, composition took the place in Latin education which music had held in Greek ; and although the composition which it was imperative to practise was in prose, composition in verse was practised also (and in its turn became imperative, though not before the future of Latin literature was fixed), because the pupils in the course of their education read a great deal more verse than prose. Indeed, much Latin poetry bears traces of this train- ing ; something like a glorified school exercise seems em- bedded in not a few passages in TibuUus, Propertius, and even such a great writer as Juvenal. During the last century of the republic, especially after the reforms of Sulla, the influence of education was reinforced by the influence of foreign travel ; for Romans of rank who had to visit the Eastern provinces often entered into inter- course with the literary celebrities whom they found there. The first travellers were men of mature years, fixed tastes and position, and at most condescended to hear a philosopher. But when the senate regained for a lime the control of the law-courts, it became possible for governors to take young men of good family in their train, who often thought that to prosecute their education was to further their career. Even when the courts were no longer exclusively filled by senators, the fiishion lasted until it became a custom to reside in Ath- ens or some other Greek town, simply for the advantage of lectures, at an age when literature was more interesting than philosophy. It was this change which brought the Romans into contact with contemporary Greek books, for while they stayed at Rome nothing later than Menander was imported for their benefit. Alexandrian literature seems to have proved more stimulat- INTRODUCTION. 13 i. I ing than the Greek literature of the prime. The literature of the Scipionic age was simply dependent on the literature of the Attic age. It is characteristic of the poetry of the Au^-us- tan age to look back from the Alexandrian age to the pre- Attic age. Thus Vergil reaches back through Nicander to Hesiod, through Apollonius to Homer; Tibullus reaches back througii Callimachus to ]\Iimnermus. Horace is more origi- nal ; he owes nothing of his framework to the Alexandrines, but he embroiders the simple strains of Lesbos with Alex- andrian subtleties. Ovid borrows his framework, at least in his serious writings ; but the tone of Miem is half due to Ro- man fashionable society, half to a shallow but not insincere ro- manticism which turned fondly to the simplicity of the past. The contrast between past and present plays a larger part in Roman literature than in Greek, for in Greece there was never enough accumulated wealth to make the surroundings of life consistently elaborate. Even Theocritus does not dream of readers who all live in palaces, or of cities where there are more splendid buildings than the temples. Of course trav- elled literati .\x^ apt to be denationalized, especially when the public has retained a prejudice in favor of homespun poetry; but the immense improvement in public aflliirs during the early part of Augustus's reign delayed any schism between the literary class and the community at large. When the impulse which Augustus had given was spent, and it was plain that any further improvement must come from a better adjustment of the machinery of administration, not from fresh moral ef- forts on the part of the population or their leaders, the liter- ary class soon got to be as isolated from the rest of the pop- ulation as the Accademie Delia Crusca and Degli Arcadi dur- ing the Spanish domination in Italy. The tendency to liter- ary stagnation was even stronger in the second century than in the sixteenth. There was less publicity, and, outside Italy, very little literary activity. The decline was retarded partly by the irritation with w^iich the senatorial families and the provincials who recruited the order regarded the progress to a centralized monarchy and the objectionable incidents of an inevitable process; partly by the gradual spread of Latin civ- 14 LATIN LITERATURE. \ Wfj ilization in the western half of the PJmpire ; so that fresh races were continually coming forward to appropriate a culture which they had not created or exhausted. At first the new recruits paraded at Rome. Seneca, Lucan, Tacitus, Martial, represent almost all that is excellent in the literature of the Silver Age, and they are all Spaniards; and it is hardly fanci- ful to say that the epigrammatic grandiloquence and the elab- orate courtesy anticipate something of the character of Span- ish literature when Spain was a great power. After the mid- dle of the second century, the supremacy passes to Africa; the great writers are Apuleius and Ter"tullian, perhaps St.' Cyprian. Here we can hardly ascertain the influence of race: such modern African literature as exists is Arabic; and few Arabic scholars know Latin literature well, while few Latin scholars know Arabic at all. It may be observed, in passing, that the Egyptians regard Barbary as the land of enchanters and enchantments, and that the founder of the Hanbalite, the straitest of the four orthodox schools of Islam, was a puri- tan countryman of Tertullian. In the fourth and fifth centu- ries there are two changes to note : most of the great writers are religious, and superior to their predecessors both in style and matter; on the other hand, the language appears to have come to a complete standstill. Up to Apuleius both syntax and vocabulary are still in movement: the natural way of turning a sentence or a paragraph varies. But the complete exhaustion of the capital as a literary centre, which was the natural result of the ascendency of the army and of the ad- ministrative system introduced by Diocletian and perfected by Constantine, naturally threw the provincial teachers on the fundamental classics. Fourth-century prose is in the main a more or less corrupt following of Cicero, though St. Jerome is a conspicuous if doubtful exception, and Martianus Capella an exception less doubtful, if less conspicuous. Fourth-cen- tury verse is founded upon Vergil and Ovid, with slight traces of Horace and Martial. This is plainest in Claudian, the greatest poet of the century. He is a happy accident, an off- shoot of the poetical school of Egypt which chanced to bloom in Latin rather than in Greek. But the great western seat of \ k IN TROD UCTION fl 15 \ pure literature during the latter half of this period was Gaul, whose political activity was manifested by the number of pre- tenders who rose and fell there. Ausonius and Sidonius Apol- linaris have much of the spirit of French literature of society; and, trivial as they are, they have cleverness enough to show that if the frontier had been effectually guarded, Gallic society would never have sunk into barbarism. The last epoch of Latin literature that- we have to examine is that of the Ostrogoth rule in Italy, which revived the intel- lectual industry as well as the political importance of the Ro- man nobility, the only trained body of administrators available. The works of the period which have most interest and value are the literary recreations of old men. That old men should amuse themselves with literature was not new; it was new that literature should be left to them. Like the literary move- ment in Gaul, the literary movement in Rome came to a vio- lent end. Theodoric's character broke down with his con- stitution, the Ostrogoth kingdom never recovered itself; and as its decline tempted the ambition of Constantinople, Haly was exposed to a series of devastating campaigns which did far more mischief than the raids of the fifth century. Even then a recovery was possible, but the ruin was completed by the mismanagement that permitted the invasion of the Lom'- bards. St. Gregory, the only considerable writer after that calamity, manifested an intellectual activity worthy of his ec- clesiastical energy. His voluminous works lie beyond our limits ; their chief literary merit is their style, which some think better because more consistent than that of the great fathers of the fifth century, who are never clear whether^they are to imitate the classics or the translation of the Bible. For St. Gregory the question is practically decided ; his vocabu- lary and his syntax are still pure Latin ; there are Latin anal- ogies for what is incorrect tried by the standard of Cicero or Livy; but the structure of his sentences is no longer de- termined by Latin precedents. The logical arrangement has superseded the rhetorical : what has to be said is said simply and directly, without any of the laborious parade of demon- stration and antithesis which w^e still find in St. Augustine. i6 LATIN LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION. Such eloquence as remains is a matter of feeling rather than of skill : in such an age a writer must be reckoned eloquent if he is copious, and St. Gregory is earnest and pathetic as well. Latin literature does not begin with ballads ; the scanty legends of the prehistoric past were never, that we know of, The actual workcd up by primitive minstrels into anvthing the beginning of i i. ii t i txt ^ i i i t'l- i Latin litera Icast likc Lord Macaulav s superb lays. \\ e do not Amironiars^ ^^'^'"^ kuow that there was a time when they were Nsvius. tQ](-i ^^ continuous stories in unsuspecting good f;iith. The tradition seems to have been fragmentary and conjectur- al ; it attached itself to places and sites. The Sister's Beam seems to have kept the story of the battle between the Horatii and Curiatii alive ; every generation who passed under the Beam had to hear the legend of how the surviving champion did penance there for slaying his sister, who reproached him with the death of her lover. So, too, the legend of the devo- tion of the hero who leaped with horse and arms into the gulf was only remembered because Curtius's Pool was shown in the Forum. Much of the legends of the reigns of Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Martins is a collection of precedents, and this guarantees that the stories are in a way trustworthy. The tradition of the colleges of heralds and pontifts, though sure to be much perverted by later practice, had more chance of retaining a hold upon facts than the rumors of the people ; but it was even further from literature. When literature comes to deal with the early traditions, it is impossible to say how much is due to Greek models. Is the story of Sextus Tarquinius at Gabii copied from the story of Zopyrus at Babylon? Do Brutus and his cousins journey to Delphi because the first literary historians were familiar with the name of no other oracle t The visit can hardly be a f;ict— it would have left some memorial at Delphi ; and if the oldest legend knew of a visit to an oracle, there were oracles at Cumai and Praeneste. The oldest legends of all do not seem homo- geneous, .^ilneas and Anna Perenna seem at home in Italy as water deities ; ^neas is transformed in or into the river Nu- micius; Anna is identified with a spring. One of the first reflections that the Greeks and Latins made on the renewal 17 of their acquaintance was that ^neas of Latium must be the same as ^neas of Troy. Anna was easily understood to be a Carthaginian name, and then the tradition that Carthage was tbunded a little before Rome led to a tale of ^neas's visit to Carthage on his way to Italy. Afterwards, chronologists re- flected that Alba was much older than Ron>e, and tha't Rome was not founded till some centuries after the fall of Troy, and interpolated a line of Alban kings (perhaps not wholly the coin- age of their own brains) as well as they could between /Eneas and Romulus. Here, at last, we come to a figure that may be said to live in popular tradition, though the death of Romulus is suspiciously like the death of Renulus, an earlier scion of the line of ^neas who died by the thunder which he had imi- tated. Even the story of the twins nursed by the wolf is not so well attested as to exclude a growing suspicion that it is rather an imitation of the story Herodotus tells of Cyrus be- ing nursed by a bitch than a genuine popular tradition. In general, Roman legend seems to be the aftair of antiquarians, men like Cato and Varro ; it is only later that poets like Ver- gil and Ovid utilized the materials thus collected to their hands. There is no reason to suppose that Ennius possessed at first hand greater treasures of tradition than were within the reach of Vergil. His "Annals" were venerated as a great national monument, but they were not popular in the sense that the poems which have come to us under the names of Homer and Hesiod were in Greece ; it is doubtful whether they were even so popular as the poems which the Alexandrian literati collected into a cycle. The true cradle of Roman literature is the theatre and the school ; and it is in connection with these that we must say the little that can be said here of the precursors of Father Ennius. There were two elements in the earliest Roman drama— the solemn mimic dance that came from Etruria, and the firrcical scenes of daily life, already mentioned, which seem to have been most at home in the Oscan ' speech and ' The Oscans seem to have been Sabellians who settled early and peace- ably on the lower Garigliano, and the coast south of the Pomptine Marshes. i8 LATIN LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION, country. The latter dealt with stock persons and situations, like the Italian harlequinades, which still kept the stage against literary comedy in the eighteenth century. The char- acters were free to extemporize, for the story contained nothing that they could spoil. Incidentally this led at Rome to a special division of the art : according to Livy, the Atellan farces (so called from a little town where the scene was always laid) were first imitated and then monopolized bv youths of good family, who, having no poet over them, requiring no dresses but what they could provide for themselves, no scen- ery, and no music, were perfectly independent, and so main- tained their self-respect. They kept that particular form of farce to themselves because they did not wish their persons or their performances to sink to the level of ordinary players, who were either slaves or hirelings, incapable of military ser- vice or civil rights. It is not unlikely that this form of art may have grown on another side into the " Rhinthonian trage- dies," which were a burlesque upon tragedies, and may, for all we know, have been acted by the same companies as the Atel- lance. If so, we should be able to understand why the Rhin- thonian differed from the Exodia, which were also very often burlesques. The name implies that the Exodia were of the nature of an after-piece ; the Rhinihonicce, like the AteUance, were an independent entertainment. Both have many points of analogy to the satyric drama of Athens, though neither can be shown to have been directly derived from it, and neither attached itself so closely as the satyric drama did in its origin to the comic side of the legend of Dionysus. If Livy is to be trusted, there was a closer relation between the satyric drama and Roman satire, which grew, as he says, out of the jests which revellers bandied about at festivals. Onlv, when these jests began to receive a literary polish, no company at Rome was bold enough to rehearse them in public ; and so written satires were from the first written to be read, and naturally tended to drop the dramatic form which we shall see was not unfrequently employed at first. The literary development of vernacular fiirces will occupy us later; it attained most importance after the literary imitation 19 } of Greek comedy had run its course. The serious drama which was developed out of the mimic dances cf the Tuscan actors passed from the first under Greek influences. Most likely the stories which the dances illustrated were Greek from the time they were first introduced into Rome ; at all events, the first written pieces were taken from the Greek ; and even when the Romans took up national subjects, the treatment was still pretty closely conformed to Greek models, and it was not uncommon to appropriate large portions of Greek plays. The first Latin playwright, the first schoolmaster who taught Greek literature, was Titus Livius Andronicus. He was a native of Tarentum : he came to Rome as a slave, and em- ployed himself after his emancipation as a schoolmaster and an actor. In the latter capacity he originated the curious division of labor whereby one actor, commonly himself, danced and acted, while another, whom the audience were not sup- posed to see, sang the words which he would have sung him- self if the exertion of singing and dancing at once had not been too overwhelming. Such a device implies that the pub- lic came for the spectacle, and held the pantomime more im- portant than the song ; so it is not strange that the plays of Livius Andronicus should have been very meagre, and that the dialogue should have been very little above the level of stage directions, just serving to explain to the audience what was going on. Besides plays of mythology, plays of Greek life, plays of contemporary Roman history, he wTote an ofiicial thanksgiving for a happy turn in the war with Hannibal. Per- haps his most considerable work was a school-book, an abridg- ment of the " Odyssey" in the saturnian metre, which served as a class-book and to give some notion of the story, though hardly any of the poetry. The fragments that we have of it are like the explanations that an impatient teacher might give to an impatient pupil. For instance, "Homer" enumerates the provisions with which Circe furnishes Ulysses for his voyage, while Livius tells us that they (Circe's handmaidens, whom " Homer " names) brought good things to the ships, and ten thousand things else were put aboard the same. Per- 20 LA TIN LITER A TURE. haps his choice of metre may be taken to imply that the sa- turnian was a hexameter pure and simple, neither dactylic nor trochaic, nor anapastic nor iambic, though more nearly tro- chaic than anything. Still, it is curious to find a very smooth quatrain ascribed to him by Terentianus Maurus, who gives a specimen of his own in the same very elaborate metre:' espe- cially as Terentianus tells us that he quotes later writers by choice, because they were more accurate in their versification ; and it is not easy to see why Terentianus or any one else should have been at the pains to modernize a quatrain of I^ivius.'^ His successor, N^evius, wrote in saturnian verse as a matter of national pride. Latin was his mother tongue : he was a native of Campania, then thoroughly Latinized, and he resented the progress of Greek at Rome with all the pride of a Cam- panian. One might almost gather from his remains that a superb and reckless character served him instead of literary talent, as it afterwards served Alfieri ; though he, with a great literature behind him, had opportunities for cultivating fiistid- iousness which Na^vius had not. Nasvius was fastidious by nature : he despised everything, from the Metelli to the starve- ling Greeks who were weaning his countrymen from their na- tive speech ; yet his great poem was addressed to Greeks. It was an epic on the origin of Rome and her recent achieve- ments in the first Punic war : it told exactlv the two thinsfs that foreiiiners would most want to know who were becominji curious about the city which had conquered Sicily. Cicero has preserved a specimen of his narrative, which deals with the battle of yEgusoe, and probably does him full justice, as Cicero, who undervalued nothing in Latin literature, ventures to compare it with Ennius. We find plenty of fire and fulness in the fi-agment, no relief or climax — in a word, nothing artistic in execution or intention. To judge by the fragments, the national epic was not superior, if it was equal, to the spirited 'The niiuius, consisting of hexameters, with every other line ending in an iambus instead of a spondee. "^ Consequently, the reading or the good faith of Terentianus has been called in question. I, INTRODUCTION. 21 adaptations of Greek plays, of which Naevius produced sev- eral. His true glory is not to be the last surviving representa- tive of an imaginary popular literature uncorrupted by Greek, but to be the precursor of Ennius and Accius. of Varius and Vergil. ENNIUS: THE '' ANNALS:' 23 PART I. CHAPTER I. ENNIUS: THE '' ANNALSr The position of Father Enniiis in Latin literature seems at first sight decidedly in excess of his performance. Through- out the republican period he was recognized as the great Roman poet. Cicero appeals to him as summiis poeta. Lu- cretius speaks of the doctrines of the world to come which he has enshrined in everlasting verse. Vargunteius lectured on him to large audiences ; Vergil imitated him to commend his own poems to :i populus Etinianus. Silius in all probability imitated him too, partly in honor of Vergil, partly because he found him a useful guide. The poets of the Augustan age in general acknowledge Ennius's great position, though some- times perplexed and irritated by it. The nearest approach to an explanation which they reach is given in Ovid's neat epi- gram- Ennius ingenio maximus, arte rudis. Quinctilian is more sober and solid, if not so clear, when he compares Einnius and the other luminaries of the Scipionic age to the venerable trees of a sacred grove that have lost their beauty but are impressive still. The public could only respect what their fathers had admired and enjoyed ; the chano-e was in the public, not in Ennius and his contemporaries : so far the metaphor is inexact. Nor can we altogether explain the change by referring to the finish and refinement of form of the great works of the Augustan age, as if these had created a taste which the founders of Roman literature were too untrained, r too inexperienced, to satisfy. Ovid's antithesis makes us think of works like " Voluspa " or the " Nibelungenlied," where there is much imagination and passion, but not the instinctive or acquired skill to express them in a way permanently de- lightful. We should think it overstrained to say that Cicdmon was of the greatest in genius though rude in art, and yet Csed- mon did as much for the poetry of English religion as Ennius for the poetry of Roman history. The fragments of the "Annals" are enough to enable us to judge of the poetry of Ennius, and certainly our first impres- sion is wonder in what sense he is a poet at all. We natu- rally think it the business of a poet to transcend experience, to carry us to a world lit ujd by The light which never was on sea or land, or else to see something in experience which we did not see till he showed it. But the imagination really has a function which is quite as indispensable as these ; to conceive consciously of ordinary life, especially worthy life, as a whole, without ideal- izing it in any way, is really an exercise of the imagination. Experience is successive and simultaneous, and is generally fragmentary too ; and memory in its spontaneous action is more fragmentary still. Imagination is needed to make ex- perience a whole, and this kind of imagination Ennius pos- sessed in full measure. He lived in a time which w^as ^reat. and knew its greatness, and was glad to see itself mirrored in the pages of one who understood and appreciated all that was best in it with a manly, generous, disinterested sympathy. Quintus Ennius was not a Roman or even a Latin ; he was born at Rudire, in Calabria, a town which Strabo reckoned .Greek, r.c. 239 ; he believed himself to be a descendant of Messapus, the king or the patriarch of the land; he said that he had three hearts * because he knew three languages — Latin, Oscan, and Greek. Oscan influence has left no traces that we can identify in his poetry; but Greek culture had come to him more easily than to later Roman poets and been more * The distinction of head and heart, which Plato uses as if it were famil- iar, does not appear in Latin literature even much later than Ennius. 24 LATIN- LITERATURE. intimately appropriated. He took up the ideas and theories which were current among the Itahote and Siceliote Greeks without much discrimination, or the need of it. In him the mystical and rationalist tendencies were still at the early stage of development in which they only represent the emo- tional and the speculative side of the same eager curiosity. This is illustrated by his feeling about dreams — a point always attractive to the gifted minds of a primitive people, and there- fore possibly to the commonplace minds of an instructive peo- ple. He does not doubt their importance. His great work began with a dream in which Homer appeared to him, as Hector appears in Vergil to /Eneas, and, as critics seem to agree, revealed to him the secrets of the life to come. The dream of Ilia which served as a prototype of the dreams of Dido is too like a real dream to be dismissed as a poetical machine. The numerous dreams in the plays translated, with more or less change, from the Greek serve to show the other side of the question. Though these are still treated seriously, we meet already with the reflections that because some dreams are true all need not be, and that dreams frequently contain nothing but a confused medley of the experiences of waking life; but this does not exclude a recognition of Ihe special clearness of the perceptions which come in sleep when the limbs are at rest. Even here criticism comes in : the revela- tions in the visions of the night are the reward of the diligence of the day. If the escape which dreams offer from the limits of com- monplace experience is less complete than it seems, the es- cape which diviners and soothsayers of all ranks offer is no better than a cheat. They promise riches to others and have nothing for themselves, except what the dupes of their prom- ises give. They have missed their own path in life (for they are no better than beggars), and yet they undertake to show others the road to fortune. The panegyrist of Scipio who went up to the Capitol to converse with Jove had no quarrel with the mystical temperament; he was content that Each should see according to his sight. But it offended his masculine common-sense that weak and ENNIUS: THE '' ANNALSr 25 greedy or timid natures should try to get more than their share of good things by the help of more or less conscious impostors. Another point at which he came into collision with contemporary pietism was the question of a particular providence, which he rejected on the strength of the broad fact that it by no means always goes well with the good, or ill with the bad. The substance of the popular religion was left nearly untouched by these audacities ; for what the people really believed in was the ritual, which proved its value by ex- perience, having been established because it contained antici- pations of sound empirical rules of hygiene and the like, and maintained because it fostered a serious, cautious, and atten- tive spirit. Besides, when speculation begins, it is still felt to be a luxury, and is not mistaken for a necessity by those who indulge in it: they are on their guard against the harm they might do by setting a fashion it would not be well for all to follow. Ennius's own philosophy was very simple : it consisted of the belief that he had passed in his own person through all expe- rience that interested him— a belief which we find in Pythag- oras and Empedocles, perhaps in Buddha, and later in tire Welsh poets of the sixth or seventh century ; of a recognition of the large element of nature-worship which had inspired the popular mythology ; and of the adoption of a conjecture with which the opening of intercourse with India had inspired a clever Greek. The chief objects of worship in India had been deified men ; there were legends of the death of gods in Greece. When the two facts were brought into combination, It was a plausible conjecture that the anthropomorphic my- thology of Greece was really history in disguise. We are told that Ennius not only translated the work of Euhemerus, but extended it ; and that Lactantius, who reproduced Euheme- rus's story under the impression that he was refuting paganism, seems to have quoted Ennius. It is inferred that we may find this extension in the adventures of Saturn from his de- thronement to his settlement in Italy, which Lactantius gives. This need not exclude Alommsen's view, that the history up to the death of Romulus, at any rate, may have been influ- I.--2 26 LA TIN LITER A TURE. enced by the Euhemerism of Ennius. Such speculations, when used, were not unfavorable to religious fervor. Apotheosis seemed the sublimest goal of aspiration for the poet and his friends: to climb within the regions of the host of heaven was the reward for noble deeds. If Jupiter had won his godhead by going five times over the world, establishing his friends in kin^-doms and taming barbarians, it was the easier to worship him"" and believe that he had put off his mortality to put on the "lorious life ' of the glow overhead which all call upon as Jove, the life of air and cloud and wind and shower and sun- shine which is called "the father of help" "because it helps mortals." Such r^ationalism may end— it generally does— by lowering both the conceptions that are brought together, but it begins by heightening both. Ennius only came to Rome in middle life, and was not at first a Roman citizen : he became so by being placed on the rolls of a colony conducted by a son of Fulvius Nobilior, un- der whom he had served in /Etolia. Even after this he was poor, for Cicero tells how merry he was under the double burden of poverty and old-age. Though poor, he did not think austerity necessary to dignity. He died of gout at seventy. He had said, long before, he was never a poet but when he had the gout: he translated a Sicilian cookery-book and a Greek work on the extreme of voluptuousness. His great work was produced at intervals, as a war occurred in which a patron distinguished himself. Its successive instal- ments are the fruit of the brightest intervals in the life of the father of Roman letters, when he could escape from the drudg- ery of his work as a schoolmaster and playwright to the free- dom of a parasite. He had no sordid desire to make a profit of his patrons, for whom he glorified and transcended the festal songs in praise of men of old. He has drawn his own portrait as the model client with great insight and perhaps a little garrulity, and it is noticeable that there is not a utili- tarian trait in the picture. There is nothing to show that the client makes himself of use to his patron in any way. His value to the patron is that he is absolutely safe with him, and » Aspice hoc sublime candens quern invocant omnes Jovem. 4 \ \ I- ENNIUS: THE '' ANNALSr 27 absolutely at ease; he can tell him anything good and bad; he can share his avowable and unavowable pleasures with him • all his secrets will be kept, nothing will ever provoke the good client to be thoughtless or spiteful: the good client knows when to speak and when to hold his tongue ; he is always pleasant and has plenty to say, and can be entertained ; he can follow up his patron's ideas at the right lime, but he is not talkative ; he has old-world knowledge of all kinds, but it is buried in his mind ; he does not overwhelm his company with precedents. It is curious to turn from this picture of discretion to the grand self-assertion of P^nnius's claim to be hailed as the poet ' who reaches to mortals the fiery cup of heartfelt song. The contrast seems rather characteristic of the Italians, and occurs again and again in Latin literature; in Greece boast- fulness and prudence do not seem to go together. Pindar perhaps is an exception, but even Pindar praises himself less directly and less audaciously than Ennius. Another great poet of whom Ennius reminds us is Milton; there is the same late maturity, the same manliness, if not the same austerity and purity. And there is the same transition from the roman- tic interest in poetry to the ethical and political interest. Nearly everything that is strictly poetical or imaginative in the "Annals " belongs to the earliest books. It is not merely that the outline of the story ceases to be poetical : such a pict- ure as the goddess swimming swiftly over the tender marge of gloom might have been introduced anywhere, but in fact it comes in the first. There, too, we have the first appearance of the "azure meadows" of the sea; in the second we have the really exquisite line — OIH lespondet suavis sonus Egeriai,'' where one wonders \i sonus is really used for vox, or whether Ennius wished to suggest that the favored king heard the * Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus Versus propinas flammeos medullitus. ' Egeria answered him with soothing sound. IZ LA TIN LITER A TURE, ENNIUS: THE ''ANNALS. i> 29 voice of ihe nymph in the sound of the fountain. In the dream of Ilia we may notice the pleasant willow beds, and the *' new places " over which the fair man of the dream hurries the dreamer, for the combination of two ditTerent kinds of imagination : and we know that the description of the fall of Alba suggested many traits in the fall of Troy. In the war with Pyrrhus there are one or two well-known grandiloquent passages, and an amusing sneer of the demi-Greck at Stolidum genus ^neidarum Bellipotcntes sunt magis quam sapicntipotentes, which suggests an inquiry whether Lucilius would have con- sidered sapicntipotentes a legitimate Latin compound. We know that he criticised another phrase which passed almost into a mannerism with Ennius. Both in the "Annals" and in the tragedies we find more than once the metaphor of bristling arms : one line in which it occurred ended with splendct ct horrct. Lucilius susfiiested that the line should read •&a horrct ct algct, implying that nothing but a strictly intransitive use in connec- tion with cold was permissible. Perhaps his criticism suggests that Ennius's metaphor was taken from the play of light upon the weapons, which gave him the impression of shivering. There is no trace of this in Vergil, who adopted the metaphor and handed it on to a long succession of poets. Another metaphor of Ennius which Vergil adopted too has been less fortunate : Florentes aere catcrvas has found no imitators outside the literature of the Latin lands, and it is only Vergil's imitation which has preserved to us the knowledge of Ennius'syf^/'^i", a formation which has to be ex- cused by the remembrance that Ennius was a Calabrian poet. In spite of these questionable audacities, it is clear that Ennius valued style and art as highly as the poets of the Au- gustan age. When he begins his own cursory narrativ^e of the first Punic war, he says that the story has been told already — t Versibus' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat Nee dicti studiosus erat. And Cicero, who has preserved the boast, seems to admit that though ungraceful it was not unjustifiable. What is perhaps more remarkable, a Greek rhetorician of the second century was struck by the sonorous pomp and strength of his hex- ameters. It is true that the metre is imperfectly mastered : there are spondaic lines like Olli respondet rex Albai Longai, which recall the old saturnian rhythm, unless we are to assume that its prosody was much more fixed than is probable. And even when the dactylic movement is unmistakable, the want of practice makes itself painfully felt; he writes with as little restriction as Homer, and he is far from having Homer's resources. Such a line as Aspcclabat virtutem Icgionis' suai is very far from being an extreme instance of the harshness of Ennius : it is at least as hard to scan as an averasre Endish hexameter. A fixirer example of Ennius's latest manner may be fhinid in the description of the tribune in the Histrian war : Undique conveniunt velut imber tela tribuno, Configunt parmani, tinnit liastilibus umbo /Erato sonitu galeae ; sed nee pote quisquam Undique nitendo corpus discernere ferro. Semper obundantes hastas frangitque quatitque. Totum sudor habet corpus, multumque laborat, Ncc rcspirandi fit copia, praepetc ferro Histri tela manu jacientes sollicitabant.' In the main, these lines are a free and vigorous translation of » All around the weapons came in upon the tribune like a storm. They pierce his buckler : the boss rings with darts with bronzed clang in his helm. But yet no one prevails among them all to cleave his body with steel. Evermore he shatters and shakes off the wave of lances. All his body is in a sweat ; he is sore put to it ; he has no leisure to draw breath. The Histrians troubled him with winged steel, easting darts from their hands. 30 LA TIN LITER A TURK. II. TT 103 sq. The double ablative in the second and third lines is an immature construction : even in English the boss of a helmet ringing with darts with bronzed clang is awkward. On the other hand, the fifth line is fine and original, though not quite co.nsistent with the statement that the tribune's shield is pierced with darts. A similar incongruity occurs in Ennius's adaptation of the simile of the ararir^ JWor: he adds the trait of the horse foaming, which implies that he is balked and restrained while stimulated to violent action. With all its incongruities, the "Annals" of Ennius was the work upon which his reputation rested. His comedies were rated very low in antiquity. Volcatius, a grammarian of the seventh century of the city, who drew up a list of ten co- medians in order of merit, placed Ennius at the end of it, and only placed him there in honor of his antiquitv ; which is more remarkable, as he placed the haughty and free-spoken Naivius, an earlier writer than Ennius, a^nd'one whose come- dies are otherwise unknown, above Terence. Ennius's trage- dies were better esteemed, though both Tacuvius and AccTus were held to have surpassed him. Still, for us the history of Latin tragedy begins with him, as for us the history of Latin comedy begins with. Plautus. ) I LATJ.V TRAGEDY UNDER THE REPUBLIC. 31 CHAPTER n. LATIN 7RAGEDY UNDER THE REPUBLIC. According to an ingeaious theory set forth by Ladewig in a programme published thirty years ago, the Latin drama be- gan with translation, at least with paraphrase, and in Ennius hardly ever got beyond this, while Pacuvius and Accius eman- cipated themselves. For instance, he observes that if Ennius had treated the legend of Antiope as Hyginus said he did, Cic- ero must have been wrong in saying that Pacuvius's "Anti- ope" was a translation of the "Antiope" of Euripides. It is a fair reply that Hyginus was at least as likely to be mistaken in the name of the poet as Cicero in the nature of the play, though it does not seem to have been noticed on either side that a line of Pacuvius's play,' which Persius paraphrases, is plainly taken from ^schylus, whom Euripides is not known to have copied. This is nearly decisive against the literal truth of Cicero's statement. It may possibly be true in the main ; it would be like Persius to sum up Pacuvius's imitation of the shabby pathos of Euripides in the one epithet verrucosa^ as if she had been covered with warts in consequence of the ill-treatment on which Pacuvius had dwelt at length; it would be as like him to use this coarse. epithet to express his sense of the roughness of the play, or of the incorrectness of Pacu- vius's language, who, since Cato calls a hill verruca, may have made his heroine fly to her sons/^/' verrucosa loca. Most of Ladewig's instances are as doubtful as the "An- tiope," and he never carried his system beyond the first sketch. In philology theories which are put forward with an insufficient foundation of knowledge seem harder to revive than theories * Antiopa aeriimnis cor luctificabile fulta. E/(Tance works with one or more veteran playwrights, the actual dialogue is left to the novice. We may be certain that the young nobles did what they liked, and were tiianked and praised by the au- thor, who had to do the rest. The result of the whole was much more acceptable to a cul- tivated circle which anticipated the judgment of posterity than to the public of the day, who missed their own likeness and their own grievances; "comity" and "sweetness" were for their betters; for themselves they preferred "salt." The next stage of literary comedy at Rome is more imper- fectly known. It began to manifest itself even before the Afranius. ^''"^ ^^ Tercucc, but its great representative was Afranius, who flourished a whole generation later. As Terence had reached the point of working on the common element of Greek and Latin life with Greek characters, and had reached the utmost possible perfection of style and plot and sentiment on these terms, it only remained to treat the same element a little more realistically with Latin characters. Ambivius Turpio, the same whose acting saved a play of Caecilius Statins, had shown the way, but there are few re- mains of his plays. Hostius, who seems to have succeeded him, is extensively quoted by grammarians, but literary writers do not speak of him as Horace and Quinctilian do of Afranius. The dependence on Greek comedy was not thrown off by the transfer of the scene from Greek towns to Latin towns. When Horace says that in the opinion of many the toga of Afranius fitted Menander, this means that Menander's speeches came very well from the characters of Afranius. AFRANIUS. 6i Though they wore the toga, they belonged for the most part to the lower orders : they were either Latins, or Romans who were below equestrian rank. To bring knights and senators on the stage would still have been inconceivable at Rome; and, apart from this, the humors of the Latin towns were sup- posed to be ridiculous at the capital. The titles show that the scene of the story, if not of the action, commonly lay there. It is obviously impossible to reconstruct the story to the same extent that has been done for Latin tragedy, as the plots were fictitious, not traditional, and there were no Greek parallels in an equally fragmentary state to eke them out with. Here and there two or three scraps of the dialogue throw enough light upon each other to make out a piece of the story by, but this may belong just as well to the underplot as to the plot. The fragments make a more definite impression in another way. Afranius seems to be rather a superficial realist explaining to his public the ins and outs of a shabby world of which they all know something, so that each could recognize and applaud the trait that corresponded to his own experience. The jollity of riautus seems to be passing into voluptuousness; the subtle kindliness of Menander is replaced by a sickly sentimentalism. This last seems to have been the reason that Afranius did not become a school-book, in which case his works would have reached us. It was, of course, difficult to ":o on idealizins: the love affiiirs with which Plautus and Terence dealt to the ex- tent to which Plautus and Terence idealize them ; the position of Aspasia or even Lais was impossible at Rome. Such pas- sions as the passion of Catullus for Lesbia, and even Proper- lius for Cynthia, appear at a later stage; and in the interval it was natural for poetry and life to go further and fare worse, all ihe more because, as Plato points out in the " Symposium," friendship, even when perverted by passion between a man and a boy, does not interfere with a man's ordinary interests to the same extent as "love" in the sense of the New Comedy. As the covicedia togata was always more or less a comoedia fa- bcrnaria, it naturally prepared the way for the transition to the period when the stage was practically abandoned to the Atel- lanjK and the Mimi, and comic writers had to adapt themselves to the conditions of a lowered form of art. 62 LATIN LITERATURE, CHAPTER IV. SA TIRE. Roman- satire was the last fruit of the age of the Scipios. At first, in the hands of Ennius, it seems to be poetry at large; it covers the whole range of Horace's satires and epistles and of the fables of Phaidrus. According to the general opinion, he wrote six books of satires, and of these the best known bv the fragments that have reached us is the third, devoted to the praise of the elder Scipio. Hence come the passages of self- praise, one of which was quoted above,' and here we may sus- pect a dialogue. Scipio seems to address the poet in the first, and the poet to answer in the second. The metre in both seems to be iambic, but most of the fragments are hexameters, and there are four very smooth trochaic tetrameters on the great calm which fell on nature when the gods took council to give Scipio the victory. Scipio himself was introduced ad- dressing Rome. Ennius, too, put on record his belief that such exploits could not be worthily sung by any writer but Homer. There is a lively fragment of the sixth book, which treats in satirical style, in trimeters, the disgust of the host whose guest has too good an appetite. Of the other fragments the most important cannot be placed. One is an amusing jingle upon the word "frustra*' — in vain — to the effect that it is lost labor to take a man in who takes in your intention to take him in. We learn from Quinctilian that Ennius wrote a dialogue between " Life and Death," which figured in his satires, and from Gellius that he gave a version of the fable of the farmer and the lark who only fiew away when the farmer began to reap himself Here, too, the form is more or less dramatic : the greater part of the Hible passes » P. 27. LUCILIUS. (^Z in dialogue between the lark and her young. There is noth- ing in the tone of the fragments of the satires to distinguish them from the " Protrepticon," or book of good advice, except that we know that the satires were more or less dramatic. In fact, it would fit all we know of the latter to suppose that they were a kind of closet drama, without plot, dealing with most of the interests of the stage drama, in a spirit rather lighter than tragedy and more serious, perhaps, than comedy ; and this agrees with the tradition of the Romans themselves, who always hold that satire originated in the license of festivals. There is little to be said of the satires of Pacuvius, except that they seem to have been imitations of his uncle's, like his continuation of the "Annals," and the fragments doubtfully attributed to Accius (though the MSS. fluctuate between many names, including those of Caecilius and Lucilius) need not be discussed. The later shape of Latin satire— the satire of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal — owes its origin to Lucilius, who was born 574 u.c. (St. Jerome placed his birth thirty-two years too late, having pitched upon the wrong Albinus and Qualms. Calpurnius, by whose consulship his birth was dated); he died 652 u.c. He was a Campanian, like Ncevius, born at Suessa Aurunca, and served, thirty years before his death, in the cam- paign of Numantia under his friend the younger Africanus; he died at Naples, and was buried at the expense of the public. He was of good fiimily, for on the mother's side the f^reat Pompey was descended from his brother or sister, and in his own lifetime he was in a position to acquire the house built at the public expense for Anliochus Epiphanes when a hostage at Rome. He wrote thirty books of satires; probably each book in- cluded more satires than one. It is agreed upon all hands that the first twenty were written entirely in hexameters, and that the thirtieth was in hexameters too; the fragments of the twenty-second are in elegiacs; the twenty-sixth and twenty- seventh were in trochaic tetrameters; the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth, if we can trust our authorities, were a medley of iambic and dactylic and trochaic metre in the old stvle. The 64 LATIN LITERATURE. twenty-sixth book has a separate prefiice, in which the author wishes for readers cultivated enough, and not too much; and it has been conjectured that the last five books are earlier than the rest, although the argument on which most stress is laid admits of being retorted; and it is just as likely that Lucilius started a new form of art while his energies were fresh, and fell back upon old ones when they began to fail. We are told that he learned from Rhinthon the notion of a comedy in hexameters, and it is quite certain that he was the first to make satires a systematic criticism of literature and life. The one element upon which he seems to rely for amus- ing his reader is that he always shows that somebody else is wrong. It is impossible to detect any charm in his fragments ; yet we learn that late in the Empire those who could read nothing else made a shift to read him, which is perhaps as se- vere a criticism of contemporary taste as if there should come a time in England when nothing was readable except "Gam- mer Gurton." When we try to guess at what his attraction may have been, we come upon two things. He was perfectly frank, never afraid of saying plainly what he had to say ; and, as Persius tells us, there is always a public to applaud any- body who taunts a man with one eye for not having two. Moreover, he was the earliest writer that we know of since the days of the nineteenth dynasty who saw that macaronics would be amusing ; and his reliance upon this primitive arti- fice was all the more effective because it was as naive as that of his unknown Egyptian prototype. Then, too, his immense fiicility was not lost upon his public. A man who can dictate a couple of hundred Latin hexameters in the hour without shifting his weight from one foot to the other is always a remarkable phenomenon, though no dozen lines saved by ac- cident from the shipwreck awake the grateful regrets of pos- terity. As often happens, we owe the neatest specimen of his skill to Cicero, who tells us how Lucilius made ScjEvola greet Albucius, who carried Hellenizing too far (Cic. " Fin." i. 3, 8) : Graeciim tc, Albiici, qiiam Romanum atque Sabinum, Municipem Ponti, Tritanni, centurionum, Pracclaroriim liominum ac primoi urn, signiferumque, LUCILIUS. 6- Maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis, Id quod uialuisti, tc, quiim ad me accedis, saluto. Xoi/j', inquam Tite ! lictorcs, turma omnis, cohorsque Xa7/jf, Tite, hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus. One remembers that Scx^vola was a man of good f^imily, and it is a i\\x joke, though a cheap one, that he gives Albucius credit, if he would only take it, for being on a level by birth with the most respectable and eminent centurions, instead of which he has too meanly condescended to naturalize himself at Athens (which, no doubt, was proud to be permitted to con- fer its citizenship on a popular outgoing propraetor), and thereby lost the friendship of Scaevola and ranked himself with prospective enemies of the Roman people. The other good fragments are as hard to place. Here is a definition of Virtue : Virtus, Albaue, est pretium persolvcre vcrum, Qucis in versamur, quels vivimus rebus potcsse ; Virtus est, homini scirei quo qux>que abcat res : Virtus, scirei, homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum ; Quai bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum : Virtus, quxrendac tinem re scire modumque: Virtus, divitiis pretium persolvere posse: Virtus, id dare quod re ipsa debetur honor! ; Hostcm esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum, Contra dcfensorem hominum morumque bonorum ; IIos magnifacere, his bene vellc, his vivere amicum ; Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare, Dcinde parentum, tcrtia jam postrcmaquc nostra. Here is plenty of the redundancy that Horace disliked in his predecessors, and, after all, it is only in the last two lines that we get anything beyond illustrations of the tautological proposition that virtue consists in doing right, respecting the rights of wealth and office, seeing the right view, taking the right side. If a "public spirit" in the puritan sense is vTrtue, his general experience is that a selfish spirit prevails, and with it a base belief that money makes the man. The direction which he gave to satire was a voluble and outspoken criticism of everything sacred and profane, the whole public and literary life of the time. The first two books 66 LATIN LITERATURE. LUC I LI US. 67 li are held to have contained invectives against luxury, and per- haps a description of a tavern brawl. In the third there was a great deal about his journey to Sicily, with plenty of passing attacks on contemporary poets. The fourth was an attack upon the rich, put perhaps mainly into tiie mouth of Lnelius. The fifth, we know, made fun of rhetorical artitices, and the si.xth of the shabby ways of the rich and the noble. The sev- enth and eighth appear to treat of the many quarrels of the two sexes. The ninth was full of grammatical criticism, and also contained the original of Horace's immortal colloquy with the bore. The tenth book set Persius upon attacking the world, under pretence of attacking himself. The eleventh dealt with the lax discipline of the young nobles in the cam- paign of Numantia. I'he twelfth is held, on very slight evi- dence, to have been devoted to the stage. The thirteenth and fourteenth were on elaborate cookery and on ambition. The later books, especially the seventeenth and perhaps the fif- teenth, criticised Stoicism and mythology. The eighteenth and nineteenth had much to say on avarice, and the twentieth on superstition in low life and luxury in high. The elegiac satires were devoted to love, and the last five are chiefly re- markable because they often brought up the question between old and young, man and wife, father and son, which we are fa- miliar with in Latin comedy. His favorite method, upon the whole, seems to be parod)-. For instance, in the first book he gives us a council of the gods upon the lot of man, and wishes that men had been properly represented at an earlier meeting, for then they would all have been gods too, of the highest rank, choosing their personality according to taste. Apollo objected to be called beautiful, because it was treating him like a pet boy; but this is a mild piece of audacity compared to the insinuation that the gods have taken an unfair advan- tafre, and carried their measures bv a stolen division in a thin house. He has plenty of jests at superstition, but they none of them cut very deep. \Vhen he tells of the formida- ble bugbears instituted by a Faunus or a Pompilius Numa, at which one of his butts trembles, and takes it for an omen to look upon (just like children before they can speak, who be- lieve every brazen statue is a live man); of men as silly who lake feigned dreams for truth, and believe that there is sense in brazen statues, though it is just like a gallery painted in perspective outside a house, all feigning and no truth — he does not really commit himself against the popular creed ; he only satirizes the predecessors of the class who spread the fame of winking Madonnas and the like. Again, it takes little audacity to tell us that the Cyclops in Homer two hundred feet high, with a stick bigger than the mast of any vessel, is a fictitious monster. There is not a hint of the thorough-going discussion of providence which we find in the tragedians. His political criticisms are equally superficial; he stops at a quaes- tor being " a man who skulks from the day, a shady character, just that sort ;" or at the nuisance of having a praetor on his hands, " w^ho himself is enough to turn him inside out ;" or at the early reputation of Opimius, the father of the friend of Jugurtha, who, when young, was too pretty for his credit, and mended both ways afterwards ; or at Gaius Cassius, the man of all w'ork, the thievish auctioneer widi the big head, who was made heir by the judgment of Tullius to the exclusion of everybody. The poetical criticism is often painstaking; for instance, a dozen lines are devoted to a distinction between poetry and a poem. A poem is but a small part of the poetry of a poet. The poetry of Homer is above attack, though it is possible to pick out a line or a thought for blame. And most of his crit- icism is of the same painstaking, pettifogging kind, dealing with strictly grammatical points, often mere minutiae of proso- dy, like the puzzle which the Romans were not tired of long after the davs of Lucilius, that the Greeks could cnan^ie the quantity of the first syllable of ''A/)/;c. It is true that Lucilius seems duller and paltrier, because he has been principally quoted by grammarians, often at second-hand. On the other hand, it is to be remembered that many of them quoted from some selection which would include his best works, and that he would have been quoted by other writers than grammarians if he had been generally quotable. He wrote, however, for the public of his own day, and had no pretension to perfect purity 68 LA TIN LITER A TURK. of style : he said that he wrote for the people of Tarentum, Consentia, and Sicily, none of whom knew the best Latin. In general, he was indifferent to his own reputation, and immor- talized his own amours while satirizing those of other men. He told his readers almost all that he knew of himself, from the adventures of his journey to Sicily to his refusal of differ- ent lucrative speculations in public contracts. It was of a piece with this that he was quite indifferent to style, and filled up his lines freely with stop-gaps, though Quinctihan did not endorse the severe criticism of Horace. THE ''ANNALSr 69 CHAPTER V. EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. Roman history begins with the *' Annales Maximi," and they begin — when they were finally published by Quintus Mucius Scasvola, in 133 i?.c., in eighty books — with the foun- The dation of the city. That Sca^vola discontinued them "^^""a^s." w-as a proof of his tact, which Cicero praises upon the authority of other writings in the custody of the pontiffs ; he saw that the collection was growing too bulky to be continued. It is not clear when the Pontifex Maximus began to keep a record of the events of each year upon a white board in his official res- idence ; that he had done so for some considerable time be- fore the series was closed by Scxvola is proved by the testi- mony of both Cicero and Servius; both also agree that there was some kind of publication of the record, but their agree- ment goes no further. According to Cicero, the Pontifex waited till the year's record was complete before he exposed it at the door of his house ; according to Servius, he put up the blank-board at once, at the beginning of the year, and added the events as they occurred, so that the record served some of the purposes of an official newspaper. Each year's record was laid up in the house of the Pontiff for future refer- ence, and was accessible to the public. Of the two, Servius is likelier to be right as to the practice which prevailed when the "Annals " were discontinued. It would be hard to under- stand what the publication at the year's end can have come to, and whether last year's news was left to edify the public for a twelvemonth. We have no authority whatever to tell us when the publication in any form began ; and the first pub- lication may have been intermittent. There was not, and had never been, any reason for keeping the citizens in ignorance 7^ LATIN LITERATURE. of current history, as there was for keeping them in ignorance of legal proceedings and of the calendar; in which last the college of pontiffs had a special interest, because they were able to manipulate the machinery of intercalation so as to lengthen or shorten the terms of office, as might suit their friends. Still, the official publication of events was of a piece with the publication of the " Legis Actiones '' and the calendar by Cn. Flavins, and a publication which gratified curiosity is not likely to have been earlier than a publication which was almost indispensable to daily business. It is even doubtful whether the annual register of events was separately kept, be- fore it was separately published, though our authorities as- sume that both the compilation and the publication went back to the commencement of the Republic, if not to the founda- tion of the college, l^eside the "Annals,"' the pontiffs had two sets of records in their possession — the " Libri Pontificales," which wx*re a manual of rules and ceremonies, and the " Com- mentarii Pontificum," which were a collection of the cases which the pontiffs had had to decide from time to time ; among these would be included the prodigies which had occurred and the rites rcconnnended to avert their eftects. These would in- clude everything that the pontiffs required for their own use; as thev had the control of the calendar. The State mi;2:ht have required them to register the names of magistrates, and the official who had to do this would naturally add short notes of whatever struck him as important. It is certain that any annals which had been kept before the Gallic invasion perished when the city, with the exception of the Capitol, was captured ; nor were any measures taken to restore the loss. The military tribunes collected the laws and treaties which had survived, and restored copies of those which had been lost, but we hear nothing of any endeavor of the pontitTs to do the same. The confusion of the earlier Fasti, which more than once provokes Livy to outbursts of despair, proves that the early part of the "Annals " of the Re- public did not rest upon anything so certain as a record kept from year to year by the Pontifex Maximus, and restored at once after the fire. THE '' ANiXALSr 71 Yet there are many passages in the second book of Livy which seem to imply that materials were used for the recon- struction of the "Annals" quite as trustworthy as those availa- ble for the beginning of the " Saxon Chronicle." Wherever the events of the year are compressed into two or three lines, it is a presumption, not that the entry is necessarily correct, but that it represents the sober belief of well-informed officials, and is not necessarily corrupted by anything but simple errors of memory; though it is impossible to read any military his- tory without seeing that this of itself is a fruitful source of er- ror. And it WMS, of course, a more fruitful source of error Avhen writing was so rare as we know it to have been in the beginning of the Roman Republic. When it was the duty of the highest official (consul, dictator, interrex, as the case might be) to drive a nail into the door of a temple on the Ides of September, it is obvious that this was the only way to inform the community at large of the passage of time, of which they were in danger of losing count ; and as September, if no tricks were played with the calendar, was the unhealthiest month in the year, it was quite intelligible that, if an especially unhealthy September followed the accidental omission of this precaution against losing count of time, some punctual persons should think that an offence had been committed against some deity, who had to be propitiated, and even that enough people should be affected by this scruple for the public health to improve perceptibly when such scruples were appeased. Still, there is no reason to suppose that the practice of writing was ever confined to the pontiffs ; whatever records they kept, it is likely that the records of private families went back as far. But these would be from the first much worse authorities: they were the expression of individual or family pride; and assuming that they did not begin with the beginning of the fiimily, the beginning would be completed by a free use of im- agination. A family which had kept records for two or three generations, and wished to carry them back to its reputed founder, would have a fragmentary legend of the intervening stages ; and whoever undertook to piece the fragments together would hardly know whether he was remembering or inferring 72 LATIN LITERATURE. FABIUS.—CINCIUS. n or inventing. And the first record would receive continual additions, for a legend grows rapidly where it has some frame- work to give it coherence, and would spread through the cli- ents of a family to the people and become the source of new confusions. The Valerii and Fabii seem to have contributed largely in this way to Roman history, especially the latter; for we hear of their actions even when not in office, and it is seldom that either of these houses are in office without something more interesting happening than in ordinary years. Still, it would be a mistake to set down all the details in early history to this source. We hear much of heroes like Cincinnatus and Corio- lanus, who did not belong to Rimilics that played a great part for many generations. We have, too, copious legends to illus- trate the relative position of dictator and master of the horse, and the history of Melius docs not owe much to the house- hold records of the heirs of his destroyer, for it is not even clear whether Q. Servilius Abela, who struck the decisive blow, was in office, or simply a private citizen zealous in the cause of authority. ^Moreover, it is certain that the beginning of all cannot have been recorded by the f;imilies of the Republic, and the legend of the beginning of all was comparatively full. It is quite possible that it was first written down by Greeks. Plutarch speaks of Fabius Pictor following Diodes of Pepare- thus in his account of Rhea Sylvia's twins, and Diodes of Pepa- rethus would follow the story current in the Greek towns of Campania or Tarentum, which would be a distortion of the popular traditions of Rome. Another reason to suspect Greek influence is that all the history of the younger Tarquin is so like the history of a Greek tyrant, and that the treason of Sex- tus at Gabii might almost be copied from Herodotus, though how such anecdotes get repeated, with variations, from one period to another and one nation to another has still to be explained. Whatever the sources of the "Annals," their manner was studiously plain and archaic; so that Cicero, who generally was disposed to venerate antiquity, complains again and again of the mischievous precedent, which later historians imitated [ too closely to please him, even after Cxlius Antipater had set a new one. The first two Roman historians, Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus, wrote immediately after tlie war with Han- nibal; towards the close of which Cincius, v;ho had Fabius; cin- been commanding as propraetor in Sicily, was taken *^'^'^- prisoner, and had an interview with Hannibal, and received information from him as to the forces with which he crossed the Alps. Both wrote in Greek, and neither made very much use of the "Annals." Dionysius, who almost always quotes them together, says that they told the legend of the foundation of the city pretty fully, and that they also told fully what they had been personally concerned with, while the long interval was filled by a cursory recapitulation, which need not have been cursory if they had gone regularly through the "Annals," using all the materials at their disposal to amplify them. Fa- bius, at least, must have had access to family archives going back to the first days of the Republic; and, in fiict, it was the possession of these, as well as the recent achievements of his great kinsman, which led him to continue in a new way the work of his ancestor, the first Roman painter. Neither seems to have been equal to a critical narrative of even contemporary events — the testimony of Dionysius is to be taken strictly of what came under their personal knowledge. Cincius, although he was able to question Hannibal on some important matters, was capable of following a Greek historian who had attached himself to the fortune of the great adventurer, and apparently retailed all the incredible gossip of his camp-followers; for then, as now, southern countries were hotbeds of rumors, where malice and the love of excitement engendered an odd mixture of suspicion and credulity, which led Polybius to parody Plato, and despair of history till men of aff.\irs became historians, or historians became men of affairs. Fabius was translated bv another Fabius about a hundred years after his work was completed, and otherwise seems to have been little read. His Greek cannot have been delight- ful; his legends were more picturesquely told, though it may be with less sincerity, by Ennius, who was a classic down to I.-4 is i 74 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the Augustan age. The history of the Republic was told at jireater lencrlh bv later annalists, and he does not seem to have thou^^ht of dwellinir on the numerous points of constitutional history on which Nicbuhr wished to make him an authority. Although he did commit himself to a theory of the number of the tribes under Servius and the number of able-bodied citi- zens at the time of the original constitution of the centuries, he is never quoted for antiquarian details, which were only collected upon a large scale in the seventh century. He gave the legends of the foundation of the city and of the monarchy more simply than some of his successors, v;ho, however, agreed with him in the main outlines. It is generally thought that the very full account which Dionysius gave of the education of the sons of Rhea Sylvia is supplemented from without, but it had not yet been adorned by the sacrifice of the mother and her marriajie to Father Tiber. Again, his narrative of the House of Tarquin was quite unperplexed by artificial chronol- ogy; he made Aruns and Tarquin the proud sons, not grand- sons, of the older Tarquin, wlience it naturally followed, as Dionysius pointed out, that Tanaquil must have been a hun- dred and fifteen vears old when her heart was broken by the death of Aruns, always assuming that the "Annals,'' as they finally existed, were trustworthy. Fabius, as the oldest writer, seems to have been used with a certain predilection by Dion. Acilius Glabrio was another writer of the same period, who was qux^stor 551, and wrote a history in Greek; which may be c. Acilius explained by the fact that he was interpreter to Car- p''t:orueiius ^'^^adcs and the other philosophers who came with Scipio. i^jni to Rome. As he must then have been at least seventy years old, it is obvious the knowledge of Greek was rare. He is the authority for the legendary interview between Hannibal and Scipio at Ephesus, which took place 560 u.c, whence it is inferred that he carried his historv at least to that date. He is quoted also for the fact that several of Hannibal's prisoners tried to evade their parole, and for the rather im- probable statement that the censors contracted to have the sewers cleared and repaired at the expense of 240 talents; and for a rationalistic legend of the origin of the Lupercalia, CA TO AND HIS IMITA TORS. 75 which commemorate the way Romulus's companions ran about naked after supplication to Faunus to find their missing cattle. He is also the earliest Roman writer to deal in precise and monstrous, numbers. He makes C. Marcius, who rallied the wrecks of the army of the Scipios destroyed in Spain by Has- drubal, storm two camps — one by day, one by night — put 37,000 to the sword, take 1530 prisoners, a great deal of spoil, and a silver shield of the weight of 138 pounds. It is obvious that here we have a story exactly like those that were circulated on the French side during the war of 1870, inserted by a grav'e official, twenty years after the facts, in a history addressed to the civilized world. It does not originate even in the gossip of the camp of Marcius; it is made up of contemporary and distant rumors of what Marcius was doing. One Roman his- torian who wrote in Greek still remains to be commemorated; he was P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the elder Africanus, the adoptive father of the younger, who wrote a history which Cicero had not seen, for he does not give the subject; but he vouches for the fact that it was written very sweetly. Cato was as original in history as in oratory. He rebelled against the trivialities of the "Annals" with their recurring rec- ords of scarcities and eclipses, and he determined to q^^^ a^d his write instead upon the Origines of the Roman world. »™"atois. His work was divided into seven books; and, as we know from Fronto that it had passed through the hands of the grammarians who divided Naevius into seven books, it has been conjectured, though with little certainty, that Cato's work was not divided into books by the author. Tiie w-ork was influenced throughout by Cato's preoccupation with Greece. He disliked the Hellenizing party among the high aristocracy, and he protested with energy and temporary effect against the introduction of Greek philosophy as a fatal solvent to the Ro- man theory of discipline and civil duty. But he was far from indifferent to Greek culture: he learned Greek himself in his old-age ; in his speeches he was given to figures of rhetoric ; in his history he seems to have been set upon showing that the Latins were genuine Greeks of an older and more uncor- rupted stock than the degenerate Greeks of contemporary 76 LATIN LITERATURE. Hellas. The aborigines, whom the Phrygians found in the land when they came with .4uieas, were Greeks, and spoke ^olic. The amiable Plutarch fairly pointed out that if the Greeks were to be expected to believe this story of a prehis- toric migration from their own shores earlier than the ^olic or Doric or Ionic migrations which they thought they knew, it was only reasonable that some Cireek evidence should be produced in support of it; but the absence of such evidence itself suggests that the stories must have had some foundation in local traditions. How slight the foundation might be is shown by his inclination to identify the Sabincs with the Lace- daemonians, on the ground of the simplicity of manners which prevailed among both, and the similarity of certain unnamed institutions. He is the oldest authority we have for the pov- erty and frugality of the Sabines. It would be interesting to know whether the economic changes which followed the war of Hannibal told differently upon the region of the Apennines and upon the region of the coast. We know that the small farmers, who had nothing to depend upon but their home- steads and the labor of their fiimilies, were ruined ; while large farmers like Cato himself, who had efficient slave gangs, were making money and perfecting their system of cultivation. The grazing tribes of the highlands, on the other hand, were simply cut off from many, if not most, of their former sources of profit, especially as the Greek towns of the south, with which they alternately traded and fought, were impoverished and reduced to political insignificance. lie is also our oldest authoritv for much of the detail of the war between ^4uieas and Turnus and Mezentius, which he re- lates with a naive absence of effect. There is no attempt to concentrate the interest such as we find in Vergil ; there is no real victory for /Eneas at any time, and the foundation of the Trojan settlement in Latium is really the work of his son. In the legend of Romulus and Remus he is the authority for Faustulus and Acca Larentia. After the monarchy his narra- tive became much more summary; he protested against the uncertainty of the "Annals" and the vanity of noble houses by omitting all names in his history of the Republic, while CATO AND HIS IMITATORS. 77 his own performances were narrated at length, and even his speeches inserted. There can be no doubt that his narrative was very uneven in the distribution of the matter. For in- stance, the story of a tribune who sacrificed himself and the four hundred men under his command, in order to cover the retreat of the consul and his army from an unfavorable position, is told in full, because Cato thinks the tribune and his four hundred are fully equal to Leonidas and his three hundred at Thermopylae. It is characteristic that he congratulates him- self and the reader that the valiant tribune survived his com- mand, having fainted under his wounds, and being found among the dead, as he lived to earn new distinctions and dec- orations in future wars. A Spartan of the age of Leonidas would have felt himself disgraced for life, but Cato was not sensitive to the point of honor; he was at once thoroughly conscientious and vainglorious. He began his histories with the aphorism, which always sent a thrill through Cicero, that great men owed the world a reckoning for their leisure as well as for their work: this was implying at starting that he too was great, and he praised himself quite as lavishly and less ingeniously than Cicero. His services in the campaign of ThermopylaL' were set forth with no squeamish reticence about the effusive self-gratulation with which he repaid himself for them. Cato is the first Roman of really high character whom we have reason to accuse of vainglory. Being a self-made man who had pushed his own way to the front, he had no respect for any of his contemporaries. That he attempted no chro- nology in the Early Republic is less revolutionary than it looks. He only carried to its logical issue the method of all the early Latin historians. Every Roman historian began with the foundation of Rome, and then has very little to give till he came to the Samnite wars, or an even later period. Cato's originality was that, as a native of one of the oldest and proudest of the Latin towns, which wms also among the first to be forcibly incorporated in the Roman State, he gave the origins of all or most Italian states, and that he omitted en- tirely the mass of meagre and uncertain padding which most writers before and after thought it necessary to interpolate. 78 LA TIN LITER A TURE. The whole work consisted of seven books, and was carried down to the accusation of Galba for his cruelties in Lusitania, 603 U.C., which the author inserted a few days before his death. Another speech of Cato's, for the freedom of the Rhodians, delivered in the year 586 u.c.,was inserted in the fifth book: so it appears that the last two books dealt with the events of nineteen years at most, and there is a good deal of opinion in favor of the view that the first five books, at any rate, were published separately. The third book still dealt with "ori- gins" in the strict sense, for we are told that Ameria was founded 964 years before the war of Persius. In the same way, he doubtless fixed the date of the foundation of every city; and, though he did not profess to give the succession of events precisely, acquired a high reputation as a chronological authority. It appears that he quotetl little from Greek writers, and so did not pose for learned, but he inquired diligently into institutions and local traditions. He had much to say about Spain, where he had served with success, and also about the war in Macedonia; the fourth book contained the first Punic war; the fifth contained the second, and much else. Cato was imitated by Cassius Hemina, who treated of the second Punic war in the fourth book of his "Annals," the latest quoted, and had much to say, not only of other Italian towns besides Rome, but of trees and other points of natural history. Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was censor 634 u.c, wrote also seven books of "Annals" from the foundation of the city to his own time. Livy and Dionysius quote him in the early history, generally in support of some rather dull bit of rationalism. He, like Cassius, is a good deal quoted by Pliny: fortunately we are able to judge of his style, which Cicero thought meagre, by two specimens preserved by Gel- lius. He had none of Cato's pretensions to eloquence, and he was not on the way to the elegant Latin of the age of Cic- ero and Livy. Even among his contemporaries he must have affected simplicity which seemed delightful to antiquarians. Here is the shorter of the two : Eundem Romulum dicunt ad cocnam vocatum, ibi non multum bibisse quia postridie negotium haberet. Ei dicunt Romule, si istuc omnes homi- C^LIUS ANT/PA TER. 79 ncs faciant, vinum vilius sit. Is rcspondct, immo vero carum, si quantum quisquc volet bibat, nam ego bibi quantum volui. The inlluence of Cato is still traceable in C. Fannius, quxs- tor u.c. 615 and praetor 617, who adopted his new fashion of inserting speeches in the history as well as the letters of C. Gracchus, his friend; and in C. Sempronius Tuditanus, consul 625, who followed Cato's antiquarian tendency, telling us about the foundation of Caieta and the institution of market- days and tribunes of the commons. He is the oldest author- ity for the legend of the death of Rcgulus, which he gives in a very unimpressive form. Rcgulus, it seems, believed that he was poisoned and sure to die when he exhorted the senate not to consent to an exchange of prisoners, and so his sacrifice came to nothing. He goes on to add that on his return the Carthaginians would not allow Rcgulus any sleep, and says nothing of other tortures. Plutarch was under the impression that Tuditanus was a principal authority among the writers he had consulted about Flamininus, the conqueror of Philip. The first historian after Caio who had any intention of style was Ci-elius Antipater, of whose person little is known except that he heard the anecdote about C. Gracchus dream- c^iius An- in^ of his brother, while Gains was still alive. He "''•'**^'- was regarded as the most painstaking writer on the war w^th Hannibal, having used the works of his Greek followers, and was patronized rather contemptuously by Cicero, while his rhetorical account of Scipio's passage to Africa aroused Livy to one of his rare and mild outbreaks of criticism. -sX!:-m- THE LAST rOETRY OF THE REPUBLIC. 8i PART II. CHArTKR I. THE LAST POETRY OF THE REPUBLIC. The deaths of the younger Gracchus and the younger Scipio made a considerable change in the conditions of Ro- man literature. Hitherto it had been in the hands of the clients of an aristocratic circle ; Ennius was the friend of the elder Africanus, Terence and Lucilius were the friends of the younger; and it was part of the dignity of Pacuvius to be the successor of Knnius — part of the dignity of Accius, who over- lived the good days, to be the successor of Pacuvius ; even Terence appealed to the memory of his predecessor CTcilius. But the liberal circle of the nobility is henceforward only rep- resented by good-natured egotists, like Lucullus, and, to a certain extent, Sulla, who had no literary influence except upon their Greek fiimily philosophers, physicians, and gram- marians, who encouraged them to write their memoirs in col- loquial Cireek. And there was as yet no public to take their place. The theatre was still alive, although it was rapidly passing into farce, for which educated men were willing to write brilliant dialogue ; but there was no audience for such works as the "Annals" or the "Satires" of Ennius. And the laroe horizons which seemed to be open while men like the Africani guided the State were closed; petty intrigue and factious vio- lence at home, and doubtful and inglorious conflicts abroad, had taken the place of the glorious strife with Carthage, of the profitable enthusiasm to liberate the Greeks of the Levant by substituting the authority of the Senate for the dominion of the successors of Alexander, and of the noble leisure filled with dreams of Greece. There came a period of some forty years when poetry was in abeyance, and grammarians flourished instead. The lib- eral nobles had set a fashion of culture which gradually dif- fused itself. Learned Greeks who found themselves at Rome, like Crates Mallotes, the ambassador of Attains, or who had been attached to great houses, became each the centre of a circle of his own. 'i'hey were known as literati ; they lectured upon the writings of their friends, reading them aloud and in- terpreting them. In this way Archelaus lectured on Lucilius to Pompeius Santra, and Philocomus to Valerius Cato ; as Vargunteius had lectured on Ennius. Later on, men of good Italian firmily were willing to teach what they knew, like L. /Elius Stilo, who accompanied Q. Metellus Numidicus into exile, and Servius Clodius. The time was still distant when it was a matter of course for every boy of gentle birth to study under a grammarian till he was old enough to study under a rhetorician. For grown men the forum supplied the place both of literature and journalism ; and oratory developed rap- idly. The general level of speaking rose, though there was no orator of such a natural genius as the younger Gracchus. One form of the poetical tradition maintained itself. Men of rank still amused themselves with erotic or satirical quotations at their feasts, and the grammarians who read poetry and taught the rules of metre occasionally practised them. Besides, the course of history had familiarized the Romans with Greek philosophy, and Greek philosophy had begun to adapt itself to the demands of Roman piety. Panaitius, the family philosopher of the younger Africanus, had adopted the orthodox doctrines of omens and oracles instead of the con- sistent and simple fatalism of the earlier Stoics, who held that man did not need to be warned in advance of the decrees of destiny in order to prepare his heart to obey them. At the same time, their Levantine protectorate had brought the Romans into contact with a new aspect of Greek mythol- ogy. Hitherto they had only known the classical legends of Homer and the tragedians, the legends of Argos and Attica, of I.-4* (fl 82 LATIX LITERATURE. THE LAST POETRY OF THE REPUBLIC. 8.^ Thessaly and the Troad. But every island, every hill-top on both sides of the ^:gean and far inland, had its legend : every rock that was a little like a human f^ice in the twilight was some victim of enchantment turned to stone. These legends were often little but repetitions of more famous ones ; but they were racy of the soil : the imagination of the common people, doubtless assisted by the invention of a few, had put the story into shape by degrees: and in more than one town the proc- ess was. only just finished when the learned poet — Callima- chus or Philetas — pounced upon his prey. The business of a poet was to know as many and as fresh legends as possible, and either pick them out for picturesque treatment one by one in graceful little poems as tender as possible, and on no account tedious ; or else they might link all the stories they knew to- gether, or remind the reader of more than they told. 'I'his last view of the poet's mission generally puzzled the reader, who found Lycophron obscure not so much because he was crabbed as because he was learned, and could designate everybody by an epithet which was an allusion to a legend saved from obliv- ion ; and describe everything in a vocabulary which had put every Greek locality and every Greek book under contribution for quaint, sonorous words which seemed expressive to their first discoverer. The poets of the days of Augustus had learned that I^ycophron was a beacon to be avoided ; but in the days of Cicero he still seemed a guiding star to be followed. The "Snivrna" of Cisena was as learned and difficult as the " Alexandra " of Lycophron. Cicero, with his habitual good- sense, began upon works of Aratus, a poet who had written on astronomy and the weather, setting forth the signs of change and the natural calendar kept by the stars — which for country folk was more convenient than the civil calendar, in which there was a perplexing series of compromises between lunar months and the solar year. And the civil calendar, even if it had been as intelligible as Julius Caesar made it, would still be a tax upon memory, especially between the ides and the calends, while the constellations could always be watched, and if any one forgot there were neighbors who could re- mind him. There were other subjects besides astronomy h t equally suitable for didactic poetry, which still in Alexandrian hands was devoted to the learned conservation of folk-lore. The poet went out to gather up information about fishing or gardening or simples among fishermen, gardeners, and herbal- ists, just as other poets collected local legends in out-of-the- way places. They adorned what they collected in both cases by their own book-learning; but there was no attempt to revive the reflected poetry of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Emped- ocles. The learned poets, for the most part, were sceptical ; they shrank from great works. Their coryphaeus, Callima- chus, pronounced a great book a great evil. They were quite content to leave speculation to philosophers, who, in turn, were more and more inclined to criticism: as the great systems were already completed; and the greatest of all, the system of Aristotle, was left like a deserted fortress. The official rep- resentatives of Aristotle were content to elaborate the doctrine of the conduct of life and the conditions of happiness; while all the speculative parts of his system, having served as a starting-point for science, were neither affirmed nor disputed. The transcendentalism of Plato had shared the same fate, ex- cept among the learned Jews of Egypt : the only difference between the heirs of the Academy was whether they were to ally themselves with men of the world against the dull, preten- tious dogmatism of the Stoics, and furbish up the sceptical side of the Socratic method, or whether they were to ally themselves with the Stoics, and ransack Plato's stores of elo- quence to rebuke the low and worldly views of the Peripatet- ics. Here, too, Roman influence made itself felt ; the number of Romans of rank of all ages who wished to " hear " the reign- ing philosophers in Greece were inclined to prefer a teacher who was edifying. The Romans were as f\ir from scepticism as from science : the one question for them was how to attain a blessed life, free from prejudice or passion. Even this, of course, required some theory of the world in which they lived; and as Plato's tentative physics had died with him, and the physics of Aristotle were only studied by specialists, they were thrown back on the primitive speculations of the Italian and Ionic schools by the stagnation of contemporary Greek HI i< 84 LATIN LITERATURE. thought. These were, moreover, naturalized in Italy by a tra- dition going back to the days of Ennius, if not further. There was a similar interregnum in Greek poetry between Euripides and Menander, and it was due to similar causes. LUCRETIUS. The transition from the tragic poets to Lucretius is like the transition from Euripides to the New Comedy : there is a vis- ible continuitv of intellectual movement, but the movement is on a lower level ; common-sense and the interests of private life replace public and heroic struggles and transcendental morality. Euripides coincides with the last struggles of Ath- ens to maintain her supremacy; Accius coincides with the last days of decorous senatorial government: Epicurus and the New Comedy coincide wiih the tacit or avowed acceptance of Macedonian ascendencv, as Lucretius coincides with the tacit or avowed acceptance of the ascendency of military chiefs. But for the Greek poets and the (ireek thinker the period of defeat was a period of calm; for the Roman poet it was a period of struggle, the more passionate because all guiding authorities had collapsed. The poem " l)e Rerum Natura " is interesting for many reasons — for none more than for the contrast between the author's temperament and his doctrine. The author is an ar- dent enthusiast who would fain be a devotee; his doctrine is the most thorough -going expression of homely, kindly, self- complacent, self-confident common -sense. Epicurus is the one truly positive AVestern thinker who constructed a com- plete speculative and practical code upon grounds level with the experience of ordinary people. Even then science was transcendentalist, and had reached positions which upon their fiice were paradoxical. The astronomy of the time was as much beyond a plain man who wished to judge by his sensations as the traditional orthodoxy. Both had to be received upon au- thority, if at all ; and Epicurus wished every man free to judge for himself upon evidence drawn from familiar intelligible ex- perience. Although the Stoics were beginning to anticipate LUCRETIUS. 85 the concordat, not yet repudiated in Christendom, whereby the authority of science and tradition support one another, they were compelled repeatedly to fall back upon the mad- ness of the many. Their theory, that strictly regulated activity is the end of life, is a theory for the few : for most who have to pass through life the value of activity is that it maintains life, which yields them nothing better than what Epicurus pro- claimed as the end. Physical bicn-etrc apart from misconduct always brings cheerfulness ; and all the forms of activity which make life more complicated or more splendid are only possible, at least only rational, when unrewarded sacrifices are readilv made. On the other hand, the deliberate limita- tion of desire which Epicurus preached is only possible to a class sufficiently educated to understand the argument in fa- vor of listlessness ; for otherwise men are the dupes of hopes which break their promise to the individual, and at best half keep it to the race. Lucretius himself never succeeded in reaching the passionless calm that he preached with an air of eager, vehement conviction, contrasting strangely with the good-humored, prolix complacency of his master. Little as we know of his life, we have no reason to doubt the tradition that it was stormy. Our main authority is St. Jerome, who is proved by Ritschl and Lachmann, to Professor Munro's sat- isfaction, to have copied the lost articles of Suetonius's " De Viris lUustribus." He tells us in his supplement to Eusebius that Lucretius committed suicide at the age of forty-four, in 56 i].c., having lost his reason by a philter; and that his poems, written in the intervals of insanity, were edited by Cicero. As Suetonius wrote nearly two hundred years after the facts, we have to rely upon the chance that the tradition of literary his- tory, passing through few hands, was more likely to be right than wrong; especially as the reporters all cared for the sub- ject. So far as the connection with Cicero goes, the tradition is confirmed by numerous coincidences with the " Aratea," and perhaps still more by the fact that Cicero wrote to his brother in winter- Quarters in Gaul, four months after Lucretius's death, in terms which imply that both had read the poem : " Lucreti poemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingenii; 86 LATIX LITERATURE. LUCRETIUS. 87 niultce tanien artis si cum inveneris/ virum te putabo ; si Sal- lustii Empcdoclea legeris homineni non putabo." No editor accepts the MS. reading of the letter. According to Professor Munro's ahiiost certain restoration, the passage implies that the elder Cicero knew the book best, and therefore he, if either, was the editor; though it is curious that there is no other trace of the affair in his large correspondence. The only other relation of Lucretius to the political life of his time was his curious devotion to C. Memmius, who was praitor the year when Caesar was consul first, and opposed him with en- ergy that commanded the admiration of Cicero. This shows that Lucretius, like most other sceptics, was a conservative in politics. His devotion need not have been misplaced be- cause Catullus, who followed IMemmius to Bithynia in the hope of making money, gave frank expression to his disgust when disappointed. It was certainly exaggerated, for, though Lucretius did not live to see it, Mcmmius had serious thoughts of pulling down Kpicurus's house, as he wanted to build him- self, and positively refused to make the site over to the head of the Epicurean school; and finally died in exile, after an un- successful attempt first to sell himself to Caesar, and then to outbid him in his promises to the democracy. Lucretius himself is aware that Memmius is half indifferent to philosophy, and constantly presses the subject upon him ; he is aware, too, that it is out of the question for such an illus- trious person to stand aloof from public life. Most readers of Lucretius's great poem will be more likely to agree with the younger Cicero than with the elder. The many flashes of genius that light up the first three books, at any rate, are more obvious than the art which should blend the whole poem into one. Its form is determined, not by any positive scheme of doctrine, but by a series of protests against * MSS. : " Sed quum veneris." The editors had ac;reed to insert " non," and only differed as to whether it came before "nuiltis" or "multx." As emended the sense is perfectly clear. Cicero gives his brother credit for recognizing Lucretius's genius in the many splendid passages of his poem, hopes he is man enough to recognize his skill as well, and tells him he will sink below humanity if he can read Sallust's " Empedocles." different forms of superstition. The fear of the gods is nour- ished by the belief that they made and rule the world, and so we have two books to set forth the theory of the origin and destruction of the universe borrowed by Epicurus from Denioc- ritus. The fear of death and of torment after death poisons life, and is a fruitful motive of crime; and so in the third book we have a polemic against the immortality of the soul and the clinging to life. Then, since apparitions are a support of superstition, we have a theory of perception to explain them awav, and in connection with this a theory of imaginative passion, which concludes with a very vigorous denunciation of women. This occupies the fourth book, and then the connec- tion becomes more and more fragmentary. Both astronomy and the history of civilization were strongholds of supernatu- ralism ; the heavenly bodies were supposed to be the dwelling of higher spirits, the arts of life were supposed to have been revealed by gods or heroes who attained divine immortal life. These two topics, with the hidden connection which it is left to the reader to supply, fill up the fifth book; in the sixth Lu- cretius discusses all the occurrences which are interpreted as signs of the will or anger of the gods, such as magnetism, electricity, and pestilence. Of course, when we leave the po- lemical purpose out of sight, it seems as if electricity and mag- netism belonged to the first two books, which treat of physics in general, and as if pestilence, like other forms of disease, ou'iht to have been treated in connection with death in the third book. Another defect which, like the inorganic arrangement, is due to the author's polemical ardor, is that he continually overstates his case. Every presumption that tells for him is an intellectual necessity in his eyes, every conclusion is en- forced by iteration ; and when a point is proved to his satis- fiiction, he tells us it is true twice over — "etiam atque etiam." It cannot be counted as a defect that the author dutifully rejects astronomy, or rather regards it as a series of hypotheses each of which admits endless alternatives, all equally in har- mony with facts. From a common-sense point of view, Epicu- rus was right in classing astronomy with atmospheric phenom- f 88 LATIN LITERATURE. ena, under the head of meteorology, the doctrine of things over our heads. No theory of either could be verified : it was impossible to mount up into the sky and look. The telescope did not yet exist; minute accuracy of measurement was im- possible; the close correspondence between calculation and observation, which makes modern astronomy so convincing to the laity, was only represented by approximate predictions of eclipses. It was only after Kepler that the geocentric hy- pothesis became decidedly less plausible than the heliocentric, and when Lucretius lived it was still possible to hesitate wheth- er there might not be a new sun every morning, and a new moon every night, or at any rate every month. A less justifiable omission is that we have no theorv of hu- man nature. The supremacy of pleasure is repeatedly stated as something self-evident, and there is not even a definition of what pleasure means— whether it is to be conceived as con- sisting in enjoyment or in ease; though there is a constant lauding of simplicity, a constant polemic against the costly and clumsy luxury which turned many of the nobility into Epicureans because they were epicures. Again, the resolute and premature rejection of teleology makes much of the natu- ral history meagre and unsatisfactory. It is quite possible now to maintain that teleology is superseded, at least for sci- entific purposes, by the growth of anatomical and physiological science; but while these were in abeyance it gave valuable aid, as supplying one class, at any rate, of moderately coherent and precise observations. Even now there are branches of botany, especially the doctrine of the structures which provide for cross-fertilization, which are nothing if not tcleological. We know the use of the intricate machinery; we know next to nothing of the process of its formation. Aristotle represents a scientific advance upon Democritus, though he accepts the teleology of the Socratic school. Where Lucretius succeeds is in showing that of the pre- Socratic philosophies, to which without notice he restricts our choice, the atomic philosophy of Democritus is much the most reasonable. For one thing, Democritus and Lucretius see clearly that ro sensible substance is simple, since each enters LUCRETIUS. 89 into many dilTercnt substances, and must therefore be decom- posable into as many different elements as diflerent natures can assimilate. For instance, horses and oxen feed upon the same pasture; lions and men may feed upon the same ox; and this proves that such different creatures as oxen and horses, as lions and men, build up their bodies out of the same materials ; and as lions can live upon dift:erent kinds of fiesh, it cannot be replied that beef and grass are simple substances which form different compounds with different bodies. Every way Anax- agoras's theory, that every organized being is made up of some one elementary substance dispersed throughout nature and only reunited in that single species, is shown to be opposed to plain facts. And Lucretius is equally free from the bondage of the four elements, which came in with Empedocles and was accepted by Aristotle and most subsequent thinkers. He sees clearly that earth must be eminently decomposable ; and though he nowhere says that fire is not an element, but one state of many elements, he sees that as fire it can only exist when it is actually burning. And he plays off Heraclitus and Empedocles against each other very cleverly, proving by the arguments of Heraclitus that the ''elements" are not ultimate, since they pass into one another, and by the arguments of Em- pedocles that something permanent must be assumed under all the changes of phenomena if we are to guarantee the sta- bility of the universe. There is a considerable deviation from Democritus upon the question whether the shapes of atoms were infinite or only the number of atoms of each shape. It might have saved Lucretius and his master some embarrass- ment if either had known the mathematical convention which recognizes infinities of difterent orders. But Epicurus and Lucretius (who argues the point with admirable vigor) felt the limitation of the actual world of experience too strongly to be inclined to admit that it could have arisen out of absolutely unlimited constituents. Another strong point of Lucretius is his psychology. It is rudimentary compared to that of Plato or Aristotle; but he has a clearer grasp than either upon the obvious truth that our faculties are closely connected with our organization, and so rjo LATIX LITERATURE. escapes the illusion of those great thinkers that the heavenly bodies were animated by higher inteHigences, in virtue of the simple reflection that inorganic nature stands below organic. Only the backward condition of anatomy prevented Lucanius from anticipating the fashionable doctrine which practically substitutes the nervous system for the traditional conception of the rational soul. He insists upon the unequal distribution of sensibility as a proof that the soul is not equally present throughout the body, and is much impressed with the subtlety of a fourth nameless substance, which is the very soul of the soul. The other three components which he names are/tVTw, spiritiis, and aer, and these are supposed to have their centre in the breast. 7'hey enter in ditlerent proportions into the souls of different animals; for instance, there is more spiritns in the soul of a lion, more aer in the soul of an ox. From these and other examples it is plain that he is thinking of the interaction of the heart and the lungs; only his apprehension of it is exclusively based upon the subjective feelings to which it gives rise. Consequently, he divides the proces.fof respira- tion between two distinct principles : the act of inspiration, being the more conspicuously necessary of the two, is ascribed to aer; while the act of expiration, which is only noticed dur- ing vehement action, is ascribed to spiritns. As the nervous system is nowhere described, it is not strange that the central seat of life should be placed in the breast; for Lucretius did not care to depart from tradition gratuitously, and was anxious in every way to identify the principle of life and thought. The existence of some central seat is easily proved, since life and consciousness survive mutilation, and it takes time for the will to act upon the extremities. This last is mentioned in con- nection with the curious Epicurean doctrine of free-will. If everything is a compound of atoms falling straight through a void, which only differ in shape and densitv, it is possibfe to understand how they become entangled with one another into more or less durable shapes. It is hard to see how any of these shapes have the power of reacting from within upon the shapes that surround them. It would have been enough for the time to say that atoms were elastic, and therefore capable LUCRETIUS. 91 of reacting in certain combinations almost as if they were act- in^ of themselves. But Lucretius knew elasticity, at most, as a property of bodies of sensible magnitude, and was anxious, like his master, to save " free-will " in the transcendental sense, because it was important to them as practical philosophers to maintain that all men were really and truly able to act upon their benevolent precepts. So Lucretius accepts his master's device to make the motion of the atoms incalculable : instead of falling perpendicularly, it is assumed that some or all of them have an imperceptible deflection (which, being imper- ceptible, can never be disproved); whence it would follow that the bodies formed from these would have a proper motion of their own derived from the motion of the atoms forming them, and independent of the motion communicated by the impact of other bodies. No part of the system has attracted more ridicule in ancient or modern times, to say nothing of other objections : if consistently applied, the doctrine makes all ex- act science impossible. This is hardly proving too much from Epicurus's point of view. Such exact science as he knew struck him as *' slavish," just as civilized industry strikes sav- ages, who contemplate its results disinterestedly, and compare them with the laborious efforts required to begin to appropriate them. When Lucretius is discussing the atoms and the void, he has, at any rate, the advantage of following a thinker who was in some sense in advance of his successors. Impressive as the discussion of immortality is, it is a loss that he so com- pletely ignores Plato. The argument from the contrast be- tween sense and thought, which is stated in so many forms in the *' Phcedo," is left untouched ; the idea that a future life can be an object of even mistaken desire, which is so prominent in the early days of Buddhism, has not a trace in Lucretius. In his view either the future life is spent in hell among the torments of the poets, or else it is a life of endless transmigra- tion, either, as Empedocles taught, through the whole round of being, or, as Plato was supposed to have taught, through a succession of human lives, each forgotten as soon as over. The answer to this is quite decisive. " First, if the changeless 92 LATIN LITERATURE. immortal soul passes through so many bodies, how is it that it remembers nothing of its former lives? for such a change in the power of the soul as to cause all grasp of things clone to fall away cannot differ very much from death; so there is no help but to confess that the soul which has been before has perished, and that which now is has been fashioned now. Be- sides" (and this argument against transmigration shows that Lucretius is as callous to the spiritualism of Aristotle as to that of riato), " if the body is already perfect before the power of the enlivened soul is set within us just as we are being born and entering the threshold of life, it would not be fitting such a power should seem to have grown together with body and limbs in the very blood, but it ought to live alone in a cave to itself." Of course, it is easily proved that Empedocles's theory of transmigration is impossible. Lucretius has only to show that the principle of heredity applies to all animals, and that the character of the soul would assert itself at the expense of the character of the race, if transmigration were possible. The higher side of the doctrine of transmigration did not appeal to Lucretius : the sense that the spirit has entered into all experience, that life is one throughout the world, was naturally strange to a poet who had apparently no conception of a per- manent spiritual self, with a continuous inner life of its own persisting through all modes and circumstances. The only reality to him is the life of the moment : his feeling for that is penetrating and intense, but it only makes him anxious to preserve it from the contamination of hope and fear. The wide range of transformation which is present to his thought only leads to a certain recklessness of concession : very likely we have been before, very likely we shall be again ; but, either way, it is nothing to us. If the same atoms, or atoms exactly similar to those which make up our bodies and minds, have entered and will enter into precisely similar combinations, we have no more need to think of what we shall be than to think of what we have been. There is some meanness in this ; the writer cannot allow for our natural and wholesome care for what will never be matter of personal experience. A man's LUCRETIUS. 93 dislike to the imagination of indignities which his corpse may suffer does not really imply a latent belief that he will feel them when they come. The revellers who lie at their wine with garlands shading their brows, and say, heartily, " We manikins have but a little pleasure here ; presently it will be over, and we shall never be able to call it back again," do not really think, whatever Lucretius says, that they will be parched by tormenting thirst in the grave. The fear of never seeing home or kindly wife again is not a fear of pining after death for them. Lucretius allows that mourners are really sorry for the dead, not for their own loss : he asks what is there to lament in a lot that is only sleep and rest, and shows by his question that an artificial feeling may be as irrational as a spontaneous feeling. The triumph that death is noth- ing, and does not concern us a jot, comes oddly after a demon- stration that the mind may die and be drowned in black lethargy while the body still lives. It is hard to judge just here of the argument, for there is a provoking lacuna whose length is uncertain, when Lucretius wins his easy victory over the perfunctory plea for immortality put forth in the " Repub- lic." He sees the distinction, which Plato misses, between a fit of vice or folly, and confirmed mental disease which may permanently lower or destroy the whole life of the mind, so that instead of being free from the risks of extinction which affect the body, it has a special danger of its own, able to slay it while the body lives. This is a worthy sequel to the com- placent inference that the lower fornix: which quicken, as Lu- cretius held in good company, out of the corruption of higher, must get their souls from the souls of the higher beings. Throughout, it is the author's object to represent our shrink- ing from death as a sort of unreasonable caprice, one of the worst effects of which is actually to make men sacrifice in order that their days may be prolonged in exile and other miseries, which might end at once if they would die. Obvi- ously, Lucretius was one of the first to feel the passion for suicide which gathered strength through the death-struggle of the Republic, and reached its height in the halcyon days of Trajan. Another object is to justify nature against our de- 94 LATIN LITERATURE. sires ; and here Lucretius does not succeed. He does not perceive that our wish that the best moments in life should be eternal is one of the most natural things in the world, and that we do not contract our clinging to life by our own mis- management. If we pass through life with no experience but desire and regret, this is the foult not of man, but of nature, whom Lucretius introduces to rebuke the disappointment of her dupes. Nature tells us that we have enjoyed all she has to give ; and if this has satisfied us, it seems, according to Lucre- tius, we should be ready to go : if not, what is there to wait for ? Nature, or rather Lucretius, is very sarcastic upon the impossible hopes, the preposterous ambitions, of the old ; but these are a symptom, not a cause, of the reluctance to die which they serve to excuse. And, after all, criticism of such a purely animal craving is even more unconvincing than criticism of our natural craving for enjoyment, which Lucre- tius would have thought empty and unreasonable. To argue ourselves out of desires which may trouble us is generally to extirpate all desires alike ; if desires cannot be conquered without arguing with them, it is better to endure them. It is remarkable that there is one set of desires which Lu- cretius assumes to be above discussion : he takes for granted that as citizens of the State and as citizens of the universe we are concerned with what will never affect us personally. He regards the final catastrophe of the universe, to which Epicu- reans and Stoics alike looked forward, with spontaneous un- feigned fear, and only hopes that fortune (being too consistent to invoke the deities) may avert it as long as possible. He is very {\x from the temper of the Jewish king who said of the ruin of his realm and his house, "Is it not good if peace and truth shall be in my days ?'' Lucretius's feeling is rather that, as Rome and the world must end, we ought to resign our- selves to the end of our own lives : he wishes to prove that the world is so admirable that we ought to be satisfied with our share of it, and so perishable that we cannot complain that our own craving for immortality is futile. He is entirely without the idea of progress, which is all the more remarkable because he is entirely free from the superstition of cycles LUCRETIUS. 95 through which prehistoric civilizations had arisen and disap- peared and left no trace. He sees clearly that history had a beginning, and that the world must have had a beginning too ; and in this he is better advised than Plato or Aristotle, who both leaned to the eternity of the world. On the other hand, they have a feeling for literature, for art, for institutions, which Lucretius lacks. His ideal is the legendary life of Otaheite \ and the growing complexity of life, which is the clearest re- sult of progress, is not attractive to such a temper, especially when activity is declining throughout the world. The point at which Lucretius is most tempted to go beyond the limits fixed by his master is theology; and this, though one of the most ingenious parts of the system, was open to modification, because it had little connection with the rest. Neither Epicurus nor Lucretius ever seriously asks if the gods exist ; they take that fact for granted on the fixith of the gen- eral consent of mankind. And with this fact they take for granted the character of the gods as the best and most glori- ous beings imaginable, "enjoying life immortal at the height of peace," or, as Epicurus puts it more prosaically, "The best has no trouble of its own, and gives no trouble to others." Doth respect the instinct of worship, if purged of irrational fears and hopes : and both ignore the fact that it is precisely these that keep alive the instinct in ordinary minds. This attitude at first may seem illogical, till we remember how ex- actly it corresponds to our own attitude to the ideal. We do not think it is exactly a creation of our own, and yet only a few enthusiasts hold that the actual world originates w^ith it or is ruled by it, and all right-minded people like to dwell upon it and venerate it. How we come to elaborate ideals, or how we are trained to apprehend them, is such a difficult question that it is no wonder Epicurus and Lucretius cut the knot by assuming that we simply see the images of the gods as they are, just as we see the images of sensible things. Where one detects the incoherence of the conception is in the necessity of putting the gods outside the perishable material world. The tradition which it was wished to save had made the gods the highest inhabitants of the world rather than its makers or 96 LATIN LITERATURE. even its rulers. It was to get rid of this last that Epicurus was induced to declare war against the natural explanation of the anthropomorphic ideals of Greece. Me might safely have recognized that they were embodiments of natural forces or natural processes. If he had condescended to borrow from Empedocles as he borrowed from Democritus, he might have explained their immortality by the rival principles of love and hatred, showing that beings in whom the principle of hatred predominated were short-lived, and beings in whom the principle of love predominated lived lonor; while the jrods were immortal because in them the principle of love had gained an entire victory. As it is, his belief in the gods is obviously a survival, gradually detaching itself from the main body of his belief. Lucretius is more strongly tempted to adopt tlie old Roman rationalism in the double form in which Ennius and his successors had embodied it; he can hardly keep from deifying nature, and hardly from deifying Epicurus. Here the temptation is so strong that he more than once salutes his teacher as very god, though he is so sure of his mortality that it is the climax of all his arguments to reconcile us to our own. The other temptation was less fun- damental : the gods would still have been perfectly tranquil, if not perfectly motionless, if they had been identified with the ideal side of the beneficent processes of nature; they would not have been responsible for rewarding human merit or pun- ishing human vice ; they would have been free, too, from the endless whirl in which the one supreme god of the Stoics lived, for Epicurus and Lucretius were polytheists. In spite of his protests, he gives way more than once quite sincerely: all his concessions, it is true, are in the line of possible con- tinuations of his system. Venus, the mother of the House of ^neas, the pleasure of gods and men, the power who keeps the world alive, befoie whom the winds depart, and the clouds of heaven flee at her coming, for whom Daedal earth sends up flowers in sweetness, the only lady who governs the nature of things, is really quite at home in the system of Epicurus ; and Mars, " melting in her lap spell-bound by the eternal wound of love," is at once a picture too sincere to be conventional, and LUCRETIUS. 97 a persuasive allegory of the way that grace subdues stormy strength into fruitfulness ; and this last entered into the Roman conception of Mars. If one compares this descrip- tion with the scene in the fourteenth " Iliad,'' between Zeus and Here, it is obvious that it is the Greek poet rather than the Latin who is playing with a conventional mythology. Lucretius sometimes plays with mythology too, as in the fa- mous passage on the round of the seasons. Spring and Venus go along; and Spring's harbinger, the winged West Wind, nips before ; and beside his steps they find Mother Flora scat- tering flowers on the way before, to fill all things with choice colort and scents. Next in place follows parching Heat ; and close beside are dusty Ceres and the yearly northern blasts. Then Autumn draws nigh, and Euhius Evian trips beside. Then other seasons and winds follow— high thundering Vol- turnus and the South Wind with all the strength of the levin. At last short days bring the snows and stiff numb cold, and Winter goes abroad ; behind her follows Shivering with chat- tering teeth. This is quite in conformity to Lucretius's own theoiy, that all such allegory should be treated consciously as a mere ornament, separable from the substance of the work. It is only in connection with Epicurus that Lucretius feels the necessity of invoking a higher power than man's to account for the effects which strike him with admiration ; in general, he uses the conception of" nature "as easily and as vaguely as half-educated writers on the " scientific " side in modern times use the conception of "force." He finds it easy to per- sonify " nature," and at the same time to remember that she has nothing but what we have given her; he is at least as much impressed by the fact that her power is limited both in extent and duration as by the fact that our power is over- shadowed by hers. The flaming walls of the world are a boun- dary that nothing but the human spirit led by Epicurus and Democritus can pass. For Lucretius the sages are true ideals of blessedness and holiness ; even when he refutes Democritus his decrees are sacred. He follows Democritus closely and intelligently in one of the most thorough and ingenious parts of his book, which deal? 1.-5 98 LA TIN LITERA TURE. LUCRETIUS, with the phenomena of vision. All the arguments which prove that color is a "secondary property " of bodies are as old as Democritus; the sea, for instance, is dark in repose and white when lashed into foam by the wind, whence it is inferred with admirable boldness that even those bodies which always pre- sent the same colors to the eye do so because the arrangement of their component atoms is less variable, and so they are always affected in the same way by the light that falls upon them. But here the explanation stops short ; if light is really colored, and different combinations of atoms reflect differently colored light, it is obvious that light ought to be altogether in- dependent of the atoms, and of a separate substance and opera- tion. But it is explicitly stated that the sky and all luminous bodies are composed of the lighter atoms, which separated themselves in the beginning from the grosser particles which formed the earth by a process like that by which the shining dew-drops mount up in the morning into air. The theory of images given forth from objects is even more remote from our ordinary ways of thinking ; it is harder to follow because it is not explained for its own sake, but as part of a polemic against superstition. The author spends more pains on what are now called optical illusions than on the common facts of perception. Then, as now, optical illusions suffirested vairue alarms about the superhuman powers with which they were supposed to originate. Lucretuis aiTanges them in two classes : one includes the visions of sleep, trance, and delirium ; the other includes such appearances as the mirage and the fata morgana. The former are explained mainly as confused reminiscences of real observations ; it is the latter which (in default of familiarity with the phenomena of refraction) suggest the very curious theory that the images which bodies give off are capable of forming new combinations just as the atoms are,Nand that in this way we come to have ideas of centaurs and hippogriffs and other impossibili- ties. The apparent externality of mere subjective visions is very cleverly explained. Of course we can only judge of what enters the eye (and therefore it may be granted that space is full of unseen images), but there is always a reac- 99 tion' from within in the case of perception of real objects, and the analogy of this leads us to imagine that visions and dreams are external too. Perhaps also we ought to give Lucretius credit for his perception that the eye has some ' power of in- stinctively correcting the illusion of distance in the case of elevated luminous objects; although the argument was never sufficient to bear out his theory of the size of the sun and moon. One interesting feature of the fifth book in particular is the writer's keen sense of the continuity of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. This serves to cover the astronomical perversity of a system which refused to recognize a purely rational account of phenomena that could not be made objects of direct sensa- tion. The sun looks small, and he is small, but that is no reason why he should not be able to light and warm the world. Look how many fields a little fountain will irrigate. Of course the fountain is fed : why not the sun ? Again, why should there be more difficulty in a fresh sun being formed every mornin"- than in all the periodical phenomena upon earth? There are fresh thunder and lightning pretty nearly every summer, fresh snow and hail pretty nearly every winter; every spring there are fresh buds, every autumn there are fresh fruits ; every child has one set of teeth in so many months after birth, and an- other set so many years after. Of course most of these period- ical phenomena are dependent upon the sun ; but it is per- haps to the credit of Lucretius to have reversed the presump- tion that the sun is an independent source of light and heat. He will not even take it as proved that the moon shines by his light : it is quite possible she may, and turn the illumi- nated side in larger measure upon the earth day by day; but » This reaction corresponds to the more precise observations of modern science upon attention to the muscular efforts which adjust the eye to objects =» V. 566. In fact, Mr. Hamerton (" Portfolio," 1875, P- 11) has shown that most people suppose that the sun and moon look larger than they really do ; that is, they think the sun and moon have the same apparent diameter as certain other objects which must obviously be estimated with reference to their habitual distance from the eye, at which distance, as can be proved by angular measurement, the apparent magnitude of those objects far ex- ceeds that of the sun and moon. * I lOO LATLV LITERATURE. LUCRETIUS. lOI it is just as likely that she rolls with a light of her own, and pays her debt to earth in changeful shining forms. There may be a dark invisible body that almost always partially eclipses the moon; or, granting (a large concession) that the moon is spherical, it may have a bright side and a dark side, and turn sometimes more of one and sometimes more of another to the earth. Besides, there may be always new moons as there may be new suns, and the argument is supported by the picturesque analogy of the procession of seasons quoted above. In deal- ing with astronomy, Lucretius's zeal to provide a large number of alternative theories is especially striking, because we are f^imiliar with astronomy as the province where certain and ex- clusive truth is most surely to be found. Lucretius addressed a public who still found it hard to apply natural standards to lieavenly bodies, and found it still harder to keep two views of the same subject in their minds at once. None of his nu- merous alternative physical explanations of celestial phenomena really exclude the supernatural theory they are meant to su- persede. Any one of his conjectures about sunrise is plau- sible enough to justify disbelief in Phoebus Apollo; any one is quite compatible with a belief in the providential uses of sunshine. His belief in their adequacy is one proof more of his incapacity to imagine believers who found comfort in their belief, and of the extreme activity of his mind, that found it always easier to start a dozen hypotheses than to test one. When Lucretius returns to earth, he is more fortunate ; he coincides often with views which have been fashionable recent- ly or are fashionable now. Thirty years ago it would have been reckoned to his credit that he thinks the first stages of evolution were much more rapid and much more imposing in their results than those that succeeded them (v. 799, 800). He imagined that each race began with giants, and gradually dwindled away: and that the earth too lost its fertility, so that the enlarged allotments of the later republic were inadequate to maintain such families as had thriven upon the small allot- ments of the good old days. Observations in Colorado and elsewhere prove that vegetables, the average size of which / appeared to be known, attain a gigantic development when nUroduced under favorable conditions to a virgin soil. If the analogy between the individual and the race is as trustworthy as Lucretius thinks, it would be safe to assume that the period during which a race survives its most vigorous manifestation is longer than the period during which it reaches it. With this view of evolution in general, Lucretius is able to explain the changes in human society without the conception of prog- ress. According to him, the life of mankind was once rude and simple and easy; it gradually became elaborate and anxious; it exchanged the risks which affect individuals, such as homicide, perils from wild beasts, weather, and the like, for the rarer but more terrible risks that affect communities, such as war, famine, civil massacres, and pestilence. Men grow gentler as they grow weaker and the like. All these are in- teresting and plausible generalizations, and rather too discour- aging in their tone to be quite compatible with the optimism (in our judgment) hardly separable from piety. They leave room for the euhemerism which turned mythology into an his- torical theory quite as plausible as most of the physical theories with which it had to be combined. At the same time, his criticism is not a protest. The tradition of energy and occu- pation is still too strong to be attacked. Instead of the contrast which Horace is so fond of between the simple pleasures of repose and the barren labors of ambition and avarice, w^e have the contrast between pleasures that are easy and cheap and those that are costly and disappointing. He lends no support to the gross love of eating, which, to judge by the comedians and satirists, was a very prominent feature in Roman life ; whereas in Greece, after the Homeric age, eagerness as to the quantity or quality of food was somewhat discreditable, while drinking was idealized for the sake of the excitement that it promoted. Lucretius does not care for either form of animal enjoyment. He is remarkably bitter in his depreciation of love, and, what perhaps is curious, it is the ideal side of love which rouses his spleen: the animal appetite, if we could limit it to that, would give very little trouble if it did not give much pleasure. The strength of his feeling is to be measured by r J T^r v r / r*/;' p a ttti} fr I 102 LA T/.V LITER A TURK, the length at which he develops the subject, as an appendix to his theory of perception, for it is the image thrown off from the beloved and lodged in the eye of the lover that does the mischief Lucretius seems to think that philosophy can purge us of sentiment and restore the innocent pleasures of the Golden Age: in general, he does not go beyond the ordinary promise of ordinary Roman philosophy, that he can give strength and insight to lead the common life in a better way than others, and to attain inward peace. The temple of philosophy from which the sage looks down upon the wanderings of a world astray is, after all, a figure : the sage knows the way of life, simply because he knows that common existence would, upon the whole, be a pleasant thing if men could only clear their minds from idle fears and passions. \w this, as in much else, Lucre- tius reminds us of Rousseau and Cowper. Lucretius's indig- nation against "religion" is very like Rousseau's indignation against "civilization'* and Cowpers indignation against ''world- liness." All three, at bottom, seem to seek nothing more than a peaceable development of their own nature, though each has a different transcendental theory to justify the modest de- mands of his character. All seek some external cause for the storms which disturb an inner life consumed bv a fruitless aspiration after calm, which, so long as it is heartily felt, seems always to be the truest expression of the real self. Al- though persons in the position of Lucretius always exaggerate, it is probable that a vague anxiety about the inscrutable in- tention of higher powers was still a source of trouble in Italy. The only reason for doubting this is that a section (we do not know how large a section) of the upper classes had become sceptical. \w fact, this would probably make superstition more formidable. The majority escape superstition best when their natural guides have a hearty practical respect for the religious tradition they have inherited; for then their attention is di- rected by minds more active than their own to the points at which the tradition is in living contact with experience. The "emancipation" of the educated leaves the uneducated to take refuge in those parts of the tradition which are furthest and LUCRETIUS. 103 safest from experience; for their experience is narrow and their apprehension of it fragmentary; and whenever they are anxious or uncomfortable, they turn to old wives* firbles for guidance how to put their fears and hopes into shape, unless some secular fanaticism takes the place of superstition. Then, too, all the idle brooding over a half-employed and less than half- successful life which tormented all Romans above the ranks of the peasantry (unless a strong turn for politics or money-making saved them) led in itself to meditations upon luck and ill-luck, and their conditions. And it is not surpris- ing that Lucretius should have thought that the mischief was done by the theories in which such meditations issued, instead of by the temper that made such meditations anxious. This may seem a meagre justification for his passion, but a yoke which all have worn is never hated till some have broken it. The famous passage on the sacrifice of Iphigenia (in the pref- ace to the first book) is not intended to prove that religion makes men miserable, or that every man who believes in " providence " is liable to sacrifice his daughter. It is intended simply to contrast the effects of" religion " with the claims, ad- mitted to be superior, of" piety." Nothing is too horrible, ac- cording to Lucretius, to be done under a belief that uncontrol- lable, incalculable forces have to be propitiated. Due regard to human ties, due reverence to superhuman perfection, are only possible when both are disinterested — when we are able to watch the course of things understandingly, hoping and fearing nothing except from human efforts. The sixth book is even more fragmentary than the fifth. It leaves off in the middle of a rhetorical description of a pestilence, which is evidently elaborated much more for the sake of ornament than for the sake of the argument that suf- fering in such calamities is distributed with little resfard to equity. The magnet is examined through two hundred lines, ' because when Thales had once noticed some of its properties and inferred that it had a soul, and supported his impression that all things were full of gods, it figured in the first rank of popular science, and was probably the more attractive for its mystery; if the mariner's compass had been familiar for two I04 LATIN LITERATURE. hundred years when Lucretius wrote, he might have been able to say no more about magnetism than other useful arts. I'he discussion on thunder, on the other hand, was strictly obligatory. The Roman official religion was full of specula- tions about the meaning of electrical phenomena, and cere- monies to provide against their bad effects. Italians always have been constitutionally nervous about thunder-storms; and when public business was transacted in the open air, a thunder- storm was certain either to cut it short or lead to its being badlv done. And the official doctrine was as vulnerable as it was obtrusive. The aruspices were already discredited ; their mystery was a tissue of elaborate nonsense, with no visible rela- tion to objective fact of any kind. Whoever chose to look might see that the thunderbolt fell at random — on the waste and on the temple, and on the dwelling of the righteous. A natural- istic account of the matter was evidently needed, and sure to be welcome; but Lucretius, like most of his successors, comes short of Aristotle's precept not only to set forth the truth, but also the cause of error. It would be an adequate explana- tion, if it were true, that the collision of clouds gives rise to a report which we hear on earth and call thunder; but the fact that conscious guilt cannot rest in such explanations needs to be explained in turn. The human mind is not an ultimate source of self-originated error, anymore than of self-originated knowledge ; its power of projecting its own alarms, its own unrest, upon a world above or a world to come is, like all its powers, a derived power — derived Lucretius does not tell us whence. The poem is manifestly incomplete; it is not only that the sixth book is not finished, but that after the first two books the writer almost seems to have left his work in the state of a rough draught (e.g. v. 82-90; vi. 58-66). Ornamental pas- sages are repeated in different places, sometimes entire, some- times with omissions and insignificant alterations. There are additions, often of over a hundred lines {e. g. v. no), which unmistakably interrupt the connection, though they make the treatment of the subject more complete. Besides all this, there is a large crop of interpolations, ancient and modern LUCRETIUS. 105 (e. g. i. 40-49; iJi- 806-818); some of which long held their ground, because they were so like Lucretius's own in their manner of insertion. The additions, of course, are intelli"-ible enough; the repetitions of the ornamental passages show that they too are after -thoughts, and it would not be strange if poetical imagination was the last power to develop in Lucre- tius, as it was the last to develop in Dryden and Burke. These repetitions are a proof that his memory was weak; which is what might have been expected, considering that he has no sense of ihe continuity of the inward life. In the fifth book we have an extreme instance of the author's infirmity: he proceeds to prove the possibility of a new moon coming into existence every month, as if he had not proved the possibility of a new sun coming into existence every morning, by very much the same arguments, some seventy lines before. Even in the third book, the insertions do not fit their places, though they help the argument and do not disturb its framework, or mar the impressiveness of the sustained glow of passion and sarcasm which Lucretius pours upon the natural clinging to life to prove that it is condemned by nature. The six books on the "Nature of Things" deserve more at- tention than they have always received, as a very fresh, vio-or- ous, and earnest contribution to the formation of opinion ; it is quite as able, as interesting, and as telling as many of the great books of the eighteenth century, which eighteen hun- dred years hence are likely to seem as preposterously incom- patible with true knowledge as Lucretius seems now. The analogy is not exact : as a thinker Lucretius ranks with men like Vico rather than with men like Rousseauor Montesquieu; he gathers up much of the thought of the past, he anticipates much of the thought of the future, but he is not a leader or director of the thought of his own times. The only trace of his intellectual influence is the reaction from it in Vergil, who sets himself persistently to idealize all the laborious side of civilization, which Lucretius systematically depreciates. As a poet, too, he has had more fiime than influence. He was praised and read, but not imitated as Vergil was; his thoughts and phrases did not pass current with posterity as Horace's io6 LATIN LITERATURE. did. Manilius affected a few of his mannerisms: Vergil stud- ied him as he did all his predecessors, but he imitated Ennius far more closelv. Passing from Ennius and Lucilius to Lucretius, we feel that he marks an epoch in versification. His lines have a power and a flow which those of his predecessors have not; perhaps we ought to take account of his having read Empedocles as well as Homer, for the movement of his lines is certainly more Greek than that of his elder contemporary Cicero, or his younger contemporary Catullus. When we compare him with them, we see that his metrical achievement, such as it is, lies off the path that led to Vergil. He is far from acquies- cing in the principle which Cicero had clearly grasped, and probably discovered that the appropriate ending for a Lat- in hexameter is either a dissyllable or a trisyllable. Ca- tullus, with some refinements which shall be pointed out in their place, accepts the rule of Cicero. But Lucretius seems to be fond of polysyllabic endings for their own sake: such lines as Qune mare navigerum, quae terras frugifercnteis . . . Iti gicmium matris tenai praccipitavit are as deliberately introduced for effect as lines like Funera Cecropia nefunera portarentur. The termination of the fourth foot with a word is common to him and Cicero and Catullus, and is probably as much a matter of necessity as of choice; for to link the whole six feet always into one rhythm was beyond the power of poets who still had the tact to shun crudities like Pendent peniculata unum ad quemque pedum Pluma atque amfitapoe et si aliud quid deliciarum. Perhaps Lucretius's predilection for sonorous endings makes him end the fourth foot with a word rather oftener than his contemporaries. Like them, when he has a dissyllable and a monosyllable to place after the caesura in the third foot, he generally places the monosyllable first, while after Vergil the presumption is the other way. The metrical order in both cases seems to coincide more or less with the rhetorical ; it CATULLUS. 107 would disturb the flow of the older poet to write " terras quae frugifercnteis;" to write Arma virumque cano qui Trojae primus ab oris would cripple the eloquence of the younger: as it is, " Trojce " seems too emphatic to be kept back. Other metrical peculiarities of Lucretius, like his beirinnin Again, the dates of his birth and death are uncertain. There is a tradition that he died at the age of thirty, and the last events that he unmistakably mentions are the second con- sulate of Pompeius, B.C. 55, and Caesar's first invasion of Brit- ain, B.C. 55-54. The accepted chronology of Catullus's poems assumes that he died soon after; and unless his final quarrel with Lesbia left him in the condition of a more or less extinct io8 LA TIN LITER A TURE. CATULLUS, 109 volcano, it is strange that, if he lived to see Vatiniiis consul in 48-47, he should not allude to any public event in the seven years between. On the other hand, Catullus thought it a duty to die, because Vatinius swore fiilsely by his consulate; and though he might have begun to clench his lies, " as sure as I shall be consul," when first put down for promotion, honest people were perfectly free to find him ridiculous, till he was actually consul. There would be more point in calling Caesar *' Romulus" after he received the formal title of father of his country. It is a less weighty argument that Catullus might have yielded to Caesar with a better grace when Caesar was master of the world. If Caesar cared to dine with a man who he thought had branded liis name forever by his lampoons at any time before he crossed the Rubicon, his object must liave been to gain him; after Pharsalia, the same act could only have been a seal of pardon. Catullus's place in literature is h.arder to determine than his place in chronology : he seems to have no precursors, and hardly any successors. All the poetry that can be said in any sense to belonii to his school is included in the narrow circle of the aj^pendix to Vergil. There is no sign of hendecasyllabics earlier than his in Latin, except a couple that are attributed to Naivius. What is more, we know of no great Greek writer whose hendecasyllabics were celebrated, though Sappho wrote in them. Again, there was no great Greek poem in galliam- bics, which is certainly the right name for the metre of the " Attis," though Greek metrists are inclined rather to treat it as a variant of the lonicus a viinore. In all this Catullus is much more original than Horace, who formed himself as a lyric poet on Alca^us and Sappho, with a distant imitation of Pindar. Like Horace, too, he stands apart from the literary movement of his day : the movement towards assimilating Alexandrine literature was begun, and in full force, and he is perceptibly aware of it and interested in it, and yet outside it. He translates the *' Coma Berenices " for Hortalus, he trans- lates later some other works which have not reached us, and sends them as a peace-offering to Gellius. He translates or imitates the idyl of enchantments from Theocritus, who also supplies the model of an epithalamium — which, unlike the other, has reached us. Catullus even composes a very com- plete and musical miniature epic or heroic idyl — of the or- thodox Alexandrine pattern — on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. But none of these belong to his most characteristic work : none appeal to the inner circle of admirers, who are the best judges of a poet. There is no Alexandrian precedent for the hendecasyllabics or iambics, for the poems to Lesbia, or the Roman Epithalamium, or the "Attis." One might al- most say that his attitude to Alexandrinism was like the at- titude of Byron and De IMussct to the phases of romanticism with which they were contemporary. All these, without sur- rendering themselves to the movement of their time, or really sympathizing with it, were enlarged and emancipated by it. Alexandrinism was unlike romanticism in many ways, and not least in this, that it laid too much stress upon form and plan rather than too little; but it was like it in two very im- portant points, it was disinterested, and it was learned ; it paraded the separation between art and life, and it carried its curious pursuit of the beautiful into the strangest and remotest regions. The "Attis" is a poem no Alexandrine could have written, but the legend it turns upon is a legend which would not have been thought fit for elaborate treatment, until the fashion set by Callimachus and his school. Hitherto Roman literature had lived upon Greek works, which, like those of Euripides and Alenander, were deeply rooted in real life. The time had come for it to go further and fare worse. Catullus's pet abomination was a certain honest Taminius Geminus, a continuator or rival of Ennius, whose "Annals " were popular at the day. His own ideal is the compact, studied, memora- ble poem of his friend Cinna, which took nine years of labor, and was so full of learning that it required a highly trained grammarian to understand it, and earned a reputation high enough to discourage the modesty of Vergil. Neither Catul- lus nor Vergil was shocked by the subject— the passion of a daughter for her father; indeed, its morbid intensity com- mended itself to a school in search of new legends and strong emotions. l! no LA TIX LITER A TURK. Catullus himself is the one great master of a certain kind of passion in Latin literature. There are many poets who had understood the passion of a woman for a man, and in this Catullus does not come short; his forsaken Ariadne may face a comparison with Vergil's forsaken Dido, for, after all, it was written first. But Catullus is the first poet to conceive a man's passion for a woman ; and Propertius, his only successor, comes very far short of him. It is true that his passion is a little egoistic and brutal, and it proves what a new phenomenon it was, that it has no appropriate language of its own ; when he wishes to reproach his mistress with the depth of the affection she has slighted, he can only say that he loved her, not as common men love women, but as a father loves his sons and sons-in-law. The explanation of this strange phrase may be found in another poem, where Catullus assures his mistress that the result of her faithlessness is, that he loves her more than ever, but that he bears her less good-will. It was this element of good-will which impressed him by its novelty; he was famil- iar with the idea of men's desire for women, and the resulting readiness to humor a woman's caprice; but the feeling which makes a man wish well to his mistress for her own sake was something quite unheard of: not unnaturally, as manners did not allow anv virtuous maiden so much intercourse with vounir men as might lead one to wish to marry her, and the inter- course that was permitted was obviously selfish on the part of the women to whom it was permitted. The naive enthusiasm for an attractive woman, which is more conspicuous in Plautus than in Terence, was completely worn out by the days of Catullus, who came so long after both. The beloved of the comic poets was always unmarried ; the beloved of the elegiac poets (with the doubttlil exception of Tibullus) is always mar- ried; and it is Catullus who set the fashion. His own mis- tress, according to ancient tradition and most modern critics, except Herr Riese and Professor Nettleship, was as celebrated for rank as for beauty. She was Clodia, the sister of the famous tribune, the wife and afterwards the widow of Q. Metellus Celer, consul B.c, 54. She w\as as fascinating and unscrupulous as her brother, and had no natural outlet for her enerc:ies. A Ro- CA TULL US. Ill man matron of the Republic compromised herself by dancing or singing or talking too well or too freely, even in her own house. If she was not content to live ostentatiously for her husband, her children, and her spinning-room, she might re- nounce her reputation; an accomplished woman who liked to be a little notorious hardly found it worth while to be virtuous or even prudent. Lesbia showed no sign of prudence in her downward career, except quarrelling with her lover when her husband was by. She was at least ten years older than Catullus, and must have been very charming to intoxicate him so com- pletely. There is no evidence that she was in love with him, though his devotion flattered her so fir that she soothed him by promises of fidelity, never meant to be kept. She did not intend to be fettered in any way by her relation to him, even if she cared enough about it to wish it to be pleasant and kind- ly while it lasted. Catullus, on his side, did not feel bound to exclusive fidelity, and never imagined that a woman could owe any faith to her husband. If she cared to be true, she deserved the credit which the world would give her ; but he did not hold that he was sinning himself or tempting her to sin. The real sin was to be false to her freely plighted oath to him, who loved her more than he had loved or could love any other woman. He does not believe that Jove laughs when lovers take his name in vain ; and he expects the gods, whose name he has never profaned, to take his part and deliver him from his pas- sion for a perjured woman. This stage was only reached by degrees. At first when he detected her escapades, he tried to think they were not many and that she was ashamed of them: he refused to think it was any shame to himself, when the news came to Verona that any gentleman who pleased might take his place with her at Rome. True, her infidelity made hhn miserable : and the distracting poems in which he analyzes his misery have no charm but their sincerity, and the unex- hausted tenderness that made him ready to be reconciled when his mistress renewed her professions of regard. To the last he avoids direct reproaches in the poems addressed to her, though he speaks of her with asperity that passes more and more into vindictive bitterness, The immortal poems 112 LATIN LITERATURE. on the sparrow and the kisses seem to belong to the early clays of fanciful intoxication, which dies away into something better or somethins: worse when lovers have had time to be- come intimate with one another. Accordinii to most commentators, the affair be^ran about or before 60 p.,c. ; according to Professor Munro, it was over when Catullus went to Bithynia three years later. This would carry the quarrel with Mamurra rather far back, as Catullus makes it a grievance that his Provincial,' or Provencal, mis- tress ventured to compete with Lesbia at Rome. The quar- rel culminated when Mamurra came back with the fortune that he had accumulated as Caesar's chief engineer to replace the patrimony he had squandered. His tastes for display were as vigorous as ever (Pliny tells us that he was the first private person who ventured to panel his own house with col- ored marbles), and he had laid himself open in his youth to the same kind of imputations as Caesar. According to Catul- lus, Caesar and Pompeius had ruined the world by a family compact, and there was nothing to show for it but Mamurra's fortune. The imputations on Caesar's private life can only be half sincere : if there had been anvthin^r a2:ainst him in his manhood, Cicero would have mentioned it; but the Italians were probably foul-mouthed because many of them were foul- living ; the coarse jests at a triumph may have been meant to propitiate Nemesis, but they did not lose sight of probability. Ccesar's soldiers rallied him on the legend of Nicomedes; Tiberius's soldiers rallied him on his presumed fondness for drinking hard on the sly. Catullus lavished foul language upon his friends Furius and Aurelius as freely as upon Caesar and Mamurra, or Gellius, a rival with Lesbia, whom Baehrens has proposed to identify with Lesbius {i.e. with Clodius), although he thought the latter worth propitiating, and gra- ciously condescended to assure Caesar that he did not care whether he was black or white. Catullus is too self-absorbed to be amiable ; he complains of almost evervbodv he comes in contact with : Cornificius nes:- * It is not clear whether /;v'c7//r/(?, xli. (xliii.) 6, means a province or the province of Transalpine Gaul before Csesars conquests. CATULLUS. "3 lects him in his trouble; some other friend who is under great obligations, at least to Catullus's thinking, has deserted him in his pecuniary difficulties. Memmius, the praetor who took him to Bithynia, and brought back the original authority for the story about Caesar, fares none the better upon that account ; he is foully insulted, for no reason except that Ca- tullus failed to make money with him. Caecilius and Corne- lius Nepos, Cinna and Calvus, Cato and Varro, are mentioned respectfully ; Verannius and Fabullus, perhaps because they were less intimate with Memmius than Furius and Aurelius, are condoled with on the ground that they are sacriticed to unworthy rivals. He is always as ready to adopt his friends' quarrels as to quarrel with them himself And his passionate lamentations on his brother's death — oddly enough alwavs in connection with his visit to the grave in Troas — are full of a depth and sincerity which have no j^arallel in ancient literature. It is characteristic of the fitfulness of Catullus that so many of his best pieces should be short — a cry, or jest, or a caress ; and it is also noticeable that the affair with Lesbia seems to have left him very nearly heart-whole ; the innocent merriment of his home-coming, in the odes to his villa at Sirmio and the pinnace which had brought him home, is not like a man whose heart was broken or breaking. Even before he got home, the spring-time, when his chief leaves the province, fills him with emotion ; he takes wing in spirit for the f^amous cities of Asia, and his mind quivers beforehand with the yearning to roam. When he is back in Rome, he is equally gay : he rallies one friend on the secrecy in which he shrouds his love affairs, li. (liii.) ; he tells the story of his misadventure with the pert mis- tress of another, who would not let him brag in peace of Cin- na's well-mounted litter, x.; he commemorates the pure, happy love of Septimius and Acme without the least arriere pe?tsie of bitterness. There is only bitterness enough to be piquant in the brutal poems to a second mistress, xl. (xlii.), married, like Lesbia, and, like her, in possession of much of Catullus's writing; or in the farcical poem, xvii., in which he invites the "colony to duck an old gentleman" who got on badly with !■ 114 LA7LV LITERATURE. CATULLUS. 1^5 his young wife. The most perfect, probably, of the longer poems is the Epithalamium of Mallius : it is remarkable for a curious union of gayety, tenderness, and enthusiasm. The poet has much to say that it would be enviable and natural if attainable to say now, and he has almost as much to say that a modern writer of the coarsest fibre would have felt himself forced to refuse. The sentiment, we might say, is almost ex- clusively the sentiment of the situation ; the bridegroom is, for the moment, in love almost up to the standard of Mr. Coventry Patmore, and his antecedents are discussed with a cynicism which outdoes M. Dumas yf/y. The impatience of the spectators, who do not care to be kept waiting for the suc- cessive stages of the show, gets full play, and there is plenty of good-humored banter upon everything in its turn — from the expectation of the bridesmaids, whose own day will come, to the final recommendation to the new spouses to keep up an old family. Throughout, the whole is full of caressing diminu- tives ; and there is a sort of eagerness — we cannot call it hurry — pervading the metre, which moves much more swiftly than in Horace, although Horace never dallies with his ideas as Catullus does. The praise of Hymen, for instance, with which the poem opens, tells us nothing but the most common- place advantages of marriage, and stanza after stanza the poet bursts out with the question. Since these all come by the grace of this god, who can dare to liken himself to himi^ — an extreme and rare instance in Roman literature of the tendency of worshippers who have a choice of several objects of wor- ship to set the one they select above all others while they are worshipping it. The whole poem is full of pictures like the bride in her bower, shining as brightly as the while pellitory, or glowing as the yellow poppy, and the light of warm, tender desire through which they are seen doubles their charm. In his other Epithalamium, Catullus, who is probably translating or imitating a Greek work, takes matters still more simply ; there is nothing of the Roman ritual of marriage, little of its social purpose : everything turns on the bare conflict of sentiment between the chorus of youths and maidens who dispute over the bride. I'he maidens hold that when a maiden marries she is like a plucked flower that droops and is trodden under- foot ; the youths, that a maiden unwed is like the vine trailino- along the ground untended of swain and steer, while a maiden wedded is like the same vine trained to fruitfulness upon the stately elm. The poem on the nuptials of Peleus and Thetis is the long- est work of Catullus : it is a little over four hundred lines, much longer than any of the mythological idyls of 'i^heocritus or Moschus — for one reason, because it is the only attempt of its author in that kind. It is divided into two nearly equal parts, the main story and the episode of Ariadne, which is in- troduced because it was represented upon the coverlet on the marriage-bed; just as in Moschus the casket of Europa is adorned with the story of lo : only Moschus, though by no means so great a poet as Catullus, has a sense of proportion, and remembers that Europa is his subject, and not lo. It is possible that if Catullus was following a Greek original he amplified it for the benefit of a public that knew very little of Theseus and less of Ariadne. But of two hundred and seven- teen lines that are devoted to tho coverlet, a hundred and eighty could quite well be spared by a reader who had the information which is contained in any dictionary of mvthol- ogy. No part of the description of the coverlet woukf have to be omitted, and we should pass at once from the picture of the desolation of Ariadne to the picture of the jollity of her divine wooer, with his train of Bacchanals. The part which would have to be omitted is full, however, of splendid poetry ; in fiict, it has more movement and connection than the main poem, where one picture succeeds another without «^rowino- out of it. The opening passage about the Argo is irrelevant, or at least superfluous, and leads to nothing except anachro- nisms \ for we cannot suppose that Thetis fell in love with Peleus when he sailed in the Argo, the first ship that ever sailed the sea, and that the marriage was postponed till Minos had established a maritime empire, and his vengeance for his son and the death of ^geus and the perfidy of Theseus were an old familiar tale. Besides, how are we to believe that peo- ii6 LATIN LITERATURE. pie came from all Thessaly and Scyros to Pharsalus, only to go away again before the arrival of the gods, who alone are worthy to sit down at the marriage supper and hear the song of fate ? Even when the gods arrive, Chiron and Peneus and Prometheus seem more important to the author than the Olympians. The protest against impiety is spirited, and might perhaps be taken as a reply to the Epicureanism of Lucretius. According to Lucretius, the blessed nature of the gods would be contaminated by any interest in human affairs. According to Catullus, it is only human guilt which shuts men out from the fiimiliar intercourse with heaven enjoyed in days of old. The poet looks back with longing and regret to the times of the heroes, upon whom he promises to call often in his song, although the promise remained unfulfilled. 'I'he song of the Fates is solemn and dignified, but very inferior to the lament of Ariadne, which refers to the long quarrel of the sexes, treated more lightly in the second Epithalamium. Ca- tullus had much experience of the quarrel, and probably Les- bia, when their passion had reached the stormy stage, took care that he should hear the woman's side of the matter. Theseus is perfidious much rather than ungrateful; Ariadne does not reproach liim with having been saved by her, but with having broken his promise, or rather his solemn oath, to marry her. It is his perjury which brings down the curse upon him : he forgot Ariadne, and therefore Jove ordered that he should forget the token his flither had appointed if he prospered in his errand ; and so his father, thinking his son had perished, threw himself into the sea. Love, who brought the trouble upon her, is still a holy child, who mingles care with joy for men. Protesilaus and Laodamia were parted because they did not propitiate Nemesis, and Catullus is careful to propitiate her himself So, too, he winds up his poem on the tragicom- ical legend of Attis, who mutilated himself in haste o^iily to repent at leisure, with the naive petition that the lady of Dindymus will graciously vouchsafe to keep all her madness far from his house, and drive others to headlong courses, others to madness. The first reading of the '' Attis''' su^^-ests CATULLUS. 117 Gibbon's remark, that it is worth all the mystical theories of the legend put together; the second or third reading suggests that it is as artificial as any, and almost as heartless. There is a sob of true passion in the famous address to his native land, which furnished the key-note that is struck repeatedly in Mr. Tennyson's "Gi^none." Patria o mea cicatrix, patria o mca gcnitrix, Ego quam miser relinquens, domiiios ut herifugoe FamuH solent, ad Idae tetuli nemora pedem ; Ut apud nivem et ferarum gelida stabula forcm, Et earum omnia adirem iui ibunda latibula : Ubinani, aut quibus locis te positam, patria, rear? Cupit ipsa pupula ad tc sibi dirigere acicm, Rabie fcra carens dum breve tern pus animus est. Egone a mea remota hxc ferar in nemora dome.? Patria, bonis, amicis, gcnitoribus abero? Abcro foro, palaestra, stadio, et gymnasiis ? Miser, ah miser, querendum est ctiam atque etiam, anime. « « » # ^ » Egone deiim ministra, et Cybeles famula ferar? Ego Macnas, ego mei pars, ego vir sterilis ero? Ego viridis algida Idai nive amicta loca colam ? Ego vitam agam sub altis Phrygian columinibus, Ubi cerva silvicultrix, ubi aper nemorivagus? lam iam dolct, quod cgi, iam iamque poenitet.* Even here the splendid epithets of the doe and the wild boar belong to Catullus rather than to Attis; and when we ' Fatherland, my fatherland, my mother who barest me, whom I, poor wretcli, have left after the manner of servants who run from their lords, to bring my steps to the thickets of Ida, that I might be among the snow and the cold lairs of wild beasts, and go into all their hiding-places in my mad- ness! Wherever, in what region, must I think thee set, my fatherland? My very eve desires of itself to turn unto thee for the short season that my spirit is clear of wild madness. Shall I be borne to those thickets far from my home ? be away from my fatherland, gear, friends, parents ? be away from market and ring, from race-course and playground ? Ah, poor soul ! complain again, poor soul ! and yet again. ... I to be called a hand- maiden of gods, of the household of Cybele; to be a Maenad? I a fragment of myself ? I a man unmanned? I to dwell in the chill regions of green Ida, whose covering is of snow? I to spend my life under the lofty pinnacles of Phrygia, where the boar roams through the thicket and the doe haunts the glade ? Now, now, my deed repents me ; now, even now, it is my pain. i8 LA TIN LITER A TURE. hear in the next line that the cry of Attis came from '' rosy liplets," it is clear that the legend is being treated as Perugino treated the martyrdom of St. Sebastian— with a dainty curi- osity not far removed from cruelty. The whole poem belongs to a very simple period of art, and so at first seems to be purely natural; but within its limits it is elaborately— over- elaborately— finished. All the primitive ornaments of alliter- ation and euphony are lavishly employed, and there are signs of affectation : the cry of Attis rises to the " twin ears " of the gods; Cybele, when she looses one of her lions to scare her wavering votary back to his duty, bids him "beat his back with his tail," which is simple enough, and to "bear his own blows," which is a conceit. The lion himself is the " left-hand foe of cattle;" he "calls upon himself in his fury; his spirit is stirred to speed: he goes, he roars, he bursts the brushwood with uncontrolled tread. But when he cnme to the moist re- gion of the whitening shore, and saw tender Attis beside the flashing levels of the main, he made his charge : and Attis fled crazy iTito the wild woods." The whole poem is short, only nine'ty-three lines, and five of these are given to saying, "When the sun rose Attis woke'— "When the sun, with the radiant eyes of his golden countenance, looked abroad upon white heaven, hard earth, wild sea, and drove the shadows of night before the tramp of his fresh steeds, then Attis started. Sleep departed from him in swift flight, and the goddess Pa- sithea took him' trembling to her bosom." It is very pretty, fresh, and dainty, but cold and unreal. Why should Sleep fly trembling to the bosom of Pasithea? In Homer there is a reason: he has been deceiving Jupiter, and one is not clear whether the espousals of Sleep and the gracious lady of the fair fancies of night are older than the " Iliad "—and there they are only promised. What, again, is the sound of the feet of the horses of the sun ? and the epithet is perhaps a little rahenhe. Vero-il is far better— "When we feel the breath of the panting horses of the east." The words are all simple and natural, and the metaphor is at once delicate and true, where Catullus is forced, quaint, and, if suggestive, boisterous. Quaintness ' Or, as others read, " took him to her quivering bosom." CATULLUS. 119 Catullus would hardly have thought a reproach ; he was dis- gusted with the notion of what was common or homespun or commonplace : his firvorite word of praise is " venustus " — full of the charm of Venus ; and it is curious to find that he thinks it applicable to an unfinished poem of a friend's upon Cybele, a subject which might be thought to demand sublime or pict- uresque or romantic treatment rather than an exquisitely pretty one. When he wishes to give praise not quite so high, he speaks of what is " lepidus " or '• bellus " or "facetus:" " bellus " is exactly " pretty ;" " lepidus " is " elegant," with an added suggestion of kindly pleasantness; "facetus" wavers between "clever" and "amusins:." His own hexameters in the longer and more elaborate poem suffer from over -finish. The separate lines are happy and skilful — more skilful than any separate lines which had been written in Latin before; there is a curiosity in varying the construction and cadence, and an ingenious appreciation of the advantages of weak ccesuras. Even the mannerism of ending lines with a double spondee is probably suggested by the observation that when some pains were taken with the caesuras in the early parts of the line, and the verse was care- fully ended with a dissyllable or trisyllable, the fourth foot was apt to end with a word and to be a spondee. After lines like Pars e divolso jactabant membra juvcnco, lines like Pars sesc tortis serpcntibus incingcbant were a welcome relief. In the Epithalamium there are no spondaic lines, but Catullus is carefully on his guard against ending the fourth foot, which is still almost always a spondee, with a word except a monosyllable. The structure of the poem, short stanzas divided by the hymeneal refrain, excludes the more serious fault of the poem on Peleus and Thetis — a want of continuous movement, and the too obvious effort to gain effect by an accumulation of parallel details. I20 LATIN LITERATURE. ORATORY OF THE REPUBLIC. 121 CHAPTER II. ORATORY OF THE REPUBLIC. The development of Latin oratory was much more contin- uous than that of Latin poetry, and is much better known. For Cicero has traced its history from the earliest -recorded speeches to his own day with infinite good-will and a great deal of delicate discrimination, and has taken quite sufficient pains to mark the necessary abatements from his general tone of eulogy. The external conditions of Roman oratory were practically fixed from the days of Pyrrhus to those of Cicero — the only important change being the institution of the standing court for the trial of provincial governors in 149 B.C., and the exten- sion of this jurisdiction to murder, attempted murder, forgery, riot, undue electoral influence, under Sulla. Men had always spoken in the senate and in the forum, and in the forum they had spoken under very different conditions from Greek ora- tors. At Rome and at Athens the theory was that all causes were determined by the sovereign people, and that all meas- ures of legislation or administration were decided in the last resort by their votes. But at Athens the rule w\as that speech- es on public affiirs were addressed to the meeting that voted upon them : it was the exception when this happened at Rome. Again, at Rome the question of law was always decided by the authority of a magistrate in the presence of the parlies and their supporters, and often of a crowd w'ho shared their excite- ment; there was seldom much for the orator to do: shrewd- ness, intrigue, influence, had more to do than eloquence or argument in deciding what particular issue of fact should be raised to govern the legal issue. The opportunity of the orator came later, before the court that had to decide the special issue of fact. At Athens the duty of the magistrate was purely ministerial : the whole merits of the case, whether of fact or lawycame before the jury ; and the jury was a body to be counted by hundreds — a large committee of the sovereign assembly. At Rome the question of Hict was often referred to a single judex; and when the court was largest it was counted by scores. But the court was never the whole of the audience; generally it was the smallest part. Besides the parties and their friends, there were the loungers in the mar- ket-place, who gathered round any knot engaged in an inter- esting or amusing dispute. The larger the ring of such idlers any speaker could draw and hold, the greater his success : knowledge of the law, station, tact, and the like might win the verdict of the judge, but eloquence only could interest an au- dience; and success gained by eloquence was much more im- portant to the orator than a success gained in any other way. Consequently, what told upon the audience was quite as im- portant as what told upon the court, and much told upon the audience which did not tell upon the cause. There was the same tendency to irresponsible display in political speaking: the audience was commonly a mass-meeting convoked to sup- port or oppose a particular measure ; it was rare that any speaker addressed a meeting called by an opponent. The only scene of debate was the senate, and even there debate was beset by formalities : for one senator directly to reply to another was only tolerable when questions of personal dignity had been raised. As a rule, each senator gave his opinion in turn as called upon by the consul or other magistrate. In this way, men of consular rank, at any rate, had to speak whether they had anything to say or no ; and even when the consulars had spoken, there was little chance that less digni- fied speakers would animate the latter part of the sitting. In the first place, they were not expected to speak at such length as the leaders, and there were a number of senators who would give a silent vote, and had still to be asked for whom they would give it. Even in the senate, too, there was a great deal of vague speaking, for no senator who was not a magistrate could bring forward any subject of his own motion : lie had I.— 6 ( 122 LA TIN LITER A TURE. CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 123 to speak on such subjects as magistrates chose to bring for- ward: if other subjects struck him as more important, his only resource was, in speaking on the magistrates' motion, to give his opinion that they should be instructed to bring his own question before the senate on a future day. Even this, though permissible, was reckoned irregular, like the practice of per- sonal altercation. CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. The records of Roman eloquence went far back. Cicero had read the speech of Appius Caucus which decided the sen- ate against treating with Pyrrhus, and ^le had read funeral orations older than the days of Cato. He did not admire either : he disliked the funeral orations, which were kept as the authorities and patterns for similar exercises in his own day, whereby history was increasingly corrupted. He was willing to believe that Appius must have been eloquent, since till he spoke the senate had been inclined to treat. He pavs capricious compliments to the hypothetical eloquence of Fa- bricius, sent to induce Pyrihus to restore his prisoners; of Tiberius Coruncanius, whose wisdom was proved by the "Com- mentaries of the Pontiffs;" and of iM'. Curius, who overruled the illegal intention of Appius Caucus to create two patrician consuls. There were other speakers who had a name for having carried measures or exercised influence. But the first speaker whose reputation was intelligible was M. Cor- nelius Cethegus, consul 203 b.c; and his eloquence, which Cicero only knew by the report of Ennius, was chiefly an aff^air of voice and manner. His contemporaries called him the *'fine flower of the people," " the marrow of persuasion," and spoke of his " mouth of honeyed speech." When he was con- sul the elder Cato was quc-estor, with whom Cicero plainly feels that the history of Latin oratory really begins. There were a hundred and fifty of his speeches (unless'' Cicero con- founded hmi with a grandson who left speeches in the same style) to be read in Cicero's day ; and it amused Cicero to overpraise him. He compared his speeches to Lysias, and his history to Thucydides and Philistus; partly because Lvsias \ \ was the least passionate, the least ornate, of the great Attic orators, and among the most voluminous, and partly because the historical reputation of Thucydides and Philistus had been thrown into the shade by the affected sublimity of Theopom- pus. (Was Cicero inclined to resent the historical reputation of Sallust, who, like Theopompus, aimed at the sublime?) He liked also to illustrate Greek figures of rhetoric from the prac- tice of Cato, who was really an ambitious and clever speaker,* with a strong taste for displaying his ingenuity, all the more pronounced because he had no real oratorical passion. The speech on the freedom of the Rhodians has been preserved in great measure by Aulus Gellius. It is a plea against punish- * Fronto gives an amusing specimen : " Jussi caudicem profeni iibi mea oratio scripta crat. Dc ea re quod sponsionem feceram cum M. Cornelio tabulx prolatcc : majorum bene facta perlecta, deinde quce ego pro repub- lica fccissem, Icguntur. Ubi id utrumque perlectum est, deinde scriptum crat in oratione : ' Nunquam ego pecuniam neque mcam neque sociorum per ambilionem dilargitus sunn' Attat noli, noli scribere, inquam ; istud nolunt audirc. ' Num quos prxfectos per sociorum vcstrorum oppida imposivi, qui bona eorum, liberos diripercnt ?' Istud quoquc dele : nolunt audire. Rccita porro : 'Nunquam ego prncdam neque quod de hostibus captum esset, neque manubias inter pauculos amicos meos divisi, ut illis eriperem qui ceperant.' Istuc quoque dele. Nihilominus volunt dici : non opus est. Recitato : ' Nunquam ego evectionem datavi, quo amici mci per synibolas pecunias magnas caperent.' Perge istuc quoque uti cum maximc delerc : ' Nunquam ego argentum pro vino congiarii inter ap- paritores atque amicos meos disdidi neque eos malo publico divites feci.' Enim vero usque istuc ad lignum dele. Vide, sis, quo loco respublica siet uti quod reipublicx bene fccissem, unde gratiam capiebam, nunc idem illud memorarc non audeo, ne invidias siet. Ita inductum est, male facere inpocne, bene facere non inpoene licere." Cato had boasted of his integ- rity with success and acceptance, and naturally could not believe that he had done anything to disgust the public with the interesting topic. Since they found it tedious, it was obvious they had changed. When he found it necessary to defend himself again on the subject of his expenditure — for there were many who thought his extreme frugality mean — his first idea was to look over his speech that had succeeded before when his merits were fresh. He saw that it would not do to repeat his old boasts, and so he carried the figure of " pretermission " — saying that he would not say so-and-so — to a pitch of ingenuity beyond anything in the range of Fronto's reading. A modern reader — probably, too, a reader of the days of Cicero — would have been struck rather by the speaker's naivete and his readi- ness to take liberties with his audience. 