Produced by Irma Spehar, Sarah Graham and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)





  Transcriber's Notes:

  * Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
  * The corrigenda et addenda listed on page xvi have been applied
    to the text.
  * Page 167: Original text 'curosity' replaced with 'curiosity'.
  * Page 139: Original text in footnote 'Thon' replaced with 'Thou'.
  * Page 359: Latin 'At, credo' more usually seen as 'An, credo' but
    text in this book not altered.




            *    *    *    *    *


               THE ROMAN POETS

                      OF

                THE REPUBLIC

                   _SELLAR_


                    London

                 HENRY FROWDE

       OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE

               7 PATERNOSTER ROW




                THE ROMAN POETS

                       OF

                 THE REPUBLIC

                       BY

            W. Y. SELLAR, M.A., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

                      AND

    FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD

       _NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_

                    OXFORD

            AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

                  MDCCCLXXXI

             [_All rights reserved_]




                         TO

              J. C. SHAIRP, M.A. LL.D.,

   PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS,

  PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

                 IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

        OF MUCH ACTIVE AND GENEROUS KINDNESS,

                       AND OF

          A LONG AND STEADY FRIENDSHIP,

    THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.


In preparing a second edition of this volume, which has been for some
years out of print, I have, with the exception of a few pages added to
Chapter IV, retained the first five chapters substantially unchanged.
Chapters VI and VII, on Roman Comedy, are entirely new. I have enlarged
the account formerly given of Lucilius in Chapter VIII, and modified
the Review of the First Period, contained in Chapter IX. The short
introductory chapter to the Second Period is new. The four chapters on
Lucretius have been carefully revised, and, in part, re-written. The
chapter on Catullus has been re-written and enlarged, and the views
formerly expressed in it have been modified.

In the preface to the first edition I acknowledged the assistance I
had derived from the editions of the Fragments of the early writers by
Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach; from the Histories of Roman
Literature by Bernhardy, Bähr, and Munk, and from the chapters on
Roman Literature in Mommsen's Roman History; from a treatise on the
origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen; from Sir G. C. Lewis's work on 'The
Credibility of Early Roman History'; from the Articles on the Roman
Poets by the late Professor Ramsay, contained in Smith's 'Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'; and from Articles by Mr.
Munro in the 'Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology.' In addition
to these I have, in the present edition, to acknowledge my indebtedness
to the History of Roman Literature by W. S. Teuffel, to Ribbeck's
'Römische Tragödie,' to Ritschl's 'Opuscula,' to the editions of some
of the Plays of Plautus by Brix and Lorenz, to that of the Fragments
of Lucilius by L. Müller, to the Thesis of M. G. Boissier, entitled
'Quomodo Graecos Poetas Plautus Transtulerit,' to Articles on Lucilius
by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Philology,' and to the edition of
Lucretius, and the 'Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus' by the
same writer, to Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' to Mr. Ellis's
'Commentary on Catullus,' to R. Westphal's 'Catull's Gedichte,' and to
M. A. Couat's 'Étude sur Catulle.' I have more especially to express my
sense of obligation to Mr. Munro's writings on Lucretius and Catullus.
In so far as the chapters on these poets in this edition may be
improved, this will, in a great measure, be due to the new knowledge of
the subject I have gained from the study of his works.

I have retained, with some corrections, the translations of the longer
quotations, contained in the first edition, and have added a literal
prose version of some passages quoted from Plautus and Terence.
Instead of offering a prose version of the longer passages quoted from
Catullus, I have again availed myself of the kind permission formerly
given me by Sir Theodore Martin to make use of his translation.

Edinburgh, _Dec. 1880_.




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER I.

  GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
                                                                   PAGE
  Recent change in the estimate of Roman Poetry                       1
  Want of originality                                                 2
  As compared with Greek Poetry                                       3
  "      "    with Roman Oratory and History                          4
  The most complete literary monument of Rome                         5
  Partly imitative, partly original                                   6
  Imitative in forms                                                  7
      "     in metres                                                 8
  Imitative element in diction                                        9
      "        "    in matter                                        11
  Original character, partly Roman, partly Italian                   13
  National spirit                                                    14
  Imaginative sentiment                                              15
  Moral feeling                                                      16
  Italian element in Roman Poetry                                    17
  Love of Nature                                                     17
  Passion of Love                                                    19
  Personal element in Roman Poetry                                   20
  Four Periods of Roman Poetry                                       24
  Character of each                                                  24
  Conclusion                                                         26


  CHAPTER II.

  VESTIGES OF INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME
  AND ANCIENT ITALY.

  Niebuhr's theory of a Ballad-Poetry                                28
  The Saturnian metre                                                29
  Ritual Hymns                                                       31
  Prophetic verses                                                   33
  Fescennine verses                                                  34
  Saturae                                                            35
  Gnomic verses                                                      36
  Commemorative verses                                               37
  Inferences as to their character                                   38
  From early state of the language                                   39
  No public recognition of Poetry                                    40
  Roman story result of tradition and reflection                     41
  Inferences from the nature of Roman religion                       43
  From the character and pursuits of the people                      44
  Roman Poetry of Italian rather than Roman origin                   45


  FIRST PERIOD.

  FROM LIVIUS ANDRONICUS TO LUCILIUS.


  CHAPTER III.

  BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS.
  CN. NAEVIUS, 240-202 B.C.

  Contact with Greece after capture of Tarentum                      47
  First period of Roman literature                                   49
  Forms of Poetry during this period                                 50
  Livius Andronicus                                                  51
  Cn. Naevius, his life                                              52
  Dramas                                                             55
  Epic poem                                                          57
  Style                                                              59
  Conclusion                                                         60


  CHAPTER IV.

  Q. ENNIUS, 239-170 B.C., LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
  VARIOUS WORKS. GENIUS AND INTELLECT.

  Importance of Ennius                                               62
  Notices of his life                                                63
  Influences affecting his career                                    64
  Italian birth-place                                                64
  Greek education                                                    65
  Service in Roman army                                              66
  Historical importance of his age                                   68
  Intellectual character of his age                                  69
  Personal traits                                                    71
  Description of himself in the Annals                               72
  Intimacy with Scipio                                               74
  His enthusiastic temperament                                       75
  Religious spirit and convictions                                   77
  Miscellaneous works                                                78
  Saturae                                                            81
  Dramas                                                             83
  Annals                                                             87
  Outline of the Poem                                                88
  Idea by which it is animated                                       91
  Artistic defects                                                   93
  Roman character of the work                                        94
  Contrast with the Greek Epic                                       95
  Contrast in its personages                                         95
  Contrast in supernatural element                                   96
  Oratory in the Annals                                              97
  Description and imagery                                            99
  Rhythm and diction                                                101
  Chief literary characteristics of Ennius                          105
  Energy of conception                                              106
  Patriotic and imaginative sentiment                               109
  Moral emotion                                                     111
  Practical understanding                                           113
  Estimate in ancient times                                         115
  Disparaging criticism of Niebuhr                                  117
  Conclusion                                                        118


  CHAPTER V.

  EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY. M. PACUVIUS, 219-129 B.C.
  L. ACCIUS, 170-ABOUT 90 B.C.

  Popularity of early Roman Tragedy                                 120
  Partial adaptation of Athenian drama                              121
  Inability to reproduce its pure Hellenic character                123
  Nearer approach to the spirit of Euripides than of Sophocles      125
  Grounds of popularity of Roman Tragedy                            127
  Moral tone and oratorical spirit                                  129
  Causes of its decline                                             132
  M. Pacuvius, notices of his life                                  134
  Ancient testimonies                                               135
  His dramas                                                        136
  Passages illustrative of his thought                              137
  Of his moral and oratorical spirit                                139
  Descriptive passages                                              141
  Drama on a Roman subject                                          142
  Character                                                         142
  L. Accius, notices of his life                                    143
  His various works                                                 145
  Fragments illustrative of his oratorical spirit                   147
     "          "        of his moral fervour                       148
     "          "        of his sense of natural beauty             149
  Conclusion as to character of Roman Tragedy                       150


  CHAPTER VI.

  ROMAN COMEDY. T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, ABOUT
  254 TO 184 B.C.

  Flourishing era of Roman Comedy                                   152
  How far any claim to originality?                                 153
  Disparaging judgment of later Roman critics                       154
  Connection with earlier Saturae                                   155
  Naevius and Plautus popular poets                                 156
  Facts in the life of Plautus                                      157
  Attempt to fill up the outline from his works                     159
  Familiarity with town-life                                        160
  Traces of maritime adventure                                      161
  Life of the lower and middle classes represented in his plays     162
  Love of good living                                               163
  Love of money                                                     164
  Artistic indifference                                             165
  Knowledge of Greek                                                165
  Influence of the spirit of his age                                166
  Dramas adaptations of outward conditions of Athenian New Comedy   167
  Manner and spirit, Roman and original                             171
  Indications of originality in his language                        172
      "              "       in his Roman allusions and national
        characteristics                                             173
  Favourite plots of his plays                                      176
  Pseudolus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria                177
  Aulularia, Trinummus, Menaechmi, Rudens, Captivi, Amphitryo       180
  Mode of dealing with his characters                               188
  Moral and political indifference of his plays                     189
  Value as a poetic artist                                          193
  Power of expression by action, rhythm, diction                    194


  CHAPTER VII.

  TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO
  PLAUTUS.

  Comedy between the time of Plautus and Terence                    201
  Caecilius Statius                                                 202
  Scipionic Circle                                                  203
  Complete Hellenising of Roman Comedy                              204
  Conflicting accounts of life of Terence                           205
  Order in which his Plays were produced                            206
  His 'prologues' as indicative of his individuality                207
  'Dimidiatus Menander'                                             209
  Epicurean 'humanity' chief characteristic                         210
  Sentimental motive of his pieces                                  211
  Minute delineations of character                                  212
  Diction and rhythm                                                214
  Influence on the style and sentiment of Horace                    215
  Comoedia Togata, Atellanae, Mimus                                 216


  CHAPTER VIII.

  EARLY ROMAN SATIRE. C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.

  Independent origin of Roman satire                                217
  Essentially Roman in form and spirit                              219
       "        "   in its political and censorial function         220
  Personal and miscellaneous character of early satire              222
  Critical epoch at which Lucilius appeared                         223
  Question as to the date of his birth                              224
  Fragments chiefly preserved by grammarians                        227
  Miscellaneous character and desultory treatment of subjects       228
  Traces of subjects treated in different books                     229
  Impression of the author's personality                            230
  Political character of Lucilian satire                            232
  Social vices satirised in it                                      233
  Intellectual peculiarities                                        236
  Literary criticism                                                238
  His style                                                         240
  Grounds of his popularity                                         243


  CHAPTER IX.

  REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.

  Common aspects in the lives of poets in the second century B.C.   247
  Popular and national character of their works                     250
  Political condition of the time reflected in its literature       251
  Defects of the poetic literature in form and style                253
  Other forms of literature cultivated in that age                  254
  Oratory and history                                               255
  Familiar letters                                                  256
  Critical and grammatical studies                                  257
  Summary of character of the first period                          258


  SECOND PERIOD.

  THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.


  CHAPTER X.

  TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS.

  Dearth of poetical works during the next half century             263
  Literary taste confined to the upper classes                      265
  Great advance in Latin prose writing                              266
  Influence of this on the style of Lucretius and Catullus          267
  Closer contact with the mind and art of Greece                    268
  Effects of the political unsettlement on the contemplative
        life and thought                                            270
     "    on the life of pleasure, and the art founded on it        271
  The two representatives of the thought and art of the time        272


  CHAPTER XI.

  LUCRETIUS. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

  Little known of him from external sources                         274
  Examination of Jerome's statement                                 275
  Inferences as to his national and social position                 281
  Relation to Memmius                                               282
  Impression of the author to be traced in his poem                 283
  Influence produced by the action of his age                       284
  Minute familiarity with Nature and country life                   286
  Spirit in which he wrote his work                                 288
  His consciousness of power and delight in his task                289
  His polemical spirit                                              291
  Reverence for Epicurus                                            292
  Affinity to Empedocles                                            293
  Influence of other Greek writers                                  295
     "      of Ennius                                               297
  His interests speculative, not national                           298
  His Roman temperament                                             299


  CHAPTER XII.

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.

  Three aspects of the poem                                         300
  General scope of the argument                                     301
  Analysis of the poem                                              303
  Question as to its unfinished condition                           313
  What is the value of the argument?                                316
  Weakness of his science                                           317
  Interest of the work as an exposition of ancient physical enquiry 325
            "          from its bearing on modern questions         326
  Power of scientific reasoning, observation, and expression        327
  Connecting links between his philosophy and poetry                333
  Idea of law                                                       333
    "  of change                                                    336
    "  of the infinite                                              339
    "  of the individual                                            340
    "  of the subtlety of Nature                                    341
    "  of Nature as a living power                                  342


  CHAPTER XIII.

  THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING
  OF LUCRETIUS.

  General character of Greek epicureanism                           348
  Prevalence at Rome in the last age of the Republic                350
  New type of epicureanism in Lucretius                             352
  Forms of evil against which his teaching was directed             355
  Superstition                                                      356
  Fear of death                                                     361
  Ambition                                                          366
  Luxury                                                            367
  Passion of love                                                   368
  Limitation of his ethical views                                   370
  His literary power as a moralist                                  372


  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.

  Artistic defects of the work                                      376
          "        arising from the nature of the subject           377
          "        from inequality in its execution                 378
  Intensity of feeling pervading the argument                       380
  Cumulative force in his rhythm                                    381
  Qualities of his style                                            382
  Freshness and sincerity of expression                             383
  Imaginative suggestiveness and creativeness                       385
  Use of analogies                                                  387
  Pictorial power                                                   389
  Poetical interpretation of Nature                                 390
  Energy of movement in his descriptions                            391
  Poetic aspect of Nature influenced by his philosophy              393
  Poetical interpretation of life                                   395
  Modern interest of the poem                                       397


  CHAPTER XV.

  CATULLUS.

  Contrast to the poetry of Lucretius                               399
  The poetry of youth                                               400
  Accidental preservation of his poems                              401
  Principle of their arrangement                                    402
  Vivid personal revelation afforded by them                        404
  Uncertainty as to the date of his birth                           405
  Birth-place and social standing                                   408
  Influences of his native district                                 410
  Identity of Lesbia and Clodia                                     412
  Poems written between 61 and 57 B.C.                              414
  Poems connected with his Bithynian journey                        418
  Poems written between 56 and 54 B.C.                              421
  Character of his poems, founded on the passion of love            424
      "         "            "    on friendship and affection       426
  His short satirical pieces                                        430
  Other poems expressive of personal feeling                        437
  Qualities of style in these poems                                 438
      "     of rhythm                                               439
      "     of form                                                 440
  The Hymn to Diana                                                 441
  His longer and more purely artistic pieces                        442
  His Epithalamia                                                   443
  His Attis                                                         447
  The Peleus and Thetis                                             448
  The longer elegiac poems                                          455
  Rank of Catullus among the poets of the world                     457




CORRIGENDA ET ADDENDA.

  Page xii, line 25 from top, _for_ Ampitryo _read_ Amphitryo.
    "   43, note, _for_ Altus _read_ Attus.
    "   90, line 26 from top, _for_ Fos _read_ Flos.
    "  157, note 2, add the words, 'Terence, who was by birth a
            foreigner, was probably brought to Rome as a child.'
    "  194, line 25 from top, _for_ The Italian liveliness, &c.,
            made them, _read_ Their liveliness, &c., made the Italians.
    "  194, third line from bottom, _for_ nisim _read_ nisam.
    "  213, line 12 from top, _for_ Æschylus _read_ Æschinus.
    "  215, note, _for_ debacehentur _read_ debacchentur.
    "  230, foot of the page, _for_ divitias _read_ divitiis.
    "  287, line 12 from top, _for_ arbonis _read_ arboris.
    "  289, line 16 from top, _for_ ardera _read_ ardua.
    "  289, line 32 from top, _for_ and _read_ or.
    "  296, line 9 from bottom, _for_ by _read_ to.
    "  343, line 7 from bottom, _for_ fungiferentis _read_
            frugiferentis.
    "  413, note 1, add the words, 'Cicero also, in his letters to
            Caelius, addresses him as mi Rufe,' Ep. II. 9. 3, 12. 2.




THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC.




CHAPTER I.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.


A great fluctuation of opinion has taken place, among scholars and
critics, in regard to the worth of Latin poetry. From the revival of
learning till comparatively a recent period, the poets of ancient Rome,
and especially those of the Augustan age, were esteemed the purest
models of literary art, and were the most familiar exponents of the
life and spirit of antiquity. Their works were the chief instruments of
the higher education. They were studied, imitated, and translated by
some of the greatest poets of modern Europe; and they supplied their
favourite texts and illustrations to moralists and humourists, from
Montaigne to the famous English essayists who flourished during the
last century. Up to a still later period, their words were habitually
used by statesmen to add weight to their arguments or point to their
invectives. Perhaps no other writers have, for so long a period,
exercised so powerful an influence, not only on literary style and
taste, but on the character and understanding, of educated men in the
leading nations of the modern world.

It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should
be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern
poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They
have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change
in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present
century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of the
great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They have thus, for
some time, been exposed to undue disparagement rather than to undue
admiration. The perception of the debt which they owed to their Greek
masters, has led to some forgetfulness of their original merits. Their
Roman character and Italian feeling have been partially obscured by
the foreign forms and metres in which these are expressed. It is said,
with some appearance of plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only
much inferior in interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a
work of cultivated imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of
literature were the true expression of the genius of the Roman people;
that their poets brought nothing new into the world; that they have
enriched the life of after times with no pure vein of native feeling,
nor any impressive record of national experience.

It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed
glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the
genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be
applied,

    αὐτοδίδακτος δ᾽ εἰμί, θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας
    παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν.[1]

Besides possessing the charm of poetical feeling and artistic form in
unequalled measure, Greek poetry is to modern readers the immediate
revelation of a new world of thought and action, in all its lights and
shadows and moving life. Like their politics, the poetry of the Greeks
sprang from many independent centres, and renewed itself in every
epoch of the national civilisation. Roman poetry, on the other hand,
has neither the same novelty nor variety of matter; nor did it adapt
itself to the changing phases of human life in different generations
and different States, like the epic, lyric, dramatic, and idyllic
poetry of Greece. But it may still be answered that the poets of Rome
have another kind of value. There is a charm in their language and
sentiment different from that which is found in any other literature
of the world. Certain deep and abiding impressions are stamped upon
their works, which have penetrated into the cultivated sentiment of
modern times. If, as we read them, the imagination is not so powerfully
stimulated by the revelation of a new world, yet, in the elevated
tones of Roman poetry, there is felt to be a permanent affinity with
the strength and dignity of man's moral nature; and, in the finer and
softer tones, a power to move the heart to sympathy with the beauty,
the enjoyment, and the natural sorrows of a bygone life. If we are no
longer moved by the eager hopes and buoyant fancies of the youthful
prime of the ancient world, we seem to gather up, with a more sober
sympathy, the fruits of its mature experience and mellowed reflexion.

While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown
to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical
composition: they preserved some knowledge of their history in various
kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some
skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice
of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men.
But they cannot be said to have produced spontaneously any works of
literary art. Their oratory, history, poetry, and philosophy owed
their first impulse to their intellectual contact with Greece. But
while the form and expression of all Roman literature were moulded
by the teaching of Greek masters and the study of Greek writings, it
may be urged, with some show of truth, that the debt incurred by the
poetry and philosophy of Rome was much greater than that incurred by
her oratory and history. The two latter assumed a more distinct type,
and adapted themselves more naturally to the genius of the people and
the circumstances of the State. They were the work of men who took an
active and prominent part in public affairs; and they bore directly on
the practical wants of the times in which they were cultivated. Even
the structure of the Latin language testifies to the oratorical force
and ardour by which it was moulded into symmetry; as the language of
Greece betrays the plastic and harmonising power of her early poetry.
There is no improbability in the supposition that, if Greek literature
had never existed, or had remained unknown to the Romans, the political
passions and necessities of the Republic would have called forth a
series of powerful orators; and that the national instinct, which clung
with such strong tenacity to the past, would, with the advance of power
and civilisation, have produced a type of history, capable of giving
adequate expression to the traditions and continuous annals of the
commonwealth.

But their poetry, on the other hand, came to the Romans after
their habits were fully formed[2], as an ornamental addition to
their power,--κηπίον καὶ ἐγκαλλώπισμα πλούτου. Unlike the
poetry of Greece, it was not addressed to the popular ear, nor was
it an immediate emanation from the popular heart. The poets who
commemorated the greatness of Rome, or who sang of the passions and
pursuits of private life, in the ages immediately before and after the
establishment of the Empire, were, for the most part, men born in the
provinces of Italy, neither trained in the formal discipline of Rome,
nor taking any active part in practical affairs. Their tastes and
feelings are, in some respects, rather Italian than purely Roman; their
thoughts and convictions are rather of a cosmopolitan type than moulded
on the national traditions. They drew the materials of their art as
much from the stores of Greek poetry, as from the life and action of
their own times. Their art is thus a composite structure, in which old
forms are combined with altered conditions; in which the fancies of
earlier times reappear in a new language, and the spirit of Greece is
seen interpenetrating the grave temperament of Rome, and the genial
nature of Italy.

But, although oratory and history may have been more essential to the
national life of the Romans, and more adapted to their genius, their
poetry still remains their most complete literary monument. Of the
many famous orators of the Republic one only has left his speeches
to modern times. The works of the two greatest Roman historians have
reached us in a mutilated shape; and the most important epochs in the
later history of the Republic are not represented in what remains
of the works of either writer. Tacitus records only the sombre and
monotonous annals of the early Empire; and the extant books of Livy
contain the account of times and events from which he himself was
separated by many generations. Roman poetry, on the other hand, is the
contemporary witness of several important eras in the history of the
Republic and the Empire. It includes many authentic and characteristic
fragments from the great times of the Scipios,--the complete works of
the two poets of finest genius, who flourished in the last days of the
Republic,--the masterpieces of the brilliant Augustan era;--and, of
the works of the Empire, more than are needed to exemplify the decay
of natural feeling and of poetical inspiration under the deadening
pressure of Imperialism. And, besides illustrating different eras, the
Roman poets throw light on the most various aspects of Roman life and
character. They are the most authentic witnesses both of the national
sentiment and ideas, and of the feelings and interests of private life.
They stamp on the imagination the ideal of Roman majesty; and they
bring home to modern sympathies the charm and the pathos of human life,
under conditions widely different from our own.

Roman poetry was the living heir, not the lifeless reproduction of
the genius of Greece. If it seems to have been a highly-trained
accomplishment rather than the irrepressible outpouring of a natural
faculty, still this accomplishment was based upon original gifts of
feeling and character, and was marked by its own peculiar features.
The creative energy of the Greeks died out with Theocritus; but their
learning and taste, surviving the decay of their political existence,
passed into the education of a kindred race, endowed, above all other
races of antiquity, with the capacity of receiving and assimilating
alien influences, and of producing, alike in action and in literature,
great results through persistent purpose and concentrated industry.
It was owing to their gifts of appreciation and their love of labour,
that the Roman poets, in the era of the transition from the freedom
and vigour of the Republic to the pomp and order of the Empire,
succeeded in producing works which, in point of execution, are not much
inferior to the masterpieces of Greece. It was due to the spirit of
a new race,--speaking a new language, living among different scenes,
acting their own part in the history of the world,--that the ancient
inspiration survived the extinction of Greek liberty, and reappeared,
under altered conditions, in a fresh succession of powerful works,
which owe their long existence as much to the vivid feeling as to the
artistic perfection by which they are characterised.

From one point of view, therefore, Roman poetry may be regarded as
an imitative reproduction, from another, as a new revelation of the
human spirit. For the form, and for some part of the substance, of
their works, the Roman poets were indebted to Greece: the spirit and
character, and much also of the substance of their poetry, are native
in their origin. They betray their want of inventiveness chiefly in the
forms of composition and the metres which they employed; occasionally
also in the cast of their poetic diction, and in their conventional
treatment of foreign materials. But, in even the least original aspects
of their art, they are still national. Although, with the exception of
Satire and the poetic Epistle, they struck out no new forms of poetic
composition, yet those adopted by them assumed something of a new type,
owing to the weight of their contents, the massive structure of the
Roman language, the fervour and gravity of the Roman temperament, and
the practical bent and logical mould of the Roman understanding.

They were not equally successful in all the forms which they attempted
to reproduce. They were especially inferior to their masters in
tragedy. They betray the inferiority of their dramatic genius also in
other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic poetry, and
in philosophical dialogues. They express passion and feeling either
directly from their own hearts and experience, or in great rhetorical
passages, attributed to the imaginary personages of their story--to
Ariadne or Dido, to Turnus or Mezentius. But this occasional utterance
of passion and sentiment is not united in them with a vivid delineation
of the complex characters of men; and it is only in their comic poetry
that they are quite successful in reproducing the natural and lively
interchange of speech. There is thus, as compared with Homer and
Theocritus, a deficiency of personal interest in the epic, descriptive,
and idyllic poetry of Virgil. The natural play of characters, acting
and reacting upon one another, scarcely, if at all, enlivens the
divinely-appointed action of the Aeneid, nor adds the charm of human
associations to the poet's deep and quiet pictures of rural beauty, and
to his graceful expression of pensive and tender feeling.

The Romans, as a race, were wanting also in speculative capacity; and
thus their poetry does not rise, or rises only in Lucretius, to those
imaginative heights from which the great lyrical and dramatic poets
of Greece contemplated the wonder and solemnity of life. Yet both the
epic and the lyrical poetry of Rome have a character and perfection of
their own. The Aeneid, with many resemblances in points of detail to
the poems of Homer, is yet, in design and execution, a true national
monument. The lyrical poetry of Rome, if inferior to the choral poetry
of Greece in range of thought and in ethereal grace of expression, and
scarcely equalling the few fragments of the early Aeolic poetry in
the force of passion, is yet an instrument of varied power, capable
of investing the lighter moods or more transient joys of life with an
unfading charm, and rising into fuller and more commanding tones to
express the national sentiment and moral dignity of Rome. Didactic
poetry obtained in Lucretius and Virgil ampler volume and profounder
meaning than in their Greek models, Empedocles and Hesiod. It was by
the skill of the two great Latin poets that poetic art was made to
embrace within its province the treatment of a great philosophical
argument, and of a great practical pursuit. The Satires and Epistles of
Horace showed, for the first time, how the didactic spirit could deal
in poetry with the conduct and familiar experience of life. The elegiac
poets of the Augustan age, while borrowing the outward form of their
compositions from the early poets of Ionia and the later writers at
the court of Alexandria, have taken the substance of their poetry to a
great extent from their own lives and interests; and have treated their
materials with a fluent brilliancy of style, and often with a graceful
tenderness of feeling, unborrowed from any foreign source. It may thus
be generally affirmed that the Roman poets, although adding little to
the great discoveries or inventions in literature, and although not
equally successful in all their adaptations of the inventions of their
predecessors, have yet left the stamp of their own genius and character
on some of the great forms which poetry has hitherto assumed.

The metres of Roman poetry are also seen to be adaptations to the Latin
language of the metres previously employed in the epic, lyrical, and
dramatic poetry of Greece. The Italian race had, in earlier times,
struck out a native measure, called the Saturnian,--of a rapid and
irregular movement,--in which their religious emotions, their festive
and satiric raillery, and their commemorative instincts found a rude
expression. But after this measure had been rejected by Ennius,
as unsuited to the gravity of his greatest work, the Roman poets
continued to imitate the metres of their Greek predecessors. But, in
their hands, these became characterised by a slower, more stately,
and regular movement, not only differing widely from the ring of the
native Saturnian rhythm, but also, with every improvement in poetic
accomplishment, receding further and further from the freedom and
variety of the Greek measures. The comic and tragic measures, in which
alone the Roman writers observed a less strict rule than their models,
never attained among them to any high metrical excellence. The rhythm
of the Greek poets, owing in a great measure to the frequency of vowel
sounds in their language, is more flowing, more varied, and more
richly musical than that of Roman poetry. Thus, although their verse
is constructed on the same metrical laws, there is the most marked
contrast between the rapidity and buoyancy of the Iliad or the Odyssey,
and the stately and weighty march of the Aeneid. Notwithstanding their
outward conformity to the canons of a foreign language, the most
powerful and characteristic measures of Roman poetry,--such as the
Lucretian and the Virgilian hexameter, and the Horatian alcaic,--are
distinguished by a grave, orderly, and commanding tone, symbolical of
the genius and the majesty of Rome. In such cases, as the Horatian
sapphic and the Ovidian elegiac, where the structure of the verse
is too slight to produce this impressive effect, there is still a
remarkable divergence from the freedom and manifold harmony of the
early Greek poets to a uniform and monotonous cadence.

The language, also, of Roman poetry betrays many traces of imitation.
Some of the early Latin tragedies were literal translations from the
works of the Athenian dramatists; and fragments of the rude Roman copy
may still be compared with the polished expression of the original.
Some familiar passages of the Iliad may be traced among the rough-hewn
fragments of the Annals of Ennius. Even Lucretius, whose diction, more
than that of most poets, produces the impression of being the immediate
creation of his own mind, has described outward objects, and clothed
his thoughts, in language borrowed from Homer and Empedocles. The short
volume of Catullus contains translations from Sappho and Callimachus,
and frequent imitations of other Greek poets; and, from the extant
fragments of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others of the Greek lyric poets, it
may be seen how frequently Horace availed himself of some turn of their
expression to invest his own experience with old poetic associations.
Virgil, whose great success is, in no slight measure, due to the skill
and taste with which he used the materials of earlier Greek and native
writers, has reproduced the heroic tones of Homer in his epic, and the
mellow cadences of Theocritus in his pastoral poems; and has blended
something of the antique quaintness and oracular sanctity of Hesiod
with the golden perfection of his Georgics.

But besides the direct debt which each Roman poet owed to the Greek
author or authors whom he imitated, it is difficult to estimate
the extent to which the taste of the later Romans was formed by
the familiar study of a foreign language so much superior to the
rude speech spoken by their fathers. The habitual study of any
foreign language has an influence not on style only, but even on the
structure of thought and the development of emotion. The Roman poets
first learned, from the study of Greek poetry, to feel the graceful
combinations and the musical power of expression, and were thus
stimulated and trained to elicit similar effects from their native
language. It is for this gift, or power over language, that Lucretius
prays in his invocation to the creative power of Nature,--

    Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem;

and it is this which Catullus claims as the characteristic excellence
of his own poems.

The Augustan poets attained a still greater success in the variations
of words and rhythm; but this success was gained with some loss of
direct force and freshness in the expression of feeling. And it may be
said generally that the Latin language, in its adaptation to poetry,
lost some of its powers as an immediate vehicle of thought. In Virgil
and in Horace, words are combined in a less natural order than in
Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language does not strike the mind
with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry, nor does it seem equally
capable of being rapidly followed by a popular audience. Catullus alone
among the great Roman poets combines perfect grace with the happiest
freedom and simplicity. Yet the studied and compact diction of Latin
poetry, if wanting in fluency, ease, and directness, lays a strong
hold upon the mind, by its power of marking with emphasis what is most
essential and prominent in the ideas and objects presented to the
imagination. The thought and sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved
on her poetical literature, in deep and enduring characters. And,
notwithstanding all manifest traces of imitation, the diction of the
greatest Roman poets attests the presence of genuine creative power. A
strong vital force is recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of
Ennius and Lucretius; and, though more latent, it is not less really
present under the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and
the subtle moderation of Horace.

Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its contents to Greek
thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that
conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of
the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome
and Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian
Gods; the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected
with the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late
civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised
features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling,
experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from
earlier representations. Hence a great deal in Latin poetry appears
to come less directly from the poet's heart, and to fit less closely
to the facts of human life, than the best poetry both of Greece and
of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship is more
apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance and
thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they reproduce
Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own feeling than
the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The beautiful and
stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second life in the young
imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and conventional to
Virgil:--

    Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes,
    Omnia jam vulgata.

The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized
with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in
the episode of the 'Pastor Aristacus' in the Georgics. Not only are
the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but
the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with
the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is a
religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed
which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of
Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy.
The manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and
of the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists
of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek
traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world,
and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted
itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil.
Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the
great Roman epic, bears the mark of the artificial construction of a
late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative
legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of
poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes
of Horace, yet the mythological accessories of some of those which
celebrate the praises of a god, or the charms of a mistress, seem to
stand in no vital relation with the genuine convictions of the poet.

Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek
art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the
civilised world, after it had been thoroughly leavened by Greek
thought, taste, and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a
living power, after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so
that, were it nothing more, that literature would still be valuable
as the fruit of the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the
earliest poet of the ancient world, there is a kind of promise of
the great life that was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a
retrospective contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art
of the past,--a gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the
Roman poets had also a strong vein of original character and feeling,
and many phases of national and personal experience to reveal. They
had to give a permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to
perpetuate the charm of the land and life of Italy. In their highest
tones, they give utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified
and commanding attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial
Republic. But other elements in their art proclaim their large
inheritance of the receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient
as in modern times, has characterised the Southern nations. As the
patrician and plebeian orders were united in the imperial greatness
of the commonwealth, as the energy of Rome and of the other Italian
communities was welded together to form a mighty national life, so
these apparently antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty
and beauty of Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself
have been unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was
too austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create
and foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the
south, when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and
the elevation of higher ideas, tended to degenerate into licentious
effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier
tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and
the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the
exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand,
gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight
restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline.
In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of character
are most happily combined with susceptibility to the charm and the
power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the Augustan age
abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their lives,
under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue of their
forefathers. Their vices, and still more their weaknesses, are of a
type apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman
character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect
testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very
coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which,
in a better time, the freedom and energy of the Republic had been
developed. Ovid, even in his libertinism, displays his vigorous and
ardent vitality. The effeminacy of Tibullus looks like the reaction
of a nature, enervated by the circumstances of his age, from the high
standard of manliness, which a sterner time had maintained.

Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national
and patriotic sentiment is prominently conspicuous. Among the poets of
the Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by strong political
as well as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to
the commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions,
the advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the
works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the whole
plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell exercised
over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the great destiny
of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of Italy, and his
pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of men. Horace rises
above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the imperial majesty
of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the Sabine households,
and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of Roman character.
The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing its existence to
the strong interest which was felt by the Romans in their mythical
and early story, so long as any living memory of their political life
remained.

The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little
sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they
flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to
political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated
him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the
lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage in
the strife of personal ambition;--

    Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
    Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.

Catullus, while eagerly enjoying his life, seems, in regard to all the
grave public questions of his time, to 'daff the world aside, and bid
it pass': yet there is, as has been well said[3], a rough republican
flavour in his careless satire; and he retained to the last, and boldly
asserted, what was the earliest, as well as the latest, instinct of
ancient liberty--the spirit of resistance to the arbitrary rule of any
single man.

Roman poetry is pervaded also by a peculiar vein of imaginative
emotion. There is no feeling so characteristic of the works of Roman
genius as the sense of majesty. This feeling is called forth by the
idea or outward manifestation of strength, stability, vastness, and
order; by whatever impresses the imagination as the symbol of power
and authority, whether in the aspect of Nature, or in the works,
actions, and institutions of man. It is in their most serious and
elevated writings, and chiefly in their epic and didactic poetry,
that the Romans show their peculiar susceptibility to this grave and
dignified emotion. Even the plain and rude diction of Ennius rises into
rugged grandeur when he is moved by the vastness or massive strength
of outward things, by 'the pomp and circumstance' of war, or by the
august forms and symbols of government. The majestic tones of Lucretius
seem to give a voice to the deep feeling of the order and immensity of
the universe, which possessed him. The sustained dignity of the Aeneid,
and the splendour of some of its finest passages--such for instance as
that which brings before us the solemn and magnificent spectacle of
the fall of Troy--attest how the imagination of Virgil was moved to
sympathy with the attributes of ancient and powerful sovereignty[4].

Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman
poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is
more authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry.
They speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom
that has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry
strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful
representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry
appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous impulses
of our nature. This glow of moral emotion pervades not the poetry
only, but the oratory, history, and philosophy of Rome. It has cast a
kind of religious solemnity around the fragments of the early epic,
tragic, and satiric poetry: it has given an intenser fervour to the
stern consistency and desperate fortitude of Lucretius: it has added
the element of strength to the pathos and fine humanity in the Æneid.
It is by his moral, as well as his national enthusiasm, that Horace
reveals the Roman gravity that tempered his genial nature. The language
of Lucan, Persius, and Juvenal still breathed the same spirit in the
deadening atmosphere of the Empire. Of all the great poets of Rome,
Catullus alone shows little trace of this grave ardour of feeling, the
more usual accompaniment of the firm temper of manhood than of the
prodigal genius of youth.

There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in
Roman poetry, which are, perhaps, more akin to modern sympathies. In
no other branch of ancient literature is so much prominence given to
the enjoyment of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows,
tastes, and pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity
of the old Roman life, and the predominance of public over private
interests in the best days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather
than to foster, the birth of these new modes of emotion. They are
like the flower of that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life
which spread itself abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and
came to a rapid maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the
accumulated treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons
ample leisure to enjoy them.

The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more
prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed,
among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true
description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and
the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly,
affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of
Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the
Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and
to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs
and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature
as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era.
The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the
thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much
on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of
beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they
breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do
not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from
contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the
happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful
security of the country. The difference between the two nations in
social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their
aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his
leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his
constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition
which made the λέσχη a favourite resort so early as the time of
Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most typical
representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman
statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy
repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and
self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with his
household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and retirement
was one great element in the Roman taste for country life;--a taste
which was manifested among the foremost public men, such as the Scipios
and Laelius, long before any trace of it is betrayed in Roman poetry.
But, as the practice of spending the unhealthy months of autumn away
from Rome became general among the wealthier classes, and as new modes
of sentiment were fostered by greater leisure and finer cultivation,
a genuine love of Nature,--taking the form either of attachment to
particular places, or of enjoyment in the life and beautiful forms of
the outward world,--was gradually awakened in the more susceptible
minds of the Italian race.

The poetry of the Augustan age and of that immediately preceding it is
deeply pervaded by this new emotion. Each of the great poets manifests
the feeling in his own way. Lucretius, while contemplating the majesty
of Nature's laws, and the immensity of her range, is, at the same
time, powerfully moved to sympathy with her ever-varying life. He
feels the charm of simply living in fine weather, and looking on the
common aspects of the world,--such as the sea-shore, fresh pastures and
full-flowing rivers, or the new loveliness of the early morning. He
represents the punishment of the Danaides as a symbol of the incapacity
of the human spirit to enjoy the natural charm of the recurring seasons
of the year. Catullus, too, although his active social temper did not
respond to the spell which Nature exercised over the contemplative and
pensive spirits of Lucretius and Virgil, has many fine images from the
outward world in his poems. He delights in comparing the grace and
the passion of youth with the bloom of flowers and the stateliness of
trees; he associates the beauty of Sirmio with his bright picture of
the happiness of home; he feels the return of the genial breezes of
spring as enhancing his delight in leaving the dull plains of Phrygia,
and in hastening to visit the famous cities of Asia. Virgil's early art
was characterised by his friend and brother poet in the lines,--

                              Molle atque facetum
    Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camenae[5].

The love of natural, and especially of Italian, beauty blends with all
his patriotic memories, and with the charm which he has cast around
the common operations of rustic industry. The freedom and peace of his
country life, among the Sabine hills, kept the heart of Horace fresh
and simple, in spite of all the pleasures and flatteries to which he
was exposed; and enabled him, till the end of his course, to mingle
the clear fountain of native poetry,--'ingeni benigna vena,'--with the
stiller current of his meditative wisdom.

The passion of love was a favourite theme both of the early lyrical
poets of Greece, and of the courtly writers of Alexandria; but the
works of the former have reached us only in inconsiderable fragments;
and the latter, with the exception of Theocritus, are much inferior to
the Roman poets who made them their models. It is in Latin literature
that we are brought most near to the power of this passion in the
ancient world. Few among the poets who have recorded their own
experience of love, in any age, have expressed a feeling so true or so
intense as Catullus. He has all the ardent, self-forgetful devotion, if
he wants the chivalry and purity, of modern sentiment. He has painted
the love of others, also, with graceful fidelity. He has shown the
finest sense in discerning, and the finest power in delineating the
charm of youthful passion, when first awakening into life, or first
unfolding into true affection. It is by his delineation of the agony
of Dido that Virgil has imparted the chief personal interest to the
story of the Aeneid. If he has failed to embody any complex type of
character, he has described the agitation and pathos of this particular
passion at least with a powerful hand. Horace is the poet of the
lighter and gayer moods of love. Without ever becoming a slave to it
he experienced enough of its pains and pleasures, to enable him to
paint the fascination or the waywardness of a mistress with the equable
feeling of an epicurean, but, at the same time, with the refined
observation of a poet. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, making
pleasure the chief pursuit of their lives, have made the more ignoble
and transient phases of this passion the predominant motive of their
poetry. Yet the effeminacy of Tibullus is redeemed by real tenderness
of heart; there is ardent emotion expressed by Propertius for his
living mistress, and true affection in the lines in which he recalls
her memory after death; the profligacy of Ovid is, if not redeemed, at
least relieved, by his buoyant wit and his brilliant fancy.

Roman poetry is also interesting as the revelation of personal
experience and character. The biographies of ancient authors are, for
the most part, meagre and untrustworthy; and thus it is chiefly through
the conscious or unconscious self-portraiture in their writings that
the actual men of antiquity are brought into close contact with the
modern world. Few men of any age or country are so well known to us
as Horace; and it is from his own writings, exclusively, that this
intimate knowledge has been obtained. The lines in which he describes
Lucilius are more applicable to himself than to any extant writer of
Greece or Rome,--

    Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
    Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat, unquam
    Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis
    Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
    Vita senis[6].

He has described himself, his tastes and pursuits, his thoughts and
convictions, with perfect frankness and candour, and without any of
the triviality or affectation of literary egotism. Catullus, although
sometimes wanting in proper reticence, and altogether devoid of that
meditative art with which Horace transmutes his own experience into the
common experience of human nature, is known also as a familiar friend,
from the force of feeling with which he realised, and the transparent
sincerity with which he recorded, all the pain and the pleasure of his
life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age have written, neither from
so strong a heart as that of Catullus, nor with the good taste and
self-respect of Horace; but yet one of the chief sources of interest in
their poetry, as of that of Martial in a later age, arises from their
strong realisation of life, their unreserved communicativeness, and the
light they thus throw on one phase of personal and social manners in
ancient times.

Nor are these indications of individual character confined to the poets
who profess to communicate their own feelings, and to record their own
fortunes. All the works of Roman poetry bear emphatically the impress
of their authors. While the finest Greek poetry seems like an almost
impersonal emanation of genius, Roman poetry is, to a much greater
extent, the expression of character. The great Roman writers manifest
that kind of self-consciousness which accompanies resolute and
successful effort; while the Greeks enjoy that happy self-forgetfulness
which attends the unimpeded exercise of a natural gift. The epitaphs
composed for themselves by Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, and Pacuvius,
and the assertion of their own originality and of their hopes of
fame, which occurs in the poetry of Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace,
were dictated by a strong sense of their own personality, and of the
importance of the task on which they were engaged. Catullus, although
he is much preoccupied with, and most frank in communicating his
feelings and pursuits, has much less of the consciousness of genius, is
much more humble in his aspirations, and more modest in his estimate
of himself. In this, as in other respects, he approaches nearer to the
type of Greek art than any of his brother-poets of Rome.

It is a common remark that the very greatest poets are those about
whose personal characteristics least is known. It is impossible in
their case to determine where they have expressed their real sympathies
or convictions. They rise above the prejudices of their country and
the accidents of their time, and can see the good and evil inseparably
mixed in all human action. No criticism can throw any trustworthy
light on the personal position, the pursuits and aims, the outward
and inward experience of Homer. It cannot even be determined with
certainty how much of the poetry which bears his name is the creation
of one, seemingly, inexhaustible genius; and how much is the 'divine
voice' of earlier singers still 'floating around him.' Such inquiries
are ever attracting and ever baffling a high curiosity. They leave the
mind perplexed with the doubt whether it is discerning, in the far
distance, the outline of solid mountain-land, or only the transient
shapes of the clouds. Hesiod, on the other hand, a poet of perhaps
equal antiquity, but of an infinitely lower order of genius, has left
his own likeness graphically delineated on his remains. There is much
to interest a reader in the old didactic poem, 'The Works and Days,'
but it is not the interest of studying a work of art or of creative
genius. The charm of the book consists partly in its power of calling
up the ideas of a remote antiquity and of human life in its most
elemental conditions; partly in the distinct impression which it bears
of a character of an antique and primitive and yet not unfamiliar
type;--a character of deep natural piety and righteousness, but with a
quaint intermixture of other qualities, homespun sagacity and worldly
wisdom;--genuine thrift, and horror of idleness, of war, of seafaring
enterprise;--sardonic dislike of the airs and vices of women, and a
grim discontent with his own condition, and with the poor soil which
it was his lot to till[7]. It is through his want of those gifts of
genius which have made Homer immortal as a poet, and a mere name as
a man, that Hesiod has left so distinct a picture of himself to the
latest times. In like manner Roman poetry, while never rising to the
heights of creative and impersonal genius, from this very defect, is
a truer revelation of the poets themselves. The Aeneid supplies ample
materials for understanding the affections and convictions of Virgil.
Lucretius makes his personal presence felt through the whole march of
his argument, and supports every position of his system not with his
logic only, but with the whole force of his nature. The fragments of
Ennius and of Lucilius afford ample evidence by which we may judge what
kind of men they were.

It thus appears that, over and above their higher and finer
excellencies, the Roman poets have this additional source of interest,
that, more than any other authors in the vigorous times of antiquity,
they satisfy the modern curiosity in regard to personal character and
experience. These poets have themselves left the most trustworthy
record of their happiest hours and most real interests; of their
standard of conduct, their personal worth, and their strength of
affection; of the studies and the occupations in which they passed
their lives, and of the spirit in which they awaited the certainty of
their end.

       *       *       *       *       *

It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of
this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided
into four great periods:--

I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about
B.C. 240 till about B.C. 100:

II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical career
belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the
outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey:

III. The Augustan age:

IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus.

The poetry of each of these periods is distinctly marked in form,
style, and character. There is evidently a great progress in artistic
accomplishment and in poetical feeling, from the rude cyclopean remains
of the annals of Ennius to the stately proportions and elaborate
workmanship of the Aeneid. Yet this advance was attended with some loss
as well as gain. With infinitely less accomplishment and less variety,
the older writers show signs of a robuster life and a more vigorous
understanding than some at least of those who adorn the Augustan era.
They endeavoured to work in the spirit of the great masters, who had
made the most heroic passions and most serious interests of men the
subject of their art. They were men also of the same fibre as the chief
actors on the stage of public affairs, living with them in familiar
friendship, while at the same time maintaining a close sympathy with
popular feeling and the national life. Their fragments are thus, apart
from their intrinsic merits, especially valuable as the contemporary
language of that great time, and as giving some expression to the
strength, the dignity, and the freedom which were stamped upon the old
Republic.

For more than a generation after the death of Accius and Lucilius, no
new poet of any eminence appeared at Rome. The vivid enjoyment of
life, and the sense of security which usually accompany and foster
the successful cultivation of art, had been rudely interrupted by the
convulsions of the State. A new birth of Roman poetry took place during
the brief lull between the storms of the first and second civil wars.
The new poets arose independently of the old literature. They appealed
not to popular favour, but to the tastes of the few and the educated;
they gave expression not to any public or national sentiment, but to
their individual thought and feeling. Their works reflect the restless
agitation of a time of revolution; but they show also all the vigour
and sincerity of republican freedom. While greatly superior to the
fragments of the older poetry in refinement of style, and in depth
and variety of poetical feeling, they want the simple strength of
moral conviction, and the interest in great practical affairs, which
characterised their predecessors. They are inferior to the poets of the
Augustan age in artistic skill; but they show more force of thought,
or more intensity of passion, a stronger and livelier inspiration, a
bolder and more independent character.

The short interval between the death of Catullus and the appearance of
the Bucolics of Virgil marks the beginning of a new era in literature
and in history:

    Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

Catullus, dying only a few years before the extinction of popular
freedom, is, in every nerve and fibre, the poet of a republic. Virgil,
even before the final success of Augustus, proclaimed the advent of the
new Empire; and he became the sincere admirer and interpreter of its
order and magnificence. Most of the other poets of that age, though
born before the overthrow of the Republic, show the influence of their
time, not only by sympathy with or acquiescence in the new order of
things, but by a perceptible lowering in the higher energies of life.
Still, the poetry of the Augustan age, if inferior in natural force to
that of the Republic, is the culmination of all the previous efforts
of Roman art; and is, at the same time, the most complete and elaborate
representation of Roman and Italian life.

The chief interest of Roman poetry, considered as the work of men of
natural genius and cultivated taste, and as the expression of great
national ideas or of individual thought and impulse, ceases with
the end of the Augustan age. Under the continued pressure of the
Empire, true poetical inspiration and pure feeling for art were lost.
One certain test of this decay is the absence of musical power and
sweetness from the verse of the later poets. Yet some of the poets
of the Empire have their own peculiar greatness. Lucan and Juvenal
recall in their vigorous rhetoric the masculine tone and fervid feeling
of the old Roman character, liberalised by the progress of thought
and education. In the Satires of Persius, there is an atmosphere of
purer morality than in any earlier Roman writer, with the exception
of Cicero. There is much vigour, sense, wit, and keen appreciation of
life, intermingled with the coarseness of Martial. Yet it is owing
rather to their rhetorical or their intellectual ability and to their
historical value, than to their poetical genius, that these writers are
still read and admired. The artificial epics of Silius Italicus and
Valerius Flaccus may be occasionally read in the interests of learning;
but it is hardly probable that they will, or desirable that they
should, ever be permanently restored from the neglect and oblivion into
which they have long been sinking.

This review of Roman poetry will bring before us the origin and
progressive growth of a branch of literature, moulded, indeed, on the
forms of a foreign art, but executed with native energy, and expressive
of native character. In this poetry not the genius only, but the inner
nature and sympathies of some of the more interesting men of antiquity
are displayed. It throws light on the impulses of thought and feeling
which influenced the action of different epochs in Roman history. The
great qualities of Rome are seen to mould and animate her poetry.
These qualities are found in harmonious union with the spirit of
enjoyment and the sense of exuberant life, fostered by the genial air
of Italy; and with a refinement of taste drawn from the purest source
of human culture which the world has ever enjoyed. After all deductions
have been made for their want of inventiveness, it still remains true,
that the Roman poets of the last days of the Republic and of the
Augustan age have added to the masterpieces of literature some great
works of native feeling as well as of finished execution.

[Footnote 1: Hom. Od. xxii. 348.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 2, 3. Sero igitur a nostris poetae
vel cogniti vel recepti. At contra oratorem celeriter complexi sumus:
nec eum primo eruditum, aptum tamen ad dicendum.]

[Footnote 3: Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography, Art. Catullus.]

[Footnote 4: The following lines might be quoted as a specimen of the
_majesty_ of the Aeneid:--

    Haec finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum
    Sorte tulit, Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem
    Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
    Regnatorem Asiae.--Aen. ii. 554-7.
]

[Footnote 5: Horace, Sat. i. 10. 45.]

[Footnote 6: 'He used from time to time to intrust all his secret
thoughts to his books, as to trusty friends; it was to them only he
turned in evil fortune or in good; and thus it is, that the whole life
of the old poet lies before our eyes, as if it were portrayed on a
votive picture.'--Sat. ii. 1. 30.]

[Footnote 7: The parallel which Mr. Ruskin draws (Modern Painters, vol
iii. p. 194), between an ancient Greek and 'a good, conscientious, but
illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back,'
becomes intelligible if we regard Hesiod as a normal type of the Greek
mind.]




CHAPTER II.

VESTIGES OF EARLY INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY.


The Romans themselves traced the origin of their poetry, as of all
their literary culture, to their contact with the mind of Greece.

    Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
    Intulit agresti Latio.

The first productive literary impulse was communicated to the Roman
mind by the Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who, in the year B.C.
240--one year after the end of the First Punic War--brought out, before
a Roman audience, a drama translated or imitated from the Greek. From
this time Roman poetry advanced along the various channels which the
creative energy of Greek genius had formed.

But it has been maintained, in recent times, that this was but
the second birth of Roman poetry, and that a golden age of native
minstrelsy had preceded this historical development of literature.
The most distinguished supporters of this theory were Niebuhr and
Macaulay. In the preface to his _Lays of Rome_, Macaulay says that
'this early literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are
found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence,
but little reading and writing.' Niebuhr went so far as to assert that
the Romans in early times possessed epic poems, 'which in power and
brilliance of imagination leave everything produced by the Romans in
later times far behind them.' He held that the flourishing period
of this native poetry was the fifth century after the foundation of
the city. He supposed that the early lays were of plebeian origin,
strongly animated by plebeian sentiment, and familiarly known among
the mass of the people; that they disappeared after the ascendency of
the new literature, chiefly through the influence of Ennius; and that
his immediate predecessor, Naevius, was the last of the genuine native
minstrels. He professed to find clear traces of these ballads and
epic poems in the fine legends of early Roman history. His theory was
supported by arguments founded on the testimony of ancient writers, on
indications of the early recognition of poetry by the Roman State (as,
for instance, the worship of the Camenae), on the poetical character of
early Roman story, and on the analogy of other nations.

Although there may be no more ground for believing in a golden age of
early Roman poetry than in a golden age of innocence and happiness,
yet the question raised by Niebuhr deserves attention, not only on
account of the celebrity which it obtained, but also as opening up an
inquiry into the nature and value of the rude germs of literature which
the Latin soil spontaneously produced. Though there is no substantial
evidence of the existence among the Romans of anything corresponding
to the modern ballad or the early epic of Greece, yet certain kinds of
metrical composition did spring up and flourish among the Italians,
previous to and independent of their knowledge of Greek literature.
It is worth while to ascertain what these kinds of composition were,
as they throw light on some natural tendencies of the race, which
ultimately obtained their adequate expression, and helped to impart a
native and original character to Latin literature.

It was observed in the former chapter that while the metres of all
the great Roman poets were founded on the earlier metres of Greece,
there was a native Italian metre, called the Saturnian, which was
employed apparently in various kinds of composition, and was quite
different in character from the heroic and lyric measures adopted by
the cultivated poets of a later age. This metre was used not only in
rude extemporaneous effusions, but also in the long poem of Naevius, on
the First Punic War. Horace indicates his sense of the roughness and
barbarism of the metre, in the lines,

                            Sic horridus ille
    Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus
    Munditiae pepulere[8].

Ennius speaks contemptuously of the verse of Naevius, as that employed
by the old prophetic bards, before any of the gifts of poetry had been
received or cultivated--

    Quum neque musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
    Nec dicti studiosus erat.

The irregularity of the metre may be inferred from a saying of an
ancient grammarian, that, in the long epic of Naevius he could find
no single line to serve as a normal specimen of its structure. From
the few Saturnian lines remaining, it may be inferred that the verse
had an irregular trochaic movement; and it seems first to have come
into use as an accompaniment to the beating of the foot in a primitive
rustic dance. The name, connected with Saturnus, the old Land-God of
Italy, points to the rustic origin of the metre. It was known also by
the name of Faunian, derived from another of the Divinities worshipped
in the rural districts of Italy. It seems first to have been employed
in ritual prayers and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth, and in
the grotesque raillery accompanying the merriment and license of the
harvest-home. It is of the Saturnian verse that Virgil speaks in the
lines of the second Georgic--

    Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni
    Versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto[9].

As the long roll of the hexameter and the stately march of the alcaic
were expressive of the gravity and majesty of the Roman State, so the
ring and flow of the Saturnian verse may be regarded as indicative
of the freedom and genial enjoyment of life, characterising the old
Italian peasantry.

The most important kinds of compositions produced in this metre, under
purely native influences, may be classed as,

1. Hymns or ritual verses.

2. Prophetic verses.

3. Festive and satiric verses, uttered in dialogue or in rude mimetic
drama.

4. Short gnomic or didactic verses.

5. Commemorative odes sung or recited at banquets and funerals.

1. The earliest extant specimen of the Latin language is a fragment of
the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, a priestly brotherhood, who offered,
on every 15th of May, public sacrifices for the fertility of the
fields. This fragment is variously written and interpreted, but there
can be no doubt that it is the expression of a prayer, for protection
against pestilence, addressed to the Lares and the god Mars, and that
it was uttered with the accompaniment of dancing. The following is the
reading of the fragment, as given by Mommsen:--

    Enos, Lases, juvate.
    Ne veluerve, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores.
    Satur fu, fere Mars.
    Limen sali.
    Sta berber.
    Semunis alternis advocapit concto.
    Enos, Marmar, juvato.
    Triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe[10].

The address to Mars 'Satur fu,' or, according to another reading,
'Satur furere,' 'be satisfied or done with raging,' probably refers
to the severity of the winter and early spring[11]. The words have
reference to the attributes of the God in the old Italian religion, in
which the powers of Nature were deified and worshipped long before Mars
was identified with the Greek Ares. The other expressions in the prayer
appear to be, either directions given to the dancers, or the sounds
uttered as the dance proceeded.


Another short fragment has been preserved from the hymn of the Salii,
also an ancient priesthood, supposed to date from the times of the
early kings. The hymn is characterised by Horace, among other specimens
of ancient literature, as equally unintelligible to himself and to its
affected admirers[12].

From the extreme antiquity of these ceremonial chants it may be
inferred that metrical expression among the Romans, as among the Greeks
and other ancient nations, owed its origin to a primitive religious
worship. But while the early Greek hymns or chants in honour of the
Gods soon assumed the forms of pleasant tales of human adventure, or
tragic tales of human suffering, the Roman hymns retained their formal
and ritual character unchanged among all the changes of creed and
language. In the lines just quoted there is no trace of creative fancy,
nor any germ of devotional feeling, which might have matured into
lyrical or contemplative poetry. They sound like the words of a rude
incantation. They are the obscure memorial of a primitive, agricultural
people, living in a blind sense of dependence on their gods, and
restrained by a superstitious formalism from all activity of thought
or fancy. Such compositions cannot be attributed to the inspiration or
skill of any early poet, but seem to have been copied from the uncouth
and spontaneous shouts of a simple, unsophisticated priesthood, engaged
in a rude ceremonial dance. If these hymns stand in any relation to
Latin literature, they may perhaps be regarded as springing from the
same vein of public sentiment, as called forth the hymn composed by
Livius Andronicus during the Second Punic War, and as rude precursors
of those composed by Catullus and Horace, and chanted by a chorus of
youths and maidens in honour of the protecting Deities of Rome.

2. The verses of the Fauns and Vates spoken of by Ennius, with allusion
to the poem of Naevius, in the lines,

                        Scripsere alii rem,
    Versibu' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,

were probably as far removed from poetry as the ritual chants of the
Salii and the Fratres Arvales. The Fauni were the woodland gods of
Italy, and were, besides their other functions, supposed to be endowed
with prophetic power[13]. The word _Vates_, a word of Celtic origin,
originally means not a poet, but a soothsayer. The Camenae or Casmenae
(another form of which word appears in Carmenta, the prophetic mother
of Evander) were worshipped, not as the inspirers of poetry, but as
the foretellers of future events[14]. Both Greeks and Romans sought to
obtain a knowledge of the future, either through the interpretation of
omens, or through the voice of persons supposed to be divinely endowed
with foresight. But the Greeks, even in the regard which they paid to
auguries and oracles, were influenced, for the most part, by their
lively imagination; while the Romans, from the earliest to the latest
eras of their history, in all their relations to the supernatural
world, adhered to a scrupulous and unimaginative ceremonialism. The
notices in Latin literature of the functions of these early Vates--as,
for instance, the counsel of the Etrurian seer to drain the Alban Lake
during the war with Veii, and the prophecy of Marcius uttered during
the Second Punic War,

    Amnem Trojugena Cannam Romane fuge, etc.[15],

suggest no more idea of poetical inspiration than the occasional
notices, in Latin authors, of the oracles of the Sibylline books.
The language of prophecy naturally assumes a metrical or rhythmical
form, partly as an aid to the memory, partly, perhaps, as a means of
giving to the words uttered the effect of a more solemn intonation. In
Greece, the oracles of the Delphian priestess, and the predictions of
soothsayers, collected in books or circulating orally among the people,
were expressed in hexameter verse and in the traditional diction of
epic poetry; but they were never ranked under any form of poetic art.
The verses of the Vates, so far as any inference can be formed as to
their nature, appear to have been products and proofs of unimaginative
superstition, rather than of any imaginative inspiration among the
early inhabitants of Latium.

3. Another class of metrical compositions, of native origin, but of a
totally opposite character, was known by the name of the 'Fescennine
verses.' These arose out of a very different class of feelings and
circumstances. Horace attributes their origin to the festive meetings
and exuberant mirth of the harvest-home among a primitive, strong, and
cheerful race of husbandmen. He points out how this rustic raillery
gradually assumed the character of fierce lampoons, and had to be
restrained by law:--

    Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
    Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit;
    Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos
    Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam
    In rabiem coepit verti jocus et per honestas
    Ire domos impune minax. Doluere cruento
    Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
    Conditione super communi; quin etiam lex
    Poenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quemquam
    Describi; vertere modum, formidine fustis
    Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti[16].

The change in character, here described, from coarse and good-humoured
bantering to libellous scurrility, may be conjectured to have taken
place when the Fescennine freedom passed from villages and country
districts to the active social and political life within the city.
That this change had taken place in Rome at an early period, is proved
by the fact that libellous verses were forbidden by the laws of the
Twelve Tables[17]. The original Fescennine verse appears, from the
testimony of Horace, to have been in metrical dialogue. This rude
amusement, in which a coarse kind of banter was interchanged during
their festive gatherings, was in early times characteristic of the
rural populations of Greece and Sicily, as well as Italy, and was
one of the original elements out of which Greek comedy and Greek
pastoral poetry were developed. These verses had a kindred origin with
that of the Phallic Odes among the Greeks. They both appear to have
sprung out of the rudest rites and the grossest symbolism of rustic
paganism. The Fescennine raillery long retained traces of this original
character. Catullus mentions the 'procax Fescennina locutio' among the
accompaniments of marriage festivals; and the songs of the soldiers,
in the extravagant license of the triumphal procession, betrayed
unmistakably this primitive coarseness.

These rude and inartistic verses, which took their name either from
the town of Fescennia in Etruria or from the word fascinum[18], were
the first expression of that aggressive and censorious spirit which
ultimately animated Roman satire. But the original satura, which
also was familiar to the Romans before they became acquainted with
Greek literature, was somewhat different both from the Fescennine
verses, and from the lampoons which arose out of them. The more
probable etymology[19] of the word _satura_ connects it in origin
with the _satura lanx_, a plate filled with various kinds of fruit
offered to the gods. If this etymology be the true one, the word meant
originally a medley of various contents, like the Italian _farsa_[20],
and it evidently had not lost this meaning when first employed in
regular literature by Ennius and Lucilius. The original satura was a
kind of dramatic entertainment, accompanied with music and dancing,
differing from the Fescennine verses in being regularly composed and
not extemporaneous, and from the drama, in being without a connected
plot. The origin of this composition is traced by Livy[21] to the
representation of Etrurian dancers, who were brought to Rome during a
pestilence. The Roman youth, according to his account, being moved to
imitation of these representations, in which there was neither acting
nor speaking, added to them the accompaniment of verses of a humorous
character; and continued to represent these jocular medleys, combined
with music (_saturas impletas modis_), even after the introduction of
the regular drama.

These scenic saturae, which, from Livy's notice, appear to have been
accompanied with good-humoured hilarity rather than with scurrilous
raillery, prepared the way for the reception of the regular drama among
the Romans, and will, to some extent, account for its early popularity
among them. The later Roman satire long retained traces of a connexion
with this primitive and indigenous satura, evinced both by the
miscellaneous character of its topics, and by its frequent employment
of dramatic dialogue.

4. The didactic tendency which is so conspicuous in the cultivated
literature of Rome manifested itself also in the indigenous
compositions of Italy. The popular maxims and precepts preserved by
the old agricultural writers and afterwards embodied by Virgil in
his Georgics, were handed down from generation to generation in the
Saturnian rhythm. But, apparently, the first metrical composition
committed to writing was a poem of an ethical or didactic character,
written two generations before the first dramatic representation of
Livius Andronicus, by Appius Claudius Caecus, who is also the earliest
known to us in the long line of Roman orators[22].

5. But it was not from any of these sources that Niebuhr supposed the
poetical character of early Roman history to be derived. Nor is there
any analogy between the religious hymns, or the Fescennine verses of
Italy, and the modern ballad. But there is evidence of the existence,
at one time, of other metrical compositions of which scarcely anything
is definitely ascertained, except that they were sung at banquets, to
the accompaniment of the flute, in celebration of the praises of great
men. There is no direct evidence of the time when these compositions,
some of which were believed by Niebuhr to have attained the dimensions
of Epic poems, existed, or when they fell into disuse. Cato, as quoted
by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, and in the Brutus[23], is our
earliest authority on the subject. His testimony is to the effect
that many generations before his time, the guests at banquets were in
the habit of singing, in succession, the praises of great men, to the
music of the flute. Cicero, in the Brutus, expresses a wish that these
songs still existed in his own day; 'utinam exstarent illa carmina,
quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a
singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus scriptum
reliquit Cato.' Varro again is quoted, to the effect, that boys
used to be present at banquets, for the purpose of singing 'ancient
poems,' celebrating the praises of their ancestors. Valerius Maximus
mentions 'that the older men used at banquets to celebrate in song the
illustrious deeds of their ancestors, in order to stimulate the youth
to imitate them.' Passages are quoted also from Horace, from Dionysius,
and from Tacitus, implying a belief in the ancient existence of these
compositions.

Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain
funeral poems, called _Naeniae_, originally chanted by the female
relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the
practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a
mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations.

The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no
more than this,--that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of
great men,--that they were of such length as to admit of several being
sung in succession,--and that they fell into disuse some generations
before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from
these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr. The
evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical pieces,
and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great banquets and
funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of exhibiting the
ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their origin to the
patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have been animated
by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved at all, they
were thus more likely to have been preserved by members of the great
houses living within the city walls, than by the peasantry living among
the outlying hills and country districts. If ever there were any golden
age of early Roman poetry, it had passed away long before the time of
Ennius and Cato.

The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early
times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the
memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of
hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic
poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions
were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and
had any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult
to believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination,
pouring itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems,
could have been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular
poetry, not scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the
possession of a great commonwealth--one most tenacious of every
national memorial--could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign
influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the
supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the
memory of men--as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of
Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the
Iliad and the Odyssey--this early poetry could not have perished
without leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth
of poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical
feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force by
which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from one
generation of poets to another. The language of Homer, by its natural
and musical flow, by its accumulated wealth of meaning, by the use of
traditional epithets and modes of expression, that penetrate far back
into the belief, the feelings, and the life of an earlier time, implies
the existence of a long line of poets who preceded him. On the other
hand, the diction of the fragments of Ennius, in its strength and in
its rudeness, is evidently, in great measure, the creation of his own
time and his own mind. He has no true discernment of the characteristic
difference between the language of prose and of poetry. The materials
of his art had not been smoothed and polished by any long, continuous
stream of national melody, but were rough-hewn and adapted by his own
energy to the rugged structure of his poem.

While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early
commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of
imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular
enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their
entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains,
and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language and
rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to the
presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any time,
and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art. This
presumption is further strengthened by such indications as there are
of the recognition, or rather the non-recognition, of poets or of the
poetic character at Rome in early times.

The worship of the Camenae was indeed an old and genuine part of the
Roman or Italian religion; but, as was said before, their original
function was to predict future events, and to communicate the knowledge
of divination; not like that of the Greek Muses, to imagine bright
stories of divine and human adventure,--

    λησμοσύνην τε κακῶν ἄμπαυμά τε μερμηράων.

Even the names by which two of the Camenae were known--Postvorta and
Antevorta--suggest the prosaic and practical functions which they were
supposed to fulfil. The Romans had no native word equivalent to the
Greek word ἀοιδός, denoting the primary and most essential
of all poetical gifts, the power to awaken the music of language. The
word _vates_, as was seen, denoted a prophet. The title of _scriba_
was applied to Livius Andronicus; and Naevius, who has by some been
regarded as the last of the old race of Roman bards, applies to himself
the Greek name of _poeta_,--

    Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam.

The commemorative odes appear to have been recited or sung at banquets,
not by poets or rhapsodists, but by boys or guests. There is one
notice, indeed, of a class of men who practised the profession of
minstrelsy. This passage, which is quoted by Aulus Gellius from the
writings of Cato, implies the very lowest estimation of the position
and character of the poet, and points more naturally to the composers
of the libellous verses forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables,
than to the authors of heroic and national lays:--'Poetry was not held
in honour; if anyone devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets,
he was called a vagabond[24].'

It appears that, on this ground also, there is no reason for believing
in the existence of any golden age of Roman poetry before the time of
Ennius, or in the theory that the legendary tales of Roman history were
created and shaped by native minstrels. To what cause, then, can we
attribute their origin? These tales have a strong human interest, and
represent marked and original types of antique heroism. They have the
elements of true tragic pathos and moral grandeur. They could neither
have arisen nor been preserved except among a people endowed with
strong capacities of feeling and action. But the strength of the Roman
mind consisted more in retentive capacity than in creative energy.
Their art and their religion, their family and national customs,
aimed at preserving the actual memory of men and of their actions:
not like the arts, ceremonies, and customs of the Greeks, which aimed
at lifting the mind out of reality into an ideal world. As one of the
chief difficulties of the Homeric controversy arises from our ignorance
of the power of the memory during an age when poetry and song were
in the fullest life, but the use of letters was either unknown, or
extremely limited; so there is a parallel difficulty in all attempts
to explain the origin of early Roman history, from our ignorance of
the power of oral tradition in a time of long established order, but
yet unacquainted with any of the forms of literature. The indifference
of barbarous tribes to their past history can prove little or nothing
as to the tenacity of the national memory among a people far advanced
towards civilisation like the Romans after the establishment of their
Republican form of government. Nor can the analogy of early Greek
traditions be fairly applied to those of Rome, owing to the great
difference in the circumstances and the genius of the two nations.
Many real impressions of the past might fix themselves indelibly in
the grave and solid temperament of the Romans, which would have been
lost amid the inexhaustible wealth of fancy that had been lavished upon
the Greeks. The strict family life and discipline of the Romans, the
continuity of their religious colleges, the unity of a single state as
the common centre of all their interests, the slow and steady growth
of their institutions, their strong regard for precedent, were all
conditions more favourable to the preservation of tradition than the
lively social life, the numerous centres of political organization, and
the rapid growth and vicissitudes of the Greek Republics.

It cannot, indeed, be disputed that although the legendary tales of
Roman history may have drawn more of their colour from life than
from imagination, yet there is no criterion by which the amount of
fact contained in them can be separated from the other elements of
which they were composed. Oral tradition among the Romans, as among
other nations, was founded on impressions originally received without
any careful sifting of evidence; and these first impressions would
naturally be modified in accordance with the feelings and opinions of
each generation, through which they were transmitted. Aetiological
myths, or the attempt to explain some institution or memorial by some
concrete fact, and the systematic reconstruction of forgotten events,
have also entered largely into the composition of Roman history. But
these admissions do not lead to the conclusion that the art or fancy
of any class of early poets was added to the unconscious operation of
popular feeling in moulding the impressive tales of early heroism,
partly out of the memory of real events and personages, partly out
of the ideal of character, latent in the national mind. It has been
remarked by Sir G. C. Lewis that many even of the Greek myths,
abounding 'in striking, pathetic, and interesting events,' existed
as prose legends, and were handed down in the common speech of the
people. In like manner, such tales as those of Lucretia and Virginia,
of Horatius and the Fabii, of Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, and Camillus,
which stand out prominently in the twilight of Roman history, may have
been preserved in the _fama vulgaris_, or among the family traditions
of the great houses, till they were gathered into the poem of Ennius
and the prose narratives of the early annalists[25]. In so far as they
are shaped or coloured by imagination, they do not bear traces of the
conscious art of a poet, but rather of an unconscious conformity to the
national ideal of character. The most impressive of these legendary
stories illustrate the primitive virtues of the Roman character, such
as chastity, frugality, fortitude, and self-devotion; or the national
characteristics of patrician pride and a stern exercise of parental
authority. There is certainly no internal evidence that any of them
originated in a pure poetic impulse, or gave birth to any work of
poetic art deserving a permanent existence in literature.

The analogy of other nations might suggest the inference that a race
which in its maturity produced a genuine poetic literature must, in
the early stages of its history, have given some proof of poetic
inspiration. It is natural to associate the idea of poetry with youth
both in nations and individuals. Yet the evidence of their language,
of their religion, and of their customs, leads to the conclusion that
the Romans, while prematurely great in action and government, were, in
the earlier stages of their national life, little moved by any kind of
poetical imagination. The state of religious feeling or belief which
gives birth to or co-exists with primitive poetry has left no trace
of itself upon the early Roman annals. It is generally found that a
fanciful mythology, of a bright, gloomy, or grotesque character, in
accordance with the outward circumstances and latent spirit or humour
of the particular race among whom it originates, precedes and for a
time accompanies the poetry of romantic action. The creative faculty
produces strange forms and conditions of supernatural life out of
its own mysterious sympathy with Nature, before it learns to invent
tales of heroic action and of tragic calamity out of its sympathy with
human energy and passion and its interest in marking the course of
destiny, and the vicissitudes of life. The development of the Roman
religion betrays the absence, or at least the weaker influence of that
imaginative power which shaped the great mythologies of different races
out of the primeval worship of nature. The later element introduced
into Roman religion was due not to imagination but to reflection. The
worship of Fides, Concordia, Pudicitia, and the like, marks a great
progress from the early adoration of the sun, the earth, the vault of
heaven, and the productive power of nature; but it is a progress in
understanding and moral consciousness, not in poetical feeling nor
imaginative power. It shows that Roman civilisation advanced without
this vivifying influence, that the mind of the race early reached the
maturity of manhood, without passing through the dreams of childhood or
the buoyant fancies of youth.

The circumstances of the Romans, in early times, were also different
from those by which the growth of a romantic poetry has usually been
accompanied. Though, like all races born to a great destiny, they
had much latent imaginative ardour of feeling, this was employed by
them, unconsciously, in elevating and purifying the ideal of the State
and the family, as actually realised in experience. Their orderly
organisation,--the early establishment of their civic forms,--the
strict discipline of family life among them,--the formal and ceremonial
character of their national religion,--and their strong interest in
practical affairs,--were not calculated either to kindle the glow of
individual genius, or to dispose the mass of the people to listen to
the charm of musical verse. The wars of the young Republic, carried on
by a well-trained militia for the acquisition of new territory, formed
the character to solid strength and steady discipline, but could not
act upon the fancy in the same way as the distant enterprise, the
long struggles for national independence, or the daring forays, which
have thrown the light of romance around the warlike youth of other
races. The tillage of the soil, in which the brief intervals between
their wars were passed, was a tame and monotonous pursuit compared with
the maritime adventure which awoke the energies of Greece, or with
the wild and lonely, half-pastoral, half-marauding life, out of which
a true ballad poetry arose in modern times. Some traces of a wilder
life, or some faint memories of their Sabine forefathers, may be dimly
discerned in the earliest traditions of the Roman people; but their
youth was essentially practical,--great and strong in the virtues of
temperance, gravity, fortitude, reverence for law and the majesty of
the State, combined with a strong love of liberty and sturdy resistance
to wrong. These qualities are the foundations of a powerful and orderly
State, not the root nor the sap by which a great national poetry is
nourished[26].

If the pure Roman intellect and discipline had spontaneously produced
any kind of literature, it would have been more likely to have taken
the form of history or oratory than of national song or ballad. It was
from men of the Italian provinces, and not from her own sons, that
Rome received her poetry. The men of the most genuinely Roman type and
character long resisted all literary progress. The patrons and friends
of the early poets were the more liberal members of the aristocracy,
in whom the austerity of the national character and narrowness of the
national mind had yielded to new ideas and a wider experience. The
art of Greece was communicated to 'rude Latium,' through the medium
of those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the
Greek language and civilisation. With less native strength, but with
greater flexibility, these races were more readily moulded by foreign
influences; and, leading a life of greater ease and freedom, they were
more susceptible to all the impulses of Nature. While they were thus
more readily prepared to catch the spirit of Greek culture, they
had learned, through long years of war and subsequent dependence,
to understand and respect the imperial State in which their own
nationality had been merged. It is important to remember that the time
in which Roman literature arose was not only that of the first active
intercourse between Greeks and Romans, but also that in which a great
war, against the most powerful State outside of Italy, had awakened
the sense of an Italian nationality, of which Rome was the centre.
The great Republic derived her education and literature from the
accumulated stores of Greek thought and feeling; but these were made
available to her through the willing service of poets who, though born
in other parts of Italy, looked to Rome as the head and representative
of their common country.

[Footnote 8: Epist. ii. 1. 157.]

[Footnote 9: Georg. ii. 385.]

[Footnote 10: It is thus interpreted by the same author:--Nos, lares,
juvate. Ne malam luem, Mamers, sinas incurrere in plures. Satur esto,
fere Mars. In limen insili. Pesiste verberare (limen)! Semones alterni
advocate cunctos. Nos, Mamers, juvato. Tripudia.

'Help us, Lares. Suffer not, Mamers, pestilence to fall on the people.
Be satisfied, fierce Mars. Leap on the threshold. Cease beating it.
Call, in turn, on all the demigods. Help us, Mamers.'--Mommsen, Röm.
Geschichte, vol. i. ch. xv.]

[Footnote 11: Such is the interpretation of Corssen, Origines Poesis
Romanae.]

[Footnote 12: Epist. ii. 1. 86.]

[Footnote 13: Cf. Virg. Aen. vii. 81, 82:--

    At rex sollicitus monstris, oracula Fauni,
    Fatidici genitoris adit.

]

[Footnote 14: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 24, note 1.]

[Footnote 15: Livy xxv. 12.]

[Footnote 16: 'The Fescennine raillery in this way, arose and poured
forth its rustic banter in responsive strains; the spirit of freedom,
made welcome, as the season came round, first played a kindly part; but
soon the jests grew cruel, then changed into sheer fury, and began,
with impunity, to threaten and assail honourable households. Men
smarted under the sharp edge of its cruel tooth: even those who were
unassailed felt concern for the common weal. A law was passed, and a
penalty enforced, forbidding any one to be branded in libellous verses.
Thus they changed their style, and were brought back to a kindly and
pleasant tone, under fear of a beating.'--Epist. ii. 1. 144-55.]

[Footnote 17: Sei quis ocentasit, casmenue condisit, quod infamiam
faxsit flacitiomque alterei, fuste feritor.]

[Footnote 18: Teuffel quotes from Festus: Fescennini versus qui
canebantur in nuptiis, ex urbe Fescennina dicuntur allati, sive ideo
dicti quia fascinum putabantur arcere. It seems more natural to connect
the name of these verses, which were especially characteristic of the
Latian peasantry, with fascinum (the phallic symbol) than with any
particular town of Etruria, though the name of that town may probably
have the same origin.]

[Footnote 19: Mommsen's explanation, 'the masque of the full men'
('saturi'), does not seem to meet with general acceptance.]

[Footnote 20: Cf. Teuffel, vi. 2.]

[Footnote 21: vii. 2.]

[Footnote 22: Cf. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p. 102.]

[Footnote 23: Tusc. Disp. iv. 2; Brutus, 19.]

[Footnote 24: Noct. Att. xi. 2. A similar character at one time
attached to minstrels in Scotland.]

[Footnote 25: Some of these tales may have been originally
aetiological, but the human interest even in these was probably drawn
originally from actual incidents and personages of the Early Republic.
Some of the aetiological myths, such as that of Attus Navius the augur,
have no human interest, though they have an historical interest in
connexion with early Roman religion or institutions.]

[Footnote 26: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 1. 24.]




CHAPTER III.

THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS, B.C.
240-202.


The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar
contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum,
the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies
in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional
communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in
Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of
Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from
Epidaurus in B.C. 293 and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by
the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to
have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either
Greeks or men acquainted with that language[27]. The identification
of the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before
Greek literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius
and Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process.
Greek civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close
relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district,
such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of
by the Romans as 'Semi Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum
there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two
great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with
Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was
slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of Rome
began to attract the attention of Greek historians[28], and the Romans,
though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the language
and literature of Greece.

Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed
before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman
audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to
B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not till
the successful close of that war, and the commencement of the following
years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and instruction was
made familiar to the Romans.

    Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis;
    Et post Punica bella quietus, quaerere coepit
    Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[29].

Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the
minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily
had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their
intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities
for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent
opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. Many Greeks
also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of Tarentum,
and were employed in educating the young among the higher classes.
Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their circumstances and
education, to take interest in the legends and in the dramatic form of
literature introduced from Greece; while the previous existence of the
saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at Rome, tended to make the new
drama acceptable to the great mass of the population.

The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the
First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During
this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory,
history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of
five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The
whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered
people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved
upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and great
productive energy; but with little sense of art, and endowed with
faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of life
than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle against
the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art and to the
rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to other
disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass of
the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference of the
educated class for the more finished works already existing in Greek
literature.

Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and such
scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected with
the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity. Naevius,
the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native poet, was
actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the time of his
death; about which period his greater successor first appeared at Rome.
For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic and tragic poetry.
The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew, Pacuvius. He, in the
later years of his life, lived in friendly intercourse with his younger
rival Accius, who, again, in his old age, had frequently conversed with
Cicero[30]. The torch, which was first lighted by Livius Andronicus
from the decaying fires of Greece, was thus handed down by these few
men, through this long period, until it was extinguished during the
stormy times which fell in the youth of the great orator and prose
writer of the Republic.

The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the
tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest
introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all
the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the comic
writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and Ennius.
It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both in
form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on the
later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the time.
The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three, is
generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown
earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification of
the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius, who
was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius.

No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern
times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this
long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly
from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been
preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but
by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech
contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to
the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that which
really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting
fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient
poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can
be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity,
be incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a
consistent impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought
and sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic
worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their
antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral
and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the
strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time
when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness.

The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the
literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the
end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius.
Of the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are
scanty and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely
as illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius
and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older
dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are not
worth reading a second time[31].' There is no ground for believing that
Livius was a man of original genius. The importance which attaches to
him consists in his being the accidental medium through which literary
art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and, as is
generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. If he was among the captives
taken after the fall of that city, he must have resided thirty years
at Rome before he ventured to reproduce a Greek drama in the Latin
language. He educated the sons of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from
whom he afterwards received his freedom. The last thirty years of his
life were devoted to literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the
Greek drama in a Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been
founded on Greek subjects; most of them, probably, were translations.
Among the titles, we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_,
_Tereus_, _Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be
popular with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved
sufficient to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of
his general mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from
the scanty remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and
inelegance of his diction.

In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian
verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is
spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under
the rod of Orbilius[32]. One or two lines of the translation still
remain, and exemplify its bald and prosaic diction, and the extreme
irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[33],

    οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγέ τί φημι κακώτερον ἄλλο θαλάσσης
    ἄνδρα γε συγχεῦαι, εἰ καὶ μάλα καρτερὸς εἴη;

are thus rendered:--

                                Namque nilum pejus
    Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi
    Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae.

He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second
Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter novenae,'
which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and unpolished[34].

Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father
of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original
genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated
man. If his long residence among his grave and stern masters, and the
hardships and constraint of slavery, had subdued in him the levity
and gaiety of a Tarentine Greek, they did not extinguish his love
of his native literature and the intellectual cultivation peculiar
to his race. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign
language, and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to
give the direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a
new interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary
that the Romans should be educated before they could either produce
or appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a
brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study and
imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable grace
and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial to the
better side of Roman character.

Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the
first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of
original power. He is believed to have been a Campanian by birth, on
the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous epitaph as
'plenum superbiae Campanae.' Though the arrogance of Campania may have
been proverbial, yet the expression could scarcely with propriety have
been applied, except to a native of that district. If not a Roman by
birth, he at least belonged to a district which had become thoroughly
Latinised long before his time, and he showed himself to be, like his
successor Ennius, thoroughly Roman in his sympathies. He served as
a soldier in the First Punic War, and recorded his services in his
epic poem on that subject. The earliest drama of Naevius was brought
out in B.C. 235, five years after the first representation of Livius
Andronicus. The number of dramas which he is known to have composed
affords proof of great industry and activity, from that time till the
time of his banishment from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than
in tragedy, and he used the stage, as it had been used by the writers
of the old Attic comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political
warfare. A keen partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence
some of the chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had
passed into a proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,--

    Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules;

to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian,

    Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.

It is, however, doubted whether the first of these lines was really
written by Naevius, as the Metelli did not enjoy their rapid succession
of consulships till nearly a century after his death; but even at the
time of the Second Punic War they were powerful enough to procure the
imprisonment of the poet, in consequence of some offence which he had
given them. Plautus[35] alludes to this event, in one of the few
passages in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of
Athenian manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While
in prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which
contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was liberated
through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. Being
afterwards banished, he took up his residence at Utica, where he is
said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have died, in
B.C. 204[36], though the same author adds that Varro, 'diligentissimus
investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was still alive for some
time after that date[37]. It is inferred, from a passage in Cicero[38],
that his poem on the First Punic War was composed in his old age.
Probably it was written in his exile, when removed from the sphere
of his active literary efforts. As he served in that war, some time
between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have been well advanced in years
at the time of his death.

The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most favourable
specimen of his style, is his epitaph:--

    Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
    Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam,
    Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
    Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua.

It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest
against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to
Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the
life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame
and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to
disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly
be regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus,
as from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of
the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and
independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and
somewhat turbulent career.

He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except
the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector
Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as the
Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as well
as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken in the
Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the Trojan War. The
following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as containing the
germs of poetical diction:--

    Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias
    Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
    Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[39].

He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays,
founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or
_Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to
him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability,
attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows
considerable power of close satiric observation:--

                                        Quasi pila
    In choro ludens dadatim dat se, et communem facit:
    Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet;
    Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem;
    Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat;
    Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[40].

The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his
dramas is the political spirit with which they were animated. Thus
Cicero[41] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii
ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time,
destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given,

    Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[41].

The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him
in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which
a failing of the great Scipio is exposed[42]. Other fragments are
found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of
character:--

    Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
    Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?
    Quanto libertatem hanc his superat servitus[43]?

and this also[44]:--

            Semper pluris feci potioremque ego
    Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.

He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after
Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of
Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and
aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his
strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit
of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place
in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.
He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the
Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may be
regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the Roman
Senate ruled the world.

But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly
rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The
poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian
metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The
earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and
of Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court
of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the
poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main
substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and
tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from
the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and
literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic
representation.

Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem
of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil
followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius
(as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises,
leaving Troy in the night-time,--

                                    Amborum
    Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus
    Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.

He represents Aeneas as having only one ship built by Mercury,--a
limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which
the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the
storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus
complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of
the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's
epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He
speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there
is no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale
of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the
worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great
national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing
Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology
compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the
shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.

Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of
Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was
composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants
of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their
common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas
and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between
Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the
time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius,
that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter,
and promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the
Romans were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny.
How much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of
Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical
part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of
Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention,
and of a real adaptation to his main subject. There was more meaning
in the mythical foreshadowing of the deadly strife between Romans and
Carthaginians, at a time when the two nations were fighting for their
very existence, and for the ultimate prize of the empire of the world,
than in the age of Virgil, when the power of Carthage was only a memory
of the past, and the immediate danger from which Rome had escaped had
arisen not so much from any foreign enemy, as from the fierce passions
of her own sons.

The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the
events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among
the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and
of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles
without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the
Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this
respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history,
and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The slight
and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the poem, are
expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with the fidelity
of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and vigorous, but
are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid and graphic
condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of impetuosity
in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and energetic
temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines

    Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram
    Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[45].

But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford
ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some
evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was
written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be
inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every
fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old
grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he
could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as
a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong
testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one
place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[46].' In the
dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing the idiomatic
purity which distinguished the conversation of his mother-in-law,
Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of Plautus and
Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius enim
mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum sermonis
expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam sic audio,
ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis ita recto et
simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis afferre videatur;
ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic majores[47].' Expressions
from his plays were, from their weight and compact brevity, quoted
familiarly in the days of Cicero; and one of them 'laudari a laudato
viro,' like so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to
express a distinction that could not be characterised in happier or
shorter terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he
assumes to himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote
the Latin language.

Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and
fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be
gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented
the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman
character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as
a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national
feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a
strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed great
productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and vigorous
lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper have left
their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his epic poem.
Probably his most important service to Roman literature consisted in
the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin language. But the
conception of his epic poem seems to imply some share of the higher
gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head of the line of Roman
poets, distinguished by that force of speech and vehemence of temper,
which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and Juvenal; distinguished
also by that national spirit which moved Ennius and, after him, Virgil,
to employ their poetical faculty in raising a monument to commemorate
the power and glory of Rome.

[Footnote 27: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i.
chap. ii. 14.]

[Footnote 28: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i.
chap. ii. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 29: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]

[Footnote 30: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]

[Footnote 31: Brutus, 18.]

[Footnote 32: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]

[Footnote 33: viii. 138.]

[Footnote 34: xxvii. 17.]

[Footnote 35: Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]

[Footnote 36: Brutus, 15.]

[Footnote 37: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired to Utica
till after it fell into the possession of the Romans.]

[Footnote 38: De Senectute, 14.]

[Footnote 39: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king, hasten
straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is of nature's
growth, not planted by man.']

[Footnote 40: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses about
from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she nods, to
another winks; she makes love to one, clings to another. Her hand is
busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring to look at, to
another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with another corresponds by
signs.'

The reading of the passage here adopted is that given by Munk.]

[Footnote 41: De Senectute, 6.]

[Footnote 42:

    Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
    Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
    Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.

]

[Footnote 43: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by the
applause given to me, to think that any of these great people should
now dare to interfere with! How much better thing is the slavery
_here_'(_i.e._ represented in this play), 'than the liberty we actually
enjoy?']

[Footnote 44: I have always held liberty to be of more value and a
better thing than money.' The reading is that given by Munk.]

[Footnote 45: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this poem, the
action is generally represented in the _present tense_.]

[Footnote 46: Brutus, 19.]

[Footnote 47: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my mother-in-law, Laelia
(for women more easily preserve the pure idiom of antiquity, because,
from their limited intercourse with the world, they retain always their
earlier impressions), in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am
listening to Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so
natural and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or
imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and her ancestors
all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De Oratore iii. 12.]




CHAPTER IV.

ENNIUS.


The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two
directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its
subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the
work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his
younger contemporary Plautus: and, in a strictly chronological history
of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in order.
But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of Roman
comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to direct
attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of Naevius
in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.

The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than
those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature.
They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the
spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to
Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their
literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language a
vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the metrical
conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully to elicit
the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national imagination.
The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance with Greek
literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of his time, the
serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which he carried out
his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was in action, the
most vital representative of his epoch. It has happened too that the
fragments from his writings and the testimonies concerning him are more
expressive and characteristic than in the case of any other among the
early writers. There are none of his contemporaries, playing their part
in war or politics, and not many among the writers of later times, of
whom we can form so distinct an image.


I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.

I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year
after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first
entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as
quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the
rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus,
he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal
combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he resided
at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome, 'very plainly,
on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city), 'attended only by
a single maid-servant[48],' and supporting himself by teaching Greek
and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior in his Aetolian
campaign. Through the influence of his son, he obtained the honour of
Roman citizenship, probably at the time when the colony of Pisaurum was
planted in B.C. 184. This distinction Ennius has himself recorded in a
line of the Annals:--

    Nos sumu' Romani, qui fuvimus ante Rudini.

He lived on terms of intimacy with influential members of the noblest
families in Rome, and became the familiar friend of the great Scipio.
When he died at the age of seventy, his bust was believed to be placed
in the tomb of the Scipios, between those of the conqueror of Hannibal
and of the conqueror of Antiochus. He died in the year B.C. 169. The
most famous of his works were his Tragedies and the Annals, a long
historical poem written in eighteen books. But, in addition to these,
he composed several miscellaneous works, of which only very scanty
fragments have been preserved.

Among the circumstances which prepared him to be the creator of a
national literature, his birthplace and origin, the kind of education
available to him in his early years, and the experience which awaited
him when first entering on life, had a strong determining influence.
His birthplace, Rudiae, is called by Strabo 'a Greek city;' but it
was not a Greek colony, like Tarentum and the other cities of Magna
Graecia, but an old Italian town, (the epithet _vetustae_ is applied to
it by Silius) which had been partially Hellenised, but still retained
its native traditions and the use of the Oscan language. Ennius is thus
spoken of as 'Semi-Graecus.' He laid claim to be descended from the old
Messapian kings, a claim which Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the
introduction of Messapus leading his followers in the gathering of the
Italian races,

    Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant.

This claim to royal descent indicates that the poet was a member of the
better class of families in his native district; and the consciousness
of old lineage, which prompted the claim, probably strengthened the
high self-confidence by which he was animated, and helped to determine
the strong aristocratic bias of his sympathies. He bore witness to his
nationality in the saying quoted by Gellius[49] that 'in the possession
of the Greek, Oscan, and Latin speech, he possessed three hearts.' Of
these three languages the Oscan, as the one of least value to acquire
for the purposes of literature or of social intercourse, was most
likely to have been his inherited tongue. Rudiae, from its Italian
nationality, from its neighbourhood to the cities of Magna Graecia, and
from its relation of dependence on Rome, must have been in the time
of the boyhood of Ennius a meeting-place, not only of three different
languages,--that of common life, that of culture and education, that
of military service--but of the three different spirits or tendencies
which were operative in the creation of the new literature. To his home
among the hills overlooking the Grecian seas--referred to in a line of
the Annals,--

    Ad patrios montes et ad incunabula nostra--

in the expression of Ovid,--

    Calabris in montibus ortus--

and in the phrase of Silius,--

                            Hispida tellus
    Miserunt Calabri; Rudiae genuere vetustae

the poet owed the 'Italian heart' the virtue of a race still
uncorrupted and unsophisticated, the buoyant energy and freshness
of feeling which enabled him to apprehend all the novelty and the
greatness of the momentous age through which he lived. The South of
Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied
to Rome or Latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for
the first twenty years of the life of Ennius granted leisure to avail
himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been
born a few years later. In the short account of his life in Jerome's
continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, it is stated that he was born
at Tarentum. Though this is clearly an error, it seems probable that
the poet may have spent the years of his education there. Though
Tarentum had lost its political importance since its capture by the
Romans, it still continued to be a centre of Greek culture and of
social pleasure. Dramatic representations had been especially popular
among a people who had drifted far away 'ex Spartana dura illa et
horrida disciplina[50]' of their ancestors. From the intimate knowledge
of the Attic tragedians displayed by Ennius in his later career it
is likely that he had witnessed representations of their works on a
Greek stage, before he began, in middle life, to direct his own genius
to dramatic composition. The knowledge and admiration of Homer which
stimulated him to the composition of his greatest work, might have
been acquired in any centre of Greek culture. But the intellectual
interests indicated in some of his miscellaneous writings have a
kind of local character, distinguishing them alike from the older
philosophies of Athens and from the more recent science of Alexandria.
His acceptance of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the
physical fancies expressed in some of the fragments of the Epicharmus
probably came to him from the teaching of the Neo-Pythagoreans,
who were widely spread among the Greeks of Southern Italy. The
rationalistic speculations of Euhemerus, which appear in strange union
with the 'somnia Pythagorea' of the Annals, were of Sicilian origin.
The gastronomic treatise, which Ennius afterwards translated into
Latin, was the work of Archestratus of Gela. The class of persons for
whom such a work would originally be written was likely to be found
among the luxurious livers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Thus while the
serious poetry of Ennius was inspired by the older and nobler works
of Greek genius, the influence of a more vulgar and prosaic class of
teachers, transmitted by him to Roman thought and literature, was
probably derived from the place of his early education.

His Italian spirit, and the Greek culture acquired by him in early
youth, were two of the conditions out of which the new literature was
destined to arise. The third condition was his steadfast and ardent
Roman patriotism. Born more than a generation after his native district
had ceased to be at war with Rome, he grew up to manhood during the
years of peace between the first and second Carthaginian wars, when
the supremacy of Rome was loyally accepted. Between early manhood and
middle life he was a witness of and an actor in the protracted and long
doubtful struggle between the two great Imperial States, on the issue
of which hung the future destinies of the world:--

    Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
    Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris;
    In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
    Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique[51].

Though during that struggle the loyalty of some of the Italian
communities was shaken, yet the aristocratic party in every city, and
the Greek States generally, were true to the Roman alliance[52]. Thus
his political sympathies, as well as his Greek education, would incline
Ennius to identify himself with the cause of Rome, and his ardent
imagination apprehended the grandeur and majesty with which she played
her part in the contest. It was in the Second Punic War that the ideal
of what was greatest in the character and institutions of Rome was most
fully realised. Her good fortune supplied from among the contingent
furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of a nature so
sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to gain for the
ideal thus created a permanent realization.

Of the share which Ennius had in the war we know only that he served
in Sardinia with the rank of centurion. That he had become a man of
some note in that capacity is suggested by the fact that he attracted
the attention of the Roman quaestor Cato, and accompanied him to Rome.
A certain dramatic interest attaches to this first meeting of the
typical representative of Roman manners and traditions and great enemy
of foreign innovations, with the man by whom, more than by any one
else, the mind of Rome was enlarged and liberalised, and many of her
most cherished convictions were most seriously undermined. This actual
service in a great war left its impress on the work done by Ennius.
Fragments both of his tragedies and his Annals prove how thoroughly
he understood and appreciated the best qualities of the soldierly
character. This fellowship in hardship and danger fitted him to become
the national poet of a race of soldiers. He has drawn from his own
observation an image of the fortitude and discipline of the Roman
armies, and of the patriotic devotion and resolution of the men by whom
these armies were led. There is a strong realism in the expression of
martial sentiment in Ennius, marking him out as a man familiar with
the life of the camp and the battle-field, and quite distinct from the
idealising enthusiasm of Livy and Virgil[53].

Ennius entered on his career as a writer at a time when the long strain
of a great struggle was giving place to the confidence and security
of a great triumph. He lived for thirty-five years longer, witnessing
the rapid advance of Roman conquest in Greece and Asia, and over the
barbarous tribes of the West. He died one year before the crowning
victory of Pydna. During all his later life his sanguine spirit and
patriotic enthusiasm were buoyed up by the success of the Roman and
Italian arms abroad; while his political sympathies were in thorough
accord with the dominant influences in the government of the State. At
no other period of Roman history was the ascendency of the Senate and
of the great houses more undisputed, or, on the whole, more wisely and
ably exercised. In the lists of those who successively fill the great
curule magistracies, we find almost exclusively the names of members of
the old patrician or of the more recent plebeian nobility. At no other
period does the tribunician opposition to the senatorian direction of
affairs and to the authority of the magistrate appear weaker or more
intermittent. It was not till a generation after the death of Ennius
that the moral corruption and political and social disorganisation--the
ultimate results of the great military successes gained under the
absolute ascendency of the Senate,--became fully manifest. It is
difficult to say how far the aristocratic and antipopular bias of all
Roman literature may have been determined by the political conditions
of the time in which that literature received the most powerful
impulse, and by the personal relations and peculiar stamp of character
of the man by whom that impulse was given.

Along with the military and political activity of the time, during
which Ennius lived in Rome, the stirring of a new intellectual life
was apparent. Even during the war dramatic representations continued
to take place, and the most active part of the career of Naevius, and
a considerable part of that of Plautus, belong to the years during
which Hannibal was still in Italy. After the cessation of the war,
we note in the pages of Livy that much greater prominence is given
to the celebration of public games, of which at this time dramatic
representations formed the chief part. The regular holidays for which
the Aediles provided these entertainments became more numerous; and the
art of the dramatist was employed to enhance the pomp of the spectacle
on the occasion of a great triumph, or of the funeral of an illustrious
man. The death of Livius Andronicus and the banishment of Naevius,
which must have happened about the time that Ennius arrived at Rome,
had deprived the Roman stage of the only writers of any name, who had
attempted to introduce upon it the works of the Greek tragedians.
Ennius had, indeed, rather to create than to revive the taste for
tragedy. The prologue to the Amphitryo[54] shows how much more
congenial the reproduction of the ordinary life of the Greeks was to
the uneducated audiences of Rome than the higher effort to familiarise
them with the personages and adventures of the heroic age. The great
era of Roman comedy was coincident with the literary career of Ennius.
It was then that the best extant plays of Plautus were produced, and
that Caecilius Statius, whom ancient critics ranked as his superior,
flourished. The quality attributed to the latter in the line of Horace,

    Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte,

indicates a closer affinity with the spirit of Ennius, than the moral
and political indifference of the older dramatist. The aim of Ennius
was to raise literature from being a mere popular recreation, and to
bring it into accord with the higher mood of the nation; to use it
as a medium both of elevation and enlightenment. In carrying out this
aim he appealed to the temper and to the newly awakened interests of
members of the aristocratic class, who were coming into close contact
with educated Greeks, and were beginning to appreciate the treasures
of art and literature now opened up to them. The career of Q. Fabius
Pictor, the first historian of Rome, and the first who made a name
for himself in painting, who lived at this time, attests this twofold
attraction. The friendly relations which Roman generals, such as T.
Quintius Flamininus, established with the famous Greek cities, in which
they appeared as liberators rather than conquerors, were the result of
intellectual enthusiasm as much as of a definite policy. With the wars
of Pyrrhus and the capture of Tarentum, the first stage of the process
described in the lines of Horace began[55]: the end of the Second Punic
War was the second stage in the process. It is to this period, rather
than to the progress of the war, that the words of the Grammarian,
Porcius Licinus, most truly apply,

    Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
    Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.

The more frequent and closer contact with the mind of Greece not only
refined the taste and enlarged the intelligence of those capable of
feeling its influence, but produced at the same time a change in
men's deepest convictions. Though the definite tenets of Stoicism
and Epicureanism did not acquire ascendency till a later time, the
dissolving force of Greek speculative thought and Greek views of life
forced its way into Rome through various channels,--especially through
the adaptations of the tragedies of Euripides and of the comedy of
Menander. All these tendencies of the time acted on Ennius, stimulating
his mental activity in various directions. His natural temperament and
his acquired culture brought him into harmony with the spirit of his
age without raising him too much above it. A poet of more delicacy
of taste and perfection of execution would have been unintelligible
to his contemporaries. A more systematic thinker would have been out
of harmony with the conditions of life by which he was surrounded.
Breadth, vigour, a spirit clinging to what was most vital in the old
state of things, and yet readily adapting itself to what was new, were
the qualities needed to establish a literature true to the genius of
Rome in the second century B.C., and containing the promise of the more
perfect accomplishment of a later age. And these qualities belonged to
Ennius by natural gifts and the experience and culture of his earlier
years.

There is no reason to believe that he had obtained any eminence in
literature before he settled in middle age at Rome. His genius was of
that robust order which grows richer and livelier with advancing years.
The Annals was the work of his old age,--the ripe fruit of a strong and
energetic manhood, prolonged to the last in hopeful activity. Cicero
speaks of 'the cheerfulness with which he bore the two evils of old age
and poverty[56].' Wherever the poet speaks of himself, his words reveal
a sanguine and contented spirit; as, in that fine simile, where he
compares himself, at the close of his active and successful career, to
a brave horse which has often won the prize at the Olympian games, and
in old age obtains his well-deserved repose:--

    Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
    Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectu' quiescit.

In none of his fragments is there any trace of that melancholy
after-thought which pervades the poetry of his greatest successors,
Lucretius and Virgil. From the humorous exaggeration of Horace,

    Ennius ipse pater nunquam, nisi potus, ad arma
    Prosiluit dicenda;

and from the poet's own confession,

    Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager,

it may be inferred that he belonged to the class of poets of a lusty
and social nature, of which Dryden is a type in modern times, who
enjoyed the pleasures of wine and good fellowship. The well-known
anecdote, told by Cicero, of the interchange of visits between Scipio
Nasica and Ennius[57], though not a brilliant specimen of Roman wit,
is interesting from the light which it throws on the easy terms of
intimacy in which the poet lived with the members of the most eminent
Roman families. Such testimonies and traits of personal character make
us think of Ennius as a man of genial and social temper, as well as of
'an intense and glowing mind.'

It was probably through his position as a teacher of Greek that Ennius
first became known to the leading men of Rome. If this position was
at first one of dependence, similar to that in which in earlier times
the client stood to his patron, it soon changed into one of mutual
esteem and admiration. We can best understand the relation in which
he stood to men eminent in the state and in the camp, from a passage
from the seventh book of the Annals quoted by Aulus Gellius. In that
passage the poet is stated, on the authority of L. Aelius Stilo[58] (an
early grammarian, a friend of Lucilius, and one of Cicero's teachers),
to have drawn his own portrait, under an imaginary description of
a confidential friend of the Roman general, Servilius Geminus. The
portrait has the air of being drawn from the life, with a rapid and
forcible hand, and with a minuteness of detail significant of close
personal observation:--

    Haece locutu' vocat quocum bene saepe libenter
    Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
    Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassu' diei
    Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis
    Cousilio, indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
    Cui res audacter magnas parvasque jocumque
    Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
    Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
    Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque:
    Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
    Ut faceret facinus levis aut malu', doctu', fidelis,
    Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus,
    Scitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum
    Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
    Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.
    Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque;
    Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.
    Hunc inter pugnas Servilius sic compellat[59].

There are many touches in this picture, which suggest the kind of
intimacy in which Ennius may have lived with Fulvius Nobilior when
accompanying him in his Aetolian campaign, or his bearing when taking
part in the light or serious talk of the Scipios. The learning and
power of speech, the knowledge of antiquity and of the manners of the
day, attributed to this friend of Servilius, were gifts which we may
attribute to the poet both on ancient testimony and on the evidence
afforded by the fragments of his writings. The good sense, tact, and
knowledge of the world, the cheerfulness in life and conversation, the
honour and integrity of character represented in the same passage,
are among the personal qualities which, in all ages, form a bond of
union between men eminent in great practical affairs and men eminent
in literature. Such were the qualities which, according to his own
account, recommended Horace to the intimate friendship of Maecenas.
Many expressive fragments from the lost poetry of Ennius give assurance
that he was a man in whom learning and the ardent temperament of
genius were happily united with the worth and sense described in this
nameless portrait.

By his personal merit he broke through the strongest barriers ever
raised by national and family pride, and made the name of poet, instead
of a reproach, a name of honour with the ruling class at Rome. The
favourable impression which he produced on the 'primitive virtue' of
Cato, by whom he was first brought to Rome, was more probably due
to his force of character and social qualities than to his genius
and literary accomplishment,--qualities seemingly little valued by
his earliest patron, who, in one of his speeches, reproached Fulvius
Nobilior with allowing himself to be accompanied by a poet in his
campaign. But the strongest proof of the worth and the wisdom of Ennius
is his intimate friendship with the greatest Roman of the age, and the
conqueror of the greatest soldier of antiquity. It is honourable to
the friendship of generous natures, that the poet neither sought nor
gained wealth from this intimacy, but continued to live plainly and
contentedly on the Aventine. Yet after death it was believed that the
two friends were not divided; and the bust of the provincial poet found
a place among the remains of that time-honoured family, the record of
whose grandeur has been preserved, even to the present day, in the
august simplicity of their monumental inscriptions.

The elder Africanus may have been attracted to Ennius not only by his
passion for Greek culture, but by a certain community of nature. The
mystical enthusiasm, the high self-confidence, the direct simplicity
combined with majesty of character, impressed on the language of the
poet were equally impressed on the action and bearing of the soldier.
The feeling which Ennius in his turn entertained for Scipio was one
of enthusiastic admiration. While paying due honour to the merits and
services of other famous men, even of such as Cato and Fabius, who were
most opposed to his idol, of Scipio he said that Homer alone could
worthily have uttered his praises[60].

In addition to the part which he assigned to him in the Ninth Book of
the Annals, he devoted a separate poem to commemorate his achievements.
He has left also two short inscriptions, written in elegiac verse,
in which he proclaims in words of burning enthusiasm the momentous
services and transcendent superiority of the 'great world's victor's
victor'--

    Hic est ille situs cui nemo civi' neque hostis
      Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium[61];

and this also,

    A sole exoriente supra Maeoti' paludes
      Nemo est qui factis me aequiperare queat.
    Si fas endo plagas coelestium ascendere cuiquam est,
      Mi soli caeli maxima porta patet[62].

With many marked differences, which distinguish a man of active,
social, and national sympathies from a student of Nature and a thinker
on human life, there is a certain affinity of character and genius
between Ennius and Lucretius. Enthusiastic admiration of personal
greatness is one prominent feature in which they resemble one another.
But while Lucretius is the ardent admirer of contemplative and
imaginative greatness, it is greatness in action and character which
moves the admiration of Ennius. They resemble each other also in their
strong consciousness of genius and their high estimate of its function
and value. Cicero mentions that Ennius applied the epithet _sanctus_ to
poets. Lucretius applies the same epithet to the old philosophic poets,
as in the lines of strong affection and reverence which he dedicates to
Empedocles,

    Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se,
    Nec _sanctum_ magis, et mirum carumque videtur[63].

The inscription which Ennius composed for his own bust directly
expresses his sense of the greatness of his work, and his confident
assurance of fame, and of the lasting sympathy of his countrymen--

    Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam,
      Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum.
    Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu
      Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[64].

Two lines from one of his satires--

    Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus
    Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[65].

indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power.

Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by
Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the
self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in
Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful
of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature
and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or
political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in
men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect
sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or
antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the
disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:--

                            Scripsere alii rem
    Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
    Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
    Nec dicti studiosus erat[66].

The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet
seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first to
introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature.

Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and
Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed
no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius,
nor in Lucretius any gleam of the mysticism which Ennius inherited from
the speculations of Pythagoras. But in both deep feelings of awe and
reverence are combined with a scornful disbelief of the superstition
of their time. They both apply the principles of Euhemerism to resolve
the bright creations of the old mythology into their original elements.
Ennius, like Lucretius, seems to deny the providence of the gods.
He makes one of the personages of his dramas give expression to the
thought which perplexed the minds of Thucydides and Tacitus--the
thought, namely, of the apparent disconnexion between prosperity and
goodness, as affording proof of the divine indifference to human
well-being--

    Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
    Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus;
    Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[67]:

and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs,
prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of
Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions
of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit
of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he
believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued
existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the
spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a
peacock[68], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had
finally passed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he
regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype had
appeared to him from the invisible world,--

    Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra
    Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris,

and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the
imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to
escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to
Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was
that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism.
He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of
Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime of
Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold fancies
of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their later
speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus to
have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance of
tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency.


II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.

II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius displayed
not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of genius, but also
great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning. The composition
of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most demand on his
original gifts, implied also a diligent study of Homer and of the
Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the traditions and
antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which his highest
poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a philosophical,
didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of the versatility
of his powers and interests. It does not appear that he was the
author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred Chronicle
of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than a literal
prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was conceived in
that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by Plato in the
Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology, by representing
them as a supernatural account of historical events. Several extracts
of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the translation of Ennius,
look as if they had been reduced from a form originally metrical into
the prose of a later era[69]. There is thus no evidence, direct or
indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in forming the style of
Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument which he used, this
was certainly not due to the poetical character of all the topics which
he treated, but, more likely, to the fact that his acquired aptitude,
and the state of the Latin language in his time, made metrical writing
more natural and easy than prose composition.

One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called
Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus
of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of
everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have
recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of
epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius,
giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be found,
have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as exemplifying
that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who treat, either in
prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem naturally to adopt[70].
The language in which the _scarus_, a fish unhappily lost to the modern
epicure, is described as 'the brain almost of almighty Jove,' fits all
the requirements of gastronomic rapture:--

    Quid turdum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam
    Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi?
    Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque.

He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse,
called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian
poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology
into natural substances[71]. A few slight fragments have been preserved
from this poem. They speak of the four elements or principles of the
universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the blending of heat with
cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth bearing and supporting all
nations and receiving them again back into herself.' The following is
the longest fragment from the poem:--

    Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant
    Aërem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea
    Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aër denuo,
    Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi,
    Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[72].

These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals,
where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius (like
the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are
specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature,
which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge.
Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the Roman
poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred Chronicle
of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was the first
among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the ultimate
facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the universe,
which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the mind of
Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.

Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic
character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that
all of these works[73], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the
Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which title Ennius composed four,
or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked
upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that
word[74];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the
character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time.
But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in
early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the
principal authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various
subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written
partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well
as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or
dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of
Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was
superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name
was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which
ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory
way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained
much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written
in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of
various topics of personal and public interest. The few passages which
ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value
in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to
their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind of
composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura and
the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one of these
pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and Death;--thus
transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very frequently in
Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original scenic medley. Ennius
also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have communicated in his
satires his own personal feelings and experience, as in the fragment
already quoted:--

    Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager.

Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical
moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and
by portraiture of individuals and classes, but also by the use of
anecdotes and fables. This last mode of combining amusement with
instruction is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have been
first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable of the
field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully told
by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice, appended to the
fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do for
yourself:'

    Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm:
    Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[75].

These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning
and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might
have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been
as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas,
and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent,
and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and
literature is discerned.


(2) DRAMAS.

(2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic,
had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy
and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully
cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The
advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due
to the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried,
though without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in
favour of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_
and _Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too
insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits.
His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim
to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a
work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as assigning
the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius
as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that
might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments
of Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence
of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in
common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally
the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour.
The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave
and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits,
strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply want
of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the following
fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the passage is more
obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon the word
_frustra_:--

    Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari,
    Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse.
    Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sentit,
    Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[76].

The love of alliteration and assonance, which is conspicuous also in
Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems
to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy
imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators,
appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the

    O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti,

quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he
possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light of
common sense, not of humour, that he viewed the follies of the world.

The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be ascertained
from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the early
tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not
possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed
in the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters.
His peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his
dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of
conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality,
are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman
temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in the sequel,
along with passages from the Annals, as important contributions to our
estimate of the poet's genius and intellect.

It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to
that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero.
While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried
on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his life.
Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the celebration
of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's death[77]. The
titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known, and a few
fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these bear the
titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan cycle
of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_, _Ajax_,
_Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_, _Hecuba_,
_Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his tragedies,
the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of Euripides,
whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to the older
Attic dramatists. Cicero[78] speaks of it, along with the Antiope of
Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek; and a
comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in the Medea
of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original. In one
place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med. 215),

                οἶδα γὰρ πολλοὺς βροτῶν
    σεμνοὺς γεγῶτας, τοὺς μὲν ὀμμάτων ἄπο
    τοὺς δ᾽ ἐν θυραίοις,

being thus rendered in Latin,--

    Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul.

The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a
fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman
tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous
force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the
language:--

    Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
    Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
    Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
    Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
    Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
    Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
    Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum;
    Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem
    Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[79].

In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free
use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in
many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly
that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[80]. The subjects of many of
his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the
Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the
soldierly character. Cicero[81] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an
example of the kind of fortitude and superiority to pain produced
by the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with
great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache
Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to
his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle;'
and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis
contemnitur! Sentit omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ...
praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[82].'
In the former of these scenes Cassandra, under the influence of
Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a
Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by
prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:--

    Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio:
    Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite.
    Iamque mari magno classis cita
    Texitur: exitium examen rapit.
    Advenit, et fera velivolantibus
    Navibus complevit manus litora[83].

We see in this passage how the passionate character of the situation
is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Cassandra. A similar
excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in
a fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another
the motive is the awe associated with the dim and pale realms of the
dead[84]. In these and similar passages we note the power of expressing
the varying moods of passion by varied effects of metre. Horace
characterises his ordinary verse in the line,

    In scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus;

and this slow and weighty movement seems to have been the general
character of his metre in the calmer parts of his dramas. But in a
large number of the fragments of the dialogue, where there is any
excitement of feeling or intensity of thought, we find him using
the more rapid trochaic septenarian, with quick transitions to the
anapaestic dimeter or tetrameter, as the passion passes beyond the
control of the speaker.

In two of his dramas, the Sabinae and Ambracia, he made use of
materials supplied by the early legendary history of Rome, and by a
great contemporary event. The first of these, like the Romulus of
Naevius, belonged to the class of 'fabulae Praetextatae,' and was
founded on the intervention of the Sabine women in the war between
Romulus and Tatius. The second, representing the capture of the town
of Ambracia, in the Aetolian war, may, like the Clastidium of the
older poet (written in celebration of the victory of Marcellus over
the Gauls), have had more of the character of a military pageant and,
in all probability, was composed for representation at the games
celebrated on the triumphal return of M. Fulvius Nobilior from that war.


(3) THE ANNALS.

(3) But the poem which was the chief result of his life, and made an
epoch in Latin literature, was the Annals. On the composition of this
work he rested his hopes of popular and permanent fame--

    Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum:

and again, apparently at the opening of the poem, he wrote,--

    Latos per populos terrasque poemata nostra
    Clara cluebunt.

At its conclusion, he claimed for his old age the repose due to a brave
and triumphant career. He composed the eighteenth book, the last, in
his sixty-seventh year, three years before his death[85]. The great
length to which the poem extended, and the vast amount of materials
which it embraced, imply a long and steady concentration of his powers
on the task. It was one requiring much learning as well as original
conception. The fragments of the poem afford proofs of a familiarity
with Homer, and of acquaintance with the Cyclic poets[86]. It is
impossible to say how much of the early Roman history, as it has come
down to modern times, is due to the diligence of Ennius in collecting,
and to his genius in giving life to the traditions and ancient records
of Rome. He was certainly the earliest writer who gathered them up, and
united them in a continuous narrative. The work accomplished by him
required not only the antiquarian lore of a man

    Multa tenens, antiqua, sepulta,

and the power of imagination to give a new shape to the past, but an
intimate knowledge of the great events and the great men of his own
time, and a sympathetic insight into the spirit by which they were
animated.

The poem was written in eighteen books. Of these books about six
hundred lines have been preserved in fragments, varying from about
twenty lines to half a line in length. From the minuteness with which
comparatively unimportant matters are described, it is inferred that
the separate books extended to a much greater length than those either
of the Iliad or of the Aeneid. Of the first book there remain about 120
lines, including the dream of Ilia in seventeen lines, and the auspices
of Romulus in twenty lines. In it were narrated the mythical events
from the time

    Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub marte Pelasgo,

to the death and deification of Romulus;

    Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus aevum
    Degit.

There is no allusion in these fragments to the Carthaginian adventures
of Aeneas, which Naevius had introduced into his poem on the First
Punic War. Aeneas seems at once to have been brought to Hesperia, a
land,

    Quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.

Ilia is represented as the daughter of Aeneas. The birth and infancy
of Romulus and Remus appear to have been described at great length. In
commenting on Virgil's lines at Aeneid viii. 630--

    Fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro
    Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
    Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
    Impavidos; illam terreti cervice reflexam
    Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua,--

Servius says 'Sane totus hic locus Ennianus est.' The second and third
books contained the history of the remaining Roman kings. Virgil
imitated the description given in these books of the destruction of
Alba (the story of which is told by Livy also with much poetic power,
perhaps reproduced from the pages of Ennius), in his account of the
capture of Troy, at Aeneid ii. 486--

    At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu, etc.

One short fragment of the third book contains a picturesque notice of
the founding of Ostia--

    Ostia munita est; idem loca navibu' pulchris
    Munda facit; nautisque mari quaesentibu' vitam.

This line also

    Postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancu' reliquit

is familiar from its reappearance in one of the most impressive
passages of Lucretius.

The fourth and fifth books contained the history of the State from the
establishment of the Republic till just before the beginning of the
war with Pyrrhus. One short fragment is taken from the night attack
of the Gauls upon the Capitol. The sixth book was devoted to the war
with Pyrrhus; the seventh, eighth, and ninth, to the First and Second
Punic Wars. In the fragments of the sixth are found a few lines of the
speeches of Pyrrhus, and of Appius Claudius Caecus. In the account of
the First Punic War, the disparaging allusion to Naevius occurs--

    Scripsêre alii rem, etc.

It is mentioned by Cicero that Ennius borrowed much from the work of
Naevius; and also that he passed over (_reliquisse_) the First Punic
War, as it had been treated by his predecessor. Several fragments
however must certainly refer to this war; but it is probable that
that part of the subject was treated more cursorily than either the
war with Pyrrhus, or the later wars. The passage in which the poet
is supposed to have painted his own character, under the form of
a friend of Servilius Geminus, occurred in the seventh book. Two
well-known passages have been preserved from the ninth book--viz., that
characterising the 'sweet-speaking' orator, M. Cornelius Cethegus--

    Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla,

and the lines in honour of Q. Fabius Maximus,

    Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, etc.

The tenth and eleventh books, beginning with a new invocation to the
muse--

    Insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator
    Quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo,

treated of the Macedonian war, and of the deeds of T. Quintius
Flamininus. In the later books, Ennius told the history of the war with
Antiochus, of the Aetolian War carried on by his friend, M. Fulvius
Nobilior, of the exploits of L. Caecilius Denter and his brother (of
whom scarcely anything is known except that the sixteenth book of the
Annals was written in consequence of the poet's especial admiration for
them), and lastly, of the Istrian War, which took place within a few
years of the author's death.

Neither in general design nor in detail could the Annals be regarded
as a pure epic poem. Like the Aeneid, which connects the mythical
story of Aeneas with the glories of the Julian line and the great
destiny of Rome, the poem of Ennius treated of fabulous tradition, of
historical fact, and of great contemporary events; but it did not, like
the Aeneid, unite these varied materials in the representation of the
fortunes of one individual hero. The action of the poem, instead of
being limited to a few days or months, extended over many generations.
Nor could the poem terminate with any critical catastrophe, as its
object was to unfold the continuous, still advancing progress of the
State. From the name it might be inferred that the Annals must have
been more like a metrical chronicle than like an epic poem; yet, as
being inspired and pervaded by a grand and vital idea, the work was
elevated above the level of matter of fact into the region of poetry.
The idea of a high destiny, unfolding itself under the old kingly
dynasty and the long line of consuls,--through the successive wars
with the Italian races, with Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians,--rapidly
advancing, though not fully accomplished in the age when the poem
was written,--gave unity of plan and consistency of form to its rude
and colossal structure. The word Annales, as applied to Roman story,
suggests something more than the mere record of events in regular
annual sequence. It involves also the idea of unbroken continuity.
In the Roman Republic, the unity and vital action of the State were
maintained and manifested by the delegation of the functions of
government on magistrates appointed from year to year, just as the
life of a monarchical state is maintained and manifested in its line
of kings. In the spirit animating the work,--in the conception of a
past history, stretching back in unbroken grandeur until it is lost
in fable, but yet vitally linked to the interests of the present
time,--the Annals of Ennius may be compared with the dramas in which
Shakspeare has represented the national life of England--in all its
greatness and vicissitudes--with the glory and splendour, as well as
the dark and tragic colours with which that story is inwoven.

The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form,
had thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating
both of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded
by a living and popular idea,--faith in the destiny of Rome. It was
through the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that
Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous
tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan
hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It
is the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial
epics of refined and civilised eras,--such poems, for instance, as the
_Thebais_ of Statius, or the _Argonautics_ of Valerius Flaccus,--in
general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as
a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable
conditions than the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, or the _Punic Wars_ of Silius
Italicus--in being the work of an age to which the past had come down
as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The imagination of the
poet employs itself more happily and legitimately in filling up or
modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies and feelings of
successive generations, than in venturing to recast the facts that
stand out prominently in the actual march of human affairs. By treating
of contemporary events, the poem must have receded still further from
the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later fragments of the work,
while written with something of the minute and literal fidelity of a
chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic inspiration. They prove that the
author was no unconcerned spectator and reporter of the events going
on around him, but that his imagination was fired and his sympathies
keenly interested by whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live
in the memory of the world.

There must have been many drawbacks to the popularity of the poem in a
more critical time, when strong enthusiasm and forcible conception fail
to interest, unless they are combined with the harmonious execution of
a work of art. Even from the extant fragments the rude proportions and
the unwieldy mass of the original work may be inferred. It is still
possible to note the bare, annalistic style of many passages which
sink below the level of dignified prose, the barbarisms of taste shown
by a fondness for alliterative lines and plays upon words, the more
common faults of careless haste and redundance of expression, and of
a rugged and irregular cadence. There must have been some peculiar
excellencies or adaptation to the Roman taste, through which, in spite
of these defects, the popularity of the poem was sustained far into the
times of the Empire. This late popularity may have been due in part to
antiquarian zeal or affectation, but some degree of it, as well as the
favour of the age in which the poem was written, must have been founded
on more substantial grounds. Apart from other literary interest, this
poem first drew forth and established, for the contemplation of after
times, the ideal latent in the national mind. The patriotic tones of
Virgil have the same kind of ring as these in the older poet--

    Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
    Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis;

and this other line which Cicero compared to the utterance of an
oracle--

    Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.

While in his other works Ennius was the teacher of an alien culture
to his countrymen, in his Annals he represented them. He set before
them an image of what was most real in themselves;--an image combining
the strength and commanding features of his own time, with the proud
memories and traditional traits of the past. As it is by sympathy with
what is most vital and of deepest meaning in actual experience that a
great poet forms his ideal of what transcends experience, so it is
by a vivid apprehension of the present, that he is able to re-animate
the past. Dante and Milton gained their vision of other worlds through
their intense feeling of the spiritual meaning of this life; and, in
another sphere of art, Scott was enabled to immortalise the romance
and humour of past ages, partly through the chivalrous and adventurous
spirit which he inherited from them, partly through the strong interest
and enjoyment with which he entered into the actual life and pursuits
of his contemporaries. It is in ages of transition, such as were the
ages of Sophocles, of Shakspeare, and of Scott, in which the traditions
of the past seem to blend with and colour the activity and enjoyment
of a new time in which great issues are involved, that representative
works of genius are produced. Living in such an era, deeply moved by
all the memories, the hopes, and the impulses which acted upon his
contemporaries, living his own life happily and vigorously in the chief
centre of the world's activity, Ennius was enabled to gather the life
of centuries into one representation, and to tell the story of Rome, if
without the accomplished art, yet with something of the native force
and spirit of early Greece; to fix in language the patriotic traditions
which had hitherto been kept alive by the statues, monuments, and
commemorative ceremonies of earlier times; to uphold the standard
of national character with a fervent enthusiasm; and to address the
understanding of his contemporaries with a practical wisdom like their
own, and a large knowledge both of 'books and men:'--

                                  Vetustas
    Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.

The manifest defects, as well as the peculiar power of the poem, show
how widely it departed from the standard of the Greek epic which it
professed to imitate. Its vast dimensions and solid structure are
proofs of that capacity of long labour and concentrated interest on
one great object, which was the secret of Roman success in other
spheres of action. So large a mass of materials held in union only by
a pervading national enthusiasm would have been utterly repugnant to
Greek taste, intolerant above all things of monotony, and most exacting
in its demands of artistic unity and completeness. The fragments of
the poem give no idea of careful finish; they produce the impression
of massiveness and energy, strength and uniformity of structure,
unaccompanied by beauty, grace, or symmetry. The creation of an
untutored age may be recognised in the rudeness of design,--of a Roman
mind in the national spirit, the colossal proportions, and the strong
workmanship of the poem.

The originality of the Roman epic will be still more apparent if we
compare the fragments of the Annals, in some points of detail, with
the complete works of the poet, whom Ennius regarded as his prototype.
There was, in the first place, a marked difference between Homer
and the Roman poet in their modes of representing human life and
character. The personages of the Iliad and of the Odyssey are living
and forcible types of individual character. In Achilles, in Hector,
and in Odysseus,--in Helen, Andromache, and Nausicaa, we recognise
embodiments the most real, yet the most transcendent, of the grandeur,
the heroism, the courage, and strong affection of manhood, and of the
grace, the gentleness, and the sweet vivacity of woman. The work of
Ennius, on the other hand, instead of presenting varied types of human
nature, appears to have unfolded a long gallery of national portraits.
The fragments of the poem still afford glimpses of the 'good Ancus';
'of the man of the great heart, the wise Aelius Sextus'; 'of the sweet
speaking orator,' Cethegus, 'the marrow of persuasion.' The stamp of
magnanimous fortitude is impressed on the fragmentary words of Appius
Claudius Caecus; and sagacity and resolution are depicted in the lines
which have handed down the fame of Fabius Maximus. This idea of the
poem, as unfolding the heroes of Roman story in regular series, may be
gathered also from the language of Cicero: 'Cato, the ancestor of our
present Cato, is extolled by him to the skies; the honour of the Roman
people is thereby enhanced: finally all those Maximi, Fulvii, Marcelli,
are celebrated with a glory in which we all participate[87].' This
portraiture of the kings and heroes of the early time, of the orators,
soldiers, and statesmen of the Republic, could not have exhibited the
variety, the energy, the passion, and all the complex human attributes
of Homer's personages. The men who stand prominently out in the annals
of Rome were of a more uniform type. They were men of one common
aim,--the advancement of Rome; animated with one sentiment,--devotion
to the State. All that was purely personal in them seems merged in the
traditional pictures which express only the fortitude, dignity, and
sagacity of the Republic.

Ennius also followed Homer in introducing the element of supernatural
agency into his poem. The action of the Annals, as well as of the
Iliad, was made partially dependent on a divine interference with
human affairs, though exercised less directly, and, as it were, from a
greater distance. Yet how great is the difference between the life-like
representation of the eager, capricious, and passionate deities
of Homer's Olympus and that outline which may still be traced in
Ennius, and which is seen filled up in Virgil and Horace, of the gods
assembled, like a grave council of state, to deliberate on the destiny
of Rome. In one fragment, containing the familiar line,--

    Unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli
    Templa,--

they are introduced as debating, 'tectis bipatentibus,' on the
admission of Romulus into heaven. Again, in the account of the Second
Punic War, Jupiter is introduced as promising to the Romans the
destruction of Carthage; and Juno abandons her resentment against the
descendants of the Trojans,--

    Romanis coepit Juno placata favere.

It may be remarked, as a strong proof of the hold which their mythology
had on the minds of the ancients, that men so sincere as Ennius
and Lucretius, while openly expressing opposition to that system of
religious belief, cannot separate themselves from its influence and
associations in their poetry. But it is not to be supposed that Ennius,
in the passages just referred to, was merely using an artificial
machinery to which he attached no meaning. In this representation of
the councils of the gods, he embodies that faith in the Roman destiny,
which was at the root of the most serious convictions of the Romans, in
the most sceptical as well as the most believing ages of their history.
This, too, is the real belief, which gives meaning to the supernatural
agency in the Aeneid. Aeneas is little more than a passive instrument
in the hands of Fate; Jupiter merely foreknows and pronounces its
decrees; the parts assigned to Juno and Venus, in thwarting and
advancing these decrees, seem to be an artistic addition to this
original conception, suggested perhaps as much by the experience of
female influence and intrigue in the poet's own age as by the memories
of the Iliad.

Homer makes his personages known to us in speech as well as in action.
Among epic poets he alone possessed the finest dramatic genius. But
over and above the natural dialogue or soliloquy, in which every
feeling of his various personages is revealed, he has invested his
heroes with the charm of fluent and powerful oratory, in the council of
chiefs and before the assembled people. The words of his speakers pour
on, as he says of the words of Odysseus,--

    νιφάδεσσιν ἐοίκοτα χειμερίῃσι,

in the rapid vehemence of passion or the subtle fluency of persuasion.
The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, scarcely afford sufficient
ground for attributing to him a genuine dramatic faculty. But, as the
citizen of a republic in which action was first matured in council,
and living in the age when public speech first became a recognised
power in the State, it was incumbent on him to embody in 'his abstract
and chronicle of the time' the speech of the orator no less than the
achievement of the soldier. In his estimate of character this power
of speech is honoured as the fitting accompaniment of the wisdom of
the statesman. In the following lines, for instance, he laments the
substitution of military for civil preponderance in public affairs.

    Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res:
    Spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur:
    Haut doctis dictis certantes, sed maledictis
    Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes;
    Non ex jure manu consertum, sed magi' ferro
    Rem repetunt, regnumque petunt, vadunt solida vi.[88]

Many lines of the Annals are evidently fragments of speeches. The
most remarkable of these passages is one from a speech of Pyrrhus,
and is characterised by Cicero as expressing 'sentiments truly regal
and worthy of the race of the Acacidae[89].' This fragment, although
evincing nothing of the fluency, the passion, or the argumentative
subtlety of debate, yet suggests the power of a great orator by its
grave authoritative appeal to the moral dignity of man:--

    Nec mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium dederitis:
    Non cauponantes bellum, sed belligerantes,
    Ferro non auro vitam cernamus utrique.
    Vosne velit an me regnare era quidve ferat Fors,
    Virtute experiamur. Et hoc simul accipe dictum:
    Quorum virtutei belli fortuna pepercit,
    Eorundem libertati me parcere certum est.
    Dono ducite, doque volentibu' cum magnis dis.[90]

Of the same severe and lofty tone is that appeal of Appius Claudius,
blind and in extreme old age, to the Senate, when wavering in its
resolution, and inclined to make peace with Pyrrhus--

    Quo vobis mentes rectae quae stare solebant
    Antehac, dementes sese flexere viai.[91]

As Milton, in his representation of the great debate in Pandemonium,
idealised and glorified the stately and serious speech of his own time,
so Ennius, in his graphic delineation of the age in which he lived,
gave expression to that high magnanimous mood in accordance with which
the acts of Roman statesmen were assailed or vindicated, and the policy
of the State was shaped before Senate and people--

    indu foro lato sanctoque senatu--

The great poets of human action and passion are for the most part to be
ranked among the great poets of the outward world. If they do not seem
to have penetrated with so much personal sympathy into the inner secret
of the life of Nature, as the great contemplative poets of ancient and
modern times, yet they show, in different ways, that their sense and
imagination were powerfully affected both by her outward beauty and by
her manifold energy. Homer, not so much by direct description of the
scenes in which the action of his poems is laid, as by many indirect
touches, by vivid imagery and picturesque epithets, reveals the
openness of his mind to every impression from the outward world, and
the fresh delight with which his imagination reproduced the impressions
immediately received from the 'world of eye and ear.' If he has left
any personal characteristic stamped upon his poetry, it is the trace of
adventure and keen enjoyment in the open air, among the most stirring
sights and sounds and forces of Nature. The imagery of Virgil is of a
more peaceful cast. It seems rather to be 'the harvest of a quiet eye,'
gathered in the conscious contemplation of rural beauty, and stored up
for after use along with the products of his study and meditation. The
fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, afford few indications either
of active toil and unconscious enjoyment among the solitudes of Nature,
or of the luxurious and pensive susceptibility to beauty by which the
poetry of Virgil is pervaded. He was the poet, not of the woods and
rivers, but, essentially, of the city and the camp. No sentiment could
appear less appropriate to him than that of Virgil's modest prayer,--

    Flumina amem silvasque inglorius.

Yet both in his illustrative imagery and in his narrative, he
occasionally reproduces with lively force, if not with much poetical
ornament, some aspects of the outward world, as well as many real
scenes from the world of action.

His imagery is sometimes borrowed from that of Homer; as, for instance,
the following simile, which is also imitated by Virgil:--

    Et tum sic ut equus, qui de praesepibu' fartus,
    Vincla suis magnis animis abrupit, et inde
    Fert sese campi per caerula laetaque prata
    Celso pectore, saepe jubam quassat simul altam,
    Spiritus ex anima calida spumas agit albas.[92]

Other illustrations are taken from circumstances likely to have been
familiar to the men of his own time, but without any apparent intention
of adding poetical beauty to the object he is representing. Thus
the silent expectation with which the assembled people watch the
rival auspices of Romulus and Remus is brought before the mind by an
illustration suggested by, and suggestive of, the passionate eagerness
with which the public games were witnessed by the Romans of his own
age:--

    Expectant vel uti consul cum mittere signum
    Volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras,
    Quam mox emittat pictis e faucibu' currus.[93]

There may be noticed also, in fragments of the narrative, occasional
expressions and descriptive touches implying some sense of what is
sublime or picturesque in the familiar aspects of the outward world.
The sky, with its starry host, is poetically presented in that
expression, which has been adopted by Virgil, 'stellis ingentibus
aptum;' and in the following line,

    Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis.

In the description of the auspices of Romulus, the scene is enlivened
by this vivid flash, 'simul aureus exoritur Sol,' following
instantaneously upon the appearance of the first bird of omen. A lively
sense of natural scenery is implied in these lines from the dream of
Ilia--

    Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
    Et ripas raptare locosque novos;

in this description of a river, afterwards imitated both by Lucretius
and Virgil--

    Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen;

and in these lines which recall a familiar passage in the Aeneid:--

    Jupiter hic risit tempestatesque serenae
    Riserunt omnes risu Jovis omnipotentis.[94]

The rhythm and the diction of these fragments suggest another point
of contrast between the father of Greek and the father of Roman
literature. For the old Saturnian verse of the Fauns and Bards, which
had been employed by Livius Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius substituted
the heroic hexameter, which he moulded to the use of Roman poetry, with
little art and grace, but with much energy and weight. As he imitated
the metre of Homer, he has in several places (as in a simile already
quoted, and again in describing the conduct of a brave tribune in the
Istrian war), attempted to reproduce his language. Nothing, however,
can show more clearly the vast original difference between the genius
of Greece and of Rome than the contrast presented between the rhythm
and style of their earliest epic poets. In their regard for law and
civil order, in military and political organisation, in practical
power of understanding, and in the command which that power gave them
over the world, the Romans of the second century B.C. had made a great
and permanent advance beyond the Greeks of the time of Homer. But the
Greeks, when they first become known to us, appear in possession of a
gift to which all later generations have been unable to attain. The
genius of poetry has never, since the time of Homer, appeared in union
with a faculty of expression so true and spontaneous, so faultless
in purity, so inexhaustible in resources. It is difficult to imagine
a greater contrast than that between the varied and harmonious power
of the earliest Greek epic, and the rugged rhythm and diction of the
Annals. Yet the very rudeness of that work is significant of the energy
of a man who had to accomplish a gigantic task by his own unaided
efforts. His ear had not been passively trained by the musical echoes
transmitted by earlier minstrels; nor did he inherit the fluency and
richness of expression which a long line of poets hands on to their
successors. While professing to imitate the structure of the Homeric
verse, he was unable to seize its finer cadences. Nor had he learned
the stricter conditions under which that metre could be adapted to the
powerful and weighty movement of the Latin language. If he did much
to establish Latin prosody on principles deviating considerably from
those observed by the contemporary comic poets, yet many points which
were regulated unalterably for Virgil were left quite unsettled by
Ennius. There are found occasionally in these fragments lines without
any _caesura_ before the fifth foot, as the following, in one of the
longest and least imperfect of his remains--

    Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.

and this in a passage in which the sound seems intended to imitate the
sense--

    Poste recumbite vestraque pectora pellite tonsis.

And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a
large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed by
later poets are violated. Again, while the final 's' is in most cases
not sounded before a word beginning with a consonant (a usage which
finally disappears only in the Augustan poets) the final m, on the
other hand, is sometimes left without elision before a vowel, as in the
following line--

    Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes.

The quantity of syllables and the inflexions of words were so far
unsettled, that such lines as the following are read,

    Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis;

and this,

    Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;

and

    Volturus in spinis miserum mandebat homonem.

Among the ruder characteristics of his diction, his use of prosaic and
technical terms is especially to be noticed. The following lines, for
instance, read more like the bare statement of a chronicle, or of a
legal document, than an extract from a poetical narrative:--

    Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani;

and this

    Appius indixit Karthaginiensibu' bellum;

and these lines enumerating the various priesthoods established by
Numa,--

    Volturnalem Palatualem Furrinalem
    Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit
    Hic idem.

Yet, in spite of these imperfections, both his rhythm and language
produce the impression of power and originality. With all the roughness
and irregularity of his measure, and notwithstanding the inharmonious
structure of continuous passages, his lines often have a weighty and
impressive effect, like that produced by some of the great passages
in Lucretius and Virgil. It is said of the rhetorician Aelian that he
excessively admired in Ennius both 'the greatness of his mind and the
grandeur of his metre[95].' Something of this sonorous grandeur may be
recognised in a fragment descriptive of the havoc made by woodcutters
in a great forest,--a passage in which the language of Ennius again
appears as a connecting link between that of Homer and of Virgil:--

    Incedunt arbusta per alta, securibu' caedunt,
    Percellunt magnas quercus, exciditur ilex,
    Fraxinu' frangitur, atque abies consternitur alta.
    Pinus proceras pervortunt: omne sonabat
    Arbustum fremitu siluai frondosai.[96]

In the longest consecutive passages,--the dream of Ilia, the auspices
of Romulus, and that from book seventh, already quoted as illustrative
of the poet's character,--there is, notwithstanding the roughness of
the lines, something also of Homeric rapidity;--a quality which the
Latin hexameter never afterwards attained in elevated poetry.

The diction also of the Annals is generally fresh and forcible,
sometimes vividly imaginative. But perhaps the most admirable quality
of its style is a grave simplicity and sincerity of tone. Especially
is this the case in passages expressing appreciation of strength
and grandeur of character, as in those fragments from the speeches
of Pyrrhus and of Appius Claudius Caecus, already quoted, and in the
famous lines commemorative of the resolute character and momentous
services of Fabius Maximus.

    Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem:
    Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem:
    Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret.[97]

These lines leave on the mind the same impression of antique majesty,
as is produced by the unadorned record of character and work
accomplished inscribed on the tombs of the Scipios.


This truly Roman quality of style, depending on a strong imaginative
sense of reality, is one of the great elements of power in the language
of Lucretius.


III. CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS AND INTELLECT.

III.--From a review of the extant fragments both of the Tragedies and
the Annals of Ennius, it appears that his prominent place in Roman
literature, and influence over his countrymen, were due much more to
a great productiveness and activity, and to an original force of mind
and character, than to any artistic skill displayed in the conception
or execution of his works. A consideration of the spirit and purpose
of his greatest works has led to the conclusion that they were, in a
considerable measure, inspired by the genius of Rome, and were thus
rather the starting-point of a new literature than the mechanical
reproduction of the literature of the Greeks. It remains to consider
what inference may be formed from these fragments as to the character
of his genius, of his imaginative sentiment and moral sympathies, and
of his intellectual power.

The force of many single expressions in these fragments, and the power
with which various incidents, situations, and characters, are brought
before the mind indicate an active imagination. A sense of energy and
life-like movement is the prevailing impression produced by a study
of the language and the longer passages in these remains. Many single
lines and expressions that have been gathered accidentally, as mere
isolated phrases, disjoined from the context in which they originally
occurred, bear traces of the ardour with which they were cast into
shape. In longer passages, the whole heart, sense, and understanding of
the writer seem to be thrown into his narrative. He has not the eye of
a poetic artist who observes, as it were, from a distance, and fixes
as in a picture, some phase of passionate feeling or some beautiful
aspect of repose. He suggests rather the idea of a man of practical
energy, who has been present and taken part in the action described,
who enters with living interest into every detail, and watches it at
the same time with a sagacious discernment and a strong enthusiasm.
His power as a narrative poet is the power of forcibly reproducing
the outward movement and the inward meaning of an action, and of
identifying himself with the hearts and minds of the actors on the
scene. Several passages, wanting altogether in poetical beauty, yet
arrest the attention by this energy and realism of conception; as, for
example, this short and rugged fragment, descriptive of a commander in
the crisis of a battle (probably that of Cynoscephalae),--

    Aspectabat virtutem legioni' suai,
    Expectans, si mussaret, quae denique pausa
    Pugnandi fieret, aut duri fini' laboris.[98]

Even in the abrupt dislocation from their context these lines leave on
the mind an impression of the calm vigilance of a general, and of his
confidence, not unmixed with anxiety, in 'the long-enduring hearts' of
his men. The same truth and energy of conception, with more poetical
accompaniment, may be recognised in the longer passages, from Book vii.
and Book i., already quoted or referred to.

But the imaginative power which gives poetical meaning to familiar
objects and ideas is revealed by the force of many single expressions
and by the delineation of more passionate situations. Such expressions
as the following, most of which reappear with an antique lustre in the
gold of Virgil's diction, are indicative of this higher power.

    Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum.
    Transnavit cita per teneras caliginis auras.

                    Postquam discordia taetra
    Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit.

                    Quem super ingens
    Porta tonat caeli.

    Spiritus austri imbricitor. Naves velivolae, etc. etc.

These and similar phrases, some of which have already been quoted,
imply poetical creativeness. They tend to justify the estimate of the
genius of Ennius, indicated in the language of high admiration applied
to him by Lucretius,--

    Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno
    Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
    Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret;[99]

and in the signs of the careful study of the Annals which may be traced
in the elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid.

The longest specimen of narrative vivified by poetical feeling, from
the hand of Ennius, is the passage in which the vestal Ilia relates to
her sister the dream that portended her great and strange destiny:--

    Excita cum tremulis anus attulit artubu' lumen,
    Talia commemorat lacrimans, exterrita somno.
    Eurudica prognata, pater quam noster amavit,
    Vires vitaque corpu' meum nunc deserit omne.
    Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
    Et ripas raptare locosque novos; ita sola
    Postilla, germana soror, errare videbar
    Tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse
    Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
    Exin compellare pater me voce videtur
    His verbis: 'O gnata, tibi sunt ante ferendae
    Aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet.'
    Haec ecfatu' pater, germana, repente recessit
    Nec sese dedit in conspectum, corde cupitus,
    Quanquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa
    Tendebam lacrimans et blanda voce vocabam:
    Vix aegro cum corde meo me somnu' reliquit.[100]

Though these lines are rough and inharmonious as compared with the
rhythm of Catullus or Virgil, yet they flow more smoothly and rapidly
than any of the other fragments preserved from Ennius. The impression
of gentleness and tender affection produced by the speech of Ilia,
implies some dramatic skill in the conception of character. And there
is real imaginative power shown in the sense of hurry and surprise, of
vague awe and helplessness conveyed in the lines--

    Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta, etc.

From this passage Virgil has borrowed one of the finest touches in his
delineation of the passion of Dido, the sense of horror and desolation
haunting the Carthaginian queen in her dreams--

                          Agit ipse furentem
    In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui
    Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur
    Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra.

Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the
Aeneid--the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas[101]--was evidently
suggested by the description which Ennius gave of the appearance of the
shade of Homer to himself. Some of his dramatic fragments, also, as for
instance the scene between Hecuba and Cassandra already referred to,
show a real power of conceiving and representing passionate situations.

Among the modes of imaginative sentiment by which the poetry of
Ennius is pervaded, those kindled by patriotic enthusiasm are most
conspicuous. In the manifestation of his enthusiasm, he shows an
affinity to Virgil in ancient, and to Scott in modern times. He
resembles them in their mingled feelings of veneration and affection
which they entertain towards the national heroes of old times, and
the great natural features of their country, associated with historic
memories and legendary renown. Such feelings are shown by Ennius in the
lines of tender regret and true hero-worship, which express the sorrow
of Senate and people at the death of Romulus--

    Pectora ... tenet desiderium, simul inter
    Sese sic memorant, O Romule, Romule die
    Qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt!
    O pater, O genitor, O sanguen dis oriundum!
    Tu produxisti nos intra luminis oras.[102]

They appear also in the language applied by him to the sacred river of
Rome, which had preserved the founder of the city from his untimely
fate, and which was thus inseparably identified with the national
destiny--

    Teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto.

and also in this fragment--

    Postquam consistit fluvius qui est omnibu' princeps
    Qui sub caeruleo.

The enumeration of the great warlike races in the line

    Marsa manus, Peligna cohors, Vestina virum vis,

may recall the pride and enthusiasm which are kindled in the
heart of Virgil by the names of the various tribes of Italy, and
of places renowned for their fame in story, or their picturesque
environment[103]. This fond use of proper names recalling old
associations or the charm of natural scenery is also among the most
familiar characteristics of the poetry of Scott.

It was seen in the introductory chapter that the Roman mind was
peculiarly susceptible of that kind of feeling, which perhaps may best
be described as the sense of majesty. This vein of poetical emotion is
also conspicuous in the fragments of Ennius. His language shows a deep
sense of greatness and order, both in the material world and in human
affairs. Thus his style appears animated not only by vital force, but
by an impressive solemnity, befitting the grave and dignified emotion
which responds to such ideas. This susceptibility of his genius appears
in such expressions as these--

    Magnum pulsatis Olympum. Indu mari magno.
    Litora lata sonant.
    Latos per populos terrasque.
    Magnae gentes opulentae.
    Quis potis ingentis oras evolvere belli?
    Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis;

and again in the following--

    Indu foro lato sanctoque senatu.
    Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est.
    Omnibu' cura viris uter esset induperator,

and in the epithet which Cicero quotes as applied to cities--

    Urbes magnas atque _imperiosas_.

His imagination appears also to have been impressed by that sense of
outward pomp and magnificence which exercised a strong spell on the
Roman mind in all ages, and obtained its most complete and permanent
realisation in the architecture of the Empire. A short passage from one
of his tragedies, the Andromache, may be quoted as illustrative of this
influence, even in the writings of Ennius, though naturally it is much
more apparent in the style of those poets who witnessed the grandeur of
Rome in her later era:--

    O pater, O patria, O Priami domus,
    Saeptum altisono cardine templum!
    Vidi ego te, astante ope barbarica,
    Tectis caelatis, lacuatis,
    Auro ebore instructum regifice![104]

While his peculiar poetical feeling is present chiefly in the fragments
of the Annals, the moral elements of his poetry may be gathered both
from his epic and dramatic remains. Strength and dignity of character
are the qualities with which his own nature was most in sympathy. Yet
in delineating the agitation of Ilia, the shame of Cassandra, and the
sorrow of Andromache, he reveals also much tenderness of feeling,--the
not unusual accompaniment of the manly genius of Rome. A similar
tenderness is found in union with the grave tones of Pacuvius and
Accius, and in still greater measure with the fortitude of Lucretius
and the majesty of Virgil. The masculine qualities which most stir his
enthusiasm are the Roman virtues of resolution (constantia), sincerity,
magnanimity, capacity for affairs. Thus a latent glow of feeling may be
discerned in the lines which record the brave resolution of the Roman
people during the first hardships of the war with Pyrrhus--

                      Ast animo superant atque aspera prima
    Volnera belli dispernunt;[105]

and in this strong and scornful triumph over natural sorrow, from the
Telamon:--

    Ego cum genui tum morituros scivi, et ei rei sustuli:
    Praeterea ad Trojam cum misi ob defendendam Graeciam,
    Scibam me in mortiferum bellum, non in epulas mittere.[106]

The generosity and courage of a magnanimous nature are stamped
upon the kingly speech which he puts into the mouth of Pyrrhus. A
frank sincerity of character reveals itself in such passages as the
following:--

                                    Eo ego ingenio natus sum,
    Aeque inimicitiam atque amicitiam in frontem promptam gero.[107]

There is no subtlety nor rhetorical point in the expression of his
serious convictions. The very style of the tragedies, which, as Cicero
says[108], 'does not depart from the natural order of the words,' is a
symbol of frankness and straightforwardness.

He shows also, in his delineations of character, high appreciation of
practical wisdom, and of its most powerful instrument in a free State,
the persuasive power of oratory. This appreciation is expressed in
the lines so much admired by Cicero and Aulus Gellius[109], though
ridiculed by the purism of Seneca:

                    Is dictus 'st ollis popularibus olim
    Qui tum vivebant homines, atque aevum agitabant,
    Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla.[110]

He seems to admire the sterling qualities of character and intellect
rather than the brilliant manifestations of impulse and genius. He
celebrates the heroism of brave endurance rather than of chivalrous
daring[111]; the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and
saves the State[112], rather than the impetuous valour which achieves a
barren glory; the sincerity and simplicity which are stronger than art,
yet that know when to speak and when to be silent[113]; the sagacity
which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to turn them
to the best account[114].

Many of his fragments, again, show traces of that just and vigorous
understanding of human life, and that shrewdness of observation, which
constitute a great satirist. The didactic tone of satire appears, for
instance, in the following lines--

    Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit;
    Hic itidem est: enim neque domi nunc nos neque militiae sumus,
    Imus huc, illuc hinc, cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet;
    Incerte errat animus: praeter propter vitam vivitur[115],--

a fragment which might be compared with certain passages in the
Epistles of Horace, which give expression to the _ennui_ experienced
as a result of the inaction and luxurious living of the Augustan age.
But a closer parallel will be found in a passage where Lucretius has
assumed something of the caustic tone of Roman satire--

    Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille
    Esse domi quem pertaesum 'st, subitoque revertit,
    Quippe domi nihilo melius qui sentiat esse,' etc.[116]

While Ennius, like Lucretius, gives little indication of humour, yet
the folly and superstition of his times provoke him into tones of
contemptuous irony, especially where he has to expose the arts of
false prophets and fortune-tellers. The men of the manliest temper and
the strongest understanding in ancient times were most intolerant of
this mischievous form of imposture and credulity. Thus Thucydides, in
general so reserved in his expression of personal feeling, treats, with
a manifest irony, all supernatural pretences to foresee or control the
future. The tone in which Ennius writes of such professions reminds us
of Milton's grim contempt for

                              Eremites and friars
    White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.

Thus, in a fragment of Book xi. of the Annals, the fears excited by the
prophets and diviners at the commencement of the war with Antiochus are
encountered with the pertinent question--

    Satin' vates verant aetate in agenda?

Thus too the pretensions and the ignorance of astrologers are exposed
in a line of one of the dramas--

    Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.

And the following passage may be quoted as applicable to charlatans of
every kind, in every age and country--

    Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque arioli,
    Aut inertes aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat,
    Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
    Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachmam ipsi petunt.[117]

There are passages of the same spirit to be found among the fragments
of Pacuvius and Accius.

There is not much indication of speculative thought in any of these
fragments. The blunt sentiment which Ennius puts into the mouth of
Neoptolemus probably expressed his own mental attitude towards the
schools of philosophy--

    Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis: nam omnino haut placet.

His observations on life are neither of an imaginative, of a deeply
reflective, nor of a purely satiric character. Unlike the thoughts
of the Greek dramatists, they make no attempt to solve the painful
riddle of the world; they want the universality and systematic basis
of philosophical truths; they are expressed neither with the pointed
wit nor with the ironical humour of satire. They are the maxims of a
strong common sense and the dictates of a grave rectitude of will. They
are practical, not speculative. They have their origin in a sense of
duty rather than of consequences. They are in conformity with the ideal
realised in the best types of Roman character; and they bear witness
to the sterling worth combined with the ardent enthusiasm, and the
practical sense united to the strong imagination of the poet.

Such appear to be the chief attributes of genius and imaginative
sentiment, and the chief moral and intellectual features indicated in
the fragments of Ennius. It is not indeed possible, from the tenor
of single passages, to judge of the composition of a whole drama or
of a continuous book of the Annals. No single scene or speech can
afford sufficient grounds for inferring the amount of creative power
with which his characters were conceived and sustained in all their
complex relations. Yet enough has appeared in these fragments, which,
from the accidental mode of their preservation, must be regarded as
the ordinary samples and not chosen specimens of his style, to confirm
the ancient belief in his pre-eminence and to determine the prevailing
characteristics of his genius. There is ample evidence of the great
popularity which he enjoyed among his countrymen, and of the high
estimate which many of the best Roman writers formed of his power. It
is recorded that great crowds ('magna frequentia') attended the public
reading of the Annals. Virgil was said to have introduced many lines
into the Aeneid, with the view of pleasing a public devoted to Ennius
('populus Ennianus'). The title of Ennianista was assumed by a public
reader of the Annals in the time of Hadrian[118]. Cicero often speaks
of the poet as 'noster Ennius,' and quotes him with all the signs of
hearty admiration and affection. The numerous references in his works
to the Annals and the Tragedies imply also a thorough familiarity with
these poems on the part of the readers for whom his philosophical
and rhetorical treatises were written. The criticism of Quintilian,
'Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et
antiqua robora jam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem[119],'
expresses a sentiment of traditional reverence as well as of personal
appreciation. Aulus Gellius, a writer of the time of Hadrian, often
quotes and comments upon him with hearty and genial sympathy. The
greatest among the Roman poets also, directly and indirectly,
acknowledge their admiration. The strong testimony of Lucretius,
the most imaginative poet and the most powerful thinker whom Rome
produced, is alone sufficient to establish the fame of Ennius as a man
of remarkable force and genius. The spirit of the Annals still lives
in the antique charm and national spirit which make the epic poem of
Virgil the truest representation of Roman feeling which has come down
to modern times. By Ovid he is characterised as--

    Ennius, ingenio maximus, arte rudis.