124 LATIN LITERATURE. ing the Rliodians too severely for their presumed sympathy with Perseus in the last war with Rome. Cato maintains that it is unfair in such a case to take the will for the deed ; the Rhodians had been trustworthy allies in their acts, and they did not deserve to lose their independence because they had proffered their mediation, and had not wished the Romans to conquer too completely. He illustrates this ingeniously with instances of cases where unpractical good-will is not rewarded and unpractical ill-will is not punished. He recurs to the same idea in his latest speech, when he prosecuted Galba for violating: a convention with the Lusitanians because he sus- pected them of meaning to break faith with him. The illus- trations are new ; he tells the audience how absurd it would be for him to expect to be made pontiff or augur because he meant to become a great authority upon pontifical law or augury, and argues that it was as absurd to punish the Lusi- tanians for what they meant to do. Most of the fragments of his speeches are in this vein of leisurely, antithetical argument: there is a great show of brev- ity, because there is little amplification, although there is al- ways some parade and irrelevance. There is nothing of the easy flow of exposition that we find in the speeches of Lysias, who deliberately avoids display, and keeps as near as he can to the tone of refined conversation on matters of exciting busi- ness. Cato, on the contrary, likes to perorate. Here, for in- stance, is what he says when a Roman magistrate had the au- thorities of an Italian town publicly beaten for not providing him with a proper dinner : Dixit a decemviris paium bene cibaria curata esse; jussit vestimenta detrahi atque flagio caedi : dcccmviros IJiuttiani vcrbciaveie : videre multi mortales: quis banc contumeb'am, quis hoc imperium, quis banc servitu- tem feire potest? Nemo hoc rex aiisus est faceie ; cam facere bonis, bono genere gnatis, boni consulitis? ubi societas? ubi fides majorum? insignitas injurias, plagas, verbera, vibices eos dolores atque carnificinas per dedecus atque maxiniam contumeliam inspectantibus populai ibus suis atque multis mortalibus te facere ausum esse ; sed quantum luctum, quantum gemitum, quid lacrimarum, quantum fletum audivi. Servi injuriam nimis aegre fe- runt: quid illos, bono genere gnatos, magna virtute praeditos, opinamini animi habuisse atque habituros dum vivunt? CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 125 Obviously the orator is deliberately lashing up his own indig- nation, and the indignation of his audience, to divert attention from the question what was to be done with the authorities of a small town who neglected the rather onerous duty of pro- viding for a Roman governor en route: if he was to have any control at all, he must be able to inflict summary punishment, and it was hard for him to dispense with the convenient fic- tion that he was at the head of an army able to deal with whomsoever he met under martial law. Among his own contemporaries, Cato's fame for eloquence did not s'tand high : he was an able man, whose perseverance, cleverness, and bitterness made his speeches worth listening to, while his vanity secured their preservation. Other speak- ers had more weight and gave more pleasure. C. Laelius, the friend of the younger Africanus, was supposed to be the wisest statesman of his day; and his freedom from personal ambition and passion, and his readiness to take the second place, gave him a higher reputation than a more active politician could gain. hIs "mild wisdom" was long proverbial: he was sup- posed to be the only man able to influence his friend, who, without wishing to override the constitution, habitually set himself above it. Consequently, Loelius was asked to speak in all important cases, and took pains with his speeches, which had the merit of perfect purity of language, though that was less remarkable then than in later days. His speeches read well for their day, because he took as much pains in preparing them for publication as for delivery in the forum. The charm of his speeches was a kind of religious unction; nothing, says Cicero, could be sweeter, nothing holier. We have a specimen in the magnificent panegyric on his dead friend which he wrote for Q. Tubero, and which was imitated by Q. Fabius ^milia- nus. " Needs must be," said Laelius, " that the empire of the whole earth should be where that man was : wherefore neither such great thanks can be paid to the immortal gods as ought to be paid that he, with such a mind and such a spirit, was born in this city out of all others, nor yet such moan and la- ment be made as ought to be made since he died of that dis- ease, and was taken away in that same season, when to you 126 LA TIN LITEKA TURK, and all others who would have this commonwealth safe there was most need of his life, ye men of Rome." Cicero had trained himself to feel strongly about a speech on the sacred ceremonies of Rome, in which it was set forth what delight the gods took in wooden ladles and bowls of red Samian earthen- ware. LcX'Iius's speeches were remarkably archaic compared with Scipio's. Cicero does not tell us whether this was be- cause they were more accurately transmitted : the orations of Scipio doubtless found their way into the " Annales Maximi;" but when that voluminous work was published, there had been time for a good deal of archaism to rub off. At the same tmie, the parade of ancient words, which it required training to use accurately, was itself a mark of education ; and througlv out the history of Roman eloquence there is a constant feelhig that ordinary words are not good enough for oratory. Though Lx^lius was the more celebrated speaker, we have more quotV tions from Scipio. With one exception, they are not very re- markable. He was more shocked at the fiict that five hundred free-born girls and boys learned to dance such dances as were performed upon the stage than we should have expected from one who, among his contemporaries, had a name for self- indulgence. His scorn for a certain Asellus, of which two or three specimens have been preserved, is not above the mark of other aristocrats of the period. One really characteristic phrase is quoted by Isidore of Seville : "Innocence brinos worth, worth brings office, office brings command, command brmgs freedom." The feeling is that no Roman, till he had earned and held the highest office, had a right to feel himself free: not only the duty of obedience to the laws, but the more galling duty of deference to superiors, still lay upon him. Both Scipio and Laelius owed their fame as orators to their position as statesmen and to their disinterested care for cult- ure. Servius Sulpicius Galba,who belonged to an older gen- eration, was a real orator: according to Cicero, he was^he first Latin orator to undertake what only an orator could do— Uie first to introduce deliberate digression for the sake of or- nament; the first to delight the mind, to move it, to raise his subject; the first to use "commonplaces" and topics of pity. CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 12 7 Apparently it was in this last that his real power lay: he had a hoarse, gruff voice, and he could make it sound as if it were thick with emotion. When Libo, with the support of Cato, impeached him for his treatment of the Lusitanians, he de- clared that the Roman people might deal with him as they pleased • he only trusted that they would have mercy upon his children and the orphan son of Gallus. He brought the chil- dren into court— a Greek practice that he was the first to in- troduce at Rome — and their tears mingled with his, and quenched the fiame of popular indignation. Cicero tells us himself that his power lay in his natural dolorousness ; he al- wavs felt his own case or his client^s as a grievance, and the feelin- was always contagious. He had the power of working himseTf into a passion in cold blood, as is shown in a story which Cicero tells on the authority of P. Rutilius Rufus. 1 he fiirmers of the State pitch-works in the Forest of Sila were accused of allowin- their slaves to commit murders upon respectable people.^ The case against them was strong, for Lx'lius, who spoke twice in their defence, taking especial pains, could obtain nothing better than repeated adjournments. After' the second, he suggested that they should put the case into Galba's hands. Galba had only a clear day to prepare himself, and shut himself up in a vaulted chamber, with some slaves that could read and write, till the morning of the third day, and did not leave till he heard the consuls had come into court. In his excitement he had thrashed all the slaves to whom he had dictated his notes. He came out with flushed cheeks and flashing eyes, as if he had been delivering a speech instead of preparing it. The speech was delivered amid con- tinual applause. He complained so copiously of the hardship of keeping respectable men with such a charge hanging over them on mere suspicion, that the court forgot how unconvinc- ing they had found Lselius's sober and elaborate argument that the suspicion did not amount to legal certainty. Neither this speech nor any of Galba's read well : they were old-fashioned compared not only with Laelius and Scipio, but with Cato. A verbatim report of them would have been disappointing, they owed so much to the voice and feeling of the orator; and he 128 LATIN LITERATURE. did not take any pains when they were delivered to prepare them for publication : he had not yet reached the artistic fas- tidiousness of the age of Cicero, when every orator who took himself seriously thought that to work up a successful speech after delivery was the best way to improve himself The only other contemporary of Galba who had any real reputation as an orator w^as M. yEmilius Lepidus Porcina. He was a little younger than Galba, and in his own day passed for a first-rate speaker, and in Cicero's judgment his speeches proved him a really good writer. He was the first Latin who had a sense of the easy flow of Greek and the value of a good arrangement of words : he wrote as if it were a fine art. It is a description of superficial graces. Galba's innovations had been more sub- stantial, though equally artificial. Publius Crassus was appar- ently the best speaker of those whose reputation was due to their knowledge of law and their station and influence; he had married his son to Galba's daughter, and studied law with the fiimous Pontiff Scaevola. A certain Gains Fannius, consul 122 B.C., left a famous speech against the measures of the younger Gracchus. It was the best speech of the day which Cicero had read : it was the manifesto of the aristocracv, who, though they sometimes chose to represent themselves as champions of the Latin allies, affected to fear that if the Lat- ins were enfranchised they would leave no room for the Ro- mans at Rome. But Cicero makes a very lame reply to the suspicion of Atticus that the written speech was the work of C. Persius, who utilized all the suggestions of the nobility. Fannius himself was a tolerable speaker, and doubtless deliv- ered an effective speech, which, when delivered, owed nothing to the help of Persius. Fannius belonged to an older gener- ation than even the elder Gracchus, who, like C. Carbo, had studied under Porcina. Carbo, according to Cicero, was the great orator of his day: he praises both him and Tiberius Gracchus for their prudence and ingenuity and acuteness, while neither seems to have had any aptitude for purely liter- ary display; which Cicero excuses in the case of Tiberius Gracchus on the ground that he was cut off before he reached his prime. Carbo lived long enough to give his measure: he CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 129 was the kin«- of the courts, in spite of his want of political steadfixstncss. He was fluent and voluble, and had a good voice; he was sharp enough (this may be taken in connection with his want of political earnestness, for he only took up the democratic cause for popularity) and had abundant energy, and withal knew how to keep his audience in good-humor and amused: these last were his great merits — all the more impor- tant because the courts had just received the right of voting by ballot, and so were made comparatively independent of family and political influence. He was also painstaking in his preparation, and had the great virtue, in Cicero's eyes, of writinf'- a great deal before he spoke. None of the other speakers of the generation were remarkable even in the eyes of Cicero. Scaurus, the famous Pnnceps Scnatus, always spoke as if he were giving evidence, which answered better in the senate than in the courts. Rutilius, who was involved with Scaurus in a cross-action for electoral manoeuvres, wearied the audience with his stoical precision. Hitherto Cicero has been dealing with orators who only interested himself, as he is careful to tell us; for Brutus, with whom Cicero is supposed to be conversing, explains that he never read any of them. It appears from the admirable dia- lo"-ue on oratory, generally ascribed to Tacitus, that most later readers were of the same mind as Brutus. Galba and Carbo are only mentioned to be depreciated; there was nothing in either of them that Cicero could imitate; even the eulogist of the ancients can find nothing better to say than that eloquence was in its infancy in the days of Galba and La^lius, and it was no wonder that their speeches left a good deal to be desired. The reputation of Cato, which Cicero was at such pains to foster — because, like himself, he was a newMiian from an Italian country town, and because his namesake deserved an in- direct compliment— slept in spite of Cicero's pains: there is no trace of him in Tacitus or Seneca. He is not one of the classics of Quinctilian. He was disinterred in the days of Gellius, who seems, like Cicero, proud of having discovered him. For most people the history of Latin eloquence began with I. — 6* I30 LA TIN LITER A TURE, Gaius Gracchus/ who certainly by all accounts was an extraor- dinary genius, though Cicero seems to put him below Carbo, on the ground that his style of speaking was better suited to public meetings than to law-courts. Again, he was a little of- fended at the entire absence of elaboration : he valued him- self upon having carried the elaboration of every possible effect further than any orator had ever done, and he valued his predecessors as stages on the road to his own perfection. His own judgment on Gracchus is that there was plenty of su- perb beginnings, but nothing worked out as it should be. This is borne out to some extent by Tacitus, who says that, if the choice lay between the age before Cicero and the age after him, the impetus of Gracchus and the "maturity" of Crassus were better than anything in post-Augustan oratory. Perhaps verve in its highest sense would be the nearest translation of impetus. It was difficult for Gracchus to control himself : while he was speaking he ran up and down on the rostra; he was so apt to scream that he kept a slave behind him with a flute to irive him a softer note. It was not that he was unfamiliar with rhetorical training; his opponents taunted him with the help he got from Menelaus of Marathus, which reminds us of another great orator, Mirabeau, who gave his secretaries heads from which they drew up the speeches that electrified France. He had seen the effect of rhetorical tricks at Rome. C. Curio had delivered an elaborate defence of Ser. Fulvius, accused of incest, full of all the flowers of Greek school-books, discussing Ihe force of love, the inferences to be drawn from what slaves said or did not say under torture, or from the conduct of their masters in offering or withholding them, the weight to be given 1 Tiberius Gracchus was still read in some form by Plutarch, who gives us the heads of his speeches on the agrarian law with much pathos on the homeless condition of the majority of Italians, who had not so much as a den or cave of their own like the wild l)easts ; though when they went to battle they were bidden to fight for their family shrines and tombs as if they had cither. Plutarch was even more struck by the ingenuity with which he accumulated illustrations of the thesis that Octavius (a tribune deprived of his office on the motion of Gracchus because he would not waive his right to veto the agrarian law) had forfeited the immunities of an office which he had abused against the intention of the founder. CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 131 to local rumor— all topics too hackneyed for the days of Cic- ero who could remember when the speech was m the hands of every schoolboy. Gracchus was too serious for such display ; he dis-usted Gellius by the simplicity with which he recount- ed outra-es of governors on their way to their provinces, with^ out eveif aspiring to the emphasis and amplification which Cato in his earlier day had reached. All he cared for in the way of ornament was splendid diction; all he cared for in the way of artifice was to coin aphorisms which would stick in the memory ^Ve have very few quotations from his speeches ; and if we had many, it would be impossible to judge of such a speaker by quotations. His speeches told by a fulness both of f icts and of feeling which left no room for rhetoric. One or two phrases are full of passion, like the appear to the Ro- . - Si vellem apud vos verba facere et a vobis postulare cum genere summo ortus essem. et cum fratrem propter vos amisissem, nee qu.squam de P Africani et Tiberii Gracchi familia nisi ego et puer restaremus, ut pa- teremini hoc tempore me quiescere ne a stirpe genus nostrum mtereat et uti aliqua propago generis nostri reliqua esset baud sc.o an lubentibus a vobis impetrassem." He could count on some regard for his sacrihces it he had asked for leave to save himself; he doubted whether they weighed enouMi with the Romans to carry his laws about the corn distribution and revenue-farming and the courts of justice. Even more celebrated was the outburst-" Ouo me miser conferam? quo vertam ? in Cap.toluimne ? atfra- tris san-uine\edundat? An donuim ? ad matremne? ut m.seram lamentan- tcm vidcam et abjectam." Cicero thought so highly of these passages as to imitate both. The imitation of the first comes in the speech for I ubl.us Sulla, acquitted on a charge of complicity with Catiline, which rested on no other ground than that he had stood for the consulship with Autromus, one of the conspirators, and, like him, was condemned for undue influence at the election. The imitations are instructive, for they show in what w^ays Cicero thought he could improve upon Gracchus. The prosecutor had chosen to assume that Cicero was making himself a king in Rome, and choosing at his will whom to protect and whom to destroy ; so Cicero re- torts that instead of taking well-earned repose he went on facing the dan- gers and duties of public life : so that a new turn is given to his claim to ease, or rather a new inference is drawn from it. "Ego, tant.s a me be- neficiis in republica positis, si nullum aliud mihi praemium ab senatu pop- uloque Romano nisi honestum otium postularem, quis non concederet . Sibi haberent honores, sibi imperia, sibi provincias, sibi tnumphos. sib. alia prxclara. laudis insignia, mihi liceret ejus urbis, quam conseryassem conspectu, tranquillo animo et quieto frui. Quid ? si hoc non postulo ; s, 132 LA TIX LITER A TURE. man people to rouse themselves, if they cared for him or for his sacrifices and his brother's. His opinions made him permanently unpopular among the class of professional speakers who expected to rise to the honors of the State by defending men of station. It was not the rule to learn his speeches by heart, as men learned the peroration of the speech of C. Galba, son of the famous orator, who was crushed as an accomplice of Juguriha. The elo- quence of Drusus, who tried to carry out what was beneficent in the reforms of Gracchus in the interest of the senate, with the leave of the nobility, left no trace behind it. Cicero' who mentions every orator that he can think of, is silent about him, though he mentions P. Scipio, the wittiest speaker of the day, who died when he was consul, in the same year with Bestia, who was banished, to the great grief of Cicero, for treating with Jugurtha. He only spoke rarely. The great speaker of the time immediately after Gracchus was C. Fim- ille labor mens pristinus, si sollicitudo, si officia, si opcrne, si vigiliai deser- viunt amicis, pra^sto sunt omnibus ; si neque amici in foro requirunt stu- dium meuni ncque respublica in curia; si mc non modo rerum gcstarum vacatio, sed neque lionoris, ncque aitatis excusatio vindicat a laborc ; si voluntas mea, si industria, si domus, si animus, si auies patent omnibus : si niihi ne ad ea quidem, quae pro salute omnium gessi, recordanda et cogi- tanda quidquam relinquitur tcmporis : tamen hoc regnum appellabitur cu- jus vicarius qui velit esse invcniri nemo potest?'' (" Pro P. Sulla," ix. 26). How connected and vigorous and varied this is compared with Gracchus ! how much fuller, how much richer, for not a single detail is thrown away — each adds a new trait to the picture. Only Gracchus is thoroughly in earnest — his tragic words correspond to a tragic situation. It is the same in the " Pro Murcna," x. 41 : " Si (quod Jupiter omen avertat) hunc vestris sententiis afflixciitis : quo se miser vertct? Donnmine? ut earn imaginem clarissimi viri, parentis sui, quam paucis ante dicbus laureatam in sua gra- tulatione conspexit, eamdem deformatam ignoniinia lugentemque videat .? An ad matrem } quae misera, modo consulem osculata filium suum, nunc cruciatur et sollicita est, ne eumdcm paullo post spoliatum omni dignitate conspiciat? Sed quid ego matrem aut domum appcllo," etc. Murena, it seems, would have to go into exile : was he to go to the far cast or to the far west ? He had commanded in both ; was he to visit either as an exile ? In fact, he would not have had to go farther than Sicily or Greece, if he had to go farther than Naples. Here, too, Cicero is playi'ng with a topic that was serious in the hands of Gracchus. CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 133 bria a very passionate free-spoken partisan of the senate, whose character stood high enough to carry off his scolding way of speaking. It was impossible to find any of his speech- es when Cicero wrote, some sixty or seventy years afterwards. Fimbria was consul B.C. 104; five years later, M. Antonms was consul ; four years later came the turn of Licinius Crassus. Antonius and Crassus were, in the judgment of Cicero, the Demosthenes and Hyperides of Rome. They were very near- ly contemporaries. Antonius was born 143 B.C., Crassus 139 B.C. Antonius lived to perish in the massacre of Cinna, B.C. 87; Crassus died in peace 91 B.C., just before the outbreak of the Social War. He had been the first to make his reputation : two of his greatest speeches were delivered in his twenty-first and twenty-seventh years. Antonius is not thought to have spoken in public till he was thirty, and that in his own de- fence ; while Crassus made his first speech against Carbo, who had deserted the popular cause without gaining the confidence of the nobility, though he had gone so far as to defend Opim- ius. Six years after, Antonius had the opportunity of accusing another Carbo, the unfortunate opponent of the Cimbri : three years later still they came into collision. Crassus had to de- fend Servilius, who was prosecuted for having been defeated by the Cimbri, because he had proposed a law to restore the control of the courts to the senate. The prosecutor, C. Nor- banus, was himself accused of lowering the majesty of the State by raking up forgotten scandals : on this occasion An- tonius defended him. But neither was a serious politician, and both respected the authority of the senate. Their object was to prove their own consequence in the courts, to make as many friends as possible, and to prove, if they pleased, that they could be formidable enemies. As the law-courts were the highest field of eloquence at Rome, and Antonius the greatest Roman advocate, he had to be the Roman Demos- thenes, though Cicero was quite aware of his inferiority in all the imaginative and intellectual part of oratory. He wrote nothing : even his Latinity was questionable— at least, his vo- cabulary was not choice : as he always spoke extempore, he had no occasion or opportunity for rhetorical turns and devel- 134 LATIN LITERATURE. opments. His praise was that he " thought of everything," caught all the points of a case at once, and conveyed to the court a vivid sense of all that told on his own side. He ar- ranged his words and sentences with a sufficient eye to effect and emphasis, but did not care for elegance or dignity ; in fact, his pursuit of rapidity made his sentences so full of short and open syllables that, in the judgment of severe critics who liked every phrase to be full and rounded, his style was hardly manly. This was corrected in delivery by his energy and en- terprise : he astonished the court when defending Aquillius, who was accused of peculation after his return from putting down the servile war in Sicily, by baring the breast of the vet- eran and showing the honorable scars which covered his body. According to ancient tradition, the court knew he was guilty, but had determined not to encourage revolutionists by con- demning him. When he himself was prosecuted under the law of Varius, he actually was seen to bend before his judges till one knee touched the ground. This was the more re- markable because he had boasted, in his defence of Norbanus, that he was only in the habit of descending to supplication on behalf of his friends. Apparently, Cicero thought the speech on behalf of Norbanus his best, for in his dialogue upon oratory he makes A n ton i us give a very complacent sketch of it, dwell- ing especially on his boldness in pressing home to the court how much Rome had been indebted in the past to politicians who could be called seditious. Though Antonius never wrote his own speeches, there was enough curiosity about them for some notes to be taken at the lime, which, with the help of Cicero, kept a critical tradition about him alive as late as the third centurv. Crassus had more vanitv : he wrote down for the benefit of posterity the most successful passages in his speeches. He was a niucli more leisurely speaker : he was not ready to take up every case that was brought him like Antonius : he repent- ed heartily of having been induced to prosecute Carbo. He took care never to have to defend himself, and he refused to defend Servilius, whose law he had advocated. Instead, he chose to be a witness for the defence : and in that capacity CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. '35 he made a serious speech, denouncing the prosecutor, and de- scribing the measures he had felt boimd to take agamst him as cons°ul The speech was rather long for a witness, and de- cidedly short for an advocate, and Cicero admired it immetise- iv • a.Kl as for the speech in favor of the Servd.an law, which restored to the senate the right of trying senators, he always professed that it had been his mistress in the art of oratory. He especially admired the appeal to the people to deliver the senators out of the hands of the knights, so that thenceforward the senate might have no superior but the Roman people— wlio no doubt, as represented by the loungers in the forum, were almost as jealous of the knights as of the senate. Thou"h there was a great deal of solemnity, Crassus seems to have Tested even in Uiis speech. C. Memmius, a famous op- nonent of the nobilitv, spoke against the bill of Servilius, and Crassus said he thought himself so tall that when he went down to the forum he stooped to pass under an archway. In the same speech he had told a perfectly imaginary story of how he found the walls at Terracina covered with L L L M M, and that it was explained to him they meant " Lacerat lacer- lum Largi inordax Memmius.^' Apparently the jest, such as it was, succeeded. Oratory was still rather rudimentary : Cicero immortalized a lillle bit of cross-examination which would have fallen flat at the Old Bailey. A better specimen of his skill is found in his altercation with Brutus, the son of a famous master of law, who had got through his patrimony and then taken to the trade of accuser-general. Crassus had to defend Cn I'lancus against him, and both orators were much more occupied with «ne another than the case. Brutus had two men to read parallel passages from Crassus's speeches on the Servilian law and the colony of Narbo which did not agree very well together; Crassus retorted by having the opening words read from each of the father's treatises on law. Each began with an allusion to one of three estates which the father left behind him, all of which the son had sold. As he had sold his father's baths too, Crassus suggested that the only reason diey were not mentioned in a fourth book was that Brutus was alreadv too old to bathe with his father. In the same vein. 136 LA TIN LITER A TURE. when Brutus said he was "in a sweat about nothing" (to indi- cate his contempt for the argument he was considering), Cras- sus retorted, "And no wonder : you're just out of the baths." In the same speech he took occasion, by the passage of a fu- neral of an old lady of the family, to apostrophize Brutus and ask what message he wished her to carry to all the ilkistrious dead of his house. In neither case was the audience offend- ed by the discursiveness of the speaker. They liked to be en- tertained. When Scaevola had argued in great detail that an heir who was to take under a will if another heir died a minor could not take at all, since the heir failing whom he was to succeed had never been born, Crassus began his reply by tell- ing a story of a young man who was lounging by the seashore and picked up the ihole-pin of an oar, and thereupon con- cluded to build a ship. Scx-vola had made as much out of as little : it would be intolerable tyranny to make every will of no effect if it was not drawn with all the technicalities a jurist thought desirable. The whole speech was in a vein of happy banter, though there were no separate witticisms which could be quoted. Cicero is the principal authority for the witticisms of Crassus. Tacitus prefers to emphasize the sure way in which he made his points when he had worked up to them ; and Cice- ro, when he is bearing witness to the opinions of others, seems to say the same; for he tells us his strength lay in defining and explaining, and that he was more impressive than exciting. L. Marcius Philippus was the most important of the con- temporaries of Antonius and Crassus. He was free from any- thing like restraint or embarrassment, witty and ingenious without being exactly eloquent. Apparently- in this he was surpassed by T. Albucius Barra of Asculum, the most eloquent Italian outside Rome, who often spoke at Asculum, and once had the opportunity of speaking at Rome against Servilius Caepio. Ca'pio's reply was written by L. AiXxw?, Stilo, who has been mentioned already. He was one of the most accom- plished men of his day, but Cicero will not allow that he was eloquent: he never spoke himself, but he wrote speeches for others to deliver, and wrote out the speeches of others. To Cicero's surprise, C. Aurelius Cotta, one of the best speakers of CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 137 the generation who were growing up when Antonius and Cras- sus were in their prime, thought it worth while to issue the works of .4£lius as his own — although he himself was a vig- orous speaker ; and the pretty little pamphlets which ^lius made out of his speeches were smooth, but tame. He himself was an imitator of Antonius, and caught something of his en- ergy ; but he was even more meagre, and never rose to any ideal elevation, or opened large horizons to his audience. The successor of Crassus was less unworthy of his model. P. Sul- picius Rufus was, according to Cicero, the "grandest," the "most tragic " speaker whom he had ever heard. He excelled Cras- sus in passages like the improvisation on the funeral of the old lady of the family of Brutus. But he could never relieve an audience by talking quietly and good-humoredly about an unexciting side of a case. He, too, could not write his speeches ; but he was more fortunate than Cotta, for after his death P. Canutius, the most eloquent of all Romans out- side the senate, wrote speeches on his subjects, and, no doubt, introduced close reminiscences of his finest passages, so that it was necessary to state a generation after that Sulpicius had not written anything that circulated in his name. Another orator of the same generation was the elder Curio, who had a great name among some for the splendor of his diction and for the purity of his Latin, which he owed to having been brought up in good society, for he had no literary training in either Latin or Greek. C. Julius C\xsar the elder was also a witty and amusing speaker, whom it was always easy to listen to. No one spoke with such agreeable good-breeding, though his speeches never carried any weight. He died, like Anto- nius, in the massacres which followed the return of Marius. Q. Hortensius, who was twenty-seven when this happened, had already distinguished himself as an orator, even under the rule of Cinna, when he was twenty-eight. For about sixteen years he was undisputed leader of the courts : after his con- sulship, 69 B.C., which followed immediately upon his abortive defence of Verres, he took less pains with his speeches, and fell off: and though when Cicero became consul six years later he felt that he had a rival against whom it was worth while to i3« LATIN LITERATURE. exert himself, in Cicero's judgment it was too late to recover the lost ground. Still a speech in behalf of Messalla, deliv- ered twelve years after, the year before Hortensius's death, had a considerable success : the verbatim report of it was pub- lished, and did the author credit, though his speeches, as a rule, were better to hear than to read. The criticism of Cicero seems candid as well as elaborate; the great fault of his speaking was that it wanted force and seriousness. Cotta wanted "pomp," Sulpicius wanted "gen- tleness," Hortensius wanted "gravity." His voice and pres- ence were admirable, and his ingenuity was inexhaustible; all his gifts were of a kind to make their fullest impression in youth. He was so eager and entertaining that the audience did not notice that he was irrelevant and diffuse, especially as he corrected the effect of the diffuseness by announcing be- forehand the heads under which he intended to treat of the case. This was a novelty at Rome, like another device of Hortensius. Towards the close of a speech he used to re- capitulate all that had been said on either side. With his admirable and singular memory, this gave him a great advan- tage, as he put his own coloring on arguments, which at the time produced their effect on the court, at a time when the court had half forgotten them. Another advantage his mem- ory gave him was, that he could reproduce exactly what he had prepared at leisure. There were two schools of Asiatic oratory at the time, one of which relied on an ingenious multi- plication of general aphorisms more or less applicable to the case; another depended upon vehemence and volubility. \\\ both Hortensius was a master; and he had the peculiar grace that his irrelevant aphorisms and his empty phrases were al- ways beautifully rounded, because he took such an interest in his profession that he was never weary of rehearsin"-. He never let a day pass without speaking in the forum or de- claiming at home ; very often he did both. The perfection of superficial polish, the readiness in retort, the animation, the abundance of words, and what did duty for thoughts, were all fascinating to the young, especially in a young man ; while the elders from the first were inclined—if we may trust Cicero— CICERO'S PREDECESSORS. 139 to think the display of Hortensius little better than preten- tious rubbish. With all his diligence, he seems at no time to have had any literary or philosophical interest: he gained verdicts by adroitness and tact of statement rather than by playing upon the feelings of the court. When Cicero was, in his o\ui judgment, at his best, in the four years between the speeches against Verres and those on the Manilian law and the defence of Cluentius, there was no speaker before the pub- lic with any knowledge of law or history, any power of digres- sion, any art of raising a particular case into the sphere of gen- oral truth. Hortensius, who had never possessed this art, af- ter two or three years of luxury lost, first, the art of rounding his phrases and picking his words, and then the power of pouring forth an endless stream of rapid speech. His inge- nuity lasted better : he could always produce neat and well- framed aphorisms, but they were too ingenious for a speaker of his years, and they lost half their effect for want of being clothed in fluent, graceful language. Besides, the circumstances under which he spoke before his consulship suited him better. While the courts were in the hands of the senate, the majority of judges must have been young and idle men; it w'as enough to make Hortensius careless that a number of busy elderly men came to listen to him, who wished to understand causes and decide them, not to amuse themselves with them. Cicero judges himself as well as his great predecessor; but while he dwells alike upon his predecessor's gifts and upon his zeal and diligence in improving them, he speaks only of his own natural defects— his scraggy neck, his weak flanks, his tendency to pitch his voice in a monotonous scream, and the like, as if it were unseemly to boast of his genius. He has no scruple in praising his own industry and his unusually elabo- rate and systematic training, which he owed partly to the fact that he grew up in the midst of the civil wars, and to his weak health. At the age of eighteen he served one campaign in the Marsian war; but from nineteen to twenty -six, at an age when Hortensius and Crassus had been already celebrated, he was quietly pursuing his studies, for the courts were not open : when they were open, he showed some skill and great boldness 140 LA TIN LITER A TURE. for two years ; but on the abdication of Sulla the state of af- fairs at Rome was so unsettled that he might well have decided to resume his studies (as he did for the best part of three years), even if his health had allowed him to continue speakin"-. CICERO. The pre-eminence of Cicero in Latin prose is only to be compared to the pre-eminence of Phidias and those who worked with him at Athens in sculpture. He stands alone, above predecessors and contemporaries and successors: none approach him as Demades or yEschines or Hyperides approaches Demosthenes. Plato's art is as supreme 'and un- equalled, and in quality it is rarer than Cicero's ; but Cicero is always master of his subject, while it is an essential element of Plato's art to be always reminding us that it is still impos- sible for any mind to master such subjects as his ; and noth- ing has been attributed on doubtful evidence to Cicero so brilliant as the "Greater Hippias," which the latest criticism refuses to regard as the work of Plato. There can be no question in such a case whether the supreme achievement is the result of circumstances or of a personal gift, and Cicero owed more to himself and less to his surroundings than most great Latin writers. All the great orators before him, with the exception of Cato, had been men of rank and family; and the oratory of Cato, though elaborate, pretentious, and'clever, was still essentially plebeian; while the oratory of Cicero is full of an ideal dignity and nobility, which surpasses the tone that rank can give, because it proceeds from an honest enthu- siasm for Roman institutions as they had been and might be. One must not imagine this idealism is insincere becau'se it is inconsistent: in the orations themselves there is a difference of tone between the " Pro Murena " and the " In Catilinam," between the "Pro Ca^lio " and the " Pro Milone." Between the letters in general and the orations in general the contrast is greater; it is at its height in the letters to Atticus about the aftair of Catiline, where he is always ridiculing the exag- gerated way in which he thought it wefl to speak in public of . the dangers he had saved the State from, and the services he CICERO. 141 had rendered. It is a familiar observation that people who have had great experiences find it difficult when the experi- ence is over to believe that they are the same : there is so much difference between what they thought and felt at the time and what they think and feel afterwards. In ordinary cases ^reat experiences are rare, and the reaction after them is accomplished quietly ; and it is only in looking back after some time that its whole extent can be measured. But a busv, exciting life like Cicero's is full of alternations of feel- ing Vhich succeed each other too rapidly for one to chasten an'd subdue the other ; instead, the effort to secure the conti- nuity of life has to be given up : it is necessary to live in and for the moment, and an orator has to express all that he feels while he feels it. Here, too, we have to remember that Cicero was a self-made man, without the habits of caution and reti- cence which are hereditary in a business-like aristocracy. One finds the same defect in Canning and Brougham, whose eloquence raised them to a leading position in two opposite camps. Both lost the confidence of their colleagues through their want of decorum, while each had sympathies and inter- ests in the camp of his opponents. Cicero, like them, is open to the charge of political tergiversation — to say the least, of political versatility. He has, however, an excuse which they had not: an English politician has to choose between two political confederations, with a stable organization and flexi- ble traditions. This makes it natural to speak of Cicero as wavcrincr between the aristocratical and democratical parties, especially as he speaks himself of the opthnaies and popidares as dividing the public at Rome. In a speech delivered in the Roman forum the division was not irrelevant; but when we take history as a whole, we see that for any time after the Gracchi it was inadequate as an explanation of Roman poli- tics. In the age of Cicero there were no less than five dis- tinct forces in politics : the old nobility, enriched by several generations of high office ; the mob of the capital, who, in vir- tue of the legislation of the Gracchi, continued to rec(;ive out- door relief; the great banking and financial corporations, which dated from the time of Gracchus too ; the notables of 142 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. I4i the country towns all over Italy ; the great general, or great generals, of the period, who had conducted several campaigns continuouslv. The action of the first three admitted of beins: calculated : as a rule, the nobility were always opposed both to the mob and to the equestrian order, which, as a political force, was nnder the control of the largest and most enterpris- ing capitalists, who of course had no sympathy with govern- ment by mass-meetings, which was always apt to degenerate into downright brigandage when the promoters of a particular job obtained the temporary command of the streets and the assembly by employing gangs of hired ruffians. The notables of the country towns were uncertain in their action : some of them were affiliated to the trading corporations, others to no- ble houses ; but, as a rule, they stood outside the passions and interests of the capital, and gave their wishes and occasion- ally their effective support to whichever cause or leader was for the moment safest and most respectable. If there had been a strict residential qualification for voting in the assembly, so that no man could vote in a tribe who could not prove that he habitually resided in the district of that tribe, the Consensus lialicc would have been a practical political force, for each district would have been virtually represented by its leading men. As it was, each district was represented by its permanent contribution to the pop- ulation of the capital, and the Consensus Jtaliiv too often ex- pressed itself by crying in concert over shed milk. The great generals were always more or less outside the constitu- tion from the days of the elder Africanus to those of Caesar and Agrippa : no party could trust them entirely, and they could trust no party. Cicero's townsman IMarius was, of all Roman politicians, the most uncertain. He owed his first elec- tion to the consulship to the popular disgust with the corrup- tion and inefficiency of the noble commanders who had con- ducted the war against Jugurtha, which, oddly enough, came to a head just when there was a noble in command who was honest and efficient: he took the side of the senate, after some hesitation, in the sedition of Saturninus ; but when the party of sedition was supported by the Italians, he placed himself at its head fell with it, and rose with it to his last bloody consul- hip. Sulla, whose personal insouciance made him n. one sense he most disinterested of politicians, was the champion of the senate as an institution rather than of the nobdity as a class : compared with Marius, he was liberal and progressive, and, it must be added, arbitrary. At bottom Manus was the more conservative, even the more constitutional, of the two; though he was more easily tempted to imperil legal order and the public interest, through personal vanity and class passion. Fompeius, though he appealed to the people to assure his in- dependence of the nobles, wished to confirm his supremacy bv -ettin- the senate to recognize it as the only security for order- wliile Cxsar was content to carry his measures by the help of the votes of the people, and to ward off opposition by the influence of his armv and his largesses. Cicero's career was affected in various ways by the compli- cations of politics. He was at once conscientious and ambi- tious ; he shrank from doing harm himself and from abetting the misdeeds of others who were less scrupulous; he shrank equallv from running risks and giving offence: he was always on the watch for opportunities of bringing and keeping him- self before the public in ways that were safe and respectable, alwavs trving to get credit with high and low, and at the same time'to cmitribut^ to the real good of the State. His natural party were the Italian notables, the worthy middle class, who were politicians out of vanity and patriotism, and awarded Iheir ineffectual approval in a manner that was generally equi- table at the moment, though rather embarrassing in the long run because ihev had no means of controlling their idols, and therefore felt no obligation to support any one in particular consistentlv. Thev were always true to Cicero, though their fidelitv helped hi.n little ; and it may also be said that he was true to them. Unfortunately, he was already committed on many questions of persons and principle when Caesar, the only one of his influential contemporaries who was morally or in- tellectually capable of appreciating him, thought the time had come to enter upon sustained and serious public action. And Cicero, though the purest of all the practical politicians of his 144 LATIN LITERATURE. time, was not disinterested enough not to resent ill-treatment After his return from banishment, he was not consistent as a supporter either of the senate or of Caesar or of Pompeius for all had treated him ill. Upon the whole, he was most inti- mately connected with Pompeius, whose general policy, thou-h ineffectual and ill-considered and arbitrary, had an air of ix- spectability which reinforced the ascendencV which his blame- less private life and his military successes and his family connection had given him. After the death of Pompeius Cic- ero's course wms clearer: while Caesar lived he accepted the clemency of the conqueror with such dignity as was possible- and after the heir of the dictator was at variance with the first lieutenant, who had usurped his power, he exerted himself, with admirable courage and ingenuity, to turn a Caesarian quarrel into a senatorian reaction; and, imperfect and short- lived as the success of his endeavors was, he rendered a greater service to such republicanism as was possible than in any other part of his checkered career. He was born at Arpinum, io6 B.C., just a year before Tu- gurlha was surrendered to Sulla; he was eighteen when Sulla was consul and drove Marius into exile. Cicero, a year be- fore, had served in the army of Cn. Pompeius the elder as a comrade of the great Pompeius, who was nine months voun-er than himself, llirce years before he had witnessed the "at- tempt of Drusus to reconcile the senate and the people, and the sudden and violent death which rewarded it. Durino- the stormiest years of all, which followed upon the consulship of Cmna, he was pursuing his studies, learning law from Sca^n-o- la, and philosophy from the Stoic Diodotus, and rhetoric from the Rhodian Apollonius. Both the latter selections, 'if we are to call them so, are important ; the first forms of cont'emporary philosophy and oratory with which Cicero became familiar were the severest. He exercised himself in arguing quite as much as in moralizing with Diodotus; for the Stoic was then the only philosophical school which had much faith in formal argument. The Peripatetics were mainly engaged in the com- munication of knowledge, and the Academics and Epicureans wished to establish their respective points of view by an ap- CICERO. M5 peal to the fiicts which told for them. The Rhodians were at that time the only Greeks who possessed a school of practical oratory. Their independence and their commercial position gave importance to the practice of their courts, especially their maritime courts, where the cases argued were not of a kind to require or suggest declamation ; while in the rest of Asia ora- tors had plenty of opportunities of display and very few of speaking before an audience who had to take action upon their words, and consequently developed a style of speaking which was diffuse, showy, ornate, and irrelevant, and which differed from the oratory of the great Attic period in being in tiie hands of men who often had Syrian blood in them; so that it would be instructive, if it were possible, to compare their fine speaking with Arabic fine writing. Cicero himself began to write early. He translated the poems of Aratus on the stars and the weather into hexameters during the first year of the Marsic war; even earlier, if his own recollections and the traditions which Plutarch collected can be trusted, he had written on the legend of Glaucus in tetram- eters, and upon the consulship of Marius,' whence he quoted a passage about the conflict of an eagle with a dragon, in his treatise on divination, which may fiiirly be called fimciful and spirited. The metre in both is admirably smooth and finished for the period, and shows how Cicero had profited by the teaching of the poet Archias. The great fault is that the lines have no flow; each contains a separate instalment of the sense, and is, in a way, complete in itself For instance, we never get an epithet in one line and the substantive to which the epithet refers in another; and almost every line ends, as a clause in sober, old-fashioned Latin ought to end, with a substantive or a verb or a participle: it is very rare to find a verb which belongs to the sense of one line standing by itself at the beginning of the next, which, after Vergil, is one of the commonest of devices for linking lines together. Besides his poetry, he translated several dialogues of Plato and the "Eco- * According to llaupt, the "Marius" was Later, and belongs to the l)criod after Cicero's exile, when he was most inclined to commit himself to Caesar. I.-7 146 LATIN LITERATURE. nomics" of Xenophon, and paraphrased the Greek treatises on rhetoric, of which we have a fuller and more methodical digest in the four books of the " Auctor ad Herennium," to employ an indispensable barbarism. The first speech of Cicero's which has reached us was that for P. Quinctius, delivered in the twenty-sixth year of his age —the same year that Pompcius extorted a triumph for his en- ergy in i)ursuing the remnants of the party of JNIarius. In the year which followed, Cicero too had a triumph: he secured the acquittal of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, who was accused of parricide in order to secure Chrysogonus, Sulla's freedman, in the enjoyment of the property of Roscius's father. Sulla was still dictator, and Cicero speaks with ostentatious respect of his person, and abstains from fundamental criticisms on his policy; but still the speech is an astonishingly bold one, be- cause the main line of defence is that his client is in danger of being sacrificed to the favorite of the dictator. The next year Sulla abdicated, and Cicero went abroad af- ter defending against Cotta the freedom of a woman of Arre- tium (another victim of Sulla's system?). He was very lean, and far from strong, and he habitually overstrained his voice — a natural error in a young man making his way as an open- air speaker. At Athens he came under the influence of An- tiochus of Ascalon, who was guiding the Academy in the direction of rhetorical edification, after the excursion into the barren territory of scepticism, where Carneades and others had gone to gather weapons for the warfare against Stoicism, which was really one phase of the long conflict between "Hel- lenism" and "Hebraism." He also practised speaking with Demetrius Syrus, from whom he apparently learned less than from the Asiatic orators Menippus of Stratoniceia (who, he says, deserved to be called Attic if Atticism consisted in say- ing nothing inappropriate or ineffective), Xenocles of Adra- niyttium, yEschylus of Cnidus, and Dionvsius of Majrnesia. With these three he travelled for over a year in Asia, and he says they were glad to have him with them. His old teacher Apollonius gave him more lessons at Rhodes, trying to check his tendency to say too much, which would be more obvious CICERO, 147 when he was speaking simply for exercise than when he had a real cause to plead. Cicero fully recognized the importance of this distinction : he is careful to tell us that Apollonius was a successful pleader. On his return to Rome, Cicero felt him- self quite a new creature. He married Terentia, of whom we know little except that she was the mother of his children, and that he was on very affectionate terms with her, although lie parted with her after thirty-two years of marriage, after his submission to Caisar. "We do not know whether he was pro- voked at her imperfect management of his embarrassed money matters during his absence with the army, or whether she was simply trying to him as he grew old and irritable, as all pro- longed relations are apt to be. Very soon after the divorce he married his rich ward Publilia, of whose fortune he was trustee: very likely a girl of seventeen (who doubtless w^as proud of her intimacy with her famous guardian) had attrac- tions of her own, independent of those of her fortune. In the year after his marriage, Cicero, then in his thirty-first year, began his official career. He was elected quaestor by all the tribes, and accompanied Sextus Peducceus, the praetor, to Sicily. This was important, because the intimacies he con- tracted there led naturally to his being selected by the Sicil- ians to conduct the prosecution of Verres, an energetic under- ling of the conservative party, who was sent to Sicily under very difficult circumstances. IMithridates was not yet deci- sively defeated by Lucullus in Asia, Pompeius was carrying on a doubtful struggle with Sertorius in Spain, Spartacus was loose in Italy, the pirates were in command of the seas. It is not wonderful that in such a state of things Verres was in- structed by all means to raise a large revenue in Sicily, for it was almost the only element of the system of finance unaf- fected by the calamities of the time, which increased the ex- penses of the State while diminishing its resources. Verres certainly did raise a large revenue, by deciding every point that could be debated between the tax -payer and the tax- farmer in favor of the latter, without apparent regard to equity or usage. He also enlisted the interest of a large and strong party in Syracuse and Messana, of which one was beyond dis- 148 LATIN LITERATURE. pute the first town in the island, and the other either was, or might with a little encouragement be made, the second. He does not appear to have left any friends in the rest of the isl- and, nor to have displayed any real vigor either in administer- ing Sicily for its own benefit, or even in guarding it for the be'nefit of the Roman State. The island naturally was full of petty bitter feuds between cliques and individuals in each city, who were anxious, or might easily be encouraged, to figlit out their quarrels by the help of the Roman governor. Verres was always ready to take a side in such quarrels, if he did not instigate them; according to Cicero, the side on which he meddled was always wrong. He collected works of art, and an obsequious provincial could not avoid presenting whatever the governor was supposed to desire. He strained and ex- ceeded every precedent which regulated his personal emolu- ments. As might be expected from an administrator of the school of Sulla, he anticipated the frightful severities of the police of the Empire, in cynical defiance of the republican ju- risprudence which had exempted all citizens not under mili- tary discipline from death or stripes. is'o more convenient handle could be found for the party that declared that senators could not be trusted to try govern- ors of their own order impartially; and Tompeius, who had returned from Spain the year before (b.c. 71), thought the time had come to atone in some measure for the severity he had shown to the surviving chiefs and adherents of the Marian party by sanctioning some relaxation of the restrictions laid by Sulla upon the whole body of the citizens. The tribunes regained the right of initiating legislation, and the knights and treasury officials' were admitted, the latter for the first time, to share the control of the. courts with the senate (by the Au- 1 The tyibiiniixrariiwtxt originally appointed to collect the tributnm, each in his tribe, and act as army paymasters afterwards. The latter function was delegated to the quxstors, and the tribunes began to act as judges in the prxfectures (the country towns without magistrates of their own); and as they were directly elected by the assembly, they were popular, and had the further advantage of judicial experience and a class interest separate from that of the "knights," who would be prejudiced against any govern- ors who had defended the treasury from the ta.x-farmers. CICERO. 149 relian law, proposed by L. Aurelius Cotta,one of the praetors for the year), in the year that Hortensius, the consul designate, threw up his brief to defend Verres. Cicero was then aedile designate : that Hortensius, an older and more fiimous speak- er, did not venture to reply to him is generally taken as a proof that Verres was not only worse than the average bad governor of the period (which is very nearly proved by the fact that Cicero, who had never prosecuted before, thought it well, on moral and prudential grounds, to prosecute him), but so much worse than others that the leading advocate of the time could make no defence for him. This is far from clear. When Hortensius undertook the case, he did not know how strong the popular feeling for the Aurelian law was, nor even that the case would be placed in Cicero's hands; for the court, which had power to select the prosecutor, had to choose between him and Q. Cx'cilius, who had been quaestor under Verres, and maintained plausibly enough that, having quar- relled with him, he was the proper person to expose his mis- deeds. As Cicero was the choice of the Sicilians, the dimen- sions of the case would have been much reduced if the court had placed it in the hands of Cxcilius, who would have grati- fied the spleen which, no doubt, he really felt, and gained some cheap notoriety, which would have pleased him and hurt nobody. Least of all did Hortensius know that Cicero would treat the first great political case he had ever had to deal with in the business-like and self-denying way he did. Hortensius, no doubt, expected to hear a long rhetorical his- tory of the whole of Verres's career up to the close of his Sicilian government, to reply to this at his leisure, with full lib- erty to multiply delays and pick out weak points till the broad facts of the case were forgotten. Cicero got up the broad facts, and evidence in support of them, with diligence and activity which at any time would have been remarkable, and which at that time were portentous; then he simply established them in court, magnanimously renouncing, for the sake of his cli- ents, a great opportunity of endless rhetorical display. Cicero was ready, Hortensius was not ; events were in favor of Cicero and against Hortensius ; and Verres went into exile. The ^50 LA TIN LITER A TURE. CICERO. 151 ancients had two records of Cicero's pleadings— the report of the speeches which he actually made in court, and the edition which he published. We have only the latter. The first two speeches, especially the former, the Divinatio (as the speech was called whereby the court had to divine which candidate was fittest to be intrusted with the prosecution), are in the main what he delivered; though it is likely that the Actio Prima, which actually decided the case, was curtailed, so as to contrast yet more strongly with the five books of the Actio Scciinda, in which, without fear of contradiction, Cicero set forth all that he and his clients believed of the turpitude of the Proprietor of Sicily. This proves, among other things, that Cicero, who was then thirty-seven, was not overwhelmed with business. He was not disposed to adopt the role of protector-general of oppressed provincials. Next year he defended Fonteius, who, like Verres, had been three years in office, and was ac- cused but not convicted. Cicero, of course, though his ora- tion has only reached us in fra2;ments, succeeds in nivinii the impression that it was not such a flagrant case; and the Sicil- ians were "allies" of the Roman people in a very different sense from the Gauls, who had not the same claims to be treated leniently on grounds of present prudence or historical equity. In the same year he pleaded the cause of Caecina, who claimed to inherit an estate which a person whom he al- leged to be the agent of the testatrix had bought in his own name. The case was mixed up more or less with politics. It was alleged that the plaintiff was disqualified, as a citizen of Volaterrce, a community disfranchised by Sulla, from pleading his title on the merits of the case: accordingly Cicero, while making a clear statement of what his side supposed to be the merits, rests the case upon a technical side issue — whether the defendant, in resisting the entry of the plaintiff in a way that went much beyond the customary process of ejectment, had not violated an edict of Dolabella, the praetor of the year, against " force committed with armed men." Cicero's next political measure was as safe and popular as his prosecution of Verres. The command against the pirates, with paramount authority over all Roman governors within /■ fifty miles of the coast, had been conferred upon Pompeius by a law moved by Gabinius, which Cicero supported unobtru- sively. As the measure succeeded admirably, Cicero, who had now been elected praetor, came forward with one of his most elaborate and splendid orations in support of the Manil- ian law to confer yet more extensive powers upon Pompeius for the war against Mithridates. Lucullus had proved himself quite capable of terminating the war to the public advantage; but an incompetent officer had been appointed to succeed him, and his control over his army had been already weakened by his unpopularity with the equestrian order. He had shown a too ostentatious preference for enriching himself and the treasury with the spoils of the enemy when expected to en- rich himself and the revenue -farmers with the spoils of the allies— if, indeed, he did not find it a profitable bargain to protect the allies, while they discharged their strict dues to the State, and to trust for his reward to their liberality. Pompeius was appointed, and the appointment deranged everything. He was immensely the most important person in the State, and he was to be away for years with increased power and patronage and prestige of all kinds, and all the while he was to be with- out detailed knowledge of home affairs, without any constitu- tional or extra-constitutional means of giving timely effect to his opinion upon them. Of all who suffered from this abnor- mal state of things, none did so more severely than Cicero. In his year of office as praitor he delivered one of the speech- es which he thought did him most honor as an advocate. Two years after, he thought his position entitled him to canvass for the consulship, especially as both his competitors were broken men. He now came for the first time into serious intercourse with Titus Pomponius Atticus, a fiimous banker and publish- er,' to whom he had written two or three slight letters before about works of art for his villa of Tusculum ; but when he came to stand for the consulship he was naturally anxious for the influence a banker could exercise over the nobles he ac- commodated. Cicero had resolved to stand as a conserva- ' This is tiic nearest explanation to be given of the position of a man who coukl always dispose of the services of a number of trained copyists. ^^ 152 LATIN LITERATURE. tive: this point is emphasized repeatedly in his own speeches of the period, and in the candidate's manual which bears the name of his brother Quintus. This hardly amounts to an in- consistency: he had never been in the least a revolutionist, and to have dwelt upon his want of anccblry would have alarmed tiic nobility into a belief that his moderation had been a mask. Besides, one of his competitors, Lucius Sergius Catilina, was at that time the leader of the "popular" party: he was a noble who had been a passionate partisan of Sulla, and, having failed to enrich himself when confiscations were plenty, had become the mentor of an ever-wideninii circle of daring, well-connected profligates, who were convinced that the government was in the hands of an effete and incompetent clique, which would be easily swept away by the living forces of a needy and vigorous nation, if the latter had only the right men at its head. At one point Cicero thought of some- thing like a coalition with Catilina, as a consequence of his aid in repelling a charge of ambitus. As it turned out, the nobility were glad to accept the "new man " of unblemished respectability as their candidate against two broken men of family. Cicero was elected with Antonius, and secured the obsequiousness of his colleague by a promise to waive his rights to a province in his favor. His consulship would have been memorable under any circumstances. The different op- ponents of the nobility had got their plans ready for action during the absence of Pompeius. There was a proposal of the tribune Rullus to create a gigantic land-jobbing commis- sion for the purpose of acquiring by purchase land for the foundation of colonies beyond the sea. The scheme was de- cidedly ingenious, and not on the face of it revolutionary: the idea of the projectors was to raise money by turning the les- sees of State property into freeholders where, as in Campa- nia, land was immensely valuable, and to use the proceeds in founding colonies where land was cheap. They seem also to have calculated on securing the support of Cxsar and Cras- sus by providing situations for them in Egypt and Africa al- most equivalent to the situation of Pompeius in Asia. But the powers they demanded were so immensely in excess of CICERO. 153 their reputation, and of the public interest in their projects, that it was easy for Cicero to turn the whole scheme into ridi- cule, especially as the idlers of the forum whom he addressed had no serious wish to begin f^irming in Greece or Africa. A more serious— at least a more embarrassing— proposal was to remove the disabilities of the sons of the proscribed, who were precluded from inheriting from their fiithers and from standing for any public office. As Cicero was closely connected with the old Marian party, the question was especially difficult for him : he made an ingenious speech, not undignified for the situation, on the wisdom of abstaining, at any cost, from re- opening a question so full of bitterness. But the great concern of Cicero's consulate was the conflict with Catilina, who if he had neither a programme nor a grievance, had numerous fol- lowers, and some commencements of an understanding with individuals more powerful than himself or Cicero. It is pret- ty well agreed that Crassus, the richest man in Rome, knew something of Catilina's plans, and was prepared in some cases to back them to some extent; while Caesar's admirers denied that he had compromised himself by any compact with an in- cendiary. Perhaps no compact, no formal communication even, was necessary: Lord Melbourne was too proud to make any bargain with O'Connell, though he could not have kept office for a session without O'Connell's support. The leaders whose power lay in their insurrectionary strength had already made a. temporary coalition with Pompeius, in which each side hoped the other would prove to be duped. Cicero had the choice of a showy consulship or of a safe one. He might have allowed the scheme of Rullus to fall flat; he might have watched Catilina and kept the peace: he preferred to use the opportunity to test and discipline the strength of the party of order. He spoke repeatedly against the bill of Rullus. He placed no restraint upon the movements of Catilina or his as- sociates; he did everything to excite alarm at their schemes, and he took dramatic precautions against their results. He proclaimed his belief that his own life was in danger, he suc- ceeded in getting information from the intimates of the con- spirators about the wild plans that were under discussion. No L— 7* 154 LATIN LITERATURE, action could be taken against individual conspirators on such evidence, but it told on public opinion, which heartily endorsed all Cicero's demonstrative precautions. At last, after the fail- ure of Catilina's canvass for the ensuing year, Cicero succeed- ed by force of oratory in driving him out of the city, to put himself at the head of an insurrection in Etruria. The confed- erates he left behind him compromised themselves by a trea- sonable agreement with some Gallic delegates, who were stopped after they had left the city and confronted with the conspirators, whom it was now possible to arrest. The con- spirators did not admit the story of the delegates; and under the circumstances neither the conspirators nor the delegates could be trusted to speak the truth, for the delegates knew they would propitiate the consul by deponing as he wished. Cicero was at the pinnacle of glory: he had saved Rome from the hands of men prepared to massacre the senate, to fire the city, to call in the barbarian. His fatal elation is the measure of the genuine popularity, the sincere adulation, which was too much for his self-control. At the time he had not lost pru- dence; indeed, he was too prudent for dignity: he ceased to guide the senate — he appealed to them for guidance. The conspirators had not been tried : if they were condemned, as was still, on the whole, probable (though every day, when the danger was over, the hands of the government would be weak- er), there was no court that had full legal power to inflict an adequate sentence. It was not clear whether a vote of the senate could give the consul powers beyond the law, or that the necessity which existed was sufficient to justify such a vote. The senate had scarcely more courage than the consul : Cato proposed to decree the execution of the prisoners ; Caisar proposed to abide by the law; the senate, as vindictive as Cato, was content to authorize the execution by directing the consul to provide for the safety of the State. Cicero ordered the execution, and the reaction began. A tribune of the name of Metullus was supported by the crowd in his protest when Cicero wished to make the customary speech on laying down office, though we need not doubt that opinion was still in his favor when he cut short the ceremony by swearing, with dramatic effect, that he had saved the State. CICERO. 155 While still exhilarated by the sight of all Rome rallied round him in defence of order, before he had been invited to hazard himself beyond the pale of law, Cicero delivered the very brilliant and amusing speech ''Pro Murena," which shows how little the crisis yet weighed upon him. One might fancy that his spirits rose as his own responsibility was coming to an end. He congratulated the people on having such a con- sul as IMurena to protect them from Catilina; condoled ironi- cally with the jurist Sulpicius on his defeat, while professing to regret his disappointment, and overwhelmed Cato w^ith sa- tirical compliments on his philosophy and public spirit. The defeat and death of Catilina left the militant democracy with- out a leader, for Caesar did not choose to commit himself. A dissolute man of fashion, who professed himself the lover of Caesar's wife, came forward to take the vacant post. His in- trigue with Pompeia, Caesar's wife, had culminated in his mak- ing a rendezvous at a rite attended by women only. It was believed that he was detected in disguise, and it was deter- mined to treat his outrageous escapade as a high crime against the State. Clodius pleaded an alibi, and Cicero, though he thought it safer not to prosecute, came forward as a witness to disprove the alibi. The trial was mismanaged in a way to suggest that the moderate conservatives thought it decent to bring Clodius to trial for an oftence alleged to have been com- mitted under circumstances then extremely offensive to all decent and serious people, while they were not sure enough that the respectable party were in the majority to run the risk of crushing a man already popular with the rabble. Clodius had already made up his mind to be a demagogue: perhaps pique at Cicero's resolve, first to convict him and then to turn his acquittal into a moral defeat, may have weighed with him in desiring to turn plebeian in order to be elected tribune. Cicero was still able to secure a prolongation of his brother's term of office in Asia (for which his brother, a clever, queru- lous man, with little real ability, wms far from grateful). It appears, from his brother's elaborate essay on the government of a province, that Quintus was zealously on his guard against peculation, and very irritable to the corrupt officials and na- 156 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. 157 lives about him, and anxious to get liomc from a place where he felt too virtuous to make money. Meanwhile Tompeius had returned to Rome and triumphed, but found unexpected difficulty in obtaining the ratification of his acts in the East. This drove him into a coalition with Ciusar and Crassus ; for the nobility, his natural allies, were incurably jealous both of him and of Cicero, who, in turn, was not sparing of epigrams against the men who lived for their fish-ponds — a fiishionable folly of the period, which combined the maximum of expense with the minimum of splendor. Moreover, the senate was no longer supported by the equestrian order, for Cato had in- volved them in a quarrel by insisting that the revenue-farmers should be held to a bargain which had turned out unprofitably. Cicero's only idea of defending himself against the approach- ing danger was to exaggerate his services, which Pompeius and Crassus had once accepted at his own valuation, lie wrote in Greek and Latin upon his consulship; he composed a poem on the same inexhaustible subject, which was probably much the best thing that had yet been written in Latin hex- ameters since Ennius. The first measure of the coalition was to provide for the di- vision of the Campanian domain, the only substantial part of the phantom schemes of Rullus. The financial objection urged by Cicero had lost its force since the annexations of Pompeius had enlarged the revenue. Cicero saw that his isolated posi- tion was becoming more and more insecure, but he still re- fused to surrender his independence ; he declined to serve upon the commission for the Campanian domain, or to accom- pany Cagsar as one of his lieutenants to Gaul, when, at the end of a stormy consulship, he received the command of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum from the people, and Transnlpine Gaul from the senate. He believed that even now, if he withdrew for a time from politics, his legitimate influence as an advocate would be strong enough to screen him. But this resource was failing too. Antonius, Cicero's colleague, was convicted, in spite of his defence, for extortion in Macedonia: a certain Mi- nucius Thermus was prosecuted twice, though each time Cicero defended him with success. He was successful in securing: the acquittal of Valerius Flaccus, w^ho had governed Asia as proprx'tor, after seconding Cicero as prcetor; whether in con- sequence of his appeal to the unforgotten fear of Catilina or of the wit which was remembered far into the second century. At last the crash came : at the end of a long string of laws — sensible enough on the hypothesis that the populace of Rome in receipt of outdoor relief was to continue to vote on impor- tant questions — Clodius brought in a bill for the banishment of any person who might have put a Roman citizen to death without trial. Cicero took fright and went into mourning: so, according to an uncontradicted boast, did 20,000 Romans, including almost the whole equestrian order. The consuls, one of whom was Gabinius, the henchman of Pompeius, did nothing; Pompeius professed to be afraid of displeasing Cas- sar, and would do nothing unless appealed to by the consuls. Cicero had only the choice of leaving Rome or beginning a civil war, in which legality would have been against him. He left Rome, and a law was passed to banish him by name and confiscate his property. The revulsion of feeling was excessive; all the versatile sensibility which had been at the disposal of so many clients had to be spent now upon his own misfortunes. His career had not tramed him in any measure to reticence ; his letters were full of lamentations, which looked unmanly when it was all over, and perhaps found no sympathetic readers at the lime. Cicero's exile was generally unpopular with all classes of citizens above the lowest ; a wish for his recall was soon expressed, and would, no doubt, have been effective in any case. It was effective all the sooner because Titus Annius Milo, a young man with more money than wit and more spirit than money, made the discovery that it was just as easy for him to hire jih'idiators to defend law and order as for Clodius to hire street ruffians to defend popular rights. As Clodms had no longer the exclusive command of the streets, Cicero was restored fourteen months after his banishment-— " carried back," as he said, *'on the shoulders of Italy." The position of the confederates was still insecure: they were not, and never had been, popular enough to set them- IP^ I* 41 158 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. 159 selves above the constitution with impunity; and Cicero still hoped, for some time after his return, to play an independent part in politics. His first concern was to recover possession of his property, which was difficult, because Clodius had con- secrated the site of his house as a temple to Liberty. His speeches on these subjects, if any are genuine, are for the most part unworthy of him, and mixed up with declamations of the first or second century. The first, which shows that his powers had recovered themselves after the shock of his ban- ishment, is that on the answers of the haruspices, whose vague oracles had seemed to Clodius capable af being turned against Cicero, who showed, with wit and spirit, that they were more applicable to Clodius. Already he had put his name to a proposal that Pompcius, whom the of^tiniatcs hoped to gain, should have the control of the corn-market for five years all over the world ; and his brother was placed on Pompcius's staff of lieutenants. The defence of P. Sestius jiave him an opportunity of affirming his conservative principles, and that of M. Cx^lius showed that he was still capable of treating po- litical questions with the happy levity that he had shown in defence of Murena. Meanwhile the confederates were at variance, and Cicero gave notice of a motion to resume the powers of the commis- sioners of the Campanian domain. If the motion had been pressed and carried, Italian affairs would have passed again into the hands of the senate. Caesar had to come to Lucca and pledge his whole influence to his colleagues in order to overawe the reaction ; and even then the notables of the op- position had to be gained over individually — a process which very much augmented Cajsar's power, for he was the treasurer of his party, being enriched by the plunder of Gaul, which he dispensed with a generosity as spontaneous as it was politic. Cicero was among the recipients of this bounty: his gains as an advocate were very irregular, while their amount was suffi- cient to stimulate expensive tastes. He believed that, for a man of taste, he was remarkably thrifty; but from his exile to his death he was in a chronic condition of embarrassment. He delivered a speech on the consular provinces soon, after the meeting at Lucca, which was a bid for leave to manage the senate on behalf of the confederates; and he sent his brother, sorely against his brother's will, to serve as the lieu- tenant of Caesar, whose command had been prolonged for five years. At this time Cicero was inclined to cast his own lot in with Caisar. In doing so he took vengeance on the nobil- ity for the satisfaction with which they had abandoned him to his fate, and he had the further pleasure of piquing Pompeius. With this view he defended Vatinius, the dmc datnncc of Cae- sar, while he refused for a long time to defend Gabinius, the dme damnec of Pompeius ; actually giving evidence against him on the trial where the case against him was clearest, though, when he was acquitted upon this, he at last consented to be reconciled, and to prove his sincerity by defending him upon a second trial. In this year (54 B.C.) he wrote his treat- ise on the Republic: his attachment to Caisar, then at its height, explains the famous passage where he insists that the perfect government would be compounded of monarchy, aris- tocracy, and democracy, with an emphasis and air of discovery quite disproportionate if he had meant no more than to pay the compliment to the Roman constitution which Polybius had paid before. The great enterprise of foreign policy was being conducted at Caesar's absolute discretion; and though he was absent from Rome, he practically guided affairs there also. Crassus's adventurous mvasion of Parthia had firiled, and its chief result was that Cicero was appointed to succeed him as augur. The growing anarchy at Rome threw Cicero back upon Pompeius, who was appointed sole consul in 52 B.C., as it was increasingly difficult to get the elections conducted reg- ularly. The year before the consuls had not been elected till April. Pompeius was elected before the end of February, as Milo, who was standing for the consulship, had thought it bet- ter that Clodius, who was standing for the praetorship, should not survive an encounter between their respective bands of bravoes in the latter half of January. The death of Julia, the wife of Pompeius, had weakened the ties which bound him to Caesar; and his subsequent marriage to Cornelia, the daugh- ter of Q. Metellus Scipio, was a sign that he was drawing closer i6o LATIX LITERATURE. CICERO. i6i to the aristocracy, which seemed willing at last to accept him on his own terms. However, he had to dechire against Milo, who was convicted, partly on the merits of the case and partly because the military display ordered by Pompeius emboldened the partisans of Clodius, and disarranged the defence of Cic- ero, who sent Milo, then in exile at Marseilles, the splendid speech which he wished he had delivered. The speech act- ually delivered was still e.xtant in Quinctilian's day, but the fragments of it which have reached us are not enough to judge by. He was more successful in his defence of Saufeius, who was mixed up in the charge against Milo, and in his accusation of T. Munalius Plancus lUusa, an ex-tribune. He wrote at this period a treatise on the laws of his model State, in which the monarchical element is reduced to the dimensions of the Roman consulate, an office which retained more of the attri- butes of primitive monarchy than any other known at the time. As a part of the guarantees for order established by Pom- peius "in his divine third consulship," it had been arranged that consulars and praetorians should in future wait five years for their provinces, as the scramble for provinces tended to make the canvass for office more violent and irregular. Con- sequently, Cicero had to serve like other consulars who had hitherto declined to take provinces in their turn. He went to Cilicia, where he distinguished himself as an active, efficient, and very disinterested governor. His successes against some rebellious mountaineers were sufficient to deserve a solemn thanksgiving, and would doubtless in quiet times have led to a triumph. He also had an opportunity of rebuking Brutus, whose agents were pressing him to abuse his authority against the senators of a town in Cyprus, which had contracted a loan upon peculiarly usurious terms. He was impatient to return to Rome; and as no successor was sent to him, he turned his province over to his quaestor, and reached Rome on the last day of 50 b.c. Here he found everything in confusion. Caesar's term of office was coming to an end according to one possible reckoning, and the nobil- ity wished his career to end with it; while Pompeius was de- termined to reduce him to a subordinate position. Cicero was anxious to temporize, and Caesar was anxious to be con- ciliatory ; but all overtures were rejected, and the senate and the consuls declared for Pompeius. Cicero was placed in command of the Campanian coast, for Pompeius did not at once avow, even to himself, his intention of evacuating Italy. AV'hen he did so in the middle of March, 49 I3.c., Cicero waited for more than two months to follow him, and was very uncom- fortable all the time he was in his camp ; seeing clearly all the faults and follies of his own side, convinced that Pompeius's head was running on Sulla and proscriptions, and yet tor- mented bv reirrets that he had not followed him with a blinder loyalty. It was an aggravation of his difficulties that Atticus, like most bankers in time of commotion, was disposed to call in all his outstanding capital. After the battle of Pharsalia, at the end of September, 48 B.C., he was able to retire from the contest. Cicero went at once to Prundisium ; and when Cx'sar, a year after Pharsalia, returned to Italy from Alexan- dria, Cicero was ready to meet him. Thenceforward he was the recoiinized intercessor on behalf of the survivors of his party who wished to reconcile themselves after continuing the struggle longer; although he still retained independence enough to write a panegyric o\\ Cato, who, after fighting hon- orably to the last, had committed suicide at Utica. Caesar put forward a lengthy reply, respectful to both. The leisure forced upon Cicero by the preponderance of the three confed- erates had produced the splendid work upon the perfect ideal of oratory, as well as the two treatises on politics; so now he wrote little rhetorical manuals, and a very interesting little review of his predecessors addressed to Prutus. Soon after his second marriage he lost his daughter Tullia, who had just been divorced from her third husband, and his sorrow threw him upon philosophical writing. He composed a "Consolation," a very ingenious discussion on our ultimate conceptions of good and evil ; and a less satisfactory series of conversations on the fundamental problems of speculative philosophy. A more interesting work was the " Tusculan Disputations," a course of informal lectures, in which Cicero i) I l62 LATIN LITERATURE. replies to successive objections from difTerent pupils to the all-sutiicicncy of virtue. The loss of his daughter was not all that weighed upon him. I'ersonaliy he had little to complain of, and he quite recognized the full value of Caesar's politic clemency. The senate was filled up with men disqualified from acting upon its traditions. Judicial and administrative business was almost at a standstill, and what there was did not need eloquence or infiuence like his to carry it on. He did what he could to civilize Caesar's adherents: he gave les- sons in rhetoric to llirtius, a man of great natural literary gifts, and Dolabella, with whom his intimacy continued unaf- fected l)y the divorce and death of Tullia. He amused him- self in many ways ; among others, by taking lessons in gastron- omy, on which he rallies himself in letters to old-fashioned correspondents; but the intervals of depression were many and severe, and explain, if they do not excuse, his exultation at the death of Cxsar, whose surroundings were certainly of a nature to disgust decorous contemporaries with his flir-reach- ing and beneficent policy. The death of Caisar was far from restoring public life to what Cicero regarded as a healthy tone. The popular feeling condemned the conspirators ; and consequently Antonius, when he had obtained the ratification of Ca3sar's acts, was practically dictator, for he strained the ratification to include all the projects which he discovered, or professed to discover, in Caesar's papers. Cicero wandered from one country-house to another, writing incessantly on the Nature of the Gods, Divination, Fate, Friendship, Old-age, and Glory. He be- gan a work on the duties of life, and resolved to travel in Greece. A Roman consular, unless he went into exile, could not go abroad without some pretence of public business. Cicero, as it happens, had the choice of three: he might have gone to acquit his vows for the restoration of liberty, but he could not persuade himself that liberty had been restored; he might have got himself appointed "ambassador at large," but this would have committed him to inaction for a definite pe- riod ; he decided to accept a nominal appointment as a lieu- tenant of Dolabella, which could be dropped at any moment. CICERO. 163 His ship WMS driven back from Syracuse to the territory of Rhegium, where he learned that Antonius's position was shaken. This was on the 2d of August ; by the end of August he was back in Rome. He still shrank from defying Antonius in his presence; and even when he spoke he said nothing that need have made an irreparable breach — nothing nearly so severe as his invectives against Piso or Vatinius. Antonius, however, was resolved upon subduing or crushing the one conspicuous survivor of tiie old regime. He took seventeen days to com- pose a reply, and gave him notice to come and hear it. Cicero did not come, but he composed a crushing rejoinder, which he would have delivered if he had heard the attack. He pub- lished it when Octavian, the heir of Caisar, had formed an army to assert himself against Antonius. Meanwhile he fin- ished his moral treatise. From the 20th of December, 44 n.c, to the end of June, 43 r..c., Cicero was once more, as he had been in his consulship, the foremost politician in Rome. The senate was willing to follow him in all measures in favor of Octavian and in favor of the conspirators, but it was immovably resolved not to be committed to a combat a outrance with Antonius. B it Cicero was able to prevent any agreement with Antonius, and might possibly, if the consuls had survived the battle of Mutina, have forced Octavian to take up the mantle of Pompeius. As it was, he was included in the proscription which was the first act of Antonius, Lepidus, and Octavian, when their com- pact had been ratified by their appointment as triumvirs to organize the Republic. It is often said that Octavian dis- graced himself by consenting to sacrifice Cicero, because, while each hoped to make use of the other, Cicero had lav- ished a great deal of panegyric upon Octavian, who had repaid his attentions with a great parade of deference. At the time it is not likely that Octavian, the adopted son of Caisar, had any feeling so deep or so creditable as his desire to avenge his father ; if so, he would feel quite honestly and naturally that Cicero deserved to share the fate of the conspirators with whom he had been forward to associate himself. He was overtaken and put to death before he left Italy, on i»> 164 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. 165 December 7, 43 b.c, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. He met his death with courage, but in the weeks before it he showed the indecision whicli was natural to him in difficult circumstances: he neither waited nor escaped in time; he doubtless foresaw that life with Sextus Pompeius or with IJru- tus would be a repetition in worse company of the miserable life that he had endured in the camp of Pompeius before Pharsalia. It has become the fashion to praise Cicero as a man and a writer, and to disparage him as a statesman and a thinker; and recently his reputation has been exposed to the attacks of writers who take the side of accomplished fiicts in what may be called a vindictive spirit. Cicero failed as a politi- cian, and it is rather difficult to see how he could have suc- ceeded ; and resentment at his failure takes the form of con- tempt for his blindness in not seeing before trial that his ingenious and well-intentioned plans were impracticable. Besides, his political career was disfigured by faults which seem natural to advocates who play a leading part in politics; for all Cicero's great political f^iults have their parallels in the career of Brougham, who was in so many respects unlike Cic- ero. There was the same obtrusive fertility of suggestion, the same readiness to patronize,' the same want of fixity of political purpose — due in both to the same disposition to fol- low their changing personal interest and their changing per- sonal views of the public good, rather than principles held in common with others; the same want of spontaneous respect for the dignity of those with whom they had to act, sometimes disguising itself in fulsome praise, sometimes expressing itself in wanton epigrams ; the same giddy elation at the culmina- tion of the career ; the same tendency to be guided by petty vindictiveness when high station seemed irrecoverably lost. In both, too, there was the same disposition to take refuge in nitellectual interests, and in the display of intellectual attain- ments which were rather extensive than profound. In this, * The word is exact if taken in the etvmoloc;ical sense as markinji the disposition of the advocate to treat every politician on his own side as his client. as in many points, Cicero has the advantage, for his intellect- ual exercises did not intrude upon fields already occupied by more competent workmen. As we compare Cicero's orations with the masterpieces of Greek oratory, we are apt to compare his philosophical writings with the masterpieces of Greek philosophy ; and such a comparison is fatal. Considering how rapidly they were thrown off, it is natural to lay the greatest stress upon the in- dications that their substance was taken with little change from Greek works of the decline, and that Cicero added little of his own but the style and the literary framework; especial- ly as he tells us himself that he kept introductions ready by him to be fitted to works upon any subject. But Cicero was a man of much greater general power than the Greek writers on philosophy whom he condescended to follow ; and the power of selection, statement, and judgment is itself enough to found a reputation upon. We are able to verify in the case of Paley what we only suspect in the case of Cicero, and yet Paley is in his degree a classic. Then, too, it is to be remem- bered that a mind so fertile as Cicero's, trained to rapid ex- pression, would work very fast for a couple of years when suddenly thrown upon a new class of subjects. He wrote largely to exercise his own ability, to compose without the heat and emphasis of oratory, to improve and vindicate the capacities of his language, which he ventured to prefer to Greek; largely, also, to complete Latin literature by adding a philosophical department. But his works are also the ex- pression of his ripe judgment on matters of which a thought- ful man of action is qualified to judge — better, perhaps, than a purely speculative thinker. The "Academics" have only reached us in a very incom- plete form, and the position they are intended to maintain gains more by being assumed than by being stated and dis- cussed. It is briefly this, that our ultimate convictions are a matter of common -sense and good feeling; that when we come to talk about them there is plenty to say against them ; and that, as they cannot be assimilated to the fundamental prop- ositions of the exact sciences, they cannot be sharply stated i66 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. 167 or pressed to extreme conclusions. All this is directed against Stoicism, which was on one side a system of closely fitting ab- stractions, fit, as Cicero knew, to extort assent rather than to generate conviction; for which reason he repeatedly warns public speakers against an exclusive devotion to Stoicism. 'V\\(:^ New Academy practically coincided with Stoicism as to the nature of truth and duty: but what Stoicism held strictly the Academy held loosely and half-heartedly; what Stoicism urged as a matter of inexorable principle the Academy rec- ontmended up to the point required by decency, and praised up to the point inspired by generosity. In fact, the difference was not unlike that between Puritan and Jesuit morality; only, as the morality of the New Academy had no supernatural sanctions, it resembled Jesuit morality at its worst rather than at its best, rather in its accommodations to the low standard of general expediency than in its encouragement of exceptional heroism ; while Stoicism, which never acquired the same power as Puritanism of enforcing conformity, was quite free in Cice- ro's time from the hypocrisy of poor natures who had adopted a standard fit for the noble few. The rigorous dialectic of Stoicism rested upon the assumption of the absolute validity of sensible experience ; and in this it was quite consistent, for the abstractions to which the Stoics gave such exaggerated precision were taken direct from popular language, and any criticism of sensation is essentially unpopular. The criticism of sensation by the later Academy, as Cicero represents it in his " Academics," is not very thorough, and yet it is really Pla- tonic; only the Platonic criticism of sensation was intended to prepare the way for a more accurate criterion of transcen- dental truth, and Plato saw that criticism of sensation ought to suggest the value of instruments of precision ; and a science ill possession of such instruments would have little reason to fear the criticism of the New Academy, which aims at estab- lishinir, not a bracing transcendentalism, but an enfeebling ac- quiescence in the verdict of educated common-sense. Still more disappointing than the "Academics" is the "De Fato," which is not concerned with what we suppose to be the question of fatalism so much as with verbal and logical diffi- culties as to whether propositions concerning things to come can be certain. The question is rather— Do we mean, when we say "The sun will certainly rise to-morrow or not," that cither branch of the alternative is in the nature of things equally possible? than — Do we mean, when we say "Cicero will certainly speak in the senate to-morrow or not," that either branch of the alternative is equally likely? The question of Divination is connected by Cicero himself with that of Fate ; but the discussion is much more interest- ing, for here the Stoical argument is a curious anticipation of much modern argument in defence of orthodoxy. Divination is defended because man needs a revelation of the will of liigher powers; and it is assumed that it follows from the gen- eral doctrine of providence that there must be a provision for the need; and the universal belief in some non-scientific means of ascertaining the future is treated as its own justifi- cation, just as the religious instincts of mankind are appealed to now as a sufficient ground for assuming what they are al- leged to affirm. This, in turn, is supplemented by a reference to history for all the wonderful predictions which are supposed to have been fulfilled beyond the power of mere rational fore- sight. Cicero's reply to these arguments is less modern than the arguments themselves, for the science of his day had not the pretension to give, even in the distant future, a complete explanation of all the elements of historical civilization; and the orthodoxy of his day did not rest upon one series of phe- nomena, which, whether admitting a naturalistic explanation or not, was certainly unique in character, but upon a discon- nected mass of more or less authenticated occurrences, few of which had any ideal impressiveness, and few any perma- nent importance. Consequently, though Cicero drew a line between faith and reason, he did not draw it at any of the places where the line is drawn now; he did not undertake to prove that some traditions proceed from higher knowledge than reason can reach; he did not try to fix upon certain feelings as too strong or too sacred to be reasoned about. The principle of his concession to piety (which is quite sincere so fiir as it goes) is that it is well for each man and each com- r68 LATIX LITERATURE. inunity to practise without discussion tiic traditions recom- mended to each by the authority of public custom. He sneers at the art of the amspiccs^ which was not a native Roman form of divmation. He treats his own mvstery of au-ury as a matter of simple, venerable routine. 11 J is not ashamed of the wisdom of his ancestors, who established a discipline that neither needed nor admitted rational verification. He justi- fies them by one very pregnant remark, that the Roman state used divination to allay, not to create, reli-ious anxietv. When something unaccountable and alarming happened, the author- ities took the time-honored means to lind out somethin- mys- terious to do; and when it was done, the public had as -ood reason for being reassured as they had had for being alarmed • but there were few, if any, Roman precedents for seeking guid- ance for practical action in supposed indications of the^will of Heaven rather than in sound human judgment. IJut, this concession apart, his criticism is worthy of a countryman of Knnius: he is full and ingenious upon the theme that out of many guesses some must be right; remarks that the most ex- traordinary predictions require to be better attested; proves that the alleged revelation is far from satisflictory ; that it is given, if given, very capriciously; and that it is hard to see how those who receive it are tlie better for it. In the more fundamental question treated in the "De Na- tura Deorum," Cicero's attitude reminds us of Hume's in the "Dialogues on Natural Religion:" in both the author means to give the sceptic the best of the argument, and in both there is too little reverence left to protect the defenders of the faith trom his flippancy : in both the sceptic thinks that faith has a better foundation in tradition than in argument, and in both the sceptic is represented as arguing against his real opinion and in Cicero against the .-author's opinion too. In Cicero the traditional view is not represented at all, while the Epicurean who represents the all-sufficiency of common -sense has no equivalent in Hume. Here, as in the work on '' Divination " the orthodox argument is the most modern part of the whole- all the commonplaces of '• natural theology " appear, and be- sides, we have some clever Stoical dialectic, to prove that' our CICERO. 169 idea of perfection must necessarily be subordinated to the highest reality; and consequently, as there can be no higher reality than the universe, we must affirm of the universe every perfection we can think of, including that of being a rational and immortal animal. The sceptic turns his main strength against what the Stoic has in common with Paley. The Stoic deity was a watchmaker who lived in his watch, and Cicero is distinctly of opinion that many parts of the universe are gro- tesque and offensive, though he feels that the impression made by the beauty and majesty of the whole is irresistible. ]5e- sides, a future state of retribution was not then an article of natural theology, and consequently the difficulties connected with the inequalities of fortune among men reinforced those connected with the general struggle for existence with greater eifect than now. Besides, the Stoics never mastered their Heraclitean physics, and did not know what would become of their deity when the periodical conflagrations which Hera- clitus foretold arrived, and were embarrassed between their own conception of the universe as a stable organism and Her- aclitus's conception of the rational fire as the eternal process by which all transitory beings appear and disappear. The Epicurean, by comparison, gets off easily; he is allowed, if he likes, to persist in his tissue of arbitrary assertions, after it has been shown that they are arbitrary, and do not in the least amount to a rational ex-planation of men's traditional ideals. Epicurus is more severely treated in the moral works, though we find frequent ad Iiomiiicvi arguments based on the stricUiess and simplicity of his personal practice, and the vig- or with which he denounced excess and insisted on the hap- piness of the philosopher even in the midst of pain. But the happiness of the Epicurean philosopher had a purely physical basis. The founder of the school had said, quite consistent- ly, that he could be content to live if he lost his sight and hearing, and even his taste and smell, so that he could keep his appetite and susceptibility to sexual pleasure, while if he lost these life would really not be worth having: Cicero took the last stipulation out of its context to be shocked at. I.-8 f. ♦ «;. lyo LA TIN LITER A TURE, CICERO. 171 In spite of this injustice, it must be admitted that the " De Finibus" compares favorably with ahiiost any Enghsh ethical treatise of -the eighteenth century. In one respect it is de- cidedly superior: both the Stoic and the Epicurean know what they are talking of. When the Stoic speaks of virtue, he does not mean vaguely anything that it is well to do; when the Epicurean speaks of pleasure, he does not mean vaguely anything for which men can or do wish. Nor does the Aca- demic attempt to correct the disputants by the explanation that each one sees one side of the proverbial shield ; he ac- knowledges that the debate is a real one, though he finds the arguments on both sides unconvincing. Pleasure to the Epi- curean is always something to be received; it is something to be enjoyed more purely and more securely as man's life ap- proximates to that of a healthy gregarious animal, liking sun- shine and food and women and wine and company, and using his reason as a multiplying mirror for these sources of happi- ness. It would not be very misleading to say that the pleas- ure of Epicurus is exclusively an aftair of the afferent nerves and of those connected with the solar plexus. The Stoic, on the other hand, starts with the conception that our activity has a normal development of its own ; that a man of whole- some nature, who finds himself a member of a sound society, finds it his nature to act in a certain way, just as it is the nat- ure of a tree in suitable soil to grow to a certain shape. The growth of the tree is an end in itself; a well-grown tree is perfect of its kind, and that is enough. The difference be- tween a man and a tree, according to the Stoics, is not that man needs anything more than to be perfect of his kind, but that to be perfect of his kind he has to choose and intend his proper end, because he is capable of rational voluntary action. Since a normal development of activity is, according to the Stoics, the only thing completely subject to rational choice, and at the same time its adequate satisfactory object, it ceases to be a paradox that virtue is the only good. The exposition of this, which is put into the mouth of Cato, is very clear and vigorous, and in its form is'probably original; for Cicero con- gratulates himself (through another speaker) on having broken through the Stoical custom of logic -chopping to attain to a free continuous argument. The criticism of Epicureanism is decisive; it is a doctrine that leaves out ail that is best in man, and especially all that is best in a Roman; for Epicureanism, a much clearer and more consistent doctrine than Benthamism, has no place for public -spirited activity. The true Epicurean is simply a laz- zarone clothed and in his right mind, and aware of his advan- tages; and Cicero had considerable experience of the fiilse Epicurean, whose activity, so far as he could give an account of it to himself, was simply a means to accumulating the ma- terials for an old-age of coarse indulgence and extravagance, and naturally maintained that even Epicurus had cause to blush for such disciples. In life, as Cicero and serious people generally understood it, there was no room for " pleasure " derived from some material object of enjoyment, or for "glad- ness," the vague irrational exhilaration that depends upon the physical state, and generally interferes with any steady activ- ity. Both were set down quite correctly as " disturbances of the mind," and were separated rather too absolutely from the tranquil satisfactions which attend the gratification of natural appetites and the successful activity of our powers. The en- joyment of a cheerful meal differs in kind from the enjoyment of a debauch ; though, if we watch the transition, it is impossi- ble to fix a point at which the difference is more than one of degree. The same may be said of the difference between temperate enjoyment of success and the half-crazy exultation which was not uncommon in the ancient world and is not un- known in the modern. The question whether the "appetites" were to be moderated or abolished was really for Cicero a question whether it was right or possible to take the enjoy- ment of the debauchee at rare intervals or in safe doses — a theory which commended itself to a good many respectable Romans who did not study philosophy. The point at which Stoicism was really open to criticism was not so much tiiat it made too little allowance for natural feeling (though Cicero thought it might have made more), but that it took no account of success. It was difficult to maintain W 172 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. that the results of action were really indifferent. If a patriot saved his country, the act was its own reward; it required nothing further in the shape of popularity or praise or self- complacency. But how if a citizen did his duty and failed to save his country, and perhaps by doing his duty and ignoring that other men were certain not to do theirs, did, so far as could be calculated, more harm than good? How if a man recognized the direction in which activity was desirable, and saw that with his natural endowments activity in that direc- tion would be ineffectual? The only reply that a Stoic could make to such criticism was to repeat his demonstration that normal voluntary action was the adequate object of rational choice, and that the ideal standard must be maintained at any cost. Here, too, the Academic has to give up the ideal, at any rate as a standard: excellence is generally ranked above success, and real excellence the Academic is content to rank highest; but real excellence, he insists, is seldom really un- successful. It is also very seldom attainable, and he doubts whether it can be the object of every life to attain it. Carne- ades thought it surprising that no one had taken up the very defensible position that life bad no end at all for a man be- yond itself; that for a man to get what was fit for him, and to do what he was fit for, was the chief good, or at any rate there was no other, beyond the simple play of human faculty in human intercourse. The w\ay of expressing this was curi- ously technical. Discussion had brought to light certain nat- ural prerequisites to both virtue and pleasure, such as eating, drinking, moving, sleeping, talking, learning (for no one can live without instruction). Now, all these seem good in their place for their own sake, apart from anything to which they may lead. It is impossible to imagine any further good which does not include and presuppose these first gifts or needs of nature; and though it seems natural to treat them as means (was this why Carneades did not affirm for himself that they were the end?), it is hard to prove that any end which we pur- sue by them yields more than themselves. The interest of the treatise *' De Finibus" is purely specu- lative; the interest of the "Tusculan Disputations" is purely 173 practical. One of Cicero's pupils after another puts forward some one of the evils which the natural man fears, and Cicero demolishes his objections with much affectionate earnestness and a certain parade of what is meant for Socratic dialectic. This is a very poor substitute for the real interchange of thought between equals which we have in Cicero's other works. Landor might have been less ready to praise the method of Cicero's Dialogues at the expense of Plato's, if he had sus- pected that the continuous speeches were often extracted from Greek treatises; as, for instance, the speech of Velleius in the ''De Natura Deorum," from the works of Philodemus, a con- temporary Epicurean, of which large fragments have been dis- covered at Plerculaneum. Still, so far as he apprehends the question (and he generally apprehends it as well as any man of the time), Cicero succeeds in giving the force with which conflicting views appeal to the instructed practical judgment. Put the "Tusculan Disputations" are a work of despair. When Cicero wrote them, Italy was given over to Caesar and the host of tribunes and centurions who had conquered license in his train. Everything but good conscience seemed lost be- yond recovery; and Cicero strove to convince himself, in con- vincing the young yet uncorrupted by the world, that to keep a good conscience through everything is enough, and more than enough ; that to know this is our main concern ; and that glory and success and all externals are so secondary that the inquiry as to whether they add anything more or less to virtue only serves curiosity, if, indeed, it does not lower courage. Even the style is affected by the reckless earnestness of the writer, and becomes more animated and pathetic, and at the same time less pure. The discussion whether vita bcata will mount the rack with the philosopher is a model of the careless personification which misses being picturesque and succeeds in being illogical; and it is one of the praises of Latin literature that it generally abstains from this slovenly sort of personification, and only personifies to make a direct and vivid appeal to the imagination. The smaller treatises— the "Lx^lius" and the "Cato"— are probably, like the " De Officiis," founded upon single Greek I* 174 LATIN LITERATURE. CICERO. 175 works whicli Cicero adapted with a well-founded confidence that, as a great writer, he could improve the style, and that a Roman of rank ought to be able to improve the substance. There is the same impatience of mere discussion which meets us in the "Tusculan Disputations." Lailius and Cato are lect- urers, with a youthful audience; and their pleasure in it is, no doubt, a reflection of the generous pleasure Cicero was still able to take in the voun^:. One interestinc: feature in both is the anticipation of the thought which is beginning to console a few rare spirits for the certainty of death. Cicero felt as strongly as any disciple of the "Religion of Humanity" that the best part of the lives of those who have lived for others still lives on in others, and few disciples of the school have expressed the feeling so simply and so welk This was sup- ported in him by the philosophical hope of a personal life for the glorified spirit, set forth with enthusiastic eloquence in the magnificent dream of Scipio.' Cicero did not live to see the two thoughts which comforted him popularized by being com- bined in the faith or fiction of apotheosis, for he obviously treats the position of Antonius, the flamen of Divus Julius, as a very sorry joke. Something has been said already of Cicero's political trea- tises ; it should be added that in the " Laws " the actual laws are in decidedly archaic Latin, and that very great stress is laid on the importance of keeping the character of Roman worship unchanged. Its ceremonies were valuable, both be- cause they cost little money and because they cost much time and care. Plato's exclusion of poets was replaced by an ex- clusion equally respectful of the New Academy; happily there was no need to exclude the loungers of the Garden. We have lost most of the discussion on justice in the " Republic ;" but, in a sense, we can see it was an advance on that with which Plato's " Republic " opens. Carneades did not outrage good-sense and common experience by an ideal portrait of an unredeemed successful villain, whose prosperity should make * Preserved by the sagacity of Macrobius from the wreck of Cicero's "Republic," and more valuable than all that has been recovered by the diligence of Cardinal Mai. it doubtful whether it was worth while to be just. He con- fined himself to illustrating a position which has never been refuted — that in actual society there is a real conflict of inter- ests; that one man's advantage, rightly understood, may be incompatible with the rights of another, or with the good of the community, and then asking for reasons to prove that a man is to be just against himself. The reply to these objec- tions, so far as we can judge from the fragments preserved to us, was mainly an appeal to our natural sociability and to all that is expressed by the modern phrases of "solidarity " and "social organism." Of course, so far as the analogy which the latter phrase suggests holds, it would be decisive. In the individual organism, no one organ can thrive really at the ex- pense of the rest, just as no outward prosperity can compen- sate for injury to the health of the body; whence Plato had argued that for no earthly gain could it be worth while to in- jure the health of the soul. Unfortunately, neither analogy is exact, and the analogy to which Plato appeals has a false look of exactness which has led Plato and others into much unreal rhetoric. We do not know whether Cicero's rhetoric was unreal, though we do know from his own boasts in the " Lxlius " that it was earnest and elaborate. Of the rhetorical works only the " De Oratore " need de- tain us; for, admirable as the "Brutus" is, with its fine, ex- act, and generous appreciation of scores of forgotten speakers, there is little to say of it here beyond the extracts already given. The " De Oratore " is certainly the most finished of all Cicero's treatises, and the coming and going of the sec- ondary speakers is admirably managed to bring out the dig- nity of the principals, and to convey an impression of the lofty courtesy of the highest Roman society. The scenery of the dialogue, so to speak, is on a level with Plato, except at his very best, although there is much less play of thought, as, in- deed, the subject suggests less. The real subject is the double function of the orator as a public speaker and an advocate. Crassus, the greatest orator before Cicero, brings out the con- ception of the public speaker as a man who must be, first of all, perfectly virtuous, then perfectly wise — a master of the 176 LATIN LITERATURE. philosophy of Greece and of the truer, more practical teaching of Roman sages like Lo^lius and Coruncanius and the elder Cato. lie must have a competent knowledge of everything- that can come under discussion, though subordinate sciences^ such as civil law, will be studiously kept in their proper place! It must be remembered that at Rome there were no newspa- pers, no sermons, hardly any books; that the general public was not in the habit of reading such books as there were. When a famous citizen spoke on public affairs in the Assem- bly, or on an exciting case before the courts, he nn'ght, if he pleased, put himself forward to supply in his own person an equivalent for the many forms of instruction and entertain- ment which the Romans lacked, each of which in our own day forms the basis of a separate profession. On the other hand, the parties, and perhaps the court, might think what was very interesting to the corona (the ring of spectators who gath- ered round the parties and their respective adherents) rather superfluous, for the corona could go away at pleasure, and the parties and the court were bound to remain, 'i'here was ob- viously room for a more business-like, less pretentious, less discursive style of speaking than that which Crassus cultivated, and it is of this style that Antonius constitutes himself the theorist.' The discussion as to the comparative merits of the two styles is indecisive, and only serves to bring out the con- ception of each, and to show that really able speakers, what- ever their ideal of their profession may be, have necessarily much in common; perhaps, too, to show that Cicero could idealize his predecessors in a way to bring out their charac- teristic excellences and veil their defects. Pie was glad to be able to deny that his Crassus was less wordy andliis Anto- nius more copious than the originals. The contrast is impor- tant from another point of view: it is clear, both from the *' Brutus " and the preface of the lost translation of the speeches ofyEschines and Demosthenes in the case of Ctesiphon, that Cicero's reputation in his later years was not uncontested. A » It seems that Cicero intended also to make Antonius the representa- tive of the theory of Aristotle (set forth in a lost dialogue), and Crassus the representative of the theory of Isocrates. CICERO. 177 school of Atticists had grown up, mostly purists in politics as well as in style, who wished to exclude everything superfluous and get rid of amplification and emofion, and be simple, busi- ness-like, convincing, and elegant. They probably foiled to realize that there had been occasions, and perhaps were still when it was worth while to electrify the court by passionate pleadings; but generally eloquence was directed not to gain the suffrages of the court, which, even in important cases might consist of a single judge, but to influence the audience ' and the Atticists were quite right in thinking that this trait was anythmg but Attic, for an Attic orator had never occasion to separate the audience and the court. They were also prob- ably right in thinking that, for practice in Roman courts in ordinary cases, Lysias was a better model than Demosthenes It is curious that Cicero should have imagined that a trans- lation of yEschines and Demosthenes was a vindication of his own style. Compared with Calvus, no doubt even Demosthe- nes was full and ^schines was passionate; but Cicero was certainly diftuse, even compared with ^^schines As compared with Demosthenes, it is his great praise to be amusing and interesting: he does not take our concern for granted as Demosthenes does, who trusts simply to the con- tagion of his own earnestness, whereas Cicero has studied all methods of engaging and relieving our attention. He varies everything that can be varied; he amplifies almost everything that can be amplified; he is fond of side issues. In the de''- lence of Sex. Roscius, his first great speech, he rests his case not on the innocence of his client, which he is content for the most part to asseverate, but on the nefarious manoeuvres of Chrysogonus. So, too, in the defence of Cluentius we hear quite as much of the trial in which Cluentius was supposed to have outbribed his mothers husband as of the char-e of poi- soning that was actually before the court; and, long'after the attair of Catilina, the supposed necessity of protecting all who had helped Cicero to save the state from his nefarious enter- prise figured largely in his speeches. He was rather apt to irame improbable defences and to take up more ground than could be really held. For instance, it is obvious that there I.— 8* 1 78 LATIN LITERATURE. was no malice on cither side in the affray between Clodius and Milo; but as Clodius's partisans chose to assert that Milo had laid a plot to assassinate Clodius, Cicero roundly retorted that it was Clodius who had laid a plot to assassinate Milo, and his whole speech is pervaded by this rash assumption. Throughout, also, Milo is represented as a pure and spotless patriot; although, even before his last outbreak, Cicero had pretty well made up his mind that he was a madman, and ex- pressed his belief with his usual frankness in his outspoken correspondence. Perhaps Cicero wrote in defence of Milo with some exaggeration of enthusiasm, because in the actual trial he had spoken with less than his usual courage and failed in the result more completely than he was accustomed to fail. But it does not appear that after his consulship he ever was really supreme as an advocate: he was always the greatest living orator, though few of the orations which he handed down to us belong to his later years — except the " Philippics," which, with one or two exceptions, are more remarkable for the skilful pertinacity with which a political object is pursued under great difficulties than for their worth as orations. For instance, it was voted that under the alarming circumstances of the time military dress should be worn in the streets of Rome; and Cicero harps upon this decision in a way that was probably edifying and useful to right-thinking gossips at the time, but is the reverse of impressive to posterity. In gener- al, the difficulties under which Cicero spoke are too apparent, and the necessity of putting on an air of heroism interferes with our appreciation of the diplomatic ingenuity displayed in the speeches, and to better advantage in the letters to Plancus and other commanders whom Cicero had hopes of securing to the interests of the senate. Probably even the great Second Philippic, which has generally been recognized as Cicero's masterpiece, gained in reputation a good deal by the subse- quent history of Antonius, who was completely sacrificed to Augustus by all Roman writers; whence it followed that all Cicero's attacks upon him were entirely justified. At the time, it is hard to think that the conduct of Antonius was really an outrage upon the sensibilities of a senate whose 1 80 LA TIN IJTFI?A TTTk^ // CICERO. 179 ranks had been filled with Caesar's officers, who felt that in o-ivin^ Decimus Brutus a hesitating support against him they were, after all, only espousing the quarrel of one old comrade a^^ainst another, and consoled themselves by the fact that, if Brutus had helped to kill their old commander, he was in alli- ance for the moment with their commander's heir. Apart from this, Cicero's denunciations of mere debauchery and cru- elty must have rung rather hollow upon the ears of contem- poraries for the most part only less shameless than Antonius, and far less vigorous : though Cicero himself had every right to treat the conventionalities which he reproached Antonius with disregarding as serious, and political profligacy had not gone so far that a man in Antonius's position could travel slip- shod in the dark without some discredit when the charge was brought home to him — to say nothing of drunkenness on pub- lic occasions. On the other hand, the invective loses, because it is clear that Cicero's honest convictions might have slept if Antonius had been willing to keep terms with him. For this reason the speech stands below the invective against Piso, which makes no pretence of serving any purpose except Cice- ro's hearty contempt for a vulgar blusterer who had done him what injury he could, and had been foolish enough to chal- lenjie an altercation with him after his fortunes had mended. Of Cicero's letters it is not easy to speak as they deserve within moderate compass: they have always a charming air of frankness and dignity, even when the writer is embarrassed and has to calculate the eftect of every word. The long series of letters " ad Familiares " are all more or less of this cate- gory. The letters to Atticus show how great the strain must have been, for they prove his need of entire unrestrained ex- pansion, and his need of leaning upon another judgment. In both points the correspondence reminds us of Dickens's let- ters to Forster. It is also the clearest proof of Cicero's fun- damental honesty, and of how little he was really the dupe of his vanity, and of the miscalculation which led him to exag- gerate his public services in the presence of the public. i8o LA TIJV LITER A TUKE. CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AXD SUCCESSORS. A curious and intercstiug relic of tlie beginning or tlie end ot tlie age of Cicero is tlie treatise on rhetoric addressed to Ca.us Herenn.us by an unknown writer, probably Cornificius who used the sanie Greek text-book as Cicero in liis two book L)e nvenfone " He follows his model much more closely and dogmatic, where Cicero is apt to lose himself in discus- son. i,e two books of Cicero arc longer than the four of he author who wrote for Herennius. 'Jhey both agree that the choice and arrangement of topics is the most extensile part of the art; and when Jie has exhausted this Cicero pauses and concludes all of his treatise that iias reached us The unknown goes on to treat of memory and of the arts of voice and gesture, wh.ch occupy the remainder of the third book • the fourth, which is the most interesting, contains the wSer'J views o style in the largest sense, illustrated by choice mor- se s of h,s own composition. This was an innovation which filled h,m w,th uneasy pride: his Greek models and his Latin rivals had always drawn their illustrations from approved and recogmzed classics, which was tantamount to a confession from US pouit of view, that they were unequal to practise the art which they professed. He thinks it as absurd to teach era ory by a series of extracts from other speakers as for a sculptor to teach sculpture by exhibiting frngmenls of the work of other sculptors, or for an athlete to undertake to train a runner by standing still and discoursing on the performances of celebrated runners in the past. The second comparison diminishes the arrogance of the first, for the author, whoever he was, cannot have been a celebrated speaker. He makes a merit of writing on the subject at all, as he has private 'affairs to attend to; but he is fond of exercising himself in speakin- and expects Herennius, who likes exercising with him, to iiu^ prove with such opportunities. He is not exactly a ieacher of rhetoric, but a private gentleman, studious of the art and recognized among his friends as accomplished in the practice CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS. i8i of it. Probably, if asked why he declaimed at home oftener than he spoke in the courts or the assembly, he would have said that his station did not call upon him to be a conspicu- ous politician, or his temper to force himself into politics. His authorities are all the famous orators from Loelius to Crassus, which naturally leads us to think that he was a mature man when Cicero was a youth ; on the other hand, there are traces which might lead us to fancy that he knew of Cicero and did not admire him, and knew of Lucretius and agreed with him. It is certainly strange that a Roman who had not read Lucre- tius should enumerate not only the fear of death, but religion among the motives of crime. It is also curious that somebody who was not Cicero should have a son Tullius and a wife Te- rentia. Phrases like " Et inimico proderas et amicum Isede- bas et tibi non consulebas,'' "Nee reipublicce cons.iluisti nee amicis profuisti nee inimicis restitisti," look like criiicisms of Cicero's conduct in the decline of his fortune. His refusal to be on the Campanian domain commission was an advantage to his enemy Clodius, an offence to his friend Pompeius, and left his own safety unprovided for. When he went into exile, it might fairly be said he neither served the state, nor stood by his friends, nor withstood his enemies. After his return, when he was inclined to revenge himself, with Ccesar's help, upon the nobility who had betrayed him, it might seem fair to say, "Inimicis te placabilem, amicis inexorabilem prcebes." What follows might pass for a scathing invective from the point of view of the thorough opti mates of his conduct during the civil war : "In otio tumultuaris; in tumultu es otiosus. In re frigidis- sima cales; in ferventissima friges. Tacito quum opus est clamas; quum tibi loqui convenit, obmutescis. Ades, abesse vis; abes, reverti cupis. In pace bellum quaeritas, in bello pacem desideras. In contione de virtute loqueris; in prailio pra? ignavia tuba^ sonitum perferre non potes." The only part which an admirer of Cicero might think in- appropriate in the mouth of his enemies is the first half-sen- tence. Though Cicero busied himself a good deal in promot- ing the abortive reaction of public opinion against Pompeius l82 LATIN LITERATURE. and his confederates, his action was hardly of a kind to be described as "tumultuous." All the rest would suit well enough: he was loud in criticism in the camp of Pompeius, where he would have done well to hold his peace ; in the de- bates which preceded the war he took no part. When he was with Pompeius, he wished himself away; when he was safe in Cilicia, he wished himself back in Rome. When the confed- erates were united, he had a mind to disunite them or to op- pose their united forces. When Pompeius was drifting into hostilities, and when he was engaged in them, Cicero was for peace at almost any price. In the campaign, when he joined Pompeius at last, he was so nearly a neutral as to be almost proscribed by the ultras, who doubtless thought he would have fought if he had had the courage. Another touch is less cer- tain in its application: it is a vigorous apostrophe to Cassius, probably the celebrated judge and author of the much mis- quoted " Cui bono," against the impudence of a witness who makes a speech for the prosecution ; which was rather a fa- vorite device of Cicero's when he sympathized with a prosecu- tion that he had not courage to conduct in person. It is needless to say that the style of the unknown is any- thing but an advance upon Cicero's. Though pure and clear and even elegant, it is so dry and stiff that it is difficult to suppose he wrote after him ; but we know that Pollio, one of the most celebrated speakers of the age of Augustus, was, compared with Cicero, simply rough and unfinished, only reaching here and there the level of agreeable finish which Cicero constantly maintained. It is the more noticeable, therefore, that the writer to Herennius sets the ideal of finish very high, much higher than an l\nglish writer or speaker would set it. For instance, if it were necessary to throw the blame of the revolt of a colony on a revolutionary party at home, one would think it quite sufficient to begin a passage not meant to be particularly impressive as follows: "Our al- lies, when minded to wage war upon us, would certainly have reasoned again and again how much lay in their power to do, if, indeed, they were acting altogether of themselves, and had not many helpers from among us, evil and daring men. For CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS. 183 all are wont to ponder long who mean to work in mighty mat- ters." The author's criticism is: "Discourse of this kind cannot hold the hearer's attention, for it is all at sea, does not grasp one point and clasp it firm in perfect words." It is a failure, in short, in the style in which this is a success : "Ye see, judges, with whom we wage this war — with allies, with men accustomed to fight for us, and both by diligence and valor to uphold our empery with us. These, on the one part, needs must know themselves and their means and their resources; on the other part, none the less by reason of neigh- borhood and fellowship in all things were able to know and to deem of the power of the Roman people in all things. When these determined to wage war with us, what matter was it, I pray you, that made them bold to enterprise the war when they understood that far the greater part of our allies stood f^ist in their duty ; when they saw on their own part that nei- ther multitude of soldiers, skill of generals, nor treasure of money was ready at need; or, in a word, any matter of the matters that are needful for the service of war.? If they were waging war for boundaries with neighbors, if they thought the whole contest depended upon one battle, still they would come thereto with better equipment in all things; how much less would they, being what they are, essay with their petty forces to take away the empery of the wide world, to which empery all nations, kings, and peoples have yielded themselves, partly of force, partly of good-will, being overcome either by the arms or the bounty of the Roman people? Some one will ask. What, did not they of Fregellai move of their own choice? Truly it was much the harder for them to move that they saw how all the rest had come off. For, without experience of things, such as are not able to seek ensamples concerning ev- erything soever from things done aforetime do most easily fall into that error for lack of knowledge ; but such as know what has befallen others are able easily, by the fortune of others, to provide for their own prospects. Was there nothing, then, to lead them on, no hope to make them bold to take up arms? But who can believe that such madness possessed any as to make him dare to assault the empery of the Roman people i84 LATIN LITERATURE, with no force to make him bold? Therefore there must needs have been something. What else can that be except what I say?" Of course this is more distinct and emphatic, but the ga'in involves a disproportionate expense in elaboration. The point that the revolt of Fregella^ cannot have been unsupport- ed is obvious, whether true or false ; and the longer it is dwelt on, the longer a sceptical hearer has to divine an alternative reason for a strange event. It is easier to approve the author's taste in the specnnen he gives of the simplest style to which an orator can de- scend. "When my client came into the baths, he began to be rubbed down after his douche. Presently, when he thought it time to go down into the hot bath, the other party called across the bath, ' Here, young fellow ! your people have been hustling ; you will have to make amends.' My client blushed ; at his a^ge he was not used to being hailed by a stranger. The other party began to say the same and the like much louder. My client just managed to say, ' Well, you must let me think about it.' Then the other party did begin to shout with that voice which is fit to bring a blush from the most hardened brawler, 'You are so sharp and impudent that you're not con- tent to practise even in the middle of the forum: you must get behind the scenes and to places of that kind.' The young fellow was disturbed; and no wonder, for he still felt the lect- ures of his pedagogue buzzing in his ears, and had never heard such abuse as that. For where, pray, should he have seen a rascal, bankrupt of blushes, who might well think he had not a rag of character to lose, and so might do everything without risking his reputation?" The unsuccessful attempt in the same style deserves all the author can say of it: "The other party came up to my client in the baths; says thereafter, ' Your servant here hustled me.' Thereafter my client says to him, 'I'll think it over.' Then the other grew abusive, and called out more and more in the presence of many." As the writer says, this has no style or composition or choice of vocabulary. He has not been at pains to construct a large specimen of the tumid style, which CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS. i8c is the danger to which those who aim at the impressive style are most exposed. " Whosoever traffics with foemen to betray the fatherland will never pay a fitting penalty; no, not though he be driven headlong to be engulfed of Neptune. So it repenteth him who hath fashioned mountains of war, abolished fair fields of peace." This corresponds to, '^ Who is there among you, judges, to be able to devise lit and due punishment for a man who has devised to betray tlie fatherland to enemies? What misdeed can be compared with this wickedness? what worthy chastise- ment be found for this misdeed?" and so on for twenty or thirty lines more, winding up with a rather tame display of in- genuity. The writer knew that the worst that could be done with a traitor was to banish him, and so, when he lias spent all his rhetoric on heightening the guilt of treason, he con- cludes that his words are too weak for the horror of the fact • but he finds this easier to bear, because the judges will, out of their abounding zeal for the country, drive the traitor head- long from the country which he sought to bring under the yoke of filthy enemies. The author is not satisfied with a specimen of each of the three styles which an orator requires to practise: he gives specimens of most of the different figures or ways in which a point can be put ; and it is among these that we find the pas- sages that read like criticism of Cicero. That the criticism is veiled is hardly surprising, for Cicero himself shrank from criticising his contemporaries, as we see from the amount of pressure that he describes in the " Brutus," before he will pay his tribute of vague eulogy to Caesar and candid courtesy to Hortensius, and justify his own self-complacency by a depre- catory description of his own training and endeavors. Who- ever the author was, he had more reason to avoid challenging a collision with Cicero than Cicero had to shun collisTons with others, though Cicero lacked the best defence for his rep- utation. With all his endeavors, he never founded a school of oratorv. The only speaker who seriously tried to form himself upon i86 LATIN LITERATURE. him was M. Claudius IVIarcellus, consul 51 B.C., who was in exile at Mytilene when Cicero wrote. He was a vehement opponent of Cxsar, and delayed his return from exile for nearly a year after he had been pardoned. He was an ac- complished and very painstaking speaker, who naturally fol- lowed the greatest and most laborious of contemporary ora- tors; and his fine voice and dignity of presence gave grace to the imitation. Afterwards he was completely forgotten, and the praise which Cicero puts into the mouth of Brutus, high as it is, sounds a little perfunctory. Something of the same perfunctory tone is to be traced in all that is said of the elo- quence of C. Julius Caesar: his greatness left men under the impression that he was, or might have been, a consummate orator, for in the early part of his career he had been a fre- quent and effective speaker. Cicero gives us to understand that he and Marcellus were, among politicians of mark, the only speakers to be named in the same breath with himself. As he leaves Brutus to characterize Marcellus, so he sets At- ticus to characterize Cxsar. It is clear that Caesar's special distinction was that he spoke better Latin than any statesman of the day. Cicero was a great master of the language, but he had learned it, while Cxsar knew it by hereditary instinct. Again, Cxsar was content with the language as it stood at its best, and only cared for the utmost attainable consistency of usage, while Cicero wished to enrich and vary the language, and in the judgment of Cxsar succeeded admirably. Being a very able man, he naturally had some share of most of the recognized merits of the day. The praise which both Cicero and Tacitus give, after they have done justice to his Latin and his general ability, turns upon something that they call "splen- dor." All the orators of Cicero's age, according to Tacitus, stand together on a far higher level than his own contempo- raries, and "splendor" is the special grace of Cxsar. Cicero is a little fuller. There was nothing tricky or puzzling in Cxsar's way of speaking : everything was clear and bright as in full sunshine; his voice, his figure, his bearing when he spoke, had all something high-bred and magnificent about them. This seems to apply to the speeches of his maturity; CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS. 187 according to Suetonius, when young he had imitated the easy, humorous vein of the elder Cxsar. Perhaps the prosecution of Dolabella might have succeeded better if the prosecutor, then only twenty-two years old, had been unmistakably seri- ous. Apparently this was not the speech by which later stu- dents judged him; and later students judged him amiss, for he took very little pains about the publication of his speeches; and Augustus had to protest with some vigor that most of the speeches which circulated in his name were an entirely inad- equate compilation from the public records and private tradi- tion. Apparently the speech for a certain Samnite, Decius, was authentic, and therefore critics fastened upon it and found it tedious; as they found Brutus's speech on behalf of King Deiotarus. Neither speaker was in a position to be passion- ate and effective at all hazards : when the ascendency of Sulla or of Cxsar was at its height, the advocate of a Samnite or of a king who had sided with Pompeius was obliged to be cau- tious. Either speech may have been a well-considered mani- festo on behalf of a defeated party, all the more valuable at the time for being too temperate for posterity. Cxsar took no pains to preserve the elaborate addresses which he issued daily when he was curule xdile and was restoring the statues of ]\Lirius. Perhaps Quinctilian, who flnds in his speeches the same vigor, the same rapid insight, the same decisive en- ergy as in his campaigns, may be thinking of the brief records of what he said when his position in the state was secure. The phrase is not merely conventional, for he thinks a student might gain by studying Cxsar as well as Cicero, and so add some additional vigor to the completeness and grace which he might learn from Cicero. As a man of action he could be round and peremptory beyond the ordinary measure of speakers who lived upon the applause of an audience. An exceedingly elegant speaker, who had, and sought, no political position, was M. Calidius. He hardly stood above the common crowd of advocates, but among them he was quite unique. If he had had the power of contagious passion, he would have been a great orator: as it was, he was a most ex- quisite and ingenious advocate, who never missed the real i88 LA TLV LITEKA TURK. point of a case, and delighted connoissems by tlie perfect clearness ofhis explanation and by the felicity of his diction, which seemed perfectly natural and appropriate, in spite of an abundant display of ornament of all kinds— rhetorical fic^. urcs, musical cadences (which were never obtruded), and met aphors which came in without effort. He dealt much in aph- orisms of a kind whose application it was difficult to discover until they had been enunciated in his smooth, easy, transpar- ent language He is only known by the high praise which Cicero gives him, which perhaps is higher because he had once treated him very cruelly in open court. Calidius ac- cused one Cn. Gcliius of an attempt to poison him, and set lorth the case with his accustomed neatness and precision Cicero sa.d what was to be said in reply, and then told Ca- lidius he was a great deal too cool about such a char-e to have believed in it. While making it he had never slapped his forehead or his thigh; he had not so much as stamped his loot. So far from moving the court, he had almost sent it to sleep. _ The generation who were young when Cicero was celebrated inc uded three considerable speakers who passed away while still young: C. Curio, .M. Ca^lius Rufus, and C. Licinius Cal- vus. Of these Curio was, upon the whole, the most important as a politician, and perhaps not the least effective as an ora- tor. Cicero regrets that, after trying to make his way with the approval of the nobility and all respectable citizens, he decided to pay his debts by siding with Cx-sar. He, like his father, was noted rather for energy than for skilful argument or literary culture. He was not indiflerent to purely oratori- ca training though, according to Cicero, he was more remark- able for zeal than diligence. M. Cffilius Rufus pained Cicero in the same wav, though he lived ong enough to turn against Caesar as too conservative out of an insatiable desire to fish in troubled waters His speeches were more read than Curio's, though he filled less space in history. He made his three best speeches compara- tively early and unlike Calidius, who spoke best in defence, he was celebrated as an accuser. He prosecuted C. Antonius fc> CICERO'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS. 189 in 59 B.C. for his malversations in Macedonia, and L. Sempro- nius Atratinus; the third accused was cither D. La^lius or Q. Pompeius Rufus, who was tribune 53 B.C., and who was sedi- tious in support of .Milo. Wlien curule icdile he dehvered sev- eral harangues to the people which were all in favor of strict- ness of administration : one, on the variety of frauds in the management of aqueducts, had been read with diligence by Frontinus in the latter part of the first century a.d. "^Hc was celebrated both for his wit and for a certain air of elevation He had a very happy knack of inventing details and pourin- contcmpt upon his opponents. Phrases like a ">/-//////"...st have been a minority of the male population) were al- owed to retain their lands ami a good deal of their institu- tions, and were treated wi.h considerable forbearance bv the representatives of the conquering power. The first experi- ence of Roman rule had often been like the experience of the natives of Ireland ; the first experience the Gauls had of it ' "If men must sin, the fairest prize of sin .Shoiikl be a throne : else jjiety is well." LA TIN LITER A TURE. 2IO WIS more like the experience of the natives of India. It is m,e r.t the poor and distant tribes of the northwest were r ate more harshly than the tribes of Central Gaul, wh.ch had 'iven greater p,^vocation ; but the same reasons of m>h- tarv convenience told in favor of Aciiiitania. , , .. C^s^r-s clemency to Romans, tiio.glt not mKalculatnig, was more disinterested : it sprang from a native generos. ty which no opposition could tiro, no treachery exhaust. 1 he liuhlsiasm of his followers was boundless. The grea oath of his chief lieutenants, from Antony downwards, was Ita \ o rJ^^aie moriar " They wished to leave the>r loader >n the wo" d vl ey died, Is other Romans wished to leave then^ clS en or thei' brothers ; if they lost hin,, ^ - -orU woul be enptv to them, just .as it would bo to a father who had DC cmpiv L^ I >J „,.,rchiU wore wearv of hmi : lost his children. Napoleon s "•*^,^''^'^/.y^ J\?4, Napo- he said himself, "When I am dead, ^« dt,a ouf , but Mai o eon ws cynical, and there is not a trace of cyn.csm ur Ca.- ir There is n;t a word in his writings, or in the anecdotes about] 'mo indicate that he despised or disliked h,s fellows 'nd this s wonderful, considering his i,nn,ense super.onty, Td a lo his entire unscrupulousness. Another contras .s, H?.t hels extremely generous in his treatment of h.s subo - d ah never tluows the blame on their mistakes and when he has to narrate their failures, excuses them as far as ;Sble, without stating or implying that there .s a fault to "HTs'-^reat work was written year by year for se^^n years in the intervals of his campaigns, with an ease and rap.chty wh h astonished Hirtius. It does not profess to b a te- torv but onlv materials for history ; though, as H.rt.us and Cicero udiciously observe, the m.aterials were so excelle t Sat no\n elligen't historian ventured to use them for a work oftts own. C.sar-s " Commentaries " ^^ ^^^^^f^. conquest of Gaul, and few parts of anccnt ^^'^'°:> =^' ';\^ . Iv so well told : but they are not qu.te a history such as 1 ac U,s w"u d h.ve given u^, still less such a history as we shot, •e d" ired from a modern writer. For ^^:^^ \? '^ • .„r (hot r-vsnr went nto Cisalpme Gaul, to almost every wmter that C«sai wcm uuv ^ i CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. hold the district courts," {ad conventiis agendas). Now, Cce- sar's administration of Cisalpine Gaul must have had .a his- tory which deserved to be told, for the extension of Roman citizenship to the country between (he Alps and I>o was an important point of his ijrogramine. Again, it appears that tlie Germans established their set- tlements in the two provinces to the west of the Rhine durin- his tenure of power ; but he does not tell us this expressly'^ he only tells us how he defeated the Germans when thev at- tomptwl to coerce friendly tribes, or to assist unfriendly tribes and almost suggests that whenever tliey crossed the Rhine they were driven back with loss. So, too, he never tells us what were the relations he established with the conquered tribes in Gaul, how much of their institutions he left to them how much authority he claimed for himself or his renresenta' tives over the native tribes. He leaves it certainly to be understood that the only occasion on which he exercised any- h.ng like jurisdiction was in what might be called slafe trials; but, in general, he tells us nothing, and Hirtius his contmuator, tells us nothing, of his civil administration Na- p.er, ,n wTiting of the Peninsular War, intended to write be- fore all things a military history, yet he tells us much more .n proportion of the relation of Wellington to the Inquisition and the Spanish Constitutionalists. Nor can it be said that Ca;sar confines himself rigidly to military history • he de- scribes not only the Germans, with whom he was the first civ- ilized writer to come in contact, but the Gauls, who were pretty well known from other sources— as Strabo thinks at much greater length than was necessary to make his narra- tive intelligible : in fact, he seems to use the avowed incom- pleteness of commentaries to enable him to say just as much as he wished As a military history the "Commentaries" are full ; they tell us, with a frankness that perhaps is intended t\ir^".T' '' "°"T °^"' ^"''^^^''"■'^ movement.s, great and sinall. I here is nowhere any attempt at picturesqueness The surrender of Vercingetori.v, one of the most romantic scenes in ancient history, is dismissed in a couple of w-ords • we only know the details from Dion, a writer of the third cen' 212 LA TIN LITER A TURE. CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. 213 cuted after Caesar's triumph^ ^^^ ^.^ ., ^^^^^ Cxsai's narrative, both of the <^-il"C ^ j. is ingeniously arranged to ^^'^^^J^^^^^^^Z^^:^, an'd the ^K-.fj^n He tries lo show tnat ne conqucicu ^ ambition, nc uicb lu Ar^mrentlv the migra- neither of which he was responsible, deteimmea a ,onvUlins to represent i.s »' " 1* "' ,„ senate. Ki the same way. Cxsa. gives us to m rr^own ;^;:::iS:;na\^^ so -ch to ten ^ or ^ns :::. -^s, how nttie he tells us of i.s pi.^: ^j^^^^-^^:;:):^ to claim credit for making any It is true J^'^^,*^; .j, nart except towards the close of his career, he ^^''^^^^^y % vl\tclled; but so was Napoleon in tl- -rnpaign o^^^^^^^^^ rengo, although this campaign was planned for a countr> roads and maps, more favorable, therefore, to elaborate com- binations. The impression that Caesar and his lieutenants give us is, that he had a quick eye for what was essential and feasible, and could execute it with such courage and rapiditv as commonly disconcerted his opponents. It is clear, too, that he had a singular faculty for keeping his army in hand, and for keeping it in good heart. He was a strict'disciplinarian, never allowing his soldiers to discuss his action : his army at no time bore any resemblance to a French revolutionary army, having been in the first instance recruited and officered under a comparatively regular state of things. One of the worst crimes of Titurius Sabinus seems to have been his appealino- to the soldiers in order to reinforce his own alarms, and there*^ by overbearing his wiser colleague, who wished to remain in the camp until relieved by Coesar. The narrative is clear and terse, but too full to be rapid : there is less ornament, or rath- er less elaborate description, than even in Thucydides. I'he only things which could be spared, though we should be sorry to miss them, are the descriptions of individual heroism. For instance, the account of Cicero's defence of his cantonments would be quite sufficiently intelligible without the splendid episode of the two centurions. ''\w that legion there were two centurions of such excellent valor that they stood high for promotion, Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus " (the second names might, by an easy conjecture, be Englished ''Chick" and "Gobble"). "They were always disputing with one an- other about who was to get first preferment, and every year they had a very bitter strife for their step. Pullo was the one to say, when there was very sharp fighting going on at the works, 'Why think twice, Vorenus ? Can you look out for a better chance to prove your valor .^ This is the day to decide the case between us.' When he had said that, he advanced beyond the works, and charged at the densest body of the enemy he could see. Then Vorenus would not stay within the works either: he followed, knowing that everybody was watching and judging him. When he got within short range, Pullo threw his javelin against the enemy, and pierced olie who came forward to meet him : as he was wounded and y: LA TIN- LITER A TURE. senseless they covered him with shields, and all ihrew their ™ns at o'ne enemy, and gave him no chance o retreat PMllo had his shield pierced, and a dart stuck m hs bet. Th ad en forced hfs scabbard aside, and balked h.s r.ght liul 'd n 1 e tried to draw his sword ; and the enemy sur- ':" did him while thus hampered. Vore.,us though no friend of his, came up and helped hun n> - ^"".',,ete' 1" mnltitude turned at once upon hnn f'^j" ^ "''°; ,,/ '^"X" Vorenus charged briskly with the sword, and wen to wo.k at close quarters ; killed one, and made the rest give ground till pressing on too eagerly he got down on lower ground and Jt^umbled. ^Vhen he was hemmed in, Pullo's turn came to l^ g him help : and both, after plentiful slaughter, came back safe and sound within the lines, covered wuh glory, bo fort- une phed each of them in their strife and contention, so St an^dy that of two enemies each helped and saved the otherf and it could not be determined which of the two was to be 'preferred to his fellow for valor." The style is perceptibly more archaic than u, the mo,e business-like parts of the narrative ; one might almost sus- pe t that Cxsar was condescending to show that he appre- dated the finer parts of the old annalists; for Cxsar was a iterary connoisseur, and found time to.;"''^^;" J""};;;^;' and spent all the evening, when he visited Cicero after 1 hai- salia,on philological discussion. The greater part of the " Commentaries," however, have been written without any La - in modd, for Su la and LucuUus wrote in Greek; and though Ca^ history was disproportionatdy full when he came o speak of his own services, he cannot have writ en on anything like so large a scale. The only Greek work which C«;sar can have had before him as worth imitating would be the "Anabasis" of Xenophon, a writer '""^'^ ™°''%"rrdn"t'o ec^oistical, and whose one achievement in life was 1 is hdp to diirisophus on one long and difficult march, - ^'cMemaik- able as it was, had more significance for P°l''' lonrrth of ihcir education. Ini^ sug^esib ma Srev ::^e 1 li^e i.-s of the schoolmen ; for scholnst,- c sm "s < cledly a French, not to say a Celtic, product. ■he ''CI Wars" arc less complete Nvithnr then- range; .e ll^ar nothing of the course of events at J^on.e, except so ■ much of his diplomacy as it suits Ca=sar to tell. He pioxes Te se t int h was more conciliatory than Ins encnnes, «1 o "U led l-ompeius:M,e hints the worst, and —^ to nothin.^ as to what they really meant. Did they wi.h to cm h L:ar, or simply to prove that the co-t.tut.on wa ,00 stron- for him, as they had proved already that 1 °»M^'J 5one°was not loo strong for the constuut.on? Was thcr 'Ir n ent hat Caesar should have a second consulate, pro- ,U r left his army behind and Tompeius kept '-• -^ - «' bv Ox^sar's advance t,. .\riminum? Ca>sar does not tell us ? it had been as frank in his narrative of the nur^ues a^ Rome as he was in his narrative of nUngues n. Gaul he o c have offended many people xvhom -- -I-'- ^^ gain- he would have had to acknowledge that he w. s a re o fu ionist and would have lost the advantage which h.s ad m- able temper had given him, of putting his opponents >n he vton. oAu matters of precedent. As it was, he gives he n pr^ssion that the senate would have been in his favoi, if it ha been free, and was coerced by the ill-regulated ambition of Lei tl and the jealous vanity of Tompeius, who was sup- ine bv his second father-in-law. There is an ingenious E ntion (endorsed, to some extent, by Cicero in his bitter tcTto Lucceius) that Ixntulus thought he was going to be a second Sulla, and was heavily in debt, and was read to make s own bargain with Cxsar, after all. P.eyond th. , and one or two gibes at Cato, the narrative spares the aristoc- 4 The conduct of Uomitius, who thrcwh mself into U^-^ segues after being pardoned at Corfniium, and •'- ^« / - Marseilles to fall at I'harsalia— rejoicing, as I.ucan sa\s, o hJ^xtca'ped a second pardon-only moves Cxsar to note CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. 217 how apt that ''ferocious scoundrel," as Dean Merivale calls him, was to leave his troops in the lurch. Caesar does not decide whether Ponipeius evacuated Italy because he had no choice or because it was his plan from the first. He lays some stress on the alacrity with which Northern and Central Italy pronounced in his favor, but he does not discuss or extenuate the curious attachment of the Marsi and their neighbors to the cause of the senate, or the more intelli- gible devotion of Campania, where all the grandees had estates, to the cause of the nobility. While passing over points like these, Caesar misses no opportunity of setting forth that he was the champion of law and order against the revolutionary proceedings of factious aristocrats. He dilates on the harsh measures of Varro in Andalusia, and of Scipio and Milo in Rome. Cailius had been made pnxtor by Caisar, IMilo had been banished by Pompeius in the third consulate, which Cicero thought divine, while Caesar thought the virtue of Pompeius had brought public affiiirs into a tolerable state; but both united to raise the party of debtors in the name of Pompeius. * Cx^sar is not a purist. He never hints that Curio wa's a compromising adherent ; he handles his fatal and unsuccessful raid upon Africa very tenderly : he dwells more upon his enterprise and gallantry, and upon his reasons to be sanguine, than upon his failure to utilize half the resources at his dis- posal. Of course due stress is laid upon Juba's cruelty to the captives, whom Attius Varus, one of the least incapable of the lieutenants of Pompeius, failed to protect, after they had surrendered to him upon the ordinary terms. The murder of Pompeius is narrated much more coolly. Cassar speaks with more feeling of the treasure of Ephesus, which fortune gave him the opportunity of saving twice. The only trace of emotion is that Achillas, the Egyptian commander- in-chief, who received and slaughtered Pompeius, is called a man of singular daring. Perhaps, too, if the war had not been prefaced by an assassination, the account of the forces under Achillas might have been less caustic. "They were such that their number, their character, their military experiences I. — 10 o LA TIN LITER A TURE. f TTr^ ivifl twentv thousand of ,„ight appear ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ soUUers, who them under arms. lhc> consisiLu u license of had come already into the custom of the 'f^/" "^ \°; A,e.andria, had .m.earned -^^^^Xt^"^^ r:-S!:' ' ■llt::r: -n^rced ^^ ., .sonm^^^ f ,i.,t.nnd exiles- all our runaways had a sure refuge rXl ::; S ' a -; livelihood ; they had only to give in hdr name and be put on the soldier roll: then, .any o em were challenged ly his master, the -1 - raH.ed and brou-ht him off; for they bore the.r men out n violence be cCe \l "ere in the like fault, and each thought to fend off h own p ri . These were the men who had used themselves to ckma lin^ the execution of courtiers, to plundermg the ITo tle^■ich, to beset the kings house to get the.r fnv raised to driv; one iVom the kingdo.n and br,..g ui an- 'o 4 , all after the old use and wont of the army of Alexa.v d ia Besides, there were two thousand cavalry All the e vvere veterans of mo.e than one of the wars oAlexandr.a: r; liri^brought back Ptolema^us the elder to ius .ngc om ,\.L hid shin the two sons of Bibulus. 1 hc> had oucn Se '; war ui^u Egyptians. Such was their milita,y expe- ''Srl is little or nothing of the archaisms of tl. more 1 f t.nc^no-Ps of the " Commentaries on the Oallic \\ ar, "^^^^^ elaborate structure of the level nar- rat ve The stvle is at onee less careful and easier more ani- rn^d and more monotonous : there is not so much endeavor To make a complicated statement clearly in a single sentence , fL r pa m'raphs open with an ablative absolute followed by ? TepS lirticiple ; perhaps, too, there are fewer of he rather nave sentences in which each clause ends in a verb nf he sar^eten e and termination. There is also less piety ; :^a?n ore of fortune, and decidedly less of the imn.ortal ::d^ : ^el ps Ccesar felt it incongruous - boast ot.r^^ ?ng in a civil war, and throughout the tone of the narrative CMSAR'S COMMENTARIES. 219 less cheerful; sometimes it is almost querulous. One may instance the description of the opposition of the Yimous trib- une Mctellus : Caisar does not say a word of his own designs upon the treasurv, and gives us to understand that he was baf- fled in everything. Still more noticeable is the way in which he treats the two unsuccessful engagements before Dyrra- chium • he will not allow that the fust was a defeat, the second was only a slight one; such as it was, it was due to a mere accident, like the defeat before Gergovia, and the elation of Pompeius and his army was quite unfounded and unreason- able A whole chapter is devoted to this topic. There is not k line to show how precarious, not to say desperate, was the position from which the impatience of the aristocracy and the vain confidence of Pompeius delivered Caesar by the bat- tle of Pharsalia. In fact, it seems to have been part of Caesar s system to underrate risks both in action and description. He represents the Alexandrine war (where he was in urgent peril till he had occupied Pharos and burned great part of the Egyp- tian fleet) as an enterprise undertaken out of a disinterested sense of consular decorum, too keen to allow him to stand by and see the heritage of a king whom the Roman people had restored to his throne fought for in his presence. Of course the brief and guarded statement was intended to parry plen- tiful gossip about the fascinations of Cleopatra ; by itself it hardly sufficed. . Hirtius, who narrates the sequel of the Alexandrine War, finds it necessary to explain, with an air of sympathetic frank- ness, how natural it was for the Egyptians to make a last effort to keep the Romans out of their country. *' It was but a few years since Gabinius had been in Egypt with an army : Pompeius had fallen back on Egypt in his flight; Caesar had come with ships and troops : the death of Pompeius had done no good, it had not prevented the stay of Caesar. Unless he were driven out, Egypt would be a province, not a kingdom; and that must be done betimes, while the tempest and the season of the year shut him in, so that he could receive no help from over sea." Hirtius is less enthusiastic than Caesar as to the valor of LA TIN LITER A TURF CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. 220 LA TIN LITER A TURE. his comrades. Cnssar never, after the first German campaign, records such depression as seems to have taken possession^of the forces that held part of Alexandria, when Ganymedes had brought sea-water into their cisterns; and the distress at Ilerda had been at least as severe, and lasted longer. He obviously admires the versatility of the Alexandrines, who, in all that belongs to street-fighting, seem to have been able, with the advantage of their superior numbers, to hold their own, and something more, against Caesar, who was superior both in the field and in regular sea-fights, even when he had none of his soldiers aboard, as the Rhodians manceuvred and fought better than the Egyptians. Not that Hirtius cares to depreciate the Egyptians, though he cannot help exclaiming at the truly kingly dissimulation of young Ptolema^us, who cried at parting with Ca-sar, and had to^be consoled' with the prospect of an early meeting, as soon as the pacification had been arranged which his subjects professed to desire Apparently they were tears of joy, for as soon as he was free he threw himself into the war with as much energy as his sub- jects, who only pretended a wish for peace in order to get him out of CcX\sar's quarters. The Alexandrine War is not the only subject of the book which carries the history of the Civil War from the point at which Caesar's ''Commentaries" leave off to his return to Rome after the victory over Pharnaces. This gives the book a very episodical character, for the operations in the south of Spain had no connection of any kind with those in Egypt; and the check of Domitius, who was compelled to fall back into the province of Asia, after an unsuccessful engagement with Pharnaces, did nothing to add to the dangers of C\xsar, or to hinder the advance of the army under Mithridates of Pergamos which ultimately relieved him. The result is that Hirtius has to tell each story separately, without attempting to link them together. First we have the history of Caesar's combats, till the final settlement of affairs in Egypt; then the affairs of Pharnaces, until Ccesar was ready to deal with him ; then Caesar and Pharnaces are left to wait till the end of the book, while we hear of the performances of Gabinius and Vatinius v-mm^^^-c! 222 LATIN LITERATURE. CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. 221 and Octavius, on the coast of Illyricum ; and, at much greater lencrth,how Cassius made money in his province out of every- thing even a conspiracy to assassinate him, and how at length he hi\ to leave the province to a successor, who might very well have dispossessed him by force, as half the province was alreadv in revolt against his authority. As Cassius and his treasure were swamped at the mouth of the Ebro, because his pride would not allow him to retreat by land, the affair ended without immediate consequences, and might have been passed over although it contributed, not very remotely, to the second Spanish war, which Hirtius intended to relate in due course. Still, the episode might have been curtailed if Hirtius had not owed a brother officer an ill turn. He writes candidly and cleverly: one phrase is worthy of Tacitus, where he says that the news of Pharsalia forced a little gladness out of Cassms, " Lxtitiam exprimebat ;" though he takes more words than Tac- itus would have taken to explain why the gladness of Cassius was not spontaneous. Tacitus, too, would have carried the art of damaging candor to a person he dislikes much further ; he would have been undeniably fair, without taking so much visible pains to be fair as Hirtius. In his own way, Hirtius is not without literary ambition ; he tries to be ingenious about the perfidy of the Alexandrines, and eloquent about the tyranny of Pharnaces, who seized the most beautiful of both sexes for his harem, inflicting a punishment, says Hirtius, worse than death. He is a good conservative, and disapproves, like his chief, of the recurring efforts of the mob of Rome and its would-be leaders to use Caesar's victory as an occasion of dis- order. His style is more elaborate than that of the "Civil War ; " it is modelled upon the full, serried order of the " Gallic War.'" It comes a little short of their sublime air of imparti- ality. Caesar's own explanations of his conduct never seem the least like apologies ; he never seems to boast of his achieve- ments. Hirtius visibly admires his commander always, and sometimes defends him. He deserves credit for his freedom from Caesar's few mannerisms, such as the frequent use of nactus in the " Civil War," of ^^ res and guce res in the ''Gallic W\ar;" but there are a few traces of imperfect education— ^-2CQj />' c rOMArKA'TARJES. lit 222 I. A TliX LITER A TUKE. phrases are used without a clear perception of their natural meaning. Infcne momm and hifcrrc cwufationcm are good and natural by themselves, or even together, but they do not justify such a sentence as iXc'que rcro ALxamlrmis in gc-rendis ;!,^o/iis amclalio ulla aut mom wfcrcbatur. It rested with the Alex andrmes to delay or not, and Jiirtius probably means that they chose not to delay; but what he says would almost im- ply that there was nothing to hinder their bein- cnercretic The narrative of Hirtius is continued, by au infertor I,and or hands to the end of the second Spanish war, which is prob- ably as far as Hirtius meant to go ; for there were no seri- ous military operations between tlie battle of Munda and the death of Caesar, which he fixed as the period of his history rhe conlnuiator's work is in a very fragmentary state, and leaves off abruptly ui the middle of an harangue in which Caesar rebukes the people of Gades for their persistent disaf- fection ; mforming them that, even if ihev had been able to compass his death, they would still have had to deal with the valor of the Roman legions - legions which were stron-^ enough to pull down the heavens. It is noteworthy that the speech ^^xnoratio recta: throughout the Commentaries of Caesar and Hirtius almost everything is put in oratio oMiyua, as f set speeches were too much of a literary ornament fo^ such simple memoirs. Altogether the books on the African and Spanish wars show a strong though ill-regulated ambition thevT' ;"^- '" .'""'°^ °^ """'°^^ -*^ uneducated, and hey do not care for simplicity ; they are not exactly pr^en- tious, but they wish to write like a book The author of the "African War" still imitates C.Tsar pretty closely m everything but ease and elegance He is rough and cumbrous, and a little over-emphatic ; for one hingj,e IS very fond of the historical infinitive; he indulges, work, which Cfesar does not employ. The book has an in- terest, because the author was not of the rank of Hirtius, and some 'o?ti:: ""^ 'r"" ""^ ^'"^"^- ^- '-'--e, wh „ tirLlL f T'n °^'"'' ''"■" '^'^"'■^■'^^ ^°°" •-'f'^r landing, the w liter feels that it served them right, yet seems to think 22d LA 77 A' I ri'fi'i.>jrr^i?ir CESAR'S COMMENTARIES. 