Horace, although more reluctant and grudging in his admiration, yet
allows the 'Calabrian Muse' to be the best preserver of the fame of
the great Scipio. Even the disparaging lines--

    Ennius et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus,
    Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur
    Quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea,[120]

are a strong testimony in favour of the esteem in which the vigour and
sagacity of Ennius were held by those who had all his works in their
hands. As one of the founders of Roman literature, it was impossible
that he could have rivalled the careful and finished style of the
Augustan poets; but, by his rude and energetic labours, he laid the
strong groundwork on which later poets built their fame.

He has been exposed to more serious detraction in modern times, as
the corrupter of the pure stream of early Roman poetry. It is alleged
against him by Niebuhr, that through jealousy he suppressed the ballad
and epic poetry of the early bards. The answer to this charge has
already been given. There is no evidence to prove that any such poems
were in existence in the time of Ennius. By other modern scholars
he is disadvantageously compared with Naevius, who is held up to
admiration as the last of the genuine Roman minstrels. Naevius appears
indeed to have been a remarkable and original man, yet his very scanty
fragments do not afford sufficient evidence to justify the reversal
of the verdict of antiquity on the relative greatness and importance
of the two poets. The old Roman party, in opposition to whom Ennius
and his friends are supposed to have introduced the new taste and
suppressed the old, never showed any zeal in favour of poetry of any
kind. Cato, their only literary representative, wrote prose treatises
on antiquities and agriculture, and in one of his speeches reproached
Fulvius Nobilior for the consideration which he showed to Ennius. The
evidence of these epic and dramatic fragments which have just been
considered, is all in favour of the high verdict of antiquity on the
importance and pre-eminence of the author of the Annals. Whatever in
the later poets is most truly Roman in sentiment and morality appears
to be conceived in the spirit of Ennius.

He stands out prominently in that early time as a man of true genius,
and of a strong and original character. His lot was not cast, like that
of the Augustan poets, in the midst of a refined and courtly society,
with all the aids and appliances of literary leisure, and in secure
exemption from any harsh collision with the world. Neither was he a
poetical artist, like Catullus, yielding himself up to the enjoyment
of beauty, and reproducing in his verse the charm which he had found
in life, in Nature, and in earlier art. His poetry was the serious
product of a manly and energetic life, and of a vital interest in the
great affairs of his time. Till middle life he is dimly discerned as an
obscure Messapian soldier, claiming descent from an old race of kings,
and a stranger to the great city which in after times regarded him as
the father of her literature. In mature manhood, and in a kindly old
age, he is seen exercising a constant literary industry in manifold
ways, living plainly and in cheerful independence, applauded by his
fellow-citizens, and honoured by the friendship of the greatest among
his contemporaries.

The variety and extent of his works bear witness to remarkable
learning, as well as a strong productive energy. With a wide knowledge
of Greek literature, he combined the heart and will of a Roman; and
to the study of the best books he added a close contact with men.
Expressions in his remains indicate the opposite religious feelings
and convictions of a mystic and a sceptic. In his temper and character
a high self-consciousness appears united with a true simplicity
and hearty appreciation of others, and a great gravity of tone and
purpose with a cheerful and sanguine spirit. His moral sympathies are
most deeply moved by such qualities as fortitude, magnanimity, and
practical wisdom; and the transparent sincerity of his words gives
assurance that he himself was formed out of the same true metal which
he recognised in 'the old manners and men' of his adopted country.

In his poetry he represented the traditions and the steady continuous
growth of the Roman State, and expressed the confidence which the
people reposed in their destiny, their institutions, and their leading
men. His dramas, although founded on Greek models, and dealing with
Greek legends and personages, yet had a real national air in the type
of character they presented, in the sentiments they expressed, and in
the lessons of life they inculcated. His epic poem was in form, spirit,
and substance, inspired by the genius of his country, and was finished
with the strong and massive execution of Roman workmanship[121]. While
discarding the native Saturnian measure, as unequal to the elevated
tone of a long narrative poem, he moulded the Latin language to the
conditions of a new metre, which, in later times, was successfully
wrought into the most expressive organ of the majesty of Rome. In his
reproduction of the Homeric mythology, he has embodied the idea of the
national destiny. The characteristic sentiment of his poetry indicates
his affinity not to Homer and Sophocles, but to Lucretius and Virgil.
There are gleams also of true creative power in these fragments. If
wanting in the fine accomplishment and the contemplative faculty of
a poetic artist, he seems to have possessed a strength and energy of
conception unsurpassed by any of his successors. He was endowed also
with that living power which gives new meaning to familiar things;
which, without distorting or exaggerating the truth, discerns and
reveals the glory and grandeur in the actual march of events.

[Footnote 48: Parco admodum sumptu contentus et unius ancillae
ministerio.]

[Footnote 49: xvii. 17.]

[Footnote 50: Livy xxxviii. 17.]

[Footnote 51: 'When the Carthaginians were coming from all sides to
the conflict, and all things, beneath high heaven, confounded by the
hurry and tumult of war, shook with alarm: and men were in doubt to
which of the two the empire of the whole world, by land and sea, should
fall.'--Lucret. iii. 833-7.]

[Footnote 52: Mommsen, book iii. ch. 5.]

[Footnote 53: The author of Caesar's Spanish War quotes Ennius in his
account of the critical moment in the Battle of Munda:--'Hic, ut ait
Ennius, "pes pede premitur, armis teruntur arma."' Bell. Hisp. xxxi.]

[Footnote 54: Amphit. 52-3--

    Quid contraxistis frontem, quia tragoediam
    Dixi futuram hanc?

]

[Footnote 55: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, &c.]

[Footnote 56: De Senectute, 5.]

[Footnote 57: De Oratore, ii. 68.]

[Footnote 58: 'L. Aelium Stilonem dicere solitum ferunt Q. Ennium de
semet ipso haec scripsisse, picturamque istam morum et ingenii ipsius
Q. Ennii factam esse.'--Gell. xii. 4.]

[Footnote 59: 'He finished: and summons to him one with whom often,
and right gladly, he shared his table, his talk, and the whole weight
of his business, when weary with debate, throughout the day, on high
affairs of state, within the wide Forum and the august Senate,--one to
whom he could frankly speak out serious matters, trifles, and jest; to
whom he could pour forth and safely confide, if he wanted to confide
in any one, all that he cared to utter, good or bad; with whom, in
private and in public, he had much entertainment and enjoyment,--a man
of that nature which no thought ever prompts to baseness through levity
or malice: a learned, honest, pleasant man, eloquent, contented, and
cheerful, of much tact, speaking well in season; courteous and of few
words; with much old buried lore; whom length of years had made versed
in old and recent ways; in the laws of many ancients, divine and human;
one who knew when to speak and when to be silent. Him, during the
battle, Servilius thus addresses.']

[Footnote 60: Σκιπίωνα γὰρ ᾄδων καὶ ἐπὶ μέγα τὸν ἄνδρα ἐξᾶραι
βουλόμενος φησὶ μόνον ἄν Ὥμηρον ἐπαξίους ἐπαίνους εἰπεῖν
Σκιπίωνος.--Aelian, as quoted by Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258. Ed.
Gaisford. Cf. Vahlen.]

[Footnote 61: 'Here is he laid, to whom no one, either countryman or
enemy, has been able to pay a due meed for his services.']

[Footnote 62: 'From the utmost east, beyond the Maeotian marsh, there
is no one who in actions can vie with me. If it is lawful for any one
to ascend to the realms of the gods, to me alone the vast gate of
heaven is opened!']

[Footnote 63: 'Yet nothing more glorious than this man doth it (the
island of Sicily) seem to have contained, nor aught more holy, nor more
wonderful and beloved.']

[Footnote 64: 'Behold, my countrymen, the bust of the old man, Ennius.
He penned the record of your fathers' mighty deeds. Let no one pay to
me the meed of tears, nor weep at my funeral. And why? because I still
live, as I speed to and fro, through the mouths of men.']

[Footnote 65: 'Hail, poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy fiery
verse from thy inmost marrow.']

[Footnote 66: 'Others have treated the subject in the verses, which
in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had
climbed the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style.']

[Footnote 67: 'I have always said and will say that the gods of heaven
exist, but I think that they heed not the conduct of mankind; for, if
they did, it would be well with the good and ill with the bad; and it
is not so now.']

[Footnote 68:

    Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
    Maeonides, Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.
          Persius, vi. 10 (Ed. Jahn).

]

[Footnote 69: Vahlen.]

[Footnote 70: E.g. Horace, Sat. ii. 4.]

[Footnote 71: 'The poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans
had extracted from the writings of the old Sicilian comedian,
Epicharmus of Megara, or rather had, at least for the most part,
circulated under cover of his name, regarded the Greek gods as natural
substances, Zeus as the atmosphere, the soul as a particle of Sun-dust,
and so forth.'--Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, Book iii. ch. 15. (Dickson's
Translation.)]

[Footnote 72: 'This is that Jupiter which I speak of, which the Greeks
call the air; it is first wind and clouds; afterwards rain, and after
rain, cold; next it becomes wind, then air again. All those things
which I mention to you are Jupiter, because it is he who supports
mortals and cities and all animals.']

[Footnote 73: Mommsen.]

[Footnote 74: 'Inventore minor.'--Horace.]

[Footnote 75: Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive of the
greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to Roman comedy and to
Roman satire:--

    Quippe sine cura laetus lautus cum advenis
    Insertis malis, expedito bracchio
    Alacer, celsus, lupino expectans impetu,
    Mox cum alterius obligurias bona,
    Quid censes domino esse animi? pro divum fidem!
    Ille tristis cibum dum servat, tu ridens voras.

]

[Footnote 76: The meaning of the passage amounts to no more than this,
that the man who tries to 'sell' another, and fails, is himself 'sold.']

[Footnote 77: Brutus, 20.]

[Footnote 78: De Fin. i. 2.]

[Footnote 79: Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:--

    Εἴθ᾽ ὤφελ᾽ Αργοῦς μὴ διαπτάσθαι σκάφος
    Κόλχων ἐς αἶαν κυανέας Συμπληγάδας,
    μηδ᾽ ἐν νάπαισι Πηλίου πεσεῖν ποτε
    τμηθεῖσα πεύκη, μηδ᾽ ἐρετμῶσαι χέρας
    ἀνδρῶν ἀριστέων, οἳ τὸ πάγχρυσον δέρος
    Πελίᾳ μετῆλθον· οὐ γὰρ ἂν δέσποιν᾽ ἐμὴ
    Μήδεια πύργους γῆς ἔπλευσ᾽ Ἰωλκίας
    ἔρωτι θυμὸν ἐκπλαγεῖσ᾽ Ἰάσονος.

]

[Footnote 80: Several of these fragments will be examined later.]

[Footnote 81: Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.]

[Footnote 82: 'How tender, how true to character, how affecting!' De
Div. i. 31. 'What a great poet, though he is despised by those admirers
of Euphorion. He understands that sudden and unlooked-for calamities
are more grievous. A noble poem,--pathetic in matter, in language, in
melody.' Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.]

[Footnote 83: 'Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood.
Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it. For
now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries along
a host of calamities. They come: a fierce host lines the shores with
sail-winged ships.' Exitium = exitiorum, cf. Cic. Orator. 46. Itaque
idem poeta, qui inusitatius contraxerat 'Patris mei meum factum'
pudet pro 'meorum factorum' et 'Texitur: exitium examen rapit' pro
'exitiorum.']

[Footnote 84: Acad. ii. 28.]

[Footnote 85: Gellius, xvii. 21.]

[Footnote 86: He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas. This
statement he is supposed to have derived from the _Cypria_.]

[Footnote 87: Cicero, Arch. 9.]

[Footnote 88: 'Wisdom is banished from amongst us, violence rules the
day: the good orator is despised, the rough soldier loved; striving,
not with words of learning, but with words of hate, they get embroiled
in feuds, and stir up enmity one with another. The battle is fought,
not according to law, but with the sword they demand their rights,
assail the sovereign power, advance by sheer force.']

[Footnote 89: Cic. De Off. i. 12.]

[Footnote 90: 'Neither do I ask gold for myself, nor offer ye to
me a ransom. Let us wage the war, not like hucksters, but like
soldiers--with the sword, not with gold, putting our lives to the
issue. Whether our mistress Fortune, wills that you or I should reign,
or what her purpose be, let us prove by valour. And hearken too to
this saying,--The brave men, whom the fortune of battle spares, their
liberty I have resolved to spare. Take my offer, as I grant it, under
favour of the great gods.']

[Footnote 91: 'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were wont to
stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?']

[Footnote 92: A comparison with the original passage (Iliad, vi. 506),
will show that Ennius, while reproducing much, though not all, of the
force and life of Homer's image, has added also some touches of his
own:--

    ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τις στατὸς ἵππος, ἀκοστήσας ἐπὶ φάτνῃ
    δεσμὸν ἀπορρήξας θείῃ πεδίοιο κροαίνων,
    εἰωθὼς λούεσθαι εὐρρεῖος ποταμοῖο,
    κυδιόων· ὑψοῦ δὲ κάρη ἔχει, ἀμφὶ δὲ χαῖται
    ὤμοις ἀΐσσονται· ὁ δ᾽ ἀγλαΐηφι πεποιθώς,
    ῥίμφα ἑ γοῦνα φέρει μετά τ᾽ ἤθεα καὶ νομὸν ἵππων.

Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:--

    Qualis ubi abruptis fugit praesepia vinclis
    Tandem liber equus, campoque potitus aperto
    Aut ille in pastus armentaque tendit equarum,
    Aut adsuetus aquae perfundi flumine noto
    Emicat, arrectisque fremit cervicibus alte
    Luxurians, luduntque jubae per colla, per armos.

]

[Footnote 93: 'They watch, as when the consul is going to give the
signal, all look eagerly to the barrier, to see how soon he may start
the chariots from the painted entrance.']

[Footnote 94:

    Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
    Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat.--Aen. i. 254.

]

[Footnote 95: Ἔννιος Ῥωμαῖος ποιητής· ὃν Αἰλιανὸς ἐπαινεῖν ἄξιόν
φησι . . . . δῆλον δὲ ὡς ἐτεθήπει τοῦ ποιητοῦ τὴν μεγαλόνοιαν καὶ
τῶν μέτρων τὸ μεγαλεῖον καὶ ἀξιάγαστον.--Suidas, vol. i. p. 1258, ed.
Gaisford.]

[Footnote 96: Cf. Iliad, xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen. vi.
179:--

    Itur in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum,
    Procumbunt piceae, sonat icta securibus ilex,
    Fraxineaeque trabes cuneis et fissile robur
    Scinditur, advolvunt ingentis montibus ornos.

]

[Footnote 97: 'One man, by biding his time, restored the commonwealth.
He cared not for what men said of him, as compared with our safety:
therefore now his fame waxeth brighter day by day.']


[Footnote 98: 'He watched the courage of his force, to see if any
murmur should arise for some pause to the long battle, some rest from
their weary toil.']

[Footnote 99: 'As sang our Ennius, the first who brought down from
pleasant Helicon a chaplet of unfading leaf, the fame of which should
be bruited loud through the nations of Italian men.']

[Footnote 100: 'When the old dame had risen, and with trembling
limbs had brought the light, thus she (Ilia), roused in terror from
her sleep, with tears tells her tale: "Daughter of Eurydice, whom
our father loved, my strength and life now fail me through all my
frame. For methought that a goodly man was bearing me off through the
pleasant willow-groves, by the river-banks, and places strange to me.
Thereafter, O my sister, I seemed to be wandering all alone, and with
slow steps to track my way, to be seeking thee, and to be unable to
find thee near; no footpath steadied my step. Afterwards methought I
heard my father address me in these words--'Daughter, trouble must
first be borne by thee; afterwards thy fortune shall rise up again from
the river.' With these words, O sister, he suddenly departed, nor gave
himself to my sight, though my heart yearned to him, though I kept
eagerly stretching my hands to the blue vault of heaven, weeping, and
calling on him with loving tones. With pain and weary heart at last
sleep left me."']

[Footnote 101: Aen. ii. 270.]

[Footnote 102: 'Regret and sorrow fill their hearts, while thus they
say to one another, O Romulus, God-like Romulus, how great a guardian
of our country did the gods create in thee! O father, author of our
being, O blood sprung from the gods! it is thou that hast brought us
forth within the realms of light.']

[Footnote 103: E.g. passages such as the following:--

    Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
    Junonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis
    Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit,
    Quos, Amasene pater.--Aen. viii. 682-5.

]

[Footnote 104: 'O father! O fatherland! O house of Priam, palace,
closing on high-sounding hinge, I have seen thee, guarded by a barbaric
host, with carved and deep-fretted roof, with ivory and gold royally
adorned.']

[Footnote 105: 'But they rise superior in spirit, and spurn the first
sharp wounds of war.']

[Footnote 106: 'When I begat them, I knew that they must die, and to
that end I bred them. Besides, when I sent them to Troy to fight for
Greece, I was well aware that I was sending them, not to a feast, but
to a deadly war.']

[Footnote 107: 'Such is my nature. Enmity and friendship equally I bear
stamped on my forehead.']

[Footnote 108: 'Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit a
communi ordine verborum.'--Orator, 11.]

[Footnote 109: Cicero, Brutus, 15; Aulus Gellius, xii. 2.]

[Footnote 110: 'He was called by those, his fellow-countrymen, who
flourished then and enjoyed their day, the chosen flower of the people,
and the marrow of persuasion.']

[Footnote 111: Compare his account of the Tribune in the Istrian war:

    'Undique conveniunt velut imber, tela tribuno,' etc.

]

[Footnote 112: Cf. 'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,' etc.]

[Footnote 113: Cf.

    'Ita sapere opino esse optimum, ut pro viribus
    Tacere ac fabulare tute noveris;'

also

    'Ea libertas est quae pectus purum et firmum gestitat.'

]

[Footnote 114: 'Egregie cordatus homo catus Aeliu' Sextus.']

[Footnote 115: 'In idleness the mind knows not what it wants. This is
now our case. We are neither now at home nor abroad. We go hither,
back again to the place from which we came,--when we have reached it
we desire to leave it again. Our mind is all astray--existence goes on
outside of real life.']

[Footnote 116: iii. 1059-67.]

[Footnote 117: 'But your superstitious prophets and impudent
fortune-tellers, idle fellows, or madmen, or the victims of want,
who cannot discern the path for themselves, yet point the way out to
others, and ask a drachma from the very persons to whom they promise a
fortune.']

[Footnote 118: 'And there it is announced to Julianus that a certain
public reader, an accomplished man, with a very well-trained and
musical voice, read the Annals of Ennius publicly in the theatre. Let
us go, says he, to hear this "Ennianista," whoever he is,--for by that
name he chose to be called.--Aulus Gellius, xviii. 5.

The following line of Martial (v. 10. 7) implies also his popularity
under the Empire--

  'Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi, Roma, Marone.'

]

[Footnote 119: 'Let us venerate Ennius like the groves, sacred from
their antiquity, in which the great and ancient oak-trees are invested
not so much with beauty as with sacred associations.'--Inst. Or. x. i.
88.]

[Footnote 120: 'Ennius, the wise and strong, and the second Homer, as
his critics will have it, seems to care little for the issue of all his
promises and Pythagorean dreams.'--Epist. II. i. 50-2.]

[Footnote 121: The name _Romais_ given to the Annals in a later age
indicates the appreciation of this national inspiration.]




CHAPTER V.

EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY--M. PACUVIUS, B.C. 219-129; L. ACCIUS, B.C.
170-ABOUT B.C. 90.


The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained
till about the beginning of the first century B.C. first by his nephew
M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the drama
during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the early
writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the Roman
stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been mentioned
were not only performed during the lifetime of their authors, but, as
appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they held their place on
the stage with much popular applause, and were read and admired as
literary works till the last days of the Republic. This popularity
implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the time in which
it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening new interests
and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with literature. Yet, on
the other hand, the want of permanence, and the want of any power
of development in the Roman drama, would indicate that it was less
adapted to the genius of the nation than either the epic or the satiric
poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of Pacuvius and Accius had
been as true an expression of the national mind as either the epic
poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius, it might have been expected
that it would have flourished in greater perfection in the eras of
finer literary accomplishment. The efforts of Naevius and Ennius
were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and the spirit and manner
of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; but
Roman tragedy dwindled away till it became a mere literary exercise
of educated men, and remains only in the artificial and rhetorical
compositions attributed to the philosopher Seneca.

From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is
more difficult to discern its original features and character than
those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further difficulty
arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments. Isolated passages
in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the conduct of the
action, or the force and consistency with which the leading characters
are maintained. There is, moreover, very slight direct evidence bearing
on the dramatic genius of the early tragic poets. Roman critics seem to
have paid little attention to, or had little perception of this kind
of excellence. They quote with admiration the fervid sentiment and
morality--'the rugged maxims hewn from life'--expressed on the Roman
stage; but they have not preserved the memory of any great typical
character, or of any dramatic plot creatively conceived or powerfully
sustained.

The Roman drama was confessedly a reproduction or adaptation of the
drama of Athens. The titles of the great majority of Roman tragedies
indicate that they were translated or copied from Greek originals, or
were at least founded on the legends of Greek poetry and mythology.
The _Medea_ of Ennius and the _Antiope_ of Pacuvius are known, on the
authority of Cicero, to have been directly translated from Euripides.
Other dramas were more or less close adaptations from his works, or
from those of the other Attic tragedians. All of the Roman tragic poets
indeed produced one or more plays founded on Roman history or legend:
but, with the exception of the Brutus of Accius, none of these seem to
have been permanently popular. This failure to establish a national
drama seems to imply a want of dramatic invention in the conduct of
a plot and the exhibition of character on the part of the poets. As
their own history was of supreme interest to the Romans at all times,
it is difficult on any other supposition to explain the failure of the
'fabula praetextata' in gaining the public ear. There is, however,
distinct evidence that in their adaptations from the Greek the Roman
poets in some cases departed considerably from their originals.
Something of a Roman stamp was perhaps unconsciously impressed on the
Greek personages who were represented. Many of the extant fragments
seem to breathe the spirit of Rome more than of Athens. They are
expressed not with the subtlety and reflective genius of Greece,
but in the plain and straightforward tones of the Roman Republic.
The long-continued popularity of Roman tragedy implies also that it
was something more than an inartistic copy of the masterpieces of
Athenian genius. Mere imitations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
might possibly have obtained some favour with a few men of literary
education, but could never have been listened to with applause, for
more than a century and a half, by miscellaneous audiences.

The following questions suggest themselves as of most interest in
connexion with the general character of early Roman tragedy:--How
far may it have reproduced not the materials and form only, but the
spirit and ideas of the Greek drama? What was its bearing on the
actual circumstances of Roman life, and what were the grounds of the
favour with which it was received? What cause can be assigned for the
cessation of this favour with the fall of the Republic?

The materials or substance of Roman tragedy were almost entirely
Greek. The stories and characters represented were, except in the few
exceptional cases referred to above, directly derived from the Greek
tragedians or from Homer and the cyclic poets. In point of form also
and some of the metres employed, Roman tragedy endeavoured to imitate
the models on which it was founded, with probably as little perception
of the requirements of dramatic art as of refinement in expression and
harmony in rhythm. But while generally conforming to their models,
the early Roman poets departed in some important respects from their
practice. Thus they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, assigning
to it merely a subsidiary part in the dialogue. Although some simple
lyrical metre, accompanied with music, continued to be employed in the
more rapid and impassioned parts of the dialogue, there was no scope,
on the Roman stage, for the great lyrical poetry of the Greek drama,
and for the nobler functions of the chorus. On the other hand, there
seems to have been more opportunity both for action and for oratorical
declamation. The acting of a Roman play must have been more like that
on a modern stage than the stately movement and the statuesque repose
of the Greek theatre. Again, in imitating the iambic and trochaic
metres of the Greek drama, the Roman poets were quite indifferent to
the laws by which their finer harmony is produced. Any of the feet
admissible in an iambic line might occupy any place in the line, with
the exception of the last. There is thus little metrical harmony in the
fragments of Roman tragedy; but, on the other hand, it may be remarked
that the order of the words in these fragments appears more natural and
direct than in the more elaborate metres of the later Roman poets.

But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner
spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic
excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely
Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase
through which the human mind has once passed;--a phase in which the
vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with
the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest
era of ancient civilisation. The Athenian dramatists, like the great
dramatists of other times, imparted a new and living interest to
ancient legends; but this was but one part, perhaps not the most
important part, of their functions. They represented before the
people the destiny and sufferings of national heroes and demigods,
sanctified by long association in the feelings of many generations,
still honoured by a vital worship, and appealed to as a present help
in danger. Thus a highly idealised and profoundly religious character
was imparted to the tragic representation of human passion and destiny
on the Athenian stage. This view of life, represented and contemplated
with solemnity of feeling in the age of Pericles, would have been
altogether unmeaning to a Roman of the age of Ennius. Such a one would
understand the natural heroism of a strong will, but not the new force
and elevation imparted to the will by reliance on the hidden powers and
laws overruling human affairs. He might be moved to sympathy with the
sufferers or actors on the scene; but he would be altogether insensible
to the higher consolation which overcomes the natural sorrow for
the mere earthly catastrophe in a great dramatic action. The inward
strength and dignity of a Roman senator might enable him to appreciate
the magnanimity and kingly nature of Oedipus; but the deeper interest
of the great dramas founded on the fortunes of the Theban king,
especially the interest arising from his trust in final righteousness,
his sense of communion with higher powers, from the thought of his
elevation out of the lowest earthly state into perpetual sanctity
and honour, was widely remote from the tangible objects of a Roman's
desire, and the direct motives of his conduct. Or perhaps a Roman
would have a fellow-feeling with the proud and soldierly bearing of
Ajax; but he would be blind to the inward lesson of self-knowledge and
self-mastery, which Sophocles represents as forced upon the spirit of
the Greek hero through the stern visitation of Athene. Equally remote
from the ordinary experience and emotions of a Roman would be the
feeling of awe, gloom, and mystery, diffused through the great thoughts
and imaginations of Aeschylus. Both in Aeschylus and in Sophocles the
light and the gloom cast over the human story are not of this world.
But in the fragments of the Roman tragedians, though there is often
found the expression of magnanimous and independent sentiment, and of a
very dignified and manly morality, there is little trace of any sense
of the relation of the individual to a Divine power; and there are
some indications not only of a scorn for common superstition, but also
of disbelief in the foundations of personal religion. The thought of
the insecurity of life, of the vicissitudes of human affairs, and of
the impotence of man to control his fate, which forced the Greek poets
and historians of the fifth century B.C. into deeper speculations on
the question of Divine Providence, was utterly alien to the natural
temperament of Rome, and to the confidence inspired by uniform success
during the long period succeeding the Second Punic War.

The contemplative and religious thought of Greek tragedy was thus
as remote from the practical spirit of the Romans as the political
license and the personal humours of the old Athenian comedy were from
the earnestness of public life and the dignity of government in the
great aristocratic Republic. And thus it happened that, as the comic
poets of Rome reproduced the new comedy of Athens, which portrayed the
passions of private not of political life, and the manners rather of a
cosmopolitan than of a purely Greek civilisation, so the tragic poets
found the art of Euripides and of his less illustrious successors more
easy to imitate than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The interest of
tragedy, as treated by Euripides, turns upon the catastrophes produced
by human passion: the religious meaning has, in a great measure, passed
out of it; the characters have dwindled from their heroic stature
to the proportions of ordinary life; his thought is the result of
the analysis of motives, and the study of familiar experience. He
has more affinity with the ordinary thoughts and moods of men than
either of the older poets. The older and the later Greek writers have
a nearer relation to the spirit of other eras of the world's history
than those who represent Athenian civilisation in its maturity. It
requires a longer familiarity with the mind and heart of antiquity
to realise and enjoy the full meaning of Sophocles, Thucydides, or
Aristophanes, than of Homer, Euripides, or Theocritus. Homer is indeed
one of the truest, if not the truest, representative of the genius
of Greece,--the representative also of the ancient world in the same
sense as Shakspeare is of the modern world,--but he is, at the same
time, directly intelligible and interesting to all countries and
times from his being the most natural and powerful exponent of the
elementary feelings and forces of human nature. The later poets, on
the other hand, such as Euripides and the writers of the new comedy,
were not indeed more truly human, but were less distinctively Greek
than their immediate predecessors. They had advanced beyond them in the
analytic knowledge of human nature; but, with the decay of religious
belief and political feeling, they had lost much of the genius and
sentiment by which the old Athenian life was characterised. Both their
gain and their loss bring them more into harmony with later modes of
thought and feeling. Thus it happened that, while the influence of
Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Thucydides and Aristophanes, is scarcely
perceptible in Roman literature, Homer and the early lyrical poets who
flourished before Greek civilisation exhibited its most special type,
and Euripides who, though a contemporary of Sophocles and Aristophanes,
yet belonged in spirit and tone to a younger generation, the writers
of the new comedy, and the Alexandrine poets who flourished when the
purely Greek ideas and character were being merged in a cosmopolitan
civilisation, exercised a direct influence on Roman taste and opinion
in every age of their literature. The early tragic poets of Rome could
not rival or imitate the dramatic art, the pathetic power, the clear
and fluent style, the active and subtle analysis of Euripides; but
they could approach nearer to him than to any of his predecessors, by
treating the myths and personages of the heroic time apart from the
sacred associations and ideal majesty of earlier art, and as a vehicle
for inculcating the lessons and the experience of familiar life.

The primary attraction, by means of which the tragic drama established
itself at Rome, must have been the power of scenic representations to
convey a story, and to produce novel impressions on a people to whom
reading was quite unfamiliar. In Homer, the cyclic poets, and the Attic
dramatists, there existed for the Romans of the second century B.C. a
new world of incident and human interest quite different from the grave
story of their own annals. This new world, which was becoming gradually
familiar to their eyes through the works of plastic and pictorial art,
was made more living and intelligible to them in the representations of
their tragic poets. It cannot be supposed that these poets attempted
to reproduce the antique Hellenic character of the legends on which
they founded their dramas. In this early stage of literary culture,
the harmonious cadences of rhythm, the fine and delicate shades of
expression, the main requirements of dramatic art,--such as the skilful
construction of a plot, the consistent keeping of a character, the
evolution of a tragic catastrophe through the meeting of passion and
outward accident,--would have been lost upon the unexacting audiences
who thronged the temporary theatres on occasional holidays. The
fragments of the lost dramas indicate that the matter was presented in
a straightforward style, little differing in sound and meaning from
the tone of serious conversation. Although little can be known or
conjectured as to the general conduct of the action in a Roman drama,
yet there are indications that in some cases a series of adventures,
instead of one complete action, were represented[122]. But while
failing, or not attempting to reproduce the Greek spirit and art of
their originals, the Roman poets seem to have animated the outlines of
their foreign story and of their legendary characters with something of
the spirit of their own time and country. They imparted to their dramas
a didactic purpose and rhetorical character which directly appealed to
Roman tastes. The fragments quoted from their works, the testimonies
of later Roman writers, and the natural inference to be drawn from the
moral and intellectual characteristics of the people, all point to the
conclusion that the long-sustained popularity of tragedy rested mainly
on the satisfaction which it afforded to the ethical sympathies, and to
the oratorical tastes of the audience.

The evidence for this popularity is chiefly to be found in Cicero; and
it is mainly, though not solely, to the popularity which the tragic
drama enjoyed in his own age that he testifies. The loss of the earlier
writings renders it impossible to adduce contemporary evidence of the
immediate success of this form of literature. But the activity with
which tragedy was cultivated for about a century, and the favour with
which Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, were regarded by the leading men
in the State, suggest the inference that the popularity of the drama
in the age of Cicero, after the writers themselves had passed away,
and when more exciting spectacles occupied public attention, was only
a continuation of the general favour which these poets enjoyed in
their lifetime. Cicero in many places mentions the great applause with
which the expression of feeling in different dramas was received, and
speaks of the great crowds ('maximus consessus' or 'magna frequentia'),
including women and children, present at the representation. Varro
states that, in his time, 'the heads of families had gradually gathered
within the walls of the city, having quitted their ploughs and
pruning-hooks, and that they liked to use their hands in the theatres
and circus better than on their crops and vineyards[123].' The large
fortunes amassed and the high consideration enjoyed by the actors
Aesopus and Roscius afford further evidence of the favour with which
the representation of tragedy and comedy was received in the age of
Cicero.

According to his testimony, these lively demonstrations of popular
approbation were chiefly called out by the moral significance or
the political meaning attached to the words, and by the oratorical
fervour and passion with which the actor enforced them. Thus Laelius
is represented, in the treatise _De Amicitia_, as testifying to the
applause with which the mutual devotion of Pylades and Orestes, as
represented in a play of Pacuvius, was received by the audience[124]:
'What shouts of applause were heard lately through the whole body of
the house, on the representation of a new play of my familiar friend,
M. Pacuvius, when, the king being ignorant which of the two was
Orestes, Pylades maintained that it was he, while Orestes persisted, as
was indeed the case, that he was the man! They stood up and applauded
at this imaginary situation.' Again, in his speech in defence of
Sestius[125], the same author says, 'amid a great variety of opinions
uttered, there never was any passage in which anything said by the
poet might seem to bear on our time, which either escaped the notice
of the people, or to which the actor did not give point.' In a letter
to Atticus (ii. 19) he states that the actor Diphilus had applied
to Pompey the phrase 'Miseria nostra tu es magnus,' and that he was
compelled to repeat it a thousand times amid the shouts of the whole
theatre. He mentions further, in the speech in defence of Sestius[126]
that the actor Aesopus had applied to Cicero himself a passage from a
play of Accius (the Eurysaces), in which the Greeks are reproached for
allowing one who had done them great public service to be driven into
exile; and that the same actor, in the Brutus, had referred to him by
name in the words, 'Tullius qui libertatem civibus stabiliverat;' he
adds that these words 'were _encored_ over and over again.' 'millies
revocatum est.' These and similar passages testify primarily to the
intense political excitement of the time at which they were written,
but also to the meaning which was looked for by the audience in the
words addressed to them on the stage, and which was enforced by the
emphasis given to them by the actor.

Besides these and other passages in Cicero, the fragments themselves
of Roman tragedy testify to its moral and didactic tone, and its
occasional appeal to national and political feeling.

In so far as it served any political end we may infer from the personal
relations of the poets, from the approving testimony of Cicero, and
from the personages and the nature of the situations represented, that,
unlike the older comedy of Naevius and Plautus, it was in sympathy
with the spirit of the dominant aristocracy. The 'boni' or 'optimates'
regarded themselves as the true guardians of law and liberty, and it
would be to their partisans that the resistance to, and denunciations
of tyrannical rule, expressed in such plays as the Atreus, the Tereus,
and the Brutus of Accius, must have been most acceptable. Members of
the aristocracy, eminent in public life and accomplished as orators,
became themselves authors of tragedies. Of these two are mentioned
by Cicero, C. Julius Caesar, a contemporary and friend of the orator
Crassus, and C. Titius, a Roman Eques, also distinguished as an
orator[127]. These instances, and the comments Cicero makes upon them,
indicate the close affinity of Roman tragedy to the training and
accomplishments which fitted men for public life at Rome.

Passages already referred to, and others which will be brought forward
later, imply also that the audience were easily moved by the dramatic
art and the elocution of the actor. We hear of the pains which the best
actors took to perfect themselves in their art, and of the success
which they attained in it. Cicero specifies among the accomplishments
of an orator, the 'voice of a tragedian, the gestures and bearing
of a consummate actor.' The stage may be said to have been to the
Romans partly a school of practical life, partly a school of oratory.
Spirited declamation, the expression, by voice and gesture, of vehement
passion, of moral and political feeling, and of practical wisdom, would
gratify the same tastes that were fostered by the discussions and
harangues of the Forum[128].

The testimony of later writers points to the conclusion that the
early Roman tragedy, like Roman oratory, was characterised both by
great moral weight and dignity, and also by a fervid and impassioned
character. The latter quality is suggested by the line of Horace,

    Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet;

and also by the epithets 'altus' and 'animosus' applied by him and
Ovid to the poet Accius. Quintilian describes the ancient tragedies
as superior to those of his own time in the management of their plots
('oeconomia'), and adds that 'manliness and solemnity of style'
('virilitas et sanctitas)[129], were to be studied in them. He states
also that Accius and Pacuvius were distinguished by 'the earnestness
of their thought, the weight of their language, the commanding bearing
of their personages[130].' The fragments of all the tragic poets bear
further evidence to the union of these qualities in their thought and
style.

These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that
the early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality,
and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman
literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence
than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic.
For more than a century new tragedies were written and represented
at the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious
intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During
the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre, but
merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent
stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the
Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to dramatic
art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a gorgeous spectacle
superseded that afforded by the works of the older dramatists; and
dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in popular favour which
had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the accomplished Roscius.'
The composition of tragedy passed from the hands of popular poets,
and became a kind of literary and rhetorical exercise of accomplished
men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed four tragedies in sixteen
days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and Horace eulogise the dramatic
talent of their friend and patron Asinius Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica'
implies that the composition of tragedy was the most fashionable form
of literary pursuit among the young aspirants to poetic honour at
that time, and the Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed
a great literary reputation. These were, however, futile attempts to
impart artificial life to a withered branch; they obtained no general
favour, and left no name or fame behind them. Of all forms of poetry
the drama is most dependent on popular sympathy and intelligence.
With the loss of contact with public feeling the Roman drama lost its
vital power. One cause of the change in public taste was the passion
for more frivolous and coarser excitement, such as was afforded by
the mimes and by gladiatorial combats and shows of wild beasts to a
soldiery brutalised by constant wars, and to the civic masses degraded
by idleness and by intermixture from all quarters of the world. Other
causes may have acted on the poets themselves, such as the exhaustion
of the mine of ancient stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the
truer sense, acquired through culture, of the bent of Roman genius.
But another cause was the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and
the people, arising from the decay and final extinction of political
life. In ancient, as occasionally also in modern times, the contests
and interests of politics were the means of affording the highest
intellectual stimulus of which they were capable to the large classes
on whom literary influences act only indirectly. So long as the old
republican sense of citizenship remained, there was a bond of common
feelings, ideas, and sympathies between the body of the people and
some of the foremost and most highly educated men in Rome. There was
an immediate sympathy between the political orator and his audiences
within the Senate or in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy,
more remote, but still active, between the poet of the Republic, who
had the strong feelings of a Roman citizen, and the great body of
his countrymen. With the overthrow of free government, this bond of
union between the educated and the uneducated classes was destroyed.
The former became more refined and fastidious, but lost something in
breadth and genuine strength by the want of any popular contact. The
latter became more debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works
were more and more addressed to a small circle of men of rank and
education, sharing the same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus
became more finished as works of art, but had less direct bearing on
the passions and great public interests of their time.

The origin and the earliest stage of the Roman drama have been examined
in a previous chapter. For about a century after the close of the
Second Punic War new tragedies continued to be represented at Rome with
little interruption, first by Ennius, afterwards by his nephew Pacuvius
and by Accius. The older poets, Livius and Naevius, had produced both
tragedy and comedy: Ennius neglected or failed to attain success in
comedy; and his two successors appear to have devoted themselves more
exclusively than any of their predecessors to the composition of
tragedy. While the fame of Ennius chiefly rested on his epic poem[131],
Pacuvius and Accius are classed together as representatives of the
tragic poetry of the Republic. Though in point of age there was a
difference of fifty years between them, yet Cicero mentions, on the
authority of Accius himself, that they had brought out plays under the
same Aediles, when the one was eighty years of age and the other thirty.

M. Pacuvius, nephew, by the mother's side, of Ennius, was born at
Brundusium, in the south of Italy, about 219 B.C., and died at Tarentum
about 129 B.C., at the age of ninety. He obtained some distinction as a
painter[132], and he is supposed to have written his tragedies late in
life. Jerome records of him, 'picturam exercuit et fabulas vendidit.'
Cicero represents Laelius as speaking of him as a friend, 'amici et
hospitis mei.' A pleasing anecdote is told by Aulus Gellius[133] of
his intercourse with his younger rival, L. Accius. 'When Pacuvius, at
a great age, and suffering from disease of long standing, had retired
from Rome to Tarentum, Accius, at that time a considerably younger man,
on his journey to Asia, arrived at that town, and stayed with Pacuvius.
And being kindly entertained, and constrained to stay for several days,
he read to him, at his request, his tragedy of Atreus. Then, as the
story goes, Pacuvius said, that what he had written appeared to him
sonorous and elevated but somewhat harsh and crude. 'It is just as you
say,' replied Accius; 'and in truth I am not sorry for it, for I hope
that I shall write better in future. For, as they say, the same law
holds good in genius as in fruit. Fruits which are originally harsh
and sour afterwards become mellow and pleasant; but those which have
a soft and withered look, and are very juicy at first, become soon
rotten without ever becoming ripe. It appears, accordingly, that there
should be left something in genius also for the mellowing influence of
years and time.' This anecdote, while giving a pleasing impression of
the friendly relation subsisting between the older and younger poets,
seems to add some corroboration to the opinion that the Romans valued
more the oratorical style than the dramatic art of their tragedies.
It affords support also to the testimony of Horace and Quintilian in
regard to the distinction which the admirers of the old poetry drew
between the excellence of Pacuvius and Accius:

    Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert
    Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti.

Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to
be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its
modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'--'Epigramma Pacuvii
verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.'

    Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat,
    Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas,
    Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
    Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.[134]

With its quiet and modest simplicity of tone this inscription is still
significant of that dignified self-consciousness which characterised
all the early Roman poets, though the feeling may have been displayed
with more prominence by Naevius and Plautus, by Ennius, Accius, and
Lucilius, than by Pacuvius.

Among the testimonies to his literary qualities the best known is that
of Horace, quoted above. Cicero, in speaking of the age of Laelius as
that of the purest Latinity, does not allow this merit to Pacuvius and
to the comic poet Caecilius. He says of them, 'male locutos esse[135].'
Pacuvius seems to have attempted to introduce new forms of words, such
as 'temeritudo,' 'geminitudo,' 'vanitudo,' 'concorditas,' 'unose';
and also to have carried to a greater length than any of the older
poets the tendency to form such poetical compounds as 'tardigradus,'
'flexanimus,' 'flexidicus,' 'cornifrontis'--a tendency which the Latin
language continued more and more to repudiate in the hands of its most
perfect masters. One line is quoted in which the tendency probably
reached the extremest limits it ever did in any Latin author,--

    Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus.

We find also such inflexions as 'tetinerim,' for 'tenuerim,' 'pegi' for
'pepigi,' 'cluentur' for 'cluent.' These peculiarities are ridiculed in
the fragments of Lucilius, and also in a passage of Persius. Another
author[136] contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_
of Pacuvius,--a distinction probably connected with the progress of
oratory in the interval between the poets. Persius applies the term
'verrucosa' (an epithet not inapplicable to his own style) to the
Antiope of Pacuvius, which, on the other hand, was much admired by
Cicero[137]. Lucilius refers to this harshness of style in the line,

    Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.

Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies,
founded on Greek subjects; and of one, _Paulus_, founded on Roman
history. Among these, the _Antiope_ was perhaps the most famous and
most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from
Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and
Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute
as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred
to by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius
is described by Cicero[138] as one who made war on all philosophy;
and the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their
controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and
the use of virtue. Two dramas, the _Dulorestes_ and the _Chryses_, the
latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures of
Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder
of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on
the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the
passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as
to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their
subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken
from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent
part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the _Niptra_, was founded
on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles[139]; and the title
seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of Ulysses
by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc. The subjects of
his other dramas may be inferred from the following titles:--_Armorum
Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Hermione_, _Ilione_, _Io_, _Medus_ (son of
Medea), _Pentheus_, _Periboea_, _Teucer_.

The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of
these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of
old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the
way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them,
however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode
of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty.

A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of
that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in the
Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful attraction
for many of the Roman poets:--

    Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet
    Terram
    Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret,
    Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera:
    Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat,
    Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater,
    Indidemque eadem quae oriuntur, de integro aeque eodem incidunt.[140]

The following fragment illustrates the dawning interest in ethical
speculation, which became much more active in the age of Cicero, under
the influence of Greek studies:--

    Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi
    Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili:
    Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta, instabilisque sit:
    Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet:
    Brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.
    Sunt autem alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negant
    Esse ullam, sed temeritate res regi omnis autumant.
    Id magis veri simile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet:
    Velut Orestes modo fuit rex, factu'st mendicus modo.[141]

These lines again from the Chryses show that Pacuvius, like Ennius,
exposed and ridiculed the superstition of his time--

              Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt
    Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo,
    Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo;[142]

and this is to the same effect--

    Nam si qui, quae eventura sunt, provideant, aequiparent Jovi.

This tendency to physical and ethical speculation may be the reason for
which Horace applies to Pacuvius the epithet 'doctus.'

The fragments of Pacuvius show not only the cast of understanding,
but also the grave and dignified tone of morality, which was found to
be one of the most Roman characteristics of Ennius. They indicate also
a similar humanity of feeling. The moral nobleness of the situation,
in which Pylades and Orestes contend which should sacrifice himself
for the other, has already been noticed: 'stantes plaudebant in re
ficta.' Again, in the Tusculan Disputations (ii. 21), Cicero commends
Pacuvius for deviating from Sophocles, who had represented Ulysses,
in the Niptra, as utterly overcome by the power of his wound; while,
in Pacuvius, those who are supporting him, 'personae gravitatem
intuentes,' address this reproof to him, 'leviter gementi':--

    Tu quoque Ulysses, quanquam graviter
    Cernimus ictum, nimis paene animo es
    Molli, qui consuetu's in armis
    Aevom agere![143]

The strong tones of Roman fortitude are heard in this grave rebuke;
and the lines in which Ulysses, at the point of death, reproves the
lamentations of those around him, have the unstudied directness that
may be supposed to have characterised the serious speech of the time:--

    Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet:
    Id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additus.[144]

The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a
Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it
deserving of being written in front of every temple':--

    Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia.

There are other fragments the significance of which is political rather
than ethical, as for instance the following:--

    Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt
    Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere.

A passage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in
order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The
prominent words of the passage were,--

    Men' servasse ut essent qui me perderent.[145]

Other passages again appear to be fragments of spirited dialogue,
and well adapted to show the art and the elocution of the actor.
Cicero[146] quotes from the Teucer of Pacuvius the reproach of
Telamon, couched in much the same terms as those which Teucer himself
anticipates in the Ajax of Sophocles:--

    Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi,
    Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem
    Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis
    Neque ejus gnati parvi, qui tibi in tutelam est traditus--?[147]

In commenting on these lines, Cicero speaks of the passion displayed
by the actor ('so that even out of his mask the eyes of the actor
appeared to me to burn'), and of the sudden change to pathos in his
voice as he proceeded. He adds the further comment, 'Do we suppose
that Pacuvius, in writing this passage, was in a calm and passionless
mood?'--one of many proofs that the 'gravity' of the old tragedians was
that of strong and ardent, not of phlegmatic natures, and that their
strength was tempered by a pathos and humanity of feeling which were
gradually gaining ascendency over the old Roman austerity. The language
in such passages has not only the straightforward directness which is
the general characteristic of the early literature, but a force and
impetuosity added to its gravity, recalling the style of some fragments
of the older orators[148].

The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of
natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age; but
one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several passages in Ennius, show
the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible aspects
of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the Greek army
after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in this style:--

    Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam
    Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
    Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
    Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occaecat nigror,
    Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit,
    Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit,
    Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines,
    Fervit aestu pelagus[149].

There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines,
exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to
their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'--

                Armamentum stridor, flictus navium,
    Strepitus fremitus clamor tonitruum et rudentum sibilus.[150]

Virgil must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the line--

    Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum.

The effect of alliteration and assonance may be illustrated by a
passage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised
Ulysses:--

    Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem
    Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam,
    Lassitudinemque minuam manuum mollitudine.[151]

Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the title of which was
'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the principal
character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae, whom
Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words--

                    Animaeque magnae
    Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno,

or his more fortunate son who conquered the Macedonians at Pydna, yet
it would seem much more probable that the poet should celebrate a great
triumph of his own time, achieved by one in whom, from his connexion
with Scipio, the nephew of Ennius would feel a special interest, than
that he should recall a great calamity of a past generation, neither
near enough to excite immediate attention, nor sufficiently remote to
justify an imaginative treatment. The Fabulae Praetextatae, of which
this was one, were, as Niebuhr[152] has pointed out, historical plays
rather than tragedies. Such a drama would not naturally or necessarily
require a tragic catastrophe, but would represent the traditions of the
earlier annals, or the great events of current history, in accordance
with the dictates of national feeling. No important fragment of this
drama has been preserved, but the fact of its having been written by
Pacuvius is interesting, as affording a parallel to the celebration
of the victory of Marcellus in the Clastidium of Naevius, and of the
success of M. Fulvius Nobilior in the Ambracia of Ennius.

Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce
on a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius
and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius. His
remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general features
of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to determine
from internal evidence alone whether any particular passage came from
the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points that are known
in his life are his provincial origin, and his relationship to Ennius;
the fact of his supporting himself, first by painting, afterwards by
the payment he received from the Aediles for his plays; his friendship
with Laelius, the centre of the literary circle in Rome during the
latter part of the second century B.C.; his intimacy with his younger
rival Accius; the facts also that, like Sophocles, he preserved his
poetical power unabated till a great age, and that, like Shakspeare, he
retired to spend his last years in his native district. The language
of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly and modest temper, and of the
calm and serious spirit of age; while that of many of his dramatic
fragments bears evidence to his moral strength and worth, and to the
manly fervour as well as the gentle humanity of his temperament.

L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 B.C., of parentage
similar to that of Horace--'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native
of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 B.C.; and
an estate in that district was known in after times by the name
'fundus Accianus.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the
exact date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born B.C. 106,
speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius
Brutus--Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, B.C. 138, and one of
the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that
age--on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the poet:
'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus[153].' The
meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is remarkable,
as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which stand so
widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are respectively
characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Archias,
mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the poet[154].
The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,' like that of
'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's dialogue, to
Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets (men of humble
or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and soldiers, was in that
age one of familiar intimacy rather than of patronage and dependence.

Although Cicero's notice of his own acquaintance with Accius, which is
not likely to have existed before the former assumed the toga virilis,
is a proof of the great age which the poet attained, it is not certain
how long he continued the practice of his art. Seneca, in quoting from
the Atreus of this poet the well-known tyrant's maxim, 'oderint dum
metuant'--a maxim, according to Suetonius, constantly in the mouth
of Caligula,--adds the remark that 'any one could see that it was
written in the days of Sulla.' But Aulus Gellius, on the other hand,
states that the Atreus was the play which had been read by the poet
in his youth to Pacuvius at Tarentum. The termination of the literary
career of Accius must have been soon after the beginning of the first
century B.C., so that nearly half a century elapses between the last of
the works of the older poets and the appearance of the great poem of
Lucretius. The journey of Accius to Asia shows the beginning of that
taste for foreign travel which became prevalent among the most educated
men in a generation later, and grew more and more easy with the advance
of Roman conquest, and more attractive from the increased cultivation
of Greek literature. Accius is the first of the Roman poets who seems
to have possessed a country residence; and some taste for country life
and the beauties of Nature first betrays itself in one or two of his
fragments. He possessed apparently all the self-esteem and high spirit
of the earlier poets. Pliny mentions that though a very little man, he
placed a colossal statue of himself in a temple of the Muses[155].

Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C.
Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of
the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets'
Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference,
thus asserting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the
unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival.

He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The
titles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50
in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan
cycle of events; and to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies
of the Romans in his representation of character and action. Two of
his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian
dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the
second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged
to the class of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of Ennius
in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books. He was
the author also of what seem to have been works of grammar and literary
criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres, and known
by the name Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The subjects of
these last works, as well as those of some of the satires of Lucilius,
and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius Sedigitus, written
in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the attention which was given
about this time by Roman authors to the principles of composition.
The literary and grammatical studies of the time of Accius must have
prepared the way for the rapid development of style which characterised
the first half of the first century B.C. In some of the fragments of
Accius distinctions in the meaning of words--e.g. of 'pertinacia'
and 'pervicacia'--are prominently brought out. We note also in his
remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great access of formative energy
in the language, especially in abstract words in -_tas_ and -_tudo_,
many of which afterwards dropped out of use. The antagonism manifested
by Lucilius to Accius seems in a great measure to have arisen from his
claims to a kind of literary dictatorship in questions of criticism and
style.

The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius, and
attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as those
which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit. Cicero
testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and to the
didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains illustrate
these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense and vigorous
understanding of the older writers, and afford some traces of a new
vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable in earlier
fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that of 'animosus'
to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et ingeniosus poeta,'
and attests the didactic purpose of a particular passage in the words,
'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with the view of stimulating,
not those princes who no longer existed, but us and our children to
energy and honourable ambition[156].' The style of a passage from the
Atreus is described by the same author in the dialogue '_De Oratore_',
as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a certain impassioned gravity
of feeling[157].' Oratorical fervour and dignity seem thus to have been
the most distinctive characteristic of his style. Virgil, whose genius
made as free use of the diction and sentiment of native as of Greek
poets, has cast the ruder language of the old poet into a new mould in
some of the greatest speeches of the Aeneid, and seems to have drawn
from the same source something of the high spirit and lofty pathos with
which he has animated the personages of his story. The famous address,
for instance--

    Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
    Fortunam ex aliis,

though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to
Virgil in the line of Accius--

    Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.

The address of Latinus to Turnus--

    O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci
    Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est
    Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus,

is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic
poet--

    Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo,
    Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere.

The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and
something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches
of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most
Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike
the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of
speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather
than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius. The
following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which may
be recognised in many other fragments of Accius--

    Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro
    Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo,
    Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia
    Confingit.[158]

He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that most
powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of
compassion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these
fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,--

    Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine
    Commovit animum excelsa aspecti dignitas;[159]

and--

    Nam huius demum miseret, cuius nobilitas miserias
    Nobilitat.[160]

He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human
life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following
may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity,
and direct force of understanding:--

    Sein' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem,
    Nunquam ulla humilitas ingenium infirmat bonum.[161]

    Erat istuc virile, ferre advorsam fortunam facul.[162]

    Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes
    Eripere quivit, at virtutem non quit.[163]

    Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum,
    Quod non labascat lingua, mitiscat malo.[164]

The following, again, like similar passages already quoted from Ennius
and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superstition
which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:--

    Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant
    Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos.[165]

Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by
the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange
vision--

    Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
    Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt
    Minus mirum est.[166]

Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two passages
may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet--force
of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable
descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which
a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the first
appearance of the Argo--

                          Tanta moles labitur
    Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu:
    Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat:
    Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat.[167]

There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in
this fragment--

    Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer
    Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives.[168]

There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the
Oenomaus--

    Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
    Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
    Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
    Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent.[169]

This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive
passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating
the common aspects of Nature. Several other short fragments betray the
existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility, as, for instance, the
following:--

    Saxum id facit angustitatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans
    Scatebra fluviae radit ripam.[170]

The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been
accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining
after effect, as in this fragment:--

    Hac ubi curvo litore latratu
    Unda sub undis labunda sonit.

The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without
naming the author, are probably from Accius--

    Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
    Vites laetificae pampinis pubescere,
    Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere,
    Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia,
    Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.

We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and
asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in
Plautus, as in the following:--

    Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser.

    Pro se quisque cum corona clarum cohonestat caput.

    Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe.

       *       *       *       *       *

It remains to sum up the most important results as to the early tragic
drama of Rome, which have been obtained from a consideration of ancient
testimony and of the fossil remains of this lost literature, as we
find them collected and arranged from the works of ancient critics
and grammarians. The Roman tragedies seem to have borne much the same
relation to the works of the Attic tragedians as Roman comedy to the
new comedy of Athens. The expression of Quintilian, 'in comoedia maxime
claudicamus[171],' following immediately on the praise which he bestows
on Pacuvius and Accius, implies that in his opinion the earlier writers
had been more successful in tragedy than in comedy. But a comparison
between the fragments of the tragedians and the extant works of Plautus
and Terence, proves that, in style at least, Roman comedy was much the
most successful; and this superiority is no doubt one main cause of its
partial preservation. The style of Roman tragedy appears to have been
direct and vigorous, serious, often animated with oratorical passion,
but singularly devoid of harmony, subtlety, poetical refinement and
inspiration. There is no testimony in favour of any great dramatic
conceptions or impersonations. The poets appear to have aimed at
expressing some particular passion oratorically, as Virgil has done
so powerfully in his representation of Mezentius and Turnus, but not
to have created any of those great types of human character such as
the world owes to Homer, Sophocles, and Shakspeare. The popularity and
the power of Roman tragedy, during the century preceding the downfall
of the Republic, are to be attributed chiefly to its didactic and
oratorical force, to the Roman bearing of the persons represented,
to the ethical and occasionally the political cast of the sentiments
expressed by them, and to the plain and vigorous style in which they
are enunciated. The works of the tragic poets aided the development
of the Roman language. They communicated new ideas and experience,
and fostered among the mass of the Roman people the only taste for
serious literature of which they were capable. They may have exercised
a beneficial influence also on the thoughts and lives of men. They kept
the national ideal of duty, the 'manners of the olden time,' the 'fas
et antiqua castitudo' (to use an expression of Accius), before the
minds of the people: they inculcated by precept and by representations
great lessons of fortitude and energy: they taught the maxims of
common sense, and touched the minds of their audiences with a humanity
of feeling naturally alien to them. No teaching on the stage could
permanently preserve the old Roman virtue, simplicity, and loyalty
to the Republic, against the corrupting and disorganising effects of
constant wars and conquests, and of the gross forms of luxury, that
suited the temperament of Rome: but, among the various influences
acting on the mind of the people, none probably was of more unmixed
good than that of the tragic drama of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius.

[Footnote 122: E.g. the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius.]

[Footnote 123: De Re Rustica, Lib. ii. Praef. Quoted also by Columella,
Praef. 15.]

[Footnote 124: De Amicitia, 7.]

[Footnote 125: Cic. Pro P. Sestio, 65.]

[Footnote 126: Chap. 57.]

[Footnote 127: Cicero. Brutus, 48-45; De Orat. iii. 8. 30. 'Quid noster
hic Caesar nonne novam quandam rationem attulit orationis et dicendi
genus induxit prope singulare? Quis unquam res praeter hunc tragicas
paene comica, tristes remisse, severas hilare, forenses scaenica
prope venustate tractavit atque ita, ut neque iocus magnitudine rerum
excluderetur nec gravitas facetiis minueretur.']

[Footnote 128: Cf. Cic. de Orat. iii. 7. 'Atque id primum in poetis
cerni licet quibus est proxima cognatio cum oratoribus quam sint inter
sese Ennius, Pacuvius, Acciusque dissimiles.']

[Footnote 129: 'Sanctitas certe, et, ut sic dicam, virilitas, ab iis
petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque
ratione defluximus.'--Quintil. Inst. Or. i. 8. 9.]

[Footnote 130: Inst. Or. x. i. 97.]

[Footnote 131: Cf. Cic. Opt. Gen. Orat. 'Itaque licet dicere et Ennium
summum epicum poetam si cui ita videtur, et Pacuvium tragicum, et
Caecilium fortasse comicum.']

[Footnote 132: Pliny. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 7.]

[Footnote 133: xiii. 2.]

[Footnote 134: 'Young man, though thou art in haste, this stone
entreats thee to regard it, and then read what is written:--Here are
laid the bones of the poet Marcus Pacuvius. This I desired to be not
unknown to thee. Farewell.']

[Footnote 135: Brutus, 74.]

[Footnote 136: The writer of the treatise on Rhetoric addressed to C.
Herennius.]

[Footnote 137: 'Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est, qui
Ennii Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvii spernat aut rejiciat, quod se eisdem
Euripidis fabulis delectari dicit.'--Cic. De Fin. i. 2.]

[Footnote 138: De Oratore, ii. 37.]

[Footnote 139: Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 21.]

[Footnote 140: 'Behold this, which around and above encompasseth the
earth, and puts on brightness at the rising of the sun, becomes dark
at his setting; that which our people call Heaven, and the Greeks
Aether. Whatever this is, it is to all things the source of life, form,
nourishment, growth, existence; it is the grave and receptacle of all
things, and the parent, too, of all things: all things which arise from
it equally lapse into it again.' Compare with this passage Lucretius,
ii. 991--

    'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi' etc.

Both may be traced to a fragment of the Chrysippus of Euripides, quoted
by Ribbeck, Röm. Trag. p. 257; and also by Munro, Lucret. p. 455, third
edition.]

[Footnote 141: 'Philosophers say that Fortune is mad, blind, and
senseless, and represent her as set on a round rolling stone. They say
that she is mad, because she is harsh, fickle, untrustworthy; blind,
for this reason, that she can see nothing to which to attach herself;
senseless, because she cannot distinguish between the worthy and
unworthy. Other philosophers again deny the existence of Fortune, but
hold that all things are ruled by chance. That this is more probable,
common experience proves, as Orestes was but the other day a king, and
is now a beggar.']

[Footnote 142: 'For those men who understand the language of birds, and
have more wisdom from examining the liver of other beings than from
their own (i.e. understanding), I think should be heard rather than
listened to.']

[Footnote 143: 'Thou, too, Ulysses, although we see thee sore wounded,
art yet almost too much cast down; thou, who hast been used to pass thy
life in arms!']

[Footnote 144: 'To complain of adverse fortune is well, but not to
lament over it. The one is the act of a man; it is a woman's part to
weep.']

[Footnote 145: Sueton. Caes. 84.]

[Footnote 146: De Orat. ii. 46.]

[Footnote 147: 'Didst thou venture to let him part from thee, or to
enter Salamis without him; and didst thou not fear to see thy father's
face, when in his old age, bereft of his children, thou hast torn
him with anguish, robbed, crushed him; nor didst thou feel for thy
brother's death, and his child, who was trusted to thy protection--?']

[Footnote 148: Compare especially the fragments of the speeches of C.
Gracchus.]

[Footnote 149: 'Glad at their starting, they watch the play of the
fish, and are never weary of watching them. Meanwhile, nearly at
sunset, the sea grows rough, darkness gathers, the blackness of night
and of the storm-clouds hides the world, the lightning flashes between
the clouds, the heaven is shaken with the thunder, hail mixed with
torrents of rain dashes down in sudden showers; from all quarters all
the winds burst forth, the wild whirlwinds arise, the sea boils with
the surging waters.'--Quoted partly from Cic. De Div. i. 14; partly
from De Orat. iii. 39.]

[Footnote 150: 'The groaning of the ships' tackling, the dashing
together of the ships, the uproar, the crash, the rattle of the
thunder, and the whistling of the ropes.']

[Footnote 151: 'Give me your foot, that with the brown waters I may
wash away the brown dust with those hands with which I have often
rubbed gently the feet of Ulysses, and with my hands' softness soothe
your weariness.']

[Footnote 152: 'It represented the deeds of Roman kings and generals:
hence it is evident that at least it wanted the unity of time of the
Greek tragedy; that it was a history like Shakspeare's.'--Niebuhr's
Roman History, vol. i. note 1150.]

[Footnote 153: Brutus, 28.]

[Footnote 154: 'Decimus quidem Brutus, summus ille vir et imperator,
Accii, amicissimi sui, carminibus templorum ac monumentorum aditus
exornavit suorum.'--Chap. 11.]

[Footnote 155: Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 10: 'Notatum ab auctoribus, et L.
Accium poetam in Came narum aede maxima forma statuam sibi posuisse,
cum brevis admodum fuisset.']

[Footnote 156: Pro Plancio 24.]

[Footnote 157: De Orat. iii. 58.]

[Footnote 158: 'Tereus, in his wild mood and savage spirit, gazed upon
her, maddened with burning passion, quite desperate; in his madness, he
resolves a cursed deed.']

[Footnote 159: 'Withdraw him within: for the lofty dignity of his
aspect has moved my mind to compassion.']

[Footnote 160: 'That man indeed we pity whose nobleness gives
distinction to his misery.']

[Footnote 161: 'Dost thou not know, that whatever rank fortune has
assigned to a man, no meanness of station ever weakens a fine nature?']

[Footnote 162: 'This was the part of a man, to bear adversity easily.']

[Footnote 163: 'Though fortune could strip me of kingdom and wealth, it
cannot strip me of my virtue.']

[Footnote 164: 'No nature is so strong, no breast so savage, which is
not shaken by words, does not melt at misfortune.']

[Footnote 165: 'I trust not those augurs, who enrich the ears of others
with their words, that they may enrich their own houses with gold.'
There is of course a pun on the _auris_ and _auro_.]

[Footnote 166: 'O king, what men usually do in life, what they
think about, care about, see,--their pursuits and occupations, when
awake,--if these occur to any one in sleep, it is not wonderful.']

[Footnote 167: 'So huge a mass is approaching--sounding from the deep
with a mighty rushing noise; it rolls the waves before it, forces
through the eddies, plunges forward, throws up and dashes back the
sea.'--Quoted in Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 35.]

[Footnote 168: 'Lying beneath the pole by the seven stars, whence the
blustering roar of the north-wind drives before it the chill snows.']

[Footnote 169: 'By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays,
when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest into the
fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled soil with the
plough, and turn up the clods from the soft soil.']

[Footnote 170: 'That rock makes the passage narrow, and from beneath
that rock a spring gushing out sweeps past the river's bank.']

[Footnote 171: Inst. Or. x. i. 99.]




CHAPTER VI.

ROMAN COMEDY. PLAUTUS. ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C.


The era in which Roman epic and tragic poetry arose was also the
flourishing era of Roman comedy. A later generation looked back on the
age of Ennius and Plautus as an age of great poets, who had passed
away:--

    Ea tempestate flos poetarum fuit
    Qui nunc abierunt hinc in communem locum.[172]

And among these poets the writers of comedy were both most numerous and
apparently the most popular in their own time[173]. Besides the names
of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we know the names of other
comic poets of less fame[174], and from allusions in the extant plays
of Plautus[175] and in the prologues of Terence we infer that there
were other competitors for public favour whose names were unknown to a
later generation. In the Ciceronian age the works of these forgotten
playwrights were for the most part attributed to Plautus, probably with
the view of gaining some temporary popularity for them. In the time of
Gellius no fewer than 130 plays passed under his name; among these,
twenty-one were regarded as undoubtedly his, nineteen more as probably
genuine, and the rest as spurious. They were however all of the class
of _palliatae_; and as the _fabulae togatae_ seem, after the time
of Terence, to have been composed in much greater number than those
founded on Greek originals, most of them must have belonged to the
first half of the second century B.C. Plays of a later date would have
clearly shown by their diction that they were not the work of Plautus.

Although this form of literature has little in common with the higher
Roman mood, and exercised comparatively slight influence on the style
and sentiment of later Roman poetry[176], yet no review of the creative
literature of the Republican period would be complete without some
attempt to estimate the value of the comedy of Plautus and Terence.
The difficulty of doing so adequately arises from an opposite cause
to that which makes our judgment on the art and genius of the Roman
tragic poets so incomplete. In the latter case we know what was the
character of their Greek models; but we can only conjecture from a
number of unconnected fragments, how far the copy deviated in tone and
spirit from the original. On the other hand, while we have between
twenty and thirty specimens of Latin comedy, we have no finished work
of Greek art in the same style, with which to compare them. It makes
a great difference in our opinion, not only of the genius of the
Roman poets, but of the productive force of the Roman mind, whether
we regard Plautus and Terence as facile translators, or as writers of
creative originality who filled up the outlines which they took from
the new comedy of Athens with matter drawn from their own observation
and invention. It makes a great difference in the literary interest
of these works, whether we regard them as blurred copies of pictures
from later Greek life, or, like so much else in Roman literature, as
compositions which, while Greek in form, are yet in no slight degree
Roman or Italian in substance, character, life, and sentiment. How far
can we answer these questions, either by general considerations, or by
a special attention to the actual products of Latin comedy which we
possess?

We have seen that there was a certain aptitude in the graver Roman
spirit for tragedy:--

    Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet.

The rhetorical character of Roman education and the rhetorical
tendencies of the Roman mind secured favour for this kind of
composition till the age of Quintilian. His dictum 'in comoedia maxime
claudicamus,' on the other hand, implies that the educated taste of
Romans under the Empire did not find much that was congenial in the
works of Plautus, Caecilius, or Terence. The tone of Horace is more
contemptuous towards Plautus than towards Ennius and the tragic poets.
While tragedy continued to be cultivated by eminent writers in the
Augustan age and early Empire, few original comedies seem to have
been written after the beginning of the first century B.C. The higher
efforts of the comic muse were almost, if not entirely, superseded by
the Mimus. These considerations show that comedy was not congenial to
the educated or the uneducated taste of Romans in the last years of
the Republic, and in the early Empire. But, on the other hand, the
popularity enjoyed by the old comedy between the time of Naevius and of
Terence, and even down to the earlier half of the Ciceronian age, when
some of the great parts in Plautus continued to be performed by the
'accomplished Roscius,' and the admiration expressed for its authors by
grammarians and critics, from Aelius Stilo down to Varro and Cicero,
shows its adaptation to an earlier and not less vigorous, if less
refined stage of intellectual development; while the actual survival of
many Roman comedies can only be accounted for by a more real adaptation
to human nature, both in style and substance, than was attained by
Roman tragedy in its straining after a higher ideal of sentiment and
expression.

The task undertaken by Naevius and Plautus was indeed a much easier
one than that accomplished by the early writers of tragedy. They
were not called upon to create a new taste, or to gratify a taste
recently acquired in Sicily and the towns of Magna Graecia. They had
only to give ampler and more defined form, fuller and more coherent
substance, to a kind of entertainment which was indigenous in Italy.
The improvised 'Saturae'--'dramatic medleys or farces with musical
accompaniment'--had been represented on Roman holidays for more than
a century before the first performance of a regular play by Livius
Andronicus. And these 'Saturae' had been themselves developed partly
out of the older Fescennine dialogues--the rustic raillery of the
vintage and the harvest-home,--partly out of mimetic dances imported
from Etruria. Another kind of dramatic entertainment, the 'Oscum
ludicrum,' which was developed into the literary form of the 'fabulae
Atellanae,' with its standing characters of Maccus, Pappus, Bucco,
and Dossennus, had been transferred to the city from the provinces of
southern Italy, and ultimately became so popular as to be performed,
not by professional actors, but by the free-born youth of Rome. The
extant comedies of Plautus show considerable traces of both of these
kinds of entertainment, both in the large place assigned to the
'Cantica,' which were accompanied by music and gesticulation[177], and
in the farcical exaggeration of some of his characters, which provoked
the criticism of Horace,--

    Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.

The mass of Roman citizens, both rural and urban, was thus prepared
by their festive traditions and habits to welcome the introduction of
comedy, just as they were prepared by their political traditions and
aptitudes to welcome the appearance of a popular orator.

Naevius and Plautus might thus be poets of the people more truly than
any later Roman poet could be. The career of Naevius, and the public
and personal elements which he introduced into his plays, afford
evidence of his desire to use his position as a popular poet for
political ends. His imprisonment and subsequent banishment equally
attest the determination of the governing class to allow no criticism
on public men or affairs, nor anything derogatory to the majesty of
the State and the dignified forms of Roman life, to be heard on the
stage. Plautus, though prevented either by his own temperament or the
vigilance of state-censorship from directly acting on the political
sympathies of the commons, maintained the thoroughly popular character
of Roman comedy, and poured a strongly national spirit into the forms
which he adopted from Greece. Between the death of Plautus and that of
Terence there was no cessation in the productiveness of Roman comedy;
but the little that is known of Caecilius, and the evidence afforded
by the plays of Terence, show that Roman comedy had now begun to
appeal to a different class of sympathies. The ascendency of Ennius in
Roman literature immensely widened the gulf which always separates an
educated from an uneducated class. One of the great sources of interest
in Plautus is that he flourished before this separation became marked,
while the upper classes were yet comparatively rude and simple in their
requirements, and the mass of the people were yet hearty and vigorous
in their enjoyments. The popularity of his plays revived again after
the death of Terence, and maintained itself till nearly the end of the
Republic, a proof that his genius was not only in harmony with his own
age, but satisfied a permanent vein of sentiment in his countrymen, so
long as they retained anything of their native vigour and republican
spirit. The fact that Roman comedy was not congenial to the educated
taste of the early Empire is no proof of its want of originality. It
was in harmony with an earlier stage in the development of the Roman
people. Had that been all, it might have been completely lost, or
preserved only in fragments like those of the Satire of Lucilius. But
as being the heir of an older popular kind of composition it enjoyed
the advantage, possessed by none of the more artificial forms of
poetry introduced at this period, of a fresh, copious, popular, and
idiomatic diction. The comic poets of Rome alone inherited, like the
epic poets of Greece, a vehicle of expression formed by the improvised
utterance of several generations. The greater fluency of style and the
greater ease of rhythmical movement, thus enjoyed by the early comedy,
is the most obvious explanation of its permanent hold on the world.
But the mere merits of language would scarcely have secured permanence
to these compositions apart from the cosmopolitan human interest
derived from the Greek originals on which they were founded, and from
the strong vitality which the earlier Roman poet drew from the great
time into which he was born, and the refined art for which the younger
poet was partly indebted to the circle of high-born, aspiring, and
accomplished youths into which he was admitted.

Our chief authorities for the life of Plautus are a short statement
of Jerome, one or two slight notices in Cicero, and a somewhat longer
passage in Aulus Gellius (iii. 3. 14). As he died at an advanced age,
in the year 184 B.C.[178] (during the censorship of Cato), he must
have been born about the middle of the third century B.C. He was thus
a younger contemporary of Naevius, and somewhat older than Ennius.
His birthplace was Sarsina in Umbria. That this district must have
been thoroughly Latinised in the time of Plautus, is attested by the
idiomatic force and purity of his style, a gift which no foreigner
seems ever to have acquired[179]. He probably came early to Rome,
and was at first engaged 'in operis artificum scenicorum,'--in some
kind of employment connected with the stage. He saved money in this
service, and lost it all in foreign trade,--what he himself calls
'marituma negotia[180].' Returning to Rome in absolute poverty, he
was reduced to work as a hired servant in a mill; and while thus
employed he first began to write comedies. The names of two of these
early works, _Saturio_ and _Addictus_, have been preserved by Gellius.
From this time till his death he seems to have been a most rapid and
productive writer. We have no means of determining at what date he
began to write. A passage quoted from Cicero has been thought to imply
that he was writing for the stage during the life-time of P. and Cn.
Scipio, i.e. before 212 B.C. But the earliest allusion to contemporary
events that we find in any of his extant plays, is that in the Miles
Gloriosus, to the imprisonment of Naevius, about 207 B.C. We have no
certainty that any of the extant plays were written before this date,
although the mention of Hiero in the Menaechmi, and the use of some
more than usually archaic inflexions in that play, have been supposed
to indicate an earlier date for it. Of the other plays, the Cistellaria
and Stichus were written within a year or two of the end of the Second
Punic War[181]. The larger number of the extant comedies belong to the
last ten years of the poet's life. His plays do not seem to have been
published as literary works during his life-time, but to have been left
in possession of the acting companies, by whom passages may have been
interpolated and others omitted, before they were finally reduced into
a literary shape. Most of the prologues to his plays belong to a later
time, probably that of the generation after his death[182]. Of the
twenty-one plays which Varro accepted, on the ground of their intrinsic
merits, as certainly genuine, we possess twenty, and fragments of the
remaining one, the _Vidularia_. The names of some other genuine plays,
such as the _Saturio_, _Addictus_, and _Commorientes_, are also known
to us.

How far are we able to fill up this meagre outline by personal
indications of the poet left on his works? In the case of any dramatist
this is always difficult; and Plautus is not in form only, but in
spirit, essentially dramatic. Nothing marks the difference between the
popular and the aristocratic tendencies of Roman thought and literature
more than the entire absence of any didactic tendency in his plays. He
does not think of making his hearers better by his representations,
nor does he believe that it is possible to do so[183]. He identifies
himself as heartily for the time being with his rogues of both sexes as
with his rarer specimens of honest men and virtuous women. He seldom
indulges in reflexions on life. When he does so it is by the mouth
of a slave, who winds up the unfamiliar process in some such way as
Pseudolus, 'sed iam satis est philosophatum[184],' or in the lyrical
self-reproaches of some prodigal, whose good resolutions vanish on
the re-appearance of his mistress. Among the innumerable terms of
reproach which one slave addresses to another, none is expressive of
more withering contempt than the term 'philosophe[185].' But even if we
could trace any predominant sympathies in Plautus, or any special vein
of reflexion which might seem to throw light on his own experience,
some doubt would always remain as to whether he was not in these
passages reproducing his original. The loss of many of his prologues
deprives us of the kind of knowledge of his circumstances and position
which Terence affords us in his prologues. Even the 'asides' to the
spectators, which often occur in Plautus, may in many cases be due to
the comedians of a later time.

Yet perhaps it is not impossible to enlarge our notion of his personal
circumstances and characteristics by tracing some hints of them in his
extant works.

We find one reference to his birthplace, in the form of a bad pun
altogether devoid of any trace of sentiment or affection[186].
He mentions other districts or towns in Italy in the tone of
half-humorous, half-contemptuous indifference, which a Londoner
of last, or a Parisian of the present century, might adopt to the
provinces[187]. More than one allusion indicates that the citizens of
Praeneste were especially regarded as butts by the wits of Rome[188].
The contempt of the town for the country also appears unmistakeably in
the dialogue between Grumio and Tranio in the 'Mostellaria[189],' and
in the boorish manners of the country lover in the 'Truculentus.' In
the eyes of a town-bred wit the chief use of the country is to supply
elm-rods for the punishment of pert or refractory slaves. A large
number of his illustrations are taken from the handicrafts of the city,
but very few are indicative of familiarity with rustic occupations.
There is no breath of the poetry of rural nature in Plautus. If he
betrays any poetical sensibility to natural influences at all, it is
to be found in passages in which the aspects of the sea, in calm or
storm, are recalled. Mommsen speaks of 'a most remarkable analogy in
many external points between Plautus and Shakespeare[190].' Yet there
is contrast rather than analogy in the impression left upon their
respective works by the associations of their early homes.

On the other hand we find, in many of his plays, traces of intimate
familiarity with the adventures of a mercantile life. It is most
probable that some of the passages in which these appear would have
been found in his originals had they been preserved to us. Yet the
emotions of thankfulness for a safe return to harbour, or of curiosity
and pleasure in landing at a strange town[191], are expressed so
frequently and with such liveliness as to seem like the reminiscence
of personal experience. We get, somehow, the impression of one who
had travelled widely, had 'seen the cities of many men and learned
their minds,' had marked with humorous observation many varieties
of character, had taken note, but without any special aesthetic
sensibility, of the works of art which were scattered throughout the
Hellenic cities, had shared in the pleasures which these cities held
out freely to their visitors, and had encountered the dangers of the
sea not without some sense of their sublimity and picturesqueness[192].
The God most frequently appealed to in prayer or thanksgiving is
Neptune[193]. The colloquial use of Greek phrases in many of his
plays seems to imply a familiar habit of employing them, in active
intercourse with Greeks on his maritime adventures. The day-dream of
Gripus, after finding his treasure, might almost be taken as a humorous
comment on the various motives of curiosity and mercantile enterprise
by which he himself was prompted to become engaged in maritime
speculation:--

    Navibus magnis mercaturam faciam: aput reges rex perhibebor.
    Post animi causa mihi navem faciam atque imitabor Stratonicum,
    Oppida circumvectitabor, ubi nobilitas mea erit clara,
    Oppidum magnum conmoenibo: ei ego urbi Gripo indam nomen.[194]

He shows much greater familiarity with the life of the lower and
middle classes than with that of those above them in station. He is
not always happy in his embodiment of the character of a gentleman.
Nothing, for instance, can be meaner than the conduct of the second
Menaechmus, who is intended to interest us, in his relations to
Erotion. And this failure is equally conspicuous in another of his
favourite characters, Periplecomenus, the 'lepidus senex' of the
Gloriosus. His indecorous geniality is scarcely compatible with the
respectability, not to say the dignity, of age. We recognise in his
characters and illustrations a vigorous and many-sided contact with
life, but no influence derived from association with members of the
governing class. In this respect he stood in marked contrast to Ennius
and Terence, and probably to Caecilius. The two latter, being freedmen,
were naturally brought into closer association with, and dependence on,
their social superiors. Plautus writes in the spirit of an 'ingenuus,'
in good-humoured sympathy with the mass of the citizens, and with
no feeling of bitterness towards the aristocracy, or indeed to any
human being whatsoever. He is at home with all kinds of men, except
the highest in rank. He takes a good-natured ironical delight in his
slaves, courtesans, parasites, and sycophants. He is not shocked by
anything they can do or say. He feels the enjoyment of a man of strong
animal spirits in laughing at and with them. Even the 'leno,' the least
estimable character in the repertory of ancient comedy, he treats
rather as a butt than as an object of detestation. He does not by a
single phrase show any sign of having been soured or depressed by the
misfortunes and vicissitudes of his life. We feel, in his dialogues,
the presence of irrepressible animal spirits, and a sense of boundless
resource and lively intelligence in his characters, especially in his
slaves. From no scrape does it seem hopeless for them to find some
means of extrication. Like them, he himself has the buoyancy of one,
'fortunae immersabilis undis.'

From the zest with which he writes of them, we might infer that he had
a keen personal enjoyment in eating and drinking, and in the coarser
forms of conviviality. His favourite dishes,--

    Pernam callum glandium sumen etc.[195]

find no place in the more fastidious gastronomy of our own times,
but they were capable of giving great satisfaction to the larger and
robuster appetites of the ancient Italians,--of a people who had
been, till the sudden influx of luxury in his own time, described
as 'barbarous porridge-eaters[196].' Horace has criticised the
extravagant gusto with which he makes his parasites dilate on their
peculiar pleasures[197]; and the important part which the preparation
for the 'prandium' or the 'cena' plays in several of his dramas is
perhaps significant of the attention which he himself bestowed on
them in the days of his prosperity. The early revels of Philolaches
and Callidamates in the Mostellaria, the manner in which Pseudolus
celebrates his triumph over Ballio[198], and Sagarinus and Stichus
the return of their masters from abroad[199], the tastes which the
poet attributes to the old women in his pieces, as to Staphyla in the
Aulularia,--show that the Romans had not learned, in his time, the more
cultivated enjoyment of wine, which they brought to perfection in the
days of Horace. The experience to which Plautus bears witness, like
that attributed to his contemporaries in the lines

    Ennius ipse pater numquam nisi potus ad arma
    Prosiluit dicenda,

and

    Narratur et prisci Catonis
        Saepe mero caluisse virtus,

is indicative rather of the convivial 'abandon' of men of vigorous
constitutions, than of the more deliberate and fastidious epicureanism
of the poets of a later age.

Another criticism of Horace upon Plautus--

    Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere--

may very probably be true, and is by no means to his discredit. The
same charge has been brought against some of the most facile and
productive creators in modern times, such as Scott, Dickens, and
Balzac, and, to a certain extent, even Shakespeare. To the poets
of Nature, or of the higher thought and emotions of men, the pure
enjoyment of their art may afford sufficient happiness. In so far
as they are true to their higher genius, they are, or ought to be,
more independent than any other class of men of the pleasures which
money can give. But artists whose power consists in vividly realising
and representing the various activities, passions, and enjoyments
of life, may feel, in their own experience, some of the craving and
of the satisfaction which they are called on to describe. Nor is it
unnatural that they should take any legitimate means of securing for
themselves some share in the objects of desire, which are the moving
forces of their imaginary world. In the large place which the details
of good living fill in his plays, Plautus exaggerates a tendency which
is discernible in the more decorous fictions of Scott and Dickens. In
the important part which he assigns to money in many of his dramas,
in his business-like mention of specific sums, in the frequency of
his illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, he shows a
resemblance to Balzac. The experience of his life must have impressed
upon him the value of money. The fact that he saved enough in his
early employment in connexion with the stage to embark on mercantile
speculations is a proof of early thrift and prudence and of a wish
to raise himself in the world. In all this he was merely exhibiting
one of the most common characteristics of the middle class among his
countrymen.

Horace adds the further criticism, that so long as he could make money
he was indifferent to the artistic merits of his pieces,--

    Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo;--

and this criticism is to a great extent true. His object was to
give the largest amount of immediate amusement[200]. He was not a
careful artist like Terence, studying either finish of style, perfect
consistency in the development of his characters, or the working out of
his plots to a harmonious conclusion. It was owing to the irrepressible
vitality and strong human nature which he could not help imparting
to his careless execution, that his plays have survived many more
elaborate compositions. Yet he shows a rude kind of consciousness of
his art in such passages as that in which he makes Pseudolus compare
himself to the poet who creates out of nothing--

    Set quasi poeta, tabulas quom cepit sibi,
    Quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen;[201]

and he speaks of the pleasure which he took in his play
'Epidicus[202].' Cicero also testifies to the joy which he derived
from two of the works of his old age, the Pseudolus and the
Truculentus[203]. But his delight was that of a vigorous creator, not
of a painstaking artist.

Many allusions in his plays attest his acquaintance with works of art,
with the stories of Greek mythology or the subjects of Greek tragedies,
and with the names, at least, of Greek philosophers. His extraordinary
productiveness in adapting works from the new comedy shows that he
had a complete command of the Greek language. He not only uses Greek
phrases, but has endeavoured to enrich the native vocabulary with
a considerable number of Greek words in a Latin form[204]. Yet the
knowledge he betrays is that which a man of versatile intelligence,
lively curiosity, and retentive memory, would pick up in his varied
intercourse with his contemporaries, without any special study of
books, except such as were needed for his immediate purpose. The more
recondite learning of Ennius was probably as strange to him as that of
Ben Jonson was to Shakspeare.

The great movement of his age acted on the mind of Plautus in a manner
different from that in which it affected Ennius. To the younger poet
the triumphant close of the Second Punic War brought the sense of a
mighty future awaiting the Roman Republic. He appealed to the higher
national aspirations stirring the hearts of the governing class.
Plautus felt the strong rebound of spirits from a long-continued state
of tension, from a time of anxiety and self-sacrifice, in a less noble
manner. He appealed to the craving which the mass of the citizens felt
for a more unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life. In the
spirit which moved him we seem to recognise the same kind of impulse
which prompted the repeal of the Oppian law, and which led to the
great increase of public amusements of every kind. The newly-acquired
peace and ease awoke in him a sense of the immense capacities of the
individual for enjoyment. In a passage of one of his later plays he
seems to claim this indulgence as the natural concomitant of victory:--

    Postremo in magno populo, in multis hominibus,
    Re placida atque otiosa, victis hostibus.
    Amare oportet omnes, qui quod dent habent.[205]

With this new sense of freedom and of fullness of life, the old
restraints of religion and of the morality bound up with it were
relaxed. The commons began to exercise less and less influence in the
state. Their political indifference finds an echo in the slighting
allusions which Plautus makes to the duties of public life[206]. The
increased contact with the mind and life of the Greeks powerfully
stimulated intellectual curiosity, but at the same time was a great
solvent of faith, manners, and morals. The frequent use of the words
_congraecari_, _pergraecari_, etc., in Plautus, shows that while the
highest Roman minds were learning new lessons of wisdom and humanity
from the great Greek writers of the past, the ordinary Roman was
learning lessons of idleness and dissoluteness from the living Greeks
of the time. The armies which returned from the Macedonian wars, and
still more from that with Antiochus, brought with them new fashions
and new appliances of luxury. Plautus shows a large indulgence, not
unmixed with a vein of saturnine humour, for these new ways on which
both young and old were eagerly entering. We see in him the unchecked
exuberance of animal life, but no sign of the recklessness or the
satiety of exhausted passions. Though there is more decorum, more
refined sentiment, in the life of pleasure as presented by Terence,
there is more often in Plautus an expression of a struggle between the
new temptations and the old Roman ideas of thrift, active duty, and
self-restraint. The conscience, though easily lulled to sleep, is still
capable of feeling the sting of the thought contained in the Lucretian
line--

    Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire.

If we turn now to the extant plays we find that all belong to the class
of _palliatae_. We find that they are adaptations or combinations
from the works of Menander, Diphilus, Philemon, and other writers
of the new comedy. The action is generally supposed to take place
in Athens, sometimes in other Greek towns, in Epidamnus, Ephesus,
Cyrene, etc. The plays of Plautus, unlike those of Terence and most of
those of Caecilius, have generally Latin titles, but nearly all his
personages have Greek names. One or two of his parasites (Peniculus,
Saturio, Curculio) are exceptions to this rule: but the absence of all
_gentile_ designations among his richer personages would alone prove
that he had no intention of presenting to his audience the outward
conditions of Roman or Italian life. The social circumstances implied
in all his plays are those of well-to-do citizens engaged in foreign
commerce, or retired from business after having made their fortunes.
The only differences in station among his personages are those of
rich and poor, free and slave. There is no recognition of those great
distinctions of birth, privilege, and political status, which were so
pervading a characteristic of Roman life. Old men are indeed spoken of
as 'senati columen'; and it is made a ground of reproach to a young
man that he is not already a candidate for public office, or making
a name for himself by defending cases in the law-courts. But such
passages are probably to be classed among the frequent Roman allusions
to be found in Plautus, which had no equivalent in his original. The
new comedy of Menander was based on the philosophy of Epicurus, which
taught the lesson of abstention from all public duties[207]. The
life of the young men is almost entirely a life of pleasure, varied
perhaps by some participation in their father's foreign business, or
occasional service in the army. But the dislike of a military life
among the 'easy livers' of Athens in the beginning of the third century
B.C. is shown as much by the indifference of these young men to their
honour as soldiers[208], as by the ridicule which is heaped upon the
'Captain Bobadils' who served as mercenaries in the military monarchies
of the successors of Alexander. Even a slave regards enlisting as a
soldier as the last refuge of a ruined man. The other characters are
of Greek origin, though some of them became naturalised in Rome. The
ordinary Roman client on the one hand--such as the Volteius Mena of
Horace,--and the scurra of Roman satire on the other (Volanerius or
Maenius), had a certain likeness to the Greek parasite; though the
position of the first was more respectable[209], and the last was a
more formidable element in society than a Gelasimus or an Artotrogus.
The 'fallax servus' of comedy, though a wonderful conception of a
humorous imagination, is a character hardly compatible with any social
conditions; but it is undoubtedly an exaggeration of Greek mendacity
and intelligence, the very antithesis of Italian rusticity. The
commanding part they play in the affairs of their masters seems like
a grotesque anticipation of the part played under the empire by Greek
freedmen,--

    Viscera magnarum domuum dominique futuri.

The 'meretrix blanda' of Menander was probably more refined, but not
essentially different from the 'libertina' of Rome. Among the rare
glimpses into social life which Livy affords behind the stately but
somewhat monotonous pageant of consuls and imperators, armies in the
field, senators in council, and political assemblies of the people,
none is more interesting than that given in the enquiries into the
horrors of the Bacchanalia at Rome[210]. The relations between P.
Aebutius and the freedwoman Hispala Fecenia bring to mind those
existing between the Philematiums, the Phileniums, or Planesiums of
comedy and their lovers. The 'leno insidiosus' and the 'improba lena'
are probably much the same in all times and countries; but there is
a vigorous brutality and inhuman hardness about Ballio and Cleaereta
which seem more true to Roman than to Greek life. The kind of life
which comedy represents must have had great attractions for a race of
vigorous organisation like the Romans, after continued success and
prosperity had broken down the old restraints on conduct and desire,
and the accumulated wealth of the world had become the prize of their
energy. Yet their inherited instincts for industry and frugality must
have made it difficult for them to realise gracefully the hollow
life of light-hearted enjoyment which came easily to a Greek in the
third century B.C. They learned to exaggerate the profligacy without
acquiring the more refined and humane qualities of their teachers.

It might perhaps have been expected that a writer of such prodigal
invention and so popular and national a fibre as Plautus would have
chosen rather to set before his countrymen a humorous image of
themselves, than to transport them in imagination to Athens and to
exhibit to them these well-used conventional types of Greek life and
manners. But, in the first place, the mere fact that it was more easy
for him to adapt than to create would have been a sufficient motive
to so careless and unconscious an artist. Again, the state-censorship
exercised by the magistrates who exhibited the games would naturally
deter a poet, who did not wish to encounter the fate of Naevius,
from any direct dealing with the delicate subject of Roman social
and family life. The later writers of the _fabulae togatae_ seem
for the most part to have reproduced the life and personages of the
provincial towns in Italy. The position not only of the magistrate
but even of the citizen at Rome was invested with a kind of dignity
and even sanctity, which it would have been dangerous to violate in a
public spectacle. Further, the very novelty and unfamiliarity of the
ways of Greek life would be more stimulating to the rude imagination
of that age than a reproduction of the everyday life of Rome. It
requires a more cultivated fancy to recognise incidents, situations and
characters suited for art in actual experience, than to appreciate the
conventional types of older dramatists. It is a noticeable fact that
Shakespeare places the scene of only one of his comedies in England,
and that he too introduces the English names and characteristics of
Bottom, Snug, Peter Quince, etc., as Plautus does those of Saturio
or Curculio into an imaginary representation of Athenian life. But
whatever were his motives for doing so, Plautus professes to introduce
his hearers to a representation of Greek manners and morals. His
frequent use of the word _barbarus_ in reference to Italian or Roman
ways, his use of Latinised Greek words and actual Greek phrases, the
Greek names of his personages, the dress in which they appeared, the
invariable reference to Greek money, perhaps the actual scene presented
to the eye, the frequent mention of ships unexpectedly arriving in
harbour, the names of the foreign towns visited, etc., would all tend
to remind the audience that they were listening to an action and
witnessing a spectacle of Greek life.

But while the outward conditions of his dramas are professedly taken
from Greek originals, much of the manner and spirit of his personages
is certainly Roman. The language in which they express themselves in
the first place is thoroughly their own. This is shown by the large
number of his puns and plays on words. These by their spontaneity,
sometimes by their grotesqueness, sometimes by a Latin play on a Greek
word--such as Archidemides[211] or Epidamnus,--show their native
origin. No writer, again, abounds so much in alliterations, assonances,
asyndeta[212], which are characteristic of all early Roman poetry
down even to Lucretius, and which have no parallel in the more refined
and natural diction of the Greek dramatists. Further, we constantly
meet with Roman formulae[213], Roman proverbs[214], expressions of
courtesy[215], and the like. The very fluency, copiousness, and verve
of his language are impossible to a translator, at least in the early
stages of a literature. Nothing can be more spontaneous and natural
than the dialogue in Plautus. There is, on the other hand, considerable
appearance of effort in the reflective passages of the 'cantica'; and
this is exactly what we should expect in a Roman writer of originality.
Reflexion on life was altogether strange to a Roman in the age of
Plautus; to a Greek it was easy and hackneyed. In the prolixity and
slow beating out of the thought in some of the 'cantica' we note the
beginning of a process unfamiliar to the Roman mind, for which the
forms of the Latin language were not yet adapted. The facility of
expressing reflexion appears much more developed in Terence. If Plautus
were reproducing a Greek original in such passages as Mostell. 85-145,
Trinummus 186-273, the thought and the illustration would have lost
much in freshness and naiveté, but they would have been expressed with
much more point and conciseness.

But it is not only in his language and manner that Plautus shows his
independence of his originals. The poems taken from Greek life are
in a large measure filled up with matter taken from the life around
him. The Greek personages of his play, without apparently any sense
of artistic incongruity, speak as Romans would do of the places
familiar to Romans--towns in Italy[216], streets, markets, gates,
in Rome[217]; of Roman magistrates and other officials, Quaestors,
Aediles, Praetors, Tresviri, Publicani; they allude to the public
business of the senate, comitia, and law-courts,--to colonies[218],
praefecturae, and the provincia of a magistrate,--to public games in
honour of the dead,--to the distinctive dress worn by matrons,--to
the forms of bargaining and purchasing, of summoning an antagonist
into court, of pleading a case at law,--to the times of vacation from
business[219],--to the emancipation of slaves,--peculiar to the Romans.
The special characteristics of Roman religion appear in the number of
abstract deities referred to, such as Salus, Opportunitas, Libentia,
etc. A new divinity is invented in the interests of lovers, under
the name of Suavisuaviatio[220]. Other better-known objects of Roman
worship, such as Jupiter Capitolinus, Laverna, the Lar Familiaris are
also introduced. We find also references to recent events in Roman
history--such as the subjugation of the Boii[221], the treatment
inflicted on the Campanians after the second Punic War, the importation
of Syrian slaves after the war with Antiochus[222], the introduction
of foreign luxuries at the same time[223], the extreme frequency with
which triumphs were granted in the first twenty years of the second
century B.C.[224] Allusion is made to particular Roman laws, such as
the lex alearia[225], probably passed about this time to resist the
progress of Greek demoralisation. The state of feeling aroused, on
both sides, by the repeal of the Oppian law, and the state of society
which led to the original enactment of that law, are reflected in many
passages of the plays of Plautus. A remark of one of the better class
of matrons--

    Non matronarum officium est, sed meretricium,
    Viris alienis, mi vir, subblandirier[226]--

may serve as a comment on the arguments with which Cato opposed the
repeal of the law: 'Qui hic mos est in publicum procurrendi, et
obsidendi vias, et viros alienos appellandi?... An blandiores in
publico quam in privato, et alienis quam vestris estis[227]?' The
imperiousness of a 'dotata uxor,' and the spirit of rebellion thereby
aroused in the mind of her husband, are themes treated with grim humour
in many of the dramas. The stale jokes against the happiness of married
life were as applicable to Greek as to Roman life; and Greek husbands
may have stood in as much dread of their wives' extravagance in dress,
and in as great awe of their surveillance, as were experienced by the
elderly husbands of Latin comedy. But the fact that similar criticisms
appear in the satirical and oratorical fragments of the second century
B.C. indicate that such jokes, whether or not originally due to the
Greek writer, came equally home to a Roman audience.

Again, the great fertility of Plautus and his many-sided contact
with life are apparent in the number and variety of his metaphors
and illustrations from, and other references to, many varieties of
human occupation. These have, for the most part, both a national and
a popular origin. The number of those taken from military operations,
and from legal and business transactions, is a clear indication that
they were of fresh Roman coinage. There is no character which a slave,
who has to conduct some intrigue to a successful issue, is so fond
of assuming as that of the general of an army. In one passage one of
his confederates addresses him as 'Imperator.' He takes the auspices,
he brings his engines to bear on the citadel of the enemy, he brings
up his supports, he lays his ambush and avoids that laid for him,
he leads his army round by some unknown pass, cuts off the enemy's
communications, keeps open his own, invests and takes the hostile
position, and divides the booty among his allies. The following passage
for instance is freshly coloured with all the recent experience of the
Hannibalian war:--

    Viden hostis tibi adesse, tuoque tergo obsidium? Consule,
    Arripe opem auxiliumque ad hanc rem, propere hoc non placide decet,
    Anteveni aliqua aut aliquo saltu circumduce exercitum,
    Coge in obsidium perduellis, nostris praesidium para.
    Interclude conmeatum inimicis, tibi moeni viam,
    Qua cibatus conmeatusque ad te et legionis tuas
    Tuto possit pervenire. Hanc rem age: res subitariast.[228]

The illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, from banking
and business operations, and the references to law forms, such as
the mode of pleading a case by sponsio[229], would come home to the
experience and habits which were fostered more in Rome than in any
other ancient community[230]. Though the Romans never were a mercantile
community, like the Carthaginians or the Greek States in their later
days, yet from the earliest times they understood the uses of the
accumulation and skilful application of capital. Another large class of
metaphors, generally expressive of some form of roguery, and taken from
the trade of various artisans--such as the smith, carpenter, butcher,
weaver, etc.[231]--speaks to the popular as well as the national
characteristics of his dramas. If these metaphorical phrases had been
mere translations, they would, as thus applied, have had no meaning to
a Roman audience. They must have been more or less of slang phrases,
formed by and for the people, and suggested by an intimate familiarity
with many varieties of trickery and swindling on the one hand, and with
the skill and trade of various classes of artisans on the other.

The exuberant use of terms of endearment and of abuse in Plautus may be
also mentioned as an original and Roman characteristic of his genius.
His lovers' phrases[232], though used by him with a saturnine humour,
remind us of the passionate use of similar phrases in Catullus. The
slave or cook of Greek comedy may probably have indulged freely in the
vituperation of his fellows; but there is an idiomatic heartiness in
the interchange of curses and verbal sword-thrusts among the slaves,
panders, and cooks of Plautus, which seems congenial to the race who
enjoyed the spectacles of the amphitheatre. The inexhaustible fund of
merriment supplied by references to or practical exemplifications of
the various modes of punishing and torturing slaves, tells of a people
not especially cruel, but practically callous either to the infliction
or the suffering of pain. The Greek nature was, when roused to passion,
capable of fiercer and more cowardly cruelty than the Roman, but was
too sensitively organised to enjoy the spectacle or the imagination of
inflictions which form the subject of the stalest jokes in Plautus.
The spirit of the new comedy as it existed in Greece, was not, on
the whole, calculated to elevate, but it certainly was capable of
humanising the Roman character.

We are less able to speak of his originality in the selection of
incidents and dramatic situations, in the general management of his
plots, and his conception of characters. Though more varied than
Terence in the subjects which he chooses for dramatic treatment, yet
there is great sameness, both of incident, development, and character,
in many of them. His favourite subject is a scheme by which a slave,
in the interests of his young master, and his mistress, cheats a
father, a mercenary captain, or a 'leno,' who are treated, though in
different degrees, as enemies of the human race and legitimate objects
of spoliation. Some of the best of his plays--the Pseudolus, Bacchides,
the Mostellaria, and the Miles Gloriosus--turn entirely upon incidents
of this kind,--'frustrationes in comoediis' as they are called. There
is nothing on which the chief agent in such plots prides himself so
much as on his success 'in shearing,' 'planing away,' or 'wiping the
nose' of, his antagonist in the game: there is no indignity about which
the sense of honour is so sensitive as that of having had 'words palmed
off upon one,' and having thus been made an object of ridicule. The
invariable enlisting of sympathy in favour of the cheat and against the
dupe is a trait more illustrative of the countrymen of Ulysses than
of Fabricius: but the 'Tusci turba impia vici' at Rome had, no doubt,
their own native aptitude for cheating and lying.

The 'Pseudolus' is perhaps the best and the most typical specimen of
a play the interest of which turns on this kind of intrigue. In it
the plot is skilfully worked out, the characters are conceived with
the greatest liveliness, and admirably sustained and contrasted,
and the incidents and motives on which the personages act are never
strained beyond the limits of probability. A more fastidious age might
have objected to the celebration by Pseudolus of his triumph, as a
grotesque excrescence: but it serves to bring out the sensual geniality
underlying the audacity and roguery of his character, in contrast to
the sensual brutality underlying the audacity and villainy of Ballio.
When we consider the vigorous life and even the art with which the
whole piece is worked out, we understand why Plautus, with good reason,
took, in his old age, especial pleasure in this play. There is not
much to offend a robust morality in the piece; for though the result
accomplished cannot be called the triumph of virtue over vice, it is
at least the triumph of a more amiable over a more detestable form of
depravity.

In the 'Bacchides' the slave Chrysalus plays a part similar to that of
Pseudolus, with perhaps more subtlety but less vigour and liveliness.
The mode in which both the 'pater attentus' and the 'senex lepidus'
of the piece (Nicobulus and Philoxenus) succumb to the blandishments
of the two sisters, and in the end become the rivals of their sons,
is still less edifying than the winding up of the Pseudolus: but the
dénouement is brought about not unskilfully or extravagantly. It is
difficult to say whether Plautus, like the author of Gil Blas, felt a
moral indifference to the characters he brought on the stage, so long
as he could make them amusing; or whether, like Balzac, but with more
humour and less cynicism, he had a peculiar delight in following human
corruption into its last retreats. The moral with which the piece winds
up--

    Hi senes nisi fuissent nihili jam inde ab adulescentia,
    Non hodie hoc tantum flagitium facerent canis capitibus,

implies that he recognised the difference between right and wrong, or
at least between good and bad taste in such matters, but that he did
not, perhaps, attach much importance to it. The 'Asinaria,' which also
turns on a scheme by which a slave defrauds his mistress in behalf of
his young master, winds up with a scene in which a father is enjoying
himself as the rival of his complaisant son, till he is summoned
away by the apparition of his wife, and the wrathful and scornful
reiteration of 'Surge, amator, i domum.' The moral expressed there by
the 'Caterva' implies less sympathy with outraged virtue than with the
disappointed delinquent--

    Hic senex siquid clam uxorem suo animo fecit volup
    Neque novom neque mirum fecit nec secus quam alii solent.

There are two or three other plays in which a father appears as
the rival of his son. None of the characters in Plautus, not even
Ballio, or Labrax, or Cleaereta,--the worst of his 'lenones' and
'lenae,'--excite more unmitigated disgust than Stalino in the 'Casina.'

The 'Miles Gloriosus' and the 'Mostellaria' are much less objectionable
in point of morality, or at least good taste, than either the
'Bacchides' or the 'Asinaria.' They are among the most popular of the
plays of Plautus. There is a great variety of humorous situations in
the 'Miles': and, although the principal character transcends all
natural limits in his self-glorification, his stupid insensibility,
and his pusillanimity, the intrigue is carried out with the greatest
vivacity by Palaestrio and his army of accomplices; and the humour with
which the fidelity and veracity of the slave Sceledrus are played upon
almost merges into pathos in the despairing tenacity with which he
cannot bring himself to disbelieve the evidence of his eyes--

    Noli minitari: scio crucem futuram mihi sepulchrum:
    Ibi mei sunt maiores siti, pater, avos, proavos, abavos,
    Non possunt tuis minaciis hisce oculi mi ecfodiri.[233]

Tranio in the 'Mostellaria' is, in readiness of resource and resolute
mendacity, a not unworthy member of the fraternity to which Pseudolus,
Chrysalus, and Palaestrio belong. He is, besides something of a fop and
a fine gentleman, and all his relations with his young and old master,
with Simo and the Banker, are conducted with perfect urbanity. Yet the
'Mostellaria' is certainly one of those plays to which the criticism of
Horace--

    Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo,--

is peculiarly applicable. No less suitable 'Deus ex machina' than
the crapulous Callidamates can well be imagined for the purpose of
reconciling a justly incensed father and master of a household to the
profligate extravagance of his son, and the audacious mystification of
his slave.

Several other plays turn upon similar 'frustrationes.' Two of the
best of these are the 'Curculio' and the 'Epidicus.' Though there are
lively and humorous scenes in nearly all his plays, and the language
is generally sparkling and vigorous, yet the sameness of situation
and character, and the unrelieved tone of light-hearted merriment and
mendacity with which this class of play is pervaded soon pall upon the
taste. A few, the 'Cistellaria' and the 'Poenulus,' for instance, turn
upon the incident of a free-born child being stolen in infancy, and
recognised by her parents before she has fatally committed herself to
the occupation for which she has been destined. But these are not among
the best executed of the Plautine plays. In the 'Stichus' we enjoy the
unwonted satisfaction of making acquaintance with two wives who really
care for their husbands: and the parasite Gelasimus in that play is as
amusing as the characters of the same kind in the Captivi, Curculio,
Menaechmi, Persa, etc. But the absence of incident, coherent plot, and
adequate dénouement, must prevent this play from being ranked among the
more important compositions of Plautus. A few however still remain to
be noticed as among the most serious or the most imaginative efforts
of his genius. The 'Aulularia,' Trinummus,' 'Menaechmi,' 'Rudens,'
'Captivi,' and 'Amphitryo,' are much more varied in their interest
than most of those already mentioned, and each of them has its own
characteristic excellence.

The interest of the 'Aulularia' turns entirely on the character of
Euclio. Whether or not this embodiment of the miser owes much to the
original creation of Plautus, it is certainly realised by him with
the greatest truth and vivacity. The whole conception is thoroughly
human and original; and though nothing can be more complete than the
hypochondriacal possession which his one idea has over his imagination,
the character is not presented in an odious or despicable light. In
this respect it differs from the frequent presentment of the miserly
character in Roman satire, and in most modern works of fiction.
Perhaps, except Silas Marner and Père Goriot, there is no other case
of a miser being conceived with any human-hearted sympathy. His
exaggerated sense of the value of the smallest sum of money is like
a hallucination, arising out of the unexpected discovery of a great
treasure after a life of poverty has made pinching and sparing a
second nature to him. But this hallucination has left him shrewdness,
honesty, pluck, a certain dignity, shown in his relation to Megadorus,
and abundance of a grim humour; and it seems to have cleared away,
in the dénouement of the piece, under the influence of fatherly
affection[234]. There are none of the baser or more brutal characters
of the Plautine comedies introduced into this play. Eunomia is a rare
specimen of a virtuous woman; Megadorus of a worthy and kindly old
man, with a didactic tendency which makes him a little wearisome; the
'young lover' shows an honourable loyalty in the reparation of his
fault. Though none of these subsidiary characters are conceived with
anything like the force and vivacity of Euclio, yet after reading the
humours of ancient life, as exhibited in the 'Asinaria,' 'Casina,' and
'Truculentus,' we feel a sense of relief in finding ourselves in such
respectable company. The genius with which the chief character of the
play is conceived and executed is sufficiently attested by the fact
that it served as a model to the greatest of purely comic dramatists of
modern times.

The 'Trinummus,' if less amusing than most of the other plays of
Plautus, is one of the most unexceptionable in moral tendency; and one
at least of the personages in it, Philto, in his union of shrewd sense
and old-fashioned severity with a sarcastic humour and real humanity
of nature is quite a new type, distinguishable from the hard fathers,
the disreputably genial old men, and the mere worthy citizens, who are
among the stock characters of the Plautine comedy. There is no play
in which the struggle between the stricter morals of an older time
and the new temptations is more clearly exhibited: and though vice is
finally condoned, or at least visited only with the mild penalty of
an unsolicited marriage, the sympathies of the audience are entirely
enlisted on the side of virtue. Lesbonicus is a prodigal of the type
of Charles Surface, whose folly and extravagance are redeemed by
good feeling and a latent sense of honour: and if it is not easy to
acquit Lysiteles of a too conscious virtue, one must remember how
difficult it always is for a comic dramatist to make the character
of a thoroughly respectable young man lively and entertaining. But
the whole piece, from the prologue, which indicates the way which all
prodigals go, to the end,--the good sense, worth of character, and
friendly confidence exhibited in the relations of Megaronides and
Callicles,--the honourable love of Lysiteles for the dowerless sister
of his friend,--the pious humanity and humility of such sentiments as
these in the mouth of Philto--

    Di divites sunt, deos decent opuleutiae
    Et factiones: verum nos homunculi
    Scintillula animae, quam quom extemplo emisimus,
    Aequo mendicus atque ille opulentissimus
    Censetur censu ad Acheruntem mortuos,[235]--

the denunciation by Megaronides of the 'School for Scandal,' which
seems to have flourished in Athens as similar institutions do in our
modern cities,--enable us to believe that the citizen life of the Greek
communities, after the loss of their independence, may not have been
so utterly hollow and disreputable as some of the representations of
ancient comedy would lead us to suppose.

There is much greater originality of plot, incident, and character,
though, at the same time, a much less unexceptionable moral tendency in
the 'Menaechmi,' the model after which Shakspeare's Comedy of Errors
was composed. The plot turns upon the likeness of twins, who have been
separated from each other from childhood: and granting this original
supposition,--one perfectly conformable to experience,--the many
lively and humorous situations arising out of their undistinguishable
resemblance to one another, are natural and lifelike. We feel, in
the incidents which Plautus brings before us, none of that sense of
unreality which the complication of the two Dromios adds to the 'Comedy
of Errors.' The play is enlivened also by the element of personal
adventure, arising out of the experiences of the second Menaechmus in
his search for his brother over all the coasts of the Mediterranean.
The two brothers (whether or not this was intended by the poet) are
like in character, as well as in outward appearance; and they are both,
in their hardness and knowledge of the world, in the unscrupulousness
with which they gratify their love of pleasure, and the superiority
which they maintain over their dependents, entirely distinct from the
weak and vacillating 'amantes ephebi' of most of the other plays. The
character of the 'parasite' is not very different from that in some
of the other plays, except that in his vindictiveness for the loss of
his 'déjeuner,' and his love of mischief-making, he comes nearer to
the type of the 'scurra' than of the faithful client of the house,
who is best represented by the Ergasilus of the 'Captivi.' But in the
fashionable physician who is called in by the wife and father-in-law of
the first Menaechmus, to examine into and prescribe for his condition,
we are introduced to a new type of character which certainly seems to
be drawn from the life. After reading the scene in which this personage
is introduced, one might be inclined to fancy that, notwithstanding
the advance of medical science, certain characteristics of manner and
procedure had become long ago stereotyped in the profession.

These three plays show Plautus at his best in regard to the delineation
of character, to moral tendency, to the conduct of a story by means
of humorous incidents and situations. The three which still remain to
be considered assert his claim to some share of poetic feeling and
genius, and to at least some sympathy with the more elevated motives
and sentiments which dignify human life. The 'Rudens' is inferior to
several of the other plays in purely dramatic interest; but it has all
the charm and freshness of a sea-idyl. The outward picture imprinted
on the imagination is that of a bright morning after a storm, of
which the effects are still apparent in the unroofing of the villa of
Daemones, in the wild commotion of the sea[236], in the desolation
of the two shipwrecked women wandering about among the lonely rocks
where they have been cast ashore, in the touching complaint of the
poor fishermen deprived by the storm of their chance of earning their
daily bread. The action, which consists in the rescue of innocence from
villainy, and in the recognition of a lost daughter by her father,
entirely enlists both the moral and the humane sympathies. There is
imaginative as well as humorous originality in the soliloquies of
Gripus, and in his altercation with Trachalio; and a sense of sardonic
satisfaction is experienced in contemplating the plight of Labrax (a
weaker and meaner ruffian than Ballio) and his confederate chattering
with cold and bewailing the loss of their ill-gotten gains. But the
peculiar charm of the play, as compared with any of those which has
been already noticed, is the sentiment of natural piety--not unlike
that expressed in the 'rustica Phidyle,' of Horace[237]--by which the
drama is pervaded. This key-note is struck in the prologue uttered by
Arcturus, whose function it is to shine in the sky during the night,
and during the day to wander over the earth, and report to Jove on the
good and evil deeds of men.

    'Quist imperator divom atque hominum Iuppiter,
    Is nos per gentis hic alium alia disparat,
    Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem
    Noscamus, ut quemque adjuvet opulentia.[238]

The affinity of piety to mercy is exhibited in the part played by the
priestess of Venus--

    Manus mihi date, exurgite a pedibus ambae,
    Misericordior nulla mest feminarum;[239]

and the natural trust of innocence and good faith in divine protection
is exemplified by the confidence with which the shipwrecked women take
refuge at the altar of Venus.

    Tibi auscultamus et, Venus alma, ambae te opsecramus
    Aram amplexantes hanc tuam lacrumantes, genibus nixae,
    In custodelam nos tuam ut recipias et tutere, etc.[240]

Even the moral sentiment expressed is of a finer quality than the
maxims of rough good sense and probity which we find, for instance, in
the Trinummus. When Gripus tells his master that he is poor owing to
his scrupulous piety--

    Isto tu's pauper, quom nimis sancte piu's--

the answer is in a higher strain than that familiar to ancient comedy.

    O Gripe Gripe, in aetate hominum plurimae
    Fiunt transennae, [illi] ubi decipiuntur dolis.
    Atque edepol in eas plerumque esca inponitur,
    Quam siquis avidus poscit escam avariter,
    Decipitur in transenna avaritia sua.
    Ille qui consulte, docte atque astute cavet,
    Diutine uti ei bene licet partum bene.
    Mi istaec videtur praeda praedatum irier,
    Majore ut cum dote abeat hinc quam advenerit.
    Egone ut quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam
    Celem? minume istuc faciet noster Daemones.
    Semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissumum'st,
    Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficii suis.
    Ego nisi quom lusim nil morer ullum lucrum.[241]

The 'Captivi' was pronounced by the greatest critic of last century to
be the best constructed drama in existence. Though probably few will
now be found to assign to it so high a place, yet, if not the best, it
certainly is among the very best plays of Plautus, in respect both
of plot and the dramatic irony of its situations. But it possesses a
still higher claim to our admiration in the presentment of at least
one character of true nobleness. And the originality of the conception
is all the greater from the fact that this heroism is embodied in the
person of one who has been brought up from childhood as a slave. There
are not many of the plays of Plautus calculated to raise our ideas of
human nature; but the loyal affection of Tyndarus for his young master,
his self-sacrifice, the buoyancy, courage, and ready resource with
which he first meets his dangers, and the manly fortitude with which he
accepts his doom--

    Dum ne ob malefacta, peream: parvi id aestimo.
    Si ego hic peribo, ast ille, ut dixit, non redit,
    At erit mi hoc factum mortuo memorabile,
    Me meum erum captum ex servitute atque hostibus
    Reducem fecisse liberum in patriam ad patrem,
    Meumque potius me caput periculo
    Hic praeoptavisse quam is periret ponere[242]--

enable us to feel that some of the glory of the older and nobler
Greek tragedy still lingered in the Athens of Menander, and has been
reproduced by Plautus with imaginative sympathy. Yet perhaps even to
this play the criticism of Horace,

    Quam non adstricto percurrat pulpita socco,

in part applies. The old slave-tricks of mendacity and unseasonable
joking, which are a legitimate source of amusement in the Pseudolus
and similar plays, jar on our feelings as inconsistent with the simple
dignity of the character of Tyndarus and the heroic part which he has
to play.

There are none of the plays of Plautus which it is so difficult to
criticise from a modern point of view as the 'Amphitruo.' On the
one hand the humour of the scenes between Mercury and Sosia is not
surpassed in any of the other comedies. There is no passage in any
other play in which such power of imagination is exhibited, as that in
which Bromia tells the tale of the birth of Alcmena's twins--

    Ita erae meae hodie contigit: nam ubi partuis deos sibi invocat,
      Strepitus, crepitus, sonitus, tonitrus: subito ut propere, ut
          valide tonuit.
    Ubi quisque institerat, concidit crepitu: ibi nescio quis maxuma
      Voce exclamat: 'Alcumena, adest auxilium, ne time:
      Et tibi et tuis propitius caeli cultor advenit.
    Exurgite' inquit 'qui terrore meo occidistis prae metu.'
      Ut iacui, exurgo: ardere censui aedis: ita tum confulgebant.[243]

Nor is there, perhaps, anywhere in ancient literature a nobler
realisation of the virtue of womanhood than in the indignant
vindication of herself by Alcmena,--

    Non ego illam mihi dotem esse duco, quae dos dicitur,
    Set pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatum cupidinem,
    Deum metum et parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam,
    Tibi morigera atque ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis.[244]

On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the part played by
Jupiter, and the comments of Mercury upon that part, should not have
shocked the religious and moral sense even of the Athenians of the age
of Epicurus and of the Romans in the age when they were first made
familiar with the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus. Perhaps the Romans
made a distinction between the Jupiter of Greek mythology and their own
Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and may have thought that what was derogatory
to the first did not apply to the second. Or, perhaps, some clue to
the origin of the Greek play may be found in a phrase of the Rudens,

    Non ventus fuit, verum Alcumena Euripidi.[245]

Was the Greek writer partly parodying, in accordance with the tradition
of the old comedy, partly reproducing a tragedy of Euripides? and
was the representation first accepted as a recognised burlesque of a
familiar piece? In any case its production both at Athens and Rome
must be regarded partly as a symptom, partly as a cause, of the rapid
dissolution of religious beliefs among both Greeks and Romans.

As in the case of other productive writers there is no absolute
agreement as to which are the best of the Plautine plays. Without
assigning precedence to any one over the other, a preference may be
indicated for these five, as combining the most varied elements of
interest with the best execution--_Aulularia_, _Captivi_, _Menaechmi_,
_Pseudolus_, _Rudens_; and for these, as second to the former in
interest owing to some inferiority in comic power, artistic execution,
or natural _vraisemblance_, or owing to some element in them which
offends the taste or moral sentiment--_Trinummus_, _Mostellaria_,
_Miles Gloriosus_, _Bacchides_, _Amphitruo_. These ten plays alone,
without taking the others into account, show both in their incidents,
scenes, and characters, how much wider Plautus' range of observation
was than that of Terence. Even within the narrow limits of the
characters most familiar to ancient comedy--the 'amans ephebus,' the
'meretrix blanda,' the 'fallax servus,' the 'bragging captain,' the
'parasite,' the 'leno,' the 'old men'--good, kindly, severe, genial,
sensual and disreputable,--we find great individual differences. More
than Terence, Plautus maintains a dramatic and ironical superiority
over his characters. This is especially shown in his treatment of his
young lovers and the objects of their despairing affection. The former
exhibit various shades of weakness, from the mere ineffectual struggle
between the grain of conscience left them and the attractions of
pleasure, to the sentimental impulse to end their woes by suicide. The
latter show varying degrees of attraction, from a grace and vivacity
that reminds German critics of the Mariana and the Philina in 'Wilhelm
Meister,' to the hardness and astuteness of the heroines of the
'Truculentus' and the 'Miles Gloriosus.' Plautus cannot be said to care
much about any of them except as objects of amusement and of the study
of human nature. Nor, on the other hand, has he any hatred of his worst
characters. He has the true dramatist's sympathy with the vigorous
conception of Ballio--the same kind of sympathy which made that part a
favourite one of the actor Roscius. His characters are interesting and
amusing in themselves; they are never used as the mere mouthpieces of
the writer's reflexion, wit, or sentiment. It is, of course, impossible
to determine definitely how far he was an original creator, how far
a merely vigorous imitator. But he is so perfectly at home with his
characters, he makes them speak and act so naturally, he is so careless
about those minutiae of artistic treatment of which a mere translator
would be scrupulously regardful, that it seems most probable that the
life with which he animates his conventional type is derived from his
own exuberant vitality and his many-sided contact with humanity.

In what relation do the plays of Plautus stand to the more serious
interests of life? Is he to be ranked among philosophic humourists
who had felt deeply the speculative perplexities of this world, whose
imagination vividly realised the incongruity between the outward mask
that men wear and the reality behind it, and the wide divergence of
the actual aims of society from the purified ideal towards which it
tends? Is there in him any vein of ironical comment or satirical
rebuke? any latent sympathy with any of the objects which move the
serious passions of moral and social reformers? Or is he merely a great
humourist, revelling in the mirth, the absurdities, the ridiculous
phases of character, which show themselves on the surface of life? It
must be admitted that it is difficult to find in him any traces of the
speculative questioning, of the repressed or baffled enthusiasm, of
the rebellion against the common round of the world which tempers or
inspires some of the greatest humourists of ancient and modern times.
His indifference to the problems of speculative philosophy is expressed
in such phrases as the

    Salva res est: philosophatur quoque jam, non mendax modo'st

of Tyndarus in the Captivi[246], and in the

    Sed jam satis est philosophatum

of Pseudolus[247]. Yet to Tyndarus he attributes a sense of religious
trust befitting both his character and situation--

    Est profecto deus, qui quae nos gerimus auditque et videt, etc.,[248]

while Pseudolus easily finds an opposite doctrine to suit his ready,
self-reliant, and unscrupulous nature--

    Centum doctum hominum consilia sola haec devincit dea,
    Fortuna, etc.[249]

Probably the truth is that living in an age of active enjoyment
and energy, he troubled himself very little about the 'problem of
existence'; but that he had thought enough and doubted enough to
enable him to animate his more elevated characters with sentiments
of natural piety, and to conceive of the ordinary round of pleasure
and intrigue as quite able to dispense with them. There is rather an
indifference to religious influences or beliefs, than such expressions
of scepticism or antagonism to existing superstitions as we find in the
tragic poets. The political indifference of his plays has been already
noticed. Yet the sentiments attributed to some of his best characters,
such as Philto in the Trinummus, Megadorus in the Aulularia[250],
imply that he recognised in the growing ascendency of wealth an
element of estrangement between the different classes of the community.
His frequent reference to the extravagance and imperiousness of the
'dotatae uxores' seems to imply further his conviction that the curse
of money was a dissolving force, not only of the social and political
but also of the family life of Rome.

The first aspect of many of his plays certainly produces the impression
of their demoralising tendency. But it is perhaps necessary to be on
our guard against judging this tendency too severely from a merely
modern point of view. These plays were addressed to the people in their
holiday mood, and a certain amount of license was claimed for such a
mood (as we may see by the Fescennine songs in marriage ceremonies and
in triumphal processions), which perhaps was not intended to have more
relation to the ordinary life of work and serious business than the
lies and tricks of slaves in comedy to their ordinary relations with
their masters.

Public festivity in ancient times, which was originally an outlet of
religious emotion, became ultimately a rebound from the severer duties
and routine of daily life. There are frequent reminders in Plautus
that this life of pleasure and intrigue was not altogether worthy or
satisfactory. There are no false hues of sentiment thrown around it,
as there are in Terence, and still more in the poets of a later age.
Nor must we expect in an ancient poet any sense of moral degradation
attaching to a life of pleasure. So far as that life is condemned it
is on the ground of sloth, weakness, and incompatibility with more
serious aims. The maxims which Palinurus addresses to Phaedromus in the
Curculio would probably not have shocked an ancient moralist:

                    Nemo hinc prohibet nec vetat
    Quin quod palamst venale, si argentumst, emas.
    Nemo ire quemquam puplica prohibet via,
    Dum ne per fundum saeptum faciat semitam:
    Dum ted apstineas nupta vidua virgine
    Luventute et pueris liberis, ama quod lubet.[251]

Something of the same kind is implied in the warning addressed by his
father to the young Horace. Any breach of the sanctities of family life
is invariably reprobated. On the rare occasions where such breaches
occur--as in the Aulularia--they are repaired by marriage. Any one
aspiring to play the part of a Lothario--as in the Miles Gloriosus--is
made an object both of punishment and ridicule. In this respect the
comedy of Plautus contrasts favourably with our own comic drama of the
Restoration. There are no scenes in these plays intended or calculated
to stimulate the passions; and although there are coarse expressions
and allusions in almost all of them, yet the coarseness of Plautus
is not to be compared with that of Lucilius, Catullus, Martial, or
Juvenal. It is rather in the absence of any virtuous ideal, than in
positive incitements to vice, that the Plautine comedy might be called
immoral. Although family honour is treated as secure from violation,
there is no pure feeling about family life. Sons are afraid of their
fathers, run into debt without their knowledge, deceive them in every
possible way, occasionally express a wish that their death might
enable them to treat their mistresses more generously. Husbands fear
their wives and speak on all occasions bitterly against them. Plautus
was evidently more familiar with the ways of the 'libertinae' than
of Roman matrons of the better sort; and thus while we see little of
the latter, what we hear of them is not to their advantage. The only
obligation which young men seem to acknowledge is that of honour and
friendly service to one another. So too slaves, while they hold it as
their first duty to lie and swindle in behalf of their young masters,
feel the duty of absolute devotion and sacrifice of themselves to their
interests. Plautus shows scarcely any of the Roman feeling of dignity
or seriousness, or any regard for patriotism or public duty. There is
everywhere abundance of good humour and good sense, but, except in the
Captivi and Rudens, we find scarcely any pathos or elevated feeling.
The ideal of character which satisfies most of his personages might
almost be expressed in the words of Stalagmus in the Captivi--

    Fui ego bellus, lepidus,--bonus vir nunquam neque frugi bonae
    Neque ero unquam.[252]

But the life of careless freedom and strong animal spirits which
Plautus shaped with prodigal power into humorous scenes and
representations for the holiday amusements of the mass of his
fellow-citizens, does not admit of being tried by any moral or social
standard of usefulness. It would be equally unprofitable to search
for any consistent vein of irony in him, or any deep intuition into
the paradoxes of life. He is to be judged and valued on the grounds
put forward in the epitaph, which was in ancient times attributed to
himself,--

    Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget,
    Scaena est deserta, dein risus, ludu' iocusque
    Et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt.

And this leads us to the last question concerning him--What is his
value as a poetic artist? The very fact that his imagination plays
so habitually on the surface of life, that he has, as compared with
the greatest humourists of modern times, so little poetry, elevation,
or depth, prevents his being ranked in the very highest class of
humorous creators. In the absence of serious meaning or feeling from
his writings he reminds us of Le Sage or Smollett rather than of
Cervantes or Molière. Nor does he compensate for these defects by
careful artistic treatment. The criticisms of Horace on this subject
are perfectly true. If the line--

    Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi

refers to the rapidity with which he hurries on to the dénouement
of his plot, it must be admitted that in some cases this quality
degenerates into haste and impatience[253]. But, on the other hand, the
careless ease and prodigal productiveness of his genius entitle him
to take certainly a high rank in the second class of humourists. If
he shows little of the idealising or contemplative faculty of poetic
genius, he has at least the facile power and spontaneous exuberance
which distinguish the great creators of human character.

The power of high and true dramatic invention which he occasionally
puts forth, and the stray gleams of beauty which light up the coarser
and commoner texture of his fancies, suggest the inference that it
was owing more to the demands of his audiences than to the original
limitation of his own powers, that he did not raise both himself
and his countrymen to the enjoyment of nobler productions. A people
accustomed to the buffoonery of the indigenous mimic dances required
strong and broad effects. Their popular poet, in conforming to the
conditions of Greek art, could not altogether forget the Dossennus
native to Italy.

But the largest endowment of Plautus, the truest note of his
creativeness, is his power of expression by means of action, rhythm,
and language. The phrase 'properare' may more probably be explained by
the extreme vivacity and rapidity of gesture, dialogue, declamation,
and recitative, by which his scenes were characterised, than be taken
as an equivalent to 'ad eventum festinare.' Their liveliness and
mobility of temperament made the Italians admirable mimics: and the
favour which the plays of Plautus continued to enjoy with the companies
of players, may be in part accounted for by the scope they afforded to
the talent of the actor. How far he was expected to bring out the
meaning of the poet may be gathered from the lively description given
by Periplecomenus of the outward manifestations which accompanied the
inward machinations of Palaestrio,--

                                        Illuc sis vide
    Quem ad modum astitit severo fronte curans, cogitans.
    Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras.
    Ecce avortit: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum.
    Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur
    Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppetit.
    Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status.
    Eccere autem capite nutat: non placet quod repperit.
    Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit.
    Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo.
    Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio:
    Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro,
    Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant.
    Euge, euscheme hercle astitit et dulice et comoedice.[254]

Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of
feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of mimic
dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative of Ballio
on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which Ergasilus
tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance of Pseudolus when
well drunken after celebrating his triumph over Ballio,--

    Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non?
    An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[255]

His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of
the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word
_percurrat_ in the criticism of Horace, which has been already
quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his
superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities.

It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament,
that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place
altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpassioned
monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,'
or purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer
in his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical
accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or
cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac
metre is employed in passages expressive of some sedate or laboured
thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Canticum' of
Lysiteles in the Trinummus,--

    Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso,
    Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor.
    Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo.

The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with
either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On
the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to
the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are
largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance
of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to
the bolts which barred his mistress's door,--

    Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens,
    Vos amo vos volo vos peto atque obsecro,
    Gerite amanti mihi morem amoenissumi:
    Fite caussa mea ludii barbari,
    Sussulite, obsecro, et mittite istanc foras,
    Quae mihi misero amanti exhibit sanguinem.
    Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi
    Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius.[256]

These early efforts of the Italian lyrical muse do not approach the
smoothness and ease of the Glyconics and Phalaecians of Catullus,
nor the dignity of the Alcaics and Asclepiadeans of Horace: but
they do, in a rude kind of way, show facility and native power in
finding a rhythmical vehicle for the emotion or sentiment of the
moment. In the longer passages in which they occur, these metres are
generally combined with some form of trochaic verse, which again is
often exchanged for septenarian or octonarian iambics. Of the rapid
transitions with which Plautus passes from one metre to another in the
expression of strong excitement of feeling, we have a striking example
in the long recitative of Ballio[257], in which trochaics, septenarian,
octonarian, and dimeter, are continually varied by the introduction
now of one, now of several, octonarian or septenarian iambics. He thus
claims much greater freedom than Terence in the combination of his
metres. He exercises also greater licence, in substituting two short
for one long syllable (in his cretics and trochaics), and in deviating
from the laws of position and hiatus accepted by later poets. It is
impossible for a modern reader to reproduce the rhythmical flow of
passages which must have depended a good deal for their effect on the
musical accompaniment, and on the pronunciation of the actor. Yet even
though it requires some effort to recognise the legitimate beat of the
rhythm 'digito et aure,' it is equally impossible not to recognise the
vigour and vehemence of movement of such passages as these--

    Haec, quom ego a foro revortar, facite ut offendam parata,
    Vorsa sparsa tersa strata lauta structaque omnia ut sint.
    Nam mi hodiest natalis dies: eum decet omnis vos concelebrare.
    Magnifice volo me viros summos accipere, ut rem mi esse reantur.[258]

Terence has a more artistic mastery than Plautus of the ordinary metre
of comic dialogue: but the latter has the more original poetic gift of
adapting and varying his 'numeri innumeri' to the animated moods and
lively fancies of his characters.

But the gift for which Plautus is preeminent above all the earlier,
and in which he is not surpassed by any of the later poets, is the
exuberant vigour and spontaneous flow of his diction. No Roman poet
shows more rapidity of conception, or greater variety of illustration:
and words and phrases are never wanting to body forth and convey with
immediate force and freshness the intuitive discernment of his common
sense, the quick play of his wit, the riotous exaggerations of his
fancy, his vivid observation of facts and of the outward peculiarities
of men, his inexhaustible resources of genial vituperation and
execration, or bantering endearment. The mannerisms of his style,
already mentioned as indicative of the originality with which he
deviates from his Greek models, are not laboured efforts, but the
spontaneous products of a rich and comparatively neglected soil. His
burlesque invention of proper names, even in its wildest exaggeration,
as in the high-sounding title assumed by Sagaristio in the Persa--

    Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides,
    Nugipalamloquides, Argentumexterebronides,
    Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides,
    Quodsemelarripides, Nunquampostreddonides--

is a Rabelaisian ebullition, stimulated by the novel contact with
the Greek language, of the formative energy which he displays more
legitimately in the creation of new Latin words and phrases. In the
freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of
speech, in the idiomatic verve of his Latin, employed in an age when
inflexions still retained their original virtue, and had not been
limited by the labours of grammarians to a fixed standard, he has no
equal among Latin writers. It is one of the great charms of the Letters
to Atticus, and of the shorter poems of Catullus, that they give us
back the flavour of this homely native idiom. Where there is difficulty
in interpreting Plautus, this arises either from the uncertainty of
the reading, or from the wealth of his vocabulary. He saw clearly and
realised strongly what he meant to say, and his words and phrases
appeared in rapid, close, and orderly movement to his summons. He
describes his personages,--Pseudolus for instance,

    Rufus quidam, ventriosus, crassis suris, subniger.
    Magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo, ad modum
    Magnis pedibus;[259]

Ballio,

    Cum hirquina barba;

Plesidippus, in the Rudens,

    Adulescentem strenua facie, rubicundum, fortem;

Harpax, in the same play,

    Recalvom ac silonem senem, statutum, ventriosum
    Tortis superciliis, contracta fronte, etc.--

in such a way as to show how real they were to his imagination in their
outward semblance as well as in the inward springs of their actions.
Or he brings before us some peculiarity in the dress or manner of his
personages by some graphic touch, as that of the disguised sycophant of
the Trinummus,--

    Pol hic quidem fungino generest: capite se totum tegit.
    Illurica facies videtur hominis: eo ornatu advenit;

and later--

                                            Mira sunt
    Ni illic homost aut dormitator aut sector zonarius.
    Loca contemplat, circumspectat sese, atque aedis noscitat.[260]

He tells an imaginary story or adventure, such as that which Chrysalus
invents of the pursuit of his vessel by a piratical craft--

    Ubi portu eximus, homines remigio sequi,
    Neque aves neque venti citius, etc.[261],

or the account which Curculio gives of his encounter with the
soldier[262], tersely, rapidly, and vividly, as if he were recalling
some scene within his own recent experience. He imitates the style of
tragedy--as in the imaginary speech of the Ghost in the Mostellaria--in
such a manner as to show that he might have rivalled Ennius in the
art of tragic rhythm and expression, if his genius had allowed him
to pass beyond the province which was peculiarly his own. His plays
abound in pithy sayings which have anticipated popular proverbs, or
the happy hits of popular poets in modern times, such as the 'nudo
detrahere vestimenta,' in the Asinaria, and the 'virtute formae id
evenit te ut deceat quidquid habeas[263],' in the Mostellaria. He
writes letters with the forms of courtesy, and with the ease and
simplicity characteristic of the best epistles of a later age. His
resources of language are never wanting for any call which he may make
upon them. In a few descriptive passages he shows a command of the
language of forcible poetic imagination. But he does not often betray a
sense of beauty in action, character, or Nature: and thus if his style
altogether wants the peculiar charm of the later Latin poets, and the
tenderness and urbanity of Terence, the explanation of this defect is
perhaps to be sought rather in the limited play which he allowed to his
finer sensibilities, than in any inability to avail himself of the full
capabilities of his native language.

Whether the deficiency in the sense of beauty should deny to him the
name of a great poet, is to be answered only when agreement has been
attained as to the definition of a poet. He was certainly a true and
prodigally creative genius. He is also thoroughly representative of
his race--not of the gravity and dignity superinduced on the natural
Italian temperament by the strict discipline of Roman life, and by
the sense of superiority which arises among the governing men of an
imperial state--but of the strong and healthy vitality which enabled
the Italian to play his part in history, and of the quick observation
and ready resource, the lively emotional and social temperament, the
keen enjoyment of life, which are the accompaniment of that original
endowment.

[Footnote 172: Prologue to Casina, 18, 19.]

[Footnote 173: Prologue to Amphitryo, 52.]

[Footnote 174: Licinius and Atilius are placed before Terence in the
Canon of Volcatius Sedigitus.]

[Footnote 175: E. g. Pseudolus, 1081:

    'Nugas theatri: verba quae in comoediis
    Solent lenoni dici, quae pueri sciunt.'

Cf. also Captivi, 778.]

[Footnote 176: The influence of Plautus may be traced in the style of
Catullus, and perhaps in the sentiment of the passage in Lucretius, iv.
1121, etc.; and that of Terence also in Catullus, and in the Satires,
Epistles, and some of the Odes of Horace.]

[Footnote 177: E.g. the dance of Pseudolus. Pseud. 1246, etc.]

[Footnote 178: Cic. Brut. 15. 60; De Senec. 14. 50.]

[Footnote 179: Cf. Cicero's testimony to the purity of the style of
Naevius and Plautus with his criticism on the style of Caecilius and
Pacuvius. Terence, who was by birth a foreigner, was probably brought
to Rome as a child.]

[Footnote 180: 'Puplicisne adfinis fuit an maritumis
negotiis?'--Trinum. 331.]

[Footnote 181: Cf. the line at the end of the Prologue to the
Cistellaria (Act i. Sc. 3)--

    'Vt vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.'

The 'Didascalia' to the Stichus is one of the few preserved. From it we
learn that the play was acted P. Sulpicio, C. Aurelio, Cos., i.e. 200
B.C.]

[Footnote 182: This is shown in some cases by reference to seats in the
theatre, which were not introduced till 155 B.C. In the Prologue to
the Casina it is said that only the older men present could remember
the first production of that play in the lifetime of the poet. The
Prologues to the Aulularia, Trinummus, and Rudens, are probably
genuine, and also the speech of _Auxilium_ in the Cistellaria.]

[Footnote 183: Cf. Rudens, 1249--

    Spectavi ego pridem comicos ad istum modum
    Sapienter dicta dicere atque is plaudier,
    Quom illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo.
    Set quom inde suam quisque ibant divorsi domum
    Nullus erat illo pacto ut illi iusserant.

]

[Footnote 184: Pseud. 687.]

[Footnote 185: E.g. Rudens, 986.]

[Footnote 186: 'Quid? Sarsinatis ecquast, si Umbram non habes.' Mostel.
757.]

[Footnote 187: 'Post Ephesi sum natus, noenum in Apulis, noenum
Aminulae.' Mil. Glor. 653.

    'Quid tu per barbaricas urbes iuras? _Erg._ Quia enim item asperae
    Sunt ut tuum victum autumabas esse.' Captiv. 884-5.

]

[Footnote 188: Capt. 879; Trinum. 609; Truc. iii. 2. 23; Bacch. 24.]

[Footnote 189:

    'Quid tibi, malum, hic ante aedis clamitatiost?
    An ruri censes te esse? apscede ab aedibus.' Most. 6. 7.

]

[Footnote 190: Vol. ii. p. 440; Eng. Trans.]

[Footnote 191: Cf. Trinum. 820, etc.; Menaechmi, 228, etc.; Stichus,
402, etc.]

[Footnote 192:

    'Ita iam quasi canes, haud secus circumstabant navem turbine venti,
    Imbres, fluctus, atque procellae infensae (fremere) frangere malum,
    Ruere antennas, scindere vela, ni pax propitia foret praesto.'
                                                        Trinum. 835-7.

]

[Footnote 193: E.g. Rudens, 906; Trinum. 820.]

[Footnote 194: 'I shall trade in big ships: at the courts of princes
I shall be styled a prince. Afterwards for my amusement I shall build
a ship and imitate Stratonicus; I shall visit towns in my voyages:
when I shall have become famous, I'll build a big town, and call it
Gripus.'--Rudens, 931-5.]

[Footnote 195: Pseud. 166.]

[Footnote 196:

    'Non enim haec pultifagus opufex opera fecit barbarus.'
                                                     Mostel. 815.

]

[Footnote 197:

    'Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.'

]

[Footnote 198: Pseud. 1229, etc.]

[Footnote 199: Stichus, 682, etc.]

[Footnote 200: Cf. Pseud. 720:--

    'Horum causa haec agitur spectatorum fabula,
    Hi sciunt qui hic adfuerunt; vobis post narravero.'

]

[Footnote 201: Pseud. 401-2.]

[Footnote 202: Bacchid. 214.]

[Footnote 203: De Senec. 14.]

[Footnote 204: E.g. graphicus, doulice, euscheme, morus, logos,
techinae, prothyme, basilicus, etc., etc.]

[Footnote 205: Truculentus, 55-57. Weise condemns the passage as
spurious. But whether written by Plautus or not it is in the spirit
of the Plautine comedy. In a passage of the Poenulus (act iii. 1. 21)
another reference is made to the sense of security enjoyed since their
victory:--

    'Praesertim in re populi placida, atque interfectis hostibus,
    Non decet tumultuari.'

]

[Footnote 206: Cp. the remark of the parasite in the Persa, 75, 76--

    'Set sumne ego stultus qui rem curo publicam
    Ubi sint magistratus, quos curare oporteat?'

and that of the parasite in the Captivi, 'that only those who were
unable to procure invitations to luncheon should be expected to attend
public meetings and elections'; and such jokes as 'Plebiscitum non est
scitius.']

[Footnote 207: The Comedy of Terence, which represents that of
Menander, is completely non-political.]

[Footnote 208: Cf. Epidicus, 30, etc., and Captivi, 262.]

[Footnote 209: The advocati in the Poenulus, who are evidently clients,
show a certain spirit of independence. Cf. Act iii. 6. 13:--

                                 'Et tu vale.
    Iniuriam illic insignite postulat:
    Nostro sibi servire nos censet cibo.
    Verum ita sunt omnes isti nostri divites:
    Si quid bene facias, levior pluma est gratia;
    Si quid peccatum est, plumbeas iras gerunt.'

]

[Footnote 210: Livy, xxxix. 9, etc.]

[Footnote 211:

    'Quom mi ipsum nomen eius Archidemides
    Clamaret dempturum esse si quid crederem.' Bacchid. 285.

    'Propterea huic urbi nomen Epidamno inditumst
    Quia nemo ferme sine damno huc devortitur.' Menaech. 264.

Cf. also the play on Chrysalus and Crucisalus; and the following may
serve as a specimen of his perpetual puns:--

    'Non enim es in senticeto, eo non sentis.' Captivi, 857.

]

[Footnote 212: Alliterations and assonances:--'Vi veneris vinctus.'
'Cottabi crebri crepent.' 'Laetus, lubens, laudes ago.' 'Collus collari
caret.'

    'Atque mores hominum moros et morosos efficit,' etc., etc.

Asyndeta:--

    'Laudem, lucrum, ludum, iocum, festivitatem, ferias.'

    'Vorsa, sparsa, tersa, strata, lauta, structaque omnia ut sint.'
        etc., etc.

These are not occasional, but constantly recurring characteristics
of his style. The thought and matter they express must, in a great
measure, be due to his own invention.]

[Footnote 213: Roman formulae:--'Quae res bene vortat.' 'Conceptis
verbis.' 'Quod bonum felix, faustum, fortunatumque sit.' 'Ut gesserit
rempublicam ductu, imperio, auspicio suo,' etc., etc.]

[Footnote 214: Proverbs:--'Sarta tecta.' 'Sine sacris haereditas.'
'Inter saxum et sacra.' 'Vae victis.' 'Ad incitas redactust,' etc.,
etc.]

[Footnote 215: Expressions of courtesy:--'Tam gratiast.' 'Benigne.'
'Num quid vis?' etc.]

[Footnote 216: E.g. Pistoria, Placentia, Praeneste, Sutrium, Sarsina,
etc.]

[Footnote 217: E.g. Vicus Tuscus, Velabrum, Macellum, Porta Trigemina,
Porta Metia; and compare the long passage in the Curculio (462), which
directly refers to Rome.]

[Footnote 218:

                        'Quid ego cesso Pseudolum
    Facere ut det nomen ad Molas coloniam.' Pseud. 1082.

]

[Footnote 219: 'Mancupio dare,' 'stipulatio,' 'antestatio,' 'sponsio,'
'ubi res prolatae sunt.']

[Footnote 220: Bacchid. 120.]

[Footnote 221: Captivi, 888.]

[Footnote 222: Trinummus, 545-6.]

[Footnote 223:

    'Non omnes possunt olere unguenta exotica.' Mostell. 42.

]

[Footnote 224: Cf. Bacch. 1072:

    'Set, spectatores, vos nunc ne miremini
    Quod non triumpho: peruolgatumst, nil moror.
    Verum tamen accipientur mulso milites.'

]

[Footnote 225: Mil. Glor. 164, 6. Cf. Hor. 'Seu malis vetita legibus
alea.']

[Footnote 226: Casina, iii. 3. 22.]

[Footnote 227: Livy, xxxiv. 2.]

[Footnote 228: 'Do you see that the enemy is close upon you, and that
your back will soon be invested. Quick! seize some help and succour:
it must be done speedily, not peacefully. Get before them somehow;
lead round your forces by some pass or other. Invest the enemy; bring
relief to our own troops; cut off the enemy's supplies; make a road for
yourself, by which provisions or supplies may reach yourself or your
legions safely: give your whole heart to the business--it is a sudden
emergency.'--Mil. Glor. 219-225.

The end of many of the prologues also shows that they were addressed to
a people constantly engaged in war.]

[Footnote 229: Menaech. 590.]

[Footnote 230: Cf. such expressions and lines as:--'Salva sumes
indidem' (Mil. Glor. 234); 'locare argentum;' 'fenerato.'

'Mihi quod credideris, sumes ubi posiueris.' Trinum. 145.

'Nequaquam argenti ratio comparet tamen.' Ib. 418.

'Bene igitur ratio accepti atque expensi inter nos convenit.' Mostel.
292.]

[Footnote 231: For a list of these, cp. the edition of the Mostellaria
by the late Professor Ramsay.]

[Footnote 232: E.g. 'Mellitus, ocelle, mea anima, medullitus amare.']

[Footnote 233: 'Don't threaten me; I know that the cross will be my
tomb: there lie my ancestors, father, grandfather, great-grandfather,
great-great-grandfather: but your threats can't dig these eyes out of
my head.'--Mil. Glor. 372-5.]

[Footnote 234: The conclusion of the Aulularia is lost, but the play
seems to have ended with the old man's consigning his treasure into the
hands of his son-in-law and daughter.]

[Footnote 235: 'The Gods only are rich: great wealth and high
connexions are for the Gods; but we, poor creatures, are but a tiny
spark of life, and so soon as that is gone, the beggar and the richest
man, when dead, are rated alike by the shores of Acheron.'--Trin.
490-4.]

[Footnote 236: 'Non vidisse undas me maiores censeo.' Rudens, 167.

'Atque ut nunc valide fluctuat mare, nulla nobis spes est.' Ib. 303.]

[Footnote 237: Cf.

    'Atque hoc scelesti [illi] in animum inducunt suum
    Iovem se placare posse donis, hostiis:
    Et operam et sumptum perdunt: id eo fit quia
    Nihil ei accemptumst a periuris supplici,' etc.--22-5.

]

[Footnote 238: 9-12.]

[Footnote 239: 280, 1.]

[Footnote 240: 694, etc.]

[Footnote 241: 'O Gripus, Gripus! in the life of man are laid many
snares, by which they are trapped; and for the most part a bait is laid
on them, and whoso in his greed greedily craves for it, by reason of
his greed he is caught in the trap. But whoso warily, wisely, craftily
takes heed, to him it is given long to enjoy what has been well earned.
That prize of yours, I fancy, will be so made prize of, as to bring a
larger dower in going from us than when it came to us. To fancy that
I should be capable of keeping secret possession of what I know to be
another's property? Far will that be from our friend Daemones! It is
the absolute duty of a wise man to be on his guard against ever being
privy to any wrong done by his own people. I never would care for any
gain, except when I am in the game.'--Rudens, 1235-48.]

[Footnote 242: 'Provided it be not for wrong done, let me perish, I
care not. If I shall perish here, while he returns not, as he promised,
yet even after death this will be a memorable act, that I restored
my master from captivity and his enemies to his father and his home,
and chose rather to emperil my own life here than that he should
perish.'--Captivi, 682-8.]

[Footnote 243: 'So it befell my mistress this day: for when she calls
the powers of travail to her aid, lo! there ensues a rumbling, rattling
noise, loud uproar and a peal of thunder--all of a sudden how fast,
how mightily it thundered! At the crash each one fell on the spot
where he stood. Then some one, I know not who, exclaims in a loud
voice, "Alcmena, be not afraid; help is at hand: the dweller in the
skies draweth nigh with kindly intent to thee and thine. Arise ye who
from the dread inspired by me have fallen down in alarm." As I lay,
I rose up: methought the house was all on fire, so brightly did it
shine.'--Amphitruo, 1060-67.]

[Footnote 244: 'I call not that which is named my dower, my true
dower, but chastity and modesty, and passion subdued, fear of
the Gods, affection to my parents, amity with my kinsmen, a will
to yield to thee, to be bountiful to the good, of service to the
worthy.'--Amphitruo, 839-42.]

[Footnote 245: 86.]

[Footnote 246: Captivi, 280.]

[Footnote 247: Pseud. 666.]

[Footnote 248: Captivi, 310.]

[Footnote 249: Pseud. 677.]

[Footnote 250: Cf. Aul. iii. 5. 4-8:--

    'Nam, meo quidem animo, si idem faciant ceteri,
    Opulentiores pauperiorum filias
    Ut indotatas ducant uxores domum,
    Et multo fiat civitas concordior,
    Et invidia nos minore utamur, quam utimur.'

]

[Footnote 251: Curculio, 33-8.]

[Footnote 252: 'I was a fine gentleman, a nice fellow--a good or
respectable man I never was nor will be.'--Capt. 956-7.]

[Footnote 253: Cp. the winding up of the Mostellaria, Casina,
Cistellaria.]

[Footnote 254: 'Look there, if you please, how he has taken up his
post, with serious brow pondering, meditating; now he taps his breast
with his fingers. I fancy he is going to summon his heart outside:
look, he turns away; now his left hand is leaning on his left thigh;
with his right hand he is making a calculation on his fingers; his
right thigh burns, such a violent blow he has struck it; his scheme
does not come easily to him:--he cracks his fingers: he is at a loss;
he often changes his position: look, there he nods his head: he does
not like this new idea. Whatever it is, he will not bring it out till
it is ready: he'll serve it up well done. Look again, he is busy
building: he props up his chin with a pillar. Away with it! I don't
like that kind of building: for I have heard that a foreign poet has
his face thus pillared, beside whom two sentinels are every hour on
watch. Bravo! by Hercules, now he is in a fine attitude, like a slave,
or a man in a play.'--Mil. Glor. 201-14.]

[Footnote 255: Pseud. 1246.]

[Footnote 256: 'Hear me, ye bolts, ye bolts, gladly I greet you, I
love you, I am fond of you; I beg you, I beseech you, most amiably now
comply with the desire of me a lover. For my sake become like foreign
dancers; spring up, I beseech you, and send her forth, who now is
drinking up the life-blood of me her lover. Mark how these vilest bolts
are still asleep, and do not stir one whit on my account.'--Curculio,
147-154.]

[Footnote 257: Pseud. 132-238.]

[Footnote 258: 'See that when I return from the Forum, I find
everything ready, the floor swept, sprinkled, polished, the couches
covered; the plate all clean and arranged: for this is my birthday:
this you must all join in keeping: I want to entertain some great
people sumptuously, that they may think I am well to do.'--Pseud.
159-62.]

[Footnote 259: 'A red-haired fellow, pot-bellied, with thick legs,
darkish, with a big head, keen eyes, a red face, and enormous feet.']

[Footnote 260: 'By Pollux he is of the mushroom sort: he hides himself
with his head: he looks like an Illyrian: he is got up like one;'--

'I should be surprised if he be not either some dreaming fellow (? al.
housebreaker) or a cut purse: he takes a good look of the ground, gazes
about him, takes note of the house.'--Trinum. 850-862.]

[Footnote 261: Bacchid. 289.]

[Footnote 262: Curculio, 337, etc.]

[Footnote 263: Cp. the proverbial 'taking the breeches off a
Highlander,' and the lines in one of Burns' earliest songs--

    'And then there's something in her gait
      Gars ony dress look weel.'

]




CHAPTER VII.

TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS.


The names of five or six comic dramatists are known, who fill
the space of eighteen years between the death of Plautus and the
representation of the earliest play of Terence, the 'Andria.' From
one of these, Aquilius, some verses are quoted, which Varro did not
hesitate to attribute to Plautus, and which Gellius characterises as
'Plautinissimi.' They are the words of a parasite, complaining of
the invention of sun-dials as inconveniently retarding the dinner
hour. Among these writers the most famous was Caecilius Statius, an
Insubrian Gaul, first a slave, and afterwards a freedman of a member
of the Caecilian house. He is mentioned by Jerome as having been a
'contubernalis' of Ennius,--a term which has been explained as meaning
that they were together members of the poets' collegium or club, which
met in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine. His poetic career very
nearly coincides with that of the epic and tragic poet, and he is said
to have died one year after him, in 168 B.C. Some Roman critics ranked
him above even Plautus as a poet. The line of Horace--

    Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte--

probably indicates the ground of their preference. He is said also
to have been careful in the construction of his plots[264]. Cicero,
who often quotes from him, speaks of him as having written a bad
style[265]. He is also mentioned among those poets who 'powerfully
moved the feelings.'

He composed about forty plays. Most of them had Greek titles, and
a considerable number of these are identical with the titles of
comedies by Menander. Two of the longest of his fragments express
with more bitterness and less humour the feelings which husbands in
Plautus entertain towards their wives. In one of these passages he has
adapted his Greek original to the coarser Roman taste with even less
fastidiousness than Plautus generally shows[266]. Another passage,
from the Synephebi, is more in the spirit of Terence than of Plautus.
It is one in which a young lover complains that the 'good nature'
(commoditas) of his father made it impossible to cheat him with an easy
conscience. Occasionally we find specimens of those short maxims which
probably led the Augustan critics to attribute to him the character of
_gravitas_, such as the

    Serit arbores quae alteri saeclo prosint,

quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, and this line--

    Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia.

He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus,
nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the
way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than
his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more
serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life.

With Terence Roman literature takes a new departure. When he appeared,
a younger generation had grown up, who not only inherited the
enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the older generation,--of
men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Æmilius Paulus, T. Quintius
Flamininus,--but who had been carefully educated from their boyhood
in Greek accomplishments. The leading representative of this younger
generation, Scipio Aemilianus, was about the same age as Terence, and
admitted him to his intimacy; thus showing in his early youth the same
enlightened and tolerant spirit and the same cultivated aspiration
which made him choose Panaetius and Polybius as the associates of
his manhood, and induced him to live in relations of frank unreserve
with Lucilius during the latter years of his life. Among the members
of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and Furius Philo were also closely
associated with Terence; and he is said to have enjoyed the favour
of older men of distinction and culture, Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius
Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular rank and of literary and
poetic accomplishment[267]. In the interval between Plautus and
Terence, the great gap which was never again to be bridged over had
been made between the mass of the people and a small educated class.
While the former became less capable of intellectual pleasure, and
were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers, rope-dancers, and
gladiators[268], to the comedies which had delighted their fathers,
the latter became more exacting in their demands for correctness and
elegance than the men of a former generation. They had acquired through
education the fastidiousness of scholars and men of culture, a quality
not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice of native force
and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense superiority of the
Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman copies, they believed
that the best way to create a national Latin literature was to deviate
as little as possible, in spirit, form, and substance, from the works
of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan, or rather purely Greek, in
their literary tastes, they were thoroughly patriotic in devotion to
their country's interests. They cherished their native language as the
great instrument of social and political life; and they recognised
the influence which a cultivated literature might have in rendering
that instrument finer and more flexible than natural use had made
it. By concentrating attention on form and style, without aiming at
originality of invention, Latin literature might become a truer medium
of Greek culture, and might, at the same time, impart a finer edge and
temper to the rude ore of Latin speech.