223 that Caesar almost descended to sharp practice in availing himself of such a little petty bit of a cause as the conduct of Avienus, who filled a whole ship with his stores, his house- hold, and his riding-horse and sumpter animals, without bring- ing over a single soldier from Sicily. He admires Caesar's clemcncv, but the admiration is rather Platonic ; he does not seem shocked when he tells us how the soldiers after Thapsus cut down the troops of Scipio, under the eyes of Caesar, who vainly begged his men to be merciful, though he thinks the veterans went rather too far in attacking the nobles and knights who served in Cassar's army, and were called auctores by a curious piece of slang. It was natural enough that an army in a civil war should wish for some personages of posi- tion at its head, who should not merely act as generals, but is always especially bland and conciliatory in his language to "citizens of tlie more slender sort,"' and gives us to under- stand that it was only Clodius who taught them to make a trade of disorder ; according to Sallust, even Catilina found the lesson ready taught. The reason that the mine which Sulla laid was tired when it was did not lie deep, if we may trust Sallust; Catilina was driven to his destruction by a guilty conscience — he had poisoned his son to make room for his mistress. The absence of Pompeius had given the nobil- ity a temporary preponderance, which they used unsparingly; and the commons, and all who traded on their discontent, were ready to rally round any chief who would break the yoke which it seemed had been shaken oft' He supplies also a more prosaic explanation. When Catilina had been pre- vented from standing for the consulate by an unfair manoeu- vre two years before, he had contemplated killing the consuls and sending a partisan to seize Spain. The consuls were not killed, according to the story, because Catilina gave the signal before his friends were ready ; the partisan was sent to Spain with a regular though lower commission, procured by the influence of Crassus and of " many excellent citizens who thought he was to be trusted," as a counterpoise to Pom- peius, whose Spanish friends put Catilina's friend out of the way. There was an end of the first conspiracy. As to the second, Cicero, who had been inclined to coalesce with Cati- lina, had secured his own election by retailing the wild talk of the silliest of Catilina's intimates, and was hard at work improving them into a foundation for a formal charge of high- treason. Still Catilina kept the peace till he knew that the election had gone against him once more ; he only left Rome when he saw that the senate was willing to accept denuncia- tion as an equivalent to proof. Sallust speaks of the "craft and cunning"' of the consul as quite on a par v.ith the de- vices of the conspirators. On one point Sallust's judgment is decisive against some modern theories. Catilina's enterprise, whatever it was, had no serious chances. He would have raised a formidable civil ' " Tenuiores civiuni." "•' "Dolus atque astutiae." war if he had not been crushed in the first engagement; and, vv'hether he or the government had been victorious, neither would have been strong enough to profit by the victory: some third party of real consequence would have struck in to estab- lish a dictatorship on the ruins of the constitution. Brilliant and attractive as Catilina was, he was only a storm-bird and a firebrand. It is curious how exactly the greater part of the character Sallust gives him fits a more brilliant adventurer, at once less unfortunate, less criminal, and more mischievous— the famous Cardmal de Retz. "A body to bear firsting, chill, and w\atching in a manner beyond belief; a spirit bofd, sub- tle, changeable, fit for any semblance or dissemblance soever, greedy of other men's goods, lavish of his own, burning in de- sires; eloquence enough, wisdom scant; a great unfurnished spirit, full of immoderate, incredible, high -reaching wishes." Catilina suffered, like Byron, for the wilful neglect of his body in the perversion of his instincts ; De Retz, who treated his more kindly, lived to prosper and reform. But Sallust, who is always eager to assert the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh, mentions Catilina's austerities to his praise, just as he admires Jugurtha for keeping to the good hardy habits of his nation instead of wasting himself in sloth and pomp. From most points of view the "Jugurtha" is an hiiprovement on the " Catilina." The same pohits are made in the exordium, but they are made better; we have a mov- ing piece of eloquence instead of a frigid heap of aphorisms, some of which are impressive and some are bald. The open- ing is translated, as showing the best side of a character which did not bear late prosperity faultlessly. "The race of man complains of its nature, not aright, that, being feeble and of short continuance, hap, rather than virtue, beareth rule. For think of it the other way, you find there is nothing greater nor more excellent, and our nature lacks the energy of man far more than strength or time. But the leader and com- mander of the life of mortals is the spirit, which, if it advances to glory in the way of virtue, with strength and stoutness enough, it gets renown, and needs not fortune, inasmuch as she has no power to give or take away any man's honesty, in- 234 LA TIN LITER A TURE. SALLUST. 235 dustry, or anght of good behavior. But if, being taken of evil desires, it falls into perdition of sloth and bodily pleasures, after brief use of deadly delights, when strength and time and wit have ebbed away by reason of dulness of heart, then men cry out against the weakness of nature, and each in his plea lays his fault upon dumb things. Lut if men had so much care for good things as zeal to seek what touches nor shall profit them— ay, and brings much peril too — then they should be not ruled by chance, but rulers over chance, and go so far in greatness as, being mortal, to attain eternal glory ; for as the race of man is made up of body and soul, so all things and all our pursuits follow, some the nature of the body, some the nature of the spirit. Therefore, a beautiful countenance and great riches and strength of body, with all and whatever else is of this f\ishion, come to nothing in short space ; but the excellent feats of the spirit are immortal like the soul. \x\ a word, as to the goods of the body and of fortune, as their be- ginning so is their end — they all have their rising and their setting, and only increase to wax old ; but the spirit eternal, incorruptible, the ruler of the race of men, sways all things, possesses all things, and is not possessed.' Wherefore their depravity is more wonderful who, given up to bodily joys, spend their time in sloth and luxury: while their wit, than which is nothing either better or greater in the nature of mor- tals, they leave to rust and wither without culture or diligence; and that, when the devices of the spirit are so manifold, and high renown is won by all." Then comes an apology, less querulous and more dignified than that in the " Catilina," for being an historian, not a statesman. Here he breaks off his rhetoric and begins his history, with an imitation of Thucydides ; he writes the war of Jugurtha for somethiniz the same reason as Thucydides writes the war of Peloponnese. Even the escalade of the castle by the Mulucha is described with an eye to the Platxans' escalade of the lines of circumvallation; the garrison of Zama watch the fight be- tween IMctellus and Jugurtha as the Athenians in the camp ^ This allusion to Aristippus proves that Sallust felt no vocation to re- nounce pleasure, only to subdue it. watched the last battle in the harbor of Syracuse; the Punic books, said to belong to King Hiempsal, remind us of the most learned of the Peloponnesians, who are introduced in just the same way as vouchers for a piece of antiquarian information not very accurate or relevant. At the same time, as contem- porary Egyptian inscriptions of the thirteenth century b.c. are held to prove that Armenians at any rate joined Libyans then in an invasion of Egypt, there may have been some real foun- dation for the tradition which reached Sallust in its latest form. If we could trust Sallust, who did not know Punic, and was therefore dependent upon interpreters whom he did not cross-examine, the Africans reported that Hercules died in Spain; and then his army broke up, and the Persians, Medes, and Armenians crossed into Africa and settled along the rano-e of Atlas from west to east. But, in general, the digressions do not overpower the narra- tive as in the "Catilina;" the question whether we are read- ing a history or an essay does not arise. For one thing, the thesis that the venality of the nobles was to blame for atl' the trouble which arose about Jugurtha is easier to prove than the thesis that the Sullan restoration was to blame for Catilina: for another, the events to be narrated were more varied, and spread over a longer time. The conspiracy of Catilina did not furnish matter for a book, when authors were unwilling or unable to go thoroughly into its secret history. The hisU^ry of Jugurtha is incomplete, at least for modern readers; it never appears why the commons or their leaders were so eager to expose his misdemeanors and those of his senatorial supporters. His quarrels with his relations were of no prac- tical concern to the Roman people, and a war with him pro- duced a good deal of inconvenience to business men, as Sal- lust lets us see more than once. Adherbal was compelled to surrender by the Italian traders of Cirta, whose assistance had enabled him for a time to hold out. When the scandal of Jugurtha's treaty with Albinus was beginning to be formidable. It was the representatives of the business community, espe- cially Latin citizens, who were put forward by the aristocracy to hinder measures which they would have compromised ?A O 1t\ LA TIX LITER A Tl 7v'A\ T T T r r^ 'r% 236 LA TIN LI TEA' A TCRE. SALLUST. 237 themselves too much by opposing cHrectly. In fact, the pop- ular enthusiasm, which overbore all obstacles, was ckie, as Sal- lust says, less to care for the republic than to hatred of the nobilitv. Iw the same wav, it seems that it was onlv the energy of Memmius which secured, first that the death of Adherbal should be avenged by war, and then that the con- vention with Ijestia which Scaurus had sanctioned should be set aside. On the latter occasion Sallust professes to give one of tiie many harangues of Memmius, which is full of elab- orate imitations of the self devotion of the younger Gracchus; for the rest, he appeals throughout to passion, not to interest, and hardly even to dignity. "Slaves bought with money re- fuse unjust orders from their masters: will you, Quirites, born to empire, be patient under slavery? Ay, but who are these who have seized upon the commonwealth.^ The wickedest of men; men of bloody hands and monstrous avarice; men most guilty and withal most proud; who count faith, dignity, duty, ay, all honor and all dishonor, but as merchandise. Some have slain tribunes of the commons, some have brouirht vou to unrighteous judgment, many to slaughter; that is their con- fidence, so the greatest villain is the safest for his villany: your cowardice bears the burden of dismay, due to tiieir guilt; the same desires, the same hatreds, the same fears, unite them all in one. Among good citizens that is friendship, among bad citizens faction. If you so took care for liberty as they are on fire for tyranny, certainly the commonwealth would not be laid waste as it is now, and your favor would rest upon the best, not upon the boldest. Your ancestors twice over with- drew themselves and sat down in arms on Mount Aventine to obtain justice and establish their majesty; and you, do you not think the liberty you inherited from them worth an earnest struggle, and that the more hearty, the more shame there is in losing what is won than in never getting at all? Some one will say. What, then, do you advise? Vengeance on those who have betrayed the commonwealth to the enemy; ven- geance, not by blows or by violence, both more unseemly for you to inflict than for them to endure, but by the courts and the evidence Jugurtha will give against his accomplices. If he has surrendered, he will obey your orders. If he despises them, then no doubt you will put the right value on that strange kind of a thing, be it peace or surrender, which brings to Jugurtha impunity for his crimes, to a few powerful men enormous riches, and to the commonwealth calamity and dis- honor." The political part of the history is decidedly the most interesting; the military part is vague, like most military writ- ing in Latin except Caesar's. It is not clear what the boun- dary between Jugurtha's kingdom and that of Adherbal u'as, though we can see that Jugurtha's corresponded roughly to the province ofOran, and Adherbal's roughly to that of Constan- tine. We are not told either how much of the kingdom of Jugurtha liestia had occupied — for Sallust is careful to explain that he was a competent though venal commander — or how much had been conquered by Metellus or made a voluntary submission. Still less do we know what was the situation of the different desert castles and towns which in the latter stage of the war the Romans captured one after another, though the last, we know, was near the river which divided the dominions of Locchus and Jugurtha. Then, again, w^e are told that fight- ing went on for forty days before Thala, but this is dismissed in a line. More space is given to the preparations for a march of fifty miles without water which was necessary to reach Thala, more space even to the final debauch of the Roman deserters, who burned the treasure for the sake of which Metellus had formed the siege. It never appears whether Metellus or even Marius was a better c^eneral than Jugurtha, or whether the superiority of both in the field was not due simply to the fact that their troops w'ere disciplined and his were not. When this had been proved, it was impos- sible for Jugurtha to trust any of his nobles; for Metellus, whom Sallust admires almost without reserve, thought it bet- ter to devote his attention to suborning treason than to organ- izing flying columns. This does not shock Sallust in the least, and it shows how very much public opinion had altered since the days of Pyrrhus. Even the arrest of a courtier of Jugurtha on a charge of procuring the assassination of a pre- A 238 LA TIN LITER A TURE, tender is not beyond apology. True, he was covered by the safe-conduct under which Jugurtha and his attendants came to Rome, but he was dealt with on the merits of the case. To massacre the males of a town that had surrendered,' and sell the rest of the population as slaves, was another offence against strict law for which Marius was not to blame; it would have been inconvenient to leave a garrison, and the inhabitants were not to be trusted without. According to the Roman fashion, all military disasters arc minimized: there is never an estimate of the loss cither of the Romans or the enemy; in fact, the loss of the Numidians, it is admitted, was generally insigniticant; they generally were beaten when they came to close quarters, then they dropped their arms and ran away. It is quite possible that before they were broken they inflicted as much loss as they suffered in the final charge which saved the Roman army. Marius, in his speech on sail- ing for Africa, is made to say that the army ought to be largely reinforced; for, in spite of its energy, it had been unfortunate. As Metellus had taken out reinforcements only a year before, we must assume that the soldiers were worn out by marching and the climate, and perhaps, at the time when Marius came to Italy to canvass, demoralized by the f^iilure of the attempt upon Zama, which may have been costlier than Sallust cared to admit. Apparently Marius was a more popular and more lucky commander than Metellus, more liberal of his booty to the soldiers, and more willing to share their Huigues; for it is hinted more than once that Metellus, though he restored discipline without punishments, was stricter to his soldiers than to himself. It does not seem that Marius was abler in other ways; he relied more upon force, and less upon di- plomacy. Sallust does not say whether Sulla, who managed all the negotiations with Bocchus, was the choice of Marius or of the nobility; it is clear that the adroitness with which * The Roman law of war was mild in one respect. When a town sur- rendered at discretion, it forfeited all claim to its institutions or public property, but the free inhabitants were safe (except, perhaps, the instiga- tors of the war) as suljjects of the arbitrary dominion of Rome. SALLUST, 239 Sulla humored Bocchus decided the war; for the last record- ed operation of Marius was an unsuccessful attempt upon a castle held for Jugurtha by deserters. All this Sallust leaves to be implied, which is strange, as he does not admire Marius particularly, and is careful to explain that in the quarrel with Metellus there were fLiults on both sides. It was wrong of Metellus to set his face against Marius's candidature; it was almost worse of Marius systematically to disparage his com- mander and even relax discipline. AVhen Marius was consul and had a right to use his own judgment, Sallust is suspicious of the freedom he allowed to the army, though he admits that no harm came of the indulgence. In fact, Sallust treats the war throughout as an episode in the quarrel of the nobility and commons, and, upon the whole, he will never let the nobil- ity be in the right. Their decision not to entangle the state in the quarrel between Jugurtha and Bocchus, and to mulct Jugurtha rather than to depose him, was defensible upon the merits of the case, and Bocchus did everything to help the Romans that a sworn ally could have done, till Jugurtha threw himself on his protection. But Snllust will only see that the nobility were venal, and Jugurtha a better paymaster than Bocchus; and if Bocchus had obtained a treaty when he first asked for it, the war would have ended sooner. The summary of the speech by which, according to Sallust, Tu^nntha induced Bocchus to join him is rather like a rough draft of the letter which Mithridatcs wrote to the king of the Par- thians in the like case. Both Jugurtha and Mithridates dwell upon the antipathy of the Roman people to kings, and their unwillingness to tolerate any power except their own. Mith- ridates adds the further consideration, which his career sug- gested to Sallust, that mankind at large are indifferent to lib- erty and only desire a tolerable despotism, and that for this reason the Romans will never allow a king to gain enough power to promise relief to their discontented subjects. This is almost the only trait in Sallust which shows that he had consid- ered the way in which the government of the senate affected the provincials.* He is much more concerned with the reac- ' He is very little impressed by the ominous fact that the Allobroges 240 LATIN LITERATURE. SALLUST. 241 tion of so many new and rich dependencies upon the constitu- tion of the civic community at Rome, and he lays much more stress upon this than upon the economic change which fol- lowed the second Punic war. He never notices that over large districts of Italy the yeomanry were ruined without the fault of the nobility; what he does notice is, that the nobility had changed their habits and enlarged their desires, so that they always felt the pressure of a separate interest from the interest of the state. According to him, it was only the fall of Carthage which removed the last restraint from the greed of the few and the envy of the many. The Gracchi were too extreme; Memmius hnds irony the best way of meeting the charge that they were aiming at a monarchy. Sallust himself thinks that the nobles were justified in opposing them, if they could have done so by fair means, and yet the Gracchi were the only members of the aristocracy who preferred " true glory to unrighteous power.'' This speculative barrenness is char- acteristic of Sallust; he is sententious and emphatic, and fails to be profound. His speeches, when he tries to imitate Thucydides, are gf^nerally empty ; he only applies copy-book maxims tr. tl-,e situation. He does not succeed, as Thucyd- ides does, in unfolding the possibilities of a policy or the in- terests of a party by means of a speech too penetrating ever to have been delivered ; he is only effective in the region of taunts and allusive sarcasm. Cato's speech in fiivor of the execution of the conspirators is exceedingly dull and unre . , it turns upon the thesis that vengeance is a necessary means of self defence, just like the great speech of Cleon on the Mytilenean revolt; but where Cleon, in spite of his passion, brings out the true intellectual aspect of one side of a polit- ical problem, Cato only falls into ludicrous exaggeration of the peril to be expected from mercy. His argument is that unless the criminals are executed they will carry out their were ready to join Catilina, and does not hint that the massacre of the Roman garrison at Vacca was due to their own insolence, thougli Plutarch tells us the commander was spared because he alone had given no oftence ; he only mentions the oppression of the allies in Africa as a proof that the armies of Rome were not formidable to the enemv. I crime. Caesar's speech is persuasive and statesmanlike, and so much better than Sallust's speeches in general ^hat it is natural to suppose that in substance it is Caesar's. The speech of Macer in the Histories is an elaborate and skilful cento from Demosthenes' speeches against Philip, who is re- placed by Sulla. One point is successfully heightened; De- mosthenes tells the Athenians that the state doles, which they thought more valuable than a spirited foreign policy, were like the messes given to the sick, just enough to keep them alive, but not enough to make a whole man hearty. Macer tells the Romans that the dole with which the senate tried, too suc- cessfully, to keep the commons quiet was just the same in amount as a prisoner's rations, who was dieted to keep down his spirit. The style of Sallust is remarkable upon two grounds. He is the first writer of Latin prose who attaches himself to a single Greek model ; he gets his points from the whole range of his reading, which was tolerably extensive, but his method is the method of Thucydides ; he cultivates irregularities, especially in comparisons, at a time when two greater writers had done everything in their power to make Latin the most regular language known. He also is the first Latin writer deliberately to try to reverse the natural development of style. He goes back to Cato, as Spenser went back to Chaucer. He was dissatisfied with the vocabulary as purified by his 'Contemporaries, and thought words and phrases which were J ilf obsolete more picturesque and telling than the refined dialect of the day, which, as Cicero saw, was always verging upon insipidity — and Cicero himself was criticised as early as the reign of Vespasian for not having a sufficiently choice vocabulary. Sallust had considerable posthumous influence. L. Arrun- tius, a grandee of the reign of Augustus, copied and ex- aggerated his mannerisms, and Tacitus certainly owes very much to him; it might be said that Tacitus writes as Sallust ought to have written. In Sallust the abruptness and impa- tience of expression show^ that the writer is excited; the crudity and redundance of matter shows that he is immature. L— II 242 LATIN LITERATURE. SALLUST. Of all that is in his mind he leaves nothing for the reader to divine, though he is careful to avoid what he thinks the te- dious parade of orderly, elegant, harmonious exposition. His matter masters him, but he remains master of his diction. In Tacitus the matter is more completely mastered than the diction. He is temperate and self-controlled, and Sallust de- claims with the naivete, if not the simplicity, of a schoolboy, even while he affects the pregnant brevity of an experienced statesman. The description of the treason of Bomilcar is a fair specimen of this crude subtlety. "At the same time Bomilcar, who had pressed Jugurtha to begin the capitulation, which he gave up through fear, both being suspected of the king and suspecting him also, was fain of a new world, sought a device to destroy him, wearied his spirit night and day, till at last, with trying everything, he took to his help Nabdalsa, a nobleman famous for his great means, acceptable to his own people withal, who had been wont often to lead armies apart from the king, and to perform all business which was left over when Jugurtha was weary or taken up with greater things, whence he got both glory and great means. So, by counsel of both, a day was set for this plot, and they agreed the rest should be made ready at the time as things might require. Nabdalsa set out for the army, which he kept, as ordered, well within the Roman winter-quarters, that the enemy might not waste the land at will. When he, struck down at a deed so great, came not at time appointed, and fear began to hinder the matter, then Bomilcar, being troubled both by his desire to achieve his undertaking, and out of fear of his partner lest he should leave his old counsel and look out for new, sent letters to him by faithful men ; wherein he chode the man for sloth and cowardice, adjured him by the gods he sware by, warned him not to turn the rewards of Metellus to his own destruction. Jugurtha's ruin was at hand; all that lay in doubt was only whether he should perish by their valor or Metellus's, so he had better ponder in his mind whether to choose reward or torment. But the letter came just when Nabdalsa, weary with his bodily exercise, was resting on his bed, where, when he had taken knowledge of Bomilcar's words, 243 1 first care fell upon him, and then sleep, as is the way with a troubled spirit. Now he had a Numidian to manage his bus- iness, who was faithful to him and a,cceptable, and took part in all his counsels but the last. He, hearing a letter had come, judged by old custom there would be need of his work or wit, so went into Nabdalsa's chamber: as he lay asleep, the letter lay at random on a pillow above his head. '):\\(t other took and read it through; then, when he knew the plot, set off at speed to the king. Nabdalsa, waking soon after, when he found no letter, and was informed by deserters of all that had passed, first essayed to overtake the informer. After that proved vain, he went to Jugurtha to appease him, said the perfidy of his client had forestalled him in executing his own intention, besought him with tears, by his friendship and all his faithful service aforetime, not to hold him suspect concerning such wickedness; whereto the king gave gentle answer, contrary to that he bare in his mind. As soon as Bomilcar and many more whom he knew to be partners in his plots were slain, he had bridled his anger, lest some sedi- tion should arise from the business." PART III. AUGUSTAN AGE. CHAPTER I. GENERAL CONSIDER A TIONS. The literature of the reign of Augustus has two distinct characters— it represents the highest elaboration of form ever attained in Latin, and the highest elevation of thought ; after- wards there were efforts to surpass it in both directions, which had a short-lived success in the judgment of contem- poraries too excitable to distinguish between inspiration and an ambition reckless of good sense and good taste. As Plato said \ox\^ ago, it is not the musical man, but the un- musical, who tVies to do more than the musical has done. To imagine that Lucan is sublimer than Vergil is like im- agining that Young is sublimer than Dryden, or Chateau- briand'' than Bossuet. In many ways there is a closer re- semblance between the literature of the reign of Louis XIV. and that of the reign of Augustus than between the literature of the age of Augustus and that of any other so-called Au- gustan age. For one thing, both periods are an interval of rest, of splendor, of order between a time of misery and an- archy and a time of petulant license in private, combined with'much capricious repression in public. Again, both Au- gustus and Louis survived the best of their prosperity and of die men of genius whom it had inspired ; both, it may even be said, were not unlike in what was one of the deepest things in both, their sense of public duty; both felt called upon to be reformers and restorers, and were perfectly seri- GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 245 ous in the endeavor to subject others to obligations which till late in life, they evaded for themselves, though this fun- damental similarity is disguised by the contrast between the frank pomposity of Louis and the ironical simplicity of Au- gustus, who suspected the splendor of his own reign, and re- gretted the austerity of days of innocence and poverty which were irrecoverably gone. Both, during the central period of their reign, were honestly idolized or idealized, as we like to put it, by the men of letters, who saw them at work and did not know how little of their w^ork would last. It is true that Bossuet, who admired the Grand Monarch as sincerely as any one, and believed in his system heartily, was penetrated as profoundly by a sense of void and nothingness at the bottom of all things; but neither he nor Pascal imagines that his pessimism is due to anything in the circumstances of the time. The Augustan writers are clearer-sighted : they generally write more or less in a tone of hopeful penitence; but their sense of guilt depends upon definite national sins, the wasteful horror of the civil wars, and the final disap- pearance of the old thrifty household discipline. Again, the ground of their confidence is more definite. Augustus to them is not simply a great, prosperous, and religious ruler: he is the representative of the historic spirit and mission of Rome. And the sense of the grandeur of Rome survives even in Livy and Ovid, when the faith in moral restoration has died away. It would be possible to pursue the parallel into detail. Racine has often been compared with Vergil : there is the same blending of pathetic grace and dignity, but perhaps less independence of feeling, certainly less man- liness of tone ; the courage of Racine's heroes depends too entirely upon their faith in their ideals. There are sides of Horace that La Fontaine does not touch, and they are precisely the best of Horace : his brood- ing aspirations after inward peace and purity, his short jubi- lant flights into an upper realm of triumphal calm ; but his disinterested insight, his kindly shrewdness and gayety, his unworldliness, are all more or less reflected in La Fontaine, who has something of the spleen of Horace, of which Boileau 246 LA TIN LITER A TURE. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. received a double portion. Boileau certainly owes more to Horace than to Juvenal, and in France the ode on tiie capt- ure of Namur may be held to rank with the odes on the conquest of the Orisons and the Tyrol. Ovid finds his rep- resentative as a story-teller in La Fontaine, as a wit in Mo- liere, whose range is wider, and who makes some approach to a serious purpose, but who, after all, takes almost as much interest as Ovid in the dissection of the foolish husband. Another parallel which at first sight is less obvious is really closer; both the position and the spirit of the author of "Telemachus" are like Livy. There is the same grave and gentle intelligence of some of the most important among the permanent conditions of well-doing and well-being, the same dreamy blindness to the shifting conditions under which well- doing and well being can be actually realized at a given time, the same pity for the poor, the same distrust of wealth, the same respect for authority, the same romantic regrets for an imaginary past, when life was simpler and virtue easier. There is nothing in the age of Louis XIV. like the effrontery which in Ovid alternates with sentimental and insincere re- grets for the good old times. One must go back something like a hundred years, to Montaigne, to find an approach to the way in which Ovid glories with undisguised amusement in his shame ; and even Montaigne has nothing so impu- dent as " I, the great Naso, the poet of my own naughtiness." * There is nothing like it in the literature of the Augustan age, which, upon the whole, is decidedly more virtuous in tone than the societv to which it was addressed. There was a general feeling against the self-styled republicans, who made it their business to expose all the hollowness and hypocrisy of respectable imperialism. This license was probably itself a survival from the period of anarchy and disturbance which lasted for thirteen years from the death of Coisar to the battle of Actium, and was most acute for the eight years which passed before the complete defeat of Sextus Pompeius. For eleven years out of the thirteen, Octavian and Antony had exercised a practically secure supremacy throughout the ^ " Ille ego nequitiae Naso poeta niese." 247 \ Roman world, but they possessed only power without au- thority. They could decide military or financial questions without consulting any will but their own. Their immense patronage gave many sufficient motives to propitiate them by honorable or dishonorable means ; but no one felt that they were the legitimate rulers of the state, and they themselves had no adequate reason to attempt to regulate civil relations or to interfere with private life. The comparative barrenness of this period is a sufficient answer to the theory that the Augustan age, like the age of Louis XIV., only expended the energy which it had inherited from the Republic. In fact, the suppression of independent political life contributed in another way to the literary move- ment ; for men of letters were no longer depressed by the feeling that the work-a-day world and its numerous natural leaders were practically of much more importance than they were: the poets of the Augustan age saw nothing above them but the narrow circle of the ruler and his intimates, whom It was easy to invest with superhuman attributes. At the same time, there was the full stimulus of a stream of im- portant events. As the events were more important and more certam than the processes by which they came about, it was easier to idealize them ; and when idealism had once set in, It was easy to confound projects and achievements. Words- worth was a scrupulous realist, but the account of the French Revolutionary War that we should gather from his poems would be quite as untrustworthy as that which we should gather of the reign of Augustus from the Odes of Horace. 'Ihat the ascendency of Augustus was disadvantageous to eloquence in the law-courts is probably true : it must be re- membered that the pompous struggles of the law-courts were an unmitigated nuisance to everybody but the advocates. Ihe forum, which was not much too large for an exchange, was, besides, the natural resort for loungers ; and it was \o convenience to anybody to have it blocked up by noisv and often quarrelsome knots of disputants, whom it was a'point of honor to detain as long and excite as highly as possible. Even before the war of Pharsalia, when the Republic was still 11 248 LA T/X LITER A TURE. in a state to recover from the rivalry of Cresar and Pompeius, as it had recovered from the rivahy of Marius and Sulla, measures had been taken to keep the forum quiet by lim- iting the number of hours a speech could take, by exclud- ing the attendance of grandees who appeared to give their hangers-on a good character — in fact, generally to take means that the pleadings should be addressed to the court, not to the public. Now the court was unpaid, and naturally eager for despatch, and the greater part of the public who at- tended to back their friends found the duty wearisome, unless the orator whose celebrity and influence they were helping to make was already a master of his business. Be- sides, the judges were either busy men or young idle men, who very much preferred to spend a good part of the morn- ing in drinking when they could, and, when at last they came into court, were in a hurry to get the case over, that they might be off to bathe for dinner. Still, so long as the major- ity of the magistrates were freely chosen, the self-importance of the advocates who wished to make themselves of conse- quence enough in the courts to be of consequence in the state was practically irrepressible ; but when office came to be conferred by the emperor exclusively as the reward of administrative work, oratory had to adapt itself to narrow conditions, to be an ornament rather than a power in the state, the basis of a career for two or three in a genera- tion rather than an indispensable instrument for every one who wished to have a career. The change was, from the first, favorable to poetry ; for the people who had, upon the whole, liked to listen to orators in the forum were glad to listen to poets reciting in the baths, which from the reign of Augustus began to increase in number and splendor; and the great majority of those who had a gift for oratory deserted politics and real cases and the forum, and declaimed upon imaginary themes — also in the baths if they made a profession of elo- quence. If their position enabled them to be amateurs, they declaimed in their own houses, where they received their friends only, if they were modest or fastidious ; while if they were vain or liberal they admitted the public. But the prac- GENERAL CONSIDERA TIONS. 249 tice of declamation came in later than the practice of reciting- poetry, which is alluded to in the earliest writings of Horace! who half boasts that he is too shy to f^dl in with it • and so might almost as well not be a poet, since he neglects to adver- tise his poetry in the way that other poets advertise theirs. Poets were no longer independent : they did not maintain themselves, as they had done from Ennius to Valerius Cato, by teaching or play-writing : in the new world which was be- ginning few were rich enough to live on their own means, as Catullus and Lucretius had done. They expected to receive splendid presents from the emperor and other grandees: they expected also to make a certain profit by the sale of their books. This last change never went far, but Horace towards the end of his life says that mediocrity in poets is intolerable, not only to gods and men, but to booksellers, as if poets had more reason to fear booksellers than other men or gods. In the days of Martial a poet might refuse a pres- entation copy to an acquaintance because he did not choose to interfere with his bookseller's profit ; and it is clear that a considerable number of copies must have been issued (slave labor being tolerably cheap), for the common fate of unsuc- cessful poetry was to wrap up fish and spice : now a single copy would naturally be used to light a fire, while a book- seller would send his surplus stock either to the public baths or to the grocers, just as unsuccessful books used to be sent in England to the trunkmakers. An author who was volumi- nous and could not find a publisher might be burned upon a pile of his own MSS., or at least his enemies spread the re- port. When books sold, they generally sold to the few who kept libraries for their own enjoyment, and to the compara- tively numerous class of schoolmasters and grammarians who could not content themselves with consulting new books at the library attached to the Temple of Apollo at the Pala- tine, an humble imitation of the Museum of Alexandria. There were a few years when it seemed possible that pa- tronage might make literature remunerative— while Octavian NNvas under the influence of Maecenas, which lasted unimpair- ed till Agrippa's marriage with the emperor's daughter M^e- I. — II* 250 LA TIN LITER A TURE. cenas saw that poets would be able to work upon the public mind by giving a permanent artistic expression to the enthu- siasm of the \iioment. He made several poets free of his house ; he made or procured them large pecuniary presents. Messalla followed the f^ishion to a small extent upon his own account, and it cannot be said to have entirely died out be- fore the death of Seneca. The expectations which Maecenas had fostered, and led Augustus to foster, lasted longer still ; as late as the days of Domitian, perhaps as late as the days of Hadrian, poets expected to be semi-sacred pensioners, as they have been at the courts of the princes of the heroic age of Greece and Scandinavia— as they are still at the courts of the princes who trace their descent up to the heroic age of India. In the age of Anne, for similar reasons, poets had something of the same experience ; and during the reigns of the first two Georges they were haunted by the same expec- tations. In England the bookseller took the place of the patron ; at Rome, when the hopes of patronage were finally given up, the profession of poetry was given up too : educated men of position still wrote verses for their own amusement, and obtained thereby a kind of reputation : teachers of liter- ature competed solemnly for the prizes established by Nero and Domitian, and there was no feeling that it was incongru- ous or undignified for grown men to write prize poems. 1 he truth is, that the Romans were too matter-of-fact to spend much labor without prospect of return. The second and third centuries, which witnessed the practical extinction of poetry, were the classical age of jurisprudence. The reign of Au-ustus is, in the history of Roman literature no less than in tlie history of Roman life, a splendid exception. It falls naturally into three periods— the period of confu- sion • the period of splendor, which lasted more than thirty years i and the period of decline, which lasted only seven. The first, which has already been described, ended with the battle of Actium, and the literature of the period was still a continuation of the literature of the republic. Cassius of Parma, one of the leading poets of the period, attached him- self to the cause of his namesake. Cinna, another poet, who GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 251 was killed at Cassar's funeral by mistake for his namesake who had joined in killing CiEsar, left a reputation which daunted Vergil. Calvus the orator, a friend and imitator of Catullus, was the only poet but Catullus that the fashionable singer of the day or his copyists cared to know. Besides these, there was a certain C. Licinius Anser, whom Vergil chose to gibbet at the same time that he paid his respects I0 Varius and Cinna : he was nothing but one goose more be- side such swans as these. When we come to Furius, who anticipated Dubartas with such choice figures as "O'er the cold Alps Jove spits his hoary snow," and Bavius and Mas- vius, who had a private quarrel with Horace, perhaps we come to -city poets," such as in the reign of James I. and Uiarles II. earned the appreciation of old-fashioned men of business, whom they entertained and, in a sense, instructed at the same time that their self-consequence provoked the rising lights, who looked to the approval of a more limited a more critical, a more influential public. ' Of the new poets who made their mark in this period Va- rius was the most distinguished. His "Thyestes," written we do not know when, of which only one insignificant line has reached us, was thought to be one of the two or three -Koman plays which stood on the level of the best Greek work Contemporaries thought more of his fliculty of writin- pan- egyrical pamphlets on the events of the day in heroic'verse which sympathetic readers found as spirit-stirring as Homer! One distich has been preserved by Horace, and identified by his scholiast, which is hearty and vigorous but not remark- able — Tene magis salvum populus velit, an populuni tu, Servet in ambiguo, qui consulit et tibi et uibi, Juppiter ! Varro Atacinus, who was born in Gaul, and took his last name from the Gaulish river Atax, was perhaps a more important though less successful writer. He was versatile hanng written satires, elegies, and epigrams, as well as an elaborate translation of the " Argonautica " of Apollonius Khodius, which was the most important of his works This t LA TIN LITERA TURE. contained more than one beautiful night-piece, in connection with he sorrows of Medea, which Vergil appropriated and mproved ; and the versification is freer and better than any- hing before the days of Vergil. The satuxs -- Practically only known by the modest boast of Horace that he was gen- erally thought to have done well in what was, no doubt, the owest line^of poetry, though such a clever man as Van-o had filled in it His epigrams were better, to judge by the tuo or three doubtfully attributed to him : the best is on Licnms, a Gallic freedman, procurator of Gaul under Augustus, who provoked a revolt by the diligence with which he amassed an Lmense fortune. The epigram must be the -ork of he author's old-age, for Horace, who succeeded in satiie a e Varro failed, did not live to see the death of Licmus ; and it is surprisingly pithy for an old man— Marmoreo tumulo Licinus jacet ; at Cato parvo Pompeius nullo: quis putet esse deos ? Saxa pvemunt Licinum ; levat altum fama Catoneni, Pompeium tituli : credimus esse deos. The only other poet of this generation who need detain us is Cornelius Gallus, the first Roman prefect of Egypt, whose love-affairs were over before Actium. He wrote elegies on his love of Lycoris, otherwise known as Cytheris, which Quinc- tilian characterizes as "austere:" there was no artificial adornment of phrases or metre, and the writer trusted simply to his passion and tenderness for his effect. His self-absorp- tion made him exacting: he subjugated Lycoris, who was Mad to escape him. He made a more permanent conquest of the tender sympathies of Vergil. In practical life his aims proved less fortunate ; he was overbearing as a governor, and was recalled for excesses of authority ; and at the first signs of Au-ustus's displeasure on his return he committed suicide. VERGIL, 253 CHAPTER n. VERGIL. To all posterity A^ergil has always been the great Latin poet, and it is better to understand, if possible, on what his reputation rests, than either to explain, repeat, or refute the expressions of the impatience with which, for the last hundred years, English and German critics have regarded his greatest work. For it is not unlikely that a hundred years hence that impatience may seem as inexplicable as the contempt with which the virtuosi of the first half of the eighteenth century regarded the remains of mediaeval architecture. Even this inquiry is difficult, for the Romans were much better skilled in the criticism of oratory than in the criticism of poetry ; and the best possible statement of what they found to admire is not too much to guide us in appreciating what they spontaneously admired more than we. The "^:neid" has a charm and a power which later Latin epic poetry has not, which Alexandrine epic poetry has not either: the ex- tent of this charm and this power has to be learned from the mere force of the impression which Vergil made, first upon the Romans and then upon the whole world of the Renaissance, as the greatest classical poet, who lay at the foundation of all liberal culture. Its character we have to ascertain as we can for ourselves. Some of its elements are obvious enough : the sustained splendor and harmony of ver- sification, the nobility of tone which is never^verstrained, and hardly ever collapses, the rare union of elevation and pathos have always been recognized. Then, too, the immense tact and felicity with which the antiquarian learning of the poet has been employed makes an impression of its own, not less effective for not being displayed. The national interest was, we may think, stronger for the Romans than for us, but the m 254 LA TIN LITER A TURE. national interests of the Roman of the Augustan age were co- extensive with the interests of civiHzation. And something is due to Vergil's unique position : he is the first writer who really mastered the Latin hexameter, and his work retains much more of the freshness and simplicity of the pre-Augus- tan period than that of any other Augustan poet ; and when we compare him with his successors, his simplicity is as re- markable as Pope's, and is due to the same cause. I'he form is elaborated for its own sake, but the matter is still sunple : it has not undergone the unmeaning elaboration which we find in later poets, who are always haunted by the ghosts of vanished effects, and so are never simple, and almost always tame. It is the more important to attend to this, because the rich harmony of Vergil and Pope undoubtedly made sim- plicity more difficult to their successors, and because Vergil had a very extensive and not very favorable influence on the future of Latin ; which lost more in clearness, solidity, and regularity than it gained in picturesqueness and variety by the obtrusion of fragmentary phrases and constructions which every writer who had been educated upon Vergil imported into the language of Caesar and Cicero. Perhaps to all these elements of Vergil's greatness we should add another— his unworldliness. He seems always a specta- tor and never an actor in the drama of his time ; he is like a visitor fiom another world, profoundly touched by what he sees of the sorrow and labors and achievements of this, but not otherwise concerned with them. His poetry is full of emotion, but the emotion is always contemplative and imper- sonal : it is not merely that he feels his own life separated, like Lucretius's or Horace's, from the coarse passions and desires of the crowd— he despises these much less than they do— but that he hardly seems to have a life of his own apart from his intelligent and respectful sympathy with the life of others. His impersonality is not the impersonality of Homer or of Shakespeare, who simply show us the world as it stands; Vergil yearns over the spectacle which he spreads before us. It^may almost be doubted whether the sober pensive spirit of Vergil, which is too refined and elevated for discontent, is VERGIL. 255 not Northern rather than Italian. It would not be a violent conjecture that he belonged to a Tyrolese family' settled in Italy; for he certainly clung to the belief that Mantua was before all tlnngs an Etruscan city, and the Etruscans of Man- tua are more likely to have crossed the Alps than the Apen- nmes. ^ Mantua itself stands on a plain, but there seems reason to li.nk that Andes, the village where Vergil's parents' farm lay, was upon the hills that run up from the Mincio to the mounta.ns. They appear to have been simple, flourishing people; for they were able to send their son to Rome and Naples to learn rhetoric and philosophy. The latter alone interested hnn, for almost alone of his contemporaries he was .nd.tferent to glory. And what attracted him in the teaching o Syron was not the special aspects of Epicureanism, but te prospect wh.ch ,t held out, in common with all philoso- phies, of enunc.patmg neophytes from sordid cares and pas- sions. So too, on its speculative side, what attracted him was tl^e reahst explanation of nature, combined with a very Z pressive proclamation of the " reign of law " There is always a stage in the progress of knowled<^e when scence seems to offer the imagination a wider an die re" pasture than ,t has found in the world of sense, which .ssH bounded by .gnorance and harassed by alarms. And a thou' the nnagmation cannot live for long upon results i^^ou processes, some very interesting poetica! effects lave been attamed before the attempt is abandoned. In Vergil's case the mterest .s heightened because the poet is divided between 9t;rjr:^S-^l^;-'''.edi^ Planat.on of the fact that crows chatter beforl .ain If ,f " change of pressure n, the atmosphere mus.t some' wi; m:!;: Celts on their extreme frontier had blende!;': "f 'a ^rl A^a.^^™!'" "' 256 LA TIN LITER A TURE. them restless; it is no explanation at all that fate and provi- dence bestow foresight upon dumb creatures for the benefit of men. Then, too, the Stoic doctrine of providence was really only tenable upon the artificial hypothesis that the chief purpose of the world was to produce and maintain a few chosen spirits, capable of finding the chief and adequate end of life in endurance or activity, irrespective of results ; for Italy in Vergil's day had long left behind the stage (which every society leaves behind sooner or later) when the visible distribution of good and evil among mortal men commends itself spontaneously to the judgment of intelligent and kindly lookers-on. . It does not seem that Vergil ever took more from Epicure- anism than a faith in the uniformity of nature, and a prefer- ence of concrete explanations of fact to a parade of verbal optimistic dialectics. Nor was there any real inconsistency between the meteorology which he took from Epicurus, the psycholocrv which he took from Plato, and the views of nation- al history^and destiny which he inherited from his ancestors, who believed them to be guided bj^ national deities. Eclecti- cism is only oftensive when it is systematic : that a learner should be influenced by many teachers, and take from each what each knows best, is natural and right, if he has not the .pretension to prove to each in turn that what he has taken is all that is worth taking, and that the only way to give a com- plete and coherent account of the universe is to piece togeth- er fragments of discordant traditions and theories. It is curious that we know next to nothing of \ergils purely literary education: we are sure that he must have been powerfuUv influenced by Lucretius, and when the "Geor- crics" were written it is likely that the influence may have been passing away, and the "Bucolics" are written under the fresh influence of Theocritus. But Vergil was born in 70 b c., and the earliest of his ascertained poems cannot be earlier than 43 B.C., and may very well be a year later, and it is dif- ficult to believe that he had been idle till then. His fastid- iousness has left it uncertain what, if anything, among the pieces which have come down to us as the work of his VERGIL, 257 early years is genuine, for the appendix to his poems has not his authority nor that of his representatives. They are quite unlike his certain writings, and it is seldom possible to trace any points of connection and transition; and the general ver- dict of criticism has been against all, or almost all, upon grounds that would be as effective against most that Shelley wrote before "Queen Mab," or Scott before the "Lay of the Last Minstrel." What complicates the problem is that Ver- gil certainly did write a poem on a gnat, which Martial had read, and complimented the memory of Lucan by observing that before he was at the age when Vergil wrote it "he had written the "Pharsalia." Consequently, we have to suppose that, if the poem on a gnat which we have is not Vergil's, it was composed in rivalry with him ; and this at a late period of literature, when another Octavius than the heir of Julius could be invoked to prosper the labors of the poet. And one of the poems of the "Catalecta"' is addressed to a promising young Octavius, who died leaving a work on Roman history which the writer admires. It is tempting to identify the two, for the singer of the gnat addresses his patron as "sancte puer," which would have been a gaucherie as applied to Au- gustus after he had entered upon his inheritance. And, though Vergil was not incapable of this,'^ it is more likely that, if we have his poem on the gnat, he addressed it to some • townsman who fancied that he was going to rise by the side of his illustrious kinsman. The poem itself is pretty, but tedious. An old man kills a gnat which came to wake' him and save him from a serpent, and the gnat's ghost comes back with news of the world of spirits beyond the Po, which moves the old man to perform a solemn funeral in its honor. There IS little or no connection between its parts, and the descrip- tion of a summer morning and the reflections on the happi- ness of country life are developed at quite disproportionate length. The writer has no idea of subordinating his fluency to his subject (which is exactly what we should expect in an ' This means poems reckoned to Vergil, and is equivalent to our use of appendix. ' He laid himself open to ridicule before by coining a plural to "barley." 2S8 LA TIN LITER A TUKE. VERGIL. 259 early work of Vergil); and the ^vhimsicality of the whole thin" just falls short of being amusing, though it might per- hap^have been amusing to a certain circle when hrst pro- duced. Of all Vergil's doubtful works it remmds us most of his certain works ; and this, of course, it would do if U was composed in rivalry with him, or was intended to be m.s aken for a lost poem of his. On some metrical grounds we shoukl be inclined to think the poem later than Vergil's age ; but the early works of a great metrist are not always the least finished, so far as smoothness of surface goes. The " Ciris" .s a poem which certainly dates from a time when Vergil had not de- termined the definite form of the Latin hexameter. It is an interesting idvl of the same type as the " Epithalamium of Peleus and fhelis," addressed to Messalla by a poet who wishes to devote himself to the study of philosophy. 1 here are numerous imitations of Catullus, both in metre and mat- ter- and in the philosophical introduction there are reminis- cences of Lucretius. It seems to have been a sort of rule in poems of this kind to frame two legends together, and accord- inoly the introduction contains a sketch of the story of the Homeric Scvlla, with a lamentation, quite Veigilian in spirit over the hardship of children suffering, like her, for the sins of their parents, before relating the legend of the Scvlla of Meg- ara The only difficulty in ascribing the poem to \ergil when under the infiuence of Catullus is that we do not know how he can have been brought into relation with Messalla before the latter was reconciled to Octavian ; and the " Ciris is certainly not an advance upon the " Bucolics." Two other poems of less pretensions are thought less unlikely to be genu- ine: one is a copy of elegiacs to a Syrian barmaid ; the other is a little didactic poem on salad, said to be imitated from the Greek of Parthenius. Almost all the " Catalecta," including the elegy on the voun'' Octavius, are more or less of the school of Catullus. There is one direct parody on the dedication of die " pinnace, perhaps with a shade of sarcasm in it, as if a muleteer past work were no more uninteresting than a waterlogged yacht. One elegv, addressed to Messalla at the height of his reputa- tion, after his .Aquitanian triumph, is rather in the manner of Propertii.s, who, we know, looked forward with enthusiasm to the appearance of the "^:neid." It is a fine and spirited poem; but, if Vergil wrote it, he did wisely in excluding it from the collected edition of his works. The same ma/ be saul of .111 elegiac vow to Venus to secure her blessing on the Aneid. • In fact, the only poem among the "Catalecta" which readers of his acknowledged works would be sorry to lose IS a poem of fourteen scazons on beginning the study of philosophy, full of delicate fervor tersely e.x-pressed. The best authenticated is a dull jest on a dull orator, vouched for by C^umctilian. ' Whatever we believe of the tentative or imitative works which posterity rightly or wrongly ascribed to Vergil, the Bucolics have all the character of a fresh beginning: they have all the naivete and indecision of a timid and inexperi- enced writer. There is abundant charm and very little mas- ter_v. Mhcn one compares them with Theocritus, one feels how immeasurably below his model Vergil is in command of his materials: one does not feel the same, to anything like the same extent, when one compares the author of the "Ciris " wilh .Moschus. Part of this may be duo to the fact that Ver-jl was coming for the first time before a real public : the " Ciris*" upon the face of it, is the exercise of an amateur, which the writer only finishes under the friendly pressure of Messalla I art must be due to the disturbing influence of the writer's personal situation in the years when the triumvirs had to pro- vide for their soldiers. All the agrarian laws of the Republic had dealt in the main with the public domain of the Roman city, and had left the domains of other Italian cities untouched. It IS probable that in these much property was held upon ten- ures much short of absolute ownership, which gave the occu- pier a practically perfect title against his fellow-citizens, but not against the authorities of his city, nor against the authority of the paramount city Rome. The triumvirs were less scni- pulous than the Gracchi: they confiscated the domains of as many cuies as they found it convenient to pronounce guilty ot rebellion against their authority, and they disregarded all [ LATIN LITERATURE. 260 subordinate titles; but .e have ^^^.^:^:^;^X^:^T.:X they technically confiscated ^"'; P"^^ ^J^^Pfp^.oscript'on : dividuals, except those whose "^ "'=%Y;;°" "-P i.^ right to they si.^ply reaped to acUnowc^ge^^^^^ ^^ privileges which, in theor> , ih« ^''^ " e This aftected Vergil, had always been -Jl- 2\°, "of clcn^ona, which was ' because the boundary of he t y ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^ V^eSl-rtri^'arfortte first and last ti.e in h.s . .e r--;nrrrirhisS^L^:^urLta^ani:^ ;;rdl; wS:;instated tl. poet ^But^e soldier w^^^^^^^^^ in possession declined to be ous^^ '^^Z£^o, I'ollio Perusia, "^en Oc---; - A U^^^^^^ ^^,^^„ ,„ „,,,. was superseded, and te new ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^_^^ ^^^ ing for a fnend f 1° ''°,„ . 'Vfrom whom he had learned son.e ,.o.uhs - ^-•' ^ ^ rhe was indemnified with an . sr.£r Napt:, Ld left a ^^ ^^^ ^x::^:::^ favors of Augustus and Maecenas ; j^i, ;„ , ^'? ^;f?JU':f. ItsTirn Itfu-S^st m his patema, ltstr::X^ed by U^e prospect of losir^U.^ .vhen he had once struck ''-^f^;,^';;;: dissatisfied with to abandon it too soon, especial > as he was his first experiments in ep.c poetry He can hardl been an energetic farmer n, '- °; " P^ ^".'^^^rok forward t^ when they gave him a cty «>"""?' ;^''^^^\°', ,,e may quite ^ ,-, settli,v. clown on the arm <;0 -q <=-^> ^^^J^^ ,,, / beheve ''>'■>'" "^•,f';°^=;,„ , share of the produce to joint owner of the f^"^" '.P^ "- , , ^^.j ^f the household Vergil, and maintaming hnnselfand the «^t °' ^ ,,,h^ t'he remainder. This l^P^'!""- ^.^ttirsome afher and ninth Eclogues cons.sten, -"> ^ ^ ; J ^,,, ,, had ;SiS;2r.r'vit^r :;: p::.^ But, aaer ., there VERGIL. 261 is enough unreality. A pastoral poet always lends his peas- ants the sentiments with which their life inspires him, and envies them the country as in all probability they envy him the town. But Vergil's sentiment is even further from reality than this: he never asks himself, and we had better not ask ourselves, whether he is writing of Sicily or of Lombardy : pines and poplars, mountain caves and water meadows, blend in his imagination ; and one might almost say that the chief value of the country life of Lombardy to him is that it enables liim to feel Theocritus, who reproduced real country life more perfectly than any other literary poet ; for Wordsworth, by his very fidelity, often lays himself open to mere literary criticism. In one sense, the greater part of the "Bucolics" is a mere rifaciamento of Theocritus ; and it is easy to point out how much more definite and coherent the original is than the copy, even apart from the question which is most like nature. Yet, after all, the " Bucolics " of Vergil have a charm of their own — a soft playfulness, so tender as to be almost grave, which makes them, upon the whole, the more enjoyable reading of the two. They have taken a place in Latin literature which the clever and more stimulating work of Theocritus failed to take in Greek; and in modern times all pastoral poetry derives from Vergil, not from Theocritus. The truth is, that the tem- per in which we find pastoral poetry enjoyable is not a tem- per in which we care for true or keen perceptions. Theocritus always remains at the point where perception is passing into enjoyment, but Vergil begins when the transition is completed. There is one other element in the " Bucolics " besides this naive enjoyment of the holiday side of country life, which probably did as much at the time for the author's reputation, though it only serves to puzzle and annoy posterity. Vergil, like Theocritus, carries on a war of allusions through the " Bucolics " against his literary rivals; though, with question- able tact, he tries to mask his own personality, and sometimes theirs, under the names of shepherds. Bavius and Msevius are notorious, for Vergil named them, and his commentators have preserved anecdotes enough to damn them to an im- mortality of fame. *' Codrus," a rival whom he half esteemed, 262 LA TIN LITER A TURE. VERGIL. 263 is generally supposed to be an anagram of Cordiis, who is identified again with a certain " Maurus larbita," who may even be the same as "lollas," who appears as the rival of the poet in the favor of Pollio's cupbearer, better known as "Alexis." But though there is a certain dexterity in putting the polemic into the mouth of shepherds, the polemic itself is tame, and the best that can be said of Vergil is that he did not allow himself to be entangled like Pope in an endless series of ignoble quarrels, though the temptation for both lay in a fastidiousness which had a noble side. When we turn from Vergil's relations to his rivals, to his relations to his patrons, we are struck, not exactly by his in- dependence, but by the liberality with which he distributes his homage. We should hardly find out that Octavian was a greater^man than Pollio, or even that Pollio was a greater man than Varius. Even when the monarchy was established, it never had the effect which an hereditary monarchy has of limiting individual ambitions: and when the monarchy was still a Thing of the future, it stimulated every individual ambi- tion, as a prize within the reach of all. It seems quite natu- ral to us that a pastoral in honor of the dead Caesar should represent Nature mourning for him, as it mourned for the dead Daphnis," and to find Uiat he too is thenceforward to be a blessed presence in Nature. The apocalyptic anticipations of the 'a^ollio" seem natural too: all that was worst in the world had been uppermost for a generation, and enough good was left to expect that the turn of the righteous would come, thou-h men could find no hope within the sphere of sober politTcs, and turned for comfort to signs in the stars of heaven, and to such echoes of Eastern prophecy as had reached their ears. But what is strange is, that all this miraculous hope should have settled on a new-born child of a second-rate par- tisan who happened to be consul at the time, and conse- quently much ingenuity has been wasted on the search for a child of higher destinies than Pollio's own.' At the time, it ' A personification not so much of the perishing summer sun as of the Sicilian herdsman's joy therein. » The best perhaps among many bad guesses is that the poem was corn- was not stran^fe, as all the familv of the Asinii were celebrated for generations for their spirit.' When Augustus was dis- cussing his possible successors, he mentioned Asinius Gallus as coveting a station which was too great for him. Of course Vergil had special reasons for idealizing Pollio's position and his prospects ; so, too, he idealizes Cornelius Gallus, who suc- ceeded him as land commissioner in Lombardy, in the last and perhaps the most beautiful of the Eclogues. All the gods of Arcadia come to console the love-lorn poet when his fiiith- less lady has ibrsaken him to follow a rival to the wars. The passage suggested the august procession of the superhuman mourners of Lycidas, which in its turn suggested to Shelley the splendid pageant of Adonais. The poetry is so rich and ten- der that it would be churlish to remember either that Milton and King were not shepherds, or that the deserted Gallus certainly did not spend his time in roaming about Arcadia. Vergil's pomp of woe is so far beyond the occasion which the author of "Alexis" knew how to treat as it deserved as to in- vite a guess that the poem is really a dirge, written after Callus's death, to make amends for the enforced suppression of the panegyric on him which it is said once closed the fourth Georgic. Tiie assumed date of the poem is 36 B.C., when Vergil must have already been meditating the " Georgics ;" but the alternative title of the "Bucolics" is Eclogae or Selec- tions, and a selection may be made at any time. Do we know when the selection was closed? Is not the solemn opening' more appropriate if Vergil was returning after an interval of many years to a kind of poetry which he had abandoned } If so, there would be a fitness in his prayer that the little which he says may be fit to move even Lycoris — and a sterner reader — and in the way that he dwells on the danger of the cold shade of evening and misfortune to the singer; and there would be admirable boldness in the lines where he speaks of posed upon the chance that the first-born of Octavian might turn out a boy. Julia was born while Pollio was in office. * Perhaps this is the best word to translate " ferocia " in the context. Whose solemnity young Milton reasonably exaggerated in the opening of " Lycidas." n 264 LA TIN LITER A TURE. his c.,ovvin-^^'; cism of the sixth Eclogue, where two shepherds find S. et^us S ep and bind him with flowers, while a nymph pa.nts Is e as he wakes, with the juice of berries and he buys h hoTtv of the shepherds with songs, and of the nymph wuh is Se The groundwork of the poem is really the same as ;ra;°:f%chille;s, where the god of ^vi-e brings te god o song and ^'^ ^od of love nt -s t.. L t X .^^^ do^^ ^^^^ r;e tha; it performs. When we come to ^xam-ne t^e .e wish for some letters o Vergd - s wh . ^^^ "-^S^J^Z^:^ mad:Vomrprogress with H. S;LS\vas probably deep in <^^^:^-;'^Zr^ the subject of metamorphosis. The legtncl wnic rated most is the unpleasant legend of Pas.phae . we are e nnnded for the first and last time n. Vergd of Atfs and Smyrna, the masterpiece of C.nna. ^^ Th^ "Geor'ncs contain 2258 nexamcici ""^ » ^ .epr sent^he wo k of seven of the best years of \ erg.l s hie, from .Tto 44 : the year in which they were completed was he veu when Oetalian was settling the affairs of the East ater the victory of Actium, which put the seal on the most htr ous a cl ist fruitful part of his work in the restorat.on of ItTv The temper of chastened hope and serene endeavor : ■;? breathes thr'ough them is as f--cterisuc of ^^^^^^^ as the lofty note of thanksgivmg wh.ch runs through the se riou oc es of Horace, written in the seven years after Actm, when Rome was gathering with joy the harvest wh.ch had I I VERGIL, 265 been sown in tears. Horace waited for Actium to be quite converted to the empire ; but Vergil, who had never fought at Phihppi, was ready to worship the new deity as soon as Sextus Tompeius had been subdued.' The worship was probably quite sincere, and as rational as any worship can be expected to be when the worshipper is not directly or indirectly under superhuman guidance. The feeling of rev- erence and loyalty was reviving under great difficulties, and in the early days of its revival it was neither easy nor helpful to separate its elements : loyalty had been the more deeply in- jured of the two, and much that had injured loyalty had in a wav strenirthened reverence. For the disturbance of all stable relations, which had gone on increasing in violence from the Social War to the war of Perusia, had forced upon men the feeling that their lives were governed by incalculable, uncon- trollable powers, and this conviction always makes many turn for comfort to propitiatory ceremonies; and these were pre- cisely the most vigorous part of the religion of Rome. When things mended, reverence and loyalty revived and coalesced, and sought a visible object, which the imagination could lay hold of: men needed an earthly providence, and for a time it seemed that they had found one. Besides, the belief in im- mortality had reached a stage in its development when it in- evitably conducted to a belief in apotheosis. In the days of Hesiod there was the choice of imagining a man living on as a ghost in middle air or underground in a world of shadows, accessible through caves and river gorges, or simply in his tomb. In the days of Pindar it was possible to think that glorious spirits passed under earth with the sun, to rise again with him, sooner or later, in some bright region of the west. But when science had reached a positive conception of the terraqueous globe and the sublunary atmosphere, it was plain that there was no rest for the souls of the righteous till they reached the sphere of the fixed constellations, or at least the orb of the planet of their nativity. And astrology, which was then the only form in which men could give "scientific" shape ^ The close of the first Georgic, with its sense of trouble throughout the world, must be early : the opening invocation is probably later. I.- 12 266 LA TLV LITER A TURE, VERGIL. 267 to their belief that terrestrial life is governed by cosmical con- ditions, led straight to a conviction that spirits which reached the starry sphere were made equal to the highest gods. Of course, an artificial belief of this kind is always in a sense un- real: it has not the strength of either a true belief or a tradi- tional belief; but when it corresponds to a real need it is held all the more vehemently and eagerly because it cannot be held steadily. A reader now can hardly do anything but smile at the suggestion that the deified Augustus should ap- pear as a new star, and fill the gap between the Virgin and the Scales, or the Claws, as they were called then : at the time, a fanciful difficulty in arranging a star map represented a grave hiatus in spiritual science. The religious temper of the "Georgics" reaches its highest fervor in anticipating the worship of Augustus; but it is founded on more permanent elements. The feeling is that all thiniis are iiiven to men abundantlv, but that the terms upon v.'hich they are given are hard and not equal ; the gods are bountiful in a sense and faithful in a sense, the earth is sure to yield her increase to those who till her fields with diligence; even the hardships of life are a discipline which trains men to higher perfection ; but the poet never reaches the elevation at which it is possible to repose upon the thought of the goodness and justice of the IMost High. He worships almost without praise, yet his worship is not a service of fear: his highest conception of gladness is a solemn sacrifice, where men pay their vows which they made in trouble. One may find many passages like those which tell of husbandmen per- forming festal rites upon rich grass, or of sailors paying their vows when they are safe ashore to Glaucus (the god of the evil-boding sea) and Panopea and Melicerta (child of Ino), and many complaints that all things go back of themselves, and only go forward by our care, and that life gives its best at first and then has nothing to offer but the lees, and that in- nocent cattle suffer like luxurious men. The famous passage where the Father is praised for the cares that edge the hearts of mortal men stands alone. Agriculture seems to attract him as much by its certainty % and innocence as by anything else : it is the one pursuit in which endeavor never quite fails, in which success is attained without crime. His love of nature doubtless has its part in the matter, but his love of nature is of a kind which might easily become jealous of the encroachments of tillage : what pleases him in rustic life is its contrast with the life of the town, not with the life of the wilderness. He wooes Alexis to the lo7v cots and unadorned fields.' When he fears that his want of fiiith and courage ' (as we should say) may disappoint his hope of writing a great scientific poem," he cries for the woods and rivers, for the cool valleys of Ha^mus, and for the mighty shadow of the branches to cover him ; he longs for the steep slopes of Taygetus, where Spartan maids hold revel. When he comes to treat of breeding sporting dogs, his first thought is how exciting a night on Cithasron must be; and when the cry of hounds and the noise of cattle and of horses is in his ears, it is echoed back by the wood. The country deities whose knowledge is bliss are all deities of the wilds — Pan and Silvanus,* and the nymphs— all dear to the imagi- nation of poets who lived when mythology had come to be cherished by sentiment, all shapes of terror to real husband- men, who lived when mythology was still growing out of men's dim sense of the hidden powers of the world. All this is far short of the passion for wild nature which we know from modern writers. Bare crags to Vergil are not picturesque or sublime unless crowned with towers by human toil, but simply bleak and cruel. He hardly realizes what a great mountain is like, or rather, having never thought of climbing one, he is at the mercy of the commonest illusions of perspective ; the nearest pine-clad peak that towers above * " Soidida rura " as opposed to " nitidae urbes." ^ He speaks himself of the " cold blood about his heart." ' He knew enough of Alexandrian literature to be sure that the grand scienlific spirit of Lucretius had not made up for his total ignorance of science. ♦ Silvanus is the creature of the fears of the hour, when every fantastic stump takes the shape of a deformed old man, and the wind, as it goes crashing through the woods, is felt and heard so vividly that it creates illusions of sight. \ 268 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the horizon is the cloud-capped head of the giant, the snow- clad masses nearer the horizon are his shoulders in their white mantle, and the glaciers which run down from them arc his beard which reaches his knees.' The picture has a kind of fragmentary momentary truth in its way, but it is very puz- zling to readers trained at first or second hand to exact rec- ognition of the permanent features of the landscape. Indeed, Vergil, who in many ways is so modern, is very unlike mod- ern writers, at least English writers, in this, that he is quite a stranger to their habit of seeking natural beauty first by the isolated sense of sight. With \'ergil the bees float through the clear summer, which is felt as well as seen ; the chariots in the race "put it on down the course" or are deaf to the rein, the charger " twines bv turns the arches of his lejrs/' hc'* "lays back his pliant limbs " as at each stride the upper parts of the fore-legs are drawn back to the body ; instead of watch- ing the action of the horse, he feels it going on. In fact, it might be said that Vergil apprehends nature intimately where a modern poet would aim at representing nature accurately, and a primitive Greek poet would present the broader aspects of nature vividly. Vergil is quite as refined in his observa- tion as the subtlest modern, but he does not deal with such large masses of caretuUy discriminated detail, and, like Shake- speare, he makes flowers blow together which cannot be found at once in any visible garden. Still, his method has its ad- vantages ; modern word-painting would have been quite out of place in a didactic poem, while Vergil, when he is most poetical, continues to be instructive. The famous passage on the praise of Italy contains a sufficient cataloirue of Italian trees; and the description of the signs of the sky at the end of the first book is as highlv ornamented, though not as im- passioned, as the description of the signs of the times in which it culminates. Again, the plainest and most level passages have always some imaginative phrase to relieve them : it is the frisky unyoked heifer that will trample down the flowers that should be reserved for the bees (the milch kine and the ' ".^n."iv. 298sqq. ' Or, as Conington takes it, "sets down his springy feet." VERGIL. 269 laboring oxen are sober and safe, the wild bullocks ought to be stalled up or in distant pastures). The vine-dresser follows his vine up as he crops it, he fashions it as he prunes. It is this intimate union of the poetry with the construction which makes the "Georgics" the most masterly didactic poem in the world. Where Lucretius is a poet, it may be thought that he is a greater, at least a more powerful, poet than Ver- gil ; but Vergil is a poet always, and through the greater part of his work Lucretius has no characteristic of a poet but im- passioned earnestness. It may seem curious that a writer with Vergil's exquisite skill and judgment should have written a didactic poem at all. Hesiod would have certainly written in prose, if prose had existed then : the philosophers of the fifth century B.C. were not very encouraging precedents, and the Alexandrine guides whom Vergil followed still less so. Something must be allowed for external influence : Vergil was a diffident writer, he needed the encouragement of recog- nition to spur him on. Pollio had to press him for more "Bucolics;" Maecenas had to press him, at any rate for the second part of the "Georgics," consisting of the last two books. Then, too, Vergil had always a predilection for the poetry of real life : he was surfeited with the adaptations of Alexandrine legends which had been common ever since Catullus. His ambition as an epic poet had been to write of Caesar's wars, like all his contemporaries ; he thought that what fired beyond all else the imagination of practical men ought to fire the imagination of literary men too, and that if it did not it was the literary men's fault. He frankly said that the task was, for the time at any rate, beyond his strength ; and so he accepted another task which lay within it. And the task was not exactly superfluous. The Romans had excellent practical manuals of agriculture by Cato and Varro ; but the former, at any rate, was too purely national to be on the level of an age when many new plants of all kinds had been natu- ralized in Italy, and neither had addressed the literary class. There really seems to have been a stage at which the natural course for a literary man who had mastered a practical or scientific subject sufficiently to wish to introduce it to his 270 LA TIN- LITER A TURE. peers was to write a poem upon it. A literary introduction to any art or science, addressed to the general public and written in prose, implies a far greater continuity between the public and the literary class and specialists than existed then. No doubt, to a modern reader the " Georgics " have one of the worst f^iults that any introduction to a subject can have — they are not clear ; but they were probably clear enough at the time. The description of the plough has puz- zled many tyros; but any one who had seen an Italian plough could learn from the description how to make one. And this applies to the whole poem ; readers who had the whole rural economy of Italy under their eyes found it interpreted suffi- ciently to carry them some way in practice. Indeed, we a little exaggerate the obscurity of the "Georgics" because we have lately recognized it : an attentive reader is never sure of understanding Vergil, a cursory reader is hardly ever arrested. He feels even less need than Vergil felt to decide between the alternative suggestions which were often present to his imagination ; he is satisfied with a vague apprehen- sion of what is presented with a mixture of subtlety and in- decision, which is sometimes carried so far as to imperil the supremacy of grammar : as where we are told that things neglected go back ' " not otherwise than he who forces a skiff against the stream by oars, if perchance he lets his arms slacken and the channel bears him down headlong to the rapids." Here the incompleteness is partly due to the artis- tic tact with which Vergil shrinks from polishing too far. He values the remains of primitive simplicity which he has been able to gather from Hesiod and Lucretius, and from old rustic saws, even when he has not been able to keep them intact. There are four things that the wise vine-dresser does early; he ought to be the last to gather his crop. The precepts are given with a show of archaic simplicity, but the requirements of metre have sophisticated all but the first and the last. Still, they have the effect of rocks cropping up in a park. It is probably for the sake of archaism that Vergil gave the wonderful receipt for obtaining a swarm of bees by stifling a * "Georg." i. 200 sqq. VERGIL. 271 bullock and shutting it up in a shed with four apertures, filled with scented herbs. For a panegyric on Egypt and the admni- istration of Gallus could easily have been provided with a bet- ter introduction ; and from a mere literary point of view Ver- cril's reputation has probably gained by the substitution of the exquisite idyl on Aristoeus and Orpheus and Eurydice, which he is said to have substituted after the disgrace and death of Gallus. It might, no doubt, be guessed that one half the idyl, which deals \Wth Aristx'us and Cyrene, was part of the origi- nal design, as yellow-haired Lycorias, who has just become a mother, might very well be an allusion to " Lycoris " or Cyth- eris or Volumnin, of whom Gallus was not yet wholly weary. As it stands it is more in accordance with the regular double structure of an Alexandrian idyl, which in the present in- stance may be thought to have the disadvantage that the story of Orpheus is told at greater length and with more sympathy than Cvrene would have told it with, although she would have wished to melt her son with pity that he might humble him- self more easily. The "Georgics" are, beyond contradiction, Vergil's most perfect work : '\\\ England and Germany there has lately been a feeling that they are also his greatest— that the "^neid" is more^or less of a splendid failure, and, in fact, may be con- sidered an elaborate mistake, into which court influence se- duced Vergil against the promptings of his better genius. It is known that he wished, on his death-bed, to have the "^neid" destroyed, and that he wrote to Augustus that he almost thought he must have been mad to begin such a work, es- pecially as he was spending pains upon it that might have been better employed. But this means that he thought he ought to have been studying philosophy. He was not alone in the feeling that a person past middle life ought \ofairc son dme, as the French say, which has its natural explanation in the fact that, as soon as activity begins to be impaired, there is need to dwell more than before upon large beliefs that tran- scend personal cravings, if the character has to be saved from the fretting of irritable impotent desire. The "^neid" is undoubtedly unfinished : there are half-lines and lines which 272 LA TIN LITER A TURE. VERGIL. 273 are filled up in some MSS. and not in others, where it is un- certain whether a copyist supplied a makeshift, or wheiher Vergil's original editors took the responsibility of omitting what Vergil had marked as provisional. There are otheT makeshifts which we can scarcely believe would have survived a final revision, as where Latinus swears by his sceptre, "for he had it in his hand at the time," and assonances and am- biguities which a final revision might have removed too, though the latter are an exaggeration of the indecision which we trace in Vergil from the first. For instance, when Lausus IS dead he is praised as worthy to have been happier in pa- ternal rule and to have had another father than Mezentius: the praise is almost a tautology, because Vergil did not de- cide in the first half of the phrase whether he thought of Lausus as under his father's rule, or ruling in the right^'of his father. But it is certainly possible that Vergil was dissatisfied with the " ^:neid " because he had tired of his task, not because he left it incomplete ; and there can be no doubt that it did not lie so completely within his powers as the ''Georgics." To adorn and to versify the precepts of an art whose spiritual aspects interested him was what he could do perfectly; to make the heroic past live again is really a hopeless undertak- ing, which will always tempt poets who are born too late. The Italian poets who make a kind of gracious burlesque of chiv- alry have come nearest, perhaps, to success. Ariosto has not yet become a butt for the criticism which has overtaken Ver- gil, and will most likely overtake Scott before long. But for the Civil War we should have had more poems like " Comus " and the "Ode for the Nativity," and critics to tell us that Milton's real greatness lay there, and that "Paradise Lost" was to be pardoned as the aberration of a noble ambition. No poet can be sure of surroundings that suit him entirely : he needs to see something like what he desires to sing, and yet his per- sonal fitness to sing one thing rather than another is not de- termined by what he sees. The inspiration of Vergil and Milton was strong enough to carry them through immortal works ; but these have less freshness and soliditv than works I m \m \ . n taken direct from life, like those of Shakespeare or Homer or Goethe, or even Burns or Jonson. Of course, even Vergil and Milton bear the impress of their time; the debates of Hell and the idvls of Eden reflect the grave pleasure of refined Puritanism'and the passions of the Long Parliament : the con- test between Drances and Turnus reflects what Vergil half in- clined to think of the contest between Cicero and Antonius ; the seductions of Dido are painted more harshly because the poet cannot forget the seductions of Cleopatra, who had been the hostess and the paramour of Julius before she became the successful temptress of Antonius, and the adversary and the unsuccessful temptress of Octavian ; even the rising buildings of Carthage are watched by yEneas with the eyes with which Vergil had watched the rising buildings of the new Rome of Augustus ; and the voyages of ^neas, especially the voyage which he relates to Dido, remind us of the sentimental tours of educated Romans in famous seas. Both the " yKneid " and the " Paradise Lost," however, owe more to the reading of their authors than to their experience. Milton uses his reading in a way which we spontaneously ad- mire : he recalls much without exactly imitating anything. Vergil insists upon repeating as many of the effects of Greek poetry as possible, and is anxious to have them recognized; and our first thought is that he reproduces because he cannot produce. A reference to other arts might abate this preju- dice : a grand opera must have a ballet in a set place, and the hero or heroine must cHtTin a duet; and the hero must be a tenor and the villain must be a bass. Raphael took figures with little change from Masaccio, and Poussin was never tired of adapting figures from the antique for use in his own com- positions. Vergil himself judiciously observed to critics who thought him a plagiary that it was easier to steal his club from Hercules than to convey a verse from Homer. A more penetrating criticism is, that the episodes may be said to overpower the poem. When one thinks of the "^neid," one thinks of the capture of Troy or the loves of Dido and ^neas, or the descent of ^neas to the underworld, or, per- haps, of Nisus and Euryalus or the fate of Pallas; when one L— 12* TTi 274 LATIN LITERATURE. ^ VERGIL. 275 thinks of the " Iliad," one thinks of the persons and the sub- ject; when one thinks of the "Odyssey," one thinks of the story. It is impossible to infer anything from the Hict that the most brill- iant episodes are to be found in the earlier half of the poem ; for we are fortunate in knowing something of Vergil's method of work : he drew up a framework of the whole poem, and then wrote at any part of it which attracted him at the time ; it was his habit to write two or three hundred lines in a morninc-, and to pass the remainder of the day in reducing them to twenty or thirty. It is not conceivable that the whole of the last six books were written after the pathetic episode of the young Marcellus was recited to Augustus and Octavia in 20 B.C., only two years before Vergil's own death, or even after 22 B.C., when Marcellus himself died. The truth is that Vergil succeeds whenever the subject lends itself to romance or mysticism : he fiiils, at least he fails to in- terest, when it is a question of throwing himself into the home- ly every-day life of primitive times. His skill and knowledge are admirable even here: the court and empire of Priam arc invested with all the splendor of the East; the court of Dido is equally splendid, but without the majesty of age. When the poet comes to Italy, we are never allowed to forget that we are on virgin soil. p:verything belongs to a world that is young and small— the woods that hang over the Tiber, the thickets that surround the lair of Cacus on the Aventine, the arms of the tribes that muster to the war, the numbers of the contingents, the horsemen who fight with one another, in- stead of the heroes who rush through whole armies in their chariots, though Turnus, who in all respects is almost an Ho- meric figure, in this also makes some approach to the achieve- ments of Achilles. Again, the first chance medley fighting over the slain hart is curiously lifelike : even the Fury stand- ing on the thatch and blowing the alarm-horn is real com- pared with the far more brilliant and ingenious description of Fame in the fourth book. In dealing with the direct super- natural, Vergil is at a disadvantage compared with the old epic, which was written in the ages of iaith : he is continually compelled to force the note ; the bleeding myrtles, the harpies. \ the convulsions of the sibyl, her gasping shrieks of prophecy, the serpent from Alecto's head which enters into iurnuss heart the spirit which baffles him in his last battle, are all too depeiKlent upon physical horror. The grand vision of the cods arraved against Troy is the only thing we have to set a-ainst such picHires as Athene holding her aegis over Achil- i "s at the trench and swelling his shout with hers ; and even here the elder poet has the advantage of his effortless simplic- ity In general, the gods of the " yEneid " expose their dig- nity much less and maintain it much worse than the gods of the ''Iliad." Neptune's first appearance to still the storm is majestic, but before we have done with him he begins to scold the winds, and stops himself to remember that he had better calm the waves. The unscrupulous persistent hate of Juno is almost nodlike tried by the standard of Homeric deity; but the tedious majesty with which Jupiter bears with her reduces her at once to a shrewish, meddlesome wife. The apparition of Venus in the first book, and the way that she vanishes when fully revealed, are happily devised ; but she is much too skil- ful a rhetorician : when she speaks, she looks as if she had landed from a viachina of Euripides. Another point of contact between the " ^:neid " and " Par- adise Lost " is, that the poets have succeeded in one thing too well for their own reputation : they have fastened the main framework of their poems in the public mind as securely as if it had been an original part of the tradition ; and this tells more to the disadvantage of Vergil, because the tradition upon which he built is no longer regarded with religious respect. If it were realized how completely the story of the "^Mieid" is the creation of Vergil, his invention would be more praised than it is : it would still be less praised than it deserves. The wanderings of Ulysses interest more than the wanderings of ^Eneas, and yet the latter are much more skilfully contrived both for pathos and dignity. Ulysses goes from one place to another just as it happens, or rather in order that he may ex- haust all the possibilities of adventure with which the Greeks were acquainted when the poem was written ; u^Eneas is al- ways on his way to the land appointed for him. He lands in 276 LATIN LITERATURE. Thrace like Ulysses, but not for aimless plunder; he thinks to build a city— he is really brought thither to propitiate the manes of rolydorus ; in Crete he tries once more to build for himself, 'thenceforward he is tried, not by failures of his own, but by the successes of others ; he regards the infant set- tlement of Helenus with affectionate envy, but the settlement of Dido in Africa is a temptation to himself, the settlement of Acestes in Sicily is a temptation to his followers. The meet- ing of yEneas with Helenus and Andromache is much more moving than the meeting of Telemachus with Menelaus and Helen. Dido outshines Circe and Calypso, for Vergil is the first great poet who lived in a society where the pas*^ions of great ladies could be studied from life : her fall (for it must always be remembered that her second marriage, even if it had been regular, is consistently represented as a tall) is the fall of a Roman matron j her commanding charm is the charm of an Egyptian queen, of a Cleopatra without caprices. But, shifty and ruthless as he is, Ulysses is a hero : yEneas is a saint; and almost all saints are insipid except to their worshippers ; and it is a disadvantage that the hierophant is only half a believer. What attracts Vergil in ^neas is be- fore all things his piety, just as Homer is attracted before all things by the courage of Achilles. And each poet is attract- ed by what he feels to be most difficult : courage is precious \vhen men are in bondage to the fear of death ; piety is pre- cious when the gods seem to overthrow cities in their inno- cence. In Vergil courage is comparatively a cheap virtue: the brave Gyas and the brave Cloanlhus are intended as sam- ples of the pervading heroism of the chosen remnant of Trov. It is not the choicest prerogative of their chief to be the brav- est of the brave or the wisest of the wise, though lie is not overshadowed by any of his followers, as Agamemnon is over- shadowed by Achilles and Ulysses. Bur the true glory of ^neas is meant to be that he, above all other men, knows and keeps the will of Heaven. The condemnation of Dido and Turnus and Amata is that they are fighting against destiny. Dido rebels with her eyes open ; she \aunts iineas with his fame for piety, she sneers at the pretence that the Epicurean VERGIL. 277 \ calm of heaven can be broken to make ^neas break his faith. The Italians resist, but they do not blaspheme ; their offence is the blind refusal, selfish yet not ungenerous, of prejudice and passion to look bevond the obvious standard of worldly hon- esty which tells in their favor; they are headstrong, and that was sufticient to put them beyond the pale of the sympathy of a Roman poet and a Roman public. But the peculiarity of the position is, that while Vergil condemned them, while he exults in the future of Rome, to which they are sacrificed, he never says or feels that the power that will have it so is holy or just or good ;' he feels exactly as we feel about people who disobey what are called the laws of nature, and he expects us to feelto /Eneas almost as we feel to a man who obeys the law of God. And, besides this half-heartedness, there is a special difficulty in the case of Dido ; her side of the story is treated in a thoroughly modern way, /Eneas's side is treated in an archaic way ; and we find ourselves complaining of his lack of chivalry in a way in which we do not complain of the reck- lessness of Ulysses in the " Odyssey," or the cynicism of Ja- son in the "Medea;" that is, we expect of him the tone of conduct and feeling which has been gradually cultivated, principally by the help of Provencal poets, to meet the class of situation whose possibilities Vergil was the first to begin to discern. The catastrophe happily is not elaborated : we are spared the scene in which Lavinia had to reconcile herself to a hus- band who had slain her betrothed and brought her mother to suicide; we hardly learn the "laws of unequal peace" to which /Eneas has to bow according to the prophecy of Dido. The story ends even more abruptly with the death of Turnus than the " Iliad " ends with the death of Hector. To resume, all the shortcomings of the ".^neid" resolve themselves into one : it is the work of a divided genius. The interest in primitive faith and simplicity, and the interest in the serene elevation of civilized virtue and the subtle ques- ' The nearest approach to a suggestion of this is in the character of Mezentius, who is a tyrant of the blackest kind because he fears not God and therefore regards not man. 278 LA TIN LITER A TURK. tioning and patient sadness of civilized intellect, sustain and balance one another in the " Georgics :" in the "^Jneid" the attempt to embody both objectively in the same series of pict- ures confuses the interest as often as it heightens it; the rather that in the '' Georgics " Vergil glorified the primitive life which he saw around him, and whose limits he so under- stood, while in the "/Eneid" he looked back to a distant past through the distorting media of antiquarianism and mytholo- gy. Thus, the episodes in the battles are excellent, but the battles themselves are often tame ; because special incidents in warflxre can be invented or adapted, but the general condi- tions of warfare have to be known. Again, in describing excit- ing things which are seen seldom, it is a help to refer to more familiar experiences, and so the "Iliad" is full of similes; and as this proves that similes are the appropriate ornament of an epic, the "yEneid" is full of similes too — of similes conveyed with exquisite taste and judgment, and wonder- fully little loss of truth and power, and occasionally with some gain in suavity; there are even new similes from housewives at their wheels, and bulls fighting for the mastery of the herd in the forest pastures, the one picturesque feature in rustic life in which Italy stood above Greece. But, after all, the sim- iles in the ".^uieid" are there not to help out the description, but to ornament it; the purpose which they serve in the "Iliad" is served in the ".>I^:neid " by a whole machinery of abstraction and emphasis which the poet finds ready to his hand. But the framework of the poem is of its essence : it is ex- actly preposterous to demand that Vergil should have written a series of heroic idyls instead. Heroic idvls presuppose that an heroic legend is already fixed and elaborated either by the activity of living popular tradition or by a poet or school of poets whose invention is still spontaneous and half conscious ; but it was Vergil himself who fixed the tradition of the journeys and wars of /Eneas. Besides, heroic idyls are almost a contradiction : they either tend to come together again into an epic, or to degenerate into mere romantic pret- tiness. Even a purely romantic figure like Camilla gains VERGIL. 279 much in seriousness and dignity xyhen the whole story of the national strife in which she falls is told. The very pictmesque combat in which Mezentius rides round ^neas, and hurls snear after spear into the shield that is always turned to catch U.cm is admirably fitted for an idyl ; but, if it stood alone, Mezentius would be the hero conquered by the coward thrust that slays his horse. The steadfast endurance of ^neas in a real peril may pass for heroism when we know what he has borne and achieved, and what destinies await him. The "^^:neid," if finished, would still have been freer and bolder than the'" Georgics " in metre and other ways. When we compare it with other great epics, we are struck before all Ihincrs with its sustained sweetness and dignity ; but when we compare it with Vergil's other works and with later Latm epic poetry, we are struck with its manliness and sonorous lou-hness,' and, besides, by its simplicity and directness. Sopliocles is not one of the simplest of Greek writers, but Ajax's blessing to his son is plain and modest beside the sug- crestive grandiloquence of Vergil's counterpart ; but that is calm and simple beside a comparatively modest specimen of the ferocious ingenuity of Lucan. Sophocles says, *' Boy, mayst thou prove more fortunate than thy father, and like him in the rest, and thou wilt not prove amiss." Vergil says, "Learn, bov, virtue of me, and faithful endeavor ; and fortune of other men." Lucan says (by the mouth of a centurion), " From those who must live the gods hide (how else could life be endured ?) that it is happy to die." The phrase is as contorted as the thought. » Much of this is due to a diligent study of Ennius, many of whose lines arc embahned in the "/Eneid;" something, perhaps, to a study of a con- temporary, Varius ; and much, of course, to Vergil's own tact, which does not shrink from abruptness and elision and a plentiful use of the rolhng "r." It was doubtless a sense of the value of the vigorous hemistichs which led Veri^il to leave so many lines, especially in the second book, imperfect: hewuld have filled them up at a moment's notice, but he waited till he could do so without weakening them. Another effect of the resolution to be broad and epic is that epithets like ^>/^-^;/^ are rather over- freq^fent, and there is less of the precise felicity of the kinguage of the earlier poems. 28o LA TIN LITER A TURE. It is necessary to notice this, because Vergil's influence told in spite of his later practice almost wholly in favor of smooth- ness. Wc shall even fnid that during the Claudian period he was criticised as he taught posterity to criticise Ennius ; and that Lucan might almost be considered as an exaggerated re- action in favor of one side of Vergil's method — the side which had been abandoned by Ovid and all who came after him, and was never fairly revived by any of the later masters of epic poetry. For Silius Italicus, who possessed the requisite simplicity, lacked the requisite energy ; and Claudian, who, after all, comes nearest, was born much too late. The truth is that Vergil represents almost the earliest stage at which perfect maturity of metre can be artistically attained. For instance, we think that our Elizabethan literature is primi- tive ; but Vergil is incomparably simpler and more direct than "Lear" or "Catiline*' or Shakespeare's "Sonnets," to say nothing of " Paradise Lost." Words are used in their natural sense ; or, if the poet's insight or caprice charges them with a new weight of meaning, what he proceeds upon is still the natural ordinary sense: he does not take words in their conventional sense and then develop and exaggerate this. The order of the words is natural ; the only transpositions we find are easily suggested by the metre and emphasis : there are no inversions introduced simply for effect, and out of im- patience with what is ordinary. The reason that we attend so much more to Vergil's influence than to his personal ten- dency is that Latin literature in its later stages never suc- ceeded in simplifying itself with the brilliant success with which English literature simplified itself in the reign of Queen Anne,^ and again at the end of the eighteenth century, for the movement in that direction inaugurated by Hadrian and Fronto was, upon the whole, a failure. Such as it was, the movement went back to the Latin before Vergil, and never distinguished him from the literature which sprang from him; ^ Compared with the literature called Elizabethan we may say that the literature of our Au2;ustan age is artificial as opposed to natural; but it is simple compared with the quaintness and perplexity which marked the literature of the middle quarters of the seventeenth century. VERGIL. 281 and it is not surprising that it has become possible to modern scholars like Professor Munro to charge him with corrupting the native purity of Latin, as Milton might have been charged with corrupting the native purity of English if " Paradise Lost" had ever gained the position which the "^neid" gained at once, of the indispensable school-book, governing all future writers both of prose and verse, with a supremacy that can only be faintly illustrated by the ascendency which the consecrated cadences of King James's Bible have retained over all subsequent writers in English, for the reverence which has made that ascendency permanent has kept its influence in the main indirect. Although these circumstances have led to an exaggeration of the charge, it would be rash to say that it is altogether unfounded. The poets of the Ciceronian age do write a language which is purer and more idiomatic than the greater poets of the Augustan age ; and, in fact, it may be observed that all poets who are familiar with more languages than one tend generally, in proportion to their poetical rank, to transcend the special characteristics of their language. The two English poets whom one naturally would tun: to as specimens of racy idiomatic style are Butler and Swift, and no one would deny that Delille is a model of French purity and lucidity of diction, while Victor Hugo is a great poet who has to write in French. N'ote oil the Metre of the Culex. A single metrical test is not very decisive, but, as the late date of the Culex has been inferred from the rarity of elisions, it may be worth while to call attention to a peculiarity which points the other way. In the Culex, out of 413 lines, 16 (36, 38, 39, 49, 58, 62, 104, 172, 175, 213, 265, 268, 291, 348, 35 r, 3S5) end with two dissyllables. In all cases except 268 there is a monosyllable before the two dissyllables. In the 820 lines of the "Eclogues" there are 26 examples of this rhythm; in the 514 lines of the first Georgic, 6; in 902 of the sixth book of the " .'Eneid," 6. In 413 lines taken at haphazard from the " Pharsalia " there arc none ; in 465 lines taken from Statius's " Silvae," III. ii.-iv., there are two. In the second book of Lucretius there are 26 in 1152 lines — a small proportion, con- sidering: the cencral irregularity of Lucretius. In Horace's "Satires" the proportion is high — 38 out of 326 lines in the third satire of the second book ; in his imitator, Persius, there are fewer— 30 out of 549. All this 282 LA TIN LITER A TURE. points to the conclusion that the rhythm belongs to the beginning of the Augustan age; on the other hand, in Theocritus the proportion is 21 in 434 lines ot the first four idyls. In the first four idyls of Calpurnius the proportion is 20 in 460; in the next three, 18 in 298; in the last four, 6 in 309; but Calpurnius, like Pcrsius, is an imitator. HORACE. 283 CHAPTER III. HORACE. The most versatile, enterprising, and frank of the writers of the early part of the Augustan age was Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the son of a freedman of Venusia, who made a mod- est living by getting in debts. The father was proud of his son, a remarkable child, of what would now be called a ro- mantic temper: he took him to Rome for education, and put him under the care of Orbilius, a noted grammarian of Bene- ventum, wiio taught him Homer. He pursued his studies at Athens, where he learned the Stoic theory of right and wrong and the fashionable Academic mixture of curiosity and scepti- cism. His talents and good-nature gave him enough reputa- tion there to raise him to the rank of tribune in the army of Brutus and Cassius. At Philippi he showed a lack of heroism which it pleased him to exaggerate, partly to imitate Alca^us, who also had lost his shield, and partly to prove that when he fought on the wrong side he fought half-heartedly. When he returned to Italy his father was dead, and the house and land at Venusia were gone. Horace may have been living on his capital, or included in the proscription. For three years, more or less, he lived in Italy without means, and wrote verses under the spur of want, expecting that his talent would be employed when known. At last Vergil and Varius intro- duced him to Maecenas with a strong recommendation. If anything Horace had then wTitten has reached us, it must be sought among the least important epodes and satires ; but at the beginning of a great literary period very scanty and ten- tative performances may be the legitimate foundation of a considerable celebrity, for a real advance in form is easily perceptible to good judges, who say " there has been nothing like this before." Nine months after the first introduction i|: 284 LA TIN LITER A TURE, Maecenas made Horace free of his house, and by-and-by gave him a farm in the Sal)ine country near 'I'ibur. He accom- panied Maecenas to Brundisium, and perhaps followed Oc- tavian to Sicily, in the neighborhood of which he escaped shipwreck at some time in his life. Maecenas went to Actium without him : thenceforward they were in constant intercourse up to the death of Maecenas, whom Horace only outlived for a few months. Some time before the ^w(\^ Horace, like Au- gustus, had begun to loosen the ties which bound him to a man to wiiom they both owed much. Horace continued to write of Maecenas, and to him, as if he loved him, but he told him he was querulous: he defended himself against his ex- actions, he even offered to restore his gifts. Augustus pro- posed to employ the poet as his private secretary, in terms so disrespectful to MjEcenas as to be hardly respectful to Hor- ace. The proposal was declined without offence, and Augus- tus continued to complain that Horace was ashamed to seem intimate with him. He would have liked to have been one of the chief speakers in the " Satires.;" he protested against being excluded from the list of Horace's correspondents; so Horace wrote him a letter to apologize for intruding on his political cares with literary discussions. The genius of Horace was less impersonal than that of Vergil, wiio communicates little of his individual life, while Horace almost j^erplexes us by his free disclosures of his whole self, as a living man acting upon ideal impulses, prac- tical inducements, animal appetites, by turn, and quite in earnest all the time in his desire to cultivate his mind and im- prove his character. In an early poem we learn that he had his fortune told by a Sabine witch ; in the latest, most likely, of all, he asks himself seriously whether he has overcome the fear of witches, ghosts, and dreams. He makes much of all incidents that will take a miraculous color. Pigeons covered him with leaves to protect him from serpents when he strayed far from home in his childhood; a wolf ran away from him in a wood ; he was caught in a storm and escaped shipwreck ; a tree fell in his grounds and did not crush him as he passed. He even professes that thunder and lightning in a clear sky HORACE. 281; converted him from Epicureanism, which had plentv of theo- ries to account for thunder-storms which included thunder- clouds. It is even noticeable that almost all the poems which refer to his quarrel with an elderly procuress of the name of Gratidia, or, as he calls her, Canidia, turn upon her reputation for sorcery. All this shows that there was a perceptible vein of mysticism in Horace's temperament, which commonlv ac- companies a craving for enjoyment in all but vigorous men of action. Wieland began as a mystic and a pietist, to end as an Epicurean ; Moore's habitual sentimentalism in literature was the other side of his habitual joviality in conduct • and though the religion in which he was bred was more favorable than Horace's to pietism, he too gave way to a turn for humor which was often sceptical and sometimes irreverent. All three tended more or less to revery — perhaps it might be said to aspiration — in the intervals of pleasure ; and all three, prizing the mood of the moment above everythin"-, were in- different to what is called the serious business of life, and so ceased to respect the conventions which regulate it ; and when respect for conventions has disappeared, respect for re- ligious traditions can hardly maintain itself except when it is fortified by asceticism. Like Moore, Horace had a Platonic admiration for au- sterity; unlike Moore, his taste and judgment went together in favor of simplicity, though his vanity was flattered by in- vitations to share the luxuries of the great. But splendor, except as the appendage of rank, had no attraction for him; he honestly thought that wine and perfumes and garlands were best enjoyed in their simplicity, by a roaring fire in winter and by a shady brook in summer. Wine and love are old allies in the hearts of poets as well as in their songs ; but Horace trusted wine, and he distrusted love. Wine cheered and excited him, and enabled him to follow in his cups the footsteps of the revellers of old, whose passionate svmpathy with nature carried them through wilder solitudes than those to which the Muse drew him in the calm of day. Love was a trouble to him; he uses the metaphor of fire about it much more frequently and exclusively than the other poets of the 286 LA TIN LITER A TURE. HORACE. day ; it meant little or nothing to him but the fever of desire at liie sight of beauty ; in his youth the desire was strong enough to determine pursuit by the help of vanity. He com- plained like other poets of the time, though with as little reason as any, that the reigning beauties preferred wealth to wit ; but there is no trace that he was capable of the sus- tained passion of Catullus or Propertius, or of the tender sentiment of Tibullus, or even the restless curiosity of Ovid, which kept him long in a labyrinth of the kind of love-affairs best called intrigues. In his maturity he no longer cared to pursue: whether the desire was gratified or not, he learned early that the fever would pass. He came to think love was a game that it was pretty to watch and ill to play, at least with players who were young and keen, and had still to be taught to lose with patience. A lover has necessarily plans and hopes, and it was Horace's ambition to live without plans: his indifference to wealth was the one feature of his character which he thoroughly approved. Unfortunately, it is difficult for an impressionable, imaginative nature, constantly cravhig for joy, to escape the tyranny of caprice except by submission to a routine of duty, or by resolute effort to reach a high and distant goal ; accordingly Horace reproached himself severely for his fitful temper and his restless wish for change. Ca- prices are often thwarted, and he reproached himself for irri- tability too. He was never vindictive, and at one time, before his position was assured, while it was still important to him to make friends and to be conciliatory, he had serious hopes of subduing his temper to a constant state of easy good-nature. Horace was twenty-three years old when the battle of Philippi was fought ; he was twenty-six before he was admit- ted to the intimacy of Maecenas. During those three years he had everything in his own circumstances and in public affairs to make him anxious and uncomfortable; he had nothing to cheer him but his talents and his youth. Even if he inherited no foundation of homely virtue and good-sense from the father, whose bourgeois precepts of prudence and probity he always loved to recall, the experience of those three years was certain 287 to brace and harden a nature which they did not sour. One result of this was that Horace completely escaped the error of poets like Byron and Keats, who always seem to be more or less mistaking their talent for their character. Horace is a poet for men of the world and for men : he thought habitu- ally of practical things — of his circumstances, his neighbors, his character, his behavior; he thought intermittently of ideal interests ; he recognized the conditions forced upon him by the hardness of his early experience, perhaps too by the soft- ness and openness of a temperament incapable of concentrat- ing itself on any task except in solitary ease, and hardly capa- ble of living long with any task alone. He tells us that he found it impossible to go home and write after going through the routine engagements of a man about town : it was of the observations of a man about town that he first began to write." We have no data for determining how early some of the slighter odes may have been written, but we know on Hor- ace's own authority that he had a reputation as a satirist at a time when Varius was the leading heroic and Pollio the Lead- ing tragic poet, and Vergil was chiefly known by the soft grace of his bucolic jests and the tenderness of the " Georgics," then probably incomplete. Whether Horace is right or wrong in his theory that Lucil- ius founded his art upon the old Attic comedy, there can be no doubt that his own " Satires " are founded upon Lucilius. The two main interests of Lucilius are both represented: we still find personal and social criticism combined with literary criticism, but neither reappears without change. Horace dep- recates publicity: he only writes for his friends ; he never re- cites; his works are not for sale : it is almost an absurdity to take so much trouble when there is no reputation to be had by it. No doubt Horace was shy by temperament ; he shrank from a world which he never much admired, and was not yet in a position to treat with open disdain : but he traded upon this side of his character as he traded upon his humble birth — partly to disarm envy, to which he was always extremely sen- sitive (the thought that people with no power to hurt him were speaking unkindly of him behind his back was always 288 LA TIN LITER A TURE. enough to vex him), partly too from a coquetry as natural to delicate talent as to delicate beauty. This reserve, whatever its cause, makes Horace very unlike his predecessor, who said his say openly, and had not the least reluctance to be known. As Horace's detractors seem to have said, Lucilius was by comparison a man of station, who might take liberties with less oftence ; but Lucilius offended citizens almost as power- ful as his patrons, which Horace never did. Again, Lucilius is censorious, Horace is conciliating : Lucilius had no purpose but to vent his spleen and show up rogues, and give honest men their due: he has no style; the mere copious outpour- ing of vigorous and sometimes witty speech was enough for his age. Horace has a purpose and a standard : he wishes to give advice and to get it taken : his personalities are all in- cidental illustrations of some thesis in the major or minor morals : he is anxious to show the reader his faults without making him wince, to get him to join his monitor in a good- humored laugh at his own expense. Then, too, he is not only an adviser, but an artist : satire, he s^ispects, is a poor thing at best, it is so difficult to fuul what a satirist can be expected to say which any sensible well-bred man might not say too without the least pretensions to be a poet. Of course he would say it in prose, but then verse by itself does not con- stitute poetry. All this is a reason why a satirist who respects himself should take pains with his satires, which have no chance of being valuable unless they are perfect in their kind. To begin with, the redundancy of Lucilius must be re- trenched ; a s^atirist ought to say nothing that can be spared : besides, if he is to write in verse at all, the verses must run smoothly and easily. Then, whether satire and comedy arc; true poems or not, the satirist ought to be able to maku shift to pass now and then for a poet or an orator ; now and then he ought to show his breeding by keeping within his strength. The metre of Horace hardly performs what he promises : he has not quite mastered the hexameter --the rather monoto- nous flow of Catullus was certainly unsuited to conversational satire \ and Horace had not yet formed any clear ideal of the HORACE. 289 type of line he wishes to keep to. The lines jolt less than the lines of Lucilius or even of Lucretius, but they jolt still ; there is no systematic correspondence between the pauses of the metre and the pauses of the sentence : sometimes, though not often, the order of the words is forcibly disturbed by metrical necessities. The " Satires," so far as metre goes, are written as the author could rather than as he would ; for the " Epistles," written after Horace had mastered the stupendous metrical difficulties of the Alcaic stanza, and had learned from the completed "Georgics" and the *'^neid" the full range and pliability of the Vergilian hexameter, are at least as eaty and careless in diction, and often as lively, as the " Satires." Another characteristic of the '' Satires " for which we are not prepared by the programme is that, short as they are, they are really ditTuse : so far as they are dramatic, they are abrupt. The dialogue is often elliptical ; the transitions from one sub- ject to another, from one speaker to another, arc so rapid and so slightly marked that a modern reader is continually un- certain whether ancient readers were more apprehensive or whether the poet was obscure. But when the author gives us a piece of exposition in his own person, the meaning might have been put in many fewer words. The style is as much the reverse of "succinct" as the dress of Maecenas. We can- not say the author is prolix— he checks himself always in trnie ; but he is fragmentary and discursive, while in the lyrics of his full maturity he is terse or condensed. Perhaps, too, the " ^'^♦'^tires '^' are personal in a way the " Odes " are not.' In the " Satires" Horace seems to talk about himself for the sake of it just as he tells us that when he had a piece of writing finished he took it straight to show it to Maecenas, without^'thinkin- whether he was at leisure and in the mood. Like many re"^ served persons, he was never at ease unless he could take liberties : he is really afraid of the great public, but he claims all the privileges of intimacy with the reader. Perhaps an- cient readers of the journey to Brundisium thought he pre- sumed upon his privileges. The details of such a journey are unfamiliar to us, but to contemporaries they must have been familiar enough : and Horace and his friends seem to have k i% 290 LA TIN LITER A TURE. HORACE, 291 seen very little more by the way than any other travellers. The only points which can have been fresh at the time are the sneers at the notary (Horace himself was connected with the corporation) who set up for a great rnan as the Praetor of Fundi, the jest that ball is a bad game after dinner for people with weak eyes, and the lively description of a scolding match between two blackguards. Probably, too, they appreciated the discretion with which the writer just hints at the importance of Maecenas's mission, which gives the zest of incongruity to the petty discomforts of his suite : and though the sort of in- terest of a Dutch picture is never a permanent interest in lit- erature, it is an interest which always makes its appearance at a certain stage, and has sometimes strength enough to found a reputation. Another satire turns entirely on a scolding match which it seems Horace witnessed when he was with Brutus in Asia: he says it is an old story, and unluckily the only point is a rather poor pun ; but Horace did not make the story, and tells it with humorous exaggeration, and mock heroics were a nov- elty. There is the same mixture of weakness and strength in an- other satire, which is really intended to invite public gratitude to Maecenas for laying out the land near his gardens on the Esquiline for building, by a burlesque description of how the deified scarecrow he had set up there had frightened away a brace of old women, who made their living with less comfort than Dame Ursula Suddlechop, in the same doubtful way, and filled up their spare time by trying to bewitch those of their clients, generally of the opposite sex, whom they happened to have a spite against. For these purposes they found the ceme- tery on the Esquiline attractive, because necromancy was the most naturally stimulating form of magic at a time when it was difficult to believe in anything supernatural, except when the eerie sights and scents of a graveyard mingled themselves with the awe of a southern night. If all tales were true, there was another attraction : it was hard sometimes to come by a supper, and generally there was a supper to be found, by those who were not ashamed to snatch it, upon some grave or other. The description of the incantations is well done, though in the fifth epode the same thing is done better : but the catastrophe is not only indecent, but inadequate : we were prepared for something more exciting. Priapus begins as if he were going to treat us to a burlesque epic, and instead he gives us an anecdote that might have gone in an epigram. The most perfect of the "Satires" is certainly the ninth, which is also the earliest example of a method which runs through a great deal of Horace's later work. He begins with a close imitation of Lucilius (xvi. 12) : following him for a line almost syllable by syllable, but the body of the poem is unmis- takably new, both in form and substance. Here too we have to read between the lines : a story of a bore, generally supposed to have been Propertius, who fastened himself on Horace and stuck to him till peremptorily cited into court, turns out to be a panegyric of the principles on which Msecenas managed his patronage, and a defence of Horace's own reluctance to give introductions. Here too the poem is made to end with a small jest, though the jest is better, and is not made the substance of the poem. His relation to Maecenas supplies the form of the sixth sat- ire, while the matter is an exposition of Horace's theory of rank, which comes to this, that high station is a burden (to men of Horace's temper), that any one who aims at a rise of station is foolish, and that talent and character entitle a man of the lowest station to intimacy with men of the highest. Horace is far from holding, with Burns, "The rank is but the guinea's stamp :" he treats high station consistently as a pre- sumption of high personal eminence. He admires Maecenas for refusing senatorial rank, but he compliments him un- weariedly on his distinguished pedigree: all the more per- haps because it seems his family had come down in the world. The Cilnii were the representatives of the old kings of Arre- tium ; his paternal and maternal grandfathers had been in com- mand of armies; but his father had been poor and obscure and taken petty municipal contracts. Equally characteristic is Horace's account of his claims to Maecenas's friendship : he is not avaricious or stingy, or given to low debauchery; 292 LA TIN LITER A TURE. he is pure and innocent, and his friends value him. All this is due to his fother, who gave liini the best literary educa- tion that could be had, and watched over his character in per- son : he is thankful for such a falhe^, and all the more be- cause, being a freedman, he has left him no appearances to keep up. It may be doubted whether his father would have appreciated the last ground of gratitude : he was careful that his son should look like a gentleman as well as behave like one. When he advised him to do a thing, it was by the ex- ample of one of the select judges, the aristocrats of his order ; when he warned him, it was by the example of some neighbor who had an ill name. Horace tells us this as an excuse for the personality of his " Satires," which had given offence : his reply is noticeable, that to point a moral at the expense of strangers is better than to garnish conversation with depre- ciation of intimates behind their backs. The charge is no- ticeable too : it implies that average people find it easier to stand attacks upon their faults when they can surmise a per- sonal motive in the assailant; disinterested censure strikes them as gratuitous malice. Perhaps their resentment was heightened because the censor stood so near themselves: there is nothing the least transcendental, or extravagant, or Bohemian in the ideal of life which Horace sets forth in his earliest satires, and which, wiiii liule change, he continues to preach to the end. His preaching comes to this : some of our wishes are natural ; some are the result of fashion and van- ity. The first are what gives life its value \ they are strongest in youth, and it is, in a manner, indecorous that they should survive it. All plans and ambitions which interfere with their prompt gratification are vanity and vexation of spirit: so, too, are the wishes with which we inoculate one another — the wishes for fortune, and splendor, and mistresses that can be boasted of. These wishes have a further disadvantage — they not only spoil our proper pleasures, but they impair our re- sources : to diminish one's capital is as foolish as to hoard one's income, and that is the result of expensive artificial tastes. Besides, they give every one who is not immensely rich a bad name, and Horace thoroughly agrees with his HORACE. 293 father in rating a good name high: in fact, of the two, he may almost be said to rate it higher, because he values it as an end, not as a means to a rise in station. In truth, Horace's Epicureanism differs from Stoicism much less than we suppose : it is a difierence of temperament, not of doctrine. The principle of following nature is common to both; only with Horace the voice of nature makes itself heard more plainly in normal desires than in normal activities. He goes heartily with the Stoics in their appeal to nature and reason from fiishion and tradition, and he does not come in confiict with them on the question between virtue and pleas- ure : his objection is that the concrete Stoic is a pretentious, quarrelsome prig. It was quite true that he did not profess to be wise; but he was always thrusting "the wise man" in people's faces : and the wise man was a very grotesque object, a capital cobbler who had never made a shoe in his life, a king who could be hustled in the street, always in admirable health except when his phlegm was troublesome. And this ludicrous ideal was used to abolish all rational distinctions, and to prove that everybody else was " mad." This was a sure way to spoil one of the best things in life, friendship, by cultivating an un- meaning rigorism which could see nothing anywhere but faults : whereas Horace spends great part of a satire in prov- ing (after Plato) that we should use our imagination in ideal- izing even the faults of a friend, as a lover idealizes the de- fects of his mistress. Still, his first satire leaves off with a fear that if he goes on he will be suspected of plundering the desk of blear-eyed Crispinus — a Stoical rival who thought himself cleverer than Horace because he wrote faster; and certainly a Stoic might have endorsed everything that Horace has been saying about the folly of people who never know their own minds, and are never content with a position which they do not really wish to change, and, worst of all, cannot hit the mean between being money-makers and spendthrifts. There are si2:ns in the first book of " Satires " that Horace was still only half reconciled to Octavian : he has a great quarrel with the memory of one Tigellius, a Sardinian singer, whom Octavian and Julius had patronized, and the quarrel is man- 294 LA TIN LITER A TURK. aged in a way to reflect upon the patrons. It is hardly a compliment to Caesar to say that Tigellius would sing when he was not asked, and would not sing when he was ; but this might pass if it stood alone for an attack upon Tigellius. Lut it does not stand alone : Horace, who is so anxious to prove that his own conduct and character do credit to the discre- tion of Maecenas, takes the low habits of Tigellius, who was just dead, as a text for a very plain-spoken sermon on the rules of behavior which he recommends as a succedaneum for chastity. He congratulates himself that his book is not for the hands of the vulgar, or Tigellius ; that he founds himself upon authors whom Tigellius, and the monkey who never got be- yond singing Calvus and Catullus, never read. He tells us, in a word, that Octavian petted a man who may have been good-looking and had a fine voice, but who had no taste and no sense, and worse than no character. In the second book of" Satires " we find an advance, though a small one, towards the later attitude of the poet to the empe- ror. By a curious combination of circumstances, incantations had passed without any breach of continuity into lampoons; and so it was possible to imagine that the old legislation against incantations was applicable to lampoons. Horace takes refuge from this danger in the approbation of Cx'sar : as Cajsar praises his *' Satires," they cannot be mala carmina. Already, too, we find that the court is looking out for poets. Horace's mentor asks why, if he must write, he does not sing the achievements of Caesar. Naturally Horace does not reply that Cx'sar's achievements up to that date had been scanty, and those of which he could approve still scantier : he con- fines himself to the answer, which lie never abandons even when an enthusiastic imperialist, that the subject is beyond his strength. But there are more unequivocal signs of inde- pendence than this: when he thanks Maecenas for his Sabine farm which he had given him after seven years of intimacy, he is so explicitly grateful for having received all he can reason- ably wish that he seems to protest against being expected to merit more. His only ambition is to get away into the coun- try and gather hi« '^'vn friends round his own board, where he HORACE, 295 can insure that everybody shall be free to mix his wine as he likes it, and can lead the conversation to philosophy, to the questions whether it is riches or virtue that makes men well off, whether interest or character is the bond of friendship, what is the nature of good, and wherein it culminates. Such discussions are pointed with good old wives' tales by a neigh- bor, who proves, for instance, that we ought not to wish for riches that will make us anxious by the fible of the Town and Country Mouse. The town mouse preaches exactly Horace's philosophy of enjoyment ; the country mouse is frightened into his philosophy of prudence. And this comes at the end of a satire which sets forth how Horace panted to escape from his round of occupations in Rome, to read or drink or sleep as he pleased (he is the only writer of the time who rates sleep high). The truth is, Horace was affectionate and grateful, but he was not iienerous: he allowed himself to feel his relation to Maice- nas burdensome, and to try to escape from its burdens. He did not like being a personage, with visits to pay and ap- pointments to keep and influence to bestow ; to know some secrets, and to have to keep them, and to have the credit of knowing all. The net result in his mind was that every day he lived he was more exposed to envy; and so he simply resolved to be as independent as possible, and do what he could to hold aloof and take his ease. The second book marks an advance in another direction too: the satires are more completely planned and more thoroughly finished; it is possible to assign the subject of each, and none is a mere anecdote, or string of anecdotes, like the fifth, seventh, and eighth of the first book ; the didac- tic purpose is more unmistakable, the personalities are more subordinate. It is obvious that the author has been laying to heart the double criticism passed upon his previous writings, that he went too far and cut too sharply, and that all he wrote was mere chit-chat. He admits that in his hands satire has been a weapon of self-defence, and this can hardly refer to any of the extant satires ; but he professes his wish for peace. Perhaps, at the same time, there is some loss of spontaneity : at least, there are more traces of preparation. One of his 1 I 296 LA TIN LITER A TURK. HORACE. 297 critics tells him that he has taken Plato and Menander and Kupolis and Archilochus into the country with him ; and even without this ^ve might be sure that he is translating from some Greek soujce or another when he introduces a lady who asks her lover for five talents. This occurs in a satire on the the- sis that all but " the wise man " are slaves ; but the thesis is treated ironically : Horace's slave lectures him during the Saturnalia, and he has picked up his wisdom from the door- keeper of Crispinus. Horace does not commit himself to a judgment on his own tastes, or those of his contemporaries (for Davus reproaches him with much with which he never reproaches himself, e. g., pretensions to connoisseurship and costly and illegal amours) ; he only shows in the most irre- sponsible way how much the refined desires of men of the world resemble the desires of a slave. In fact, by Horace's own standard, the slave is often the wiser of the two : his pleasures are safer and cheaper, and at worst the slave's glut- tony only entails a beating ; he can pay for an occasional de- bauch by the proceeds of petty thefts : the gourmatidisc of the master ruins his health, and, if carried f\ir, his estate to boot. Besides, not only are the masters enslaved by unreasonable desires which they have not even the manhood to avow and pursue consistently, but they are a burden to themselves, never content with their own company, trying to cheat care by wine or sleep or travel. It is noticeable that Horace is almost alone in takin;? notice of the restlessness of the world. His contemporaries generally thought that, if they were uncomfortable or anxious, they always had something to be uncomfortable or anxious about, and did not inquire as to tlie origin of their susceptibility. Another Stoic thesis is that all but the wise are mad, which is treated in the same ironical way : a crazy amateur who has ruined himself by collecting is saved from suicide by Stertin- ius, as £rreat a saut, though he was not struck by their discourtesy, he was struck with the inherent absurdity of the whole thing ; the exclamation '" poor riches " is the one phrase in the satire which is not ironical. He is expressing his sincere convictions in the harangue which he puts into the mouth of Ofellus, because OfeMus acted up to it. It is remarkable how convenient these convictions must have been to the government under one of whose chiefs Horace had taken service. Ofellus had lost his estate in some confisca- tion or other, no friend at court had procured its restitution, but the new proprietor was very willing to have his property worked by his victim, who throve almost as well as before, and took the change of circumstances very philosophically, reflecting that property was an unmeaning conception, that every one had the use of the land by turns, and no one had a real ownership: the moral of which is that young men should live hardly, and meet adversity with bold hearts. Plain living is the way to high thinking : a young man who pampers him- self is undermining his health, and is making a fool of him- self and so destroying his character; besides which, suppose his body should require indulgence, what new indulgence can a man give his body who lives at the fashionable rate while young? Exercise and abstinence will make the coarsest food palatable, and keep up the old Roman character and temper. Even the few who can really afford to keep a fashionable HORACE. 299 table without being ridiculous should remember that a revo- lution may sweep away their property ; and, therefore, while they have it they had better lay it out munificently upon pub- lic objects. For instance, it is a disgrace to a rich noble that there are temples falling to ruin. One sees throughout that Horace's tastes coincide with the interests of Octavian, who did not wish the huge fortunes of his leading associates to stimu- late the emulation of the public at large, and sincerely de- sired to use the position which a revolution promised him to inaugurate a thorough -going reaction. The treasury was probably empty, and the funds which in ordinary times had met the censor's contracts for keeping public buildings in re- pair were not forthcoming; and, if private munificence could be appealed to with effect, the government would reap a two- fold advantage: its friends would make it popular, and it would not have to f^ice the disappointment of a throng of greedy men of talent, like those who undermined the mon- archy of July. The eighth satire is a sequel to the fourth : (he fifth is a contrast rather than a sequel to the second. There Horace had recalled the lessons of a sturdy survivor of the old regime, for the instruction of the generation which was beginning to form itself under the new : in the fifth he illustrates the mean- ness to which a man who seriously cares for money is sure to descend. Ulysses has been informed by Tiresias that he will return to Ithaca a beggar, and inquires how he had bet- ter repair his fortunes. The answer is : " Do what every clever reprobate who wants to make his way in Rome does : pay your court to every elderly man of fortune who is child- less, flatter him, give him presents, do his dirty work in the law-courts, and say you do it out of devotion to his virtue ; show your concern for his health, sell your wife to him— she will gladly consent if she gets her share of the price ; don't be daunted by a single failure. AVhen there is a rickety heir, pay your court just the same ; it will do you credit, and you will not have too long to wait for the reversion. Very likely your patron will offer to show you his will : say you cannot look at it, and mind you do. If, as is likely, you are one heir among 300 LA TIN LITER A TV RE. many, look out for any invalids who inherit with you, and pay your court to them." There are other details, but even these do not satisfy the curiosity of Ulysses, and, in accordance with Horace's system of abrupt terminations, Proserpine calls Tiresias away before he has completed his description of the arts of the Roman fortune-hunter. As WMs perhaps to be expected, the element of literary crit- icism is decidedly less prominent in the second book than in the first. It is one sign more that Horace was growing cau- tious, that he had passed the stage when an ambitious writer lashes out in all directions, and reached the stage when it seems prudent to limit the number of enemies and to secure as many allies as possible. The transition is marked by the last satire of the first book, where he winds up his controversy with Lucilius and his admirers, and decrees reputations to various members of Maecenas's circle. Thenceforward when- ever he has to mention Lucilius he is ostentatiously deferen- tial to his predecessor, whom he acknowledges his superior both in rank and talent : only here and there we find a sneer at poor Furius, who blows himself out with a haggis, and then falls to singing how the Alps are sputtered over with snow, or at Fufius, who sleeps through the part of Uione when Ca- tienus is roaring "Mother! mother!" in the part of Deiph- obus. The "Kpodes" are, in many respects, the most puzzling portion of the works of Horace ; for this reason, among others, that he himself says so little about them. Once he tells the daughter of Canidia that she may dispose of the slanderous iambi as she will. Once he gives as a reason for not writing that he is asked to write such different things : Florus likes odes, another likes satires seasoned with Bion's black salt, another likes iambics. He speaks too, when forty, of his hot youth, when Plancus was consul, in the year of Philippi, and perhaps we are to understand that Athens was the scene of his earliest amours. The internal evidence derived from the " Epodes" themselves is scanty. The one which opens the book seems to have been composed when Maecenas was going with- out Horace to the battle of Actium, and is a pathetic exposi- IIORACE. 301 tion of the anxiety of the poet at being left behind. The ninth deals with his exultation when it was known that the campaign of Antony had failed. The sixteenth must be early. The connection with Mx'cenas must from the first have in- volved some deference to Octavian, who would have been af- fronted if Horace had published his despair of the republic when he was trying to save it. When Horace was still living among the vanquished of Philippi — some of whose chiefs kept enough strength in the /Kgean to choose between the j^rotcction of Octavian and Antony — when the land-owners of Italy were making their last despairing stand for the last fra on for six lines continuously, and the list of the portents which must occur before the refugees return to Rome for ten ; the natural advantages of the happy isles occupy sixteen, and one is surprised to find the mythological voyagers who never reached them dismissed in four. But the triumph of the tendency to simple enumeration is reached in the second epode, where the joys of country life are recounted at length for sixty-six lines, with obvious sin- cerity and a wistful freshness of anticipation that are plainly the expression of the poet's own feeling, who had begun to find that to roam through woods and meadows, by streams and waterfiills, and now and then to try a little hunting, was a remedy for the discomforts of love, and to look with admir- in"- desire not yet divorced from hope upon the family life which he was never to share. To a blase reader there may seem to be something pointless in the catalogue of such simple joys : he might miss more than one pretty line by the way, and look impatiently to the ^w(\. There Horace is ready for him. All that he has been reading or skipping are the words of Alphius the money-lender, when he was so im- patient to retire into the country that he got in all his money in the middle of one month, only to look out for fresh invest- ments at the beginning of the next. When one turns back, one sees that the finale has been kept in mind throughout the farmer's pleasure culminates in the sight of the swarm of home-bred slaves, the true wealth of the house. He does not dream of sacrificing more than a lamb at the great feast of beating the bounds ; or, if he indulges in a kid, whose flesh is more savory, it is only when the wolf has mangled it ; when he snares thrushes, he reflects that a thrush is a greedy bird and eats his fruit. Even the use of a wife is to serve a din- ner which you need not buy. The assumption is not carried through quite consistently. It is more like Horace than a money-lender to reflect that a farmer is not roused like a soldier by the pitiless trumpet, and need not shudder at the anger of the sea, and can keep, above all, from the forum and the haughty thresholds of the great. Then, too, though the farmer's diligence in training his vines and trimming and If I |ii?i 304 LATIN LITERATURE. grafting his fruit-trees is hardly like Horace, his sense of the romantic side of country life is hardly like Alphius, who, again, would hardly have noticed the drooping necks of the oxen, almost too tired to draw the light plough home with the share turned up. This is perhaps the nearest approach we get in this epode to the manner of the "Odes." The image is subtle itself, and made more subtle by the reticence with which it is presented ; the one word invcrsum marks the exhaustion of the oxen who find the light plough hard to draw, even when it has not to be drawn through the resisting soil. But Horace is not yet sure of himself; he cannot make his points in passing ; even this is prepared by ati exaggerated contrast : the sheep who have been taking their ease hurry home from pasture in a way in which they certainly do not hurry home in England. One traces slighter anticipations of the writer's later manner in the value given to single epithets, as in the line Ut gaudct iiisitiva deccipens pira. The use of an epithet where a modern writer or an early Ro- man writer would have used a relative clause is characteristic of Augustan poetry, and still more of the poetry of Horace. Another epithet which is characteristic in a different way, and more characteristic, it may be, of Vergil than of Horace, is tenaci for grass : it is obviously the direct reflex of a purely physical impression. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent would be "matted," which renders not the physical impres- sion itself, but an apprehension, partly intellectual, partly fiin- ciful, of the group of conditions which determine it. We have not an epithet for tiie mere sense we have of the grass; be- fore we can find one, we have to notice the way the leaves and stalks twine together, and then to remember that the fibres of a mat cross each other very much in the same sort of way. There are fewer illustrations to be found of the more complex felicities of Horace's later manner — the studied collocation of words to pique the curiosity of the reader, and give every word of the group a fictitious yet not an exagger- ated interest. The tricks and turns of construction which HORACES 305 meet us in the " Odes " are alike the product of the metre and of the ingenuity needed to master it. In an artificial age a metrical effect suggests a grammatical or rhetorical ef- fect, in the same way as m a simpler age a musical tone calls up a moral feeling. And, if this seem fiir-fetched, it is suf- ficient to observe that in the "Odes" themselves these felici- ties are abundant in proportion to the intricacy of the metre. From the " Epodes " we may extract one or two specimens like— Me libertina, nequc uno Contenta, Phryne maceiat. Unde expedire non amicorum queant Libera consilia, nee contumelia; graves; Sed alius ardor, aut puellaj candidae, Aut teretis pueri, longani renodantis comam. One feels that the turn in the last line especially is taken from the Greek ; and the same may be said of the whole poem, whose last lines we quote because the Gra^cism in them is more effective in Latin : Illic omne malum vino cantuque levato, Deformis a^grimonice dulcibus alloquiis. The first three books' of "Odes " belong to a well-marked period ; none can be proved to be earlier than the battle of Actium; or later than the restoration of the standards taken when Crassus was defeated. The most characteristic of them, with hardly an exception, can be proved to fall within the seven years ; and upon the work of those years those who consider Horace a great poet would probably rest his claim. They belong to the middle of Horace's life, to the years be- tween thirty-four and forty, and this is noticeable because they ' The third book is an after-thought, explained by the opening series of odes on the several reforms of Augustus ; and their effect is perceptible in the contrast between the closing ode of the second book and the closing ode of the third. In the first, which is intended to sum up his lyrical ac- tivity, Horace thinks of nothing better to say than that he feels he is turn- ''\fi '"to a swan, and knows that he will be read from the Danube to the T igris ; in the second everything grotesque and unreal has disappeared, he only dwells upon what is purely Italian— the stately ritual of the Capi- to), the parched plains and roaring torrents of his native Apulia. 2o6 ^^ '^^^^ LITER A TURE. dwell much more upon the shortness of hfe than the earlier and later poems. The preoccupation with death varies very much in its strength in different ages, and in the same age among different individuals : it was much stronger in Horace than in Vergil or Ovid, and it took rather a different form. So far as Vergil felt it, he felt it as a matter for sympathy which was very nearly disinterested ; it was the spectacle rather than the prospect of mortality that moved him. It would be wrong to say that Horace's feeling was selfish : the prospect of the mortality of others moved him as much as the prospect of his own ; but it is still true that he was moved by the prospect rather than by the spectacle. And the time when the prospect moved him most was when his physical prime was just beginning to be over, and when his spiritual prime, which is commonly at least as fleeting as the physical prime, was just setting in. It was his rare good-fortune that his spir- itual prime coincided with one of the happiest and most promising moments of the spiritual life of the world. For the seven years which are covered by the first three books of *' Odes," Horace's relation to his contemporaries was the most favorable which a man of genius can possibly occupy. The improvement in their life was large enough and swift enough to lift him up and to carry him forward ; and the spring and buoyancy of his own nature was still sufficient to keep him well above them. One well-marked sign of this superiority is a serious exultation which carries with it an exemption from anxiety. His indifference to "rumors" would have been en- viable to the author of the " Imitation," and he lived at a time when rumors had unusual power : great events had just hap- pened ; hardly anybody was left in a familiar and assured po- sition. Within the Roman Empire the work of restoration was going on with results that were dazzling for the moment, and really full of solid promise for the future ; but most of those who profited by the work were lookers-on, who were not called to help, and had no help to give. In fact, they often profited by the improvement without sharing it. Rome was a much wholesomer and pleasanter place to live in, while some effort was being made to restore family life among the upper HORACE. 307 classes : but Propertius was very much afraid of being called to found a family of his own. Horace, who was not a knight and did not come under the new laws, could afford to be enthusiastic. But spectators less capable of enthusiasm transferred all the restlessness which the events of the last generation had bred in them to the chances of what might happen abroad, at a time when the frontier of the Euphrates had been repeatedly violated and- the frontier of the Danube had not yet been established. The loungers in the streets of Rome were full of fears of what the Dacians would do, or what might happen to Tiridates ; while Horace was wrapped up with the Muses when he was serious, or was forirettin^ graver cares in wine or love. His exaltation was more intelligible to his contemporaries than to us. An Italian of the Augustan age with a new type of Greek poetry to naturalize was in very much the same posi- tion as an Italian of the fifth or the nineteenth century with a new cult to naturalize. And Horace was in more exclusive possession of his field than most of the writers of the time. We have the judgment of Quinctilian that he was practically the only Roman lyric poet worth reading; while in heroic and elegiac poetry there were many writers of whose success we are still able to judge, and the unanimous tradition of Ro- man literature assures us that many of the numerous writers of tragedy attained what was accepted as success. Horace's method of work is not so easy to ascertain. We hardly know how much he borrowed, nor how far what he bor- rowed was transformed, and all conclusions must be a little uncertain, because the greater part of Greek lyrical poetry has been lost. Nor do we know the extent of Horace's obli^a- lions to other parts of Greek literature; for instance, the im- age of Europa at nightfall might very well be taken direct from Moschus, although it is impossible to prove that the Alexandrian and the Roman poets were not both imitating a lost Hellenic original. When we see what a very large pro- portion of the extant lyrical fragments have certainly been imitated, it is probable that there are very many imitations which we can only trace by guess. But if it could be shown i li i 3o8 ^^ ^^-^ LITER A TURE. more completely than it can that Horace's materials were bor- rowed, we should still have to ask whether he was a mere echo ; and, if that is a suggestion to be set aside at once, where his originality lies. For one thing, he has transformed the Alcaic and Sapphic and Choriambic metres in the same way as Vergil has trans- formed the hexameter. He has given them the smoothness and exactness which were needed in a language where con- sonants were much more plentiful than in Greek, sonorous vowels and diphthongs much rarer, while syntax was far more developed, and inflections at least as well preserved, though less copious, so that the free use of particles was superfluous. Then, too, in both we trace the influence of newly perfected Latin prose : there is the periodic structure which is inde- pendent of the metrical structure, and yet always kept in har- mony with it, so that the emphasis of the sentence and of the metre heiirhten one another. But in Horace this efTect is carried further than in Vergil ; and perhaps we may find an explanation in a peculiarity of Greek choral poetry. The collocation of words in Pindar and in many of the choruses of yEschylus and Sophocles is quite unlike anything else in Greek literature, and is hardly explicable on purely literary grounds. Still less can we suppose that such great writers were baffled by metrical difficulties, and arranged their sen- tences as they could rather than as they would. A possible explanation might be found in the difficulty of singing and dancing at once, which would lead to much arbitrary trans- position of words, in the more or less extemporary choral songs which must have preceded and accompanied the rise of great schools of choral poetry. If this were so, it would be intelligible that choral poets took what may be called the choral dialect for granted, and did not add to the difficulties of their task by clinging to the hicidus ordo of ordinary speech. But though Horace is further than anv other writer of the AuiTUstan ajre from the natural order of Latin, which we find still substantially unimpaired in the writers of the Ciceronian age, he always has a liicidiis ordo of his own. His Pindaric transpositions are utilized, like the correspondences between HORACE. 309 the metrical and syntactical emphasis, as far as a delicate and fiistidious artist could utilize them ; and they are only admit- ted so far as they could be utilized. Another and more important debt to Pindar is perhaps to be found in the structure of the more ambitious odes. Horace wisely refused to write in metres like Pindar's, which he could not scan ; and the intricate implicit harmony of plan which Boeckh and Dissen have traced beneath the apparently aim- less discursiveness of so many epinicia was not at all in the spirit of Augustan art. But the combination of mythology and ethical precept and political enthusiasm is in itself like Pindar, only, as we should expect in a Roman poet, the proportion of political enthusiasm is larger; for in Pindar the spirit of jubi- lant sympathy with the heroic and spontaneous side of life is balanced by a spirit of dry caution, not to say of timid reserve, in all that concerns its practical business. Moreover, for Pin- dar the glory of the state is centred in the glory of heroic houses, while for Horace the glory of individuals shines brightest in the glory of the state. Still, though there is much to limit the resemblance, such a poem as the fourth ode of the third book recalls Pindar in the method and arrangement, at any rate from the seventh stanza onward ; and the third ode does so even more completely, though the resemblance is masked by the greater development of the parts of a scheme which, though simplified and reduced in its proportion, is very like a scheme of Pindar's.' If Horace had done nothing but write Pindaric odes in Alcaics on Roman subjects, in a Roman spirit, this would in itself have been a kind of originality ; but, besides this, there are many elements of interest which are due to his special share of the culture of his time. There is the constant incul- cation of unworldliness, of the limitation of personal aims, and the sufTiciency of virtue, which contrasts both with the ' Subordinate resemblances may be traced in the abrupt close of this ode, and in the odd antiquarian parenthesis in the fourth ode of the fourth book about the Amazonian axes of the Vindclici. In Pindar such a di- gression would not offend us, but in Horace the general finish of surface is so even and elaborate that the interruption seems trivial and we wish it spurious. 310 LATIN LITERATURE, party spirit and personal peevishness of Alcaeus, and with Pindar's oscillations between enthusiasm for the assertion of the absolute worth of his patron's personality, and his sense of the necessity of caution and sobriety in dealing with others. Sometimes, in preaching sobriety, Pindar seems to come near Horace, but there is always a difference: the elder poet is concerned chiefly for prudence in conduct ; the younger is concerned for the more inward prudence whereby a man possesses his own soul in patience and peace. Then, too, Pindar idealizes wealth ; Horace idealizes poverty. The pas- sion of the nobility for planting and palace-building which alarmed Horace would have aroused the admiration of Pin- dar. And this suggests another contrast : in his " Odes " Hor- ace is less independent than Pindar; he never admonishes Augustus as Pindar admonishes Hiero or Arcesilas. Where he cannot abound in the sense of the emperor, he is discreetly silent ; all the progressive side of Augustus's work is passed over, and, as might have been expected, no incense is burned at the shrine of the great Julius : no enthusiasm greets the architectural magnificences of the reign which found Rome brick and left her marble. That the old temples should be rebuilt was well, but there is no hint that it was well that the new temples should be more gorgeous than the old : all that Horace cares for is that pontiff and vestal should go up to offer sacrifice in silence, as in the days of Numa. Again, the commercial activity which followed upon the restoration of a tolerable degree of order is nothing to Hor- ace, or next to nothing. Tl>e sea is a barrier that it is im- pious to cross ; it is strange that men should risk their lives for pepper or spice. Almost the only good thing he says of trade is that it enables a lover to bring home a little fortune to his sweetheart : but the poet is more serious when he de- nounces the wife who leaves her convenient husband ' to keep an appointment with a broker or ship-master from Spain. All Horace's heart is in the moral regeneration, which seemed to be more distant than ever, in spite of a better government and * It is noticeable that Horace is the only Augustan writer who speaks of this character with natural indignation. HORACE. 311 external prosperity. The generation that came into life af- ter Actium was very like the generation that came into life after the 2d of December ; but the temper of Horace is more like the temper of Lamartine and Chateaubriand— ideal as- piration without ideal activity, which is not favorable to cheer- fulness or hopefulness. The extension of commerce and military relations gives a new character to the geographical background which Horace, like his Greek predecessors, values rather more than a modern reader. To Pindar the wide world beyond was full of memo- ries of heroes who had wandered through it ; to Horace it is the waste field, to be replenished and subdued by his own fiime and by the laws and genius of Rome. Every Eastern embassy, every exploring expedition with a military escort, was the occasion of poems which claimed as accomplished more than the most sanguine observer could rationally hope. But these exaggerations are never quite uncalculating. When there is an expedition to Arabia, Horace warns his friends, both in jest and earnest, against wishing to join it to make their fortunes. When the standards taken with Crassus were at length restored, it may have occurred to Labienus and others that the standards had been restored without the cap- tives. Horace was prepared for such cavillers : Augustus was a god upon earth who had subdued the Persians ; it was scarcely conceivable that captives should have survived; and, if any had, they deserved to be left to their fate, on the prin- ciples advocated long ago by Regulus. Perhaps we ought to read between the lines an apology for the ingratitude of Au- gustus in the ode where Horace invites Maecenas to keep with him the feast of his deliverance from the rotten tree. We know that Maecenas was hurt at being left in ignorance of state affairs ; and Horace, who had often complimented him upon his freedom from ambition, advises him to profit by the exemptions of his private station.' In the same way, he con- * Perhaps we may find a remoter allusion to the same grievance in the majestic ode where Horace defies the uncertainty of fortune, from which, personally, he had little to fear ; while Maecenas might with less absurdity torment himself with the suspicion that the loss of power foreshadowed the loss of station and fortune. II li 312 LA TIN LITER A TURE. soles Maecenas for the reports of his wife's infidelity by a per- sistent optimism, and meets the complaints of a broken-down politician and voluptuary with promises of fidelity to death and reminders of the bright days he had known, especially of the applause he had received when he appeared in the theatre after an illness. In a more independent mood, Horace half adopts the grievances of Lollius, who had a bad name among historians for charges which Horace expressly sets himself to rebut. Horace had a strong imaginative sympathy with any- thing that looked like sturdiness. He liked to imagine Au- gustus a model of constancy, proof against the tyranny of one and the madness of many, because he frowned on the dream of transferring the capital to the Hellespont under the name of restoring Troy. No doubt the civil wars fought out on the coasts of the ^Egean had led many to see that Consular Asia was a more desirable country than Italy. But there was no effective pressure upon Augustus to anticipate Constantine ; there were only exiles and loiterers in no haste to return. An ode to Munatius Plancus, one of these refugees, is a cento from the Greek with a Roman application ; a Greek epithet of Argos is rather awkwardly paraphrased. In a letter to Bullatius, we have the same patriotic precepts in a less am- biguous shape. There is as yet no homage to Augustus in either poem, nor in the ode on the restoration of Pompeius Grosphus, who found it easier to forget his wrongs in wine than to thank the unnamed benefactor who had restored him to the gods of his fathers and the sky of Italy, as if a Roman had no political birtiuight. Manliness, according to Horace, does not imply the least attention to civic duties. There is nothing anywhere incon- sistent with the hearty sneer at opdla forcnsis' the drudgery of the forum. The ordinary business of a young man of spirit is to exercise himself in breaking horses and hurling javelins in the Campus iMartius; his ordinary pleasure is with the lass who loves and hides, and is caught because she cannot keep from laughing at the bewilderment of her lover, who snatches a bracelet or ring as a pledge that at their next meeting she * Unless we count his esteem for a great advocate. HORACE. Zn will be as punctual and less coy. The doctrine that the pleasure of the moment is always to be taken in youth is not only an affair of temperament with Horace; it is a lesson of experience. He had lived with men who could never be cer- tain of the morrow, and whose plans always failed : the worth of such lives was realized, as a matter of fiict, in moments, and not in the long-run. Another result of this life is the ideal- ization of ease, which we find in a Sapphic ode to the same friend. The poem is interesting in another way, as almost the only indication of conscious rivalry with Catullus, who de- nounced ease with a vehement passion only less impressive than Horace's tone of intense yearning, and we may note Horace's clear conviction that it is only to be won by a moral effort to resist the restlessness and anxiety which are the plague of half-occupied men. After all, the hours of gladness and the days of repose w^ere not the whole, or anything like the whole, of life; there was always a background of dissatisfaction and irony. The last j weighty words ' of the great series of ethical odes at the be- ' ginning of the third book really sum up the expression of an undercurrent of feeling which flowed on beneath the poetical enthusiasm of the patriot and the bacchanal. The wounds of the civil war seem to baVe been always bleeding inwardly. He recurs to the subject again and again, as if the stain could never be effaced ; and when Pollio undertook a history of them, Horace's complimentary anticipations of the result . almost read like dissuasives. He shudders at the thought of the shrill trumpet ringing in his ears : he sees great chiefs laid low in the dust, which is no dishonor, and all the world subdued except the fierce spirit of Cato— the one anti-Cassarian hero whose praise the Augustan poets felt it safe to sing, be- cause his opposition had been disinterested, not to say un- practical. He sees all the perils of the work, and he does not seem to imagine it could have lessons. For instance, though he IS fond of the topic that true friendship which does not ' "The age of our sires was worse than the days of our grandsires ; we, \ its children, are waxen worse, and our posterity shall be yet more cor-/ rupted.'* 4 I. — 14 T A Tr\T r rrp- k^ A tttk>jt nORA CR. tie m 314 LA TIN LITER A TURE, change with fortune is a rare distinction, it does not strike him that it is a distinction especially rare in revolutionary times ; for when great positions are seldom shaken, respect for them is strong enough to survive the shock. As it is, he shrinks from the subject, as he generally does shrink from higher subjects altogether, partly from a sense that he himself cannot be serious without unreality, and partly from a distaste for the subjects about which he was expected to be serious. He often tells us that Phoebus forbade him to sing of battles and of conquered cities, and that he must leave such themes to Varius, who could soar aloft on the wings of Homer ; but for once he is entirely frank, and says that Maecenas had bet- ter write Augustus's deeds — in prose. All this explains the shortness of the period of Horace's spontaneous activity as a lyric poet : illusions came to him late and did not stay long. He had always felt that wine and women were for youth, and he was quite in earnest with his resolution to forsake both at the proper time. He had not the constitution of an Anacreon to tempt him from his reso- lution. He feared the spiteful comments which he had be- stowed himself on the companions of his revels who had gone on too long. When the time came to keep his resolution, he found that it made him languid and irritable. The Muse had forsaken him, and her kisses left him weak. He professed to regret his youthful inspiration no more than his youthful locks, and to think sleep a better occupation for a man of his years than writing verses. He reflected soberly on the chances of failure, and was resolved not to run the risk of exposing the decay of his powers to public contempt. He had other in- terests in prospect, and hoped, not unreasonably, to find com- pensation in philosophy. He saw clearly that character was the foundation of national and individual happiness, and that reflection and self-discipline were capable of producing great and beneficial changes in character. Besides, the mere mag- nitude of philosophic problems excited him. Philosophy was the study of the vocation of man ; how could a man live rightly without studying his vocation ? how could a man who was studying his vocation fail to be well employed t Horace HORACE. 315 was quite ready to adopt from Stoicism its exaggerated sense of moral responsibility and its exaggerated condemnation of the natural man, who lives by habit or temper, not by system. But the system of Stoicism did not grow upon him ; besides the objections which he felt from the first, the attitude of comparing doctrines and trying experiments was much more fivorable to selfcomplacency than going humbly to school when he was growing old. Sometimes he thought of doing all the business which could not but come in the way of an intimate of Maecenas heartily, and making himself a useful citizen ; sometimes he indulged his natural love of ease, and found reasons for staying at his Sabine farm or elsewhere, to arrange things to his own mind instead of trying to fit him- self to the course of the world. Naturally the study was not a srreat success ; Horace found himself as irritable as ever, and more peevish than he had been before ; the letter to Albinovanus contains a confession of his failure. But in spite of discouragement he persevered ; he knew that a neglected character goes to pieces in a disgusting manner when the constitution gives way, and that a character well trained in time gains in purity and dignity as the lower nature decays. Although he probably knew that he had no natural vocation for perfection, that he was born with a weak will as he was born with weak eyes, the inference he drew was that it was needful to take care of both, and he probably felt his superi- ority to the mechanical one-sided absolutism of the Stoics, when he observed that it is possible to go on to a certain point, if not permitted to go further. It is of a piece with this, that in the first letter to Lollius he concludes with a resolu- tion to go his own pace, without waiting for laggards or press- ing on those in front of him. It is characteristic, too, that he lays down the principle that Homer is a better ethical teacher than Chrysippus or Grantor. This is a way of saying that what he wants is not a body of ethical doctrine, but an illus- tration of a very few ethical aphorisms. One has been often quoted which tells how peoples suffer for the faults of kings ; perhaps Horace attached more importance to the comparison between himself and most of his contemporaries and the i6 LA TIN LITER A TURE. worthless crowd who fill up the background of the *• Odys- sey." The craving for coarse pleasure, the indifference to noble action, which are always general on the morrow of revo- lutions, disturbed him almost as much as the recklessness with which people allowed envy, anger, and avarice to grow upon them without reflecting on the misery they were laying up. It is noticeable as a proof of Horace's conscientious good-sense that he does not attack the cynic, who thinks that virtue is so much words as a wood is so much logs, and throws himself with conviction into money-making. Such a man is really not avaricious; he is never at leisure to be tormented by the craving for money, which is felt most keenly in the irk- some intervals of energetic efforts to get it. This state of mind is not favorable to literary activity, and Horace wrote little except letters, and we cannot assume that anything like all the twenty letters contained in the first book, which was published when he was forty-four — with serious doubts as to whether it was worth publishing — were recent then. Several are mere notes of introduction or invitation, and even an introduction is the pretext for the lecture on money matters to Iccius, who had philosophical pretensions, and a temperament more given to gain than Horace approved. So, too, the letter to Albinovanus seems a congratulation on his position as secretary to Tiberius in his Armenian expedi- tion, which in one way or another is the occasion of several of Horace's notes. The letters which show most deliberate intention are the first to Maecenas, which must be one of the latest, and the pair of letters to Scaeva and Lollius on the whole duty of a retainer. That to Scaeva brings out the rea- sons a young man of spirit has to court the great — unless he chooses to vegetate in a corner, "for, after all, to be born and die without notice is no bad life." At the same time, he must remember his own dignity, never ask for money or money's worth, either because he is really poor or because he says he has been robbed. Lollius apparently had entered upon the career about which Scaeva still was hesitating; and Horace lectures him on a fault opposite to that on which he lectures Scaeva. The retainer must not give himself airs of indepen- HORACE. 317 I dence about trifles : if he tries to set up for being as fine a gentleman as his patron, he makes himself ridiculous : it is only a very rich man of high station who can afford to play the fool. Then, too, the retainer, besides avoiding self-asser- tion and display, must be willing to humor his patron and to share his interests. He must be careful how he gets his pa- tron talked about, and he must avoid the mistake which Vergil made about ** Alexis :" he must be careful what introductions he gives; and, when he has given one, he must defend the friend he introduces, in case of need, up to the latest possible moment. After all, it is a risky line of life, in which success depends very much on the retainer having a temperament to suit the patron ; and at Horace's age, whenever it is possible to get quietly into the country, nothing in the way of advance- ment seems so desirable as to live the end of life to one's self in health and peace, This was difficult enough, as we see from a letter to Maecenas in which Horace apologizes, with an odd mixture of cajolerie and obstinacy, for his determination to prolong a five days' leave of absence indefinitely : Maece- nas would not surely wish him to risk his health in the heats of autumn ; and then, when winter comes on, he will have to take care of himself and get into a corner and read. Maece- nas knew the value of his gift when he made Horace inde- pendent ; and if he disapproves the use he makes of his inde- pendence, it is for the patron to reclaim his gifts : they will be restored as cheerfully as they have been enjoyed. This, like the letter at the beginning of the book, looks late. That which stands last but one may be earlier : it seems to date from the days when Horace still drank hard and gayly, and had ap- parently not written many of his loftier odes. Another letter equally early, not earlier, may be that to Tibullus, which implies that Horace was mainly known as a satirist, and is probably a remonstrance, half literary, half political, on the inactivity of a charming poet who to the last refused to rally to the empire. The letters to Fuscus and Quinctius about his farm are likely to to be early too : in the first he observes that his farm has aes- thetic attractions, which Fuscus found hard to imagine; in the second we see that most of his friends thought more of its value 3i8 LA TIN LITER A TUKE, than of its beauty, and turned first to the question whether it grew corn or oil, because there was a profit to be got out of oil, while corn could not be depended upon for more than a livino-. Of course, we have no right to suppose that the later letters were the only product of the years of comparative idleness which came between the publication of the three books of " Odes " and that of the fourth. In fact, the superb ode to the elder Lollius cannot but fall within a year or two of the pub- lication of the three books; and if we disregard the tradition which makes the Vergil of the twelfth ode another than the ej3ic poet, we should be obliged to date that before his death. The whole book, however, has rather the appearance of " after- math :" the main harvest has been reaped, and the later crop, though rich in quality, is scanty. Like its predecessors, the fourth book draws its inspiration from events. The campaign of Tiberius and Drusus in the Orisons and the country tow- ards the Danube naturally appealed to the pride of the em- peror and to the sympathies of the poet : it was long since such a considerable military achievement, so wholly matter for gratulation, had been wrought so near to Italy. It seemed a pledge that the dynasty would be happily carried on, and so called out the enthusiasm of those who felt anxiety for the future which they could not express, although it is half utter- ed in the ode which complains of Augustus's prolonged ab- sence in Spain. Another source of inspiration was the vigor with which Augustus was following up his legislation in favor of public morality, which, as Horace grew older, seemed more and more the one condition on which he could hope for real durable improvement. The enthusiasm of such a shrewd observer is probably the measure of the good effects which followed the temporary conformity to well-meant laws. The illusion was never complete, it would not have lasted; but there came one fortunate moment of complete fulfilment. In the year 737 it was decided that the Sibylline books required the celebration of games in honor of Apollo and Diana at the completion of a secn/um, which was supposed to consist of a hundred and ten years, and to mark the extreme duration of human life. At these games a choir of children with both HORACE. 319 parents living, whose mothers had only married once, had to sin- a hymn ; and of course Horace had to compose it. 1 he occ!asion appealed to his sense of piety, which, as commonly happens with cultivated, self-indulgent men in an old society, attached itself to ritual rather than to belief. The hymn is stately and solemn, in spite of an official air, which strikes a modern reader more because he has little sympathy with the fervor of the poet, even where it is most genuine, and comes nearest to the tone of the "Psalms of Degrees." It looks like a second attempt, for in the fourth book we find another ode to Apollo and his sister,' which shows perhaps a fresher interest in the celebration, which he hoped would be a life- lon- memory for the choir. In taking up the subject for the firsrtime,he followed Oreek precedents too closely, and ciwelt more on topics of mere mythology than suited the occasion ; thou-h perhaps they suited Horace's talent better than the attempt to bring out the physical and ethical aspects of the worship of Apollo and Diana, which we find in the "Carmen Seculare" itself. To find a measure of his exultation as the chosen psalmist of Rome, we must turn to the devout ode to Melpomene, which marks, too, a sense that occasional inspira- tion may lead to an enduring consecration. Whoever has been visited by the Muse is a being apart, to whom the busi- ness and the interests of the world have lost their meaning. As this ode shows the persistence of Horace's unworldh- ness, others show that his hopes that years would subdue his animal nature came to little. Love did not cease to torment him, nor wine to cheer him, though one notices that the en- joyment of both is quieter; he speaks of being "mellow" in- stead of being " drunk." When he invites his mistress to keep Maecenas's birthday with him, he tells her with an air of convic- tion that he is too old to love again, and he only asks to be ac- cepted as a//> aller instead of "Telephus," whom "Phyllis" would have if she were not forestalled by a lady as willing and richer. This frank recognition of unideal relations does not exclude real delicacy of feeling; but there are signs that Hor- ' Unless, indeed, like the similar ode in Catullus, it may have been in- tended for some minor ceremony. 320 LA T/iV LITER A TURE. HORACE. 321 ace was not satisfied with himself. He had called himself a pig of Epicurus's sty: one might almost suppose that he was still thinking of himself in the memorable lines which end the second book of letters. If so, he thought it was time for him to die without waiting till Voutli tliat wears Its motley better kick thee down the stairs. However this may be, he did not become indifferent to litera- ture because he had outlived his own literary activity: he wished to be a whetstone for other men's wit when his own had lost its edge. His criticisms are extremely penetrating, though fragmentary and not very fruitful. He pointed out s*!irewdly enough the most conspicuous defects in contempo- rary literature, and it is possible from his criticisms to form some idea of the general condition of which these defects were symptoms j but a large and connected scheme of doc- trine is necessary for a writer whose criticisms are to issue in a literary reformation. It is true that when we come to Hor- ace's continuator, Persius, we find traces of a change of fish- ion among the mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease. What Horace complains of is a tendency to fluent showy incorrect- ness; what Persius complains of is a fluent mechanical over- finish. One can account for the change from rude vigor to empty pathos by the decline of public spirit and national en- ergy, but the eager search for refinements of verbal melody is not a necessary consequence of this change, and it is not un- likely that the fashion which ran to seed under Nero may have been influenced in some degree by writers who had half appropriated, or misappropriated, a precept of Horace. The real objection with Horace lies deeper: he shows some perception that Roman literature suffered from being the ac- complishment and the pastime of a class instead of being the work of trained organs of the national life. Poets formed a mutual-admiration society : some elegiac poet (Tibullus.?) told Horace he was a new Alcaeus ; the elegiac poet was a new Callimachus, If that seemed cheap praise (Propertius had appropriated it), then he was a new Mimnermus. Admission to the society was easy. Everybody, educated and uneducated, wrote poetry : and it was more than doubtful whether it was worth while to convince bad poets that their poetry was bad ; it amused them and hurt nobody, and Horace was too rea- sonable to suppose that everybody, or nearly everybody, who enjoyed writing bad poetry could learn to write good by tak- ing pains. He has a sort of fellow-feeling for even bad poets, for the world at large despises good. The average respect- able Roman was, above, all things, according to Horace, a man of business : compound addition and subtraction were the foundation of education ; and in the character which this education developed, all the springs of feelings which express themselves in poetry, or respond to poetr}-, were dried up. Such sentimental or aesthetic interest as the man of business is capable of clings round old associations : he gets to be fond of what his fathers admired before him. Horace is al- ways coming back to the grievance that the literature of the Scipionic age was popular among his contemporaries in a way in which the literature of the Augustan age was not : it is sig- nificant in the same sense that plays like Sheridan Knowles's sometimes had a striking success. The public, if it was to listen, liked to listen to showy handling of ethical or political commonplaces, set forth by characters whose behavior was governed by a strong sentiment of their age and station : if they could say " How like a young man !" or " How like a slave !" they did not miss mere aesthetic merits, gracefully conducted dialogue, telling situations, or skilfully managed plots. Then, too, the part of the audience which valued it- self on its judgment was still at the stage of judging by the moral : Horace himself was still at the stage of respecting and accepting any success that was reached by what could be called literary means; for the public, even the instructed pub- lic, had reached the point at which their whole pleasure in a play was derived from the spectacle. So far as his advice to literary aspirants is directed to their own conscience, its bur- den is finish and self-criticism : nothing is to be treated that cannot be treated brilliantly ; nothing that can be treated brill- iantly is to be left till it is brought to its full effect. One of the topics which were most discussed was the tone of diction I.- 14* 322 LA TIN LITER A TUKE. to be adopted. The popularity of the old-fashioned poets told in favor of archaism : there was, besides, a current of mere "urbanity," catching the tone of good society and tending to a narrow fluctuating vocabulary, often half unintelligible ex- cept to the initiated. Horace lays down that the poet will not fly too much in the face of usage, and that, subject to this, he will avail himself of all the resources of the language. Per- haps the theory is founded upon VergiTs practice. Another point on which Horace lays stress is the ars cclarc artem : it is noticeable that he illustrates this by the skill of a practised dancer, as he illustrates the preliminary training, with which poetasters were so ready to dispense, by the training of the athlete. Both illustrations are suggestive: it seems as if Horace thought of the poet as having learned to do difficult things easily when he was at his best; and, when he came short of doing his best, trying over and over till the best came of itself. It is in the same spirit that Horace urges the Pisos to con the models of Greece by day and night. He is still without a theory of art, and can only recommend repeated and fastidious endeavor in the presence of the best results. And it is to be noticed, further, that he practised what he preached, for in the fourth book and the "Carmen Seculare" we find a slight tendency to revert to the freer metres of Greece. He cer- tainly decided that in the Sapphic a weak ciEsura, as in the line Sicleiiim regina bicornis audi, supplied a valuable element of variety, which might be free- ly used provided that the line, where it occurred^ was other- wise sonorous. He was inclined to doubt whether it was necessary that the first choriambus in his favorite glyconic rhythm should end with a word ; but a line like Non incendia Karthaginis impiaj did not seem to invite repetition: and the next line, which begins with an ignoble pronoun,' suggests that the experiment ' Ejus only occurs here and in one other passage of the "Odes ;" both have been obelized by ancient and modern hypercriticism. HORACE. zn f may have been partly the result of indolence — perhaps, too, of haste, for the poem to Censorinus was probably intended as a New-year's gift. It is remarkable that Horace, who in his letters depreciates the literary achievements of his lime, and ridicules the commerce of adulation which he shares, should speak more seriously and loftily of poetry in his "Odes" than any other contemporary writer ; and still more remark- able, that his estimate seems to have risen as his inspiration flagged. In the early odes the feeling seems to be that the Muse admits the poet into an ideal world, from which all the sordid anxieties and agitations of the real world are happily excluded : in the later odes, the feeling is rather that the poet idealizes history, that all the great men of the past whose memory is the light of the world owe their glory to the poet. Perhaps this view was suggested by Horace's knowledge that the grandeur of the Augustan age had a side which was not ideal, and that it required a special effort to see, and a special power to show, the ideal side, which he had made it his mis- sion to glorify. We are accustomed, rightly or wrongly, to believe that the best that is done in the world is immeasura- bly better than the best that can be said of it : and, therefore, Horace's view of the functions of the sacred bard may offend us. If it is less reverent than Vergil's blessing on those "who were faithful bards and spake aright in Phoebus' name," it is higher than the view of the elegiac writers, who seem most serious when they anticipate the personal reputation which is to reward their accomplishments. One finds this feeling in Horace too ; it comes between the w^orthier feeling of the ode to Fuscus and the ode to Lollius. 324 LA TIN LITERA TURK, CHAPTER IV. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. When we turn from Vergil and Horace to Tibullus, Pro- pertius, and Ovid, we find that Augustus had done as much to emancipate frivolity as to embody day-dreams. We are taken into a world that seems emptied of all serious interests, where everybody is out of work, and sad for love out of pure idleness. Tibullus stands aloof from the contemporary en- thusiasm, and will not recognize any hero but Messalla, who stood aloof too. And he only honors Messalla because he loves him : he loves him not for his glory, but in spite of it. His natural mood is indignation that men should let politics and war withdraw them from the true interests of life, which are onlv to be found in the heart and the home. He hates effort; his ideal is to go through a narrow, simple round of pleasures and duties with tranquil, meditative enjoyment. It is cruel to bid him go to the wars or to sea. He likes to pity himself for misfortunes which were almost imaginary. If his mistress asks for money or turns to a rival with a fuller purse, he is almost heart-broken : he is almost ruined to his own satisfaction because in his minority the agents of the trium- virs revised the boundaries of his ancestral estate ; though Horace, in one of his earlier letters, rallies him on his indo- lence, and confrratulates him on his jrood looks and his wealth. In the same way, he thinks himself intensely devoted to Mes- salla,' for whom he had never done anything, except follow ' It is not quite impossible that his devotion made him Munder into hexameters. A contemporary panegyric on Messalla, remarkable for noth- ing but a tasteless display of erudition and enthusiasm, appears among all the MSS. of Tibullus ; but this proves little, as any remains of the works of other members of Messalla's jjoetic circle would naturallv be in the hands of those who possessed the genuine writings of the one considerable poet among them ; and sooner or later some copyists of the collection would TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID, 325 him in the Pyrenees, and perhaps in the Levant. In an elegy on Messalla's Aquitanian triumph in the first book, after ap- pealing to the rivers of Aquitania to attest the deeds which they witnessed with him, he asks if he shall sing of Cydnus and the Nile, as if he had the same right to appropriate Mes- salla's exploits there. Probably he had, for he goes off into a hymn to Osiris, as if he meant to celebrate his mysteries in honor of Messalla's triumph. This is not clearly made out : the construction of the poem is, as often, vague. Tibullus has plenty of ease and beauty and feeling, but he pieces his verses together almost at random ; he hardly ever keeps to one plan or^'one view of one subject through a poem. For instance, in the middle of the fifth elegy of the first book, the faithless Delia is in Armenia with a rival ; at the end, Tibullus is at her door in Rome, appealing to her pity, and warning his rival that one is at hand to supplant him in his turn. Sometimes the incoherence goes so far that editors, in despair of estab- lishing a connection, are driven to take refuge in asterisks. Even poems which can be read continuously have little tirades embedded in them about peace, husbandry, war, and avarice. Tibullus is not alone in dilating on the last topic. The rei"-ning beauties were willing enough to encourage writers whose homage flattered their vanity, increased their celebrity —it may be, touched their feelings. They were not willing to sacrifice luxury and display to a sentiment ; nor were poets, with the exception of Horace, manly enough to accept facts and hold their tongues: still Tibullus cries out loudest. When a rival carries the beloved into the country out of reach, Ti- bullus detests the country, and wishes man had continued to live upon acorns. Of course this is sentiment run mad : no poet loved the country better, his sweetest day-dream was to have his mistress living in the fields— with him— in chastity— and waiting upon Messalla. The pieties of country life charm him ; he is the one genuine believer among the poets of the age; he has the simple faith for which Vergil sighs. He never questions the ways of the gods ; he doubts nothing but start a tradition ascribing the whole to the best known or only known author of any part. 326 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the infallibility of evil omens, or at least of evil dreams. He is half in earnest with his thanksgivings that heaven winks at lovers' perjuries ; he is quite in earnest with his prayer that the curse upon the fickle Delia may not come true, with his tender anxiety to propitiate the deities on her behalf. The tenderness is just a little morbid : he always fancies him- self dying in the arms of Delia, or Delia dying in his. In the same spirit he says of his second love. Nemesis, who was as false as the first, that he is not worth a single tear of hers. Such delicacy is unique in Latin literature : until we come to Apuleius, there is hardly another writer who understands what delicacy means. Other poetical lovers beat their mistresses, and then ask to have their hands tied ; instead, Tibullus wishes that he might never have had hands if he could think of such a thing. There is less tenderness in what may be called the dra- matic elegies of the third and fourth books: the third deals mainly with the loves of Lygdamus and Neaera ; the fourth, in a more fragmentary manner, with the loves of Cerinthus and Sulpicia. AV'e may guess that we have a series of billets- doux, or only the scraps of verse out of them ; or we may guess that we have the germs which, if Tibullus had lived, would have grown to poems on the scale which we find in the first two books, which close, not very impressively, with a poem on the departure of Macer, another poet and lover, to the wars —whither Tibullus would follow if he could leave his love behind. As Tibullus's own love-affairs were too prosperous for the moment to write about, it is intelligible that he should have written about his friends', and that he should not have written so well. But it is generally held that the inferiority in the fourth book, at any rate, is too marked to admit such explana- tions. The topics in the third book are practically the same as those of Tibullus. The lover is still patient, and the mis- tress is still filse : the shadow of death is still over all ; there is the same contempt for wealth ; the same anxious affection- ate piety; the same confession that drink drowns a lover's cares, though there is a sort of homage to love in the very im- TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID, 327 patience with which Lygdamus calls for wine and bids the cup-bearer mix a heady draught. One fresh topic appears in the fourth book : Sulpicia is a lady of station, and is jealous of a rival in a rank below her own ; perhaps it is doubtful if Cerinthus could have legally married her. If so, this would be an additional reason for the obscurity of the fourth book : the lovers, or whoever wrote in their name, would think it prudent to write in riddles, especially as the narrow circle for whom the poems must have been collected would have the key to the riddle in their knowledge of the circumstances. Tibullus, with all his piety, is very indifferent to mythology, and indeed to erudition in general : all his poems have the character of a musical tete-a-tete, in which the reader is asked to surrender himself to a kindly egotist, completely taken up with himself, or his friend, or his love. His own skill in poetry is precious to Tibullus only as it commends him to Delia or Nemesis. If they are deaf to his strains, it is better for him to be silent ; he desires no fame himself, he grudges it them. If they were known only to him, it would be easier for them* to be true. The splendors of the reign of Augustus are nothing to him. He agreed, indeed, to send a copy of his works for the library of the Palatine, with an added poem on the Sibylline books, which he treats rather in a spirit of edifica- tion than of curiosity. He stands alone in his frank indiffer- ence to fame, more 'unaffected than Horace's indifference to wealth; he stands alone in his independence of Alexandrme learning. Perhaps, like Horace, he went back to the pre- Attic literature ; perhaps he is the friend who was not quite satisfied till Horace had hailed him as the Roman Mimner- mus. If so, Horace was less adroit than usual when he thought it a compliment to hail him as the Roman Callim- achus. The Roman Callimachus in his own conceit was Proper- tius, at once a poet and an antiquary, a lover and a mytholo- gist; though Callimachus, with his graceful, temperate self- possession, might question whether a successor so boisterous, so exuberant, so incoherent — nay, sometimes so clumsy — had not failed to appropriate the best part of his inheritance. 328 LA TIN I. ITER A TURK. In most things the Roman Callimachus is a complete con- trast to the Roman Mimnermus: in one thing he is like him —he is in earnest with his love. Even here there is a differ- ence : he respects neither himself nor his mistress; he is passionate, not sentimental, and he does not spare us a single phase of his passion. We have his triumph, his indignation, his suspicion, his insolence, his infidelity, all with a plentiful parade of mythological illustration. Cynthia (whose real name was Hostia) was one of the most learned of a class who often piqued themselves quite as much upon their learning as upon more genuine accomplishments, so that Propertius ?iad a right to display his erudition for her benefit. He is credu- lous as well as learned, more superstitious than Tibullus in proportion as he is less pious. Tibullus trusts the gods of his own farm spontaneously: he trusts the god of song for healing, and the god of wine for comfort; he enters naturally into the devotion of his mistresses to outlandish Egyptian deities. Propertius thinks little of the gods when thhigs ^o well: when they go ill, he is afraid of death and of gltosrs. He tries to make Cynthia afraid of thunder, that fear may keep her true. In spite of such traits, Propertius is not an unmanly or ungenerous writer: he is absorbed by a selfish passion, but not without a protest. He does not imagine that such passions are the only interests in life; after *lhe first book he admits that they are not the highest He attempts a national work upon Roman antiquities in the style of Cal- limachus, \yhich would have covered the same ground as the "Fasti." The plan would have been different, and perhaps better. Ovid wrote at least half of a poetical almanac ; Proper- tius left behind him fragments of a poetical guide-book. He is eager about all national concerns : he has a song of triumph for the victory of Actium; he gloats over the glorious spoil which Caesar, the new god, is to win in India. Only one thing in the new regime displeases him : it is the abortive attempt, soon abandoned, to turn him and all other Romans of equestrian rank into virtuous patresfami/ias by law. In the same spirit of obtrusive enthusiasm, he poses as the trumpeter of Vergil and the panegyrist of Mcecenas ; he writes the epi- TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. 329 taph of Gallus. Posterity, represented by the scholiasts, has taken him at his word : it has accepted him as the chosen friend of all with whom he linked his name. As he pays no tribute to Horace, it is not unlikely that he is the importunate acquaintance on whom Horace wrote his one really biting satire; and, beyond his own testimony, there is nothing to show that his homage was valued at the time. To judge by the epitaph, and by the twentieth elegy of the first book, he was intimate with Gallus, precisely the most un- reasonable poet of the age, whose egotism and abruptness resembled his own. He is not incoherent in the same way as Tibullus : he always aims at organic unity, but seldom, if ever, reaches it. He is obscure because he is impatient; he is abrupt and desultory in the exact sense of those words. Two topics or more are in his mind, and he says something of one, stops without finishing, and goes to another: he leaves his editors to devise or invent the connection, and conjecture, if they please, that he would have made it clear if his feelings had not been too impetuous for language. Feelings too im- petuous for language are seldom deep and strong : the full river runs itself clear. A mind that is restless and not full must always be working, and often must work upon borrowed materials. Propertius is less original than Tibullus. He seems to have translated much with little change from Callimachus: even the elegy \q Gallus is like a translation, though it fits the cir- cumstances well, and the epitaph, if it were not too stiff, might very well be an extract from the anthology. The obscurity of the first book is just the obscurity which we should look for in a translation. And there is this excuse for the ob- scurity, that the author is absorbed by the question of metre ; he is fascinated by the charm of the polysyllabic ending of the pentameter. Catullus gave no special pains to the mat- ter : in his early poems polysyHables are frequent, in the later he seems to settle down to dissyllables without much choice. In Tibullus the dissyllabic rule is observed in almost all cases without reflection ; but in the first book of Propertius it is the polysyllabic endings that are studied, and the dissyllabic that 330 LA TIN LITER A TURE. come of themselves. The attempt is interesting; for the comparative absence of short open syllables and little wards makes it impossible, as has been said, for a Latin verse to be an exact copy of a Greek: except in iambics and hendeca- syllables, a Latin verse has to be more highly finished than a Greek, if it is not to be more unfinished. Still, the attempt at an artificial grace compromises the independence of Pro- pertius : he ends too many lines with Greek proper names; he is driven, too, to particular Latin terminations, especially to datives and ablatives of the so-called third declension ; just as, in English, writers who aim at the uncongenial orna- ment of double rhymes end a disproportionate number of lines with -i?ig and -dh. Even w ith these resources there are whole elegies in the first book, which was published sepa- rately, where the natural dissyllable-ending prevails, with per- haps the insertion of one solitary quadrisyllable : in others the beginning of an elegy is full of polysyllables, and the end subsides into dissyllables as if they were easier. The first book has a character of its own in other ways: it is more delicate and reserved, and less passionate. The author is still on his good behavior: he boasts of his own devotion, not of his mistress's favors; his reproaches to her are gentle and vague. It was wrong of him to leave her, as it was wrong of her to wait to dress before she visited him in his illness. Already death haunts his imagination : he is content to die, if Cynthia will cherish his memory. When he meets the hero- ines of the Trojan war, he will see none so fair as Cynthia; when he is a shadow among shades, it will be seen that he is the shadow of Cynthia, not of his old earthly self. He prom- ises to come back to her as Protesilaus came back to Laoda- mid ; but he will come in vain, against her will. Love will have dried her eyes : no girl, however true, can brave the displeasure of love. Since death must part them, let them live and love while they may. In the second book there is more originality. Propertius is trying to be an independent poet, and to make himself useful in the same way as Varius : he would like to leave the old tales of the wars of the Titans, and the worthy deeds of Marius, to TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. Zl^ sin«- of Caesar and Maecenas, and he finds, to his surprise, that love is too strong upon him. Whereupon all the heroes who ever were in love are cited to excuse the poet who is more in love than any hero. The period of sentiment is over, and the period of bitterness is not quite come : he has ceased to ideal- ize his mistress; indeed, her character is so doubtful that he is tempted to beat her ; but as that would be an unscholarly revenge, he resolves to brand her for all time with a verse, which is either unsymmetrical or ungrammatical or corrupt as it stands — Cynthia forma potens, Cynthia verba levis (II. v. 28) — "Cynthia a shape of power, Cynthia light of words." If we might think that Propertius coined two perfectly regular compounds, and that neither he nor any one else ever used them again, we might read — Cynthia formipotens, Cynthia verbilevis. The spell of her beauty is unshaken : he swears, while cursing her and her other lovers, to have no mistress himself but Cynthia, with her stately stature and her long taper hands and her robe of bright red gauze, with her skill in dancing and poetrv. In more cheerful moods he boasts alike of the friendship of Maecenas and his fidelity to Cynthia, which was not quite disinterested, for he noticed that most lovers sank into common ladies' hacks. He is still as full as ever of mythology : when Cynthia objects to being left alone, she has the opportunity of emulating the heroic constancy of Penelope, or Briseis, who was, to be sure, more faithful than Achilles. In the third book, at last, the poet breaks loose : he is able to sing of other things than love, and he sings of love all the better. He takes Cynthia as he finds her, scolding her, using her roughly, even treating her to a little wholesome neglect. He is still anxious when the summer heat makes her ill ; though he improves the occasion by suggesting that her ill- ness was the effect of her perjuries. As no doubt her other lovers exacted as much perjury as Propertius, she had plenty to worry her and something to reproach herself about, and ii i 33^ LA TIN LITER A TURE. she seems to have been really superstitious. Propertius com- plains that she goes now to try the lots at Praeneste, and to propitiate Hercules at Tibur ; now to worship Diana at Aricia by torchlight, with halt" Rome in her train, instead of staying with Propertius in Rome. There was a crowd wherever she went, so it was useless for her to pretend that she left Rome to be out of the crowd. In the fourth and fifth books we have less of Cynthia: in the seventh elegy of the fifth book the poet tries to lay her ghost. Having done with his own love, he sings the loves of others (V. iii.), and announces for the first time his full literary pretensions. He is the Roman Callimachus. Like Callima- chus, he prefers love and legend to heroic poetry, and, like Callimachus, he expects a higher reputation from posterity than from his own contemporaries. In a sense he was right: Varius was a much greater poet in the eyes of Maecenas, A.u.c. 731, than Propertius, who seemed to be allowing an un- worthy passion to fritter away his powers and deprive him of the reputation which he might have earned by his unmistak- able power of splendid declamation in verse. It may be taken for granted that contemporaries were quite as alive as editors to all the disconnectedness of a poet who lived in a state of suspicion and over-excitement which incapacitated him for steady work. They were more sensitive than editors to all his harsh and doubtful phrases, like that which tells how " that death is best which comes fitly when our day is spare;"' for they had not the inducement to display their knowledge of Latin by defending the MS. text, or suggesting emendations only less harsh, and could recognize intuitively the phrase which his irregular fancy was distorting under more or less pressure from metrical necessity. They would perhaps be less sensitive than modern readers to the vul- garity of the imitation ' of Vergil's aspiration ' after poetry and science. The originality, such as it is, consists in the frank sensuality. Propertius finds it pleasant to have haunted Helicon in early youth, and to have twined his hands in the ' Optima Mors parca quce venit apta die. — IV. iv. 18. ^ IV. iv. 19-46. ' " Georg." ii. 475 sqq. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS: OVID, 333 dances of the Muses. He finds it pleasant, too, to bind his spirit with much wine, and to have his head always in the roses ' of spring. It is only when he is too old for what he understands and enjoys, when the heavy years have cut off love, and hoary age has sprinkled his sable locks, that he trusts he may have a mind to learn the ways of nature. Then he goes on for twenty lines or more with an empty, frivolous enumeration of the points which arouse his curiosity, which is never aesthetical, never ethical. What he is nearest being serious about is the life to come : and even then he only wonders whether there are judgments of the gods and tor- ments of the giants underground, whether it is possible to hunger in the midst of fruit, and thirst in the midst of waters. For himself, Propertius is credulous : when Cynthia is dead, he has a long conversation with her ghost, who appears in the form of her corpse as he supposed the funeral pyre to have left it. When in a later poem he describes the death of a Roman lady of rank, the incoherence is still more glaring. The speech of the dead Cornelia is eloquent and pathetic, and it would be hard to overpraise it,^ but it is unreal to the last degree. The poet has seen that the farewell charge of a dying wife and mother would be interesting, but he is not content to confine himself to this source of interest, nor yet to renounce it when he is attracted by the idea that she is answerinjr for her whole blameless life before the inflexible judges of the world to come. Even this thought is not steadily kept in view. The speaker calls the living to bear witness in her behalf. She is not quite sure whether she is in Elysium already ; and her last word is, " Conduct has found the way to heaven ; may my desert make me worthy to have my bones borne in a chariot of honor." ' ' Does he wish for a crown of roses, or for a pillow of rose-leaves .^ "^ Admirers of Propertius stake his fame as a great poet on this work, though it has none of the musical and picturesque redundancy of the first book, or of the glowing passion of the third or fourth. In fact, we are asked to be grateful that Propertius is on the way to become like every- body else ; and no doubt a powerful and eccentric writer commends him- self most to general approval at this stage. * Moribus et caelum patuit ; sim digna merendo Cujus honoratis ossa vehantur equis. 334 LA TIN- LITER A TURE, The transition from Tibullus and Propertius to Ovid is the transition from the poetry of personal feeling and passion and ambition to the poetry of self-possessed, self-conscious art. Ovid is emphatically a "ladies' man ;" he is the only poet of the Augustan age, except Vergil, who was a water-drinker. The excitement of haunting women took the place of wine to him, and he had no need of sleep like such sentimentalists as Horace and Tibullus. He is singular, again, in having the sense of society. He liked the company of many women at once, without needing to be in love with any. The love-affairs of others were as interesting, perhaps we should say as enter- taining, to him as his own : he never seems to get beyond being interested, or at most teased ; a mistress might be pro- voking, but the lover was always cool. This is the more re- markable because Ovid allowed himself to be much longer and more completely absorbed by love, as he understood it, than most of his contemporaries. The other classic poets were hardly capable of anything but elegy ; moreover, they died young. Quinctilian has the air of repeating the opinion of the Augustan age when he says that Ovid could have done much more if he would have submitted to the restraints of a severe form of art, such as tragedy; and we know that he did write one tragedy, the " Medea," which was highly praised, and that he had hesitated between elegy and tragedy himself. The hesitation was not very serious; it left no trace but a very conventional dream of two women who challenged the poet's allegiance by a display of their contrasted charms. The imitation of Prodicus's choice of Hercules is decidedly more frigid than Lucian's burlesque hesitation between litera- ture and statuary. It is certain that his " Medea " has gone the way of the "Thyestes " of Varius, and that the " Letters of Heroines" have held their place among the most vital and most fruitful works of the Augustan age. In form they are not absolutely original : the transition to monologue is always an easy resource when the dramatic faculty is no longer at home on the stage, and Lycophron, the obscurest of the Alex- andrines, had shown the way in his " Cassandra." There are hints of less repulsive writers, including Callimachus, who had TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. 335 shown that it was feasible to conduct a monodrama in elegy, but it does not appear that any of their attempts were cele- brated. Now Ovid was celebrated at once. He had, to be sure, a talent for being celebrated : he wrote much and well about his own books, and doubtless talked more than he wrote; and he had none of the shyness of Horace, who, thouMi he knew how to advertise himself to a high-class public, preferred, upon the whole, that his reputation should be select. The "Letters of Heroines" are an early work: they have a generosity and purity of feeling which could hardly have survived the composition of the " Art of Love," and made the Middle Ages regard the book as a work of edification — a char- acter which it certainly deserves by the side, not only of Ovid's other elegies except the " Fasti " (which are uninteresting) and the " Tristia" and " Letters from Pontus " (which are positively dull), but of the wholesomer works of Tibullus and Propertius. It is true that the situations are often extreme ; but the hor- ror of extreme situations in literature is only intelligible when the majority of steady, well-conducted people can count with almost absolute assurance on keeping outside such situations in real life ; and, in fact, it may be said to date from the moral revival which accompanied the expansion of English industrial civilization in the latter part of last century. When the art of writing elegiacs revived at the Renaissance, Ovid received the compliment of imitation : it is admitted upon all hands that the three replies to Phyllis, Hypsipyle, and Ariadne, which are printed in most collections of Latin poetry under the name of Sabinus, are a work of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. We know that Sabinus, a friend and contemporary of Ovid, actually did write replies to the three heroines named, for Ovid tells us so ; but, apart from the absence of MS. authority, many vaguenesses of language show that the author wms composing in an unfamiliar tongue, although he has caught the superficial aspects of Ovidian Latin sufficiently well to sive a kind of content to uncritical scholars. Besides these imitations, there are many of the letters of the heroines which are doubtful, because the MSS. of that portion of Ovid's Z2^^ LA TIN LITER A TURE. works vary considerably in the number of letters they include, and it is not clear whether the later and fuller MSS. represent a lost archetype, or the supplementary ingenuity of some imi- tator more successful than the pseudo-Sabinus. And when such a question has once been started, it is easy to see how long the discussion can be kept up, by a minute examination of all discrepancies of style and diction between the doubtful and acknowledged elegies, and by a microscopical investiga- tion of the correspondence and divergence between the letter of Sappho and the allusive account of it which Ovid wrote long afterwards ; and the question is further complicated be- cause the genuineness or the reverse of the letter of Sappho would have its weight in deciding the antiquity and credibility of the tradition that Sappho ended her career at the " J. over's Leap " of Leucas. Certainly the poem must be called a failure by the side of others : there is, one might almost think, a visi- ble transition to the frigid mythology of the "Fasti." When Ovid is speaking in his own person, we may forgive him for learning dull legends in dreams: it is worse that Sappho should learn the legend of Leucas in the same way, and write a letter to say so, on the eve of suicide. She has nothing else to say but commonplaces. The thought of Phaon makes everybody else insipid : she dreams of him, her dreams are very vivid ; and the rough tufa of the cave where they met be- fore he avoided her was more beautiful, in her eyes, than Phrygian marble. So Juvenal complains of the marble which defaced the grotto of Egeria ; but our author is just as likely to have remembered the cave of Dido and yEneas, and to have invented the contrast of marble and tufa for himself. The general inferiority is probably due to the fact that Sap- pho's story had never been worked out by a succession of poets ; it had lingered in the state of local tradition, and even for a local tradition had never been clear. A modern poet would have felt himself more at ease upon virgin soil ; but Ovid, who is modern in many ways, succeeds much better with Dido than he or his imitator succeeded with Sappho. Without being in the least embarrassed by the hazard of a competition with Vergil, he uses Vergil without TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 337 scruple, as a pianist improvising a fantasia uses the airs of greater composers ; nearly everything in the fourth book of the "^neid " comes over again in a quarter of the space, and yet Ovid looks flowery and redundant in comparison with the passionate simplicity of Vergil. This is possible, because the story is taken for granted by a series of ingenious allusions, just sufficient to reconstruct it by. The signature, as usual, gives the key to the poem, and, as often, is turned into a rather heartless epigram, which has to do duty as an epitaph. But Ovid intends his Dido to be tenderer than Vergil's. He does not care about her dignity. Instead of cursing yEneas and his people with her last breath, her fear is that his guilt may expose him to shipwreck: she would rather lose him by any way than death. For herself, her supplications are only another form of complaint ; she hopes nothing, and only writes at all because, after losing her virtue and her reputa- tion, she thinks it a light thing to lose her words. She cer- tainly does not spare them ; she reproaches ^neas on the chance of being responsible for the death of an unborn brother of lulus. If we turn to the lamentation of Hypsipyle and CEnone, who, like Dido, had done service to lovers who had deserted them, we shall see more and more reason to admire Ovid's in- exhaustible fertility. There is singularly little repetition. It is not that Hypsipyle is so unlike Ariadne, or Ariadne so un- like CEnone. The situation is reviewed from without, not from within ; but no circumstance is lost sight of For instance, ^Enone brings in the virtue of Andromache and the wisdom of Antenor, and hints that Paris will find a successor in De- iphobus ; and, with a pretty affectation of ignorance, she won- ders how far he was forestalled by some Theseus or other, and gives herself airs of superior virtue to any woman who can leave her country with a stranger. It never occurs to Ovid to alter the tradition that Apollo had been the lover of (Enone before Paris; it never occurs to him either to make CEnone humble herself to Paris because he was not the first; and he does not overrate his resources. His CEnone is proud of the favor of the god who built the walls of Troy, which will 1—15 ^^ 33^ LA TIN LITER A TURK. fall by the guilt of Paris, and she is proud of her own inef- fectual resistance : if Apollo overpowered her, at any rate she tore his unshorn locks. This is on the borders of vulgarity; here is a passage which comes nearer to poetry : " That day brought doom upon poor me ; thenceforth be- gan the evil winter of changed love, that day when Venus and Juno, and Minerva, who looks better when she puts on her armor, came naked to your judgment. My bosom quivered with dismay, and a cold trembling ran, as you told the tale, through my stout bones. I questioned (for my terror was beyond measure) beldames and hoary elders, and both were sure it was sin. The pine was felled, the beams were hewn, the fleet was ready, the azure wave parted before the trim galleys ; you wept at parting, spare me at least a denial of this : that love of yours is more reason for shame than the love that is gone by. You did weep, and I wept too : you saw the tears in my eyes ; each of us was sad, we mingled our tears. No elm is clasped as close by the vine set against it as your arms were twined about my neck. Ah ! how often your shipmates smiled when you would complain that you were wind-bound ; the wind was fair. How often, after let- ting me go, you drew me back for one kiss more ! how hardly did your tongue bear to say fiirewell ! The light breeze lifts the canvas that laps idly on the stiff mast, and the water whitens beneath the plunging oars. Poor I can but follow the parting sails with my eyes while I may, and moisten the sand with my tears. I pray the green maidens of the sea that you may come home with speed. Alas ! your speed was to my undoing. So it was my prayers that brought you back, and brought you back to another ! Woe is me, that I hum- bled myself to the profit of my hateful rival! A mass of na- tive rock looks upon the boundless deep, a mountain once, and still strong to breast the billows of the main. From my station here I was first to mark the sails of your galley, and my impulse was to meet you through the waves. While I linger, purple methought gleamed on the front of the prow : I trembled sore; it was no garb of yours. The bark drew nearer, the breeze was swift, it touched the shore : my heart TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 339 shrank as I saw the cheeks of a woman. Was not that enouo-h t AVhat bewitched me to stay and see your shameful leman clinging to your neck 1 Then I did rend my robes and beat my breast, and my nails shivered as they tore my tearful cheeks. I filled holy Ida with the storm of my complaint, and thence I bore tears of mine to my rocky home." ' » Ilia dies fatum miserrc niihi duxit, ab ilia Pessima mutati coepit amoiis hicms ; Qua Venus et luno, sumtisque deceiUior armis Venit in arbitrium nuda Minerva tuum. Attoniti micuere sinus, gelidusque cucurrit, Ut mihi narrasti, dura per ossa tremor. Consului, neque enim modice terrebar, anusque, Longacvosque senes: constitit esse nefas. Caesa abies, sectaique trabes, et, classe parata, Ca^rula ceratas accipit unda rates. Flcsti disccdens : hoc saltern parce negare. Practcrito magis est iste pudendus amor. Et flesti et nostros vidisti flcntis ocellos. Miscuimus lacrimas moestus uterquc suas. Non sic appositis vincitur vitibus ulmus, Ut tua sunt collo brachia nexa meo. Ah ! quotics, quuni tc vento quererere teneri, Riserunt comites ! Illc secundus erat. Oscula dimissae quoties repetita dedisti ! Quam vix sustinuit diccre lingua, Vale. Aura levis rigido pendentia lintea malo Suscitat ; et remis eruta canet aqua. Proscquor infelix oculis abeuntia vela, Qua licet ; ct lacrimis humet arena meis. Utque celer venias, virides Nereidas oro ; Scilicet ut venias in mea damna celer. Votis ergo meis alii rediture redisti ? Hei mihi ! pro dira pellice blanda fui ! Adspicit immensum moles nativa profundum. Mons fuit ; aequoreis ilia resistit aquis : Hinc ego vela tuae cognovi prima carinae, Et mihi per fluctus impetus ire fuit. Dum moror, in summa fulsit mihi purpura prora. Pertimui, cultus non erat ille tuus. Fit propior, terrasque cita ratis attigit aura : Fenn'neas vidi corde tremente genas. Non satis id fuerat : quid enim furiosa morabar ? Haerebat gremio turpis amica tuo. 340 LA TIN LITER A TURE. In a sense, nothing can be more picturesque or terse or musical : it is even moving. On a second or third readmg it strikes one that CEnone is too voluble to be deeply moved herself; but this is hardly a reproach to a poet who would not press Horace's maxim, that he who would make another weep must grieve himself, too far. His heroines are never self-forgetful in their grief, and self-forgetful grief gets little sympathy; though CEnone carries self-command rather far when she brings botanical science to bear upon the levity of Paris : he is lighter than a leaf, that is not enough ; than a withered leaf, that is not enough either ; he is lighter than a leaf just then when it flies before the wind whose motion has parched it and it has no sap to weight it ; there is less sub- stance in him than in the top of an ear of corn that is burned stiff with the long sunshine. The self-possession of Phaedra is still more astonishing ; the confusion, which is even more apparent than the passion in Euripides, is wholly absent. Even the passion is a matter of inference : the writer puts his whole strength into ingenuity. The tragic part of the situa- tion is left to the reader's memory, while Phaedra displays her seductions, and dwells upon the ease with which Hippolytus, if he only will, may yield. It is probable that contemporaries recognized the seductive matron as a much more intelligi- ble Type than the shy queen of Euripides, who dies without declaring herself: though there Euripides had yielded to his contemp°oraries, and rather sacrificed the role of Phxdra to Hippolytus. The style and metre of the "Heroines" is already master- ly : the neat-fitting couplets without a superfluous preposition or conjunction hint at everything that can be hinted at in the space, and leave the connecting links to be supplied by the reader for himself. The structure of the parentheses, which to a practised ear are never an interruption, is complete from Tunc vero rupique sinus, et pectora planxi, Et secui madidas ungue rigente gcnas : Implevique sacram querulis ululatibus Iden : mine has lacrimas in mca saxa tuli." Ovid, "Her." V. 31-72. TIBULLUS; PROPER TI US ; OVID, 341 the first. Only in one point one notes an imitation of Catul- lus which disappears later on : we have the spondaic line, like Non haec yEsonides sed Phasias vEetine, where both the spondee at the beginning and the pretty affec- tation at the close are unlike Ovid. On the other hand, the " Heroines " are free from an affectation of Ovid's own, which in his later elegiacs, from the "Fasti" onwards, becomes very wearisome. Fue/ia in almost all its cases is a capital word to end an hexameter with, but neither pueila nor faiiina nor muiier is convenient at the end of a pentameter; and, unfortu- nately, it occurred to Ovid that Jiurus, which properly means a daughter-in-law, w^as absolutely convenient if used without respect to its natural limitations of meaning. The transition to the " Amores " from the " Heroides " is the transition from the ideal to the real. Ovid wishes us to believe that he is relating his own experience, and boasts that it was not exactly creditable. Perhaps the personal element would have been clearer if the original edition in five books had reached us : in reducing them to three, nothing that was not typical and of permanent interest would be preserved. As they stand, the "Amores " are a complete course of erotic philosophy, teaching by example what the "Art of Love " and the connected treatises teach by precept : one might almost say that they are an elegant letter-writer for the use of lovers. In flict, they are this and more. A lover could hardly be in a situation in which he could not find a love-letter in the "Amores" to suit him, and he might be full of sentiments which he could not conveniently put into a letter. Then, too, Ovid supplies him with model entries for a sentimental journal. For instance, it must have been a common ad- venture to be stopped by a swollen river on the way to an assignation; and Ovid supplies a distressed lover with over a hundred lines' of appropriate reflections, to be let off while waiting to see whether the flood-water will run off in time to let him* keep his appointment. First he tells the river that there is no bridge or ferry, and ' "Am."III.vi. 342 LA TIN LITER A TURE. that he remembers it used to be quite easy to ford ; that he is in a great hurry, and will be no better for his haste if kept standing there ; then he wishes for the wings of Perseus, or the dra"-on-car of Ceres. Presently he reflects that these are fables, and tells the river to flow within its banks ; especially as that particular river cannot afford the unpopularity of stopping a lover. In fact, lovers have a special title to the protection of rivers, so many rivers have been in love, from Inachus to Tiber, who fell in love with Ilia, "though her nails had marked her hair, her nails had marked her cheek!"' Then comes a long passage of mythological pathos, in the manner of the " Heroides :" at the end Ilia "drew her rai- ment over her swelling eyes, and so cast herself to perish into the swift waters. They say the gliding stream spread hands to bear her bosom, and made her the lawful partner of his bed." Ovid is not quite clear whether he means to rationalize the tradition into the suicide of Ilia or not : perhaps two passages about Ilia in the first edition are run together in the second. At any rate, it does not occur to Ovid that the whole story of Ilia is just as credible or incredible as the whole story of Perseus; nor does it occur to him that the story of Leander is more credible than either, and at least as relevant. Instead, he opines that the river which stops him has had a love-aff"air of its own, of which the groves and woods have been faithful confidants. Meanwhile, he notices that the river has swollen instead of going down, and abuses it in good set terms for a nameless, good-for-nothing torrent, which deserves nothing better than his parting curse, that the sun may pass over it quickly to smite it, and winter always leave it dry. Perhaps we owe this poem to the fact that Ovid had mis- tresses in more parts of Italy than most poets. Corinna was the first, but she was not the only one, though she has the honor of being the heroine of the poem" which every elegiac poet seems to have felt called to write in honor oi the first time when the lover embraces the beloved. Naturally, there 1 (( Ungiie notata comas, ungue notata genas." — Ovid, "Am." III. vi. 48. 2 "Am." I. V. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 343 is nothing of the imitation of a marriage contract which we find in Propertius, always more earnest than his contempora- ries, and often in worse taste. All the other commonplaces recur with variations, and an evident desire to be complete. Ovid is most original in his description' of the quarrel in which the lover beats his mistress, and brings her hair about her ears. He has more sense of humor than Propertius ; in- stead of discussing the merits of the case, he plays quaintly with his pity for the poor lady who was so surprised and frightened, and with his own amazement at his own barbarity. There is, of course, the assurance that the disorder was be- coming, and, equally of course, not a hint at the real story. We learn from the " Art of Love " that his remorse sprang from the perception that a lover who gave no costly presents could not afford to lose his temper. In the "Amores" he suggests that, if too angry to confine himself to words, he ought to have bitten her throat, or just gone through the form of tearing her dress. In fact, it had pleased the lady, when her color and her wits came back, to insist that her dress had been torn in the scuffle: and, though Ovid did not believe her, he had to pay for the imaginary damage. Even economical lovers had to give presents, and Ovid has a very pretty poem '' on the sentiments which may accompany a ring, the tender- est of all cheap presents, tenderer than many costly ones. He wishes that a gift in which there is nothing to prize but the love of the giver may be accepted. He hopes that the ring may fit as well as he and she fit each other. He envies the gift that his mistress will handle: then he longs for the art of Circe or of Proteus (he does not name either) to change him into his gift ; if that could be, he would firin be the ring touching her body, as the left hand steals under her tunic. It would be charming to slip from her finger where the ring had clung so close and fall on to her. Then, too, it would be his privilege often to be pressed to her lips when she had billets to seal, for fear the gem should be dry or sticky, and so pull the wax with it when the stamp was raised, only he hopes he would never have to seal a letter to a rival. When 1 u^ m ?> I. vii. '' "Am." II. XV. 344 LA ThY LITER A TUNE. she wishes to put the ring away, if he were the ring it should never come ofi; and so forth. He concUides, as always, with a touch of irony. All his prayers are vain: a ring is only a ring, not a man ; but still he speeds his little gift on the way, with a wish that his mistress may feel that he has given his faith with the ring. In the next elegy, Ovid endeavors to compete with the rustic sentimentality of Tibullus ; but his ingenuity is uncon- querable ; he puns, and is too accurate in his topography. Ovid is in the country, and he presses his mistress to come to him there : he did not care for the country himself, as Tibullus did, and was too experienced to expect his mistress to care for it either : he only ventures to appeal to her prom- ise, though the words of a girl are lighter than billing leaves, and are trifles that wind and wave bear whither they will. Still, if she has piety enough to care for the lover whom she left,' she will think of going on from promise to performance, and shake the reins herself over the streaming manes of her ponies as they whirl her little car along. The swelling nioun- lains are to fall before her, and change to an easy way through winding valleys. The real attractions of Sulmo are set forth with appreciation that just stops short of enjoyment. In the vintage Sulmo is healthy, because there are plenty of streams which never run dry in the greatest heat; the soil is never hard, and the grass is always green ; the rivers float over the fields ; the grass, as it rises again above the water, casts a shadow on the moist soil ; the cool breeze caresses the leafage of the trees. Then, too, it is a good country for corn, and a much better country for wine, and not impracti- cable for oil, and it was also the home of his sires ; and yet Ovid was restless there, and fancied himself among the sav- aj^es of Scythia or the Caucasus or the Taurus, or the wilds of Britain where the natives dye themselves green. With his mistress he could go anywhere : if they were shipwrecked to- * Hence we may infer that Ovid was able to get his mistress to come down with him when he went to Sulmo, no doubt for the prosaic purpose of looking after his property, though she took the first opportunity of es- caping to Rome. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID, 345 gether, she would be safe ; as he puts it, ^'If the windy might of Neptune prevail, and the wave sweep away the gods who would have helped, still do you lay your snowy arms upon my shoulder; it will be easy for my body to sustain the sweet burden." He remembers that Leander was drowned, but then Leander's love did not light his way. One touch is very like Tibullus— it was a cruel idea to have long distances in the world. Perhaps the tone of his model is better pre- served in the eighth elegy of the third book, where he com- plams that, though his mistress likes and praises his poems Jie cannot find his way, like them, to her presence, because some blood-stained soldier has come home with a full purse and a ring as a knight. All the notes struck are characteris- tic of Tibullus. There is the sentimental contrast between the pure holy poet and the cruel mercenary with his scars • there is the mythological regret for the discovery of gold run- ning off into a sentimental regret for the progress of indus- trial civilization. There is even the note of political inde- pendence— " Men have built cities; they have trained their hands to arms, they have crossed the sea: all folly. Why could they not be satisfied with earth > If they must have the sea, why not the sky?" Then comes the answer, ''They do what they can : they build temples on earth to their dead, to Romulus and to Liber and to Alcides, and now to Ccesar." 'J'his couplet might be a later interpolation, but there is a po- htical flavor about the denunciation of the "census" which IS the key to honor, and gives gravity to the judge and char- acter to the knight. And this points to a tolerably late pe- riod of the rule of Augustus, when the gloss had worn off his reforms, and there was room for discontent at court. It might almost seem as if Julia liked to sneer at her father and his uncle. The sneer is unlike Tibullus, who is never mali- cious and never witty, and Ovid's wit in this poem is a fair promise of the ingenuity that runs riot in the "Art of Love." ^\e know that he was writing, if he had not written, that work before the last poems in the collection of the "Amores" were flmshed. On the other hand, there is no allusion to the Fasti " or the " Metamorphoses." There are anticipations 346 LA TIN LITER A TURE. of the manner of the " Fasti " in the v.ston m the grove where the poet chooses between elegy and tragedy and rec- ognizes the former by one foot being longer than the other ; and perhaps a pleasanter one in the poem = on the mourntng of Ceres, who is thanked for her benefits, and bantered, not too disrespcctfullv, upon her own love-affair with Jupiter in Crete-even Cretans tell the truth sometimes— just to prove the inconsistency of trying to do her honor by suspending all other love-affairs upon her festival ; which, like all other feasts of the lord gods, ought to be kept with the acceptable otfer- inss of love and song and wine. On the whole, it is safest to suppose that the three earlier series of elegies proceeded pari passu, though, speaking rou-hlv, the '-Heroines" may be put at the commencement of that' stage of Ovid's career, and the "Art of Love at its *" °He had exhausted all phases of the subject in practice; he had even married; and one of the prettiest of the later ele- gies is on the feast of Tuno at Talerii," which he attended be- cause his wife was a native of the place. There is no love in the poem, and only a vague account of the legend : such leg- ends are clearer in the "Fasti." What Ovid could feel f.r a wife is better seen in the " Tristia." His feeling was never of the same kind as his feeling for his mistresses; and his feelin- for his mistresses always ended in disgust, partly at himself, and partly at his mistress. He boasts of his eman- cipation ; he boasts of the reputation he has conferred, and then complains that he has given himself rivals. He soon comes round to the admission that he hates and oves at once, and is afraid that love will prevail. He appeals to his mistress to decide whether he shall love her of his \y,ll or against his will. The last elegy but one is still more mgen- iouslv abject. The poet is quite content that his mistress should be f^tlse, if only she will not force him lo know it. After the cvnical humility with which Ovid deprecates her cynical etfronterv, we are not surprised or sorry to hear him bid the mother 'of tender loves seek another poet, and are • ".\m."iii. I. Mb. ID. =Ib. 13- TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. rather grateful to horned Bacchus, who has put it into his mind to tread a wider floor with his mighty steeds. But though Ovid takes leave of elegy here, we have still to consider his great work, the "Art of Love." This poem is divided into three books, of which the first two are addressed to men, and the third, by an after-thought, to women. They are all remarkable for their daring and ingenuity. I'he pre- tence that the love he teaches does not soil the robe of a Ro- man matron is only a pretence. All the ladies whom he teaches the art of courting are married, more or less; a great many of them have law business, important enough to make an excuse for claiming the attendance of their lovers; not a few have enough property to bequeath to make it worth while to be very anxious and attentive while they are ill. Some la- dies are a little too "savage" to be approached by ordinary means; then it is wise to begin by "paying court" as a de- pendant, until it is possible to pay court as a lover. With a lower class, the inevitable overcrowding at the circus -ave many opportunities for gallantry (especially in days wheli it was possible to lift a lady's robe out of the mud and pay one^s self by a peep at her ankles). It is needless to bid a lover interest hmiself in the horse or actor that she favors (one hears much more about the horse than the actor, as if ladies of all ranks followed the fashion set by the law, which admit- ted "matrons" to the circus and excluded them from the theatre). Of course, neither the theatre nor the circus is the only scene of gallantry; and the whole description of gallantry implies that the idea was a noveltv, and that the lover would require a great deal of encouragement to enable hmi to make the sacrifice of paying such attentions as could be commanded from a servant. This throws a new light on the habit the Augustan poets have of calling their mistress dominaM^xc\, is more noteworthy, for they call no man domi- nus. One does not trace the idea at all in Latin comedv where the heroines are, for the most part, only too thankful to be caressed and protected. One finds the word in Lucilius but even in Catullus it is hardly established. Li " Acme and beptimius, ' Acme prays that she and Septimius may continue ^^8 ^^ ^^^^ LITER A TURE, fellow-servants of one love. Catullus himself, though he was more absorbed by his passion than he liked, was much more anxious to master Lesbia than to pose as her slave. There is always something unreal in the love which consoles itself for the discovery that a mistress is capricious and tyrannical by ostentatiously hugging her chains. Ovid is never seri^ous for an instant, and he is always af- fecting seriousness and even enthusiasm. Ccesar's pageant of a sham sea-fight (? in 2 B.C.) is described' as having brought all Italy together, and many love-aff\irs were the result : and then the still more glorious triumph which Caesar is going to win over the Parthians is described with apparently a disinter- ested dow of flatterv. The avenger of Crassus is at hand ; he will approve himself a general in his first campaign ; he is a boy, but he conducts a war too great for a boy. But faint hearts ought not to count the birthdays of a god. Virtue comes before its season to the house of Coesar. Hercules crushed the snakes in his cradle; Bacchus is still a boy, and can have been no more when he conquered India : and so on for forty lines. And then, when we have finally come to the procession of conquered generals, with chains on their necks to prevent their finding safety, as heretofore, in flight, we learn they will be a show for joyous lads and lasses, and the minds of all will be enlarged that day. When one of them asks the names of the kings, and of the countries and mountains and waters whose emblems are being carried by, the lover will do well to have an answer for everything; indeed, he had better not wait to be asked. He should tell all that he knows, and all that he can guess; the blue liairs of one river god must do for the Tigris, and the crown of pale-green reeds is to be the ensign of the Euphrates. He will always be able to name the generals, even if he does not happen to know them by sight. Then a festival leads to a feast, and a feast is full of oppor- tunities. There Love pushes back the horns of Bacchus ; there Love wets his wings till he cannot fly away. Only a lover must be careful not to commit himself by lamplight, * " Ars. Am."i. 171 sq. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. 349 which makes every woman beautiful. The great question, however, is not how to make sure of the lady : every woman is to be won. Those who say yes and those who say no are both glad to be asked. Mythological precedents are so en- couraging that we almost wonder that the thriving wooer must begin by making sure of the maid's good word before he ac- costs the mistress; it is a knotty point whether it answers to be in love with both. Ovid, who always leans in favor of de- cency, thinks not. Apparently the most likely time for the lady to yield is when she is in high spirits, with nothing to be in high spirits about, for whenever there is any special attrac- tion (for instance, some extra decorations in the circus) she is sure to put her lover oft' impatiently. Unlucky days, however, do a lover no harm : he may begin a prosperous courtship on the day of Allia, or on the Sabbath of the Syrians, which was recognized as a day unfit for business. On the other hand, the lady's birthday is eminently unlucky, because a present is sure to be expected ; not that precau- tions against presents are much use : a hawker will call when you are there with just the wares your mistress wants, and she will be sure to tell you that it is a capital time to buy. If you tell her that you have no cash ready, the salesman will be happy to take your note of hand. Besides, it is no good keep- ing away on the day you think is her birthday; as many days in the year as suits her she will greet you with a birthday cake, and expect a present in return. It is better to submit to her rapacity with a good grace, though it is worth a great effort to win the first caresses without buying them. Everything is analyzed in the same style of heartless, kind- ly ingenuity. Ovid is always careful to inculcate prudence, politeness, and decency: sometimes, as in the matter of cor- respondence, it is possible to give a relative assent to his rules; sometimes, as in the matter of feasting, the change of manners makes his rules grotesque, and his sincere anxiety to hold fast the restraints and comforts of piety in every de- partment of life but one must always have been amusing. In the next book Ovid treats how love is to be held fast when won, and it is curious that he should have thought it 50 LA TIN LITER A TURE. worth writing, as he treats fidehty as out of the question on either side. One can hardly suppose he recommended liai- sons to be kept up from interested motives, as he regrets the way that various /^///i" soins had been proHmed by legacy-hunt- ers though his encomium on Ladies of a certain age is, to say the least, suspicious. He has little to recommend but bound- less patience and good temper. Philters are criminal and use- less • and it is clear from the case of Ulysses, who fascinated two ^oddesses, that beauty is not indispensable. For a poet, he has a very poor opinion of the value of poetry ; no mistress, under the most favorable circumstances, will rate the most beautiful verses higher than a present of game. It is surpris- ing to find that all were vain and good-natured enough to be much pleased when the lover gave their influence credit for a favor which it suited him to show his slaves. Not that he re- lies exclusively on this form of flattery; the really important thinf^ is to persuade your mistress that you believe in her beauty. After an ironical burst of self-laudation on his own prowess as a lover, which ranks him with half a dozen of the most fa- mous heroes of the Trojan war (beginning with Podalirius the sure-eon, and endinsr with Automedon the charioteer), Ovid passes, in his third book, to give advice to the ladies. The book has* something of the character of a palinode: after warning young men of the wiles of the fair, he has to turn round and admit that most women are good ; constancy is a feminine virtue, and many have been victims to it. The rea- son was, they did not know how to love ; if all the forlorn her- oines who died of broken hearts had only had Ovid for their master, they would have lived in peace. Here much more is promised than is ever performed. Ovid's study of the rela- tions of his world was one-sided: he knew just enough of women to know how they were to be won, but not enough to teach them new arts of conquest, or to appreciate the feelings and the skill with which they used the arts they knew. Hor- ace, who says far less of his mistresses, comes much nearer to showing us'their inner life than Ovid, or even such true lovers as Catullus and Tibullus. What Ovid has to tell his class of TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 351 ladies is simply how to dress well, and make the most of their advantages. And even here he is something less than mas- terly; he has observed very attentively, but we cannot see that he has reflected much, or digested his observations. His two profoundest counsels are, not to begin to make a gain of a lover too soon, and to affect jealousy a propos without feeling it too much. There is always the 'chance that the jealousy may be unfounded; and, besides, there is no use in trying to monopolize love, which is not diminished by being divided. He is decidedly opposed to too much expense in dress, partly* no doubt, in the interests of the lover, and partly in those of the mistress; we learn that the two most expensive toilets were double-dyed purple and strips of brocade {scgmentd) used to border dresses. The title of the last is curious : it proves that women prized the rich stuffs. of Eastern courts without daring to covet a whole dress of them. There is choice enough, he adds, among other colors from air color to ame- thyst; and there is good mythological precedent for each. The general rule is contrast : brunettes should wear white and blondes dark colors. This itself implies that the majority of Ovid's clients were not exactly beautiful, and needed to be made up for exhibition; accordingly, we find directions for all kinds of toilet observances/ from cleaning the teeth up- wards, which have to be practised extensively; false hair is very likely an inevitable misfortune, but there is no need to court it by dyeing one's own. Other cautions are no more complimentary: ladies have to learn how to laugh and cry becomingly, how to clip their words prettily in talking, and how to beat their bosom and tear their hair with a grace so as to be laying snares for a new lover while mourning an old husband. But the most attractive morsel of the third book is the story of the jealousy of Procris,\and the death which came to her just as she was undeceived : there is more feeling than in ' For further instructions on the great art of cosmetics Ovid refers to his short but labored treatise on the subject ; of which we have only a frag- ment, treating of the most harmless kind of face-powders. = "Ars Am."iii. 6S5-746. 352 LATIN LITERATURE, most of the legends of the " Art of Love," if less than in the " Heroines/' and the half-humorous tenderness shows that the poet is not yet callous. Mythology almost disappears from the *' Remedies of Love," which is not altogether a loss, for most of the legends in the *' Art of Love " are rather too palpable digressions. . It is cer- tainly relevant enough that Agamemnon cured himself of his love for Chryseis by sending for Briseis. The longer digres- sion upon the poet's ill-wishers is not exactly misplaced. Ovid never suppresses his own personality, and has a right to argue against those who already proclaimed that the " Art of Love" was an immoral work, and to illustrate with com- placent prolixity the familiar thesis that the envy provoked by his success will not survive his day, and the reasonable boast that his elegies would always rank with the classics of the Augustan age. He has to vindicate himself against other critics, who thought it inconsistent to write against love. Ovid answers," His remedies are only to be applied to get rid of passions that cannot possibly turn out happily." There are two stages at which such love may be conquered, at its beginning and in its decline. Before love has taken firm hold, a little resolution will be effectual ; afterwards the lover had better make no efforts, but yield to his folly and watch its effects. Ovid knows all the ways in which a man can learn to depreciate a woman, and warns his pupils not to test their disgust too early : it is better to go on cultivating a woman when she begins to be a weariness, to bear a good deal from her caprice, and only decline her favors when she is very pressing. Of course all the processes by which an artificial ad- miration can be worked up may be reversed ; with a little aver- sion to begin with, real defects may be exaggerated, doubtful qualities may be turned into defects, just as with a little good- will it is easy to turn questionable or even unquestionable de- fects into admirable qualities. Besides, a lover has in most cases only to read or to employ himself: it is a favorite thought w^ith Ovid that love is a labor or a warfare, and that it is the labor of those who live at ease, and, therefore, whoever can re- nounce ease will soon be cured of love. Only the cure will re- TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 353 quire care to maintain it. The lover on the way to emancipation must not boast of his indifference : he may criticise his mis- tress as much as he can to himself, but it is dangerous to rail at her in company, and still more dangerous to enter the com- pany of lovers. Solitude is dangerous too : until the cure is confirmed, the patient is safest in the hands of an affectionate inseparable comrade, who will sympathize with him in every- thing but his folly; and Ovid observes that this was the chief value of Pylades to Orestes. All the description of the care the lover must take to see his mistress at her worst is fijll of ingenious though coarse detail, and as usual Ovid puts for- ward one or two suggestions which he thinks too trivial or too shocking to be practical. One suggestion which he develops with great complacency is open to the criticism that the remedy is worse than the disease. No doubt a man who worries about his cash, or his crops, or the stinginess of his father, or the bad terms that he is on with his wife, or the dis- honesty and carelessness of his slaves, will be less likely than another to worry over the unkindness or infidelity of a mis- tress ; but, if it is positively necessary to worry, it might be thought that a mistress was the least humiliating subject to worry about. The great difficulty in emancipation is, that we cannot get rid of the belief that we are beloved, and the self^ complacency of each makes us all a pack of dupes. The only way is to trust no words, which are but false breath, and rate the everlasting gods as light as air. A woman's tears should never move the wise, who know a woman's eyes have been schooled to weep. The mind of a lover is assailed by arts without number, as the waves of the sea that beat against a rock. It is better not to go into the reasons which make you prefer to part, and not to say what vexes you, though you must remember to nurse your vexation privately. Do not re- mind her of her faults ; she will explain them away. You will favor her pleading against yourself, and wish her case better than yours. Silence is a sign of firmness, and whoever says much to a lady is too interested in her by half: if he scolds her, it is only to give her a chance to satisfy him. Another point, more important than it looks, is to burn all the lady's 354 LA TIN LITER A TURE. love-letters: there is great danger of relapse m loolang them over and remembering how kind she used to be. t)' P« 'y of reasoning, the natural dislike to your successor ,s to be sub- dued by an affectation of cordiality, which may be trusted to nroduce the reality. ' Although the "Art of Love " and the '' Cure of Love are properly placed at the close of a series, yet the audacity ^^'Ih which they are written throughout confirms tlie boast of the poet that they are, after all, an early work. Ovid s manhood is represented by the " Metamorphoses and the tasti ; and apparently the " Fasti" were completed (in whatever sense) first of the two, for he is always apologizing ^orU.e im- perfect state in which the " Metamorphoses were left a hi. exile, while he only once alludes to '* The Imperfect \ oik of Days " Apparently the " Fasti " were never carried beyond the first six months of the year, for there are no perceptible sic^ns of want of finish in what we have (it is true that he con- tinued to work at them in his exile, iv. 281-284). 1 ossibly when Ovid wrote Sex ego Fastorum scripsi totidcmqiu libclos he was past his prime, and the dupe of his own penphrasUc facility. If so, he might conceivably have failed o notice that his words would naturally be taken to mean- I wrote six books of Fasti, and as many more,'' not ;'I wrote ripon the calendar, and got through six months in six books, not, it would be natural to guess that in July, the first month of the second half of the year, the poet had sung he praise of one or other Julia, and that when (as seems most probab t he was involved in the catastrophe of the younger Jula, this may have led to the destruction of half his book. But he pio- tests more than once that all his works, with the one exception of the "Art of Love," were innocent and inoftensive; ana therefore the last half of the "Fasti," if ever ^vritten, must have been lost by accident, very early, for there is no trace of its existence in antiquity. The " Metamorphoses " themselves are a most brilliant and interesting work. In one sense it is the most " romantic work in Latin literature: there is the same perception of the picturesque, tl>e same quick appetite for what is strange and TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 3^5 horrible, only there is not the same ready sympathy with all kinds of emotion. It might almost be said that Ovid always begins where Victor Hugo leaves off, and the inexhaustible ingenuity of detail reminds us of the " Botanic Garden " and the " Loves of the Plants." To take one specimen among many : when Perseus has slain the sea-monster (one is glad tiiat in Ovid he does not even use a magic wand, muchless turn the brute into stone with the Gorgon's head), he draws water from the sea to wash his victorious hands ; and then, not to mar the snaky head, he spreads leaves and wands of tangle of tiic sea upon the ground below, and lays the visage of Medusa, child of Phorcis, thereupon. The fresh wand, whose pith was quick yet with its draught of brine, caught the powers of the portent and hardened at its touch, and put on strange stiffness in leaf and bough. Anon, the sea-nymphs put the wondrous fact to proof in many wands, and take pleasure to ^w^Ci the same come to pass upon all, and double -sow the waves with seeds culled from the stony plants. The same nature abides in corals; still they harden at the touch of air, and what was pliant as osiers under the sea, above the sea turns to stone ! ' How like the angel of the flowers who gave (he rose a veil of moss, although there the sentiment disguises the real coldness of the invention ! What is characteristic of Ovid is the zeal with which he elaborates the parts of the story to which legend had paid least attention. For instance, the rock into which Perseus had turned the monster was shown near Joppa ; but this, the most interesting feature of the legend, is dismissed very briefly, and all the pathos of the virgin doomed to die for an idle word of her mother's is hurried over, not for want of ap- preciation. Perseus would have thought her a statue of mar- ble but for her hair that moved in the light breeze, and her eyes that were trickling with tears. She is a maiden, and hardly dares to speak to a man. She would have covered her eyes, if her hands were free : she only speaks at last lest It should seem she has guilt of her own she is loath to confess.^' Short as this part of the story is, the fight between Perseus • " Met." iv. 740-52. 2 lb. 672 sqq. 356 LA ThV LITER A TURE. i told comparatively fully ; that is to say r;:cmp risen viu/vergil or any oiher writer who is not p o ix ^B^Twhen it co.^es to describing the conflict between Phineus and his Cephenes and Perseus, Ov,d pu s th al his strength. One cannot tell in each spec.al case vyhether a y 1 ng\as been taken from Callimachus or N.cander, bu "n leneTal it is clear that Ovid must have gone to say the a^t, as far beyond his Greek models as Valenus F laccus does beyond Apollonius Rhodius ; and the ongmahty (to .ive it that name) of Valerius Flaccus, though always con- scientious, frequently ingenious, and "^^^^^'""^"y f';°'J"*;..;fi almost always a little tedious ; whereas the or,gn,ahty of O d is always st!perbly vigorous, even when U seems grata tous There is no single trait that is to be called admirable m the contention of Phineus and Perseus ; but ,t >s all sp.rUed and entertaining, and just a little exaggerated, and it is amazing 'hat any writer should have been capable of supplying so much matter of such remarkable quality. Here is an average sample. After telling of the death of the da.n^-, innocent Ath s, whose mother was one of the nymphs of Ganges, the poet goes on : " Lycabas saw him fall with his fair face quivei- L in gore - Lycabas, the Assyrian, his close companion, who took no shame of his true love: and when he had made his moan for Athis, breathing out his young life under t e wound, he caught the bow that Athis strung and \Vith me be thy strife,' quoth he, ' nor shalt thou delight thee long in a bov's death, which brings thee more c^rse than praise. Befo;e he had ended his words " (the bus.ness-like Ovid feels that there is little time for a scolding-match in serious fight^ ing) " the piercing weapon flashed from the string, and, shun it as he would, hung in the folds of Perseus's vesture. J he child of Acrisius's house turned Harpe, proved by the augh ter of Medusa, against him, and drove it home on his breast^ He with death upon him, and his eyes swimming under b ack "ght, looked round for Athis, and bowed himself upon h.m and bare to the world below the comfort that m deatl. they were not parted.'" Then two more slip m the blood, and • "Met." V. 59-73- i-f T T r> T? TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. 357 the sword withstood their rising, driven home to the side of one and the throat of the other; against the next Perseus "reared in both hands a mighty bowl, raised high with graven figures, and of massy weight, and crashed it on the wight.'* The aged and pious Emathion is slain, like Priam, at the altar, fighting against the impiety of Phineus with his tongue, and cursing his guilty arms: his head "falls upon the altar, and there uttered the sentence of wrath with failing: tongue, and breathed out the soul into the midst of the fire. So the battle rages, till at last Perseus is compelled by odds to bare the Gorgon's head." Thescelus bids him carry his conjuring tricks elsewhere, and, as he made ready to hurl his deadly dart, in the very gesture he stood fast, a marble statue. Am- pyx "aimed at the breast of Lyncides with his sword: his hand stiffened as he aimed, and would not move to or fro." Eryx " was ready to charge; earth held him on his track, and he abode stiff stone, a statue in armor." One soldier of Perseus saw the Gorgon, and stone mounted up his limbs. Astyages assaulted him, and "his sword rang shrill on the marble: before his wonder was past he was marble too, with the gape of astonishment upon his features." * And here even Ovid draws the line : he declines to invent dying attitudes for two hundred nobodies more, whom up to this point he has decided to leave alive, and gives five-and- twenty lines to the fate of Phineus. He calls in vain to his men for help ; he cannot believe there is none to hear him ; he feels all who are in reach, and finds them stone, and turns with abject words and gestures to the conqueror whom he dares not face. He has nothing to plead but that he spoke first, and is ashamed of not having given way to his rival's better right, nothing to ask for but bare life. Perseus's reply is superb : " * Poor coward Phineus, what I can give (it is a great gift to a dastard) I will give. No steel shall scathe thee ; nay, I will give thee a memorial that shall endure for- ever, and thou shalt always be for a sign in the house of the sire of my wife, that she may comfort herself with the image of the betrothed of her youth.' Then he turned the Gorgon » " Met." V. 74-206. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS - OJzrn 358 LA TLV I.ITERA TURE. rS ^^:^::^l^^^£o..r.^.^ han^. ana '"urthis r 'iate of Polydcc.es is an anticlimax, and is dism sseU; a sentence; and in another sentence" vve lea n ITl^Zrvi Darted from her brother at Senphos, and went o He i on V: S the Muses if the report about Hippocrene vartrue (it will be remembered that Pegasus sprang from he Go "O 's blood). AS they are telling her of th.s, she hears pes in the trees, and then finds that they are ..ne s.s- ?eTs (the Fierides, would-be rivals of the Muses), who gave h Jr a hort /'uas of the wars of the giants as sung by the Pilride ancf then, after due bashfulness, the song of Calhope, vho tod of how Ceres sought for Proserpme, and more Isnecia ly the transformation of Cyane, Stell.o, Ascalaphus, nnd Lvncu As an episode we have the flight of Arethusa, vho e Sns how she got to Sicily in time to give Ceres her firs° news of her daughter. When the Nymphs dcc.de m ?avor o the Muses, the Pierides protest and wa.x abus.ve, whereupon they are turned into birds. Oddly enough, Mmcr- TS it will be to her glory to tell' '-she turned 1^ rival Arachne into a spider : the poet thinks . w.U be to h s Xry to tell the story himself, as two narratives at second- hand dose to<^etherv4uld be wearisome. Unfortunately he r ottr lo^l to the goddess, or rather his l-dent.a P-ety is too sincere to let him see that it is ignoble Miner\a Uustrates the contests of the gods among themselves by her icto y over Neptune, and the contests of the gods with mo. ab by the fate of Rhodope and Hxmus turned to stone, and the Queen of the Phrvgians turned to a crane, and the daugh- ter of Laomedon to a rtork, and Cinyras waiting to be turned no a swan and mourning for the fate of his daughter^ A achne illustrates the humiliating disguises -Inch the gocb assumed for love. Her work is quite as good ^^ Minerva s X loses her temper, tears up Arachne's work, and beats her . •■ Met." V. 224-35. ' II'- ^50 sqq. ' lb. v.. I-I45- TIBULLUS; PKOPERT/US ; OFID. with the shuttle; and, when the poor girl hangs herself, saves her life, with an odd mixture of spite and pity, by turning her into a spider. Niobe, it is decided, knew Arachne before she married Amphion and went to Thebes; and this serves to in- troduce the story of her woes. Here, as in the case of Phineus, the poet seems to be writ- ing largely from works of art, and perhaps the framework of his poem might be taken from a play on the model of Eurip- ides, with a haughty speech of Niobe at the beginning, and the long r/tesis of a messenger describing her calamity at the close. Then we learn' that the honor of Latona reminds some spectators of the fate of the Lycians who had driven her from a spring and been transformed to frogs ; and their f^ite in turn brings up the story of Marsyas.'' But Ovid has not done with Niobe : the crowd, we learn, were sorry for her husband and her children, but no one except Pelops was sorry for her; which makes it stranger that every city within reach should have sent its king to condole with him. Ovid however, wanted an occasion to mention the ivory shoulder he bared ni his sorrow, and thought that the deputation of kmgs was as good an opportunity as any to introduce the story of Procne and Philomela, by the observation that the Athenians would have sent to console Pelops too if they had not unfortunately been engaged in a war, in which they sup- posed Tereus would be a usefbl ally.^ Ovid is never cleverer than m describing the infatuation of Philomela and the dia- bolical cunning of Tereus, who pleads a commission fVom Irocne fbr whatever is to ibrther the passion that will break her heart. Perhaps the horrors culminate when Pandion in- trusts Philomela to the escort of Tereus. " ' I give her thee dear son, since a tender cause constrains me, as'' she and her s.ster both desire, and you, Tereus, desire too ; and pray you by your faith, and by the hearts akin to both, and by the -ods above, that you will protect her with a love like minc'^and send me back the solace of my anxious age as soon as may be. Every delay will seem so long. And you, too, Philomela, '" Met." vi. 316-81. .,, o , TT - ^t). 382-OQ. He gets this from Thuc. II. xxix. 4. 360 LA TIN LITER A TURE. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIVS ; OVID. 361 rome back at your best speed if you have any duty : it is enoulh to havVyour sister far away.' He kissed h.s.daughter a everv word of the charge, and asked the hand of each as a pedge'of their faith, and joined them each to each as hey Lid them in his, and bade them not to forget to gue h>s greet- n<^ to his daughter and her children far away, and hardly sa.d the last goodbve for the sobs that choked his voice, as he trembled at the presage of his own mind.' ■ We know all that is coming after this, but Ovid does not spare us any- hincr . and if tve could read the story for the first tmie, here is hardly a line that would seem wasted, except two or three i , which Procne boasts to her sister of all the crmies she feels ready to commit. In the midst of her boasts she sees he so and sees her way : her first thought is " How hke h>s fother . - as she seethes with silent wrath. " But when her son came near and greeted his mother, and drew her neck down with his little arms, and kissed her close, and fondled her as children can, then her mother's heart was moved, her anger was broken and came to a stand, tears found the>r way to her eyes, which grew moist- against their will. - So far he picture is simply elaborate, or, if you will, overwrought ; but presently we have the characteristic ingenuity of Ovid, who is never far out of sight of the borders of the burlesque, and seldom fairly over them. " As soon as she felt she was giving way, because the mother's tenderness in her was all too stron- she turned from him again to eye her sister s face ; and looked by turns on both, and asked, ' Why does one press his fondness on me, and why is one tongueless and mute .^ When he calls me mother, why does not she call me sister See child of Pandion, what a husband you have married . Yoil are falling below your rank : piety is guilt in the spouse of a Tereus." She stayed no more, she caught Itys, and drew him as a tigress by Ganges draws the suckling fawn through the dense thickets." * The transition from poetry about Tereus to poetry abou the Argonauts is furnished by some score or two of clever lines about Boreas and Orithyia, whose sons sailed with Ar^^o. There is not a word to explain what relation, if any, there'^is between the Phineus whom Perseus turned to stone and the Phineus whom the sons of Boreas delivered from the Harpies. The " Metamorphoses " are a tolerably complete manual of mythology; every legend is at least alluded to, and the poet has been at the pains to construct a chronological framework into which they are to be fitted. But his diligence stops short at these mechanical arrangements. He does not, indeed, al- low his ostensible subject to hamper him. For instance' lie does not give any conspicuous transformation in connection with the story of the Argonauts, and what he tells is subor- dinated entirely to the love of Medea. All in the legend that is like a fairy tale is sacrificed: the golden fieece^and the fire-breathing bulls, and the warriors who spring from the dragon's teeth are just not omitted. As for the crusliing rocks and the battle with Amycus, and the fate of Absyrt'Iis, and the romance of the northern seas, they disappear entirely The struggles of Medea between love and honor are perhaps the most interesting part of the picture to a modern reader • but what Ovid finds most interesting is the mere witchcraft by which yEson and then a ram are restored to youth and the shocking butchery of Pelias by his daughters. All through, this magical interest is the chief one ; we may forget, if we please, that Pelias has wronged ^son and deserved'^bis fate Ail the tragedy of Corinth is hurried over, simply that the author may get Medea to Athens, where she vainly attempts the hfb of Theseus. With the mention of Iheseus we pass into a new cycle of legends, connected chiefly with Minos and ^:gina. Here we have a glaring instance of Ovid's in- consequence, ^geus is glad to get his son back to defend him against Minos, yet we hear of no fighting. Athens is conquered in spite of the return of Theseus, and the tribute Of victims for the Minotaur imposed and paid twice befbre he put an end to it by the help of Ariadne. Apparently Ovid did not care to tell the history of Ariadne over again, tiiough he had no objection to repeat the less hackneyed story 4 Cephalus and Procris. Cephalus tells it to the house of I.— 16 T'TDiT r I rc- n li /~\ r^ IT rt rr» r t ■• r^ ^-^ ■. , ■, ■ 362 LA TIN LITERA TURK. ^acus, while he is wailing for a fair wind to sail with them to the aid of Athens, and has aheady heard from ^acus the oricrin of the Myrmidons, probably introduced for the sake of the'^splendid description of the pestilence, composed in rivalry with Lucretius and Vergil. The most original trait is the vain appeals to heaven, ^acus stood between the corpses of his people strewn in the way,^ like to the apples fallen from the bough, or acorns shaken by the wind, and the lofty temple of his father, where so many brought their vam oblations; and often a wife praying for her husband-a father for a son -with words of supplication on their lips, breathed out their soul on the altar which was deaf to their prayers, with some unburnt frankincense clasped in their stiffening hands. Bod- ies were cast down before the holy gates ; yea, before the very altar, to reproach the gods the better with their death. Ot course we have the familiar trait that the bearers of the dead fought for funereal pyres ; but Ovid is not content with this : the plague leaves no room for graves, and no trees to burn the dead, which, to be sure, matters less, for none are left alive to mourn. The story of Cephalus is very pretty ; the moral standard is low, and the hero and heroine make a touching effort to be above it. The way that Cephalus lingers over the years that they led a happy life together is an advance upon the treatment of the legend in the "Art of Love," though it may be doubtful whether the tragi-comedy of the jealousy of Procris is so well handled as in the earlier poem : when Cephalus becomes sentimental and explanatory over it, there is more difficulty in forgetting that the legend is, after all, ab- surd. AVhile the house of .^:acus were listening to the his- tory of Cephalus, Minos was besieging Nisus in Megara.' It cannot be said that the fall of Scylla is an improvement in any way on the fall of Tarpeia in Propertius. In fact, 1 atius was better fitted for a hero of romance, just because less was known about him. He was simply a barbarian or a tyrant ; while Minos was a solemn figure, one of the judges of the under-world, who could only be made ridiculous if represent- ed as the object of a girlish passion. To Ovid he is chiefly ^ - Met." vii. 583 sqq. ' "Ib."viii.6-i:;i. • ^-r* w^ »» M T^r T n r? TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. Z^l the taskmaster of Daedalus; and the trite legend of Icarus* is narrated with the same amplification as the trite legend of Phaethon, which shows that the lesson of moderation was dear to Ovid's heart. The partridge who was once a pupil of Daedalus appears rather mechanically,' to exult over the mis- fortune of his master ; and then we are carried back to The- seus and the Calydonian boar,' who, strictly speaking, has no business in the "Metamorphoses," except that Meleager died in consequence of the hunt, and that his sisters were turned into birds—we do not know what birds. The hesitation of Althaea is much labored and rather frigid : she rings the changes through fifty lines* in the conflict between h^r feel- ings as a sister and a mother. On his way home' Theseus is stopped by Achelous, who afifably explains that he and all the rivers round are flooded, and that it will be better to wait till they are gone down again. While feasting in Achelous's cave, Theseus and his friends notice an island (one of the Echinades) and learn that she and her companions were nymphs, all of whom Achelous carried out to sea; after which he fell in love with one, and she was changed into an island to save her life, and the others followed suit. The profane Pirithous, the son of the godless Ixion, ventures to throw doubt on this, but the venerable Lelex reminds the company of the omnipotence of heaven, and enforces his doctrine by the story of Philemon and Baucis, whose piety preserved them from the destruction of their country, changed their house into a temple, and merited that when the end of their life came they should be changed to trees together. The end of the story ^ is very quaint and pretty. "They were standing by the steps of the temple, and talking of the hap of the land^ when on a sudden Baucis espied leaves upon Philemon, and Philemon, the elder, espied leaves upon Baucis ; and now as the crest of the trees outshot their faces, they exchanged greetings while they might, and each said 'Farewell, my spouse!' at once, as the shoots grew over their faces." The hero and the poet are perfectly serious, for Lelex goes on : 1 (( 3 Met." viii. 195-235. lb. 236-59. ^ lb. 270 sqq. * lb. 461-51 1. lb. 548 sqq. lb. 713-25. TIRUILUS : PROPRRTfrrs - ctvin ^ /t Pi* 3^4 LA TIN LITER A TURE. "The natives of Tyana still show two twin trunks that en- twine their bull<, and I heard the tale from elders who were not light-minded, and had no cause to mock me. I saw fes- toons^ipon the boughs ; and as I laid fresh garlands for my part I said/ The gods care for the righteous, and give wor- ship to their worshippers.' " Achelous caps the story with the fate of Erisichthon,' who brought upon himself the curse of endless hunger by cutting down a sacred tree in the grove of Ceres, and, having sold everything else, sold his daughter, who, thanks to Neptune, was able to change her shape when she pleased, so that as often as she was sold she came home to be sold again, untd at last her ravenous father set her free by devouring his own limbs." He afterwards tells the story of his unsuccessful bat- tle for Deianira, which, after all, left him little the worse, while Nessus was slain, and caused the death of Hercules, which is described with more wit than sublimity. Juno does not mind his deification, but is angry that Jupiter should hint that she would object if she could. Alcmena meanwhile has nothing to do but to talk over the anxieties of the present and the wonders of the past with lole.' So we hear how Galanthis delivered Alcmena and was turned into a weasel,* and Dry- ope into a lotos, and how her son embraced her face as it was just disappearing-^" While the two women were crying over this tragical history," lolaus appears with his youth re- newed, and then, after a sharp burst of condensed mythology, we learn that Minos in his old-age was harassed by fear of Miletus.' And the mention of Miletus brings us to the first of a series of studies in voluptuous psychology, where Ovid shows more poetical power than in most of the " Metamorphoses." Per- haps he is strongest of all in the horrible legends of Byblis« and Myrrha,' the latter of which from the days of Catullus had attracted special attention from poets. There is nothing in his treatment of it to discredit the proposition that at bot- TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 365 » "Met." viii. 739-879. ^ lb. ix. 4 sqq. ^ lb. 275 sqq. ♦ lb. 285-323. 5 lb. 329-93. <^ lb. 397 sqq. ' lb. 441 sqq. 8 lb. 454-664. ' lb. X. 300-502. tom Ovid was a right-thinking man. He has the same for- mula for the repentance of Myrrha as for the repentance of Midas.' Both have gone far astray, and there is a kind of mercy for both. Midas is delivered from the curse of turn- ing all he touches to gold, and Myrrha is delivered from earthly life and from facing the dead by the doom which changes her into a tree always weeping; while her child, the child of sin, has a charming life as Adonis and is beloved by the Queen of Love. There is plenty of subtlety, though less strength, in the picture of the love of Hippomenes and Ata- lanta.^ When Hippomenes enters himself for the match, At- alanta wonders what god can bear such a grudge to beauty as to wish to undo him, and bid him stake his dear life upon such a bride. She judges herself that she is not worth such a price. Not that she cares about his beauty, and yet he has enough to touch any woman ; but he is a mere boy still. It is the age, not the person, that interests her. "And then," she adds, "his courage and the spirit unabashed by death, and his descent in the fourth degree from the god of the sea : and then his love for me ; his counting a marriage with me so precious as to be willing to perish if hard fortune will not let him win me. Ah, friend, depart in time! leave the bloody bower behind ! My wedlock is cruel ! There is none but will be willing to wed with thee ; a wiser maiden might well desire thee. And yet why care for thee when I have so many slain before 1 It is for him to look. Let him perish, since the slaughter of so many wooers leaves him unwarned, and he is driven on to cast away his life. And so he is to die for wishing to live with me, and bear to be paid for his love with a shameful death. The indignation at his death will be more than my victory will sustain : it is no fault of mine. Ah ! if you would but draw back; or, if you will be mad, that you were swifter! And what a maidenly look on the poor boy's fiice ! Ah! unlucky Hippomenes, I wish you had never set eyes upon me! You deserved to live. If only I were hap- pier, and my hard fate did not forbid me to wed, you were the only one I could ever have borne for a bedfellow." After » " Met." xi. 134, cf. X. 488. ^ lb. x. 61 1-35. ffi TTK TIT T TJ^ • PPOPFR TTUS: • H VTH 366 LA TIN LITER A TURE. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS; OVID. 367 this it is not surprising that Atalanta picked up all the three apples, nor is it surprising that she allowed Hippomenes to scandalize Cybele, who avenged Venus for the ingratitude of the lovers by turning them into lions. Naturally, too, Venus dislikes lions ever after, and tells Adonis the story to explain her disgust, and enforce her advice never to hunt anything braver than deer. Venus herself comes in at second-hand: Orpheus tells her story and Myrrha's, while he is bereaved of Eurydice ; and, as soon as he has told it, the Maenads come and tear him into pieces. Apollo turns the snake which ^vould have devoured his head into a stone, and Bacchus turns the Bacchanals into trees. First their feet are caught in the ground ; and the more they pull, like birds in a snare, the f^ister they are caught. When they want to slap their thighs for their sorrow, they find them as hard as boards ; when they stretch their arms, you would think them as stiff as bare boughs, and be quite right.' Meanwhile Silenus was missing, and was restored to Bacchus by the hospitality of Midas. His double blindness brings us to Phoebus, and Phoebus brings us to Laomedon and Telamon. The latter brings us to Peleus; for, if he had not been married to a god- dess already, the rescued Hesione would have been given to him rather than to Telamon. All the history is told at length, and there are a great many episodes about Daedalus and Ceyx, Alcyone and Psamathe, and ^sacus and Hesperia. And here we come to the Trojan times, and, one way or an- other, these fill two books and a half. The remainder of the work deals with purely Italian leg- ends, and their poverty does nothing to remove the impres- sion that Ovid was wearying of a task in which he succeeded best when he had the stimulus of emulation to sustain him. All Greek legends, even the obscurest, had been turned every possible way by the tragedians, the Alexandrines, and the ar- tists ; for these did not confine themselves to the poets by any means, and a writer like Ovid could inspire himself quite as well among Greek painters and sculptors as among Greek poets. When he came to Latin ground, he had everything to ' ♦♦ Met." xi. 71-84. invent afresh, and was reduced to a long Pythagorean dis- course ' upon the nature of things, with especial reference to the transformations which the world has undergone. Numa is the pretext for this treatise, which a great epic poem could hardly afford to omit. Vergil gives it us in the "^^neid," Lucan makes Caesar listen to it in the " Pharsalia." Ovid was probably quite sincere in his vegetarianism ; he was a water-drinker even in his hot youth, and might perhaps have been very thoroughly tamed if he had fallen upon a pe- riod when strict moral discipline was enforced by society. He had an immense curiosity, which liked to amuse itself upon dangerous ground ; but few poets have had less of the spirit of rebellion. The Centaurs and Ajax fill him with a feeling that comes as near moral repulsion as he is capable of knowing, while the cool ingenuity of Ulysses fills him with complacency. Probably there is nothing more dramatic, in our sense of the word, in all ancient literature, than the great speech of Ulysses in the judgment of the arms.^ All the or- atorical skill of the forum is combined with a complete reali- zation of a mythical personality. There is the affectation of modesty; the letie submissumque priiicipium was never carried further. Ulysses is quite free from the animosity against his rival to which Ajax gives way. Ajax is admirably abrupt and stormy ; any one of his indignant little outbursts is quite credible, but the whole is incurably ingenious. Ajax will not boast of his descent from Jove, except because he shares it with his cousin Achilles.' After this, Ulysses may well claim to have done all the deeds of Achilles, inasmuch as he brought Achilles from Scyros to the camp. He is still more success- ful in clearing himself of the charges of treachery to Pala- medes, and of cruelty to Philoctetes. Ajax has to accuse Ulysses of having misled the Greeks, and Ulysses can appeal to the Greeks to acquit themselves and him. The "Metamorphoses" close with a panegyric upon Au- gustus and the whole Julian house, as if the poet were still in the height of court favor. The " Fasti " are the most decor- ous, if not the most loyal, of all his writings. Except the ' ♦' Met." XV. 60-478. ' lb. xiii. 128-380. ^ lb. xiii. 29 sqq. A 368 LA TIN LITER A TURE. TIBULLUS; PROPERTIUS ; OVID. 369 later epistles from Pontus, they are least interesting. There is an endless limpid stream of colorless and tasteless anti- quarianism, without even the merit of accuracy or naivete. What Ovid gives is not so much the crude tradition as the crude conjectures of Varro or somebody else. Perhaps one might make an exception in f^ivor of the description of the Sementiva, the holiday kept when the seed was in the ground.' Even here the feeling is neither so fresh nor so warm as in Tibullus, and there is a little pedantry in the half-dozen lines where he starts and solves the objection that it is a movable feast. The legend of Evander' is told very smoothly, which is all that can be said for most of the others. Lucretia's fate is told really well,' though a little too rationalistically. The poet is over-anxious to account for the success of the ravisher, althou'^h here he is entitled to divide the blame with his prede- cessors. Many dull facts are told about the calendar itself, as, for instance, that March was the third month of the year at Alba and the fifth at Falerii, and that Aricia and Tibur reck- oned like Alba, and that the early Italians were not learned enough to reckon the year by the course of the stars.* In the account of the Matronalia' there are a few pale flashes of the humor of the " Art of Love," and one may smile a little with the poet at the scenes between Numa and the deities," especially at the dialogue between him and Ju- piter, which would have been racier if it had been bolder, and if the dutiful poet had not shrunk from implying that Jupiter wished for human sacrifices and was cheated out of them. There is little but mythology in the fourth book : the legend of Cybele and Claudia' is neat; one may admire the skill with which Ovid goes over the old ground of the rape of Pros- erpine, and the sorrow of Ceres, without repeating himself;' and he is more entertaining than often on the Palilia, the classic holiday which exercised the pen of every fledgling poetaster.' There is also a lively description of the Floralia, » " Fast." i. 568 sqq. * lb. iii. 89 sqq. ' lb. iv. 305-44. « lb. i. 471. sqq. =* lb. 169 sqq. ' lb. 41 7 sqq. 3 lb. ii. 721 sqq. ^ lb. 295-348; cf.v.621 sqq. ' lb. 721 sqq. and of the origin of the feast, put, as usual, into the mouth of the iroddess to whom it was held.* \\\ Mav, each of the nine Muses gives one of the current theories of the origin of the month ;'■' in June, Juno and Hebe and Concord give one of the current etymologies from Juno, juvenis, and jungo, as if the month was named in honor of the union between the Ro- mans and Quirites.^ The poem ends abruptly, but it seems to end. The poet asks the Muses* why the last day of the month is sacred to them and to Hercules; and they answer that Philippus, the husband of IMarcia, the aunt of Caisar, had dedicated a temple jointly to both. " Alcides nodded assent and hushed the lyre." Before the lyre is hushed we learn that Marcia was not only noble, but fair; and it is no shame to praise beauty, which is an ornament to the greatest of god- desses ; and Marcia was worthy of the holy house which she adorned. Perhaps the eulogy on beauty may be a compliment to the younger Julia, whose ruin appears to have involved that of Ovid. He is always talking of his misfortune in a way that must have been intelligible to those of his contemporaries who were in any sense behind the scenes, but it is very per- plexing to us. He seems to admit that he had been guilty of something which gave Augustus a right to be very seriously displeased, and that it would pain him to have the oflence, whatever it was, precisely described. Yet Ovid will have it that his guilt was purely involuntary; that he was ruined by an error, not by a crime. He asks once,^ " Why did he see any- thing? why did he bring guilt upon his eyes?" He compares his fate with Actaeon's. It would fit all this to suppose that accident or curiosity or indiscretion had acquainted him with the secrets of a princess who was then able to compel him to accept the position of a confidant, perhaps an accomplice, in intrigues of love or state, which, hazardous as it was, need not have been unattractive to the author of the "Art of Love." It is clear that, so far as Augustus condescended to explain himself, the publication of that work was the justification of Fast." V. 195 sqq. ' lb. vi. 13-100. * •' Tiist." II. i. 103-5, lb. 9 sqq. ♦ lb. 798 sqq. L— 16* I u \\\ 370 LA TIN LITER A TURE. TIBULLUS; PROFERTIUS ; OVID. Ovid's banishment. He always says himself that two things, "song" and "error," were his undoing. The mere fact that he had written a loose book many years ago could hardly have injured him under any government, still less have been treated as an unpardonable offence. We have our choice of supposing that the Julias, one or both, had been distinctly the worse for reading it, and supposing that it justified in the mind of Augustus the severest view of Ovid's conduct. In the later poems of his exile, Ovid abandons the attempt to vindicate himself, even to the extent that has been hinted. Augustus had resolved to allow no extenuating cir- cumstances, and unless Ovid were resolved to tell everything and to brave everything, he had nothing to do but plead guilty without reserve, "it is hard to see why, as he still had friends, his endless and abject supplications to be allowed to live nearer Italy and out of reach of war were so pertinaciously rejected ; especially as they were coupled with the most ear- nest protestations that a complete pardon was beyond his hopes. It may have been wished that he should die, and it was known that at Tomi everybody who saw him could be counted, and that he could be killed without remark if he proved indiscreet. One of the earliest poems after his ruin was a stiff and tire- some elegy entitled " Ibis," which is probably the cipher of some enemy whom he threatens to name if further provoked. Its only interest is, that he wishes his enemy, with every ap- pearance of sincerity, all the plagues of mythology, generally omitting to name the mythical prototypes who first endured the curses he invokes; and that he admits' having been piqued into imitating a style which he disapproved as a mat- ter of taste— perhaps as a matter of reason too. The admis- sion is interesting, as a proof that Ovid could not quite forgive himself for sinking to the level of Callimachus. There are five books of " Tristia," and four of " Letters from Pontus," and they are all about Ovid and his misfortunes. Taken alto- gether, they are decidedly wearisome ; almost any letter from The "Tristia" is interesting by itself. The earlier are even » ♦* Ibis" ad init. 371 pathetic, and for a long time even the second series, taken separately, are ingenious, though the growing disappearance of mythological illustration may be taken as a sign of failing powers. He complains himself that his old fluency was dis- appearing, and that, though he had nothing to do but write, he had less and less satisfaction in writing. He actually learned the Getic language, and wrote in it in praise of Augustus and Tiberius.' His contemporaries did not know that the poem would have been a more precious linguistic monument than the translation of the Bible by Ulphilas. It is not quite clear whether he wrote on the same subject in Latin ; we have a fragment of a poem, which was dull enough, on the fisheries of the Black Sea. Although he was over fifty when banished, he had the courage to exert himself in the defence of Tomi, which was almost always in a state of siege, so that the na- tives gave him the freedom of their city, for what it might be worth. It cannot be said that Ovid allowed his misfortunes to un- man him. In the early days he was energetic enough in as- serting that he wms only relegated, not banished: he retained all his rights as a Roman citizen, though commanded by com- petent authority to reside at Tomi. To the last he kept up and made the most of all the friendships that could by any chance be of any service to him ; for, apart from the great question of his return, his property, never very large, was ex- posed to dilapidation; and, even if his wife had been more successful than she w^as in keeping his property together, there was no bank at Tomi with a Roman correspondent, so that he needed a good deal of help in money matters. Perhaps this is why he is so profuse in his acknowledgments to Sextus Pompeius. His other chief friends were Fabius Maximus and Cotta Messallinus, of whom Juvenal speaks highly and Tacitus severely; but there are signs, even before the end, that he had worn out his friends' patience. He lived to write a congratulatory letter' to a mere centurion, and in the last book but one he asks the forgiveness of his friends for having had good hopes from them, and promises not to offend again. * " Epp. ex Pont." IV. xiif. 21-28. "^ lb. IV. vii. \ r' f 1 k 372 LA TIN LITER A TURE. LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY. 373 He will not trouble his wife : she is true to him, no doubt ; and if she is a little cowardlv, and afraid to try what can be done, like everybody else, it is not her f^iult. His comfort must be to think that Augustus has never refused to pardon hmi (be- cause he has never been asked), and thereupon to make up his own mind to end his days at Tomi. He was, as he was meant to be, very uncomfortable; and he did not make a sud- den chan-e from volubility to silence, which would simply have stupefied him ; besides, his case was a very hard one, and it was a natural relief to write about it, especially as he was more or less (if we are to believe him) betrayed by his own household and his own set, whom he ought to have been able to trust. One curious effect of his misfortune was, that as soon as Caesar had ruined him he began to be as much afraid, in a disinterested way, of Caesar as of the thunderbolt (which, in the literal sense, had never struck him) ; the less he hopes and the longer he suffers, the more he worships ; he is the earliest authority for the idea of -piety,"^ of which we get so much in Martial. He is always practising it himself, and congratulating Cotta, and everybody else who, he hopes, may be an intercessor, on his proficiency in it, and with every appearance of sincerity. He anticipates that Augustus will be deified, and he is constantly humbling himself and putting himself into the attitude of a mortal before a god; and his feeling seems to be as genuine as a conscientiously cultivated feeling can be. » The loyalty of a citizen to his country is the foundation of the feeling, and so far Ovid is anticipated by Cicero ; but it is new to find this feehng so completely transferred to the head of the state (though Cicero speaks of his A-A;. binding him to Pompeius, as also to Lentulus), st.ll newer to find this feeling so completely fused with the feehng of religious revei- ence. CHAPTER V. THE LAST POETS OF THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS, AND THEIR SUCCESSORS. ^ I The banishment of Ovid rather than the death of Au- § I. ustus may be said to mark the close of the most flourishing period of Roman poetry : it marks the time when the society which encouraged poets got discontented and cautious. Au- gustus himself had the misfortune to overlive the best of his prosperity; and after the defeat of Varus there was very little enthusiasm anywhere, although the busybodies still fluttered about, praising and criticising, according as they were good- or ill-natured. The activity which they shared, or helped, or hindered was for the most part restless, aimless, listless; there was very little in the state of affairs under Tiberius, at any rate till the fall of Sejanus, to repress literary activit}', if there had been a strong spontaneous tendency thereto in any vigor- ous section of the community. Tacitus mentions literary men, especially philosophers, who got into trouble by writings with a flavor — commonly a very faint flavor — of sedition about them ; but those who took offence at the course of the literary movement during the middle of the eighteenth century in France possessed much more vigorous means of repression, and used them with more steadiness, if with less extreme se- verity. But the literary movement was not impeded in the least, because the authors cared seriously for expressing their ideas, and the public really wished to assimilate them. It is clear that clandestine circulation of literature judged to be scandalous encountered no practical difficulties; but authors were not content to disavow some of their most brilliant works, like Voltaire, and could not sacrifice the pleasure of reading their books to a numerous and distinguished circle as soon as they were finished ; it was their vanity which compelled ii 374 LA TIN LITER A TURE. most of them to be prudent, if not absolutely safe. Anony- mous writing as an instrument of literary warfare was con- fined to pasquinade ; and if large sections of the literary class were discontented and silent, this would be rather a relief than otherwise to a public which, alike in the good times of Trajan and in the bad times of Domitian, found it one of the most wearisome of social duties to attend to the praelections of friends. When Ovid, in his last letter from Pontus, enumerates the contemporaries among whom he was distinguished, it is no- ticeable that almost all passed away without leaving enduring works behind them. It is not merely that their works did not reach us, but that they had almost all been practically forgot- ten in Quinctilian's time, for the simple reason that the gram- marians did not think it worth while to use them as reading- books, because they were frequently careless and unequal. Quinctilian' tells us this himself of A. Cornelius Severus, whose six books on the wars of Sicily were illustrated by a brilliant little threnody on the death of Cicero, which is re- markable both for the vague exaggeration of the language and for the disconnected character of the thought. Marsus, who was probably the most celebrated, was the most com- pletely forgotten, because he was the most fluent. According to Martial, the one book of Persius was oftener quoted than the twentv-four which Marsus had devoted to the wars and lives of the Amazons; while his namesake, who had devoted himself to epigrams, left a reputation which it was decorous for Martial to rate above his own. A great deal of the poetry of the period was of the kind expected from poets laureate; court festivities, and still more court calamities, gave great opportunities for writers with more ingenuity than inspiration. There was a Roman knight, C. Lutorius Priscus, who made a reputation by a poem on the death of Germanicus, and com- posed another poem on the death of Drusus, the son of Ti- berius, w^ho was only ill. Unfortunately, he read the poem aloud, and was put to death by the vote of the senate, and of course both poems were lost.'* » X. I. 89. ' Tac. " Ann." iii. 49. LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY. 375 § 2. Accident has preserved a favorable specimen of the mechanical skill of an earlier generation, in the "Consolation to Livia " on the death of the elder Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, which is generally printed as an appendix to Ovid. The author is inexhaustible in varying and amplifying the ob- vious points of his subject — the grief of a mother who has lost one out of two very distinguished and exemplary sons. This note is struck at starting : " When they say * Your son,' you will never ask which. " Further on Livia herself says, " When 1 hear that Nero has come home in triumph, I shall not ask, * The elder or the younger ? ' " Of course Livia, with two such sons, is the most fruitful of mothers ; of course she looked for- ward vainly to seeing Drusus come back in triumph ; almost of course, she is pitied in one place for not having been there to close her son's eyes, and half congratulated in another on hav- ing only heard of his last agonies, and been prepared for the worst by anxiety — which does not exactly contradict the opening passage on the proud hopes with which she awaited his triumphant return. Augustus is completely deified : he can only leave earth for heaven, and the tears of a deity are the greatest honor of the funeral of Drusus. Less is made than v;e might have expected of the funeral march of Tiberius through the Alps in winter beside his brother's bier. There is one fine line — Dissimilemque sui vultu profitente dolorem ' — on the way his grief broke through his habitual self-com- mand. But there is decidedly more pains spent on the reluctance of the army to part with the body of their com- mander. The public mourning is described with a good deal of ingenuity; and, as the temples were shut, the poet conjectures that the gods, who could not save Drusus, were ashamed to be seen ; a pious plebeian who was going to make a vow for the life of his son resolves to give up hope, since the gods did not hear the prayers of Livia for Drusus. Oddly enough, the poet, who belonged to the equestrian order, says nothing of the senate taking part in the mourning. The ' V. %^, 37^ LA riiV LITER A TURE. LA TE A UGUSTAIV FOE TR Y. 377 army, of course, does homage to the dead general. Tiber does homage too ; he is so swollen with tears that he could put out the'^funeral pile, and thinks of doing so with the laud- able purpose of carrying off the body uninjured by the flames. Of course the funeral was in the Campus Martins, and there- fore it was quite suitable for Mars to interfere, and persuade the river god to resign himself to the decrees of Fate. Mars has resigned himself. He entreated the Fates for his race, and was'^told that he could be heard only for Romulus and the two Ccesars: these alone out of so many heroes were the gods whom Rome was to send to heaven. There is a touch of pathos in the limitation, in which, perhaps, we ought to see a homage to Tiberius's modesty ; as the instinct of a court poet would be to treat the heir-apparent as an embryo deity. After this rather frigid episode, the corpse is permitted to burn, and the poet consoles himself with the prospect of the execution of the German leader who dared to exult at the death of Drusus. This will be the great grace of the triumph of Tiberius, and the poet takes care that the picture shall lose nothing in his hands. He will behold the necks of kings livid with chains, and the hard bonds knotted on their cruel hands, and their visages pale with fear, as tears fall, against their will, on the proud rebels' cheeks. Their haughty souls, the prouder for the death of Drusus, will have to be yielded to the executioner in prison gloom ; and the poet will stand and feed his eyes at leisure, on their naked bodies, cast in the filth of the streets.' From this burst of Roman ferocity we are carried back, with a little confusion, to the grief of Tiberius and the army, and the wife of Drusus, who was like Andromache or Evadne. She is consoled with a vision of his triumphal entrance to Elysi- um, where all his noble ancestors crowd round him: the passage is imitated partly from the quasi-apotheosis of Cor- nelia in Propertius, partly from the Elysium of Vergil. Then we return to Livia, and the style of the poet rises. She too ought to have found comfort in the glory of her son. Let her think what becomes the m.other of a Drusus, the mother of a » vv. 273-80. Nero; let her think from whose bed she rises in the mornino-. Fortune has set her on high, and bidden her keep a station of honor ; let her bear the load to the end. Every eye and ear is upon her, all note her deeds, and no word can be hid- den that comes from the mouth of a princess ; let her abide on high, rise above her woe, and hold her spirit— for this she can— unbroken to the last. Fate is above all, and deaf to prayer. The threefold world — earth, sky, and sea— is doomed to death: and can a mortal complain? Fortune may punish complaints, and, after all, Livia has, upon the whole, more reason for thanksgiving, since both her sons have often been victorious; as we learn in some ringing lines, almost strong enough for Propertius, and smoother. Besides, there were signs in heaven which foretold the coming sorrow ; and this sorrow will be the last (a thought to which the poet recurs as emhiently comfortable).' It occurs to him that Livia found a comforter in Tiberius, and the picture of him and Augustus exerting themselves to keep the bereaved mother from starv- ing herself to death is not quite conventional; nor is the clos- ing address,' in which Drusus speaks from the shades, want- ing in manly dignity. The poem professes to have been written and read during a period of general and deep emo- tion ; and, if it leaves a modern unsympathetic reader cold, it need not have left an ancient reader cold too : there are many lines which, when recited first, must have seemed to quiver with the true sob of elegy. The author is generally taken to be C. Pedo Albinovanus, whose work on astronomy earned the title of " starry '' from Ovid ; but the MSS., all of the latter part of the fifteenth century, give no author's name, and give the work as an appendix to Ovid, like the three letters of "Sabinus'' which appear in no MS., and are probably the work of the scholar of the Renaissance who saw the editio prmceps of Ovid through the press. § 3- Like Pedo and several other authors Ovid mentions, Gratius Faliscus devoted himself to didactic poetry. He wrote a treatise on hunting, of which only six hundred lines have reached us. He imitates Vergil more closely than hap- ' vv. 411 sqq. '^ VV.447 sqq. 378 LA T/.V LITER A TURE. LA TE A UGUSTAN FOE TR Y. 379 pily he is involved and obscure, and, though he shows that he appreciates Vergil's charm very accurately, he fails to re- produce it for long, because he has no inner depth or fulness. His one merit is a sort of sober, serious grace. He has a feel- in- not very unlike Vergil's for the toil that makes civilization of\ny kind possible ; he is quite honest in treating even the huntsman's art as a revelation, for the hunter is far above his crame There is the same feeling that the play of human faculties is desirable for its own sake ; that there are few better things in the world than exercise. He carries the reactionary tend'encies of the Augustan age perhaps to an extreme : he does not think that the art has made much real progress since the days of Dercylos, who was illuminated because of his special piety. It does not occur to Gratius to distinguish between practical improvements and the pretentious fop- peries of rich amateurs, who carried out all their caprices without respect to experience, and had monstrous blades to their hunting spears, and enclosed the ground for a drive with swords, when spikes were perfectly sufficient. In the same way he judges horses by their race rather than their looks, and is especially enthusiastic over the scrubby ponies of Ao-ricrentum, and is inclined to recommend British dogs in prefel-ence to the bulkier and showier Molossus, which was the celebrated dog of the period. He speaks rather mythi- cally about the Hyrcanian breed, which was supposed to be a mongrel between common dogs and tigers ; and mentions a rather more credible breed, which are mongrels between jack- als and dogs, and gives some curious notions about the natural history of jackals. We are familiar with the theory that they are cunning and manage to make themselves of use to the lion, and so are allowed to feed upon his leavings : Gratius takes it in another way— they are bold enough to snatch the prey out of the lion's mouth. Long as the treatise is, it is probably only a fragment. It begins\ith a discussion of weapons, and then goes to dogs, their breeds, their training, and their diseases (with reference to the last, one thinks Gratius advocates "stamping out" in the kennel, because Vergil had advocated it in the fold) ; horses come last. To make the treatise complete, he should have treated of the habits of different kinds of game and— a topic on which a Roman would have very likely been fuller the times and the places and the arts by which a hunter might make iiis advantage of each kind of game. § 4. A writer who was probably a contemporary of Gratius, since he wrote under both Augustus and Tiberius, escaped the notice of Ovid, because very likely he did not care to publish; he survived authors who published— with applause in their day— because his subject is one that in almost every age has been of absorbing interest to a small circle of read- ers who hand on their treasure in secret. Manilius, whose name is only known to us from the MSS., which, as often, leave his other names a little uncertain, devoted himself to the poetry of science, the only concrete science which existed then— the science of the stars. It would be unfair to say that his poem is on astrology, for the distinction between astrono- my and astrology did not yet exist. Those who studied the stars did not confine themselves to the positions of the fixed stars, or the orbits of the stars which were not fixed. Men born in a certain region were supposed to be born under the con- stellation which served to mark its position before maps and a terrestrial globe were possible ; and men born at a certain sea- son were supposed to be born under the constellations which marked the season of their birth before calendars were possi- ble. It was a natural and pardonable confusion to imagine a mysterious power in the stars which produced all, and more than all, the effects which we now attribute to climate and the seasons. From this the step was easy to giving a significance to all the combinations of the heavenly bodies; and the cal- culations founded upon these served to give a pseudo-scien- tific prestige to predictions about the future : these of course owed such success as they had to personal shrewdness, suf- ficient to stimulate, without satisfying, the curiosity of the in- creasing number of people to whom luck, in some form or other, seemed the most important element in life. It is not clear that these calculators were insincere. Combe believed in phrenology, though he had a considerable power 38o LA TIN LITE K A TURE. of making it mean anything, and his measurements and ma- nipulations simply provided him with an articulate method of puttin<^ his views' of character into shape, and he had a real oift of^'reading character. Besides, astrology, like phrenology, had the attraction for impatient thinkers of bringing just what looked most complex and uncertain and important in life under what looked like immutable laws; and astrology had the advantage of appealing to laws which, if they existed, were more primary and more imposing than those of the cere- bral centres. Of course the rise of astrology implied that people no longer found the distribution of success or ill-suc- cess sufficiently accounted for by conduct and character, so far as character tinds its adequate expression in conduct. When it appears that circumstances which could not have been foreseen, and idiosyncrasies which in themselves are neither blamable nor laudable, count for quite as much in determining a man's lot as his own choice for good and evil, it is a moral and intellectual relief to refer all the apparent disorder to the steadfast stars, which seem at first sight a mere confused splendor themselves. And yet there is nothmg whose revolutions are so sure; nothing convinces Manilius' so powerfully that Lucretius must have erred when he pro- nounced Chance the mistress and mother of the world, as the stable order of the stars, which have kept their courses with- out haste and without rest ever since the days of the Trojan war. How^ many kingdoms have been overthrown since Troy was sacked ! how many people have gone into captivity ! how often Fortune has gone round the world bringing empire or slavery to mortals ! She has put away the memory of the ashes of Troy; she has fanned the embers to a mighty em- pire, while the fate Greece brought upon Asia has overtaken Greece. It would be weariness to count the ages, and how often the fiery sun has gone his round and surveyed the world since then. Change comes to all that is created beneath the law of mortality, and earth does not know herself through all the rolling years. Nations change : they cast their fashion through age's as a serpent casts its skin; but the world abid- » i. 481 sqq. LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY, 381 eth fast forever, and all that it hath is safe ; nought therein is increased by multitude of days or minished by old-a^-e. They hurry no tittle in their going, and are not weary in their course ; but it shall be the same forever, since it hath been the same from everlasting. It was not another world which our fathers have seen, or another world that our children's children shall see ; it is a god who changeth not forever. That the Bears never turn round ; that the sun does not run down to meet them, nor change his path nor turn his course to his rising to show the new-born dawn to unfamiliar lands; that the moon never transgresses the appointed bounds of her light, but keeps the measure given of old for her WMXjng and her waning ; that the stars which hang in heaven never fall to earth, but wear out the seasons meted out for them to shine in — is no work of chance, but the order of a mighty deity. And here, of course, we see the weak point of the system. The year and the starry sphere keep their appointed way : how, then, do the changes of earth originate in heaven.? And here comes the fantastical conception of planetary in- fluences. Given the point of view, observation shows that the sun, the most conspicuous of the planets, influences the world differently, according to his conjunction with different signs; and then it follows that other planets must have an influence of the same kind, and perhaps even a more exten- sive influence, as their spheres are larger. As each constella- tion is appropriated to a special region upon earth, it follows that the characteristics of that region are derived from the constellation, and that the characteristic effects of the con- stellation must modify any neighboring planet. Here was ample scope for calculation, and the whole science of judicial and horary astrology in its later developments depends upon these ; and it is probable that the Chalda2ans whom Tiberius had consulted and banished had already made some progress in that direction. But, to judge by Manilius and his contem- poraries, the rudiments of the quasi-science which stood in some relation to facts still occupied most attention. Indeed, what strikes us throughout in Manilius is that all is rudimen- tary together. When one compares him with Lucretius, the 382 LA TIN LITER A TURE. LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY. Z^l proportion of argument is very much less, and the proportion of description is very much larger ; and the description has always the character of laborious explanation. For one thing, the Romans, though masters of compound addition and sub- traction, were not familiar with other ways of manipulating large figures; for another, maps and globes were not fiimiliar objects in every schoolroom, and therefore the zodiac took a great deal of description. The division of the sphere into three hundred and sixty degrees, the relation of the plane of the ecliptic to the plane of the equator, and the fact that six signs of the zodiac are above the horizon together, although the sun is only in one, are all rather difficult to imagine, especial- ly as the imagination of the student would be beset by the prejudice that births in a particular month ought to be con- fined to the influence of a particular sign. Still, after all al- lowances, Manilius is prolix, being perhaps seduced by the example of Lucretius, who is redundant out of pure vehe- mence of conviction. And, after all, when one reads the de- scription of the Milky Way,' it seems as if writing in verse such matters as we are accustomed to read in prose tended in itself to prolixity. We are reminded of Lucretius again by the style of his speculations on the different causes which might have produced the Milky Way. As a Stoic, he refuses to rest in simple curiosity : he is shocked at the thought that men should contemplate a catastrophe of the world without awe, and speculate idly on the chance of the Milky Way be- ing a crack in the firmament through which the light of the empyrean is beginning to stream. As a Stoic, also, he is bound to treat mythology seriously. The fall of Phaethon may conceal a genuine tradition of a cosmical catastrophe ; even the legend of Juno's milk has to be gravely told. Still more like Lucretius is the speculation upon the origin of comets •? he does not really care whether comets and shoot- ins: stars originate on earth or heaven or in middle air. Per- haps comets rise in the neighborhood of all the stars, and are attracted by the burning heat of the sun ; perhaps they are sparks from the burning furnaces below, " which threaten » i. 675 sqq. ' i. 831. Olympus with ^tna;" at any rate, they are proofs of the omnipotence of fire throughout the universe. With the usual inconsequence of a fatalist, he is willing to conjecture that God manifests them out of pity, to warn mortals of impending- fate, though elsewhere' he proves himself more consequent than the Pharisees. Their maxim was, ''All things of God except the fear of God ;" but IVLinilius lays down that to know the ways of fate is itself a gift of fate ; and it is of a piece with this that he should regard insight into the ways of the uni- verse, which makes our little lives what they are, as a proof that the spirit which dwells in the universe dwells also in us. When he comes to find illustrations of the truth of his fatalism in history,' he turns to what seems to him unique and extraor- dinary : the common facts of human nature, which are made the main argument for modern determinism, seem to him to need no transcendental explanation — they have their expla- nation in themselves; and the attraction of fatalism to him is that it presents us with an external constraining power which should account for what exceeded the power of mere mortals. That nature should be rational, that man should be powerful, are the two problems which Manilius undertakes to solve by the help of the stars. His spirit, in approaching the solution, is truly scientific; his enthusiasm is the enthusiasm of knowl- edge; he takes a solitary path, not so much because he is weary of hackneyed themes as because he wishes to turn from fable to truth. Of all didactic poets he is the most coura- geously didactic : he never seeks digressions except when he generalizes, and manfully confesses that his subject refuses all ornament, and is content to be explanatory. He even makes less use than most writers of the metaphors from the course of a ship and the course of a chariot. He seldom says it is time to loose his horses from the car or to brin^ his ship into port. He is conscientious too: he explains^ at length the risk of mistake through forgetting that the triangle of constellations is often only approximate, and at the same time, the influence of the triangle is much more powerful than the influence of the square, which is easier to establish cor- :ii ' iv. 118. IV. 23 sqq. ii. 296 sqq. 384 LA TIN LITER A TURE. rcctly. Then, when any sign or star is powerful, we are duly told' in what part of the body to look for its effect : the head and neck, for instance, are affected by the Ram (about whom Manilius is always trying to be poetical, reminding "s of h.s •rolden fleece and his passage of the Hellespont) ; vvhde the Fishes at the other end of the zodiac, influence the feet. It is to be noticed that he takes the constellations for crranted : he is exercised by the question why the whole pat- fern of the figure is not made up visibly with stars, and ex- plains that the world would not boar so much fire lh,s shows that he is completely under the dominion of Greek science for the Chaldces and their baser followers still group- ed the stars fresh from one month to another, and were not averse from the notion of seeing the whole sky turn into an ea-le or a lion. Of course the purely fanciful element has a 1 the more play in consequence. One fifth of the whole work is devoted to observations of this kind. When the sun is half through the sign of the Virgin, or, rather, when the \ .rgin floats alon^ with thrice five of her parts stretched from he sea the glorious memorial ofthe Crown once set upon Ariadne will be .eared above the waves, and grant all dainty arts ; for these make the gifts to shine which are given to a maiden : whence it follows that whoever is born then will be a gardener or a perfumer, or something ornamental. But w_^ioeyer is born under the Ear of Corn, which rises soon after the Crown, w.U be a practical, moncv-making agriculturist, or miller, or archi- tect. And here we have a protest against luxury : the only sold we ought to dig from earth is the gold of harvest, the onlv use of architecture (especially fretted roofs, which were the' fashionable feature) is for temples.' This protest is re- peated' apropos of the Roman f.uicy for eating outlandish birds, since it is the duty of a writer on the stars to explain the business to which a bird-catcher is condemned by his birth under the constellation of the Swan ; and, again, when Mani- lius has to spe.ik of the adventurous money-seekers of ditter- ent kinds born under the Fishes.^ As the »/& was an instrument of torture, it follows that all born under the Lyre LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY. 38; will distinguish themselves as inquisitors, more or less con- scientious and public-spirited/ Terhaps this kind of thing reaches its climax when we learn that whoever is born under the human half of the Centaur will be muleteers and the like, while those born under the animal half will be veterinary surgeons. ii. 450 sqq. V. 251 sqq. » V. 287. ' V. 363. V. 396 sqq. § 5. Phaidrus, like Manilius, escaped the notice of Ovid, though he began to write under Augustus. He certainly wrote under Tiberius, for he hints ^ that he was persecuted by Sejanus. He addressed freedmen of Claudius, but the freed- men of any prince of the imperial house may have been great men in the eyes of Phaedrus, himself originally a slave of Macedonian extraction. His fables are short, for the most part, nnd thoroughly faith- less. He does not think that it is worth people's while to take good advice. He seems to regard the fable as an in- strument rather of criticism than of correction. His favorite epilogue is, "This complaint will do for any one who has found his hope betray him," or, " This example will serve to make so and so ridiculous." He was obviously a person who expected very little from the world : he had renounced money- making for literature, and he hardly expected to be read even by his brother freedmen. When we consider how Ions: he was writing his thousand or so of lines, it is curious to see how solemn he is upon the subject, and how entirely he re- quires his readers to give themselves up to him. The imitation of " ^sop" is never very close. In the prol- ogue to the second book we are warned that, though he imi- tates the style of the old gentleman as well as he can, he does not confine himself exclusively to his matter. In fact, one of the best of the fables* is directed against busvbodies at Rome who are, strictly speaking, "officious," and are very aptly re- buked by an anecdote of Tiberius, who told a slave, whom he noticed ostentatiously laying the dust before him at Misenum, that he was wasting his labor, and would have to do much more than that to earn a box on the ear. In the prologue to the fourth book, he tells us that henceforth he will imitate ' V. 410 sqq. 2 ^. ^-Q ^^^ 3 phaej, Pj-qJ^ m ^j ^^^ « ^^^ jj ^ I.-17 ^86 ^^ TliV LITER A TURE. rather than copy, and calls his fables not ^sop's, but ^so- pean. It is generally thought that, so f^ir as he was a copyist, his principal source was Babrius ; but it is to be remembered that Babrius was merely, like Socrates,' a versifier of tales which were already floating in the air; and as he was not the first versifier, so he was not the last. He was the chief, per- haps the last, of the Greek fabulists ; but the Latins, from the days of Ennius downward, had occupied themselves more or less with the mass of folk-lore which from the days of Herodo- tus onwards had been associated with the name of ^sop. ^2sop himself is associated with the court of Croesus, which is close to the home of the Milesian tales. As these turned largely upon a parody of human life among animals, it may be suspected that the whole literature is derived from the pop- ular heritage of the non-Aryan population of Asia Minor; as a great deal of the folk-lore of India seems non-Aryan, since more than one collection is stated to be told by a "devil," or translated out of the language of "devils;" and a devil in India meant a non-Aryan, as an embodiment of all the fears and dislike which attached themselves to the unknown. However this may be, Phcedrus has been the chief agent in floating down the fables of /I'^sop to posterity. Much of his popularity is due to his plebeian temper : he grumbles and sneers, without aiming at elevation or refinement, and his lan- guage is thoroughly plain and popular, and in a sense more really Latin than that of the great Augustan poets. He writes the language — if not of Terence, or even of Laberius — of the composers of the prologues of the seventh century : he is terse and unaffected ; and whenever he is a little antithetical in structure, there is always a finite verb in each member of his antithesis. He has none of the subtlety of Babrius, little of his elegance and refinement, and his pathos is different : one might take the fiible of the swallow and the nightingale as a specimen of the pathos of Babrius,' and the fable of the old hound whose teeth are too rotten to hold the boar,' so well known through the wood-cut of Bewick, as a specimen of the pathos of Phcedrus. One might trace the contrast, again, » Plat. " rh«d." p. 600. =* Bab. 12. ' Phaed. V. x. I LA TE A UGUSTAiV FOE TR Y, 3^7 in the way that they treat the fable of the wolf and the lamb. In Babrius,' the wolf begins with the possible charges. First, the wolf suspects the lamb of afifronling him (and Babrius has another fable in his collection where a lamb on a wall does affront a wolf'-^), then of trespassing on the wolfs ground, then, at last, of muddying the stream at which the wolf is drinking, and the lamb is simply too young for everything; the wolf eats the lamb at last out of pique, because he cannot let the lamb have the last word. In Phasdrus,' the wolf is de- termined to eat the lamb, and begins with the impossible charge of troubling the brook where the lamb was drinking below the wolf, and the wolf tries for something on which the lamb cannot contradict him. Of course, in Pha^drus the in- iquity of the wolf is more obvious; in Babrius he behaves more like an oppressor in real life. The same desire to force such moral as there is shows it- self in the way Phaedrus varies the fable of the frog and the ox. In Babrius,* the ox treads upon one of the froglings, and the survivors tell their mother that the victim was crushed by a great beast. She swells and swells to try and reach the size of the ox : they tell her she may swell till she bursts, and never be as big. In Phx^drus, she actually bursts,' and asks after her first effort if she is not bigger than the ox. Again, when the frogs lament the marriage of the sun, because one scorches them, and a family of suns would make life impossi- ble, Phaedrus « prefaces the story with the remark that ^sop told it at the marriage of a noted thief, while Babrius' does not think it necessary to point the moral at all. There is more political interest in Babrius : the mice, when they go to war, ascribe their defeat to the want of conspicuous generals, and so we get an explanation of why the generals had the high crests which intercepted their retreat;* while Phasdrus * does not care to go beyond the fact that it is a misfortune to be conspicuous in time of trouble. In general, Phaedrus gives us the impression of accepting the imperial dispensation very I » » Bab. 89. -lb. 96. " Phaed. I. i. * Bab. 28. * Phaed. I. xxiv « lb. I. vi. " Bab. 24. ' lb. 31. ' Phxd. IV. vi. f 3^^ LA TLV LITER A TURK. heartily. His only grievance is that his merits do not meet clue recognition, or rather that he is envied for his talents.' This envy showed itself in a severe criticism of his fables, which are of a kind that it is easy to regard as childish; and he actually tries to meet this charge by parodying a tragedy.^ The prologue to the *' Medea " is very sensible, because Medea would have done no mischief if the Argo had never found its way to her. He succeeds rather better with contemporary anecdotes. The evergreen story of the vain individual who appropriated to himself the loyalty displayed by a whole theatre to the head of the state has seldom been better told than by Phae- drus,' who makes the mistake just plausible enough. '' Prince " was a piper who used to play for Bathyllus, and so had some celebrity; and, owing to a fidl from the machin- ery at some game or other, had broken the "pipe"* of his left leg, though he would have been better pleased to break both the pipes which he played on the right. He was car- ried home groaning, and it was some months before the cure was completed. As. the custom of play-goers is (they are really a nice sort), they began to miss him ; his breath had kept a dancer up to the mark so often. A noble was just go- ing to exhibit some games, and Prince was getting on his feet again ; the noble plied him w^ith money and compliments only just to show himself on the day of the games. As he arrived, there was a buzz in the theatre about the piper: some were sure he was dead, some that he would come on at once. Well, when the curtain fell (for the show to begin), and the roll of the thunder was over, and the gods had spoken in their figurative fashion, then the chorus set up a song (which the absentee had never heard) to this effect : '' Rejoice, Rome, for thou art preserved— thy Prince is safe." Every- body stood up to applaud ; the piper began to kiss hands ; he thought his friends were congratulating him. The eques- trian order understood his stupid mistake, laughed heartily, and encored the song. Of course it was repeated ; my hero ' rii^cd. Piol.lV. 15. ^ lb. V. vii. ' lb. IV. vii. * The thigh-bone. LATE A UGUSTAN FOE TR V. 389 prostrated himself at full length on the stage, and the knights jeered and applauded, and the people thought he was asking for a crown. But as soon as the truth of the matter had run up all the benches, Prince, with the white fillet rolled round his leg, and his white tunic and white boots too, as he plumed himself on the honor paid to the Holy House, was bundled out by everybody head foremost. The truth is that Pha^drus is more preoccupied with his own private anxieties than with public: if Particulo would keep his promise to give him money enough to make him easy for the rest of his life, as Particulo* did at last, imperial politics did not concern him much. It was only a question who should load the panniers, but there was very little risk that the ass would have to carry double. It is curious that he should treat fables as a safety- valve for slaves,*' for a head of a household in our time would, if affronted by comment at all, be more affronted by comment disguised because known to be offensive. § 6. A pretty collection of bucolics, which has come to us under the name of T. Calpurnius Siculus, may be most con- veniently described as a sort of appendix to the Augustan poetry; for there is a general consent that the first seven idyls are by a contemporary of the first five years of Nero, and probably the remaining four are by him too : though either the blunder of an ignorant scribe, or the conjecture of an am- bitious scribe, or the knowledge of a learned one, has imported some uncertainty into the MSS.; and there are sometimes peculiarities, just visible — like the avoidance of the hiatus after the first foot, and the shortening of the final of verbs — which have been quoted in support of the distinction.^ But the poems are an echo of Vergil, with no perceptible trace of later influences. Calpurnius follows Vergil even more simply than Gratius, because he has no real subject of his own. He is undeniably musical, and very little more. The only original observation which his shepherds make is that the noise of a brook over gravel rather interferes with singing, and it is as well to get away from it into the shade. The allusions to real life of the ^'Eclogues" reappear, though with a great loss of * Epil. IV. 4, 5. " Piol. III. 33 sqq. = See also note, pp. 281, 282. 390 LA TIN LITER A TURE. truth and color. There is a patron Meliboeus, who, the swains hope, may bring their song under the notice of Rome and Caesar;' Corydon hopes to be accepted as the successor of Tityrus,'* altliough he knows the extent of his ambition. There is another patron, Thyrsis,^ who comes round the folds and awards prizes for competitions between the shepherds, which Corydon misses when he "oes to see some irames in Rome, held by a young god with a face like Mars and Apollo at once,* so far as could be seen from the back seats at the top, where a countryman who came in a black blanket had to stand, for all the lower seats were reserved for citizens who were respectable enough to come in togas, all of whom seem to have had some official position. This same emperor is saluted in a prophetic poem,^ which Ornitus reads to Corydon after ^o'xw'g out of the heat for a singing match. He is to deliver the world from oppression and war, and bring back the Saturnian age. He succeeds a prince who triumphed abroad, and brought discord home with him ; he threw the senate into chains. His successor is accomplished, and, while yet in his mother's arms, it was his favorite amusement to play at pleading causes. AFost of this would fit Nero well enough, and, though all the other notices of him imply that he was given rather exclu- sively to poetry,* it is quite possible that there may have been a little early taste for oratory, which Seneca may have thought it well to discourage, as he took a very severe view of the juridical ambition of Claudius. It is tempting to identify Meliboeus with Seneca, for Meliboeus is a very important per- son and a guardian of the laws ; and apparently a philosopher, for the lamentations on his death in the eighth idyl begin with a pompous invocation to .-Ether, father of all, and Fluids, the cause of things, and Earth, the mother of the body, and Air, whence we draw the breath of life — which recalls Veririrs Silenus, as the first idyl recalls his Pollio. But there is a grave difficulty in identifying Meliboeus and Seneca. Meli- boeus, whoever he was, died after patronizing Tityrus through- ^ lb. vii. 6 sqq. ' Calp. iv. 157 sqq. Mb. 64. lb. 8: lb. i. 33. Tac. " Ann."xiii.3. LA TE A UGUSTAJV FOE TR Y. 391 out the life of both (one of many indications that Calpurnius was past his youth), and apparently his friends had nothing to deplore but the death of a good old man in a good old-age, full of days, riches, and honor, and yet were inconsolable because he was too good to die. Now it is difficult to imagine a poet publishing any lamentation on Seneca's death at the time without immortalizing himself, and it is more difficult to im- agine a poet with so much constancy as to lament Seneca ab- staining from denunciations of Nero ; and most difficult of all to imagine how any poet living under Nero could expect praise and promotion for praising Seneca. There is the same procession of the powers of nature to mourn for Meli- boeus as come in Vergil to console Gallus and mourn for Daphnis. Calpurnius gives one the impression of knowing country life pretty well ; and, being a countryman, the "city" is al- ways something distant to dream of, and the splendors of the sliow make rather a disproportionate impression on his mind. His shepherd must have visited Rome before the completion of the Coliseum, for the seats were still supported on wooden scaffolding.' But the decorations made amends for the mean- ness of the structure. A marble wall went round the arena, protected from the animals by a strong timber fence cased with ivory, which had the double advantage of being too smooth to give their claws a hold, and of looking magnificent. There were bosses of precious stones (probably jasper and onyx and colored spars) round the front of the lowest row of seats, and there was a good deal of gilding on the covered arcade assigned to women and the commonalty ; and this was a novelty which impressed a city sight-seer as much as it im- pressed a countryman who had never seen anything before. We get a good deal of light as to what was wealth in the country parts of Italy. Idas "" is a rustic, but not a barbarian ; he often kills both he-lambs and she-lambs ; he has plenty of milk and cheese. Astacus' has potherbs all the year round ; he makes a cake for Priapus quite as often as Idas sacrifices to Pales, and cakes and honey are quite as accept- * Calp. vii. 23. 2 lb. ii. 61 sqq. ^ lb. 74. Z9' LATIN LITERATURE. able to gods and men as fresh lamb. Idas promises fleeces in autumn, and Astacus promises chestnuts. And at bottom both lovers are very practical : as soon as it is night and time to go home, the shepherd orders his men to the right and left to bring up the flocks, and the gardener orders his man to open the sluice of the canal. It is true another pair of lovers are less reasonable;^ and they are not even rivals, for their mistress is equally well inclined to both, and they are content to divide her. But her parents think it is better to keep the girl at home ; consequently one of the lovers forgets for three days to take the heifers out for grass or water, and forgets himself to make baskets. There is more of a story in the fifth idyl, where a forlorn swain has lost two hours and got badly torn in looking for a stray heifer; and gives up the search to lament his love, who has left him for a worse musician, who cannot give her so many presents. After telling the story of the quarrel, which was much aggravated by his indiscretion in stripping her and beating her, when her interest in the rival had not gone be- yond a mere caprice, he resolves by the advice of his friend Xo attempt a reconciliation; so he composes a poem, which his friend promises to take down on cherry bark and carry to the oftended beauty. The lover offers his mistress the satisfac- tion of tying his hands behind his back (which we have seen was part of Italian etiquette) : he, of course, as he is a country- man, is careful to give her alternative of osier or vine, and to remind her how many presents she has had from his hands, while the hands of his rival were bound, not for a lover-like indiscretion, but because he was detected in an attempt to rob the fold at night. Perhaps the point is ingenious enough to deserve some of the praise which the poet, as usual, awards himself by the mouth of the friend who compliments the lover on his verses. The latter promises himself a happy recon- ciliation, for he sees one of his men on the right with the missing heifer. In most of the poems Calpurnius aims more at story and dialogue than Vergil, just because he cannot trust himself to ' Calp. ix. LATE AUGUSTAN POETRY. 393 let a lover fill a whole poem with his complaint. When Myron lectures Canthus on the art of goat-keeping,^ when he is going to turn over his flock to him, the lecture begins when they have gone out of the heat of the sun, and after a little more than a hundred lines Mvron observes it is jrettinji late, though he has much more to say. Still, he manages to give rules for the management of a flock from one year's end to another in the space, and to give some useful hints how to cure sores caused in shearing, how to keep serpents from the fold, and how to mark the flocks as a precaution against law- suits. The language is f^iirly good throughout, and there is an attempt at the simplicity of the practical parts of the "Georgics;" elsewhere, in general, Calpurnius refines upon Vergil, and is vague and unreal in consequence. When a shepherd wants to say that " though summer is nearly over, it is as hot as ever," he begins, "the sun's horses are no gentler yet as summer slopes down.'"' When a shepherd wishes to strike a loftier strain, he tells us that " it must not have the echo of the woods."' Even this is simpler than the original, for, since the sound of the voice rebounds from a wood some- times, Calpurnius allows himself to say "rebounds" for the sake of the metre, without intending much more than "sounds," if, indeed, he intends anything. "The blessing of Fame has paved a kindly way for Tityrus thus far from the woods, and broken the full clouds of envy." But here praise has to stop: "already the sun is sending down his steeds from the summit of the universe, and counsels us to grant the flocks the moisture of the rivers." * Note on the Epicedioti Dnisi. The genuineness of this work has ahvays been called in question since 1849, when Haupt suggested that it was written by a Renaissance imitator of Ovid. In 1S78 E. Hiibner, in an elaborate paper in Hermes, while es- tablishing the imitative character of the work by an exhaustive array of quotations from both Ovid and Propertius, combated Haupt's linguistic arguments for a late date, and maintained that the imitation was too per- fect for the young scholarship of the fifteenth century. None of his quo- » Calp. V. 13 sqq. '^ lb. i. i. ^ lb. iv. 5. * lb. viii. 84-7. I.— 17* I 394 LATIN LITERATURE. talions are very decisive, for Ovid certainly imitated both Propert.us and himself. Still, it is startling that a poet who wrote 745 l^'-C. should be as familiar with the turns of expression which we find in the " Metamor- phoses " and the " Fasti," to say nothing of the " Tr.st.a and the Letters from Fontus," as with those of earlier works. Less stress can be laid on the coincidences with the consolatory works of Seneca, and upon the bare possibilitv that the poet may have taken the river Isargus from 1 acitus— from all which Ilubner infers that the " Epicedion" is a work of the sec- ond century, in which case it must be a school exercise. In any case, the treatment of Tiberius is singular if the poet wrote after his death ; while, if it was written at the time by a member of Ovid's school, it might have been elaborated afterwards. LIVY. 395 CHAPTER VI. LIVY. Livy's position was less dignified than that of many of his contemporaries : he was the tutor of the grandchildren of Au- gustus, a position which might have been filled by a slave or a freedman. It is probable that he owed his selection partly to the reputation of his native town for severity of manners — a rep- utation which was not impaired by its wealth. Livy mentions that in his day there were five hundred citizens of equestrian census, a larger number than was to be found in any other town of Italy, except Rome and Capua. Patavium had grown, like Venice, because it was in the way of trade and out of the way of war. It had repelled the invasion of the Etruscans and of the Gauls and of the Spartan Cleonymus, but it had not known the constant harassing warfare through which col- onies like Placentia or Cremona struggled into greatness. The colony founded there by the Romans was in no sense a protection against the natives. These belonged to the nation of Heneti or Veneti, who had expelled the Euganei. It was generally admitted that the Heneti of Venetia were descend- ants of the Heneti of Paphlagonia, whose king Pyl^menes had fallen before Troy, and that they had settled in Italy un- der the conduct of Antenor. Livy himself speaks half as if he believed the legend, which he tells in its baldest form, ^^neas and Antenor were spared by the Greeks, on the obvi- ous ground that they had been on the Greek side throughout the war: they naturally left a ruined country to settle in Italy. It is only when we come to the miraculous that Livy is scep- tical. The legend of the white sow with her litter of thirty staggers him ; as for the wonderful birth and nurture of Romu- lus, he can only say it is due to the majesty of Rome that the world should refrain from questioning what is incredible. 