The task which awaited Terence was the complete Hellenising of Roman
comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of
Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the Latin
spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by intellectual
education a Greek, by the associations of his daily life a foreigner
living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the cosmopolitan mode
of thought and feeling which Greek culture was diffusing over the
civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman morality or the
homely and genial humours of Italian life. As a dependent and associate
of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had neither
the contact with the many sides of life, nor the familiarity with the
animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion the style of
Plautus: but by assimilating the literary grace of the Athenian comedy
and the familiar manner of a friendly, courteous, and active-minded
society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in ancient and the
French in modern times have had preeminently, a style which gives
dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and simplicity to
literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and training of the
Romans make the absence of these last qualities perceptible in much
both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm of their presence in
the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of Catullus, the Epistles
of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was owing to the social
and intellectual position of Terence that this secret of combining
consummate literary grace with conversational ease and spontaneity was
discovered.

The biography of Terence written by Suetonius has been preserved in
a complete state; so that in regard to the facts of his life, as of
that of Horace and Virgil, we have ampler evidence than is afforded
in the case of other writers, of whom the only external record is
contained in the short summaries of Jerome. We are enabled to go back
to the original and nearly contemporary authorities which Suetonius
used in his work 'De viris illustribus.' But the result of this fuller
information is to increase the distrust which some of the summaries in
Jerome naturally arouse. The authorities are found to be inconsistent
with one another in several important points. We find also proof
that the grammarians and _littérateurs_ of the second century B.C.
had a pleasure in chronicling the same kind of scandalous gossip
which Suetonius has perpetuated in his lives of the Caesars, and his
biographies of Virgil and Horace.

He was born at Carthage in the year 185 B.C.[269], and became the
slave of Terentius Lucanus, by whom he was liberally educated and soon
emancipated. According to the statement of Porcius Licinus he was
ruined in fortune by the intimacy of his noble friends, who did nothing
to save him from poverty, and retired in disgust to Greece, where he
died, at Stymphalus in Arcadia. The same authority adds that he had not
even a lodging in Rome, to which a slave might have brought the news of
his death. This account is contradicted by other authorities, who give
a more probable reason for his journey into Greece--viz. his desire to
become more familiar with the life and manners which he represents. In
him we note that impulse to travel, stimulated by artistic enthusiasm,
which acted on the great Roman poets of a later time. Other conflicting
accounts are given of his death: one, that he was never heard of after
sailing from Italy; another, that he was lost at sea, on his return
from Greece, along with a number of plays which he had translated from
Menander; another, that he died in Arcadia or at Leucadia from grief
at the loss of his baggage (including a number of new plays), which
he had sent forward by sea by a different route. The account given of
the extreme poverty into which the neglect of his friends allowed him
to sink is contradicted by the statement that he left behind him a
property, consisting of gardens to the extent of twenty acres, close
to the Appian Way. It seems also inconsistent with the fact that
his daughter was so well provided for that she ultimately married a
Roman knight. The 'animus' of Porcius Licinus against the members of
the Scipionic circle is probably the explanation of the conflicting
accounts of the poet's circumstances.

The 'Andria,' his earliest play, was exhibited in 166 B.C., when the
poet was eighteen or nineteen years of age. A story is told, that
before the play was accepted by the aediles, he was desired to read
it to Caecilius; that he came to him at supper, and being meanly
dressed ('quod erat contemptiore vestitu'), he sat down on a bench at
the foot of his couch; but after reading a few lines he was invited
to take his place at the table, and afterwards read the whole play,
to the great admiration of the older poet. The story probably owes
its origin to the tendency which delights to find a point of contact
between the beginning of one literary career and the close of another.
It is inconsistent with the date assigned for the death of Caecilius:
nor does it seem likely that one, admitted to the intimacy of young
men of the highest rank, should have appeared on such an occasion
'contemptiore vestitu.' Perhaps however it may be regarded as quite as
worthy of credit as the story of the meeting of Accius with Pacuvius at
Brundisium.

The next play in order of composition was the 'Hecyra,' first produced
in 165, but withdrawn owing to the bad reception which it met. The
'Hautontimorumenos' appeared in 163, and the 'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio'
in 161 B.C.; the second and third representations of the 'Hecyra'
and the production of the 'Adelphi' took place in 160. The last was
represented at the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus. It was in this
year that Terence sailed for Greece; and he died in the following year
when only twenty-five years of age. Two of his plays, 'Phormio' and
'Hecyra,' were translated from Apollodorus, the rest from Menander.

His art is so purely imitative, that for any knowledge of his
circumstances and character we have to trust entirely to his
'prologues,' in which he speaks in his own person. We note in them
his apologetic tone, in marked contrast to the confident hold which
Plautus has over his audiences. This tone is to be explained partly,
perhaps, by the consciousness of his servile origin and his position
as an alien; partly by a sense that his art was not congenial to his
audiences. He shows great sensitiveness to criticism, and shields
himself from the want of popular applause by the sense of the favour
and protection of the great[270]. His attitude to his 'noble friends'
is not unlike that of Horace to the higher class of his day; but he
seems to want the Italian self-confidence and independence of the son
of the Venusian freedman. In the prologue to the 'Adelphi' he refers
with pride to the charge made against him that he was assisted by his
friends in the composition of his plays--

    Nam quod isti dicunt malivoli, hominis nobilis
    Eum adiutare adsidueque una scribere:
    Quod illi maledictum vemens esse existumant.
    Eam laudem his ducit maxumam, quom illis placet,
    Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent,
    Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio
    Suo quisque tempore usus't sine superbia.[271]

Traditions both of Scipio and Laelius show that the report was believed
in later times; and as his plays lay no claim to original invention, it
is quite possible that he may have been directly assisted by them or by
other men of rank in the task of translating and adapting. In any case
the style in which they are written seems to reflect the simplicity
and urbanity, the friendliness and the freedom from intolerance,
though not the more serious interests or the graver aspirations of
young men who, in their maturer years, had to play the greatest parts
in the Roman State. In other passages of his prologues he vindicates
himself from the reproach of 'contaminatio,' i.e. the combination of
scenes from different plays, and also from that of plagiarising from
Naevius and Plautus[272]. He contrasts the sobriety of his own art with
the sensationalism of his detractor[273]; and in another place[274],
he charges his opponent with having, by his bad style and literal
adherence to his original, turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones--

    Qui bene vortendo et easdem scribendo male
    Ex Graecis bonis Latinas fecit non bonas.

In the prologue to the Andria he professes to imitate the carelessness
of Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, rather than the 'obscura diligentia' of
his detractors.

All these passages show that he was at war with the survivors of the
older generation of playwrights; that he was not a popular poet, in the
sense in which Plautus was popular; that he made no claim to original
invention, or even original treatment of his materials; that he was
however not a mere translator but rather an adapter from the Greek; and
that his aim was to give a true picture of Greek life and manners in
the purest Latin style. He speaks with the enthusiasm not of a creative
genius, but of an imitative artist, inspired by a strong admiration
of his models. And this view of his aim is confirmed by the result
which he attained. He has none of the purely Roman characteristics
of Plautus, in sentiment, allusion, or style[275]; none of his
extravagance, and none of his vigour. The law which Terence always
imposes on himself is the 'ne quid nimis.' He aims at correctness and
consistency, and rejects nearly every expression or allusion which
might remind his hearers that they were in Rome and not in Athens.
His plots are tamer and less varied in their interest than those of
Plautus, but they are worked out more carefully and artistically.
He takes great pains in the opening scenes to make the situation in
which the play begins clear, and he allows the action to proceed to
the dénouement through the medium of the natural play of character and
motive. As a painter of life it is not by striking effects, but by his
truth in detail, and his power of delineating the finer distinctions
in varying specimens of the same type, that he gains a hold over the
reader. There are no strongly-drawn or vividly conceived personages
in his plays, but they all act and speak in the most natural manner:
and the powers of intrigue and mystification attributed to his slaves
are limited by the ordinary resources of human ingenuity. Characters,
circumstances, motives, etc., are all in keeping with a cosmopolitan
type of citizen life, courteous and humane, taking the world easily,
and outwardly decorous in its pleasures, but without any serious
interests, any sense of duty, or any high aspirations.

Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, a 'dimidiatus
Menander,'--a Roman only in his language. The aim of his art was to be
as purely Athenian as it was possible for one writing in Latin to be.
The life of Athens, in the third century B.C., after the loss of her
religious belief, her great political activity, her speculative and
artistic energy,--or, rather, one of the phases of that life, as it was
shaped by Menander for dramatic purposes--supplies the material of all
his plays. It is the embodiment of the lighter side of the philosophy
of Epicurus, without the elevation of the speculative and scientific
curiosity which gave serious interest even to that form of the
philosophic life. There is a charm of friendliness, urbanity, social
enjoyment, superficial kindness of heart, in the picture presented: and
it was a necessary stage in the culture of the best Romans that they
should learn to appreciate this charm, and assimilate its influence in
their intercourse with one another. The Greek comedy of Menander was a
lesson to the Romans in manners, in tolerance, in kindly indulgence to
equals and inferiors, and in the cultivation of pleasant relations with
one another. The often quoted line,--

    Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,

might be taken as its motto. The idea of 'human nature,' in its
weakness and in its sympathy with weakness, may be said to be the
new element contributed to Roman life by the comedy of Terence. The
qualities of 'humanitas, clementia, facilitas,'--general amiability and
good nature,--are the virtues which it exemplifies. The indulgence of
the old to the follies or pleasures of the young is often contrasted
with the stricter view of the obligations of life, entertained by an
earlier generation, and always in favour of the former. The plea of the
passionate modern poet--

    'To step aside is human'--

is often urged, but without any feeling that this divergence needs
an apology. The hollowness of the social conditions on which this
superficial agreeability and humanity rested is revealed by passages
in these plays which prove that the habitual comfort of a moderately
wealthy class was maintained by the practice of infanticide: and a
virtuous wife is represented as begging the forgiveness of her husband
for having given her child away instead of ordering it to be put to
death[276]. In its outward amenity, as well as its inward hollowness,
the social and family life depicted in the comedies of Terence was the
very antithesis of the old Roman austere and formal discipline. How
far this comedy contributed to the subsequent depravation of Roman
character, it is difficult to say. The tone in which pleasure or
vice is treated seems too feeble and sentimental to have powerfully
stimulated the Roman temperament. The writings of Cicero and Horace
show that the receptive Italian intellect was able to extract the
elements of courtesy, tolerance, and social amiability out of such
a delineation without any loss of native manliness and strength of
affection. And thus perhaps, apart from their literary charm, the
permanent gain to the world from the comedies of Terence and the
philosophy which they embody, has been greater than the immediate loss
to the weaker members of the Roman youth who may have been misled by
the view of life presented in them.

The motive of all the pieces is love. There is generally a double
love-story; one, an attachment, which, if not virtuous in the
beginning, has become so afterwards, and which ends in marriage and
the discovery that the lady is the daughter of a citizen, who has
been exposed or carried away in her infancy; the other, an ordinary
intrigue, like those which form the subject of most of the comedies
of Plautus. In his treatment of love, Terence may be said to be the
precursor of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. He has the serious
sense of its pains and pleasures which they display, though he wants
the passionate intensity of the two first of these. The greatest
attraction of his love passages arises from his tenderness of feeling.
In this he is like Tibullus. Although the origin of the sentiment, in
most of his plays, is nothing deeper than desire, inspired by outward
charms and enhanced by compassion, yet we recognise in him, or in
the model which he followed, much more than in Plautus, a belief in
and appreciation of constancy and fidelity. In his treatment of his
'amantes ephebi' he shows sympathy with, rather than the humourous
superiority to their weaknesses which we find in Plautus. But though
there is more grossness in the older poet, yet there is occasionally
more real indelicacy in Terence; as in the subject of the 'Eunuchus'
and in the acceptance by Phaedria, at the end of that play, of the
suggestion of Gnatho, which, in its union of mercenary with sentimental
motives, is almost more repugnant to natural feeling than the
conclusion of the 'Asinaria' and 'Bacchides.'

The characters in Terence, although more consistent and more true to
ordinary life, are more faintly drawn than those of Plautus. None of
them stand out in our memory with the distinctness and individuality
of Euclio, Pseudolus, Ballio, or Tyndarus. The want of definite
personality which they had to the poet himself is implied in the
frequent recurrence of the same names in his different pieces. They
are products of analysis and reflexion, not of bold invention and
creative sympathy. They are embodiments of the good sense which keeps
a conventional society together, or of the tamer impulses by which the
surface of that society is temporarily ruffled. The predominant tone
in their intercourse with one another is one of urbanity. We find none
of the rollicking vituperation and execration in which Plautus revels.
The encounter of wits between slaves and fathers is conducted with the
weapons of polished irony and mutual deference to one another. Davus,
Parmeno, Syrus, Geta, speak with the terse and epigrammatic polish of
gentlemen and men of the world.

While the 'Andria' has more pathetic situations, and the 'Adelphi' is
on the whole more true to human nature, the 'Eunuchus' presents the
greatest number of interesting personages. The Thais of that play is
the most favourable delineation of the Athenian 'Hetaera' in ancient
literature. She has grace and dignity, a consciousness of her charms
combined with a proud humility, and not only kindliness of nature, but
real goodness of heart. The natural dignity of her nature, tempered by
the sense of her position, appears in her rebuke to Chaerea,--

                          Non te dignum, Chaerea,
    Fecisti: nam si ego digna hac contumelia
    Sum maxume, at tu indignus qui faceres tamen;[277]

and her kindness is equally manifest in her ready admission of his
excuse,

    Non adeo inhumano ingenio sum, Chaerea,
    Neque ita inperita, ut quid amor valeat, nesciam.[278]

Gnatho is a new and more subtly conceived type of the parasite, and
in Thraso the 'Miles Gloriosus' does not transcend the limits of
credibility. Parmeno and Phaedria are natural embodiments of the
confidential slave and the weak lover. Their relations to one another
are brought out with more delicate irony and finer psychological
analysis, though with less vigour than those of Pseudolus and
Calidorus, or of Ludus and Pistoclerus in the Pseudolus and Bacchides
of Plautus. The Davus, Geta, and Syrus of the other plays are tamer
and less humourous than the slaves of Plautus; but they play their
part with wit and liveliness, and the rôle which they have to perform
is not felt to be incompatible with the ordinary conditions of life.
Aeschinus, in the Adelphi, shows a higher spirit and more energy of
character than most of the other lovers in Plautus or Terence. The
contrast between the genial, indulgent, selfish man of the world,
and the harder type of character produced by exclusive devotion to
business, is well brought out in the Micio and Demea of the Adelphi,
and in the Chremes and Menedemus of the Heauton Timorumenos. The two
brothers in the 'Phormio,' Demipho and Chremes, are also happily
characterised and distinguished from one another; and Phormio is
himself a type of the parasite, as distinct from Gnatho, as he is
from the Gelasimus or Curculio of Plautus. The character-painting
in Terence is altogether free from the tendency to exaggeration and
caricature which is the besetting fault of some of the greatest
humourists. Yet with all his truth of detail, his careful avoidance
of the extreme forms of villainy, roguery, and inhuman hardness, it
may be doubted whether the life represented by Terence is not on the
whole more purely conventional than that represented by Plautus. His
personages seem to move about in a kind of 'Fools' paradise' without
the knowledge either of good or evil. All the sentimental virtues seem
to flourish spontaneously, even in the hearts of his courtesans: and
the only lesson that seems to be suggested is the duty of overcoming
the restraints imposed by prudence and conscience on the indulgence of
natural inclination.

If we consider the form, substance, and spirit of these six plays, we
find that their merit consists in the art with which the situation is
unfolded and the plot developed, the consistency and moderation with
which a conventional view of life and various types of character are
set before us, and in the large part played in them by the tender and
sympathetic emotions. But their great attraction, both to ancient and
modern readers, has been their charm of style. The diction of Terence,
while it wants the creativeness and exuberance of Plautus, is free from
the mannerisms which accompanied these large endowments of the older
poet. He does not attempt to emulate his 'numeri innumeri,' but limits
himself almost entirely to those metres which suit the natural flow
of placid or more animated conversation, viz. the iambic (senarian or
septenarian) and the trochaic septenarian. The effect of his metre is
to introduce measure, propriety, grace, and point into ordinary speech
without impairing its ease and spontaneousness. The natural vivacity
and urbanity of his style is equally apparent in dialogue, or in rapid
and picturesque narrative of incidents and pathetic situations[279]. He
is full of happy often-quoted sayings, such as

    Hinc illae lacrimae. Amantium irae amoris integratiost.

    Quot homines, tot sententiae.

    Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

    Tacent: satis laudant.

    Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis.

    Cantilenam eandem canis--laterem lavem,--etc. etc.

Many of these--such as 'ne quid nimis,' 'ad restim res redit mihi,'
'auribus teneo lupum,' etc.--are obviously translations from Greek
proverbial sayings; and in all his use of language we may trace the
influence of a close observation and sympathetic enjoyment of Greek
subtlety, reserve, delicate allusiveness, curious felicity in union
with direct simplicity. These qualities of style, reproduced in the
purest Latin idiom, had a great influence on the familiar style of
Horace. Expressions in his Satires and Epistles, and even in his Odes,
show how closely he studied the language of Terence[280]. It is from
a scene in Terence that Horace takes his example of the weakness of
passion[281]; and the mode in which he tells how his father trained
him to correct his own faults by observing other men must have
been suggested by the conversation between Demea and Syrus in the
Adelphi[282]:

    _De._ Denique
    Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium
    Iubeo atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi.
    'Hoc facito.' _Sy._ Recte sane. _De._ 'Hoc fugito.' _Sy._ Callide.
    _De._ 'Hoc laudist.' _Sy._ Istaec res est. _De._ 'Hoc vitio
        datur.'[283]

Again, the remonstrance of Micio to Demea,

                              Si esses homo,
    Sineres nunc facere, dum per aetatem licet,

expresses the philosophy of many of his love poems and his drinking
songs. The Epicurean sentiment and reflexion borrowed from Menander
were congenial to one side of Horace's nature, as the manly
independence and serious spirit of Lucilius were to another: and in
his own style he has incorporated the conversational urbanity of the
one writer no less than the intellectual vigour of the other. But
Horace was much richer and more varied in the subjects of his art, as
he was larger and more penetrating in his knowledge of the world, and
more manly and serious in his view of life, than the comic poet who
died so early in his career. It is as the 'puri sermonis amator' that
Terence deserves to be ranked high among Latin authors. The limitation
of his ambition to the production of a faithful copy of his original
enables us better than any other evidence to appreciate the originality
and creative force of Plautus. The absence of all moral fibre in his
representations of character and his philosophy of life, makes us
feel how necessary the Roman 'gravity' was for the creation of a new
literature as well as for the conquest and governing of the world.

After the death of Terence the only writer of _palliatae_ of any name
was Sextus Turpilius, who died about the end of the second century
B.C. No new element seems to have been contributed by him to the Roman
Stage. After the decline of the Comoedia palliata, the Comoedia togata,
which professed to represent the Roman and Italian life of the middle
classes, first obtained popular favour. The principal writers of this
branch of comedy were T. Quintius Atta and L. Afranius. The latter was
regarded as the Roman Menander:--

    Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro.

The admiration which he expressed for Terence, whom he regarded as
the foremost of all the Roman comic poets, is in keeping with this
criticism. From the testimony of Quintilian[284] we may infer that
the change of scene from Athens to Rome and the provincial towns of
Italy did not improve the morality of the Roman stage. A further
decline both in intellectual interest and in moral tendency appeared
in the resuscitation in a literary form of the Fabulae Atellanae, the
chief writers of which were L. Pomponius and Novius. A still further
degradation was witnessed in the later days of the Republic and under
the Empire in the rise of the 'Mimus,' as a recognised branch of
dramatic literature. If the influence of the comic stage, when its
chief representatives were Plautus and Terence, is to be regarded as
only of a mixed character, it is difficult to associate any idea of
intellectual pleasure with the gross buffooneries of the Atellan farce,
when it had passed from the spontaneous hilarity of primitive times
into the conditions of an artistic performance, and still less with the
'mimi,' which were intended to gratify the lowest propensities of the
spectators. The rapid degeneracy of the mass of the people from the
characteristic virtues of the older Republic is testified as much by
the popularity of such spectacles as by the passionate delight excited
by the gladiatorial combats.

[Footnote 264: 'In argumento Caecilius poscit palmam,' quoted from
Varro.]

[Footnote 265: Ep. ad Attic. vii. 3; Brutus, 74.]

[Footnote 266: Cf. Mommsen, vol. ii. p. 435, English translation.]

[Footnote 267: 'Consulari utroque ac poeta.' Life of Terence, by
Suetonius.]

[Footnote 268: Cf. Prologue to the Hecyra.]

[Footnote 269: Another reading makes the date ten years earlier.]

[Footnote 270: Eunuchus, 1-3:

    'Si quisquamst, qui placere se studeat bonis
    Quam plurimis et minime multos laedere,
    In his poeta hic nomen profitetur suom.'

Hecyra, 46:

    'Nolite sinere per vos artem musicam
    Recidere ad paucos.'

]

[Footnote 271: 'For as to the charge of these ill-natured people, that
men of rank aid him, and constantly write along with him, what they
regard as a great reproach he considers the greatest compliment, while
he enjoys the favour of those who enjoy the favour of all of you and of
the people, whose services in war, in your leisure, in your business,
each one of you has availed himself of at his own time without pride.']

[Footnote 272: Eunuchus, Prologue.]

[Footnote 273: Prologue to Phormio, l. 5 etc.]

[Footnote 274: Eunuchus, 7.]

[Footnote 275: We have one or two Latin puns. Such as the play of words
in _amentium_ and _amantium_, _verba_ and _verbera_; one or two cases
of alliteration and asyndeton, e.g.--

    'Hic est vietus, vetus, veternosus senex,'--

and

    'Profundat, perdat, pereat, etc.;'

but such mannerisms, which abound in Plautus, are extremely rare in the
younger poet.]

[Footnote 276: In the Heauton Timorumenos.]

[Footnote 277: 'This act was not worthy of you, Chaerea: for even if
it is quite fitting that I should receive such an insult, it was not
fitting that it should come from you.']

[Footnote 278: 'I am not so wanting in natural feeling or so unschooled
in its ways as not to know what love is capable of.']

[Footnote 279: E. g. Andria, 115-136; 282-298; Heauton Timorumenos,
273-301.]

[Footnote 280: The original of such expressions as--'Appone lucro;'
'Dulce est desipere in loco;' 'Rimosa quae deponuntur in aure;' 'Qua
parte debacchentur ignes;' 'Cena dubia;' 'Paucorum hominum et mentis
bene sanae;' 'Quam sapere et ringi;' 'Quid non ebrietas designat;'--and
others, are to be found in Terence.]

[Footnote 281: Eunuch. A. i. 1; cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 260, etc.]

[Footnote 282: 414, etc.]

[Footnote 283: 'Then I bid him look into the lives of men as into a
mirror, and to form for himself an example from others.' 'Do this.'
_Sy._ 'Quite right.' _De._ 'Avoid this.' _Sy._ 'Cleverly said.'
_De._ 'This is honourable.' _Sy._ 'That is it.' _De._ 'This is
discreditable.']

[Footnote 284: Quint. x. 1, 100.]




CHAPTER VIII.

EARLY ROMAN SATIRE--C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.


Poetical satire, as a branch of cultivated literature, arose out of
the social and political circumstances, and the moral and literary
conditions of Roman life in the last half of the second century B.C.
The tone by which that form of poetry has been characterised, in
ancient and modern times, is derived from the genius and temper of a
remarkable man, belonging to that era, and from the spirit in which he
regarded the world. C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting
a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in
which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the
occasional mood or interests of the writer. Although the satire of
Lucilius was rude and unfinished, and evidently retained much of the
vague general character belonging to the satura of Ennius, yet he was
undoubtedly the first Roman writer who used his materials with the
aim and in the manner which poetical satire has permanently assumed.
The indigenous satura existing at Rome before the rise of regular
literature had been merged partly in the Latin comedy of Naevius,
Plautus, Caecilius, etc., partly in the metrical miscellanies of Ennius
and Pacuvius, which, though not written for the stage, retained the
name of the old scenic medley. The new satire differed from Latin
comedy in form and style, and in the personal and national aims which
it set before itself. The satire of Lucilius, and even that of Horace,
retained many features in common with the desultory medley which Ennius
had formed out of the older satura. But the latter was the parent of
no permanent form of literary art. The miscellanies of Varro, the most
famous work produced on this model, were composed partly in prose
and partly in verse, and were never ranked by the Romans among their
poetical works. The former, on the other hand, was the parent of the
satire of Horace, of Persius, and of Juvenal, and, through that, of the
poetical satire of modern times. The spirit of censorious criticism, in
which Lucilius treated the politics and morals, the social manners and
the literary taste of his age, has become the essential characteristic
of that form of literature which derived its name from the old Italian
satura.

Of all the forms of Roman poetry, satire was least indebted to
the works of the Greeks. Quintilian claims it altogether for his
countrymen--'satira tota nostra est.' Horace characterises it as
'Graecis intacti carminis.' While the names by which they are known
at once betray the Greek invention of the other great forms of poetic
art, the name of satire alone indicates a Roman origin. It is true that
Lucilius, like every educated man of his time, was acquainted with
the Greek language and literature. It is true also that the critical
spirit in Greece had found vent for itself in the works both of the
early iambic writers, Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgos, and Hipponax,
and of the great authors of the old political comedy of Athens. But
Roman satire sprang up and flourished independently of either of those
kinds of composition. In national spirit and moral purpose it was
unlike the personal lampoons of the Greek satirists. It was perhaps
not less personal, but was more ethical; it professed at least to be
animated not by private enmity but by public spirit. It embraced also
a much greater variety of topics. Horace finds a closer parallel to
the satire of Lucilius in the old Athenian comedy. These two kinds
of literature have this in common, that they are the expression of
public, not of personal feeling. But though animated by a similar
spirit, Roman satire was not imitated from Greek comedy. Each was the
independent result of freedom of speech and criticism in different
ages and countries. Their difference in form arose out of fundamental
differences in the character as well as in the genius of the two
nations. Although Roman speakers and writers exercised a licence of
speech and of personal criticism equal to that which prevailed in the
Athenian democracy, and beyond what the spirit of personal honour
tolerates in modern times, yet the exposure of public men to ridicule
on the stage was utterly repugnant to the instincts of an aristocratic
republic in which one of the great bonds of union was respect for
outward authority. The tendency of the Roman mind to reduce all things
to rule and to express itself in abstract comments on life, rather
than to represent human nature in living forms, also favoured the
assumption by Lucilius of a mode of literature addressing itself to the
understanding of readers, and not to the sympathies of spectators.

The spirit by which satire is animated was native to Italy. The germ
out of which it was developed was the _Fescennina licentia_, or, as it
is called by Dionysius, the 'κέρτομος καὶ σατυρικὴ παιδιά,' peculiar
to the Italian people. But in assuming a regular literary form, this
native raillery was tempered by the serious spirit and vigorous
understanding of Rome, and liberalised by the tastes and ideas derived
from a Greek education. The age in which satire arose,--the age of
the Gracchi,--was one of social discontent, of political excitement,
of intellectual activity, of moral and religious unsettlement: and all
these conditions exercised a powerful influence on its character. As
addressed not to the imagination but to the practical understanding,
it was in a peculiar manner the literary product of a people 'rebus
natus agendis.' It combined the practical philosophy of the 'abnormis
sapiens,' expressing itself in proverbial sayings, anecdotes, and
homely illustrations; the keen perceptions, the criticism, and vivacity
of a circle, educated, well-bred, and versed in affairs; the serious
purpose of a moral reformer; and the knowledge of life, which results
from the mixed study of men and books. Their circumstances, temper,
and pursuits, united these various elements, in different proportions,
first in Lucilius, and after him in Horace. By writing what interested
themselves, in accordance with their own natural bent, they appealed
to the practical and social tastes of their countrymen. While the
higher poetical imagination was a rare and exceptional gift among
Roman authors, and was appreciated only by a limited class of readers,
there was in Roman satire a true popular ring and a close adaptation
to the national character, understanding, and circumstances. As the
most genuine product of actual Roman life, it was, if not so luxuriant,
a more vigorous plant than any other species of Roman poetry. It is
seen growing up in hardy vigour under the free air of the Republic,
attaining to mature perfection amid the rich intellectual life of the
Augustan age, and still fresh and vital in the general intellectual
languor and corruption of the Empire.

The Roman character of satire is attested also by the fact that other
Roman poets and authors, besides those who professed to follow in the
footsteps of Lucilius, have exhibited the satiric spirit. The caustic
sense of Ennius, the generous scorn of Lucretius, the license of
Catullus, attest their affinity, in some elements of character, to the
Roman satirists. There may be remarked also in the best modern works of
poetical satire,--such as the Absalom and Achitophel, the Prologue to
Pope's Satires, the Vanity of Human Wishes,--a conscious or unconscious
echo of that vigorous sense and nervous speech, which accompanied the
great practical energy of the Romans.

Satire was not only national in its intellectual and moral
characteristics, but it played a part in public life at Rome. Even
under the Empire, when free speech and comment on the government were
no longer possible, the Roman satirists claimed to perform an office
similar in spirit to that which the Republic in its best days had
devolved on its most honourable magistracy. But the satire of the
Republic, besides performing this magisterial office, played an active
part in the politics of the day. It combined the freedom of a tribune
with the severity of a censor. It held up to public criticism the
delinquencies of leading politicians, and of the mass of the people in
their elective divisions,--

    Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim.

Nor was it confined to aggressive criticism: it was used also as an
instrument of political partisanship, to paint the virtues of Scipio as
well as the vices of his antagonists. It thus performed something of
the same kind of public office as the political pamphlet of an earlier
time, and the newspaper of the present day.

It endeavoured also, by acting on individual character, to effect
objects which the Roman State strove to accomplish by direct
legislation. The various sumptuary laws of that age, and the enactments
made to repress the study of Greek rhetoric and philosophy, emanated
from the same spirit which led Lucilius to denounce the increase of
luxury and the affectation of Greek manners among his contemporaries.
The strong Roman appetites and the novelty of new studies prevailed
alike over the artificial restraints of legislative enactments, and
over the contemptuous and the earnest teaching of satire. But the
influence of satire could reach further than that of censors or
sumptuary laws. While it could brand notorious offenders it was able
also to unmask hypocritical pretences--

    Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora
    Cederet, introrsum turpis.

It could stimulate to virtue as well as denounce flagrant offences. It
wielded something of the power of the preacher to produce an inward
change in the characters of men. By its close contact with real
experience and its close adherence to the national standard of virtue,
it might educate men for the duties of citizens more effectually than
the teaching of Greek rhetoric or philosophy.

But while satire, from one side, is to be regarded as the directest
expression of Roman public life, it was, at the same time, the
truest exponent of the character, pursuits, and interests of the
individual writer. The old definition of it by a Latin grammarian,
'Carmen maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia compositum,' is quite
inapplicable to those familiar writings of Horace, in which he gives a
pleasant account of his habits and mode of life in town and country,
or that in which he humorously narrates his various adventures on
his journey to Brundisium. The writings of Horace and Lucilius bore
a more varied and miscellaneous character than that of the satire
of the Empire or of modern times. Horace expresses his opinions and
feelings in the form sometimes of a dialogue, sometimes of a familiar
epistle, sometimes of a discourse put into the mouth of another,
sometimes of a moral disquisition. He makes abundant use of fables,
anecdotes, personal portraiture, real and imaginary, autobiography, and
self-analysis. The fragments of Lucilius, and the notices about him in
ancient authors, prove that in these respects Horace followed in his
footsteps. The testimony of the lines--

    Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim, etc.,

implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for
expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the
circumstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature of the
topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal revelations,
his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,--the father of the prose
essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman satire more
completely than even the poetical satire of modern times.

Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in
fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman
Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman
epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest
mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which
ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her
ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those
internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life
was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics
and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as
those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we
form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous
fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality.
From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may
endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva
tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to
realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence
which he exercised over his countrymen.

The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs
in Roman history, the end of one great era,--that of the undisputed
ascendency of the Senate,--the beginning of the century of revolution
which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began
then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and
to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit
of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the
legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature.
It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest
and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its
material, not in the representation which had been fashioned by Greek
dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen
life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman
streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and literary
coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which
the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though
there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually
assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to
doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the
tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of
the first century B.C. This period is so important and interesting
that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the
contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.

The dates of his birth and death, according to Jerome, were 148 B.C.
and 102 B.C. We are told, on the same authority, that he died at Naples
and received the honour of a public funeral. The chief difficulty
in accepting these dates arises from the statement of Velleius that
Lucilius served as an 'eques' under Scipio in the Numantine War[285],
and from the fact, attested by Horace and other authorities, of his
great intimacy with both Scipio and Laelius[286]. Horace also mentions
that he celebrated in his writings the justice and valour of Scipio,--

    Attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem
    Scipiadem ut sapiens Lucilius--;

and the parallel there suggested between the relation of Lucilius
to the great soldier and statesman of his age, and of Horace to
Augustus, would be inappropriate unless the praises there spoken of
had been bestowed on Scipio in his life-time. Fragments from one book
of the Satires appear to be parts of a letter written by Lucilius to
congratulate his friend on the capture of Numantia[287]. One line of
Book xxvi,--

    Percrepa pugnam Popilli, facta Corneli cane,

contrasts the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas in 138 B.C. with the
subsequent successes of Scipio. In another fragment Lucilius charges
Scipio with affectation for pronouncing the word 'pertaesum' as if
it were pertisum[288]. He is also mentioned as one of those whose
criticism Lucilius dreaded[289]. These and other passages must have
been written in the life-time of Scipio--i.e. before 129 B.C. Thus, if
the date assigned for the birth of Lucilius is correct, he must have
served in the Numantine War at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he must
have been admitted into the most intimate familiarity with the greatest
man of the age, and must have composed some books of his Satires, and
thus introduced a new form of literature, before the age of nineteen.
L. Müller in his edition of the Fragments adduces other considerations
for rejecting the dates given by Jerome, such as the allusions to the
career of Lupus (whom he supposes to be the same as the Censor of 147
B.C.) and to the war with Viriathus. He holds also that the words of
Horace--

                         Quo fit ut omnis
    Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
    Vita _senis_--

lose their point, unless _senis_ is to be understood in its usual
sense. He supposes that the mistake of Jerome arose from a similarity
in the names of the Consuls of 148 B.C. and 180 B.C., and would
therefore throw the date of the poet's birth more than thirty years
further back than that commonly received.

Whatever strength there may be in the other objections urged against
accepting the date 148 B.C. as that of the birth of Lucilius, it is
difficult to believe that Lucilius should have taken part in the
Numantine War, and been admitted to apparently equal intimacy with
Scipio before he had attained the age of fifteen. It is still more
difficult to suppose that the earliest book or books of his Satires,
composed before the death of Scipio, should be the work of a boy
under nineteen years of age. But with these admissions it is not
necessary to throw back the date of the poet's birth so far as is done
by Müller. A more probable explanation of the error in the date is
suggested by Mr. Munro in a recent number of the Journal of Philology.
He supposes that Jerome in copying the words of Suetonius referring to
the death and funeral of Lucilius substituted the 'anno aetatis xlvi.
for lxiv. or lxvi., and then adapted the year of birth to the annus
Abrahae which would correspond to this false reading.' Mr. Munro adds,
'Everything would now run smooth. Lucilius when he went with Scipio
to Spain, would be in the prime of manhood, thirty-two or thirty-four
years of age. Soon after that time he would be writing and publishing
his earliest Books, xxvi.-xxix., and then xxx. Some of these at all
events would be published before the death of Scipio, when the poet
would be thirty-seven or thirty-nine[290].' It may be added against the
supposition that Lucilius was born in the year 180 B.C., that, in that
case, we should have expected to have found in his numerous fragments
allusions to events even earlier than the Censorship of P. Cornelius
Lupus or the wars with Viriathus. Moreover the notices of his relation
to Scipio and Laelius, as in the 'discincti ludere' of Horace, and in
the story told by the Scholiast on that passage, of Laelius coming on
them, when the poet was chasing Scipio round the table with a napkin,
seem to indicate the familiar footing of a much younger to older men.

His birth-place was Suessa Aurunca in Campania. Juvenal calls him
'Auruncae magnus alumnus.' He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact
indicated in the passage in which Horace speaks of himself as 'infra
Lucili censum.' The Scholiast on that passage mentions that he was on
the mother's side grand-uncle to Pompey--a relationship confirmed by a
passage in Velleius, who mentions that the mother of Pompey was named
Lucilia.

His satires were written in thirty Books. The remaining fragments
amount to about 1100 lines. Most of these are single lines, preserved
by grammarians as illustrative of the use of words. The amount and
variety of these, if they had no other value, would at least be
suggestive of the industry with which grammatical and philological
research into their own language was carried on by Roman writers.
Some fragments are found in ancient commentaries on the Satires and
Epistles of Horace. The longer passages are quoted by Cicero, Gellius,
Lactantius, and others. The Books from i. to xx. were written in
hexameters; Book xxii., apparently, in elegiacs, a metre which had
hitherto been employed only in short epigrams. Of the intervening Books
between xxii. and xxvi. there remains only one line[291]. Books xxvi.
and xxix., from which a large number of lines have been preserved, were
written in trochaics and iambics. The last Book (xxx.) was written
in hexameters. From the fact that the trochaic and iambic metres
had been chiefly employed by the older writers of saturae, it seems
probable that Lucilius made his first attempts in these metres, that he
afterwards adopted the hexameter, and that in one or two of his latest
books he attempted to write continuously in elegiacs. The allusions in
Book xxvi. to the Spanish wars and to the 'exploits of Cornelius,' and
the statement of his reasons for coming forward as an author, render it
not improbable that this Book was the earliest in order of composition.
It was in this Book that he appeared most conspicuously as the censor
and critic of the older writers, a position not unlikely to have been
assumed, at the very outset of his career, by one who claimed to
initiate a change in Roman literature.

The first impression produced by reading these fragments, as they have
been arranged by Müller or Lachmann, is one of extreme desultoriness
and discursiveness of treatment. The words applied by Horace to
Lucilius,--

    Garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem,

characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition.
Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been
introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether
the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces.
He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion,
verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.--

    Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo,
    Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est
    Pars hominum,
    Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, cum
    Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te
    Si minu' delectat, quod τεχνίον Isocratium est,
    Ληρῶδέςque simul totum ac συμμειρακιῶδες,
    Non operam perdo.[292]

We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity
of purpose, the formal discourse and illustration of a set topic,
which characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the
apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace, in
his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation. Lucilius
adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader.
Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing
with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on
a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the
reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another,
as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes
frequent use of the epistolary form--a form which in prose and verse
became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. He employs
fables, quotations, and parodies, to illustrate his subject. He gives
a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes and incidents at
which he was present, such as a fight between two gladiators, a rustic
feast, and a storm which he encountered in his voyage to Sicily. In
other places he plays the part of a moralist, and discourses to a
friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he takes on himself the
special office of a censor, and assails the vices of the day by direct
denunciation and living examples. In other places he appears as a
literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar and orthography.

In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of
the gods was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to
be preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were
exposed by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account
of the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been
imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line--

    Mantica cantheri costas gravitate premebat[293]--

it appears that some part of the journey was made on horseback, but
other lines[294] show that the latter part was made by water, and that
a severe storm was encountered on the voyage. In Book iv., imitated by
Horace (Sat. ii. 2), and by Persius in his third satire, was included
the discourse of Laelius against gluttony. In this book mention was
made of the sturgeon which gained notoriety for Gallonius[295]. Book v.
contained a letter to a friend of the poet, who had neglected to visit
him when ill. Book ix. was composed of a dissertation on questions of
grammar, orthography, and criticism. Book xi. treated of the wars in
Spain and Transalpine Gaul, and contained criticisms and anecdotes of
various public men. Book xvi. was named 'Collyra,' in honour of the
poet's mistress. In other books the castigation of particular vices
formed a prominent topic, and some of the latest (probably the earliest
in the order of composition), were largely filled with personal
explanations and with criticisms of the older poets. But the desultory,
discursive, self-communing character seems to have been common to all
of them; and it would be contrary to our evidence to speak of any
single book as composed on a definite plan, or as treating of a special
topic.

The fragments however, when read collectively, bring out the main
sources of interest which the Romans found in the writings of Lucilius;
first, the interest of a self-portraiture and close personal relation
established with the reader[296]: second, the interest of a censorious
criticism on politics, morals, and literature[297].

Among the personal indications of the author we note the great freedom
and independence of his life and character. In his mode of expressing
this freedom and independence he reminds us of Horace, who seems to
have imitated him in his view of life as well as in his writings.
Thus, Lucilius declares his indifference to public employment, and
his unwillingness to change his own position for the business of the
Publicani of Asia, just as Horace declares that he would not exchange
his leisure for all the wealth of Arabia[298]. Like Horace, he speaks
of the joy of escaping from the storms of life into a quiet haven
of repose[299], or inculcates contentment with one's own lot[300]
and immunity from envy[301], and the superiority of plain living
to luxury[302]. Like Horace, while holding to his independence of
life, he put a high value on friendship, and strove to fulfil its
duties[303]. Like him, while condemning excess and weakness, he did
not conform to any austerer standard of morals than that of the world
around him. Like Horace, too, in his later years, he seems to have
been something of a valetudinarian[304], and to have had much of the
self-consciousness which accompanies that condition. On the whole
the impression we get of him is that of an independent, self-reliant
character,--of a man living in strong contact with reality, taking all
the rubs of life cheerfully[305],--enjoying society, travelling[306],
the exercise of his art[307],--a warm friend and partisan, and a bold
and uncompromising enemy,--not professing any austerity of life,
but knowing and following the course which gave his own nature most
satisfaction[308], while, at the same time, upholding a high standard
of public duty and personal honour[309].

This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of
the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first of
Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public
into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to
contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and
most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire,
we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them, from
the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting character and
intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero and the Satires
and Epistles of Horace.

His independent social position, and the character of the times in
which he lived, enabled him to perform the office of a political
satirist with more freedom than any other Roman writer. He belonged to
the middle party between the extreme partisans of the aristocracy and
of the democracy, the party of Scipio and Laelius, and that to which
Cicero, in a later age, naturally inclined. He directed his satire
against the corruption, incapacity, and arrogance[310] of the nobles by
whom the wars abroad and affairs at home were mismanaged. His service
under Scipio, and his admiration of his generalship, made him keenly
sensitive to the disgrace incurred by the Roman arms under 'the limping
Hostilius and Manius[311],' and in the war against Viriathus. Among
those assailed by him on political grounds, L. Hostilius Tubulus,
notorious for openly receiving bribes while presiding at a trial for
murder, and C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of Tib. Gracchus and the
suspected murderer of Scipio, were conspicuous. The more reputable
names of Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus and Mucius Scaevola are also
mentioned among the objects of his satire[312]. Personal motives--and
especially his devotion to Scipio[313]--may have stimulated these
animosities; but there were instances enough of incapacity in
war, profligacy and extortion in the government of the provinces,
corruption and favouritism in the administration of justice, venality
and ignorance in the electoral bodies, to justify the bold exposure
by Lucilius of 'the leading men of the State and of the mass of the
people in their tribes.' The personality of his attacks probably made
him many enemies; and thus we hear that he was assailed by name on the
stage, and was unable to obtain redress, while a writer who had taken
a similar liberty with the tragic poet Accius was condemned. But the
honour of a public funeral awarded to him at his death would indicate
that the final verdict of his contemporaries was that in assuming the
censorial function of attaching marks of infamy against the names of
eminent men he was actuated, in the main, by worthy motives, and had
done good service to the State.

The chief social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear
in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to
which the Roman temperament was most prone, rapacity and meanness
in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using
it[314]. These were opposite results of a sudden influx of wealth
among a people trained through many generations to habits of thrift
and self-restraint, and, through this accumulated vital force,
unaccompanied, as it was, with much capacity for refined enjoyment,
animated by a strong craving for the coarser enjoyments of life. The
intensity and concentrativeness of the Roman temperament also tended
to produce those one-sided types of character, which are the favourite
objects of satiric portraiture. The parasites and spendthrifts, the
misers and money-makers of Horace's Satires and Epistles, Maenius and
Avidienus for instance, are among the most strongly marked of his
personal sketches. Lucilius witnessed the same tendencies in his time
and exposed them with greater freedom. The names which are typical of
certain characters in Horace, such as Nomentanus, Pantolabus (probably
a nickname) Maenius and Gallonius, had first been taken by Lucilius
from the streets and dinner-tables of Rome. This indifference to the
claims of personal feeling, in which Lucilius emulates the license of
the old Greek comedy, although sanctioned by the approval of Horace in
a poet of an earlier age, would probably have been forbidden by the
greater urbanity and decorum of the Augustan age.

The excesses of his contemporaries in the way of good living, against
which numerous sumptuary laws, (the Lex Fannia and Lex Licinia for
instance), enacted in that age, vainly contended, were largely
satirised by Lucilius. Such passages as these--

    O Publi, O gurges Galloni, es homo miser, inquit,
    Cenasti in vita numquam bene, quom omnia in ista
    Consumis squilla atque acipensere quum decumano.

    Hoc fit item in cena, dabis ostrea millibu' nummum
    Empta.

    Occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri.

    Vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventres.

    Illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx
    Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo.

    Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas, etc.[315]

show the proportions already assumed by a form of sensuality, the
beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of
the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to
be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius,
Vitellius, and Elagabalus, and many men of less note.

The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid meanness
in hoarding money, and the discontent produced among all classes by
the restless passion to grow rich, which fills so large a place in
the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently in the
fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:--

    Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum,
    Vini mille cadum.--
    Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia cum sint.--
    Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.--
    Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cibum.--
           Aquam te in animo habere intercutem.[316]

The following description of a miser seems to have suggested the
beginning of one of Catullus' lampoons[317]:--

    Cui neque inmentumst nec servos nec comes ullus,
    Bulgam et quidquid habet nummum secum habet ipse,
    Cum bulga cenat, dormit, lavit; omnis in unast
    Spes homini bulga. Bulga haec devincta lacertost.[318]

In other passages he inculcates the lessons of good sense and
moderation in the use of money, or urges, in the person of an objector,
that a man is regarded in proportion to the estimate of his means. In
his enumeration of the various constituents of virtue, one on which he
dwells with emphasis, is the right estimation of the value of money.
In all his thoughts and expressions on this subject it is easy to see
how closely Horace follows on his traces.

The extravagance, airs, and vices of women, are another theme of
his satire. But he deals with these topics rather in the spirit of
raillery adopted by Plautus, than in that of Juvenal. In one fragment
he compares, in terms neither delicate nor complimentary, the
pretensions to beauty of the Roman ladies of his time with those of the
Homeric heroines. In another he contrasts the care which they take in
adorning themselves when expecting the visits of strangers with their
indifference as to their appearance when alone with their husbands,--

    Cum tecumist, quidvis satis est: visuri alieni
    Sint homines, spiras, pallam, redimicula promit.[319]

Another fragment--

    Homines ipsi hanc sibi molestiam ultro atque aerumnam offerunt,
    Ducunt uxores, producunt quibus haec faciant liberos,--

indicates the same repugnance to marriage, which is expressed in a
fragment of contemporary oratory, quoted by A. Gellius: 'If, Quirites,
we could get on at all without wives, we should all keep clear of
that nuisance; but since, in the way of nature, life cannot go on
comfortably with them, nor at all without them, we ought rather
to provide for the continued well-being of the world than for our
temporary comfort.' The dislike to incur the responsibilities of family
life, which appears so conspicuously among the cultivated classes in
the later times of the Republic, was probably, if we are to judge from
the testimony and examples of Lucilius and Horace, as much the result
of the license allowed to men, as of the extravagant habits or jealous
imperiousness of women.

The intellectual, as well as the moral and social peculiarities of
the age were noted by Lucilius. One fragment is directed against the
terrors of superstition, and shows that Lucilius, like all the older
poets, was endowed with that strong secular sense which enabled the
educated Romans, notwithstanding the forms and ceremonies of religion
encompassing every private and public act, to escape, in all their
ordinary relations, from supernatural influences. This passage affords
a fair specimen of the continuous style of the author:--

    Terriculas Lamias, Fauni quas Pompiliique
    Instituere Numae, tremit has, hic omnia ponit;
    Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
    Vivere, et esse homines; et sic isti omnia ficta
    Vera putant, credunt signis cor inesse in ahenis;
    Pergula pictorum, veri nihil, omnia ficta.[320]

His attitude to philosophy, like his attitude to superstitious terrors,
was not unlike that of Horace. We find mention in his fragments of the
'Socratici charti,' of the 'eidola atque atomus Epicuri' of the four
στοιχεῖα of Empedocles, of the 'mutatus Polemon,' spoken
of in Horace (Sat. ii. 3, 253), of Aristippus, and of Carneades; but
his own wisdom was that of the world and not of the schools. In these
lines,--

    Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre,
    Utilior mihi, quam sapiens;

and--

       Nondum etiam, qui haec omnia habebit,
    Formosus, dives, liber, rex solu' feretur,

we find an anticipation of the tones in which Horace satirised the
professors of Stoicism in his own time. The affectation of Greek
manners and tastes is ridiculed in the person of Titus Albutius, in a
passage which Cicero describes as written 'with much grace and pungent
wit[321].'

    Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum,
    Municipem Ponti, Tritanni, Centurionum,
    Praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque,
    Maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis,
    Id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedi,' saluto:
    Chaere, inquam, Tite. Lictores turma omni' cohorsque
    Chaere, Tite. Hinc hostis mi, Albucius, hinc inimicus.[322]

We learn from Cicero's account of the orators antecedent to, and
contemporary with himself, that this denationalising fastidiousness
was a not uncommon result of the new studies. The practice of Lucilius
of mixing Greek words and phrases with his Latin style might, at first
sight, expose him to a similar criticism. But this mannerism of style,
which is condemned by the good sense of Horace, is merely superficial,
and does not impair the vigorous nationality of the sentiment expressed
by the Roman satirist. Like the similar practice in the Letters of
Cicero, it was probably in accordance with the familiar conversational
style of men powerfully attracted by the interest and novelty of the
new learning, but yet strong enough in their national self-esteem
to adhere to Roman standards in all the greater matters of action
and sentiment. Lucilius seems however to recognise a deeper mischief
than that of mere literary affectation in the general insincerity of
character produced by the rhetorical and sophistical arts fostered
by the new studies, and finding their sphere of action in the Roman
law-courts.

The satire of Lucilius, besides its political, moral, and social
function, assumed the part of a literary critic and censor. The
testimony of Horace on this point,--

    Nil comis tragici mutat Lucilius Acci?
    Non ridet versul Enni gravitate minores,
    Cum de se loquitur non ut maiore reprensis?

confirmed by that of Gellius[323], is amply borne out by extant
fragments. These criticisms formed a large part of the twenty-sixth
book, which Müller supposes to have been the earliest of the
compositions of Lucilius. Several lines preserved from that book are
either quotations or parodies from the old tragedies[324]. We observe
in these and other quotations the peculiarities of style, noticed in
the two tragic poets, such as their tendencies to alliteration and the
use of asyndeta, the strained word-formations of Pacuvius, and the
occasional inflation of Accius[325]. We trace the influence of these
criticisms in the sneer of Persius,--

    Est nunc Briseis quem venosus liber Acci,
    Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
    Antiopa, aerummis cor luctificabile fulta.

The antagonism displayed by Lucilius to the more ambitious style of the
tragic and epic poets was perhaps as much due to his own deficiency in
poetical imagination, as to his keen critical discernment, the 'stili
nasus' or 'emunctae nares' attributed to him by Pliny and Horace.

The criticism of Lucilius was not only aggressive, but also directly
didactic. In the ninth book he discussed, at considerable length,
disputed questions of orthography; and a passage is quoted from the
same book, in which a distinction is drawn out between 'poëma' and
'poësis.' Under the first he ranks--

                                      Epigrammation, vel
    Distichum, epistula item quaevis non magna;

under the second, whole poems, such as the Iliad, or the Annals of
Ennius. The only interest attaching to these fragments is that, like
the didactic works of Accius, they testify to the crude critical effort
that accompanied the creative activity of the earlier Roman poets.

As specimens of his continuous style the two following passages may
be given. The first exemplifies the serious moral spirit with which
ancient satire was animated; the second vividly represents and rebukes
one of the most prevalent pursuits of the age--

    Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum,
    Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu', potesse:
    Virtus est hominis, scire id quod quaeque habeat res.
    Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum;
    Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;
    Virtus quaerendae rei finem scire modumque:
    Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse:
    Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori:
    Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
    Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
    Hos magnifacere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
    Commoda praeterea patriae sibi prima putare,
    Deinde parentum, tertia jam postremaque nostra[326].

If there is no great originality of thought nor rhetorical grace of
expression in this passage, it proves that Lucilius judged of questions
of right and wrong from his own point of view. To him, as to Ennius,
common sense and a just estimate of life were large ingredients in
virtue. To be a good hater as well as a staunch friend, and to choose
one's friends and enemies according to their characters, is another
quality of his virtuous man. With him, as with the best Romans of every
age, love of country, family, and friends, were the primary motives to
right action. The next passage, written in language equally plain and
forcible, gives a graphic picture of the growing taste for forensic
oratory--

    Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto,
    Toto itidem pariterque die, populusque patresque
    Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam,
    Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti,
    Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
    Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se
    Insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes.[327]

These passages are probably not unfavourable specimens of the author's
continuous style. At its best that style appears to be sincere,
serious, rapid, and full of vital force, but careless, redundant, and
devoid of all rhetorical point and subtle suggestiveness. Even to these
passages the censure of Horace applies,--

    At dixi fluere hunc lutulentum.

If we regard these passages as on the ordinary level of his style
we cannot hesitate to recognise his immense inferiority to Terence
in elegance and finish[328], and to Plautus in rich and humourous
exuberance of expression. There is scarcely a trace of imaginative
power, or of susceptibility to the grandeur and pathos of human life,
or to the beauty and sublimity of Nature in the thousand lines of his
remains. We find a few vivid touches, as in this half-line--

    Terra abit in nimbos imbresque,

but we fail to recognise not only the 'disjecti membra poetae,' but
even the elements of the rhetorician, or of the ironical humourist--

                                Parcentis viribus atque
    Extenuantis eas consulto.

Thus it is difficult to understand what Cicero means when he speaks of
the 'Romani veteres atque urbani sales' as being 'salsiores' than those
of the true masters of Attic wit, such as were Aristophanes, Plato, and
Menander.

But these passages are simple, direct, and clear, compared with many
of the single lines or longer passages, already quoted in illustration
of the substance of his satire. These leave an impression not only of
a total want of the 'limae labor,' but of an abnormal harshness and
difficulty, beyond what we find in the fragments of Pacuvius, Accius,
or Ennius. The fragments of his trochaics and iambics are much simpler,
'much less depart from the natural order of the words,' than those of
his hexameters: a fact which reminds us of the great advance made by
Horace in adapting the heroic measure to the familiar experience of
life. Lucilius is moreover a great offender against not only the graces
but the decencies of language. Lines are found in his fragments as
coarse as the coarsest in Catullus or Juvenal: nor could he urge the
extenuating plea of having forgotten the respect due to his readers
from the necessity of relieving his wounded feelings or of vindicating
morality.

Yet it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the most glaring faults and
defects in form and style, he was one of the most popular among the
Roman poets. The testimony of Cicero, Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian,
Tacitus, and Gellius, confirm on this point the more ample testimony
of Horace. If, as Mr. Munro thinks, Horace may have expressed, in
deference to the prevailing taste of his time, a less qualified
admiration for him than he really felt, this only shows how strong a
hold his writings had over the reading public in the Augustan age.
But Horace shows by no means the same deference to the admirers of
Plautus and Ennius. To Lucilius he pays also the sincerer tribute of
frequent imitation. He made him his model, in regard both to form
and substance, in his satires; and even in his epistles he still
acknowledges the guidance of his earliest master. In reading both
the Satires and Epistles we are continually coming upon vestiges of
Lucilius, in some turn of expression, some personal or illustrative
allusion. Similar vestiges are found, imbedded in the harsh and jagged
diction of Persius, and though not to the same extent, in the polished
rhetoric of Juvenal. Nor was his literary influence confined to Roman
satirists. Lucretius, Catullus, and even Virgil, have not disdained to
adopt his thoughts or imitate his manner[329].

But if we cannot altogether account for, we may yet partially
understand the admiration which his countrymen felt for Lucilius. In
every great literature, while there are some works which appeal to the
imagination of the whole world, there are others which seem to hit some
particular mood of the nation to which their author belongs, and are
all the more valued from the prominence they give to this idiosyncracy.
Every nation which has had a literature seems to have valued itself
on some peculiar humour or vein of observation and feeling, which it
regards as specially allotted to itself, over and above its common
inheritance of the sense of the ludicrous, which it shares with other
races. Those writers who have this last in unusual measure become the
favourite humourists of the world. But their own countrymen often
prefer those endowed with the narrower domestic type; and of this
type Lucilius seems to have been a true representative. The 'antiqua
et vernacula festivitas,' attributed to him, seems to have been more
combative and aggressive than genial and sympathetic. The 'Italum
acetum' was employed by the Romans as a weapon of controversy with the
view of damaging an adversary and making either himself or the cause he
represented appear ridiculous and contemptible. The dictum of a modern
humourist, that to laugh at a man properly you must first love him,
would have seemed to an ancient Roman a contradiction in terms. When
Horace writes--

                                    Ridiculum acri
    Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res,

he means that men are more likely to be made better by the fear of
contempt than of moral reprobation.

But Lucilius had much more than this power of personal raillery,
exercised with the force supplied and under the restraints imposed
by an energetic social and political life. He is spoken of not only
as 'comis et urbanus,' but also as 'doctus' and 'sapiens.' Even his
fragments indicate that he was a man of large knowledge of 'books and
men.' Horace testifies to the use which he made of the old comic poets
of Athens:--

    Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus.

His fragments show familiarity with Homer, with the works of the
Greek physical and ethical philosophers, with the systems of the
rhetoricians, and some acquaintance with the writings of Plato,
Archilochus, Euripides, and Aesop. His habit of building up his Latin
lines with the help of Greek phrases illustrates the first powerful
influence of the new learning before the Roman mind was able thoroughly
to assimilate it, but when it was in the highest degree stimulated
and fascinated by it. The mind of Lucilius was susceptible to the
novelty of the new thoughts and new impressions, but like that of his
contemporaries was insensible to the grace and symmetry of Greek art.
Terence is the only writer in the ante-Ciceronian period who had the
sense of artistic form. But all this foreign learning was, in the mind
of Lucilius, subsidiary to the freshest observation and most discerning
criticism of his own age. He was a spectator of life more than an
actor in it, but he yet had been present at one of the most important
military events of the time, and he had lived in the closest intimacy
with the greatest soldier and most prudent statesman of his age. His
satire had thus none of the limitation and unreality which attaches to
the work of a student and recluse, such as Persius was. To the writings
of Lucilius more perhaps than to those of any other Roman would the
words of Martial apply--

    Hominem pagina nostra sapit.

It is his strong realistic tendency both in expression and thought
that seems to explain his antagonism to the older poets who treated
of Greek heroes and heroines in language widely removed from that
employed either in the forum or in the social meetings of educated
men. The popularity of Lucilius among the Romans may thus be explained
on much the same grounds as that of Archilochus among the Greeks. He
first introduced the literature of the understanding as distinct from
that either of the graver emotions or of humorous and sentimental
representation. And, while writing with the breadth of view and wealth
of illustration derived from learning, he did not, like the poets
of later times, write for an exclusive circle of critical readers,
but rather, as he himself said, 'for Tarentines, Consentini, and
Sicilians[330].' There was nothing about him of the fastidiousness and
shyness of a too refined culture. Every line almost of his fragments
attests his possession of that quality which, more than any other,
secures a wide, if not always a lasting, popularity, great vitality
and its natural accompaniment, boldness and confidence of spirit.
While he saw clearly, felt keenly, and judged wisely the political
and social action of his time, he reproduced it vividly in his pages.
Whatever other quality his style may want, it is always alive. And
the life with which it is animated is thoroughly healthy. There is a
singular sincerity in the ring of his words, the earnest of a mind,
absolutely free from cant and pretence, not lashing itself into fierce
indignation as a stimulant to rhetorical effect, nor forcing itself
to conform to any impracticable scheme of life, but glowing with a
hearty scorn for baseness, and never shrinking from its exposure in
whatever rank and under whatever disguise he detected it[331], and ever
courageously 'upholding the cause of virtue and of those who were on
the side of virtue'--

    Scilicet uni aequus virtuti atque eius amicis.

It was by the rectitude and manliness of his character, as much as
by his learning, his quick and true discernment, his keen raillery
and vivid portraiture, that he became the favourite of his time and
country, and, alone among Roman writers, succeeded in introducing a new
form of literature into the world.

[Footnote 285: Vell. Paterc. ii. 9. The service of Lucilius in Spain
seems to be confirmed by a line in one of his Satires:--

    'Publiu' Pavu' mihi [      ] quaestor Hibera
    In terra fuit, lucifugus, nebulo, id genu' sane.'

]

[Footnote 286: Hor. Sat. ii. 1. 71-5.]

[Footnote 287: Cf. L. Müller's edition of the Fragments.]

[Footnote 288:

    'Quo facetior videare et scire plus quam caeteri
    Pertisum hominem, non pertaesum dices.'

The comment of Festus shows that these words were addressed by Lucilius
to Scipio.]

[Footnote 289: Cic. de Fin. i. 3.]

[Footnote 290: Journal of Philology, vol. viii. 16.]

[Footnote 291:

    'Iucundasque puer qui lamberat ore placentas.'

One of many lines imitated and almost reproduced by Horace.]

[Footnote 292: 'I will tell you how I am, though you don't ask me,
since you are of the fashion of most men now, and would rather that
the man whom you did not choose to visit, when you ought, had died. If
you don't like this "nolueris" and "debueris," because it is the trick
of Isocrates, and altogether nonsensical and puerile, I don't waste my
time on the matter.' This passage illustrates two characteristics of
Lucilius--his habit of mixing Greek with Latin words, and the attention
he bestowed on technical rules of style.]

[Footnote 293: Imitated by Horace in the lines:--

                                        'Nunc mihi curto
    Ire licet mulo, vel, si libet, usque Tarentum,
    Mantica cui lumbos onere ulceret, atque eques armos.'

]

[Footnote 294:

              'Promontorium remis superamu' Minervae.--
    Hinc media remis Palinurum pervenio nox,--
    Tertius hic mali superat decumanis fluctibus--carchesia summa.'

]

[Footnote 295: Hor. Sat. ii. 2. 46:--

              'Haud ita pridem
    Galloni praeconis erat acipensere mensa
    Infamis.'

]

[Footnote 296:

                            'Quo fit ut omnis
    Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
    Vita senis.'

]

[Footnote 297:

                                 'Secuit Lucilius urbem--
    Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim--
    Non ridet versus Enni gravitate minores--?'

]

[Footnote 298:

    'Mihi quidem non persuadetur publiceis mutem meos.
    Publicanu' vero ut Asiae fiam scriptuarius
    Pro Lucilio, id ego nolo, et uno hoc non muto omnia.'

Cf. Hor. Ep. i. 7. 36;

                                 'Nec
    Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto.'

]

[Footnote 299:

    'Quadque te in tranquillum ex saevis transfers tempestatibus.'

]

[Footnote 300:

    'Nam si quod satis est homini, id satis esse potisset
    Hoc sat erat; nam cum hoc non est, qui credimu' porro
    Divitias ullas animum mi explere potisse.'

]

[Footnote 301:

    'Nulli me invidere: non strabonem fieri saepius
    Deliciis me istorum.'

]

[Footnote 302:

    'O lapathe, ut jactare nec es sati cognitu' qui sis--
    Quod sumptum atque epulas victu praeponis honesto.'

]

[Footnote 303:

    'Munifici comesque amicis nostris videamur viri--
    Sic amici quaerunt animum, rem parasiti ac ditias.'

Among the friends of Lucilius, besides Scipio and Laelius, were Aelius
Stilo, Albinus, and Granius, whom Cicero quotes for his wit.]

[Footnote 304:

           'Querquera consequitur capitisque dolores
    Infesti mihi.--
    Si tam corpu' loco validum ac regione maneret.
    Scriptoris quam vera manet sententia cordi.'

]

[Footnote 305:

    'Verum haec ludus ibi susque omnia deque fuerunt,
    Susque et deque fuere, inquam, omnia ludu' iocusque.'

]

[Footnote 306:

                  'Et saepe quod ante
    Optasti, freta Messanae, Regina videbis
    Moenia.'

]

[Footnote 307:

    'Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit.'

]

[Footnote 308:

    'Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum
    Jam qua tempestate vivo chresin ad me recipio.'

Cf. 'Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.']

[Footnote 309: Cf. Virtus, Albine, etc. Infra, p. 240.]

[Footnote 310:

                          'Peccare impune rati sunt
    Posse et nobilitate procul propellere iniquos.'

]

[Footnote 311:

                              'Hostiliu' contra
    Pestem permitiemque catax quam et Maniu' nobis.'

]

[Footnote 312: Cf. Cic. De Or. 1. 16:--'Sed ut solebat C. Lucilius
saepe dicere, homo tibi (i.e. Scaevolae) subiratus, mihi propter
eam causam minus quam volebat familiaris, sed tamen et doctus et
perurbanus.'

Hor. Sat. ii. 1. 67:--

                     'Aut laeso doluere Metello
    Famosisque Lupo cooperto versibus?'

Pers. i. 115:--

                      'Secuit Lucilius urbem
    Te Lupe, te Muci.'

]

[Footnote 313: 'Fuit autem inter P. Africanum et Q. Metellum sine
acerbitate dissensio.']

[Footnote 314: Cf. 'Diversisque duobus vitiis, avaritia et luxuria
civitatem laborare.'--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]

[Footnote 315: 'O Publius Gallonius, thou whirlpool of excess; thou
art a miserable man, says he; never in thy life hast thou supped well,
since thou spendest all thy substance in that lobster of thine and that
monstrous sturgeon.'

'This too is the case at dinner, you will give oysters, bought at a
thousand sesterces.'

'Sardines and fish-sauce are your death, O Lupus.'

'Long live, ye gluttons, gourmands, belly-gods.'

'One was attracted by sow-teats and a dish of fatted fowls; another by
a gourmandising pike caught between the two bridges.'

'Then he wiped the ample table with a purple cloth.'

The two last passages are reproduced by Horace in the lines:--

    'Unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus, an alto
    Captus hiet, pontesne inter iactatus, an amnis
    Ostia sub Tusci?'--Sat. ii. 2. 31.

And

    'Gausape purpureo mensam pertersit.'--Ib. ii. 8. 11.

]

[Footnote 316:

    Cf. 'Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops,' etc.

]

[Footnote 317:

    'Furei cui neque servus est neque arca,' etc.

]

[Footnote 318: 'Who has neither beast, or slave, or attendant; he
carries about him his purse and all his money; with his purse he
sleeps, dines, bathes--his whole hopes centre in his purse; this purse
is fastened to his arm.']

[Footnote 319: Cp. the speech of Cato (Livy, xxxiv. 4) in support of
the Oppian law:--'An blandiores in publico quam in privato, et alienis
quam vestris estis?']

[Footnote 320: 'These bugbears and goblins from the days of the Fauni
and Numa Pompilius fill him with terror; he believes anything of them.
As children suppose that statues of brass are real and living men, so
they fancy all these delusions to be real: they believe that there is
understanding in brazen images: mere painter's blocks, no reality, all
a delusion.' Cf. Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 208:--

    Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
    Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides?'

]

[Footnote 321: De Fin. i. 3.]

[Footnote 322: 'You preferred, Albucius, to be called a Greek, rather
than a Roman or Sabine, a fellow-countryman of the Centurions, Pontius,
Tritannius, excellent, first-rate men, and our standard-bearers.
Accordingly, I, as praetor of Athens, when you approach me, greet
you, as you wished to be greeted. "Chaere," I say, Titus; my lictors,
escort, staff, address you with "Chaere." Hence you are to me a public
and private enemy.']

[Footnote 323: 'Et Pacuvius, et Pacuvio jam sene Accius, clariorque
tunc in poematis eorum obtrectandis Lucilius fuit.']

[Footnote 324: E.g.

    'Ego enim contemnificus fieri et fastidire Agamemnona.--
    Di monerint meliora, amentiam averruncassint tuam.--
                                 Hic cruciatur fame,
    Frigore, inluvie, inperfundie, inbalnite, incuria.--
    Nunc ignobilitas his mirum, taetrum, ac monstrificabile--
    Dividant, differant, dissipent, distrahant.'

]

[Footnote 325: In the same spirit is the following line:--

    'Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.'

And this from another book of Satires:--

    'Ransuro tragicus qui carmina perdit Oreste.'

Among the phrases of Ennius at which Lucilius carped was one which
Virgil did not disdain to adopt. The passage of the old poet,--

    'Hastis longis campus splendet et horret,'--

parodied by the Satirist in the form 'horret et alget,' was justified
by being reproduced in the Virgilian phrase,

                    'Tum late ferreus hastis
    Horret ager.'

]

[Footnote 326: 'Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give their
true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among which we live.
The virtue of a man is to understand the real meaning of each thing:
to understand what is right, useful, honourable for him; what things
are good, what bad, what is unprofitable, base, dishonourable; to know
the due limit and measure in making money; to give its proper worth
to wealth; to assign what is really due to honour; to be a foe and
enemy of bad men and bad principles; to stand by good men and good
principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their friend
through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our country's weal as
the chief good; next to that, the weal of our parents; third and last,
our own weal.']

[Footnote 327: 'But now from morning till night, on holiday and
work-day, the whole day alike, common people and senators are bustling
about within the Forum, never quitting it--all devoting themselves to
the same practice and trick of wary word-fencing, fighting craftily,
vying with each other in politeness, assuming airs of virtue, plotting
against each other as if all were enemies.']

[Footnote 328: Cp. Mr. Munro's criticism in the Journal of Philology.]

[Footnote 329: Passages of Lucilius apparently imitated by Lucretius:--

    (1) 'Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit.'

    (2) 'Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum
         Jam quae tempestate vivo, chresin ad me recipio.'

    (3) 'Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
         Vivere et esse homines, sic istic omnia ficta
         Vera putant.'

Virgil's 'rex ipse Phanaeus' is said by Servius to be imitated from the
Χῖός τε δυναστής of Lucilius. Other imitations are pointed out in
Macrobius and in Servius. An apparent imitation by Catullus has been
already noticed.]

[Footnote 330: Cic. de Fin. i. 3.]

[Footnote 331:

    'Detrahere et pellem nitidus qua quisque per ora
    Cederet, introrsum turpis.'

]




CHAPTER IX.

REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.


The poetic literature reviewed in the last five chapters is the product
of the second century B.C. The latest writers of any importance
belonging to the earlier period of the poetry of the Republic were
Lucilius and Afranius. Half a century from the death of Lucilius
elapsed before the appearance of the poems of Lucretius and Catullus,
which come next to be considered. But before passing on to this
more familiar ground, a few pages may be devoted to a retrospect of
some general characteristics marking the earlier period, and to a
consideration of the social and intellectual conditions under which
literature first established itself at Rome.

With striking individual varieties of character, the poets whose works
have been considered present something of a common aspect, distinct
from that of the literary men of later times. They were placed in
different circumstances, and lived in a different manner from either
the poets who adorned the last days of the Republic or those who
flourished in the Augustan age. The spirit animating their works was
the result of the forces acting on the national life, and the form
and style in which they were composed were determined by the stage of
culture which the national mind had reached, and the stage of growth
through which the Latin language was passing under the stimulus of that
culture.

Like nearly all the literary men of later times, these poets were of
provincial or foreign birth and origin. They were thus born under
circumstances more favourable to, or at least less likely to repress,
the expansion of individual genius, than the public life and private
discipline of Rome. Their minds were thus more open to the reception of
new influences; and their position as aliens, by cutting them off from
an active public career, served to turn their energies to literature.
Their provincial birth and Greek education did not, however, check
their Roman sympathies, or prevent them from stamping on their writings
the impress of a Roman character.

While, like many of the later poets, they came originally as strangers
to Rome, unlike them, they seem to have in later years, resided
habitually within the city. The taste for country life prevailing
in the days of Cicero and of Horace was not developed to any great
extent in the times of Ennius or Lucilius. The great Scipio, indeed,
retired to spend the last years of his life at Liternum; and Cicero
mentions the boyish delight of Laelius and the younger Africanus in
escaping from the public business and the crowded streets of Rome to
the pleasant sea-shore of Caieta[332]. Accius seems to have possessed a
country farm, and Lucilius showed something of a wandering disposition,
and possessed the means to gratify it. But most of these writers
were men of moderate means; nor had it then become the practice of
the patrons of literature to bestow farms or country-houses on their
friends. By their circumstances, as well as the general taste of their
time, they were thus brought almost exclusively into contact with the
life and business of the city; and their works were consequently more
distinguished by their strong sense and understanding than by the
passionate or contemplative susceptibility which characterises the
great eras of Latin literature.

It is remarkable that nearly all the early poets lived to a great age,
and maintained their intellectual vigour unabated to their latest
years; while of their successors none reached the natural term of human
life, and some among them, like many great modern poets, were cut off
prematurely before their promise was fulfilled. The finer sensibility
and more passionate agitation of the poetic temperament appear, in some
cases, to exhaust prematurely the springs of life; while, in natures
more happily balanced, or formed by more favourable circumstances, the
gifts of genius are accompanied by stronger powers of life, and thus
maintain the freshness of youth unimpaired till the last. The length
of time during which Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and
probably Lucilius, exercised their art suggests the inference, either
that they were men of firmer fibre than their successors, or that they
were braced to a more enduring strength by the action of their age.
As the work of men writing in the fulness of their years, the serious
poetry of the time appealed to the mature sympathies of manhood; and
even the comic poetry of Plautus deals with the follies of youth in a
genial spirit of indulgence, tempered by the sense of their absurdity,
such as might naturally be entertained by one who had outlived them.

But perhaps the most important condition determining the original
scope of Roman poetry was the predominance in that era of public over
personal interests. Like Virgil and Horace, most of the early poets
were men born in comparatively a humble station; yet by their force
of intellect and character they became the familiar friends of the
foremost men in the State. But while the poets of the Augustan age
owed the charm of their existence to the patronage of the great, the
earlier poets depended for their success mainly on popular favour. The
intimacy subsisting between the leaders of action and of literature
during the second century B.C. arose from the mutual attraction of
greatness in different spheres. The chief men in the Republic obtained
their position by their services to the State, and thus the personal
attachment subsisting between them and men of letters was a bond
connecting the latter with the public interest. The early poetry of the
Republic is not the expression of an educated minority keeping aloof
from public life. If it is animated by a strong aristocratic spirit,
the reason is that the aristocratic spirit was predominant in the
public life of Rome during that century.

In this era, more than in any later age, the poetry of Rome, like
that of Greece in its greatest eras, addressed itself to popular and
national, not to individual tastes. The crowds that witnessed and
applauded the representations of tragedy as well as comedy, afford a
sufficient proof that the reproduction of Greek subjects and personages
could be appreciated without the accomplishment of a Greek education.
The popularity of the poem of Ennius is attested by his own language,
as well as by the evidence of later writers. The honour of a public
funeral awarded to Lucilius, implies the general appreciation with
which his contemporaries enjoyed the verve, sense, and moral strength
which secured for his satire the favour of a more refined and critical
age.

This general popularity is an argument in favour of the original spirit
animating this early literature. It implies the power of embodying some
sentiment or idea of national or public interest. Thus Roman tragedy
appears to have been received with favour, chiefly in consequence
of the grave Roman tone of its maxims, and the Roman bearing of its
personages. The epic poetry of the age did not, like the Odyssey,
relate a story of personal adventure, but unfolded the annals of the
State in continuous order, and appealed to the pride which men felt,
as Romans, in their history and destiny. The satire of Lucilius was
not intended merely to afford amusement by ridiculing the follies
of social life, but played a part in public affairs by political
partisanship and antagonism, and maintained the traditional standard of
manners and opinions against the inroads of foreign influences. Latin
comedy, indeed, was a more purely cosmopolitan product. The plays of
Terence especially would affect those that listened to them simply as
men and not as Roman citizens. But that of Plautus abounded in the
humour congenial to the Italian race, and owed much of its popularity
to the strong Roman colouring spread over the Greek outlines of his
representations.

The national character of this poetry is attested also by the spirit
and character which pervades it. Among all the authors who have been
reviewed, Ennius alone possessed in a large measure that peculiar
vein of imaginative feeling which is the most impressive element in
the great poets of a later age. The susceptibility of his mind to the
sentiment that moulded the institutions and inspired the policy of the
Imperial Republic, entitles him to rank as the truest representative
of the genius of his country, notwithstanding his apparent inferiority
to Plautus in creative originality. The glow of moral passion, which
is another great characteristic of Latin literature, as it was of the
best types of the Latin race, reveals itself in the remains of all
the serious writers of the age. The struggle between the old Roman
self-respect and the new modes of temptation, is exemplified in the
antagonistic influence exercised by the tragic, epic, and satiric
poetry on the one hand, and the comedy of Plautus and Terence on the
other. The more general popularity of comedy was a symptom of the
facility with which the severer standard of life yielded to the new
attractions. The graver writers, equally with the writers of comedy,
shared in the sceptical spirit, or the religious indifference, which
was one of the dissolving forces of social and political life during
this age. The strong common sense which characterised all the writers
of the time, could not fail to bring them into collision with the
irrational formalism of the national religion; while the distaste for
speculative philosophy which Ennius and Plautus equally express, and
the strong hold which they all have on the immediate interests of life,
explain the absence of any, except the most superficial, reflections on
the more mysterious influences which in the belief of the great Greek
poets moulded human destiny.

The political condition of Rome in the second century B.C. is reflected
in the changes through which her literature passed. For nearly
two-thirds of that century, Roman history seems to go through a stage
of political quiescence, as compared at least with the vigorous life
and stormy passions of its earlier and later phases. But under the
surface a great change was taking place, both in the government and the
social condition of the people, the effects of which made themselves
sufficiently manifest during the last century of the existence of the
Republic. The outbreak of the long gathering forces of discontent and
disorder is as distinctly marked in Roman history, as the outbreak
of the revolutionary forces in modern Europe. The year 133 B.C., the
date of the first tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, has the same kind of
significance as the year 1789 A.D. Nor is it a mere coincidence that
about the same time a great change takes place in the spirit of Roman
literature. The comedies of Plautus, written in the first years of the
century, while they reflect the political indifference of the mass of
the people, are yet indicative of their general spirit of contentment,
and their hearty enjoyment of life. The epic of Ennius, written a
little later, proclaims the undisputed ascendency of an aristocracy,
still moulded by its best traditions, and claiming to lead a united
people. The remains of Roman tragedy breathe the high spirit of the
governing class, and attest the severer virtue still animating its
best representatives. The comedies of Terence seem addressed to the
taste of a younger generation of greater refinement, but of a laxer
moral fibre than their father's, and of a class becoming separated by
more elaborate culture from ordinary Roman citizens. Expressions in
his prologues[333], however, show that there was as yet no division
between classes arising from political discontent. But in the satire
of Lucilius we read the protest of the better Roman spirit against
the lawless arrogance of the nobles, their incapacity in war, their
corrupt administration of justice, their iniquitous government of the
provinces; against the ostentatious luxury of the rich; the avarice
of the middle classes; the venality of the mob, and the profligacy of
their leaders; and against the insincerity and animosities fostered
among the educated classes by the contests of the forum and the
law-courts.

In passing from the substance and spirit of this early literature to
its form and style, we can see by the rudeness of the more original
ventures which the Roman spirit made, how slowly it was educated by
imitative effort to high literary accomplishment. The only writer
who aimed at perfection of form was Terence, and his success was due
to his close adherence to his originals. But as some compensation
for their artistic defects, these early writers display much greater
productiveness than their literary successors. They were like
the settlers in a new country, who are spared the pains of exact
cultivation owing to the absence of previous occupation of the soil,
and the large extent of ground thus open to their industry. The
contrast between the standard aimed at, and the results attained by the
sincerest literary force in two different eras of Roman literature, is
brought home to the mind by contrasting the rude fragments of the lost
works of Ennius, embodying the results of a long, hearty, active, and
useful life, with the small volume which still preserves the flower of
a few passionate years, as fresh as when the young poet sent it forth:--

    Arido modo pumice expolitum.

The style of the early poets was marked by haste, harshness, and
redundance, occasionally by verbal conceits and similar errors of
taste. That of the writers of comedy, on the other hand, is easy,
natural, and elegant. The Latin language seems thus to have adapted
itself to the needs of ordinary social life more readily than to the
expression of elevated feeling. Though many phrases in the fragments
which have been reviewed are boldly and vigorously conceived, few
passages are written with continuous ease and smoothness, and the
language constantly halts, as if inadequate to the meaning which
labours under it. The style has, in general, the merits of directness
and sincerity, often of freshness and vigour, but wants altogether the
depth and richness of colour, as well as the finish and moderation
which we expect in the literature of a people to whom poetry and art
are naturally congenial, and associated with many old memories and
feelings. Their merits of style, such as the simple force with which
they go directly to the heart of a matter, and the grave earnestness
of their tone, are qualities characteristic rather of oratory than of
poetry. But this colouring of their style is very different from the
artificial rhetoric of the literature of the Empire. The oratorical
style of the early poets was the natural result of a sympathy with
the most practical intellectual instrument of their age. The rhetoric
of the Empire was the expression of an artificial life, in which
literature was cultivated to beguile the tedium of compulsory inaction,
and the highest form of public speaking had sunk from its proud office
as the organ of political freedom into a mere exercise of pedants and
school-boys[334].

The same impulse in this age which gave birth to the forms of serious
poetry, stimulated also the growth of oratory and history. While these
different modes of mental accomplishment all acted and reacted on one
another, oratory appears to have exercised the most influence on the
others. Roman literature is altogether more pervaded by oratorical
feeling than that of any other nation, ancient or modern. From the
natural deficiency of the Romans in the higher dramatic and speculative
genius, the rhetorical element entered largely into their poetry, their
history, and their ethical discussions. Cicero identifies the faculties
of the orator with those of the historian and the philosopher. His
treatise _De Claris Oratoribus_ bears witness to the energy with which
this art was cultivated for more than a century before his own time;
and the remains of Ennius and Lucilius confirm this testimony. It was
from the impassioned and dignified speech of the forum and senate-house
that the Roman language first acquired its capacity of expressing
great emotions. All the serious poetry of the age bears traces of this
influence. Roman tragedy shows its affinity to oratory in its grave
and didactic tone. This affinity is further implied in the political
meaning which the audience attached to the sentiments expressed, and
which the actor enforced by his voice and manner. It is also attested
by the fact that in the time of Cicero, famous actors were employed
in teaching the external graces of public speaking. The theatre was
a school of elocution as much as a place of dramatic entertainment.
Cicero specifies among the qualifications of a speaker, 'Vox
tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum actorum.' Although the epic poetry
of the time mainly appealed to a different class of sympathies, yet the
fragments of speeches in Ennius indicate that kind of rhetorical power
which moves an audience by the weight and authority of the speaker.
Roman satire could wield other weapons of oratory, such as the fierce
invective, the lashing ridicule, the vehement indignation which have
often proved the most powerful instruments of debate in modern as well
as ancient times.

Historical composition also took its rise at Rome at this period.
Although the earliest Roman annalists composed their works in the Greek
language, it was not from the desire of imitating the historic art of
Greece that this art was first cultivated at Rome. The origin of Roman
history may be referred rather to the same impulse which gave birth
to the epic poems of Naevius and Ennius. The early annalists were men
of action and eminent station, who desired to record the important
events in which they themselves had taken part, and to fix them for
ever in the annals of their country. History originated at Rome in the
impulse to keep alive the record of national life, not, as among the
Greeks, in the spell which human story and the wonder of distant lands
exercised over the imagination. Its office was not to teach lessons of
political wisdom, but to commemorate the services of great men, and to
satisfy a Roman's pride in the past, and his trust in the future of
his country. The word _annales_ suggests a different idea of history
from that entertained and exemplified by Herodotus and Thucydides.
The purpose of building up the record of unbroken national life was
present to, though probably not realised by, the earliest annalists who
preserved the line of magistrates, and kept account of the religious
observances in the State: in the time of the expansion of Roman power,
this purpose directed the attention of men of action to the composition
of prose annals, and stimulated the productive genius of Naevius and
Ennius: and when, in the Augustan age, the national destiny seemed to
be fulfilled, the same purpose inspired the great epic of Virgil, and
the 'colossal masterwork of Livy.'

Another form of literature, in which Rome became pre-eminent, first
began in this era,--the writing of familiar letters. It was natural
that a correspondence should be maintained among intimate friends
and members of an active social circle, separated for years from one
another by military service, or employment in the provinces; and the
new taste for literature would induce the writers to give form and
finish to these compositions, so that they might be interesting not
only to the persons addressed, but to all the members of the same
circle. The earliest compositions of this kind of which we read,
are the familiar letters in verse ('Epistolas versiculis facetis ad
familiares missas' Cicero calls them) written to his friends by the
brother of Mummius, during the siege of Corinth[335]. That these had
some literary value may be inferred from the fact that they survived
down to the age of Cicero, and are spoken of in the letters to Atticus,
as having often been quoted to him by a member of the family of Mummii.
One of the earliest satires of Lucilius appears to have been a letter
written to Scipio after the capture of Numantia; and several of his
other satires were written in an epistolary form. How happily the later
Romans employed this form in prose and verse is sufficiently proved by
the letters of Cicero and Pliny, and the metrical Epistles of Horace.

This era also saw the beginning of the critical and grammatical
studies which flourished through every period of Roman literature, and
continued long after the cessation of all productive originality. This
critical effort was a necessary condition of the cultivation of art by
the Romans. The perfection of form attained by the great Roman poets of
a later time was no exercise of a natural gift, but the result of many
previous efforts and failures, and of much reflection on the conditions
which had been, with no apparent effort, fulfilled by their Greek
masters. Neither did their language acquire the symmetry, precision,
and harmony, which make it so effective a vehicle in prose and verse,
except as the result of assiduous labour. The natural tendency of the
spoken language was to rapid decomposition. This was first arrested
by Ennius, who cast the literary language of Rome into forms which
became permanent after his time. Among his poetic successors in this
era Accius and Lucilius made critical and grammatical studies the
subjects of some of their works. Lucilius was a contemporary and friend
of the most famous of the early grammarians, Aelius Stilo, the critic
to whom is attributed the saying that 'if the muses were to speak in
Latin, they would speak in the language of Plautus.' Critical works
in trochaic verse were written by Porcius Licinus, and Volcatius
Sedigitus, who appear to have been the chief authorities from whom
later writers derived their information as to the lives of the early
poets. It is characteristic of the want of spontaneousness in Latin
literature, as compared with the fresh and varied impulses which the
Greek genius obeyed in every stage of its literary development, that
reflection on the principles of composition, efforts to form the
language into a more certain and uniform vehicle, and, comment on
living writers, were carried on concurrently with the creative efforts
of the more original minds.

The existing works of the two great writers of Roman comedy have
an acknowledged value of their own, but even the fragments of this
early literature, originally scattered through the works of many
later authors, and collected together and arranged by the industry of
modern scholars, are found to possess a peculiar interest. They recall
the features of the remarkable men by whom the foundations of Roman
literature were laid, and the Latin language was first shaped into
a powerful and symmetric organ. They present the Roman mind in its
earliest contact with the genius of Greece; and they are almost the
sole contemporary witnesses of national character and public feeling
in the most vigorous and interesting age of the Republic. They throw
also much light on the national sources of inspiration in the later
Roman literature. The early poets are seen to be men living the life
of citizens in a Republic, appealing rather to popular taste than to
the sympathies of a refined and limited society; men of mature years
and understanding, animated by a serious purpose and with a strong
interest in the affairs of their time; rude and negligent but direct
and vigorous in speech,--more remarkable for energy, industry, and
common sense, than for the finer gifts and susceptibility of genius.
Their poetry springing from their sympathy with national and political
life, and from the impulses of the will and the manlier energies,
was less rich, varied, and refined than that which flows out of the
religious spirit of man, out of his passions and affections, or of his
imaginative sense of the life and grandeur of Nature. But in these
respects the early poetry was essentially Roman in spirit, in harmony
with the strength and sagacity, the sobriety and grave dignity of Rome.

The accomplished art of the last age of the Republic and of the
Augustan age owed much of its national and moral nourishment to the
vigorous life of this early literature. The earnest enthusiasm of
Ennius was inherited by Lucretius,--his patriotic tones were repeated
by Virgil. The lofty oratory of the Aeneid sometimes sounds like an
echo of the grave and ardent style of early tragedy. The strong sense
and knowledge of the world, the frank communicativeness and lively
portraiture of Lucilius reappeared in the familiar writings of Horace,
while his fierce vehemence and bold invective were reproduced by the
vigorous satirist of the Empire.

[Footnote 332: De Orat. ii. 6.]

[Footnote 333: Adelphi, 18-21:--

                          'Quom illis placet,
    Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent,
    Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio
    Suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia.'

]

[Footnote 334: Cf. Juv. x. 167:--

    'Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.'

]

[Footnote 335: Referred to by Mommsen.]




          SECOND PERIOD.

     THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.

 *       *       *       *       *

      LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.




CHAPTER X.

TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.


An interval of nearly half a century elapsed between the death of
Lucilius and the appearance of the poem of Lucretius. During this
period no poetical works of any value were produced at Rome. The only
successors of the older tragedians, C. Julius Caesar (Consul B.C. 88)
and C. Titius, never obtained a success on the stage approaching to
that still accorded to the older dramas. No rival appeared to dispute
the popularity enjoyed by Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, as authors
of the Comoedia Palliata; but the literary activity of Afranius and of
T. Quintius Atta, the most eminent among the authors of the Fabulae
togatae, extended into the early years of the first century B.C. It
was during this period also that the Fabula Atellana was raised by L.
Pomponius of Bononia and Novius into the rank of regular literature.
The tendency to depart more and more from the Greek type of comedy, and
to revert to the scenic entertainment native to Italy, is seen in the
attempt of Laberius, in the last years of the Republic, to raise the
Mimus into the sphere of recognised literary art. The Annalistic epic
of Hostius on the Istrian war, and the Annales of Furius, of Antium,
a friend of the elder Catulus, perpetuated the traditional influence
of Ennius, during the interval between Lucilius and Lucretius. The
first attempts to introduce the erotic poetry of Alexandria, in the
form of epigrams and short lyrical poems, also belong to this period.
The writers of this new kind of poetry,--Valerius Ædituus, Q. Latatius
Catulus (the colleague of Marius in his consulship of the year 102
B.C.), and Laevius, the author of Erotopaegnia, have significance
only as indicating the direction which Roman poetry followed in the
succeeding generation. Cicero in his youth cultivated verse-making,
both as a translator of the poem of Aratus, and as the author of an
original poem on his townsman Marius. His hexameters show considerable
advance in rhythmical smoothness and exactness beyond the previous
condition of that metre, as exemplified in the fragments of Ennius and
Lucilius: and his translation of Aratus marks a stage in the history
of Latin poetry as affording a native model, which Lucretius did not
altogether disregard in the structure of his verse and diction[336].
But Cicero is not to be ranked among the poets of Rome. He merely
practised verse-making as part of his general literary training. He
retained the accomplishment till his latest years, and shows his
facility by translating passages from the Greek tragedians in his
philosophical works. That he had no true poetical faculty is shown by
the indifference with which he regarded the works of the two great
poets of his time. This indifference is the more marked from his
generous recognition of the oratorical promise and accomplishment of
the men of a younger generation. The tragedies of Q. Cicero were mere
literary exercises. Though several of the multifarious works of Varro
were written in verse, yet the whole cast of his mind was thoroughly
prosaic. His tastes and abilities were those of an antiquarian scholar,
not of a man of poetic genius and accomplishment.

The period of nearly half a century, from 102 till about 60 B.C., must
thus be regarded as altogether barren in genuine poetical result.
During this long interval there appeared no successor to carry on the
work of developing the poetical side of a national literature, begun by
Plautus, Ennius, and Lucilius. The only metrical compositions of this
time were either inferior reproductions of the old forms or immature
anticipations of the products of a later age. The political disturbance
of the times between the tribunate of Tib. Gracchus and the first
consulship of Crassus and Pompey (B.C. 70) was unfavourable to the
cultivation of that poetry which is expressive of national feeling: and
the Roman genius for art was as yet too immature to produce the poetry
of individual reflexion or personal passion. The state of feeling
throughout Italy, before and immediately subsequent to the Social War,
alienated from Rome the sympathetic genius of the kindred races from
whom her most illustrious authors were drawn in later times. It was in
the years of comparative peace, between the horrors of the first civil
war and the alarm preceding the outbreak of the second, that a new poet
grew apparently unnoticed to maturity, and the silence was at last
broken by a voice at once stronger in native vitality and richer in
acquired culture from the long repression of Italian genius.

But there is one thing significant in the literary character of this
period, otherwise so barren in works of taste and imagination. Those
by whom the art of verse was practised are no longer 'Semi-Graeci' or
humble provincials, but Romans of political or social distinction.
The chief authors in the interval between the first and second era
of Roman poetry are either members of the aristocracy or men of old
family belonging to the equestrian order. And this connexion between
literature and social rank continues till the close of the Republic.
The poets of the Ciceronian age,--Hortensius, Memmius, Lucretius,
Catullus, Calvus, Cinna, &c.--either themselves belonged to the
governing class, or were men of leisure and independent means, living
as equals with the members of that class. This circumstance explains
much of the difference in tone between the literature of that age and
both the earlier and later literature. The separation in taste and
sympathy between the higher classes and the mass of the people which
had begun in the days of Terence, grew wider and wider with the growth
of culture and with the increasing bitterness of political dissensions.
It was only among the rich and educated that poetry could now expect
to find an audience; and the poetry written for them appealed, for the
most part, to the convictions, tastes, pleasures, and animosities which
they shared as members of a class, not, like the best Augustan poetry,
to the higher sympathies which they might share as the depositaries
of great national traditions. But if this poetry was too exclusively
addressed to a class--a class too, though refined by culture, yet
living for the most part the life of fashion and pleasure--it had
the merit of being the sincere expression of men writing to please
themselves and their equals. It was not called upon to make any
sacrifice of individual conviction or public sentiment to satisfy
popular taste or the requirements of an Imperial master.

But though barren in poetry this interval was far from being barren
in other intellectual results. This was the era of the great Roman
orators, the successors of Laelius, Carbo, the Gracchi, &c., and
the immediate predecessors and contemporaries of Cicero. It was
through the care with which public speaking was cultivated that Latin
prose was formed into that clear, exact, dignified, and commanding
instrument, which served through so many centuries as the universal
organ of history, law, philosophy, learning, and religion,--of public
discussion and private correspondence. While Latin poetry is quite as
much Italian as Roman, both in spirit and manner, Latin prose bears
the stamp of the political genius of Rome. It was the deliberate
expression of the mind of men practised in affairs, exercised in the
deliberations of the Senate, the harangues of the public assemblies,
the pleadings of the courts,--of men accustomed to determine and
explain questions of law and to draw up edicts binding on all subjects
of the State,--trained, moreover, to a sense of literary form by the
study of Greek rhetoric, and naturally guided to clearness and dignity
of expression by the orderly understanding, the strong hold of reality,
and the authoritative bearing which were their birthright as Romans.
The effort which obtained its crowning success in the prose style of
Cicero left its mark on other forms of literature. History continued
to be written by members of the great governing families to serve both
as a record of events and a weapon of party warfare. The large and
varied correspondence of Cicero shows how general the accomplishment
of style had become among educated men. And if this result was, in the
main, due to the fervour of mind and temper elicited by the contests of
public life, the systematic teaching of grammarians and rhetoricians
acted as a corrective of the natural exuberance or carelessness of the
rhetorical faculty.

Perfection of style attained in one of the two great branches of
a national literature cannot fail to react on the other. It was
the peculiarity of Latin literature that this perfection or high
accomplishment was reached in prose sooner than in poetry. The
contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar, whose genius impelled them to
awaken into new life the long silent Muses of Italy, were conscious
that the great effort demanded of them was to raise Latin verse to a
similar perfection of form, diction, and musical cadence. What Cicero
did for Latin prose, in revealing the fertility of its resources, in
giving to it more ample volume, and eliciting its capabilities of
sonorous rhythmical movement, Lucretius aspires to do for Latin verse.
Although Catullus in forming his more elaborate style worked carefully
after the manner of his Greek models, yet we may attribute something
of the terseness, the idiomatic verve, the studied simplicity of
expression in his lighter pieces to the literary taste which he shared
with the younger race of orators, who claimed to have substituted Attic
elegance for Asiatic exuberance of ornament.

During all this interval, in which native poetry was neglected, the art
and thought of Greece were penetrating more deeply into Italy. Cicero,
in his defence of Archias, attests the eagerness with which Greek
studies were cultivated during the early years of the century; 'Erat
Italia tunc plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum, studiaque haec
et in Latio vehementius tum colebantur quam nunc iisdem in oppidis,
et hic Romae propter tranquillitatem reipublicae non neglegebantur.'
With the reviving tranquility of the Republic these studies also
revived. Learned Greeks continued to flock to Rome and to attach
themselves to members of the great houses,--the Luculli, the Metelli,
Pompey, &c.; and it became more and more the custom for young men of
birth and wealth to travel or spend some years of study among the
famous cities of Greece and Asia. This new and closer contact of the
Greek with the Roman mind came about, not as the earlier one through
dramatic representations, but, in a great measure, through the medium
of books, which began now to be accumulated at Rome both in public and
private libraries. Probably no other cause produces so great a change
in national character and intellect as the awakening of the taste and
the creating of facilities for reading. By the diffusion of books,
as well as by the instruction of living teachers, the Romans of this
generation came under the influence of a new class of writers, whose
spirit was more in harmony with the modern world than the old epic and
dramatic poets, viz. the exponents of the different philosophic systems
and the learned poets of Alexandria. These new influences helped to
denationalise Roman thought and literature, to make the individual
more conscious of himself, and to stimulate the passions and pleasures
of private life. While the endeavour to regulate life in accordance
with a system of philosophy tended to isolate men from their fellows,
the study of the Alexandrine poets, the cultivation of art for its
own sake, the exclusive admiration of a particular manner of writing
fostered the spirit of literary coteries as distinct from the spirit of
a national literature. But making allowance for all these drawbacks, it
is to the Alexandrine culture that the education of the Roman sense of
literary beauty is primarily due. Along with this culture, indeed, the
taste for other forms of art, which was rapidly developed and largely
fed in the last age of the Republic, powerfully cooperated. Lucretius
specifies among the 'deliciae vitae'

    Carmina, picturas, et daedala signa;[337]

and, in more than one place, he writes, with sympathetic admiration, of
the charm of instrumental music,

            Musaea mele per chordas organici quae
    Mobilibus digitis expergefacta figurant.[338]

The delicate appreciation of the paintings, statues, gems, vases,
etc., either brought to Rome as the spoils of conquest, or seen in
their original home by educated Romans, travelling for pleasure or
employed in the public service, was not without effect in calling forth
the ideal of literary form, realised in some of the master-pieces of
Catullus. We may suppose too that the cultivation of music had some
share in eliciting the lyrical movement in Latin verse from the fact
mentioned by Horace, that the songs of Catullus and Calvus were ever in
the mouths of the fashionable professors of that art in a later age.
If the life of the generation which witnessed the overthrow of the
Republic was one of alarm and vicissitude, of political unsettlement
and moral unrestraint, it was, at the same time, very rich in its
capabilities of sensuous and intellectual enjoyment. The appetite for
pleasure was still too fresh to produce that deadening of energy and of
feeling, which is most fatal to literary creativeness. The passionate
life led by Catullus and his friends may have shortened the days of
some of them, and tended to limit the range and to lower the aims of
their genius, but it did not dull their vivid sense of beauty, chill
their enjoyment of their art, or impair the mastery over its technical
details, for which they strove.

As the bent given to philosophical and literary studies developed
the inner life and personal tastes of the individual, the political
disorganisation of the age tended to stimulate new modes of thought
and life, which had not, in any former generation, been congenial to
the Roman mind. While the work of political destruction was being
carried on along with the most strenuous gratification of their
passions by one set among the leading men at Rome--such as Catiline and
his associates, and, somewhat later, Clodius, Curio, Caelius, Antony,
etc.--among men of more sensitive and refined natures the pleasures
of the contemplative life began to exercise a novel fascination.
The comparative seclusion in which men like Lucullus and Hortensius
lived in their later years may, perhaps, be accounted for by other
reasons than the mere love of ease and pleasure. It was a symptom of
that despair of the Republic which is so often expressed in Cicero's
letters, and of the consequent diversion of thought from practical
affairs to the questions and interests which concern the individual.
In the same way the unsettlement and afterwards the loss of political
life at Athens gave a great impulse both to the various philosophical
sects on the one hand, and to the literature of the new comedy, which
deals exclusively with private life, on the other. In Rome this
alienation from politics naturally allied itself, among members of
the aristocracy, with the acceptance of the Epicurean philosophy. The
slow dissolution of religious belief which had been going on since
the first contact of the Roman mind with that of Greece, awoke in
Rome, as it had done in Greece, a deeper interest in the ultimate
questions of the existence and nature of the gods and of the origin
and destiny of the human soul. We see how the contemplation of these
questions consoled Cicero when no longer able to exercise his energy
and vivid intelligence on public affairs. He discusses them with
candour and seriousness of spirit and with a strong leaning to the
more hopeful side of the controversy, but scarcely from the point of
view which regards their settlement as of supreme importance to human
well-being. But they are raised from much greater depths of feeling and
inward experience by Lucretius, to whom the life of political warfare
and personal ambition was utterly repugnant, and who had dedicated
himself, with all the intensity of his passionate and poetical
temperament, to the discovery and the teaching of the true meaning
of life. The happiest results of his recluse and contemplative life
were the revelation of a new delight open to the human spirit through
sympathy with the spirit of Nature, and the deepening beyond anything
which had yet found expression in literature of the fellow-feeling
which unites man not only to humanity but to all sentient existence.
The taste, so congenial to the Italian, for country life found in him
its first and most powerful poetical interpreter: while the humanity of
sentiment, first instilled through the teaching of comedy, and fostered
by later literary and ethical study, was enforced with a greatness of
heart and imagination which has seldom been equalled in ancient or
modern times.

The dissolution of traditional beliefs and of the old loyalty to the
State produced very different results on the art and life of the
younger poets of that generation. The pursuit of pleasure, and the
cultivation, purely for its own sake, of art which drew its chief
materials from the life of pleasure became the chief end and aim of
their existence. In so far as they turned their thoughts from the
passionate pleasures of their own lives and the contemplation of
passionate incidents and situations in art, it was to give expression
to the personal animosities which they entertained to the leaders of
the revolutionary movement. Nor did this animosity spring so much
from public spirit as from a repugnance of taste towards the coarser
partisans of the popular cause, and from the instinctive sense that the
privileges enjoyed by their own caste were not likely to survive any
great convulsion of the State. The intensity of their personal feelings
of love and hatred, and the limitation of their range of view to the
things which gave the most vivid and immediate pleasure to themselves
and to others like them, were the sources of both their strength and
weakness.

Of the poetry which arose out of these conditions of life and culture,
two representatives only are known to us in their works, Lucretius
and Catullus. From the testimony of their contemporaries we know them
to have been recognised as the greatest of the poets of that age.
Lucretius in his own province held an unquestioned pre-eminence. Yet
that other minds were occupied with the topics which he alone treated
with a masterly hand is proved by the existence of a work, of a
somewhat earlier date, by one Egnatius, bearing the title 'De Rerum
Natura,' and also by Cicero's notice, in connexion with his mention of
Lucretius, of the 'Empedoclea' of Salustius. Varro also is mentioned
by ancient writers, in connexion with Empedocles and Lucretius, as the
author of a metrical work 'De Rerum Natura[339].' More satisfactory
evidence is afforded by the discussions in the 'De Natura Deorum,'
the 'Tusculan Questions,' and the 'De Finibus,' of the interest taken
by educated men in the class of questions which Lucretius professed
to answer. Yet neither the antecedent nor the later attention devoted
to these subjects explains the powerful attraction which they had for
Lucretius. In him, more than in any other Roman, we recognise a fresh
and deep source of poetic thought and feeling appearing in the world.
The culture of his age may have suggested or rendered possible the
channel which his genius followed, but cannot account for the power and
intensity with which it poured itself into that channel. He cannot be
said either to sum up the art and thought contemporary with himself,
or, like Virgil, to complete that of preceding times. The work done
by him, and the influence exercised by him on the poetry of Rome and
on the world, are to be explained only by his original and individual
force.

Catullus, on the other hand, was the most successful among a band of
rival poets with most of whom he lived in intimacy. Among the men
older than himself, Hortensius, the orator, and Memmius were known as
writers of amatory poetry. His name as a lyric poet is most usually
coupled with that of his friend Calvus; and a well-known passage of
Tacitus[340] brings together his lampoons and those of Bibaculus as
being 'referta contumeliis Caesarum.' Among others to whom he was bound
by the ties of friendship and common tastes were C. Helvius Cinna,
author of an Alexandrine epic, called Zmyrna, and Caecilius, author of
a poem on Cybele. Ticidas and Anser, mentioned by Ovid among his own
precursors in amatory poetry, also belong to this generation. Among the
swarms of poetasters--

    Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae,--

a countryman of his own, Tanusius Geminus, the author of a long
Annalistic epic, is held up by Catullus to especial obloquy under the
name of Volusius.

While so much of the literature of that age has perished, we are
fortunate in possessing the works of the greatest masters in prose and
verse. The poems of Lucretius and Catullus enable us, better perhaps
than any other extant Latin works, to appreciate the most opposite
capacities and tendencies of the Roman genius. In their force and
individuality, they are alike valuable as the last poetic voices of
the Republic, and as, perhaps, the most free and sincere voices of
Rome. The first is one of the truest representatives of the national
strength, majesty, seriousness of spirit, massive constructive
energy; the second is the most typical example of the strong vitality
and passionate ardour of the Italian temperament and of its vivid
susceptibility to the varied beauties of Greek art.

[Footnote 336: Mr. Munro, in his Introduction to Part II of his
Commentary on Lucretius, illustrates this relation of the work of the
poet to this youthful production of Cicero.]

[Footnote 337: v. 1451.]

[Footnote 338: ii. 412; cf. also ii. 505-6:--

    Et cycnea mele Phoebeaque daedala chordis
    Carmina consimili ratione oppressa silerent.

These lines point to the union of music and lyrical poetry.]

[Footnote 339: Cp. the passages quoted from Quintilian, Lactantius,
etc. by W. S. Teuffel. Wagner's Translation, p. 239.]

[Footnote 340: Annals, iv. 34.]




CHAPTER XI.

LUCRETIUS.--PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.


It is in keeping with the isolated and independent position which
Lucretius occupies in literature, that so little is known of his life.
The two kinds of information available for literary biography,--that
afforded by the author himself, and that derived from contemporaries,
or from later writers who had access to contemporary testimony,--almost
entirely fail us in his case. The form of poetry adopted by him
prevented his speaking of himself and telling his own history as
Catullus, Horace, Ovid, etc., have done in their lyrical, elegiac,
and familiar writings. His work appears to have been first published
after his death: nor is there any reason to believe that he attracted
the attention of the world in his lifetime. To judge from the silence
of his contemporaries, and from the attitude of mind indicated in his
poem, the words 'moriens natusque fefellit' might almost be written as
his epitaph. Had he been prominent in the social or literary circles
of Rome during the years in which he was engaged on the composition of
his poem, some traces of him must have been found in the correspondence
of Cicero or in the poems of Catullus, which bring the personal life
of those years so close to modern readers. It is thus impossible to
ascertain on what original authority the sole traditional account of
him preserved in the Chronicle of Jerome was based. That account,
like similar notices of other Roman writers, came to Jerome in all
probability from the lost work of Suetonius, 'de viris illustribus.'
But as to the channels through which it passed to Suetonius, we have no
information.

The well-known statement of Jerome is to this effect,--'The poet
Lucretius was born in the year 94 B.C. He became mad from the
administration of a love-philtre, and after composing, in his lucid
intervals, several books which were afterwards corrected by Cicero, he
died by his own hand in his forty-fourth year.' The date of his death
would thus be 50 B.C. But this date is contradicted by the statement
of Donatus in his life of Virgil, that Lucretius died (he says nothing
of his supposed suicide) on the day on which Virgil assumed the 'toga
virilis,' viz. October 15, 55 B.C. And this date derives confirmation
from the fact that the first notice of the poem appears in a letter
of Cicero to his brother, written in the beginning of 54 B.C. As the
condition in which the poem has reached us confirms the statement that
it was left by the author in an unfinished state, it must have been
given to the world by some other hand after the poet's death; and, as
Mr. Munro observes, we should expect to find that it first attracted
notice some three or four months after that event. We must accordingly
conclude that here, as in many other cases, Jerome has been careless
in his dates, and that Lucretius was either born some years before 94
B.C., or that he died before his forty-fourth year. His most recent
Editors, accordingly, assign his birth to the end of the year 99 B.C.
or the beginning of 98 B.C. He would thus be some seven or eight years
younger than Cicero, a year or two younger than Julius Caesar, and from
about twelve to fifteen years older than Catullus and the younger poets
of that generation.

But is this story of the poet's liability to fits of derangement, of
the cause assigned for these, of his suicide, and of the correction of
his poem by Cicero, to be accepted as a meagre and, perhaps, distorted
account of certain facts in his history transmitted through some
trustworthy channels, or is it to be rejected as an idle fiction which
may have assumed shape before the time of Suetonius, and been accepted
by him on no other evidence than that of a vague tradition? Though no
certain answer can be given to this question, yet some reasons may be
assigned for according a hesitating acceptance to the main outlines of
the story, or at least for not rejecting it as a transparent fiction.

It may indeed be urged that if this strange and tragical history had
been known to the Augustan poets, who, in greater or less degree,
acknowledge the spell exercised upon them by the genius of Lucretius,
some sympathetic allusion to it would probably have been found in their
writings, such as that in Ovid to the early death of Catullus and
Calvus. It would seem remarkable that in the only personal reference
which Virgil, who had studied his poem profoundly, seems to make to his
predecessor, he characterises him merely as 'fortunate in his triumph
over supernatural terrors.' But, not to press an argument based on the
silence of those who lived near the poet's time, and who, from their
recognition of his genius might have been expected to be interested
in his fate, the sensational character of the story justifies some
suspicion of its authenticity. The mysterious efficacy attributed to a
love-philtre is more in accordance with vulgar credulity than with the
facts of nature. The supposition that the poem, or any considerable
portion of it, was written in the lucid intervals of derangement seems
hardly consistent with the evidence of the supreme control of reason
through all its processes of thought. The impression both of impiety
and melancholy which the poem was likely to produce on ordinary minds,
especially after the religious reaction of the Augustan age, might
easily have suggested this tale of madness and suicide as a natural
consequence of, or fitting retribution for, such absolute separation
from the common hopes and fears of mankind[341].

Yet indications in the poem itself have been pointed out which might
incline us to accept the story rather as a meagre tradition of
some tragic circumstances in the poet's history, than as the idle
invention of an uncritical age. The unrelieved intensity of thought
and feeling, by which more almost than any other work of literature it
is characterised, seems indicative of an overstrain of power, which
may well have caused the loss or eclipse of what to the poet was the
sustaining light and joy of his life[342]. Under such a calamity
it would have been quite in accordance with the principles of his
philosophy to seek refuge in self-destruction, and to imitate an
example which he notes in the case of another speculative thinker, on
becoming conscious of failing intellectual power[343]. But this general
sense of overstrained tension of thought and feeling is, as was first
pointed out by his English Editor, much intensified by references
in the poem (as at i. 32; iv. 33, etc.), to the horror produced on
the mind by apparitions seen in dreams and waking visions[344]. 'The
emphatic repetition,' says Mr. Munro, 'of these horrid visions seen
in sickness might seem to confirm what is related of the poet being
subject to fits of delirium or disordering sickness of some sort.'
He further shows by quotation from Suetonius' 'Life of Caligula,'
that such mental conditions were attributed to the administration of
a love-philtre. The coincidence in these recorded cases may imply
nothing more than the credulity of Suetonius, or of the authorities
whom he followed: but it is conceivable that Lucretius may have himself
attributed what was either a disorder of his own constitution, or
the result of a prolonged overstrain of mind, to the effects of some
powerful drug taken by him in ignorance[345].

Thus, while the statement of Jerome admits neither of verification nor
refutation, it may be admitted that there are indications in the poem
of a great tension of mind, of an extreme vividness of sensibility,
of an indifference to life, and, in the later books, of some failure
in the power of organising his materials, which incline us rather to
accept the story as a meagre and distorted record of tragical events
in the poet's life, than as a literary myth which took shape out of
the feelings excited by the poem in a later age. Yet this qualified
acquiescence in the tradition does not involve the belief that any
considerable portion of the poem was written 'per intervalla insaniae,'
or that the disorder from which the poet suffered was actually the
effect of a love-philtre.

The statement involved in the words 'quos Cicero emendavit,' has also
been the subject of much criticism. No one can read the poem without
recognising the truth of the conclusion established by Lachmann, and
accepted by the most competent Editors of the poem since his time,
that the work must have been left by the author in an unfinished state
and given to the world by some friend or some person to whom the task
of editing it had been entrusted. But there is some difficulty in
accepting the statement that this editor was Cicero. His silence on
the subject of his editorial labours, when contrasted with the frank
communicativeness of his Epistles in regard to anything which for the
time interested him, and the slight esteem with which he seems to have
regarded the poem and the philosophy which it embodied, justify some
hesitation in accepting the authority of Jerome on this point also. He
only once mentions the poem in a letter to his brother Quintus, and
in passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to
it he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[346].
In the disparaging references to the Latin writers on Greek philosophy
before the appearance of his own Tusculan Questions and Academics, he
makes no exception in favour of Lucretius. The words in his letter
to his brother Quintus are these, 'Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita
sunt, [non] multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum
veneris, virum te putabo, si Salustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non
putabo.' In the MS. the _non_, seemingly required by the antithesis,
is found neither before the _multis_, nor the _multae_: we are thus
left in doubt whether it was the genius or the art of the poem that
Cicero denied. A correction of the passage has been suggested[347],
in accordance with which Cicero's discernment is vindicated, and the
impression that the poem was deficient in art is attributed to Q.
Cicero. Those who hesitate to accept this correction may yet agree
with the view that if the _non_ must be inserted, it is better to
insert it before the _multae_ than the _multis_. Even as the passage
stands, it may be a short summing up of a more detailed criticism of
the younger brother[348], to this effect. 'I agree with you that
there is much genius in the poem of Lucretius, and (though this is
less apparent) much art.' Cicero certainly admits either the genius or
the art of the poem; perhaps both. It is a truer criticism, and more
in accordance with Cicero's expressed opinion of all the Epicurean
writings, to admit the exceptional genius of the poem while denying its
artistic excellence, than to deny the first and admit the last. Thus
if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not markedly deficient in
appreciation. Mr. Munro succeeds in explaining Cicero's silence on the
subject in his other correspondence. It is in his Letters to his oldest
and most intimate correspondent, the Epicurean Atticus, that we should
expect to find notices of his editorial labours. It was a task on which
Atticus might have given most valuable help from his large employment
of educated slaves in the copying of manuscripts. Cicero's silence on
the subject in the Letters to Atticus is fully explained by the fact
that they were both in Rome during the greater part of the time between
the death of Lucretius and the publication of his poem. Again, Cicero's
strong opposition to the Epicurean doctrines was not incompatible
with the closest friendship with many who professed them; and this
opposition was not conspicuously declared till some years after this
time. Lucretius may have regarded him, as being the greatest master
of Latin style who had yet appeared, with an admiration similar to
that expressed by Catullus, though about him too Cicero is absolutely
silent. There is thus no great difficulty in supposing that the work
of even so uncompromising a partisan as Lucretius should have been
placed, either by his own request or by the wish of his friends, in the
hands of one who was not attracted to it either by strong poetical or
philosophical sympathy. The energetic kindliness of Cicero's nature,
and his active interest in literature, would have prompted him not to
decline the service if he were asked to render it. Thus, although on
this point too our judgment may well be suspended, we may think with
pleasure of the good-will and kindly offices of the most humane and
energetic among Roman writers, as exercised in behalf of Lucretius
after his untimely death, just as his name is inseparably associated
with that of Catullus, owing to some service rendered in life, which
called forth the lively expression of the young poet's gratitude.

This is all the direct external evidence available for the personal
history of Lucretius. It is remarkable, when compared with the
information given in his other notices, that the record of Jerome does
not even mention the poet's birth-place. This may be explained on the
supposition either that the authorities followed by Jerome knew very
little about him, or that, if he were born at Rome, there would not be
the same motive for giving prominence to the place of his birth, as in
the case of poets and men of letters who brought honour to the less
famous districts of Italy. While Lucretius applies the word _patria_
to the Roman State ('patriai tempore iniquo'), and the adjective
_patrius_ to the Latin language, these words are used by other Roman
poets,--Ennius and Virgil for instance,--in reference to their own
provincial homes. The Gentile name Lucretius was one eminently Roman,
nor is there ground for believing that, like the equally ancient and
noble name borne by the other great poet of the age, it had become
common in other parts of Italy. The name suggests the inference that
Lucretius was descended from one of the most ancient patrician houses
of Rome, but one, as is pointed out by Mr. Munro, more famous in the
legendary than in the later annals of the Republic. Some members
of the same house are mentioned in the letters of Cicero among the
partisans of Pompey: and possibly the Lucretius Ofella, who was one of
the victims of Sulla's tyranny, may have been connected with the poet.
As the position indicated by the whole tone of the poem is that of a
man living in easy circumstances, and of one, who, though repelled by
it, was yet familiar with the life of pleasure and luxury, he must
have belonged either to a senatorian family, or to one of the richer
equestrian families, the members of which, if not engaged in financial
and commercial affairs, often lived the life of country gentlemen
on their estates and employed their leisure in the cultivation of
literature. The tone of the dedication to Memmius, a member of a noble
plebeian house, and of the occasional addresses to him in the body of
the poem, is not that of a client to a patron, but of an equal to an
equal:--

    Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas
    Suavis amicitiae--.

While Lucretius pays the tribute of admiration to the literary
accomplishment of his friend, and to the active part which he played
in politics, he yet addresses him with the authority of a master. In a
society constituted as that of Rome was in the last age of the Republic
this tone could only be assumed to a member of the governing class by a
social equal. Memmius combined the pursuits of a politician, a man of
letters, and a man of pleasure; and in none of these capacities does he
seem to have been worthy of the affection and admiration of Lucretius.
But as he filled the office of Praetor in the year 58 B.C.[349] it may
be inferred that he and the poet were about the same age, and thus
the original bond between them may probably have been that of early
education and literary sympathies. That Memmius retained a taste for
poetry amid the pursuits and pleasures of his profligate career is
shown by the fact that he was the author of a volume of amatory poems,
and also by his taking with him, in the year 57 B.C., the poets Helvius
Cinna and Catullus, on his staff to Bithynia. The keen discernment
of the younger poet, sharpened by personal animosity, formed a
truer estimate of his chief, than that expressed by the philosophic
enthusiast. But at the time in which the words--

                    Nec Memmi clara propago
    Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti--

were written, even Cicero regarded him as one of the bulwarks of the
senatorian cause against Clodius and his influential supporters. And
neither the scandal of his private or of his public life prevented his
being in later years among the orator's correspondents.

This relation to Memmius is the only additional fact which an
examination of the poem brings into light. Nothing is learned from
it of the poet's parentage, his education, his favourite places of
residence, of his career, of his good or evil fortune. There were
eminent Epicurean teachers at Athens and Rome (Patro, Phaedrus,
Philodemus, etc.) during his youth and manhood, but it is useless to
ask what influence of teachers or personal experience induced him to
become so passionate a devotee of the doctrines of Epicurus. Yet though
no direct reference to his circumstances is found in his writings, we
may yet mark indirect traces of the impression produced upon him by
the age in which his youth and manhood were passed; we seem to catch
some glimpses of his habitual pursuits and tastes, to gain some real
insight into his being, to apprehend the attitude in which he stood
to the great teachers of the past, and to know the man by knowing the
objects in life which most deeply interested him. Nothing, we may well
believe, was further from his wish or intention than to leave behind
him any record of himself. No Roman poet has so entirely sunk himself
and the remembrance of his own fortunes in absorption in his subject.
But his strong personal force and individuality have penetrated deeply
into all his representation, his reasoning, and his exhortation. From
the beginning to the end of the poem we feel that we are listening to a
living voice speaking to us with the direct impressiveness of personal
experience and conviction. No writer ever used words more clearly
or more sincerely: no one shows a greater scorn for the rhetorical
artifices which disguise the lack of meaning or insinuate a false
conclusion by fine-sounding phrases:--

                      Quae belle tangere possunt
    Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore.[350]

The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost
sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius
resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both,
notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of a
direct personal revelation.

The tone of many passages in the poem clearly indicates that Lucretius,
though taking no personal part in the active politics of his age, was
profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on human happiness
and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74--

    Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.--

recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly
presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[351]. Other
passages are an immediate reflexion of the anarchy and alarm of the
times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of the
second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative life with
the strife of political and military ambition, seem to be suggested
by the action of what is sometimes called the first triumvirate. The
lines--

    Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.--

have been noted[352] as a probable allusion to the position actually
taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the
year 58 B.C. Some earlier lines of the same passage--

    Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
    Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
    Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri,--

have a resemblance to words directly applied by Cicero to Caesar[353],
and are certainly more applicable to him than to any other of the
poet's contemporaries. The political reflexions in the poem, as for
instance that at v. 1123, seem, in almost all cases, to be forced from
him by the memory of the first civil war, or the vague dread of that
which was impending. It is not from any effeminate recoil from danger,
but rather from horror of the turbulence, disorder, and crimes against
the sanctities of human life, involved in the strife of ambition, that
Lucretius preaches the lessons of political quietism. And while his
humanity of feeling makes him shrink from the prospect of evil days,
like those which he well remembered, again awaiting his country, his
capacity for pure and simple pleasures makes him equally shrink from
the spectacle of prodigal luxury which Rome then presented in a degree
never before witnessed in the world.

Thus the first general impression of Lucretius which we form from
his poem is that of one who, from a strong distaste to the life
of action and social pleasure, deliberately chose the life of
contemplation,--the 'fallentis semita vitae.' Some illustrations of
his argument--as, for instance, a description of the state of mental
tension produced by witnessing public games and spectacles for many
days in succession[354], of the reflexion of the colours cast on the
stage by the awnings of the theatre[355], of the works of art adorning
the houses of the great[356], etc.--imply that he had not always been
a stranger to the enjoyments of city life, and that they attracted
him by a certain fascination of pomp and novelty. His pictures of the
follies of the 'jeunesse dorée,' (at iv. 1121, etc.), and of sated
luxury (at iii. 1060, etc.), show that he had been a witness of the
conditions of life out of which they were engendered. At iv. 784, in
speaking of the power of the mind to call up images, he specifies
'conventus hominum, pompam, convivia, pugnas.' But such illustrations
are rare when compared with those which speak of a life passed in the
open air, and of intimate familiarity with many aspects of Nature.
The vivid minuteness with which outward things are described, as
well as the occasional use of such words as _vidi_[357], show that
though a few of the sights observed by him may have been drawn from
the physics of Epicurus[358], the great mass of them had either been
originally observed by himself or at least had been verified in his
own experience. He was endowed not only with the poet's susceptibility
to the beauty and movement of the outward world, but also with the
observing faculty and curiosity of a naturalist: and by both impulses
he was more attracted to the solitudes of Nature than to the haunts of
men. Many bright illustrations of his argument tell of hours spent by
the sea shore. Thus he notes minutely the effect of the exhalations
from the salt water in wearing away rocks and walls (i. 336; iv.
220), the invisible influence of the sea-air in producing moisture in
clothes (i. 305; vi. 472), or a salt taste in the mouth (iv. 222), the
varied forms of shells paving the shore (ii. 374), the sudden change
of colour when the winds raise the white crest of the waves (ii. 765),
the appearance of sky and water produced by a black storm-cloud passing
over the sea (vi. 256). Other passages show his familiarity with inland
scenes,--with the violent rush of rivers in flood (i. 280, etc.), or
their stately flow through fresh meadows (ii. 362), or their ceaseless
unperceived action in eating away their banks (v. 256);--or again, with
all the processes of husbandry, the growth of plants and trees, the
ways of flocks and herds in their pastures, and the sounds and sights
of the pathless woods. While he anticipates Virgil in his Italian love
of peaceful landscape, he shows some foretaste of the modern passion
for the mountains,--as (at ii. 331) where he speaks of 'some spot
among the lofty hills,' commanding a distant view of a wide expanse of
plain, and (at iv. 575) where he recalls the memory of wanderings among
mountain solitudes--

    Palantis comites cum montis inter opacos
    Quaerimus et magna dispersos voce ciemus,--

and (at vi. 469) where he notices the more powerful action of the wind
on the movements of the clouds at high altitudes--

    Nam loca declarat sursum ventosa patere
    Res ipsa et sensus, montis cum ascendimus altos.

Even some of the metaphorical phrases in which he figures forth the
pursuit of truth seem to be taken from mountain adventure[359]. The
mention of companionship in some of these wanderings, and in other
scenes in which the charm of Nature is represented as enhancing the
enjoyment of a simple meal--

    Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae,--

enable us to think of him as, although isolated in his thoughts from
other men, yet not separated from them in the daily intercourse of
life by any unsocial austerity. Such separation would have been quite
opposed both to the teaching and the example of his master. Some
remembrance of active adventure is suggested by illustrations of his
philosophy drawn from the experience of a sea-voyage (iv. 387, etc.,
432), of riding through a rapid stream (iv. 420), of watching the
action of dogs tracking their game through woods and over mountains
(i. 404), or renewing the memories of the chase in their dreams (v.
991, etc.). The lines (at ii. 40, etc., and 323, etc.) show that his
imagination had been moved by witnessing the evolutions of armies, not
indeed in actual warfare, but in the pomp and pageantry of martial
spectacles,--'belli simulacra cientes.' These and many other indirect
indications afford some glimpses of his habitual manner of life and of
the pursuits that gave him most lively pleasure: but they do not give
us any special knowledge of the particular districts of Italy in which
he lived; or of the scenes in foreign lands which he may have visited.
The poem tells us nothing immediately of the trials or passions of
his life, though of both he seems to bear the scars. But as passages
in which he reveals the deep secrets of human passion and suffering
prove him to have been a man of strong, ardent, and vividly susceptible
temperament, so the numerous illustrations drawn from the repertory of
his personal observation tell of an eye trained to take delight in the
outward face of Nature as well as of a mind unwearied in its search
into her hidden laws. One great charm of his work is that it breathes
of the open air more than of the library. If, in dealing with the
problems of human life, his strain--

    'Is fraught too deep with pain,'

yet to him too might be applied the lines written of one who, though
not comparable to him in intellectual and imaginative power, yet, in
his spiritual isolation from the world, seems almost like his modern
counterpart--

    'And thou hast pleasures too to share
    With those who come to thee,
    Balms floating on thy mountain air
    And healing sights to see.'[360]

But we may trust with even more confidence to the indications of his
inner than of his outward life. The spirit and purpose which impelled
Lucretius to expound his philosophy can be understood without any
collateral knowledge of his history. The dominant impulse of his being
is the ardent desire to emancipate human life from the fears and
passions by which it is marred and degraded. He has more of the zeal of
a religious reformer than any other ancient thinker, except one who in
all his ways of life was most unlike him, the Athenian Socrates. The
speculative enthusiasm which bears him along through his argument is
altogether subsidiary to the furtherance of his practical purpose. Even
the poetical power to which the work owes its immortality was valued
chiefly as a pleasing means of instilling the unpalatable medicine of
his philosophy[361] into the minds and hearts of unwilling hearers. It
is the constant presence of this practical purpose, and the profound
sense which he has of the actual misery and degradation of human life,
and of the peace and dignity which are attainable by man, that impart
to his words the peculiar tone of impassioned earnestness to which
there is no parallel in ancient literature.

Among his personal characteristics none is more prominent than his
consciousness both of the greatness of the work on which he was
engaged, and of his own power to cope with it. The passage in which
his high self-confidence is most powerfully proclaimed (i. 920, etc.),
has been imitated both by Virgil and Milton. The sense of novelty,
adventure, and high aspiration expressed in the lines--

    Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
    Trita solo--

moved Virgil less powerfully in speaking of his humbler theme--

    Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
    Raptat amor;

and inspired the English poet in his great invocation:--

                                  I thence
    Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
    That with no middle flight intends to soar
    Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
    Things unattempted yet in prose and rhyme.

The sense of difficulty and the joy of overcoming it meet us with
a keen bracing effect in many passages of the poem. He speaks
disdainfully of those enquirers who fall into error by shrinking from
the more adventurous paths that lead to truth--

    Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai.

Without disowning the passion for fame,--'laudis spes magna,'--so
powerful an incentive to the Roman temperament, he is more inspired
or supported in his arduous task by 'the sweet love of the Muses.'
The delight in the exercise of his art and the joyful energy sustained
through the long processes of gathering and arranging his materials
appear in such passages as iii. 419-20:--

    Conquisita diu dulcique reperta labore
    Digna tua pergam disponere carmina cura:

and again at ii. 730--

    Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore
    Percipe.

The thoroughness and devotion of a student tell their own tale in such
expressions as the 'studio disposta fideli,' and the 'noctes vigilare
serenas' in the dedication to Memmius, and in the more enthusiastic
acknowledgment of the source from which he drew his philosophy at iii.
29, etc.--

                   Tuisque ex, inclute, chartis,
    Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
    Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.

The absorbing interest with which he carried on the work of enquiry and
of composition appears in illustrations of his argument drawn from his
own pursuits; as where (ii. 979) in arguing that, if the atoms have the
properties of sense, those of which man is compounded must have the
intellectual attributes of man, he says,--

    Multaque de rerum mixtura dicere callent
    Et sibi proporro quae sint primordia quaerunt;[362]

and, again (at iv. 969), in explaining how men in their dreams seem
to carry on the pursuits to which they are most devoted, how lawyers
seem to plead their causes, generals to fight their battles over again,
sailors to battle with the elements, he adds these lines:--

    Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum
    Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis.[363]

His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence
of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his
task.

The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,--through
the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it
leads him,--is something different from the delight of a poet in his
art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of
a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are
combined with the passion of his whole moral and intellectual being,
aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes--'maiestas
cognita rerum'--and concentrated on the greatest of practical ends, the
emancipation and elevation of human life. The life of contemplation
which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and realised he
carried out with Roman energy and fortitude. It was with him no life
of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied and braced by
original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous literary effort
employed in giving clearness to obscure materials, and in eliciting
poetical charm from a language to which the musical cadences of verse
had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was the life of one
who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly than any poet
who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture forget

    'The human heart by which we live.'

His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his
master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school
which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument
is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism, as
well as against popular ignorance and superstition. His polemical
attitude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,'
'dede manus,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion
of topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised
with the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such
frequently recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum
esse videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[364]. Of other
early philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks
in terms of admiration and reverence: but Heraclitus, whose physical
explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in
terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers
as against himself, as--

    Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis
    Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt.

The traditional opposition between Democritus and Heraclitus lived
after them. Adherence to the doctrine of 'atoms and the void,' and
to that of 'the pure fiery element,' became the symbol of a radical
divergence in the whole view of human life.

While there is frequent allusion to the Stoics in the poem, there is
no direct mention either of them or of their chief teachers, Zeno,
Chrysippus, or Cleanthes. Neither do the greater names of Socrates,
Plato, or Aristotle appear in it, though one or two passages clearly
imply some familiarity with the writings of Plato[365]. But among the
moral teachers of antiquity he acknowledges Epicurus only. The whole
enthusiasm of his temperament breaks out in admiration of him. He alone
is the true interpreter of Nature and conqueror of superstition (i.
75); the reformer 'who has made pure the human heart' (vi. 24); the
'guide out of the storms and darkness of life into calm and light'
(iii. 1; v. 11, 12); the 'sun who at his rising extinguished all the
lesser stars' (iii. 1044). He is to be ranked even as a God on account
of his great services to man, in teaching him the mastery over his
fears and passions:--

    Deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi.[366]

He speaks of his master throughout not only with the affection of
a disciple, but with an emotion akin to religious ecstasy[367].
His admiration for him springs from a deeper source of spiritual
sentiment than that of Ennius for Scipio, or of Virgil for Augustus.
Though Epicurus inspired much affection in his lifetime, and though
other great writers after Lucretius,--such as Seneca, Juvenal, and
Lucian,--vindicate his name from the dishonour which the perversion of
his doctrines brought upon it, yet even the most favourable criticism
of his life and teaching must find it difficult to sympathise with the
idolatry of Lucretius. Yet his error, if it be one, springs from a
generous source. He attributes his own imaginative interest in Nature
to a philosopher who examined the phenomena of the outward world
merely to find a basis for the destruction of all religious belief.
He saturates with his own deep human feeling a moral system which
professes to secure human happiness by emptying life of its most sacred
associations, most passionate longings, and profoundest affections.

There was a truer affinity of nature between Lucretius and another
philosopher whom he names with the warmest feelings of love and
veneration--Empedocles of Agrigentum--the most famous of the early
physiological poets of Greece. He flourished during the fifth century
B.C., and was the author of a didactic poem on Nature, of which some
fragments still remain, sufficient to indicate the nature of the work
and the character of the man. These fragments prove that Lucretius
had carefully studied the older poem, and adopted it as his model in
using a poetical form and diction to expound his philosophical system.
He declares, indeed, his opposition to the doctrine of Empedocles,
which traced the origin of all things to four original elements; but
he adopted into his own system many both of his expressions and of his
philosophical ideas. The line in which the Roman poet enunciates his
first principle,--

    Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,

was obviously taken from the lines of the old poem περὶ φύσεως--

    ἐκ τοῦ γὰρ μὴ ἐόντος ἀμήχανόν ἐστι γενέσθαι
    τό τ᾽ ἐὸν ἐξόλλυσθαι ἀνήνυστον καὶ ἄπρηκτον.

Speaking of Sicily as a rich and wonderful land, Lucretius pays his
tribute of love and admiration to his illustrious predecessor in these
lines,--

    Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se
    Nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur.
    Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius
    Vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta,
    Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus.[368]

There is a close agreement between the two poetical philosophers in
their imaginative mode of conceiving Nature. They both represented the
principle of beauty and life in the universe under the symbol of the
Goddess of Love--'Κύπρι βασίλεια;' 'alma Venus, genetrix.'
They both explain the unceasing process of decay and renovation in
the world by an image drawn from the most impressive spectacle of
human life--a mighty battle, waged through all time between opposing
forces. The burden and the mystery of life seem to weigh heavily on
both, and to mould their very language to a deep, monotonous solemnity
of tone. But along with this affinity of temperament there is also a
marked difference in their modes of thought and feeling. The view of
Nature in the philosophy of Empedocles appears to be just emerging out
of the anthropomorphic fancies of an earlier time: the first rays of
knowledge are seen trying to pierce through the clouds of the dawn of
enquiry: the dreams and sorrows of religious mysticism accompany the
awakened energies of the reason. His mournful tone is the voice of the
intellectual spirit lamenting its former home, and baffled in its eager
desire to comprehend 'the whole.' Lucretius, on the other hand, saw the
outward world as it looks in the light of day, neither glorified by the
mystic colours of religion, nor concealed by the shadows of mythology.
He was moved neither by the passionate longing of the soul, nor by the
'divine despair' of the intellect: but he felt profoundly the sorrows
of the heart, and was weighed down by the ever-present consciousness of
the misery and wretchedness in the world. The complaint of the first is
one which has been uttered from time to time by some solitary thinker
in modern as in ancient days:--

    παῦρον δὲ ζωῆς ἀβίου μέρος ἀθρήσαντες
    ὡκύμοροι, καπνοῖο δίκην ἀρθέντες ἀπέπταν
    αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες, ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος,
    παντοσ᾽ ἐλαυνόμενοι· τὸ δ᾽οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν
    αὔτως. οὔτ᾽ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ᾽ ἄνδρασιν οὔτ᾽ ἐπάκουστα
    οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά.[369]

The other gives a real and expressive utterance to that 'thought of
inexhaustible melancholy,' which has weighed on every human heart:--

                            Miscetur funere vagor
    Quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras:
    Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
    Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
    Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.[370]

Besides Epicurus and Empedocles Lucretius mentions Democritus and
Anaxagoras, and speaks even of those whom he confutes as 'making many
happy discoveries by divine inspiration,' and as 'uttering their
responses from the shrine of their own hearts with more holiness
and truth than the Pythia from the tripod and laurel of Apollo.'
The reverence which other men felt in presence of the ceremonies of
religion he feels in presence of the majesty of Nature; and to the
interpreters of her meaning he ascribes the holiness claimed by the
ministers of religion. Thus, to a doctrine of Democritus he applies the
words 'sancta viri sententia.' The divinest faculty in man is that by
which truth is discovered. The highest office of poetry is to clothe
the discoveries of thought with the charm of graceful expression and
musical verse[371].

Of other Greek authors, Homer and Euripides are those of whom we find
most traces in the poem. To the first he awards a high preeminence
above all other poets,--

    Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum,
    Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus
    Sceptra potitus eadem aliis sopitu' quietest[372].

The passages in which Lucretius imitates him show how clearly
he recognised his exact vision of outward things, and his true
appreciation of the moral strength and dignity of man. The frequent
imitations of Euripides[373] show that while he felt the spell of his
pathos, he was also attracted by the poetic mould into which the tragic
poet has cast the physical speculations of Anaxagoras. Allusion is made
in tones of indifference or disparagement to other poets of Greece, as
having, in common with the painters of former times, given shape and
substance to the superstitious fancies of mankind. It is characteristic
of his powerful and independent genius, that, unlike the younger poets
of his generation, he adheres to the older writers of the great days of
Greece, and acknowledges no debt to the Alexandrine School. Although
amply furnished with the knowledge necessary for the performance of
his task, he is a poet of original genius much more than of learning
and culture: and he is thus more drawn to those who acted on him by a
kindred power, than to those who might have served him as models of
poetic form or repertories of poetic illustration. The strength of
his understanding attracted him to some of the great prose-writers
of Greece, by whom that quality is most conspicuously displayed;
notably to Thucydides, whom he has closely followed in his account
of the 'Plague at Athens,' and, as has been shown by Mr. Munro, to
Hippocrates. The kind of attraction which the last of these has for him
confirms the criticism of Goethe, that Lucretius shows the observing
faculty of a physician, as well as of a poet.

The diction and rhythm of the poem, as well as the more direct tribute
of personal acknowledgment[374], prove that he was an admiring
student of his own countryman Ennius, to whom in some qualities of
his temperament and genius he bore a certain resemblance. Many lines,
phrases, and archaic words in Lucretius, such as--

    Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret,--

    Lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Ancu' reliquit,--

    inde super terras fluit agmine dulci,--

 multa munita virum vi; caerula caeli Templa; Acherusia templa; luminis
 oras; famul infimus; induperator; Graius homo, etc.--

have a clear ring of the older poet. The few allusions to Roman history
in the poem, as, for instance, the line--

    Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,--

the specification at iii. 833 of the second Punic War as a momentous
crisis in human affairs,--the description at v. 1226 of a great naval
disaster, such as happened in the first Punic War,--the introduction
there of elephants into the picture of the pomp and circumstance
of war,--suggest the inference that, just as events and personages
of the earlier history of England live in the imaginations of many
English readers from their representation in the historical plays of
Shakspeare, so the past history of his country lived for Lucretius
in the representation of Ennius. But of the national pride by which
the older poet was animated, the work of Lucretius bears only scanty
traces. The feeling which moved him to identify the puissant energy
pervading the universe with 'the mother of the Aeneadae,' and the
motive of his prayer for peace addressed to that Power,--

    Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo,--

seem indeed to spring from sources of patriotic affection, perhaps
all the deeper because not too loudly proclaimed. But in the body of
the poem his illustrations are taken as frequently from Greek as from
Roman story, from the strangeness of foreign lands as from the beauty
of Italian scenes. The Georgics of Virgil, in the whole conception of
Nature as a living power, and in many special features, owe much to
the imaginative thought of Lucretius; but nothing can be more unlike
the spirit of the older poet than the episodes in which Virgil pours
forth all his Roman feeling and his love of Italy. The height from
which Lucretius contemplates all human history, as 'a procession of
the nations handing on the torch of life from one to another,' is wide
apart from that from which Virgil beholds all the nations of the world
doing homage to the majesty of Rome. The poem of Lucretius breathes
the spirit of a man, apparently indifferent to the ordinary sources of
pleasure and of pride among his countrymen. Living in an era, the most
momentous in its action on the future history of the world, he was only
repelled by its turbulent activity. The contemplation of the infinite
and eternal mass and order of Nature made the issues of that age and
the imperial greatness of his country appear to him as transient as
the events of the old Trojan and Theban wars. To him, as to the modern
poet, whose imagination most nearly resembles his, the thought of more
enduring things had

                        'Power to make
    Our noisy years seem moments in the being
    Of the eternal silence.'

But while by his silence on the subject of national glory and his
ardent speculative enthusiasm Lucretius seems to be more of a Greek
than of a Roman, yet no Roman writer possessed in larger measure the
moral temper of the great Republic. He is a truer type of the strong
character and commanding genius of his country than even Virgil or
Horace. He has the Roman conquering energy, the Roman reverence for the
majesty of law, the Roman gift for introducing order into a confused
world, the Roman power of impressing his authority on the minds of men.
In his fortitude, his superiority to human weakness, his seriousness
of spirit, his dignity of bearing, he seems to embody the great Roman
qualities 'constantia' and 'gravitas.' If in the force and sincerity of
his own nature he reminds us of the earliest Roman writer of genius, in
these last qualities, the acquired and inherited virtues of his race,
he reminds us of the last representative writer, whose tone is worthy
of the 'Senatus populusque Romanus.' But Lucretius is much more than
a type of the strong Roman qualities. He combines a poetic freshness
of feeling, a love of simple living, an independence of the world,
with a tenderness and breadth of sympathy, and a power of sounding
into the depths of human sorrow, such as only a very few among the
ancients--Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,--and not many among the poets or
thinkers of the modern world have displayed. In no quality does he rise
further above the standard of his age than in his absolute sincerity
and his unswerving devotion to truth[375]. He combines in himself some
of the rarest elements in the Greek and the Roman temperament,--the
Greek ardour of speculation, the Roman's firm hold of reality. A poet
of the age of Julius Cæsar, he is animated by the spirit of an early
Greek enquirer. He unites the speculative passion of the dawn of
ancient science with the minute observation of its meridian; and he
applies the imaginative conceptions formed in the first application of
abstract thought to the universe to interpret the living beauty of the
world.

[Footnote 341: Mr. Wallace in his very interesting account of
'Epicureanism,' just published, writes, in reference to the way in
which Epicurus himself was regarded in a later age, 'And the maladies
of Epicurus are treated as an anticipatory judgment of Heaven upon him
for his alleged impieties.'--Epicureanism, p. 46.]

[Footnote 342: This consideration is urged by De Quincey in one of his
essays.]

[Footnote 343: iii. 1039, etc.]

[Footnote 344: iv. 33-38:--

    'Atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes
    Terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras
    Contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum,
    Quae nos horrifice languentis saepe sopore
    Excierunt, ne forte animas Acherunte reamur
    Effugere aut umbras inter vivos volitare.'

]

[Footnote 345: An article, in a recent number of the Fortnightly
Review, on 'Hallucination of the Senses,' suggests a possible
explanation of the mental condition of Lucretius, during the
composition of some part of his work. The writer speaks of the power of
calling these hallucinations up as being quite consistent with perfect
sanity of mind, but as sometimes inducing madness. He goes on, 'Or,
if the person does not go out of his mind, he may be so distressed by
the persistence of the apparition which he has created, as to fall
into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide.' Fortnightly
Review, Sept. 1878.]

[Footnote 346: E.g. Tusc. Disp, i. 21, especially the sentence--'Quae
quidem cogitans soleo saepe admirari non nullorum insolentiam
philosophorum qui naturae cognitionem admirantur, eiusque inventori et
principi gratias exultantes agunt eumque venerantur ut deum.']

[Footnote 347: 'Multae tamen artis esse cum inveneris.' Munro's
Lucretius, Third Edition, p. 315.]

[Footnote 348: The theory of Lachmann and others that Q. Cicero was the
editor may possibly be true. He dabbled in poetry himself, and he was
more nearly of the same age as Lucretius, and thus perhaps more likely
to have been a friend of his. The fact that Cicero's remark is in
answer to one of his might suggest the opinion that the poem had been
read by him before it became known to the older brother, and perhaps
been sent by him to Cicero. This would explain Cicero's indifference
on the subject. He makes a casual reply on a matter more interesting
to his correspondent than to himself. But if Q. Cicero was the editor,
Jerome must here also have copied his authorities carelessly. In the
time of Jerome the familiar name of Cicero must have been understood
as applying to the great orator and philosophic writer, not to his
comparatively obscure brother. The only certain inference which can be
drawn from this mention of the poem is that it had been read, shortly
after its appearance, in the beginning of the year 54 B.C., by both
brothers. Yet the consideration of the whole case does not lead to
the rejection of the distinct statement that Cicero was the editor as
incredible, or even as highly improbable. If it was he, he must have
performed his task very perfunctorily.]

[Footnote 349: At that time he would be about forty-one years of
age--the same age as Lucretius, if, as is most probable, he was born in
99 B.C.]

[Footnote 350: i. 643-4; cf. οὔτε ὡς λογογράφοι ξυνέθεσαν ἐπὶ τὸ
προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον.--Thuc. i. 21.]

[Footnote 351: The lines (v. 999)--

    'At non multa virum sub signis milia ducta
    Una dies dabat exitio,' etc.--

might well be a reminiscence of the great massacre at the Colline gate.]

[Footnote 352: Cp. Munro, Note II, p. 413. Third Edition.]

[Footnote 353: 'Si jam violentior aliqua in re C. Caesar fuisset,
si eum magnitudo contentionis, studium gloriae, praestans animus,
excellens nobilitas aliquo impulisset.' In. Vatinium 6.]

[Footnote 354: iv. 973, etc.]

[Footnote 355: iv. 75, etc.]

[Footnote 356: ii. 24, etc.]

[Footnote 357: In places where he is not drawing from his own
observation, he uses such expressions as _memorant_; e.g. iii. 642.]

[Footnote 358: E.g. iv. 353, etc.]

[Footnote 359: e.g.

    'Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai'

and

    'Avia Pieridum peragro loca.'

]

[Footnote 360: Obermann, by M. Arnold.]

[Footnote 361: i. 935-50.]

[Footnote 362: 'And can discourse much on the combination of things;
and enquire moreover, what are their own first elements.']

[Footnote 363: 'While I seem ever to be plying this task earnestly, to
be enquiring into Nature, and explaining my discoveries in writings in
my native tongue.' This is one of those passages which seem to indicate
an unhealthy overstrain which may have been the precursor of the final
disturbance of 'his power to shape.']

[Footnote 364: Cp. Munro's notes on the passages where these
expressions occur.]

[Footnote 365: E.g. ii. 77, etc. Augescunt aliae gentes etc., suggested
by a passage in the Laws:--γεννῶντας τε καὶ ἐκτρέφοντας παῖδας, καθάπερ
λάμπαδα τὸν βίον παραδίδοντας ἄλλοις ἐξ ἄλλων--and the lines which
recur several times, etc. 'Nam veluti pueri trepidant,' which Mr.
Munro aptly compares with the words in the Phaedo (77), ἴσως ἔνι τις
καὶ ἐν ἡμῖν παῖς, ὅστις τὰ τοιαῦτα φοβεῖται.]

[Footnote 366: v. 8.]

[Footnote 367: Cf.

    'His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
    Percipit adque horror.'

]

[Footnote 368: 'But nought greater than this man does it seem to have
possessed, nor aught more holy, more wonderful, or more dear. Yea,
too, strains of divine genius proclaim aloud and make known his great
discoveries, so that he seems scarcely to be of mortal race.'--i.
729-33.]

[Footnote 369: 'When they have gazed for a few years of a life that
is indeed no life speedily fulfilling their doom, they vanish away
like a smoke, convinced of that only which each hath met in his own
experience, as they were buffeted about to and fro. Vainly doth each
boast to have discovered the whole. The eye cannot behold it, nor the
ear hear it, nor the mind of man comprehend it.']

[Footnote 370: 'With death there is ever blending the wail of infants
newly born into the light. And no night hath ever followed day, no
morning dawned on night, but hath heard the mingled sounds of feeble
infant wailings and of lamentations that follow the dead and the black
funeral train.'--ii. 576-80.]

[Footnote 371: i. 943-50.]

[Footnote 372: iii. 1036-38.]

[Footnote 373: Cf. notes ii. of Mr. Munro's edition.]

[Footnote 374: i. 117, etc.]

[Footnote 375: Mr. Froude, in his 'Julius Cæsar,' says, 'The age was
saturated with cant.' Perhaps, to that condition of his age we, in
part, owe one of the sincerest protests against cant, and unreality of
every kind, ever written. Both speculatively and practically Cicero
appears at a great disadvantage when compared with Lucretius in these
respects.]




CHAPTER XII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.


The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique
in literature, is the fact that it is a long sustained argument in
verse. The prosaic title of the poem, 'De rerum natura,'--a translation
of the Greek περὶ φύσεως,--indicates that the method of exposition
was adopted, not primarily with the view of affecting the imagination,
but with that of communicating truth in a reasoned system. In the
lines, in which the poet most confidently asserts his genius, he
professes to fulfil the three distinct offices of a philosophical
teacher, a moral reformer, and a poet,--

    Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis
    Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
    Deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
    Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore.[376]

We have, accordingly, to examine the poem in three different aspects:--

I. as the exposition of a system of speculative philosophy.

II. as an attempt to emancipate and reform human life.

III. as a work of poetical art and genius.

But these three aspects, though they may be considered separately,
are not really independent of one another. The speculative ideas on
which the system of philosophy is ultimately based impart confidence
and elevation to the moral teaching, and new meaning and imaginative
grandeur to the interpretation of Nature and of human life, on
which the permanent value of the poem depends. Thus, although the
philosophical argument, which forms as it were the skeleton of the
work, is in many places barren and uninteresting, yet it is necessary
to master it before we can form a true estimate of the personality
of the poet, of the main passion and labour of his life, of the full
meaning of his thought, and the full compass of his poetic genius.
Moreover, the study of the argument is interesting on its own account.
In no other work are the strength and the weakness of ancient physical
philosophy so apparent. If the poem of Lucretius adds nothing to the
knowledge of scientific facts, it throws a powerful light on one phase
of the ancient mind. It is a witness of the eager imagination and of
the searching thought of that early time, which endeavoured, by the
force of individual thinkers and the intuitions of genius, to solve
a problem which is perhaps beyond the reach of the human faculties,
and to explain, at a single glance, secrets of Nature which have only
slowly been revealed to the patient labours and combined investigations
of many generations of enquirers.


I.--EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENT.

I. The philosophical system expounded in the poem is the atomic theory
of Democritus[377], in the form in which it was accepted by Epicurus,
and made the basis of his moral and religious doctrines. Lucretius
lays no claim to original discovery as a philosopher: he professes
only to explain, in his native language, 'Graiorum obscura reperta.'
His originality consists, not in any expansion or modification of
the Epicurean doctrine, but in the new life which he has imparted to
its exposition, and in the poetical power with which he has applied
it to reveal the secret of the life of Nature and of man's true
position in the world. After enunciating the first principles of the
atomic philosophy, he discusses in the last four books of the poem
some special applications of that doctrine, which formed part of
the physical system of Epicurus. But the extent to which he carries
these discussions is limited by the practical purpose which he has in
view. The impelling motive of all his labour is the impulse to purify
human life, and, especially, to emancipate it from the terrors of
superstition. The source of these terrors is traced to the general
ignorance of certain facts in Nature,--ignorance, namely, of the
constitution and condition of our souls and bodies, of the means by
which the world came into existence and is still maintained, and
lastly, of the causes of many natural phenomena, which are attributed
to the direct agency of the gods. With the view of establishing
knowledge in the room of ignorance on these questions, it is necessary,
in the first place, to give a full account of the original principles
of being: and to this enquiry the two first books of the poem are
devoted. Had his purpose been merely speculative, the subject of the
fifth book,--viz. the origin of the world, of life, and of human
society,--would naturally have been treated immediately after the
exposition of these first principles. But the order of treatment is
determined by the immediate object of attacking the chief stronghold
of superstition: and, accordingly, the third and fourth books contain
an examination of the nature of the soul, a proof of its non-existence
after death, and an explanation of the origin of the belief in a future
state. In the fifth and sixth books an attempt is made to show that
the creation and preservation of the world, the origin and progress of
human society, and the phenomena of thunder, tempests, volcanoes, and
the like, are the results of natural laws, without Divine intervention.
Although he sometimes carries his argument into greater detail than
is necessary for his purpose, and addresses himself to the reform of
other evils to which the human heart is liable, yet his whole treatment
of his subject is determined by the thought of the irreconcilable
opposition between the truths of Nature and the falsehood of the
ancient religions. The key-note to the argument is contained in the
lines, which recur as a kind of prelude to the successive stages on
which it enters, in the first, second, third, and sixth books:--

    Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
    Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
    Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque.[378]

The action of the poem might be described as the gradual defeat of
the ancient dominion of superstition by the new knowledge of Nature.
This meaning seems to be symbolised in its magnificent introduction,
where the genial, all-pervading Power--the source of order, beauty, and
delight in the world and in the heart of man,--and the grim phantom of
superstition--

    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,--

the cause of ignorance, degradation, and misery,--are vividly
personified and presented in close contrast with one another. The
thought, thus symbolised, pervades the poem. The processes of Nature
are explained not chiefly for the purpose of satisfying the love of
knowledge (although this end is incidentally attained), but as the
means of establishing light in the room of darkness, peace in the room
of terror, faith in the laws and the facts of the universe in the room
of a base dependence on capricious and tyrannical Powers.

What then was this philosophy which supplied to Lucretius an answer
to the perplexities of existence? The object contemplated by all the
early systems of ontology was the discovery of the original substance
or substances out of which all existing things were created, and
which alone remained permanent amid the changing aspects of the
visible world. Various systems, of a semi-physical, semi-metaphysical
character, were founded on the answers given by the earliest enquirers
to this question. In the first book of the poem several of these
theories are discussed. Lucretius following Epicurus, adopts the answer
given by Democritus to this question, that the original substances
were the 'atoms and the void'--ἄτομα καὶ κενόν. After the invocation
and the address to Memmius, and the representation of the universal
tyranny exercised by superstition until its power was overcome by
Epicurus, and after a summary of the various topics to be treated in
order to banish this influence from the world, he lays down this
principle as the starting-point of his argument,--that no existing
thing is formed out of nothing by divine agency--

    Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam.

The apprehension of this principle--a principle common to all the
ontological systems of antiquity--is the first step in the enquiry, as
to what are the original substances out of which all creation comes
into being and is maintained. The proof of this principle is the
manifest order and causation recognisable in the world. If things could
arise out of nothing, all existence would be confused and capricious.
The regularity of Nature subsists--

               Materies quia rebus reddita certast
    Gignundis e qua constat quid possit oriri.

The complement of this first principle is the proposition that no thing
is annihilated, but all existences are resolved into their ultimate
elements. As the first is a necessary inference from the existence of
universal order, the second is proved by the perpetuity of creation and
the observed transformation of things into one another.

The original substances out of which all things are produced, and
into which they are ultimately resolved, are found to be certain
primordial particles of matter or atoms, which are called by various
names--'materies,' 'genitalia corpora,' 'semina rerum,' 'corpora
prima.' Some of these names, it may be observed, are expressive not
only of their primordial character, but also of a germinative or
productive power. The objection that these atoms are invisible to our
senses is met by showing that there are many invisible forces acting in
Nature, the effects of which prove that they must be bodies,--

    Corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res.