396 LA TIN LITER A TURE. LIVY, 397 But he has no doubt whatever of the tradition which links Kome and Patavium together, and his judgment is of the more weight because it agrees with that of Vergil, one of the most learned of Italian antiquaries. Probably the tradition would have belonged to the same class as the French and Welsh traditions of their descent from Troy. We are on surer ground when we remember that the same mixture of races flourished at Patavium which afterwards flourished at Venice. Livy was born B.C. 59, or 57, according to the reckoning of St. Jerome ; and it seems that he was about thirty-two when he began the great work of his life, for the indications in the first decade {e.g., the mention of the temples, iv. 20) point between 27 B.C. and 20 B.C. He prosecuted his work with insatiable industry till his death in a.d. 16; though long before he left off he had done enough, even in his own judgment, for fame. His hundred and forty books carry the history of Rome from its foundation to the death of Drusus, the brother of Tiberius — an event which might have served for the terminus of a contemporary history, or simply have marked the last stage which a septuagenarian historian lived to reach. The extent of his work is a marked contrast with the his- torical writincfs of Roman aristocrats like Asinius Pollio, who took the Civil Wars for his subject, or L. Arruntius, who wrote on the Punic War with a tiresome imitation of Sallust. But Livy did not confine himself to history; he wrote to his son- in-law on rhetoric, and rebuked the obscurity of Sallust : he wrote dialogues of moral edification, which were praised by Quinctilian, and have gone the way of the dialogues of Aris- totle, which fascinated and inspired Cicero. The same tendency shows itself very plainly in his history : like Rollin and Fenelon, he never forgets that he is a school- master. Edification in one shape or another is the only topic of his long and interesting preface. He doubts whether his labors in such a gigantic task will not be in vain ; he knows the ancient history which interests him will seem tame to readers in a hurry to get to the Civil Wars. He does not write for fame ; he has not Sallust's pretension of writing because he wishes to occupy the leisure forced upon him, nor does he aim, like Thucydides, at eliciting principles which will be a guide to men through the future revolutions of hu- man affairs. Rome seems to him a fitting subject for the his- torian because it was the greatest city and displayed the great- est examples both of good deeds and of evil. And Rome was not only the greatest city in the world, but the best; it had honored poverty and withstood luxury longer than any other, and this when it had greater temptations to luxury than any. What strikes him is not what strikes a modern — the won- derful organizing power so often displayed by the ancient heroes of Rome, or the political talent of the whole people, which we are apt to treat as an ultimate fact. He is more impressed by the turbulent side of Roman public life than by its stability; he looks for the principle of Roman greatness in the moral qualities which made discipline possible. And there can be no doubt thrift and parsimony are simpler than the habit of military and political discipline : they are among tlie conditions on which discipline depends, which is quite in- compatible with self-pleasing. Livy feels like Vergil, Moribiis antiquis stat res Romani viiisquc, and is rather indifferent to material sublimity: he is little im- pressed by the greatness of such works as the Cloaca Maxima or the Via Appia; the tradition that the Potitii died out in the consulship of Appius because they agreed to his proposal to delegate the rites of the great altar of Hercules to public slaves is recounted at greater length than the censor's engi- neering triumphs, to which Livy is so indifferent that he never connects them either with his obstinacy in retaining office for the full term of five years, or with his innovation of admitting freedmen's sons, doubtless including his own contractors, to the senate. The portion of this work that has reached us is little more than a quarter of the whole in bulk; but in time the proportion is different. The first ten books cover 460 years (not counting the period between ^neas and the foun- dation of the city). Out of this the first covers 244, the four V\ 398 LA TIN LITER A TURE. that follow 12 1, and the next five 95 ; the next ten, which are lost, covered seventy years; then came ten books which we still possess, which covered the events of eighteen years, the terrible second Punic war; while the fifteen books which fol- low cover the period from the final defeat of Hannibal to the final overthrow of the Macedonian power: leaving ninety-five books for the events of about a hundred and seventy years — almost, that is, at tiie rate of a book for the events of every two years. The disproportion shows that the author has only an imper- fect mastery over his materials. He started with the method of using and amplifying all the records which he found to his hand, in order to make them at once intelligible and edifying. AVhen the records are meagre, he is a creative artist; when the records are full and the subject trivial, he degenerates into a compiler capable of incorporating the vulgarities of the original. To the last, the final characters with which he dis- misses a great man upon his death are carefully and skilfully done, with a general intention of generosity, which rather breaks down in the case of Cicero. One might very well ex- pect that Cicero, with his good intentions and private de- cency, would have been treated exceptionally well; but Livy could not forgive him for seeing through Pompeius. If Cic- ero had been a partisan, it would have been easier for the nobility to hold their own : his pretensions and his insight both acted as solvents. It is remarkable that Livy, a retainer of the imperial house, a native of the country beyond the Po, which owed its admission to full Roman citizenship to Coisar, should have written the history of the civil war with a strong tendency to favor Pompeius. It is unfortunate that his his"^ tory has not reached us, for none of the histories that have come down give the case for Pompeius with force enough to counteract the growing bias in favor of Caisar— due partly to his amiability, partly to the perception that his success \vas ^inevitable. Probably for this very reason the latter part of Livy was not so much read after the reign of Domitian; for, though criticism of bad emperors was free to the last, criticism of the imperial system was forbidden ; and it is doubtful if LIVY. 399 criticism of the events under which it originated was really free after the reign of Augustus, for the " Pharsalia" is a gi- gantic escapade, and, as it proved, a perilous one. Even Ver- gil and Horace only use their liberty to glorify Cato, against whom, to be sure, Caisar had written a monstrous pamphlet. Labienus, son of the only lieutenant of Caesar who made the mistake of joining Pompeius, had not damaged himself so deeply by his bad life but that he damaged himself by his zeal for Pompeius in his histories. Another reason for the neglect of the latter part of Livy doubtless was that his eloquence was beginning to show signs of the garrulity of old-age. The fall- ing-off in the fourth and fifth decades is already very marked, and cannot be wholly accounted for by the deterioration of the sul)ject. For the same reasons, it is probable that the second decade, which dealt with the dulness of the first Punic war as well as with the sensational campaigns of Pyrrhus, was neglected by readers anxious to reach the thrilling story of the campaigns of Hannibal. The first and the third decades of Livy are two of the greatest historical books of the world : it may well be doubted whether of the two the first is not the greater. It is quite true, of course, that Livy believed much that is incredible to mod- ern scholars, much that was incredible even to learned con- temporaries; true that in all the material conditions of his- tory Livy was careless, even for a man who had no practical acquaintance with affairs ; true also that, like Hume, he pre- ferred to write from chroniclers wljen he might have made some approach to writing from documents. His history is full of stories like the escape of Cloelia and the rescue of Rome by Camillus, which are condemned without appeal by the casual allusions of Tacitus to the surrender of the city to Porsena, and to the ransom paid for it to the Gauls. Again, antiquarian research would have made constitutional questions of all kinds much plainer than Livy makes them — much plain- er than antiquarian speculation can make them now: he talks of the "people" and the "commons," and nowhere states any distinction between the two : he seems to imagine that the "fathers" are the senators, yet he is not quite ignorant of the 400 LA TIN LITER A TCRE. connection between them and the patricians; and he knows of plebeian senators at a time when the commons were still excluded from every office but that of tribune. One never learns the relation of the comitia ciiriata to the comitia tribitta, or of the comitia centuriata to either. To sum up all in a word, he constantly confuses the conflict between the author- ities of the city of Rome and the inhabitants of the Roman territory with the conflict between the rich and poor, the high- born and the base-born ; between which it is possible that Niebuhr and some of his successors have drawn too sharp a distinction. Hut, with all this, the first decade of Livy gives incompar- ably the fullest and clearest picture of national life as a whole which any ancient historian has given us. The incidents are often misconceived and misplaced, but the atmosphere and the scenery are always lifelike. It is generally recog- nized that '' Quentin Durward " has a great deal of historical truth, although (to mention nothing else) the Bishop of Liege was not massacred, nor William de la Marck slain, on the occasion of that revolt of Liege which Louis XL helped Charles the Bold to suppress. Now, very few of Livy's inac- curacies are on a larger scale than this, and he has always the kind of truth which we expect in an historical novel — the kind of truth which we accept in conjectural reconstructions of primitive history, especially the history of religious institu- tions, where our interest in the subject disposes us, as patri- otic pride disposes Livy, to make the utmost of imperfect evi- dence. It is easy to exaggerate the imperfection of the materials: for instance, the discontinuity of family as distin- guished from gentile names in the very early history shows the good faith of the annalists, for if they had worked simply to flatter the vanity of great houses, every family name would have been carried back to the beginning of the Republic. It was a less serious falsification that when a plebeian of the same gentile name as an ancient patrician distinguished himself after the days of Pyrrhus or Hannibal, the complaisant annal- ist reckoned him a direct descendant of the older celebritv, one of whose heirs was supposed to have gone over to the LIVY. 401 commons — probably not an uncoinmon process when a coun- try gentleman did not care to leave the district where his land lay often, and probably had no objection to espouse the quarrels of his country neighbors. But Livy complains that what had happened sometimes was represented as having happened often. This is a fair instance of the sort of criticism on his author- ities which we find in Livy. He has been called credulous, like Herodotus, because he has no canons of what is abso- lutely incredible, and because he is not ashamed of a rever- ent curiosity about omens and prodigies. Even about this he is not exactly free from scepticism, or rather he has a clear perception that their value depends rather upon human carefulness than any efficacy of their own,' He quite ap- proves of the distinction drawn by Papirius between the re- sponsibility of a general and of an augur on the occasion of a profane pu/larius, or keeper of the sacred chickens, which were carried about with Roman armies, as it was supposed tliat when they fed heartily the soldiers were likely to be in good heart to fight. When moral conditions became more important than physical, the soldiers were ready to fight when the chickens were not ready to feed; and at such times a pullarius was tempted to falsify his report. The general's nephew, we are told, was careful to inform his uncle of the real facts. The general replied that he was justified in fighting, since he was officially informed that the omens were favor- able, and that \\\q. pullarius was answerable for his own false- hood. Accordingly, we are told that the Romans gained a decisive victory, and that the pullarius^ who was set in the front of the battle, was killed. There is the same quaint casuistical tone in the discussion on the treaty of the Caudine Forks.^ Livy is evidently uncomfortable that an unauthor- ized convention, which had been solemnly sworn to in the name of Rome, had been repudiated. It comforts him a little, to be sure, that there was no regular treaty, which would have been concluded by feiiales, and necessarily been sanc- tioned by all the powers of the state. Probably, while two » Liv.X.xl. Mb. IX. V. 2. 402 LA TIN LITER A TURE. consular armies were in the field, it was impossible to Iiold an assembly whose decision would be binding. Accordingly, the Samnites could only insist that the consuls should pledge themselves and their staff that they would carry a treaty to the mind of the Samnites: and, according to Livy's version (as it was desirable to do what was possible to bind the au- thorities at home), two of the tribunes of the commons were made to pledge themselves also.* Livy dwells at great length, and with great unction, on the contrast between the devotion of the consuls who were anxious to be given up to the Samnites, that the convention might be annulled, and the selfishness of the tribunes, who insist that the convention is binding because they fear to be given up : he composes a forcible and eloquent speech, in which the consul dilates on the infatuation of the Samnites in thinking that the army could possibly bind the state. If we compare his account of the behavior of the Romans with modern usaiie, it almost seems as if the Romans were excessively scrupulous. In- stead of punishing the consuls themselves for exceeding their powers, they gave up every one who had sworn to the con- vention to the Samnites. Yet Livy feels as if they had not done enougli : the Samnites refused to admit that the Romans could clear themselves at the expense of individuals, and so they set all the victims who were offered to them at liberty. Livy's last word is, ''Perhaps they had saved the public faith by their surrender ; at any rate, they saved their own." Just the same mixture of patriotic pride and moral scruple meets us in the story of M. Scaptius.^ Ardea and Aricia dis- puted, it seems, the ownership of a patch of land, and referred the question to Rome ; and Scaptius informed the assembly that he had served in the campaign in which the Romans had conquered the debatable land from the Volscians at the time of the capture of Corioli. Hereupon the assembly voted that the land was the property of the Roman people, to the horri- ble scandal of the " fathers " and the historian, who yet insists that the right of the Roman people was so clear that a dis- interested judge could not fail to recognize it. The sequel of * Liv. IX. viii. sqq. '^ lb. III. Ixxi., l.wii.; iV. ix.-xi. LIVY. 403 the case is more curious : Ardea sends an embassy to com- plain at Rome; the senate say that they will watch for an opportunity to make amends. Soon after there is a sedition at Ardea, arising out of a faction fight over a marriage, in which the popular party call in the Volscians. The Romans come to the rescue, and, as Ardea is depopulated, a colony is sent there ; it is arranged that the land which the assembly voted to be Roman territory shall be assigned to the colonists, and that natives shall have a preference over Romans in the assignment. When it is too late, the commons detect the plot, and the tribunes prosecute the commissioners who as- sign the lands. The "fathers" themselves or their leaders are inclined to abandon the commissioners, who take refuse irom the storm by settling in their colony. It is plain that the story is made a great deal more edifying in Livy than it can have been in reality ; it suggests that the aristocracy of Rome were in league with the aristocracy of Ardea to manage the open land to their joint profit, and that the aristocracy of Ardea got the best of it. The further question that arises is, how Livy comes to have such minute information of the in- ternal afliirs of Ardea long before the Gallic war; for we seem to be in the presence of a real, though a perverted, tra- dition. There can hardly have been a record at Rome of a kind to survive the capture of the city, and therefore Livy or his authorities must have got their information at Ardea. The quarrel at Ardea has too many parallels from mediceval Ital- ian history to be regarded as fictitious. Livy always succeeds in giving a great look of probability to his narratives of internal dissensions : he has the keen- sightedness of hatred in describing them; he has a far keener sense of the misery and criminality of sedition than of civic right. He blames the "fathers" whenever they provoked sedition ; but he blames them little, if at all, for their exclusiveness, or for their monopoly of the public lands, or for their harshness to their debtors. He disapproves of the tribunes by instinct, and sees only the anarchical side of their office ; in this he is like most ancient writers, who also dwell exclusively on the capricious side of the institution of 404 LA TIN LITER A TURK. ostracism. It was a real political progress to appoint officers to do, in the name of the commons, without resistance, every- thing that the commons could accomplish by the force of their numbers. It is a consequence of this that Livy does not explain why the multiplication of the tribunes was always a popular measure. They had two functions: one was to propose laws, which Livy treats as the most important; the ^other was to protect individuals against the acts of the au- thorities. Any increase in the numbers of the tribunes made it possible for the " fiithers " to get one out of many to im- pede legislation which they disliked, but one or two tribunes could be influenced to allow a levy or a strict application of the law of debt, but it was difficult to effect this with ten trib- unes, or even five. There is the same want of perception of the growth of in- stitutions in the anecdotal explanation of the appointment of curule aediles : ^ he never thinks of comparing them with the public prosecutors, who were as old as the monarchy, any more than he thinks of comparing the prcetor with the praj- fectus urbi, who often appears ^ as one of the regular magis- trates of the period just before the Licinian laws. Nor does he explain why, when it was decided that the censors should not hold office for the full term of five years, the term of eighteen months was fixed. These questions do not seem to have perplexed Livy ; he is more puzzled by the recurring .^{quian and Volscian cam- paigns. He has not yet arrived at serious scepticism as to the numbers which he finds in his authorities, and so he makes the reflection that both nations must have been ex- terminated many times over.^ He gives the solution himself in an earlier chapter: * the .4{quians had a talent for brigand- age, and the Romans were not able, for many reasons, to occupy the country from which the yEquians descended. Now and then there was something like a pitched battle, and then the Romans were almost always victorious, as the Eng- lish were in theii battles with the Scots. If further explana- ' I.iv. VI. xlii. 9. ^ lb. VI. xii. 2, 3. ' E. g. IV. xxxi. 2 ; VI. vi. 9. * lb. III. ii. 14. LIVY. 405 tion is required, it is to be found in the fact, which Livy men- tions, that a regular levy of the whole force of the ^quian nation was a very exceptional thing, only to be accomplished by the employment of special religious rites : while year by vear the Romans were accustomed to swear to their com- manders such a binding oath that they found it easier to kill the commander to whom they had sworn than to desert their colors while he was alive. Their disappearance after the capture of the city by the Gauls was so obvious that Livy hardly notices it. P^or many years, if the Campagna was plundered, it was plundered by Ciauls ; and when the Gauls were driven back, the same meas- ures as kept them out would serve to keep out the degener- ate yLquians. It has been noticed that when the Valerii are in office we generally find not only an ^quian, but a Sabine war; and hence it has been inferred that Livy follows Vale- rius Anlias in a rather uncritical combination. The Valerii were in the habit of thinking of the same predatory bands under the name of Sabines that the Fabii thought of under the name of .^quians, and consequently their special traditions always recorded a Sabine campaign; while the general tra- dition, which was the only guide when the Valerii were not in office, only records an .^quian one. Probably the combi- nation was already accomplished in the " Annales Maximi ;" for Livy is careful in noting the discrepancies in the annalists whom he follows, not exactly without discrimination: when they differ, he asks himself which is the oldest, and which tells the most probable story. But he never attempts to go behind the annalists. Augustus had seen a linen breastplate, dedi- cated by A. Cornelius Cossus, at the Temple of Jupiter, which stated that he was consul, and had slain Lars Tolumnius and had dedicated his spoils. The other authorities all agreed that when he was consul there w^as no important war with Etruria or elsewhere, and that when he won the spoils he had no higher rank than tribune.' It never occurs to Livy to enter the shrine and inspect the inscription himself: it is doubtful if he could have done so without special permission. • Liv. IV. XX. 4, 5. 4o6 LA TIN LITER A TURE. But he attaches paramount value to a contemporary docu- ment, especially a contemporary document attested by Au- gustus: he declines to explain how the mistake in the Fasti arose, and takes it for granted there must be one, So that he does not hazard the easy conjecture that Cossus was not able to put up a permanent record of the dedication of his spoils until he was consul. It is just the same with the "Linen Books," which contained lists of magistrates, and were kept in the Temple of Moneta. Livy carefully notes when Licini- us Macer appeals to their authority against other authors,' but he never dreams of consulting them himself, not even when the authors who appeal to them, as Macer and Tubero, differ as to what they say. One notices that Augustus hardly seems to have entered the Temple of Jupiter P^eretrius as a matter of course, althougli he was Pontifex Maximus: the temple, like many others, was out of repair, and he entered as part of his official inspection. There were only fifteen men in Rome who had the right of reading what the Sibyl was supposed to have written ; and though the number of officials who had access toother public records during their term of service was greater, tiiere is no reason to think that they were open, of course, to every his- torian. And if Livy's opportunities had been better, he is too much in bondage to edifying anecdotes to make the most of his materials. For instance, all the treatment of the second Sam- nite war, up to and including the convention of Caudium, is colored by Livy's view of the purely ethical merits of the case. It is an axiom with him that every state which renews a war with Rome after a treaty is perfidious, and disloyal too : there is a sort of reflected lustre of the world-wide empire of Rome thrown back upon the early days, as if every state which signed a treaty with Rome ought to have known from the first that it was signing an indenture of vassalage. The word '^ rebellare'" has from the first a good deal of the associations of " rebel." It is the guilt of rebellion which makes the Sam- nites unsuccessful at the outset of the war; it is a conscious- ' E g. IV- vii. 13. LIVY. 407 ness of guilt that makes them resolve to surrender Brutulus Papius, the leader of the anti-Roman party. And when the Romans refuse to renew the treaty after his dead body has been given up. Gains Pontius has a reasonable expectation that the gods will change sides; and the final victory of the Romans is due to the arrogance of the Samnites in sending the Roman army under the yoke. In the same way, the bat"^ lie of Sentinum is decided by the religious effect of the devo- tion of the younger Decius, quite as much as by the superior tactics of Q. Fabius; and the final triumph before Aquilonia is explained by the displeasure of the gods at the human sacrifices with which Ovius Paccius had consecrated the last arm v. As a work of art,' the picture of the pompous musters of the two armies which, at the end of each war, were over- thrown by a Papirius is decidedly impressive, even after the suspicion has occurred to us that the family legends of the Papirii may have something to do with the coincidence. And the Samnites are the only adversary of Rome whom Livy can bring himself to respect, with the exception of the Latins. The Latin war fills him with horror— partly at the audacity of the Latins in demanding incorporation on equal terms into the Roman state, and actually claiming to have one consul permanently allotted to them, partly at the fratricidal char- acter of the war (this gives him an opportunity of describing the tactics of the Romans and the Latins at the time of the decisive conflict), and partly also at the great risk the Ro- mans ran. But the Latin war was short and sharp; the Samnite wars lasted as long as the Punic, almost as long as the tedious and desultory conflict with the ^qui and Vofsci : and Livy is weary of the long war, and ashamed, of his weari- ness.' The Samnites were not weary of being conquered, the Romans were not weary of conquering, and Livy has no right to be weary of writing, or we to be weary of reading. Per- haps he idealizes a little when he says that the Samnites never tired of an unblest battle for liberty, and chose rather to be conquered than not to fight. They were fighting, not ' Liv. IX. xl.; X. xxxviii. 2. Mb. X. xxxi. 6, 7. 4o8 LATIN LITERATURE. merely for liberty, but for access lo the sea; the treaties which closed the first and second Samnite wars both left the independence of Samnium untouched, but the first cut the Samnites off from Campania, and the second cut them off from Apulia and Lucania: and the wars were, besides, less of an unbroken chronicle of Samnite disaster than Livy represents them. Not only does he often disguise Roman defeats and embellish drawn battles into brilliant victories, but he does not take account of anything but pitched battles and the de- fence or attack of fortified towns. The likelihood is that al- most to the last the Samnites had the best of the booty, as the Romans had the best of the battles. There are incidental notices of plunder, which we only hear of when it was re- covered from the Samnites: while it is always matter for a triumph by itself when a Roman army roams about the open country without meeting an enemy, especially if there had been a bloody battle which could be claimed as a victory. The political situation is treated like the military: the fact that there were Samnite and Roman parties in Apulia and Lucania is not affirmed or denied, and, instead, we have a declamation on the perfidy or levity of Apulia and Lucania, whenever there was a change of sides in those nations to the disadvantage of Rome. Still more perplexing is the account of the relations of Rome to Etruria from the days of Porsena and the Cremera on- wards. The family legend of the Fabii doubtless obscured the fact that their house had practically been banished from Rome because it was always involving Rome in wars for the debatable territory between Rome and Veii ; but it is strange that Livy should not have understood that the truces con- cluded with the great cities beyond the Ciminian wood were for so many years of ten months. Consequently he com- plains of the perfidy of the Etrurians in so constantly resum- ing hostilities before the time, while he never invents a speech to express the indignation which the Romans must have felt at the time if the case had been as he puts it. The decisive struggle with Etruria coincided with the decisive struggles with Samnium ; and there can be no doubt that on this period LIVY, 409 the traditions of the Fabii, embodied in the oldest annalist, Fabius Pictor, would certainly have been valuable if critically used. As it is, Livy has taken little from Fabius but the lively picture of the dismay of the common people at Rome when Q. Fabius l\Laximus marched through the Ciminian wood. It was only two hours' march, and it must constantly have been traversed by traders; and yet to the average idler of the forum and the average soldier in the field it seemed the boundary of another world, the haunt of all kinds of ghostly monsters. It must be remembered that narrow mule-tracks were quite sufficient for all the wants of commerce, and that the pioneers who entered them iox the first time would feel none of the security against the terrors of the forest which a wide military road naturally gives; and that the Romans were always very sensitive to change in their surroundings, and prone to imagine themselves in another world upon all sorts of pretexts — because they were on the shores of the ocean instead of the shores of the Mediterranean, because they saw fresh constellations or lost sight of familiar ones, or found the shadows fall in a new way. The same source, no doubt, accounts for a good deal of dramatic and doubtful detail about the campaign of Sentinum, where Fabius and Decius defeated the Gauls and Samnites. According to Livy,' Fabius first asked for Decius as his col- league, and then quarrelled with him because both wanted to go to Etruria and neither wanted to go to Samnium. In quite a different connection,' Livy tells us that the service in iSamnium was generally unpopular, and a change to Etruria a welcome relief^ because the cold in the Abruzzi was so severe. Historians who were not of an anecdotical turn simply said Ihat Fabius and Decius fought in Etruria ; but Livy has a long tale, which he only half believes, of the debate between fabius and Decius (he is careful to call attention to the curt archaic character of the speeches of men who were better in the field than in the forum), and of the advance of Fabius into Etruria at the head of a small army to refute the false alarms of Appius Claudius (who was naturally opposed to Fabius, * Liv. X. xxii. sqq. ^ j^) X. xlv. 9. I.— 18 4IO LA TIN LITER A TURE. since it was in the censorship of Fabius and Decius that his demagogic constitution had been overthrown by the restric- tion of freedmen, who were mostly domiciled at Rome, to the four city tribes). Then Claudius raises the alarm at Rome, and at last Fabius and Decius combine their forces against the Samnites and Gauls. There were annals that went fur- ther, and gave two contentions of Fabius and Decius, and a heated debate between Claudius and Fabius at Rome. This is too long a story for Livy, who is strongest in iso- lated episodes. For instance, he does not attempt to trace the growth of the demands of the commons, or explain why the question of debt seems to have become urgent about the time of the Gallic wars, or how the author of the Licinian laws had become a senator of old standing. But the descrip- tion of how any given riot passed into a revolution is always masterly. Perhaps the most splendid instances are the ac- count of the laws of Publilius, with the surprise at his decision to legislate for the public good instead of prosecuting for his private wrongs,' and the restoration of the old constitution after the decemvirate." It is true that Livy has not taken as much pains as he might to ascertain all the special features of the case. He knows less than Dionysius of what the Icil- ian laws were ; but his description of the reaction in favor of the senate, and of the enthusiasm which greeted the restora- tion of the consuls and tribunes, is infinitely more dramatic. He succeeds again in the scene of the rescue of Fabius from the wrath of the dictator,' who wished to execute him for hav- ing fought a successful engagement without orders ; and the success is the more noteworthy, as he has encumbered him- self with the assumption that before Fabius could be spared the authority of the dictator must have been vindicated, and that the tribunes and senate and people must have acknowl- edged that they could do nothing but entreat humbly for the free pardon of one lawfully condemned. It is a suitable close to the episode that long after, when P'abius is consul, and has won his great victory beyond the Ciminian wood, the senate's anxiety about his colleague compelled him to name his old ' Liv. II. Iv.-lvii. ^ lb. III. xliv.-lv. ' lb. VIII. xxxi.-xxxv. LIVY. 411 enemy dictator at midnight in deep silence.' Another epi- sode, which is decidedly well treated, is the institution of a paid army in connection with the siege of Veii.' First we have the useless opposition of the tribunes to the principle of pay, on the ground that the commons would have to find the money to keep the military chest full ; and then, when it is resolved to keep the troops before Veii all the winter, we have an admirable speech of a consular tribune on the stage which the Romans had reached in their progress to the con- quest of the world. It had become possible for the first time to give a practical shape to the principle that the Romans would never end a war without a victory: Liiherto, though wars had been commenced with abundance of ceremony, they commonly languished after one or two campaigns, if the en- emy abandoned the offensive. In general, the speeches of Livy are admirable; they al- ways comment instructively on some of the most important elements of the situation, through conventional assumptions of what the situation must have been. For instance, in this speech the tribune gravely contrasts the constancy of the Vei- entines, who bear the siege and even the burden of a newly re-established monarchy, with the impatience of the Romans. It is hardly a demerit that Livy, who writes as an advocate of authority, masks the question whether the pay was not given because otherwise the troops would have refused to lose their harvesting; and whether, when it was given, they found that they lost their chance of getting the next year's crops as well, as they were not home in time to plough and sow. But, in spite of unreality and reserve, Livy's speeches have not the empty scholastic air of those of Sallust ; and he has every reason to boast that he never seeks digressions from his main subject, though he makes the boast ^ as an introduction to his curious discussion as to whether Alexander the Great could have conquered Italy : no doubt it was an old school discussion when Livy wrote, and he could hardly have passed it over. One smiles at the list of the great Roman generals any one of whom would have been a match for Alexander; ' Liv. IX. xxxviii. 7, 8. ^ lb. IV. lix. Ix.; V. ii.-vii. ^ lb. IX. xvii.-xix. 412 LA TIN LITER A TUKE. but it is quite true that the worst of them was very much bet- ter than any general whom Alexander met in his Persian campaigns. Alexander was a very great tactician ; but it would have required a very great tactician indeed to bring a million of men into effective action against a force which never numbered fifty thousand. Livy is quite right in in- sisting that the Roman system of tactics was far superior to the later Macedonian, and that it would have been much harder to conquer a Roman consular army than any number of Asiatics. It is also relevant that Alexander could not have invaded Italy in his prime, that neither he nor any army that he could have raised were the same men as they were when they invaded Asia. The rhetorical indignation at the measures which Alexander took to commend himself to his Oriental subjects may seem excessive to admirers of Alex- ander's genius, but it is true that the adoption of Persian pomp would have proved a very bad preparation for an inva- sion of Italy. The invasion of Pyrrhus really gives a toler- able measure of the success which Alexander might have expected : besides, as Livy points out, Italy at that time had nothing to reward an invader in comparison with Carthage and even Sicily, which Alexander would certainly have con- quered first. The suggestion that Carthage might have sup- ported Rome if Italy had been attacked first is not exactly preposterous ; and perhaps some weight is due to the reflec- tion with which Livy characteristically begins, that the " fort- une " of the Roman city was more enduring than that of any individual, and that Alexander died too young for it to be seen whether a reverse of fortune such as overtook Cvrus and Pompeius was not in store for him. There are some gro- tesque exaggerations, like the statement that the terror of the name of Alexander could not have daunted the Roman peo- ple, because they had never heard of him. Considering that the senate had, long before the death of Alexander, been en- gaged in diplomatic correspondence with Tarentum, and that the rite of burying Gauls and Greeks in the forum proves the familiarity of Roman superstition with Greeks, it is unlikely that Alexander's name was unknown, even to the country folk LIVY. 413 whose children called elephants Lucanian oxen when they saw them for the first time in Pyrrhus's army. The second decade contained the conclusion of the Samnite wars (which shows that the division into decades was not Livy's own, or he would have finished the subject in the first decade), and their renewal on the invasion of Pyrrhus. It is clear from the epitome that all the romantic stories were told at length, and there were a great many observations of what happened for the first time. It was left, for instance, to Curius Dentatus to invent a moderate method of coercion for men who declined to enrol themselves when summoned. Instead of involving his lictors in the risk of a wrangle with the trib- unes, he simply put up the defaulter's goods for sale. The first show of gladiators came considerably later, and was, per- haps, of more importance. The history of the first Punic war was prefaced by an ac- count of the origin of the Carthaginians, and the early days of their city ; and the author had been careful beforehand to provide for the bad impression which the story of the Mamer- tines made. The Mamertines had been called in to garrison Messana, just as a Campanian legion had been called in to garrison Rhegium : in both cases the garrison appropriated the town to themselves; and the Romans, with a severe sense of justice, compelled Rhegium to surrender, and put the Cam- panian legion to the sword. When the Mamertines in the same circumstances applied to Rome for help against Carthage and Syracuse, there was a strong effort made to uphold the strict view; but in the assembly regard for morality and the law of nations was finally overborne, partly by the hunger of the commons for the rich corn-lands of Sicily, and partly by a fellow-feeling for Italians who were fighting for their lives against Greeks and barbarians. Livy is too scrupulous to approve either motive; but in his eyes the war was justified, because Carthage, which doubtless had a treaty with both Tarentum and Rome, had sent a fleet to the aid of Tarentum when the two were at war; and the Romans, who took treaties much more strictly than the Greeks, no doubt assumed that their own treaty was violated : although the Athenians and 414 LA TIN LITER A TURE, Spartans would have thought the conduct of the Carthagini- ans, in defending one ally when invaded by another, quite excusable, if slightly irregular. The incidents of the long, confused, and indecisive war seem to have been left in their native obscurity, and in some ways the difficulties of an historian were greater than in the earlier period. He had sources independent of the Roman annals, but none of them were so decisively superior to the Roman as Polybius was for the second Punic war. The prin- cipal Greek authority was Philinus of Agrigentum, whose re- sentment of the sack of his native city led him invariably to color his narrative in the interests of Carthage to an extent which scandalized Polybius. Polybius himself had no special sources for the first Punic war, such as his friendship with Scipio supplied him with for the second. Consequently Livy, who even when Polybius is at his best follows him capricious- ly, seems to have treated him as one of many authorities to choose from as he happened to think their stories probable. The most interesting part of the war was Hamilcar's occupa- tion of Ercte and Eryx; and this Polybius found too intricate for detailed narration ; and, to judge by the epitome, Livy was of the same mind. On the other hand, the legend of Regulus and his martyrdom, which was treated as uncertain by many writers, and finally denied by Dio Cassius, was told at length. The Romans, as we see from Cicero, had long settled that Regulus was a hero for protesting against a treaty of peace and an exchange of prisoners, and still more for returning to Carthage afterwards. There seems to have been some ground for believing that Regulus thought himself that the Cartha- ginians meant to murder him, and had actually given him slow poison, and his family had no doubt of his murder after his death. As the Romans had a legend of how he had gone back to torture with his eyes open, so the Carthaginians had a legend of the cruelty of Regulus's family to Hasdrubal and Bostar, who were certainly handed over to them according to Roman authorities, either as hostages or for purposes of re- taliation. Probably Livy had no explanation to give of the fact that, a few years after he dated the heroic and fruitless LIVY, 415 embassy of Regulus, an exchange of prisoners was carried out as a matter of course. All tlie Roman anecdotes of the war found a place : how the army of Regulus were frightened by a monstrous snake a hundred and twenty feet long on the banks of the Bagradas, and had to destroy it with stones from balistce; how C. Duilius won the first sea-fight, and was re- warded with the privilege of having pipers and link-boys to march before him when he came back from supper;' how the handsome Claudius lost a fleet by his contempt of the prophet- ic poultry, and his sister incurred a fine by regretting, when she was hustled by a crowd, that he was not alive to command another fleet. The eventful twenty years between the first and second Punic wars were hurried over in a single book, though they included the decisive struggle with the Gauls, who had come over the Alps at the invitation of their kindred in Italy, in which C. Flaminius, who fell at Trasimene, acquired his repu- tation as a doughty champion of the commons, by not only defeating the Gauls, but dividing the conquered land among the poor of Rome. The event which the epitomist thought most interesting was, that M. Claudius Marcellus won the last spolia opitna by slaying the king of the Insubrians. The cen- sors had to repeat the feat of Fabius and Decius in confining the freedmen to the city tribes (which Livy, when he first mentioned it, treated as a final settlement), and this proves how the Punic and Gallic wars had exhausted Italy; for many farms must have been in the hands of bailifi's, whom the wid- ows had been compelled to emancipate. It is true that the eventful history of the conquest of Spain was to be told as an introduction to the second Punic war; but this is one of the weakest parts of Livy's work : he does not enable us to see the situation at all, or explain why the Carthaginians got on so much better with the Spaniards than the Romans. It is a minor grievance that he involves the actual casus belli in hopeless confusion. There seems to have » This proves how strict the police of the Roman streets was, for in most ancient towns a man who could keep pipers was at liberty to have them play in the streets. 4i6 LA TIN LITER A TURK. been some kind of understanding that Carthaginian influence was not to extend to the north of the Ebro, and Livy mixes up this understanding with the Roman claims to support the Sa2:untines,who claimed alliance with them, whose citv, thou^^h Livy did not always remember it, lay well to the south of the Ebro. The siege of Saguntum is told at oppressive length; although Spanish sieges have always been remarkable for dis- plays of passive heroism, as there have always been found those who could force the impatient to suffer in silence. Of course the final scene is exaggerated : the Roman party committed suicide, and burned themselves with their families and goods, and they are treated on this occasion as if they were the whole town ; while afterwards Saguntines are mentioned as if the town had surrendered in ordinary course. The changes of fortune in the Spanish war, which began soon after Hannibal's invasion of Italy, are not more inexplicable in Livy than in the other authors who have treated of them. Perhaps the nearest explanation is to be found in the campaigns of Lord Peterborough. The capture of New Carthage by the younger Scipio is a feat exactly in the manner of Lord Peterborough; and it is not unlikely that the admirable marching powers of Spanish irregulars threw the offensive now on one side, now on another, in a way very perplexing to the reader. It is also to be remembered that Scipio wms a mystical and untrust- worthy person, and that he represented himself as having driven the Carthaginians, including Hasdrubal, out of Spain ; although it is certain that Hasdrubal must long have been anxious to leave Spain as soon as he safely could, in order to join his brother in Italy. jNIodern readers object, perhaps too much, to the compla- cency with which Livy assumes that Hanno the Great and his party, who opposed and thwarted the war in every way, who would have been delighted to surrender Hannibal to the Ro- mans if they could, in order to avert the war, who depreciated his successes and refused him the means of following them up, were the true patriots, the best and wisest of the Cartha- ginians. It is clear from Livy's own showing (and Polybius completely bears him out) that the ruling class at Carthage T ATTAT T TTT" V A TTTJ? rr LIVY. 417 was very corrupt ; but this does not prove that its interests were at variance with those of the bulk of the citizens. Car- thage was a commercial city, whose rich men had extensive estates, cultivated by serfs, whose condition would be improved in no way if their masters were heavily taxed to recruit a mercenary army in Italy. If the taxes reached a point at which they trenched on capital, the trade of the city and the mass of poor who depended upon it would have suffered. There was much to be said for the view that Carthage, having once been defeated by Rome, had better renounce ambition, and avoid giving provocation for the future. The commercial aristocracy of Rhodes actually took the course which the com- mercial aristocracy of Carthage wished to take, and Livy is consistent in approving both. Then, too, Livy had an instinc- tive sympathy with the sense of civic independence, which was shocked at the hereditary predominance of a single i.\\w- ily. First, Hamilcar had ruled the south of Spain on his own account, then his son-in-law had taken up the reins, then the son-in-law sent for Hannibal to be trained to take up the suc- cession in his turn. Barnevelde and the De Witts were very good patriots, though they were strong opponents of the House of Orange, and the Grand Pensionary De Witt did not main- tain his ground without abundant bribery. Of course, too, Livy applied to Carthage the standing assumption that the aristocratic party, which was also the Roman party, was the prudent and respectable party; and it is to be noticed that this assumption rests upon the most ancient experience. It goes back beyond the days when the Campanian aristocracy appealed to Rome to protect them from the Samnites : even modern writers are of opinion that at Corinth, if not at Car- thage, the party of subservience was more rational and re- spectable than the party of independence; and though Car- thage was more powerful than Corinth, it was more vulnerable, because even before the existence of the city was in peril it had so much to lose. The ambition of Capua to displace Rome by the help of Carthage was not heroic; and Livy does not admire the de- spair of the final banquet, when those who had been most I.- 18* 4i8 LA TIN LITER A TURE. intimate with Hannibal escaped the executioner by taking poi- son. The suicide of the Saguntines in like case strikes him as sublime; but the sublimity is not so much that they died for liberty as that they died to keep their faith with Rome; while the Campanians died, not to keep their faith with Han- nibal, but because they had broken faith with Rome through pride. In the same spirit, Livy makes Hieronymus, the grand- son of Hiero, sink from a king to a tyrant as soon as he broke away from the Roman alliance. The Romans before Livy's time had got into the habit of feeling that a king was not a king unless it pleased the Roman senate to recognize him as one, and the assumption held good of barbarian chieftains from Masinissa to Ariovistus and Maroboduus, and to some extent of the later Ptolemies; but, as applied to Hieronymus, it is certainly an anachronism, and it is difficult to see the folly which scandalizes Livy in his resolution to take advan- tage of the distress of the Romans after Cannae. Hierony- mus's downfall is, of course, an admirable text for a moral essay on the true wisdom of uncalculating fidelity; but that is the peculiarity of Livy throughout : he assumes the standpoint of a moral essayist, though he does not interrupt his narrative nearly so often as Polybius to introduce good advice to the reader; but the tone of edifying assumption is far more per- vading-. There was not a commoner theme for declamation than the mischief done to Hannibal's army by its winter in Capua; but Livy shows no wish to be especially eloquent or impressive about it, though it is one of the points upon which he has been most severely criticised. It is quite true that as Hannibal's army maintained itself for many years in Italy after the battle of Metaurus, the deterioration of which the ancients speak cannot have gone very far. But it is quite true that im- mediately after the army of Hannibal moved out of Capua it had lost its superiority. The armies of the Romans were worse than they had ever been ; for Trasimene and Canna}, coming one after the other, had gone far to annihilate the able-bodied men of a certain age : and yet we repeatedly find Hannibal outmarched and outmanoeuvred, and worsted in partial en- counters, which were not always insignificant, although Livy LIVY. 419 exaggerates them as much as Polybius underrated them; for he formally laid down, no doubt on Scipio's authority, that Han- nibal, when engaged in person, had never been worsted till he was overthrown by Scipio at Zama. The same moralizing tendency makes Livy more than just to the caution, which was partly incompetence, of commanders like Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator. They undoubtedly had more self-control than men like Varro, who thought it a plain duty to fight Hannibal and beat him, and they recognized his greatness as a general sooner. They were right in thinking that the commander of a mercenary army, without a military train or a military chest, could do nothing in the long-run in a country full of fortified cities, and that even if a few towns joined him he would not be able to defend them long or ef- fectually. But Livy's admiration of their self-control carries him far when he assumes that it was the only right and virtu- ous course to let Hannibal burn and plunder as he liked, and only follow him up and down Italy from one fortified camp to another. According to Appian, the battle of Cannae was fought, not only to please the hot-headed Varro, but a large body of senators in his camp: and perhaps it was a proof of consistency as well as magnanimity that Varro was officially thanked for coming back to Rome after the most crushing de- feat that a Roman general had ever survived. If he had stayed to be killed like his colleague, who did not want to fight, of whom Livy, like posterity, makes a spotless hero, it would have been clear that he despaired of the Republic. It was really a pusillanimous resolution never to fight a pitched battle because the Romans had no light cavalry and were dis- concerted by a general who systematically made his main attack, not on the enemy's front, but on his flanks. Livy gravely assures us that when C. Claudius Nero had marched with a picked corps to reinforce his colleague, who was op- posed to Hasdrubal, the colleague seriously proposed to delay the action, and give Hasdrubal time to discover how weak the reinforcement was, as then the Romans would not run the risk of engaging unprepared with an unfamiliar enemy. One cannot say that such imprudent prudence was quite im- ht i« ii 420 LA TIX LITER A TURK. LIVY, 421 possible, for Livy is not alone in asserting that Fabius and his admirers threw every difficulty in the way of Scipio's in- vasion of Africa, because Hannibal was still encamped in Italy, and might have resumed the offensive if another Ro- man army had been cut to pieces in Africa like that of Regu- lus. Livy gives a perfectly impartial account of the dispute, for'both Fabius and Scipio were accepted heroes of Roman respectability ; and Livy's simple piety, which his critics handle so severely, makes him very penetrating about the mystical pretensions of a Scipio. He thinks it quite proper that solemn supplications should be made to Vesta when the priestess on duty had let out her sacred fire, though he knows that the whole blame of the accident lay with the priestess, and that it betokened neither the guilt of the city nor the wrath of the gods; but that a private individual should pre- sume to hold converse with Jupiter on the Capitol, and medi- tate all his resolutions in his presence, and countenance ru- mors that he was of superhuman birth, was evidently not quite compatible with good faith or perfect reverence. Livy's tone is never more nearly rationalistic than when he is dealing with a pretentious mystic. He does not presume to criticise the mystical temper that took hold of the public generally; all the prodigies which accompanied the war of Hannibal are related quite'' simply and seriously, though he is aware that he is writing for an incredulous generation. In the same spirit, and \Wth less anxiety, he recounts the importation, in the most literal sense, of foreign deities— the Great Mother from Phrygia, ^sculapius from Epidaurus— and the touching care with which old games were performed and new games instituted, at the height of public distress. The most impressive part of the third decade is certainly the recurring spectacle of Roman constancy. There are few scenes in history like the census when the censors were afraid, because the treasury was empty, to contract for ordinary re- pairs, and the contractors begged them to let the contracts as usual, and promised to wait for their pay till better times. Of course the transaction had a commercial side to it, and Livy does not conceal that the heroism of the nation had to be braced by the government. He is quite as proud of the severity of the censors to young men of rank who neglected to serve as of the generosity of the women who gave up their ornaments to the treasury when they were forbidden to wear them, and dwells with satisfaction on the police measures for limiting the period of mourning and prohibiting crowding in the gates after Can nee. In the same way, when Ti. Sempro- nius (the grandfather of the Gracchi) raised an army of slaves under the promise of freedom, Livy not only gloats over their achievements in cutting up a Carthaginian army under the principal lieutenant of Hannibal, but dilates with relish upon the strict and slow degrees by which Sempronius doled out the fulfilment of his promise. This contrasts curiously with the indifference to the death of Sempronius, who fell in an ambuscade, whereupon his army dispersed, though doubtless available for future conscriptions. Nor does Livy ever care to trace the results of military events, except in the case of the occupation of Capua and of the battle of Metaurus: he mentions, or intends to mention, everything as it occurs, but holds that if he explains the succession of events the connec- tion may be left to take care of itself. This uncritical temper has some advantages : we learn the more of what was believed at the time of such episodes as the passage of the Alps and the escape from Casilinum. We are not told where Hannibal crossed the Alps ; and, consider- ing that the Gauls had often crossed them with women and children, it seems as if Livy a little exaggerated the difficulty Hannibal had in passing them with elephants and baggage, just as he exaggerated the passage of the Ciminian wood. But the exaggerated rumors of the camp which turned every steep slope into a precipice, and seriously persuaded itself that a road had been cut in a day through rocks first heated by fires and then split by vinegar, belong, in their way, to his- tory in the same sense as the venerable stratagem of oxen with torches tied to their horns; which would have made it impossible to drive them in any one direction, and otherwise they could not have produced the effi^ct of an army. The transition from the war with Carthage to the wars with H 14 422 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the successors of Alexander is managed with a good deal of dignity, and the reluctance of the people to make the efforts which the senate felt to be necessary is a familiar subject that suits Livy well; but the dilatory and indecisive campaigns, with the large crop of rumors which floated about the idle camps, are very tedious, and Livy is obviously overweighted by his materials. He breaks down into short sentences, and tries to copy the baldness of older annalists. He takes no ethical interest in the politics of the period between the war of Hannibal and the visit of Prusias to Rome, after the fall of Perseus. The only opponents of Rome whom he can cen- sure with the old spirit are the ^tolians, who overrated their services to Rome, while the Romans were always ready to sacrifice them either to Philip or to the Achaeans. The majority of the wars of that period were undertaken without an intelligible casus bcUi^ and Livy himself apologizes for the campaign against the Gauls who had settled in Asia Minor, and were always at variance with the state of Perga- mus, which had early attached itself to the fortunes of Rome, being in danger both from the power of Macedonia and from that of Syria. It is characteristic of Livy that he dwells upon the " luxury '^ which followed the battle of Magnesia and the triumph of Lucius Scipio, and never explains how Pergamus and Alexandria came to be committed to a stand- ing opposition to Antioch and Philippi, or how the Romans came to be so undecided in their dealings with Antiochus, and so vindictive in their dealings with Carthage (it is clear from the " Epitome " that the final demand upon the Cartha- ginians to remove ten miles from the sea scandalized him). Again, why had the wars with Macedonia such a peculiar character — always beginning with a long series of marches and countermarches in difficult country, which continually brought the Roman army into a position of great embarrass- ment, until at last it extricated itself by a decisive battle, where the superiority of the legion to the phalanx was sure to assert itself.'' Livy understands the superiority of Roman tactics very well, but the degeneracy of Macedonian tactics and the uncertainty of Roman strategy are left unexplained. LIVY. 423 ! ■ Naturally, nothing is done io remove the confusion of events in a period when the Romans were indiscriminately at war with enemies who were or were not formidable, and who did or did not repay the cost of conquest. The annalis- tic method is not unsatisfactory, when the Romans had only to fight in Italy, or even when they were fighting the Cartha- ginians at once in Sicily, in Spain, and in Italy. But after the Gauls of Italy had been conquered (which it was necessary to do immediately after the conclusion of peace with Hanni- bal), the wars with the barbarians of Piedmont, the Valley of the Rhone, and the mountains to the northeast of Italy, and the more serious combats with the tribes of Western and Northwestern Spain, had no connection with the wars against the civilized powers of the Levant,* although they were prac- tically contemporary with them. To make any one set of these transactions intelligible, it would have been necessary to treat it continuously ; but this Livy never attempts. When he has to mention a state or a nation for the first time, he takes pains to describe it to the reader, unless the press of greater events left no room, as was the case with the first con- flicts between Rome and Philip during the war of Hannibal. There is little of interest in the internal history. Livy is ashamed of the way in which the state compounded with its creditors on the outbreak of the Macedonian war, and hurries the matter over. It is part of the supercilious dignity of Latin history to be brief, too brief to be quite intelligible, in describ- ing financial arrangements; but the grievance of the creditors must have led to many scenes of the kind that Livy is fond of dilating upon in the early part of the history. Again, the repeal of the Oppian law would have been one of the most brilliant episodes of the first decade, if it had happened early enough. As it is, there is simply the stereotyped formula that there was a great deal of excitement about what looked a very small matter, followed by a tame though prolix assertion that the women descended in a body into the streets to sup- port the repeal of the law, and blockaded the houses of the ' The affairs of Illyria and Macedonia were inextricably entangled, though Illyria was barbarous and Macedonia was not. iit \ I 424 LA TIN LITER A TURK, tribunes who supported Cato in his desire to maintain the law. There is a speech on each side, and Cato's is very racy and peremptory: it turns upon tiie mischief which would fol- low the emancipation of women and legislation in obedience to street demonstrations. The law is scarcely defended at all upon its merits apart from the general principles of frugality; and, as Livy did not dwell upon the reasons for the enactment of the law at the time it was passed, it is easy for Cato to make his defence of the law quite independent of the distress which was over. The elder Cato is one of the few characters that stand out sharply after the Punic wars in Livy, and it is only one side of Cato of which this can be said. Livy does not show at all the side of Cato on which Cicero dwells with predilection. We should not learn from him how clever and inventive Cato was; and that, not content with upholding the old-fashioned Roman ways against the license and contempt of the Hellen- izing party in the nobility, he was also anxious to compete with the Greeks in such of their accomplishments as he rec- ognized ; just as he studied the methods of Carthaginian husbandry and introduced them to his countrymen, while he wound up every speech in the senate with " Delenda est Carthago." Of course Livy does not give a hint that his ani- mosity to Carthage had its root in commercial rivalry. Car- thage had long ceased to be formidable to the supremacy of Rome in any part of Europe ; but, so long as any part of the old domain of the city was protected from Masinissa and his horsemen, Carthage competed formidably in Italian and neu- tral markets. Nor does Livy notice the curious contrast between Cato's interested implacability to Carthage and his disinterested patronage of Lusitanians and Rhodians, and his general de- sire to limit the foreign dominion of the Roman state, which in his opinion only tended to foster a denationalized class of aristocrats, with pretensions greatly at variance with abstract justice and with the convenience of the hard-working majority. When Livy has to deal with the typical specimen of this class, the younger brother of Publius Scipio Africanus, he LIVY, 425 takes refuge in vague phrases about "luxury" and "arro- gance," and finds the climax of the trial of Asiaticus in a dramatic scene of popular ingratitude; though, for one reason or another, he omits the famous legend of the tearing up the accounts which would have secured the acquittal of Asiaticus if only they had been read in court. The final secession of Scipio to Cumai is left unexplained, though Livy does not fall into the mistake of Seneca and Pliny, who make Scipio in his retirement a model of antique simplicity, because they com- pare the rudimentary luxury of the Republic with the devel- oped luxury of the Empire. No fragment has been preserved which bears upon the story of the Gracchi, though it is clear from the " Epitome" that he took the severest view of their enterprise. The most important agitation which he has to chronicle is a long quarrel between one Postumius and the senate, who refused to allow him to triumph for his perform- ances in yEtolia ; whereupon Postumius fell into a constant state of accusation, and would allow no one else to triumph if he could persuade the people to prevent it. It is remarkable how very little Livy was quoted : the only considerable fragments which have reached us are on the assassination of Sertorius, where the MS. is very imperfect, and the narrative of the death of Cicero, preserved by the elder Seneca. The latter is curiously meagre : the last thing Livy can find to say of Cicero is that he was " Vir magnus, acer, memorabilis." Even here one word is characteristic; to say that Cicero was ^zr^r, " sharp-set " both in judgment and ac- tion, is to say something that most modern critics miss. They see nothing in Cicero but his sensitiveness and vanity, his good intentions and his perplexity — all which Livy sees too, except the last ; and it is something to be reminded that, of all the politicians of the day, he was the strictest and keenest except Cato, and perhaps Bibulus. The language of Livy, in general, rises and fiills very closely with the thought. He is rather copious than verbose : he does not spend many words on what he mentions, but he mentions almost everything he knows and believes. When his knowledge is meagre, he is constantly on the strain, as IP M 426 LATIN LITERATURE. LIVY. 427 in the first decade, to impose some unity on the fragments by compression, and to fuse conjecture and assertion into a sin^^le sentence. When his materials are more abundant, he is content simply to set them side by side. Instead of the historical infinitive and oratio cbligua, we have sentences with no* predicate but a passive participle without a copula, and a decided diminution in the number of speeches; while such as are recorded are almost all in oratio recta. There is an- other change as the narrative advances: Livy is not only more matter-of-fact, but more critical. He suspects Valerius Maximus and Claudius Quadrigarius when he can compare them with Polybius, and finds that they record battles with enormous slaughter which are not mentioned by Polybius ; he still retains the battle and the victory, but he insists that the numbers must have been enormously exaggerated. Livy did not stand alone in the magnificent scheme of his history. The Greeks were inexhaustible when the Romans were at leisure to listen to them. Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote a Roman history which was even more copious than Livy's, much more laborious, and not much more trustworthy, for his antiquarian curiosity made him the dupe of a certain Cn. Gellius, who had accumulated much lumber. Diodorus of Sicily wrote without pretension to style and without much attention to accuracy. Pompeius Trogus,' who was not im- probably of Greek extraction, though connected with Gaul, wrote in Latin, and was supposed to have written with elo- quence and dignity the history of the world in the compara- tively moderate compass of forty-four books, from the founda- tion of Nineveh to the overthrow of Varus. We only know the work from the " Epitome " and from the copious extracts of Justin, a writer of the second century, who made it his busi- ness to run all the showy episodes together, so as to make a brilliant reading book. The result is that the narrative is 1 His third name, Trogus, is Greek, and is of the nature of a nickname. It implies that he or some ancestor had a trick of nibbling dainties. Such nicknames were not uncommon among native Romans of the highest rank, at a somewhat earlier period ; but a Pompeius with a Greek cogno- men is likely, in the reign of Augustus, to have owed his citizenship to Pompeius. disproportioned and disjointed ; but perhaps this is the fault of his abbreviator : perhaps it is not uncharacteristic that he is by the accidents of history one of our chief sources for the Sacred War, which ended in bringing Philip to the frontiers of Ba^otia. His notion of what is impressive seems to depend rather upon quantity than quality. He dwells upon great calamities, great armies, great revolutions, rather than upon great personalities, whom he does not understand. His re- flections are trite, and he is at bottom a pessimist, regarding history as a gloomy though splendid spectacle. 428 LA TIN LITER A TURE. TECHNICAL LITERATURE. 429 y w CHAPTER VII. TECHNICAL LITERATUl^E. Technical literature was not neglected. Hyginus, a Greek grammarian of Spanish extraction, wrote as voluminously as Varro, though time has spared nothing but two fragments. One is an abridgment of his work on genealogies, which Bur- sian conjectures was made in the Antonine age ; it has the title of " Fabula^." Probably this includes most of the stories which had been used in literature, while the antiquarian learn- ing and compliments to distinguished families which one looks for in genealogical treatises, ancient or modern, were omitted as of no use to a schoolmaster. The other is on astronomy, and extends, even as abridged, to four books, which are largely concerned with the constellations and their history. Fenes- tella, a native of high position, undertook a great deal of encyclopedic writing in the spirit of Varro, but apparently without his originality and humor. M. Verrius Flaccus was, in the opinion of Augustus, the first grammarian of his age ; he was appointed tutor to the emperor's grandchildren about 10 B.C., and was allowed to move with his old school into the palace on pledging himself to take no fresh pupils. His repu- tation seems to have been rather burdensome to posterity, for a good deal of the little we know of him comes to us in the form of quotations from other grammarians who wrote against him, and some hundred and fifty years after his death the meek Aulus Gellius picks a quarrel with him, and is wrong. He endowed his native town of Pra^neste with a learned mar- ble calendar, of which the first four months have been recov- ered by excavations, and the town repaid the compliment by erecting a marble statue in his honor. His work on the meaning of words must have been enor- mously extensive, for Gellius quotes the article on ater dies as from the fourth book, so that at least four books must have been devoted to the letter A. Again, Parasitus came in the fifth book of the letter P. It is plausibly maintained that each letter had a first and second part, and that the order of the first part was fairly alphabetical, while in the second there was an arbitrary grouping by subjects, which might account for Parasitus coming so late. He began with Augustus, partly in compliment to his patron, and partly for the sake of auspiciousness, just as he put Jupiter Lucetius at the begin- ning of L. He is no better than other Romans in his ety- mologies : for instance, he derives adolescere from the Greek n\c//., before a.d. 19, more than sixty years after Cicero ; but the life of Seneca had been long enough to have jriven him a chance to hear both, if the war of Munda had not kept him at home when Cicero was giving private lessons in oratory to lads hardly older than Seneca. The art of decla- mation, as Seneca described it, did not yet exist at Rome in Cicero's time ; he tells us himself that when he was young it was thought safer to speak, for practice, in Greek. It was when the forum became dull, because all speakers were com- pelled to respect the government and abstain from appeals to political passions, that the schoolman drew the public, who had been used to get as much excitement as they wanted by frequenting orators. There had long been professors of rhet- oric, who gave their pupils not only rules of how to speak, and subjects, if they wished it, to speak upon, but examples of their own skill (which was still a novelty in the time of the "Author to Herennius," whoever he was); but the reputation of such professors depended rather upon their judgment than their eloquence. Even when we make full allowance for the defects of Seneca's memory, it seems that the declaimers whose feats he records owed their reputation chiefly, though not exclusively, to the brilliant things they said. A course of declamation was a school of impassioned casu- istry; its interest lay in the discussion in the most outre form of all the questions suggested by family and political life. The standing subjects always brought up the relation of father to son, step-son to step-mother, and the like ; the com- monest type of question is. Was a father in a given case justi- fied in repudiating and disinheriting his son ? Nor are public affiirs exactly excluded, but they are always combined in some way with a family squabble. For instance, a son is commander-in-chief, being elected when his father had stood for the office ; afterwards he is taken, his father fails to ran- som him, he is crucified, and on the cross tells the ambassa- dors, sent from home to try and save him, to beware of the traitor. The father is tried for treason. Of course, the story is absurd, as absurd as the story of Massinger's " Old Law ;'* but it is full of exciting points, and any speeches that were made upon it would be lit up by the inarticulate excitement of the audience, and so seem finer than they were. For all sensational literature depends for its effect upon an excite- ment so intense that its occasion is not distinctly conceived. Take another case : it is assumed that a law exists enacting that a son v/ho strikes his father shall lose his hands. A tyrant commands two sons to beat their father: one commits suicide ; the other, after beating his father, succeeds in killing the tyrant. Here was an endless field for exciting epigrams. Two of the best are, of the father pleading for the son, " Would that I could plead for two," and of the son defend- ing himself, " Nothing in the whole tyrannicide was harder to do." Besides, underlying the controversy there was the whole question whether purity or utility ought to be para- mount; and there was the literary interest of finding a form of suggesting, without bombast or bathos, that, even at the time, the father would sooner have had a son beat him than commit suicide. Of course, this led to plenty of grotesque expedients; one orator actually made the father say that both I 436 LATIN LITERATURE. THE DECLAIMERS. 437 sons wanted to commit suicide, but that he succeeded in sav- ing one who, the by-standers wrongly thought, had struck him in the scuffle. Another favorite subject, which brought up a social rather than a political question, was the slave who married his mas- ter's daughter, to the disgust of his master's son. A tyrant was supposed to have decreed that the slaves should take the free women to wife, the men being either slain or driven into exile. One slave continued to treat his master's daughter with respect, and when the republic was restored her father gave her to him in marriage: the son (in order that the cause may come before some imaginary court) accuses the father of madness. It was, of course, quite possible that a tyrant should have issued such a decree, but in the days of the Greek tyrants the pride of caste had not reached the pitch that it had under the empire. All the ability of the leading speakers was spent on the side of the son : they did not trouble themselves to prove that the father was out of his mind; they dilated with emulous ingenuity upon the position that the girl was badly used. They hardly condescend to recognize that the slave had any merit at all in the matter : he was afraid of being crucified on the restoration of the re- public, as the rest had been ; at the utmost, he hoped that when his mistress was married he might be emancipated. If he had any merit, he lost it, thanks to the folly of the father. He was sufficiently rewarded by looking on in safety, when less cautious slaves were punished. It is noticeable that none of the defences of the father are hearty : they never go to the length of asserting that the generous slave was an equal of freemen. Albutius raised the question. What is a slave, or what is a freeman? trying to prove that the distinction was merely conventional, not that it was a real distinction which might be transcended by adequate merit. Latro, who was al- ways thorough and practical, dwelt a good deal on the differ- ence between misjudgment and insanity; others invented disparaging excuses for the father; he wanted to keep his daughter at home, and to give her a convenient, obsequious husband, and there was no money to provide a proper dower. or, after all, in a family like his it was no use looking high, and if his daughter was to marry a freedman, she had better marry a freedman of her own : and, after all, a son-in-law who could despise a tyrant was not to be so much despised. Even this was not putting the matter on low enough ground : one ingen- ious person thought that the father was influenced by prudence in descending to the common level ; it would have been too invidious, if the only maiden left in the community had mar- ried in her own rank. This does not seem to strike Seneca as absurd, although he is shocked when the son, after wishing the daughter might be childless, went on to explain that the wish was only reasonable, since tyrants, he heard, were bred from such matches. A slave is a little better treated in another discussion, of which we have only the summary, though the subject is too monstrous for any country but Rome. A man dying of an incurable disease asked one of his slaves for poison. The slave refused, and the master provided in his will that his heirs should crucify him : the slave appealed to the tribunes. The argument in favor of the will admitted that the slave would probably have been crucified if he had done as his master bade him, and only insisted that the slave must have deserved the cross already, or no master would have given him such an order; and another peroration was made up of the sacredness of wills and epigrams, of which this is a speci- men: " Why, you gallows-bird, do you mean your master is to die when you please, and you not to die when he pleases ?" But even in the summary it is clear that the slave's cause was considered the best. Still, it was thought that the master had a case, and this is intelligible when we see the state of feeling shown in the declamations about foundlings. A man did not, it seems, lose his rights over his children by exposing them : if, when they had grown up, the person who had saved their lives wished to keep one to adopt himself, it was quite intel- ligible that the father should go to law with him and bewail with the sincerest tenderness his misery in being forced to choose between his children. So, too, if the foundlings were crippled in order that they might bring a profit to their owner I ■ \ l< 43^ LA TIN LITER A TURK. THE DECLALMERS, 439 by begging, it seemed a serious aggravation of the crime that, if the unnatural parent was ever inclined to recognize them, he would not be able to know them. The relation between husband and wife, on the contrary, is less unequal. Very often the wife is assumed to bring an ac- tion for ill-treatment, in order to bring the father into court for his harshness to a son, who had no rights at all unless he undertook to prove that his father was insane. A wife, on the other hand, can always bring an action for an unjust divorce or for ingratitude, as the legendary lady did,' who was tort- ured by a tyrant to make her disclose her husband's plan of tyrannicide, and was afterwards divorced for being barren, when her husband had killed the tyrant. The action for in- gratitude is one of the most unreal elements of the declaimer's laboratory : it has no relation, or very little, to the actual in- stitutions of Greece or Rome : it was one of the fancy im- provements upon human law which appeared in more than one of the philosophical constitutions which, from the fifth century onwards, it pleased philosophers to draw up. It touched the actual life of Rome on the side of the relation between client and patron, but this was not what the de- claimers valued it for. They wanted the law in order that they might try Popillius for the slaughter of Cicero, on the ground that Cicero had defended him, and, to make the case more piquant, they assumed that he had defended him on a charge of parricide. Another, and yet more famous case, was that of Cimon and Callias. Callias had paid the fine to which Miltiades was sentenced, and so released Cimon, who gave himself up as a prisoner for his father's debt in order that his father might be buried. Then Cimon married Cal- lias's daughter, and on her adultery put her to death. Was this an act of ingratitude to Callias? The declaimers were inexhaustible. Had Callias conferred any benefit upon Ci- mon? Was it not much more glorious to be in prison as a witness for the innocence of Miltiades (for if Miltiades had taken bribes he could have paid fines), than to be the son-in- law of Callias? If there had been any benefit, Callias can- * The heroine of Fletcher's play, the " Double Marringe." celled it when he wished to protect an adulteress. If any return was due to Callias, Cimon paid him, and overpaid him, when he married into his family. If Cimon owed Callias any thanks for his daughter and her dower, he repaid him by put- tin<'^ the unworthy daughter to death, as Callias should have done. If Callias had really done Cimon a service, still Cimon was not bound to waive his rights as a man and a husband out of gratitude ; and so on, and so on. The same audacious orator, who thought Callias ought to thank Cimon for killing his daughter for him, opined that Cimon had put his wife in the way of adultery in order to get rid of the burden of grati- tude to Callias. Another instructive theme was the story of Flamininus, who obliged his mistress by the sight of an execution after dinner, and was afterwards tried himself for conduct unworthy the majesty of Rome. The best thing on the subject that Seneca quotes is due to Senecio, whom he did not admire. Senecio said he felt easy about a prisoner who stopped at criminals when he wanted to be cruel, and at a courtesan when he wanted to take his pleasure. A more serious speaker, Voti- enus Montanus, who was still more noted for his ingenuity than his judgment, brought up the whole imperial practice of prosecutions for treason, enumerating everything that might be punished under other laws, or reasonably enough left, un- punished, to public opinion ; after which he went on to an enumeration of all the distinguished commanders who had taxed the forbearance of the Roman people quite as severely as Flamininus. Another favorite subject from Roman history was the death of Cicero. Something has been said already of the motives which led the declaimers to expand the doubt- ful tradition that the party which hunted Cicero down was led by a Popillius whom Cicero had once defended in a private suit. The debates were overloaded by conceits like these. It was certain now that Popillius had murdered his father as he had murdered his patron ; or, it might fairly be hoped that he would be convicted now that he had no Cicero to defend him. Some ingenuity was displayed in working in quotations from Cicero himself. Cestius Pius quoted the passage on 440 LATIN LITERATURE, parricide from the speech for Roscius of Ameria; Marcellus ^serninus introduced a quotation from the fourth speech against Catiline, making Antonius reflect that Cicero was in- different to death, which could never come untimely to a con- sular or grievously to a philosopher ; but that possibly he might not be indifferent to being killed by his own client. The f^ict that Popillius, when he once had received his orders, had no choice and ran no risk was naturally indifferent to the declaimers. Some of them debated whether, supposing that necessity excused some crimes, it could excuse the crime of killing Cicero ; some remembered that they would have run some risk themselves if they had accused Popillius under Antonius or even Octavian. Some reflected that the order might have been given to J'opillius because his commander disliked him, and tried to get some pathos out of the imagi- nary hesitation of an imaginary coward. Only one had the boldness to lay down that Cicero deserved his fate, and to say something for Antonius as well as for Popillius. Cicero had carried a decree that Antonius and all his adherents were enemies of the State. What was this but to proscribe Anto- nius and Popillius.? This was thought a harsh method of pleading. It suited public feeling better to make Popillius say that his only way not to kill Cicero was for Cicero to kill himself ; and to kill himself had been too hard a task for Cicero. It was assumed, of course, that Cicero was in hiding, and that no one but Popillius would have been admitted to his retreat; although the fact that he died as he was beins carried alons: the open country in a litter was perfectly well known. Greek history was, upon the whole, less fruitful. There were the questions, what Alexander was to do when he came to the Sutlej, and what Leonidas and his Spartans were to do when they were left alone at Thermopylae ; but these belonged to the lower department of the declaimer's art — they were suasonc^, not controversice. The only cont rovers ia besides the ingratitude of Cimon was the legend of Parrhasius, who bought an Olynthian captive in order to make him serve as a model for Prometheus on Caucasus ; the slave died under the tort- ure, and the picture of Prometheus was dedicated to Minerva. THE DECLAIMERS, 441 Curiously enough, the only ground on which it seems Parrha- sius could be prosecuted was that he had injured the Athe- nian State — either by the sacrilege of dedicating such a pict- ure, or by the disgrace which must fall on a city where such cruelty was possible, or by his contempt for the decree which gave Olynthians equal rights at Athens. The Greeks all made a point of honor of declaiming against Parrhasius, and introducing some dreadful conceit about Pro- metheus, as if to outrage a model of a picture was to outrage the subject of the picture. Seneca was shocked at the sug- gestion that to torture the Olynthian with hot irons served Prometheus right for stealing fire for men : it was all right to complain that man and fire should be turned against Prome- theus. A point of law which the Romans were fond of was how the republic was injured by a man using, or even abus- ing, his power as a master over a slave ; and the same thor- ough-going speaker, who said Cicero had no right to complain of Antonius, went fully into the question whether the decree which conferred the rights of Athenian citizenship upon all Olynthians who got safe to Athens acted retrospectively in the case of an old man who had been sold and tortured before the decree was passed, or, at any rate, before Parrhasius knew of it. Most who defended Parrhasius were content to observe that the Olynthian was an old man, who would soon have (lied any way. Seneca thought it objectionable to add that he was a wicked old man : if anything of that kind were to be said, it was so easy to add that he was a traitor to Olynthus. Of course the point that Parrhasius treated his slave worse than Philip treated his captives was pressed every way. When the Olynthian was bound down he said, " Philip left my limbs free." The Olynthians begged life of Philip, but of Parrha- sius they had to beg for death. A Greek theme, which proved very fertile and attractive, was the privilege assigned to special acts of bravery, which could always be complicated with the question of parental au- thority. A " brave man " might have lost his hands, and then order his son to kill his wife and her paramour ; or a "brave man" might be forbidden to go to war by his father, who had I.— 19* 442 LATIiV LITERATURE. THE DECLAIMERS. lost other sons ;' or both the father and son might be brave, and dispute which was to choose his reward first. This last led to a very pretty complication : the son was to insist on choosing first, and to choose that the people should erect a statue to his father, who thereupon was to disown his distin- guished but disobedient son. In general, the whole of this ingenious literature was a sort of parasitic growth of the oratory of the period that succeeded Cicero. Its two guiding ideas were sense and sound: facts were an encumbrance even in actual pleading,"" for the wit- nesses served rather for ornament than use, and perjury was not exactly discreditable. When a man was accused of an indiscretion, it was spiteful to denounce it, and spiteful or cowardly to swear to it ; while a friend who must have known if the indiscretion was real won the praise of "constancy " by denying any knowledge. The court, in the main, had to go, not by evidence, but by the a priori probabilities of the case ; and it seemed a real progress to disengage these from the long-winded plausibilities and amplifications which make up the staple of Cicero's narratives. The court was supposed to know the facts, which each side was bound to assume to have occurred, by common fame ; it was only necessary to examine these narratives, not to repeat or to adorn them. The use of aphorisms, which had been introduced by the Asiatic school, was not therefore abolished : only, they had to be incorporated into the argument; it was all the better if they could be made concrete. The triumph was, if all the argument could be turned into a dazzling string of aphorism and apostrophe. There was another trace of the period before Cicero in the great formality of division, which we know was introduced by Hortensius. In the hands of the declaimers this received a new development, for every declaimer was expected to divide not so much his own speech as the question. If he could speak on both sides of each of the subordinate questions into which the main one fell, so much the better; but if not, it was > There is a play of Beaumont and Fletcher's on this. * Cicero, in the " Republic," i. 59, puts the aphorism into the mouth of Laelius: "A good judge attends more to arguments than to witnesses." 44. something to be proud of to have started as many questions as possible on each case. It was a grave shortcoming if a declaimer gave, by way of division, simply the heads of his own speech; that was a method only fit for an orator who ex- pected a reply. The opponents of Parrhasius, for instance, might treat his guilt in four degrees: he tortured a man; an Olynthian; he imitated the torments of the gods ; he brought his picture into the temple of Minerva. But if Parrhasius was to reply, it was impossible for him to justify under these four heads -^to say that there was no harm in torturing an Olynthian, and the like; whereas it admitted of being asserted or denied that cruelty to an Olynthian was an injury to the state of Athens. There was a constant rivalry between the orators who actu- ally pleaded in court and the declaimers ; and Seneca w^as all for making the distinction as sharp as possible. A declaimer who gave himself the airs of an orator was, to his mind, the absurdest thing in the world. Not that Seneca thought the declaimer was necessarily inferior to the orator, for the orator was a declaimer for practice. The truth was, the declaimer was much freer than the orator. He had not to observe the conventional optimism which an orator who wished to rise could not escape, and the orator was seldom more than a second-rate declaimer. One fundamental difference w^as that the orator spoke out-of-doors, and the declaimer adapted his voice to a room. M. Porcius Latro, the manliest of declaim- ers, once tried to plead in open court, but found himself com- pletely at a loss ; and his friend, the Proprietor of Hither Spam, actually adjourned the case into a room where he could make himself heard. This made declaimers ridiculous to their contemporaries : but we, who can hardly imagine the pos- sibility of finished speaking out-of-doors, need not wonder that the declaimer wished for the natural conditions. In fact, though Juvenal still laughs at the poor rhetorician forced to come down from his "rhetorical shade" to fight in the open torum, the declaimers only led where the orators were soon to follow: the covered basilica, with its large apse for the tribunal, tended in ever-increasing measure to supersede the 444 LA TIN LITER A TURE. THE DECLAIMERS. 445 forum. The cleclaimers, if of sufficient rank, simply admitted the public to hear them exercise their voices and invention in their own large halls; the others commonly took advantage, like poets, of the spacious baths which were opened in dif- ferent parts of Rome. This had its disadvantages, for it de- stroyed the teacher's authority over his class. Seneca once was listening to Murrhedius, who had a very high opinion of himself, and a very poor opinion of Cicero ; so, as he was complacently explaining that whatever line he had entered he would have been the greatest man in his line, Seneca inter- rupted the climax by saying that if he had been a pumpkin he would have been the greatest pumpkin in the world. Poor Murrhedius insisted that Seneca should apologize or leave before he would go on. Seneca coolly said he had nothing to apologize for, and had no intention of leaving a public bath till he had quite done bathing. Murrhedius and his class were helpless, and had no choice but to go away in a rage. It was a distinction of Latro that he never would hear his pupils declaim : they might listen to him and learn, and they might profit, if they could, by his ironical comments upon his rivals, whom he often parodied, till at last his hearers were afraid to applaud him. Seneca gives an amusing instance of his irony : he solemnly said, at the end of a burst of eloquence, *' Sepulcra inter monumenta sunt." The phrase was between a bull and a platitude; but it had the right ring about it, and the audience applauded to the echo, till they were scolded into silence. Seneca, who, like him, had come from Spain to Italy, gives us a lively picture of his habits and his immense mental activity: he was invariably occupied in speaking or preparing to speak. He was so eager that he made himself hoarse by waking up in the night to study, only taking a short nap after dinner, which, of course, impaired his digestion. These exertions were rather fitful : he allowed him«^elf no re- pose when at work, and naturally he worked himself to a stand- still; and then he would be completely idle until he had recruited himself by a holiday in Tuscany, where he would farm and hunt as eagerly as he had declaimed, without touch- ing a book or a pen. When he came back, he was at the height of his power, and astonished every one by his fertility and en- ergy, and by his complete command over his subject and his audience. Though he did not trouble himself to imitate the speeches of real orators, he avoided the fantastical display of ingenuity which tempted most speakers on unreal themes. He always tried to find some broad, simple issue which would give sufficient field for eloquence, instead of trying to raise as many questions as possible. In the same way, when it was clear, as it generally was, that one side was altogether in the wronir, he never went far afield for a " color " to put on the case ; although this left plenty of room to invention, since, in an imaginary case, " extenuating circumstances" might be multiplied or complicated at pleasure. It is unfortunate that the fragmentary state of Seneca's compilation has left us in ignorance of his portrait of Gallio, who was, in his judgment, the second rhetorician of the day; in the judgment of many, the first. Seneca says that when- ever they were matched against one another, the glory would have been with Latro and the palm with Gallio ; as if Gallio had been the more exquisite and brilliant, Latro the more fresh, vigorous, and telling speaker. The extracts which are given from Gallio are not very characteristic, and do not throw much light on the traditional criticism of Augustus pre- served by Tacitus.* The phrases of Gallio quoted by Seneca do not seem to be more "jingly" than those of other speak- ers ; and Seneca himself seems to think that it v;as not Gallio but Albucius Silo who was most disposed to rely upon sound ; though brilliant aphorisms with great display of voice are not exactly the same as the jingles which Augustus detected in Gallio. The reputation of Albucius stood the higher that he did not presume upon it. There were only five or six days in the year that he ventured to invite the public to listen to him ; very few had the privilege of hearing him in private, and they found the privilege worthless. He took no pains for an audience too small to be inspiring; he began to speak before he rose, and he luxuriated in idle speculation ; he did more » " Tinnitus Gallionis,'' Tac, " Dial." c. 26. 446 LATIN LITERATURE. than lay out the question, and yet he did not speak on it. He was only copious when there was a crowd to listen, and then he would often speak for three hours at a time, for he wished to say everything that possibly could be said. The argument was overloaded, for every proof was proved to be cogent, and every division of the subject was treated as if it were the whole ; every part was separately established and dilated upon, and digressed from, and put the speaker into a separate fit of virtuous indignation. He was not willing to trust him- self to speak extempore; and, to hide the fact that his highly ornamented declamation had been carefully prepared before- hand, he was apt to make excessive use of low words like "vinegar" and "lantern" and the like. He wished to dis- guise the fact that he was a mere rhetorician, and spoiled himself at last by his attention to Fabianus and Apollodorus, the standard writers upon rhetoric, who insisted much upon the importance of varying the style. The result was that in his later speeches there were long stretches of simple dulness, which were meant to be terse and vigorous. His reluctance to be a mere rhetorician led to a very mortifying fcdlure in open court: he was pleading a cause of inheritance, and chal- lenged the other party to swear by the memory of his father and his unburied ashes. It was, of course, a mere figure of speech, but Arruntius had influence enough with the court to insist that the phrase should be treated as a serious proposi- tion ; though poor Albucius said that at that rate figures of speech would perish from among men, Arruntius retorted that the world would survive the loss. Happily, figures of speech were quite safe in the school, and Albucius, who could not give them up at any price, might console himself with the reflec- tion that no one had such large audiences in the forum as he had at home. But even at home he was exposed to a good deal of ridicule. When the dutiful son had to put a brother suspected of parricide to death, and instead put him on board a leaky boat (with a view to his being picked up and saved by pirates, and subsequent complications), it occurred to Albucius that, as parricides were, as a rule, sewn up in sacks, it would be an effective allusion to call the leaky boat a wooden sack, THE DECLAIMERS. 447 as we call dangerous ships coffins. But Cestius made the conceit absurd by transferring it to the statement of the con- troversy : " One brother put another aboard a wooden sack to sail to Kennaquhair." The same speaker, whose success as a critic was as marked as his failure in original work, took another opportunity of vexing Albucius, who had gravely in- quired why a cup breaks when it falls, and a sponge falls with- out breaking, by telling his own class to go and hear Albucius declaim on the question why cucumbers did not fly like cuck- oos. The poor man died in character: he suffered from an incurable complaint, and went home to Novara to die; where- upon he invited all the commons of the town to hear him de- liver an oration on his reasons for abstaining from food. His career was always a disappointment; he never satisfied an audience, and always interested them. A reputation of very much the same kind was left by Mamercus Scaurus, who exhausted the forgiveness which the Romans were long willing to give to his name and unmistak- able talent. He was too indolent to prepare his speeches, and none were good throughout but by accident: all contained something to prove what a great orator was lost in him. He affected the gravity and dignity of antiquity ; he was choice and aristocratic in diction, and had a ready and a pretty wit, whenever he could drag his opponents into an altercation. He committed suicide three years before the death of Tibe- rius because he was accused of a treasonable tragedy by Macro, the praetorian prefect. Tacitus seems to imply that his eloquence was as remarkable as his life was scandalous. The same combination of talent and censoriousness and dissoluteness meets us in T. Labienus and Cassius Severus. They were not only declaimers, but orators and historians, whose works cannot have been valuable, for they were neg- lected as soon as Caligula removed the prohibition against having and reading them. Labienus was the earliest: when the decree for burning his books was published, Cassius said he ought to be burned too, inasmuch as he had learned them by heart. Cassius Severus was a man of more serious talent; as an 448 LATIN LITERATURE. orator he made an epoch, and as a declaimer he was, if not in the first rank, a respectable champion and a formidable critic. He was the most effective of all speakers upon the favorite theme of the man who mutilated children who were exposed, in order that when they grew up he might trade upon their profitable infirmities. Most speakers were content to dwell upon the obvious point, that at any rate he had treated the children better than the parents who turned them out to die; but Cassius developed the subject into an attack upon all the injustices of contemporary civilization. It was useless to con- tend that the heartlessness of an individual was an injury to a state all whose members were as heartless in other ways. This bitter censoriousness was the secret of his power:' no one trusted him as an advocate, but he had abundant practice in speaking for the defence, as he was prosecuted himself so often. But he preferred, when he could, to prosecute, and even then he never convicted. It was one of Augustus's jokes, " I wish Cassius would prosecute my forum," which hung on hand, "because then it would be sure to be absolved," which in Latin meant either " acquitted " or "finished " ! He was so libellous in his attacks upon the honor of men and women of position, that Augustus felt compelled to extend the law of "majesty" to punish such oftences; the theory being, that offensive publications which disparaged persons of rank im- paired the "majesty " of the state, and of course this applied a fortiori to any disrespect to the person of the emperor. Cassius was banished under this law to Crete, and, as he was equally active in mischief-making there, he was finally ban- ished to Seriphos, in the tenth year of Tiberius, where he died of old age, being really too insignificant for further punish- ment. Ikit there is a complete consensus of authority as to his very remarkable eloquence. Throughout the dialogue on the orators, he is recognized on both sides as the real founder of the new school of oratory ; and the elder Seneca and Quinc- tilian bear witness to the completeness of his victory over all the obstacles in his path— his low birth, his bad life, his un- popular politics. He was practically the only speaker after THE DECLAIMERS, 449 the age of Cicero whom Quinctilian thought profitable to stu- dents of his own day. Tacitus gives him credit as the one ora- tor of the new school who had retained the liberal training of the republican period, who knew philosophy and history and law. The orators of the reign of Vespasian read nothing and knew nothing but the forum ; and even the declaimers had abandoned erudition, and accepted a complete depend- ence on text-books and compilations. Latro knew every event in the life of every general sufficiently to get the rhetorical points out of it, but even in the days of Latro such independ- ence was rare. Few took their vocation seriously enough to work for it. Montanus, who was as genial as he was grotesque, said that he did not write his declamations, for fear that the foolish things that he said should fix themselves in his mem- ory and form vicious habits of speaking. With all his praise, Seneca quite agrees with Quinctilian and Tacitus in his description of the limitation of Cassius's powers as a speaker ; he was, after all, too constantly heated, and his speeches had no development or repose. As the an- cients said, he had more energy than blood;' he lacked the fulness and pervading glow of a Demosthenes or a Cicero, thouo^h it mi":ht be said of«him, as it could not be said of Cic- ero, that there was nothing otiose in his conduct of a case, nothing that the hearer could miss without loss, nothing which did not tell and was not furnished with a proof of its own. Then, his voice and person were full of charm and dignity. Like so many Roman speakers, he is praised in the same breath for being suave and for being cutting, for the audience were never supposed to sympathize in any measure with two parties at once, and a speaker had no need to observe any measure in wounding his opponent. Seneca explains that no quotations could do justice to the oratory of that period.^ Cicero and one or two of his contem- * " Plus vis quam sanguinis." — Tac. *' Dial." 26, 4. ' This may account for his total failure to convey to his readers any sense of the eminence of Q. Arellius Fuscus the elder, whom he ranks as the fourth of the great declaimers : his extracts are wearisome, and remark- able, if for anything, for arid acuteness. Seneca says he was a very capri- cious speaker ; the framework of his declamation was dry to a degree, but 450 LATIN LITERATURE. HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS. 451 poraries were as good to read as to hear, but it is a general rule with Seneca that speeches were iiiore effective when heard than when read, and it was, moreover, very uncertain whether any particuhir speaker would do such justice as was possible to any particular speech in writing it out. P^ery speech was like a fine acting play, with the further advantage that it was acted by the author ; many speeches were like act- ing plays which owe their success to the improvisations of the actor, inspired by contact with his audience. A speaker who failed in preparation might be roused at the moment of speak- ing, but he would not be able to recall the effect at will. An- other might overload himself with superfluous ingenuity, and this was a defect apt to be exaggerated in publication, because his first thoughts were best, and, if he inflicted his second thoughts upon an audience, he was apt to inflict his third thoughts upon his readers. Votienus Montanus, the Ovid of the declaimers, made his reputation by a speech before the centumviri, who decided little but cases of inheritance, and consequently had plenty of leisure to listen to young speakers. His client was a lady accused of poisoning her father, who consequently left her only one twelfth of his property. Mon- tanus said, what in Seneca's judgment ought, if he had left it alone, to have endured to all ages—" Uncia nee filiae debetur nee veneficae,'" but he spoiled the eftect by more variations than Seneca could remember or cared to go through. " In a father's will a daughter should have her own place or none." "A daughter ought not to have such a narrow footing in her father's will." As Seneca says, each variation is good, but none equal to the original, and when he came to publish he was not content with what he had spoken. the cadences were always soft, flowing, and effeminate, and he never lost any opportunity of luxuriating in flowery description ; there was nothing rough, or keen, or earnest in his speaking. This meagre and paradoxical criticism is given incidentally when Seneca is characterizing Fabianus, an amiable philosopher, who took great pains in his youth to learn the man- ner of Fuscus, and afterwards to unlearn it, as not quite worthy of a phi- losopher. > "A twelfth is the due neither of a daughter nor of a poisoner." % CHAPTER IX. HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS. The rhetorical activity of the time made reading for its own sake superfluous and burdensome, and there was more demand for compilation than for independent works. A person who cared to hear declamations required a certain knowledge of history to understand the allusions ; a person who intended to cultivate declamation wanted a reading-book to supply him with illustrations. Besides, a person without intellectual in- terests did not like to be entirely ignorant either of the out- line of events or of the most edifying and exciting anecdotes. It is our good fortune to possess a specimen of each kind of compilation, and it is instructive also to learn that it was the reading-book for rhetoricians which had the largest measure of success. There is scarcely any ancient book which is so little quoted in ancient or mediaeval times as the two books of M. Velleius Paterculus, who composed a summary of Roman history for Vinicius, consul a.d. 30. Priscian names him once at length, and two scholiasts mention him under the name of Patercu- lus. He has given a tolerably complete account of himself, or at least his military services, from the first to the fourteenth year of our era, when he and his brother were appointed prae- tors, being the last to receive that honor from Augustus, and the first to receive it from Tiberius. As he says nothing of further promotion, it is probable that he did not receive any, although he might have held a provincial government without feeling called to mention it if it did not bring him into per- sonal contact with Tiberius. It might not be uncharitable to suspect that he took advantage of the consulate of a personal friend to see if he could recall himself to notice by an enthu- siastically loyal history: he speaks of the pleasure with which 452 LATIN LITERATURE. he reflects on his visits to the East in the first days of his service, as if the experience had not been repeated. No book, on the other hand, was more popular than the collection of memorable words and deeds by Valerius Maxi- mus, whose patron, Sextus Pompeius, was consul a.d. 14, and pro-consul of Asia in 27; the latest date he mentions is the fall of Sejanus, a.d. 32, while in the preface to the sixth book he addresses a chamberlain of Julia, the mother of Tiberius: she died in a.d. 29. There were two abridgments of his work, executed at the beginning of the fifth century by Julius Paris, who still wished the book to serve its old purpose as a man- ual for young declaimers, and at a somewhat later period by Januarius Nepotianus, for the benefit of a young student, Vic- tor by name, who showed his singular proficiency by desiring that ancient writers should be abridged for his benefit. Prob- ably there were few who read anything beyond the necessary text-books, while a student (probably an ecclesiastic) who wished to know as much of ancient literature as possible found that his time for reading was limited by other duties; and, besides, the wordiness of Valerius Maximus was as disa- greeable to a reader more familiar with the psalter than any other book, as the simplicity of the Old Testament had been to a student of Cicero like St. Jerome. Velleius is, as he tells us repeatedly, a very cursory writer: he divides his book into two halves at the capture of Carthage, and of these the first has only reached us in a very fragment- ary condition. The writer had not confined himself strictly to Roman history, which was his ostensible subject : in the early history he seems to have told in outline what he knew both of the beginnings of Greece and of the farther East, but this has to be made out from later allusions, as considerably the larger part of the first book has been lost, including the whole regal period. What there is of it is not very character- istic : the author has better opportunity to display his ingenu- ity in the later part of his work, where he can draw the out- lines of familiar characters. He makes a system of optimism; when he has to relate Sulla's reconquest of Athens he is care- ful to assert that Athens was always faithful to the Roman al- mSTORICAL COMPILATIONS, 453 liance, and only needed to be delivered from her tyrant ; and when he comes to Sulla's reconquest of Italy he insists on his endeavors to arrange the war on just terms and equal con- ditions. He admires Cicero without reserve, and calls him vir novitatis nobilissimcc, a " new man of the highest nobility :" he makes no excuses for the conspiracy of Catilina, and ap- i)lauds the energy with which Cato forced the senate to decree the execution of the conspirators by taunting the advocates of mercy with complicity. So, too, he tells with great unction the story of the homage paid to Q. Catulus when he opposed the Gabinian law: he does not know which to admire most, the generosity of the people who could see the greatness of an opponent, or the modesty of the statesman whose opposition was at once disarmed by the generosity of his countrymen. This general optimism should be taken into account in judging of his language about Augustus and Tiberius, which is extremely enthusiastic, especially about the latter. We naturally compare Velleius with Livy and Tacitus (as if the tone they take was what any Roman who respected himself would take), instead of with those who lived under Elizabeth in England or under Louis XIV. in France; so that, though the loyalty of Velleius does not exceed what we might find then, it produces all the effect of servility, the rather that his loyalty has a strong religious color. He talks of having been a witness and a minister of the most heavenly occupations of Tiberius before he had succeeded Augustus, although Tiberius would never allow his work to be called "heavenly" or di- vine even when he was emperor. It is true that he served under Tiberius when Tiberius was at his best in the German and Pannonian campaigns, after his return from Rhodes, and that, when Tiberius showed his real care for his men by plac- ing his own litter at the disposal of the wounded, Velleius profited personally by the kindness. Still, one feels that de- votion is a little forced when the retreat to Rhodes is repre- sented as the heroic action of a hero, even of a misunderstood hero, a hero whom, as Velleius hints, it was not always easy to understand. He succeeds better with the few moving words that tell the silent fire which burned in the old man's heart 454 LATIN LITERATURE. for three years (a.d. 27-29),' thanks to the disloyalty of his daughter-in-law, Agrippina, and her son. And the description of the blessings of his orderly rule is not overcharged : it is true that the provinces and the capital, up to the time at which Velleius wrote, enjoyed completer repose than they had known under Augustus. About Augustus the writer is less enthusiastic: he feels that the proscription requires a great deal of apology, and is only half satisfied to throw the blame upon the other triumvirs, especially Antonius, who is denounced in good set terms for the death of Cicero. Even Antonius is not altogether sacrificed— at least, he fares better than Plancus, who deserted him; and between Ccesar and Pompeius the author is almost impartial : all honest men wished both to put down their armies. There is some shrewd- ness in the remark that Pompeius raised forces for his war against Mithridates and most of his other wars at his own dis- cretion, and dismissed them at the discretion of others.= Sex- tus Pompeius, one of the most curious figures in historv, is rather slurred over: the writer forgets to mention some of the most important things that happen in their place.' The book is, as he says, very hurried : no attempt is made to ex- plain or describe a battle or a campaign, except in the con- trast between the conditions of the opposing fleets at Acti- um;* even then we learn nothing of the battle, except that Antonius's men went on fighting for some time after he had run away after Cleopatra, a theme for some leisurely antithe- sis. "* Sometimes the antithesis is helped by the hurrv. We are told nothing of CiEsar's campaign in Africa, exceptVhat he fought first with doubtful fortune, then with his own.' ^ In spite of his brevity, Velleius always finds room for digres- sion, on such subjects as the constellation of genius which is to be found at certain limited epochs, or the behavior of freed- men, slaves, wives, or children during a period of proscription. "Quamdiu abstruse, quod miserrimum est, pectus ejusflagravit incen- dio? quod ex nuru, quod ex nepote dolere, indignari, erubescere coactus est."— Veil. " Pat." II. cxxx. 3. ' II. xxxiii. 3. 3 E.g. II. Ixxiii. 2. ♦ II. ixxxiv. 2. * II. Ixxxiv. 3-6. « jj^ ]y^ J HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS. 455 As a rule he prefers, when he has made sure of a striking general fact, to leave it for subsequent explanation. It is a shrewd observation that freedmen behaved better than wives, and slaves better than sons, and it is to Velleius's credit that he nowhere shows any enthusiasm for the Fatria potcsias, that singular survival of which so many Roman writers were proud. Valerius Maximus is less discriminating; he waxes enthusi- astic over the obedience of a certain tribune of the commons, who, though resolved to carry his agrarian law in defiance of the senate, who were prepared for armed resistance, came away at once, to the full content of the commons, when his father led him away from the rostra.' He omits to inform us that, in spite of his deference to his father, Flaminius carried Iiis law. On the other hand, he exults in all the stories of wills that were set aside because made at the expense of family ties. He is just as pleased'^ when a son whose father passed him over because he had been adopted into another fimily (in which, of course, he was to be provided for) ousts the clients of Pompeius, as when the father of eight sons^ re- covered the estate of the eighth, who also had been adopted into another family and thought he had a right to leave his money away from his own. Whenever a father puts a dis- creditable child to death, or drives him or her to suicide, Valerius is ready with applause. He applauds Hortensius the orator for making a will in favor of his unsatisfactory son, because he had traded upon his sentiments as a father when defending his son in court. He applauds a nameless father who, hearing that his son meditated parricide, first entreated his wife to say whether he was in very truth his own son or no, and, being satisfied that he was, immediately took him to a lonely place and offered him a sword to cut his throat, to spare him the trouble of employing a brigand or buying poi- son : the son, we learn, was converted. The story looks very like a rhetorician's theme, dating, perhaps, from a time when themes were not sharply divided into controversice and suasorice. One of the points in which the influence of rhetoricians ' Val. Max. v. 4, 5. vn. 7, 2. vii. 7» 5- 456 LATIN LITERATURE. shows itself most plainly is the writer's sensitiveness to "color" in the technical sense; it is quite a typical case when he tells us* that Horatius was acquitted for killing his sister because the people thought that " the childish love of the maiden had been visited rather severely than unkindly." (It is a curious notion that it was too soon for her to be in love with her betrothed; she should have waited till they were married.) Very much in the same spirit he treats the refusal of Caesetius to oblige Caesar by casting off his son, who, as tribune, had done what he could to annoy Ccesar. In Vale- rius's opinion Caesar was so divine and generous a person that he ought to have been obeyed, of course all the more because Caesetius had two other promising sons left, to whom Caesar was good enough to promise promotion; and so Caesetius fig- ures among a list of fathers who were more or less culpably indulgent; while Hortensius, whose son was absolutely worth- less, is classed with the fathers who showed commendable moderation. Valerius's tone about the empire, if not as fervent as Vel- leius's, is quite as exaggerated. Sejanus's designs against his father-in-law are a unique specimen of the crime of par- ricide. When Caesar (as aedile ?) took the opportunity of ar- resting a man who had abused the license of Sulla's time,"* we are told that " Caesar's equity drew back the rudder of Roman Empire from Sulla's violence, since a more righteous ruler swayed the state." In spite of this there is an unre- served admiration for all the heroes of the old republic. The fiction that the empire was the republic under superhuman citizens is treated quite naively as a fiact. And this explains why Valerius sometimes seems to protest covertly against the new regime. For instance, Tiberius had invented the system of making over the slaves of suspected persons to an agent of the treasury, in order that their evidence might be given against one who was no longer their master ; and yet Vale- rius tells us three times over, as if it were always a special » Val. Max. viii. 8, i. ' He had seized the property of a man whom he chose to call his father, ousting the real son. HIS TO RICA L COMPILA TIOXS. 457 proof of justice, of eminent Romans who had refused the de- cisive evidence of a slave against his master in some impor- tant trial. But very likely he is blind to the contrast, just as he is blind to the point of three stories he tells of men who owed their success in life to Lucullus, to Augustus, and a less illustrious patron. All promised to leave their fortunes to those who had helped to make it, and all broke their word after keeping up the farce to the very last, one presenting his pa- tron on his death-bed with the rings that he had, to hand over to the heirs. Valerius tells the stories under the heading of '' Wills which were not upset," though they might have been, and is much more impressed by the meanness of the testators than by the state of subservience in which they had lived. That Atticus took the money which was left to him after be- ing promised to Lucullus does not shock Valerius, who per- haps did not notice the circumstance. He is not particular as to details at any time. For instance, he makes Spurius Cassius, the first victim of the charge of seeking to restore the monarchy, a tribune of the commons, because he was in some sense a demagogue ; and there are several cases where people of the same name are confounded. The work has neither chronological nor logical arrange- ment. It begins with religion, and instead of an invocation of Jupiter, whTch Velleius piously puts at the end of his history, we have a prayer to the Deity of Tiberius. I'he book ends with a chapter on Wonders, beginning with the apparition of the Twin Brethren at Lake Regillus, and ending with the serpent that was bombarded by the army of Regulus. Then comes a second book, which seems intended to illustrate hu- man institutions, beginning with marriage, and passing through such external things as the public spectacles and the right of triumph, to such specimens of "majesty" as C. Marius fii<^htening off the Cimbrian who was sent to kill him at Min- lurnse, and Cato followed to prison by the whole senate when CiEsar committed him for obstructing business, or Harmodius and Aristogeiton, whose statues were treated like the images of the gods at Rhodes, when Seleucus sent them back from Asia to Athens. Such traces of a scheme as have been visi- I. — 20 458 LA TIN LITERA TURE. HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS. 459 ble disappear with the next book, which begins with instances of precocious virtue and rambles through all kinds of personal traits — fortitude, patience, self-indulgence, degeneracy, con- stancy, and the like, gratitude and ingratitude, love to kith and kin and fatherland, clever sayings, resolute sayings, justice, severity, perfidy, study, and industry, which in a methodical writer would have been brought into a close connection with a chapter on precocity, just as a chapter on chastity would have been brought into connection with the chapter on marriage. There are several chapters where the author is careful to in- sist on the danger of vindictiveness : a man who propitiates Nemesis is always safe ; a man who forgets her is always sure to be disappointed. Every chapter is divided between Roman and foreign examples of whatever trait the author wishes to illustrate, and he does not succeed in being impartial \ for instance, the battle of Cannai is in his eyes an instance of barbarian cunning bordering upon treachery. His principal sources, so far as they can be traced, are Livy, Herodotus, Sallust, Cicero, Cornelius Nepos, and Pom- peius Trogus. He does not name any often : Pomponius Ru- fus, a nearly contemporary author, whose commonplace book is quoted under the title " Collectorum," is only mentioned once. His style has little distinction; fortunately, for the most part he reproduces his authorities without much chano-e, but the addition of a tame epigram of this calibre: '' So the poor man felt more unhappy in the author of his murder than in the murder itself" ' The story is of a man whose son be- trayed him during the proscription of the triumvirs, and is probably taken from Livy, for it is found in Orosius. When he is original, his style is a clumsy copy of the declaimers. He lacks their energy of movement and their point and fire ; he is fond of flat apostrophes, and lacks neatness of phrasing; he is given to devices like beginning a new paragraph with ergo. His last chapter is on people who have thrust them- selves on families to which they were strangers, and perhaps may be the occasion upon which the tract upon proper names, of which fragments have reached us, was annexed to his trea- ^ IV. ii. 5. V tise as a tenth book. It may be inferred that the work in its present state dates from the fourth century, as it does not ap- pear that -rammarians had hit upon the device of calling the second Jsnomcn {e.g. Africanus, Numidicus) agnomen until that date. INDEX TO VOL. I. Accius, 30, 37 ; ranked above Knni- us, 38 ; his " Bacchae," " Piaetex- tse," " Hrutus," 42. Aitn^ prima and actio seciinda aganist Vents, 150. A:(iiiian campaigns, in Livy, 404. /Kschylus ot Cnidus, 146. /Ksop'us, the actor, 43. /V^opus, the fabulist, 386. Atianius, 60. African war, history of, by continua- tors of Hirtius, 222. African writers, 14. Ahala, Q. Serviiius, 72. Alban kings, 17. Albinovanus, correspondent ot Hor- ace, 315, 316. All)inovanus. See Pedo. Albunea, 4. Albutius Silo, 436, 445. Alexandrian literature, 12. Alexandrine affinities of Catullus, 109. Alimentus, L. Cincius, 73. Alphius, 304. Ancus Martins, 16. Andes, Vergil's native village, 255 ; included in confiscated district of Cremona, 260. Andronicus, Titus Livius, of Taren- tum, 19 ; his plays, official thanks- giving, abridgment of the Odyssey, 19. Anna Perenna, 16. Annales Maximi, 69, 72, 126. Annals, 5. Anser, C. Licinius, 251. Antias, Valerius, I97-I99' 405* Antiochus of Ascalon, 146. Antonius, C, consul with Cicero, 152, 156. Antonius, M., the orator, Cicero s estimate of, 133 ; his speeches, 134. Apollonius, Cicero's teacher, 144. Apollonius Rhodius, 13. Appian on battle of Cannae, 419. Apuleius, 9, 14. Aratus, translated by Cicero, 82, 145. Archelaus, 81. Ardea, dispute about land near, 402. Arruntius, L., imitator of Sallust, 241, 396. Aryan immigration, I. A tell an farces, 18. Atticism, 6 ; in oratory, 177, 190. Atticus, Titus Pomponius, 151, 161 ; annals of, 203 ; life of, by Corne- lius Nepos, 205 ; story of, in Vale- rius Maximus, 457. Aufidius, Cn., 196. Augustan age, 244 sqq. Augustin, St., 15, Aurelian law, 149. Ausonius, 15. Babrius, followed by Phxdrus, 386, 387. Bacis, prophecies of, 4. Barrus, T. Betucius of Asculum, 136. Booksellers, references of Horace and Martial to, 249. Brougham compared with Cicero, 141, 164. Brutulus Papius, 407. Brutus, L.Junius, 16; Brutus, M. Ju- nius, an orator opposed to Cras- sus, 135 ; Brutus, M. Junius, the tyrannicide, 187, 191 ; Cicero's Di- alogue, 185. Bucolics of Vergil, 256; of T. Cal- purnius Siculus, 3S9-392. 462 IXDEX. liullatlus, letter to, 312. Ca'cilius Statins, 53. Cajliiis, I.. Antipatcr, 73, 79. Cxpio, Q. Servilius, 136. Caisar, the Elder, tragedies of, 43 ; sj)eeches, 137. ^^';^^''.' *-• J"''"S his Latinitv, 186; Tacitus's jud^ment on, 186; his "Commentaries," 208 sqq. ; quo- tations from, 213, 217; civil war, 216; Alexandrine war, 219; ac- count of, continued by Ilirtius, 219; Sallust's report of 'his speech on Catiline's conspiracy, 240. Calendar of Cn. Flavius, 70. Calidius, M., 187. Callimachus, 13. Calpurnius, T. Calpurnius Siculus, 3^9-393- Caivus, C. Licinius, 177, 1S8, 189, ^ 251. Canutins, P., 137. Carbo, C, contemporary of Tiberius Gracchus, 128. Carmen Scecularc, occasion of, 319. Cassius Ilemina, wrote annals atter Cato, 78. Cassius of Parma, republican poet, , 250. Cassius Severus, 447. Catilina, Lucius Sergius, 152. Catius, 297. Cato, the KIder, 4 ; his " Origincs," 75 ; character, 77 ; speech %^x the Rhodians, 78, 123,424 ; specimens of his oratory preserved by Fronto, I 123 ; and(;ellins, 123 ; manuals of ; agriculture. 269 ; Livy upon, 424. i Catullus, C. Valerius, 106 ; chronol- i ogy ot his poems, 107 ; Kpithala- ' nmun to Maliius, 109, 114; Attis, I 109, 116, 118; j)oems to Lesbia, ! Ill ; treatment of contemporaries, | 112; Septimius and Acme, 113;' Peleus and Thetis, 115; favorite \vords of praise, 1 19, Catulus, Q. Lutatius, 196. Caudine Forks, Livy on, 401, 402. Census of the Roman people, 198. Cestius, 447. Cethegus, M. Corneb"u<;, 122. Cicero, 4, 11 ; his pre-eminence in Latin prose, 140 ; his writings : Pro Murena,"i4o, 155; *' In Ca- tilmam," 140; " Pro Cxlio," 140 15S; "i'i<>Milone,"i4o, 157, ,6o- Piiilippics, 163, 178 ; letters to At- ticus, 140, 179; Letters "ad Fa- miliares," 179 j treatises on the Republic, 159, 174; laws, 160, 174. "5'utus,;' ,61, 175, ,85; a "Con- solation, 161 ; on friend-shiji, old age, glory, 162 ; Tusculan dispu- tations 161, 172, 173; "Nature ot the Gods," 162, 168, 173; "I)e Fato,"i62, 166; "I)eOfficiis,"i62 163, 173; "Academics," 165, 166- •'DeFinibus,"i7o, 172; "Lxlius," ^1}>> 175 ; Panegyric on Cato. i6r • "Cato," 173; "J)e()ratore,"i75;' "De Inventione," 180 ; parties m the age ot Cicero, 141 ; his rela- tions to Caesar and Pompeius, 144 ; early studies and compositions^ 144 ; translations from the Greek, 43« 82, 145 ; first speeches, 146 •' subsequent travels and studies; his wives, Terentia and Publilia' 147 ; prosecution of Verres, 148-^ 150 ; defence of p'onteius and Ca:- cina, 150; sui)porter of Manilian law, 151; consulate, 152; poem njion, 156; defends Antonius, Mi- nucius Thermus, and Valerius Flaccus, 156, 157; banished. 157; restored, 157; defends P. Se>tius, 158; Vatinius and Ciabinius, 159; defends Sanfeius, and is made governor of Cilicia. 160 ; proposed travels in Greece, 162; hostility ot Antonius, proscription, 163 • death, 163; defence of Rosciiis and Cluentius, 177; Livy's view ot, 425 ; Cicero's notices of Vn- nius, 26, 28, -^i, 2>7 ; of Pacuvius, 31 ; of the elder CcXsar's trage- dies, 43 ; of I>Iautus, 46 ; of Liicili- ns, 64 : of the Annales Maximi, 69, 72 ; of L. Calpurnius I'iso, 78 ; of Lucretius, 85 ; of Appius Caucus, 122 ; of C. Laclius, 125 ; of S. Snl- picius Galba, 127; of M. ^Lmilius Lepidus Porcina, C. Fanniiis, and C. Carbo, 12S; of Crassns, 133; of Antonius, 134 ; of L. .^lius Sti- lo. 136; C. Aurelius Cotta, 136, 138; P. Sulpicius Rufus, 137, 138; INDEX. 463 Mortcnsius, 138; of himself, 139; of Cn. Autidius, 196; of iSisenna, 201. Cicero, Quintus, 43, 155, 159. Cincinnatus, L. (Quintus, 72. Cinna, his "Smyrna," 82, 109, 264; killed by mistake, 250, 251. Classical character of Latin litera- ture, 8. Claudian, 14. Claiidian and Flavian period, liter- ary opposition of, 7, 9. Claudius. See Quadrigarius. Clodia, mistress of Catullus, no. Clodius, 155, 157. "Coma Herenices," translated by Catullus, 108. Comic drama, traditional, 5, 45. Commentarii Pontiticum, 70. Constantine, 14. Coriolanus, 72. Cornelius, A. Cornelius Cossus, 405. Cornelius, A.Cornelius Severus, 374. Cornelius Nepos, Lives of Cato and Cicero, 203 ; Lives of illustrious men, 204 ; Life of Atticus, 205. Corona, audience in the law courts, 176. Cotta, C. Aurelius, 136; Aurelian law of, 149. Cotta Messallinus, 371. Court, standing, for the trial of pro- vincial governors, 120; district courts held in Gaul, 210, 211. Crassus, Publius, studied with Scae- vola, 128; "maturity" of, 130 ; Cicero's opinion of, 133 ; alterca- tion with IWutus, 136. Culex, ascribed to Vergil, 257 ; me- tre of, 281, 11. Curio, C, 130. Curio, the younger, 188. Curius, M'., 122. Curtius's Pool, 16. Curule aediles, their appointments, according to Livy, 404. Cyprian, St., 14. Decins, debate with Fabius in Livy, 409. Declamation, becomes fashionable as political oratory decays, 249. Delphi, 16. Demetrius Syrus, 146. Diodes of Peparethus, followed by Fabius Pictor, 72. Diocletian, 14. Diodorus of Sicily, 426. Diodotus, Cicero's teacher, 144. Dionysius of ILilicarnassus, 426. Dionysius of ^Llgnesia, 146. Dirges, 4. Divina Comcdia, 5, ;;. Divinatio, the speech opening plead- ings, 150. Dogs, British and Molossian breeds, 378. Drama, earliest Roman, 17. Druids, described by Caesar, 2 16. Drusus, M. Livius, 132. Drusus, brother of Tiberius, poem on the death of, 375-377. 393. ''• Economic changes, after Punic wars, 76 ; referred to by Lucretius, lOi ; by Sal lust, 240. Education, 11, 12. Elizabethan literature, 280. En nius, not a native of Rome, 5 » "Annals," 17, 22, 27, 30; born at Rudiae, 23 ; on dreams, 24 ; his philosophy, 25 ; translated a Sicil- ian cookery book, 26 ; the model client according to, 26 ; " Medea," 33» 35; "Eumenides," "Ij)hige- nia,""Erechtheus,""Melanippa," 36 ; Satires, 62 ; " Protrepticon," 63 ; lines of, preserved in Vergil, 279. Epicedion Drusi, 375-377. 394. «• Epicharmus, 5. Epicureanism, Cicero's attitude tow- ards, 169, 171 ; Vergil's, 256; Hor- ace's, 293. Epitaphs of the Scipios, 4. Etruscans, not Aryans, 2 ; Etrurian insurgents, manifesto of, 231, ;/. Euripides, 33. "Evil songs," of the nature of charms, 4. Exodia, often burlesques, 18. Fabian us, 449, w. Fabii, family records of, 72, 73, 409. F\abius ALiximus, 371, 419. Fabius Pictor, 72; wrote in Greek, 73. Fabius, Q. ^^milianus, 125. Fabricius, 122. 464 INDEX. Family records, historical value of, 71 ; history of the Junii and Mar- celli by Atticus, 203. P'aniiius, C, his histories, 79, 80 ; his oratory, 128. Febris, worsiiip of, 3. Fenestella, 428. Fimbria, C, 132, 133. Flacciis. See Horace and Verrius. Flavian period, malcontent literature of, 7, 9. Floralia, 368. Florentine literature, 6, 7. Fronto, M. Cornelius, on Cato, 75, 123 ; on Claudius ^uadrigarius, 196; Valerius Antias, 196; and Sisenna, i()6, 201. Futius and Furl us, 300. Fuscus, Aristius, Horace's letter to, 317. Fuscus, Q. Arellius, the elder, 449, ;/. Galba, Servius Sulpicius, 126; im- I)eached by Libo, 127 ; C. Galba, his son, 132. Galliambics of Catullus, 108. Gallio, second rhetorician of Sene- ca's day, 4^5. Gallus, Corneiius, writer of elegiacs and friend of Vergil, 252. Gaul, literary activity in, 15. Gellius, Aulus, fragments of Ca:}cili- us preserved by, 53 ; of L. Calpur- nuis Piso, 78 ; of the elder Cato, 123, 129 ; opinion of C. Ciracchus, 130; Quadrigariusciuf)tedbv, 196; on Valerias Antias, 199 ; M. Ver- rius Flaccus controverted by, 428. Gellius, Cn., 195, 426. Germans, manners and customs of, described by Caesar, 215, 216. Glabrio, C. Acilius, 74. Gracchus, C. Sempronius, 130 ; imi- tated by Cicero, 131, ;/. Gracchus, Tiberius, studied oratory under Porcina, 128. Grammarians, age of, 8r. Gratius Faliscus, 377, 378. Greek colonists, 2 ; influence in Ita- ly, 11 ; literature, 7 ; comedy, imi- tation of, 19. Gregory, St., 15. Hanbalite school, 14. Hendecasyllabics of Catullus, 108. Heneti, or Veneti, 395. Herennius, treatise on rhetoric ad- dressed to, 180 ; probable date of, 181 ; Cicero hinted at in, 181 ;' original specimens of oratory in! 182-185. Hesiod, 13. Hirtius, A., continuation of Caesar's Commentaries, 219, 220; his style, 221 ; history continued bv an 'in- ferior hand, 222 ; African war, 222; Spanish war, 223. Homer, 13 ; state of society repre- sented by, 3. Horace, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, ir, 12 ; on Accius, 42 ; parentage and education, 283; relation to Octavian, 284, 293; introduced to Maecenas, 286; compared with Lucilius, 287, 288 ; earliest works, 287 ; satires, 289-292 ; 2d book, 294-299 ; epodes, 300-305 ; odes, 305. 309, Z^l'y value of single epi- thets in, 304 ; Grajcisms, 305 ; method of work, 307 ; metres of, 289, 308, 322 ; geography of the odes, 311 ; on friendship, 313; period of lyric activity, 314 ; first book of letters, 316, 317; second book of letters and art of poetry, 319-321. Horatii and Curiatii, 16. Hortensius, Q., his oratory, 137, 442; admirable memory of, 138 ; aban- dons defence of \'erres, 149. Hostius, 60. Hunting, treatise on, by Gratius Fa- liscus, 377. Hyginus, 32, 36, 428. Hynms, 4. IXDEX. 465 \ Hamerlon, Mr., 99, n. Icilian laws, 410. " Imagines " of Varro, 207. Isidore of Seville, sentence of Scipio preserved by, 126. Italian literatiire an exotic, 5; late development of, 10. Italian mythology, its poverty, 3. Italy a continental country, 2. Jerome, St., misdates Lucilius, 63 ; copies Suetonius on Lucretius, 85. Iniia, the younger, Ovid involved in her ruin', 369. lunii, family history of, by Atticus, ^69. Jupiter Feretrius, temple of, 406. J istin, 426. Laberius, 386. Liibienus, T., 399. 447- Lulewig on Latin drama, 31. l-xlius, C, 125. I /ike poets, 6. Litro. M. Porcius, 194, 434. M^\ broke down when plcacling in court, 443 ; method with his pu- pils, 444. law courts, mixed audience in, 121. b.uvs, Aurelian, 149 ; Gabinian, 453 ; Icilian, 410; Manilian, 151 ; Oppi- an, repeal of, 423 ; Publilian, 410 ; Varian, 134. Legis actiones, publication of, 70. Library of the Palatine, 327. Lil)ri Lintei, consulted by Licinius Macer, 406. Lihri Pontiticales, 70. Licinius. See Calvus. Licinius. See Macer. Literature of Queen Anne, 280. Livia, consolation addressed to, on the death of Drusus, 375, 393, //. Livy, T. Livius Patavinus,on Atellan farces, 18; his use of Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, 197; of Valerius An- tias, 198, 405 ; on C. Licinius Ma- cer, 202 ; compared to Fenelon, 246 ; native of Patavium, 395 ; birth and literary activity of, 396 ; first decade, 399, 400 ; second de- cade, 413 ; third clecadc, 420 ; in- ternal history of Rome, 420, 423, 434 Loll ins, 312; Horace's ode to, 318; letter to the younger, 315, 316. Lucan, 14. Lucilius, 6; on Accius, 43 ; a Cam- panian, 63 ; his satires, 63, 67 ; lect- ured on by Archelaus and Philo- comus, 81. Lucretius, T. Cams, " De Reriim Natura," 84, 104, 105 ; devotion to Memmius, 86; his psychology, 89; on transmigration, 91; pas- sion for suicide, 93 ; a polvtheist, I.— 20* 96; polemic against "religion," 102 ; his versification, 106 ; metri- cal peculiarities, 107. Luculhis, L. Licinius, Greek Me- moirs, II, 202. Luscius Lavinius, or Lanuvinus, 55. Lutorius, C. Lutorius Priscus, 374. Lycophron's "Cassandra," 334. Macaulay, 8, 16. Macedonian wars, 422. Macer, C. Licinius, 198, ;/., 201, 241, 406. Macrobius, 174, 11. Maecenas, his influence with Octavi- an, 249 ; intercourse with Horace, 284 ; poems addressed to, 291, 294, 302, 311, 317. Maeiius, Si>., 72. Mamurra, 112. Manilius, copied Lucretius, 106; his writings, 379-3^4- Marcelli, fannly history of, by Atti- cus, 203. Marcellus, M. Claudius, his oratory, 186. Marius, 143. Marsus, 374, Martial, not a native of Rome, 5, 14 ; his opinion of Sallust, 226 ; of Per- sius and Marsus, 374. Martianus Ca))ella, 14. Mcfitis, worship of, 3. Memmius, C, speech of, 135 ; satir- ized by Crassus, 135 ; reported by Sallust, 236. i Memmius, C. Memmius Gemellus, 86 ; takes Catullus to Bithynia, "3- Menander, 12, 47, 56-58, 60, 61. Menippus of Stratoniceia, 146. Messalla, M. Valerius, 192-194; imi- tates Maecenas as a patron of let- ters, 250 ; celebrated by Tibullus, 324 Metres, of T. Livius Andronicus, 20 ; of the Latin chorus, 34 ; of Enni- us's satires, 62 ; of Lucilius's sat- ires, 64 ; of Catullus, 118; of Ver- gil's Culex, 281, ;/. ; of Horace, 288, 308, 322 ; of Propertius, 329 ; of Ovid, 341. Mimnermus, 13, 328. Montaigne, 246. 466 INDEX. Montanus, Votienus, 450. Munatius Plancus, ode to, 312. Murrhedius, 444. Naevius, a Campanlan, 20; passage preserved by Cicero, 20. Nasidienus, 297. Nea;ra, 302. Nettlesliip, Prof., no. Nicander, 13. Niebuhr, i, 4. Nissen, on levy's authorities, 197. Norbanus, C, 133. Octavian, as a tragedian, 43 ; period of his supremacy, 246. Ofellus, 298. Oppian law, 423. Oracles at Cuniae and Prxneste, 16. Oratory, judicial and political, 5 ; development of Latin, 120; de- cay of, as a means of political in- fluence, 248. Oscans, perhaps Sabellians, 17, n. Ostrogoth rule in Italy, IS- Ovid, 13, 246, 328, 334 ; 'his " Me- dea," 334, 335 ; letters of hero- ines, 335, 341 ; style and metre of, 340 ; "Art of Love," 335, 341, 345' 353 ; " Fasti," 335, 354, 367, 368; "Tristia," 335, 370; letters from Pontus, 335, 370, 371, 374; "Metamorphoses," 354-367; •; Ibis," 370. Ovius Paccius, 407. Pacuvius, M., 30 ; his " Antiope," 31, 40; nephew of Ennius, 37;' praised as "learned," 39; his j "Chryses."39: " Periboea," "Bac- chic," and " Dulorestes," 40, 41 ; " Armorum Judicium," 41 ; " Sat- ires," 63. Palilia, 368. Panaetius, 81. Papirii, family legends of, 407. Papirius, 401. Paterculus. vS"^^ Velleius. Pedo, C. Pedo Albinovanus, 377. Persius, 320, 374. Phaedrus, 9 ; Fables, 385-387 ; Pro- logue to the " Medea," 388. Philippus, L, Marciiis, contemporary of Antonius and Crassus, 136. Philodemus, used by Cicero, 173. " Piety " to the emperor, idea first met with in Ovid, 372. Pindar, 309. Piso, L. Calpurnius, annalist, 78. Plancus, consulate of, 300. Plautus, 45 ; Varronian plays of, 46; " Pseudolus," "Truculentus," 46 \ follower of the new comedy, 47 ; " Menxchmi," " Stichus," 48 • "Conmorientes," " Persa," "Kn- dens," "Casina,"49; "Aulularia," "Mostellaria," "Asinaria," " Pa- nulus," 50; "Amphitruo," "Cur- culio," 51; "Captivi," "Trinum- mus," 52. Pleiad, 6. Plinv, 112. [ Pollio, C. Asinius, his style, 182 ; ca- I reer as an orator, 192, 193 ; his his- t<^''y.3i3'396. Pompcius, Cn. Pompeius Magnus, his relation to Cicero, 144. Pompeius Grosphus, 312. Pompeius Mela, 431. Pompeius, Sextus, 371 : patron of Valerius Maximus, 452. Pompeius, Sex. Pompeius Festus, 429 ; fate of his abridgment of Verrius, 430. Pompeius Trogus, 426. Pope, 8. Porchia, M. ^tmilius Lcpidus, 128. Potitii, tradition concerning, 397. Prize poems, 250. Prolixity, 6. Propertius, Sex. Aurelius, 12 ; Ro- man Callimachus, 327 ; work on Roman antiquities, 328 ; his me- tres. 330 ; elegies, 329-333. Publilia, Cicero's second wife, 147. Publilius, laws of, 410. Pullarius, Livy's story of, 401. Punic wars, 11 ; Livy's history of, 413-421. Quadrigarius, Q. Claudius, 196, 426. Quinctilian on Ennius, 22, 62 ; on Varius's " Thyestes," 37 ; on trag- edy under the empire, 44 ; on Cie- cilius, 53; on Caesar, 187; on M. Caelius Rufus, 189 ; on Varro, 206; on Sallust, 228; on Horace, 307 ; on Ovid, 334 ; on A. Cornelius INDEX, 467 Severus, 374 ; o" Livy's moral di- alo'^ues, 396 ; on Cassms Severus, 449 iiictius, Horace's letter to, 317. ( )ai Racine, 9. Kasena. SdC Etruscans. Kictians, 2. Religion of Rome, based on propiti- atory ceremonies, 265. Rhinthonian tragedies, 18; specimen of, 51 ; Rhinthon, 64. Ribbeck, 32, 39. Kicsc, no. Ritschl on Plautus, 45, 4^- Romantic literature opposed to clas- sical, 9. Rome as a city, 6. i;onuilus and Remulus, 17. Roscius, 43. RiiUis, M. Caelius, 188, 189. Rufus, P. Rutilius, 196. Riifiis, P. Sulpicius, the orator, 137. Rufus, P. Sulpicius, the jurist, 193. Rullus, land commission of, opposed by Cicero, 153. Sabellians, n. Sabines, described by Cato, 76. Sabinus, works ascribed to, written in the fifteenth or sixteenth cen- ; tury, 335, 377- . ^ . ... I Sallust, C. Sallustius Cnspus, on Si- senna, 200, 224 ; his birth, govern- i or of Xumidia, 225 ; histories, 226 ; Jugurthanwar, 227 ; conspiracy of Catiline, 228-233 ; beginning of the "Jugurtha," 234; speech of Memmius, 236 ; his style, 241 ; in- fluence on later writers, 241 ; trea- son of Bomilcar, 242, 243. Samnites or Saunites, i ; Samnite war in Livy, 407, 408. Saturnian metre, 20. Scaeva, Horace's letter to, 316. Scaevola, Pontifex Maximus P. Mu- cius, published and discontinued "Annales Maximi," 69. 128. Scaevola, Q. Mucius, the jurist, 136, 144. Scaptius, M., story of, in Livy, 402. Scaurus, Mam. ^milius, princeps senatus, 129; three books on his own life, 195. Scaurus, Mam. ^milius, orator of the early empire, 447. Scipio Africanus Minor (P. Cornelius yEmilianus), history, 75 ; quoted by Isidore of Seville, 126 ; men- tioned by Cicero, 132. Scipio Asiaticus (L. Cornelius), 424. Scipios, their epitaphs, 4. Senate, forms of debate in, 121. Seneca, 14 ; on Varro, 206 ; passage of Livy preserved by, 425 ; " Ten Lesser Orators " of, 433, 450- Seneca the Younger, on Sallust, 227. Sextii, speculative movement of, 431. Sibylline books, 4, 327, 406. Sidonitis Apollinaris, 15. Sisenna, L. Cornelius, 196, 200. Sister's Beam, 16. Social position of Greek and Latin writers, n. Spanish descent of Latin writers, 14. Spanish war, history of, by continu- ators of Hirtius, 223. Stilo, L. ^lius, 136. Stoicism, attitude of Cicero towards, 169 ; of Vergil, 255 ; of Horace, 293, 296. Strabo on Caesar's Commentaries, 211. Suetonius on Caesar's oratory, 186, 187. Sulla, 12, 143 ; his memoirs, 202. Syron, Vergil's teacher, 255, 260. Tacitus, M. Cornelius, 14 ; his opin- ion of Crassus's oratory, 136 ; of Caesar's, 186 ; of Augustus, 445 ; of Mamercus Scaurus, 447 ; of Cassius Severus, 449; influenced by Sallust, 241 ; seditious litera- ture of his time, 373. Taminius Geminus, author of Popu- lar Annals, 109. Tennvson's " CEnone," n7. Terence, his " Adelphi," 49 ; " He- autontimoroumenos," *' Hecyra," " Andria," 55, 56. I Terentia, Cicero's first wife, 147. Terentianus Maurus, quatrain pre- served by, 20. Tertullian, 14. Theocritus, 13. Theodoric, 15. Tiberius Coruncanius, 122. 468 INDEX. Tibullus Albius, 12 ; Elegies, 326; poem on the Sibylline books, 327. Tigellius, 293. •'Tity-Jus," VergiTs, perhaps virtual- ly a metayer tenant, 260. Tribuni aerarii, tunction ot, 148, ;/. Tubero, Q. ^Llius, 125, 202, 406. I'uditanns, C Seniproniiis, antiqua- rian ttMidency of, 79. Tuliia, Cicero's daughter, 161. Tullus llostilius, 16. Turpio, Anibivius, 53, 60. Urbanity, 6, 321. Valerii, family records of, 72. Valerius. See Antias. Valerius Maximu>, 426 ; his collec- tion of memorable words and ^ deeds, 452. 455-459- Valerius Frobus, 200. Vargunteius on Ennius, 22, Si. Varius, law of, 120, 134. Varius, L. Varius KuVus, his " I'hy- estes," 251, 334. Varro, M. Terentius, Plantus's plays according to, 45; " Didascalia," 54; voknninous writings, 206, 207; manual of agriculture by, 269. Varro, Atacinus, of Atax,'25i. Veii, siege of. 41 1. Velieius, M.Vclleius Paterculus,45i ; enthusiasm for Tiberius, 453. Vennonius, his history, 195. Verres, prosecution of, 147, 150. \'errius, M. Verrius Flaccus, 428 his etynu)logies, 429. \'ergil, I'. Vergilius Maro, 8, 13, 2:^3 his mastery of the hexameter, 254 unworldliness, 254; his origin, 255 " Georgics," 256, 264, 266, 269 obscurity of, 270 ; archaisms in 270; Bucolics »)r J]ch>gues, 2^6 259-261, 263, 264; poem on" . gnat, 257 ; " Catalecta," 2^7, 258 "Ciris,^' 258, 259 ; "Alneid," 259 271, 273, 275, 276, 27S; indemiii lied foi the h^ss of his farm, 260 allusions to contemporary writer> 261 ; "Pollio," 262; his love ot nature, 267 ; metiuxl of work, 270 " piety " of ylineas, 276. Vindelici, ode on conquest of, 309, //. \ itruvius, 430. Volcatius on Caecilius, 53. Volscian campaigns in Livy, 404. Vorlander on Catullus, 107. \\'ailing women, 4. War, Roman laws of, 209, 238, ;/. Webster, 9. Welcker, 32. Xenoclcs of Adrnmyttium, 146. Xcnophanes, '$>i. ^C-c M T,-,*^-^ (,, END OF VOL. I. •J* ^ f , ^ ■Cl< MPtf j^* ^'?. <-4.S r*,V. '■^^ '^ ')^€t. 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' » 4 This book is due two weeks from the last date stamped below, and if not returned at or before that time a fine of five cents a day will be incurred. 9C1 ^ \%2i — fr ? 9 '^'^^^ ^^S 16 4^ f ■>, i r t ' > y-j^-^-M-'-v^viv?/^ .•^■• s'l^'^V .hf'^J'4 '* \4- '• LATIN LITERATURE Vol. II. i. ■■ A HISTORY OF LATIN LITERATURE FROM ENNIUS TO BOETHIUS BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SIMCOX, M.A. FELLOW OF queen's COLLEGE, OXFORD IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. II. NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 1883 CONTENTS OF VOL. II. ;• !l PAGB Chronological Table ix PART IV. \ THE CLAUDIAN PERIOD. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER n. SENECA. PAGE LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. Literary Position 5 The Fashionable Poet 35 Moral Treatises . 6 The "Pharsalia" 37 Letters to Lucilius 13 Statius 49 Natural Questions 16 The "Thebaic!" ■ 49 'A7roKo\oKvvT(sjaig • 23 The " Silvae " . . 56 Plays .... . 24 The"Achilleid" • 57 Lucilius Junior . . 28 Silius .... • 63 Panegyric on Piso • 33 Valerius Flaccus . 67 ^f PART V. ROMAN SATIRE FROM NERO TO HADRIAN. CHAPTER L I CHAPTER IV. General Aspects ... 75 Partial CHAPTER H. Persius 80 CHAPTER HI. Petronius 87 CHAPIER V. Juvenal . Sulpicia . 103 . 118 . 139 391024 Vi CONTENTS. PART VI. PROSE LITERATURE FROM VESPASIAN TO HADRIAN. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Character of the Period . Pliny the Elder CHAPTER n. Pliny the Younger . Speeches and Official Letters Private Letters CHAPTER HL Quinctiliaii CHAPTER IV. Frontinus .... PAGE 161 162 171 176 CHAPTER V. Tacitus PAGB " Dialogue on Oratory " . 184 "Agricola" .... . 189 " Germania " . 191 The "Histories" . • 193 The " Annals " . 206 Doubts upon their Genuineness 216 CHAPTER VL Suetonius .... . 220 " Lives of the Caesars " . . 220 Other Works . . 231 CHAPTER VH. Florus CHAPTER VHL 179 The Jurists PART VII. PRONTO AND HIS SCHOOL. CHAPTER L Fronto 241 CHAPTER IL Apuleius .... . 248 "Apologia" . 249 " De Deo Socratis " . . 252 " De Dogmate Platonis " Metamorphoses " . " Pervigilium Veneris " CHAPTER in. Aulus Gellius . PART VIII. THE BARREN PERIOD. CHAPTER L Minucius Felix 272 CHAPTER n. Tertullian 233 236 254 254 262 264 275 4 CHAPTER in. St. Cyprian CHAPTER IV. MINOR WRITERS. Julius Solinus . PAGE 289 Commodian Nemesianus Sammonicus Dionysius Cato CHAPTER V. 296 ! Augustafi Histories . PART IX. THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE. CHAPTER L Rhetoricians ... Arnobius .... Lactantius " De Opificio Dei " . " De Iia Dei " . " Divine Institutions " " De Mortibus Persecutorum ' The Panegyrists The Elder Mamertinus . Eumenius Anonymous to Constantine Nazarius .... Claudius Mamertinus Drepanius Pacatus . CHAPTER IL THE HISTORIANS. Sextus Aurelius Victor . Eutropius Ammianus Marcellinus . CHAPTER in. POETS OF THE REVIVAL. Optatianus Juveiicus . Avienus . Ausonius . Prudentius " Cathemerinon " Hamartigenia " and " Apothe osis >> 316 323 324 324 325 328 329 330 332 333 334 334 338 339 350 351 353 353 360 360 363 j> "Against Symmachus " " Psychomachia " " Peristephanon Claudian . Numatian Merobaudis Avienus . CHAPTER IV. PAGAN CULTURE. Firmicus Maternus {a) Firmicus Maternus {b) Julius Obsequens Dictys and Dares Victorinus. Donatus . Charisius and Diomedes Servius Symmachus Pra^textatus Macrobius Vll PAGE 297 298 300 302 304 364 364 366 367 376 378 381 383 384 385 385 386 387 387 388 389 393 393 CHAPTER V. THE FATHERS OF THE PERIOD. St. Hilary 395 St. Ambrose .... 397 St. Jerome .... 406 Controversy with Rufinus . 411 Commentaries .... 414 Panegyrical Letters . . .416 Historical Works . . .416 m Vlll St. Augustin Early Writings " Confessions " " De Doctrina Christiana " CONTENTS. PAGE PAGE . 418 Controversial Works . 425 • 419 " De Trinitate " . 426 . 420 Correspondence . 427 " . 425 "City of God" . 428 PART X. LITERATURE OF THE DECLINE. Paulinus . 436 Vettius Agorius . 442 Sulpicius Severus 437 Marius Victor . • 443 Vincent of Lerins 438 Sedulius .... . 443 Cassian 439 Dracontius • 443 Julian of Eclanum . 441 Avitus .... • 444 Prosper . ■ 441 Sidonius ApoUinaris • 445 Fulgentius 442 Faustus and Mamertus Clau- Marti an us Capella 442 dianus .... ■ 446 St. Leo 442 Salvian .... 448 PART XL LITERATURE OF ITALY UNDER THE OSTROGOTHS. CHAPTER L Boethius .... Logical and Scientific Work Consolations of Philosophy CHAPTER IL Ennodius .... Cassiodorus 449 Gothic History 451 Chronicle. 451 Commentaries and Treatises Letters Maximianus 459 INDEX 460 461 462 462 464 468 469 \ I 6 t '•• \ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Death of Tiberius . Suicide of Silanus, the father-in-law of Calig- ula. Caligula marries LolliaPaulina,the heir- ess of M. LoUius . . Caligula visits Gaul . . Caligula invades Britain. Caligula is killed . . . Servius Galba ( after- wards emperor ) in- vades the Chatti. Con- spiracy of Annius Vi- nicianusandM.Furius CaniillusScribonianiis, proconsul of Dalmatia. A.D. 30 34 35 37 38 39 40 41 42 m Claudius invades Britain. 43 A* C. Masurius Sabinus, the founder of the Sabinian school, is admitted also to the equestrian order. C. Cassius Longinus, the jurist, is consul. Birth of Persius. } Birth of Quinctilian. Cyclopaedia of Celsus (A. Cornelius), five books on agriculture, eight on medicine, still extant ; six on rhetoric, often criti- cised by Quinctilian, six on philoso- phy, principally an outline of the views of different schools. He also wrote after Corbulo's campaign one book on tactics. Julius Atticus writes upon the culture of vines. Cn. Domitius Afer, of Nimes, is con- sul. Cn. Lentulus GaetuHcus, a poet and his- torian ( ? historical poet), who had commanded for ten years in Upper Germany, is put to death. ? Lucan brought to Rome. Execution of Julius Graecinus, the father of Agricola, who wrote on agriculture and followed Celsus. Birth of Sta- tins.'' Exile of Seneca. Q. Asconius Pedianus flourishes. Most of the extant scholia on Cicero are as- cribed to him ; those on Pro Miloue^ Pro Sestio, In Vatiumm, In C. Clo- dinm, De /Ere Alieno Milotiis, Pro Pi-e AlexandrinOy Pro Archia, Pro Snilit, In Catilinam, Pro Mur^iia, Pro Lii^ario^ Pro Rege Deiotaro, Pro Sea nro seem to be more or less genu- ine. Those on the Verrine orations hardly prove that the scholiast had Asconius before him. Death of the elder Arria. Martial born. Q. Curtius Rufus writes history of Alexander the Great in ten m CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XI Censorship of Claudius . Domitius Corbulo in- vades the Chauci . Ostorius Scapula in Brit- ain. Messalina mar- ries Silius and is put to death Claudius marries Agrip- pina Foundation of Camalo- dunum Surrender of Caractacus. Death of Claudius . . Death of Britannicus, his son Murder of Agrippina, mother of Nero . . . The war of Boadicea . . Victories of Corbulo in Armenia A.D. 45 46 47 48 (( 49 50 51 53 54 55 57 58 59 61 (( books, of which the two first are lost. The only date is a rhetorical allusion to the accession of Claudius. Cn. Domitius Afer passes for a cele- brated orator. Claudius rebukes the people for their levity during the per- formance of the tragedies of P. Pom- ponius Secundus. After the British triumph of Claudius, Pomponius Mela, of Tingentera, in Spain, writes his description of the world (ed. Parthey, Berlin, 1867). Q. Remmius Palaemon is celebrated as a grammarian. M. Antonius Li- beralis, the rhetorician, is his rival. Crispus Passienus, the orator, and husband of Agrippina, dies. Recall of Seneca from exile ; he is in- trusted with the education of Agrip- pina's son, adopted by Claudius. Q. Ilaterius, the orator, is consul. Seneca (L. Annaeus) is consul. Death of Aufidius Bassus, the author of an historical work which was probably carried to the death of Claudius. It was continued by the elder Pliny, and is only known by chance allusions and by the excerpt in Seneca on the death of Cicero, which leave it uncertain whether it included the work on the German wars, for which he is oftenest quoted. Exile of P. Suillius, a celebrated orator and dec! aimer. Julius Africanus distinguishes himself by exhorting Nero to bear his good fortune with courage. Deaths of Domitius Afer in old age, after he had outlived his reputation, and M. Servilius Nonianus, who had almost an equal reputation and a higher character. He wrote a history of Augustus, besides his orations ; both are lost. The bucolic poems of Calpurnius Sicu- lus'^belong to this period (on the last four see M. Haupt, Berlin, 1854, and 4> Banishment of Antistius for scurrilous verses on Nero, and of A. Fabri- cius Veiento for scur- rilous writings and for trafficking in offices . Death of Burrus. Octa- via, the wife of Nero, is put to death. Great earthquake . . . . A.D. 62 Ed. C. Burning of Rome . . Conspiracy of Piso, who is compelled to kill himself (( 63 ({ 64 65 Conington, Vergil, vol. i.). Glaser, 1842. Death of Persius. The best MS. of his works is at Montpellier ; it is of the 9th or loth century, and a copy of one made at Barcelona 402 a.d. Best editions, O. Jahn, Leipsic, 1843, Prof Conington, Clarendon Press, 1872. After Seneca's retreat L. Junius Mod- eratus Columella wrote twelve books, still extant, on agriculture, and the tenth, on gardening, is in hexameters, being meant for a supplement to the Georgics ; we have also a book on arboriculture which belongs to the first edition. L. Lucilius Junior writes on yEtna ; best edition, H. A. Munro, Cambridge, 1869. Banishment of P. Musonius Rufus, a Stoic philosopher, who wrote in Greek. Seneca is compelled to kill himself His orations (principally composed in the name of Nero ?) have been lost ; so, too, the early works on earthquakes (quoted Nat. Qiiccst. VI. iv. 2). " De Lapidum Natura," " De Natura Piscium,'* " De Situ Indiae," " De Situ et Sacris iElgyptiorum" (the aunt who brought him to Rome had a husband who was sixteen years governor of Egypt, and no doubt supplied the materials for the works on Egypt and India), and the following moral works : Ex- hortationes, " De Officiis," " De Im- matura Morte," " De Superstitione Dialogus," "De Matrimonio" (which seems from the fragments and allu- sions to have been piquant), " De Amicitia," " Moralis Philosophiae Libri," " De Remediis Fortuitorum" (to his brother Gallio), " De Pauper- tale" (uncertain)," De Misericordia,'* " De Vita Patris;" also ten books at least of letters to his brother Gallio and a suppressed panegyric on Mes- salina. The "Consolatio ad Mar- ciam " was written before 41. In his exile he wrote some of his tragedies. The " Consolatio ad Helviam " was written a.d. 43, the " Consolatio ad 4 Xll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Xlll A.D. Polybium " A.D. 44. The " De Tran- quillitate Aiiimi," " De Ira," " De Brevitate Vitae " were published be- tween A.D. 49 and 54. The Attoko- \oK\)VTio(5i^ was pubh'shed anony- mously just after Claudius's death. " De Clementia," " De Constantia Sapientis," "De Vita Beata," " De Beneliciis," date between 54 and 62. "De Providentia," " De Otio Sa- pientis," and the seven books " Na- turalium Quaestionum " were written after his retreat in a.d. 62 ; so, too, were the bulk of the letters to Lu- cilius, though the series was begun as far back as A.D. 57. We have twenty books ; the twenty-second is quoted. The later tragedies may be thought to date from 62, since Seneca was accused of writing in rivalry with Nero. The titles of the tragedies are Hercules Furens, Thyestes, Phae- dra, Q^dipus, Troades, Hecuba, Me- dea, Agamenmon, Hercules Qitaeus, 362 lines of an Qidipus Coloneus, and 302 of a Phcenissas, run together in the MSS. under the latter title. The oldest and best MS. (at Milan, saec. ix.) of the philosophical works contains all but the " De Beneficiis," " De Clementia," " Naturales Quaes- tiones," and the letters to Lucilius. The best edition is by Haase, Leip- sic, 1869. Lucan (M. Annxus Lu- canus) is also compelled to kill him- self. Besides the ten books of the Pharsalia, of which the first three were published while Nero was still re- spectable, he wrote ( ? in Greek) " Ilia- con," " Catachthonion " (the pure Latin titles would have been " Troi- corum," " Inferorum "), ten books of "Silvae," or miscellanies, fourteen "Salticae Fabulae," one tragedy, the Medea. In prose he wrote a speech for and against Octavius Sagitta, " De Incendio Urbis," and a book, " Epistolarum ex Campania," which probably dates from the time when ne was forbidden to declaim at Rome. Everything has been completely lost but the "Pharsalia," the oldest MS. of which is a few palimpsest leaves Condemnation and death of Barea Soranus, and Pxtus Thrasea . . . A.D. NerovisitsGreece. Recall and enforced suicide of the brothers Scriboni- iis, who commanded in Germany, and of Cor- bulo, who commanded in Syria. Vespasian's campaign in Galilee . Nero returns to Rome. Vindex rises in the name of Galba ; his troops come into col- lision with those of Verginius Rufus, the newcommander in Ger- many. Galba rises, and Verginius Rufus de- clares against Nero. Nero kills himself . . Galba assumes the consu- late. Jan. T, Vitellius is proclaimed in Ger- many ; Galba adopts Piso. Jan. 15, Otho is proclaimed emperor by the Praetorian Guard ; Galba and Piso are killed. April 15, Otho kills himself. Vespa- sian is proclaimed July I at Alexandria, 3 in Palestine, 15 in Syria. Towards the end of October Antonius Pri- mus defeats the army of Vitellius. In De- cember the Capitol is burned. Vitellius is killed, Dec. 21 . . . 66 67 68 69 of the ninth century at Milan ; the next are two of Voss's, which repre- sent a Constantinopolitan recension of A.D. 6.74. In the latter books they omit many lines, probably interpo- lated. Best edition, Weber, 182 1- 1832. Death of T. Petronius Arbiter, gener- ally regarded as the author of the " Satyricon." The work as a whole was lost before the seventh century ; our late MSS. are all based upon one collection of excerpts ; the best edition is by Biichler, 1854. Galerius Trachalus, the orator, and C. Silius Italicus are consuls. Quinctilian is established as a teacher of rhetoric at Rome by Galba. Al- tercation of Helvidius Priscus with Eprius Marcellus. Caslius Sabinus, the jurisconsult, is consul. Serranus, an epic writer praised by Quinctilian for his genuine though immature tal- ent, seems to belong to this period. XIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XV Capture of Jerusalem early in September Consecration of the Tem- ple of Peace . . . . Julius Agricola is consul Julius Agricola in Britain Death of Vespasian, June 23. Great eruption of Pompeii, Aug. 24 . A.D. 70 75 77 7S 79 Salaries fixed for rhetoricians and philosophers. Ilelvidius Priscus is praetor, and is exiled and put to death for his turbulent indepen- dence ; Julius Frontinus is praetor. Alleged date of the Dialogue on Ora- tory. The philosophers are banished. Cluvius Rufus is consul ; praised by Helvidius Priscus (Tac. Hist. iv. 43) as a rich and eloquent man, who did not rise by accusations. He wrote a history which was one of Plutarch's chief authorities for Galba and Otho. Sex Julius Gabinianus has an immense rhetorical reputation in Gaul. Tacitus says every schoolman preters him- self to Cicero, and has the modesty to put himself after Gabinianus. ? Quaistorship of Tacitus. Death of Pliny (C. Plinius Secundus) during the eruption of Vesuvius. He wrote " De Jaculatione Equestri," 3 books on the life of Pomponius Se- cjndus, 15 of the " Wars of Ger- many," 3 books in 6 volumes called ** Studiosi," 8 on doubtful points of language, 31 of histories "A Fine Aufidii Bassi," which were the prin- cipal source of the Histories of Taci- tus, as the " German Wars " were of his "Germany." All have been lost, including the 160 volumes of select notes, which no doubt were largely embodied in the 37 books of " Natu- ral History," which we still have. The best MS. is the Bamberg of the tenth century, which contains books xxxii.-xxxvii. ; the next are Lipsius's Leyden MS. of the eleventh cen- tury, and Paris 1795 of the tenth or eleventh century. Best editions, Sillig and Schraeder, Gotha, 1851^ 1853 ; D. Detlefsen, Berlin, 1863- 1 868. .'' Death of Caesius Bassus, the lyric poet and friend of Persius, who, according to the scholia on Per- sius, died, like Pliny, in the eruption of Vesuvius (till lately he was al- ways identified with Saleius Bassus, whom Quinctilian mentions as an Death of Titus, Sept. 13 Agricolabeyond the Forth Council of the Turbot . Battle on the Gram- pians ( .'* ). Domitian's campaign in Hesse Domitian invades Dacia . Defeat and death of Cor nelius Fuscus . . , False Nero . . . . Pacification of Dacia Cornelia, the senior ves- tal, is buried alive . . L. Antonius Saturninus, the commander of Up- per Germany, rebels, and is put to death. Agricola dies . . . Acilius Glabrio and Fla- vins Clemens, the cous- in of Domitian, are put to death Domitian is assassinated. Sept. 2'^ A.D. 81 82 83 84 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 (C 95 96 epic poet) ; a mutilated work on metre is generally ascribed to him. ? Death of Statius's father, who wrote upon the burning of the Capitol, and did not live to write, as he had in- tended, upon the great eruption of Vesuvius. Martial receives a piece of land near Nomentum. Paris, the actor, is put to death. Institutes the Agon Capitolinus, a com. petition in music and poetry, to be held every five years. Secular games of Domitian ; Tacitus is praetor. Death of Valerius Flaccus (C.Valerius Flaccus Balbus Setinus); Quinctilian speaks of him as a great and recent loss. Oldest MS,, Vatican, 3277, saec. ix., ed. G. Thilo, Halle, 1863. Turnus, the satiric poet, is influential under Titus and Domitian. Scsevius Mcmor, the tragic poet, belongs to this period. Quinctilian begins his " Institutions ;" receives the consular ornaments. Quinctilian finishes the "Institutions" (MS. Ambrosian, saec. xi. ; Bern, saec ix., ed. C. Halm, Leipsic, 1868). Tu- tilius and Verginius Rufus also wrote on rhetoric. Philosophers are ban- ished from Rome. ? Satire of Sul- picia. ? Death of Curiatius Mater- nus ; a Maternus was put to death under Domitian for denouncing ty- rants in a literary exercise. Besides a tragedy against Vatinius, written under Nero or bearing his name, he wrote a Medea, a Domitius, a Cato, and a Thyestes before A.D. 75. Junius Rusticus Arulenus is put to death for too laudatory lives of Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. Statins dedicates the fourth book of his Silvae to Victorinus Marcellus. Last consulate and death of Verginius Rufus, who played at poetry after de- featint^ Vindex. Consulate of Tacitus. XVI ClIROiXOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XVI I Nerva adopts Trajan in October Nerva dies, Jan. 25 . . A.D. Prosecution of Marius . First campaign of Trajan in Dacia Before this date Mucianus (M. Licinius Crassus), who raised Vespasian to the empire, publish- es a collection of mis- cellaneous information which Tacitus quotes for old speeches, Pliny for odd facts in natural history. The rhetori- cal collection included II books of speeches and 3 of letters . . . 97 98 100 lOI 102 ? The Silvae contain pieces written from A.D. 80 {e.g. V. iii.) to 96 (the fifth book is probably posthumous). It is uncertain whether the twelve years which the Thebaid occupied are to be dated from 80 or 84 ; the former is more probable, as the change of manner in the Achilleid, which is still dedicated to Domitian, seems to prove a certain interval be- tween the two. The best MS. (of some 70) of the Thebaid is Paris, 8051, saec. X. ; all the MSS. of the Silvae are copied from one that Pog- gio brought from France to Italy, now lost. The best edition of the whole work is by G. Queck, Leipsic, 1857. Pompeius Planta is prefect of Egypt ; he subsequently wrote a history of the civil wars which followed the death of Nero, though he had the Histories of Tacitus before him. Consulate of Pliny the Younger ; his panegyric on Trajan. Speeches of Tacitus and Pliny against Marius. L. Arruntius Stella, the friend and pa- tron of Martial, and author of a poem on the war of the giants, is consul. Death of Silius at the age of 75. The MSS. of the Punica are all 15th- century copies of a St. Gall arche- type. Ed. Weber, Corpus Poetarum, 1839. Martial (M. Valerius Martialis) dies in Spain. The *' Liber Spectaculorum," which perhaps is not all Martial's, dates from the first year of Domitian; xiii. and xiv. seem to have been pub- lished between a.d. 88 and 93. The remaining books were arranged in chronological order : i,, ii. are writ- ten between 82 and 87, iii. must have been written just after, iv. dates from 88 and 89, v. from 90, vi. from 90 and 9i,vii.and viii.from 92 to93,ix.,x.,xi. from 94 to 96, X. and xi. were partially re-edited under Nerva in 97, xii. was issued in loi, and perhaps contains early poems, l^est MS., Thuaneus, saec. X. Ed. Schneidewinn, 1842. Second ed., Teubner, Leipsic, 1853. First triumph over Dacia. i ? Dacia is reduced to a province Pliny in Bithynia A.D. 103 104 ? 105 108 109 III 112 Trajan at Athens . . . Earthquake at Antioch. Invasion of Armenia to oust the Parthian candidate Conquest of Ctesiphon . Jewish rising. Death of Trajan early in Au- gust 114 115 116 ^}1 Vestricius Spurinna at the age of 77 is still alive, and edifies Pliny by the elegant routine of his life and by his ingenuity as a versifier. Pliny succeeds Frontinus as augur. Frontinus, ed. " Gromatics " in Lach- mann, " Die Schriften der Komisch. Feldmesser ;" *' Strategematica," Oudendorp, Leyden, 1779; " De Cura Aquarum,'' Fr. Buchelcr, Leip- sic, 1858. Death of M. Regulus, the orator. Fabius Rusticus still alive, whom Tac- itus (Agr. 10) describes as the most eloquent of recent writers. His his- tory is quoted twice as favoring Sen- eca. Javolenus Priscus, the jurisconsult, Ne- ratius Priscus, Urseius Ferox, Juven- tius Celsus, Titius Aristo are cele- brated. Of letters to Trajan 15 (or i6)-i2i date from the command in Bithynia, Sept. Ill to Jan. 113. Nothing later is known of him ; his speeches were mostly delivered under Domitian, though the accusations of Marius, 100, Csecilius Maximus, loi, and the defence of Julius Bassus, 105, and Varenus Rufus, 106, fall under Tra- jan. He seems to have begun the collection of his letters in 97, and kept more closely to chronological order than he cared to confess. The 1st book contains letters from A.D. 96 and 97; the 2d from 97 to 100; 3d, from 100 ; 4th, from 104 ; 5th was pul:)lished 106 ; the 6th contains let- ters from 106 ; 7th, from 107 ? ; 8th and 9th, from 107 to 109. Best MS. Medicean, sa^c. x. ; ed. G. H. Schse- fer, 1868. Hyginus, Balbus, and Siculus Flaccus wrote under Trajan on land survey- ing. XVlll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Hadrian in Britain Hadrian in Athens . . Hadrian in Alexandria . Revolt of Barcochba . . Adoption of T. Antoni- nus Death of Hadrian, July . A.D. 119 119 125 131 ? 132 Terentius Scaurus is celebrated as a grammarian. We have probably a little treatise of his on orthography, pp. 2249-2264, Putschke. He also wrote commentaries on Plautus and Vergil, if not upon Lucan. The 51 declamations of Calpurnius, perhaps, belong to this period. } Death of Tacitus. The Dialogue written early under Domitian rests upon a 13th-century copy of a Fulda MS. of the 8th or 9th century, brought to Italy 1457, whence all extant MSS. are cojiicd. The Agricola, written in A.D. 98, depends upon two Vatican MSS, ; theGermania,written between 93 and 100 (the second and third con- sulate of Trajan), rests on the same MS. as the Dialogue. The Histo- ries were still unfinished in 106 or 107, when Pliny sent him materials, and perhaps the books were sepa- rately published. The text rests on the Medicean MS.(sasc. xi.) of Monte Cassino, which contains the last seven books of the Annals and what is left of the Histories. The Annals were published, apparently, between 115 and 117, as the writer refers to the frontier established by Trajan's con- quests. The text of the first part of the Annals rests upon an eleventh- century copy made at Corbey of a ninth-century MS. at Fulda, which last is sometimes regarded as the archetype of the Monte Cassino MS. It came to Florence 1508. Ed. Rit- ter, Cambridge, 1848 ; Leipsic, 1864 ; Orelli, Zurich, 1859. ? Death of Juvenal. Ed. Mayer, Cam- bridge, and Jahn, text and scholia, Berlin, 1851. Edictum Perpetuum drawn up by Juli- an us. Sex. Pomponius, the jurist, is praetor. M. Vindius Verus, a disciple of Julianus, is consul. Sex. Caecilius, a correspond- ent of Julianus, belongs to the same period ; so, too, Terentius Clemens, Veruleius Saturninus, and L. Volusi- us Maecianus, teacher of M, Aurelius. '^ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XIX Death of Faustina, wife of Antoninus . • . A.D. 140 141 146 150 ? 160 Panegyric a^ Fronto on the British achievements of Antoninus. Granius Licinianus, an annalist, who seems to have written 40 books, go- ing down to the death of Caesar, is assigned to the Antonine period on account of his mentioning the com- pletion of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens under Hadrian, the preoccupation with Sallust, and the archaic spelling. We have frag- ments of books xxvi., xxviii., and xxxvi., from an Egyptian MS. of a Syriac version of St. Chrysostom, written over a Latin gratiimarian, written over Licinianus. The latest edition is by seven Bonn philologers, Leipsic, Teubner, 1858, Sex. Erucius Cassius, wdiom Pliny rec- ommended to the quaestorship, who is praised for learning by A. Gellius, is consul. Proconsulate of Claudius Maximus, to whom Apuleius addresses his de- fence on a charge of magic. Birth of Tertullian. Death of C. Sue- tonius Tranquillus ; he was recom- mended for a tribunate by Pliny the Younger about a.d. 100; asked to publish, A.D. 105 ; received the jus trium liberorum, A.D. 112; was ap- parently removed from office about 121 in company with Septicius Cla- rus, to whom the Lives of the Cae- sars, in eight books, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and the three Flavian em- perors, making one book each, are dedicated. His work " De Viris II- lustribus" does not seem to have been carried below Domitian. Be- sides the works mentioned in the text, he wrote a Guide to Officials (De Institutione Officiorum) and De Regibus, which treated of the most celebrated monarchs of each conti- nent, beginning with the deities, who were treated on Euhemerist princi- ples. All the remains of Suetonius, except the Lives of the Caesars, have been edited by Reifferscheid, Leip- sic, i860; the Caesars, C. L. Roth, Leipsic. Best MS. of the Lives of the Caesars, Paris, 1 1 15. Julius [An- XX CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, XXI A.D. Death of T. Antoninus . i6i Victories of Avidius Cas- sius. Capture of the Parthian capitals . . Triumph of M. Aurelius and Verus over Par- thia. Great pestilence Death of Verus . . . Victory over the Quadi . Revolt of Avidius Cassi- us suppressed by a mu- tiny of his own troops. Death of Faustina . . Death of M. Aurelius, March 17 Perennis, the praetorian prefect, is sacrificed . L. vSeptimius Severus married Julia Domna. 162 (( 165 166 168 169 174 175 180 185 186 nius ?] Florus seems to belong to the same period as Suetonius. Best MS., Bamberg, saec. ix. Ed. C. Halm, Leipsic, 1850. Justin, who excerpted Pompeius Trogus, is assigned to this period ; also L. Ampelius, who used Florus, and dedicated his work (a Liber Memorialis, in fifty chapters, mentioning two events later than Trajan) to a certain Maximus, who may have been the emperor killed 218, at the age of 54. If so, the work cannot be earlier than 175. Institutes of Gains : only MS. Vienna palimpsest; Ulpius INIarcellus, an- other jurisconsult, flourished under M. Aurelius. Q. Junius Rusticus, a Stoic philosopher and teacher of M. Aurelius, is consul a second time. .'' Death of Aulus Gellius. The date of his work can only be detected by the fact that he speaks of Erucius (Cons. A.D. 146), and does not quote Froiito's writings, which were still un- published. The MSS. contain either the first seven or last twelve books. Of the eighth book we have only the headings of the chapters. The best edition is by the Gronovii, Leyden, 1706. Death of Fronto. The greater part of the letters to M. Aurelius as Cae- sar date between 139 and 143. Ed. Naber, Leipsic, 1867. Q. Cervidius Scaevola, the tutor of Pa- pinianus Paulus and Tryphonianus, is consul. ? M. Minucius Felix writes his Octavi- us, using the Apology of Athenago- ras, written A.D. 177. Ed. C. Halm, Vienna, 1867. •rm *.» Cleander is put to death Commodus strangled, Dec. 31 .... Pertinax is killed in a mu tiny, March 28 ; Didi us Julianus purchases the empire. Clodius Albinus is proclaimed in Britain, Pescennius Niger in Syria, Sep- timius Severus in Pan- nonia Death of Niger . Surrender of Byzantium, which held out for him Plautianus, the praetorian prefect, is put to death, and succeeded by Pa- pinianus Severus goes to Britain . Keverus dies at York. . Caracalla, his son, mur- ders his brother Geta. Papinianus is killed by the troops . . • Caracalla killed by Mar- tialis, March 3, by the contrivance of Opilius Macrinus, the praeto- rian prefect, who suc- ceeds Proclamation of Elaga- balus, grandson of a; A.D. 189 192 193 195 197 208 211 212 217 218 L. Marius Maximus Perpetuus Aure- lianus, the continuator of Suetonius (from Nerva to Elagabalus),is consul. 203 ? Birth of St. Cyprian. De Papinianus publishes his work Excusationibus." Before this date Julius Paulus publish- es his commentary on the edict, and his manual. Callistratus and A. Claudius Tryphoninus belong to the same period. Serenus Sammonicus, an exceedingly learned writer, is put to death. Helenius Aero, who really commented upon Terence and Hor- ace and Persius ; the scholia on Hor- ace, under his name, are not genuine. We have quotations from the scho- lia on Terence, and perhaps frag- ments of the one on Persius, in the scholia ascribed to Cornutus and Porphyrion (whose scholia on Hor- ace are still extant). Dositheus, a grammar master of the same date, is known from a MS, of St. Gall (saec. ix., X.), which contains thirty- one leaves of his grammar with a liter- al Greek rendering. ^ Q. Serenus Sammonicus writes his work on medicine. Zurich MS. saec. i.x. XX u CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, sister-in-law of the late empress, and claiming to be the natural son of Caracalla . . . . Elagabalus adopts his cousin, Alexander Se- verus Is killed by praetorian guards in the interest of Alexander, March i6 Ulpian, the praetorian prefect, is killed in a sedition of the soldiers Persian monarchy is re stored Persian war Alexander Severus is killed, March 19, in a mutiny, and Maximin proclaimed . . . . The Gordians, father and son, are proclaimed in Africa at the end of May, and suppressed A.D. 218 221 222 223 228 230 233 235 The earliest date of the "Responsa" of Julius Paulus. Second consulate of Marius Maximus, the historian. ? i^lius Marcianus writes his six books of Institutiones. ? Death of Tertullian. Of his works, Apologeticum (199?), Ad Nationes, lib. ii., De Testimonio Animce, De Culto Feminarum ii., and its pendant, De Pallio, De Patientia, De Oratione (these are some of the earliest), De l.aptismo, and De Poenitentia (both late). Ad Uxorem ii., Ad Martyres, Adversus Judaeos have little or no trace of Montanism. De Corona Militis (originally written in Greek), Ad Scapulam (212), De Exhortatione Castitatis, De Virginibus Velandis (also published in Greek), De Mono- gamia, De Pudicitia, even the De Prsescriptionibus Haereticorum, De Anima, De Carne Christi, De Resur- rectione Carnis, Adversus Gnosticos Scorpiace, De Idolatria, De Spec- taculis^re all more or less Montanist, as are the controversial works De Jejunio, Adv. Psychicos, Adv. Mar- cionem, which was in writing A.D. 237, Adv. Praxeam, Adv. Hermoge- nem. Adv. Valentinum, and the lost books De Ecstasi and De Tvinitate. Ed. Oehler, in Gernsdorf 's Patristic Series, Leipsic, 1854. M CHROXOLOGICAL TABLE, xxin by the governor of Mauritania early in July. Maximus and Balbinus are proclaim- ed at Rome . . . . Maximin is killed by his own troops before Aqui- leia in April. Maxi- mus and Balbinus are massacred July 15. Gordian the younger, the grandson of "the elder Gordian, is left sole emperor .... Gordian is killed in a military mutiny to the profit of Philip, his prae- torian prefect . . . Philip celebrates the Sec- ular Games .... Mutiny in Moesia. De- cius is sent to quell it ; is proclaimed em- peror Decius appoints Valerian censor. Persecution of Decius He is defeated and killed by the Goths . . . . Galius is appointed to succeed by the Senate, is deposed and put to death by ^Emilianus, the governor of Pan- nonia, who is super- seded by Valerian, Au- gust Valerian's persecution . First naval foray of the Goths A.D. 238 t( 244 248 249 250 253 256 257 258 259 'i Commodian^s Instructiones, in Gerns- dorf's Bibliotheca Patrum, Leipsic, 1847. Close of the History of Junius Cordus. Conversion of St. Cyprian. Herennius Modestinus, the jurist, is praefectus vigiliis. St. Cyprian bishop. Commodiani Carmen Apologeticum ; latest edition by H. Rausch,in Kahn's ♦'Zeitschrift fiir Historische Theolo- gie." Pestilence mentioned by St. Cyprian in his work De Mortalitate. Martyrdom of St. Cyprian. Works, Ad Donatum (De Gratia Dei), De Oratione Dominica, De Habitu Vir- ginum, De Bono Patientias, De Zelo et Livore, De Idolorum Vanitate (from Tertullian and Minucius Felix), De Lapsis, 251, De Mortalitate and Ad Demetrianum, 253, De Unitate Ecclesiae, De Opere et Eleemosynis, !i| XXIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. A.D. Persian conquest of Ar- menia Defeat and capture of Valerian Second naval foray of the Goths Aureolus invades Italy, is besieged in Milan ; Gallienus, the son of Valerian, is killed in a night alarm, March 20. Claudius succeeds Victories and death of Claudius, who nomi- nates Aurelian . . . Victory over the Ale- manni. Suppression of Seleucus War with Zenobia . . Triumph of Aurelian. Birth of Constantine . Assassination of Aure- lian, January. Elec- tion of Tacitus, Sept. 23 Death of Tacitus, April 12 ; in July, Probus, in the name of the Senate, deposes Flo- rianus, the brother of Tacitus Probus clears Gaul of Germans Revolt of Saturninus inj Egypt Revolt of Bonosus in; Gaul i Probus is massacred at! Sirmium, and succeed- ed by Cams, his prae- torian prefect . . . Death of Carus, Dec. 25, in a campaign against Persia. Carinus and Numerian, his sons, succeed him . . . . Death of Numerian. His 260 261 262 26S 270 271 272, 273 274 275 276 277 279 280 282 283 Testimoniorum adversus Judaeos, lib. iii., De Exhortatione Martyrii, lib. iii., 86 letters. Ed. G. Hartel, Vienna, 1868-1871. C. Julius Solinus, Collectanea, copied under Theodosius, A.D. 402. Ed. Mommsen, Berlin, 1864. Marius Plotius Sacerdos writes on grammar in three books, still extant, using Juba, who used Heliodorus. I la V CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXV army elect Diocletian, Sept. 17 Carinus is assassinated in the course of a bat- tle against Diocletian, May Maximian is appointed Augustus. He sup- presses the Bagaudae in Gaul. Tiridaies re- gains the throne of Armenia Carausius rebels in Brit- ain Galerius and Constantius appointed Caesars . . Death of Carausius . . Revolt of Egypt . . . Recovery of Britain by Constantius. Firstcani- paign of Galerius foi the restoration of Ti- ridates, who had been expelled by the Per- sians ..*... Victorious campaign of Galerius Triumph of Maximian and Diocletian. First edict against the Chris- tians Diocletian and Maximian abdicate. Galerius and Constantius succeed : the former nominates two Caesars . . . . Constantius dies at York, July 25. Constantinus succeeds him. Maxen- tius, son of Maximian, is declared emperor at Rome, Oct. 28. Max- imian resumes the em- pire Maximian receives the surrender of Severus ( whom Galerius had appointed to rule in Italy after the death B A.D. 2S4 285 286 2S7 289 291 293 294 295 296 297 303 305 306 Poem of M.AureliusNemesianus, which was still complete in the youth of Hincmar, Archbishop of Rbeims. First panegyric on Maximian. Second panegyric on Maximian. First panegyric of Eumenius on Con- stantius. Julius Valerius's translation of Pseudo- Callisthenes De Vita Alexandri Mag- ni. Second panegyric of Eumenius. XXVI CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, XXVll ' of Constantius). Seve- rus is put to death . . Galerius, after an unsuc- cessful campaign in Italy, creates Licinius Augustus in Illyricum, and promotes Maxi- min in Syria . . . . Maximian is deposed by his son, and takes ref- uge first with Licinius, and then with Constan- tine, who puts him to death in February . . EdictofToleration. Death of Galerius .... Maxentius is defeated at the battle of Saxa Ru- bra, and drowned inj the Tiber, Oct. 20 . .{ Conversion of Constan-j tine ? Edict of Milan ;] alliance with Licinius, Apr. 30 ; defeat and deathofMaximin, Aug. .15. Licinius declares war against Constaiitine . He loses the Danubian provinces, Greece, and Macedonia . . . . Gothic War War with Licinius ; after three battles he sur- renders and is put to death Foundation of Constan- tinople Council of Nice . . . A.D. 307 308 ;io 311 312 313 3H 315 322 323 324 325 329 Arnobius's Seven Books Adversus Na- tiones. Ed. A. Reifferscheid,Vienna, 1875. Best MS., Paris, 1661, copied in the beginning of the ninth century from a cursive in the hand which subsequently developed into the Lombardic. This was copied from an uncial written in a country where the language was full of corruptions. Third panegyric of Eumenius. Fourth panegyric of Eumenius. Death of Lnctantius. Of his works, De Opificio Dei (ad Dcmetrianum) was finished A.D. 304. Divinarum Insti- tutionum, lib. viii., 307-310. De Ira Dei, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 313, 314. The Epitome of the Institu- tions published by Pfaif in 171 2 from a Turin MS. may possibly be the same which St, Jerome ascribed to Lactantius. Edited in Gernsdorf's Bibliotheca Patrum, 1842. Dedication of Constanti- nople. Birth of Julian Gothic war Death of Arius . . . Baptism and death of Constantine, May 22. Massacre of Constan- tine's brothers and nephews with the ex- ception of Julian and Gallus Civil war between Con- stans and Constantine II. ; death of the latter Sapor'sunsuccessful siege of Nisibis Magnentius murders Con- stans, and associates Vetranio, the comman- dant of Illyrium, in the empire Constantius compels Ve- tranio to capitulate Battle of Mursa ; defeat of Magnentius ; Gal- lus declared Csesar Final defeat and death of Magnentius, Aug. 10. Disgrace and execution of Gallus .'' Death of Arnobius j it is in this year A.D. Zl^ 332 337 342 346 348 350 351 353 354 that St. Jerome enters him as cele- brated. Before the Gothic war C.Vettius Aqui- linus Juvencus publishes his four books "Historiae Evangelicae." They have been edited, with the doubtful additions on the Old Testament, by Arevalo, Rome, 1792. Attins Patera is a celebrated teacher of rhetoric at Rome. Birth of Prudentius, Birth of St. Paulinus of Nola. Pasiphi- lus is ai-)pointed prefect of the city. Probably the 14 books of Palladius on husbandry are dedicated to him : the first is taken up with generali- ties ; the next 12 are a monthly farmer's calendar ; the last treats of trees in 170 elegiacs. Birth of St. Augustin. Under this year St. Jerome marks in his Chronicle the reputation of Donatus's " My Professor." The work of Julius Fir- micus Maternus dates from this year ; so does, according to St. Jerome, the reputation of Marius Victorinus, who had a statue in Trajan's Forum. He translated the Isagoge of Porphvry, wrote comments on Cicero's Dia- XXVlll CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXIX I Julian at Athens, May ; proclaimed Caesar at Milan, Nov. 6 . . . Enforced rebellion of Sil- vanus, who is cut off by Ursicinus , , . » Constantius at Rome, April 28 to May 28. Battle of Strasburg Fall of Amid on the Tigris Julian proclaimed Au- gustus Death ofConstantius; he is succeeded by Julian. George of Cappadocia slain in a tumult at Alexandria . . . . Persian campaign and death of Julian. Jovian surrenders the con- quests of Galerius . . Death of Jovian, Feb, 17 ; Valentinian succeeds. Partition of the em- pire between Valentin- ian and Valens, June 4 A.D. Rebellion of Procopius Capture and death of Procopius . . . . . Theodosius, the father of the emperor, pacifies Britain .'.... Theodosius suppresses! the revolt of Africa 355 356 357 359 360 161 362 2>^2, 364 365 366 367 368 370 373 374 logues. We have an Ars Gram- matica of his, which treats mostly of metre. Banishment of St. Hilary. Latinus Alcimns Alethius and Attias Piso Delphidius are orators at Aries. Return of St. Hilary, C.Claudius Mamertinus returns thanks for the consulate to Julian at Con- stantinople. Rescript to I.. Aurelius Avianus Sym- machus, the father of the orator. Symmachus, the orator, is appointed Corrector "Suediniae et Bruttiorum.'* Publication of Codex Hermogeni- anus, which contained all the Impe- rial rescripts from 290 to 364. St, Uamasus Pope. Death of St. Hila- ry. Rufinus, the writer, in Egypt. Sym- machus's speech on the third consu- late of Valentinian. Symmachus is proconsul of Africa. St. Jerome in the wilderness of Chalcis. St. Ambrose Bishop of Milan. St. Optatus writes under Valentinian and Valens against the Donatists ; works in Migne- »■ Death of Valentinian ; Gratian succeeds with his half-brother Val- entinian n The Goths take refuge on Roman territory . Gratian at Rome . . . Battle of Adrianople ; defeat and death of Valens Theodosius appointed emperor Council of Constantino- ple Submission of the Goths. Maximus revolts ; Gra- tian is killed . . . . The Ostrogoths defeated on the Danube ; are settled in Phrygia . Maximus invades Italy, is defeated on the Save and put to death . Sack of the Serapeum at Alexandria . . . . Massacre of Thessalonica Penance of Theodosius . Murder of Valentinian H. by Arbogastes,who ap- points Eugenius em- peror Defeat and death of Ar- bogastes and his em- peror Death of Theodosius ; the empire is divided between Arcadius and Honorius ; Rufinus is A.D. 375 2>1^ 377 378 379 3S1 3S2 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 394 About this date Proba Faltonia com- poses her Cento of Vergil. Rufinus on the Mount of Olives. St. Jerome at Antioch ordained priest. St. Jerome at Rome. Augustin at Rome. Death of L. Aurelius Flavi- anus Symmachus. Death of St. Damasus ; letters and poems in Migne's Patrology ; the hymns ascribed to him for St. An- drew and St. Agatha are rather in the manner of Prudentius. St. Jerome and St. Paula in Egypt. Baptism of St. Augustin. Publication of the Codex Gregorianus, which contains all the Ini^perial rescripts known to the compiler up to a.d. 295. St. Augustin returns to Africa. Panegyric of Latinus Pacatus Drepa- nius in Panegyrici Veteres. Relation of Symmachus. St. Augustin is ordained Presbyter. Death of St. Pacianus, who wrote on Penitence against the Novatians ; works in Migne. St. Paulinus at Nola. U 1f XXX CJIROXOLOGICAL TABLE. CHRONOLOGICAL 'JAB/.E. ^XXI minister in the East, Stilicho in the West. Rufinus is overthrown by the military party . Alaric invades Greece . Glide rebels in Africa ; he is suppressed by hisj own brother at Stili-j cho's instigation . . Goths revolt under Tri-^ bigild (the Targibilus! of Claudian). Down-j fall of Eutropius . .' Alaric invades Italy and is defeated at Pollentia Triumph of Honorius . Invasion of Rhadagaise ; he is defeated and dies ; his troops invade Gaul A.D. 395 396 397 399 402 403 404 405 St. Augustin Coadjutor Bishop of Hip- po. St. Augustin Bishop of Hippo. Rufinus, the theologian, returns to Italy. Death of St. Ambrose. 406 Cassian at Rome. Aurelius Prudentius Clemens publishes his works ; latest edition, A. Dressel, Leipsic. Of the hymns in the Cathemerinon, vv. 1-8, 81-84, 397-400 of the hymn "Ad Galli Cantum" are used in the Bre- viary for lauds ; vv. 1-8, ^'i, 39, 52, 57, 59, 60, 67, 68 of the Ilymnus Ma- tutinus for prime ; 25, 93, 94, 96, 97- 100, 10-12, 19, 27, 109-111 of the 1 lymnus Omnis Hora^ for compline ; 125, 130, 93-102, 107-112, 117, 114, 113, 120, 133-136 of the hymn for Epiphany for Innocents' Day ; 1-4, 37-44, 85-88 of the same for the Transfiguration ; 77-80, 5-8, 61-64, 69-72 of the same for lauds in Lent ; first ten lines of the Hymnus Jejunan- tium for compline in Lent; 125-152 of the Hymnus ante somnum, com- pline in Passion Week ; 1-27, 25-28, 149-164 of the Hymnus ad Incensum Lucernae for the benediction of the Paschal candle ; 1,51, 719, 720, 721- 732 of the hymn for St. Laurence, and 545-548, 557-560 of the hymn for St. Vincent is used for any martyr; 117-120,53-56,33-44, 1 21-140 of the Hymnus in Exsequiis Defunctorum was used in Germany. I Constantine at the head of the British armv con- quers Gaul and Spain. Downfall of Stilicho. Death of Arcadius . . Alaric ransoms Rome . Alaric captures Rome, Aug. Death of Alaric Ataulphus leads Goths to Gaul . the The Goths re-establish the authority of Ho- 1 norius in Gaul audi Spain, and found a kingdom at Toulouse. Death of Honorius Usurpation of John . . Valentinianlll. Emperor of the West . . . . Revolt of Bonifacius, who invites the Van- dals (who had moved from Gallicia to Anda- lusia) into Africa . . Siege of Hippo A.D. 407 408 409 410 412 415 416 417 419 420 423 425 426 427 428 430 St. Paulinus Bishop of Nola. The capture of Rome is the last event mentioned by Orosius. Death of Rufinus. Besides the other transla- tions mentioned in the text there was a translation of Sextius, whom the translators identified with Pope Sex- tus. Claudius Rutilius Numatianus, or Na- niatianus,writes on his return to Gaul in two books ; most of the latter lost. The text depends on the Codex Bob- bianus, discovered in 1492, and now lost. Ousius dedicates his Rivellas : Teub- ^ ner, Leipsic, 1871. Cassian writes the first ten collations. Death of St. Jerome. Works in Migne reprinted trom the Venice edition. Paulinus of Milan settles in Africa and writes a life of St. Ambrose in imita- tion of Sulpicius Severus's Life of St. Martin. Prosper of Aquitaine, first letter to St. Augustin. Death of St. Augustin. Works, besides those mentioned, De Quantitate Ani- mae, at Rome, De Magistro, at Tha- gaste (a dialogue with Adeodatus, his natural son), De Bono Conjugali, De Sancta Viiginitate, 363 sermons published from reports, De Cura pro Mortuis, on prayer for the dead, and xxxn CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. Council of Ephesus A.D. Defeat of Bonifacius ; evacuation of Hippo . Death of Bonifacius (in a private war witli Ae- tius) Surprise of Carthage by the Vandals . . . . Third consulate of Ae- tius Battle of Chalons . . . Council of Chalcedon Attila dies after invading Italy , I Valentinian kills Aetius. He is killed by two of Aetius's izuards. His wicUnv invites tiie Van- dals, who occupy audi pillage Rome for four- teen days ' The Goths nominate A Vi- tus, the father- in -lawi of Sidonius Apollina-| ris, to the empire. Hei is deposed, and for fif-{ teen years Ricimer gov-i erns Italy in the name of various emperors. . 431 432 434 435 439 440 446 449 450 451 453 454 455 456 458 relic- worship and ghost stories, to Paulinus at Nola, De Mendacio and Contra Mendacium, De Divinatione Dx-monum, De Opere Monachorum, De Catechizandis Rudibus (400), De Doctrina Christiana, begun 397, fin- ished 427, Fsalmus Abecedarius, 393. Birth of C. Sollius Sidonius Apolhna- ris. Death of St, Paulinus ; his pan- egyrics on St. John Baptist in hex- ameters, which dates cir. a.d. 390, is addressed to Nicetes, Bishop of Da- cia, like a sapphic ode on the mar- tyrs, in eighty-five stanzas. Flavius Merobaudes has a statue in Trajan's Forum. ? Vincentius of Lerins writes his Com- monitorium. St. Leo is Pope. ? Commonitorium of Vincentius in dis- tichs. C. Claudius Marius Victorinus, a rhet- orician of Marseilles, composes a commentary on Genesis for his son. The death of Aetius, latest event men- tioned in Prosper's Chronicle. Philippus, an admirer of St. Jerome, dies, leaving a Commentary on Job (printed in Migne's Patrology). Si- donius Apollinaris's panegyric on Avitus. Sidonius Apollinaris's panegyric on Majorian. About this time Flavius Rusticus Helpidius Dormulus, who CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. XXXIll Death of Majorian, thei ablest of them . . . Death of Theodoric of! Toulouse ..... Ricimer receives an em- peror from Constanti- nople A joint expedition against the Vandals fails . Death of Ricimer Submission of Auvergne to the Goths .''... Odoacer gives the bar- barian troops lands in Italy,anddeposes Rom- ulus Augustulus; the Senate, with his per- mission, return the im- perial ornaments to Zeno Clovis becomes the chief of the Franks . . . Accession of Gunther- mund in Africa . . . Clovis defeats Syagrius B- A.D. 461 465 468 469 470 472 473 474 476 477 484 485, edited MS. of Pomponius Mela at Ravenna, was writing at Aries. Death of St. Leo. We have 98 ser- mons and 173 letters in Migne's Pa- trology. Paulinus of Pel la, at the age of 84, com- poses a poem of thanksgiving in ele- giacs for thirty years of good luck and fifty-four of bad. Sidonius Apollinaris's panegyric on Anthemius. .^ Publication of Sidonius Apollinaris's poems. Idacius, a bishop in Galli- cia, writes a chronicle. Paulinus of Perigueux, a poetaster, versifies Sulpicius Severus's Life of St. Martin in two books, 385. 717 hexameters. At about the same date Claudianus Mamertus Ecdidius dedicates to Sidonius his work De Statu Animas. This, with his hymns, has been printed in Migne. It is un- certain whether he or Vincentius For- tunatus is the author of the Passion hymn " Pange Lingua gloriosi prae- lium certaminis." Consecration of Sidonius Apollinaris as Bishop of Auvergne. Birth of Magnus Felix Ennodius. Birth of Cassiodorus. 4S1 j Birth of Boethius and Jornandes. 486 Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, the father-in-law of Boethius, is consul ; he emends Macrobius's Somnium Scipionis with the help of Macrobius Plotinus Eudoxius. Victor Vitensis writes his chronicle of the Vandal persecution : printed in Migne. ^ '? XXXIV CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. CIIROXOLOGICAL TABLK. XXXV A.I). 487 Theodoric invades Italy Battle of Tolbiac . . . Capture of Ravenna, and death of Odoacer . . Death ot Gunthermund . 489 490 493 496 Submission of Western Gaul to Clovis . . J Theodoric visits Rome .' Frankish conquest of Aquitaine. ... Accession of Justinian as colleague to Justin J 498 500 507 510 511 5H t;2o 521 Death of Sidonius Apollinaris. His three panegyrics on Julius Csesar, A Vitus, and Majorian, his epithala- mia, his descriptive poems on Narbo and the burg or fortified villa of Le- ontius, and most of the epigrams, are earlier than his consecration as bish- op. The first two books of letters, though collected afterwards, were written when he was a layman. Ed. Simond, 1652; reprinted'in Migne. St. Avitus, Bishop of Vienne. Between 484 and 496 Blissius .^imilius Dracontius writes his Satisfactio, 158 distichs, and De Deo in three books, unintelligible, 754, 843, 699 hexame- ters. Ed. Arevalo, Rome, 1791 ; C. E. Glaser, Breslau, 1847, 1848. Dra- contiiCarmina, Vienna, 1870. About this date Gennadi us, a presbyter of Marseilles, continued Jerome's De Viris Illustribus. He seems to have written just after the end of the pon- tificate of St. Gelasius, who died 496. Works in Migne's Patrology. The most considerable of the contempo- raries he mentions are Pomerius, a continuator of Claudianus Mamer- tus, and Ruricius, Bishop of Limoges {4^4-507), a continuator and corre- spondent of Sidonius Apollinaris; remains of both in Migne's Patrolo- gy. About the same date Coelius Sednlius composes his Carmen Pas- chale on the Gospel history, divided into four books, with an introductory book on the wonders of the Old Tes- tament. Edited by F. Arevalo, Rome, 1794. Boethius is consul. Ennodius is elected Bishop of Pavia. Cassiodorus consul. Death of Ennodius ; his works are cd- Death of Sigismund, last king of Burgundy . . Imprisonment of Boe- thius He is put to death ; so is his father-in-law, Symmachus . . . . DeatH of Theodoric . .' Reconquest of Africa A.D. Death of Athanaric, grandson'of Theodoric Death of Amalasentha . Reconquest of Sicily.; Wiiiges king of thei Goths Belisarius takes Ravenna The Goths renew the war under Totila .... Revolt of the Moors in Africa Narses conquers Italy .j Narsesdefeatsthe Franks Death of Justinian . . Lombards invade Italy J 523 524 525 526 530 533 534 535 536 539 540 543-558 552 559 565 567 569 ited in Migne. They include, besides those mentioned, a panegyric on The- odoric, and a defence ot the Svnod which absolved Pope Symmachus. Death of St. Avitus. Migne's Patrology. His works in Death of Rusticus Elpidius, a physi- cian of Theodoric, who wrote 149 hexameters on the benefits of Christ. Latest date of the 2d edition of the Chronicle of Marcellinus ; Comes's Continuation of the Chronicle of St. Jerome. ; Death of Avitus; works in Migne. Retreat of Cassiodorus. Death of Cassiodorus. LATIN LITERATURE. PART IV. THE CLAUDIAN PERIOD. CHAPTER I. SENECA. Seneca is the patriarch of a whole literary revival, as Quinctilian acknowledges when he has to give a reason for not mentioning him in his place in the list of classics. He wrote in every style, both in prose and verse — orations, essays, dialogues, tragedies : and he was the favorite author of young men when Quinctilian undertook his educational reform, which consisted in a return to the classical tradition of the Augustan age. According to Quinctilian, Seneca was intol- erant in literature, and would allow his admirers leave to ad- mire nothing but himself. It is plain from his own works that he thought very badly of the literature of erudition to which most teachers of the time were devoted, and his con- stant insistence on edification would act as a disparagement of most contemporary writers. He was born apparently about the beginning of the Chris- tian era, in Spain ; but came early to Rome wath his aunt, who nursed him through his delicate childhood. All his life he seems to have been more or less of an invalid, and when n.— I LATIN LITERATURE. SENECA. 4 growing old he suffered severely from asthma.' He was smit- ten with a passion for asceticism in his youth, thanks to the teaching of a certain Attalus, and became a water-drinker and vegetarian, till Tiberius took measures to expel the rites of Egypt and Judaea from Rome, when his father, who disap- proved of philosophy, was glad of the pretext to induce him to resume the use of flesh-meat, lest he should be suspected of abstaining upon superstitious grounds. However, he per- sistently renounced the two great dainties of the time, mush- rooms and oysters, because both served not to nourishment, but to appetite. He seems to have distinguished himself by his eloquence as early as the reign of Caligula, for that per- verse and acute observer remarked that he did nothing but put together librettos, and his style was mere sand without lime. Suetonius mentions this as a proof that Caligula dis- liked a smooth, highly finished style, and perhaps his criticism may give us some idea of Seneca's early manner before his earnestness had become strong enough to be a torment to him. The comparatively early work on Anger is smooth and easy in a sense ; the writer is not so familiar with his thoughts that he refuses to do more than allude to them. Such as they are, he puts them quite clearly and pointedly; and, at the same time, it is quite true that he seems to be playing with commonplaces, and to have no thought or information to communicate; and this explains Caligula's second criti- cism. From first to last Seneca is a very incoherent writer; he never succeeds in having a plan in any of his longer works; he is at the mercy of the association of ideas and'^of the way in which one topic suggests another. He generally seems to hold that a plan is a good thing in itself, and the arid method of Stoical text-books would naturally supply him with a framework more than sufficient, if only he could keep to it. In fact, one might almost admire the agility with which he dances round his argument, never quite losing sight of it, and coming back to it for a moment, without apparent effort, when he wishes to make a fresh start. The weakness of his method is that it is impossible to summarize one of his trea- ' Sen. " Ad Luci].".Ep. liv., Ixxv. 6. tises, and therefore impossible to remember more of it than fine phrases and passages ; and a conscientious editor who undertakes to trace the connection of the whole is soon re- duced to suspect his MSS. Apart from this want of lucid order, the treatise on Anger is easy reading. Every word and syllable is kept in place ; there is nothing tumid or rough or tedious ; the writing seems to be pointed only that it may be entertaining and clear; there is no effort to be sub- lime or startling or impressive. As was natural, considering his delicate health and his edu- cation, Seneca was in early life a ladies' man, visiting matrons of rank very much as the better kind of French abbe did in the seventeenth century. A Roman of rank who took an interest in his character kept a philosopher, as in later times serious nobles kept chaplains; but, as it was not etiquette for Roman ladies to study, they were dependent upon philosophi- cal friends. An ambitious man might hope to make his way by feminine protection; a kind-hearted man might feel he was doing good by introducing a little method among the fine feelings of high-born, high-souled, uninstructed women. His success was all the easier because society was still very much divided by sex, and a man who mixed in ladies' society found himself in the enviable situation of a solitary phoenix. But his position had its temptations and dangers.^ When a Ro- man lady compromised herself, she commonly compromised all her intimates. Julia, the daughter of Germanicus, was ac- cused of adultery and banished, and Seneca was banished to Corsica too. According to Suetonius, he was supposed to have been one of her paramours ; according to others, he was supposed to have known of her intrigues and to have aided them ; and in the minds of Messalina and Claudius the two charges would hardly be distinguished. He remained in ex- ile for eight years, and was then recalled by the influence of Agrippina to superintend the education of Nero. After the death of Claudius, he and Burrus, the praetorian prefect, gov- erned the Roman empire for five years. As neither had any independent authority, it iS not surprising that their govern- ment was studiously popular, and it was so intelligent that it was quoted as a model long after. LA TIN LITER A TURE. It was necessary to humor Nero, not only in his private vices, but in his family crimes. Seneca composed the speech in which Nero apologized for the death of his mother, as we learn from the quotation* of the opening sentence in which he assured the senate that he could not yet believe or rejoice in his safety. It is possible that, if Nero had continued to respect the senate, senatorian historians might have used Agrippina's memoirs with less confidence, and have enter- tained the question whether, when she found it impossible to reign in her son's name, she did not pass into a formidable conspirator against his authority and even his safety. Seneca was certainly a less disinterested judge of the question than Tacitus or Suetonius, or the authors of the pasquinades which compared Nero to the matricides of Greek tragedy ; on the other hand, he was much better informed. It is only fair to his memory to remember that, if Agrippina was really danger- ous, the safest and easiest precaution was to put her to death. It is easier to prove that no perfectly virtuous man in Seneca's situation would have condescended to be an accomplice in a perfidious matricide, than to guess what course a perfectly virtuous minister ought to have recommended to an excitable boy whose mother — a clever, energetic woman, still in the prime of life — was conspiring against him. Seneca was always a comparatively wealthy man : when Nero came to the throne his wealth rapidly became enormous. Nero himself gave him large sums, and every one who wished to do business with him doubtless was ready with presents. Even if Seneca had been so scrupulous as to refuse these, he would not think of refusing legacies. He appears also to have had investments in Egypt, which would become much more profitable when he was in power. When he retired, we find that he had put them on a footing which protected him against all fluctuations of profit and loss. Even if he made more moderate use of his opportunities of enriching himself than other ministers, he would still have enriched himself faster ; for he clung for a long time to simplicity of food and dress, and even furniture, and these things were the largest » Quinctilian, iii. 5. SENECA. items of the expenditure of most of the rich. Seneca had ad- mirable villas and gardens; we even hear that he had a set of five hundred dinner-tables, all mounted on ivory— which was not an excessive number, as he probably entertained his cli- ents by hundreds in his gardens. He was one of the last prominent Romans who gave away considerable sums to his dependants when in difficulties ; but he had large sums out at interest in all the provinces, including Britain, and when he desired to retire he provoked a rebellion there by calling in all his investments at once. Some time before his death, he vainly endeavored to propitiate Nero by resigning all his property, which Nero judiciously refused to accept. But when information came of a mysterious message to Piso,* al- though Seneca would have had a perfectly good defence if he could have had a fiiir trial, it is not surprising that Nero be- lieved the evidence, and concluded that Seneca was at least privy to the conspiracy of which he was the latest victim. He died in character, with a great deal of philosophical eloquence, and left a high, though not an uncontested, reputation behind him. The real significance of his career is that he brought decla- mation into literature, and that he brought philosophy into literature too, at a time when literature was languishing- for the want of something new. Cicero's philosophical treatises, though they often have more substance than Seneca's, have too much the appearance of school-books, as if philosophy required a great deal of introduction to Roman society. Seneca alwavs has the air of discussinsf a familiar matter of practical concern. He always appears to have something to say which wants saying ; and this was a great advantage at a time when literature practically consisted of three things — orations, which were a great deal too pretentious for the cases tried ; histories, which dealt with events too recent for impartiality, and were deficient even in the attraction of novelty ; and poetry, which was mainly a series of variations upon too familiar themes. The great intellectual interest of * Seneca had sent word to Piso that it was better they should not meet so often, but that Piso's safety was the guarantee of his own. 6 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the day had been supplied by declamations on imaginary subjects. It was a great change to have declamations on general and permanent interests; and the public, used to satisfy themselves for a time with a display of ingenuity about nothing, were reasonably fascinated with a display of inge- nuity on the regulation of the temper. Seneca's weak heatth was probably an advantage to him in two ways : it forced him to write instead of speaking, and it threw him forcibly upon the inner life. It is important to notice throughout that his philosophy deals with temper, and not with conduct, or only with conduct so far as it is connected with temper. There are two treatises, on Anger and on Benefits, which refer more or less to behavior ; the first is the expression of his disgust at the feverish tyranny of Caligula; the second is a theory of how he and Nero ought to exercise their patronage. There is a treatise on Clemency, which is meant to encourage Nero in his sentimental dislike to inflicting extreme penalties. But the main current of Seneca's teaching flows elsewhere, es- pecially in its latest form. The letters to Lucilius, which are really a philosophical diary, turn upon cheerfulness and fear- lessness and self-possession, and say nothing about external duties. It is remarkable that Seneca, as soon as he wishes hnnself to withdraw from power, begins a vigorous though in- termittent polemic against the Stoical doctrine that the' wise man will take part in the government of the state. He ob- serves that the celebrated Stoical sages, Zeno, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and the rest, remained private teachers all their lives; and therefore, if they were consistent, must have in- tended the precept to take part in the common weal in some other sense, or have attached some condition or other as to its performance. Either they abstained from public aff'airs because they had not sufficient station to make their virtue and wisdom of use to their fellow-citizens, and then their ex- ample would justify any philosopher who thought he was pre- cluded by circumstances from public life; or they considered that they did their part of the public service^by forming the characters of those who would be called to undertake'^it in their own persons; or they thought chiefly of the great com- SENECA. monwealth of the universe, and in practising and teaching virtue they were certainly active citizens of this. Such versa- tility in explaining away one of the most distinctive tenets of Stoicism prepares us to find that Seneca was not a very stricti Stoic. He wishes to be the disciple of truth, and not of men \ he professes to think it desirable that there should be different schools of philosophy to suit different temperaments, and to prefer Stoicism for himself, as the manliest; because all schools practically recommended very much the same course of behavior, while the Stoics professed most confidence in the sufficiency of their recommendations. No philosophy under- took to guarantee its disciples against the undesirable acci- dents of life ; but Stoicism undertook to prove that they were not real evils, and the conviction might be bracing or consol- ing when they could not be honorably avoided. Not that Seneca asserts the absolute indifference of prosperity and adversity; in his early writings he dwells by choice on the glory which is only to be won by difficult heroism, on the need that every courageous nature will feet to prove its strength, on the glory and gladness of God in beholding of what the lesser spirits which have communion with his are capable. It is quite of a piece with the rest of the discussion of such sub- jects in Seneca that he expects his readers to be edified by the example of gladiators who were disappointed if kept long without a chance of being killed. Later on, in the letters to Lucilius and the essay ^De Otio Sapientis,' there is another feeling: the wise man will always rejoice in any call to exercise his virtue ; but there are calls of different kinds, and it is permissible to prefer a call to the virtue which is least laborious ; for in prosperity virtue is shown by self-control, which is easier than the efforts which are re- quired in adversity. This casuistry reminds us of the better aspects of the casuistry which Pascal criticised without much study, with a little carelessness of the facts of an old and com- plex society. In such a society it is difficult to get many people capable of large practical success to move fiir from the conventional standard of action : if so, it is somethins: gained to get them to conform to it in a higher than the conventional 8 LATIN LITERATURE. temper, which is what Pascal's adversaries meant by their doc- trine of directing the intention— a doctrine which, with other phraseology, is as familiar to Epictetus as to Seneca. This may serve as an explanation of the contrast, which at first appears so glaring, between Seneca's ethical fervor and his political career. There is no reason to think that he had to do much, if any, violence to his conscience in his position as Nero's minister: he thought more of the good he did than of the evil he condoned. He had been used to having his sense of personal dignity offended from his first connection with the court, when he was put in charge of Nero's education, and reconciled himself to the trial as one of the things that are frequent in life. After all, he seems to think that there is very little more to be required than usefulness and fearlessness. The ho?icstiu}i which is so prominent in Cicero has retired into the background with Seneca: the habitual sense of look- ing well in men's eyes, respecting one's self and being respect- ed, counts for little in his scheme of life: self-applause at the- abiding victory over the world seems to be part of the happi- ness of the wise man, and the enthusiasm of great moments seems to be the portion of all who are sincere. Cut Seneca is aware that self-complacency is dangerous to moral progress, and is too much tormented by introspection to be much tempted to it. He begins his treatise on "Mental Tranquillity" by a piece of self-accusation. When he sees the splendor of the world, he finds it difficult to keep to his ideal of simplicity; he is dazzled, and finds it easier to rouse his spirit to resist temptation than his eyes. When he resolves to keep himself to himself, to do nothing for the judgment of others, he will occupy himself with instructive writing, which exacts less la- bor than what is meant to be immortal ; but even here his infirmity besets him. '' As soon as the mind is lifted up with the greatness of its thought, its ambition runs loose ; it pants for a higher speech to match its higher spirit, and the lan- guage mounts to the dignity of the subject. Then I forget my rule and my chastened judgment: I am borne aloft, a'lid my words are no longer mine." * ' " De Tranquillitate Aniinae," i. adfinem. SENECA. He holds that there is no danger in his state of unrest : he compares it to the unsteadiness of the nerves of convalescents, and apparently considers the malady general. Those are best off who profess nothing, and look down upon everything; they have not to keep a character which they hardly care for, and are ashamed to give up. Others are always changing, alVays best pleased with what they were doing a little while ago; others, again, change till they are tired, and only settle down to whatever they happen to be doing when they are old; others are too laz)^, not too resolute, to change ; they live not as they choose, but as they happen to have begun living. All these are forms of one vice, with one end— discontent. " This arises from an ill-tempered mind and fearfulness of desire, or ill- success therein, when men dare less than they covet, or come short of what they seek, and so lose their balance on a hope, and always are unstable and in suspense. While they are waiting and hoping they teach themselves and force themselves to everything that is hard and shameful ; and, when they have no reward for their labor, they are tormented by their unprof- itable disgrace ; and even then lament, not that their choice was shameful, but that it was barren. Then comes regret of old undertakings and fears of new; and they feel three'^things creeping over them— the unrest of a mind which finds no way open, since it can neither command nor fulfil its desires, and the slow pace of an undeveloped life, and the rust of a spirit sinking into lethargy among disappointed purposes." And outward rest only aggravates the evil ; they have no re- sources within. "They complain of being unemployed, and their envy is the bitterest enemy of others who are thriving. They would have all men pulled down, since they have not been able to come to the front themselves, and so, out of dis- gust at successes of others and despair of their own, their mind waxes wroth with fortune, and complains of the dmes, and withdraws into a corner to brood upon its own affliction' For the sores of the mind are like those of the body— they Itch to be handled, though it keeps them from healing."' Then Seneca changes the subject without letting us or himself ' " De Tranquillitate Animae," ii. lO LATIN- LITERATURE. ■» 1 SENECA. II quite know it : he goes off to the ordinary innocent restless- ness that can attempt to relieve itself by travelling, and remarks shrewdly on the fancifulness that can turn from the dainty trimness of Campania (which was then all farms or gardens) to the wild forest pastures of the far south, where the solitude was relieved by the romantic stateliness of the deserted and unruined cities of Magna Graecia. Then he comes back to Lucretius's observation that even travel palls, since no man can fly from himself, and returns to the high tragic vein. " We are too weak to bear labor or pleasure : we are past serving our own turn or other men's. This has driven not a few to death, because they had changed their aims so often that they found themselves coming back to the same as before, and had left no room for anything new. They began to despise their life and the very universe, and they feel the sting of self-indulgence run mad. 'Is it to be always the same ?' " Elsewhere Seneca quotes the same say- ing with approval, as if everything were good which makes men willing to die. After the disease comes the remedy- unselfish exertion; and here we see that Seneca has been copying Athenodorus, who recommends public life in theory, and, despairing of the republic, falls back upon a recommen- dation of the exercise of moral influence in private. Seneca puts his own eloquence at the service of Athenodorus, in order perhaps to have the credit of refuting a worthy antago- nist. He adds something to the statement of the view he is going to correct. It is important that the retired sage should work in earnest at his own improvement and that of others, or he will waste his time on outward trifles, putting up buildings and pulling down, banking out the sea, and carrying water up- hill. The truth is, Athenodorus gave up the game too soon : if there is no room for the sage in the army, he may look to civil office : if he must remain in private life, he may be an orator; if forced to silence, he may still stand by his friends in court; if forced to forsake the forum, he may still be good company at table and at play. Rome is not all the world : wherever you are banished you may be at home and of use.' Besides, a private Roman who cannot put himself forward in any way may still be a good soldier of the state. "If he is forced into the rear rank, still there he can shout and exhort and set a soldier's example and show a soldier's spirit. What- ever happens, you ought to keep your stand, help with your war-cry ; if your mouth is stopped, keep your stand and help with your silence. A good citizen always does good service: to see him, to hear him, does good; his look and gesture, his silent steadfastness, his very going by, does good. The ex- ample of one who keeps quiet well has its use.'" And then comes the example of Socrates under the Thirty, without any mention of his resistance to an illegal order of theirs. Seneca goes on to his execution under the restored democracy as a proof that all circumstances are equally favorable or unfavor- able to the wise man ; and that as they help or hinder him, he will expand to his full dimensions or draw in ; but, either way, he will be moving, not rusting in the bondage of fear. Among other remedies of discontent, Seneca mentions friendship and economy, which he bases upon a deliberate adherence to old fashions, a preference for use rather than for ornament, and the avoidance of unnecessary business. Here Seneca gets into confusion with his eclecticism : he sees the force of Democritus's recommendation to keep free from busi- ness, but he is too much of a Stoic to refuse business which had a claim upon him, or to contemplate arranging his life so as to be free from many claims. Consequently he shuts his eyes to the point of Democritus's precept, and represents it as a protest against the useless round of salutation and "that worst of vices," an itching ear and inquiry into everything public and secret, and the knowledge of many things which it is not safe to tell nor safe to hear. He escapes into some ed- ifying remarks upon the impossibility of disconcerting the wise man. who is prepared for whatever can happen to him. And so he will be free from attachment to his plans and meet everything cheerfully, like Julius Canus, who received a sen- tence of death under Caligula with thanks, and was playing chess when summoned to execution, and discoursed by the way on the question whether the soul would be conscious of its departure from the body. ' " De Tranquillitate Animae," iii. 12 LATIN LITERATURE. SENECA. 13 But there are impersonal sources of trouble : Seneca sees all that is to be said for pessimism, the only resource is to laugh at it all. Even the misfortunes of the good are not worth a tear : if they bear them well, what need to pity them ? if they pity themselves, they deserve no pity. And, in order to maintain this cheerful temper, we must amuse ourselves, like Cato and Scipio and Asinius Pollio. Apparently Seneca agrees with Plato that it is well to drink occasionally up to or beyond the verge of sobriety ; partly because the younger Cato (an exceedingly dull person) took that means of putting himself into high spirits, and partly because there is a great deal of Greek authority for connecting madness and inspira- tion. Here Seneca winds up abruptly with a caution that diligent practice is more important than precept. The treatise on the " Shortness of Life " is a sort of pendant to that on "Tranquillity of Mind." It is full of earnestness, which many will find disproportioned, drawn from the familiar topic that the shortness of life makes it a very important ques- tion how it is spent. Granted that life is important, it is easy to prove that it is more important for being short, and not difficult to maintain that it is too important to be wasted o\\ any or all of the things for which men naturally and spon- taneously care. The particular way in which Seneca puts the doctrine is that life is too short and too uncertain to be spent, according to a fashionable Roman theory, as a prep- aration for an easy and luxurious old-age. When will you live, Seneca asks, if not now.? and waxes eloquent on all the business which keeps people from realizing the present and recalling the past, while all their desire is taken up in an abortive effort to forestall the future. He glorifies the sage whose perfect self-possession makes him as God ; for to him the past and the present and the future are united in every moment of his contemplation. This is the reward of givino- his whole attention to each hour, and doing nothing that he would not think worth doing forever: but this felicity he shares with the crowd of plain, wholesome, commonplace folk who have no plans and no aspirations, and live content- edly from one day to another. The dilettante was the typical man of leisure, but Seneca sees nothing in his occupations but undignified fuss. Yet he had less peace than some " who passed their days in arranging Corinthian bronzes " or " sorting droves of useless slaves by colors and ages." It was pleasant to watch them brawling, and pretend that one was superin- tending their exercises. A man occupied with his toilet, who " would rather have the state in confusion than his hair disarranged," * is not so much more unreasonable than a phi- losopher who would rather let everything go wrong than risk liis temper in rebuking it. The philosopher is occupied with perfection, and so is the amateur who nurses his voice: if the voice is best when left alone, as Seneca says, most ascet- ics find that the same holds of the temper. It is no reproach to anybody to give good dinners, or to train the waiters to be- have better than the guests. What seems to provoke Seneca most of all is the useless learning which had become fashion- able at Rome, which consisted in a mere monoria icchnica of superficial trivialities ; as, Who was the first to induce Romans to go to sea? Who was the first to exhibit lions loose.? Who was the first to lead elephants in triumph P""* All the time which is given to this information, which has no eftect upon the character, is so much lost to the study of philosophy, and all the time that is spent on philosophy is true life. It is a great privilege to be adopted at will into a great house, and take not only its name but its heritage; and it should seem that, in Seneca's judgment, to be a serious phi- losopher of any school is all that is required. He has a hearty dislike to the pettifogging logic of the earlier Stoics, and spends the best part of a letter to Lucilius on refuting an un- lucky syllogism of Zeno :^ a drunken man is not trusted with a secret ; a good man is trusted with a secret ; therefore a good man is not drunken. First of all, he scolds Zeno for saying a drunken man if he meant a drunkard, and then he quotes several noted drunkards of the late republic and the early empire who held high office and knew great secrets and kept them. In the letters to Lucilius throughout he quotes Epicurus by preference, because Lucilius supposed himself to > " De Brevitate Vitae," xii. ^ Id. xiii. ^ Ep. Ixxxiii. 14 LATIN LITERATURE. SENECA. be an Epicurean, and because Seneca was delighted to prove that Epicurus was as unworldly and as abstinent as any of the rest, though every now and then he insists that the Stoics are always at the level which Epicurus only reaches some- times. Another attraction of Epicurus may have been his retired life; for the love of retirement certainly grew upon Seneca : he says that he never returns from company or busi- ness in as good a frame of mind as he entered upon it. He urges Lucilius, as the first step to improvement, to shake him- self loose from the cares of this world, and not to believe that he is entangled against his will because he finds the entangle- ment irksome; he could relieve himself at once, or very soon, if he could only renounce the objects for which he undertakes so much irksome business. He rejoices when he finds that he can resist distractions himself, when he can lodge near the baths and not be disturbed by the different noises; and tri- umphs when he can arrive at one of his villas and simply lie down to rest from his journey without a bath and a shampoo. The conception of progress is very prominent ; it is more to him than it could be to a strict Stoic, who consistently divided the world into the two classes, the wise and the mad. Of course the first class was practically non-existent, and the worldly were fond of dwelling upon the weaknesses and in- consistencies of the classical philosophers whom their earnest disciples wished to canonize. We see traces of this in one of the most interesting episodes of the correspondence with Lucilius. A certain Marcellinus made Lucilius and Seneca anxious by showing increasing signs of a resolution to live for the world, and using his cleverness to disparage philoso- phy.' He relieved their anxiety by suicide, at the advice of a Stoic, who told him that life was too unimportant to be worth the anxiety of recovering from a tedious illness, which would require a long and troublesome course of treatment ; and advised him not to ask one of his slaves' to kill him, but to abstain from food ; which he did for three days, with such ^ Ep. XX ix. =* It would have been difficult for the slave to prove that he had orders and was justified in acting on them. Ep; Ixxvii. 15 effect that he rather enjoyed the sensation of dying in a warm bath. Seneca supports his testimony by his own experience of the pleasure of fainting. There are not many such pieces of realism in the corre- spondence. Mostly Seneca is enforcing the commonplaces of his school or clearing up little puzzles of such an order as this : whether the virtues are animals, and, if so, whether each of them is an animal ; whether irrational animals have a sense of the harmony of their own nature, which he decides in the affirmative ; whether we apprehend the chief good by reason or by sense. Although Seneca feels very strongly that phi- losophy is to be practical, and not a mere compendium of ab- stract truths, he is always entangling himself in casuistry, for scruples grow up fast when people insist on suppressing the strongest of their natural impulses, and the artificial estimate of life on which the Stoics laid so much stress as a guide to right conduct required to be guarded by an immense appa- ratus of distinctions. Seneca distrusts his own weakness too much to be independent : though he is always fretting at the bondage of system, he never emancipates his favorite concep- tion oi Bona Mens from the paradoxical trammels of Zeno and Chrysippus. He is fascinated, besides, by the liberal side of their teaching. He is delighted to recognize the brotherhood of man in slaves, which was a more important chapter in Ro- man Stoicism than in Greek, because the Roman Stoic had, for the most part, a large household of slaves ; and it was a practical question whether he would treat them as members of his family, or keep them at a distance, and enforce dis- cipline by mechanical severity. Another side of Stoicism which Seneca develops with great zeal is the thought of the God within, and of the unity between the spirit of the wise and the spirit of the Most High, who in- habits the world and embraces it within his own beinir ; al- though this is not yet so prominent as in Epictetus and ALircus Aurelius. On the other hand, he is more occupied than we have reason to think his predecessors were with the physical side of philosophy. He seeks communion between the spirit of man and the higher spirit of nature in knowledge : he echoes i6 LA TIN LITER A TURE. the tone of Lucretius in this, and he anticipates the modern sentiment of the bounty of nature when he bids us despise earthly riches that we may be like the gods (the spirits of the stars and the personified forces of nature), who possess noth- ing and give all things. It is a sign of discontent with his school that his seven books of " Natural Questions " are based upon Aristotle ; and even when the Stoics are right in their isolated opinions, he shrinks from following them. So he narrates with patronizing scepticism a shrewd suggestion that the cold winds of spring in the south are due to the break-up of ice in the north, and the sound observation that half-melted snow chills the feet more than snow that is crisp and hard. And the whole tone of the book is rather sceptical. The author has no steady hold upon the elementary truths of phys- ical science ; telling us, for instance, as one of the glories of his study, that the earth is part of the subject of astronomy, which has to discuss whether the earth is round or flat, whether there is air all round, and, if so, what keeps it from falling. All these questions are decided rightly, but the strange thing is that they should have to be asked. Seneca is no worse than others: the elder Pliny and Tacitus, not realizing the effect of the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator, discuss the long summer days and the long winter nights of northern latitudes in language that leaves it uncertain whether they still held fast their knowledge that the earth was round. Seneca is beyond his age in his superb faith in the possibili- ties of science : here at any rate he joins hands with Bacon. He feels strongly that the human mind has never had fair play; that it is only in a civilized community that science can advance ; and that, in the civilized community in which he was living, intellectual energy was absorbed in material interests and frivolous curiosity. Seneca is quite free from the Stoic passion for the miraculous. He reproduces, for instance, Aristotle's optical explanation of the curious phenomenon of seeing one's self in the open air, which in Germany led to so much gross mysticism about Doppelgdnger and the like. On the other hand, Seneca is given to moralize in season and out of season: he has no conception of disinterested knowledge, \ SENECA. 17 except that he protests against science being subordinated to industrialism. He is not given to explanations based upon an optimistic teleology, which is worth notice, as in Cicero's treatise " De Natura Deorum " the Stoic builds very much upon "the argument from Design." But, although Aristotle gave final causes a large place in theory, he and his school generally preferred the chemical explanations of concrete phe- nomena : consequently Seneca, when he wishes to be edifying, has to bring in the edification arbitrarily. For instance, in the midst of a dissertation upon optics, we have a very bitter and outspoken declamation against a voluptuary w'ho had a room fitted up WMth magnitying mirrors to enjoy himself in, besides much sage reflection as to what the proper use of mirrors can be; it is quite clear that the toilet can have no place in them: it is shocking that a man should comb his hair, or trim his beard, or, worst of all, pluck out the superfluous hair on his face at a mirror. On the other hand, it seems a //^r^ expressed as much as the Romans in general cared to notice. u PANEGYRIC ON PISO ?) The " Panegyric on Piso," attributed to Saleius Bassus, must, if his, be a very early work. It has none of the rough vigor that Persius and Quinctilian attribute to the odes of his man- hood and old-age. It is smooth and copious and diffuse. Piso has a long and illustrious pedigree, duly celebrated by other poets: he adorns it himself by the peaceful triumphs of the gown. He has complete command over the courts : he surpasses jVIenelaus when he wishes to be terse, and Ulysses when he wishes to be convincing, and Nestor when he wishes to be entertaining. We may infer from the compliment that Saleius, being a poet, had read nothing but poetry. Piso was supposed to have distinguished himself immensely when he delivered the enthusiastic eulogy upon the emperor which was expected- from a newly appointed consul. When nothing is going on in the courts or the senate, Piso amuses himself by declamation, and all the world comes to listen ; he exercises himself at ball, or fencing, or boxing, and all the world leave their own exercises to look on. We do not hear whether any one was admitted to Piso's musical exercises : he was obviously at once proud of his accomplishments and half ashamed of them. His panegyrist accumulates mythological precedents in favor of practices which still shocked much respectable opinion. It is plain that, as Tacitus tells us, it was only a question of degree between him and Nero. Piso was behind the age in another point, which was rather to his credit : he respected the independence and judgment of friends who re- ceived material help at his hands,' while there was an in- creasing tendency to treat clients as paid buffoons, hired to sacrifice their dignity for a paltry pittance. The poet himself » In fact, it appears that dissolute pensioners were among the principal members of his conspiracy. 11.-2* 34 LATIN LITERATURE. professes to be poor, but not to want Piso's money : he com- poses his panegyric in the hope of being made free of his patron's house, partly for the satisfaction of knowing so excel- lent and illustrious a person, whom he will be able to celebrate better when he knows him better, but chiefly because he hopes that if Piso will take him up he will become known, as Vergil ' and Varius and Horace became known, thanks to Maecenas, though the poet cannot forget that Maecenas gave more than praise. For himself, he Iiopes to find a new Maecenas, and is prepared, when he enters his gates with the muse, to lay aside the gravity of the forum— a hint that he knew by reputation how voluptuous Piso's family life was, and was ready to ad- mire it the more. He has praised Piso already for being able to keep up the most magnificent dignity in public and throw off all restraint in hours of amusement, which is also the ideal of a Red Indian. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 35 CHAPTER H. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. The poetry of the Claudian period is one of the most per- plexing phenomena in Latin literature. The original work of the time is the " Pharsalia," and it stands in no intelligible re- lation to the rest of the literary movement, which was very active, though it has left no trace except some sneers and parodies in Persius and Petronius. There is only one com- mon element that we can trace throughout, and that is rather a matter of intention than of achievement. The whole poetry of the reigns of Claudius and Nero seems to have been am- bitious of greater metrical smoothness and continuity than had been attained by the contemporaries of Augustus. Persius himself makes Cornutus tell him ^ that his skill lay in close- fitting, sharply turned phrases, too smooth to need mouthing, though he sneers at the profession of his contemporaries to have found metre raw, and added grace and coherence. Cal- purnius, if he belongs to the period, is much more careful to avoid elisions than Vergil in his " Eclogues," though he is less musical, in spite of his care. Lucan is much more careful than Vergil not to let the sense end with a line ; he never fol- lows the cadences of Vergil's narrative passages for long: what attracts him is the serried texture of Juno's speeches, overloaded with metrical and rhetorical emphasis, in which no word can be spared or its place altered. The movement which Ovid describes in his last letter from Pontus seems to have kept possession of the field till the time of Persius. Antiquarianism and sentimentalism divided the public, and left no room for good-sense. When Persius wishes for an example of vicious rhetoric, he turns to a great pleader of the age of Augustus, whom he did not learn to satirize Persius, " Sat." v. 13, 14. lb. i. 85. 36 LATIN LITERATURE. from Horace ; when he speaks of the themes which represented poetry to the heirs of Romulus as they lay at wine, he turns to a Phyllis, a Hypsipyle, and all the lamentable poetry of departed bards. This reminds us of Ovid himself, who would hardly have been grateful for the inmiortality implied in having his verses snuffled through the nose of an elderly voluptuary. The " Iliad " of Macer was no better and no worse than the " Iliad " of Labeo, and Fonteius on the loves of the Nymphs and Satyrs was probably a fit link between the romantic poetry of Catullus and the romantic poetry of the af^e of Nero. It is clear that romantic poetry, when Persius formed his taste, was the kind of poetry most nearly alive ; and this goes with the spurious reputation of Marsus, the con- tinuator of Ovid, whose voluminous work upon the Amazons was well on the way to oblivion in the days of Martial, when Persius's reputation was already established. Persius treats it as the easiest thing in the world to write of Attis and the Bac- chanals : no manhood was needed to feel a fictitious hyster- ical enthusiasm for their orgies, and the expression of such feeling came as easy as slobbering. The tenderness and the pathos and the succession of distinct and vivid pictures, which were the glory of Catullus, have disappeared with the endless alliterations and the monotonous rhythmical structure which seemed obsolete. The type of poet whom Persius caricatures ' had never seen or heard the Maenads at their revels, like Catullus. He is not content with them at play : he goes straight to the wildest, most painful aspect of things. Instead of a group of male revellers playing with the limbs of a dead steert which is horrible enough, we have the figure of one woman ready to tear off the living steer's head for his pride; and we know that the steer is her son. There is a crowd of other associations besides the legend of Pentheus. To be sure, Catullus reminds us that his Sileni came from Nysa, but he is not careful to inform us that a Maenad may be regarded as a follower of Bassareus, and that she fills her horn with a Mimallonean blast. On the other hand, Catullus is clear and grammatical ; Vergil's constructions are ambiguous, but there * I. 99-102. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 37 is always a grammatical way of taking them. The poet of Persius is as ambiguous, but there is no grammatical solution of the ambiguity. A Bassarid and a Mcenad filled (plural) their horns with a Mimallonean blast : so far well, but then who is it that cries "Evius !" again and again ? The Maenad? If so, she cannot have been blowing, and the Bassarid might have been left to fill her horn in the singular by herself. Silly as the lines are, it is impossible to deny that for nonsense-verses they are singularly musical ; and the same may be said of two isolated lines quoted before (which we may be pretty sure Persius did not invent), though "a dolphin cleaving the azure god of seas," and an army " taking off a rib from the long side of Apennine," are conceptions rather difficult to realize.* The latter proves that historical poetry was still cultivated a little, though apparently not for purposes of declamation. Hannibal might have said many things more eloquent to his army at the end of a long march than the attempt which Per- sius has recorded to set a sigh of relief to music. In fact, it is one of the grievances of Persius that the poetasters of the day have never turned out a decent school exercise : when they had to write about the country, they gave a catalogue of the contents of the fiirmyard and the hackneyed associations of the farm : they only pleased themselves and their public when they got into an element of morbid romance. Lucan cuts rudely into all this. He had composed mytho- logical poems, and had a reputation in that way which rivalled Nero's ; but his great work, the " Pharsalia," stands alone in Latin literature for its resolute rejection of mythology. Even the way in which he introduces it as an appendix to geography only serves to measure his contempt for it. When he describes a region which has a legend, he tells the legend with the pro- viso that it is not true; and the motive for relating a legend that he finds strongest is, that it is an incredible explanation of facts for which no credible explanation was forthcoming. The scientific spirit is strong in Lucan, but it is unembodied ; he is curious, and he knows what knowledge is, but he knows ' Qui caeruleum dirimebat Nerea Delphin. Sic costam longo subduxi- mus Apennino. 38 LATIN LITERATURE. nothing; perhaps, if there had been anything to be known at the time, he might have failed to learn it. Science was not then in a condition to attract clever people : it was still a mis- cellaneous collection of disorganized information, converging perhaps in certain directions which could be discerned from the elevation of an Aristotle. There was much mental exer- cise to be obtained by those who sought it in the comparison of untested plausibilities, and, for those who found this too arduous, there was the simple enumeration of conjectures, in which Lucan was always ready to indulge. But what is characteristic of him is that he declaimed in verse on an heroic scale. All the passionate eloquent inge- nuity, which was wasted upon an audience which lived to find the emotions of their youth ridiculous, found a permanent ex- pression in Lucan, which has always found its echo wherever there have been strong passions forced to be still. In the Middle Ages few classical authors were so much read and praised as\ucan, which is the more noteworthy because in the Middle Ages almost every reader of the classics was a priest or a monk. It agrees with this, that John Foster and the Abbe Gaume both think Lucan one of the palmary in- stances of the dangers of classical literature to Christian piety. There are fortunate periods, in one of which we seem to have been living, when nearly all the passionate energy which exists is at once exercised and subdued by moderately successful activity ; and then Lucan seems, what Byron per- haps will seem, an author for boys, who, if they read and understand him, cannot help admiring, although they look forward to agreeing with their elders and betters, who find him far from wholly admirable. Lucan's life was a very short one : he was born a.d. 39, and he had to commit suicide a.d. 65, in consequence of his share in Piso's conspiracy. His death gives us exactly the measure of his character: he was tortured to reveal what he knew of the plot, and accused his mother, who had been on very bad terms with his father. When he knew that he was to die, he lay down to a hearty banquet, and, thus fortified, was equal to reciting his own poetry while he bled to death. LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. I 39 It was not exactly inconsistent for him to live a luxurious life, though professing to be a Stoic : the austerity of Stoi- cism differed from the austerity of monasticisin in not aimins" at externals. A good Stoic could not be a voluptuary: he was bound to satisfy himself that his heart was not set upon comfort and splendor; but when he had satisfied himself (and he was sole judge in his own cause), he might live in as much comfort and splendor as his means permitted, and as he chose to think his station required. There is no trace in either Seneca or Lucan of the feeling which is always present in Marcus Aurelius, that habitual self-denial in bodily matters is an aid to self-control; and, in fact, to a man who wishes to be in a constant state of eloquent indignation at vice and eloquent aspirations after an unattainable virtue, such self- denial is a hindrance rather than a help : patience and peace are not fiivorable to exaltation, or to boaslfulness over one's attainments or ideals; and boastfulness of his ideals, and re- grets that the general force of things is against them, is the deepest source of Lucan's inspiration. The conflict between character and circumstance, each always victorious on its own ground, is the subject which in endless recurring forms gives interest and dignity to the "jPharsalia," far more than the contest between law^and am- bition, or liberty and despotism. The poem opens with an adulatory invocation of Nero, anticipating his apotheosis in terms borrowed, with much exaggeration, from the words in which Vergil anticipates the apotheosis of Octavian, and ac- knowledging that the worst evils of the civil wars (which include, it seems, the death of Cicero) were not a heavy price to pay for the blessings of the reign of Nero, whose first five years were ended when Lucan was twenty years old. F:ven those five years had been full of crimes against his own household and against the strangers who met him when he roamed the streets at night to amuse himself with violence. There may be something in the repented observation of an- cient and modern critics, that the opening of the " Pharsalia"' owes something to Seneca; and it is certain that the poet is not at first so violently opposed to Caesar as he becomes ■^ 40 LA TIN LITER A TURE. afterwards. He is even able to recognize that the war was rather of the seeking of Pompeius, who could not endure an equal, than of C^Esar, who could not endure a master. But this is a solitary gleam of insight : most of the description of the causes of the war is a confused and turgid declama- tion on luxury and corruption and the vastness of the empire. It is true that Lucan had no experience of the corruption and luxury of the eighteenth century, which was not incom- patible with a degree of political stability that Rome hardly retained in the days of Scaurus, or recovered in the days of the Antonines; but, even allowing for this, he is not pene- trating : he attributes everything he dislikes to everything he denoimces, and does not get beyond his antipathies. There is no real inconsistency between the hyperboles which he or his uncle lavished upon the promise of a reign that ended miserably, and even the bitterest of his invectives against Caesar, as a monster who was disappointed whenever he missed a crime. It was characteristic of the Stoics to be pessimists in detail and optimists on the whole ; they regarded the general order of things with unqualified, not to say exag- gerated, reverence, because this reverence for the power and excellence of the whole was the ultimate sanction of morality; and as they placed morality in a purely disinterested act of the will, and as the will was most clearly disinterested when everything combined to hinder it, they naturally took the darkest view of the surroundings of whatever they took for virtue ; the greater the obstacles, the greater the virtue. If Ccesar had not been a criminal, where would have been Cato's glory in resisting Ccesar to the last ? He would have sunk to the level of the troops aboard one of Caesar's ships, who were stranded within reach of a Pompeian camp, and killed one another rather than accept honorable quarter. Even to Lucan, the passion for a violent death seemed less than supremely admirable when indulged purely for its own sake, or in a cause which he could not approve. Quinctilian says that Lucan is rather an historian or an orator than a poet, and this is true in the sense that, though the world into which Lucan takes us is unreal enough, it is f LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. meant to be real : the lurid glare by which we see everything is not meant for "the light which never was on sea or land.'' But, after all, every great writer in verse who could not have written better in prose must be accepted as a poet ; and Lucan is certainly not an historian. When we know the events, we see that he has related them pretty faithfully; and he was diligent in collecting splendid episodes of indiv'idual daring or endurance, of which Livy was perhaps more prodi- gal than Caesar. But it would be much harder to get a co- herent picture of the Civil war from Lucan than of* the Pu- nic wiy from Silius. Lucan is very loyal to one precept of Horace— he passes by whatever he has no hope will shine under his handling. The whole poem is made up of orna- ments, linked together without relief: the transition from one theme for declamation to another is, as a rule, just barely intelligible, but it is always hurried. For instance, the cam"- paign of Dyrrhachium, where Cassar attempted to blockade Pompeius, and ended by being blockaded himself, is one of the most interesting and important parts of the war. Lucan gives it three hundred and ten lines, and of these a hundred and nineteen are given to Sca^va, a centurion who lost an eye, like three others, and had his shield pierced by a hundred and twenty arrows, in the course of a series of engagements in which CiEsar only lost twentv men killed, though none of the cohort in which SciEva served escaped without a wound. The rest of the narrative is shorter, very much shorter, than Caesar's; and, short as it is, a great many lines are spent upon similes and mythological reminiscences and regrets that Pompeius did not follow up his success at Dyrrhachium with greater vigor. Nearly five hundred and eighty lines are spent on Cato's march from Cvrene to Lep- tis, which had no particular importance in proportion to its hardships. Often, too, the turning-point is obscured where It IS not omitted: fbr instance, Cassar quells a mutiny, and he calls his soldiers Quirites, but the connection between the two is not brought out. Lucan puts all his strength into the complaints of the mutineers, which are immensely ingenious and inappropriate. He is aware that they rebelled because 1 42 LA TIN LITER A TURK. Ihey were disappointed of the plunder of Rome, but he can- not help dilating on the e^iormous wickedness of Caesar, who went on fighting when even his soldiers wished to leave off. So, too, the battle in the port of Marseilles is described with immense energy; the heroism of individuals receives some- thing more than justice ; but, till we are told at the end who won^it is impossible to see how things were going, because the acts of individual prowess which Lucan likes to declaim about had little consequence beyond themselves. For the rest, it is curious how completely Lucan fills up what Pliny the Younger describes as the regular programme of an historical poem, such as he thought of writing him- self on the Dacian war; and it would be interesting to know whether his ideal is formed upon Lucan's, or whether Lucan followed precedents set by Varius. The style of Lucan's or- nament differs a good deal from the style that would have commended itself to Pliny ; but the subjects, the descriptions and histories of little-known places, of national customs, the characters of heroes, battles, sieges, and the like, are all the subjects of Lucan. It would be a proof that the Romans had really little historical sense if their idea of an historical poem was a versification of history with the connection of events left out. Much, of course, is due to the custom of reci- tation. No two poems could be more unlike than the "Phar- salia" and the "Metamorphoses;" and yet the structure of both is alike, because the poet had to link together a suc- cession of brilliant fragments, each of which in its way would astonish an audience. Ovid describes in epigrams, Lucan de- claims in epigrams, and the story is a mere vehicle for description or declamation. Ovid is the more natural and rapid of the two ; Lucan is terribly tedious by comparison. Cato's admirably balanced fimeral speech upon the death of Pompeius is twenty-five lines, and Lucan thinks it is only a few words. On the other hand, Ovid is empty and insipid, and Lucan, where most unreal, overflows with passion and a kind of earnestness. As has been said, he is too much in earnest for mythology ; though once, in sight of the legen- dary garden of the Hesperides, he breaks out into impatience I LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 43 at the spite which would hold a poet to bare truth. His objection to mythology is not exactly rationalistic. He admits the ghastly supernatural ism of witchcraft with an eager ap- petite for all its horrors. He does not appear to have the least suspicion of how the Thessalians managed their famous trick of bringing down the moon from heaven; he ascribes their success to incantations, which no doubt had iheir use in steadying the witch's nerves and fixing her attention, and perhaps diverting the attention of her dupe, as she adjusted and readjusted the imperfect apparatus, the principle of which she did not understand. One traces the Stoical preoccupation with the higher traditional forms of divination in the episode of Appius and the Pythia,' which is so obviously written in rivalry with the episode of ^:neas and the Sibyl. The supe- riority is not all upon the side of the original. Vergil's picture of the ecstasy of the prophetess, his report of her wild shrill utterance, are not exactly unsympathetic or disrespectful : he has far too much tact to make her compromise her dignity and his own by making her knock over the tripods^like Lucan's Pythia in her frenzy; but he is, after all, a little ex- ternal and conventional in his reverence, as if he were hang- ing draperies on a consecrated doll. Lucan's execution Ts bizarre ; his Appius resorts to vulgar violence to compel the Pythia to place herself under the influence of the true inspira- tion ; and this is the more regrettable because his previous speculations as to the silence of the oracles treat the mysti- cal vapor in a very materialistic spirit. But, in spite of this, Lucan's Pythia is not a mere lay figure : if the conception strikes us before the execution, it will probably seem both thoughtful and powerful. The shrinking reluctance of the priestess to be dragged out of the limits of wholesome natural life, and the helpless perplexity of her finite spirit gazing upon the unveiled abyss of infinite truth, are really effective and singularly modern: and the curt, meagre, unmeaning oracle is less disappointing than the tame ravings of the Sibyl in the "x^ilneid," because it does not profess to satisfy the expectation which has been raised. The disappointment' of Appius is the ^ "Pharsalia," v. 120-227. r 44 LATIN- LITERATURE. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 45 justification of Cato's refusal to turn aside to test the oracle of Ammon, on the ground that a virtuous man has within him all the light that he needs. One criticism of oracles which we might expect we do not find : Lucan does not trouble himself with the objection that it is useless to foresee what cannot be averted. Here, as elsewhere, we seem to see Stoi- cism breaking up in his poem : he has no more faith in Fate than in Providence : he turns aside repeatedly to point out what small feasible changes would have deranged the whole order of events. Pompeius, indeed, when he fights at Phar- salia against his judgment, recognizes the purpose of destiny in the taunts of Cicero ; but Lucan speaks from his heart in the line (v. 823) which tells us how Curio's desertion changed the balance of the world. We are more than half-way to the reflection of Pascal, who was in theory a predestinarian, that if Cleopatra's nose had been half an inch shorter the history of the world would have been different. In this connection we may notice the extravagant pleasure with which Lucan amplifies all the tales of the power of witches to set aside the laws of nature ; the reign of the gods is a reign of law, and Lucan is more than half willing to believe that in Thessaly witches can find drugs which make them too strong for the gods. His faith in the gods practically reduces itself to two articles, that they dwell in hearts like Cato's, and that they can be trusted to avenge the world upon the Caesars ; in both it rested upon experience, the experience of an unfortunate time reflected in a heated and rebellious mind, too impatient to idealize the sober, unobtrusive prosperity which thoroughly sound and modest natures attain under the most unfavorable conditions. Consequently Lucan makes the prosperity of the wicked a reproach to Providence, as well as a glory to the heroic spirits who could be true through all, and prize upright- ness the more for its cost, because the plain, well-meaning people, who have not courage for this, suffer without compen- sation. The particular suffering that rouses his indignation most is the loss of liberty, of which he has a much correcter notion than most of his critics.' What he understands by it is simply the absence of a master, and it is quite true that in this sense Rome still retained its liberty till Ccesar destroyed it. Cato correctly remarks that under Pompeius liberty had been rather a fiction, active politicians had all been sub- servient under tolerably strong pressure; but the community at large had not a sense of being under the orders of a single person : and this would apply even to the provincials, who were certainly better off under the Empire. But this did not prevent their having been freer under the Republic in tjje an- cient exact sense of freedom. Ccesar was a good master; he guaranteed the provincials from oppression more completely than the laws or their patrons had done, but he exacted much more homage (willingly paid) than the senate had done. Cato almost congratulates his troops on the death of Pom- peius, because their victory will re-establish the authority of the laws, instead of that of a leader who respected them. He does not promise them self-government or good govern- ment, but liberty— that is, freedom from personal rule. He joins Pompeius with a view of coercing him, and advises Brutus to do the like; although the Pompeius of Lucan is very different from the Pompeius of Cicero. There is a con- stant protest against the idea that he was cruel, and that his victory would have been bloodier than Caesar's, while Csesar's clemency is systematically ignored and his motives perverted; his plausibility is recognized, but not his real placability' while his character is much falsified by the lengthy rhetoric which Lucan invents for him. Instead of the well-known *Fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortunes,' we have fif- teen lines of bombast, which show how much it must have cost Lucan to make his fisherman set forth a condensed summary of all the practical signs of foul weather in com- paratively simple language. When Ccesar condescends at last to recognize the danger, his first thought is to imitate the dying speech of Dido. Pompeius is less egregiously falsi- fied : there are two traits of the real man which Lucan sees clearly— that he was living upon his reputation, and that he wished to rule under the forms of the constitution, which was violated even when a popular leader overruled the sen- ate by a legal popular vote. Cato, on the other hand, is 46 LATIN LITERATURE. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 47 not himself, but Paetus: a model of mild gravity and the enthusiasm that needs no hope. The only trait in common between the two was a generous forbearance and consid- eration for others : for the rest, the real Cato was an honest, impracticable pedant, who became a political personage by reason of his dauntless courage and his sharp tongue, which was useful in keeping backsliders who wished to pass for aristocrats to their colors. Perhaps the grotesque scene where Marcia comes back in mourning to be married again to her first husband, which is meant to be sublime, and suc- ceeds in being pathetic, may be accepted as characteristic. It is certain that Lucan understands the woman's side of marriage best ; he is better able to idealize the devotion of a wife than the tenderness of a husband, which he is apt to con- ceive as almost a weakness. Pompeius is ashamed to have Cornelia with him in the crisis of a civil war, as well as anx- ious for her sake ; while her feeling, if not her language, is as true as Andromache's. Of course there are subtleties which are only possible to a later age. After Pharsalia, when every- thing is over, though Cornelia does not know it, Lucan re- proaches her with wasting her time in alarms when she might be lamenting already. The hurried parting is better: after conjuring Pompeius, if beaten, by no means to come to Les- bos, the first place where the enemy will seek him, Cornelia springs wildly from bed, too miserable to put off her anguish for an instant ; she cannot bear to hold her sorrowing lord to her bosom or to hang upon his neck in sweet embrace ; they lose the last rich moments of their long love ) ' they hurry to their mournful separation ; as they draw apart, neither has strength to say farewell. The first night that Cornelia sleeps alone, restless as she is, she does not venture to lie for an in- stant in Pompeius's place. Most of the other characters are shadowy, except that one or another of the rank and file on Coesar's side are illuminated for a moment by Lucan's passion for death, which grows upon him rapidly after the first two books ; while upon the Pom- peian side devotion was confined to men of rank like Domi- > Which lasted about six years. li tius, who was pardoned at Corfinium, and after the defeat of Pharsalia died in his flight, glad, Lucan tells us, not to have been pardoned twice. The rank and file, even according to a Pompeian poet, were lukewarm in the cause ; and such in- terest as they took hi it did not go beyond personal loyalty to Pompeius, so that when he was dead it was a great achieve- ment for Cato to keep his troops to the republican standard. Lucan has obviously no sense of loyalty to a leader, though he can imagine, by a great strain upon his imagination, some- thing of what we understand by loyalty to a legitimate sover- eign. But such loyalty as that of Caesar's soldiers or par- tisans is simply an offence to him : he cannot help seeing it, but it strikes him as simple infiituation that men should go through so much simply to give themselves a master. The phenomenon is so monstrous that he cannot keep from dwell- ing upon it : he even recognizes that Caesar represented him- self as the organ of his followers, and professed himself willing to sacrifice the repose of a private station (which they could believe him capable of enjoying) for the most invidious func- tion, in order that they might reap the fruits of his usurpation; but this, too, is given only as one more proof of his hypocrisy, like his regret for the murder of Pompeius. In truth, Lucan is a systematic pessimist. He lives in the shadow even while he bears witness to the light. He is al- ways ready to blaspheme, and to venerate the patience of Cato as a rebuke to blasphemers. He has the Platonic admiration for simplicity of life which is common to almost all Roman poetry; the fisherman who fails to carry Caesar across the Adriatic is blessed because he can hear Caesar knock at his cabin and not be afraid ; but this feeling does not make him ashamed of the riches of the camp of Pompeius, though he would like us to believe that the nobles brought their wealth there chiefly to provide the sinews of war. The contrast be- tween his own life of ostentation and indulgence and his ideal of freedom and dignity was itself enough to engender a good deal of that spurious ferocity which is the natural outcome of characters which (by their own fault or that of circumstances) are condemned to express such energy as they possess by 48 LA TIN LITER A TURE. \ LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 49 words rather than deeds. One may say of Lucan, as cer- tainly as of Bvron or Keats, that his genius depends upon his intensity, and his intensity upon morbid concentration of thought and feeling. Any one of the three would have been better and happier for the discipline of practical work. Would any one of the three have left such splendid literary work behind? It is onlv well-balanced natures which can give a good direction to all their impulses, and the discipline which strengthens good impulses, when they have less than the aver- age strength, does not transform unwholesome influences, but controls and mortifies them till they cease, first to be splen- did temptations, and then to be temptations at all. The edu- cation of Lucan was such as to carry him quickly and surely to the utmost limit of his faculties ; it is probable that if he had known his iliults he would have hugged them like Ovid ; many of his worst extravagances would have seemed beauties to himself and to his contemporaries, and the same swift sus- tained impetuosity which produces them produces what we admire also. If one faculty be kept perpetually on the strain, its owner cannot pick and choose between what it brings him. Selection implies repose ; Tacitus's splendid epigrams are un- alloyed by preposterous conceits like Lucan's, because he was many things besides an historian. He was an advocate in large pract^ice (Nero would not allow Lucan to speak in pub- lic,''even for a client) ; he was an administrator at home and abroad; he began to write after he had reached middle life; his reflections and sarcasms stand out from a large background of dull facts recorded quite simply and tersely, like flowers in a tropical forest ; while Lucan's, which have no background, are like a hot-house full of tropical flowers, which even in their own climate would not grow so lavishly or luxuriantly in the open air. Lucan's reputation was immediate, and not transitory. Statins, after he had published the "Thebaid," speaks of the *' Pharsalia " as the second, if not the first, work of Latin poetry, sets Lucan above Horace and Ovid, and hints that Vergil' has no reason to challenge a comparison. The author of the " Dialogue on the Decline of Eloquence/* writing prob- ably a little earlier,' makes one of his speakers quote as a sign of progress that orators are expected to fetch their poeti- cal ornaments from the sanctuary of Vergil, Horace, or Lucan, where Cicero and his contemporaries were content with frowsy old Ennius and Accius. Martial is aware of the existence of critics who would not acknowledge a poet in Lucan, but he very properly appeals to the bookseller, who could attest that after thirty years or more he still had a sale as a poet. STATIUS. But the strongest testimony to Lucan's influence is the " Thebaid " of Statins. There is practically a whole generation between the two poets. The birth of Statius till lately was assigned to a.d. 6i, one year before the death of Persius, four years before the death of Lucan. The " Thebaid " is sener- ally supposed to have been completed in a.d. 96, after twelve years of labor ; and the " Thebaid " certainly owes as much to Lucan as to Antimachus. Statius, one might almost say, owes such inspiration as he has to Lucan, while he owes his plan and general arrangement to the Alexandrian poet, whom he doubtless labored to surpass by the aid of the ingenuity and finish which were all his own. The training of Statius had been in a certain way as stimulating as Lucan's. His father (to whom he was so devotedly attached that for three months after his death he was unable to write) was a distinguished grammarian, though not in the front rank of his profession; and this accounts for the overpowering mythological learning of Statius, which is real learning in its way. He has, or has had, the ins and outs of every form of every legend by heart; and he uses his knowledge with perplexing, tantalizing mas- tery. He alludes to legends which we can barely trace in a way that we arc prepared for in the commonplaces of mythol- ogy; and he himself is so familiar with them that he always finds them the easiest explanation of the actions of gods and goddesses, and of heroes too, though here human motives are available. Lucan is learned,. too, in a sense, and his learning IS wider in range, but it is not real ; one feels that he has > The dialogue professes to be held A.D. 75. n--3 50 LA TIN LITER A TURE. picked up everything and knows nothing, whereas Statius knows and has digested what he has learned. For one thing, Statius had not the same distractions as Lucan. Statius is a slave's name, and, though it is borne by men of good family among the South Sabeliians, we hear nothing of the poet's grand'father ; so it is natural to conclude that the family had not long emerged from the ranks of libertini, especially as their home was Naples, and the towns of the Campanian coast were a great haunt of freedmen, as we know from Petronius. The Anncei, on the other hand, had been rich for a genera- tion, although the scandalous wealth of Seneca was due to his favor at court. The early efforts of Lucan were celebrated from the first, whereas Statius only gradually found his way to notoriety as an improvisatore, who could turn off elaborate hexameters by the dozen as quickly as another could make an epigram in two or three distichs. The Flavian emperors, and especially Domitian,did much to encourage literature by periodical competitions, which gave the winners great tempo- rary distinction, and brought a sufficiently substantial prize to encourage the illusion that poetry was a remunerative pro- fession. Statius did not find it so; he retired to Naples after the completion of the " Thebaid," each instalment of which was hailed with enthusiasm when publicly recited ; and, if Juvenal is to be trusted, he had to maintain himself in the in- terval by writing librettos for mythological ballets, to be sold to a class who were particular in stipulating for exclusive possession of what tliey purchased. Lucan had written sal- ticcBfabuhE, but this was doubtless a compliment to Nero, and Lucan had less need to husband his gifts than Statius. It is impossible to read the " Thebaid " without weariness. It is perhaps the most fiuiguing work of its scale in Latin lit- erature ; it is very far from being the dullest. The attention of the reader who can go on reading is always kept awake, only it is never rewarded unless by a growing appreciation of the excellence of workmanship which is hardly ever enjoy- able. The passion and fervor of Lucan are replaced by in- o-enuity ; the conceits have no indignation in them; the ex- ao^crerations have no elevation, no heat even of feeling, to alone LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 51 for them. The effect of the whole is like Chinese fireworks : all the points of the situation are made to sparkle before us in a sort of multiplying mirror, but the light by w^hich they sparkle is pale to the lurid glow of Lucan, which is so unmis- takably brighter than mere daylight, though it throws deeper shadows. One reason of this is that, unreal as Lucan's pas- sion is, the unreality was not contracted simply by passing through his imagination. Brutus and Cato and the rest were as unreal as their poet ; and the unrealities which have played a great part in the actual world are never uninteresting. But the unrealities of Statius are invented in cold blood. When Bacchus ' appears in all his pomp to invite the nymphs to withhold the springs from the rivers, that an Argive army set in motion by his stepmother's hatred against Thebes may suf- fer from thirst, one is really glad that at least one Latin poet consigned the puppets of Olympus to the lumber-room. And this feeling is stronger for the odd medley of science and my- thology in the council of the gods. There, we learn, the rivers are kindred of the clouds, and the gods meet in council above the shifting halls of heaven in the inner pole, where east and west are seen at once in light. Jove towers above his coun- cillors as he comes into their midst, his calm gaze shakes the world as he takes his seat upon his starry throne.' We can see the intention to be more sublime than Homer; but the nod which shakes heaven and earth in the "Iliad " is an idealiza- tion of the sky bowing itself, as it were, upon the thunder-cloud and of the peal that shakes the whole horizon. Of what is the calm gaze which shakes the world an idealization.? Of the shivering awe of Statius as he came out of his study, or the hall where he had been reciting, under the deep Italian sky ? Then what is the starry throne that is set above the shifting halls of heaven } The starry sky in general may very well be the throne of the Most High; but if the planetary spheres are halls, which is probably what Statius meant to mean, what is the starry throne set above them } And all this parade serves absolutely no purpose. Eteocles was quite ready to refuse to abdicate at the end of his year, even if > " Theb." iv. 652 sqq. » I. 197 sqq. 52 LATIN LITERATURE. Jupiter, to punish the sons of men in general and Argives in particular by the Theban war, had not resolved, in spite of the protests of Juno, to raise the ghost of Laius ; but then, perhaps. Statins was moved to bring out the religious aspect of the legend, when " Pierian fire fell upon his spirit that he should unroll the guilt of Thebes, and brother in array against brother, and the unholy hate that tried out the right to reign in turn by battle." The wild horror of the subject is its great attraction to him. The stain of guilt cleaves in greater or lesser measure to all the characters except Adrastus and Amphiaraus, who is doomed to perish because he cannot act upon his own clear knowl- edge. In Lucan the sympathy with heroism passes readily into blasphemy. In Statius, who is quite correct in his own feelings and opinions, it is the heroes themselves who are blasphemous, and the tame poet gets some stir out of the contemplation of their wickedness. In this, as in much else, Statius is a contrast to Vergil, whom he studied so reverently. In the "^neid," upon the Trojan side all is virtue ; and Turnus and Dido, though the poet takes a severer view of their faults than the reader, are saints compared to Tydeus, and there is little to choose be- tween Tydeus and Mezentius, the bugbear of the ".^ineid." Another contrast is that Vergil is too artistic to give the least countenance to the Roman superstition that all kings were monsters of splendor and wickedness, which sprang partly from a corrupt exaggeration of late Attic tragedy, and partly from a jealous republicanism deeper and steadier than existed at Athens. Statius is learned enough to know that in the heroic age kings had not the temptation of wealth ; but he treats this as an aggravation of the wickedness of the Theban brothers, who could commit fratricide for so little. But, in spite of the difference of spirit, the " Thebaid " is modelled upon the " ^neid " in this sense, that there is an evident anxiety to reproduce the effects of Vergil. The horrors of the last nisht at Lemnos,* when the women slew the men, are ob- viously a reminiscence of the last night at Troy; the desertion > V. 195 sqq. LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 53 of Hypsipyle is a reminiscence of the desertion of Dido : on the first day that Tydeus and Polynices spend at the court of Adrastus,^ the Argives are keeping the festival of their de- liverance from a woman with snaky hair whom Apollo has sent against them ; because, when ^neas seeks the help of Evander, he and his subjects are keeping the festival of their deliverance from Cacus.'* Again, Adrastus boasts of his knowl- edge of the sorrows of Thebes, as Dido boasts of her knowl- edge of the sorrows of Troy, though Statius does not quite forget that the sorrows of Troy were glorious, and that Adras- tus ought to anticipate Polynices's story, simply to spare him the pain of telling it. So, too, there are games for Archemo- rus, which perhaps have a shade more to do with the story than the funeral games for Anchises ; and Lacon is famous as the pupil of Pollux, because Dares had been famous as the rival of Paris. So, too, ParthenopxHis is throughout a pen- dant to Camilla, and not at all an uninteresting pendant, though some of the details border upon the burlesque. The picture of Atalanta turning pale as her son drops on one knee to receive the rush of the boar on his spear, and then, as she fears, is all but thrown down, till a shaft from her bow de- spatches the boar,^ is pretty and touching, all the more be- cause, like most of the pretty pictures of Statius, it is given in a remote, enigmatical way, as if it had been thought out rather than seen. But when she tells him he is a boy hardly ripe for the bowers of the Dryads and for the wrath of the nymphs of Erymanth, one feels that Statius has a little too much faith in mythology. The same remark applies to the bacchic frenzy which seizes the queen* (because a similar frenzy had been feigned by Amata in the "yEneid"?). She goes about sadly with bloodshot eyes, splitting pine-trees into three pieces with * I; 553 sqq. ' The temper of the two episodes is entirely different : Hercules has wrought the deliverance of pure grace ; Phoebus has simply consented to spare an innocent people whom he persecutes, first to avenge the death of a maiden whom he seduced and deserted, and then to avenge the death of a monster sent to destroy the children of the Argives because a child of Phoebus had been destroyed. * IV. 321 sqq. 4 IV. 377.405. 54 LATIN LITERATURE. her bare hands, and throwing the fragments hither and thither, and fills the city with shouts of dismay as she invokes the omnipotent father of Nysa, who is shaking Ismarus with a thyrsus of iron, or bidding the vineyard to steal over Lycurgus with its foliage, or rushing, red-hot with triumph, through the dwellings of Ganges or the farthest bounds of red Tethys and the halfs of the East, or bursting in gold from the fountains of Hermus, while neglected Thebes is involved in a guilty war ; and bids him set her amid everlasting frosts, and be- yond Caucasus that rings with the war-whoop of Amazons, rather than bid her prophesy of the coming fratricide. On the other hand, there is plenty of ingenuity in the de- scription of the first rumors of the war at Thebes. One tells how the horsemen of Lerna are roving on the banks of Aso- pus; another says the plunderers are on Theumesus and on CithiEron, Bacchus's haunt ; yet another has tidings that the watch-fires of Plataea are glowing through the shades of night; as for the sweat upon the household gods from Tyre, and the blood that flowed from Dirce, and the monstrous births and the voice of the sphinx heard again on her rocks, whoever liked misrht know such tales and have seen such sights.' One sees that the poet has lived through an Italian revolution, and studied the morbid curiosity which it is unsafe to gratify in quiet times. Indeed, all the political part of the " Thebaid " is good. Statins was a clever man, and his observations are sound so far as they go, and they are not too numerous or too complex, so that there is little danger of anachronism. If an emperor was more likely to resent plain-speaking than a king of Thebes, it was still true that Eteocles had every reason to resent plain- speaking, and that an old man would be most likely to brave his resentment, and the limits within which public feeling could assert itself against Eteocles are pretty accurately felt. There is nothing of the tendency which we find in the Greek drama to treat him as the less guilty of the two, who falls at least in defence of his native land. For Statins he is always the gloomy, suspicious tyrant, roving about with the looks of 1 IV. 369, 377- LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 55 a wolf who has just been robbing a fold ; while Polynices, if it were not for his fatal position as a predestined fratricide, would be interesting as a gallant adventurer, driven into exile without his fault, and frank and loyal to the comrades to whom he looks for aid in the recovery of his rights. On the other hand, the fighting is decidedly bad ; there is very little movement or progress in a battle of Statins, and the horror of the carnage or the prowess of individuals is less effectively brought out than in Lucan. In fact, the workman- ship is really as perfunctory as it is conscientious: each of the seven has to meet his traditional fate, and this is to be made, if possible, effective by a description of his previous exploits. This part of the matter is generally the least unsuccessful ; the reader is half tricked into an expectation that each in turn is going to take Thebes, and then rubs his eyes and discovers that the hero is dead, perhaps simply by the difficulty his friends have in recovering his body for burial. To be sure, there is no uncertainty as to the death of Tydeus, but even here there is an anticlimax : his exploits are considerable enough to take him out of the catalogue of lay figures, and Statins has taken great pains to make it imaginable that such a hero should gnaw the head of his enemy while he lay a-dying; but Minerva's refusal to heal such a savajie does not need ex- planation, and so the catastrophe is allowed to fall flat. The end of Amphiaraus, who goes down aliv-e into hell, is one of the most labored parts of the poem :' the opening horrors of the underworld are detailed at length, and we are allowed to forget that the whole must have been the affair of a moment. The whole scene would have been very impressive if it had been shorter, although most of the detail which overwhelms it is tolerably well invented,' if only Statius or Antimachus, who had to invent it all, could have refrained from proving how much there was to invent. There is more justification for piling up the agony over the single combat between the brothers, which is the chief reason for the poem to exist, for - VII. 690-viii. 133. ^ An exception is the tedious horror of Pluto at daylight being let in upon his dominions. M 56 LATIN LITERATURE. there is more to be made of it in narrative than can possibly be made in a play. Even here there is a good deal that is simply grotesque. CEdipiis wishes elaborately and eloquently that he had his eyes again in order to tear them out at the sight of his son's wickedness — an hyperbole that could only be tolerable if it had the look of being quite simple and un- premeditated. The scenes between the brothers and the women are less objectionable, and the situations themselves are so pathetic that they cannot be spoiled by a little ex- cessive wordiness and shrill ingenuity. In general, Statins gives a more distinct impression of women than of men; at least, his women are more natural. Hypsipyle is touching and dignified in her captivity; Argia, a frank, heafty wife and true helpmate; Jocasta, a good mother, under complicated difficulties ; Antigone and her sister appear very much as in Sophocles, with the advantage that Antigone has a better chance of trying her powers as good angel to her fiivorite brother. The burial of Polynices is treated in a romantic spirit,* like the whole episode of Hypsipyle: the exchange of stately cour- tesies between the mourning wife and the mourning sister, which turn to rude contentions for the exclusive honor of disobedience which will be rewarded by death upon the arri- val of the guards; and then the eagerness of the royal ladies to thrust their hands into chains and to hurry their captors be- fore the judge, all remind us of the Countess of Pembroke's " Arcadia;" and when we remember how many pages Sidney would have made of it, we see that even in Statius Latin literature is classical. After the publication of the "Thebaid," he began the pub- lication of his occasional pieces, which are now the least un- readable of his works, and have suggested a wish that he had renounced his ambition as an epic poet. It is quite certain that the "Silvae" would not have reached us alone: their value to contemporaries was that they were the lighter works of a celebrated poet. Their value to us is that they tell us a good deal about the life of a court poet, and something of » XII. 309-463. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 57 the incidents of fashionable life; one of the most curious is the tone of feeling in the poems of condolence to masters who had lost favorite slaves with whom they had been more than half in love. The poet likes to dwell on the free spirit and modesty of the departed, even more than upon his beauty; and the rest of the poem is filled up with the beneficence of the master, and the duty of proffering consolation as soon as the mourner can be made to see the wisdom of accepting it. There is deep and genuine feeling in the lamentation over the death of the poet's own father; though we may smile at the picture of the Muses standing round and wondering why Statius is idle. The author is quite right in regarding the ad- dress to his wife * as prosaic : the justification for writing it in verse is that it is much easier and less stiff than the prose of the dedication to each successive book of the " Silvan." The poems in praise of villas of the poet's friends, and of the mag- nificence of Domitian, are ingenious exercises in the art of describing by dint of a series of exclamations, and varying within a very narrow compass the points to be exclaimed at! Now and then we come on a phrase or two that are really poetical, like the description of the calm reach of the Anio, by the villa of Vopiscus, as though the headlong river feared to break in upon Vopiscus's calm musical days and slumbers full of song.'' The praise of Domitian is interesting, because it is obvi- ously sincere, and because Statius himself was a thoroughly respectable character, and free from any strong cupidity; otherwise he would not have postponed writing on the cam- paigns of Domitian, first to the "Thebaid," and then to the " Achilleid," which he did not live to finish. The truth is, that Domitian laid himself out very successfully to appeal to the loyalty of the educated classes, whose official position was not high enough to make them acquainted at first hand with the scandals of the court, or to dispose them to sympathize with the complaints of his first victims ; and, in such a po- sition, candid persons would judge a ruler by the whole of his public acts. For instance, no one reproaches the contem- » St. " Sil." III. V. II.-3* I. iii. 23. n 58 LATIN LITERATURE. poraries of Louis XIV. with their veneration for him, though even in his early years he treated Fouquet and Louise de la Valliere badly enough. Of course where loyalty to Louis XIV. was religious, loyalty to Domitian was idolatrous; but Statins writes'of his "piety" as if he found an honest comfort in it. The lyrics are mostly hendecasyllables, which do not in the hands of Statins suggest the laureate's criticism, " So fantastical is the dainty metre;" but they are vigorous and flowing, and decidedly superior to the experiments in alcaics and sapphics which occur in the fourth book, and are not repeated. There is an ode in alcaics to Severus, and one in sapphics to Maximus: in both we are told, what Horace never tells us, that the poet is trying a new metre; and in the sapphic the information takes three stanzas— one to tell the Muse that she will have less room than in an epic, one to hope that the " Thebaid " is a title to the blessing and aid of Pindar, and one to explain in a figure that the poet hopes to do his best. Each stanza by itself is decidedly a clever copy, though a stiff one, of the style of Horace ; but after each the poet has to pause, and, after all his labor, never succeeds in ffettinjT out of prose. The same may be said of most of the hendecasyllables; but these, at any rate, are not labored, and the ode for Lucan's birthday is musical and eloquent. It is addressed to his widow, Polla, who was the sister of Pollius.' One noticeable point is that, though Lucan has gone to the starry heaven. Statins admires Polla for not professing to worship him as a god, as if it were almost a distinction to keep out of the hypocritical fashion. The " Achilleid," which was the last work of Statins, is decidedly pleasanter reading than the " Thebaid," or perhaps the " Silv^." It is hardly a triumph of imagination, but there is decidedly more imagination in proportion to the ingenuity than in anything else he has written, and it is a relief to find a poet whose own nature was innocent dispensing at last with » A friend with whom Statins was more closely connected than with most of his other literary acquaintances, in virtue perhaps of a villa which PoUius had at Surrentum. LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 59 the feverish excitement of the "Thebaid." The plan of the poem is not unhappy, especially when we consider the nature of Statius's talent. He could elaborate single scenes, and he could not tell an interesting story; and therefore it suited him better to go through the whole career of a hero than to treat of a single action. He intended, no doubt, to collect and adorn with his own invention the scattered beauties of a large range of Greek literature: Achilles and Penthesilea, for instance, would have suited Statins exactly; and the pictu- resque apparatus of mythology and ethnology with which he would have introduced the doomed son of the morning would have attracted him much, although we might have thought it tedious. He only lived to carry the story as far as the ar- rival of Ulysses and Diomed at Scyros, and their discovery of Achilles, and the poem, if ever completed, would have been longer than the " Iliad." Thetis is a lonsr time revolvino- all possible and impossible alternatives— how to keep her son out of sight for a while, before she decides to take him to Scyros, and then wonders whether she shall carry him through the sea or through the air ; and at last decides to have out her best pair of dolphins, with sharp whelks for bits. But the descrip- tion of the sleeping boy and his waking at the unknown island, where he hardly ventures to recognize his mother till she " pre- vents" him with her caresses, is exceedingly pretty and true ; and so are his struggles against being disguised as a girl, which get fainter and fainter as he looks at Deidamia, and thinks that in disguise he can be with her. The points are of a kind that in later literature easily become trivial; but a sort of praise is due to the poet who introduces such things first; just as we admire Tintoret for the ass browsing palm- leaves in the picture of the " Crucifixion," though in a modern sacred print the device would be cheap enough. Then when Deidamia has avowed her love, and been for- given and received her father's blessing upon her baby, and has had her husband with her for one night before he sails, one gets a picture quite worthy of Thackeray ; only Thackeray, while elaborating the same prettinesses with the same sympa- thetic ingenuity, would have set himself outside his own handi- 60 LATIN LITERATURE. work, and laughed frankly at the result ; while Stalius remains simply and patiently within the limits of his conventional lit- erary ideal. After the day is spent in feasting, and the cove- nant is sure at last, and Night, who always knew their secret, joins the lovers, who need tremble no more, the untried battle and Xanthus and Ida and the Argive galleys dance before his eves ; her thoughts are already upon the billows and her fears for morn ; melting on her new husband's darling neck, she lets her tears flow already, and clings to his limbs while he is still there to hold him fast. " Shall I see thee again, child of ^acus, and lay me on this breast ? Wilt thou deign once more to be father of babe of mine ? or will the household gods of Troy and the spoils of her citadel puff thee up, till it irks thee to think of the days when thou wast hidden among maidens ? Ah me! what to pray for or fear for first, or what charge to give in my alarm, when there is scarcely leisure to weep ! But now one night has given me thee, and grudged the gift. Is this the season for our bower of bliss, this the free- dom of wedlock ? O the sweetness of our fears and frauds when we met by stealth! Poor I lose when I have leave to love. " Go (who am I to stay the mighty armament ?)— go ; be wary. Remember, Thetis had some cause to fear : go, be happy. Come back mine ; poor wanton me to ask so much ! The maids of Troy will eye thee soon ; how it will become them to weep and beat the breast ! how fain they will be to throw their arms round thy neck, and take thy bed for father- land ! or the daughter of Tyndareus herself will find grace. They overpraise her, since she was shameless enough to be stolen. But I shall be nothing but a tale for handmaids of ^ the first boyish fault, or be disowned and out of sight. Come, now, take me with you ; why should I not bear the ensigns of Mars at your side ? You and I have had wool weighed into our hands together ; you have carried the holy thyrsus of Bacchus with me : poor Troy will find that hard to believe. Ah ! but this boy, whom you leave me for a sorry com tort — this boy cherish in your heart when I am forgotten. Grant me but one boon at my prayer — let your barbarian spouse be L LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 61 childless ; let no unworthy spawn of a captive call Thetis grandam." Achilles consoled her ; such words moved even him; he swore to be true, and plighted his tears to what he swore, and promised her stately handmaids and the captivity of Troy when he came back, and gifts from Priam's treasure- house. The windy storms swept his bootless words away.* After all, the " Achilleid " has lasted nearly eighteen cen- turies, which would be a long life for Thackeray's sequel to "Ivanhoe." In the same way, the modest boastfulness of Achilles may remind some readers of the " Prince of Pen- den nis and Marquis of Fair Oaks." Chiron used often to bid him tread on rivers when but just benumbed, and trip so lightly that his heel never broke the ice : that was a feat for a boy. As he grew up, Chiron never allowed him to follow a lynx — there is no fight in a lynx — upon the trackless wilds of Ossa, or fell a timid deer with his lance; he bade him rouse the sulky bear from her lair, and the headlong swine, and seek where the giant tigress might be found, or the cave where the lioness has laid her litter behind some shelterins: ridire. Then he learned how all the savages, as far as the Danube, and the slingers of the Spanish isles, handled their weapons ; he learned to enter a burning cottage, and to stay the flight of four steeds on foot ; and to stand against the current of a flooded river, where it would have been hard for his master to keep his ground on all four feet. Still, Achilles stayed there till bidden to come out ; the heights of glory had such power upon him, and no labor was hard under Chiron's eye. As for hurl- ing up the Spartan discus till it was hidden in the clouds, and twining the supple limbs in the wrestler's ring, or lashing out with the caestus, that was play and rest to him ; it cost him no more pain than when he shook the sounding chords with Apollo's quill in wonder at the worship of men of old." The supremacy of Statins was unquestioned among his con- temporaries. He was the one serious artist among a crowd of dilettanti : he complains himself of the want of encouraire- ment to poetry, and is thankful to amateurs, who will cultivate it themselves, to save it from absolute neglect. It is almost * " Ach." ii. 250-285. . 2 lb. 402-446. 62 LA TIN LITER A TURE. surprising that any of their works have come down to us probably we have to thank their own vanity, which saw tha ihe public Ubrary duly received a copy of their writnigs, and the dihgence of literary grandees of the fifth and sixth centu- ries who took out one classic after another, and went through it with the most distinguished scholars of their acquaintance. This was the origin of the archetype, copies of which gradu- ally 20t multiplied as one monastic school after another be- came desirous of literary reading-books, and then dwmdled away whenever the scriptorium, with its demand for parch- ment or legends and breviaries, became a more important department of the monastery than the school ; and disap- peared almost entirely when, in spite of the protests of the hierarchv, scholasticism, legal and theological, absorbed all the intellectual energy of the learned: till at last the omniv- orous curiosity of the scholars of the Renaissance gathered lo-elher everything that had survived the wreck, or sometimes supplemented their discoveries by their inventions. Perhaps this was the case with Earth, who professed to make many discoveries of MS. fragments which no scholar has seen since • among them were some pretty and fragmentary ascle- piads about independence of fortune and contentment in pov- erty which are ascribed to Pomponius Sabinus, a friend of the youn^-er Plinv's, whom he esteemed as an example of an honorable and happy old-age. They are plausible imitations of the second best manner of Horace ; and if they are by Pliny's friend, who had been high in office all his life, there is a little exao-o-eration in his affectation of poverty. Nor do any of the fragments correspond to Pliny's description of a certain vein of Platonic naughtiness, which reminds us of Lamb, who took pleasure in imagining much that he was too right-minded to do The other quotations which Pliny gives us from the lyrical poetry of his time go back beyond the Augustan age to Catullus, copying even his rudeness, because it was felt that to £^et the appearance of primitive strength and delicacy of feehng it was necessary to accept, perhaps one should say to affectrthe primitive conditions of expression, K LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 63 ; L SILIUS. The typical poet of the class, however, who perhaps stood out from it more because of his diligence than because of his talent, was Silius Italicus, whom Pliny does not seem to ad- mire particularly, although Pliny had a great talent for admir- ing his contemporaries, and does not in the least underrate the actual position of Silius as a wealthy nobleman whose taste and good-nature placed him among the foremost men of the state, without exposing him to the ill-will which was always the shadow of tangible power at Rome. In fact, his position was not unlike Lord Lansdowne's in his later years, though politi- cal life under Nero, when Silius was an active politician, was of course very different from parliamentary life in England. Silius, however, was not content with his reputation as a patron of art and literature : he was a poet, and venerated Vergil; an orator, and venerated Cicero. He possessed the estates of both, and Martial thought that their domains could not be in \vorthier hands. More independent judges were perhaps shy of the recitations whereby, as Pliny puts it, he tested public opinion now and then. The verdict was that his genius was less than his pains. But if we had lost the third decade of Livy, it is probable that the " Punica " would have commanded a large share of respect. It is certainly a rest to turn to it after the "Pharsalia" or the "Thebaid;" the reader may be wearied, but he is never irritated or disgusted ; even the pict- ure of Laevinus, who had lost his weapons in the press, gnaw- ing the Nasamonian Tyres to death, is not worse than the mutilated ghost of Deiphobus in the '^^neid," or the ghastly episode of the Harpies. Another distinction of the " Punica" is that it is exceedingly clear: the writer says his say quite simply and unaffectedly, without tiring the reader by an end- less succession of hinted points. There is a certain tendency to diffuseness, because the writer has never energy enough to be rapid, and is always at leisure to do his best. Towards the end he begins to be afraid that he will never finish ; we ought to have had twenty-fogr books at least by the scale upon which 64 LA TIN LITER A TURE. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 65 the story is told up to the fall of Capua. But the narrative does not move any the faster because the poet is in a hurry; he recapitulates rather than narrates ; he introduces fewer episodes; but, when he narrates, he narrates in the old long- winded wav. On the other hand, he is always dignified and often pathetic ; he comes nearer— much nearer— to the noble grace of Vergil than any other Roman poet, and it cannot fairly be said that he is a servile copyist. The direct imita- tions are not so very numerous, probably not much more numerous than Vergil's direct imitations of Homer, though Vergil, of course, has a much wider range and culls his sweets front many flowers. Silius, on the contrary, is throughout Vergilian : he invents in the spirit of Vergil, and with such succ°ess as to make us say that the gleaning of the grapes of Mantua is better than the vintage of Neapolis. The fighting, if we once grant that it is to be Homeric, is really exceedi'ngly well managed. After all, in the Punic war, it was still not unnatural or astonishing for generals to be killed in hand-to-hand combat, and therefore it is not an un- pardonable poetical license that they should sometimes kill a daring foe who came too near and sought their life too boldly. Silius falsifies his battles not in what he inserts, but in what he omits. His descriptions are clear in themselves, but they leave the thing described obscure. For instance, the account of the cavalry skirmish at Ticinum, in vyhich Scipio was wounded, is very confused, because the poet is oc- cupied, not with the movements of the Roman and Cartha- ginian cavalry, but with the adventures of real and imaginary cavaliers. So, too, in the battle of Cannae, the decisive ma- noeuvres of Hannibal are described at less length than the despairing heroism of Paullus and the stubborn rashness of Varro. But when we have once resigned ourselves to the belief that individuals are more poetical, at least more man- ageable, than masses, the individuals are really well sketched ; the obituary notices of a centurion or tribune who falls in the vielee are as well imitated from Homer as anything in Macau- lay's "Lays of Ancient Rome." Italians, Gauls, Africans, all come with the little touch of detail which makes them 11^ credible ; though the Italians are treated best— the Gauls are all a little too apt to fall back upon the sack of Rome. Han- nibal is a sort of historical Mezentius, a despiser of all relig- ion true and fiilse : he breaks treaties sworn by the true gods of Rome, he refuses his children to the impure altars of Carthage ; while the righteous Regulus, who has sworn by the Juno of Tyre, keeps the promise to the sorrow of all at Rome. Even Regulus is not wholly righteous: he makes war upon the sacred serpent of Bagrada to avenge a comrade who has perished in his rashness, and thereby brings a curse upon his army. There are few digressions, in the tolerably extensive literature where digressions are deliberately introduced for effect, more skilful and more interesting than the episode of the young Regulus who takes refuge with Marus, an ancient subaltern of his fiither, after the slaughter of Trasimene. Of course there are chronological difficulties: Regulus can hardly have been so young as he is represented, considering the length of the peace between the first and second Punic wars. Of course, too, Regulus must have known all the story, but Marus may very well have been as anxious as Silius to tell it all; and the way that the old soldier makes a fetich of his lance contrasts well with the stately pathos of the return of Regulus, which has nothing at all theatrical about it. There is something refreshing in a hero who does not declaim nor speak in epigrams. And with all this we have the pret- tiest imitations of Vergil : one is reminded now of the serpent that devoured Laocoon, now of Anchises longing to be left to die, and now of the complaint of Dido. Ateina asks Regu- lus, as Dido asked ^neas, for whom he leaves her for a prey. So, too, the lines in which Silius dismisses Paullus are a reminiscence of the lines in which ^neas dismisses Priam : it is a proof of Silius's good taste that, though he is very long upon his own account, he always shrinks from amplifying Vergil : " So Paullus ended : the lofty heart, the powerful hand are laid low. If it had been granted to him to sway the war alone, he might have been," perchance, a peer for Fabius; now his flair death is one more boast for Rome, and lifts the name of the hero to the stajs.'" Vergil says: "So Priam's » " Pun." X. 305-8. 66 LATIN LITERATURE. fates ended : this lot bore him from among men, with Troy in flames before his eyes, and her citadel in ruins He reigned once over many folk and many lands and all the pride of Asia, and now he lies a huge trunk on the shore, a head shorn from the shoulders, and a nameless body."^ ^^ The mvthologv is decidedly the weak point of the " Punica, and Lucan had pointed out a better way. Probably, however, Silius simply sank deep in the rut which was first traced by the li-hter wheels of Ennius ; and here, too, Vergil was a mis- le^adino- cruide. The worship of the "Queen of Heaven" at Carthage made it plausible in the "/Eneid " to anticipate the Punic war as the revenge of Juno as well as of Dido, and in a mythological poem it is possible to make the action depend upon the caprices of a goddess. But in Silius a god intervenes simply to give dignity: Juno tries to persuade Paullus to lly at Cann^E ; then she appears in another shape, to persuade Hannibal to slaughter the Romans in some other part of the field. When the battle is won, she invokes the aid of Sleep to warn off Hannibal from an attack upon Rome, which she knows would cut short his career of conquest; but her chief activity is in appearing to him by night to give him lessons in creo-raphv, because Silius thinks that his own erudition will be more impressive when put into the mouth of a deity: perhaps the absurdity culminates when Hannibal is warned in a dream where to land in Africa, when compelled to evacuate Italy. Perhaps this may be regarded as a fault of haste and weari- ness, of the same kind as those which made the author miss so many opportunities in the Spanish and Sicilian wars, and turned the description of the battles of Metnurus and Zama into an anticlimax; though it should be fairly remembered that, in all the narratives of the Punic war, from Livy s down- wards, the interest steadily increases till it culminates at Can- nfE, and after that decreases harmoniously till the recapture of Capua, after which the war seems to become a thing of shreds and patches— for this reason, among others, that Han- nibal had come to the end of the army he had brought from Spain, and was dependent upon deserters and such levies as he could raise in the most backward parts of Italy. »'^^n."ii. 554. 555- « \ LUCAN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 67 VALERIUS FLACCUS. If Statins takes us back to Lucan and Silius to Vergil, Va- lerius Flaccus takes us back to Ovid, although he is the most independent, and, perhaps it should be added, the least popular, of the three, as well as the earliest in date. He is more of a poet than the others, though it would be wrong to call him a greater writer. Statins is immensely cleverer and more brilliant; Silius, upon the whole, has more dignity and pathos ; but still Valerius is more of a poet, because he has more power of resting in an aesthetic contemplation of his subject for its own sake, without turning it into a means of excitement and display like Statins, or a means of edification like Sihus. He was apparently a gentleman in easy circum- stances,* and better able to indulge his imagination than a grandee like Silius or a professional man of letters like Sta- tius. Perhaps he was careless of fame ; at any rate, he missed it: the only ancient writer who mentions him expressly is Quinctilian, who gave almost a solitary proof of insight by pronouncing that Valerius Flaccus was a great and recent loss. He left his poem unfinished at one of its most exciting points, just where Jason is to be won over to aid, half con- sciously, in Medea's plan to slay Absyrtus. When he died we do not know: he invokes Vespasian at the beginning of his poem, and implies that Domitian was at that time exclusively occupied with poetry, and had given up his velleities of set- ting up as a rival to his father and brother, which developed themselves after he had stood a siege upon the Capitol, and received disproportionate homage as the only member of the imperial house at Rome. The poet himself is supposed to have held office as one of the fifteen keepers of the Sibylline books, since he appeals to the pure tripod in his house which knows the secrets of the prophetess of Cumae. He was a na- tive, if we are to trust Martial, of Patavium, and we know no other Flaccus who was a poet at the time. We may explain * If we could apply to him all the epigrams which Martial addresses to Flaccus, in circumstances which were more than easy. 68 LA TIN LITER A TURE. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 69 the name of Setiniis which the MSS. give him by supposing his family connections went back to the clays when the colo- nies beyond the Po were restricted to Latin rights. One special interest of his poem is that we are able to compare it with the Greek original of Apollonius Rhodius. Apollonius carries the story down to the return of Argo to Pagas^ in four books: the eight of Valerius Flaccus, which contain nearlv 200 fewer lines, break off, as has been said, be- fore the slaughter of Absyrtus. But the portion of the poem of Apollonius which has no equivalent in Valerius does not much exceed 1200 lines, so that the copy, even if completed, would not have been much longer than the original. In truth, the later poet is quite as anxious to abridge his exposi- tion as to amplify his subject. Apollonius asks nothing better than to tell his story in its simplest form ; Valerius is full of all kinds of emotions and reflections which come out of it. Even more than the *' Thebaid " the "Argonautica " has the interest which we are used to look for not in poetry, but in es- says upon poems. And from this point of view one is struck by the soundness as well as the fertility of the author's imagi- nation. There is never quite enough freedom or fulness of feeling, and so there is never the charm of spontaneous poetry.' We feel as if we were turning over a collection of dried flowers, where everything is stiff and pale, though there is always a suggestion of the grace of nature, and sometimes a lingering touch of the fragrance of May. For instance, the Stoic^al conception of the righteous man as a spectacle to the gods is transformed into something much blither and more human when applied by Valerius to the heroic age, when the gods in the dawn of civilization look to the opening work of their children.^ The same thought runs all through the story of " Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs," where the pure delight of the heroic age in activity for its own sake is dwelt upon with the genial spontaneity which is just what we miss in Valerius, whose imagination runs to seed in in- genuity. Thus he gravely reflects that if there had been wild beasts in Greece, Pelias would not have had to send Jason to * Arg. I. 498-502. K Colchis to get rid of him, and that Hercules had killed the worst of the monsters. It is rather a flat conceit, but how many who were capable of the conceit would have thought of the turn Valerius gives to it? "Alcides had his temples framed already in the grinning jaws of the lion of Cleonae.'" Even in a paraphrase the line is picturesque; in the terse original it is a picture, or rather the literary ghost of one. Valerius has a better right to dilate upon the perplexity of Jason when he first learns that he has to cross the sea, and inculcate in every possible way that the voyage of the Argo is the beginning of a new era in human history — a motive of which Apollonius makes no use whatever, perhaps because he was on his guard against the inconsistency of supposing that the Greeks of Lemnos were carrying on a maritime war against Tiirace at a time when the Greeks of Thessaly had still to build their first ship, which the barbarians of Colchis w^ere to pursue with a numerous fleet. x\gain, Apollonius cares little or nothing for Herodotus's legend of the series of raids of Asia upon Europe, and Europe upon Asia, culminating in the Persian war. But for Valerius the prophecy of Mopsus is the chief motive which decides the jMinyoe to sacrifice Medea to save the fleece. It is noteworthy that Mopsus is the meaner of the two prophets who accompany the voyage: his foresight always disquiets him, while the insight of Idmon, who knows he is to perish before the fleece is won, fills him with calm and enables him to calm others. The contrast is one of the points where Valerius improves upon Apollonius, who makes Idmon sail simply because he is afraid of being jeered at if he stays. There are other variations which are not improve- ments j as, for instance, the list of the Argonauts comes in Apollonius at the natural place, when they first assemble; whereas Valerius waits till he can tell in what order they took their seats on board. Now and then he changes a name to bring in one that is more celebrated, although, as the legend says nothing of Tydeus, he does not profit much by introduc- ing him. In general, he is anxious to extend the legend as much as possible. Thus, where Apollonius only gives the ' Cleonaso jam tempora cl^usus hiatu. — Alcides^ i. 34, 35. \ 70 LATIN LITERATURE. farewell of ^son and Alcimedes to Jason, allowing room for the legend of .^Eson's renewed youth, Valerius follows this up with I- Roman suicide, with the guards of the tyrant arriving too late, when everything is over. As we are in the heroic age, the suicide is committed by bull's blood, and the farewell curses are perhaps a reminiscence of Dido's. It is character- istic of Valerius himself that, when he solemnly dismisses the illustrious ghosts to Elysium, he recapitulates the joys of the Pindaric age, and says the blessed inherit these, and all where- in the people take delight no more.' Throughout the episode of Medea we are reminded, of course, more forcibly of Dido; although we are reminded more by differences than resemblances. Throughout Va- lerius is more concerned with his knowledge of the heart of a maiden than with Medea's passion : or perhaps we should say that he studies the situation as a French novelist might study it: the picture of passion, pure and simple, had no longer any novelty. The "Ariadne" of Catullus had shown pretty nearly all that was possible in the expression of simple grief; the Dido of Vergil had shown all that was possible in the ex- pression of growing passion, and the struggle of dignity and resentment; and Ovid had shown very nearly all that inge- nuity could do in playing upon all the legendary circum- stances of each deserted heroine so as to make as many sparkling points as possible. Apollonius was in quite a dif- ferent position. The Greek drama had treated very little of womanly passion, and hardly treated of maidenly passion at all ; so when Apollonius treated of the growing passion of IVIedea for Jason, which had at first no obstacles but maiden- ly reserve, he was practically upon virgin ground, and his imagination worked freely and happily. He had no need to work his intelligence: such subtlety as there is is quite spon- taneous, as when he makes Medea wonder, when she has her casket of poisons open, whether to take enough to kill her, instead of taking out the drugs necessary to protect Jason from the fire-breathing bulls. In. fact, his Medea is very little of a sorceress; at least, her own inner nature is quite unaffected i I. 835-846. r LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 71 by her magic skill; and this holds, to a certain extent, of the Medea of Valerius, although one of her savage lovers is at- tracted to one who is famous for her maidenhood and for poisons like his own.' But, in the main, Medea is an innocent girl who has a wonderful serpent to i^^^^ which she is quite ashamed to rob of the fleece that it guards. When she has once put it to sleep, she characteristically flies to the other ex- treme, and suggests that Jason should climb up the serpent's body to reach the tree where the fleece hangs. Throughout, in spite of her shrinking from love, it is she who is in love with Jason, not Jason with her ; indeed, in all ancient poetry which deals with love this is the rule, but Valerius is as often singularly fresh and modern, in what follows, when the lovers have exchanged warnings and pledges. " After all is said, each stands there still, fixed to the ground; and now they lift up their faces, glad with the daring of youth ; and each face at once snatches — how often ! — the sweetness of the face it sees. Then sick shame casts down their countenance, and there is pause again for speech, and the maiden sets herself once more to affright Jason." '■* There are touches here to which we can find few parallels before the literature of the nineteenth cen- tury ; and we should have to come to mediaeval romance to find parallels to the chivalry of Jason, who is loath to owe so much to a maiden. It is true that her ointment saves him from the breath of the bulls of ^etes (who boasts, with a frank audacity which does the author great credit, of the trouble he had with them himself at Jason's age),^ but Jason masters them by main strength ; and when the armed men start up, he rushes to engage them, though he has drawn back a little to his comrades when the seed is sown : he knows that the enchanted helmet which Medea has jjiven him is his one chance of victory, even of safety ; but he only throws it among them out of sore necessity, against his will. The desperate daring of Stirus, who throws away himself and his ship and crew in the vain attempt to capture Medea and avenge his disappointed love, is another trait of the same kind.* But the chivalry is not carried through: Jason yields . » VI. 156, 157. 2 VII. 511-51,5. ' VII. 62-64. * VIII. 328 sqq. 7^ LA TIN LITER A TURE. LUC AN AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 73 to the Argonauts when they propose to give up Medea on con- dition of being allowed to carry home the golden fleece, as he waits for their verdict that she deserves the honor before he decides to marry her. Probably the resolution to surrender her is a little earlier than Apollonius. In the primitive legend Absyrtus was a helpless child instead of a formidable warrior, upon whose achievements in the Scythian war Valerius is care- ful to dwell ; he was lured on board the Argo as soon as she was overtaken, or else Medea carried him with her in her flight, and made very little more conscience of cutting him in pieces and scattering the mangled remains for her father to collect than she made of putting the dragon to sleep. But the Medea of Valerius is a virgin priestess with a tender con- science, and the picture of this is so elaborated that, when the poet has to explain her first serious crime, he halts upon the threshold and proceeds no further: although he has laid a promising foundation for any amount of deterioration in her dcemoniac passion, which is no part of her natural wholesome life. . . We are reminded of Lucan (and it is one of the merits ot Valerius that he does not remind us often of him) in the sav- age Scythian who has killed his own father, and eaten him, as the highest act of filial duty, and appeals to this as an answer to a sitppliant who asks to be spared to his aged father. The ferocity is, however, only one element of the description : even in dealing with the extremest savagery, Valerius always feels more curiosity than excitement, and such excitement as he feels is more fanciful than passionate. The father knows that his time has come when the familiar bow is stubborn' to its master's failing arm; the son is anxious to hold his arm steady, as the father presses upon the sword. One feels much more strongly that the customs of the race are strange and romantic than that they are awful: there is no jar in passing to such details from the peaceful picture of the family on its travels, with the children running along the pole and bran- dishing their darts. » No one English word will do for the refutat of the original ; the bow quietly puts the old man in the wrong when he claims to pull it as he used. cr \ ■ Valerius succeeds decidedly better with manners and cus- toms than he does with battles. It is always puzzling to make out upon which side his warriors fall, and it is hopeless to ex- tract from him a general view of the outline of even a day's fighting; while the fighting itself is not original in its details, for, with all his passion for abridgment, Valerius finds room for a tame copy of the death of Sarpedon.' In general, the poem suffers from an endeavor to grasp too much : the writer is discursive and fragmentary, because he can never abandon himself to a single fruitful train of feeling. Besides the main interest of the book, the first enterprise of navigation, the passion of Medea, the romantic scenery of the eastern coast of the Black Sea, we have the legend of Helle, who rises from the strait that bears her name to make a pretty speech to the avenger of her brother; we have an unmistakable hankering after any and every legend connected with an Argonaut; and, in the case of Hercules and Castor and Pollux, this is carried so far that his return to his main story is almost as violent a transition as any in the *' Metamorphoses," where the poet has to get as he can from one legend to another that has no con- nection with it. Valerius reminds us of Ovid in his eye for the picturesque, or perhaps we should say that Ovid antici- pates Valerius, for the latter is above all Latin poets in his power of direct fragmentary perception of visible fact. Ovid, on the other hand, is above Valerius in flow and copiousness; and though his romanticism is heartless, it is always entertain- ing, which is more than can be said of Valerius, one of the most estimable and ingenious and wearisome of authors. Another point of resemblance is their cosmopolitanism : dis- tinctively Roman interests are little to either, and both are more disinterestedly literary than most Latin writers, and have less of the hortatory element. Of the two, it may be thought that Valerius, as the more serious, is also more open to im- pressions from contemporary life. All the Scythian episode is much more largely developed than in Apollonius, and it is at least suggestive that he should have lived and written just before the Romans had to undertake the conquest of Da- ^ VI. <32i sqq. II.— 4 LA TIN LITERA TURE. 74 cia •■ for the whole country between the Danube and the Cau- casus was practically one political and geographical system, as the country between the Rhine and the Vistula, known as Germany, was another. . The wars of Domitian proved that it was impossible to retain the Danube as a frontier. \ PART V. ROMAN SATIRE FROM NERO TO HADRIAN. CHAPTER I. GENERAL ASPECTS. Satire was a very subordinate part of the literature of the Augustan age. All the poetry of the Claudian and Flavian age which modern critics quite approve is satire ; for even Martial, though quite as ingenious in flattery, is read for his trenchant wit rather than for his courtliness or his rare and delicate sentiment. This fiict is a decisive condemnation of the literature of the time; and, oddly enough, it tells most decisively against the literature which was most copious and most conscientious and prosperous, for Lucan, after all, is read for pleasure, while Persius is read as a part of education, be- cause his Latin is as difficult as his sense is good.^ There is a certain resemblance between the position of Persius and Lucilius: both are independent gentlemen with- out ambition, and satisfied with their social standing, although the social standing of Lucilius was decidedly higher. Strictly speaking, neither was a Roman. Persius lived mostly on his » As far back as the clays of St. Jerome, Persius had become unintelb'gi- ble ; but neither Martial nor Quinctilian hints at this defect, and it is only lately that critics have generally been struck with the extreme obscurity of much of Shakespeare. Probably the same explanation is to be given in both cases: the great poet and the small used without reflection the ordi- nary dialect of their time, condensing it a little under a weight of meaning which did not puzzle their contemporaries, who had no need to have a methodical knowledge of the basis of their style. 1 76 LATIN LITERATURE. GENERAL ASPECTS. 77 estate in Etruria, and Lucilius, though he was the friend of Scipio, was liable to be treated as almost a provincial by other nobles. Both come at the end of a period of literary activity. Lucilius is the contemporary of Accius, and Persius is the contemporary of Lucan. Juvenal, according to the received chronology, comes at the end of the period of Flaccus, Silius, and Statkis. Martial, on the contrary, lived in the midst of the movement; he writes upon the same Hercules Epitrape- zius as Statins, he joins in extolling the magnificence of Do- mitian; he has compliments for all the heroes of the age, for Silius and for Pliny, for Quinctilian and for Statins, to say nothing of the writers whose reputation only flourished among those who had to court them— like Regulus and Stella. But his general judgment on the literature of his age is very severe because it is not bitter. He admires the times heartily and almost without reserve: his admiration, no doubt, was inter- ested; and under Nerva and Trajan, if not before, he shows that the constant attitude of adoration which he had main- tained towards Domitian was somewhat burdensome. But a man about town who had not to make his way by his wits might very well imagine that the Rome of Domitian, in arts and arms' and laws, was more splendid than the Rome of Augustus, and this is exactly the position of Martial. But, this being so, he wonders innocently--and he was obviously only stating a popular problem— why the Rome of Augustus was illustrated by immortal poets; and nobody knew better than iVIartial that a great many of his clever contemporaries had no chance of immortality, that a book might show plenty of ingdniiim and yet be safe to go straight to the cooks, who bought up remainders then as trunk-makers did fifty years ajro, and that the immortalitv of a book depends upon its having a genius of its own. ThJs is a great advance upon Horace's dictum that poets cannot afford to be mediocre; but the science of criticism was still in its in^incy. Martial explains the inferiority of his contemporaries by the fact that there was no Maecenas among the courtiers of Domitian. All the great poets of the Augustan age had been made easy for life (if they needed it) !Pi I* t \ as soon as their genius declared itself; whereas Statins was in difficulties all his life, and Martial himself was always begging for the necessities of a gentlemanly existence: he imagined that if he only had been made independent when he came to Rome he could have done as well as Marsus, and that other poets would have risen up equal to Vergil if they had found their Maecenas. One of his intimates, Stella, w^as in very easy circumstances ; and when Martial wished him to come to dinner, the inducement was that under no provocation would Martial recite anything, not even though Stella recited his own poem on the Giants' wars: it is obvious that Martial's ad- miration for the poetry of Stella was insincere compared with his admiration of the majesty of Domitian. Juvenal makes the same complaint that poetry is a bad profession, and hints a little more strongly than Martial that the profession was spoiled by amateurs. He gives another ground for the absence of first-rate poetry, that all subjects were exhausted. He means, of course, all mythological sub- jects: and Greek poetry never got quite free from mythology; and Roman poetry, which was less vigorous, could hardly be expected to accomplish more, although the need of doing so, if possible, had been evident as far back as Vergil's day. But he is also quite alive to the seamy side of Roman society as a whole, which Martial is not. Martial always puts himself in the position of holding up this or that specimen of a ridicu- lous type to the admiration of a distinguished society. When he goes further, he only points out that existing social arrange- ments bear hardly, without any good reason, upon himself and those like him. But Juvenal attacks society as a whole : everything, according to him, is a mistake, from the prosperity of the wicked to the insecurity of the streets. His view of the matter is that poetry and literature in general are dying out; and small wonder, since even if a man of letters makes a sacrifice which no man of letters ought to be called upon to make, and turns schoolmaster, he will be grossly underpaid, and not able even then to recover his fees. He has no per- sonal objection to the particular form which literary ambition took at the time — the pretension to make every word exquisite 78 LATIN LITERATURE. GENERAL ASPECTS, 79 and felicitous, which disgusted Martial as it had disgusted Persius. On the other hand, he agrees with Martial that one of the worst plagues of the time was the pretension to au- sterity of those who were incapable of common probity and manliness. The position of Juvenal was in some ways the least satis- factory of the three. He had a start in life good enough to justify him in expecting a considerable success, with the talents of which he was doubtless conscious ; but he carried on his preparation too long, and found himself railing at a world which did not want him and immortalized the railing. Prob- ably the rich freedman whose heir he was admired the world in which he had made his own way. Persius judges the world severely, but not bitterly: he admires nothing except Cornutus and philosophy, and he complains of the world just because he is unworldly. He has stood too much aloof to notice much real injustice or hardship: he finds enough to horrify him in the fdct that men actually dare to turn their secret wishes into prayers, that politicians undertake to govern the world with no knowledge of transcendental morality, and that young men neglect their characters and drift down-hill faster than^hey know. These reflections are not very painful to him ; he is splenetic and contemptuous towards others, but his own' short life was virtuous and prosperous ; and he writes like a man at peace with himself. It is more surprising that Martial, after being the satellite of Domilian's satellites, should have gone home to Bilbilis so little soured by a very tantalizing life, which had been full of cheap indulgences and ignoble compliances. Persius is the only one of the three who had much ambition to write on other subjects. He be- gan an epic and an imitation of the journey to Brundusium, and wrote other miscellaneous verses, including a comedy; all of which Cornutus prudently burned when he edited the " Satires." Martial tells us of certain trifles of his youth which one of his friends had been at the pains to cherish: they may perhaps have been the same as the short volume of distichs to accompany New-year's gifts which is now reckoned the fourteenth of his collection. Juvenal did nothing but de- \ f9< claim and write satires; for the tradition that he wrote a bal- let for an actor only rests upon a misunderstanding of a line in his own poem and a note of one of his biographers. Na- tional pride sustains Juvenal, as the conceit of his Stoical training sustains Persius, and a temper naturally cheerful sus- tains Martial. i 80 LA TIN LITER A TURE. PERSIUS. 81 CHAPTER 11. FERSIUS. When we come to analyze Persius, the first thing that strikes us is that he repeated Horace, so far as could be done without knowledge of life. All the topics seem to be taken from him. There is the same complaint at the unreasonable preference for antiquity, the same application of comedy to edification, the same appeal to Stoical commonplace; the same warning against wasteful expenditure, and the same pro- test against sordid economy; the same reference to dropsy as a disease that punishes neglect of the body, as the passions punish the neglect of the soul ; the same jests even at the pretentiousness of municipal dignitaries; there is the same contrast, a good deal amplified, between the tastes of the big centurions and their big sons and those of philosophers and their pupils. On the other hand, Persius omits all Horace's jests at the pedantry of the Porch. He is indifferent to the question of prudence, which is so important for Horace. When he protests against extravagance, it is because it is foolish, not because it is ruinous. All the types of actual life in Horace are only represented by casual allusions. The minor morals, again, have much less importance for Persius, to whom the necessary knowledge came by good-nature and good-breed- ing; whereas Horace had to consider his behavior, being of an irritable temper, and living with men of higher station, and being exposed to all sorts of surprises and annoyances by his ambiguous position. Horace, for the same reason, is full of the question of promotion from the ranks. Persius is content to rebuke the empty pride of birth. Another point on which Horace is full and Persius silent is the inconsist- ency of men who can never be content or stick to their choice: this is more remarkable if we trust the tradition that »« t- 1 Persius himself had hesitated between the life of a man of letters and a soldier; for in his case it would have been rather a caprice to enter either profession. His connections were not high enough to carry him far in the army, and he was not vain enough, or earnest, or even serious enough, to carry his literary pretensions far. The attraction of his book is that he jests at himself soberly without a spark of levity, and therefore he was not fitted for copious comic writing. He finds the world, not amusing, like Horace, but ridiculous, and feels that life, upon the whole, is a sorry thing. His whole tone is much sharper, and, one might add, more ill-natured, than Horace's; and this is curious, because we know Horace was decidedly irritable, whereas all the de- scriptions of Persius dwell upon his sweetness and purity. Something must be set down to the Pharisaism of youth, something, perhaps, to the pride of victory over temptation. It would not be a rash inference IhatCornutus "saved " him: he was the first teacher to whom he owed anything. He tells us nothing of his schoolmasters, and speaks very slightingly of the usual literary education ; and thinks that it is quite natural for boys to shirk their first declamation lessons, and that their master, who applauds their recitation of his own composition, is more unreasonable than they. He has a keen sense how dangerous the first taste of liberty might be, and he did not value himself upon his original propensities. The great happiness he knew with Cornutus was the happiness of a mind under the pressure of reason laboring to be con- quered. We trace an echo of the exhortations of Cornutus in the lecture, in the third satire, to the well-born, well-pro- vided simpleton, who has no idea in the world but to saunter through life without a mark to aim at, or a well-strung bow and well-filled quiver to shoot at it with, pelting crows with pot- sherds that are just good enough to take a cock-shot with, and with mud that is no use even for that. If Persius himself had been converted by the threat that he would be contemptible if he persisted in the course of self-indulgence natural to a man without ambition, he would think this threat more effectual than it is. To the last he had a clear perception that though n.— 4* 82 LA TIN LITER A TURE. PERSIUS. ^2> >, i Tove (who, he reminds us, is ahnighty) might punish tyrants quite adequately with such a sight of virtue as would make them pine away because they had forsaken her, yet a cen- turion with no particular sin upon his conscience will always think his breakfast more important than discussions about nothino- coming from nothing and the like. There is none ot the bitterness in his description of the centurions which there is in his description of the fashionable poet and his audience, nothing like his contempt for the spruce citizen who plumes himself on his performances in breaking unfair measures in the market and has an itch for jesting on a philosopher for his Greek clogs. The worst he has to say of the centurions is that their veins stand out, and that their profession is rather unsavory: what he gives them to say against the phi- losophers is far more damaging than anything he says against them; and it would not be unlike Persiusto have seen through the affectations of philosophers and to have been half ashamed of his discernment. It is to be noticed that his Stoicism has no trace of the famous paradoxes about the wise man and the all-sufficiency of virtue. Now and then we get hints that all the world but the wise are slaves; but this resolves itself into illustration of the sober thesis that the passions are hard masters. The list of duties which Persius invites backsliders to learn for their own peace is startling from its simplicity and from the entire absence of any harsh demands upon natur&< he never presses self-conquest up to the point at which it will be painful. His model students are remarkable for their immense appetite for pearl barley, as well as for their short hair and their sleepless- ness. As for Persius himself, he insists upon the right and duty of having his greens well oiled every day, and, generally speaking, thinks it unbecoming and miserly not to live up to his income; all extraordinary expenses being met out of capi- tal, at the expense, it is assumed, of the heir, who must not crrumble unless he wishes to be disinherited. He is not the feast shocked at the idea of seeing gladiators, for he thinks that as often as a victory is gazetted every man of property is bound to exhibit them. It might even be thought that it was r» i\m a part of wisdom to know when to begin to indulge one's self, although Persius does not say so plainly; one great lesson is how to turn softly round the goal, and where to start for the turn. The poet is probably thinking of the Greek chariot race in Homer, which was there and back, rather than of the Roman, which was round and round the circus. He would think also of Plato, who more than once alludes to the divis- ion of the race of life into two halves, which have each a law and a chance of their own. After asking the question where and when to turn the goal, the next question Persius bids us answer is. What fortune ought a man to make? Vv'hat is the use to be made of m.oney fresh from the mint? how much ought to be bestowed on the public and the family? It is quite of a piece with this that the main object of studying philosophy is to provide for a cheerful old-age. Most old men whom the satirist knew struck him as peevish and ridiculous; they were simply miserable, as they lived upon the scanty satisfactions that the courtesy of their juniors still vouchsafed to their van- ity. A philosopher like Cornutus can teach a young man how to take precaution betimes against this wretched lot ; it is only needful to study the duties of his station methodically, and fulfil them steadily. He is not to overrate his importance or to take too much upon himself; he is to consider what his station is in the race, what share he is to take in the common- wealth of man. The important thing is not to fret at seeing your neighbors get on quicker than you do, and not to over- rate the value of the well-stocked storeroom of an advocate in good country practice. It is noticeable throughout that Per- sius's ideas of wealth are modest. Both Juvenal and Horace have ideas of magnificent extravagance which are quite beyond him : rnarble villas, costly banquets, and wasteful profusion are unknown to him ; the worst extravagance that strikes him as possible is taken from Horace at second-hand. A man may beggar himself in largesses of vetches and beans that old men may remember, as they sun themselves, what a Feast of Flow- ers they had when he was aedile. The life that he seems to understand is the life of Roman dinner-parties and recitations, of which he had glimpses enough to fill him with contempt; 84 LA TIN LITER A TURE. I there is not a hint of the plague of morning visits to grandees of which Martial and Juvenal are full. All that he has to say is that a bold poet runs the risk of being coldly received when he calls, and that a student of philosophy must not pride him- self on being able to call on a censor cousin any more than on his long Tuscan pedigree. But what he knows best is the life of a rich thrifty f^rrmer. He is at home with Ventidius, who has a Sabine flrrm, to be sure, but one that it would tire a kite to fly over ; who groans as he says grace at his harvest home, and sups' the mothery lees of spoilt vinegar, while his hinds fare better than he. The country to Persius is always "teem- ing:" he has no feeling for the cottage farms over which Horace, and even Juvenal, are so enthusiastic ; he just conde- scends to recollect that bad poets were apt to remember the furrows where Serranus was sowing when they made him dic- tator. He has a good deal of humor, which is seen to as much advantage in the prologue as anywhere ; he laughs at Ennius with his vision of Homer and Parnassus, and at his contemporaries who had their busts finished with ivy wreaths, and liked to be told they had got pale with their draughts of Pirene. For himself, he' is but half a brother of the starveling guild, who are trained by hunger just like so many parrots and pies, who would turn poets too if they had w^it enough to be duped by the prospect of being paid for their strains. The description of the husbandman's prayers who ruins him- self in sacrifices is racy;' and so is the description of the pious grandam who sanctifies the baby with her spittle be- fore she proceeds to bless it; while for himself the poet begs that Jupiter will refuse to hear the prayers of grandam or nurse, although she may have dressed in white to make them.' It has been noticed by Professor Conington that, while we can trace a very close parallelism to Horace in subject and ^ Persius is rather fond of this word sorbere: he uses it three times (iv. l6, iv. 32, V. 112) when fotare would be quite as convenient ; probably be- cause the latter was a little hackneyed, and having got hold of a word that he hopes is picturesque, he keeps to it, and never uses either of the com- mon words for drink at all. MI. 44sqq. MI. 39, 40. PERSIUS. 85 r< \ 'I treatment, all the traditions we have tell us much more of Per- sius's imitations of Lucilius, to whom perhaps we owe Bestius with his regrets for the good old times before Romans knew Greek or had an idea of philosophy.' As an imitator, who re- produced the last book he had read which suited him with an air of genuine originality, Persius may remind some readers of Keats; though Keats has of course much more power and charm, to say nothing of his wider range. Persius, one can see, limited his range voluntarily. He enjoyed the Bay of Spezzia, and Statins or Vergil would have taken the opportu- nity of a pretty description: all that Persius tells us is that " the Liguriau coast is warm round him, and his dear sea spends winter with him where the rocks spread their giant sides and the shore draws back into a deep valley." But this is not enough to do justice to his feeling, so he flies off to quote Ennius, who had praised the place before him; and condescendingly assures us that the old poet had recovered his senses by then. The union of 7tatvcte and scornfulness and feeling is characteristic. It is characteristic in another way, that Persius takes for granted the principle of suiting your dinner to your company, which scandalizes Martial and Juvenal. He thought it just as obviously absurd to set turbots before freedmen as to train one's own palate to the point of knowing a hen thrush by her flavor from a cock: and both were as bad as to buy brine by the cupful for a birthday dinner, and then make it a substitute for oil instead of an addition to it ; though all decent people had a jar of brine in stock, and oiled their greens every day, and flavored them with brine when they had a mind.' It is to be noticed through- out that Persius has nothing of the fitful asceticism which we find in Seneca. He speaks of how he and Cornutus used to enjoy supping together after the day's work was over, and go on into the night, which was not the custom of * VI. 37. Which can hardly have kept their vigor unimpaired for two hundred years and more ; for Juyenal does not complain of Greek doc- trines, but of the personal intrusion of individual Greeks, whose numbers and intrigues were too much for any ordinary Roman. 'VI. 19-24. gg LATIN LITERATURE. ordinary revellers, who began early and were sleepy when night came on; so that Persius claims credit for temperance as well as for geniality. Nero and his courtiers, to be sure, revelled till midnight and later, but this was excep- tional. T PETRONIUS. 87 CHAPTER III. PETRONIUS. Petronius Arbiter was a contemporary of Persius, who made his reputation out of his courage in turning day into night, and night into day. He did not neglect his business like other voluptuaries; he did not arrange his time to suit the engagements of other respectable people, but slept all day and worked and played ail night, and, being clever and capable (for he governed Bithynia well), had a great name among the intimates of Nero, who gave him the title oi arbi- ter elegaiitiaruju. He was driven to suicide a.d. 66 by the jealousy of Tigellinus ; and, like most of his contemporaries in that case, decided to bleed to death, amusing himself during the process as well as he could, and sometimes stopping the bleeding for a time when he found the trivial conversation most interesting. Before dying he sent Nero a satire upon his vices, and destroyed two murrhine vases which the em- peror coveted. He is generally admitted to be the author of a long novel of which we have a few fragments from the later books. To judge from these the plan was very curious: it combined a series of shabby adventures of the kind which Le Sage affects, only with much more love, or what did duty for it, with a pretty complete criticism of contemporary literature. The travellers pass from one scrape to another, and from one low scene of debauchery to another, and are always ready to lecture upon the decay of letters and to supply specimens of how subjects ought to be treated. There is never any trace of irony in these disquisitions, and we must suppose that Petronius of all people wished to place his views of respecta- bility and a sound education upon record. Most of the ad- ventures are indecent enough, and dull into the bargain ; they turn upon all kinds of voluntary and involuntary assignations 88 LA TIN LITER A TUKE. by land and sea, and upon the squabbles and scuffles which arise from legitimate and illegitimate jealousy. Apparently it was a subordinate motive with the writer to set forth the dif- ferent phases of life among the coast towns of the Roman em- pire • just as our own novels of the eighteenth century contam many scenes of low life which are not particularly humorous or particularly indecent, and yet seemed at the time worth reading about because they were odd and unf^imiliar. There is one part which is really interesting, and will bear comparison with anything in ancient comedy— the " Supper of Trimalchio," which is preserved in a MS. of the fifteenth cen- tury published in the seventeenth. It is a most humorous and sympathetic sketch of the life of the rich freedmen who flourished in the cities of the Campanian coast. It is only from this book that we know what the conditions of their life were. Most mCu of business were luxurious and left no family behind them, and the confidential slave who knew how to in- gratiate himself with both master and mistress might expect his freedom from the master and the inheritance from the mistress. Then the pleasure properties of rich nobles did not remain long in the same hands, and for a business-like man who speculated successfully on a few large ventures to Rome, it was easy to invest the proceeds; and one who had been a slave, and knew how the owner of a large property, even if he wished to make money out of it, was apt to be cheated, was in a better position than most purchasers for making it pay. The whole pride of the class lay in their money, the ingenuity with which they spent it, and the spirit they showed when they lost it, as happened often enough. They had no ambition and no career. Trimalchio, who entertained a reasonable hope of buying so many estates that he might travel to Africa without going'^out of his own ground except when he was at sea, had no position but that of a sevir augustalis ; and he boasts of his magnanimity in declining higher rank, like Maecenas; only Mcecenas might have been consul or senator. Every corpo- ration at Rome, from that of the notaries downwards, would have been delighted to put Trimalchio on its books ; but Tri- malchio declined. Of course, being rich enough many times PETRONIUS. 89 over, he assumed equestrian rank, and wore more rings than any other knight whose father had been free-born. He did not trouble himself the least about politics, except to be proud when a noble was pleased to say that he had put up as com- fortably at Trimalchio's villa as at his own. The management of his own property was his great concern; he had a regular* journal kept of it, on the model of the journal of what hap- pened at Rome, and learned from this for the first time that he had bought a new estate, on which the journal announced a fire. He was very properly angry at not having been told of the purchase before, and decided in future that unless he received notice within six months he would repudiate any such purchase; for his slaves told him that the land had only been bought the year before, and so the payment for it had not yet come into his accounts. The journal shows that he made his money faster than he could invest it; for something between ^80,000 and ;^ioo,ooo had to be returned to his strong box because no suitable parties came forward to borrow it. Tri- malchio, like the majority of people who make large fortunes, was in a hurry to get other people to work for him. After two or tiiree ventures to Rome, he took to lending money to freed- men who had yet to make theirs. His tastes are less expen- sive than we should expect. He does not care for anything that we should call magnificence; he is satisfied with a sort of cockney smartness and completeness in the furniture of his daily life, and with a great deal of inventive display in his dinner-parties. Of course it cost something to serve one boar whole with a number of live thrushes inside ready to fly out as soon as it was cut open, and a fat pig stufled with sausages and black-puddings, which came out when the cook, who was threatened for sending it to table without cleaning it, was told to perform his neglected duty at table before the assembled guests. At bottom, Trimalchio is a very well-meaning, kind-hearted man ; although he has a slave crucified for cursing his gefiius, just as the most benevolent emperors felt compelled to exe- cute any Christian who might obstinately refuse to swear by ^ "Sat." 53. LATIN LITERATURE. their fortune. Neither quite knew how the needful discipline of an estate or an empire was to be maintained without an exemplary severity, and neither was struck with the notion that such severity ought to be painful. He wished otherwise to make his slaves fond of him, and read them his will m ^vhich they were emancipated, in hopes they might love him as if he were dead ; whereupon they cried. He surprised his cruests bv bidding them sit down to supper, though he turns out the first batch rather roughly to make room for the second. The person to whom he is harshest is his wife : he taunts her with his having married her for love, when he might have had a wife with a good dower ; he lays down the general principle that every woman is a kite by kind, and is struck by the wis- dom of a soothsayer who assures him that he is nursing a viper Still, when he boasts of his humble beginnings, he aives her credit for doing a dutiful thing, and sacrihcing all her finery to find him a hundred gold pieces to begin again with when his first venture had proved unfortunate ; and, thou'-h he threatens to leave her statue out of his monument, he does not threaten to deprive her of the succession to his propertv He is proud alike of her skill in shameless dances and of iier notable housekeeping; she would never dream of sittino- down to supper herself, until everything was properly cleared away after the supper of her lord and master ; just as he makes a pet of a slave, to his wife's great disgust though the slave is very ugly, as his master is partly aware, because the boy can read and write and cipher, and knows the ten parts of an as,' and has had several profitable transactions with other slaves, and put by some personal property of sub- stantial value. . . It is like master like man : the steward is going to have the bathman whipped for losing his clothes. The guests beg him off and the steward majestically explains that he does not care for the clothes ; he is only angry at the abominable care- lessness of the slave. To be sure, the clothes were a birthday ' The as was divided into twelve niicia:, but only the ten divisions, from two undo: to eleven, had names which needed to be learned like the multi- plication-table. I PETRONIUS. 