In addition to bodily substance there must also be vacuum or space;
otherwise there could be no motion in the universe, and without motion
nothing could come into being. The existence of matter is proved by our
senses, of vacuum by the necessity of there being space for matter to
move in, and also by the varying density of bodies. But besides body
and vacuum there is no other absolute substance--

    Ergo praeter inane et corpora tertia per se
    Nulla potest rerum in numero natura relinqui.[379]

All material bodies are either elemental substances or compounded
out of a union of these substances. The elemental substances are
indestructible and indivisible. This is proved by the necessities of
thought (i. 498, etc.) and of Nature. If there were no ultimate limit
to the divisibility of these substances, if there were not something
immutable underlying all phenomena, there could be no law or order in
the world. The existence and ultimate constitution of the atoms is thus
enunciated--

    Sunt igitur solida primordia simplicitate
    Quae minimis stipata cohaerent partibus arte.
    Non ex illarum conventu conciliata,
    Sed magis aeterna pollentia simplicitate,
    Unde neque avelli quicquam neque deminui jam
    Concedit natura reservans semina rebus.[380]

At this stage in the argument, from line 635 to 920 of Book I, the
first principles of other philosophies, and particularly of the
systems of Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, are discussed at
considerable length, and shown to be inconsistent with the actual
appearance of things and with the principles already established.

A new departure is made at line 920, and it is shown that the atoms
must be infinite in number, and space infinite in extent;--the contrary
supposition being both inconceivable and incompatible with the origin,
preservation, and renewal of all existing things. It is shown also that
the existing order of things has not come into being through design,
but by infinite experiments through infinite time. The doctrine that
all things tend to a centre is denied, and the book concludes with
the imaginative presentation of the thought that, if matter were not
infinite, the whole visible fabric of the world would perish in a
moment, 'and leave not a rack behind.'

The second book opens with an impressive passage, in which the security
and charm of the contemplative life is contrasted with the restless
anxieties and alarms of the life of worldly ambition. The argument
then proceeds to explain the process by which these atoms, primordial,
indestructible, and infinite in number, combine together in infinite
space, so as to carry on the birth, growth, and decay of all things.
While the sum of things always remains the same, there is constant
change in all phenomena. This is explicable only on the supposition
of the original elements being in eternal motion. The atoms are borne
through space, either by their own weight, or by contact with one
another, with a rapidity of motion far beyond that of any visible
bodies. All motion is naturally in a downward direction and in parallel
lines, but to account for the contact of the atoms with one another it
must be supposed that in their movements they make a slight declension
from the straight line at uncertain intervals. This liability to
declension is the sole thing to break the chain of necessity--'quod
fati foedera rumpat.' It is through this liability in the primal
elements that volition in living beings becomes possible.

As the sum of matter in the universe is constant, so the motions of the
atoms always have been and always will be the same[381]. All things
are in ceaseless motion, although they may present to our senses the
appearance of perfect rest.

It is necessary further to assume the existence of other properties
in the atoms, in order to account for the variety in Nature, and the
individuality of existing things. They have original differences in
form; some are smooth, others round, others rough, others hooked, &c.
These varieties in form are not infinite, but limited in number.

As the diversity in the world depends on the diversity of these forms,
the order and regularity of Nature imply that there is a limit to these
varieties. But while they are limited, the individuals of each kind are
infinite, otherwise the primordial atoms would be finite in number, and
there could be no cohesion among atoms of the same kind, in the vast
and chaotic sea of matter--

    Unde ubi qua vi et quo pacto congressa coibunt
    Materiae tanto in pelago turbaque aliena?[382]

The motions which tend to the support and the destruction of created
things are balanced by one another: there must be an equilibrium in
these opposing forces--

    Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum
    Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum.[383]

Death and birth succeed one another, as now the vitalising, now the
destructive forces gain the upper hand.

Further, the great diversity in Nature is to be accounted for by
diversity, not only in the original forms of matter, but also in their
modes of combination. No existing thing is composed solely of one kind
of atoms. The greater the variety of forces and powers which anything
displays, the greater is the variety of the elements out of which it
was originally composed. Of all visible objects the earth contains the
greatest number of elements; therefore it has justly obtained the name
of the universal mother. There is however a limit to the modes in which
atoms can combine with one another: each nature appropriates elements
suitable to its being and rejects those unsuitable. All existing things
differ from one another in consequence of the difference in their
elements and in their modes of combination. The different modes of
combination give rise to many of the secondary properties of matter,
which are not in the original elements. Colour, for instance, is not
one of the original properties of atoms: for all colour is changeable,
and all change implies the death of what previously existed. Moreover,
colour depends on light, and the atoms never come forth into the light.
The atoms are also devoid of heat and cold, of sound, taste, and smell.
All these properties must be kept distinct from the original elements--

    Immortalia si volumus subiungere rebus
    Fundamenta quibus nitatur summa salutis;
    Ne tibi res redeant ad nilum funditus omnes.[384]

Further, although they are the origin of all living and sentient
things, the atoms themselves are devoid of sense and life, otherwise
they would be liable to death. All living things are merely results
of the constant changes in the primordial elements contained in the
heavens and the earth. Hence the heaven is addressed as the father, the
earth as the mother, of all things that have life.

Finally, from the infinity of space and matter, it may be inferred
that there are infinite other worlds and systems beside our own. Many
elements were added from the infinite universe to our system before it
reached maturity: and many indications prove that the period of growth
is now past, and that we are living in the old age of the world.

The sum of the first two books, in which the principles of the atomic
philosophy are methodically unfolded and illustrated, is, accordingly,
to this effect:--that all things have their origin in, and are
sustained by, the various combinations and motions of solid elemental
atoms, infinite in number, various in form, but not infinite in the
variety of their forms,--not perceptible to our senses, and themselves
devoid of sense, of colour, and of all the secondary properties
of matter. These atoms, by virtue of their ultimate conditions,
are capable only of certain combinations with one another. These
combinations have been brought about by perpetual motion, through
infinite space and through all eternity. As the order of things now
existing has come into being, so it must one day perish. Only the atoms
will permanently remain, moving unceasingly through space, and forming
new combinations with one another.

These first principles being established, the way is made clear for the
true explanation, according to natural laws, of those phenomena which
give rise to and maintain the terrors of superstition.

The third book treats of the nature of the mind, and of the vital
principle. As it is by the fear of death, and of eternal torment after
death, that human life is most disturbed, it is necessary to explain
the nature of the soul, and to show that it perishes in death along
with the body.

The mind and the vital principle are parts of the man as much as the
hands, feet, or any other members. The mind is the directing principle,
seated in the centre of the breast. The vital principle is diffused
over the whole body, obedient to and in close sympathy with the
mind. The power which the mind has in moving the body proves its own
corporeal nature, as motion cannot take place without touch, nor touch
without the presence of a bodily substance.

The soul (including both the mind and vital principle) is, therefore,
material, formed of the finest or minutest atoms, as is proved by the
extreme rapidity of its movement, and by the fact that there is nothing
lost in appearance or weight immediately after death:--

    Quod simul atque hominem leti secura quies est
    Indepta atque animi natura animaeque recessit,
    Nil ibi libatum de toto corpore cernas
    Ad speciem, nil ad pondus: mors omnia praestat
    Vitalem praeter sensum calidumque vaporem.[385]

Four distinct elements enter into the composition of the soul--heat,
wind, calm air, and a finer essence 'quasi anima animai.' The variety
of disposition in men and animals depends on the proportion in which
these elements are mixed.

The soul is the guardian of the body, inseparably united with it, as
the odour is with frankincense; nor can the soul be disconnected from
the body without its own destruction. This intimate union of soul and
body is proved by many facts. They are born, they grow, and they decay
together. The mind is liable to disease, like the body. Its affections
are often dependent on bodily conditions. The difficulties of imagining
the state of the soul as existing independently of the body are
next urged; and the book concludes with a long passage of sustained
elevation of feeling, in which the folly and the weakness of fearing
death are passionately insisted upon.

The fourth book, which treats of the images which all objects cast
off from themselves, and, in connexion with that subject, of the
senses generally, and of the passion of love, is intimately connected
with the preceding book. If there is no life after death, what is
the origin of the universal belief in the existence of the souls of
the departed? Images cast off from the surface of bodies, and borne
incessantly through space without force or feeling, appearing to
the living sometimes in sleep and sometimes in waking visions, have
suggested the belief in the ghosts of the dead, and in many of the
portents of ancient mythology. The rapid formation and motion of these
images and their great number are explained by various analogies. Some
apparent deceptions of the senses are next mentioned and explained.
These deceptions are shown to be not in the senses, but in our minds
not rightly interpreting their intimations. There is no error in the
action of the senses. They are our 'prima fides'--the foundation of all
knowledge and of all conduct--

    Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
    Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis.[386]

Images that are too fine to act on the senses sometimes directly affect
the soul itself. Discordant images unite together in the air, and
present the appearance of Centaurs, Scyllas, and the like. In sleep,
images of the dead--

    Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa,[387]--

appear, and give rise to the belief in the existence of ghosts. The
mind sees in dreams the objects in which it is most interested,
because, although all kinds of images are present, it can discern only
those of which it is expectant.

Several other questions are discussed in connexion with the doctrine
of the 'simulacra.' The final cause of the senses and the appetites is
denied, and, by implication, the argument from design founded on the
belief in final causes. The use of everything is discovered through
experience. We do not receive the sense of sight in order that we may
see, but having got the sense of sight, we use it--

    Nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
    Possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum.[388]

There follows an account of sleep, and of the condition of the mind
during that state; and the book concludes with a physical account of
the passion of love, which is dependent on the action of the simulacra
on the mind. Love is shown also to arise from natural causes, and
not to be engendered by divine influence. The fatal consequences of
yielding to the passion are then enforced with much poetical and
satirical power.

The object of the fifth book is to explain the formation of our
system--of earth, sea, sky, sun, and moon,--the origin of life upon the
earth, and the advance of human nature from a savage state to the arts
and usages of civilisation. The purpose of these discussions is to show
that all our system was produced and is maintained by natural agency,
that it is neither itself divine nor created by divine power, and that,
as it has come into existence, so it must one day perish.

As the parts of our system,--earth, water, air, and heat,--are
perishable, and constantly passing through processes of decay and
renovation, the system must have had a beginning, and will have an end.
There must at last be an end of the long war between the contending
elements.

The world came into existence as the result not of design, but of every
variety of combination in the elemental atoms throughout infinite time.
Originally all were confused together. Gradually those that had mutual
affinities combined and separated themselves from the rest. The earthy
particles sank to the centre. The elemental particles of the empyrean
(aether ignifer) formed the 'moenia mundi.' The sun and moon were
formed out of the particles that were neither heavy enough to combine
with the earth, nor light enough to ascend to the highest heaven.
Finally, the liquid particles separated from the earth and formed the
sea. Highest above all is the empyrean, entirely separated from the
storms of the lower air, and moving round with its stars by its own
impetus. The earth is at rest in the centre of our system, supported by
the air, as our body is by the vital principle. The movements of the
stars and of the sun and moon through the heavens are next explained;
then the origin of vegetable and animal life on the earth, and the
beginning and progress of human society.

First plants and trees, afterwards men and animals, were produced
from the earth in the early and vigorous prime of the world. Many
of the animals originally produced afterwards became extinct. Those
only were capable of continuation which had either some faculty of
self-preservation against others, or were useful to man, and so shared
his protection. The existence of monsters such as Scylla, the Centaurs,
the Chimaera, is shown to be impossible according to the natural laws
of production.

The earliest condition of man was one of savage vigour and power of
endurance, but liable to danger and destruction from many causes.
The first humanising influence is traced to domestic union and the
affection inspired by children--

    Et Venus inminuit viris puerique parentum
    Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum.[389]

The origin of language is next explained, then that of civil society,
of religion, and of the arts,--the general conclusion being that all
progress is the result of natural experience, not of divine guidance.

The last source of superstition is our ignorance of the causes of
natural phenomena--

                      Praesertim rebus in illis
    Quae supera caput aetheriis cernuntur in oris.[390]

Hence the sixth book is devoted to the explanation of thunderstorms,
tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like,--phenomena which are
generally attributed to the direct agency of the gods. The whole work
terminates with an account of the Plague at Athens, closely following
that given by Thucydides.

The first question which arises after a review of the whole argument is
that suggested by the statement of Jerome, and brought into prominence
since the publication of Lachmann's edition of Lucretius, viz. whether
there is good reason for believing that the poem was left by the
author in an unfinished state. In answering this question, it is to
be observed, on the one hand, that there is no incompleteness in the
fulfilment of the original plan of the work, unless from one or two
hints[391] we conclude that the poet intended giving a fuller account
of the blessed state of the Gods than that given at iii. 17-24. He
announces at i. 54, etc., and again at i. 127, etc., the design of
the poem as embracing the first principles of natural philosophy, and
the application of these principles to certain special subjects,
viz. the nature of soul and body, the origin of the belief in ghosts,
the natural causes of creation, and the meaning of certain celestial
phenomena.

The practical purpose of the poem--the overthrow of
superstition--limits the argument to these subjects of discussion. They
are severally mentioned where the argument is resumed in Books iii, iv,
v, and vi, as those matters which require a clear explanation from the
poet. All the topics enunciated in the opening statement are discussed
with the utmost fulness. The great strongholds of superstition are
attacked and overthrown in regular succession. In the introduction to
the sixth book, the lines (91-95)

    Tu mihi supremae praescribta ad candida calcis, etc.

clearly show that the poet considered himself approaching the end of
his task.

But, on the other hand, an examination of the poem in detail leads to
the conclusion that it did not receive its author's final touch. The
continuity of the argument is occasionally broken in all the books
except the first. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth, especially, these
breaks are very frequent, and there are more frequent instances in them
of repetition and careless workmanship. They extend also to a greater
length than the earlier books, which would naturally be the case if
they had not received the author's final revision. The poem throughout
gives the impression of great fulness of matter--

    Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis
    Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet;--

and in the composition of these later books, new suggestions seem to
have been constantly occurring to the poet as new materials were added
to his stores of knowledge: and the first draft of his argument has
not been recast so as to incorporate and harmonise them with it. The
passages containing these new materials appear to have been fitted
into the place which they now occupy in the work, not always very
judiciously, either by Cicero or some other editor.

It was also part of the author's design to enunciate his deepest
thoughts on the Gods, on Nature, and on human life in more highly
finished digressions from the main argument. Such passages are, in
general, introduced at the beginning and the end of the different
books. They seem to bring out the more catholic interest which
underlies the special subject of the poem. Some of these passages
are highly finished, and were evidently fixed by the poet in the
places which he designed them to occupy. Such are, especially, the
introductions to the first, second, and third books, and the concluding
passages of the second and third. But the repetition of a passage
of the first book as the introduction to the fourth, the long break
in the continuity of the introduction to the fifth, the unfinished
style of that to the sixth, and the abrupt and episodical conclusion
to the whole poem (when contrasted with its elaborately artistic
introduction), show that the same cause which marred the symmetry of
his argument deprived it of the finished execution of a work of art.
Yet these books--especially the fifth--are as rich in poetical feeling
and substance as the earlier ones. The eye and hand of the master are
as powerful as in the first enthusiasm with which he dedicated himself
to his task, but they are less certain in their action. Whether his
powers became intermittent owing to the attacks of illness, or whether
his habit was to work roughly in the first instance and to perfect his
work by subsequent revision, which in the case of his latest labours
was prevented by death, must remain uncertain. It is a noticeable
result of the vastness of the tasks which Roman genius set before
itself, that two such works as the didactic poem of Lucretius and the
Aeneid of Virgil were left unfinished by their authors, and given to
the world in a more or less imperfect condition by other hands.

The poem, though incomplete in regard to the arrangement of its
materials and artistic finish, presents a full and clear view of the
philosophy accepted and expounded by Lucretius. What, then, is the
intellectual interest and value of the work, considered as a great
argument, in which the plan of Nature is explained, and the position
of man in relation to that plan is determined? Is it true, as an
illustrious modern critic[392] has said, that 'the greatest didactic
poem in any language was written in defence of the silliest and
meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy?' Is this work
a mere maze of ingeniously woven error, enriched with a few brilliant
colours which have not yet faded with the lapse of time? or is it a
great monument of the ancient mind, marking indeed its limitations,
but at the same time perpetuating the memory of its native strength
and energy? Has all the meaning of this controversy between science in
its infancy and the pagan mythology in its decrepitude passed away,
as from the vantage-ground of nineteen centuries the blindness and
the ignorance of both combatants are apparent? Or, may we not rather
discern that amid all the confusion of this dim νυκτομαχία a great
cause was at issue; that truths the most vital to human wellbeing
were involved on both sides; and that some positions were then gained
which are not now abandoned?

In estimating the strength and the weakness of the system expounded
by Lucretius, it is necessary to distinguish between the exposition
of the principles of the atomic philosophy, contained in the first
two books, and the explanation of natural phenomena contained in
the remaining books. The first, notwithstanding some arbitrary and
unverifiable assumptions, represents a real and important stage in the
progress of enquiry; the second, although containing many striking
observations and immediate inferences from the facts and processes
of Nature, is, from the point of view of modern science, to be
regarded mainly, as a curious page from the records of human error.
Whatever may be said of the Epicurean additions to the system, it
seems to be admitted that the original hypothesis of Democritus has
been more pregnant in results, and has more affinity with the most
advanced physical speculations of modern times, than the doctrines
of all the other philosophers of antiquity. But even amid the mass of
unwarranted assumptions and erroneous explanations contained in the
later books, the topics discussed--such as the relation of the mind
to the body, the mode by which sensible impressions are conveyed to
the mind, the processes by which our globe assumed its present form,
the origin of life, the evolution of humanity from its lowest to its
higher stages of development, the origin of spiritual beliefs, of the
humaner sentiments, of language, etc.--possess the interest of being
kindred to those on which speculative activity is most employed in
the present day. If the study of Lucretius forces upon our minds the
arbitrary assumptions, the inadequate method, and the false conclusions
of ancient science, it enables us to appreciate the disinterested
greatness of its aims, and the enlightened curiosity which sought to
solve the vastest problems.

It might be said, generally, that the argument of Lucretius was an
attempt to give a philosophical description of Nature before the
advent of physical science. But, as a means of throwing light on
the inadequacy of such speculations, it may be well to consider in
detail some of those points where the argument most obviously fails in
premises, method, and results.

The ancient as well as the modern enquirer into the truth of things
was confronted with the question of the origin of all our knowledge.
Is knowledge obtained originally through the exercise of the reason
or the senses, or through their combined and inseparable action? To
this question Lucretius distinctly answers, that the senses are the
foundation of all our knowledge[393]. They are our 'prima fides'; the
basis not only of all sound inference, but of all human conduct. The
very conception of the meaning of true and false is derived from the
senses:--

    Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam
    Notitiam veri neque sensus posse refelli.[394]

But besides the direct action of outward things on the senses, he
admits the power of certain images to make themselves immediately
present to the mind (iv. 722-822), and also a certain immediate
apprehension or intuition of the mind (iniectus animi) into
things beyond the cognisance of sense[395]. Thus there is no
actual inconsistency with his principles in claiming the power of
understanding the properties and configuration of the atoms, which are
represented as lying below the reach of our senses--

    Omnis enim longe nostris ab sensibus infra
    Primorum natura iacet.

But of the mode of operation of this 'intuition of the mind' there is
no criterion. The doctrine of the properties, shapes, motions, etc.
of the atoms is a creation of the imagination, suggested by certain
analogies from sensible things, but incapable of being verified by the
senses, which he regards as the only sure foundations of knowledge.

But even on the supposition that the existence and properties of the
atoms had been satisfactorily established, no adequate explanation
is offered of their relation to the facts of existence. The same
difficulty is encountered at the outset of this as of all other ancient
systems of ontology, viz. how to pass from the eternal and immutable
forms of the atoms to the variety and transitory nature of sensible
objects. This is the very difficulty which Lucretius himself urges
against the system of Heraclitus,--

    Nam cur tam variae res possint esse requiro,
    Ex uno si sunt igni puroque creatae.

The order of Nature now subsisting is declared to be the result of the
manifold combination of the atoms through infinite time and space, but
the intermediate stages by which this process was effected are assumed
rather than investigated. We seem to pass 'per saltum' from the chaos
of lifeless elements to the perfect order and manifold life of our
system. This wide chasm seems as little capable of being bridged by
the help of the atoms of Democritus, as by the watery element of Thales
or the fiery element of Heraclitus. But in Lucretius this difficulty is
partially concealed, by a poetical element in his conception, really
inconsistent with the mechanical materialism on which his philosophy
professes to be based.--It is to be observed that while the Greek word
ἄτομα implies merely the notion of individual existences, the words
used by Lucretius, 'semina,' 'genitalia corpora,' really indicate a
creative capacity in these existences. In conceiving their power of
carrying on and sustaining the order of Nature, his imagination is
thus aided by the analogy of the growth of plants and living beings. A
secret faculty in the atoms, distinct from their other properties, is
assumed. Thus he says--

    At primordia gignundis in rebus oportet
    Naturam clandestinam caecamque adhibere.[396]

In his statement of the doctrine of the _Clinamen_, or slight
declension in the motion of the atoms, so as 'to break the chain of
fate,' he attributes to them a power analogous to volition in living
beings. This doctrine is suggested by the necessity of explaining
contingency in Nature and freedom in the movements of sentient beings.
We are, as in all attempts to account for creation, forced back on the
thought of an ultimate unexplained power in virtue of which things have
been created and are maintained in being.

The Lucretian hypothesis of the atoms, even if it were accepted as the
most reasonable explanation of the original constitution of matter,
is, by itself, altogether inadequate as a key to the secret of Nature.
It cannot be shown either how these atoms succeeded in arranging
themselves in order, or how from their negative properties all positive
life has been produced. The explanation of physical phenomena given in
the four last books, as to the nature of our bodies and souls,--as to
the action of outward things on the senses,--the origin and existence
of the sun and moon, the earth and the living beings upon it, etc.,
although professedly deduced from the principles established in the
first two books, are really reached independently. They are either
immediate inferences from the obvious intimations of sense, or they are
the suggestions of analogy.

The weakness as well as the strength of ancient science lay in its
perception of analogies. The mind of Lucretius was both under the
influence of earlier analogical conceptions, and also shows great
boldness and originality in the logical and poetical apprehension
of 'those same footsteps of Nature, treading on diverse subjects
or matters.' But, in common with the earlier enquirers of Greece,
he trusts too implicitly to their guidance through all his daring
adventure. He seems to believe that the hidden properties of things are
as open to discovery through this 'lux sublustris' of the imagination,
as through the 'lucida tela' of the reason.

To take one prominent instance of this influence, it is remarkable how,
in his explanation of our mundane system, he is both consciously and
unconsciously guided by the analogy of the human body. Even Lucretius,
living in the very meridian of ancient science, cannot in imagination
absolutely emancipate himself from the associations of mythology. He
is indeed conscious of the inconsistency of attributing life and sense
to the earth: yet not only does he speak poetically of Earth being
the creative mother, Aether the fructifying father of all things, but
his whole conception of the creation of the world is derived from
a supposed likeness between the properties of our terrestrial and
celestial systems, and those of living beings. Thus we read--

    Undique quandoquidem per caulas aetheris omnis
    Et quasi per magni circum spiracula mundi
    Exitus introitusque elementis redditus extat.[397]

Of the growth of plants and herbage it is said--

    Ut pluma atque pili primum saetaeque creantur
    Quadripedum membris et corpore pennipotentum,
    Sic nova tum tellus herbas virgultaque primum
    Sustulit, inde loci mortalia saecla creavit.[398]

From v. 535 to 563 the power of the air in supporting the earth 'in
media mundi regione' is compared with the power which the delicate
vital principle has in supporting the human body. Again, the gathering
together of the waters of the sea is thus represented--

    Tam magis expressus salsus de corpore sudor
    Augebat mare manando camposque natantis.[399]

And finally, though it would be easy to multiply such quotations, the
striking account, at the end of the second book, of the growth and the
decay of our world is drawn directly from the obvious appearances of
the growth and decay of the human body; e.g.--

                            Quoniam nec venae perpetiuntur
    Quod satis est neque quantum opus est natura ministrat.[400]

As a necessary result of a system of natural philosophy based on
assumptions, largely illustrated indeed, but not corroborated by
the observation of phenomena, with no verification of experiment or
ascertainment of special laws, there is throughout the poem the utmost
hardihood of assertion and inference on many points, on which modern
science clearly proves this system to have been as much in error as
it was possible to be. It is strange to note how inadequate an idea
Lucretius had of the vastness and complexity of the problem which
he professed to solve. He has no real conception of the progressive
advance of knowledge, and of the necessity of patiently building on
humble foundations. The striking lines--

    Namque alid ex alio clarescet nec tibi caeca
    Nox iter eripiet quin ultima naturai
    Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus,[401]

look rather like an unconscious prophecy of the future progress of
science than an account of the process of enquiry exhibited in the book.

A few out of many erroneous assertions about physical facts, in regard
to some of which the opinions of Lucretius are behind the science even
of his own time, may be noticed. Thus, at i. 1052, the existence of
the Antipodes is denied. Again, in Book iii. the mind is stated to be
a material substance, seated in the centre of the breast, composed of
very minute particles, the relative proportions of which determine the
characters both of men and animals. Lucretius shows a close and subtle
observation of facts that establish the interdependence of mind and
body, but no suspicion of that interdependence being connected with
the functions of the brain and nervous system. His whole account of
the _mundus_, of the earth at rest in the centre, and of the rolling
vault of heaven, with its sun and moon and stars--'trembling fires
in the vault'--all no larger than they appear to our eyes, is given
without any notion of the inadequacy of his data to bear out his
conclusions. The science which satisfied Epicurus was on astronomical
and meteorological questions behind that attained by the mathematicians
of Alexandria: and thus some of the conclusions enunciated by Virgil
in the Georgics are nearer the truth than those accepted by Lucretius.
While enlarging on the variety and subtlety in the combinations of his
imaginary atoms, he has no adequate idea of the variety and subtlety in
the real forces of Nature. His observation of the outward and visible
appearances of things is accurate and vivid: there is often great
ingenuity as well as a true apprehension of logical conditions in his
processes of reasoning both from ideas and from phenomena: yet most of
his conclusions as to the facts of Nature, which are not immediately
perceptible to the senses, are mere fanciful explanations, indicating,
indeed, a lively curiosity, but no real understanding of the true
conditions of the enquiry. The root of his error lies in his not
feeling how little can be known of the processes and facts of Nature
by ordinary observation, without the resources of experiment and of
scientific method built upon experiment.

The weak points of this philosophy, the mistaken aim and incomplete
method of enquiry, the real ignorance of facts disguised under an
appearance of systematic treatment, the unproductiveness of the
results for any practical accession to man's power over Nature, are
quite obvious to any modern reader, who, without any special study of
physical science, cannot help being familiar with information which is
now universally diffused, but which was beyond the reach of the most
ardent enquirers and original thinkers of antiquity. But the amount
of information possessed by different ages, or by different men, is
no criterion of their relative intellectual power. The mental force
of a strong and adventurous thinker may be recognised struggling even
through these mists of error. The weakness of the system, interpreted
by Lucretius, is the necessary weakness of the childhood of knowledge.
But along with the weakness and the ignorance there are also the keen
feeling, the clear eye, and the buoyant fancies of early years,--the
germs and the promise of a strong maturity.

The full light in which ancient poetry, history, and mental philosophy
can still be read, makes us apt to forget that a great part even of
the intellectual life of antiquity has left scarcely any record of
itself. Of one aspect of this intellectual life Lucretius is the
most complete exponent. The genius of Plato and Aristotle has been
estimated, perhaps, as justly in modern as in ancient times. But
the great intellectual life of such men as Democritus, Empedocles,
or Anaxagoras, escapes our notice in the more familiar studies of
classical literature. The work of Lucretius reminds us of the intensity
of thought and feeling, the clearness and minuteness of observation,
with which the earliest enquiries into Nature were carried on. In some
respects the general ignorance of the times enhances our sense of the
greatness of individual philosophers. Each new attempt to understand
the world was an original act of creative power. The intellectual
strength and enthusiasm displayed by the poet himself may be regarded
as some measure of the strength of the masters, who filled his mind
with affection and astonishment.

The history of the physical science of the ancients cannot, indeed, be
regarded as so interesting or important as that of their metaphysical
philosophy. And this is so, not only on account of the comparative
scantiness of their real acquisitions in the one as compared with the
ideas and method which they have contributed to the other, and with the
masterpieces which they have added to its literature; but still more on
this account, that in physical knowledge new discovery supplants the
place of previous error or ignorance, and can be understood without
reference to what has been supplanted; whereas the power and meaning
of philosophical ideas is unintelligible, apart from the knowledge
of their origin and development. The history of physical science in
ancient times affords satisfaction to a natural curiosity, but is not
an indispensable branch of scientific study. The history of ancient
mental philosophy, on the other hand,--the source not only of most of
our metaphysical ideas and terms, but of many of the most familiar
thoughts and words in daily use,--is the basis of all speculative
study. Yet among the various kinds of interest which this poem has for
different classes of modern readers this is not to be forgotten, that
it enables a student of science to estimate the actual discoveries,
and, still more, the prognostications of discovery attained by the
irregular methods of early enquiry. The school of philosophy to which
Lucretius belonged was distinguished above other schools for the
attention which it gave to the facts of Nature. Though he himself makes
no claim to original discovery, he yet shows a philosophical grasp of
the whole system which he adopted, and a rigorous study of its details.
He does not, like Virgil, merely reproduce some general results of
ancient physics, to enhance the poetical conception of Nature: as he
is not satisfied with those general results about human life and the
origin of man, which amused a meditative poet and practical epicurean
like Horace. He was a real student both of the plan of Nature and of
man's relation to it. Out of the stores of his abundant information the
modern reader may best learn not only the errors but also the happy
guesses and pregnant suggestions of ancient science.

To the general reader there is another aspect, in which it is
interesting to compare these germs of physical knowledge with some
tendencies of scientific enquiry in modern times. The questions,
vitally affecting the position of man in the world, which are discussed
or raised by Lucretius in the course of his argument, are parallel to
certain questions which have risen into prominence in connexion with
the increasing study of Nature. Most conspicuous among these is the
relation of physical enquiry to religious belief. Expressions such as
this,

    Impia te rationis inire elementa viamque
    Indugredi sceleris,

show that scientific enquiry had to encounter the same prejudice
in ancient as in modern times. The insufficiency and audacity of
human reason were reprobated by the antagonists of Lucretius as they
often are in the present day. Ancient religion denounced those who
investigated the origin of sun, earth, and sky, as

    Immortalia mortali sermone notantes.[402]

The views of Lucretius as to the natural origin of life, and the
progressive advance of man from the rudest condition by the exercise
of his senses and accumulated experience,--his denial of final causes
universally, and specially in the human faculties,--his resolution
of our knowledge into the intimations of sense,--his materialism
and consequent denial of immortality,--and his utilitarianism in
morals,--all present striking parallels to the opinions of one of
the great schools of modern thought. At v. 875 there is a passage
concerning the preservation and destruction of species, originally
suggested by Empedocles,--which shows that the idea of the struggle
for existence and of the survival of those species best fitted for the
conditions of that struggle was familiar to ancient thinkers. It is
there observed that those species alone have escaped destruction which
possess some natural weapon of defence, or which are useful to man. Of
others that could neither live by themselves nor were maintained by
human protection, it is said--

    Scilicet haec aliis praedae lucroque iacebant
    Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis,
    Donec ad interitum genus id natura redegit.[403]

The attempt to trace the origin of all supernatural belief to the
impressions made by dreams, the explanation given of the first
manifestation of the humaner sentiments, of the beginning of language,
and of the whole condition of 'primitive man,' are in conformity with
the teaching of the most popular exponent of the doctrine of evolution
in the present day.

But altogether apart from the truth and falsehood, the right and
wrong tendencies of his system of philosophy, our feeling of personal
interest in the poet is strengthened by noting the power of reasoning,
observation, and expression put forth by him through the whole course
of his argument. The pervading characteristic of Lucretius is
the 'vivida vis animi.' The freshness of feeling and vividness of
apprehension denoted by the words,

                Mente vigenti
    Avia Pieridum peragro loca,

are as remarkable in the processes of his intellect as of his
imagination.

The passionate intensity of his nature has left its impress on the
enunciation of his physical as well as of his moral doctrines. He
has a thoroughly logical grasp of his subject as a whole. He shows
the capacity of unfolding it and marshalling all his arguments in
symmetrical order, and of arranging in due subordination vast masses of
details. Vigour in acquiring and tenacity in retaining the knowledge of
facts are combined with a high organising faculty. He has also, beyond
any other Roman writer, a power of analysing and comprehending abstract
ideas, such as that of the infinite, of space and time, of causation
and the like, and of keeping the consequences involved in these ideas
present to his mind through long-sustained processes of reasoning. He
alone among his countrymen possessed, if not the faculty of original
speculation, the genuine philosophic impulse, and the powers of mind
demanded for abstruse and systematic thinking.

This vigour of understanding is displayed in many processes of
deductive reasoning, in the power of seizing some general principle
underlying diverse phenomena, in the use of analogies by which he
illustrates the argument and advances from known to unknown causes and
from things within the cognisance of our senses to those beyond their
range, and in the clearness and variety of his observation.

His system cannot be called either purely inductive or purely
deductive, though it is more of the former than of the latter. He
argues with great force both from a large and varied mass of facts to
general laws and from general principles to facts involved in them.
The best examples of his power of following abstract ideas into their
consequences may be found in the first two books, where he establishes
the existence of vacuum, the infinity of space and of the atoms, the
limitations of the form of the atoms and the like. The reasoning at i.
298-328 where the existence of invisible bodies is established affords
a good instance of his power of recognising a common principle involved
in a great number and variety of phenomena.

The vigour with which he reasons from known to unknown facts and causes
may be judged most fairly by his arguments on the progress of society,
where he is more on an equality with modern speculation. He discards,
altogether, as might be expected, the fancies concerning a heroic or
a golden age, and assumes as his data the facts of human nature as
observed in his own day. The grounds from which he starts, his method
of reasoning, and the nature of his conclusions remind a reader of
the positive tendencies of Thucydides, as they are displayed in the
introduction to his history. The importance of personal qualities,
such as beauty, strength, and power of mind, in the earliest stage of
civil society, the influence of accumulated wealth at a later period,
the causes of the establishment and overthrow of tyrannies and of the
rise of commonwealths in their room, are all set forth with a degree of
strong sense and historical sagacity, such as no other Roman writer has
shown in similar investigations. The inferiority even of Tacitus in his
occasional digressions into the philosophy of history is very marked.
On such topics, where the data were accessible to the natural faculties
of observation and inference, and where conclusions were sought which,
without aiming at definite certainty, should yet be true in the main,
the reader of Lucretius has no sense of that wasted ingenuity which he
often feels in following the investigations into some of the primary
conditions of the atoms, the component elements of the soul, the
process by which the world was formed, or the causes of electric or
volcanic phenomena.

Lucretius makes a copious, and often a very happy use, of analogies,
both in the illustration of his philosophy, and in passages of the
highest poetical power. Some of the most striking of the former
kind have already been noticed as sources of error, or at least of
disguising ignorance, in his reasoning, viz., those founded on the
supposed parallel between the world and the human body; others again
are employed with force and ingenuity in support of various positions
in his argument. Among these may be mentioned his comparison of the
effect of various combinations of the same letters in forming different
words, with that of the various combinations of similar atoms in
forming different objects in nature. So too the ceaseless motion of
the atoms is brought visibly before the imagination by the analogy
of the motes dancing in the sunbeam. There is something striking in
the comparison of the human body immediately after death to wine 'cum
Bacchi flos evanuit,' and again, in that of the relation of body and
soul to the relation of frankincense and its odour--

                   E thuris glaebis evellere odorem
    Haud facile est quin intereat natura quoque eius.[404]

But this faculty of his understanding is in general so united with the
imaginative feeling through which he discerns the vital indentity of
the most diverse manifestations of some common principle, that it can
best be illustrated in connexion with the poetical, as distinct from
the logical, merits of the work.

So also it is difficult to separate his faculty of clear, exact,
and vivid observation from his poetical perception of the life and
beauty of Nature. His powers of observation were, however, stimulated
and directed by scientific as well as poetic interest in phenomena.
From the wide scope of his philosophy he was led to examine the
greatest variety of facts, physical as well as moral. His sense of
the immensity of the universe led him to contemplate the largest and
widest operations of Nature,--such as the movements of the heavenly
bodies, the recurrence of the seasons, the forces of great storms,
volcanoes, etc.; while, again, the theory of the invisible atoms drew
his attention to the minutest processes of Nature, in so far as they
can be perceived or inferred without the appliances of modern science.
Thus, for instance, in a long passage beginning--

    Denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes,[405]

he shows by an accumulation of instances that there are many invisible
bodies, the existence of which is inferred from visible effects. In
other places he draws attention to the class of facts which have been
the basis of the modern science of geology,--such as the mark of rivers
slowly wearing away their banks,--of walls on the sea-shore mouldering
from the long-continued effects of the exhalations from the sea,--of
the fall of great rocks from the mountains under the wear and tear of
ages.

Again, the argument is frequently illustrated by observation of the
habits of various animals. In these passages Lucretius shows the
curiosity of a naturalist, as well as the sympathetic feeling and
insight of a poet. How graphic, for instance, is his description of
dogs following up the scent of their game--

    Errant saepe canes itaque et vestigia quaerunt.[406]

How happily their characteristics are struck off in the line--

    At levisomna canum fido cum pectore corda.[407]

The various cries and habits of birds are often observed and described,
as--

    Et validis cycni torrentibus ex Heliconis
    Cum liquidam tollunt lugubri voce querellam;[408]

and again--

    Parvus ut est cycni melior canor ille gruum quam
    Clamor in aetheriis dispersus nubibus austri.[409]

The description of sea-birds,

                                Mergique marinis
    Fluctibus in salso victum vitamque petentes,[410]

recalls the vivid and natural life of those that haunted the isle of
Calypso--

                                τανύγλωσσοί τε κορῶναι
    εἰνάλιαι τῇσίν τε θαλάσσια ἔργα μέμηλεν.[411]

His lively personal observation and active interest in the casual
objects presented to his eyes in the course of his walks are seen in
such passages as--

                          Cum lubrica serpens
    Exuit in spinis vestem; nam saepe videmus
    Illorum spoliis vepres volitantibus auctas.[412]

There is also much truth and liveliness of observation in his notices
of psychological and physiological facts; as in those passages where he
establishes the connexion between mind and body, and in his account of
the senses. With what a graphic touch does he paint the outward effects
of death[413], the decay of the faculties with age, and the madness
that overtakes the mind--

    Adde furorem animi proprium atque oblivia rerum,
    Adde quod in nigras lethargi mergitur undas;[414]

the bodily waste, produced by long-continuous speaking--

    Perpetuus sermo nigrai noctis ad umbram
    Aurorae perductus ab exoriente nitore;[415]

the reflex action of the senses, produced by the nervous strain of
witnessing games and spectacles for many days in succession; the
insensibility to the pain of the severest wounds in the excitement of
battle! In his account of the plague of Athens, in which he enters
into much greater detail than Thucydides, he displays the minute
observation of a physician, as well as the profound thought of a
moralist.

The 'vivida vis' of his understanding is apparent also in the clearness
and consecutiveness of his philosophical style. His complaint of 'the
poverty of his native tongue' is directed against the capacities of the
Latin language for scientific, not for poetical expression--

    Nunc et Anaxagorae scrutemur Homoeomerian
    Quam Grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua
    Concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas.[416]

That language, which gives admirable expression to the dictates of
common sense and to the dignified emotions which inspire the conduct
of great affairs, is ill adapted both for the expression of abstract
ideas and for maintaining a long process of connected argument.
Lucretius has occasionally to meet the first difficulty by the
adoption of Graecisms, and the second by some sacrifice of artistic
elegance. Thus he uses _omne_ for τὸ πᾶν (11. 1108), _esse_, again,
for τὸ εἶναι, and the like. Something of a formal and technical
character appears in the links by which his argument is kept
together, as in the constantly recurring use of certain connecting
particles, such as the 'etenim,' 'quippe ubi,' 'quod genus,' 'amplius
hoc,' 'huc accedit,' and the like. Virgil has retained some of the
most striking of these connecting formulae, such as 'contemplator
item,' 'nonne vides,' etc; but, as was natural in a poem setting forth
precepts and not proofs, he uses them much more sparingly and with
more careful selection. As used by Lucretius, they add to our sense
of the vividness of the book, of the constant personal address of the
author, and of his ardent polemical tone. They also keep the framework
of the argument more compact and distinct: but they bring into greater
prominence the artistic mistake of conducting an abstract discussion
in verse. The very merits of the work considered as an argument,--its
clearness, fullness, and consecutiveness,--detract from the pleasure
which a work of art naturally produces. But the style cannot be too
highly praised for its logical coherence and lucid illustration. The
meaning of Lucretius can never be mistaken from any ambiguity in his
language. There are difficulties arising from the uncertainty of the
text, difficulties also from our unfamiliarity with his method and
principles, or with the objects he describes, but none from confusion
in his ideas or his reasoning, or from a vague or unreal use of words.


II.--THE SPECULATIVE IDEAS IN LUCRETIUS.

But it is in his grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of
them to interpret the living world, that the greatness of Lucretius
as an imaginative thinker is most apparent. The substantial truth of
all the ancient philosophies lay in the ideas which they attempted
to express and embody, not in the symbols by which these ideas
were successively represented. Lucretius has a place among the few
adventurous thinkers of antiquity who attained to high eminences of
contemplation, which were hidden from the mass of their contemporaries,
and which, in the breadth of view afforded by them, are not far below
the higher levels of our modern conceptions of Nature and human life.
And there came to him, as to the earlier race of thinkers, that which
comes so rarely to modern enquiry, the fresh and poetical sense of
surprise and keen curiosity, as at the first discovery of a new
country, or the first unfolding of some illimitable prospect.

(1) In the philosophy of Lucretius the world is conceived as absolutely
under the government of law. The starting-point of his system--

    Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,

is an inference from the recognition of this condition. There is no
need to prove its truth: it is openly revealed in all the processes of
Nature. This fact of universal order is indeed supposed to result from
the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms and from the original
limitation in their varieties: but the idea of law is prior to, and the
condition of, all the principles enunciated in the first two books, in
regard to the nature and properties of matter. In no ancient writer do
we find the certainty and universality of law more emphatically and
unmistakably expressed than in Lucretius. This is the final appeal
in all controversy. The superiority of Epicurus is proclaimed on the
ground of his having discovered the fixed and certain limitations of
all existence--

    Unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri,
    Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique
    Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens.[417]

Following on his steps the poet himself professes to teach--

                              Quo quaeque creata
    Foedere sint, in eo quam sit durare necessum,
    Nec validas valeant aevi rescindere leges.[418]

In another place he says--

    Et quid quaeque queant per foedera naturai
    Quid porro nequeant, sancitum quandoquidem extat.[419]

All knowledge and speculative confidence are declared to rest on this
truth--

    Certum ac dispositumst ubi quicquit crescat et insit.[420]

Superstition, the great enemy of truth, is said to be the result of
ignorance of 'what may be and what may not be.' This is the thought
which underlies and gives cogency to the whole argument. The subject of
the poem is 'maiestas cognita rerum,'--the revelation of the majesty
and order of the universe. The doctrine proclaimed by Lucretius was,
that creation was no result of a capricious or benevolent exercise of
power, but of certain processes extending through infinite time, by
means of which the atoms have at length been able to combine and work
together in accordance with their ultimate conditions. The conception
of these ultimate conditions and of their relations to one another
involves some more vital agency than that of blind chance or an iron
fatalism.[421] The 'foedera naturai' are opposed to the 'foedera fati.'
The idea of law in Nature, as understood by Lucretius, is not merely
that of invariable sequence or concomitance of phenomena. It implies
at least the further idea of a 'secreta facultas' in the original
elements. This idea is not, necessarily, inconsistent with that of a
creative will determining the original conditions of the elemental
substances. If the ultimate principles of Lucretius were incompatible
with a belief in the popular religions of antiquity, his mode of
conceiving the operation of law in the universe is not irreconcileable
with the conceptions of modern Theism.

The idea of law not only supports the whole fabric of his physical
philosophy, but moulds his convictions on human life and imparts to his
poetry that contemplative elevation by which it is pervaded. It is from
this ground that he makes his most powerful assault on the strongholds
of superstition. Nature is thus declared to be free from the arbitrary
and capricious agency of the gods:--

    Libera continuo dominis privata superbis.[422]

Man also is under the same law, and is made free by his knowledge and
acceptance of this condition. A sense of security is thus gained for
human life; a sense of elevation above its weakness and passions, and
the courage to bear its inevitable evils[423]. This absolute reliance
on law does not act upon his mind with the depressing influence of
fatalism. Although the fortunes of life and the phases of individual
character are said to be the results of the infinite combinations
of blind atoms, yet man is made free by knowledge and the use of his
reason. Notwithstanding the original constitution of his nature,
arising out of influences over which there is no control, he still has
it in his power to live a life worthy of the gods:--

    Illud in his rebus videor firmare potesse,
    Usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui
    Parvola, quae nequeat ratio depellere nobis
    Ut nil inpediat dignam dis degere vitam.[424]

From these high places of his philosophy,--'the "templa serena"
well-bulwarked by the learning of the wise'[425] he derives not only a
sense of certainty in thought and security in life, but also his wide
contemplative view, and his profound feeling of the majesty of the
universe. The idea of universal law enables him to apprehend in all the
processes of Nature a presence which awakens reverence and enforces
obedience. This idea imparts unity of tone to the whole poem, informs
its language, and seems to mould the very rhythm of its verse.

(2) But a closer view brings another aspect of the world into light;
viz., the interdependence of all things on one another. There is not
only fixed order, but there is also infinite mobility in Nature. The
sum of all things remains unchanged, though all individual existences
decay and perish. So too the sum of force remains the same[426]. There
is no rest anywhere; all things are continually changing and passing
into one another; decay and renovation form the very life and being
of all things. Nothing is ever lost. 'Nature repairs one thing from
another, and allows of no birth except through the death of something
else':--

    Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
    Quando alid ex alio reficit natura nec ullam
    Rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena?[427]

As the 'ever-during peace' at the heart of all things is supposed to
result from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms, this
'endless agitation' arises out of their unceasing motion through
infinite space. There are two kinds of motion,--the one tending to the
renewal,--the other, to the destruction of things as they now exist.
The maintenance of our whole system depends on the equilibrium of these
opposing forces--

    Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum
    Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum.[428]

There is thus seen to be not only absolute order, but also infinite
change in the processes of Nature. Decay and renovation, death
and life, support the existing creation in unceasing harmony. The
imagination represents this process under the impressive symbol of
an endless battle, in which now one side now the other gains some
position, but neither, as yet, can become master of the field--

    Nunc hinc nunc illic superant vitalia rerum,
    Et superantur item.[429]

This symbol is the poetical form of the old philosophical distinction
of αὔξησις and φθορά. It is another form of the ἔρις and φιλία which
to the imagination of Empedocles appeared to pervade the universe.
The idea of a constant battle imparts to the infinite and
all-pervading movement of Nature the interest and the life of human
passion on the grandest and widest sphere of action. The greatness
of the thought makes each particular object in Nature pregnant with
a deeper meaning, associates trivial and ordinary phenomena with a
sense of imaginative wonder, and throws an august solemnity around
the familiar aspects of human life. The passage in which this
principle is most powerfully announced at ii. 575, &c., swells into
deeper and grander tones, as the real human pathos involved in this
strife of elements is made manifest. This struggle of life and
decay is no mere war of abstractions: it is the daily and hourly
process of existence. Birth and death are the fulfilment of this law.
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new'--

    Cedit enim rerum novitate extrusa vetustas.[430]

'New nations wax strong, while the old are waning away; the generations
of living things are changed within a brief space, and, like the
runners in a race, pass on the torch of life'--

    Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
    Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
    Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.[431]

Man also must resign himself to the universal law, and accept his life
not as a thing to be possessed for ever, but only to be used for a
time--

    Sic alid ex alio numquam desistet oriri
    Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.[432]

Under this law of universal decay and restoration, we see the rains of
heaven lost in the earth, but passing into new life in the fruits from
which all living things are supported--

    Hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
    Hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus
    Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas.[433]

Or we see the waters of a river lost in the sea and returning through
the earth to their original source, and again flowing in a fresh stream
along the channel first formed for them--

                Inde super terras fluit agmine dulci
    Qua via secta semel liquido pede detulit undas.[434]

Under the same law the earth is seen to be the parent of all things
and their tomb (v. 259); the sea, which loses its substance through
evaporation and the subsidence of its waters, is found to be ever
renewed by its native sources and the abundant tribute of rivers (v.
267; i. 231; vi. 608); the air is ever giving away and receiving back
its substance; the sun ('liquidi fons luminis'), moon, and stars,
are ever losing and ever renewing their light. The day on which the
'long-sustained mass and fabric of the world' will pass away, leaving
only void space and the viewless atoms, is destined to come suddenly
through the termination of this long balanced warfare:--

    Denique tantopere inter se cum maxima mundi
    Pugnent membra, pio nequaquam concita bello,
    Nonne vides aliquam longi certaminis ollis
    Posse dari finem? vel cum sol et vapor omnis
    Omnibus epotis umoribus exsuperarint;
    Quod facere intendunt, neque adhuc conata patrantur.[435]

(3.) It is to be observed, also, how vividly Lucretius realises and
how steadfastly he keeps before his mind the ideas of the eternity
and infinity of the primordial atoms and of space. These conceptions
support him in his antagonism to the popular religion, and deepen the
feeling with which he contemplates human life and Nature. Our world of
earth, sea, and sky is only one among infinite other systems. It stands
to the universe in much the same proportion as any single man to the
whole earth--

    Et videas caelum summai totius unum
    Quam sit parvula pars et quam multesima constet
    Nec tota pars, homo terrai quota totius unus.[436]

It was the glory of Epicurus that he first passed beyond the empyrean
that bounds our world--

    Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque.[437]

The immensity of the universe is incompatible with the constant agency
and interference of the gods,--

    Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi
    Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas.[438]

This negative idea is, at least, a step in advance towards a higher
conception of the attributes of Deity. The infinity and complexity of
the universe protest against the limited and divided powers, as the
natural feelings of human nature protest against the moral qualities
attributed to the gods of the Pagan mythology.

The power of these conceptions is also seen in the poet's deep sense
of the littleness of human life. Such pathetic expressions of the
shortness and triviality of each man's mortal span, as that,--

    Degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest,[439]

are called forth by the ever-present thought of the Infinite and
the Eternal. But this thought, if associated with a feeling of the
pathos of human life does not lead Lucretius into cynicism or despair.
It rather elevates him and fortifies him to suppress all personal
complaint in the presence of ideas so stupendous. His imagination
expands in contemplating the objects either of thought or of sight,
which produce the impression of immensity,--such as the vast expanse of
earth, sea and sky,--or of great duration,--such as the 'aeterni sidera
mundi' or the 'validas aevi vires.' Thus, as much of the majesty of
his poetry may be connected with his contemplative sense of law, much
of its pervading life with his sense of the mobility of Nature, so the
sublimity of many passages may be resolved into the influence of the
ideas of immensity, both of time and space, on his imagination.

(4.) Another aspect of things vividly realised by Lucretius is that of
their individuality. It was in the atomic philosophy, that the thought
of 'the individual' first rose into prominence. The meaning of the word
'atom' is simply 'individual.' The sense of each separate existence is
not merged in the conception of law, of change, or of the immensity of
the universe. The atoms are not only infinite in number, they are also
varied in kind and powerful in solid singleness,--'solida pollentia
simplicitate.' From their variety and individuality the variety and
individuality in Nature emerge. No two classes and no two single
objects are exactly alike. Between any two of the birds that gladden
the sea-shore, the river banks, or the woods, there is some difference
in outward appearance--

    Invenies tamen inter se differre figuris.[440]

Each individual of a flock is different from every other, and by this
difference only can the mother recognise her offspring. This sense of
individuality intensifies the pathos of many passages in the poem. By
regarding each being as having an existence of its own, the poet enters
with sympathy into the feelings of all sentient existence,--of dumb
animals as well as of human creatures. The freshness and distinctness
of all his pictures from Nature are the result of an eye trained by his
philosophy to see each thing not only as part of the universal life,
but as existing in and for itself.

(5.) The thought, also, of the infinite subtlety of combination in the
elements and forces of the world acts powerfully on his imagination.
The individuality of things depends on the fact that no two are
composed of exactly the same elements, combined in the same way. The
infinity of the elements, the immensity of the spaces in which they
meet, and the infinite possibilities in their modes of combination
result in the endless variety of beauty and wonder which the world
presents to the eye. The epithet 'daedala,' by which this subtlety is
expressed is applied not only to Nature, but to the earth as the sphere
in which the elements are most largely mixed, and the creative forces
most powerfully active. The varied loveliness of the world,--the 'varii
lepores,' by which the eye is gratified and relieved,--are the result
of the variety in the elements and the infinite subtlety in their
modes of combination. Their invisibility and inscrutable action enhance
the imaginative sense of the power and beauty resulting from these
causes.

(6.) The abstract properties of the atoms, discussed in the first two
books, so far from being arbitrary assumptions, without any relation
to actual existence, are thus found to be the conditions which explain
the order, life, immensity, individuality, and subtlety manifested
in the universe. These conceptions, which bridge the chasm between
the particles of lifeless matter and the living world, unite in the
more general conception of Nature. What then is involved in this
conception--the dominant conception of the poem in its philosophical
as well as its imaginative aspects? Something more than the subsidiary
conceptions mentioned above. There is, in the first place, all that
is involved in the unity of an organic whole. But to this whole
the imagination of the poet seems, in some passages, to attach
attributes scarcely reconcileable with the mechanical principles of
his philosophy. In emancipating himself from the religious traditions
of antiquity, Lucretius did not altogether escape from the power of
an idea, so deeply rooted in the thought of past ages, as to seem
to be an integral element of human consciousness. It is against the
limitations which the ancient mythology imposed on the idea of Divine
agency, rather than against the idea itself as it is understood in
modern times, that his philosophy protests. To Nature his imagination
attributes not only life, but creative and regulative power. There
would be more truth in calling this conception pantheistic than
atheistic. But the sense of will, freedom, individual life, is so
strong in Lucretius, that we think of the 'natura daedala rerum' rather
as a personal power, with attributes in some respects analogous to
those of man, than as a being in whose existence all other life is
merged. Though this figurative attribution of personal qualities to
great natural forces cannot be pressed as evidence of philosophical
belief, yet as it shows, on the one hand, an unconscious survival of
the state of mind which gave birth to mythology, so it seems to be
the unconscious awakening of a spiritual conception of a creative and
sustaining power in the universe.

This new and more vital conception which supersedes the old
mythological modes of thought is not altogether independent of them.
Lucretius still interprets the world by analogies and illustrations
which attach personal attributes to different phases and forces of
Nature. Thus he speaks of Aether as the fructifying father, of Earth
as the great mother of all living things. But the survival of the
mythological conception of the universe, blended indeed with other
modes of imaginative thought, appears most conspicuously in the famous
invocation to the poem,--

    Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
    Alma Venus.

The mysterious power there addressed is identified with the Alma
Venus of Italian worship,--the abstract conception of the life-giving
impulse, the operations of which are most visible in the new birth of
the early spring,--and with the Aphrodite of Greek art and poetry,--the
concrete and passionate conception of the beauty and charm which most
fascinate the senses. But if nothing more was meant in the opening
lines of the poem than a fanciful appeal to one of the Deities of the
popular belief, it might with justice be said that some of the finest
poetry in Lucretius directly contradicted his sincerest convictions.
But the language in which she is addressed clearly proves that the
'Alma Venus' of the invocation is not an independent capricious power,
separate from the orderly action of Nature. She is emphatically
addressed as a Power, present through all the world,--

                      Caeli subter labentia signa
    Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis
    Concelebras.

She is not only omnipresent, but all-creative,--

              Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
    Concipitur,--

and all-regulative--

    Quae quoniam renum naturam sola gubernas, &c.

Thus under the name, and with some of the attributes of the Goddess of
Mythology, the genial force of Nature,--'Natura Naturans' as distinct
from the 'rerum summa,' or 'Natura Naturata,'--is apprehended as a
living, all-pervading energy, the cause of all life, joy, beauty, and
order in the world, the cause too of all grace and accomplishment in
man. To this mysterious Power, from which all joy and loveliness are
silently emanating, the poet, (remembering at the same time that the
friend to whom he dedicates his poem claims especially to be under the
protection of that Goddess with whom she is identified), prays for
inspiration,--

    Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva leporem.[441]

Here, as in earlier invocations of the Muse, there is a recognition of
the truth that the feeling, the imagery, and the words of the poet come
to him in a way which he does not understand,--

    ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν, οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν,--

and by the gift of a Power which he cannot command. Like Goethe,
Lucretius seems to feel that his thoughts and feelings pass into form
and musical expression under the influence of the same vital movement
which in early spring fills the world with new life and beauty.
But still true to his philosophy, and remembering the Empedoclean
thought[442], which recurs with impressive solemnity in his argument,
that this life-giving energy is inseparably united with a destructive
energy, and seeing at the same time before his imagination the figures
and colouring of some great masterpiece of Greek art, he embodies his
conception in a passionately wrought picture of the loves of Aphrodite
and Ares, and concludes with a prayer that the gracious Power whom he
invokes would prevail on the fierce God of War to grant a time of peace
to his country.

If to regard this passage as merely an artistic ornament of the poem
would be unjust to the sincerity of Lucretius as a thinker, to regard
it merely as a piece of elaborate symbolism would be still more
unjust to his genius as a poet. It is a truth both of thought and of
imaginative feeling that there is a pervading and puissant energy in
the world, manifesting itself most powerfully in animate and inanimate
creation, when the deadness of winter gives place to the genial warmth
of spring,--

                          Tibi rident aequora ponti
    Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum;--

manifesting itself also in the human spirit in the form of genius,
calling into life new feelings and fancies of the poet, and shaping
them into forms of imperishable beauty. Whether consistently or
inconsistently with the ultimate tenets of his philosophy, the poet,
in this invocation, seems to recognise, behind these manifestations of
unconscious energy, the presence of a conscious Being with which his
own spirit can hold communion, and from which it draws inspiration.
With similar inconsistency or consistency a modern physicist speaks of
'the impression of joy given in the unfolding of leaf and the spreading
of plant as irresistibly suggesting the thought of a great Being
conscious of this joy.'

But this puissant and joy-giving energy, personified in the 'Alma Venus
genetrix,' is only one of the aspects which the 'Natura daedala rerum'
of Lucretius presents to man. She seems to stand to him rather in the
position of a task-mistress than of a beneficent Being, ministering to
his wants. The Gods receive all things from her bounty,--

    Omnia suppeditat porro Natura,[443]--

and the lower animals who 'wage no foolish strife with her' have their
wants also abundantly satisfied:--

                      Quando omnibus omnia large
    Tellus ipsa parit Naturaque daedala rerum.[444]

But to man she is the cause of evil as well as of good; of shipwrecks,
earthquakes, pestilence, and untimely death, as well as of all beauty
and delight. Sometimes he seems to hear her speaking to him in the
tones of stern reproof,--

    Denique si vocem rerum Natura repente, etc.[445]

Again he sees her rising up before him like the old Nemesis of Greek
religion, and trampling with secret irony on the pride and pomp of
human affairs,--

    Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
    Opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures
    Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur.[446]

It is this large conception of Nature which seems to bring the abstract
doctrines of Lucretius into harmony with his poetical feelings and his
human sensibilities. The poetry of the living world is thus breathed
into the dry bones of the Atomic system of Democritus. The unity which
the mind strains to grasp in contemplating the universe is thus made
compatible with the perception of individual life in everything. The
pathos and dignity of human life are enhanced by the recognition of our
dependence on this great Power above and around us. The contemplation
of this Power affects the imagination with a sense of awe, wonder, and
majesty. But with this contemplative emotion a still deeper feeling
seems to mingle. Throughout the poem there is heard a deep undertone
of solemnity as from one awakening to the apprehension of a great
invisible Power,--'a concealed omnipotence,'--in the world. As the
imagination of Lucretius is immeasurably more poetical, so is his
spirit immeasurably more reverential than that of Epicurus. If by the
analysis of his understanding he seems to take all mystery and sanctity
out of the universe, he restores them again by the synthesis of his
imagination. If his work seems in some places to 'teach a truth he
could not learn,' this is to be explained partly by the fact that he
sometimes leaves the beaten road of Epicureanism for the higher and
less defined tracks,--'avia loca,'--along which the mystic enthusiasm
of Empedocles had borne him. But partly it may be explained by the
fact that the poetic imagination, which was in him the predominant
faculty, asserts its right to be heard after the logical understanding
has said its last word. The imagination which recognises infinite
life and order in the world unconsciously assumes the existence of a
creative and governing Power, behind the visible framework of things.
Even the germ of such a thought was more elevating than the popular
idolatry and superstition. The recognition of the majesty of Nature
enables Lucretius to contemplate life with a sense both of solemnity
and security, while it imparts a more elevated feeling to his enjoyment
of the beauty of the world. The belief which he taught and by which he
lived is neither atheistic nor pantheistic; it is not definite enough
to be theistic. It was like the twilight between the beliefs that were
passing away, and that which rose on the world after his time,--

    ἦμος δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἄρ πω ἠώς, ἔτι δ᾽ ἀμφιλύκη νύξ.

[Footnote 376: 'First, by reason of the greatness of my argument, and
because I set the mind free from the close drawn bonds of superstition;
and next because, on so dark a theme, I compose such lucid verse,
touching every point with the grace of poesy.'--i. 931-34.]

[Footnote 377: Of Leucippus, with whose name the theory is also
associated, very little is known.]

[Footnote 378: 'This terror of the soul, therefore, and this darkness
must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun or the bright shafts of
day, but by the outward aspect and harmonious plan of nature.'--i.
146-48.]

[Footnote 379: i. 445-56.]

[Footnote 380: 'The original atoms are, therefore, of solid singleness,
composed of the smallest particles in close and compact union, not kept
together by any meeting of these particles, but rather powerful by
their eternal singleness, from which nature allows no loss by violence
or decay, storing them as the seeds of all things.'--i. 609-14.]

[Footnote 381: ii. 297-302.]

[Footnote 382: ii. 549.]

[Footnote 383: ii. 575-76]

[Footnote 384: 'If we are to suppose the existence of an eternal
substance, at the basis of all things, on which the safety of the whole
universe rests, lest you find creation resolved into nonentity.'--ii.
862-64.]

[Footnote 385: 'So soon as the deep rest of death hath fallen upon a
man, and the mind and the life have departed from him, there is no loss
in his whole frame to be perceived, either in appearance or in weight.
Death still presents everything that was before, except the vital sense
and the warm heat.'--iii. 211-15.]

[Footnote 386: 'For, not only would all reason come to nought, even
life itself would immediately be overthrown, unless you dare to trust
the senses.'--iv. 507-8.]

[Footnote 387: i. 135.]

[Footnote 388: 'Since nothing in our body has been produced in order
that we might be able to put it to use, but what has been produced
creates its own use.'--iv. 834-35.]

[Footnote 389: 'And love impaired their strength, and children, by
their coaxing ways, easily broke down the proud temper of their
fathers.'--v. 1017-18.]

[Footnote 390: vi. 60-1.]

[Footnote 391: E.g. i. 54; v. 154.]

[Footnote 392: Macaulay.]

[Footnote 393: E.g. i. 694.]

[Footnote 394: iv. 478-79.]

[Footnote 395:

    'In quae corpora si nullus tibi forte videtur
    Posse animi iniectus fieri, procul avius erras.'--ii. 739-40.

]

[Footnote 396: 'But it is necessary that the atoms, in the act of
creation, should exercise some secret, invisible faculty.'--i. 778-79.]

[Footnote 397: 'Since on all sides, through all the pores of aether,
and, as it were, all round through the breathing-places of the mighty
world, a free exit and entrance is given to the atoms.'--vi. 492-94.]

[Footnote 398: 'As feathers, and hair, and bristles are first formed on
the limbs of beasts and the bodies of birds, so the young earth then
first bore herbs and plants, afterwards gave birth to the generations
of living things.'--v. 788-91.]

[Footnote 399: 'So more and more, the sweat oozing from the salt body,
increased the sea and the moving watery plains by its flow.'--v.
487-88.]

[Footnote 400: 'Since neither its veins can support adequate
nourishment, nor does Nature supply what is needful.'--ii. 1141-42.]

[Footnote 401: 'For one thing will grow clear after another: nor shall
the darkness of night make thee lose thy way, before thou seest, to the
full, the furthest secrets of Nature: so shall all things throw light
one on the other.'--i. 1115-17.]

[Footnote 402: 'Dishonouring immortal things by mortal words.'--v. 121.]

[Footnote 403: 'They, doubtless, became the prey and the gain of
others, unable to break through the bonds of fate by which they were
confined, until Nature caused that species to disappear.'--v. 875-77.

Mr. Wallace (Epicureanism, p. 114) in commenting on this passage adds,
'Of course in this there is no implication of the peculiarly Darwinian
doctrine of descent, or development of kind from kind, with structure
modified and complicated to meet changing circumstances.']

[Footnote 404: iii. 327-28.]

[Footnote 405: i. 305.]

[Footnote 406: iv. 705.]

[Footnote 407: 'Dogs, lightly sleeping, with faithful heart.'--v. 864.]

[Footnote 408: 'When from the strong torrents of Helicon the swans
raise their liquid wailing with doleful voice.'--iv. 547-48.]

[Footnote 409: 'As the low note of the swan is sweeter than the cry of
the cranes, far-scattered among the south-wind's skiey clouds.'--iv.
181-82.]

[Footnote 410: 'And gulls among the sea-waves, seeking their food and
pastime in the brine.'--v. 1079-80.]

[Footnote 411: Od. vi. 66.]

[Footnote 412: 'And likewise, when the lithe serpent casts its skin
among the thorns; for often we notice the briers, with their light airy
spoils hanging to them.'--iv. 60-2.]

[Footnote 413: iii. 213-15.]

[Footnote 414: 'Consider, too, the special madness of the mind, and
forgetfulness of things; consider its sinking into the black waves of
lethargy.'--iii. 828-29.]

[Footnote 415: 'Unbroken speech prolonged from the first light of dawn
till the shadows of the dark night.'--iv. 537-38.]

[Footnote 416: 'Now, too, let us examine the "Homoeomeria" of
Anaxagoras, as the Greeks call it, though the poverty of our native
speech does not admit of its being named in our language.'--i. 830-33.]

[Footnote 417: 'Whence returning victorious he brings back to us
tidings of what may and what may not come into existence: on what
principle, in fine, the power of each thing is determined and the
deeply-fixed limit of its being.'--i. 75-77.]

[Footnote 418: 'According to what condition all things have been
created, what necessity there is that they abide by it, and how they
may not annul the mighty laws of the ages.'--v. 56-58.]

[Footnote 419: 'Since it is absolutely decreed, what each thing can and
what it cannot do, by the conditions of nature.'--i. 586.]

[Footnote 420: 'It is fixed and ordered where each thing may grow and
exist.'--iii. 787.]

[Footnote 421: ii. 254.]

[Footnote 422: ii. 1091.]

[Footnote 423: vi. 32.]

[Footnote 424: 'This, in these circumstances, I think I can establish,
that such faint traces of our native elements are left beyond the
powers of our reason to dispel, that nothing prevents us from leading a
life worthy of the gods.'--iii. 319-22.]

[Footnote 425: ii. 8.]

[Footnote 426: ii. 297-99.]

[Footnote 427: i. 262-64.]

[Footnote 428: ii. 573-74.]

[Footnote 429: ii. 575-76.]

[Footnote 430: iii. 964.]

[Footnote 431: ii. 77-79.]

[Footnote 432: 'So one thing shall never cease being born from another,
and life is given to no man as a possession, to all for use.'--iii.
970-71.]

[Footnote 433: 'Hence, moreover, the race of man and the beasts of
the forest are fed; hence we see cities glad with the flower of their
children, and the leafy woods on all sides loud with the song of young
birds.'--i. 254-56.]

[Footnote 434: v. 271-72.]

[Footnote 435: 'Finally, since the vast members of the world, engaged
in no holy warfare, so mightily contend with one another, see'st thou
not that some end may be assigned to their long conflict, either when
the sun and every mode of heat, having drunk up all the moisture, shall
have gained the day, which they are ever tending to do, but do not yet
accomplish?' etc.--v. 380-85.]

[Footnote 436: 'And that you may see how very small a part one
firmament is of the whole sum of things, how small a fraction it
is, not even so much in proportion as a single man is to the whole
earth.'--vi. 650-52.]

[Footnote 437: 'And traversed the whole boundless region of space, in
mind and spirit.'--i. 74.]

[Footnote 438: 'Who can order the infinite mass? who can hold with a
guiding hand the mighty reins of immensity?'--ii. 1095-96.]

[Footnote 439: ii. 16.]

[Footnote 440: ii. 348.]

[Footnote 441: i. 28.]

[Footnote 442: Lucretius, in other places where he introduces pictures
or stories from the ancient mythology, as at ii. 600, etc., iii. 978,
etc., iv. 584, etc., treats them as symbolising some facts of Nature or
human life. Occasionally, as at v. 14, etc., he deals with them in the
spirit of Euhemerism. He never uses them, as Virgil, Horace, or Ovid
do, merely as materials for artistic representation.]

[Footnote 443: iii. 23.]

[Footnote 444: v. 233-4.]

[Footnote 445: ii. 931, etc.]

[Footnote 446: v. 1233-5.]




CHAPTER XIII.

THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS.


Lucretius does not enforce his moral teaching on the systematic plan
on which his physical philosophy is discussed. His view of human life
is sometimes presented as it arises in the regular course of the
argument, at other times in highly finished digressions, interspersed
throughout the work with the view apparently of breaking its severe
monotony. These passages might be compared to the lyrical odes in a
Greek drama. They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest
the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently
special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between
the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects
of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral
attitude of Epicurus was, in some respects, anticipated by Democritus,
Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz., from the
later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the
personal circumstances and disposition of Epicurus. By the ordinary
Epicurean his philosophy was valued chiefly as affording a basis for
the denial of the doctrines of Divine Providence and of the immortality
of the soul. But there is a wide difference between ordinary
Epicureanism and that solemn view of human life which was revealed to
the world in the poem of Lucretius. The power which his speculative
philosophy exercised over his mind was one cause of this difference.
Although there is no necessary connexion between his philosophical
convictions and his ethical doctrines, yet the elevation of feeling
which he has imparted to the least elevated of all the moral systems
of antiquity may be in part accounted for by the influence of ideas
derived from the philosophy of Democritus.

Epicureanism, in its original form, was the expression of a character
as unlike as possible to that of Lucretius. It arose in a state of
society and under circumstances widely different from the social and
political condition of the last phase of the Roman Republic. It was a
doctrine suited to the easy social life which succeeded to the great
political career, the energetic ambition, and the creative genius
which ennobled the great age of Athenian liberty. It was essentially
the philosophy of the ῥεῖα ζώοντες, who found in refined and
regulated pleasure, in friendliness and sociability, a compensation
for the loss of political existence, and of the sacred associations
and ideal glories of their ancestral religion. Human life, stripped
of its solemn meaning and high practical interest, was supposed to be
understood and realised, and brought under the control of a comfortable
and intelligible philosophy. Pleasure was the obvious end of existence;
the highest aim of knowledge was to ascertain the conditions under
which most enjoyment could be secured; the triumph of the will was
to conform to these conditions. All violent emotion, all care and
anxiety, whatever impaired the capacity of enjoyment or fostered
artificial desire, was to be controlled or resisted, as inimical to the
tranquillity of the soul. The philosophers of the garden taught and
acted on the practical truth, that pleasure depended on the mind more
than on external things; that a simple life tended more to happiness
than luxury[447]; that excess of every kind was followed by reaction.
They inculcated political quiescence as well as the abnegation of
personal ambition. As death was 'the end of all,' life was to be
temperately enjoyed while it lasted, and resigned, when necessary,
with cheerful composure.

Such a philosophy would scarcely be thought capable of having given
birth to any form of serious and elevated poetry. Its natural fruit
was the refined, cheerful, and witty new comedy of Athens. Yet the
genius of Lucretius and of Horace expressed these doctrines in tones of
dignity and beauty, which have been denied to more ennobling truths.
The philosophy of pleasure thus makes its appeal to the poetical
susceptibility, as well as to the ordinary temperament of men. It
might have been thought also that no philosophy would have been less
attractive to the dignity of the nobler type, or to the coarser texture
of the common type of Roman character. Yet among the Romans of the
last age of the Republic, Epicureanism was a formidable rival to the
more congenial system of Stoicism, and was professed by men of pure
character and intellectual tastes as well as by men like the Piso
Caesoninus, of whom both Cicero and Catullus have left so unflattering
a portrait. These two systems, although antagonistic in their view and
aim, yet had this common adaptation to the Roman character, that they
held out a definite plan of life, and laid down precepts by which that
life might be attained. The strength of will and singleness of aim,
characteristic of the Romans, their love of rule and impatience of
speculative suspense, inclined and enabled them to embrace the teaching
of those schools whose tenets were most definite and most readily
applicable to human conduct. To a Greek philosopher the interest of
conforming his life to any system arose in a great measure from the
freedom and exercise thereby afforded to his intellect. Thus Epicurus,
in denying the power of luxury to give happiness, says,--'These are
not the things which form the life of pleasure,'--'ἀλλὰ νήφων λογισμὸς
καὶ τὰς αἰτίας ἐξερευνῶν πάσης αἱρέσεως καὶ φυγῆς καὶ τὰς δοξὰς
ἐξελαύνων, ἀφ᾽ ὧν πλεῖστος τὰς ψυχὰς καταλαμβάνει θόρυβος[448].' To a
Roman, on the other hand, such a scheme of life was recommended by
the new power which was thus imparted to the will. Greek philosophy
has sometimes been reproached as the cause of the corruption of
Roman character and the decay of Roman religion. But it would be more
true to say that, to the higher natures at least, philosophy supplied
the place of the ancient principles of duty, which had long since
decayed with the decay of patriotism and religion. The idea of
regulating life by an ideal standard afforded a broader aim and a
more humane and liberal sphere of action to that self-control and
constancy of will, out of which, in combination with absolute devotion
to the State, the ancient Roman virtue had been formed. But still it
is true that the principles of Epicureanism were difficult to
reconcile with some of the conditions, both good and bad, of Roman
character. While fostering the humaner feelings and more social tastes,
and so softening the primitive rudeness and austerity, these doctrines
tended to discourage national and political spirit, by withdrawing the
energies of the will from outward activity to the regulation of the
inner life. The attitude both of Stoicism and Epicureanism was one of
resistance on the part of the will to outward influences;--the one
system striving to attain entire independence of circumstances, the
other to regulate life in accordance with them, so as to secure the
utmost positive enjoyment, and the utmost exemption from pain. The
political passions of the last age of the Republic inclined men of
thought and leisure to that philosophy which seemed best fitted to meet
and satisfy--

    'The longing for confirmed tranquillity
    Inward and outward.'

But while Epicureanism was a natural refuge from the passions of a
revolutionary era, Stoicism was a fortress of inward strength to the
few who, at the fall of the Republic, resisted the manifest tendency
of things, and, in a later age, to those who strove to maintain the
dignity of Roman citizens under the degradation of the early Empire.

But the profession of Epicureanism, in the last age of the Republic,
was not confined to men like Atticus and Lucretius who stood aloof
from public life. The existence of Cassius, who acted and suffered
for the same cause as the Stoic Cato, shows that political apathy,
although theoretically required by this philosophy, was not essential
to a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius, though animated by an ardent spirit
of proselytism, does not desire that Memmius should forget his duties
as a citizen and statesman. The denial of the Divine interference in
human affairs and of the doctrine of a future state was the essential
bond of agreement among the adherents of Epicureanism. The religious
unsettlement of the age assumed in them a positive form. They were the
Sadducees of Rome, who escaped from the perplexity as well as from
the most elevating influences of life, by moulding their feelings
and conduct on the firm conviction, that while man was master of his
happiness in this world, he had nothing either to hope or fear after
death.

It seems a strange result of the moral confusion of that time to find
the enthusiasm of Lucretius springing from this denial of what from the
days of Plato have been regarded as the highest hopes of mankind. No
writer of antiquity was more profoundly impressed by the serious import
and mystery of life. Yet he appears as the unhesitating advocate of all
the tenets of this philosophy, and denies the foundations of religious
belief with a zeal more like religious earnestness than the spirit of
any other writer of antiquity. Without conscious deviation from the
teaching of his master, he reproduces the calm unimpassioned doctrines
of Epicurus, in a new type,--earnest, austere, and ennobled; enforcing
them not for the sake of ease or for the love of pleasure, but in the
cause of truth and human dignity. Pleasure is indeed recognised by
him as the universal law or condition of existence--'dux vitae dia
voluptas,'--the great instrument of Nature through which all life is
created and maintained. But the real object of his teaching is to
obtain not active pleasure, but peace and a 'pure heart.' 'For life,'
he says, 'may go on without corn or wine, but not without a pure heart--

    At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi.

All that Nature craves is that the body should be free from actual
pain, and that the mind, undisturbed by fear and anxiety, should be
open to the influence of natural enjoyment--'

                          Nonne videre
    Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, cui
    Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur
    Iucundo sensu cura semotu' metuque?[449]

Although in different places he indicates a genuine appreciation of the
charms of art,--in the form of music, paintings, statues, etc.,--yet he
expresses or implies an independence of all the adventitious stimulants
to enjoyment. The only needful pleasure is that which Nature herself
bestows on a mind free from care, passion, violent emotion, restless
discontent, and slothful apathy.

Although no new principle or maxim of conduct appears in his teaching,
the view of human life presented by Lucretius was really something new
in the world. A strong and deep flood of serious thought and feeling
was for the first time poured into the shallow channel of Epicureanism.
The spirit in which Lucretius contemplated the world was different from
that of any other man of antiquity; especially different from that of
his master in philosophy. To the one human life was a pleasant sojourn,
which should be temperately enjoyed and gracefully terminated at the
appointed time: to the other it was the more sombre and tragic side of
the august spectacle which all Nature presents to the contemplative
mind. Moderation in enjoyment was the practical lesson of the one:
fortitude and renunciation were the demands which the other made of all
who would live worthily.