91 t 1 present, and were real Tyrian purple, but then they had been washed once already. And the culprit has quite as magnifi- cent ideas : he says that he has done nothing to speak of; they were not worth above ten sestertia,* all told, and promises the visitors that he will reward them for their intercession with his master's best wine. This explains the surprise of Trimalchio at his own munificence at giving better wine than the day be- fore, when he had better company. The whole banquet was rather ingenious than splendid : there were few dainties which were not to be got in any mar- ket ; the peculiarity was that the cook had a talent for sur- prises, and could make models of anything out of anything else — game, for instance, out of pork, or peacocks' eggs out of pastry. The latter are mistaken for half-hatched peachicks, which turn out at last to have beccaficos inside cooked in yolk. Trimalchio comes in late to dinner, and insists upon finishing his game of dice, while the company are still toying with their " whet," and does not leave off till he has exhausted all the gossip of the cobbler's^ stall. The next course has all the signs of the zodiac, with the earth in the middle, but noth- ing much to eat ; the Scales, for instance, each held specimens of different kinds of pastry; the Water-carrier was represented by a goose, and the Fishes by a brace of mullets, and these were the favorable signs. But all this was merely the cover: there was fixt poultry and sow's paunch and hare underneath, and in the corners four figures of Marsyas pouring peppered pickle out of their flayed hides upon the fish. The carver is named Carpus, for the sake of- a pun, as the vocative of his name is the same as the imperative of the Latin word for Carve, as the narrator learns from one of the other guests. And then the conversation turns upon Trimalchio's riches. Not one in ten of his slaves knows him by sight : he has every- thing home-grown upon his own property, pigeon's milk in- cluded ; all his mules are bred from wild asses, and he has fetched bees from Hymettus, in order to have Attic honey upon his own farm ; even the stuffing of his cushions is scar- let or purple (the two most expensive colors). " Such is the < Between ;^So and ;^ioo. " Sat." 30, ad Jin. ' Literally, of the weaver's. ^ 2 LA TIN LITER A TURE. blessedness of his mind !" ' (we are reminded of the American lady who told Emerson that being perfectly dressed, and knowin- it, filled her mind with peace that not even religion could b'^stow). Even the fellow-freedmen of Trimalchio de- serve the respect of a beggarly poet : the very lowest of them has a knight's fortune twice over, and he used to carry fire- wood; there was a story of how he managed to steal the brownie's cap and find a treasure. And still his master could claim him. However, he knows how to make himself comfort- able : he has just advertised his old lodging to let, because, as he informs us, he is going to buy a house. '' Then there's another who has had a plum of his own, and then got knocked off his feet. He's head over ears in debt: no fault of his— there's not a better man in the world. His freedmen are rogues, and got hold of it all. Then, of course, no two part- nets can boil soup in one pot, and when the house is shaky friends are out. He was an undertaker, and lived in the grandest style— dined like a king, with boars in napkins, and fancy pastry and fowl, and cooks and bakers, and poured away more wine under the table than most men have in their cel- lars Even when he was in difficulties he advertised his goods for sale under this heading, ' T. Julius rroculus puts up to auction some articles for which he has no use.'" ' Meanwhile, Trimalchio gives a lecture upon his zodiac. The heaven in which the twelve gods live turns into so many shapes : sometimes it is a ram— whoever is born then has a great many sheep, plenty of wool, a hard head, and an impu- dent forehead, and a sharp Uorn. A great many professors are born under this sign. Then the whole heaven turns into a bull, and so on. Trimalchio was born under Cancer him- self, which is the reason he has so many legs to stand on, and possesses much by land and sea. The conclusion of the speech is admirable : " So it goes round like a mill, always doing some mischief, either breeding or killing men; as for the turf that you see in the middle, and the hive on the turf, I have a reason for everything. Mother earth is in the niiddle as round as an egg, and holds all good things like a hive." ' 1 " Sat." 38. '' lb. 38- ' 1^- 39. PETRONIUS. 93 r After being duly applauded, Trimalchio sets one of his slaves to recite his verses, and rewards him by emancipating him on the spot, and presently leaves the room. One of the guests complains of the cold, and says there is no wardrobe like a hot drink; another says he don't bathe every day — the water has teeth and washes away the wits : besides, he could not bathe to-dav, he had been at a funeral. "That nice man, that good man, Chrysantheus, has just boiled over into the other world. Just now he was talking to me. I seem to hear him now: dear, dear! We are nothing but blown blad- ders on two pins : we are not as much as flies — there's some spirit in a fly — we are bubbles, sir, no more. And it is not as if he had not been abstemish. Five days and he didn't swal- low a drop of water or a crumb of bread. And yet he went over to the majority. The doctors were his death, or rather his ill-fate ; all the good of a doctor is to make the mind easy. Still, he had a good funeral : the bier that he provided when he was alive; good rugs; first-rate lamentations — he had set several slaves free — though his wife rather grudged her tears. Suppose he did not treat her very well : well, every woman is such a kite. Nobody never ought to do one a kindness : it's just the same as throwing it down a well. But old love is a prison ;^ there's no getting out of it." Then Phileros takes a severe view of Chrysantheus ; and then Ganymedes^ begins to grumble at high prices, and to abuse the sediles, who are in league with the bakers, and do not maintain the market laws and the proper size of the penny loaf. Once it took two men to eat a loaf between them, and now the loaf is not as big as a bull's eye. The town is growing down-hill like a calfs tail, and all the people are lions at home and foxes abroad, fawning on their thievish magistrates. Ganymedes has had to sell his wardrobe already, and expects soon to have to sell his little bit of house-property. In his opinion, it is all the doing of the gods. " No one believes heaven is heaven, no one thinks of keep- ing fasts; no one cares a straw for Jove. When they draw their dress over their eyes, it is only to reckon up their pos- ' " Sat." 42. Some read aancer for caixer. ^ lb. 44. 94 LA TIN LITER A TURE. sessions. Once upon a time the women used to go in fu dress with all their hair down, and bare feet, and walk up-hiU with pure minds, and pray Jove for water. Thereupon he used to rain bucketfuls-he knew it was then or never; and everybody had to come back as wet as mice. And so the sods have woollen feet because we are not religious Ihen a dealer in patchwork is shocked at this ill-omened language, and replies, "So-so and so-so," as the countryman said when he lost the spotted pig. "If it don't come to-day it'll come to-morrow, and that's the way we rub along. . . . If you lived anywhere else, you'd say that the pigs walked about ready- cooked here ; and think what a fine show we shall have in three davs: not merely the trained slaves, but plenty of freed- men. Titus is a gentleman : he is going to give them the best steel, and not let\hem run away, and put the shambles in the middle of the arena for the spectators to see. To be sure, he can afford ; his father's dead and left him a quarter of a mill- ion, more's the pity. If he lays down three or four thousand, his property will never feel it, and he'll leave a name to last forever " ' ^Then he goes on to say that he hopes one lady is aoin- io give a feast to all the people at eighteen-pence a head'' which will quite take away the credit another gentleman o-ot by his last show, where all the gladiators were invalids, hardlv good enough to fight with beasts ; as for the third man (who was held in reserve to fight the winner), he was as dead as the dead man whose place he would have to take. Then he turns upon the professor, and scolds him for not talking, if he finds the talk of others dull; and promises him a new pupil if he will come and see him in the country. The new pupil is his pet slave, who knows four parts of the as already, and is fond of sums and a very clever boy, though he has a mania for birds. His master has killed three of his gold- finches already, and said it was the cat. But he finds some- thing else, and is fond of painting. He's pretty well got throu-h Greek, and has a nice turn for Latin, though one of his m'asters is lazy and can never stick to a subject, and the other is curious and teaches more than he knows. The young » " Sat." 45- PETRONIUS. 95 hopeful is old enough to begin the study of law ; so his patron has bought him some red-lettered books to give him a taste for the subject, as he has had a sufficient splash of literature. "If he shows signs of jibbing, he'll have to take to trade, shaving, or auctioneering, or pettifogging ; for once master that, and you've got what nothing but death can rob you of." Ap- parently the trade had not been spoiled then by overcrowding, as it was in the times of Martial and Juvenal. Then Trimalchio comes back and delivers a lecture upon hygiene, which he seems to understand better than most sub- jects except cookery. Presently he begins to draw the pro- fessor, and ask upon what debate he has lectured that day. Though he does not plead in person, still he has studied litera- ture for private use, and has three libraries, one for Greek and one for Latin (we don't know whether it was Trimalchio or the copyist who forgot to add a third for Oscan).' The pro- fessor begins with a quarrel between a rich man and a poor : "What's a poor man?" says Trimalchio; still he allows the professor to tell his story, and then gravely observes either it really happened, and then there is nothing to discuss, or it didn't, and then there is nothing to discuss either. Then, to air his own learning, he asks if the professor knows the story how the Cyclops put Ulysses's thumb out of joint. "As for the Sibyl, I saw her myself at Cumoe hanging in a bladder: and when the boys asked 'What do you want, Sibyl?' out came * I want to die.' " He has plenty more to say: among other things, that he is the only man in the world who has true Corinthian brass, for his brasier is called Corinthus.'' The true origin of Corinth- ian brass, he tells us, dates from the sack of Troy, when that cunning rogue Hannibal threw all the brass and gold and sil- ver statues upon one fire, and so there was made a new kind of metal, neither one thing nor the other. For his own part, if the company will excuse him, Trimalchio likes glass better; it has no smell (one remembers the virtuoso in Martial who always wished to be sure that brass smelled of Corinth); it would be better than gold if only it would not break. And ' " Sat." 48. Buechler corrects the text, reading ii., not iii. ' lb. 50. I I c,6 LA TIN LITERA TURE. then comes the story of the artisan who invented flexible glass, and was put to death by Tiberius lest gold and silver should lose their value. Trimalchio is a connoisseur in silver too. He has some hundred three-gallon goblets with Cassandra killing her children (the poor boys lie dead just as if they were alive) ; and some thousand ladles that Mummius left to his patron, where Dcedalus is shutting Niobe into the Trojan horse ; and as for the battles of his favorite gladiators, he has them on his cups : they are all heavy, for he is proud of his intelligence (which enables him to recognize his favorite glad- iators in the heroes of the Trojan war), and would not part with it for any money. He is just as proud of having never studied under any philosopher as he is of the riches which he has acquired by starting with nothing. All his own class ad- mire him heartily, which is pleasant, and, when one thinks of it, surprising, and are always ready to take up arms when they suspect the representatives of the literary class of laughing at him. With all his pomposity, he aspires to nothing beyond a fine funeral and a large monument. When the stonemason, who is prx'tor, and a friend of the family, arrives in great state, with his wife, and of course his lictor, from a funeral feast in honor of a slave, whom a lady of the neighborhood had manumitted when he was dead, Trimalchio says that he must have a frontage of a hundred feet at least, and a depth of two hundred, for he intends to have a vineyard and all manner of good things growing round him : he cannot bear the idea of being in a Ciowd when he is dead; and hopes he shall enjoy his surroundings as he deserves, for his prudence in pro- vidino: that the monument shall not descend to his heirs. He holds it is quite absurd to trouble about how we are to be lodged for this short life, and not to care how we are to be lodged through the long hereafter. He winds up the feast by having himself laid out in his bier and grave-clothes, first show- ing the company what good stuff they are made of; and the literati make their escape while he is telling the pipers to strike up his funeral march. There is a jointed skeleton of silver carried round at the beginning of the banquet; and when Tri- malchio boasts that his wine is a hundred years old, his next ¥ PETRONIUS, 97 thought is how sad that wine should live longer than man. His soothsayer has informed him of the exact number of years and months and days he was to live. His feeling is not the fear of death exactly, it is a sort of maudlin sympathy with the shortness of life. He reminds one of Horace in this; but he has outlived youth, which is always what suggests to Horace the fleetingness of pleasure, and expects to enjoy his life to the last. He does not hold with Horace that enjoyment has to be snatched or hurried : there is no sense that the life of the underworld is grim or dreary; his only grievance is that he is fond of life, and it ends. We might almost say his self- pity is the crown of a well-spent life— the life of a dutiful, plucky, trustworthy man. There is none of the scampishness of the slave-life of ancient comedy about Trimalchio or any of his fellow-freedmen : they are all like the good apprentices of Hogarth, only, instead of marrying their masters' daughters, they comfort their masters' wives. It is natural to compare Trimalchio with Nasidienus and Virro, the only illustrious " snobs " of ancient literature. Of the three, Trimalchio is certainly the most respectable. Nasid- ienus is not only a snob, but a flunkey ; he is always trying to propitiate Maecenas and his friends. Virro's favorite amuse- ment is to bully and insult everybody who is not so rich as himself; while Trimalchio, to the best of his knowledge, wishes everybody to be comfortable, and is quite ready to share his best with everybody. His absurdities do not the least aflect his self-respect, for he understands what practically concerns him, and does not really compromise himself by blundering on matters that he only takes up for amusement. Neither he nor any of his fellows is able to speak Latin grammatically. Their syntax is seldom much out, but their de- clensions are very alarming; they mix up Greek and Latin words in a curious way, which has puzzled the writer of our manuscript and his editors not a little; and they coin Latin words, ^especially in ax, when, if they knew it, there were au- thorized words to serve the purpose. At the same time, they never offend seriously against the genius of the language : their singular forms are no worse upon the merits than those that ii.-s 98 LA TIN LITER A TURE. PETRONIUS. 99 have come down to us from the days of Plautus and Enn.us. The truth is that the way these things are settled among the best ^vriters is arbitrary, and the more elaborate the system of inflections is, the more arbitrary is the settlement: and only an e abo ate training, for ^vhich a rich freedman had neither le- sure uor modesty, could prevent deviati^ons from the conven- tional standard, unless, indeed, the speaker were protected by a narrmv vocabulary, the shades of which could be learned 'Te,';:ntfshows no signs that he thinks the banquet his masterpiece, and consistently treats Trimalch.o and h.s set as buffoons, at whom it is very good of literati not to laugh too loud; but it can hardly be an accident that they are the only charncters in his book who are quite alive and really amus- in ' Like most discoverers, he undervalued his discovery, for even Cervantes, especially in the first part, undervalues ^ ThSe"is'very little difference in their views of life, except that the traders worship money from conviction and earn ,t, and the literati complain that nothing else counts for anythmg, Tnd make plans for getting it by cheating, and the luerat. think much more than the tradesmen of passing amours. A tradesman apparently required a wife and a -"-bme 3-\- he liked to have a house and a service of plate but an he main he looked upon love as the cement of a business-like "'"'Thradventure of the literati which comes nearest to being amusin- is at Crotona, where it seems will-hunting was the only industry in vogue: so the party, who have been ship- w ecked, decide to ^.t a crazy poet ' (who is often pelted for didaiming verses out of season) at their head, with instruc- tions that he is to personate a rich owner of African property, who has just lost a son, and become disgusted with his own country in consequence. The plot at first succeeds admira- bly • but even then the narrator is nervous lest they should be detected or betrayed, and piously observes: "O gods and coddesses, what a hard life an outlaw's is ! he is always ex- " ' "Sat." 117. Il pecting his deserts." At last the poet, by way of sustaining his pretensions, informs everybody who expects to benefit tinder his will that his legatees will have to prove their en- during attachment by eating him up when he is dead; and then recites for their encouragement all the historical in- stances of cannibalism where the cannibals had no prospect of a legacy for their pains. There is also a little humor in the contrast between the mistress and maid, whose taste in lovers is very different : the mistress liking the poorest and shabbiest best, and the maid disdaining to look at anybody below the degree of a knight. But in general the adventures are quite uninteresting, and would probably be so even if they were not fragmentary. The style, on the contrary, is very good and simple, with none of the affectations of the silver age. If it has a fault, it is that it is too uniform, and wants a little relief. Exactly the same attention is paid to one adventurer as to another, and it is hard to keep what story there is in the head. It is difficult to say what purpose the greater part of the verses serve, ex- cept to display the writer's fluency: they are neither ridiculous nor beautiful, and the writer breaks into verse without any visible occasion, and often shifts from one metre to another. This, however, is part of the system of the Menippean satire, and— one may dimly conjecture— in certain states of literary taste gave the same sort of mild amusement as bilingual com- position does at others. There are two pieces in which per- haps we can trace a serious intention: the iambics on the fall of Troy are probably more or less a criticism of Nero, as the hexameters on the civil war are certainly a criticism upon Lu- can. Both are more than creditable if tried by an appropriate standard,, for no great poem was ever written in ostentatious rivalry with other poets. The sack of Troy in "Hamlet" is Shakespeare's criticism of the most stilted declamation of his time, and is not much better than Petronius, though he only embraces' the first part of the scene, and lets the mob inter- rupt Eumolpus with stones before the catastrophe of Priam and Cassandra. There is a good deal of pragmatic reflection » «' Sat." 89. \ jQQ LATfiV LITERATURE. in proportion to the poetry. We learn that the credit of Calchas was at stake, and that it was a grave omen that the fillets of Laocoon should be stained with blood The poem on the civil war is also pragmatic: there is a c^reatdeal about wealth and luxury which is commonplace and tiresome, and there is also a great deal too much mytholog). The author has a hold of two important canons which Lucan violates : one is that a poem ought not to be a history in verse because history can be better written in prose; the other, that the right way to attain poetical elevation is by making the reader conscious of pervading inspiration, not by piling up one enthusiastic epigram upon another, and trying to make each startlin- by itself. His positive precepts are less commend- able His general idea of an historical poem is something vac'ue and allusive and dignified: the gods apparently are to do'duty as concrete symbols of abstract historical conceptions, and all individual facts are to be left out as below the majesty of .rt In the same way, all words that have the least flavor of bein- plebeian are to be rigorously excluded.' 'Ihe writer is to limit himself to the example of Homer and the lyric writers of Greece, and of Vergil and Horace in Latin 1 he whole tone of his poetical legislation is curiously like the tone of the orthodox poetical legislation of France before the reign of precedent was disturbed by the Romantic movement ; and Peironius deserves credit for the insight which made him a classicist just at the time when the romanticism of Nero s rei-n was at its height. His metres also are for the most part frank and manly, with little trace of the fashionable refine- ments of sound. Even where he intends to be flowery his verse is never melting, and his prose does not aim often at bein- melting either. His most voluptuous descriptions have litde°of the lingering, cloying tenderness of Apuleius. In another way he marks an epoch ; he is the first conspic- uous opponent of the bizarre system of declamation on imagi- nary themes.' He is of opinion that professors are, for the most part fools themselves and the cause of folly in others; the only use of the exaggerated cases they put and the noisy ..■Sat." 119. » lb. 118. =Ib. >. B( PETRONIUS. lOI sentiments they bandy is to leave them without a word to say when they come into the forum. A young man who goes to a professor sees and hears nothing of what goes on in the world but pirates standing on the shore with chains, and tyrants publishing edicts to order sons to cut off their fathers' heads, or oracles in time of pestilence prescribing the sacrifice of three maidens or more; and everything that's said or done seems to be kneaded up with honey and nicely powdered over %vith poppy and spice. Then come plenty of historical exam- ples to show that the literature of a great age is simple, and that a noble and, so to say, a modest style is not swollen nor patchy, but grows up to beauty and nature at once. This looks as if his ideal were the same as the French classical ideal in prose as well as in verse. It is curious that he does not appear to admire Cicero, and it is a sign of over-clever- ness that Hyperides' rather than Demosthenes appears to be his model orator; though we know that ancient critics consid- ered Hyperides the more finished speaker of the two, and counted up more separate merits in his writings. Thucydi- des, who is his model historian, though a very grand writer, is a very faulty one, and sins as much as Seneca in bedizening his writings with a display of intellectual ingenuity. Perhaps Petronius may have judged of Thucydides by his Latin imita- tor, Sallust, who, though empty and crabbed by comparison with his original, is more level because he is more monotonous. His theory of the defects of Roman education is put into the mouth of the unlucky professor,^ who is as ready to con- demn himself as his acquaintance can be to condemn him. The root of the mischief is that the teacher is dependent on his popularity with his pupils, and he can only maintain it by a system of absurd and mischievous excitement. So far so good: the system of education recommended, if parents could open their eyes and uphold the authority of the teacher as they ought, is in some ways more questionable. Like modern reformers, Petronius holds that a great deal of time is wasted in premature attempts at composition ; but the time which he wishes to save for reading he would employ rather in the » " Sat." 5. • 2 lb. 3. '^ 102 LATIN LITERATURE, MARTIAL. 103 spirit of Fronlo than of Quinctilian. The wholesomest train- ing, according to him, is to be found, not in the classics of the days of Caesar and Augustus, but in the quaint, vigorous writ- ings of the Republic. These attracted him by their plainness and by their rough and picturesque vocabulary, which seemed more picturesque and significant than it was because it was unfamiliar. It must soon have got very monotonous for a Roman to lecture on the Roman classics, for the necessary learning required for Vergil had been accumulated once for all, and the old writers who required more elucidation, about whom the lecturer could find out something fresh every time he went over them, were more attractive to the teacher for the same reason that they were less profitable to the pupil. On the other hand, the intellectual advantages of a sound moral tone are admirably set forth in some very tolerable scazons. Almost the only point on which Petronius seems to agree with Trimalchio is that Publius Syrus is a very edifying writer, and Trimalchio gravely quotes a long alliterative sermon against gonnnandisc from him (perhaps we ought to give Trimalchio credit for his quasi-consistency in not serving up a peacock). The upshot of the whole book is to emphasize the suggestion, which probably appeared more plainly in the mimes than in Plautus, that there is nothing safe or wholesome but sense or virtue; and that there is no success without money, and no amusement without vice. k' CHAPTER IV. MARTIAL. Martial's career is one of the best known and the most instructive in the history of Roman literature. He came to Rome when Seneca and Gallio were still able to keep up tlie hospitality of the An nasi, for he reminds a quasi-patron that he had chosen to trust him instead of them. He spent, apparently, the first sixteen or seventeen years of his sojourn in Rome ingloriously, though several of his epigrams, and those among the best, have the look of being inspired by these early years. When Domitian came forward to inaugu- rate a new Augustan era, he came forward as a poet : he re- ceived about the degree of encouragement that was due to him. Domitian gave him some cheap privileges, such as the rights of a father of three children, and conferred citizenship upon a good many persons recommended by the poet, who, of course, got paid for the recommendation. Martial had presents from other patrons, and he managed to get a piece of land within a short drive of Rome to spend his summers in : perhaps one of his patrons reflected that a little outlay once for all would discharge him from the obligation of ever taking his friend to the Campanian coast again. .He even was able to set up a team of mules of his own to take him to and fro, and soon found that his possessions cost more than they were worth. He enjoyed himself rather at the expense of his respectabiHty, and at last his acquaintances found that he would never do anything of a kind to bring them credit, and decided to leave him to his own devices. The presents he received got less and less valuable, and, on the other hand, he emancipated himself more and more from the barren du- ties of a retainer, and at last he emancipated himself alto- gether, and went home to Bilbilis, where, as might be ex- 104 LA TIN LITERA TURE. I: pected, he regretted Rome, after thinking for a while that he enjoyed the recovery of leisure and liberty. He survived his return from Rome about five years at most, and he had spent thirty-five in Italy; though he went more than once away from Rome, for he appears to have had a genuine taste for country life, although the patronage of Domitian and a few others was enough to keep him in Rome, where his wit throve under the stimulus of appreciation. Nor is it to be supposed that he was entirely idle during the fifteen or sixteen years before he began to publish. It is likely enough that a good many of the epigrams he published had been written sufficiently for those who knew the circum- stances already, and had made a reputation for their author among the numerous set of fortune-hunters with whom he lived and w^aited for something to turn up. For instance, he was often advised to carry his ingenuity to the bar, and he made some halting attempts to act upon the advice. Here is an epigram in two couplets, which records the issue of one of his attempts: Egi, Sexte, tuam, pactus duo millia, causam. Misisti nummos quot mihi ? mille ; quid est ? Narrasti nihil, inquis, et a te prodita causa est: Tanto plus debes, Sexto, quod erubui.i For a company that knew the circumstances, the first line and the last were enough, and the easiest to write. But, upon the whole, Martial was mainly living, till the ac- cession of Domitian, \vhat an adventurer like him supposed to be a practical, business-like life: dancing attendance, if it led to nothing else, enabled anybody who was diligent to get a dinner most days, or the means of buying one: the hard- ships of the dependant's life were over by noon, and generally earlier, except when a very rich patron invited him to a Bar- mecide feast. Even this, though Martial does not tell us so, had its compensations. When we compare his invitations (which always include a bill of fiire) with his complaints of the shabbiness with which some of his acquaintance enter- tained him, it is quite clear that at worst a Roman patron » VIII. 17. b' ) MARTIAL. 105 gave his client the best dinner that the client could offer his friends, even when he had the bad taste to eat a better din- ner himself and to give titbits off his plate to pet slaves. Generally speaking, however, a retainer attached himself to a patron of some literary or political ambition; and such a patron, whenever he made a speech which he wished to pass for great, or had a new poem to bring before the public, or a new instalment of a history, invited enough of his dependants to applaud, and treated them well enough to put them in good humor. In fact, literary ambition w^as so general that, if Mar- tial is to be trusted, more than one amiable and distinguished author had no public at all but his unhappy guests, who learned from experience to dread his admirable dinners. Another point of Roman life on which Martial throws a good deal of light is the relation of sodalcs, which, as he describes it, could hardly have existed until his own day. Sodales were men who lived together till thirty or forty, meet- ing each other constantly and contracting inlimacies'which were intended to be perpetual; in fiict, they were chums; only they continued to be chums up to an age when marriage or business has long separated chums in England. However, even sodales had to part, and there were the same complaints upon the subject as we read in our own novels. Generally speaking, it was not marriage that parted them, but success : they probably were married at home before they came to Rome to seek their fortunes, and it was aggravating to find one's self dropped, very likely by a next-door neighbor' who had more profitable connections, or, perhaps, more method in cultivating them. Still, such separations were rare, for the reason that the life which was led in common was so barren that there were gen- erally plenty left to lament in chorus over the deserter An- other and more fruitful topic was that no money was, as a rule, to be made except by the rich, and that all gentlemanly and liberal professions were beggarly. Martial goes beyond Juvenal because he does not give himself airs of virtue: he asks all his acquaintance who come to Rome to push their * I. Ixxvji. 11.-5* 1 io6 LA TIN LITER A TURE. fortunes, not how they can bring themselves to the necessary baseness, but whether there is any market for their talents/ He is especially fond of illustrating the poverty of the mag- istracy and the bar : he is full of the absurdity of young bar- risters who set up their litters and their clients on borrowed money, as doctors set up their broughams now. The only reward that they could look forward to was payment in kind by rich fiirniers; for clients able and willing to pay their ad- vocates in ready money had not nearly business enough to occupy the courts. Meanwhile, business of other kinds in- creased so much that a man was still poor with the gifts that were almost enough to tempt Persius from the study of philos- ophy. When Martial enumerates the presents Sabellus' had re- ceived one Saturnalia, he rather undervalues them. It is more to the point that he observes that a retired pleader who had turned farmer had to buy all the country produce which he used to sell' This is a theme to which Martial often returns:* sometimes it is a fine gentleman with a train of slaves laden with country produce, whom one naturally expects to be re- turning from his estate in the country: on the contrary, he is just setting out for it. Sometimes the poet complains that an estate, large or small, used to keep' its owner: now it is the owner who has to keep up the estate. In one of the most ingeniously turned of his petitions to Domitian,' he complains of the labor and expense of drawing water for his little bit of land near Nomentum, and requests to be allowed to avail him- self of the aqueduct which ran close by. He is in other respects remarkably business-like for a poet, especially in his behavior when he asks for money and does not get it. After an application to Domitian, he rebukes his own impatience for thinking a gift refused' when it may be only delayed. When he applies to private acquaintances, on the other hand, he is peremptory enough ; he will be satisfied with no delays ; if the friend gives the money after a few months, it is' thank you for nothing. IMany of the epigrams 1 III. xxxviii. *III. xlvii. 8. ' VI. x. I2. 2 IV. xlvi. * X. xxvi. 7. * E. g. VI. xxx, 3 XII. Ixxii. 5, 6. ' IX. xix. i-\ MARTIAL. 107 look like demands for blackmail.' Somebody— the poet de- clines to know who the somebody is — has given offence ; if the poet knew who, so much the worse for somebody. He is full of veiled personalities of the most damaging kind : he deprecates guessing at who the subjects can be, but they must have recognized themselves, and have seen the need of propitiating a poet who was at once politic and vindictive. He insists repeatedly upon his successful avoidance of all personal attacks, while he had been lavish of personal com- pliments. He tells us himself that these were not given gratis : when somebody whom he has praised ignores the obli- gation he receives, the fact is published as a general warning: besides, he tells us that a less popular poet, when he wrole three hundred lines on the baths of a celebrated gourmet, wanted a dinner more than a bath. We cannot doubt that when Martial wrote to one of his friends that there were no baths in the world like the baths of Etruscus,' that whoever missed bathing in them would die without bathing, he ex- pected to be paid in some form or other for the "valuable advertisement he was giving Etruscus. So, too, when he an- swers numerous requests for a copy of his poems with a refer- ence to his bookseller' and a jocose assurance that they are not really worth the money, it is safe to assume that his book- seller had paid something for his manuscript. It is to be noticed that even where Martial is treating the most general and commonplace topics, he always manages to give the treat- ment a false air of personality : either he professes to give his own experience, or he apostrophizes the more or less imac^i- nary person he is writing about. ^ The last two books are merely couplets to serve as direc- tions for the presents sent round at the Saturnalia, and pur- chasers paid for the labels as they paid for the wine or the game or the knick-knacks which the labels accompanied. One can imagine that to be ingenious enough to write about any- thmg conferred a kind of reputation, and that Martial may have hked the practice, and now and then there is a happy turn : the wine of Nomentum, when it is old enough, may pass " V. xxxiii. . » VI. xlii. 3 iv. Ixxii. io8 LATIN- LITERATURE. MARTIAL. 109 for any wine in the world;' the wine of Spoletum, when it is old, is better than Falernian when it is new. The cloudy Marsic wine is ^ood enough for freedmen, and a person who receives a jar of brine from tunnies^ is told that if the brine were made from a daintier fish it would not have been sent to him. A neater point is that a jar of wine is laid down in a year when there was no consul : the recipient may guess whether it dates from the days of the kings, or simply from the battle of Mutina, which was so closely followed by the death of both consuls. Some of the presents are curious in themselves; for instance, the desk' which was used to protect the books read upon the knee from the fluff of the clothes, and the snow-strainers, sometimes of flax and sometimes of silver, which were used according to the quality of the wine they flavored. For the ancients were not of our mind, that the flavor of the best wine was spoiled by icing; for instance, it was a shame to use water cooled with snow for the *' smoky" wine of Marseilles, as the wine would be less valuable than the water.* If the reader thinks this rather poor fooling, he may perhaps prefer the couplet on some wool dyed with Tyrian purple :^ The shepherd gave me to his Spartan flame, To put her mother's home-dyed robes to shame.— XIV. clvi. But there are often comparisons of this kind ; for instance, besides the couplet for cheap brine made from tunnies, another' on two kinds of mattress-stufiing— one made of woollen flock for the rich, the other of chopped rushes for the poor. There is a constant play, too, on the conceit that the poor man makes a cheap present, and recommends a rich man to make a handsome one.' There is even a hint that the verses may do as well as a present by themselves. More than once in the twelve books of epigrams Martial recurs to the same idea, and hints that he may send an epigram as a sub- » I. cvi. "" XIII. ciii. ^ XIV. Ixxxiv. * XIV. cxviii. = There were purple-dyers in Laconia and Tarentum who competed, unsuccessfully in the judgment of connoisseurs, with the manufacturers of Tyre ; the latter employing an animal, the former a vegetable, dye. 6 XIV. clix., clx. ^ y^\\. lii. t i« I J stitute for paying a morning call.' Sometimes he tells us that a poor man shows true generosity when he sends no present to a rich one, because he dispenses the rich one from making a rich return.^ On a friend's birthdays when he acquiesces in the friend's bidding to send nothing, he tells the friend to re- ward him for his obedience by sending a present on his birth- da}% He was alive to the ridiculous side of his life : he wished for wealth that he might make presents and build; he did build a little, and'' one of his raciest epigrams is on another little builder, who was warden of the hamlet the same year that a rich neighbor was consul, and built a little sweating- house when the rich neighbor built splendid marble baths. The aesthetic aspirations of the poor are as ridiculous as their ambition. Martial holds that most who laush at the im- pecunious connoisseur* who cries at the sight of rarities which he cannot buy are crying for the very same things in their hearts. A lighter sketch is of Mamurra,^ who amused himself all day in the most expensive and fashionable shops, turning over the daintiest slaves that vulgar people like Martial never see at all, and then having the covers drawn off all the finest tables and calling for the richest ivory, and measuring a splendid tortoise-shell sofa four times, only to discover with regret that it was just too small for his citron table. Then he smelled at the bronzes to see if they had the right Corinthian perfume, and found fault with statues designed by Polycletus: thought it was a pity there were specks of nitre in the crystal goblets, and so resigned himself to having mur- rhine' instead; and marked and put on one side ten of these (probably there were not fifty men in Rome wdio had so many). Then he weighed all the old plate, and the cups that were famous as the handiwork of Mentor, and counted all the green gems in the golden enamel, and all the large pearls that are such becoming ear-balls for white ears. He went to every booth for genuine sardonyx, and priced all the large jaspers. At last, when he was tired, and the shops were just ready to '^ I. cix. "^ V. xviii. 3 X. ixxix. * X. Ixxx. ^ IX. Ix. " It is not known whether these were porcelain or spar, or some kind of semi-opaque and jewelled glass. no LA TIN LITER A TURK. MARTIAL. Ill shut up, he bought two cups for a penny, and carried them away himself. Another amusing pauper boasts ' that he never dines at home; and quite truly, for whenever he does not get an invitation he simply goes without a dinner. Another is too independent for this, so he professes never to dine out, and takes his snack of fish and eggs and lettuce in the baths,'' in- stead of going home to his garret. Martial himself was not poor in this sense: he had friends who could make him a present of a boar,' though he was obliged to decline it because it was too grand a dish for his kitchen, and he could not aftbrd pepper and pickle to have it properly cooked. One hardly knows whether it is character- istic of Martial or of his age that he could publish the fact. He was equally enthusiastic over a toga sent him by Parthe- iiius, and over the goblet sent him by Instantius Rufus. The poems are on the same model : he speculates on the breed of sheep whose wool was spun for the toga,' he speculates upon the artist whose hand had wrought the goblet.' After specu- lating, he describes the beauties of the to.gaand of the goblet, the latter apparently consisting in the extreme realism of the goat charging a boy. Upon the whole, Martial is more amus- Tng when^ he duns' Paullus than when he thanks Rufus, though the exaggeration is carried too far when we are told not merely that the goblet is a leaf from the crown Paullus wore as prcetor, nor that a drop of wine breaks it, and that it shakes with the draught of the lamp, but that it is thinner than the chalk on an old woman's face, thinner than a bubble. In general, Martial is not careful to vary his subjects. He has two or three other epigrams ' on the bad habit his ac- quaintances were apt to get into, of sending him less and less silver every year; sometimes the friend whose present has dwindled till imperceptible is invited to go back to the begin- ning of the series; another is invited to pay at least half the poet's customary claim;' a third is told that half a pound of pepper does not cost as much as a pound of plate, or rather ^ V. xlvii. * VIII. xxviii. ' E.g. VIII. Ixxi. »XII. xix. ^VIII. li. «X. Ivii. 3 VII. xxvii. ' VIII. xxxiii. / that Martial can buy it for less. This last is a favorite turn : owing to the fortunate ambiguity of Latin, Martial can say, "I don't buy pepper for that," or "I don't buy a toga for that," when he means " I don't give so much for pepper, and I give more for a toga" than the trifling presents you make me for dancing attendance on you. In the same way he re- peats the conceit that nothing is worse than a bald-head* with long hair, with a variation to the effect that nothing is worse than a gelding" Priapus; and is fond of ringing the changes' on bought hair, bought teeth, or bought poems — all the prop- erty of the purchasers. Often, however, he varies the same subject. For instance, once when a criminal enacts Mucins in the arena, he is so struck with his courage that he declines to know what the hand he sacrifices has done:* another time he reflects that the true mark of courage would be lo refuse, as the unfortunate criminal would then be burned alive.' Sometimes the tame lion (there seems to have been more than one) has imbibed the clemency of Domitian ; sometimes it does not think a hare" sufficient occupation for its lordly jaws; sometimes it is too much used to its old friend the goat to think of hurting it. There is the same light-hearted incon- sistencv in the way that he thanks Domitian for jrivins' him the privileges of a father of three children,' dismissing his wife because it would be a shame to waste such a gift, while he tells other applicants for the same favor to ask it' of nature and of their wives, not of the emperor. It deserves to be mentioned, to Martial's credit, that he shov/s no exultation when the power before which he abased himself so passionately was overthrown. The only sign that h;is enthusiasm cooled during Domitian's life is an invitation to dinner, where he promises his guests they shall talk of nothing more serious than the colors of the circus, and run no risk of prosecution for anything they may say in their cups. When Domitian was dead, the only signs of reaction are one * X. Ixxxiii. 12. ' These come alto- '" X. XXV. ^ II. xcii. ^ I. XXXV i. 15. gether, I. Ixxiii. * VIII. XXX. 9, 10. ^ I. xxiii. « VIII. xxxi 112 LATIN LITERATURE. MARTIAL. 113 or two epigrams/ where he quotes Nerva as an excuse for the license of his own language, and flatters Trajan by an epigram full of civic-sounding titles^ which the poet thenceforth will have to substitute for the titles of lord and god which still come too readily to his courtly tongue. Martial dedicates under both reigns with the same confident empressefnent to Parthe- nius, the emperor's reader, who took a leading part in the conspiracy against Domitian, and who narrowly escaped, if he did escape, the vengeance of the Praetorians. Of course, such an easy, good-humored writer had no sympathy whatever with pessimist critics, who judged the Rome of Domitian as Juvenal judged the Rome of Trajan ; but he disapproved equally of the indiscriminate optimism which admired every- thing as a disguise for lack of worthy interest in anything. Certainly it is pleasant to turn from Juvenal's sneer at Fuscus, who studied war in a marble villa, and was nursing his flesh for the vultures of Dacia, to Martial's truly Roman tribute' to the urn that never need fear the threat of a foeman, and the shade that inherits the homage of the conquered grove, in spite of the flunkeyism of the opening lines about the guard- ian of his sacred majesty's person and the captain of civic soldiery. When one compares Martial's consolatory poems with those of Statius, one is struck by the superiority of Martial in sim- plicity of feeling: he may be less moved, but his kindliness is more spontaneous; he has not to torment himself and his reader with considerations. Martial reminds us of Statius in his sympathy for the fashion of petting the handsome young slave, who seems very often to have died of being a little too refined for his situation, in which case he was always liberated before death. He stands almost alone in Roman literature in his appreciation of mere girlhood : one of the most pathetic of his epitaphs* is for a child of six who died of some face dis- ease. He dwells on the quaint horror of her end, the little lips that were not whole when licked by the black flame of the funeral pyre, in a way to remind us that he is a countryman 1 XII. vi. ; cf. XI. XX. ^ VI. Ixxvi. ; cf. Juv. iv. 1 1 1, 1 12. ' X. Ixxii. * XI. xii. i of the Spanish painters of martyrdoms; and winding up by telling us that fate was in a hurry to stop her voice, lest if she could cry for mercy the grim goddess should relent. Still prettier are the distichs ' in which he commends the ghost of a little slave girl of his own to the ghosts of his parents, and concludes with the often-quoted prayer, "Lie lightly on her, earth, she trod lightly on you:" and long after, when he was leaving Italy, he wrote another epitaph,'* commending her grave to whosoever might succeed him as the owner of his Sabine farm. In between comes an epigram^ that is witty and heartless. For thirteen lines he describes the perfections of his pet, whose hair was softer than the fleece of a Spanish lamb, and more golden and more curly than a German's; whose breath was as sweet as the rosebuds of PiEstum and the finest honey of the hives of Attica, or a lump of amber fresh snatched from the hand, llie peacock has no grace in comparison with her, the squirrel no winning ways, the phoenix no rarity. So far we seem to be reading an anticipa- tion of the compliments of Don Quixote, but we presently learn, " And my friend Paetus bids me not be sad: he thumps my breast and pulls my hair. ' Are not you ashamed of cry- ing at the death of a slave baby.?' he says: * why, I've buried my wife, and yet I live, well born, well connected, rich, and haughty as she was.' Where shall we find a man so brave as PjEtus.? Think of coming into ;^20o,ooo and surviving it!" Martial is one of the first writers to be gallant in our sense of the word. We might search in vain in Latin literature for parallels to the epigram where he sends a lady German hair, that she may see how much yellower* her own is; and the other, where he complains of having fresh roses' sent him, when he. would prefer those whose bloom her hands had rubbed away. On the other hand, even for a Roman writer, he is singularly ignorant of love, and, oddly enough, is aware of the deficiency: he even fancied that if he had something to love ' it would make a poet of him. His notion of something to love was modelled rather upon Corydon's love for Alexis ^ V. xxxiv. 3 V. xxxvii. ^ XL Ixxxix. ' ^- ^^'- * V.Jxviii. 6 VIII. Ixxiii. 10. 114 LA TIN LITER A TURK. MARTIAL. 115 than upon the love of Catullus for Lesbia, and therefore had not the smallest element of permanence. If he wanted per- manence in matters of affection he thought of marriage; it was, after all, an intrinsic part of his scheme of life: he could not dispense with it as Horace or Vergil or Catullus did, as Ovid could have done. His general scheme of life is a reflec- tion of the lower side of Horace's. Amusement has a much larger place in it; he is always in a hurry to live. The wise man, the only wise man, is he who lived yesterday. The only approach to remorse or to compunction in him is due to the thought of the good daylight we lose over business of an un- interesting kind, when we might be having warm or cold baths, or doing gymnastics, or talking, or lounging in the sun ; and every sun that sets without being enjoyed is one item more in the account against us.' The notion of enjoyment of thought or imagination or mere repose is far from Martial in his prime ; and he found the comfort of having his sleep out at Bilbilis a poor exchange for the mental activity of Rome. He has no idea whatever of putting to himself the question of what his business in life may be, about which Horace is inter- mittently quite serious ; for the sufficient reason that Horace was useful to one of the most important men of the day, while Martial was in no fruitful relation to any one, except perhaps his namesake Julius, of whom and to whom he writes with a hearty enthusiasm upon the duty of enjoying life and the charms of his few acres. We extract one of the sincerest and sweetest of his confidences: Vitam qu3C faciunt beatiorem, Jucundissime Partialis, hacc sunt : Res non parta labore, sed relicta; Non ingratus ager, focus perennis, Lis nunquam, toga rara, mens quieta, Vires ingenuae, salubre corpus, Prudens simplicitas, pares amici, Convictus facilis, sine arte mensa, Nox non ebria, sed soluta curis, Non tristis torus, et tamen pudicus, Somnus qui faciat breves tenebras. Quod sis, esse velis, nihilque malis: Summum nee metuas diem nee optes (X. xlvii.). 1 V. XX. I f — "The things which make life pretty happy, my own dear Martial, are these: a property which was left you without your working for it, land that pays for cultivation, a hot dinner every day, never a law-suit, very seldom a dress-suit, a quiet mind, bodily health, and gentlemanly vigor; frankness and prudence, equal friendships, easy society, a simple table, a wet night to wash out cares, but not quite a tipsy one, a wife who is faithful and not strait-laced, sound sleep to shorten the darkness; to wish to be what you are and nothing else in the world ; not to be afraid of your last day, nor to long for it." It throws a little light on Martial's views of marriage that he was enthusiastic over Sulpicia,' who wrote a book to cele- brate the liberties she and her husband took with one another. In fact, she practised all the fascinations of a mistress upon her husband, and boasted of them in a book which, in spite of Martial's advertisement, failed to secure a permanent reputation. Still, it must have had some charm, for Martial was, as a general rule, averse to the tendency ladies of station were beginning to show to ape the fascinations of ladies to whom station was unattainable. That great part of the wit of his epigrams consists in veiled or unveiled imputation of un- mentionable vice is hardly a proof that his practical standard of behavior was much lower than that of respectable contem- poraries. When Lucan jested he made the same kind of jokes, though it is to be remembered that Lucan did not make a business of such jests. Even so, Martial was scrupu- lous compared with those who made it their business to jest: he boasts that he was more careful than most of his prede- cessors to keep clear of the cheap attraction of mere gross- ness, and takes a tone of sarcastic superiority to a competitor who tried to make a reputation out of ingeniously detailed nastiness, telling him that it was not worth while that he should prove his gift of expression at that rate.*' Now and then Martial follows Horace, not only in his phi- losophy, but in the construction of individual poems. As Dean Merivale observes, the well-known odes to Dellius and Postumus find an echo in the sharp scazons to Titullus. In »X. XXXV. • 2XII. xliii. II. ii6 LATIN LITERATURE. MARTIAL. 117 directness and rapidity and energy the later poet has such advantage as a later poet can have. Rape, congere, aufer, posside: relinquendum est. Superba densis area palleat nummis, Centum expliceiitur paginae Calendarum, Jurabit heres te nihil reliquisse.^ That is worth reading after — Cedes coemptis saltibus et domo, Villaque, flavus qiiam Tiberis lavat, Cedes, et exstructis in altum Divitiis potietur heres.' Martial has thought out what Horace only suggests, and the imacfe of the wooden chest with its brown darkness turn- ing pale with the gleam of the silver that chokes it is new and vigorous. Martial goes on to cap Horace's description of the heir tossing off the Caecuban which was shut up behind a hundred bolts, and washing the pavement with better wine than the pontiffs drink, with a brutal picture of the dead body thrown against a hurdle or a stone, while the bier to burn it on is being stuffed with papyrus, and the heir takes posses- sion of the harem at his ease. But more commonly Martial exhibits himself as the rival of a poet with whom he has little in common but metre. He does not know what passion is. Catullus is one of the most passionate of poets, and yet Martial tries to outdo him in his ambition for kisses,^ and his quarrels with his friends who give him ground for jealousy; and add to this the unpardon- able offence of not being even fat and w^ell-liking. Now and then there are imitations of the Greek epigram : a terse set of questions and answers upon a work of art, or an epitaph simple and dignified. But for the most part he keeps to the ' VIII. xliv. 9-12. " Snatch, hoard, seize, hokl, you still must leave it all ; though the proud chest is choked and pale with coin, though there are a hundred pages in the roll of your debtors, your heir will swear you left him nothing." "^ " You shall depart from the wide woodlands you bought, from your home, from your farm washed by the yellow Tiber — you shall depart, and all your heaped-up wealth shall be for your heir." — Hor. Od. II. xiv. 21-24. 'VI. xxxiv.: cf. I. cix. \ paradoxes of contemporary Roman life, and it was among these that he earned his popularity. Unambitious as he was, he was too ambitious for his public, w^ho showed a good deal of impatience whenever he wrote anything longer than a few lines (their ideal length was a distich) or paid compliments of any kind. The taste of the day did not apparently revolt at his numerous jingles and plays upon sound like "Aut apponc dapes Vare vel aufer opes." ' His style here and there show^s signs of linguistic decay : for instance, in the best epitaph, on Erotion, we hear that she went to the world below with a hastened ghost. ^ IV. Ixxviii. 6. ii8 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. 119 CHAPTER V. JUVENAL. It is difficult to be sure whether Juvenal, who was the friend of Martial, is to be identified with the satirist. If so, there was a certain plausibility in the endeavors of some ma- licious persons to get up a quarrel between the two, for the temperament of the two was as different as could be. Mar- tial was mercurial, Juvenal was saturnine. Martial was quite capable of admiration ; Juvenal was not. INIartial was an en- thusiast for the shows of the circus; Juvenal thought a day when all Rome was in the circus a capital opportunity for a quiet dinner, and considered the praetor the prey of his horses when he gave a handsome show. Juvenal, again, has a great passion for exhortation, from which Martial is entirely free. The friend of Martial was not yet known as a poet, for INIar- tial is anxious to give any of his acquaintances who write full credit for their performances, good or bad. This, pro tanto, tells in favor of the accepted belief that Juvenal only began to write under Trajan, which rests upon three facts. In his first Satire which is obviously intended to serve as an intro- duction to the rest, he mentions the condemnation of Marius, which took place 100 a.d. The thirteenth is addressed to a friend of sixty who was born in the consulship of Fon- teius, which dates the Satire at 72, 119, or 127 a.d. The fif- teenth professes to be written soon after an event which took place in the consulship of Junius, which would leave us to choose between 84 a.d. and 119 a.d., or possibly under the consulship of Juncus, who was consul suffect in 127 a.d.; and although an inscription of Hadrian's reign is dated by his consulship, it is rather difficult to suppose that a poet could expect everybody to keep all the consuls suffect in their heads, and speak loosely of what happened " lately " if he was dat- ing within a couple of months. i It would, of course, be curious that Martial should write of Juvenal as a private person if there were another Juvenal who had a reputation as a poet, and, according to the tradi- tion embodied in the lives of Juvenal, he had published under Domitian, who banished him to Egypt; though it is also true that Martial tells us nothing of Statins, the leading f^ashiona- ble poet of the age. There is one other Satire which seems to bear its date upon its face. The seventh — where the poet complains that poetry has no patrons but the emperor — must surely be contemporary with the complaints of Martial about the one drawback to Domitian's admirable reign, that it was not recognized that a poor man's talent deserved re- ward, and, consequently, poets and men of letters in general had no patron to look to but the emperor. And it is not im- possible that the Cordus who makes himself hoarse reciting his "Theseid" to an unappreciative world is the same Cor- dus whom Martial banters good-naturedly on his taste for finery rather above his means. The eighth Satire is full of allusions to the reign of Nero,^ and the scholiast embodies confused echoes of a more or less conjectural tradition that Juvenal began to write under him ; and in the first Satire there are allusions which might, perhaps, be taken the same way. It is remarkable that there are no allusions to the victorious campaigns of Trajan, and in the eighth Satire we should have expected these. We hear of the career of a valiant and diligent youth who goes to Euphrates, or the eagles which keep watch and ward over the conquered Bata- vian, and a young noble is reproached for idling in taverns when at an age to guarantee the safety of Nero. There is another passage^ in what would seem a later Satire, which is still more conclusive: an aspiring boy is told by a father with an eye to the main chance to ask for a centurion's rod, that he may have the perquisites^ oi pn7?iipilus at sixty. ' One explanation of these might be that Juvenal goes back to the per- sonages of Turniis as Persius goes back to the personages -of Horace. ''xiv. 193-19S. 'Consisting largely of fees, upon furloughs, and sufficient to support the rank of knight, with which a/'r//;////7//j hoped to retire, probably with the brevet rank of tribune. 120 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. 121 These perquisites are to be earned by a long course of petty warfare on the extreme northern and southern frontiers of the empire. The whole subject is very perplexing, for we cannot even conclude that Juvenal wrote mainly under Domitian ; but the thirteenth Satire must have been written either under Vespa- sian or under Hadrian, and the twelfth and fourteenth Satires, and probably the eleventh, must be assigned to about the same period. It is, of course, difficult to understand so much bitterness in the golden age of Trajan, when the world was enjoying the first rebound of prosperity and freedom after the jealous and latterly unsuccessful tyranny of Domitian. We learn, indeed, from Pliny's correspondence with Trajan that jobbery flourished extensively throughout the provinces, and may conjecture that it flourished at the capital. The mani- festo which, it is said, Avidius Cassius issued against Marcus Aurelius implies that under that model emperor corruption was flourishing throughout the empire, and the public interest was entirely neglected by everybody. But it is not easy to give credit to Juvenal for such comprehensive indignation : the only life that he knows or cares to describe is the life of the capital, and the life of the capital can hardly have been other than prosperous during a period of profuse expendi- ture, which was supplied without either of the unpopular resources of confiscation or taxation. The last fragmentary Satire on military privileges, which seems to have been intended to come before the Satire on the savagery of Egyp- tian superstition, might naturally be referred to the reign of Trajan, although Domitian was conspicuous for his defer- ence to the armv. Another difficulty about Juvenal is the steady ancient tra- dition of an exile in which he enlarged his Satires, which must be considered in conjunction with the elaborate conject- ure of Ribbeck that the tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Satires are declamations quite unworthy of Juvenal, and that the author of these, or somebody as stupid, interpolated the Satires which Ribbeck recognizes as gen- uine. And it is quite true that there is a real division in ii f Juvenal's work. In all the Satires which Ribbeck rejects there is very little direct observation of life: there is a great deal of hortatory commonplace, and such illustration as there is seems taken second-hand from history; and there are un- mistakable signs of this tendency in the Satires which he ac- cepts; and there is no Satire where the arrangement is the strong point — in fact, there is hardly any where a methodi- cal editor is without some temptation to rearrange his text, wliich never hardly comes to the end of one topic and goes on to another without recurring to the first. Juvenal is too considerable a poet for it to be easily admitted that he could keep back nothing, that he thought everything that he wrote too good to lose. On the whole, Juvenal may seem to have written mostly under Domitian and Nerva, and during the early years of Trajan. Perhaps after a considerable interval he began to write again under Hadrian in a different and milder vein. During his exile he may have enlarged his earlier Satires, if we rely at all on the comparatively respectable authority of Sidonius Apollinaris for the statement that he was banished for some reflection on the patronage dispensed by Paris, a favorite actor under Domitian. As the actor was put to death 84 A.D., the Satire on the poverty of men of letters must have been written tolerably early if it was to give offence to him or even to Domitian, who may have resented the imputation of bestowing military rank at the bidding of an actor. The first, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth Satires might all fairly be set down to the reign of Domitian, if we strike out the two lines' about Marius from the first, which decidedly disturb the symmetry of the text wher^ they occur. The fourth is probably Juvenal's con- tribution to the outburst of virtuous indignation which fol- lowed the fall of Domitian. Perhaps there is a trace of the same at the end of the first Satire, where the poet, after contemplating the risks of attacking a reigning fiivorite as set forth by an imaginary monitor, proclaims a not very magnani- mous resolution of trying whether it is safe to make war upon •'49, SO- IL— 6 122 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. 123 the dead. The second Satire, and perhaps the ninth, may fairly be regarded as pamphlets in favor of Domitian's revival of the Scantinian law, for there is nothing in them that can be taken to reflect upon Domitian except five bitter and powerful lines,* which are, after all, irrelevant to the two main subjects of the Satire, for Domitian in a private sta- tion would have been safe from a prosecution under the Lex Scantinia, and had no taste for exhibiting himself in the arena or making men of station exhibit themselves. The sixth, on the other hand, is a Satire on Domitian's attempt to revive the Julian law : it rallies a man who intends to live up to the new reformation, partly upon the absurdity of his pretensions to virtue, and partly upon the impossibility of finding a suitable partner. It is a saturnalia of invective: all the world of women is represented as stained by one or other of the offences which in the second Satire are treated as excep- tional. Picturesque and truthful as the invective is, there is a want of proportion and perspective about it. One would never guess that the author was a contemporary of Sulpicia, or Statius, or Pliny the Younger, or even Martial, who, though he writes of and to his wife in a tone the reverse of chivalrous, is not wholly wanting in good-nature. Here, as elsewhere, Juvenal is provokingly old-fashioned : he repeats and exag- gerates the misogyny of the republic; he does not dislike women because the sex in his time was corrupt, but his dis- like to the sex makes him keen to detect and eloquent to dilate upon all the instances of corruption which society sup- plied. There is a great deal of spasmodic and not quite un- real indignation at the turpitude of women, but no recommen- dation for improvement — in fact, whenever a woman has a character, Juvenal makes haste to take it away. He offers to give up his own bit of land if a lady who had a great reputa- tion on her own domain could live in one or two of the dullest, pettiest towns as she is said to have lived on her own estate; though even about that Juvenal has his doubts, and asks if Jupiter and Mars are grown so old. In the second Satire the indignation seems to be rather against the pretensions and » 29-34- v\ the hypocrisy of effeminate debauchery than against the effem- inacy itself, while in the ninth Satire there is no indignation at all, or else it is marvellously well suppressed. The poet encourages his friend to hope for better luck with his next effeminate employer, and promises secrecy about his quarrel with the last, while sagely reflecting that a rich man can have no secrets: his servants are sure to understand all his affairs and publish them through his tradesmen, with plenty of com- ment and conjecture. The worst thing about a bad slave is his tongue, and among many good reasons for living correctly it is not the least that then you need not mind what servants say of you. Even in the fifth Satire it is not clear whether Juvenal means to attack the rich man who will not treat his clients civilly, or the poor man who is eager to go out to dinner even at the risk of being worse served and fed than his host. Here, as often, Juvenal does nothing but paraphrase at length, and with much emphatic humor, an epigram' of Martial's on a dinner of Zoilus, who probably stands for a real person who did not appreciate Martial's epigrams: there is even the same parade of the resources which are less discreditable than dining out on such terms. Only Martial is impartial : he tells us quite^an- didly what a miserable thing it was to dine three nights run- ning in a garret that was dark and low, up ever so many pairs of stairs, at the top of which you had to stoop to get into it • and he obviously feels that a poor man might very well think the price for freedom too high. Juvenal's inference is that a poor man had better leave Rome : he just says enough of the discomfort of dark garrets and high rents' to recommend the cheap comfort of a country town. He does not touch on the fact that a man with the tastes he approved could do nothing in a small town but vegetate, while the busy idleness of Rome .Sharp- ened the wits and kept ambition alive. He thought it quite shocking that well-known poets should go into business and open an auction hall at Rome, or contract for the management of the baths at Gabii, although that was better than making a trade of perjury, which pushing freedmen from the Levani ' Mart. III. Ixxxii. . a ju^. III. 190 sqq. 124 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. 125 who had acquired equestrian fortunes were ready enough to do. Transmarine trade, which was almost the only honest way of making money known, struck him as a proof of in- sanity. A man setting out in the storms to traffic in stinking saffron and sackcloth is a more amusing show than any that the praetor can exhibit. It is quite of a piece with this that Juvenal has no belief whatever in any connection between merit and success : all the external conditions of life depend upon fate or luck: the shabby adventurers who get on without minding what they do are not monuments of the power of energy or perseverance or adaptability, but they show what fortune can do when she has a mind tofoke.' If Quinctilian' has accumulated what passed for a fortune, that does not prove that Quinctilian understood his profession, but that the stars and the wondrous power of hidden fate had manifested themselves in him; for fate can turn a professor of rhetoric into a consul,' and a consul into a professor of rhetoric, just as it can make a slave a king or give a captive a triumph. In the same way luck is the great thing in entering the army:* a lucky camp is more important than a letter of introduction from Venus to Mars. It is no contradiction to this that twice over we get the sentiment that it is only for lack of prudence that men deify fortune : virtue and prudence are never represented as the way to fame or splendor; they are the way to safety and tranquillity, which are all that Juvenal thinks it wise to wish for. With this apathy of desire it is not surprising that Juvenal is one of the most irreligious of Roman poets : he jests much more freely at mythology than his fellows, but this is not all. When he is serious and reverent he speaks, for the most part, not of the gods, but of nature, or the author of nature; but there is no trace of any piety to the traditional worship which often survived any respect for the legends connected with it. Juvenal is not much further from jesting when he says that of course man is dearer to the gods than to himself, and therefore ^ Juv. Iir. 40. ^ Quinctilian only received the consular ornaments, 'VII. 189-200. *XVI. 2-6. the future may be left to their care, than when he says that if you must go on to petitions,' and have a motive for vowing the entrails and the chitterlings of a nice little white pig (which, to be sure, are a dish for gods) to your favorite chapel, the only thing to pray for is a courageous mind above the fear of death: \vhich is hardly an improvement from the point of view of reason. Or from that of religion, upon Horace, who says simply it is enough to pray Jove for what he gives or takes away : let him give health and wealth, and then I will find myself an even mind. The jests upon mythology are mostly euhemeristic in tone — references to the days when Juno' was a young girl, and Jupiter had not been promoted from private life in the caves of Ida to be king of heaven, and sneers at Vulcan's way of taking a long pull at the nectar he handed round before it occurs to him to clean the soot off his arms. The gradual decline of morality since the Golden Age is a favorite topic with Juvenal, and he likes to dwell on the ex- treme simplicity of the good old times, when it was a great crime for a young man not to rise up to an elder, and for a boy not to rise up to any one with a beard, although he might see more strawberries and larger heaps of acorns at home.' Next to this he admires the life of the Sabine farmers,* where the wife had a large family, and lived upon porridge, and slaves and freemen played together as children, and worked together when they grew up; and the elders warned them against outlandish purple as something wicked, without wish- ing to know what it was. He has a strong feeling that the love of money is the root of all evil, and that field-work in shabby clothes is the root of all virtue; that a son who is brought-up to think of earning money will make up his mind to try criminal short-cuts to wealth. He admires the best poetry, and thinks that to dine early and listen* to it is one of the greatest pleasures in the world, though it would pall if indulged in often. This, however, is only a pleasure for men: women are better in entire ignorance; they should keep 'X. 354, 355. Mb.54sqq. ^XI. 177-180. 2x111.40. Ub. 165-189. I 126 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL, 127 their hearts pure and their hands hard by spinning, and not trouble themselves about grammar or literature, which will only put it into their heads to tease their husbands about doubtful grammar, or take up all the time at a dinner-party with discussions about the comparative merits of Homer and Vergil. In his eyes this is even a worse offence than to keep dinner waiting through an excessive passion for gymnastics, as this was a worse offence than dressiness, which easily passed into cruelty. Juvenal's politics agree very well with his philosophy: he holds in most things with the elder Cato, and is superior to all considerations of anachronism. The empire of Rome gives him no pleasure: he regards everybody, great or small, who profits by it with the robust envy of a conservative demo- crat. He is a hearty patriot, and thinks no praise too high for those who delivered the municipal community of Rome from great perils, like Cicero or Marius or the Decii, but one looks in vain for any sympathy with Vergil's view of Rome's mission to spare subjects and war down the proud and lay the fashion of peace upon the world. Both in history and in ethics it is rudimentary virtues that attract him. When there is an op- portunity for taking a large view in politics he is suspicious ; when there is an opportunity for taking a large view in history he is sceptical and credulous by turns. When he has to speak of the struggle of Greece against Persia, he can think of noth- mz better than to try to reduce Herodotus, or, at any rate, Sostratus,^ who versified him, to the level of Munchausen. When he has to speak of the struggle of Rome against Han- nibal, he can think of nothing better than to sneer at the ambition of a commander who melted rocks with vinegar, and lost an eye in the wars.'^ It is one of the most re- markable points in JuvenaPs view of life that he attaches no value whatever to posthumous renown, which almost all his serious contemporaries rated extremely high, just as they all agreed in attaching as much worth as thev could to the wor- ship which they had inherited. Of course, one does not ex- pect much homage to the ideals of an age in a satirist, though ^X. 178. 'lb. 153, 158. ^ we find it abundantly in Martuil, but, compared with either Horace or Persius, Juvenal is decidedly narrow and ungra- cious in all matters of opinion. If men could only live up to the standards they profess, neither Horace nor Persius would have much to say against them, but Juvenal complains that the aims they propose to themselves are absurd: he finds not only men but life ridiculous. Aristophanes, whom Juvenal alone of Roman satirists makes no boast of imitating, is as contemptuous of what his contemporaries admire, but Aris- tophanes makes a jest of his own opinions, as readily as of the new fashions in thought and politics against which he waged a war which lowered him. Aristophanes to the last keeps the air of looking down upon what he ridicules; he represents himself as the champion of the orthodox, respectable view of things. Juvenal always assumes that the view which he ridi- cules is in possession; he is a Diogenes who can afford to laugh at Alexander. In his later works Juvenal is in the same position towards Stoicism substantially as Horace : he wishes to amuse himself with the pretensions of the Stoics and to be independent of their doctrine, and yet he can do nothing but repeat their commonplaces. He keeps so far as he can to what they have in common with all philosophers, which was the easier be- cause they had been fiilling back upon this common ground at least as far back as the days of Seneca. The thirteenth Satire is full of this incoherence. Juvenal undertakes to console a friend who has been cheated of ten sestertia — something like ;^ioo sterling — and tells him that for such a trifle there is no need to call in the assistance of high philoso- phy — which the author boasts of not having read. In one place he tells him that it is unmanly to care about revenge, in another that he is quite certain to be avenged by the force of circumstances: the perfidious borrower has committed one crime with impunity; he will be sure to commit another, and be punished. In one place he makes a jest of the number of deities whom a perjurer" will defy for the sake of keeping money which does not belong to him. In another we are as- sured that he will be haunted by the spirit form of the man 128 LATIN LITERATURE. that he has wronged: throughout there is the assumption every one who does wrong is always tormented by the thought of what he has done, so that legal penalties are really less severe than what every criminal must suffer from his conscience. It is just the same in the fifteenth Satire: all the Stoical doctrines of the fellowship of mankind are brought to bear upon the grotesque cannibalism of the inhabitants of an Egyptian town, who had caught one of the inhabitants of an- other that they had a quarrel with, and actually eaten him at the end of a brawl at a festival. At the same time, Juvenal will not be too serious about his Stoicism: he asks himself whether the stories of Spanish cannibalism are to be tried by the Stoical standard, and, of course, says that the Spaniards who acted under a mistaken sense of honor are to be ex- cused. The humor is not very remarkable : the poet assures us that the fables of the " Odyssey " about the Cyclops and the Laistrygons were disgusting and incredible, as a preface to his more incredible and more disgusting picture from con- temporary life: even the contrast between the hungry hate on one side and the coarse merry-makings on another, with which the actual narrative opens, is rather labored than effective, and the same may be said of the complaints that Egyptians worship animals. The twelfth Satire professes to be a letter to Corvinus on the festival Juvenal intends to hold in honor of the safety of Catullus, who was very nearly shipwrecked, after seeing the mast cut away and all his own property thrown overboard. This gives occasion to praise Catullus for not sacrificing his life to save his property, and, as he had children of his own, Juvenal can praise him- self for disinterestedness in paying such a tribute to a friend from whom he expects nothing. Hereupon we have a bit of genuine satire upon the manners and customs of fortune- hunters who would sacrifice a daughter, to say nothing of their best slaves, to prove their devotion to a rich old bache- lor, without expecting a miracle to save them such as was wrought for A2:amemnon. The rest looks rather like a series of exercises in description pieced together; there is a sacri- yUVENAL, 129 y ¥ I lice and a shipwreck (and a shipwreck, at any rate, was a fovorite theme for schoolboy versification), and Juvenal's sea- piece seems rather interrupted by the catalogue of the goods which Catullus sacrifices. Here and there is an attempt to be comic by dint of grandiloquence, which breaks down in unexpected places : for instance, a bowl thrown overboard holds three gallons, and is worthy of the thirst of Pholus (a celebrated centaur), or the wife of Fuscus (as we might say, Mrs. Brown). The fourteenth, which deals with education, is vigorous and edifying, though here, too, the author cannot help going off into a special polemic against avarice, which occupies two thirds of the Satire, though most of this is con- nected with the subject upon which he begins by declamations on the influence of evil examples in propagating avarice, as well as other vices which the young acquire from elders who do not recommend them in theory. Here, too, we have the same scepticism as to Greek legend which, in the tenth Satire, we find about Greek history. In general it may be said that the interest of Juvenal's later Satires, from the eleventh onwards, is derivative: the first ten are exciting, and when the poet reaches a calmer and more elevated atmosphere the recollection of the bracing storms of the lower level prevents our finding the calm insipid or oppressive. The eleventh Satire is fresh and pleasant, and the description of the modest country-bred boy who waits at table, and wants to get back to his mother and his kids, is in a vein of sentiment that is original in ancient literature. But one may fancy it possible to trace failing powers in the sketch of the fast young men who live beyond their means, and break up their mother's bust for old silver, and paw'n their plate to provide for one or two banquets more, before they have to run away from their creditors for a season or two at the baths, after which they will come back to the gladiators' mess at Rome. The outline is vigorous still, but there is little detail, and the coloring is pale beside the picture of Lateranus among his boon companions. The tenth Satire is certainly a work of the full vigor of its author. To be sure, there is much more ethical disquisition than in the third or IF.— 6* ISO LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL, ^31 eighth, but there is an amplitude about even the abstract dec- lamation which we miss hater, and there is nothing afterwards to set against the splendid pictures of the fall of Sejanus, and the humiliation of Hannibal, or the wedding of Messalina and Silius. The plan of the Satire is clearer and more consist- ently carried out than usual. First, we have a statement that men are foolish, and wish for what will do them harm, en- forced by the consideration that Heraclitus wept over the world, and Democritus laughed at it when there was much less to laugh at, while there is no sage who has given his authority for admiring the popular judgment. Then we have illustra- tions of the evils arising from the individual things which men desire— wealth, political power, eloquence, military glory, long life, and beauty. The only trace of unsteadiness is in the treatment of long life, which is handled at more length than the rest, and there are a dozen lines on the different diseases of old age, which rather interrupt the description of natural decay. Perhaps, too, it may be said that the perils of beauty are not clearly discriminated. We never quite know whether the poet is talking about the risk of violence or the risk of seduction, and he is full on the perils of beauty in man and short on its perils to woman, although he sets out by saying that it is only for women that even unphilosophical devotees desire it very heartily. The whole Satire is, as Mr. INIacleane pointed out, very like an expansion of the passage in which Valerius Maximus re- sumes the doctrine of the Alcibiades. It is not improbable that further resemblances of the same kind might be traced, but it detracts even less from Juvenal's originality to amplify Vale- rius than it detracts from Johnson's originality to have para- phrased Juvenal, or from Pope's to have paraphrased Horace. In the eighth Satire we find originality of another kind. Ju- venal is the only writer of his day who has a fierce quarrel with the nobility and with luxury. Tacitus and Pliny make a kind of protest in favor of simplicity : perhaps so far as sim- plicity of personal habits goes the protest is sincere, but as to the material organization of social life it is certainly hypocrit- ical. With more or less affectation of regret, they accept ♦id % splendid houses; they worship great names. Now Juvenal only worships great names under protest as a means to re- proach their unworthy inheritors: he has a quite ferocious passion against the pride of a degenerate noble, but his en- thusiasm is reserved for the plebeian Decii, for the new men Marius and Cicero. He is, again, the only writer who is im- placable to the emperor Otho, who was the hero of the efifem- inate circles which Martial as well as Juvenal re^-arded with disgust. Martiar asked nothing better than the ready-made epigram of the contrast between his life and his end. Juvenal will not hear of a hero whose liighest achievement was the slaughter of Galba,'' who only showed the constancy of a great citizen by taking care of his complexion to the last. Juvenal, again, is curiously indifferent to the great question of suicide, which is so prominent in Tacitus and the letters of Pliny; he does not even condescend to sneer at the fashion. He does not discuss, like Martial, whether seeking death or challeng- i-* . . ^ ing It is not too cheap a way of earning fame. Of course the riddle of Otho's career is simple enough. He was a clever, capable man, with nothing to do in Rome, and there- fore ready iox mischief: When he had a province to adminis- |ter, he did it well ; when he had a civil war to conduct, he bhowed as much sense and rather more public spirit than pould be expected of him. Other nobles who had rather less enterprise found an outlet for their energy in the passionate cultivation of some accomplishment. If they happened to take to eloquence or poetry, their ambition was respectable, but those gifts were rare. It was commoner then, as now, for a man to have a talent for singing, or driving, or fencin"-, or play-acting. Saleius Bassus, or whoever it was that wrote the panegyric on Piso, has quite as much to say of his distinction as a chess-player as upon his industry as an advocate. Of course, as slave labor left the rich no employment in the man- agement of their property (for slaves had to be flogged, and gentlemen preferred to order .flogging by deputy), accomplish- ments took a quite disproportionate place in the lives of men whose own pride conspired with the jealousy of the soverei^-n 1 " Mart." VI. xxxii. = " Juv." II. 104. 132 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. "^ZZ to keep them back from worthy public employment. And therefore it was difficult to abstain from some public or semi- public display. Even Thrasea, the most virtuous and con- sistent politician of the previous generation, had appeared on the sta^e of Pataviuni, tliough no one was more stern in re- buking the appearances of Nero on the stage of Rome. There were members of Piso's conspiracy who asked whether it was worth while to get rid of Nero, who sang to the cittern, for Piso, who sang on the stage. Of course this made it all the easier for men of station, whose fortunes were impaired, to trv to make money out of their accomplishments and their names, and things were not yet so complicated that a prac- tised professional commanded a higher price than the most distinguished amateur. To all this Juvenal is absolutely irrec- oncilable: he insists upon holding the nobility to their dig- nity, as some of them insisted upon holding the emperor to his. It never occurs to him that his standard is conventional ; that in the best ages of Greece the best men had contended in the public games; our boat-races and cricket-matches would have scandalized him, and he would have thought it shocking that ladies should sing in public even for a charity, or act as saleswomen at fancy fairs. He is more in accordance with his age in his harsh judg- ment of the delator. Whoever held a brief in a prosecution for the crown, whoever gave information of a claim that the crown had upon property in private hands, is, for Juvenal as for Pliny and Tacitus, an enemy of the human race. Martial is the only writer who has a good word for Regulus, who was simply an advocate in large practice, one department of which was enforcing the very elastic laws against disloyalty, and threw himself into this part of his business with the same zeal as into the rest. There almost seems to be something per- sonal in Juvenal's contention with Crispinus, for he has, after all, very little to say against him, except that he was an Egyp- tian freedman, who had become offensively rich, and spent his money in parading an offensive and effeminate elegance, and was no doubt sufficiently profligate in his private life; but opinion did not exact either temperance or chastity as neces- »u4 sary adornments of a leader of fashion; and there is no tan- gible charge of robbery or oppression. The worst that is said of him is, that he seduced a Vestal, and gave fifty pounds for a fish, which is mentioned as a proof that the emperor, his patron, must have dined still better; and then comes the fa- mous story of the council of the turbot, which tells us how the members of Domitian's cabinet were convoked in hot haste to the Alban Villa, and had to wait while the emperor gave audience to a fisherman who had brought him an unusually Jarge turbot from the Hadriatic, and when they were admitted found they had nothing to debate about except whether the turbot was to be minced or cooked in a special dish, as there jwas none large enough in the imperial kitchen. They de- cided, of course, upon the special dish, and were dismissed. As no other writer tells the story. Dean Merivale suspects Ju- venal of inventing it out of the two data that Domitian was given to practical jokes, and that Vitellius invented a gigantic dish. If there is any basis of fact beyond this, Domitian bust have summoned his council to sit upon business, and changed his mind, and decided to keep the business to him- self, and, instead of telling them so, to take their advice upon the turbot. The description of the councillors is as racy as possible : there is Crispinus, smelling oi amomum in the morn- pg stronger than any two fimerals; and the deadly Catullus, j^who was in love with a girl he had no eyes to see, and was so buch dazzled by the turbot that he turned to the left to praise it when it lay on his right. Veiento (whom Juvenal treats ^'ith comparative respect, for he kept his place at court under Nerva and in the senate under Trajan) was quite as flattering as Catullus. Montanus, who remembered the banquets of Nero,' mov^d that a dish should be made on purpose: appa- rently the rest of the council, Fuscus and Pegasus, the prefect of the city, and the Glabrios, father and son, the gentle elder Vibius Crispus, and the cruel whisperer Pompeius, and the impudent Publius, who plumed himself upon an offence with which Domitian dared not reproach him, though he could not hide his nervousness, left the emperor and his turbot alone. It should be added that Juvenal expressly asserts the truth of 134 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL, 135 his story. When he invokes Calliope, he bids her take a seat, for she will not need to sing, as it is all matter of fact, and then bids the maidens of Pieria tell his true tale, and hopes they will tell it all the better since he calls them maids and young. . . This satire is written throughout with admirable decision and unity. The framework is rather loose, for he goes off from Crispinus to his master in a way not strictly artistic; but there is no patchwork. This is more than can be said of all the satires, even of the best. In the third, for instance, the passac;e about the fountain of Egeria, though it is quite up to Juven^al's level, is decidedly an interruption. Umbricius stops outside the Porta Capena while his whole goods are being packed in one cart, and then we naturally expect him to make his speech on the spot. By the best accounts, when you were outside the Porta Capena you were in the valley of Egeria; and the case is not mended when we see that the two se'ctions of which the episode of Egeria is made up do not fit well together. Jahn transposes them, but either would go more smoothly by itself. A still stronger case is the anticli- max in the second satire. Juvenal has been dilating on the worst forms of effeminacy, and winds up with a formal mar- riage between two men ; whereupon he proceeds: " Even this monstrosity has been surpassed by Gracchus with his tunic and his trident." If that were all it might be simply an ex- travagance; but we find here the explanation of another passage in the eighth satire about the taste of this same Gracclius, for disgracing himself on the arena, which is much more intelligible when we compare it with the passage in the second. There he is taunted with his rank as salius; in the eighth he is taunted with his official dress. When we put the two together, it looks very much as if Juvenal had written a more or less fragmentary satire against Gracchus, and when he came to prepare his w'orks for publication put one piece of invective into the second satire and another into the eighth. The sixth satire, the longest of all, has to be vigorously re- arranged and retrenched by Ribbeck, in order to reduce it to a coherent plan. It may be doubted whether his changes are »4 improvements: the series of caricatures, revolting or humor- bus or disgusting, has its merit in the individual sketches, not in their connection; their unity, such as it is, comes from the spleen of the poet. Here is a sketch, for instance, of the cruelty of a woman who fancies herself neglected, or is over- anxious to please her lover: "The book-maid is undone; the perfumers strip (for a Hogging); the chairman is said to have come late, and has to pay the penalty because another was sleepy; the rods are broken upon one; another is red with lithe scourge, yet another with the strap. There are ladies who contract with the tormentors by the year. She whips, and by the way she uses her face-wash, she listens to visitors, or looks pver her embroidered dresses with the Jieavy gold-lace, and goes on beating ; she reads the lengthy entries in her day-book, and goes on beating— till at last, when they are tired of beat- ing, she thunders in a dreadful voice, ' Now go,' and the court is cleared for the day. A major-domo has to be as cruel as any tyrant in Sicily. If she has an appointment, and wishes to be dressed more becomingly than usual in a hurry, as some one is waiting for her in her garden, or more likely at the chapel of Isis, where the priestess understands such things, poor Psecas has to arrange her hair, while her own is torn out by handfuls, and her dress is stripped from her breast and shoulders. * Why is that curl too high.?' and presently the cowhide punishes the deadly f rime of a bit of hair twisted awry. What has Psecas done 1 What fault of the girl is it if you don't like the shape of your nose ? Then another maid has to stretch and comb the hair on the left, and roll it into a ball." And here the poet goes off into general reflections upon the absurdity of a short woman trying to make herself look taller by ex'periments in hairdressing. Not, of course, that she dresses for her husband (we have had this reflection before) ; her only interest in him is to quarrel with his friends and ser- vants, and to make him pay for what she takes to be pietv. "A big priest of Cybele comes to tell her that the hot winds of autumn will do her a mischief, unless she gives him a hun- dred eggs for a lustration and all her old crimson gowns, that the danger may fall upon them, and then she will be safe for 136 LATIN LITERATURE. JUVENAL. 137 a year. She will break the ice in winter for the sake of taking her three dips in the Tiber, and will crawl round the whole Campus Martins shivering on her bare knees. If white lo bids she will go to the end of Egypt, and bring waters drawn from hotMeroe to sprinkle upon the temple of Isis that stands close to the old sheepfold of Romulus. For so she thinks her lady herself warned her with her own voice. What a soul and what a mind for gods to hold converse with in the night 1" Then we have the tale how she will pay a priest of Isis to pro- pitiate all her faults and her husband's, and listen to a Jewess who will sell any dreams that she fancies. Then comes the turn of the diviners, especially the Chal- d£Ean, about whom Juvenal is too copious to be quite orderly. The chief is one who has been often in exile: it was his friend- ship and his tables (and who will not pay to consult them too) that brought that great citizen,^ Otho was afraid of, to his end. A man's art is trusted if he has been kept a prisoner in the camp so long that the chain (which fastened him to the soldiers in charge) clanked on the left wrist as well as the right. No mathematician can have a genius till he has been convicted— a true genius had been almost undone, and was almost too formidable to be sent to a habitable island and escape the dreariest of all. One is rather puzzled by the fact that, of the three sentences which comprise the Chaldaean's qualifications, every one should cover so much of the ground of the other, and that the last is superfluous. We do not want to be told that no mathematician who has not been condemned can have a genius, after hearing that prosecutions give reputation. If thts line were the end of a paragraph it might be a summary, but it is the beginning of a sentence quite worthy of Juvenal. It is the same as he goes on: we learn that the questions a woman asks are all very heartless, and that a woman who has to ask is less formidable than one who can make her own cal- culations and has clients of her own ; and then suddenly we are . The -reat citizen is probably Cornelius Dolabella, a connection of r.alba's whom Otho put under arrest at Aquinum, which accounts for Juvenal's thinking of him. Under Vitellius he returned to Rome and was put to deaths •» carried back to a distinction between the sources of informa- tion open to a rich woman and a poor. And thence Juvenal passes to a new branch of his subject : at any rate a poor wo- man will take the risk of being a mother ; no rich woman will, which is just as well for her husband — his wife's children would not be his, although his wife will probably provide him with children that are not his. But, though she has none of the feelings of a mother, she has all the feelings of a step-mother to the children of a concubine. If she has children of her own she will poison them, like Pontia, for gain. The heroines of fable who did as much may plead the passions of their sex as an excuse : it is only in a civilized age and country that a mother will sacrifice her children for filthy lucre: as for sacri- ficing her husband to gain or revenge, there are classical prec- edents for both, and both are pretty generally followed, only the ancients had no resource better than brutal violence. All the passage analyzed above, it should be added, which takes up nearly a third of the satire,' begins with a promise that we are to have an account of a Roman lady's whole day, which is quite forgotten after the first paragraph on the vindictive tem- per in which she is apt to wake. In general, construction is not the strong point of any of the Latin satirists, and least of all of Juvenal, who is less conversa- tional in his tone than either Horace or Persius, and keeps up a grave tone of sarcastic indignation, which almost requires an orderly, methodical treatment of the subject. Besides, he is sententious, and likes a sonorous aphorism which fills the mouth, and is not above a truism. There are a large number of lines belonging to this type: most of them are supported by all the MSS., and the editors have never been able to agree which to gQ.X. rid of and which to keep. In extreme cases They disturb the connection wherever they can be put, and then the MSS. sometimes try more places than one, and sometimes most of them omit the lines altogether. It is often a question whether they come from Juvenal's own margin, or from the margin of his annotators, and whether they invented on their own account or quoted from memory. And, generally speak- 1 474-661. 138 LA TIN LITER A TURE. ing, the doubtful lines would be better away, unless we give the poet credit for wishing to work up to a memorable maxim, which is almost always edifying and seldom new. That Juvenal wTote slowly we know, and that he began to write late: it is not surprising that his writing should be patchy. What is surprising is that the little bursts of indig- nation, of sarcasm, should succeed each other so smoothly and with so much appearance of spontaneous impetuosity: as if his own boast, Facit indignatio versiim, were literally true. Perhaps for the three or four lines, or the six or eight, which are written at red-heat, this is true; but one notices that in a very short space Juvenal runs himself to a standstill, and has to begin again : he is quite incapable of the long bursts of Lucan, who keeps up a higher level of declamation for twenty or fifty lines than Juvenal can keep up for half a dozen. Yet Juvenal has always been much more popular than Lucan, be- cause he deals with lower motives and is less earnest, while he has been popular in later times compared with Horace just because of his making a greater show of manly indignation. It is characteristic that both Persius and Horace are more apt to end their sentences in the middle of a line, while Juvenal is so used to ending the sense and the line together that where- as one finds the chevilles at the end of a line in the "^neid," one finds them at the beginning of the line in Juvenal, who instinctively elaborates the point at the end first: thus, t'.^., he works up rather feebly to the aphorism— Spoliatis arma supeisunt (viii. 124). In another way Juvenal comes more closely into contact with Vergil than any other satirist : he is fond of parody, and he hardly goes beyond the great school classic when he wants something to turn into a jest. He parodies without any in- tention of making his original ridiculous, and only wishes to raise a laugh by describing his subject in language that is too fine for it. He does this consistently, even when he is not parodying language that has heroic associations of its own, and he is fond of enhancing the effect of this by interpolating a low word like caballus (which meant "nag" as distinguished SULPICIA. 139 iVom "horse," though "chivalry" is derived from it) at the end of a sonorous passage, which is all the more striking be- cause contemporary epic writers never dreamed of calling a jhorse cabaiius, though they were sorely discontented with \£quus, which was not nearly long enough or sonorous enouo-h for them. . ^ SULPICIA. ^ Sulpicia was a voluminous authoress, at any rate a versa- tile one; but the only record of her activity is a dull and pre- tentious protest against the banishment of the philosophers by Domitian in 94 a.d. ii it is genuine, it is a curious proof that It was possible then, as now, for a clever lady who wrote very badly to acquire a literary position by the help of her charms as a leader of society. There are only seventv lines of it in all, and eleven are devoted to explaining to the muse whom the authoress piously invokes that she wishes to write in hex- ameters, not in hendecasyllables or iambics or elegiacs. So far as the poem has a plan or a subject, it is to quote the au- 1.hority of the elder Cato, who once told the younger Scipio a iable about wasps and bees, the point of which cannot be ex- tracted from Sulpicia's grandiloquence, to the effect that Rome throve best in adversity. The application of this is, that Rome will be ruined in the midst of apparent prosperity by the expulsion of the philosophers— for courage in war and wis- dom in peace have been her strength hitherto, and she owes her wisdom to the philosophers who came from Greece and all the rest of the world to be her teachers. It is much to be feared that when they are gone the Romans will be reduced to live upon acorns and spring-water. There is an astonish- ingly bold and clumsy jest at the reigning emperor, who is charged with being pale with gluttony and heavinir a flillino- pauncli. Under these distressing circumstances the poetess prays that Calenus may have grace to emigrate, like the Smyr- ^ » There was a Greek proverb about a man who f^ll ohK utto Sokov aW ctrr' oi^ot;— falling, not off a beam, but off an ass, or out of his mind, otto mv, which would be pronounced the srmie way. Tlie pun is poor, but Sul- picia rei)roduces the pun as well as she can : the tyrant falls, not from a beam, but from his back— at least h'is paunch does. LA TIN LITER A TURE. 140 niotes when the Lydians took the town, or at any rate that everything may be overruled for the best for Rome, and for Calenus's Sabine farm. The muse reassures her, vengeance will overtake the tyrant. There are two or three good hnes towards the end which Sulpicia's admirers m>ght conscien- tiously praise, though even in these there is a vagueness which reminds us that we are reading an amateur. \ PART VI. PROSE LITERATURE FROM VESPASIAN TO HA- DRIAN. CHAPTER I. PLINY THE ELDER. The death of Nero marks a more important epoch in Latin literature than the death of Augustus; for the public to which writers addressed themselves underwent a thorough change. In the reign of Nero the public consisted of two classes— the fashionable and frivolous amateurs whom Persius ridicules, and the serious students, who were always risking a collision with authority in the pursuit of rhetorical or political or philo- sophical or historical reputation. Discreet, sensible persons went about their business and made their way by fair means or foul, but in neither case wrote ; for " glory " was to be won, if at all, by means they despised or disapproved. With the accession of Vespasian this class of men came into literature. The court favorites, who had dazzled the town generally by their expenditure and sometimes by their wit, had disappeared with Vitellius, and did not reappear even under Domitian, whose magnificence was less uncalculating than Nero's, and unlikely to disturb the finances, but that he had to conciliate the soldiery as well as the populace. It is probable that Seneca's was nearly the last of the monstrous fortunes which made it possible for a large pppulation of idlers to live the life of parasites in tolerable comfort. We find that Seneca was reduced to very risky investments : for when he tried to call his capital in which he had lent in Britain, the story goes that 142 LATIN LITERATURE. PLINY THE ELDER. 143 this was enough to excite a revolt: and it would, of course, check accumulation if there were no convenient means for in- vestment. Distant properties can never have been very pro- ductive to nobles who lived in Italy; they must have been exposed to the same drawbacks as Jamaica properties, doubled by the worse state of communications ; and a millionaire of Martial's age probably reckoned his fortune by what his whole assets would bring, if he could have found a purchaser, though, if compelled to realize at a moment's notice, the total might have been an insignificant percentage of the estimated value. It is true that the system of recitations continued, but they were felt to be a weariness by all who were less good- natured than the younger Pliny, who found reason repeatedly to rebuke his contemporaries for showing too plainly that they were not interested in what was well-intended for their enter- tainment. All the great books of the Claudian period were written to be recited, or to please a taste formed by the habit of recitation : all the great books of the period which followed were written, more or less, to be read, with the exception of the " Thebaid " of Statins. Even the " Punica " of Silius Italicus was written in the main to be read, for Pliny tells us that it was only now and then that he recited, to see what people thought of him ; and Silius Italicus, though an estimable, was not an influential, author. Pliny the Younger himself was only a quasi-success as an orator, and it was as an orator and a poet that he recited. His real success was as a letter-writer, for down to the fourth and fifth century he was imitated by ac- complished nobles. Quinctilian, of course, had been a cele- brated declaimer, and had even done something as a pleader; but his great work that he is remembered by is the elaborate treatise which he composed when he had retired from teach- ing. Pliny's vast compilation was avowedly intended for a book of reference ; he did not expect even to be read through, and drew up a table of contents for the use of his readers, that each might find what he wanted. This is characteristic : he was a practical man writing for practical men; and this is the rule with all the leading writers in prose of the age. Even Tacitus, wilful and poetical as he is, makes up his mind at once »i that no one will care to recall any details that had been re- corded by earlier writers. He intends his narrative to be complete in essentials, but all details are introduced either because they are disputed, or because they are original. Of this practical literature Pliny the Elder was the morning star; he was also one of the most astounding monuments of human industry; it cannot be added that he was one of the most encouraging. He was born a.d. 23. He seems to have belonged to the famous city of Catullus by right of extraction, and to the new city of Como by right of domicile. The MSS. of his works call him Veronensis: his nephew, himself a citizen of Novum Coinum, treats his uncle as a fellow-towns- man. He himself claims Catullus as a countryman, r^/z/trrrtr- rnms ; which, if it stood alone, might be satisfied by a belief that both were Tra7ispadani^ natives of the regio'n beyond the Po. In early life he served as prefect of one of the two squad- rons of cavalry attached to a legion in Germany, and wrote a book on throwing the dart on horseback, which proves that when young he still found time for wholesome exercise. He began a work on the German wars, which probably exercised him most during the reign of Nero; there were twenty-one books of it, and he set about it because Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, who had pushed the Roman arms fiirthest into Germany, appeared to him in a dream and set him the task, which shows that his sleep was broken, because he never al- lowed himself time to digest his food. On his return to Rome, he thought the time had come for him, according to the ordi- nary routine, to entertain ambition to distinguish himself in other than a military way : he began to train himself to ora- tory. The only result was three books of "Studies," which were so long that each made two rolls or volumes; they con- tained a complete essay on rhetorical training, taking the in- f^mt orator in his cradle and conducting him to the end of his career. Still his general force of character was enough to secure him an appointment as imperial procurator in Spain, which was high promotion for a man who did not belong to a senatorial family. This was' in the latter years of NerOf ii ^,, LATIN LITERATURE. 144 when it was perilous to write upon exciting subjects : so Pliny had to compose eight books on doubtful points of style, ^fter Nero's death he was in high office under Vespasian and Titus, till his own death, when he took advantage of his station as admiral of the Campanian fleet to inspect an erup- tion of Vesuvius more closely than was prudent. It seems that he was also anxious to take off fugitives in distress. After the death of Nero he wrote a continuation of Aufidius Bassus in thirty-one books (which must be the work that Tacitus quotes for the reign ot Nero), and the vast compila- tion of natural history which has reached us in thirty-seven books. Besides these, he had left his nephew 160 rolls of choice extracts written inside and out in the smallest of hands, so valuable that, long before the collection was complete, he had been offered between 3000/. and 4000/. sterling for it. All this was accomplished by the rule of never losing a moment. He had his official business to attend to, which took up a long morning. He had his audience with Vespasian before daylight, then set to work at the orders he had re- ceived. When he got home he went to his books, had a very licrht breakfast, and, if time could be spared, lay and sunned hhiiself while some one read to him and he took notes. Then came a cold bath, a lighter luncheon, a very short siesta, which left him fresh to study till dinner. During dinner he was read to, very fast, and took notes, and was quite shocked at the idea that anybody could stop the reader and lose ten lines to correct a mispronunciation that did not lead to a misunderstanding. He never sat till dark in summer; in winter he always rose from table before the first hour of night was gone— say before five. Whenever he could get away for a hoHdav, he gave all the time to study when he was not in his bath; and even then, though he could not go very deep, he would always be read to or dictate while in the hands of the shampooer. When he was travelling he always used to dic- tate ; he had nothing else to- do, and kept a secretary, who wore warm gloves in winter, at his elbow that he might not be interrupted by weather. For the same reason he also used a litter in Rome, that he might be reading or writing while PLINY THE ELDER. 145 i 4 he w^ent through the streets, and reproached his nephew for the time he wasted in walking. He always began to work by candle-light, long before day on August 21, and in winter he used to begin before the night was two parts over, often before it was half over. This, his nephew implies, was less wonderful, because he could always go to sleep when he pleased, and occasionally went to sleep over his books. He was only fifty-six when he died, and there is no sign of ex- haustion in the enormous compilation that has reached us. It is not to be tried, of course, by a critical standard. It is useless to ask if the writer has understood his authorities, reproduced them accurately, or whether he has tested their statements. He is not credulous, because he repeats impos- sible stories without discussion. He is only ignorant of the exact boundaries of experience : he does not suppose, as Herodotus, for instance, does, that everything very unfami'liar is incredible, or at least requires unusual attestation ; where- upon Herodotus sets aside the possibility of the Nile being swollen by melting snows under the tropics. Pliny puts down all surprising facts which he has gathered out of tolerable books together. His real weakness is, that he is almost en- tirely dependent upon books, to which he gave every moment of his leisure with the most generous devotion. He was fond of saying no book was so bad as not to have something worth reading and extracting. And most of the books he was de- pendent on for his purposes were collections of travellers' tales. It is true that he used Aristotle and Theophrastus, and they used travellers' tales intelligently. They would have been of immense use to anybody in a condition to investigate for himself any of the subjects which they touched more or less directly; but Pliny did not wish to investigate, so much as to inform himself of what was already supposed to be known. He was a wonderfully well-informed man, who took the pains, which few well-informed men do, to communicate his information in the state in which he had it. In spite of the progress of science, if any man without personal experi- ence of investigation were to undertake to make a digest of his notes fi'om all old naturali^sts not yet superseded, and all IL-7 II I in 146 LA TIN LITER A TURE. PLINY THE ELDER. the transactions of learned societies, the result would be very grotesque two thousand years hence. Another weakness of Pliny is, that he is not exactly pessi- mist but splenetic. His feeling that the conditions of human life are hard is decidedly too strong for his reverence for any power that may have fixed them. It cannot be said that in the wide field of nature or civilization he finds anything that he thinks worthy of genuine, hearty enthusiasm. He found, as the Yorkshire Cistercians found, that enthusiasm comes more easily to people who do not work at high pressure all their lives ; that a sense of the pathetic and the sublime comes most easily to those who take their own life easily. He is not bitter, as Tacitus is, but he is always grumbling, in the tone of an over- tasked man of business, over such topics as this — that we all of us scream when we are born, and that the most precocious child does not laugh till it is forty days old. There is a sort of solemnity, perhaps even pathos, about his com- plaints, but he is much more in earnest when he is declaim- ing against extravagant expenditure than when he is denounc- ing idolatry. "It is absurd, a proof of human infirmity, to try to imagine the shape and likeness of God. Whoever he be, if he be other (than the sun) or wheresoever he be, he is all feeling, all sight, all hearing, the fulness of life, of spirit, of himself. To be- lieve in gods without number, fashioned even of virtues and vices of men, as Chastity, Concord, Mind, Hope, Honor, Clem- ency, Faith, or in two at all (for Democritus thought Mercy and Judgment enough), is only double dulness. Our frail and troublesome mortality has made all these partitions, re- membering its own infirmity, that each might worship piece- meal as his need required. So we find different names in different nations, and deities innumerable in each ; and the powers below after their kind, and diseases, and many plagues withal, since we desire to appease them in our great dismay. So even by public decree Fever has her temple on the Pala- tine, and the Childless by the shrine of the A?/r^, and 111 Fort- une her altars on the Esquiline. So we come to see how the heavens are more populous than the earth, since every single 147 mortal coins a Juno or a genius of his own. Some nations, moreover, number animals, even such as are abominable' among gods, and many other things yet more shameful to speak of, since they swear even by stinking victual.* The creed that there are marriages of gods, and all this while no births among them; that some are always aged and hoary, some young and boyish; that some are swarthy and some winged, some lame, some hatched from an ^gg, and live and die by turns, is merely nonsense fit for children. But it passes all impudence to feign adulterers among them, and quarrels and strife, and deities for theft and crime. " For a mortal to help a mortal, that is God, and the way to everlasting glory.= The chiefs of Rome have gone thereby ; the greatest ruler of all time, Vespasianus Augustus, with his children, walketh therein to this day, with the steps of an im- mortal succoring the weary withal. This is the oldest way of rendering thanks to good desert, to number such among the gods. Forsooth, the names of all other gods, and the sttrs I named above, are begotten out of the worth of man. "That they are called Jove and Mercury and other names elsewhere, and that this serves for the vocabulary of astronomy, is plain : these names are coined for a key to nature. But the most highest, whatsoever it be, can never be so ridiculous as to care for the affairs of men. How are we to doubt or be- lieve that such a sorry, complicated ministry does not profane his majesty? Hardly can we reach to judge which answer IS most profitable to the race of men, since some have no re- spect to the gods, and some have such respect as is a shame.^'* ^ One cannot mistake the vigor of this; incoherent as it is, it anticipates very nearly all that the Christians were to say against paganism, or the positivists against all traditional re- ligions. The wanton will-worship of the followers of Isis and other strange gods disgusted Pliny's good sense,just as much as contemporary scepticism alarmed his prudence. His idea ^ Such as garlic and leeks. ' The Buddhists had reached this point some centuries before, whenever tlK! Jatakas were written. ■' Pliny, II. V. (vii.) 1-6. \ 148 LA TIN UTERA TURE. PLINY TLIE ELDER. 149 of a freethinker was a man who would swear falsely by Jove in the temple of the Thunderer. There is plenty of grim acute- ness in the description of Fortune, the personification of men's own perplexity. They cannot decide whether the gods rule their lot or no, and cannot be content with intelligible finite causes, and so they ascribe everything to an abstraction which relieves them of responsibility. Others again ascribe every- thing to climates or planets, with which Pliny returns to as- tronomy, the subject from which he set out. For all his the- ological speculations start with the observation that the sun, the midmost and most powerful of the planets, is plainly the ruler of the world, and the source of life within it. On the way, he lays down that it would be well, if possible, to believe in the providence of the gods, but that we may console our- selves for our own imperfections by the belief that the gods share them. The gods, like us, have limited powers: they cannot give us immortality, they cannot change the past; to put it seriously, they cannot deprive a magistrate of his hon- ors; to put it playfully, they cannot alter the rules of arith- metic. Moreover, they are condemned to immortality: they cannot die at will like men, which is our greatest privilege. Again, the death of falling stars does not necessarily involve ours. A falling star dies of having absorbed too much oil. The technicalities of descriptive astronomy are seldom inter- esting, and Pliny does not make them so. The periods of Mars\nd Venus are inaccurate, even in terms of the geocentric system. Pliny assigns two years, more or less, to Mars: the proper term is twenty months fifteen days. The term he as- signs to Venus is 348 days: it should be 225. It is charac- teristic that the most interesting astronomical phenomenon, in the judgment of Pliny, is to be found in the eclipses of the sun and moon ; whence he infers that the moon is at least as large as the earth, since she is able to hide the whole of the sun, though he knows that the sun is not hidden from the whole of the earth. Pliny is very much impressed by the fact that the conical shadow of earth which we call night does not extend beyond the moon. The wisdom of astronomers who unravel the mysteries of nature almost stupefies him. 14 He recovers his self-possession when he comes back again to Earth, to whom he has a real fetichistic devotion. We call her our mother, and do well, because of her great benefits; she nurses all our life, and takes us back to her lap when we die. She alone is so merciful that we never call down her wrath on her enemies until they are nothing. The evil of beasts that live upon her is no fault of hers; the breath of their life is tainted: such as it is, it is her portion to foster it. As for poisons, they are proofs of true tenderness, that we might end a weary life without unseemly violence. If we abuse them for purposes of murder, that is our fault: just as it is our fault to abuse iron for purposes of destruction. And how patient Mother Earth is with us when we dive into her bowels for gain ! True, we pay her debt to her perforce. We seek wealth in her, and it turns to bloodshed ; and at last we cover the wounds we have made with our un- buried bones; and in her great compassion she covers these at last.' After this outbreak of feeling, Pliny comes back to his note- books: first of all, he has to describe the terrestrial slobe, and explain that it really is a globe, in spite of mountains and seas and plains. The difiiculty about mountains is not seri- ous: he is reassured by the belief that Pelion, the highest mountain, as he supposed, which Dicasarchus" had surveyed, was only twelve hundred odd paces in perpendicular height. But he obviously more than half imagined that the earth is practically a polyhedron, every sea and plain being a mathe- matical flat. He knows that the ocean must have a properly spherical surface like a drop of water. He remembers, if he iails to reproduce, a Greek argument which had once convinced him, to the effect that if sheets of water had not a spherical surface they would be deepest closest in shore. At this point comes a curious disquisition about earthquakes, which are due to the outbursts of a subterranean wind: whence it very nat- urally follows that buildings which have vaulted substructures suffer less, because the apertures of the vaults offer a safety- valve for the air. Another curious point on which he expends M^liny.ir.lviii. ' Mb. II. lxv.2. II hi I 150 LATIN LITERATURE. PLINY THE ELDER, 151 much ingenuity is the antipodes: for then, as now, they puz- zled the popular imagination, which was induced to take refuge in the conceit that the earth was like a pine-apple. If so, of course no one would have his heads downwards in the abso- lute sense, because this could only happen in the southern frigid zone, which was uninhabitable any way. The difficulty, that at this rate no one would really stand upriglit, does not seem to have occurred to Pliny ; but on the main question he grasps the true principle that " down " practically means towards the cen- tre of the earth. How the earth keeps its place, with air all round and nothing but ether beyond, is a more puzzling ques- tion. Pliny wavers between the notion that the earth does not fall because there is no room, since each of the elements fills its appropriate region, and the notion that the earth, being in the centre to which all things fall, cannot possibly fall in any direction. It is curious that, though Pliny records several observations' of the noonday shadow which must have been taken well within the tropics, to say nothing of more than one alleged circumnavigation of Africa, he is still in bondage to the con- vention of the uninhabitable tropic zones which rested on noth- ing but the barrenness of the Sahara. This serves for a peg for much splenetic declamation on the littleness of the world, which rebukes the puny ambition of conquerors. The greater part of the globe is ocean: three-fifths of it (the frigid and tor- rid zones) are uninhabitable by reason of the heaven, much is barren mountains, sand, and marsh, and forest; and no conquer- or has ever been master of the rest. Then, leaving these gen- eral reflections, Pliny turns through three or four books to give a gazetteer of the world, which of course turns to a catalogue of tribes for the large regions that were untrodden by scien- tific travellers. This is a little unlucky, as after his descrip- tion of the earth he proceeds to a description of its organic and inorganic products, beginning with man; so that we have a course of ethnology of a kind, which is followed at once by a course of physiology of a kind. He begins with all kinds of anecdotes of curious births, in which Aristotle and Varro 1 II. Ixxv. (Ixxiii.). figure side by side; goes on to all the family names which imply some accident at the time of birth— as, for instance, when one of twins was reared it was named Vopiscus. There is an equally copious supply of anecdotes of longevity, some of which have a less apocryphal look than the legends of Old Parr and Old Jenkins. But the main staple of the natural history of man is a series of stories of who was the first to do this or that, interspersed with general reflections on the fortune' of Augustus, whom he will not allow to be fortu- nate. In all this part of his work Pliny gives us the effect of a survival of Seneca. His conceit on Sulla's arrogance is just in Seneca's manner when Seneca is least earnest. How could he dare surname himself Happy,' which no one else dared to do? Why, every one of his victims was less unhappy, for we pity them, and every one hates Sulla. There is a lit- tle treatise on diseases (and Pliny ventures a hint^' that the philosophy which disposes to suicide is a disease like the rest), but all the account of the treatment of diseases is postponed till after the account of herbs and minerals. The seventh book disposes of the natural history of man, and ends abruptly with an account of the first water-clock at Rome. Then come four books of zoology, beginning with terrestrial animals, and going on to aquatic and aerial. The terrestrial begin with the elephant, as the largest and most sagacious, and end with a story of some serpents in Syria, on the banks of the Euphrates, who never attack Syrians when asleep, and whose bite is harmless to a Syrian, even if they are trampled on — for which reason the Syrians never kill them — though to strangers they are peculiarly deadly. Lions and tigers come after elephants, and dogs and horses come together because they are domestic animals. One hears of mules in Cappadocia which are fertile, but then they belong to a peculiar breed (they were probably wild asses), and that, if mules are given to kicking, they can be cured by dosing them with wine. The root of the dog-rose, we find, is a cure for a dog's bite, as has lately been revealed by an oracle : another » Pliny, «' Hist. Nat." VII. xlvi. 3 lb. Vll. li. 2. « lb. VII. xliv. i'-^ 152 LATIN LITERATURE. specific is a hair of the dog in a more elaborate form. The Indian mastiffs, Pliny is quite willing to believe, are bred be- tween tigers and dogs, and the first two broods are too ferocious to rear. This is reinforced with a tale of how the Britons bred their dogs from wolves; but Pliny draws the line at werewolves, and is quite convinced that, if we believe in them, we may believe in everything. The version of the legend which he knew was to the effect that, if a man has once turned into a wolf, his only chance of turning back into a man is to abstain from human flesh nine years. In that case he will find his clothes, which he left in the open air on his trans- formation, still fresh, but he himself will be ten years older. Pliny somewhat disparages his philosophy by undertaking to explain the origin of this grotesque and widespread belief For, instead of an explanation, he simply gives what he takes for the oldest case of it— a certain Parrhasius, an Arcadian, who at the altar of Lyca^an Jove had the misfortune to taste the human entrail which always was chopped up among the rest, and turned into a wolf, to resume his human shape after nine years, and to contend successfully at the Olympian games. Pliny is quite willing to believe that, though men can- not turn into wolves, dogs are liable to be plagued by fauns ; and he even knows that puppies of the first litter are most exposed to the plague. Fauns, in his mythology, are imps that jump on more substantial creatures, and make them start, whence it is an easy inference that when a puppy starts with- out reason it has seen a faun. Sheep and oxen naturally follow dogs and horses as domes- tic animals; and according to Pliny's method it is impossible to exhaust the subject of sheep without a long discussion, not only of different kinds of wool, but also of difi'erent kinds of woollen, with the dates of their introduction at Rome. Oxen, the partners of men at the plough, afford room for much sen- timentality, and a good many curious anecdotes of the feel- in"- against killing them, which was once almost as strong in Phrygia and Italy as in Hindostan. Aquatic animals of all kinds take precedence of birds, for they are the largest of all : which is explained by the fact that PLINY THE ELDER, 153 water abounds in their constitution. As it is necessary to draw the line somewhere, crocodiles figure among the terres- trial animals, while the series of aquatic animals opens with the biggest animal Pliny knew of— the sperm whale of the Indian Ocean ; the series closes with an account of the pearl which Cleopatra swallowed in vinegar at a banquet >vhen she wished to convince Antony of her capacities for ex- ])ense. The legend as told by later writers drops two pictur- esque circumstances given by Pliny. Cleopatra intended to sacrifice two unique and historical pearls to her wager; when she had dissolved and swallowed the first, Plancus (the Con- sul of Horace's youth) decided the wager in her favor, and the second pearl was saved, to be divided, according to common report in Rome, between the two earrings of A'enus in the Pantheon. As for birds, in Pliny's reckoning they are open to some- thing like the contempt which, in the judgment of unscientific common-sense, attaches to insects : they are poor creatures, blown about in the air, with no strength and solidity. One of the most entertaining points in the treatise on orni- thology is the recurring allusion to Roman augury. There was a standing debate about the bird Sanqualis and the bird Ivwiussulus, which had never been seen, according to some authorities, since the days of the augur Mucins. Pliny be- lieves himself that they had often been seen, but, owing to the culpable laziness of a degenerate age, they had never been recognized. It appears that the bird Sanqualis was sacred to the ancient deity Sancus ; but Pliny does not decide on the further explanation that the Sanqualis was the young of the vulture, and the bird Lmnussulus the young of the osprey. Still more puzzling is the case of the fire-bird. Avis ijice?idia- ria, whose appearance was repeatedly chronicled, as the occa- sion for solemn lustrations of the city ; while in Pliny's day it was wholly unknown what kind of bird had passed under the name. It is noteworthy that the classification of birds as Alites and Oscines comes in quite a difierent place, and that the classification of birds by their beaks and claws is not introduced until some way has been made in a description II.— 7* 154 LA TIN LITER A TURE. of birds, beginning with the ostrich as the biggest and the eagle as the noblest. There are a good many curious traits about the migrations of birds. Side by side with the lists of the migratory birds of Italy we find the legend of the cranes and pygmies, and accounts of the wedge-shaped army which storks and wild geese form in flying. We are gravely informed that storks never arrive except at night, and, though the starting-point of their migration is uncertain, he inclines to believe a certain Peridorus, who asserts that their winter-quarters are on the by defending Accia be- fore the Centumviri than by his Panegyric ; but there is little proof that he had read the first. The Panegyric is an in- tensely clever work, which it is very hard to read ; it is ad- mirably written, and execrably composed. The author had a double object-to pay a long series of exquisite compli- ments to Trajan, and to make the most effective protest that he could against the system of Domitian. A modern reader thinks that the work is a piece of servile ostentation; Pliny thought it was a demonstration of antique courage. In fact, he praises Trajan fulsomely for conduct to which only an exemplary emperor would like to feel himself pledged. For instance, he is praised for not usurping the estates of his de- funct subjects, as Domitian had done under the pretence that they had said Cassar would be their heir. He is praised for his extreme punctiliousness about official formalities, actu- ally staying through the whole ceremony whenever he was consul, and kissing each of the candidates he nominated when returned. And his conduct in office was equally sublime : he was consul when the Germans were troublesome, and he went to the frontier and decided cases in his toga, the sight of which awed the barbarians. The style of the speech is redundant if we take it in gross ; terse and modest, if we take It in detail. One is continually tempted to compare the epi- grammatic turns with Seneca, till one notes the entire absence of passion. Seneca is always thinking that he does well to be angry ; Pliny could not be angry if he tried. Here is a fair specimen of the less epigrammatic passages : *' Everything,' Conscript Fathers, that I say or have said of other princes has this end, to show how long the custom of corrupting and defrauding the princedom has lasted, which our parent has to reform and amend. And otherwise there is nothing which it is not thankless to praise without a foil. ^ "Ep." IIL xxiii. I. 1 (t Pan." ]iii. 1 64 LATIN LITERATURE. Moreover, the first duty of a dutiful citizen to our excellent emperor is to denounce emperors of other sorts; for who can love good princes enough, unless they hate evil princes enouf^h ? And remember that of all the merits of an emperor none is <^reater or better known than this, that we may assail evil princes in safety. Have we forgotten our pain when Nero was avenged but now ? A man who thought his death a crime was likely, methinks, to give leave to attack his fame and repute, to refuse to understand of himself what might be said of one so like him. Wherefore, Caesar, for my part, I rate this above many of thy gifts, and equal to the best, that we are allowed both to avenge ourselves on evil emperors gone by, and warn those to come by such example that there is neither time nor place for the ghosts of deadly emperors to rest from the curses of posterity." His correspondence with Trajan is a natural sequel to the Panegyric, though two or three of the letters are earlier. In one he apologizes for having declined the office of prosecut- ing Marius, the proconsul of Africa, until it was pressed upon him by the senate; in another he returns thanks for having been appointed consul before his term of service at the treas- ury was over; in a third he asks a month's leave of absence, in order to arrange for a temple to several Caesars, whose statues he had inherited and wanted to put safe out of the open air, and also, as he candidly states, to settle how much he would have to return out of his rents to his tenants. Most of them relate to a short two years of office in Bithynia, where Pliny was known as having defended Bassus, a former governor. He was sent there because local jobbery of all kinds had grown beyond bearing, and he hardly seems to have had energy enough for the post: he is continually writ- ing to Trajan for surveyors or architects to check the con- tractors on the spot, who wasted the revenues of towns like Nicomedia upon abortive aqueducts, or theatres which were dilapidated before they were o^^ened. Trajan replies that the works of the capital take all the architects within reach, and that, after all, architects come to Rome from the provinces. A rich provincial leaves his fortune to Pliny, in trust for two PLINY THE YOUNGER. jg^ towns, to be spent at Pliny's discretion on founding quin- quennial games, or buildings in the honor of Trajan. Pliny wishes to be told which Trajan would prefer, and Trajan re- plies that Pliny must decide: the testator had known enough of Pliny to choose him for a trust which it was too late to evade. In the same way Pliny is referred to his own dis- cretion in questions of towns which wished to have a Roman detachment, with a centurion at its head, stationed among them to preserve order. The letters on both sides are admirably short and friendly and frank; they have very much the tone of private corre- spondence. Modern despatches would be far more formal, perhaps we should say more servile, though there is a certain backsliding in Pliny's always addressing Trajan as Doutine^ "Lord," after the emphatic distinction between Lord and Prince in the Panegyric. The nine books of private letters were deliberately collect- ed and revised for publication by the author, whose boundless self-complacency found here a safe opportunity for expan- sion. They really serve all the purpose of a polite letter- writer ; and this explains their popularity and the diligent imitation of them by Symmachus and Sidonius Apollinaris, neither of whom attains to the measure of Pliny, who is a perfect model oiihe piirum et p res sunt genus at which he aims. One must accept that it is always his intention to flatter him- self or his correspondent, or both; that every feeling has to be reduced to the limits within which one can be proud of it before it is expressed. Pliny, for instance, when he does a kindness, never asks to be thanked : he only boasts to some one else of his delicate and reticent generosity. The only feeling which is clearly unamiable is his safe vindictiveness against all who were connected with the persecutions of Domi- tian. This was sharpened a good deal by his professional rivalry with M. Regulus, the leading counsel of the day, who in the latter part of Nero's reign had been a very activ^e pro- moter of prosecutions for treason. Such prosecutions had ruined his father and brother, and he wished to retaliate, and make a reputation and a fortune. Under Domitian he was i66 LA TIN LITER A TURE. simply a very active advocate, who traded a little, or more than a little, on the jealousy of the dynasty ; he was a per- sonage intimate at court, and he did not keep his suspicions of disaffection to himself. He was something of a bully, and pressed Pliny very severely to give his opinion on the loyalty of a connection of one of his clients, a man actually banished for disloyalty. Pliny very properly refused to give any opin- ion of his own on such a subject, and felt that he was dis- playing antique virtue. Such encounters disposed Pliny to be very particular in relating all the stories about the fussy, pompous man : one is really amusing. A lady asked him to witness her will, and put on her best clothes for the cere- mony: Regulus actually insisted that she should leave them to him by her will, although she was very likely to survive him. Another story is less discreditable than Pliny seems to think. A lady was ill. Regulus assured her that she was going to recover on the strength of favorable sacrifices, and took the further trouble to consult the Chaldaians, whose re- port was equally favorable. He swore by the life of his son that she would recover, whereupon she made a will in his favor, and, as was not surprising, died in spite of aruspices and Chaldxnms. It was his habit to swear by the life of his son, which convinced Pliny's circle that he could not love him. So Pliny and the rest wde surprised when the son died, and Regulus made an immense parade of sorrow, which Pliny de- scribes in a tone of bewilderment which borders on respect. The least unkindly letter is after Regulus, too, was dead; he admits then that he respected himself as a pleader, and main- tained the dignity of the profession ; he prepared elaborate written speeches, though he failed to learn them by heart. But still an inflated pleader, who insisted on being heard at length, was a boon to a man like Pliny, who lets us see in very many places that the public was getting tired of literary pretensions of all kinds. Pliny's voice was as bad as Regu- lus's memory: when he entertained his friends with his speeches he had to employ a young freedman with a fresh voice, and actually debated whether he should follow the ab- surd fashion of the time, and go through the pantomime of PL I IVY THE YOUNGER. 167 recitation, while the freedman delivered the words. The al- ternative was to listen and applaud, like everybody else. Pliny himself was very good-natured in the matter of ap- plause : he could not understand going to hear a man you called a friend recite and not applauding, nor could he quite understand the general reluctance to go, especially among those who composed themselves. It was the only conven- tional duty which he discharged quite cheerfully: he was al- ways delighted to get out of town to escape from conventional duties; he thought himself better employed in cultivating his constitution. He does not seem to know who is most ridiculous in his story of" Passienus Paullus," ' a countryman and descendant of Propertius, who was reciting an elegy before a company which included Javolenus Prisons, a celebrated jurist, who was so absent-minded as to be suspected of insanity. Unluckily Paul 1 us began an elegy with Priscejubcs^ the regular formula of a consultation, " Priscus, do you advise ?" Prisons immedi- ately answered, " For my part I do not," and Pliny was sur- prised — at least distressed — that after this the recitation went off badly. It is not surprising that we find Pliny making Martial a present of money for his journey to Spain, for Martial was a notorious beggar; but we are surprised that he could press a present of between 300/. and 400/. in our money on Quinctilian on the occasion of his daughter's marriage, excusing the small amount as a tribute to Quinctilian's modesty, for Quinc- tilian had been a successful teacher, and stood quite at the head of his profession. But it does not appear that even in its best days the eco- nomical condition of the empire was sound or easy. A stand- ing question throughout the provinces was, what was to be done with "nurslings," as free-born children exposed in in- fancy and reared as slaves were called: it is one of the few points which Trajan does not think Pliny ought to have de- cided without help. In Italy at least there was an attempt to provide a remedy 1 "£{)." V.V.I. i68 LATIN LITERATURE. as early as the consulate of Pliny; he had to thank Trajan for including children in the public largesses/ Pliny him- self conferred on Comum, his native town, an endowment of 30,000 sesterces (between 200/. and 300/.) a year for the bringing up of freeborn children, secured upon an estate of considerably greater value. He did not like to give the capi- tal sum of 500,000 sesterces which he had promised, because the corporation were not to be trusted to keep it; he did not like to give an equivalent in land, because public fields were never properly cultivated ; and so concluded to convey his own land in satisfaction of his promise, and have it conveyed back to himself subject to a charge decidedly below its an- nual value, which charge he hoped was permanently secured. Perhaps something should be said of Pliny's enthusiasm for suicide, which is remarkable, because he has none of the strons: feelinjr of human misery which we find in his uncle and Tacitus. A life that is either enjoyable or memorable, in his judgment, may be an unmixed good; but he still ad- mires the resolution which enables a man to end it at a mo- ment's notice upon utilitarian grounds. He not only approves of a woman who got her husband, suffering from a loathsome — as she thought an incurable— disease, to let her tie herself to him, after which the pair drowned themselves in Lake Como, but actually compares her achievement to Arria's," who killed herself to encourage her husband, and handed him the da2:2:er with the fiimous words, " Paetus, dear, it don't hurt." Pliny had a system of detecting heroism in common life, and thought that his neighbors needed nothing but an equal sta- tion to command an equal fame. In the same spirit he de- cides that all the acts of Arria which proved her resolution to share her husband's fate were as great, though not as glori- ous, as the last. His letters are full of old news; sometimes, as in this case, it might be unknown to his correspondents; but often he re- peats what they must have known simply as an exercise in style. For instance, he tells the story of Domitian's exe- cution of the senior Vestal,^ because he has just heard that 1 " Tan." vii. and xviii. ' " Ep." VI. x.xiv. ; cf. III. xvi., III. xi. 3. =" IV. xi. PLINY THE YOUNGER. 15^ a man of praetorian rank who had, under some pressure, given himself up as her paramour had turned professor in Sicily. When he has a piece of real news, he commonly makes it fill two letters, even if it is no more than that an advocate was retained to oppose the application of a consular for leave to establish a market upon his own estate, which might interfere with a neighboring public market. The advocate did not appear, and the senate decided that he might return his fee and be discharged from the suspicion of having sold the case. Often a letter will be filled with an account of a sentimental visit to the villa of Scipio, or the description of his own Lau- rentine or Tuscan villas. Sometimes one almost suspects him of using his correspondents' letters as a theme for his own ingenuity. In the first book there is a letter, rather priggish in tone, on the benefits of taking a note-book out hunting; in the ninth there is a reply to the effect that it is pleasant enough to take a note-book into the woods, but then one must renounce the hope of killing boars. Both are nomi- nally addressed to Tacitus; and, as we cannot suppose that a letter of Tacitus's got mixed up accidentally with a careful collection, the alternative is that Pliny appropriated two sug- gestions of their real intercourse for two letters, of which most modern readers will prefer the later and simpler. "When all other topics failed, he could turn an elaborate note on his anxiety if a friend did not write. Besides, correspondence about his own and his friends' literary work was practically endless. He could not imagine a greater happiness than to revise a work of Tacitus's, and send his own work to Tacitus for revision : although the final revision of his own speeches was always a weary task, and he managed to spend much time over them without improving them — a temptation of which he was quite aware in the case of others. In poetry he seems to have suspected that he could hardly succeed ; he admired the contrast between a strict life and a wanton muse, and after defending the contrast by copious precedents he finally admits that his muse had been too wanton; for his hendecasyllables had never been really published or recited, II. ~8 lyo LA TIN LITER A TURE. ihey had only been read to five or six friends, and were sub- ject to revision. Probably they were attempts in the style of Catullus, in the same way as his orations were attempts in the style of Cicero: at least a contemporary' imitated the abrupt grace of that poet with considerable success. 1 Sentias Auguiinus, whom we know from a compliment to Pliny, which the latter reproduces, IV. xxxii. QUINCTILIAN, ^71 CHAPTER III. QUINCTILIAN. It is very seldom that a reaction produces a work so sane, so perfect, and so commonplace as Quinctilian's twelve books of the training of an orator. Nothing is left out, and nothing is left to the reader. Every point of composition, of language, of delivery, of gesture, of tact, is fully discussed as if nothing were obvious, in language which is astonishingly like Cicero's, considering that Quinctilian wrote a hundred and twenty years later. He does not write so as to be mistaken for Cicero, but he writes very nearly the same language. There are occasional deviations, which look more like misunder- standing than the growth of language. The twelve books were the work of his old age, after he had retired from teach- ing; and as a teacher his career had been long and brilliant. His full name was M. Fabius Quinctilianus; he was a native of Calagurris in Spain, but settled at Rome by Galba,' where he proved the best rhetorical teacher of the day, and was ap- pointed by Domitian to educate his nephews, and received the consular ornaments. He was a friend of the younger Pliny's, who made him a present of about four hundred sterling on the occasion of his daughter's marriage. In his youth he wrote on the decline of eloquence, so that he has sometimes been credited with the dialogue on the sub- ject ascribed to Tacitus; but the conjecture is quite un- lounded, for it would have come down to us under his name, like the collection of declamations which seems to have been ascribed to him in the third century. » Apparently he was at Rome with his father, a rhetorician too, and a contemporary of the elder Seneca: in his youth, if St. Jerome's notice in his supplement to Eusebius is correct, his father's success was not enough to encourage him to remain in Rome. m 172 LATIN LITERATURE, QUINCTILIAN-. 173 In point of fiKt, we know that he did declaim in public, for he speaks' of his memory, which enabled him to compliment a distinguished hearer who came in during the performance by repeating verbatim what he had said before his arrival. He never speaks of publishing his declamations, and if they were reported he had no occasion to mention them, for it is quite incidentally, in mentioning the one speech which he did pub- lish, that he is led to observe that the published reports of all his other speeches were altogether unauthorized. He seems to have succeeded to his own satisfaction as an advocate, for he ventures to illustrate a thesis now and again from his own speeches, though he prefers explaining the points which he had to make, and did make, to quoting what he expected to be in the hands of all his readers. His lectures, like his declamations, were reported by zealous disciples, and he occasionally has to correct their misreports, and to avow changes in his own opinions in the published lectures. Apparently he found another work in possession of the field, for he repeatedly criticises Celsus as if he passed for an authority. He gives a very large field to the subject, makinii the training of an orator include all education, for he holds strongly to the doctrine that a good orator is ipso facto a good man : the question had a practical side to it, for the patronus was sinking into the causidicus, and Quinctilian was disposed to protest against the change with indirect solem- nity. Like the elder Pliny, he begins his work with a table of contents. The first book deals with what the pupil has to learn before he is ready to go to the rhetorician, and contains Quinctilian's views of grammar, which are rather safe than suir2:estive. In the second book he ventilates his views on rhetoric in general, and plays fast and loose with his ideal of a virtuous advocate. Then come five books on the choice of topics and the arrangement of the heads of a speech, in which the author attempts to simplify the rules invented by Greek rhetoricians. He always tends to common-sense, and dis- courages what savors of paradox, and therefore rebukes all » XI. ii. 39. \ the ferocious ingenuities of Severus Cassius. The illustrations are taken by preference from Cicero and Vergil. The author chooses Vergil and other poets because he wishes to be at- tractive ; but he chooses Cicero out of a principle of delib- erate preference. He nowhere explains his reasons for setting Cicero above all Latin orators, he enumerates the points in which an orator who knew Cicero might improve himself by studying others ; but his real inarticulate conviction is ex- pressed by the famous words, " Is nuiltum se profecisse sciat cui Cicero valde placebit." Then come four books on elocution, a subject which is stretched very w'ide : it is made to include both memory and gesture and dress. Memory again includes not only the art of learning a speech by heart and keeping the whole of a case in mind, but also the art of illustration ; for an advocate with a well-stored mind would of course be able to produce a much greater effect than one who knew nothing but his case. Ac- cordingly the tenth book is devoted to a sort of review of Roman literature as profitable to the orator. One may say of the whole that it is extremely well adapted for its purpose \ it would be, for an aspiring advocate of fliir intelligence, an admirable guide in his reading. As a contribution to literary history it is disappointing: the remarks are sensible, but obvious : the chief use of them to us is that Quinctilian's si- lence or depreciatory candor lessens our regret for many works which contemporaries praised. Even here we cannot trust him. He tells us that the only lyric poet worth reading is Horace, and very properly criticises the occasional unfit- ness of that poet for the study of youth. Of course Catullus is still more unfit for miscellaneous reading, but Quinctilian passes him over altogether. The writer upon whom he is fullest is Seneca, whom he reserves to the last because he was the chief representative of the fashion against which Quinctilian was inclined to protest. The protest is candid and respectful, and not instructive : he says nothing which any cool reader of Seneca might not say for himself; he says nothing of the moral contrasts which are the most remarkable thing in Seneca, perhaps because he is not himself in opposi- i 174 LA TIN LITER A TURE. QUINCTILIAN. 75 tion. This makes his criticism, such as it is, of the early orators of the empire interesting, because he is the only writer who has no political bias against them. Upon Lucan he makes the obvious and false observation that he would have been a very great writer if he had lived to correct the fire and exuberance of his youth by his maturer judgment. History does not supply a single case of a writer who has written a work as vast and powerful as the "Pharsalia" before attain- ino- his maturity, and has afterwards chastened and refined himself. As to etiquette, Quinctilian is not uninstructive. ^\ e learn that the toga had been rehabilitated, and that the vicious custom of speaking in the lacerna had been abolished : for the writer assumes that an advocate will wear the toga, and requires to be told how to wear it. We are half-way to the state of things described by Tertullian, when the toga was made up ni the most becoming way, and damped so that it might be fitted into graceful folds, after which the wearer had to slip it on, if he could, without disarranging them. As to other matters, Quinctilian is very particular in his directions : for instance, he rebukes Pliny the Elder for prohibiting a gesture which would ruffle the hair, since Pliny very properly objected to elaborate hair-dressing. The author describes the tone appro- priate to each of many famous phrases of Cicero,^ and what would be the appropriate motion of the fingers to express every word. The declamations which have come to us under the name of Quinctilian are full of fliults which he rebukes, but they are more sober, less unreal, and less brilliant than those which we know from the elder Seneca. There is much less about tyrannicide, less, too, about fathers disowning their sons ; there is an attempt every now and then at actuality : for in- stance, there are several declamations on the subject of suicide as limited by human laws, and there is a reference to the act- ual legislation of Marseilles. Again, a young man is disowned because, in spite of his father's disapproval, he insisted on ful- filling his promise to provide for the family of a poor friend. The father was clearly unreasonable, as the son had been taken by pirates, and sold for a gladiator, and the friend took his place and was killed. It is noticeable, too, that the class of themes which arose out of the imaginary rights of ravished women has nearly disappeared. » XI. iii. 148. E. g. XI. iii. 97- 176 LA TIN LITER A TURE. FRONTINUS. 177 CHAPTER IV. FRONTIXUS. Another decorous and loyal writer was Sextus Julius Fron- tinus, who survived Quinctilian for eight years and Domitian for seven, and who was employed under Domitian as a land- surveyor, and afterwards commanded against the Lingones in Gaul and the Silures in Britain, and his final employment as a consular was the charge of the aqueducts at Rome. Every office produced a book, and his military service produced two. His work on land-surveying' has only reached us in a few frag- mentary excerpts : "De Agrorum Qualitate," *'De Controver- siis," " De Limitibus," " De Controversiis Aquarum." It was written under Domitian ; but after the invasion of Dacia, and as he mentions his work as early, it has been suggested that there must have been another Frontinus who wrote on the same subject. He wrote a tactical work, perhaps in Greek— at any rate, ^lian spoke respectfully of his knowledge of Greek tactics, and Vegetius uses him for Roman tactics. This work has been lost ; it is not improbable that the illustrative matter has been collected as an appendix to the manual of military devices which has reached us under the title of *' Stratefrematon." The first treats of what has to be done before en^rao-inir, the second of what has to be done in and after action, the third of forming and raising sieges. The anec- dotes are not particularly authentic or accurate— for instance, we are told that it was Croesus instead of Cyrus who frighten- ed his enemies' cavalry by his camelry — but they are seldom too far from fact to be suggestive. The writer observes that it would be easy to supplement his collection, and it seems to '- The proper title of this class of works is gromatic, from groma, or gnt7Ha, a surveyor's pole. ^1 have been the fashion to do so to such an extent that what he had inserted in one place was put in another ; whence it some- times followed that the interpolation has displaced the origi- nal passage. The interpolations are identified by the formu- Ise which introduce them. The original work consisted of instances of a special kind of ingenuity, each instance with the name of one commander; but the interpolations link the instances together with "the same man," or "likewise," or " also," or give the story as a tradition. The fourth book, so called, is full of stories which appear in the earlier ones : many of the rest seem to be taken from Valerius Maximus. The compiler in a pompous preface claims to be fulfilling a promise which he had made in the interpolated preface of the first book ; so that it is not unlikely that he was really intent on giving all the stories which circulated under the name of Frontinus. The last work of Frontinus is his best : it is an account of the aqueducts of Rome, from the point of view of a man who has to administer them, not from that of a man who has to construct them. He gives a list of them, and the distance of the source of supply from Rome, and the length of each aque- duct, and what proportion of it is carried upon arches. Occa- sionally he ventures a doubt whether the aqueduct was worth building: the Aqua Alsietina was not used to drink and was not wanted, and Frontinus can only suppose that Augustus objected to wasting good water on a sham sea-fight. The author seems inclined to a^rree with " Vitruvius and the plumbers " that the true meaning of a " quinary " pipe is not a pipe holding five times as much as a pipe with an opening round or square of a twelfth or a sixteenth of a foot, but a pipe made by folding a piece of metal five twelfths or sixteenths of a foot in width into a square or round channel. The water- supply of Rome was not felt to be abundant until the Aqua Claudia had been completed. As late as the reign of Augustus the senate had to decree that the number of public fountains should neither be increased nor diminished. Even when Fron- tinus wrote, the right of private persons to tap an aqueduct was jealously limited. It was feared that the pipes would leak II.— 8* i lyS LA TIN LITER A TUBE. TACITUS. 179 if they were tapped, and so the rule was that the water could only be drawn from a reservoir, and this involved the erection of joint private reservoirs, which were under the superintend- ence of Frontinus ; it being his business to choose suitable spots within and without the city. Still, he insists on the rule that water privileges are absolutely personal : they do not pass to heirs, or pass with the lands. Apparently it was essen- tial to reserve the whole of the emperor's patronage, though it is scarcely possible that the successors of subscribers to a pri- vate reservoir can have been refused when they applied for a new privilege. On the other hand, baths had a prescriptive right to their supplies: Nerva is praised for restoring the water-rents to the state; Domitian had put them into his privy purse. He treats Domitian upon the whole respectfully : he praises him in his earliest work for relieving all Italy from its alarm lest the state should assert its rights over the strips of land which fell outside the rectangles which were surveyed for pri- vate ownership ; he gives in the *' Strategematon " an honorable place to the way in which he (we are to understand his generals acting under his auspices) baffled the Germans ; he speaks of him as "a high commander," but apparently his respect is paid quite as much to the office as to the man. There is nothing of the homage to Domitian personally which we find in Martial or even Quinctilian. Perhaps Frontinus had too much self-complacency to feed another's vanity. This rather grew upon him : he wrote upon the business of his earlier offices when he had retired from them ; he wrote on the busi- ness of his last soon after his appointment. He crowned his career by forbidding his heirs to spend anything on his mon- ument: he hoped the deserts of his life would perpetuate his memory. His style is admirably direct and simple : perhaps it would be better if his technical vocabulary were more copious. f\ CHAPTER V. TACITUS. Tacitus stands alone in the Flavian period : he is the only v/riter who would not resemble the Augustan age if he could. In his early works he is still to some extent under the influence of the neo-classical fashion of which Quinctilian was the theo- rist. The older he grew, the further he withdrew from ordinary speech into a systematic exaggerated mannerism, founded part- ly upon Sallust, partly on one side of the work of the rhetori- cians and of Seneca. One can trace the growth of this man- nerism from its beginning, in the " Agricola " and " Germany," through its development in the " Histories " to its culmination in the "Annals." The "Dialogue on Oratory" is so like ordinary Latin, and has so few of the peculiarities of Tacitus, or even of the " silver age," that it has been doubted whether it was his work at all, for the same reason as modern readers might doubt the genuineness of Mr. Carlyle's early essays in the Edinburgh Revieiv if he had not collected them himself. Tacitus himself was a famous orator: he was selected by the senate to conduct the prosecution of Marius ; which is a proof, stronger than the friendly admiration of the younger Pliny, that he ranked among the first orators of the day. We may well believe, as Pliny tells us, that the characteristic of his ora- tory was o-f/ij'orr/c, which is inadequately translated "dignity." That Tacitus was an orator at all proves that he had the power of keeping his mannerism under control, though (te^voti^q probably includes a good deal of proud reserve. Still, sarcas- tic innuendoes can only be occasional ornaments of oratory, while they may be made almost the staple of history. Of course, too, a history is a long work compared with the long- est oration, and, if the author's idiosyncrasy is such as to find i8o LATIN LITERATURE. relief in mannerism, the mannerism has room to grow. The perfect transparency of Caesar's style is unique, but Livy and even Sallust resemble Caesar in telling a straightforward story. Livy strives to tell his story fully; Sallust, though he over- lays his story with reflections, strives to gives facts and reflec- tions alike in the curtest possible phrases : still, both tell their story, and tell it to the reader. Tacitus, on the contrary, seems always to be soliloquizing about events which he despises too much to describe plainly. He often expresses his contempt for his subject, especially in the "Annals;" and even in the preface to the '' Histories " he says that he has reserved the reigns of Nerva and Trajan for his old age, as a subject at once more fruitful and safer to handle. We can understand that it was difficult to write of the reign of Domitian without giving offence to families which had risen by abetting his tyranny. But it is strange that he should have felt the subject of the '' Histories " barren : the civil wars which accompanied and followed the fall of Nero were among the most dramatic events in Roman history, and the checkered campaigns of Domitian in Dacia were interesting in a way that Trajan's perfectly organized military promenades can hardly have been. We should have been surprised if a historian of the Indian empire had found the Chinese wars more interesting than the days of the IMutiny, or the Sikh or Afghan campaigns. Of course Trajan was a masterly commander, and it was possible to dwell upon his operations in detail with entire complacen- cv, while the scenery of his exploits was unfamiliar, and very meagre descriptions were acceptable to Roman curiosity. It is true, also, that the wars of Trajan were an attractive subject to a Roman aristocrat, because they were comparatively Hke the wars of the republic, to which Tacitus looks back with im- placable regret. The dull feud which always raged between the senate and the emperor, unless the emperor was a general of approved merit like Vespasian or Trajan, or could find a distraction, like Hadrian, in endless tours of inspection, bore no resemblance to the struggles between the fathers and com- mons, or to the rivalries of military chiefs, each of which Tacitus thought a happier subject than his own. TACITUS. i8i Tacitus is a writer who is inspired by his antipathies, like Balzac and Thackeray : he always succeeds best in analyzing what disgusts him. The sum and centre of Roman history in his judgment is precisely the fatal conflict between the ruler and the opinion of the capital as represented by the aristocracy. He passes over all the questions which seem fundamental to a modern reader : what was the position of the provinces under the empire ; what was the power of the army ; what was the character of that singular institution, the praetorian guard, which in the first century appears as the bulwark of the em- peror against the senate, and to a certain extent against the armies of the frontier ; in the third century, as the bulwark of the senate against the emperor and the armies of the frontier. It is true that in the " Histories," and still more in the "An- nals," Tacitus is at an awkward distance from his subject. In the first place, he is a continuator : he tells us at the opening of the " Histories " that many writers had treated the 820 years from the foundation of the city, so he begins at once with the 821st, although he is profoundly dissatisfied with his immedi- ate predecessors. Down to the battle of Actium the history had been the history of the Roman people, and had been written with eloquence and freedom, the two going naturally together ; afterwards there was nothing but flatterers or pam- phleteers. The latter were the most eloquent, but Tacitus distinctly aims at impartiality, at any rate in the "Histories:" he boasts that he had received no benefit and no injury from Galba, Otho, or Vitellius, and that he was under equal obliga- tions to all the members of the Flavian dynasty ; so that he could treat the worst fairly. It is obvious that Tacitus, like other continuators, was at a disadvantage compared with his- torians of the older school, who either gave a complete history of the city, or, like Sallust and Arruntius, treated a single epi- sode. In either case the staple of the narrative was a com- pilation from the writings of previous authors : the compiler relied upon his superiority in style and judgment ; and in either case was expected to tell everything that he knew. The sta- ple of the work of the historians of the empire was the tradi- tion of good society: the 'best source for the secret history, l82 LATIN LITERATURE. which it was the principal endeavor of every writer to give, was practically inaccessible. We read that after Mucianus had entered Rome as re i^ent, the leaders of the independent party in the senate appealed to him to allow the senate to in- spect the "Imperial Commentaries:" whence it would appear who was responsible for the different accusations which had thinned their ranks. The senate knew who had conducted the prosecutions, or who would have conducted them if the victims had not anticipated condemnation by suicide j but the ostensible prosecutors always professed that they acted on the emperor's orders, or at least that they had some special reason to propitiate (he emperor: the "Imperial Commenta- ries " contained confidential and trustworthy information upon this and other points. But they were obviously reserved for the exclusive use of the emperor. Nero during the best part of his reign never thought of producing them, when Suillius declared that he had prosecuted Asiaticus by the orders of Claudius; instead, he simply pledged his word that they proved the falsehood of Suillius's defence, as "his father" Claudius had never ordered any prosecution at all. In de- fault of such documents, writers had to draw upon the official records (which were very tedious and full of trivialities and falsifications), and the oral tradition of good society, which was full of partialities, supplemented by the memoirs of the agents, which were incomplete and colored by personal pre- possessions. There was no publicity, and under most reigns curiosity was unsafe. Tacitus gives as a reason for the un- satisfactory way historians had treated the period between the battle of Actium and the fall of Nero, that men in general knew nothing of the public business, which was no business of theirs. And this feeling tells upon Tacitus himself. He never cares to explain any of the administrative measures of the emperor : he notes them in passing, with a word or two of praise if he thinks it deserved. ' For instance, the centurions had been in the habit of taxing those among the rank and file who were best off, to pay for furloughs and relief from fatigue- duty; and if they preferred to stay in camp and attend to TACITUS. 183 their ordinary duties, still the centurions secured their black- HTiail by heaping extra work upon them till they yielded. One would imagine the natural remedy would have been to have raised the centurions' pay, and to have allowed the rank and file their holidays at regular intervals without payment. In- stead, Otho, when he decided to redress a grievance that had been festering at least since the accession of Tiberius, simply charged the fees for furloughs on the exchequer. Vitellius, the private soldier's emperor, of course maintained Otho's reform, and Tacitus informs us that even good princes did the same. Here the event is explained, though at much less length than Tacitus thinks necessary in dealing with a state trial of second- ary importance. But very often the narrative is so brief as to be obscure to all except contemporaries. What were the surcharges* of 2 per cent, and 2\ per cent, that were abolished by Nero and had not been re-established when Tacitus wrote? Were the indirect taxes which Nero wished to abolish alto- gether the taxes of the whole empire, or, as Dean Merivale thinks, simply such indirect taxes as were levied in Italy or the towns which had the privileges of colonies? According to Tacitus, it was the people of Rome who complained ; and yet the abolition of the taxes,^ whatever they were, was to be a boon to the human race. Again, what was the nature of the occasion when the solvency of the state was in danger and pro- tected by an advance, apparently from the exchequer to the treasury,^of320,ooo/.? What was the precise nature of the finan- cial measures by which Tiberius averted a general bankruptcy? In fact, the personalities of history have a much larger in- terest for Tacitus than for most classical historians; and, as it has been noticed, this peculiarity grew upon him : it is far more conspicuous in the " Annals " than in the " Histories," partly, no doubt, because the period covered by the part of the " Histories " we have left is so full of military revolts and national insurrections, that it was impossible to treat the fate of individual nobles as of paramount importance. Besides, while the armies were fighting out the question who should be emperor, the emperor who was in possession of the capital for » " Ann." XIII. li. 2. ' "" lb. 1. I. ' lb. xxxi. 2. i84 LATIN LITERATURE. the time being was not likely to molest the nobility who gave him a compulsory allegiance ; which, so far as it went, was quite sincere; for, when armies were in the field, the intrigues of the senate were powerless. But in quiet times the really significant events were increasingly impersonal, and Tacitus's ideal of history is a narrative of the achievements of famous individuals, and he imagines that the next best thing is a nar- rative of the baffled achievements of a few, like Corbulo and Agricola, who might have done more but for the empire; and the more or less dignified sufferings of the more numerous notabilities, great and small, who, thanks to the empire, had to fight out their quarrels by secret denunciations in the palace, instead of by the more manly and less deadly struggles of the forum and the senate-house. The feeling that the empire lowered the standard of indi- vidual life is surprisingly strong in Tacitus, considering that he rose himself higher and more rapidly than he could have done under the republic; but it never occurs to him to rank ia carriere ouverte aux talents as any compensation for the evils of the empire. In his earliest work of all, the " Dialogue on Oratory," we have already a clear perception how the empire dwarfed Roman life. Maternus has to mutilate his tragedy of " Cato,-' and the reader is hardly expected to be so well satisfied as Maternus professes to be with the compromise of putting the same speeches into the mouth of Thyestes. It is roundly laid down that the empire in establishing order had ruined oratory. Tacitus does not disparage the transcenden- tal explanation that genius, and therefore oratorical genius, has times and seasons of its own, incalculable to man: he dwells, with rather exaggerated emphasis, on the mischief done to eloquence by an exclusive and fantastic rhetorical training; but he insists that the decisive cause is, that orators are of much less consequence than they used to be. He professes, indeed, to think that this is a change to the advantage of every one but the orators : it would not be worth while to have the eloquence of the Gracchi sounding again in the forum at the price of having to vote upon their laws. AVe cannot fix the period at which the dialogue was written TACITUS. 185 precisely: it purports to have been held 75 a.d.,' the sixth year of the reign of Vespasian ; but the author speaks as if he had to go back some distance to recover the memories of his first youth, when he resorted, with exaggerated expectation, to the most famous of such orators as were still to be found in his days. Any time in the reign of Titus or the early years of Domitian would suit these indications tolerably well ; at any time after 90 a.d., the severities of Domitian's govern- ment had grown so excessive that the deliberately cheerful tone of the writer would be strange. The dialogue is beautifully written, with an evident imita- tion of Cicero's great dialogue " De Oratore "— upon a small- er scale. Aper, whom we only know from the dialogue, and Julius Secundus, who is a hero of Quinctilian's, are meant to be contrasted, something as Antonius and Crassus are con- trasted in Cicero. Tacitus reports and extenuates the unfa- vorable estimate current upon each of his heroes exactly in Cicero's vein, and he marks the transition from the first part of the dialogue to the second by the same device of introduc- ing fresh speakers. In Cicero, Crassus and Antonius first discuss the question whether the orator is to have any culture besides what is necessary to his business as advocate, and then describe alternately what are the necessary conditions of his education, whether he takes the wider or the narrower view of his profession. In Tacitus, the first stage is a discus- sion of the comparative merits of the oratorical and poetical career, conducted by Aper and Maternus, who is almost as obscure as a poet as Aper is as an orator. Quinctilian sets his tragedies far below those of Pomponius Secundus: apparently his fame was largely due to a tragedy called "Nero," which was an effective pamphlet against the misdoings of a person- age disguised under the name of Vatinius. The main point of Maternus's speech is that a poet is as famous as an orator, and lives a happier and, upon the whole, a safer life. Aper's • The absence of allusion to the fate of Marcellus Epiius, who was con- victed of conspiracy against Vespasian, in 78 A.D., proves this : there are no allusions in the body of the dialogue in " De Oratore " to the future fate of the characters. 1 86 LATIN LITERATURE. reply is what would be called "realist:" he compares the ridiculous position of Saleius Bassus, who has to beg people to come and hear him at his own expense, with the glorious position of Marcellus Eprius and Vibius Crispus, whom it was worth an emperor's while to court. Their adhesion is a real boon to the emperor, while Saleius must be thankful if the imperial munificence should enrich him with a sum a little over the equestrian census. The contrast between the style of Maternus and Aper is interesting: Aper would be like Cicero if he could : the long sentences are not unlike, although a little overlabored. They come too thick together, and there is too much logic in their structure and too little swell for the illusion to be perfect: the short sentences lack Cicero's sim- plicity and animation. There is a gain in other ways: with- out encumbering the style, greater weight and significance is given to individual words. For instance, we are told that Marcellus Eprius had no bulwark against the anger of the fathers but his own eloquence. Cicero might have carried the figure so far: Aper goes on : "Qua accinctus et minax disertam quidem sed inexercitatam et ejusmodi certaminum rudem Helvidii sapientiam elusit "— " That was a weapon to be girt with and to brandish, good to baffle Helvidius and his philosophy, that might be well spoken, but lacked exercise and practice in such strife." Here is another phrase, which has a curious felicity beyond the age of Cicero. If the orator comes forward with something fresh and newly conned, and his spirit quakes a little, " his very anxiety gives success a grace and panders to the pleasure" — "Ipsa solicitudo com- mendat eventum et lenocinatur voluptati." The speech of Maternus, we are told, is full of daring flow- ers, fitter for a poet than for an orator: a modern reader hardly recognizes anything beyond the bounds of prose, except where Maternus speaks of Fame (the orator's fame) as "pale" (with fear). The prose, however, has become musical and simple: the tendencies of the silver age get free play; abla- tives absolute replace conditional clauses; each member of the sentence is generally reduced to a noun or two and a verb or two. He winds up with a wish that the statue on his TACITUS. 187 tomb may have a smile on its face and a crown on its head, and that his memory may run no risk of official honor or con- demnation. At this point Messalla comes in, and apologizes for his intrusion, as he finds company; when reassured, he compli- ments Secundus on his life of Julius Grcecinus, and Aper, rather ironically, on his still continuing to declaim and spend- ing his leisure in the studies of a Greek rhetorician rather than of a Roman orator. This brings us to the real subject, the decline of oratory, which Messalla has often wished to have explained, and cannot believe that Aper seriously denies. Aper's denial is hardly serious : he will not allow that the orators of the late republic and of the reign of Augustus are ancients at all; he even quotes an aged Briton, still alive, who had fought against Caesar, and so might have heard Cicero. This is a cumbrous way of saying that the classical period was not over, and that the orators whom censorious contemporaries ranked as ancient were classical writers com- pared to their predecessors. Aper throws his real strength into a contention that the oratory of the age of Cicero and Messalla and Pollio was really overrated, and still more over- praised ; that, in fact, few who praised it could have listened to it with patience. He just admits that Cicero can still be read with some approach to satisfaction, and that Pollio's vocabulary is choicer than Cicero's, as Cicero's was choicer than his predecessors' ; but Cicero is very long, spends much space on technicalities, and has a good many mannerisms. As for Pollio, his significance is that he, like a Cicero, marks a stage of the gradual progress to the refinement and anima- tion of the fashionable speakers of the day. Even this is too ra>uch honor for Messalla, who is gently ridiculed for always preluding with a deprecatory reference to his health. Aper insists that the speaking of his own day is much terser and more entertaining, much fuller of quotable bits, and much fit- ter for the ears of a fiistidious audience than the speaking of the golden age: when admirers of the past praise its speakers for their " sound and healthy style," this is only a confession that such speakers had little vigor. Messalla takes no pains i88 LATIN LITERATURE, to meet Aper's criticisms; he does not pretend that all, or nearly all, the orations of the Ciceronian age were worth read- ms: O J he does not care to deny that the average speaker of his own day commanded a more brilliant style. His case is that none of the foshionable speakers had left any durable reputa- tion, while the dullest speakers of the age of Cicero belonged in a way to literature. It would have been invidious to retort Aper's criticism in detail upon contemporary speakers or those of the last generation, so Messalla assumes the decline of eloquence, and only discusses the reasons for it. Even these, he maintains, are obvious, and his explanation is rather reti- cent: symptoms are constantly substituted for causes: that children were left to Greek nurses and pedagogues, instead of being brought up by their mother and some elderly relative who was willing to act as governess, was an effect of the gen- eral decline in fiimily pride; that rhetorical training should have been substituted for philosophical culture was a conse- quence of the growing poverty of thought, which told upon oratory as upon other things. The habit of speaking in the pcenula was no doubt unfavorable for oratorical animation, but animated speakers would never have given in to the habit ; and when matters were reformed, as we learn they were from Juvenal, to the extent that the advocate always took off his wrapper before he began, eloquence did not revive. If the public had cared for its orators, they would not have been reduced to reserve their set speeches for the centumviri. Messalla's reserve is obviously calculated: he sees, as has been already stated, that there were privileged periods at which a constellation of genius appears, and that the tur- moil of the last century of the republic was admirably fitted to develop oratorical talent. But, after all, it is left to Ma- ternus, the uncalculating poet, to close the discussion for the time with an eloquent harangue on the price of political repose. There is more apparent originality, both of subject and treat- ment, in the next work of Tacitus : for, though it was the fash- ion in his circle to compose edifying biographies as a protest against a period of tyranny that was over, none of these have TACITUS. 189 reached us except the " Agricola." This is at once a political programme and a panegyric on his father-in-huv, a cautious and respectable officer, who performed considerable services in Britain, and was allowed more opportunities of distinguish- ing himself than an emperor, who was not a great general himself, could commonly allow the commander of a distant frontier. No doubt the successes of Agricola against the bar- barous Caledonians, who had neither arms nor discipline, passed for the exploits of a heaven-born general in patriotic circles, where it was hoped that the empire would be discred- ited by the numerous misfortunes of the checkered and costly campaigns against the Dacians and their allies. Agricola escaped uninjured from the zeal of his friends; he even had offers of further employment, though Domitian's intimates were allowed to suggest that they had better be de- clined. The real offence of Domitian in the matter seems to have been that he did not press Agricola to accept the emol- uments of the office he refused; and this was aggravated by what passed for an improper curiosity as to the course of his last illness. It is clear from the preface that the life was written soon after the accession of Trajan, and the author apologizes for the stiffness of his style on the ground that under the reign of Domitian he had had no practice. Already he was meditat- ing a work on his own times, which was to begin with an indictment on the tyranny that had gone by, and end with a testimony to the happiness that had come in its place. The book is an essay on the advantage of being a good and loyal subject, and this is put forward with the air of discovery. Agricola was a tribune of the commons under Nero, and he did not give himself the airs of a Gracchus or a Thrasea; he was quaestor under a corrupt superior, whom he did not imi- tate or denounce. He was praetor with nothing to do but to preside over the games, and he did not attempt to do any- thing. Vespasian picked him out to be the legate of a muti- nous legion ; he kept his men in good order, and pretended that he had found them so. He was employed, and discharged his employments well, and 'got more credit because he sought IQO LATIN LITERATURE. none. When in command he gave his subordinates due credit, though it was one of his few imprudences to give offence by harsh language (soon forgotten on his side) when he was not satisfied. Nothing that Tacitus tells us of his father-in-law proves that he was as important as Suetonius Paulinus or Cerealis, or superior to Poppceus Sabinus, who is sneered at for attaining imperial friendship and prolonged command by being up to his work and not above it; but neither Sabinus nor Paulinus nor Cerealis had the good fortune to have a jrreat writer for a son-in-law. The style of the "Agricola" is not yet the mature style of Tacitus : it is sometimes rather bald than severe, rather con- torted than condensed. The epigrammatic obscurity is con- fined to reflections, and seldom affects the narrative. In his later works Tacitus's obscurity seems due to a proud reserve; he is full of thoughts, and will not let them overflow; in the "Agricola" he is obscure when he deviates into a pretentious little digression. Here, for instance, is what he says of Agric- ola's married life: "Vixeruntque mira concordia, per mutuam caritatem et invicem se anteponendo, nisi quod in bona uxore tanto major laus quanto in mala plus culpai est." Apparently he means that the love of both was equal and equally merito- rious, except that the wife deserved most credit, as marriage is more to a woman than to a man. Such liberality in treating the relation of the sexes is not conspicuous in Tacitus's later writino-s, where we should not have had to remark that the qualifying clause (beginning with nisi) refers back to viutuam, ihouMi it logically ought to refer to invicem se anteponendo. There is the same sententious obscurity in a passage on Agric- ola's proetorship, when he was //// longe a luxuria ita famce propior, because there were people who thought it distin- guished to avoid vulgar expense ; though, after all, Tacitus does not venture to say that Agricola distinguished himself much. When Cicero tells us that Crassus the orator was elegantium parcissimus, as Scaevola the jurist \\2ls parconim elegantissi?nus, he is quite as piquant and less puzzling. But, apart from such surface blemishes, the "Agricola" is a masterpiece of biogra- phy; it would be hard to find a more eloquent page in Latin TACITUS. 191 than the peroration, which begins with a skilfully veiled apol- ogy for Agricola's personal appearance, who looked, it seems, very amiable and gentlemanlike, and rather insignificant. There is nothing equal to this peroration in the "Germa- nia," which was written almost immediately after the "Agric- ola," in the second consulship of Trajan, and is, upon the whole, a maturer, though a less interesting, work. It is at once a tribute to Pliny the Elder, a guide to the country which it was hoped the emperor might undertake to conquer,' and a pamphlet against the corruptions of Rome. Possibly Tacitus himself had served on the German frontier, for in the " His- tories " he describes the topography of Castra Vetera at what seems disproportionate length. The work is more remarka- ble for insight than for method; and one rather pines for the good faith of Herodotus, who never leaves us in the least doubt as to the sources of his second-hand intelligence. Taci- tus's accepitnus does not even tell us whether he is quoting from books or from travellers or from natives. He has no clear conception of the differences of race beyond the Elbe, which is excusable, as he tells us that Roman knowledge of that river and its neighborhood had gone back since the days of Augustus. On the southeastern frontier he is aware of differences of language, but he lays more stress upon differ- ences of customs. The Sarmatians, who always moved with their cattle when they changed pasture, are distinguished clearly in Tacitus's mind from the Germans; but the Lygii and the Venedi, who are just as certainly Slavonic, were settled to the same extent as the Germans were, and Tacitus was not aware that they spoke a different language, or that the Fenni and Estii were further from the kindred of Rome and Greece than any of the races of Europe, except perhaps the Basques. So far as his opportunities extended, Tacitus was a good eth- nologist: he notes the German physiognomy and language of the Caledonians, the Iberian affinities of the Silures; if he had known that Slavonic was spoken generally beyond the Elbe, he would have noticed it, and we may almost infer from his ^ Trajan had commanded upon the Rhine, and was the first to com- mence the fortification of the frontier of the Agri Decumates. LATIN LITERATURE. llence that German was the language of fade on the farthest Baltic coasts known to '"^^^^ f-'^''^^.^^^ ;, better, that is, In general the d«"f' °" ° .^™ '%he cmitatus is clearer, than the description of "-'^ °^^^; imagination, tolerably well explan,ed : tt was tr.k n to ^"^^^ ^ --=:hicn^:rrr:s-.f^^^ hi fol enters, except that, in a general way, a ch.ef w>th a ' "lt\r ell Xt tl e h" exactly were, and doubtful possible to tel what tne i difficulty about the if the author knew ^^^^JS^or^Ucs to the hereditary or relation of the local elective . . , osition mans, bke most otne sa^a.es « ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^_^ "^' 'Sus s a pai to be emphatic and, for bim, almost mans, 1 acitus is at pains lu t- ^^^ ^^^^^ ^ 5^ •• ^ 2 TK xviii ''. Mb.vni. 3. ID. xv. 1. 1 " Germ. xii. 3. id. xmh. -. TACITUS. 193 gifts in a way worthy of a French writer of the eighteenth century. The remarks upon the law of hostages and the po- lygamy of the rulers are more to the point, though modern readers will find it difficult to believe that masculine caprice had nothing to do with the latter. In other points, too, he may be thought credulous : he narrates that the Germans de- liberate over all things of importance drunk as well as sober, without the least suspicion that their sober deliberations were often compromised by the boasts to which they had commit- ted themselves in their cups. One may notice also a little in- consistency in the description of German dwellings. We are told in two consecutive sentences^ that they are altogether without ornament, and that in some neighborhoods they are adorned with different-colored earths. (The style of the "Germany" is already the mature style of Tacitus, and the note of sarcasm is already predominant. There is nothing much bitterer in any of his writings than the passage in which the fall of the Cherusci is traced to their becoming peaceable, good neighbors;^ and the sneer at Rome is bitter enough when we read that the Germans do not call it the way of the world to corrupt and be corrupted.^ The bitterness is quite impartial : when the Germans go quietly into slavery for a gambling debt, they call it honor, and Taci- tus calls it madness.* Of the early works of Tacitus, the "Dialogue on Oratory" and the " Germany " would probably have been forgotten if they had not been by the author of the " Histories " and the "Annals." The "Histories" and the "Annals" were never popular : they were superseded by Suetonius, who confined himself to what was really interesting to the Roman public. The emperors were the state, and all that the world cared to remember was the incidents of their reigns, and the authentic or apocryphal anecdotes that illustrated their character. Most of the details of the struggles in the senate and the frontier wars lost their interest for the public as soon as they were over. In aristocratic circles, it was natural that all these bat- tles should be fought again keenly for two or three genera- * "Germ." xvi. 3. ^ lb. xxx^vi. 2. ' lb. xix. 3. * lb. xxiv. 4. II. -Q 194 LA TIN LITER A TUBE. tions, as long as representatives of the heroes or victims kept their place in high society ; but few families under the empire lasted long. The consequence is, that both the " Annals " and the "Hisrories" have reached us in fragments. The "An- nals" consisted of sixteen books. Of these the greater part of the fifth, the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and the begin- ning of the eleventh, and the last half of the sixteenth, are lost!* The " Histories " have been mutilated yet more severe- ly • out of fourteen books we have lost the last nine and a half, perhaps rather more. Here it is conceivable that an- tiquity may have exercised a choice: the first five books would have contained a complete account of the wars which followed the accession of Galba, incomparably the most in- teresting and picturesque part of the whole ; the reign of Vespasian must have been nearly barren, and the reign of Domitian probably appeared simply as a period in which the delafores raged more furiously than ever. The narrative of the Dacian campaigns would have been interesting if it had been frank and impartial, but it was Tacitus's conviction that a Roman historian ought to find Roman defeats too painful for description ; and we should have found Domitian severely blamed for calamities whose extent would have been left un- certain, while his part in them was measured by his deserved unpopularity in the class to which Tacitus belonged. The opening of the '' Histories " is curious and perhaps unfortu- nate : ft is fixed too strictly by the calendar ; Tacitus does not begin with the death of Nero, nor with Galba's arrival in Rome,''nor with his recognition by the senate, but with his ac- cession to the consulate. The result is, that we have only a very incomplete account of his transactions on his way through Italy : we are told incidentally of a massacre of unarmed troops just outside Rome, of the execution of two consulars, of the discontent of the German army, of their enthusiasm for Verginius, and his supposed desire to profit by it if he had only'' dared ; but all these are alluded to as known from earlier writers, or perhaps from the official gazette. As it happens, the collapse of the rule of Nero and the ac- cession of Galba are some of the obscurest events in ancient TACITUS. 195 history : Tacitus makes it quite clear that the army of Italy and the common people of Rome were at bottom attached to Nero to the last : it is tantalizing that he does not explain the intrigues by which they were both induced to put on the appearance of revolt. In the "Annals" it is true that some explanation must have been given, but the "Annals" were written later than the " Histories." Another obscure point is the rising of Vindex : the accepted theory tended to minimize the importance of the collision between him and Verginius ; Tacitus without explanation or controversy tends to maxi- mize it. These defects do not make themselves felt after the first few pages. From the first mention of Galba's adoption of a successor the reader is carried on without a break to the butchery of Vitellius. The war in Germany and Northeast- ern Gaul is a less satisfactory subject, and by bad luck we have lost the end of the story, and do not know upon what terms Civilis was allowed to capitulate. And the end of the Jewish war is only known from the windy rhetoric of Josephus, and one or two excerpts from Tacitus in Sulpicius Severus, a late Christian writer; from which it is clear that Tacitus did not believe the legend which Josephus tried to circulate, in excuse for his enthusiasm in favor of his captors, that Titus could and would have sav'ed the Temple if the insane obsti- nacy of the Jews had permitted him. On the contrary, Taci- tus tells us^ that if the city had been permitted to capitulate, one of the conditions would have been that the inhabitants should abandon their city : a condition they regarded as worse than death. Galba is treated with surprising leniency, and Vitellius with surprising harshness. Otho had a good right to expect to succeed Galba, and it is difficult to see how the state suffered by his taking advantage of the disappointment and discon- tent of the prcetorians to displace a harsh, unpopular, and in- efficient ruler. However, Tacitus will have it that the military insurrection was a crime of the worst kind ; he sets the act by which Otho gained power, and the act by which he left it, 1 " Histories," V. xiii. 4, \i 196 LATIN LITERATURE. over asrainst each other : one was as shameful as the other was glorious. What seems to shock Tacitus most is, that the movement was completely spontaneous. Two common sol- diers contracted to transfer the Roman empire, and they did transfer it. That the chief of a province should revolt, with the assurance that he had sympathizers in the senate who would instal him legitimately if he succeeded, was not intol- erable as times went; it was a crime for the prefect of the praetorians to intrigue in his own interest ; but all order and discipline were subverted if the troops were to choose for themselves. Besides, Tacitus is compelled again and again to recognize the abiding popularity of Nero, and he is angry with Otho for having profited by it. He is more concerned for the respectability of the central administration than for its popularity in the capital, or its beneficence in the rest of the empire. Vitellius was no more suspicious than Galba : he did not order more executions of nobles, he ordered fewer executions of soldiers, even counting the hundred and twenty victims who suffered for thinking their zeal against Galba and Piso a title to reward. But Vitellius was an elderly man, with a strong tendency to over-eat himself. Such capacity as he had was that sort of perception of what is fair that goes with an easy temper; and, to judge by the enthusiasm of the German army in his cause, he had this perception in a very high degree. The army had an instinctive appreciation of his kindliness ; but Tacitus is only struck by his self-indul- gence. He made the same mistake as Mucianus ; lie un- derrated what Antonius could do by advancing with forces inadequate to the task before them. Believing that it was impossible that the crisis should arrive as soon as it did, he did not keep himself ready to meet it, and, as might have been expected, he broke down under it. Till it came he en- joyed the privileges of his position, and no doubt his good nature made it easier for him to accept the invitation pressed upon him by loyal landholders and corporations than to re- fuse them ; and every time he accepted their hospitality was remembered against him by the implacable aristocracy, greedy of all opportunities of degrading the monarchy, and much too »« .. TACITUS. 197 resolute to be propitiated by the sincere endeavors of Vitellius to make his office as constitutional as possible. In fact, to writers who came after Domitian this seemed perhaps an ag- gravation of his offence : after Domitian the affectation that the Republic still subsisted was impossible. The best em- perors governed through the senate : they kept their procura- tors and the claims of their private exchequer within bounds, they dispensed with degrading homage, but they did not pre- tend to treat their subjects exactly as equals. If they lost their temper in the senate, they did not say that it was noth- ing new for one senator to disagree with another. If Vitellius had been a modern ruler, his gastronomic excesses would not have been branded as decisive of the civil war. The truth is, that both Otho and Vitellius fell before the contempt of the aristocracy, and Tacitus accuses both of hav- ing been unequal to the situation they had seized. Otho fought too soon, partly out of an impatience of suspense, nat- ural to a voluptuar}', but prudence and patience were hardly possible when he knew that his officers were treating over his head. Vitellius, who had been raised to the empire by am- bitious subalterns, fell because one of them speculated on be- traying him. If opinion at Rome had accepted either as it ac- cepted Galba, who fell by his own mistakes, their subordinates would have been loyal. But Tacitus treats the pretension of both as preposterous, and only treats Otho with very qualified respect on account of his soldierly bearing during the war and the gallantry of his end. Besides, he had reasons to re- spect the feeling of many important personages, who had sym- pathized with Vespasian, without having declared for him. From the first news of Vespasian's proclamation, all the upper class were disposed to calculate on his success : and this ex- plains the ferocious resentment with which Tacitus details the homage paid to each pretender on his accession. The supe- riority of Vespasian in the long-run was so obvious that he had no intention of pushing forward into Italy, and the battle of Cremona was due to the ambition of a single partisan. The burning of the Capitol and the bloody fighting at the entrance of Rome were due to the attempt to carry out the f iqS latin literature. abdication of Vitellius prematurely; which seems to have been chiefly clue to the ambition of Vespasian's brother, who wished to have his share in the foundation of the dynasty, and partly to the general incompetency of elderly Romans, which allowed Vitellius to be forced back into the palace for want of proper arrangements, although he himself would have been glad to carry out the capitulation to which he had con- sented in the interest of his family. Here Tacitus's narrative is ambiguous : he gives all manner of discordant rumors, and does not express an opinion of his own. Part of the diffi- culty was, clearly, that the common people as well as the sol- diery were still on the side of Vitellius, whose good -nature and kindly interest in the public shows won popularity of a kind that Tacitus is glad to depreciate. He gloats over the brutality with which the rabble exulted over Vitellius's fall, as a contrast to the servility with which they had applauded his extravagance. At the same time the nobility were no better: they were ostentatiously loyal to Otho and Vitellius, and claim- ed credit on Vespasian's accession for having joined Sabinus and Domitian in the Capitol. , Their treachery disgusts Taci- tus: he will not allow that when they deserted Vitellius for Vespasian they were moved by the public good. Much as he disliked Fabius Valens, he takes leave of him with the ob- servation that he was renowned by the perfidy of others. The ascendency of Mucianus and Marcellus was quite as scanda- lous as that of Vinius and Icelus under Galba, or that of Val- ens and Asiaticus under Vitellius; if it was shorter, if it came to an end with the arrival of Vespasian, Tacitus does not say. Another point on which he would have been equally myste- rious is the real relation of the revolt of Civilis to the move- ment in favor of Vespasian. It is quite clear that most of the hi£:her officers whom Vitellius had left on the Rhine were ready to find or make an opportunity of abandoning him. It is certain that Civilis in the first instance declared for Vespa- sian ; certain also that he went on fighting after the army, to the great disgust of the rank and file, had been brought to swear allegiance to Vespasian ; and that, when certain Gallic cantons proclaimed the Gallic empire, he joined his forces to TACITUS. 199 theirs, though without swearing allegiance to their cause. After the first defeat he was allowed to capitulate on the ground that he had been acting in the interest of Vespasian. Tacitus seems to lean to the opinion that Civilis meant to prepare himself to take the lead in a German conquest of Gaul ; though it is hard to see that he had any part in the death of Hordeonius Flaccus, or that he took the initiative in the Gallic insurrection, which seems to have broken out spontaneously on the news of the burning of the Capitol. Until these events, he did nothing incompatible with his pro- fessions of devotion to Vespasian. A still more extreme instance of Tacitus's unwillingness to be at pains to investigate facts is his account of the origin of the Jewish nation, which is placed at the opening of the fifth book. It is evident the writer had never taken trouble to speak to Josephus or to read him, much less to read the Septuagint. Herodotus is always careful to give the native account, if pos- sible, of all questions of national antiquities: Tacitus seems to have set himself to give at second-hand all the speculations about the origin of the Jews which Greek writers had been able to invent or to collect among their neighbors. It is pos- sible to trace some remote thread of fact through most, except the suggestion meant to do them honor, that they were con- nections of the Homeric Solymi. The suggestion that yiidcei is a corruption of Idcei^ from Ida in Crete, is obviously absurd, but it may point to the latest form of a real tradition of the Philistine migration which gave its name to Palaestine. The Assyrian mixed multitude who occupied part of Egypt, and eventually retired into the cities of the Hebrews and the nearer parts of Syria, are obviously our old acquaintances the Shepherd Kings. It is harder to say what can have been the foundation for what was obviously the commonest story, that the Jews were the descendants of a horde of diseased and filthy immigrants expelled from Egypt by King Bocchoris, who came to the throne, according to the chronology of M. Brugsch, 733 B.C. As Bocchoris w'as burned by Sabaco, King of the Ethio- pians, it might be a question whether any of the expelled im- migrants were Ethiopians, and whether this was the substra- \ It' 200 LATIN LITERATURE. M turn of fact in another story about the Ethiopians who left their country in the time of King Cepheus. There is no trace in the monuments of any such measure of King Bocchoris, and the whole story is made much more suspicious by being mixed up with a preposterous parody of the Exodus. Moses placed himself at the head of the exiles, and by the help of a herd of wild asses found water for them in the wilderness, and at the end of seven days led them to Jerusalem. Apart from this the story is plausible, and perhaps general tradition may warrant us in admitting an enforced migration from the Delta to Palestine in the eighth century B.C. Jewish institutions are less grossly caricatured than Jewish history, although it is difficult to guess what is meant by the statement that among themselves the Jews were singularly licentious in sexual mat- ters, or whether the limitation of immortality to the souls of those who died for the law on the scaffold or the battle-field lay in popular belief or in the ignorance of Tacitus. We have no means of checking what Tacitus has to tell of Velleda, the German prophetess who supported Civilis; but German be- liefs were simpler than Hebrew, and the Romans in trying to master them made fewer mistakes. The real greatness of Tacitus as a philosophical historian lies in his analysis of the conditions of Roman public life, and his speculations as to the power of human conduct to modify them. Such a sentence as this, on the temper of the praeto- rians when Otho entered their camp, is the measure of his pow- er : "Julius Partialis, a tribune, was the officer of the watch on duty. He, stunned at such a monstrous sudden crime, or may be fearing that corruption had spread further in the camp, and that he would pull against the stream at his peril, gave ground to general suspicion that he was in the plot. And the rest of the tribunes and centurions preferred a certainty to an honorable risk. And the condition of their minds was that few had daring, many good-will, and all consent for an execra- ble deed." So, too, the often - quoted phrase that Otho did everything like a slave to be master, and the bitter jest that "Otho had not yet authority to prevent a crime; he was al- ready able to order one ;" and the yet bitterer epigram that TACITUS. 201 I "when the day had been spent in guilt the turn of the worst evil came — men had to rejoice." A more elaborate picture is the revolt of the German army. All the complicated influences at work are unravelled. "Vi- tellius had taken pains when he inspected the winter-quarters of the legions: one of the legates thought he had been slight- ed by Galba ; another was in danger of being punished for peculation. The army itself had only joined Galba after Nero's death, and then had been anticipated by troops lower down the Rhine. Then the Treveri and Lingones, and any other states that smarted under harsh decrees of Galba or the loss of territory, came into close contact with the legions in their winter-quarters; whereupon there was much seditious talk, and civilians corrupted the soldiery, and their good-will to Verginius was at the service of anybody else. The state of the Lingones had sent, after its old custom, a present to the legions, right hands joined as a token of hospitality. Their ambassadors were made up into a show of mourning and dis- honor, went through the parade-ground and the quarters com- plaining of their own injuries, the favor shown to their neigh- bors, and, when the soldiers were inclined to hearken, of the peril of the army and the despite done thereto. And they were nearly ripe for sedition, when Hordeonius Flaccus bade the am- bassadors go away, and that by night, that they might leave the camp more secretly. Thereupon rose a shrewd rumor, for most affirmed them slain, and that but for their own better heed all the briskest of the troops who complained of things as they were would be killed in the dark and the rest know nothing. So a silent league bound the legions together: the soldiers of the auxiliary forces were brought in, though at first suspect- ed, as though squadrons and cohorts were being mustered to surround and charge the legions. Soon it was seen they brooded more fiercely on the same offences, for it is easier among bad spirits to consent for war than for concord in peace. Still the legions of Lower Germany were brought to swear allegiance to Galba on the solemnity of the First of January. With much delay, and but few, and those in the front rank, swore aloud, the rest kept silent, each waiting for H.— 9* 202 LATIN LITERATURE. his neighbor to be bold, as mortal nature is made to follow and be^^loath to begin." ^ There is a touch of satire further on, when we learn that a part of the army swore allegiance to the senate and people of Rome, and a few days after to Vi- tellius on the ground that their former oath was empty. The declaration of the Syrian army needed less explana- tion, for Vespasian was a very different commander to Vitel- lius ; and although Mucianus was in command of a larger force, he preferred being the first subject of the empire to be- ing emperor: for what he wanted for himself was license and luxury, not power. There were too many scandals about him for it to be safe for him to reign in his own name. Taci- tus makes a mystery of him. " He was notorious alike in prosperity and adversity. When young he had been lavish in attentions to great friends ; soon, when his means were im- paired and his estate but slippery, and the anger too of Clau- dius seemed upon him, he appeared, as he lay in retreat in Asia, as near an exile as afterwards near a prince. He was a mixture of luxury, energy, courtesy, arrogance, evil ways and good: excessive in pleasures when at leisure, great in virtues as often as it served his turn. In public a man to praise, his privacy was of ill-report. Still, various alluring arts gave him power over subordinates, over kinsmen, over col- leagues, enough to make it easy for him to grant a sway too hard to hold."" This reminds us of the over-elaboration in the "Agricola;" further on we learn that Mucianus contrived to make a parade of his politic adhesion to Vespasian. It is very noticeable that Vespasian is nowhere character- ized in the part of the " Histories " which has come down to us. Tacitus's rule in the " Histories " seems to be to describe every important personage upon his first appearance, and again when he disappears from the scene. It is, therefore, deliberate reticence that leaves us to judge of Vespasian almost exclusively by his deeds, with only a touch of comment here and there. Vespasian set the example of a frugal table; he was admirably firm against largess to the soldiery, and had the better army for it; he refused redress for the exactions » " Hist." I. lii.-lv. ' lb. I. x. TACITUS. 203 devised by Mucianus, " though in the beginnings of his em- pire he was less stiff in holding his ground when wrong, till, between base counsellors and the indulgence of fortune, he learned and dared to be unjust." ' Vespasian's elder brother, who was taken and massacred by the partisans of Vitellius, after the latter had been hustled out of his attempt to abdi- cate by their boisterous loyalty, was always considered the ornament of the family while both were in a private station. All this seems as if Tacitus had little esteem for his first em- ployer, though " no doubt it was the interest of the common- wealth that Vitellius should be conquered." Less is said of Titus, but the notices are kindly in the main, while there are abundant hints given in advance of the fatal idiosyncrasy of his younger brother and successor. In general, Tacitus does not flatter his own side. No one is more severely handled than Antonius Primus, who actually decided the overthrow of Vitellius, and seems to have survived his disappointment in the partition of the spoils with decorum. It is one of the evils of war that he obtained an amnesty, having been con- demned under Nero for forgery: he is the worst of men in peace, in war above contempt. Of all the commanders who actually took part in the war on Vespasian's side, Messalla was the only one who brought a good character to the cause. Cornelius Fuscus is treated with some approach to respect, though his character seems to have lacked solidity : he dread- ed anxiety, and he liked excitement ; he laid down his rank as senator for the sake of a quiet life; he took the lead in his native town for Galba, and was rewarded with a place as proc- urator, in which he threw himself energetically into the cause of Vespasian, "delighting more in perils than in their reward." In fact, it is doubtful whether unblemished characters were common in any camp. It is clear that the senate was always inclined to screen informers, even when an interregnum left their hands free; examples were made of the worst cases, but any general measure would always have touched very influen- tial men, who, when their position was assured, often were dignified and bountiful enough. Many rising men had done * "Hist." II. Ixxxii. 3 ; Ixxxiv. 2. W 204 LATIN LITERATURE. questionable things; there was a general feeling at the end of each tyrant's reign that the survivors ought to be safe. Besides, it is obvious that under the constitution the senate must have been recruited with a constant stream of imperial nominees, who were naturally more imperialist than the em- peror, because the more they could harass families whose consideration dated from the days of the republic, the more of the patronage of the empire was free for their own promo- tion. Tacitus, who measured the merits and demerits of all emperors by their respect for the dignity of the senate, and their willingness to allow it a real share of the administration, systematically keeps silence as to the standing cause of the servility upon which he spends so much indignation. This makes Tacitus unjust to all the emperors who did not repress all accusations of high-treason. For a hundred years before the empire the nobles had been given to bitter quarrels among themselves, which were aggravated by the ambition of those who wished to push into their number; but these quar- rels had often come to nothing under the republic: the pros- ecution was unsparing, but the court was considerate. Under the empire every prosecution came before the senate, every prosecution had a political character, every prosecution in- volved the charge of treason ; for Augustus, by an oversight, had made all discreditable conduct treasonable, as part of his laborious and unsuccessful endeavors to make the upper classes at any rate respected and respectable. Lastly, the imperialist majority in the senate insisted that every charge of treason should be treated seriously: acquittals were the rule in state trials under the republic, convictions were the rule under the empire. The only remedy the nobility had was to frown persistently upon all who conducted state prose- cutions, and especially upon all who conducted them of their own accord; and whenever an emperor succeeded who wished to protect the nobility, both classes professed that they had been coerced by the fallen tyrant. Even when a real crime had been committed, it was generally mixed up with a more or less imaginary charge of treason ; and then the condemna- tion was more invidious than the crime. Genuine loyalty was TACITUS. ■05 extremely rare, and nearly all rulers felt it necessary to treat visible disaffection as a capital offence. Any sign of disre- spect was construed into disloyalty, and this led to endless elaborations of homage, soon carried to a point' intolerable to self-respect. The least approach to a parade of reserve was itself a proof of disaffection, for the majority visited any resentment they might feel for their own abasement upon those who refused to share it. The emperors were embarrassed also by another difficulty, which Tacitus half hints at in a phrase which he puts into the mouth of Galba — that the Romans could not bear either thorough slavery or thorough freedom. The vastness of the empire and the corruption of the times made a single ruler necessary : no serious politician denied this; Tacitus insists upon it repeatedly. But though all real power, or almost all, was in his hands or those of his dele- gates, he was not a sovereign and the rest of the Romans his subjects: they were free and independent citizens, though his will counted for almost everything, theirs for almost nothing. The only rationale of this which the most audacious emperors put forward was that they were superhuman. As a rule, em- perors were deified after death : an emperor who chafed under republican fictions anticipated his apotheosis, and so multi- plied the difficulties of those who regretted the republic. Tacitus is the echo of their indignation. He blames the em- perors almost exclusively for their misgovernment of the cap- ital ; if he blames them for rapacity in the provinces, or for military failures on the frontier, it is only because these scan- dalize the opinion of the capital. The proof is that rulers who, like Tiberius or Claudius, did much for the provinces receive no credit from Tacitus. In most things, indeed, Tacitus is rather illiberal: he has no sympathy whatever with the progressive innovations of Claudius. He is positively shocked that he should have given the officers of his exchequer jurisdiction in civil and criminal * This point was often reached earlier than a modern could imagine. For instance, a senator made himself ridiculous by an ineffectual proposal to have the decrees of the day on which Tiberius's arrangements for the succession were ratified engraved in letters of gold in the senate-house. 206 LA TllSr LITER A TURE. causes;^ he has no eyes for the administrative convenience of the change ; he only sees that it was monstrous for freedmen to exercise the same jurisdiction as consulars. So, too, he distinctly approves'^ the vote of the senate for the execution of a whole household, over four hundred in number, who passed the night under the same roof as their master, who was killed by a slave to whom he had refused freedom, and records that the populace was in favor of mercy, or, as we should say, justice. The "Annals" are decidedly gloomier than the "Histo- ries," probably simply because the writer was older : he sees evil everywhere ; his recognition of merit always has the air of paradox. All the emperors were tyrants, and it was natu- ral that under a tyrant everything should go wrong ; that all offices should be filled by servile instruments of tyranny, that virtue should have no alternative but retreat or martyrdom. When he takes leave of a noble like Lepidus or L. Piso, who were always in high place, and lived to the end of their days without peril and without shame, Tacitus always pauses to observe upon the singularity of their fate. The prudence which preserved them is always treated as a discovery: the natural course for a virtuous man being that of silent or pub- lic protest ; for the virtuous man was presumably a Stoic, and a Stoic was bound to be instant in the assertion of his princi- ples. Tacitus himself was sceptical as to the value of philos- ophy, especially of Stoicism. It is mentioned to the honor of Agricola that his early tendency to philosophize more deeply than became a Roman was checked in time ; and Helvidius Priscus is praised for making it the object of his studies to strengthen him for public life, while most contemporary Stoics only cared to talk. Besides, Tacitus had two strong convic- tions quite at variance with the Stoic creed: he disbelieved in providence, he disbelieved in fate. He is never weary of illustrating the thesis, as old as Ennius, that the gods care no more for the righteous than the wicked, whence it follows that Providence, in the Stoic sense of a power overruling all things for the best, is a fiction. He excludes fate with providence » " Ann." XII. Ix. "^ lb. XIV. xlii-xlv. TACITUS. 207 in order to make room for prudence, but even then he has not excluded the gods from the affiiirs of mortals. This is one of the most important contrasts between Taci- tus and Sallust. Sallust never discusses the question at all : he has no occasion to go beyond the sphere of human pru- dence and human passion, in which he finds the reason for everything. Tacitus does not escape so easily : he is never sure that the gods' wrath is not formidable, because it is use- less to count upon their justice: he never gets beyond the epigram,* " The gods care not to protect us, and yet they care to avenge us." All misfortunes, like the grandeur and down- fall of Sejanus, are referred quite simply to the anger of the gods. All precedents which enable men to scan their inscru- table ways are anxiously recorded: for instance, when Vitel- lius assumed the office of chief pontiff on the day that the Gauls had sfnitten the Romans on the river Allia, it is an as- tonishing proof of his own blindness and that of his friends. He is afraid to dispute the legend of the strange bird which appeared to excited eyes during the last night of Otho, and he investigates the miracles of Vespasian with the utmost sim- plicity. When he has proved that they were not invented to flatter Vespasian, he is satisfied, and takes no pains to get behind the formal report of the physicians, who evidently thought Vespasian might safely undertake to heal patients who might be well without help when they pleased. In the same way Tacitus accepts the prophecies, whatever they were, which were supposed to be fulfilled by the accession of Ves- pasian, in an ironical spirit, as if superhuman wisdom were always useless for human guidance. Vespasian was not the least influenced by the prophecies which all the world agreed he had fulfilled; the Jews thought that they justified their own insane resistance. All the omens, great and small, which were noticed in a town that canvassed everything, are sol- emnly recorded for what they may be worth. Tacitus gives no decision: he writes as if it were his object to give posterity the materials for forming one. The will of the gods seems to ^ " Hist." I. iii. fin. : Non esse curam diis securitatem nostram, esse ul- tionem ; cf. Lucan, iv. 807. 208 LATIN LITERATURE. TACITUS. 209 count for a good deal in the order of the world, but their judgment has no respect to individual worth : they prosper and punish communities as instruments of their designs : per- haps it is safe to assume that they are offended by the neglect of the established ceremonies of propitiation. The transition from Seneca to Tacitus is like the transition from Shaftesbury to Bolingbroke : Tacitus failed long ago to find any trace of " moral attributes," Here he has the advantage of appealing from theory to what he takes for facts, but his criticism of fiitalism suffers from his Roman contempt for "minute philosophy." Appar- ently he leans, like Pope, to a belief in a power Who binding nature fast in fate Left free the human will. The only alternative which he recognizes is the crude fatal- ism of the Oriental — what will happen, will happen whatever we do. He does not understand the Stoic doctrine of "con- fatalia" — that conditions were fated as well as results — and therefore he does not discuss it. He gives his measure by uniformly describing a natural death as a "fatal" one, as though fate was set aside whenever a man killed himself or was killed. The extreme instance of this loose way of think- ing which he records and shares is a passage on the Rhine being unusually low during the revolt of Civilis.' "In time of peace this would have been nature or chance, in war it seemed fate and the anger of the gods." This makes his so- lemnity less impressive. Plato's doctrine of the inward mis- ery of tyrants is hardly established by the quotation of Tibe- rius's letter^ when asked to sanction the prosecution of Cotta Messalinus. Tiberius probably meant nothing by his out- burst, except that he felt it a great tax to write to the senate ; and, as his selfcontrol was impaired by solitude and indul- gence, he actually swore at himself in a despatch; which ap- peared phenomenal because the ancients were not addicted 1 " Hist." IV. xxvi. 2. * Quid scribam vobis, patres conscripti, aut quo modo scribam hoc tem- pore di me deaeque pejus perdant quam perire me quotidie sentio, si scio. —"Ann." VI. vi. i. \\\ to that special form of profmity, and generally were capable of decorum in their public acts. The eloquence of Tacitus has rather blinded us to the fact that it was really very pro- voking for Tiberius to be asked to put another old friend on his trial, because there was more or less reason to think he spoke disrespectfully of the senate and the emperor in his cups. His annoyance broke out in an irritable confession of his failing powers, after which he settled the case sensibly enough. In fact, the whole account of the reign of Tiberius is a mas- terpiece of detraction : the emperor gets no credit for his faith- fulness to old friends, very little for his munificence on all public occasions. Though one of the most splendid instances of it comes in the last year of his reign, we are told that Tibe- rius retained that virtue long, while putting off all others — as if he put that off at last. The instances of his honest, manly dislike to flattery are carefully enumerated, not without a cer- tain sympathy; but we are reminded that many attributed such modesty to self distrust, and not a few to a craven spirit, dead alike to fame and virtue. Tacitus is pitiless to his re- peated and undignified professions of his sincere desire to abdicate, and his efforts to cover his despotism with antiquated forms. He is especially angry when an old law worked with- out straining in favor of the new despotism ; as if the mon- archy was bound systematically to soften republican proced- ure, especially by depriving prosecutors of their legal rewards. Tiberius held that the laws would lose all effect if the machin- ery for enforcing them was suddenly thrown out of gear; Tacitus's comment is, that a detestable race of informers, who can hardly be kept in check by punishment, were warmed to life by rewards; which, though a fair retort from a political opponent, comes short of historical impartiality. Again, Tibe- rius quite honestly regretted the precipitate execution of a Roman knight who had been foolish enough to read an elegy on Drusus, the son of Tiberius, At a time when he was ex- pected to die, after having been rewarded for an elegy com- posed after the death of Germanicus. Accordingly he rebuked the senate, who passed a rule that for the future no capital 2IO LATIN LITERATURE. TACITUS. 211 sentence should be registered or executed for ten days. Tac- itus's comment is, that after the sentence was recorded the senate had no power to recall it, and Tiberius grew no milder in the time. This is literally true, though the senate fre- quently waited on the chance of his interference, though no one was ever punished for the delay, which the irritable old man occasionally resented. The instances of moderation are all mentioned in their place, but without comment or empha- sis, except an occasional regret that when Tiberius knew what was best he so often chose to do what was worse. Sometimes the harshness of the historian makes his elabo- rate pictures enigmatical. For instance, a son accused of high-treason a Hither already sentenced to exile, and after a time wished to abandon the charge, which had broken down, as the slaves could not or would not swear to anything against their old master. Tiberius insisted that the son should carry the prosecution through, and, when the father was convicted, inflicted no greater penalty than exile, even taking pains to insist that he should not be banished to an island without wa- ter. The scandal is emphasized with all the art of Tacitus ; but it does not appear upon what principle, if any, Tiberius acted. Had he real grounds for believing that impotent mal- ice had turned an exile into a conspirator, while resolved to treat him as insignificant when convicted.'* Again, it is a crime of Tiberius that he allowed the law of high-treason as extended by Augustus to be put in force; it is not a merit that for some time he exerted himself to check the fantastic developments it seemed likely to receive from the ingenious malignity of Roman idlers. Even m his later years he did not encourage prosecutions for such purely constructive dis- respect as swearing falsely by the deity of Augustus, or break- ing up his consecrated image for old silver, both of which seemed deadly crimes to eager prosecutors when the law and Tiberius's rule were new. In general, a modern historian would blame what Tacitus blames, but less severely. But in the matter of Hortalus, Tacitus blames Tiberius for simple good sense. It was an excusable mistake of Augustus to give a worthless and harmless man a small fortune because he was the grandson of a celebrated orator, and it was hoped that his marriage might keep up an illustrious family; but when Hor- talus made an opportunity of begging in the senate for a fur- ther supply, Tiberius could only refuse, and it is surprising he should have conceded so much as he did to the facile and fac- titious sympathy of the senate. The campaigns of German icus and Corbulo are the only part of the history of the early empire on which Tacitus dwells with any complacency: it was the great fault of all the emper- ors till the days of Domitian and Trajan that they took no care to extend the empire. The two generals who showed some inclination to renew the traditions of conquest seem to be overrated. Corbulo was clearly very jealous of other com- manders, and inclined to leave them to difficulties; Germani- cus was reckless and irresolute, and very much less careful of his men's lives than Tiberius. Tiberius invaded Germany three times, and each time he defeated the enemy and brought his army back safe; and the only result was that his admirers hoped another campaign might bring the enemy to submis- sion. It would be curious to know why he invariably went back to Gaul for winter-quarters — because he could not main- tain himself in Germany, or because Germany was too poor a country to support an army of occupation.^ Tacitus thinks the policy of Germanicus too obvious for explanation; that of Tiberius seems to have struck him as curious and interest- ing. Tiberius was not at all disposed to non-intervention; he had too keen a sense of the possibihties of a German inva- sion of Italy. He told the senate that Maroboduus, who for a long time maintained a powerful kingdom in Bohemia and Bavaria, was more formidable to the Roman people than King Pyrrhus or King Philip, and was delighted when his kingdom collapsed and he had to take refuge on Roman territory. What he dreaded was the consolidation of any power in Ger- many strong enough and durable enough to direct the force of the race against more desirable, lands. It was easy enough to keep the Germans at war among themselves, for every ruler disgusted his family and tribe after fifteen or twenty years of rule — ^just like the rulers of Norway in the interval between ■j 212 LATIN LITERATURE. Harold Harfager and Harold Hardrada, and the rulers of France since the revolution of 1789. On the eastern frontier the policy of the empire was somewhat more decided, though it did not go beyond the lines marked out by Pompeius after his great command. No attempt was made to conquer Par- thia, but full advantage was taken of the readiness of the dynasty to have a possible pretender kept in Italy till the throne became vacant. He was generally called upon after a palace revolution : he received a Roman escort, and never succeeded in establishing himself permanently among sub- jects to whom he had become a stranger; but the Romans never regarded their prestige as affected by the failure of their proteges, while the Parthian monarchy gradually weakened itself by internal dissensions. Tacitus is rather indifferent than contemptuous when he speaks of the pretensions of the emperors to confer a diadem which their nominees could not retain. He is less ironical in his treatment of the Roman claim to a protectorate in Armenia. The Parthian pretender had rather a better chance, upon the whole, than the Roman ; but even the Parthian pretender had to reckon with Rome, because the small states of Upper Mesopotamia leaned to the power which held the road to the Mediterranean; while the small states between Armenia and the Caucasus were depend- ent on the commerce of the Black Sea, which also was in the hands of Rome. The dissensions of the imperial family fill a larger space than the frontier warfare in the "Annals" of Tacitus, and there is no part of his narrative that is more puzzling — we never know what evidence he had for the majority of his charges. We know that he used the memoirs of the younger Agrippina; he does not seem to have used the memoirs of Tiberius, and no public documents except the trial of Locusta would throw much light on the alleged assassination of Clau- dius and Britannicus. In the case of Drusus, we know the story told by Apicata, the divorced wifeof Sejanus, eight years after the time, which Tiberius believed, and the Roman peo- ple improved upon. According to the latest version, every- thing passed after the fashion of a schoolboy's theme. Seja- TACITUS. 213 nus told Tiberius that his son was going to poison him, and so lured the suspicious father to force the poisoned cup on the unsuspecting son. Tacitus rejects this story, and hardly thinks of testing Apicata's, who, after her divorce, can only have learned Sejanus's plans from slaves who deceived him and perhaps her. Though a slave of Drusus and a slave of Sejanus confirmed her story under torture, a modern court, and even a modern historian, would have doubted. The case of Germanicus is equally perplexing. Plancina seems to have tried to bewitch him; and when Tacitus de- scribes her death, which followed closely on Agrippina's, he takes her guilt for granted. In the narrative of the trial he does not go beyond strong hints that Livia's patronage, which saved her from sharing her husband's condemnation, was ex- ercised unjustly. Clear facts are not distinguished from sus- picions: the whole proceedings passed for an act of laudable vengeance for the death of Germanicus, whom it was allefied, but not proved, that Piso had poisoned with his own hand at a banquet. What was proved, according to Tacitus, was that Piso had behaved as if he wanted to make himself indepen- dent in his province, and that he had attempted to resume possession forcibly after being dismissed by his superior offi- cer, whose authority to do so he contested with some plausibil- ity. He committed suicide ; and Tiberius, who apparently did not believe in the story of the poisoning, and had most prob- ably sent Piso to Syria as a check on Germanicus, professed that if he had awaited sentence he would have saved his life. The catastrophe of the house of Germanicus, who seem to have been fairly represented by Caligula, falls within the part of the "Annals" which has been lost to us, so that it is un- certain how Tacitus distributed the blame between the jeal- ousy of Tiberius, the intrigues of Sejanus, and the ungoverna- ble temper of Agrippina and her sons. Enough is said to make it clear that the heirs were jealous of the minister and expected to share the power of .the reigning monarch — an- other proof that an avowed monarchy would have answered better than the preponderating influence of a single family disguised under republican forms.' 214 LATIN LITERATURE. The influence of Sejanus over Tiberius is treated as a fatal mystery; and the elaborate character of the favorite explains nothing, and is not meant to explain anything. The concep- tion that there are classes of character with common tenden- cies does not occur to Tacitus. All his generalizations (and he is fond of generalizing) extend to mankind at large, and they are almost always pessimistic. The inbred depravity of mortals is a favorite formula, which recurs with the fatal facil- ity of the ablative absolute to explain everything. Like Sal- lust, too, Tacitus likes to dwell on the impossibility of carrying any movement through that requires general co-operation. He takes a sort of malicious pleasure in analyzing the failure of attempts to punish delation, to organize the senate and people for the defence of the capital, or to reform manners by public authority. The nobility of the old republic were irreclaimable : so long as they had any money they could not abandon the ostentation of splendor and power; the multipli- cation of gastronomic oddities passed for splendor among a semi -barbarous race; a dish of nightingales' tongues was accepted as a luxury well worth the price; it was a mark of spirit and taste to import and slaughter a menagerie for every banquet. The fashion lasted, Tacitus says, till the accession of Vespasian ; and then a thrifty old emperor and thrifty old courtiers, who had formed their habits in the provinces, were strong enough to set a new fashion. Naturally he does not inquire into the question, which seemed so important to Juve- nal, how this reformation affected the majority who were used to depend upon the munificence of the great. Tacitus counts it pure gain that the rich ceased to waste their substance in w^iys that gave them no selfish pleasure or profit, though ready to sneer at an old age of shabby power, and the influence of a rich, childless old man, which is strong enough to protect its owner under good and bad rulers alike. In truth, the severe self-repression of Tacitus is often a mask for caprice: he is not faithful to any doctrine or to any plan. He never carried out his intention of following the History of the Flavian dynasty with a History of Nerva and Trajan. His success had been sufficiently marked to enable TACITUS. 215 him to compete with the reputation of a Fabius Rusticus, a Pliny, or a Cluvius Rufus, on the ground of the early empire. In the "Annals" he expresses an intention, if he lives,, of go- ing back to the reign of Augustus ; as if he wished to carry his cynical frankness right through the imperial period — per- haps he suspected that the reign of Trajan was a fitter theme for flatterers than for historians. His contempt for his subject seems to make him inaccu- rate : he tells us that Augustus was the only ruler between Sulla and Claudius who enlarged the Pomerium, forgetting, if he ever knew, that Julius had begun the work which Augustus simply carried out. In the same way he tells us that the gift which the Knights dedicated on the recovery of Livia had to be taken to Antium because there was no temple of Eques- trian Fortune at Rome. Such a temple certainly existed in the age of Augustus: we have to choose between believing that Augustus, the restorer of temples, demolished this, and suspecting that Tacitus, who knew that the offering was dedi- cated at Antium, invented the reason which determined the pontiffs. Again, it is impossible to reconcile his account of the relationships and successions of the Parthian royal family vv'ith Josephus, an earlier writer who must have been fiimiliar vi'ith the facts. It is not easy to understand how the younger Agrippa could figure among the vderes 7'cgcs in a.d. 54: he had only been in possession of the principality of Chalcis six years, and that principality was neither venerable in itself nor an ancient possession of the house of Herod. In such matters there is some excuse for carelessness or un- certainty : it is more noticeable that Tacitus makes, or seems to make, Felix governor of Samaria, while Cumanus is governor of Judaia; while. Josephus makes Cumanus the successor of Festus, himself the successor of Festus in both offices. Even at Rome all the details of administration are slurred over, even in such an important matter as the fashion in which Ti- berius appointed the consuls; and it is not surprising that more than once, when Tacitus takes leave of an official, it is i^ard to reconcile his summary of his services with the Fasti. Most of these sacrifices to a fastidious taste and more fas- -11 A 2l6 LATIN LITERATURE, tidious style occur in the "Annals," and have been collected in support of one of the most ingenious paradoxes of literary history. It has been suggested that the "Annals" were forged in the fifteenth century by Poggio Bracciolini, and it is certainly curious how little unambiguous mention is to be found of them either in antiquity or the middle ages. Sul- picius Severus quotes with very little change the passage on the martyrdoms in Nero's reign; John of Salisbury, in the twelfth century, speaks of Tacitus as an author who described the cruelties and downfall of tyrants. St. Jerome, in his Chronicle, speaks of thirty volumes of histories from the death of Augustus. Perhaps this is the clearest testimony of all: it is absolutely decisive, unless we suppose that Poggio con- trived to get all the MSS. of the Chronicle interpolated to support his forgery. His testimony proves, in all probability, that the "Annals" and "Histories" had been already ar- ranged as a continuous work, though it is possible to discredit it on the ground that it is difficult to imagine how the "An- nals" can have been compressed into sixteen books, or the " Histories " into fourteen, while even the " Histories " cannot have been extended into thirty books. It is possible and comparatively easy to contend that, instead of Sulpicius Sev- erus copying Tacitus, Poggio Bracciolini copied Sulpicius Severus. It is certain that John of Salisbury would have reckoned Otho and Vitellius, not to mention Galba, as tyrants like Domitian ; so that it would be possible to think that he was speaking of the " Histories," although what he says cer- tainly fits the "Annals" better, for Tiberius, Gains, and Nero bad more opportunity to display their "cruelty" before their "downfall " than Otho or Vitellius. The strong point of the hypothesis is that about 1422 and 1423 Poggio's correspondence proves that he was hesitating between a professorship and some literary enterprise, and finally decided upon the latter as more profitable. There is enough mystery about the matter to suggest that he was med- itating a magnificent forgery, especially as the mystery recurs at the time when the fragment containing the latter half of the "Annals" was upon the point of being sold. TACITUS. 217 It is hardly fatal to the theory that another MS. containing the whole remains of the "Annals" and " Histories " was pro- duced long after Poggio's death, and purchased by Leo X. ; for of course it may be maintained that Poggio improved with practice, and left the second part of his work ready to be cop- ied in an archaic hand. Nor is it fatal that the two principal MSS. from which the rest are held to be derived are both, on the face of them, much older than the fifteenth century, for one of the most suspicious circumstances is that Po^o-io is anxious to get an old MS. of Tacitus in Lombardic letters, and to get into communication with a skilful copyist. Still it is very hard to suppose that two forgers (for by the hypothesis Poggio employed two copyists at least), working in the fif- teenth century, before pala30graphy was at all scientifically studied, should have done their work so well as to escape all suspicion till the nineteenth century was three parts over. There is the further difficulty that all MSS. of the once well- known " Histories" must Lave disappeared except those which Poggio procured for his accomplices, and that the accomplices, to keep fiith with their employer, gave up those MSS. to him or his agents to be destroyed, and that this was punctually done not only in Poggio's life, but after his death, when the temptation to sell the second MS. of the "Histories" either before or after the enlarged copy would have been very strong. Nor is the attestation of the " Histories " so very much clearer than that of the "Annals:" we know, indeed, from the life of the emperor Tacitus that Tacitus the consular had written something which passed under the name of" Augustan History," for the emperor ordered that every public library should have ten copies of his w^orks taken because they were getting rare, and it was to be feared that careless readers might destroy the few existing copies. What is really decisive is the letter of the younger Pliny, in which he describes his uncle's death as a contribution to the historical work on which his friend was then engaged, which canonly have been the " His- tories." But in truth the discussion is idl^e ) it is simply incredible that Poggio or any other scholar of the fifteenth century could II.— 10 o LA TIN LITER A TURE. 2 lo have written two pages of the " Annals." The style of the " Ann • is the u'nique style of the " Histories," wuh Us man- nerisms a little exaggerated: it is in no sense a car.cature an no inference can be drawn from the undoubted difference of one, though this is not quite explained by the difference o lubkct The " Annals " are more personal than the H.s- °or es " because an interest in personalities had grown upon he author : this is a part of the reaction from the hopes which Titan's accession had inspired. The author thinks worse of the world as a whole, and its larger events seem dim and sLow they fail to dwarf the details which are still able to stin.: besides, the matter is in itself more depressing for in- stead of the conflict between armies we have the conflict be- tween the emperors and the nobility, and this conflict .s made still more depressing by the persistent assumption that the victims were alwavs innocent. This assumption is strained very far in the case of Barea, who had allowed a town in his province to defend its art treasures by force against an im- perial agent. According to Tacitus, to put such a governor on his trial for treason was an attack upon virtue itself. Barea may have been, and probably was, virtuous : he can hardly have been loyal ; and we cannot trust 1 acitus that the charge of treason rested so much as he implies upon the • charge of magic, or that the pathetic denials of Barea s daugh- ter were unimpeachably sincere. , ,<- r i But the style does not fall off, at least in the first half of the " Annals," with the author's loss of interest in his subject. It mav even be said to gain both in concentration and flexibi - ityi there are still passages in the " Histories" which are al- most impersonal, ordinary narrative that any accomplished and reserved writer might have written. There is nothing im- personal in the "Annals;" the accent of personal scorn or suspicion or indignation breaks out everywhere; where noth- ing else is characteristic there is always the severe repression and the endless variety of phrase. The stately architectural structure of the age of Cicero and Livy has quite disappeared ; the clauses are at once fragmentary and elaborate ; the sen- tences would be incoherent if they were not condensed ; po- r ACITUS. 219 sition and emphasis are made to do the work of grammatical subordination and conjunctions and auxiliary verbs. The ab- lative absolute and long compound substantives and adjectives attain their fullest development. It is, perhaps, a sign that the richness of suggestion is passing over into decay that nothing is quite simple ; there is a touch of fancy or reflec- tion everywhere, even when nothing is really added, and the author is only reinventing with superfluous ingenuity phrases which had been rubbed threadbare. For instance, he is very fond of marking evening, but he never says simply " at even- ing," but "as the day waned to evening," or "when the day was turned about to evening." In the same way Tacitus can never say simply a man killed himself, even when he does not know or care to mention the manner of death, he prefers to say "he devised his own death," sihi mortem aviscivit. But, after all, the style of the " Annals " is a matchless instrument for expressing and stimulating thought and imagination of a certain order. 220 LA TIN LITER A TURK, SUETONIUS. 221 CHAPTER VI. SUETONIUS. Suetonius Tranquillus was a litterateur of a new kind. He was at once a grammarian and an official ; he was em- ployed as secretary to Trajan and to Hadrian ; he was dis- missed from the latter office for disrespect to the Empress Sa- bina, with whom, according to some, he had an intrigue. He was not a rich man, and his own marriage was unlucky, so that he had to obtain the rights of a father of three children from Trajan by the intercession of the younger Pliny. He has none of the pretensions or the prepossessions of the senatorian WTiters : one may call him unprejudiced or un- scrupulous. He does not aim at blackening any emperor in the way that Tacitus aims at blackening Tiberius or Nero ; he has still less of the genuine though not unofficial enthusiasm of Velleius j he is a gossip, and speaks evil of ever}' one with- out an intention of doing harm. His "Lives of the Caesars " are his principal work, and they are very tantalizing, as they are to us a substitute for history. They are not orderly biographies, but biographical portraits, and the chronological skeleton which we cannot supply was still accessible when he wrote. Pie is careless of truth of de- tail, but all the stories which he gives might have been or ought to have been true. They illustrate a sound view of the character which is under discussion. Very few French or English elogcs have the easy mastery we find in Suetonius's " Lives of the Caesars," or at least in the first six. Whether materials or courage to be frank failed the author, the last six are comparatively meagre. Of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius there was, of course, little to say ; their administration was too short to have a well-marked character, and Suetonius^s plan i \ does not lead him to dwell at length on the events of their rei'^ns. Even on his plan more should have been said of Vespasian and Domitian, but the treatment of the events of their reigns is even more meagre in proportion, just because tradition was fresh ; and he could take for granted the vague knowledge of events, which was all he ever thought it neces- sary to communicate as a framework for personal anecdotes. The life of Julius, if nothing has been lost, begins abruptly, as if the author did not care to give the traditional glories of the Julian house, which must have been hackneyed when he wrote. The first thing we are told is that he lost his father at the a^e of sixteen, and the year after parted wdth a rich wife to whom he had been betrothed in his nonage, in order to es- pouse the daughter of Cinna, the last chief of the Marian party. He makes up for this reticence by a long list of all the conspiracies of which Caesar was suspected in his early years. He came back to Rome from his stay in Bithynia, about which there was scandal that Suetonius takes care to retail, in order to see if he had a chance with Lepidus ; and as he disapproved of Lepidus, and did not believe in his chances, he went to Rhodes to be out of the way and study rhetoric, after which he distinguished himself against Mithri- dates and the pirates. After his term of office in Spain he came back before the time to claim full citizenship for the Latin colonies, and to conspire with Crassus to massacre a competent number of senators to secure the consulate to Sylla and Autronius, while Crassus and he were to be dictator and master of the horse. Suetonius does not give a single hint of Caesar's share in the conspiracy of Catiline, the most formidable of all. The author's reticence appears to be imposed by the pressure of a loyalty which he does not share ; for the treatment of the Civil War is, upon the whole, impartial. We are told cynically how Caesar made a party by bribing all the surroundings of Pompeius and great part of the. senate with gifts or easy loans, while everybody of lower rank, who visited him by invitation or otherwise, received splendid presents. He helped every- body in difficulties who was riot too f^ir gone to be helped 222 LA TIN LITER A TURE. SUETONIUS. 223 decently, and hinted that he should be able to help these too if there came a civil war. Suetonius does not trouble himself to make the negotiations which preceded the Civil War intelligible. He tells us that the tribunes who had fled to Caesar's camp were only the pre- text of the Civil War, and gives a list of the different conject- ures as to the real cause. "Pompeius was in the habit of saying that as Caesar could not finish the works he set afoot out of the means of a private citizen, nor fulfil what he had taught the people to expect of his coming, he decided to con- found everything in one medley. Others say he feared to be compelled to give account of all he had done in his first con- sulship against the laws and auspices and the tribunes, since Marcus Cato had given notice not once or twice, and that with an oath, that he would put him on trial as soon as ever he had let his army go. It was a common forecast that if he came back a j^rivate man he would have to plead his cause, after the precedent of Milo, with armed men round about. This has been made more credible bv the testimonv of Asin- ius Pollio, who says that in the battle of Pharsalia, looking on his enemies smitten and beaten down before him, he uttered these very words : ' They would have it ; after all my achieve- ments I, Gains Caesar, should have been condemned if I had not asked help from the army.' Some think he was caught by the habit of command, and, after weighing his own strength and that of the enemy, took occasion to snatch the mastery which in his first youth he had desired." ^ The campaigns are hurried over in two short chapters," in which all the serious risks of the hero are completely dis- guised : one hardly knows why, for there is no approach to adulation ; not even a laudatory comment on his clemency, so unknown in civil wars. Somethinsf is said of this last in the long enumeration ofj^ersonal traits which follows the sum- mary of the Civil War; but it is put on a level with his kind- ness in beheading the pirates who took him prisoner, before he kept his word by crucifying them, and simply putting a confidential slave, who had undertaken to poison him, to * Suet. "Jul." XXX. ^ lb. xxxiv., xxxv. 4i>H It death. This praise is balanced by an elaborate indictment of his o-reed. When governor in Spain he borrowed shame- lessly from the natives, and actually plundered several Lusi- tanian towns without provocation. In Gaul he pillaged fanes and temples of the gods that were full of offerings, oftener for plunder than for punishment, and so he came to great plenty of gold, and could offer it for sale in Italy and the provinces twenty-five per cent, below its value.' Here it is doubtful how t^r Suetonius understands his story : it seems, upon the whole, that Caesar only offered gold in practically unlimited quantity tbr silver at the legal rate of exchange, while Suetonius imag- ined that the legal rate of exchange was as high as it was in his own day. Of course his informants knew that gold even then commanded a premium. But after commenting on Caesar's virtues, including his efforts to restore order and external decency by considerable severities, Suetonius decides with startling plainness that everybody thought he was justly put to death. Suetonius re- jects all the dramatic incidents of Ccesar's death and burial : he does not believe in the reproachful cry to Brutus or in the ironical speech of Antonius at the funeral ; on the other hand, he believes implicitly in all the omens and prophecies, and in Caesar's own feeling that his time was come. In the life of Octavius he reaches the type which he pre- serves thenceforward : he begins at the very beginning with the legendary history of the Octavii, the leading house at Ve- litrai, which had come down in the world in the century before the birth of Augustus. Though his father had been pra3tor, he could be plausibly accused of speculating not only in silver, but in the jobs of the Campus Martius, for it was believed he was among those who undertook the lucrative office of dis- tributing bribes. The son was born at Rome, and the place of his birth, Suetonius tells us, was turned into a chapel long after his death, while the cupboard in the old house outside Velitrai, which served as his nursery, was too holy to be enter- ed except as an act of reverence, for when the owner attempted to use the place as a bedroom he and his bed were turned out ^ Suet. "Jul."] V. 224 LATIN LITERATURE. SUETONIUS. of doors by miracle. And all miracles which were alleged in the honor of Augustus are admitted without hesitation, though Suetonius hardly admires him. No ancient author is so copious on his cruelty up to the war of Perusia, and the official tra- dition that he was forced to consent to the proscriptions is treated with a very perfunctory respect. The contrast between his virtues and vices is designedly drawn out as a riddle, and no scheme of his policy, such as we find even in Dio, is apparently present to the writer's mind. The list of his domestic measures is a pretty long one; but their dates, and generally their details, are left to conjecture. It seems that we are meant to feel that the praise predominates; but a modern reader will feel the ad- missions are too great — for one thing, if Suetonius is to be believed, the emperor was little better than a coward. The most mteresting parts of the book are the purely person^ll traits, such as his dislike to dwarfs and idiots and monsters of all kinds, and his dislike to early rising, which was a singularity in Rome; for hard-working men began early, while Augustus went on late. He agreed with a good many modern statesmen in eating at irregular hours, though he adhered in other respects to the extreme foshion of Southern abstemiousness. Suetonius knew his autographs, which were careless and full of mannerisms; he inclined to pho- netic spelling, and did not divide his lines neatly, but ran them on anyhow till he came to the end of his word or phrase. He was a purist in his distaste for archaic and outlandish words, but his partiality for certain catchwords bordered upon slang. One may add that he was naturally cold-blooded, for he scraped his skin till he was sore. In some ways the life of Tiberius is more instructive. For one thing, it admits of being more closely compared with Tacitus than any other of the earlier lives; for another, Sueto- nius is not so overpowered by his subject: almost always, when he difters from Tacitus, he seems to differ for the better. The long enumeration of the early troubles of that emperor and his hunted childhood explain much that is enigmatical in his later life. Even the genealogy is significant, and we have 225 m\ to thank Suetonius for our knowledge that the Claudii had a burial-place assigned to them under the Capitol, though he obviously does not know whether they settled in Rome in the days of Romulus or Brutus. The family pride, or rather one should call it haughtiness, combined very oddly with a real timidity, partly congenital and partly the result of cir- cumstance, to train the emperor to the singular irony and hypocrisy which marked his tyranny. We are told repeat- edly that Augustus had a poor opinion of him, pitied the Roman people who would be ground so slowly between toothless jaws, and hesitated seriously as to whether he should not assign the succession to Germanicus, or even to Agrippa, his own grandson, whom he visited in the last months of his life to see whether he could not be brought home from exile. And it does not weaken the effect of this that Suetonius quotes many passages from Augustus's letters when he has resigned himself to the inevitable, full of the praise that would sooth a sensitive, suspicious officer to whom the emperor had certainly behaved badly. The whole narrative of his hard-drinking youth and his imprudent retreat to Rhodes, and the abject shifts to which he descended when he found that his retirement had turned into a disgrace, dis- pose decisively of Tacitus's solemn paradox that he was of excellent life and repute while he was a private citizen or in command under Augustus; while Suetonius does full jus- tice to his really admirable services as a general both before and after his retirement to Rhodes. His hesitation in proclaiming his assumption of the em- pire is explained by the fear, which Tacitus does not men- tion, that the armies might pronounce in favor of Germanicus, with or without encourasfement from the latter. Nothinsr substantial is said of Germanicus's campaigns, but, on the other hand, the account of Libo's conspiracy is much clearer. The author does not care to explain that this was the first specimen of the persecution tp which the stupid nobility were liable, nor that Libo was in all probability crazy, but he does not throw any doubt on the reality of the conspiracy. Ihis is not to spare Tiberius, for Suetonius is rather depre- I- n. 10' 226 LA TIN LITER A TURE. SUETONIUS, 227 ciatory of his munificence to the pubhc, and hints that his advance of a Lirge loan from the exchequer without interest to debtors with real but unavaiLible assets was made neces- sary to mask the failure of his schemes to compel capitalists to invest two thirds of their resources in Italian land. In the same spirit he tells us that when Tiberius was "correcting the morals of the state," he appointed L. Piso (whom Tacitus praises for his moderation, temper, and manliness) prefect of the city, because in the course of a three days' uninterrupted drinking-bout he had found him " a friend for all hours." Again, when the aediles took up the question of sumptuary laws, and some strict senators were anxious for a thorough ref- ormation, Tacitus gives us the ironical letter of Tiberius and the hollow debate in the senate; Suetonius tells lis the regu- lations which the aediles were actually set to carry out. Suetonius is as capricious as Tacitus in the lives of Gains, Claudius, and Nero : in every case the life up to the accession is better than the life after, although there was no abrupt break in the case of Claudius. The peculiarities of Claudius are explained at great length, and it appears that an extreme gaiuhcrie, and in later life a very weak memory, were the worst of them, and it is surprising to see how completely they ruined his life. He was treated like an idiot, and then the public were surprised to see how completely he was in the hands of his household. The public were more scandalized that he sometimes made mistakes when judging in person than edified at his resolution to break through the system of keep- ing trials pending for years. If a party to a trial might attend when he pleased to find it perfectly convenient, trials would never be decided, and so Claudius always gave it in favor of the party who was present, and is the true father of the prov- erb, "The absent are always in the wrong." The legend that he only heard one side has the same respectable origin. There are very amusing stories of the way advocates used to presume on his good-nature: they would never allow him to rise until they had done with him ; they would call after him, and, if he did not stop, catch at the fringe of his toga. One, after apologizing at great length for the absence of a witness, and evading the inquiries of the court as to the cause, had the ingenious impudence to explain at last, " He is dead; I sup- pose he might be dispensed with." Another, returning thanks for permission to reply, added, "After all, it is commonly granted." Certainly Claudius, who knew himself to be irrita- ble, and that it was easy to make him permanently angry, had a riirht to boast that his irritation was short and harmless, if he could hardly say that his anger was always justifiable. The stories of his censorship are less piquant: he deprived a wealthy and distinguished Asiatic knight of his horse (and his equestrian rank) because he could not speak Latin, while he passed over a youthful profligate with a reprimand, "There is really no occasion for me to know the name of your mistress." What is curious is that, with so much shrewd good-nature, Claudius combined so much of the cruelty of an overgrown schoolboy. A man was condemned to be flogged to death at Alba, and Claudius thought he should like to see the cere- mony; as the executioner was away, Claudius waited patiently till one could be fetched from Rome. When a forger was brought up for trial, and somebody called out that his hands ought to be cut off, he actually ordered up a knife and a chop- ping-block, though it appears from Suetonius that he was stopped in time. Our author is so neutral and phlegmatic that he hardly gives us an opportunity of distinguishing the cruelty of Clau- dius, who was a diligent and public- spirited administrator, from that of Gaius and Nero, who were both thorough egoists : he recounts the worst excesses of both without any spontane- ous disgust. It is therefore surprising how full he is on the early benevolence of both; though he does not draw^ the in- ference, it seems that they w^ere both much inspired at first by their situation. Before their accession both indulged them- selves in baseness ; afterwards, for a time, both exerted them- selves to be worthy of their place. In his life of both, Sue- tonius divides their good and evil deeds sharply and without chronological order. In the case of Nero it is surprising to find not only the persecution of the Christians, but also his artistic exercises placed among the actions which were either 228 LATIN UTERATURE. commendable or blameless. But his chariot - driving and sin-ing are qualified as severely as Tacitus could qualify them, though Suetonius does not seem shocked that hcin- duced senators and knights to perform m public One notices that both Gaius and Nero had the feeling that the senate was the fifth wheel which was likely to upset the coach. They both were suspected of a desire to abolish the senate and manage the provinces and the armies by Roman knights, thouo-h Nero carried his hypocrisy so far as to assign amp e alloN^nces for the support of the dignity of decayed noble families. . , Of all the emperors there is none whom Suetonius s candor depreciates more than Galba ; if he is to be trusted, during the later part of his rule in Spain Galba deliberately elected as a matter of prudence to play the part of King Log, while his personal morality was almost on a level with that of ii- berius. Otho, on the other hand, gains a good deal from his narrative: it is clear that he retained much of the noble nature of his father, one of the best men of the time. For ten years he was an exemplary provincial governor, and these years were a better clew to his true character than the ele- gant ostentation with which he had sown his wild oats before he fell in love with his own wife, whom he was compelled to abandon to Nero. Suetonius has special information from his father (a namesake, and no doubt a client, of the famous Suetonius Paulinus) that Otho had a genuine conscientious abhorrence of civil war, and would not have had Galba mas- sacred upon any account, if he had thought any one would ficrht for him. It is noticeable that he omits all mention ot what Tacitus passed over lightly-the strong probability that, if the war between Otho and Vitellius had been protracted, their officers would have treated over their heads : while he is more respectful than Tacitus to the negotiations between the principals. Vitellius fares badly with him; he mentions hardlv anything to his praise, except his honest anxiety that his escort should have their breakfasts, and even this praise is qualified by the mention of the way in which Vitellius vouchsafed to guarantee that he had had his own. SUETONIUS, The Flavian dynasty is treated, upon the whole, with marked respect, " though Domitian suffered the due penalty of his cruelty and covetousness." It is curious that though Vespa- sian set his face against pedigree-makers, who might have disguised the real facts by their inventions, it was quite im- possible for Suetonius to ascertain whether his great-grand- father was a thorough Italian. There was a report that the ffreat-irrand father came from beyond the Po, and was a con- itractor for the gangs of harvestmen and vintagers who used to come out of Umbria into the Sabine country properly so called. The grandfather had served on the side of Pom- ipeius, the father had never served at all ; but this was too {much for Roman loyalty: historians would have it he served fas long as his health allowed, and only differed whether he ihad reached the rank oi primipilus, or had only attained to be a centurion when discharged. He earned a more solid dis- tinction as a revenue farmer, for several cities set up statues and inscriptions in his honor. After this he lent money at interest to the Helvetii. Vespasian himself served a long round of offices rather above his means before he came to the empire. In Nero's reign he was so heavily in debt that he had to pledge his property to his brother, and contract for the supply of mules upon the highways in order to keep up his rank. Even this was not enough : he had to make money out of rash young men who wanted to be senators in despite of their fathers. However, he never sank so low as to force himself to keep awake during Nero's performances in Greece. He actually wms in danger of death until the revolt in Judaea broke out, when he seemed insignificant and able enough to put it down. Suetonius abstains from all reflection upon his household arrangements, though his wife was the cast-off mis- tress of a Roman knight, abandoned by her own father, who afterwards paid Vespasian the compliment of proving that she was not only a freedwoman but a freewoman. Naturally enough, after his wife's death he took a real freedwoman for concubine and treated her almost as well as a wife, while upon her death he provided himself with many successors. Most of the life of Vespasiai) is taken up with the presages 230 LA TIN LITER A TURE. of his accession and his death, and with his humorous econo- mies. The best of the latter is the story of one of his house- hold ^ who wanted an appointment for somebody he called his brother. Vesj^asian inquired what the "brother" was to pay, and took the fee on the appointment himself, and told the brother to find another " brother ;" " since," he said, " the one you told me of is mine." He was very nearly impartial be- tween the senate and the knights, for he decided that, if a senator began abusing a knight, the latter had the right to retaliate. His administration, according to Suetonius, was nearly faultless, only he raised a revenue upon contracts, on which no ruler who respected himself properly would have made a profit. It is strange to see him praised for not punishing a Cynic philosopher who met him on his way to exile and showed him no sign of respect ; and for commending a pleader who ventured to say, " If my client is worth a hundred million sesterces,^ what is that to Ccesar?" Confiscations seem to have offended public opinion much less than other sources of revenue, which only offended good taste. It is clear from Suetonius that Vespasian was by no means chary in spend- ing: he actually objected to do his public works cheap, be- cause he was anxious to feed " the poor people." His action in reference to the standing question of suits in arrear was conspicuously moderate: he only issued special commissions to overtake the work. Domitian had to go further : he quashed all processes that were over five years old, as Augustus had done, and enacted that whoever recommenced such a process should do so at his peril. The impression that Suetonius gives is that Domitian was a capable and not unpopular ad- ministrator. He by no means endorses Pliny's view as to the cruelty with which he punished the Vestals who had been false to the duties of their station : the executions which he ordered are treated as if they were just of a piece with the restoration of the exclusive privilege of the knights in the theatre. Suetonius states expressly that there was no such reaction of public feeling against him as against Nero. ' Suet. " Vesj)." .\.\ii. = Not quite 1,000,000/. SUETONIUS. 231 The " Lives of the Caesars" are the only works of Suetonius which have reached us in anything like integrity, but through- out classical antiquity he continued to be a popular compiler. Not only does St. Jerome refer, in the Preface to the "Eccle- siastical Writers" and the "Letter to Desiderius," to his "Lives of Men of Letters" as a model which he was asked to imitate, but Servius Probus, Suidas, and Tzetzes, and the au- thor of the " Etymologicon Magnum," continue to quote him as far as the thirteenth century; in the Byzantine period he took the place of Varro. A work on " Grammarians and Rhetoricians," containing notes which in neither case seem to go below the Augustan ap-e, is printed in his works with Lives of Terence, Horace, Lucan, Pliny the Elder, and Juvenal, which are probably ex- tracted from the work which St. Jerome imitated. In addition to these, he wrote probably twelve books of Praia, or Miscellanies, and four books oi Ludicra ; the latter probably cover the book Tr^pi 'E\/\»/j'tVw»^ 7rai^iu>y kcu tVytiurwi' ("On Greek Sports and Public Games"), and the three -n-fpi 'Vwnaioji' TTcuciwy Kui Oeiopiwy ("On Roman Sports and Public Shows"), which Suidas mentions: the latter is quoted by Ter- tullian, and it is thought that both were written in Greek and in Latin. The Prafa probably cover the treatises on proper names, on the Roman year, which included much archceology on different festivals, besides chronology, on the names and shapes of dresses and shoes, on Rome and its laws and cus- toms, and a supplementary course of philosophy treating of the universe, animal nature, and perhaps mineralogy and bot- any. A defence of Cicero as a politician and an etymological dictionary of abuse were almost certainly written in Greek. His work on the pedigree of the twelve Caisars, in eight books, is probably a recast of that which we possess. His style is terse in a very high degree: he has no preten- sion to be epigrammatic or abrupt ; sometimes he is elliptical through carelessness. The only "corrupt" phrase that he can be convicted of using is "numerous" in the sense of " many," which shows that he belonged to a generation which had lost its hold upon the traditional meaning of the word. 232 LA TIN LITER A TURE. FLORUS, 233 It should be added that he uses technical and official words more freely than is compatible with perfect purity of style. He requires a commentary in the same way as a racy Anglo- Indian novel. CHAPTER VII. FLORUS. L. Ann/EUS Florus was in all probability the last survivor of the literary movement which expired in the second century. Some of the jMSS. of his work gave his name as Julius Florus, a poet of the days of Hadrian, who rallied him on his work; a good many critics were disposed to insist that his name was Seneca, because Lactantius quotes Seneca as having distin- guished the four ages of Rome which coincide exactly with the four ages of Florus. In fact, we may believe that he was connected both with the house of Seneca and with the Florus whom Hadrian knew ; but he can hardly be the contemporary of eitlier Seneca or Hadrian, as he speaks of an interval of nearly two hundred years between Augustus and his own day. Now Augustus only received that title in 27 b.c. : conse- quently Florus, if he used language with any accuracy, must have WTitten between a.d. 148 and 173, even if we suppose that he dates from the accession of Augustus, after the battle of Actium, not from his decease, which would be the more logical way of putting it, as the author complains that, during the period of nearly two hundred years which he describes, the empire had been simmering away in old age, till, to the surprise of all the world, it renewed its youth for a season un- der Trajan. Augustus was a conquering emperor up to the defeat of Varus, and therefore the old age of the empire can- not be fairly dated from his accession. It is a more doubtful question whether the author wrote after Varus, whose not wholly barren campaigns might have ranked as another revi- val of the aged empire. There is one more clew to his iden- tity which deserves mention. A certain [P.] Annius Florus, in the introduction to a lost discussion of the question whether 234 LA TIN LITER A TURE. FLO R US. 235 Vergil is to be considered an orator or a poet, condoled in the reign of Domilian with a friend who believed that the em- peror had deprived him of the prize in the competitions of the Capitol, in a style which is very like the Epitome— there are the same airs of independence, the same tendency to windy rhetoric; the author congratulates himself that he is what he is, an independent grammarian of Tarraco, without even a salary from the state, rather than anything else from a centurion up to an emperor, though everybody would think it great promotion for him to be made a centurion. All the MSS. of the Epitomist give either the prcenomen of Lucius or none, but it is quite admissible that P. might stand for Foeta instead of Puhlius. The best MS. gives the principal name as Julius, and this again has been explained by supposing that it is a clerical error for Lucius. The work itself falls into two parts, one of which deals with all the foreign wars down to the conquest of Gaul by Caesar; the second deals with the civil strife from the days of the Gracchi to the battle of Actium, and one or two of the more important foreign campaigns of Augustus. The arrangement is curious, and does not harmonize very well with the four pe- riods into which, after (the Elder?) Seneca, the whole history is divided: the years of the monarchy correspond to the in- fancy of Rome ; the years in which the Italian peninsula was conquered correspond to the vigor of youth: it is in that age that Rome was most fruitful in great men ; then comes the period in which Rome conquered the world, which is divided into two halves, marked by the fall of Carthage and the legis- lation of the Gracchi. The first is the true Golden Age: the second is a time of calamity within and even without ; with the establishment of the empire under Augustus old age sets in. The work was undoubtedly popular through the middle ages as a spirited compendium of ancient history: the writer, though grandiloquent, has a certain insight: he observes that the history of Rome is the history of the world : his way of saying that Rome conquered all known nations is to say that she pacified them. He is fond of philosophizing about the way in which mild climates destroy the energy of vigorous races. He is curiously destitute of political opinions; he moralizes or pragmatizes about the struggles of the republic just as the writer of a modern schoolbook might do : he has no liking or disliking for the empire, nor much understanding of it. He tells us (ii. 54) that Augustus was made " perpetual dictator." One cannot tell whether he sides in the Civil War with Julius or Pompeius ; almost his strongest expression of feeling is a regret that Julius did not succeed in stopping Pompeius at Brundisium, and so end the Civil War. Florus, like many other writers, imagines that the battles of Pharsalia and Philippi were fought on the same site : this proves that he is not exclusively dependent upon Livy. But he follows him in the main, and most MSS. and editions call his work an epitome of Livy's. He tries to improve upon his author occasionally— for instance, Livy, speaking of the first Etruscan campaign of Q. Fabius Maximus, says "he drew up towards the hills;" according to Florus, he "seized the upper ranges, whence he could thunder down at pleasure." His style is monotonous and tricky; he is much given to intro- ducing figures with quasi, not so often with vehif; he deals largely in frigid exclamations and questions, and often informs us that this or that taxes the resources of language. He uses horror and its derivatives almost as expletives in the way in which " awful " is used now. The marshes, the prison, chains, and exile, " horrificaverant Marii majestatem," "had added awe to his majesty." This and many phrases have a certain poetical color, as "if verse were breaking down into prose— for instance, we have radiarentur, where a safer writer would have said iUustrarcntur,oi\\\Q virtues of Augustus; and at rare in- tervals a broken phrase reminds us of Tacitus. With all his faults of style and arrangement, his compendium is spirited, and might be read with ease and pleasure by any one who, as the author intended, was gaining his first and only acquaint- ance with Roman history from it. 236 LATIN LITERATURE, THE JURISTS, 237 CHAPTER VIII. THE JURISTS. The reign of Hadrian was marked by an important legis- lative change. Salvius Julianus, praetor a.d. 131, when he drew lip his edict, codified the whole body of Roman equity as it then existed, and his work was sanctioned by an impe- rial constitution and a decree of the senate, and became binding on all his successors: they retained in theory the right of declaring how new points would be decided during their term of office, but they lost the power of modifying the law as a whole. Salvius Julianus belonged to the liberal and monarchical school of jurists, who traced up their tradition to Ateius Capito, who was consul a.d. 5. He did not attempt to work out legal principles for their own sake, and professed to build upon precedent and tradition; but he only recog- nized precedents which were sensible and convenient. He had the generosity and discretion to speak highly of his elder rival,' ^\. Antistius Labeo, who had declined the con- sulate which Augustus pressed upon him, though his re- publicanism was not too stiff to accept the praetorsliip. He died A.D. 13, at about the age of seventy, after writing 400 volumes, a task to which he devoted himself in the country for the half of every year. His text-book, which only oc- cupied three books, was abridged by Javolenus Priscus under Trajan, and his "Probabilia" are quoted in the "Di- gest." Capito's great work was the " Conjectanea." l\vo other lawyers of the Augustan age were Bla^sus and Fabius Mela. " - Neither Capito nor Labeo gave his name to the school which he founded. At first Labeo, as the cleverer writer and 1 A. Gellius, Xlll.xii. i. I ^ the more independent character, seems to have had the more distinguished representatives. The first was M. Cocceius Nerva, the grandfather of the emperor, who was consul a.d. 22, a year before the death of Capito, and held such a high position that Tiberius was distressed by his suicide eleven years later. The heir of the learning of Capito was Masurius Sabinus, who was only a knight, and could not have ventured to enter what was rapidly becoming the close profession of a public teacher of law without the special encouragement of Tiberius. He was dependent upon his pupils for mainte- nance, so perhaps admitted more: at any rate he gave his name to his master's school, and his "Answers" were a pop- ular text-book, upon which Pomponius, Paulus, and Ulpian all thought it necessary to comment. He also wrote three books upon civil law, which were introductory. Sempronius Procu- lus, the successor of Nerva, does not seem to have been of much more importance in the state than Sabinus. His first name is uncertain, but he overshadowed the reputation of Nerva's own son, who had also the ambition of being a juris- consult, and gave his name to the school of Labeo. Both Sabinus and Proculus were succeeded by men of position, who in turn gave their names to schools they did not found. Q. Cassius Longinus, the pupil of Sabinus, consul a.d. 30, w^as excerpted by Javolenus Priscus, and gave his name to the Cassian school. Pegasus, the son of a captain in the fleet of Misenum, named after his father^s figure-head, was appointed prefect of the city under Vespasian, and gave his name both to the Senatus Consult um Fcgasianwn^ which dealt with trusts and legacies, and to the Pegasian school. The last conspic- uous representatives of this school were Neratius, who filled high office under Trajan, and was thought of for his suc- cessor, and Juventius Celsus, who was celebrated for the brusqueness with which he replied to silly questions. Cae- lius Sabinus, who was consul suffect a.d. 69, and was the highest legal authority under Vespasian, wrote upon the edict of the curule aidiles. His successor was the learned and eccentric Javolenus Priscus, who had the misfortune to be disliked by the younger Pliny as much as anybody 238 LATIN LITERATURE. THE JURISTS. 239 who was not a delator could be. Pliny mentions another Sabinian contemporary/ Urseius Ferox, whose answer to a friend struck him as learned and hesitating. He seems to have heard Sabinus, and Salvius Julianus addressed him. Besides his work as a legislator, Julianus was a voluminous writer. Out of his ninety books " Digestorum," fifty-eight dealt with the topics of the praetor's edict, and were completed un- der Hadrian ; the rest were written under Antoninus Pius. Hadrian was careful that his legislation should hamper the activity of learned lawyers as little as possible. He laid down the principle that every senator who had served the office of prcetor had ipso facto the///^ rcspondcndi, which since the days of Augustus had been confined to such lawyers as had re- ceived an express imperial authorization. Moreover, he made the privilege more valuable, as well as more accessible, by de- creeing that the unanimity of jurisconsults should have the force of law, while when they diftered the judge was at liberty to follow which he pleased, so that he followed one. Other important contemporaries of Julianus were L. Fulvius, Albur- nius Valens, and Sextus Pomponius, praetor a.d. 138, who wrote an interesting little tract on the history of Roman law and magistracies, wliich survives in a mutilated shape in the " Di^^est." AVe have also an interesting quotation from the seventh book of his letters,' where he says that up to his seventy-eighth year he had thought learning the only reason for living. He wrote a handbook and thirty-five books of Commentaries on Sabinus. M. Vindius Verus, consul a.d. 138, was a follower of Julian. Sex. Caecilius Africanus, who was a correspondent of Julian, wrote admiringly of the twelve tables, and composed nine books of questions. Terentius Clemens was one of the first writers to devote himself to the working of the Leges Julia et Papia Poppcca on the interest- ing subject of inheritance. He was followed by Junius Mau- ricianus (a pupil of Julian), who wrote on the same subject, and also on penal law ; by Venuleius Saturninus, who wrote 1 "Ep."L xxii. I. ' Correspondence on legal questions formed a large section of many lawyers' works. on all points of practice ; and by L. Volusius Mscianus, who conducted the legal education of M. Aurelius, and wrote on trusts (then a branch of the law of inheritance) and on the Judicia Fiiblica. Ulpiiis Marcellus wrote, under M. Aurelius, thirty books " Digestorum," and one " Responsorum." Gaius, "who did not possess the jus respondetidi, wrote, besides his " Institutes," which were published a.d. 161, seven books on daily practice that were called golden, and six books on the twelve tables, beside works on the law of trust and inheritance. He seems to have been a native of the eastern parts of the empire, and, according to Mommsen, lived and taught all his life in the Troad. Cervidius Scaevola was even more impor- tant than Gaius, for he was the tutor of Papinian. His forty books " Diirestorum " were written after the death of M. Au- relius, who is quoted under his official title as Divus Marcus. Papirius Justus, about the same time, wrote twenty books on imperial constitutions, ^milius Papinianus studied with the emperor Septimius Severus under Cervidius, and was ap- 13ointed by him praetorian prefect : he was massacred a.d. 212. His works date from the reign of Severus: he wrote nineteen books of " Answers" and thirtv-seven of "Questions," besides works on the law of marriage, inheritance, adultery, and police. Callistratus, whose fragments are full of Graecisms, wrote four books on the rights of the exchequer, and two of" Questions" under Severus, and a work on procedure under Severus and Caracalla. A Claudius Tryphoninus wrote on Scaevola's " Di- gest." Domitius Ulpianus, of Tyre, who was assassinated a.d. 228, during a military revolt under Alexander Severus, wrote his voluminous works under Caracalla. There were eighty- three books on the Edict, fifty-one on Sabinus, a book of " Rules," and two of " Institutes," which we still have in frag- ments. His work " De Excusationibus " dates from a.d. 211. Julius Paulus was also praetorian prefect under Alexander Severus, but survived him : though he belonged to the western half of the empire, he is a worse writer than Ulpian. He wrote eighty books on the Edict and five books on sentences (a manual for his son) before a.d. 212. The three books on "Decrees" were earlier; his '^Responsa" date between a.d. / 240 LA TIN LITER A TURK. 222 and 235. ^lius Marcianus, among other works, com- posed six books of " Institutions." Herennius Modestinus, who also is cited in the " Digest," was /n?A'^///^ vigiliim.oi head of police, a.d. 244 PART VII. FRONTO AND HIS SCHOOL. CHAPTER I. FRONTO. As Cicero stands at the head of one literary period, Seneca of another, Quinctilian of another, so Fronto stands at the head of a period too : he is at once the lawgiver and the ex- ample of his associates and successors. We are in a position to judge accurately of the claims of Cicero and Seneca; even Quinctilian's reputation is intelligible: he was an admirable if a wearisome stylist, and it is easy to believe that he was yet more admirable as a teacher. But Fronto is completely in- explicable : he was regarded in his own day as a rival to Cicero, to whom even Pliny the Younger could only rank as a successor, and his reputation lasted quite as long as that of others ; he had a great name in the fifth century. Most of his works are lost, and there is nothing in his fragments to explain his celebrity. He came at an unfortunate time : his pupil, Marcus Aure- lius, wrote his private meditations in Greek ; and, in fact, it may be said that, from the reign of Hadrian onwards till the translation of the empire to the East, the intellectual needs of the capital, such as they were, were supplied by the eastern half of the empire; all the upper classes learned Greek in the nursery, and it was the language of fashionable conversation. Even as far back as the days of Claudius, a barbarian chief, who had learned Latin and Greek, could be congratulated by the emperor on his knowledge of "our tongues." All people IL— II 242 LATIN LITERATURE. who professed to be serious entertained a Greek philosopher: their only reason for keeping up Latin Hterature at all was that the cleverest people who had received a literary educa- tion wished to be poets or historians or orators— an ambition which was sustained by the competitions endowed by Domi- tian, and by the professorships which were founded by his predecessors and successors. Another cause, whose opera- tion was still more transitory, was the revival of spirits among the aristocracy on the death of Domitian. They felt that it had been unsafe to think or speak, and during the reign of Trajan oratory and history were zealously cultivated, and everybody played at poetry. Besides, for those who could not be idle, there was a more serious work provided by Hadrian's legislation. From the reign of Augustus jurists had shown an increasing inclination to write, but their works had not been systematic ; each had dealt with the particular department of case law which hap- pened to attract him. But matters altered after the decision of Hadrian that the city praetors should lose the right, which their predecessors had enjoyed, of laying down the law accord- ing to their own sense of equity by the edict which they pub- lished on coming into office. Henceforth all prcetors were to act upon the same standing edict, which was called \\\^ edict lun pcrpduum, and the process of modifying and improving the law passed from the hands of judges into the hands of writers of text-books, who were at lib- erty to prove that the edict meant whatever it ought to mean. Henceforward a great lawyer could only hope to make him- self felt as the writer of a text-book, and not as a judge, and consequently Roman law competed more and more severely with Latin literature. But there was one province where the aspirations of the literary class could appeal to an unexhausted public. Pleaders, Juvenal tells us, had a better chance of a living in Africa than Rome, and as the tribes of the Atlas had been effectually re- pressed, the commercial importance of Carthage steadily in- creased throughout the second century. Its administrative importance made it the centre of a kind of literary culture, PRONTO. 243 and, as Latin was the language of administration, it was, on the whole, more likely that this culture would be Latin than Greek. It naturally had some peculiarities: the African set- tlers of Utica and Carthage brought with them the plain speech of the republican period, and escaped the influence of the refinements which came in and went out of fashion in the capital, even more completely than the villagers of New England, who have preserved so many idioms of the seven- teenth century. This was important, because the literary class at Rome had reached the point at which it is easier to make books about books than about life, and of course for such a purpose the oldest books are the best. Consequently, an African settled at Rome, if he were clever enough, was in the best position to put himself at the head of an antiquarian revival. M. Cornelius Fronto seems to have been a man of con- siderable property, though he speaks in a deprecating way of his modest means, which is not surprising, considering that his correspondence dates from a time when he had long been familiar with emperors. He says what any one who was not as scandalously rich as Seneca might be expected to say in writing to an emperor. It is possible that his brother, who was also a consul, may have been the capitalist of the family. Fronto himself was a distinguished advocate, and apparently had more business than Quinctilian ; for a reflection on a rhdor might have wounded Quinctilian, while Fronto's position as an orator was too firmly fixed for him to be hurt by an allusion to a causidicus. Still, the position of the orator was so much lower, and that of the emperor so much higher, that it was promotion for the first orator of the day to be appointed private tutor to the heir of the empire. Cicero only became a teacher when his career as orator was spoiled, and none of the powerful advocates of the earlier empire would have dreamed of accepting such a charge; even Seneca, who had no independent position, was intrusted with the whole education of Nero. Fronto was only the Latin teacher of rhetoric: he was liable to be accused of being jealous of other members of the household ; he frankly admitted that he was jealous of philosophy, which he thought 244 LATIN LITERATURE. would spoil his pupil as an orator. Characteristically he thought that oratory was the higher and more difficult study, and that philosophy, where there was no trouble in framing a prelude or in picking a vocabulary, was a refuge for laziness, which was rather a plausible charge when we consider the pains which Epictetus had taken to purge philosophy from all spec- ulative and rhetorical ambition. The perfect Stoic tended to go through a round of duties with zealous, disinterested punctual- ity, without caring for any of them, or putting his strength into any. Fronto found it difficult to believe that his pupil was as attentive as he was gifted : he could not be brought to see that it mattered much what compound of a verb was used, and Fronto has to admit that, if any one chose to say he was a senator or prefect, and superior to grammar, nothing could be said to the contrary ; only, after all, we have the choice of rough-hewing language with mallet and crowbar like quarry- men, or carving it with a graver and light hammer like jewel- lers.' Fortunately, in the same letter Fronto explains how in his judgment language might be made as precious as jewelry. If we speak of washing the face, the proper word is colluere; if of washing the pavement of a h^\\\,pclliierc ; labere is the proper word for washing the cheeks with tears; lavare for washing clothes; ablitere is the right word for washing ^^dust; eliiere for washing out a stain ; and, if the stain will not come out without risk to the stuff, then it is worth while to read Plautus in order to know that we had better say clavere. Then diltiere is riiiht for wine and \\ox\^\ , prohierc for rinsing out the throat, siihliicre for washing down a horse's legs. Again, Aurelius is not sufficiently careful in the order of words : he does not see why one ought to say tricipiiem Gerjo?iam and 7iavem iriremem. Of course Fronto is quite right; every- body knows that Geryon had three heads, and that a trireme was a ship, so that the epithet in one case, and the substantive in the other, would be superfluous if not put first. Aurelius is commended for attempting a figure in a speech on the Par- thians, who, it seems, wore loose sleeves " in order that there might be room to keep the heat in suspense." Unfortunately, 1 " Ad Marc. Caes." iv. 3. FRONTO, 245 it was quite impossible to hang up heat in a loose sleeve, and the object was not to keep the heat in, but to let it out; and then Fronto gives a long list of words that would have done better, though a modern reader will think that none of them are very good. Another merit of Aurelius is that he is ambitious, though prematurely, to compose a speech of the most difficult kind, the speech of simple display, though he had read nothing more inspiring than Cato and Gracchus.* Later on, he is praised for his success in turning a Greek gnomic saying into something quite worthy of Sallust,' and exhorted to persevere in the same exercise, never being satisfied till he has turned the same sentiment two or three times. Later still, we find Fronto in a more indulgent mood : he is seriously anxious that he cannot get his pupil to take a holiday, just as before he complained that he could not get him to apply himself. Fronto's idea of a holiday' was to polish one's self with Plautus, swell one's self with Accius, sooth one's self with Lucretius, fire one's self with Ennius— or,if appetite for such delights failed, at any rate to sleep one's fill. To fire one's self with Ennius rather than with the " ^Eneid" or the "Pharsalia," to sooth one's self with Lucretius rather than with Horace or the "Georgics," seems at first sight a singu- lar aspiration, till we remember the French Romanticists of the second generation, few of whom cared to read any work of the Grand Sieclc. The latest writer he approves is Sallust, Cice- ro the latest whom he admires— very much upon the usual grounds, only he decidedly prefers * his letters to his orations, in which he anticipates the judgment of most modern readers. He complains that Cicero never treats his readers to a new and unexpected word, giving several reasons for the omission : that he did not choose to take the trouble to hunt up such words ; that he had a spirit above such niceties; that he was satisfied with a simple and dignified vocabulary. No doubt this is bet- ter than to use far-fetched words inappropriately; but what Fronto really likes is a constant stream of far-fetched words » Front. " Ad Maic. Goes." iii. 16. ^ " De Feriis Alsiensibus," 3. =» lb. II. • * " Ad M. Ant. Imp." ii. 5. 246 LATIN LITERATURE. coming in appropriately, which was also what Theophile Gau- tier liked— and Fronto'knew, like Theophile Gautier,that this could only be got by reading up old literature ; no doubt, if a Latin ^ilictionary had existed, it would have been his favorite reading. The only one of Fronto's numerous works which has reached us in anything like a complete form is his " Correspondence," from which we learn the names of his principal speeches — on behalf of the Bithynians, and of the people of Ptolemais; a speech against Herodes Atticus' (M. Aurelius's Greek rhetoric master), and against a certain Pelops, which Sidonius Apol- linaris tells us Fronto counted his masterpiece; and a thanks- giving speech in the senate for some favor to Carthage. We have fragments of his historical works, of which the most im- portant was a panegyrical account of the Parthian campaigns of Verus, which is meant to be stately.' A modern reader would find the remains rather solemn than impressive. There is nothing characterstic in the author's private correspondence in Greek or Latin except.the fact that it is bilingual. One of the correspondents to whom he writes at most length is Appi- an, a laborious compiler of Roman history in Greek. His let- ters to Verus, of which w^e have two books, are chiefly remark- able for their ecstatic loyalty, and those to the elder Antoninus are not remarkable at all. To M. Aurelius there were ten books, five when he was Caesar, five when he was Augustus; but of the last series only two books have reached us. They are certain- ly attractive, the affection on both sides is so strong;' though Aurelius never thought it worth while to be an orator after Fronto's heart, he was heartily attached to him. His letters show a pathetic endeavor to write in a strain w^hich his master would think pretty; and he is as unfeignedly interested in his 1 "Ad Marc. Goes." iii. 2 It is characteiistic of Fronto that poinpaticus is a word of praise ; with him the distinction between "stately'- and "pompous" has not yet emerged. 3 Fronto remarks, "Ad Ver. Imp." ii. 7, that Latin has no word for affec- tionate ((pi\6aTopyo{;\ because the thing was so rare at Rome. Marcus quotes the pet word of his master, i. 11. FRONTO. 247 master's delicate health as his master is interested in his. Both seem to pay the penalty for their uninspired endeavors after perfection, in chronic valetudinarianism, and it is difficult not to smile at the punctilious professor who quotes his old Greek master for a metaphor about the relief of shifting a load, to explain how much easier it is for him to know Faus- tina is ill than to know that M. Aurelius is ill. Fronto is fond of " images"— so fond that he talks of them in a mongrel dia- lect of Greek stems and Latin terminations; but there is no trace in his writings that his fondness was prosperous. Per- haps the least unlucky is to be found in the eighth letter of the third book to M.' Aurelius, where we have an elaborate description of two islands, of which the larger shields the smaller from the sea. Fronto thinks W. Aurelius will often be able to apply the figure to the relations between the elder Antoninus and himself when he has to return thanks in the Senate. 248 LATIN LITERATURE, CHAPTER II. A PULE I CS. The style of picturesque and sentimental description which attracted the clumsy ambition of the austere Fronto is not without a real charm in the hands of L. Apuleius, a writer of a younger generation, who is generally thought to have been born in or about a.d. 125, as he was only about twenty-five when he was tried for magic by a philosopher, Claudius Maxi- mus, then proconsul of Africa, whose lectures M. Aurelius had attended. The conclusion is a little uncertain : Apuleius was a great deal younger than his wife, and he said that his wife was forty when he married her; everybody else thought her an old woman of sixty. He was a native of Madaura, on the border between Gaetu- lia and Numidia, as Fronto was a native of Cirta, the centre of the most civilized part of Numidia, as Constantine is the centre of the most civilized part of Algiers. He was a franker sophist than Fronto. There were years in his life when, after a sojourn at Athens for the sake of education, he had essayed to establish himself as a pleader in Rome, but he soon found it convenient to make a rich marriage, and come home and speak for glory, not for lucre. All the MSS. of his w^orks describe him as a Platonic philosopher; he boasted himself that he could, by the admission of his enemies, speak equally well in Greek and Latin. He was popular at Carthage, where a statue was voted in his honor, though he had to make a speech in defence of the right to erect the statue, as well as a speech to return thanks for the honor. We do not know whether this statue and others were erected at the expense of Apuleius himself, according to a not uncommon practice. He seems, in fact, to have lived upon his wife's fortune, de- APULEIUS. 249 voting himself to the business of a popular lecturer, enter- taining and instructing the public, and receiving more or less valuable presents from the liberality of his more distinguished liearers. The malice of his wife's family exposed him to a kind of prosecution : he was supposed to have bewitched his wife into marrying him, because there were some suspicions that he was addicted to magic. He took advantage of this to deliver a long harangue upon his own life and virtues, which is all the more comical because throughout the work (much enlarged, like all ancient speeches, iu tlie interval be- tween delive-ry and publication) the author is careful never to drop the mask of modesty: he would never think of men- tioning his own virtues, if it were not necessary to show how incapable he is of crime. There is the same transparent ar- tifice in the flattery of the proconsul Claudius Maximus, which is conveyed by a series of asides. He is asked confidentially to pity the prosecution for their gross ignorance of what every cultivated gentleman knows as a matter of course. The whole procedure seems to have been a comedy on both sides. The speech falls naturally into two parts, and it is only the second which has anvthin^^: to do with the chars^e of maofic. The prosecution seems to have used this as a peg on which to hang all the disparaging remarks they could think of, about a man whose vanity was obviously vulnerable. Apuleius quotes them as saying, with a palpable imitation of Calvus, " We have to accuse a handsome philosopher equal- ly eloquent in Greek and Latin." And then Apuleius grave- ly proceeds to allege that it is no shame to a philosopher to be handsome, and that we have Plato's authority for the beauty of Zeno of Elea; so that if he were the least bit of a dandy there would be no disgrace in it. Not that he himself was ever more than tolerable-looking, even before the continu- ity of his literary labors "rubbed off all grace from his body, fined away his comeliness, dried up his moisture, turned his color dim, and weakened his vigor." As to his hair, which, if the prosecution were to be believed, he had been vain of, *it was all standing up in a twist and a tangle, just like tow out of a cushion, not trimmed to match, but shaggy, here in a II. TI 250 LA TIN LITER A TURE. APULEIUS. 251 ball, here in a fuzz, quite past disentangling, having been left so long without smoothing over, and without brushing out or part- ing. " ' This is probably only half-sincere. The traditional por- trait of Apuleius exhibits him with long hair carefully trimmed ; and immediately afterwards he replies to the charge of send- in"- a friend some tooth-powder^ with a copy of verses. The use of tooth-powder certainly in ancient times implied some special care of the person, and the audience probably did not think the laugh wholly on Apuleius's side when he asked if the teeth did not deserve washing as well as the feet, and ex- plained the pains that the crocodile takes to have his teeth cleaned by a river-bird." Equally insincere is the plea for his poetry, which went to the furthest limit of Platonic naughti- ness; and Apuleius had to own that he actually possessed a looking-glass, and did not venture to deny that he used it to know what he looked like ; for who could be bound to take more pains than a philosopher to maintain a decent appear- ance at all times. In the same way he was accused of having too few servants, and answered that this was a glory to a philosopher or to a Roman citizen. Here is a specimen of his praise of poverty: "Poverty was home-bred with philosophy long ago; thrif- ty, sober, mighty without much, jealous of praise, a weapon against wealth, a safe possession, simple in array, wholesome in counsel; she has puffed up none with haughtiness, corrupted none with insolence, brutalized none by tyranny; she cannot have, and will not have, the delights of the belly: for these crimes, and many more, are familiar to the nurslings of riches."* Great crimes are never found among the poor, nor great vir- tues in wealth. " Poverty, I say, in the ancient ages was foundress of all cities, inventress of all arts, empty of all sins, bountiful of all glory, fulfilled with perfect praise among all nations" — and so on and so on, till one is surprised to be reminded that Claudius Maximus was rich. When, at last, he comes to the charge of magic, he begins by explaining that magic is only the Persian name for worship, and that Plato thought highly of Zoroaster, and Zamolxis and 2 lb. vi. ' lb. viii. * lb. xviii. P Orpheus and Epimenides were justly celebrated, so that Apule- ius might have come at once to his peroration without risk; but, as he had the right to be as long as his accusers, he goes into the charges in detail. The first was, that he bought up curious kinds offish, having some curiosity in natural history and comparative anatomy; besides which, there is plenty of literary evidence that herbs of all kinds were much more like magical properties than fish, not that he had ever bought or been able to buy the particular kinds named. Even if the ob- ject had been to extract a medicine, the charge of magic would have broken down. There seems to have been more foundation for another charge. Apuleius was half inclined to think that boys might be made clairvoyant by chanting or perfumes, and he actually tried to cure an epileptic boy by chanting over him. A fit came on, and he was rather, if anything, the worse for the attempted cure, and the prosecution attempted to prove that Apuleius had wanted to train the poor boy for a clairvoyant. It is a sufficient reply that he was not a proper subject for such train- ing, which required perfect health of body and mind. There was another charge about an epileptic woman, whom he had not attempted to treat at all, but had simply inquired whether she suffered from noises in her ears. Both charges are made almost unintelligible bv a flow of voluble declamation on the absurdity of supposing that so many as fourteen slaves of Apuleius knew of his alleged magic practices, and of refusing to examine them when produced. At the same time, Apuleius boasts of his mysticism : he had been initiated in as many mysteries as possible,^ and had all kinds of mementos of his initiation, which he kept carefully covered up ; he w^as in the habit of worshipping a " King," whom he could not name on any account : he boasts of a pub- lic sermon he had delivered in praise of /Esculapius, and ex- plains that his wooden image of Mercury" was constructed in strict accordance with the prescriptions of Plato in his latest work, the " Laws." As Mercury was carved out of the sides of a box well fastened together, it is not surprising that the » " De Mag." iv. » " De Mag," \\\ ^ lb. Ixiii. Vilt 252 LATIN LITERATURE. APULEWS. 253 prosecution fancied he was a skeleton especially if the work- man had not fastened the different slabs of wood together finally until he had nearly finished his carving. The 1 ttter part of the speech is occupied with a detailed and convincing proof that Apuleius behaved as well as a man who marries a rich woman older than himself could possibly do. He would not allow her to settle more than a fraction of her property on him, and threatened her with divorce if she would not ''ive up her intention of making a will ni his favor at the expe'nse of her sons, who had circulated a garbled extract from one of her letters to support the charge that she had been be- witched by .Apuleius. , . , , , Another public speech of Apuleius which has been pre- served in its integrity is an extempore harangue on the God of Socrates," which is a very instructive document for the history of religion. He lays down a curious compromise be- tween Epicureanism and Platonism. The Highest Gods have no share whatever in regulating the pitiful lot of men, on which Apuleius dilates in his most florid style: speaking of our quick death and doleful lives, our scrupulous worship and insolent contempt of the highest, which the most venerate but not aright, all fear but fail to trust, a few at the expense of piety deny. The special doctrine which he sets himse f to preach is that pious people have a close intercourse with their aenius And here he appeals to the notion embedded in pop- ular speech, that every man has his own genius, every woman her own Juno, the consort of Jove. These genu are of two kinds, the bodiless and the embodied, and the former confine their attention to pure souls like that of Socrates 1 he inter- est of the work lies in the author's theory of revelation, which turns round to a glorification of prudence and self control, and finds its highest type in Ulysses, its poetical personifica- tion in Minerva. " With her unchangeable company, he drew nioh to all horrors, overcame all adversities. Forsooth, with he'r aid he entered the caves of the Cyclops, and came out ; beheld the oxen of the Sun, and abstained ; went down to hell and came up thence with the same wisdom for guide ; sailed past Scylla, and was not snatched up ; was swallowed H i in Charybdis, and not held fast ; drank the cup of Circe, and was not changed ; visited the Lotus-eaters, and did not abide ; heard the Sirens, and did not draw nigh."' Apuleius followed this up with at least two books on the doctrines of Plato, which are mainly occupied with the expo- sition of theism. There is no discussion, but the author^ at- tempts to parry all difficulties by insisting on the intermediate nature of man, and the responsibility entailed upon him by his free-will ; while ignorance is the excuse for a great deal of his imperfections. "Virtue is free and lies in us, and is the proper object of our will ; our sins are free no less and lie in us, and yet are not the fruit of that will. For he whom we spake of who has virtue in his eye, when he has thoroughly understood his goodness and the excellency of her kindness, will certainly strain forth unto her, and deem that for her own sake she is good to follow. But as for him who has perceived that vices not only bring disgrace on our repute, but are hurt- ful otherwise and bring a snare, how can he join himself by choice unto their fellowship?" "" There are four kinds of men to be blamed, who turn out to be the same as the timocratical, the oligarchical, the demo- cratical, and the tyrannical men of the republic ; and Apuleius comes back to this point in w^inding up his work. " Moreover, the tyrant, a single individual, arises then when he who hath broken the laws by his own contumacy gets the laws to be partners of like conspiracy, and so invadeth empery, and thenceforth ordaineth that the whole multitude of citizens should be obedient to his desires and covetousness, and order their obeisance unto such an end." * Apuleius himself concluded the matter by a dull dialogue between Asclepius and Hermes Trismegistus, in which there is a great deal about the mystical sanctity of Egypt and the efficacy of enchanted images : while physical philosophy is done justice to by a paraphrase of a w^ork upon the "World " which went under the name of Aristotle. Some other writer, whose work has found its way into most of the MSS. of Apu- leius, completes the subject with a treatise upon logic of little » " De Deo. Soc." fin. "^ " De Dog. Piatt." ii. 15 init. ' lb. 28 ; cf. xl. 15. > rl w 254 LATIN LITERATURE. independent interest, still printed as the third book, ^'De Dogmate Platonis." The great work of Apuleius is his " Metamorphoses," which professes to be the autobiograiDhy of a certain Lucius, who went on his travels to sow his wild oats, and in the course of a love affair was turned into an ass by a waiting-woman, who intended to help him by turning him into an owl, only unfort- unately she used the wrong salve. In his capacity as an ass he was the witness to a good many more or less unseemly love adventures, and overheard the tale of Cupid and Psyche, and travelled with the priests of Cybele ; and finally ran away from the games at Corinth, and received a revelation of Isis that, if he ate the rose-wreath out of the hand of her chief priest at the next procession, he would be restored to human form. The chief priest had a revelation too, and gave the poor ass every facility for disenchantment. Of course it fol- lowed that Lucius was to be initiated in the mysteries : but he was made to wait, eager as he was, for some little time, until Isis vouchsafed another simultaneous revelation to him and to her chief priest; for the initiation v/as a death to the old life and a birth to the new, and it would have been per- ilous sacrilege to venture upon it without a call. By-and-by a few other revelations came to the chief priest and to Lucius that he ought to be initiated in the mysteries of Osiris; he had his head shaved, and appeared in a pure linen dress, and went to a good deal of expense, for all of which he was well repaid by the patronage of the husband and the wife, who favored him abundantly in his practice at the bar. All this mysticism is at least half sincere ; it is quite clear that the author sees and means to show the comic side of it ; but there is a very plain contrast between the treatment of the worship of Isis and the worship of Cybele. The priests of Cybele are mere vulgar impostors, whose austerities are only intended to delude the people ; who have nothing to teach and nothing that is not shameful to hide ; who make a parade of self-torture to provide means for coarse debauchery ; while the priests of Isis have the key to the secret of the world. It is quite clear that the same kind of feeling which gathers now APULEIUS. 255 round the devotion to the Madonna had gathered then round the devotion to Isis. The priest, when Lucius recovers his shape, improves the occasion in the most edifying way. " After sharing many and manifold labors, driven by great tempests and exceeding storms of fortune, you are come at last, Lucius, to the haven of quiet and the altar of mercy. Neither your birth, no, nor your rank, and the very learning wherein you abound, could profit you, but in your green and slippery non- age you declined to slavish delights, to receive a luckless re- ward for unblessed curiosity. Howbeit the blindness of For- tune, while tormenting you with most woful perils, has but led you to this religious blessedness by malice without foresight. Let her go and rage with all her fury, and seek a victim for her crueTty elsewhere. For on such as the majesty of our goddess has laid hold to live her servants, deadly chance can- not prevail. What could robbers, or wild beasts, or slavery, or the changes and chances of most grievous journeyings, or the fear of daily death, profit Fortune in her cruelty? You are taken under the ward of Fortune— who is not blind, for the radiance of the light within her doth illuminate all other gods. Now put on a gladder countenance, which becometh your white habit; accompany the procession of the goddess of de- liverance with joyful tread. Let the irreligious see, let them see and behold their error. For behold, Lucius, delivered from his past calamities, and rejoicing in the mighty provi- dence of Isis, triumphs over his fortune ! But that you may be the safer and better assured for yourself, give in your name to this holy warfare, for you were summoned but of late to enlist therein ; dedicate yourself henceforward to the obedience of our religion, and put on the voluntary yoke of ministry. For when you shall begin to serve the goddess, then you shall gain more enjoyment of your liberty." ^ Isis herself has proclaimed her titles when she revealed his deliverance to Lucius. " Behold, I am here, Lucius, for your supplications have moved me, who am Nature, the mother of the world, the lady of all elements, the offspring of the be- ginning of ages, the highest of deities, the queen of spirits, J '' Met." :^i. 15. 256 LATIN LITERATURE. the first in heaven, the unchangeable manifestation of god and goddess, wherefore the brightness of the lights of heaven, the wholesome flowings of the sea, the lamentable silence be- low, are all ordered at my bidding. And my deity, which is one only, under manifold forms, various rites, and multiplied names, is venerated throughout the world. Among the first- born Phrygians my name is the Lady of Pessinus ; among the children of the soil of Attica it is Cecropean Minerva; among the wave-beaten Cypriotes it is Venus of Paphos ; among the archers of Crete, Diana Dictynna ; in the threefold tongues of Sicily, Proserpine of Styx; at Eleusis, the ancient Ceres; here it is Juno, there Bellona; Hecate with these, Rhamnusia with those; and all they who are enlightened with the begin- nings of the rays of the Sun-god, the Ethiopians and Arians and ^Egyptians, in the strength of ancient learning, who wor- ship me aright, with ceremonies of mine own, call me by my true name, Isis the Queen." ^ The same mysticism pervades the tale of Cupid and Psyche, though the allegory which occupies commentators about the soul and eternal beauty is a very secondary object with the writer. He is much more concerned with ordinary pie- tistic sentimentality about a maiden, of more than human beauty, brought especially near to the jealous gods, tried and . failing, and delivered at last with the ease with which gods can do all things. The provocation which made Venus hate her at first is that Psyche was worshipped in her stead. Venus exhales her rage in a purely mythological speech, and asks, as she might have done in Statius, what she had gained by the judgment of Paris. But in fact what Apuleius cares for most is caressing pictures : after Venus has finished a particularly heartless petition that her son will entangle Psyche in the most disgraceful possible love; after kissing her son long and close with greedy kisses, she sought the nearest margin of the wavering shore, and, setting her rosy feet to trample the top- most foam of the quivering billows, alighted at last on the liquid crown of the deep sea, and at the first dawn of her de- sire, as if her precept had gone forth of old, all the service of 1 " Met." xi. 5. APULEIUS. 257 the sea is at hand. Then we have all the pomp of Naiads and Tritons simply to escort Venus to Ocean, where she has nothing remarkable to do. When Psyche is carried to her doom, Apuleius spends all his pathos on the nuptial proces- sion, which is also a funeral, and does not attempt any struggle of p'aternal affection or youthful clinging to life with the harsh decree of destiny. Again, no pains are taken to account for Psyche's yielding to the temptation of her envious sisters, ex- cept making her so simple that when she has a secret to keep she tells two incompatible stories to hide it. At last they know enough, knowing that she has never seen her husband, to frighten her with the assertion that her husband is a mon- strous serpent; then they "bare the sword of treachery, and smite the timid meditations of the simple lassie." When she is wound up at last to disobey, " she hurries, she delays, dares, trembles, doubts, is angry; and, when all is done, the same body is hateful as a serpent, lovely as a husband." The climax is that she pricks herself before she wakes him with one of his own arrows, after which the fatal drop of oil falls from the lamp and awakens the god; otherwise no mischief would have been done. There is the same fundamental heartlessness in the treat- ment of Psyche's subsequent adventures. The cruelty of Venus makes no impression of religious awe, it arouses no thrill of human indignation; one hardly knows whether we are meant to pity Psyche, or to gloat over her sufferings as Apuleius's first readers gloated over the female victims of the arena. At best our minds are divided between the caressing tenderness of the style and curiosity about the matter. It is noticeable that though the author puts the story into the mouth of the housekeeper of a robber's cave, who tells it for the consolation of a captive heiress, he spends the whole treasures of his flowery rhetoric on ornamenting it. He is equally generous to the robbers : they describe the heroism of their fallen comrades in the same lyrical style as that in which Q. Curtius describes the ifeats of Alexander the Great. There is no connection between the different adventures of Lucius : when the author is tired of one scene of low life, his 2:;8 LA TIN LITER A TURE. unfortunate hero has only to escape into another; he does not even give himself much trouble, after the first, to explain why the ass is never able to munch the roses without the special grace of Isis. Many of the stories which he relates must have been old when he told them : in this he seems in- ferior to Petronius; on the other hand, it is to be said that, his adventures are commonly voluptuous or comic, rather than indecent, in which we may recognize the effects of the im- proved morality of the age of the Antonines. There is another curious question about the " Metamor- phoses." The main story is very like a Greek work, " Luci- us," which has come to us among the works of Lucian : there is the same transformation, not a few of the same adventures, including the hero's drunken onslaught on the wine-skins,' which he mistakes for robbers; but there is nothing of the mysticism which abounds in Apuleius, in spite 6f his irony. There is nothing weirder to be found in the ghostly side of literature than the story of Aristomenes* and his companion who had his throat cut in the night by witches, and died next day when the sponge with which the wound was plugged falls out when he stoops to drink. On the other hand, a Chaldaean is ridiculed who arrives after a very bad voyage and makes a great deal of money by promising good success to whoever would pay for his calculations. And the adventure of the wine-skins is treated ironically : it is due, no doubt, to the en- chantments of the lady, who turns herself into an owl ; but it is also a choice device for the service of the god Laughter, or, as we should say, for " All Fools' Day." The narrative gives a lively picture of the state of the coun- try parts of the Roman empire. The people outside the towns saw very little of the authorities. It was necessary to travel armed and in large bands, and any such band was liable to be mistaken for brigands, and there were savage affrays, which led to nothing. At the same time it was a great risk to be seen near a dead body, and the most innocent person in such a case had no idea of trusting his innocence. The au- thorities had the most arbitrary power : for instance, an aedile » "Met."iii. i-ii. '^ lb. i. 9-19. APULEIUS. 259 could upset a dish of fish in the street and trample it under foot, to punish the fishmonger for overcharging; though it is probably a comic exaggeration to select a dish which a friend had bought and paid for, to teach the lesson. The " Metamorphoses " are probably the first serious work of the author ; they are overloaded with the most curious re- search, both of epithets and cadences. There is much more liveliness and variety in the speech on ALagic, and even in the collection of elegant extracts from less carefully prepared speeches which has reached us under the name of '' Florida." The title is elliptical, and would be "Flowery Meadows" at full (for "meadow" was a common name for miscellanies); and the nearest equivalent for it would be " anthology." The principle of selection is not obvious ; one is tempted to think that the author seldom wrote a speech at full-length ; there was a skeleton and an ornamental passage here and there, especially an exordium ; and probably Apuleius, or some literary executor, simply cut these loose from ihs skel- eton and put them together. His idea of ornament is to accumulate a number of short and symmetrical clauses as long as possible. The first spec- imen of all is very typical : "Ut ferme religiosis viantium moris est, cum aliqui lucus, aut aliqui locus sanctus in via oblatus est, veniam postulare, votum adponere, paulisper adsidere : ita mihi, ingresso sane- tissimam istam civitatem, quamquam oppido festinem, prae- fanda venia, et habenda oratio, et inhibenda properatio est. Neque enim justius religiosam moram viatori objecerit aut ara floribus redimita, aut spelunca frondibus inumbrata, aut quer- cus cornibus onerata, aut fagus pellibus coronata, vel etiam colliculus sepimine consecratus, vel truncus dolamine efligia- tus, vel caespes libamine fumigatus, vel lapis unguine delibu- tus. Parva haec quippe et quamquam paucis percontantibus adorata tamen ignorantibus transcursa." The author obviously trusted himself to improvise the proof that the city in which he was speaking had more obvious claims upon a passenger than the different wayside sanc- tuaries, the flower-crowned altar; the cavern with its fringe of 26o LA TIN LITER A TUKE. leaves, the mound with the hedge round it to hallow it, the trunk hewn out into the shape of a god, the turf with the liba- tion smoking on it, the stone with the anointing still fresh on it All such signs, we hear, are little in themselves, and, though the few who iiTquire into them will worship, those who know nothing may hurry by. Another characteristic trait is " I must hold a°speech, and hold in my haste :" the author is fond of sucro-estin-- the necessity of verbal distinctions, by putting two clos°ely connected words together so as to give an ignorant or careless hearer the impression of tautology. He is fond, too, of introducing strings of unmistakable distinctions, enumerat- ino- for instance, the technical names of the notes of different birds This is not the only point in Apuleius which reminds us of the literature of the later middle ages. His ideal of precise propriety of language reminds us of Dame Juliana B-rners ; his ideal of descriptive eloquence is very like what we find in the latest romances of the "Round Table." In both alike we may trace the ambition of a society which had not attained a full and rational development, and yet had passed into the stage of over-refinement. Besides the works enumerated, Apuleius wrote voluminous compilations, which have not reached us, upon grammar and agriculture, and paraphrased the " Phx^do " and the " Repub- lic," in which last some suspect that he may have imitated Cicero and Aristotle as well as Plato. In addition to these he wrote a collection of jests and questions about banquets, containing such answers as his reading suggested to any ques- tion which might turn up at a party. This kind of compila- tion was always popular, because it enabled a reader to make a display of information where there was an audience to ap- preciate his knowledge. It is probable, however, that Apuleius came far short of the inexhaustible learning of an Athenoeus. In his speeches he shows himself shallow. Of all the ancient authors who have mentioned Alexander's rule of only allow- ing the first artists to take his portrait, Apuleius is the only one who substitutes Polycletus for Lysippus. This proves that he did not know that Polycletus and Lysippus belonged to separate generations. He had learned a list of eminent APULEIUS. 261 Statuaries, and remembered that the name of Polycletus was on it. It is of a piece with this that his philosophical anec- dotes, of which there are several in the "Florida," are taken from the same authority as Diogenes Laertius.' Nor is he at all strict in construction. One of the longest and most elab- orate chapters in the " Florida " begins with a description of Samos, in which the fact that nothing will grow there but olives is twisted into several paradoxes; then we are told that the town is decayed, but that the temple of Juno is celebrated, and rich in offerings of all kinds. There is nothing anywhere that Apuleius admires more than the statue of Bathyllus, the favorite of Polycrates, which was wrongly ascribed to Pythag- oras. Then we have an elaborate description of the statue, and an assurance that no philosopher could be the favorite of a tyrant (and apparently the dedication of Polycrates was the one fixed point about the statue), especially a philosopher like Pythagoras, who left Samos when the tyranny was estab- lished. Then we have the list of Pythagoras's travels, and his instructors, and his system of instruction, in which Apuleius, whose trade wms to talk, naturally lays most stress on the inculcation of silence, and explains that he, for his own part, has learned to speak and be silent in due season. The next chapter'^ is perhaps a little more methodical, but equally forced in its arrangement. Apuleius has to return thanks for a statue, and to explain why his absence has de- ferred his thanks. Further, he has to explain why he is bound in courtesy to explain his absence ; then he tells a story how a similar honor was paid to Philemon on the occasion of his reading a new play, and this involves a perfunctory analysis of what that author's legitimate, if exaggerated, reputation has to rest upon. After the third act Philemon adjourned the reading, and when his friends met to hear the remainder he did not come ; and they found, when they went, that he was just dead. So, when Apuleius was interrupted in a recitation by a shower, he was hindered from resumins: it at the time ap- pointed because he had sprained his ankle and shaken him- self very badly, and expected, like Philemon, to take to his » "Flor."ii. 15. 2 lb. iii. 16. 262 LATIN LITERATURE. grave rather than his bed. As soon as the hot springs had restored him sufficiently to enable him to hurry to Carthage, he came, though still lame, because the honor, being unasked, was so great as to deserve his utmost gratitude, both to the chief men of Africa who had voted his statue, and the illus- trious consular who had stipulated for a good site, on the 268 LATIN LITERATURE. Aries, and by profession a philosopher ; he was also a student of Greek literature, but he was never tired of airing his " super- ficial " acquaintance with Latin. For instance, when some superficial pretender to antiquarian knowledge was boasting that he was the one man who could explain Sallust, he proved, with a great deal of Socratic display, that the boaster did not understand the hazy antithesis, that it was doubtful whether one of the Catilinarian conspirators was "duller" or "emp- tier," ^^ stolidior afi vaniorj' He had rather more success in a Socratic dialogue on the meaning oipenus, " household stuff," and showed that several hish authorities had jriven confused definitions, while the un- lucky disputant had given no definition at all. The scene is laid in the " area of the palace," among a crowd that was wait- ing to salute Caesar; and for the most part Gellius entertains us, when he is dramatic, with the talk of loungers in public places, instead of the prolonged discourse of a select coterie in some nobleman's villa or bedroom, which is the scenery of the dialogues of Tacitus and Cicero. Occasionally Favorinus does get into good society in pri- vate: he pays a visit to a distinguished family which a baby has just entered, and preaches' a sermon on the duty of mothers to nurse their own children, of which the grandmother strongly disapproves. He philosophizes, too, in an elaborate harangue^ against the pretensions of the Chaldaeans. The temper of the speech is curious, at once rationalistic and pie- tistic. Favorinus takes most of the objections which a man of science would take (if one could be compelled to discuss the question). He asks how the planets can decide anything at the moment of birth ? Is not the moment of conception more important? How is it that many who are born at the same moment under the same planet are so unlike ? How is it that if an astrologer can predict the issue of a birth, he cannot predict the issue of a game at dice? If large events are more easily discerned, which of the events of human life can be considered large ? and so forth. Lastly, if the planets determine fate, can it be said that every one of the crowd who » Gell. " Noct. Att." xii. i. ^ lb. xiv. i. AULUS GELLIUS. 269 perish in a general catastrophe, like a conflagration or an earthquake, was born under the same planet or the same con- stellations ? But, with all this, Favorinus does not presume to emancipate himself from the assumptions of the astrologers : he takes it for granted that the heavenly bodies must, in some way'or other, dominate the affairs of our earth. He does not suppose that it is a mere accident when astrologers are right: there is a real connection which the astrologers dimly appre- hend ; if they could see it clearly they would be as the gods —an hypothesis too shocking to be credible. But Favorinus cannot stick firmly either to science or piety ; he goes on to explain that men would be mere puppets, which is contrary to common-sense. After all, the objection to astrology was practical ; the young men who haunted the Chaldaeans com- promised' themselves in many ways. Elsewhere Gellius is content to transcribe the Stoic distinctions about fate with very little criticism, almost as if he thought them satis- factory. Favorinus is the one original feature in Gellius's compila- tion, and generally appears at the beginning of a book to give a certain show of dramatic liveliness, though Gellius's modesty prevents him from giving this prominent position to a dis- course on the duties of a judge. It was a sort of axiom of Roman law to decide cases which turned on a conflict of testi- mony between the parties, in favor of the defendant ; it was an axiom of philosophers in such a case to prefer taking the word of the more respectable of the two. Gellius once had a case of this kind to decide, and adjourned it on purpose to consult Favorinus. The sage told him a good deal about his duty in general, especially as to the question whether the judge was to interrupt the pleaders and show his feeling as the case went on. As to the particular case, he enjoined on him by all means to decide for the plaintiff, who had a good character, against the defendant, who was a rogue. This struck Gellius as too great a responsibility, so he refused to decide at all. In general Gellius appears as a hearer, not as an actor: on one occasion he found himself in the distinguished society of 270 LATIN LITERATURE. Herodes Atticus, who edified him by quoting Epictetus against an insincere young Stoic babbler. It cannot be denied that Gellius is a little censorious: he likes to correct his predecessors and contemporaries ; he sneers at the elder Pliny for some of his stories about the chameleon ; he is very angry with the people who express themselves unintelligibly in order to show their knowledge of ancient words ; he abuses Seneca for his criticism on Vergil and Ennius ; he corrects Verrius Flaccus, whom he often quotes, and oftener follows, for his explanation of Cato. The passage comes in a speech against the monstrous " regiment " of women. A woman brings a big dowry; she keeps back a big sum that she lends to her husband, and then, when she is angry with him, she sends a " receptitious slave" to dun him. Verrius Flaccus held a " receptitious slave " was a good-for- nothing slave — a slave whom the owner had to take back be- cause the buyer found he did not answer the warranty given with him when sold. Gellius, for his part, thought that when the lady kept back her money she kept back the slave too, and that otherwise no slave who did not belong to his mis- tress's settled estate could be sent on such an errand. It is a very pretty quarrel. So far as Gellius had a taste of his own, it was for the sim- plicity of ancient literature : he is fond of giving little excerpts from Claudius Quadrigarius and Piso, as if there were some charm in the bald, transparent sentences. On one occasion he compares the way Claudius aud Livy described the conflict between Corvinus and the gigantic Gaul, very much to the advantage of Claudius. In the same spirit he exults at Cato's speech where he boasted that he had not gone to the expense of having one of his villas plastered and whitewashed, and thinks that such an example would be the most effective medicine for the excesses of his own day, when philosophers on fire with covetousness used to talk of having nothing and wanting nothing when they were as rich as they were greedy. Gellius himself is not exactly free from hypocrisy : he tells us a very pretty story of what he found in a book that he picked up at a second-hand shop while waiting at Brundisium AULUS GELLIUS. 271 ^and one may charitably hope he did pick up the book ; but the excerpts had been made to his hand by the elder Pliny, a much more laborious and instructive writer. As to style, Gellius has no pretensions ; he is fond of assur- in<^ us that he spoils whatever he repeats, especially the Greek haran"-ues of Favorinus, and devotes a whole article to the impossibility of finding a Latin translation, or even a Latin periphrase, for the Greek TroXvTrpayfioaujr}. He had been reading, he says, Plutarch's treatise against that vice, and when he came to explain the subject gave the impression that it must be a virtue. His chief fault is that he is long and heavy, or else bald and abrupt; his happiest attempts — they are never very happy — are in the way of light, rapid narrative. He translates Herodotus's story of Arion, which he thinks a model in that line, and the introduction is meant to vie with the translation. Still, it may be said that few modern com- pilers are so uniformly free from cumbrousness, ambiguity, and solecism. The chief signs of the decay of the language are the complete disappearance of harmony and rhythm, and the multiplication of abstract compounds and lengthened forms of words {cogu omentum), with the occasional intrusion of words like iiisiibidus, which properly belong to slang, in an author who keeps up a painful struggle for correctness, and anxiously insists that diinidius iiher is wrong for half a book, and that it ought to be dimidiatus. PART VIII. THE BARREN PERIOD. CHAPTER I. MINUCIUS FELIX, It is difficult to fix the precise date of the earliest work of Christian Latin literature, the "Octavius" of M. Minucius Felix. The only two data which can be trusted are, that the author seems to write in a time when the Christians, though slandered, were not persecuted, and that the latest scholars asfree in thinkins: that TertuUian imitated and misunder- stood him, though the opinion of scholars of the seventeenth century was that he imitated TertuUian. Whether the earlier date or the later be correct, the author seems to belong to the African school ; his principal speaker seems to be a provin- cial governor, who quotes Fronto, certainly as a countryman, perhaps as a contemporary. He describes the idolatry of the day in terms which are a distinct echo of Apuleius. But the scene of the dialogue is laid at Ostia, the speakers are sup- posed to be domiciled at Rome. Minucius is supposed to be paying a visit to Octavius, an older Christian and the chief speaker in the dialogue ; and, as they are walking by the sea one morning, Caecilius, a pagan friend, salutes an anointed im- age of Serapis. Octavius reproaches Minucius for leaving Caecilius in his natural blindness. There is no hint that it would cost Caecilius dear to have his eyes opened ; the author speaks with less fervor of the sufferings of the Christians than the Stoics speak of the sufferings of their representative sages ; earnestness is not his strong point. Lactantius praises MINUCIUS FELIX. 273 him for his work, which shows how much he might have ac- complished if he had devoted himself entirely to such sub- jects. He does not even show any acquaintance with the Scriptures, or imply anything of their authority, or dwell in any way on such doctrines as the Trinity or the Incarnation. Christianity, in his eyes, is a doctrine of exclusive monothe- ism, without visible symbols, with the promise of the resurrec- tion and the judgment of quick and dead. Probably this very neutrality of tone made his work more effectual in a time of general tolerance, when Christianity might be represented as a sort of continuation of the fashionable liberal Stoicism, only carried out more consistently. Ebert has pointed out that the argument of Octavius is the argument of the Stoic in Cicero's "De Natura Deorum;" while the argument of Ccecilius is the argument of the Academic. As soon as Caicilius is attacked by Octavius, he begins a curiously mod- ern criticism of Christianity; he objects alike to the creed and to its followers: the creed is objectionable because it pro- fesses to be the absolute religion, and every absolute religion is impossible, considering both the frailty of the human intel- lect and the ordinary sceptical objections drawn from the dis- proportion between men's lots and their worth. The first proves that no creed ought to be exclusive ; the second, that no creed ought to be transcendental : we ought, in fact, to fall back upon " regulative " truth, and be content to know, on historical evidence, that the religious temper, the observance of historical ceremonies, brings good luck, the irreligious tem- per brings ill luck. As for the Christians, they are ill-bred, paradoxical persons, who are silent in public, and can talk fast enough in corners ; who have no fear of death, and a great fear of nothing after they are dead ; who deserve the worst that is said about their cannibalism and incest. Minucius and Octavius do not take all these dreadful charges very seriously. Minucius, who is invited to judge, remarks that Caecilius is in a better humor when he has said his worst, and Octavius talks of washing away all the bitter- ness of his revilings with a river of wholesome words. Octa- vius, who is the most dignified of the three speakers, holding II.— 12* 274 LATIN LITERATURE. TERTULLIAN. 275 some provincial government, is not the least shocked at Caecilius's language ; he rebukes him gravely and lengthily for his rhetorical conceit, and then proceeds to reply at about twice the length of his opponent. The scepticism and pessi- mism of Caecilius are met, as has been said, on Stoical grounds; his historical piety is derided upon Epicurean and Euhemerist grounds: his criticism of the Christians is met, partly by the ordinary apologetical considerations, and partly by a counter -criticism of philosophers, who are eloquent against their own vices, and borrow without acknowledgment the sublime wisdom of the prophets. The style of the book is good and natural, though perhaps a little stiff; the description of the holiday at Ostia, during which the conversation is supposed to take place, is more in the manner of the younger Pliny than of Apuleius, whose in- fluence cannot be traced with certainty, for such phrases as impiatus and pluritnum quantum prove nothing. Many au- thors of our own day, who do not read each other's works, come to coincide in such doubtful phrases as " cultured " and the "converse " of a proposition, where in an earlier, perhaps purer, state of the language it was usual to say "cultivated " and "the contrary." ■1 CHAPTER II. TERTULLIAX. An African writer, later by more than one generation than Apuleius, carried spiritual interests further with a more con- sistent devotion. Q. Septimius Florens Tertullianus wrote almost exclusively on religious subjects; his most nearly secular work was a pamphlet written to defend himself for go- ing against the fashion which was coming up in Carthage of wearing the toga instead of the pallium. Almost throughout the author addresses the whole population upon common grounds, and only just at the close reminds us that the pal- lium is promoted to higher dignity, since it has become the garment not only of philosophers but of Christians. In the rest of his works he is as thoroughly a Christian as Seneca a philosopher: sometimes he is arguing with pagans, sometimes with lax Christians or heretics; but he always argues, except in the treatise on the Pallium, on distinctly Christian grounds, just as Seneca always argues upon Stoical grounds, whether he is dealing with Stoics or worldlings or Epicureans ; and, like Seneca, Tertullian is always anxious to find as much common ground as possible. In another respect he reminds us of Seneca: he shows little trace of either of the reactions which passed over Latin literature after the death of Nero. He writes in short, epigrammatic, elliptical sentences, as if the younger Pliny and his contemporaries had never gone back to Cicero, as if Fronto and Apuleius had never gone back to a language which sought its effects in choice and copious diction rather than in the frarnework of sentences with all the variations of amplification, antithesis, and emphasis. The ob- scurity of Tertullian — for he is often obscure — is the obscurity of a barbarizing Tacitus ; he 'has Africanisms like Apuleius, 276 LATIN LITERATURE. TERTULLIAN. 277 but he belongs to a different school of literature. He is de- cidedly the most of a man of letters among the Christian writers ; though his taste is not so pure as that of Minucius Felix, his intellectual activity and his interest in his own in- genuity are much keener. The date of his birth and his death are alike unknown, but most of his writings belong to the decade of the third cent- ury. He was an advocate practising in the courts of Car- thage, and comparatively late in middle-life he was converted to Christianity, when the churches of the West began to be agitated by the question whether the ecstasies of Phrygian enthusiasts were to be trusted when the ecstatics came into collision with their bishops and the sober majority of the con- gregations. This led ultimately to complete isolation ; after a time it became impossible for those who accepted the reve- lations to remain in communion with the congregations who rejected them, and the separatist communities thus formed had not power for coherence. *' Every one had a revela- tion," and the Camisards and the Convulsionnaires show that in the latter stages of such movements a competition of in- compatible absurdities sets in. Tertullian, like many other less distinguished Montanists, found himself the centre of a small society which had no fellowship with the rest of Chris- tendom, and did not survive him long. It was a natural end, perhaps, for a writer who seriously believed in revelations, "extorted by dry diet" — in other words, the fruit of artificial indigestion, produced by eating food without wine or oil, es- pecially after a fast. The revelations themselves were of the quaintest, as he was aware : for instance, a woman dreamed an angel slapped her bare shoulders, saying they were too pretty to be covered, which proved that it was a religious duty for women to wear veils down to their waists, a proposition more probable than the evidence in support of it. With all his fanaticism, Tertullian is rational at bottom. Even in such an extreme case as the treatise on the " Sol- dier's Crown," he only exaggerates a rational principle. It was written in defence of the conduct of a soldier who de- clined, as a Christian, to wear his decoration at a parade where decorated soldiers were to attend for reward. He was pu under arrest, and the general feeling of Chr.sfans was that U "vas a mistake to compromise the securuy which had long been enjoyed in Africa by insisting upon taking a strict v.ew of such a trifle. TertuUian's argument is, that Christian nraclice was against the wearing of such frivolous and idola- trous ornaments, each epithet being justified separately and at len