This difference in the spirit, rather than the letter, of their
philosophy is to be attributed in some degree to this, that Lucretius
was a Roman of the antique type of Ennius, born with the passionate
heart of a poet, and inheriting the resolute endurance of the great
patrician families. Partly too, as was said before, the effect of the
speculative philosophy which he embraced was to deepen and strengthen
that mood of imaginative contemplation, which he shares, not with
any of his countrymen, but with a few great thinkers of the world.
It is his philosophical enthusiasm which distinguishes the teaching
of Lucretius from the meditative and practical wisdom which has
made Horace the favourite Epicurean teacher and companion of modern
times. Partly too, as was said in a former chapter, this new aspect
of Epicureanism in Lucretius may be attributed to the reaction of his
nature from the confusion of the times in which he lived.

It is not indeed possible to learn whether the passions of his age
first drove him to Epicureanism, or whether the doctrines of that
philosophy, adopted on speculative grounds, may not rather have led him
to regard his age in the spirit of contemplative isolation, which he
has described in the well-known passage--

    Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, etc.

His philosophy may have been forced on him by personal experience, or
the intimations of experience may have assumed their form and colour
from the nature of his philosophy. But the memories of his youth and
the experience of things witnessed in his manhood did undoubtedly
colour all his thoughts and feelings on human life. Some of the forms
of evil against which he contends had never been so prominently
displayed before. Yet all these considerations afford only a partial
explanation of the character of his practical philosophy. There were
other Roman Epicureans, contemporary with him and later, and none
are known to have been in any way like him. Although his nature was
made of the strong Roman fibre; although his mind had been deeply
imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophy; although his view of
life was necessarily coloured by the action of his times; yet all
these considerations go but a little way to explain his attitude of
mind and the work which he accomplished in the world. Over all these
considerations this predominates, that he was a man of great original
and individual force, and one who in power and sincerity of thought
and feeling rose higher than any other above the level of his age and
country.

The moral teaching of the poem was rather an active protest against
various forms of evil than the proclamation of a positive good. The
happiness which the philosophic life promised is described in vague
outline, like the delineation given of the calm and passionless
existence of the Gods. Epicureanism appears here in antagonism to the
prejudice and ignorance, the weakness and the passions of human nature,
rather than in its hold of any positive good. Hence it is that the
tones of Lucretius might in many places be mistaken for those of a
Stoic rather than an Epicurean. In their resistance to the common forms
of evil these systems were at one. Perhaps, too, in the positive good
at which he aimed, the spirit of Lucretius was more that of a Stoic
than he imagined. His sense of human dignity was much more powerful
than his regard for human enjoyment. Yet his philosophy enabled him,
along with the strength of Stoicism, to cherish humaner sympathies.
While his earnest temper, his scorn of weakness, his superiority to
pleasure were in harmony with the militant rather than the quiescent
attitude of each of these philosophies, his humanity and tenderness of
feeling and the enjoyment which he derived from Nature and art were
more in harmony with the better side of Epicureanism than with the
formal teaching of the Porch.

The evils of life, for the cure of which Lucretius considers his
philosophy available, appeared to him to spring not out of man's
relation to Nature, but out of the weakness of his reason and the
corruption of his heart. The great service of Epicurus consisted not
only in revealing the laws of Nature, but in laying his finger on the
secret cause of man's unhappiness. Observing the insufficiency of all
external goods to bestow peace and contentment, he saw that the evil
lay in the vessel into which these blessings were poured:--

    Intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum
    Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus,
    Quae conlata foris et commoda cumque venirent;
    Partim quod fluxum pertusumque esse videbat,
    Ut nulla posset ratione explerier umquam;
    Partim quod taetro quasi conspurcare sapore
    Omnia cernebat, quaecumque receperat, intus.[450]

The evils which vitiate our happiness are the cowardice which dares
not accept the blessings of life, the weakness which repines at what
is inevitable, the restless desires which cannot enjoy the present and
crave for what is beyond their reach, the apathy and insensibility to
natural enjoyment, which are the necessary consequence of luxurious
indulgence. Thus the aim of his moral teaching was to purify the
heart from superstition, from the fear of death, from the passions of
ambition and of love, from all artificial pleasures and desires.

The greatest of these evils and the mainspring of all human misery is
superstition. It is this which surrounds life with the gloom of death--

    Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore.[451]

Against the arbitrary and cruel power, supposed to be exercised by the
Gods, Lucretius proclaimed internecine war. The fear of this power is
denounced, not as a restraint on natural inclination, but as a base and
intolerable burden, degrading life, confounding all genuine feeling,
corrupting our ideas of what is holiest and most divine. The pathetic
story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told to enforce the antagonism
between the exactions of religious belief and the most sacred human
affections. Every line of the poem is indirectly a protest against the
religious errors of antiquity. At occasional intervals this protest is
directly uttered, sometimes with indignant irony, at other times with
the profoundest pathos. The first feeling breaks forth in the passage
at vi. 380, etc., where he argues against the fancies which attribute
thunder to the capricious anger of the Gods. 'Why is it,' he asks,
'that the bolts pass over the guilty and often strike the innocent? Why
are they idly spent on desert places? Is this done by the Gods merely
in the way of practice and exercise for their arms? Why is it that
Jupiter never hurls his bolts in a clear sky? Does he descend into the
clouds in order that his aim may be surer? Why does he cast his bolts
into the sea? What charge has he against the waves and the waste of
waters?

                                Quid undas
    Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantis.[452]

Why is it that he often destroys and disfigures his own temples and
images?'

Elsewhere, however, he is moved by a feeling deeper than scorn,--a
feeling of true reverence, springing from a high ideal of the attitude
which it became man to maintain in presence of a superior nature. There
is no passage in the poem in which he speaks more from the depths of
his heart than in the lines--

    O genus infelix humanum, talia divis
    Cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!
    Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
    Volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!
    Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
    Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
    Nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
    Ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo
    Spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,
    Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri.[453]

The terrors of the popular mythology are denounced as a violation of
the majesty of the Gods, as well as the cause of infinite evil to
ourselves,--not indeed because any thought or act of ours has the power
to rouse the Divine anger, but from the effect that these feelings have
on our own minds. 'No longer can we approach the temples of the Gods
with a quiet heart, nor receive into our minds the intimations of the
Divine nature in peace--'

    Nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis,
    Nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur
    In mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae
    Suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace valebis.[454]

This passage and others in the poem imply that Lucretius both believed
in the existence of Gods, and conceived of them as revealing themselves
through direct impressions to the mind of man, and filling it with
solemn awe and peace. But the account which he gives of their eternal
existence is vague and poetical, and might almost be regarded as a
symbolical expression of what seemed to him most holy and divine in
man. The highest aim of man is to 'lead a life worthy of the Gods': the
essential attribute of the divine life is 'peace.' The Gods are said
to consist of the finest and purest essence, to be exempt from death,
decay, and wasting passions, to be supplied with all things by the
liberal bounty of Nature, and to dwell for ever in untroubled serenity
above the darkness and the storms of our world. Their abode in the
spaces betwixt different worlds--(the 'intermundia' as they are called
by Cicero),--is described in words almost literally translated from the
description of the Heaven of the Odyssey--

    Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae
    Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis
    Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina
    Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether
    Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident.[455]

'They reveal themselves to man in dreams and waking visions by
images of ampler size and more august aspect than that of our mortal
condition. Fear and ignorance have assigned to these unchanging forms
the functions of creating and governing the world, and out of this
fear have arisen all over the earth temples and altars, along with
the festivals and the solemn rites of superstition. But the Gods are
neither the arbitrary tyrants nor the beneficent guardians of the
world. Why should they have done anything for the benefit of man? How
can he add to or detract from their eternal happiness? Shall we suppose
them weary of their existence, and infected with a human passion for
change?--

    At, credo, in tenebris vita ac maerore iacebat,
    Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo.

Whence could they have obtained the idea of creation, whence gathered
the secret powers of matter--

    Si non ipsa dedit specimen natura creandi?'

Against the old argument from final causes he opposes that drawn from
the imperfections of the world, such as the waste of Nature's resources
on vast tracts of mountain and forest, on desolate marshes, rocks, and
seas,--the enmity to man of other occupants of the earth,--the malign
influences of climate and the seasons,--the feebleness of infancy,--the
devastations of disease,--the untimeliness of early death[456].

While his belief in the Gods is thus expressed in vague outline and
poetical symbolism, yet it is clear that as he recognised a secret,
orderly, and omnipotent power in Nature, so also he recognised the
ideal of a purer and serener life than that of earthly existence.
These two elements in all true religion, a reverential acknowledgment
of a universal power and order, and a sense of a diviner life with
which man may have communion, were part of the being of Lucretius. His
denial of supernatural beliefs extended not only to all the fables
and false conceptions of ancient mythology, but to the doctrine of
a Divine Providence recompensing men, here or hereafter, according
to their actions. The intensity of his nature led him to identify
all religion with the cruel or childish fables of the popular faith.
The certainty with which he grasped the truth of the laws and order
of Nature was incompatible with the only conception he could form
of a Divine action on the world. His deep sense of human rights and
deep sympathy with human feeling rebelled against a belief in Powers
exercising a capricious tyranny over the world, and exacting human
sacrifice as a propitiation of their offended majesty. His reverence
for truth and his sense of the power and mystery of Nature led him
to scorn the virtue attributed to an idolatrous and formal worship.
This attitude of religious isolation, not more from his own time than
from the subsequent course of thought, in a man of unusual sincerity
and earnestness of feeling, is certainly among the most impressive
phenomena of ancient literature. The spirit in which he denies the
beliefs of the world is far from resembling the triumph of a cold
philosophy over the religious associations of mankind. He is moved even
to a kind of poetical sympathy with some of the ceremonies and symbols
of Paganism. A sense of religious awe,--a sympathetic recognition of
the power of religious emotion over the hearts of men,--is expressed,
for instance, in the lines which describe the procession of Cybele
through the great cities and nations of the world. While guarding
himself against the pollution of a base idolatry, he yet acknowledges
not only the power of religious associations to entwine themselves with
human affections, but the intrinsic power of the truths symbolised
in that worship; viz., the truth of the majesty of Nature, and of
the duties arising from the elemental affections to parents and
country. In regard to all his religious impressions his intensity
of feeling and imagination seems to place him on a solitary height,
nearly as far apart from the followers of his own school as from their
adversaries[457].

The same strength of heart and mind characterises that passage of
sustained and impassioned feeling, in which Lucretius encounters the
thought of eternal death. The vast spiritual difference between the
Roman poet and the Greek philosopher is apparent when we contrast the
cold, unsympathetic language of the epistle to Menœceus with the
fervent and profoundly human tones of the third book of the poem of
Lucretius. Epicurus escapes from the fear of death through a placid
indifference of feeling, an easy contentment with the comforts of this
life, a sense of relief in getting rid of 'the longing for immortality'
(τὸν τῆς ἀθανασίας πόθον). Lucretius, while realising the full pathos
and solemnity of the thought of death, preaches submission to the
inexorable decree of Nature with a stern consistency and a proud
fortitude combating the suggestions of human weakness.

The whole of the third book is devoted to this part of his subject, and
the argument of the fourth is to a great extent supplementary to that
of the third book. The physical doctrine enunciated and illustrated in
the first, half of the third book is the materiality of the soul and
its indissoluble connexion with the body. The practical consequence of
this doctrine, viz., that death is nothing to us, is there enforced
in a long passage[458] of sustained power and solemnity of feeling.
First, we are made to realise the entire unconsciousness in death
throughout all eternity. "As it was before we were born, so shall it be
hereafter." As we felt no trouble in the past at the clash of conflict
between Roman and Carthaginian, when all the world shook with alarm, so
nothing can touch us or move us then--

    Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo.[459]

It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any kind
of suffering after all consciousness has ceased--

    Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit
    Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse.[460]

Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife,
and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has
brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they
forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and
longing for them. So, too, men 'spice their fair banquets with the
dust of death.' They say, 'our joy is but for a season; it will soon
be past, nor ever again be recalled,'--as if forsooth any want or any
desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking--

              Nec quisquam expergitus exstat,
    Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta.[461]

Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: 'Thou
fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not
been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast
like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has
hitherto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add
to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There
is no new thing under the sun"--"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the weak
complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away hence
with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to enjoy the
present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent, that death
has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a just charge
and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to new; and life
is given to no man in possession, to all men for use. The time before
we were born is a mirror to us of what the future shall be. Is there
any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper rest than any sleep?'

'The terrors of the unseen world are but the hell which fools make for
themselves out of their passions[462]. The torments of Tantalus, of
Tityus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the blind
cowardice and superstition, of the craving passions, of the ever-foiled
and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent with the natural
joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade our mortal
existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of the tortures
of the damned are creations of a guilty conscience, or the projections
into futurity of the experiences of earthly punishment.'

Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have gone
before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles--

    ἀλλὰ, φίλος, θάνε καὶ σύ· τίη ὀλοφύρεαι οὕτως;
    κάτθανε καὶ Πάτροκλος, ὅπερ σέο πολλὸν ἀμείνων[463]--

he reminds us that better and greater men than we have died,--kings
and soldiers, poets and philosophers, the mightiest equally with the
humblest. In the spirit, and partly too in the words of Ennius, he
enforces the thought that 'Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the terror
of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he were the meanest
slave.' 'Why, then, should one whose life is half a sleep, who is the
prey of weak fears and restless discontent, complain that he too is
subject to the common law? What is this wretched love of life, which
makes us tremble at every danger? Death cannot be avoided; no new
pleasure can be forged out by longer living. This evil of our lot is
not inflicted by Nature, but by our own craving hearts, which cannot
enjoy, and are yet ever thirsting for longer life[464].'

The power of the whole of this passage depends partly on the vividness
of feeling and conception with which the thought is realised, partly on
the august and solemn associations with which it is surrounded. Such
graphic touches as these--

    Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta;[465]--

    Cum summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi;[466]--

    Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae.[467]--

and again, the life, truth, and tenderness of the picture presented in
the lines--

    Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
    Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
    Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent,[468]

bring home to the mind, in startling distinctness, the old familiar
contrast between the 'cold obstruction' of the grave and 'the warm
precincts of the cheerful day.' But the horror and pain of the thought
of death are lost in a feeling of august resignation to the universal
law. Though the fact is made present to our minds in its sternest
reality, yet it is encompassed with the pomp and majesty of great
associations. It suggests the thought of the most momentous crisis in
history--

    Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis,[469]

of the regal state of kings and emperors--

    Inde alii multi reges rerumque potentes
    Occiderunt, magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt,[470]

of the simpler and more impressive grandeur of the great men of old,
such as the 'good Ancus,' the mighty Scipio, Homer, 'peerless among
poets,' the sage Democritus, Epicurus, 'the sun among all the lesser
luminaries.' Lastly, we are reminded of the universal law of Nature,
that the death of the old is the condition of the life of the new--

    Sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri.[471]

Even if the spirit of the poet cannot be said to rise buoyantly above
the depressing and paralysing influence of this conviction, yet he
draws a higher lesson from it than the maxim of 'Eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die.' He understands the epicurean precept of 'carpe diem'
in a sense more befitting to human dignity. The lesson which he teaches
is the need of conquering all weakness, sloth, and irresolution in
life. This life is all that we have through eternity; let it not be
wasted in unsatisfied desires, insensibility to present and regrets for
absent good, or restless disquiet for the future; let us understand
ourselves and our position here, bear and enjoy whatever is allotted
to us during our few years of existence. We are masters of ourselves
and of our fortunes, so far at least as to rise clearly above the
degradation of ignorance and misery.

The practical use of the study of Nature, according to Lucretius,
is, first, to inspire confidence in the room of an ignorant and
superstitious fear of supernatural power; and, secondly, to show what
man really needs, and so to clear the heart from all artificial desires
and passions. All that is wanted for happiness in this world is a mind
free from error, and a heart neither incapable of natural enjoyment
(fluxum pertusumque) nor vitiated by false appetite[472]. Of the
errors to which man is liable superstition and the fear of death are
the most deeply seated. Of the artificial desires and passions, on the
other hand, the most destructive are the love of power and of riches,
and the sensual appetite for pleasure. In the opening lines of the
second book the strife of ambition, the rivalries of rank and intellect
in the warfare of politics are contrasted with the serene life of
philosophy, as darkness, error, and danger with light, certainty, and
peace--

    Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
    Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,
    Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre
    Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae,
    Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
    Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
    Ad summas emergere oper rerumque potiri.[473]

Yet to be the master of armies and of navies, or to be clothed in gold
and purple gives not that exemption from the real terrors and anxieties
of life which the power of reason only can bestow--

    Quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus,
    Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces
    Nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela,
    Audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis
    Versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro
    Nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai,
    Quid dubitas quin omni' sit haec rationi' potestas?
    Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.[474]

The desire of power and station leads to the shame and misery of
baffled hopes, of which the toil of Sisyphus is the type, and also
to the guilt which deluges the world in blood, and violates the
most sacred ties of Nature[475]. While failure in the struggle is
degradation, success is often only the prelude to the most sudden
downfall. Weary with bloodshed, and with forcing their way up the
hostile and narrow road of ambition[476], men reach the summit of their
hopes only to be hurled down by envy as by a thunderbolt[477]. They are
slaves to ambition, merely because they cannot distinguish the true
from the false, because they cannot judge of things as they really are,
apart from the estimate which the world puts upon them--

    Quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque
    Res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis.[478]

The love of riches and of luxurious living, which had begun to corrupt
the Roman character in the age of Lucilius, had increased to gigantic
dimensions in the last age of the Republic. By no aspect of his age was
Lucretius more repelled than by this. No doctrine is enforced in the
poem with more sincerity of conviction than that of the happiness and
dignity of plain and natural living, the vanity of all the appliances
of wealth, and their inability to give real enjoyment either to body
or mind. In a well-known passage at the beginning of the second book
he adapts an ideal description from Homer's account of the palace of
Alcinous to the costly magnificence and splendour of Roman banquets,
with which he contrasts the pleasure of gratifying simple tastes, in
fine weather, among the beauties of Nature--

    Praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni
    Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas.[479]

With fervid sincerity he announces the truth that 'to the man who
would govern his life by reason plain living and a contented spirit are
great riches'--

    Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,
    Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce
    Aequo animo.[480]

Moderation, independence, and self-control are the virtues which Horace
derives from his philosophy. He knew how to enjoy both the luxury of
the city and the simple fare of the country. Lucretius is more alive to
the dangers of pampering the body and enervating the mind. He is more
active in his resistance to the common forms of indulgence: he shows
more truly simple tastes, stronger capacity of natural enjoyment. He
is vividly sensible of the apathy and _ennui_ produced by the luxury
and inaction of his age. Others among the Roman poets, with more or
less sincerity and consistency, appear to long for a return to more
natural ways, and paint their ideals of the purity and simplicity of
country life. But no writer of antiquity is less of an idealist than
Lucretius: there is no writer, ancient or modern, whose words are more
truthful and unvarnished. There is no romance or self-deception in what
he longs for. There may be some anticipation of the spirit of Rousseau
in Virgil, and still more in Tibullus, but none whatever in Lucretius.
The privations and rude misery of savage life are painted in as sombre
colours as the satiety and discontent of his own age. It would be
difficult to name any writer, ancient or modern, by whom the lesson of
'plain living and high thinking' was more worthily inculcated.

The passion of love, which, in its more violent phases, was seen to be
a prominent motive in the comedy of Plautus, became a very powerful
influence in actual life during the last years of the Republic and the
early years of the Empire. Extreme license in the pursuit of pleasure
was common among men and women of the highest rank: but, over and above
this, the poetry of Catullus and of the elegiac poets of the Augustan
age shows that in the case of young men of fashion and literary
accomplishment (and these were often combined) intrigue and temporary
_liaisons_ had become the absorbing interest and occupation of life.
With these claims of passion and sentiment, apparently so alien to
the ancient strength and dignity of the Roman character, Lucretius
felt no sympathy. No writer has shown a profounder reverence for human
affection. In his eyes the crowning guilt of superstition is the cruel
violation of natural ties exacted by it: the chief bitterness of death
is the thought of eternal separation from wife and children: the first
civilising influence acting on the world is traced to the power of the
blandishments of children over the savage pride of strength. The pathos
of the famous passage, at Book ii. 350, attests his sympathy with the
sorrow caused by the disruption of natural ties, even in the lower
animals. Other casual expressions, as in that line of profound feeling--

    Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus;[481]--

or such pictures, as that at iii. 469, of friends and relatives
surrounding the bed of one who has sunk into a deep lethargy--

                      Ad vitam qui revocantes
    Circumstant lacrimis rorantes ora genasque,[482]--

show how strong and real was his regard for the great elemental
affections of human nature. But, on the other hand, he is austerely
indifferent to the follies and the idealising fancies of lovers. With
satirical and not fastidious realism he strips passion of all romance,
and exhibits it as a bondage fatal alike to character and independence,
to peace of mind and to self-respect. But it is the weakness, not
the immorality of licentious passion which he condemns. And it would
be altogether an anachronism to attribute to a writer of that age
sentiments on this subject in harmony either with the austere virtue of
the primitive Romans, or with the moral standard of modern times. It is
not the indulgence of inclination, but its excess and perversion, by
which the happiness and dignity of life are placed in another's power,
which he condemns.

In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human
life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary to
contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought in
modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the result
perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by seclusion
in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly exaggerates the
influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over the world. There
is little trace, either in the literature[483] or in the sepulchral
inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'--

    Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo
    Omnia suffendens mortis nigrore neque ullam
    Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit.

The answer of Cicero to the exaggerated pretensions of Epicureanism
seems to express the common sense of his age, 'Where can you find
an old woman fatuous enough to believe what you forsooth would have
believed, if you had not studied physical science'[484]? The passionate
protest of Lucretius seems more applicable to times of religious
persecution, and to extreme forms of fanaticism in modern times,
than to the tolerant spirit and the not unkindly superstition of
the Greek and Roman world, as they are known in its literature. But
if the experience of the modern world gives a still more startling
significance to the words--

    Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,--

that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness
of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient
religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the
poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the
solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the baser
influences of fear in man's whole attitude to a supernatural Power. His
ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that passage[485]
where he resolves the passions of ambition and avarice into the fear of
death, and that again into the dread of eternal punishment.

The limitation of his philosophy is also apparent in his want of
sympathy with the active duties and pursuits of life. He can see
only different modes of evil in the busy interests of the world.
War, politics, commerce, appeared to him a mere struggle of personal
passion with a view to personal aggrandisement. A life of peace, not of
energetic action, was his ideal. In eternal peace he placed the supreme
happiness of the Gods: a state of peaceful contemplation--

    Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri--

he regards as the only true religion for man: the 'mute and
uncomplaining' peace of the grave reconciles him to the thought of
everlasting death. The inadequacy of his philosophy may thus be traced
partly to his vivid impressibility of imagination, which made him
too exclusively sensible of the awe produced on man's spirit by the
mystery of the universe, partly to his defective sympathy with the
active interests and duties of life. Partly, too, the bent of his mind
towards material observation and enquiry had some share in determining
his convictions. In dwelling on the outward appearances of decay and
death, he seems to have shut his eyes to those inward conditions
of the human spirit which to Plato, Cicero, and Virgil appeared the
witnesses of immortality. The inability to form the definite conception
of a God without human limitations, as well as his strong sense of the
imperfection of the world, forced upon him the absolute denial of any
Divine providence over human affairs.

Yet a modern reader, without accepting the conclusions of his
philosophy, may sympathise with much of his spirit. In his firm faith
in the laws which govern the universe, he will recognise a great
position established, as essential to the progress of religious as
of scientific thought. He will see, in the earnest intensity of his
feeling and the sincerity of his expression, a spirit akin to the
purer kinds of religious fervour in modern times. In no other writer,
ancient or modern, will he find a profounder sense of human dignity,
of the supreme claims of affection, of the superiority of a natural
to a conventional life. From the direct exhortation and the indirect
teaching of Lucretius, he may learn such lessons as these,--that it
is man's first business to know and obey the laws of his being,--that
the sphere of his happiest activity is to be found in contemplation
rather than in action,--that his well-being consists in valuing rightly
the real blessings of life rather than in following the illusions of
fancy or of custom,--in reverencing the sanctity of family life,--and
in cherishing a kindly sympathy with all living things. If there was
nothing especially new in the views which he enunciated, the power of
realising the common conditions of life, the passionate effort not only
to rise himself above human weakness, but to redeem the whole race of
man from the curse of ignorance, and the force of imaginative sympathy
with which he executed this part of his task were, perhaps, something
altogether new in the world.

The same 'vivida vis' with which he observes natural phenomena
characterises his insight into human character and passion. He
penetrates below the surface of life with the searching insight of a
great satirist, and sees more clearly into the hearts of men, and has
a more subtle perception of the secret springs of their unhappiness,
than any of his countrymen. The aim of his satire is not to make
men seem objects of ridicule or scorn, but to restore them to the
dignity which they had forfeited through weakness and ignorance. The
observation of Horace is wider and more varied, but it ranges much more
over the surface of life. He has neither the same sense of the mystery
of our being, nor the same sympathy with the common conditions of
mankind.

The power of truthful moral painting which Lucretius exercises is seen
in that passage in which he reveals the secret of the 'amari aliquit'
'amid the very flowers of love,'--

    Aut cum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet
    Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire,
    Aut quod in ambiguo verbum iaculata reliquit
    Quod cupido adfixum cordi vivescit ut ignis,
    Aut nimium iactate oculos aliumve tueri
    Quod putat in voltuque videt vestigia risus:[486]

and in that in which he describes the satiety and restlessness which
are the avenging nemesis of an opulent and luxurious society,--

    Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
    Esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,
    Quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.
    Currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter,
    Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
    Oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,
    Aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,
    Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit.[487]

There is always poetry and pathos in the satire of Lucretius. There
is no trace in him of the malice or the love of detraction which is
seldom wholly absent from satiric writing. The futility of human effort
is the burden of his complaint[488]: and this (as has been pointed
out by M. Martha) is the explanation of the pathetic recurrence of
the word 'nequicquam' in so many passages of his poem. His scorn and
indignation are shown only in exposing the impostures which men mistake
for truths. There is thus infinite compassion for the common lot of
man blended with the irony of the passage in which he represents the
aged husbandman complaining of the general decay of piety as the cause
of the failure of the earth to respond to his labours. His direct and
realistic power of expression enhances his power as a moral painter
and teacher. Though the writings of Horace supply many more quotations
applicable to various situations in life, and expressed in equally
apposite language, yet such lines as these in the older poet seem to
come from the heart of one ever 'sounding a deeper and more perilous
way' over the sea of human life, than suited the more worldly wisdom of
Horace,--

    Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.--[489]

    Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?--[490]

    Vitaque mancipio nulli datur omnibus usu.--[491]

    Surgit amari aliquit quod in ipsis floribus angat.--[492]

    Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo
    Eiciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res.--[493]

    Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce
    Aequo animo.[494]

Many other lines and expressions of similar force will occur to every
reader familiar with Lucretius. As his ordinary style brings the
outward aspects of the world vividly before the mind, so the language
in which his moral teaching is enforced, or the result of his moral
observation is expressed, stamps powerfully on the mind important and
permanent truths of human nature. His thoughts are uttered sometimes
with the impressive dignity of Roman oratory, sometimes with the
nervous energy, not without flashes of the vigorous wit, of Roman
satire. There are occasionally to be heard also higher and deeper
tones than those familiar to classical poetry. His burning zeal and
indignation against idolatry, and the scorn with which he exposes the
impotence of false gods--

    Cur etiam loca sola petunt frustraque laborant?
    An tum bracchia consuescunt firmantque lacertos?[495]--

show some affinity of spirit to the prophets of another race and an
earlier time. The 'grandeur of desolation' uttered in the reproof of
Nature,--

    Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque,
    Quod placeat, nil est: eadem sunt omnia semper.[496]--

recalls the old words of the Preacher--'The thing that hath been, it
is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be
done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'

[Footnote 447: Cf. Juv. xiv. 319:--

    'Quantum Epicure tibi parvis suffecit in hortis.'

]

[Footnote 448: 'But the sober exercise of reason, investigating the
causes why we choose or avoid anything, and banishing those opinions
which cause the greatest trouble in the soul.']

[Footnote 449: ii. 16-19.]

[Footnote 450: 'Thereupon he perceived that the vessel itself caused
the evil, and that all external gains and blessings whatsoever were
vitiated within through its fault, partly because he saw that it was
so unsound and leaky that it could never be filled in any way, partly
because he discerned that it tainted inwardly everything which it had
received as it were with a nauseous flavour.'--vi. 17-23.]

[Footnote 451: ii. 39.]

[Footnote 452: vi. 404-5.]

[Footnote 453: 'O miserable race of man when they imputed to the Gods
such acts as these, and ascribed to them also angry passions. What
sorrow did they then prepare for themselves, what deep wounds for us,
what tears for our descendants. For there is no holiness in being often
seen, turning round with head veiled, in presence of a stone, and in
drawing nigh to every altar; nor in lying prostrate in the dust, and
uplifting the hands before the temples of the Gods: nor in sprinkling
altars with the blood of beasts, and in ever fastening up new votive
offerings, but rather in being able to look at all things with a mind
at peace.'--v. 1194-1203.]

[Footnote 454: vi. 75-78.]

[Footnote 455: 'The holy presence of the Gods becomes visible, and
their peaceful dwelling-places, which neither the winds beat upon, nor
the clouds bedew with rain; nor does snow, gathered in flakes by keen
frost, and falling white, invade them; ever the cloudless ether enfolds
them, and they are radiant with far-spread light.'--iii. 18-22.]

[Footnote 456: v. 145-225.]

[Footnote 457: The feelings with which Lucretius contemplates the
solemn procession of Cybele may be illustrated by the following
passage, quoted by Mr. Morley in his Life of Diderot, vol. ii. p. 65:
'Absurd rigorists do not know the effect of external ceremonies on the
people: they can never have seen the enthusiasm of the multitude at the
procession of the Fête Dieu, an enthusiasm that sometimes even gains
me. I have never seen that long file of priests in their vestments,
those young acolytes clad in their white robes, with broad blue sashes
engirdling their waists, and casting flowers on the ground before
the Holy Sacrament, the crowd, as it goes before and follows after
them, hushed in religious silence, and so many with their faces bent
reverently to the ground: I have never heard the grave and pathetic
chant, as it is led by the priests and fervently responded to by an
infinity of voices of men, of women of girls, of little children,
without my inmost heart being stirred, and tears coming into my eyes.
There is in it something, I know not what, that is grand, solemn,
sombre, and mournful.']

[Footnote 458: From 830 till the end.]

[Footnote 459: iii. 842.]

[Footnote 460: iii. 877-8.]

[Footnote 461: iii. 929-30.]

[Footnote 462: Hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.]

[Footnote 463: Iliad, xxi. 106-7.]

[Footnote 464: iii. 830-1094.]

[Footnote 465: iii. 930.]

[Footnote 466: iii. 892.]

[Footnote 467: iii. 893.]

[Footnote 468: 'Soon shall thy home receive thee no more with glad
welcome, nor thy true wife, nor thy dear children run to snatch thy
first kiss, touching thy heart with silent gladness'--iii. 894-96.]

[Footnote 469: iii. 833.]

[Footnote 470: iii. 1027-8.]

[Footnote 471: iii. 970.]

[Footnote 472: Compare the metaphorical expressions at vi. 20-4.]

[Footnote 473: 'But there is no greater joy than to hold high aloft
the tranquil abodes well bulwarked by the learning of the wise, whence
thou mayest look down on other men, and see them wandering every way,
and lost in error, seeking the road of life; mayest mark the strife
of genius, the rivalries of rank, the struggle night and day with
surpassing effort to reach the highest place, and be master of the
State.'--ii. 48-54.]

[Footnote 474: 'But if we see that all this is but folly and a mockery,
and, in real truth, the fears of men and their dogging cares dread not
the clash of arms nor the fierce weapons of warfare, and boldly mix
with kings and potentates, nor fear the splendour of gold or the bright
glare of purple robes, canst thou doubt that it is the force of reason
on which all this depends, especially since all our life is in darkness
and tribulation?'--ii. 48-55.]

[Footnote 475: iii. 70.]

[Footnote 476: v. 1131.]

[Footnote 477: v. 1125.]

[Footnote 478: 'Since they take their wisdom from the lips of others,
and pursue their object in accordance rather with what they hear than
with what they really feel.'--v. 1133-34.]

[Footnote 479: ii. 33.]

[Footnote 480: v. 1117-19.]

[Footnote 481: ii. 638.]

[Footnote 482: iii. 468-9.]

[Footnote 483: A passage in the Captivi of Plautus (995-7), shows that
these terrors did appeal to the imagination in ancient times, and
thus might powerfully affect the happiness of persons of specially
impressible natures, although they do not seem to have often interfered
with the actual enjoyment of life,--

    'Vidi ego multa saepe picta quae Acherunti fierent
    Cruciamenta: verum enimvero nulla adaequest Acheruns
    Atque ubi ego fui in lapicidinis.'

Mr. Wallace in his 'Epicureanism' (p. 109) writes, 'Whatever may have
been the case in earlier ages of Greece, there is no doubt that in the
age of Epicurus, the doctrine of a judgment to come, and of a hell
where sinners were punished for their crimes, made a large part of the
vulgar creed.... Orphic and other religious sects had enhanced the
terrors of the world below,' &c. Cicero, however, is a better witness
than Lucretius of the actual state of opinion among his educated
contemporaries. The exaggerated sense entertained by Lucretius of the
influence of such terrors among the class for whom his poem was written
is a confirmation of his having acted on the maxim 'λάθε βιώσας.']

[Footnote 484: Tusc. Disp. i. 21.]

[Footnote 485: iii. 59, etc.]

[Footnote 486: 'Either when his mind is stung with the consciousness
that he is wasting his life in sloth, and ruining himself in
wantonness; or because from the shafts of her wit she has left in him
some word of double meaning, which seizes on his passionate heart and
burns there like a fire; or because he fancies that she casts about her
eyes too much or gazes at another, and marks the traces of a smile on
her countenance.'--iv. 1135-40.]

[Footnote 487: 'Oft-times, weary of home, the lord of some spacious
mansion issues forth abroad, and suddenly returns, feeling that it
is no better with him abroad. Driving his horses, he speeds in hot
haste to his country house, as if his house were on fire and he was
hurrying to bring assistance. Straightway he begins to yawn, so soon
as he has reached his threshold, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks
forgetfulness, or even with all haste returns to the city.'--iii.
1060-67.]

[Footnote 488: E.g. v. 1430-34:--

    'Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
    Semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom,
    Nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi
    Finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.'

]

[Footnote 489: i. 101.]

[Footnote 490: iii. 938.]

[Footnote 491: iii. 971.]

[Footnote 492: iv. 1134.]

[Footnote 493: iii. 57-8.]

[Footnote 494: v. 1116.]

[Footnote 495: vi. 396-7.]

[Footnote 496: iii. 944-5.]




CHAPTER XIV.

THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.


It remains to consider the poem of Lucretius as a work of literary
art and genius. Much indeed of what may be said on the subject of his
genius has necessarily been anticipated in the chapters devoted to
the consideration of his personal characteristics, his speculative
philosophy, and his moral teaching. The 'multa lumina ingenii' are
most conspicuous in those passages of his poem which best illustrate
the range and distinctness of his observation, the grandeur and truth
of his philosophical conceptions, the passionate sympathy with which
he strove to elevate and purify human life. But, at the same time, the
most manifest defects of the poem, considered as a work of art, spring
from the same source as its greatness considered as a work of genius,
viz., the diversity and conflicting aims of the faculties employed on
its production. Although, perhaps, from a Roman point of view, the
practical purpose which reduces the mass of miscellaneous details to
unity, and the success with which he encounters the difficulties both
of matter and language, might entitle the poem to be regarded as a work
'multae artis,' yet, when tested by the canons either of Greek or of
modern taste, it fails in the most essential conditions of art,--the
choice of subject and the form of construction. The title of the poem
is indeed taken from a Greek model, the poem of Empedocles, 'περὶ
φύσεως': and the form of a personal address to Memmius, in which
Lucretius has embodied his teaching, was suggested by the personal
address of the older poet to the 'son of Anchytus.' But although
Aristotle acknowledges the poetical genius of Empedocles by applying
to him the epithet Ὁμηρικός, he denies to his composition the
title of a poem. The work of Empedocles and the kindred works of
Xenophanes and Parmenides are inspired not by the passion of art but
by the enthusiasm of discovery. They are to be regarded rather as
philosophical rhapsodies than as purely didactic poems, like either
the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod or the writings of the Alexandrine
School. They were written in hexameter verse partly because that was
the most familiar vehicle of expression in the first half of the fifth
century, B.C., and partly because it was the vehicle most suited to
the imaginative conceptions of Nature which arose out of the old
mythologies. But in the time of Lucretius a prose vehicle was more
suited than any form of verse for the communication of knowledge in a
systematic form. The conception of Nature was no longer mystical or
purely imaginative as it had been in the age of Empedocles. Thus the
task which Lucretius had to perform was both vaster and more complex
than that of the early φυσιόλογοι. He had to combine in one whole
the prosaic results of later scientific observation and analysis
with the imaginative fancies of the dawn of ancient enquiry. He
professes to make both conducive to the practical purpose of
emancipating and elevating human life; but a great part of his argument
is as remote from all human interest as it is from the ascertained
truths of science.

All life and Nature were to his spirit full of imaginative wonder,
but they were believed also to be susceptible of a rationalistic
explanation. And the greater part of the work is devoted to give this
explanation. This large infusion of a prosaic content necessarily
detracts from the artistic excellence and the sustained interest of the
poem. Lucretius speaks of the difficulty which he had to encounter in
gaining the ear of his countrymen, in the lines,--

            Quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
    Tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
    Volgus abhorret ab hac.[497]

And the unattractiveness of much of his theme is not diminished when
the real discoveries of science have shewn how illusory are his
processes of investigation, and how false are many of his conclusions.
He has made his poetry ancillary to his science, instead of compelling,
as Virgil, Dante, and Milton have done, a subject, susceptible of
purely artistic treatment, to assimilate the stores of his knowledge.
His theme--'maiestas cognita rerum,'--is too vast and complex to be
brought within the compass and proportions of a single work of art. The
processes of minute observation and reasoning employed in establishing
his conclusions are alien from the movement of the imagination. The
connecting links of the argument are suggestive of the labour of the
workman, not of the finished perfection of the work. And while some of
the ideas of science may be so applied to the interpretation of the
outward world, as to act on the imaginative emotions with greater power
than any mere description of the forms and colours of external things,
yet the pleasure with which processes of investigation are pursued is
quite distinct from the pleasure derived from poetic intuition into the
secret life of Nature and man. If it be the condition of a great poem
to produce the purest and noblest pleasure by its whole conception and
execution, the poem of Lucretius fails to satisfy this condition. It
is, in spite of its design and proportions,--in spite of the fact that
long parts of the work neither interest the feelings nor satisfy the
reason, that the poem still speaks with impressive power to the modern
world.

And while the whole conception of the work, as regards both matter
and method of treatment, necessarily involves a large interfusion of
prosaic materials with the finer product of his genius, it must be
added that there is considerable inequality of execution even in its
more inspired passages. A few consecutive passages show indeed the
finest sense of harmony, and are finished in a style not much inferior
to that of Virgil. Such, for instance, are the opening lines:--

    Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, etc.;--

and again the lines in the introduction to Book iii:--

    Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae, etc.

But long passages seem rather to revert to the roughness of Ennius
than to approach the smooth and varied cadences of Virgil. Though the
imaginative effect of single expressions is generally more forcible
than in any Latin poet, yet the composition of long paragraphs is
apt to overflow into prosaic detail, or to display the qualities of
logical consecutiveness or close adherence to fact rather than those
of skilled accomplishment and conformity with the principles of
beauty. In common with the older race of Roman poets he exhibits that
straining after verbal effects by means of alliteration, assonances,
asyndeta, etc., which marks the ruder stages of literary development.
The Latin language, although beginning to feel the quickening of a new
life, had not yet been formed into its more exquisite modulations, nor
learned the power of suggesting delicate shades of meaning and the new
strength derivable from the reserved use of its resources. All these
causes,--the vast and miscellaneous range, and the abstruse character
of his subject, the dryness and futility of much of the argument, the
frequent subordination of poetry to science, the inadequacy of the
Latin language as a vehicle of thought and its imperfect development
as an organ of poetry,--prevented the poem from ever obtaining great
popularity in ancient times, and have denied to it in modern times
anything like the large influence which has been enjoyed in different
ages and countries by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Even the more ardent
admirers of the poem are tempted to pass from one to another of the
higher ranges and more commanding summits, which swell gradually or
rise abruptly out of the general level over which he leads them, rather
than to follow him through all the windings of his argument.

Yet it is only after the poem has been mastered in its details that we
realise its full effect on the imagination. It is only then that we
understand the complete greatness of the man, as a thinker, a teacher,
and a poet. The most familiar beauties reveal a deeper meaning when
they are seen to be not mere resting places in the toilsome march of
his argument, but rather commanding positions, successively reached,
from which the widest contemplative views of the realms of Nature and
human life are laid open to us. As we follow closely in his footsteps,
through all his processes of observation, analysis, and reasoning, we
feel, that he too, like the older Greeks, is borne along by a strong
enthusiasm,--the philosophical ἔρως of Plato,--different from,
but akin to, the impulses of poetry. That marvellous intensity of
feeling in conjunction with the operations of the intellect, which the
Greeks regarded as a kind of divine possession, and which Lucretius,
by the use of such phrases as 'divinitus invenientes,' ascribes to
the earliest enquirers, animates all his interpretation of the facts
and laws of Nature. The speculative passion imparts life to the
argumentative processes which are addressed to the understanding, while
it adds a fresher glory or more impressive solemnity to those aspects
of the subject by which the imagination is most powerfully moved.

Again, although his rhythm, even at its best, falls far short of
the intricate harmony and variety of Virgil, and, in its more level
passages, scarcely aims at pleasing the ear at all, yet there is a
kind of grandeur and dignity even in its monotony, varied, as that is,
by deeper and more majestic tones whenever his spirit is stirred by
impulses of awe, wonder, and delight. There is always a sense of life
and onward movement in the flow of his verse. Often there is a kind
of cumulative force revealing a more powerful emotion of heart and
imagination as his thoughts and images press on one another in close
and ordered sequence. Thus, for instance, the effect of the lines
describing the religious impressions produced on the early inhabitants
of the world by the grand and awful aspects of Nature, depends, not
on any harmonious variation of sounds, but on the swelling and
culminating power with which the whole passage breaks on the ear,--

    In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,
    Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,
    Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa
    Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes.
    Nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando
    Et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum.[498]

In many passages it may be noticed how much is added to the rhythmical
effect by the force or weight of the concluding line, as at iii.
870-893, by the rugged grandeur of the line,--

    Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae,--

at ii. 569-580, by the sad and solemn movement of the close,--

    Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri,--

and at i. 101, by the line of cardinal significance, which ends a
passage of most finished power and beauty,--

    Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

The music of Lucretius is altogether his own. As he was the first among
his countrymen who contemplated in a reverential spirit the majesty
of Nature and the more solemn meaning of life, so he was the first to
call out the full rhythmical majesty and deep organ-tones of the Latin
language, to embody in sound the spiritual emotions stirred by that
contemplation.

The poetical style of Lucretius is, like his rhythm, a true and
powerful symbol of his genius. Though his diction is much less studied
than that of Virgil, yet his large use of alliterations, assonances,
asyndeta[499], etc., shows that he consciously aimed at producing
certain effects by recognised rhetorical means. The attraction which
the artifices of rhetoric had for his mind is as noticeable in his
style as a similar attraction is in the speeches of Thucydides. But
neither Lucretius nor Thucydides can be called the slave of rhetorical
forms. In both writers recourse is had to them for the legitimate
purpose of emphasising thought, not for that of disguising its
insufficiency. The use of such phrases, for instance, as 'sed casta
inceste,' 'immortalia mortali sermone notantes,' 'mors immortalis,'
etc., is no mere play of words, but rather the tersest phrase in which
an impressive antithesis of thought can be presented. The mannerisms
of his style, if they show that he was not altogether emancipated from
archaic rudeness, afford evidence also of the prolific fertility of his
genius. The amplitude and unchecked volume of his diction flow out of
the mental conditions, described in the lines,--

    Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis
    Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet.

And he had not only the 'suavis lingua diti de pectore;' he had also
the 'daedala lingua,'--the formative energy which shapes words into new
forms and combinations. The frequent ἅπαξ λεγόμενα in his poem and his
abundant use of compound words, such as _fluctifragus_, _montivagus_,
_altitonans_, etc., most of which fell into disuse in the Augustan
age, were products of the same creative force which enabled Plautus
and Ennius to add largely to the resources of the Latin tongue. In
him, more than in any Latin poet before or after him, we meet with
phrases too full of imaginative life to be in perfect keeping with the
more sober tones and tamer spirit of the national literature. Thus his
language never became trite and hackneyed, and, as we read him, no
medium of after-associations is interposed between his mind and our own.

But it is not in individual phrases, however fresh and powerful, but
in continuous passages, that the power of his style is best seen. The
processes of his mind are characterised by continuity, consistency,
and a kind of gathering intensity of movement. The periods of Virgil
delight us by their intricate harmony; those of Lucretius impress us
by their continuous and hurrying impetus. The long drawn out charm of
the one is indicative of the deep love which induced him to linger
over every detail of his subject: the force and grandeur of the other
are the outward signs of the inward wonder and enthusiasm by which his
spirit was borne rapidly along. Virgil's movement displays the majesty
of grace and serenity; that of Lucretius the majesty of power, and
largeness of mind.

Thus although the poetical style of Lucretius shows the traces of
labour and premeditation, and of occasional imitation both of foreign
and native models, it is more than that of any other Latin poet, the
immediate creation of his own genius. The 'ingenuei fontis,' by which
his imagination was so abundantly fed, found many spontaneous outlets,
and were not checked in their speed or stained in their purity by the
artificial channels in which he sometimes forced them to flow. If
the loving labour, so prodigally bestowed upon the task of finding
words and rhythm[500] adequate to his great theme, explains some
peculiarities of his diction, the qualities which have made the work
immortal are due to his noble singleness of heart and sincerity of
nature, and to the openness and sensibility with which his imagination
received impressions, the penetrative force with which it saw into the
heart of things, and the creative energy with which it shaped what it
received and discerned into vivid pictures and symbols.

He has, in the first place, the freshness of feeling, the living sense
of the wonder of the world, which is a great charm in the older poets
of all great literatures,--in Homer, Dante, Chaucer;--and this sense
he communicates by words used in their simplest and directest meaning.
The life which animates and gladdens the familiar face of earth, sea,
and sky,--of river, wood, field, and hill-side,--is vividly and
immediately reproduced in such lines as these:--

              Caeli subter labentia signa
    Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis
    Concelebras.[501]

    Denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis
    Frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis.[502]

    Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas.[503]

    Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta
    Lanigerae reptant pecudes quo quamque vocantes
    Invitant herbae gemmantes rore recenti.[504]

    Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentis
    Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis.[505]

So, too, he makes us realise, with a quickening and expanding emotion,
which seems to bring us nearer to the core of Nature, the majesty of
the sea breaking on a great expanse of shore,--the solemn stillness of
midnight,--the invisible agency by which the clouds form the pageantry
of the sky,--the active noiseless energy by which rivers wear away
their banks,--by the use of words that seem exactly equivalent to the
thing which they describe,--

    Quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus aequor
    Ionium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis.[506]

            Severa silentia noctis
    Undique cum constent.[507]

    Ut nubes facile interdum concrescere in alto
    Cernimus et mundi speciem violare serenam
    Aera mulcentes motu.[508]

    Pars etiam glebarum ad diluviem revocatur
    Imbribus et ripas radentia flumina rodunt.[509]

The changing face of Nature is to his spirit so full of power and
wonder, that it needs no poetical adornment, but is left to tell
its own tale in the plainest language. If words are a true index of
feeling, it would be difficult to name any poet by whom the living
presence and full being of Nature were more immediately apprehended,
nor has any one caught with more fidelity the intimations of her
hidden life, as they betray themselves in her outward features and
motions.

With similar fidelity and directness of language he communicates to his
reader the spell of awe and wonder by which his own spirit is possessed
in presence of the impressive facts of human life. No subtlety of
reflection nor grandeur of illustrative imagery could enhance the
effect of the thought of the dead produced by the austere plainness of
the words,--

    Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa,

and,

    Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset.

By no pomp of description could a deeper sense of religious solemnity
be created than by the lines describing the silent influence of the
procession of Cybele on the minds of her devotees,--

    Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis
    Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute.[510]

The undying pain of a great sorrow,--the paralysis of all human effort
in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,--the blessedness and
pathos of the purest human affections,--the ecstatic delight derived
from the revelation of great truths--imprint themselves permanently on
the imagination through the august simplicity of the phrases,--

    Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus,[511]--

    tacito mussabat medicina timore,[512]--

    tacita pectus dulcedine tangent,[513]--

    His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
    Percipit adque horror.[514]--

His language has the further power of producing a vague sense of
sublimity, where the cause of the feeling is too vast or undefined to
be distinctly conceived or visibly presented to the mind. The very
sound of his words seems sometimes to be a kind of echo of the voices
by which Nature produces a strange awe upon the imagination. Such, for
instance, are these lines and phrases--

    Altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens.[515]

                 Nec fulmina nec minitanti
    Murmure compressit caelum.[516]

    Murmura magna minarum,[517] etc.

The sublimity of vagueness and vastness is present in the language of
these lines--

    Impendent atrae formidinis ora superne.[518]

    Sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi.[519]

    Aut cecidisse urbis magno vexamine mundi.[520]

    Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo.[521]

While no other ancient poet brings before the mind more forcibly and
immediately the living presence of the outward world and the solemn
meaning of familiar things, there is none whose language seems to
respond so sensitively to the vague suggestions of an invisible and
awful Power omnipresent in the universe.

The creative power of imagination which gives new life to words and
thoughts is also present in many vivid and picturesque expressions,
either scattered through the main argument, or shining in brilliant
combinations in the more elaborate parts of the work. By this more
imaginative use of language, the poet can illustrate his ideas by
subtle analogies, or embody them in visible symbols, or endow the
objects he describes with the personal attributes of will and energy.
Thus, for instance, the penetrating subtlety of the mind in exploring
the secrets of Nature becomes a visible force in the curious felicity
of the expression (i. 408), 'caecasque latebras insinuare omnis.'
The freedom and boundless range of the imagination is suggested with
picturesque effect in the familiar expression--

    Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
    Trita solo;[522]

while the calm serenity of the contemplative mind is symbolised in
such figurative expressions as 'sapientum templa serena;' 'humanum in
pectus templaque mentis;' and the stormy tumult of the passions and the
perilous errors of life become vividly present to the imagination by
means of the analogies pictured in the lines--

    Volvere curarum tristis in pectore fluctus,[523]

and

    Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae.[524]

What life and energy again are imparted to external things and abstract
conceptions by such expressions as these:--'flammai flore coorto;'
'avido complexu quem tenet aether;' 'caeli tegit impetus ingens;'
'circum tremere aethera signis;' 'semina quae magnum iaculando contulit
omne;' 'vagos imbris tempestatesque volantes;' 'concussaeque cadunt
urbes dubiaeque minantur;' 'simulacraque fessa fatisci;' 'sol lumine
consent arva;' 'lucida tela diei;' 'placidi pellacia ponti;' 'vivant
labentes aetheris ignes;' 'leti sub dentibus ipsis;' 'leti praeclusa
est ianua caelo,' etc.

A similar power of imagination is shown in his more elaborate use
of analogies, in his symbolical representation of ideas, and in his
power of painting scenes from Nature and from human life. Few great
poets have been more sparing in the use of mere poetical ornament.
The grandest imagery which he strikes out, and the finest pictures
which he paints are immediately suggested by his subject. The
earnestness of his speculative and practical purpose restrains all
exuberance of fancy. Thus his imaginative analogies are more often
latent in single expressions than drawn out at length. But the few
which he has elaborated, 'stand out with the solidity of the finest
sculpture[525],' to embody some deep or powerful thought for all time.
They are suggested not by outward resemblance, but by an identity
which the imagination discerns in the innermost meaning of the objects
compared with one another. The strong emotion attending on the presence
of some great thought calls up before the inward eye some scene or
action, which, if actually witnessed, would produce a similar effect
upon the mind. Thus the thought of the chaotic confusion which the
universe would present, on the supposition that the original atoms were
limited in number, calls up the image of the most impressive and awful
devastation, wrought by Nature upon the works of man.

    Sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis
    Disiectare solet magnum mare transtra guberna
    Antemnas proram malos tonsasque natantis,
    Per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra
    Ut videantur et indicium mortalibus edant,
    Infidi maris insidias virisque dolumque
    Ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant,
    Subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti,
    Sic tibi si finita semel primordia quaedam
    Constitues, aevom debebunt sparsa per omnem
    Disiectare aestus diversi materiari,
    Numquam in concilium ut possint compulsa coire
    Nec remorari in concilio nec crescere adaucta.[526]

It is through the penetrating intuition of his imagination into the
deepest meaning of the two phenomena, and his sensibility to the
pathos and the strangeness involved in each of them, that he sees the
birth of every child into the world under the well-known image of the
shipwrecked sailor--'saevis proiectus ab undis.' Other analogies,
suggested rather than elaborately drawn out, express an inward or
spiritual, not an outward or bodily resemblance. Or rather the thing
illustrated is a thought or a mental act, the illustration a scene or
action, visible to the eye, suggestive of the same power in Nature, and
calculated to rouse the same emotions in the mind. Thus he compares the
life transmitted in succession through the nations of the world to the
torch passed on by the runners in the torch-race; or he illustrates his
calm contemplation of the struggles of life from the heights of his
Epicurean philosophy, by the vision of the dangers of the sea, as seen
from some commanding position on the land.

Although his subject did not afford much scope for the exercise of the
idealising faculty of a poetical artist, yet there are some passages in
the poem conceived with the finest pictorial power. Such, for instance,
is the representation of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, suggested indeed,
in some of its features, by an earlier poet, but executed with original
power. There are also one or two pictures from the ancient mythology,
as that of Venus and Mars in the invocation to the poem, and that of
Pan--

    Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans,[527]--

showing that he might have rivalled Catullus and Ovid as a poet of
creative fancy, had he not felt himself more powerfully called to
interpret the laws and facts of Nature. By this power of imagination he
presents that superstition against which all the weight of his argument
is directed, not as an abstraction, but as a real palpably existing
Power of evil--

    Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat
    Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.[528]

So, too, in his vivid account of the orderly procession of the seasons,
he invests the freshness and the beauty of spring with the charm of
personal and human associations in the lines--

    It ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante
    Pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter
    Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai
    Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet.[529]

But it is in describing actual scenes and actual aspects of human
life that Lucretius chiefly employs his power of poetical conception
and expression. He looks upon the world with an eye which discerns
beneath the outward appearances of things the presence of Nature in her
attributes both of majesty and of genial all-penetrating life,--as at
once the 'Magna mater' and the 'alma mater' of all living things[530].
She appears to his imagination not as an abstraction, or a vast
aggregate of forces and laws, but as a living Power, whose processes
are on an infinitely grander scale, but are yet analogous to the active
and moral energies of man. He shows the same sympathy with this life
of Nature, the same vivid sense of wonder and delight in her familiar
aspects, the same imaginative perception of her secret agency, which
led the early Greek mind to people the world with the living forms of
the old mythology, and which have been felt anew by the great poets of
the present century. All natural life is thus endowed with a poetical
interest, as being a new manifestation of the creative energy, which is
the fountain of all beauty and delight in the world.

The minutest phenomena and the most gigantic forces, the changes of
decay and renovation in all outward things, the growth of plants
and trees, the habits of beasts rioting in a wild liberty over the
mountains,--

    Quod in magnis bacchatur montibu' passim,[531]--

or tended by the care and ministering to the wants of man; the life and
enjoyment of the birds that gladden the early morning with their song
by woods and river-banks, or that seek their food and pastime among the
sea-waves;--these, and numberless other phenomena, are all contemplated
and described by an eye quickened by the poetical sense of manifold
and inexhaustible energy in the world.

It is not so much the beauty of form and colour, as the appearance of
force and life which he reproduces. He has not, like Catullus, the pure
delight of an artist in painting outward scenes. He does not express,
like Virgil, the charm of old associations attaching to famous places.
It is the association of great laws, not of great memories, which moves
him in contemplating the outward world. Neither has he invested any
particular place with the attraction which Horace has given to his
Sabine home, and Catullus to Sirmio. But no ancient or modern poet has
expressed more happily the natural enjoyment of beholding the changing
life and familiar face of the world. No other writer makes us feel with
more reality the quickening of the spirit, produced by the sunrise or
the advent of spring, by living in fine weather or looking on fair and
peaceful landscapes. The freshness of the feeling with which outward
scenes inspire him is one of the great charms of the poem, especially
as a relief to the pervading gravity of his thought. More than any
poet, except Wordsworth, he seems to derive a pure and healthy joy
from the common sights and sounds of animate and inanimate Nature. No
distempered fancies or regrets, no vague longings for some unattainable
rapture, coloured the natural aspect which the world presented to his
eyes and mind.

In the descriptions of Lucretius, as in those of Homer, there is
always some active movement and change represented as passing before
the eye. What power and energy there are, for instance, in that of a
river-flood,--(like one of equal force and truth in Burns's 'Brigs of
Ayr,')--

    Nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai
    Vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri
    Molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis.[532]

How naturally is the pure and sparkling life of brooks and springs
brought before the mind in the passage at v. 269[533], already
quoted,--and again, in these lines--

    Denique nota vagi silvestria templa tenebant
    Nympharum, quibus e scibant umori' fluenta
    Lubrica proluvie larga lavere umida saxa,
    Umida saxa, super viridi stillantia musco,
    Et partim plano scatere atque erumpere campo.[534]

In this representation of the sea-shore--

    Concharumque genus parili ratione videmus
    Pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis
    Litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam,[535]--

there is the same suggestion of quiet ceaseless movement, as in a line
of the Odyssey representing the same phase of Nature--

    λαΐγγας πότι χέρσον ἀποπλύνεσπε θάλασσα.

There is the same sense of active life in all his pictures of the early
morning; as, for instance,--

    Primum aurora novo cum spargit lumine terras
    Et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes
    Aera per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent,
    Quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali
    Convestire sua perfundens omnia luce,
    Omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus.[536]

And again,--

    Aurea cum primum gemmantis rore per herbas
    Matutina rubent radiati lumina solis
    Exhalantque lacus nebulam fluviique perennes,
    Ipsaque ut interdum tellus fumare videtur;
    Omnia quae sursum cum conciliantur, in alto
    Corpore concreto subtexunt nubila caelum.[537]

Two other passages (at iv. 136 and vi. 190), in which the movements
and shifting pageantry of the clouds are described, may be compared
with a more elaborate passage in the Excursion, in which Wordsworth has
represented a similar spectacle[538] wrought by 'earthly Nature,'--

    'Upon the dark materials of the storm.'

Nowhere does he present pictures of pure repose. The philosophical idea
of ceaseless motion and change animates to his eye every aspect of the
world. Every separate description in the poem possesses the charm of
freshness and faithfulness, and of relevance to the great ideas of his
philosophy. His living enjoyment in the outward world, and his sympathy
with all existence, both fed and were fed by his trust in speculative
ideas. The poetical descriptions which adorn and illustrate his
argument are like the sublime and beautiful scenes which refresh and
reward the adventurous discoverer of distant lands.

Some passages, illustrative of philosophical principles, blend the
movements of animal and human life with descriptions of natural
scenery. The lines at ii. 352-366, describing the cow searching
for her calf, which has been sacrificed at the altar, combine many
characteristics of the poetical style of Lucretius. There is the
literal--almost too minute faithfulness of reproduction--as in the
line--

    Noscit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis;[539]--

the active life of the whole representation, too full of movement for
a picture, yet flashing the objects on the inward eye with graphic
pictorial power; the ever fresh charm of some familiar scene, called
up by the lines already referred to,--

    Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes
    Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis;--

the pathos and respect for every mode of natural feeling denoted in
such expressions as 'desiderio perfixa iuvenci'; and, lastly, the
power of investing the most common things with the majesty of the laws
which they express and illustrate. This passage is adduced as a proof
and illustration of the varieties in form of the primordial atoms. In
a passage, immediately preceding, the perpetual motion of the atoms,
going on beneath an appearance of absolute rest, is illustrated by two
pictures, one taken from the jubilant life of the animal creation--

    Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta,'[540] etc.;

the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry
of armies--

    Praeterea magnae legiones cum loca cursu
    Camporum complent belli simulacra cientes,
    Fulgor ibi ad caelum se tollit totaque circum
    Aere renidescit tellus supterque virum vi
    Excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes
    Icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi
    Et circumvolitant equites mediosque repente
    Tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos.[541]

The truth and fulness of life in this passage are immediately
perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the
two lines with which the passage concludes, which reduces the whole of
this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence--

    Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde
    Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor.[542]

As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of
the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt by
the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In dealing
with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than any of
the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised with a
greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its lights and
shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought both of the
dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever present to the
mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily moved by the pomp
and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of reality keeps ever
before him the conviction of the vanity of outward state, the weariness
of luxurious living, and the miseries of ambition. Thus his imaginative
recognition of the pomp and circumstance of war brings out by the force
of contrast his deeper conviction of the littleness and impotence of
man in the presence of the great forces of Nature--

    Summa etiam cum vis violenti per mare venti
    Induperatorem classis super aequora verrit
    Cum validis pariter legionibus atque elephantis,
    Non divom pacem votis adit ac prece quaesit
    Ventorum pavidus paces animasque secundas, etc.[543]

If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of
human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed
the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through
great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.

But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative
emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of
human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more
truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and
sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing
the birth of every infant into the world--

    Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
    Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
    Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
    Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
    Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst
    Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum.[544]

With what truth and naiveté is the complaint of the husbandman over his
ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!--

    Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator
    Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse labores,
    Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
    Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis
    Et crepat, anticum genus ut pietate repletum
    Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom,
    Cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim.[545]

His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above
all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over
some one departed, and the infant wail of a new-comer into the troubles
of the world,

                 mixtos vagitibus aegris
    Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri.[546]

His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and
melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that
of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be
discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius
springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative
imagination.

His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of
experience, is able to bear him beyond the known and familiar regions
of life. As it enables him to pass--

    extra flammantia moenia mundi--

and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation which
will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled him to
realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man upon the
world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he adheres
strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and shows that
sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable from the
operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding and moral
nature.

His excellencies are so different from those of Virgil that the
question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of
Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be
considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that
Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to the
first or even the second place. The strongest support which he could
have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of the
powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised over
him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and imaginative
originality of his work were calculated to alienate both popular favour
and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The poem has a much
deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient times. Lucretius
stands alone as the great contemplative poet of antiquity. He has
proclaimed with more power than any other the majesty of Nature's laws,
and has interpreted with a truer and deeper insight the meaning of her
manifold life. Few, if any among his countrymen, felt so strongly the
mystery of man's being, or have indicated so passionate a sympathy with
the real sorrows of life, and so ardent a desire to raise man to his
proper dignity, and to support him in bearing his inevitable burden.
If he has, in large measure, the antique simplicity and grandeur of
character, he has much also in common with the spirit and genius of
modern times. He contemplates human life with a profound feeling,
like that of Pascal, and with a speculative elevation like that of
Spinoza. The loftier tones of his poetry and the sustained effort of
mind which bears him through his long argument remind us of Milton.
His sympathy with Nature, at once fresh and large, is more in harmony
with the feeling of the great poets of the present century than with
the general sentiment of ancient poetry. In the union of poetical
feeling with scientific passion he has anticipated the most elevated
mode of the study of Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a
few great examples. His powers of observation, thought, feeling, and
imagination, are characterised by a remarkable vitality and sincerity.
His strong intellectual and poetical faculty is united with some of
the rarest moral qualities,--fortitude, seriousness of spirit, love of
truth, manly tenderness of heart. And if it seems that his great powers
of heart, understanding, and genius led him to accept and to teach a
philosophy, paralysing to the highest human hope and energy, it is to
be remembered that he lived at a time when the truest minds may well
have despaired of the Divine government of the world, and must have
honestly felt that it was well to be rid, at any cost, of the burden of
Pagan superstition.

[Footnote 497: i. 943-45.]

[Footnote 498: 'And they placed the dwelling-places and mansions of the
gods in the heavens, because it is through the heavens that the night
and the moon are seen to sweep--the moon, the day, and night, and the
stern constellations of night, the torches of heaven wandering through
the night, and flying meteors, the clouds, the sun, the rains, the
snow, the winds, lightning, hail, the rapid rattle, the threatening
peals and murmurs of the thunder.'--v. 1188-93.]

[Footnote 499: Cf. Munro, Introduction, ii. pp. 311, etc.]

[Footnote 500: Cf.

    'Quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum
    Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti
    Res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis.'
                                                i. 143-5.

]

[Footnote 501: i. 2-4.]

[Footnote 502: i. 17-18.]

[Footnote 503: i. 256.]

[Footnote 504: ii. 317-19.]

[Footnote 505: ii. 362-63.]

[Footnote 506: i. 718-19.]

[Footnote 507: iv. 460-61.]

[Footnote 508: iv. 136-38.]

[Footnote 509: v. 255-56.]

[Footnote 510: ii. 624-25.]

[Footnote 511: ii. 639.]

[Footnote 512: vi. 1179.]

[Footnote 513: iii. 896.]

[Footnote 514: iii. 28-30.]

[Footnote 515: v. 745.]

[Footnote 516: i. 68-9.]

[Footnote 517: v. 1193.]

[Footnote 518: vi. 254.]

[Footnote 519: v. 96.]

[Footnote 520: v. 340.]

[Footnote 521: iii. 842.]

[Footnote 522: i. 926-27.]

[Footnote 523: vi. 34.]

[Footnote 524: ii. 10.]

[Footnote 525: Prevost Paradol, _Nouveaux Essais de Politique et de
Littérature_.]

[Footnote 526: 'But as when there have been at the same time many and
mighty shipwrecks, the mighty sea is wont to drive in all directions
the rowers' benches, rudders, sailyards, prows, masts, and floating
oars, so that along all the coasts of land there may be seen the
tossing flag-posts of ships, to warn mortals that they shun the
wiles, and force, and craft of the faithless sea, nor ever trust the
treacherous alluring smile of the calm ocean; so if once you will
suppose any finite number of elements, you will find that the many
surging forces of matter must disperse and drive them apart through all
time, so that they never can meet and gather into union, nor stay in
union and wax in increase.'--ii. 552-64.]

[Footnote 527: iv. 587.]

[Footnote 528: i. 64-5.]

[Footnote 529: 'Spring advances and Venus, and before them goes the
harbinger of Spring, the winged Zephyr; and near their path, Mother
Flora, scattering her treasures before her, fills all the way with
glorious colours and fragrance.'--v. 737-40.]

[Footnote 530: Cp. 'Keats has, above all, a sense of what is
pleasurable and open in the life of Nature; for him she is the _Alma
Parens_: his expression has, therefore, more than Guérin's, something
genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has above all a sense of what
there is adorable and secret in the life of Nature; for him she is
the _Magna Parens_; his expression has, therefore, more than Keats',
something mystic, inward, and profound.' _Essays in Criticism_, by M.
Arnold, p. 130. _Third Edition._]

[Footnote 531: v. 824.]

[Footnote 532: 'Nor can the strong bridges endure the sudden force of
the rushing water: in such wise, swollen by heavy rain, the stream with
mighty force dashes upon the piers.'--i. 285-87.]

[Footnote 533: 'Percolatur enim virus,' etc.]

[Footnote 534: 'Finally, in their wandering they made their dwelling in
the familiar woodland grottoes of the nymphs, from which they marked
the rills of water laving the dripping rocks, made slippery with
their abundant flow,--dripping rocks, with drops oozing out above the
green moss,--and gushing forth and forcing their way over the level
plain.'--v. 944-52.]

[Footnote 535: 'And in like manner we see shells paint the lap of the
earth, where with its soft waves the sea beats on the porous sand of
the winding shore.'--ii. 374-76.]

[Footnote 536: 'When the dawn first sheds its new light over the earth,
and birds of every kind, flying over the pathless woods through the
delicate air, fill all the land with their clear notes, the suddenness
with which the risen sun then clothes and steeps the world in his
light, is clear and evident to all men.'--ii. 144-49.]

[Footnote 537: 'Just as when first the morning beams of the bright
sun glow all golden through the grass gemmed with dew, and a mist
arises from meres and flowing streams; and as even the earth itself
is sometimes seen to steam; then all these vapours gather together
above, and taking shape, as clouds on high, weave a canopy beneath the
sky.'--v. 460-66.]

[Footnote 538: Excursion, Book ii:--

    'The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,' etc.

]

[Footnote 539: ii. 356.]

[Footnote 540: ii. 317.]

[Footnote 541: 'Besides when mighty legions fill the plains with their
rapid movement, raising the pageantry of warfare, the splendour rises
up to heaven, and all the land around is bright with the glitter of
brass, and beneath from the mighty host of men the sound of their tramp
arises, and the mountains, struck by their shouting, re-echo their
voices to the stars of heaven, and the horsemen hurry to and fro on
either flank, and suddenly charge across the plains, shaking them with
their impetuous onset.'--ii. 323-30.]

[Footnote 542: 'And yet there is some place in the lofty mountains
whence they appear to be all still, and to rest as a bright gleam upon
the plains.'--ii. 331-32.]

[Footnote 543: 'When, too, the utmost force of a violent gale is
sweeping the admiral of some fleet over the seas, along with his mighty
legions and elephants, does he not court the protection of the Gods
with vows, and in his terror pray for a calm to the storm, and for
favouring gales?'--v. 1226-30.]

[Footnote 544: 'Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast ashore by the
cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless, in need of every aid
to life, when first nature has cast him forth by great throes from his
mother's womb; and he fills the air with his piteous wail, as befits
one whose doom it is to pass through so much misery in life.'--v.
222-27.]

[Footnote 545: 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant laments,
with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often come to naught; and,
as he compares the present with the past time, he extols the fortune
of his father, and harps on this theme, how the good old race, full of
piety, bore the burden of their life very easily within narrow bounds,
when the portion of land for each man was far less than now.'--ii.
1164-70.]

[Footnote 546: ii. 569-70.]




CHAPTER XV.

CATULLUS.


Lucretius and Catullus were regarded by their contemporaries as the
greatest poets of the last age of the Republic[547]. They alone
represent the poetry of that time to the modern world. Although born
into the same social rank, and acted upon by the dissolving influences,
the intellectual stimulus, and the political agitation of the same
time, no poets could be named of a more distinct type of genius and
character. The first has left behind him only the record of his
impersonal contemplation. His life was passed more in communion with
Nature than in contact with the world: his experiences of happiness
or sorrow entered into his art solely as affording materials for his
abstract thought. The second has stamped upon his pages the lasting
impression of the deepest joy and pain of his life, as well as of the
lightest cares and fancies that occupied the passing hour. Intensely
social in his temper and tastes, he lived habitually the life of the
great city and the provincial town, observing and sharing in all their
pleasures, distractions, and animosities, and only escaping, from
time to time, for a brief interval to his country houses on the Lago
di Garda and in the neighbourhood of Tivoli. He seems to have had no
other aim in life than that of passionately enjoying his youth in the
pleasures of love, in friendly intercourse with men of his own rank and
age, in the practice of his art, and the study of the older poets, by
whom that art was nourished. All his poems, with the exception of three
or four works of creative fancy and one or two translations, have for
their subject some personal incident, feeling, or character. Nearly
all have some immediate relation to himself, and give expression to
his love or hatred, his admiration or scorn, his happiness or misery.
There is nearly as little in them of reflection on human life as of
meditative communion with Nature; but, as individual men and women
excited in him intense affection or passion, so certain beautiful
places and beautiful objects in Nature charmed his fancy and sank
into his heart. He shows himself, spiritually and intellectually, the
child of his age in his ardent vitality, in the license of his life
and satire, in the fierceness of his antipathies; and also in his
eager reception of the spirit of Greek art, his delight in the poets
of Greece and the tales of the Greek mythology, in his striving after
form and grace in composition, and in the enthusiasm with which he
anticipates the joy of travelling among 'the famous cities of Asia.' In
all our thoughts of him he is present to our imagination as the 'young
Catullus'--

           hedera iuvenalia vinctus
    Tempora.

More than any great ancient, and than any great modern poet, with the
exception, perhaps, of Keats, he affords the measure of what youth
can do, and what it fails to do, in poetry. Although the exact age at
which he died is disputed, yet the evidence of his poems shows that he
did not outlive the boyish heart, the frank trusting simplicity, the
ardent feelings and passions, the careless unreflecting spirit of early
youth. In character he was even younger than in actual age. Nearly
all his work was done between the years 60 and 54 B.C.; and most of
it, apparently, with little effort. Born with the keenest capacities
of pleasure and of pain, he never learned to regulate them: nor were
they, seemingly, united with such enduring vital power as to carry
him past the perilous stage of his career, so as to enable him with
maturer power and more concentrated industry to employ his genius and
accomplishment on works of larger scope, more capable of withstanding
the shocks and chances of time, than the small volume which, by a
fortunate accident, has preserved the flower and bloom of his life, and
the record of all the 'sweet and bitter' which he experienced at the
hands of that Power--

    Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.

The ultimate preservation of his poems depended on a single copy,
which, after being lost to the world for four centuries, was
re-discovered in Verona, the poet's birthplace, during the fourteenth
century. As that copy was again lost, the text has to be determined
from the conflicting testimony of later copies, only two of which are
considered by the latest critics to be of independent value. There is
thus much more uncertainty, and much greater latitude for conjecture,
as to the actual words of Catullus, than in the case of almost any
other Roman poet. As lines not found in this volume are attributed to
him by ancient authors, and as he appears to allude to the composition
of love poems in his first youth[548] which must have been written
before the earliest of the Lesbia-poems, it may be inferred that we do
not possess all that he wrote. It has been generally assumed that the
dedicatory lines to Cornelius Nepos, with which the volume opens, were
prefixed by the poet to the collected edition of his poems which we now
possess; but Mr. Ellis has shown that that poem may more probably have
been prefixed to a smaller and earlier collection. The lines--

                          Namque tu solebas
    Meas esse aliquid putare nugas, etc.--

imply that earlier poems of Catullus were well known for some time
before the writing of this dedication; and allusions in more than one
of the poems[549] prove that the poems of an earlier date must have
been in circulation before those in which these allusions occur were
written. It may be concluded that, as he wrote his poems from his
earliest youth till his death, he gave them to the world at various
stages of his career. The attention which he attracted from men eminent
in social rank and literature,--such as Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Memmius, etc.,--shows that his genius was soon recognised: and his
eager craving for sympathy and appreciation would naturally prompt
him to bring his various writings immediately before the eyes of his
contemporaries. It seems likely, therefore, that this final collection
was made either by the poet himself shortly before, or by some of his
many literary friends shortly after his death, from several shorter
collections already in circulation; that some poems were omitted which
were not thought worthy of preservation, and that some may have then
been added which had not previously been given to the world. It would
be difficult to believe that poems expressive of the most passionate
love and the bitterest scorn of the same person could have appeared for
the first time in the same collection.

This collection consists of about 116 poems[550], written in various
metres, and varying in length from epigrams of only two lines to an
'epyllion' which extends to 408 lines. The poems numbered from i to
lx, are short lyrical or satiric pieces, written in the phalaecian,
glyconic, or iambic metres, and devoted almost entirely to subjects
of personal interest. The middle of the volume is occupied by the
longer poems--numbered lxi to lxviii^b--of a more purely artistic and
mostly an impersonal character, written in the glyconic, galliambic,
hexameter, and elegiac metres. The latter part of the volume is
entirely occupied by epigrammatic or other short pieces in elegiac
metre, varying in length from two to twenty-six lines. Many of the
epigrams refer to the persons who are the subject of the short lyric
and iambic pieces. There is no attempt to arrange the poems in anything
like chronological order. Thus, among the first twelve poems, ii,
iii, v, vii, ix, xii, are probably to be assigned to the years 61 and
60 B.C., while iv, x, xi, certainly belong to the three last years
of the poet's life. It is difficult to imagine on what principle the
juxtaposition of certain poems was determined. Perhaps, in some cases,
it may have been on the mere mechanical one of filling up the pages
symmetrically by poems of suitable length. Sometimes we find poems of
the same character, or referring to the same person, grouped together,
and yet varied by the insertion of one or two pieces related to the
larger group by contrast rather than similarity of tone. Thus the
passionate exaltation of the earlier Lesbia-poems is first relieved by
a poem (iv) written in another metre, and appealing to a much calmer
class of feelings, and next varied by one (vi) written in the same
metre, and suggested by a friend's amour, which in its meanness and
obscurity serves as a foil to the glory and brightness of the good
fortune enjoyed by the poet. Yet this clue does not carry us far in
determining the principle, if indeed there was any principle, on which
either the short lyrical poems or the elegiac epigrams were arranged.
These various poems were written under the influence of every mood
to which he was liable; and, like other passionate lyrical poets, he
was susceptible of the most opposite moods. The most trivial incident
might give rise to them equally with the greatest joy or the greatest
sorrow of his life. As he felt a strong need to express, and had a
happy facility in expressing his purest and brightest feelings, so
he felt no shame in indulging, and knew no restraint in expressing,
his coarsest propensities and bitterest resentments: and he evidently
regarded his worst moods no less than his best as legitimate material
for his art. Thus pieces more coarse than almost anything in literature
are interspersed among others of the sunniest brightness and purity.
The feelings with which we linger over the exquisite beauty of the
'Sirmio,' and are stirred by the noble inspiration of the 'Hymn
to Diana,' receive a rude shock from the two intervening poems,
characterised by a want of reticence and reserve not often paralleled
in the literature or the speech of civilised nations. In a poet of
modern times a similar collocation might be supposed indicative of
a cynical bitterness of spirit--of a mind mocking its own purest
impulses. But Catullus is too genuine and sincere a man, too natural
in his enjoyments, and too healthy in all his moods, to be taken as
an example of this distempered type of genius. The place occupied by
some poems in the series may be regarded rather as a confirmation of
Horace's dictum--

                        In longum tamen aevum
    Manserunt hodieque manent vestigia ruris.

As Catullus had a larger share than any other Roman poet of the Italian
vigour and ardent sensuous temperament, so, too, the coarser fibre,
associated with that temperament, was especially conspicuous in him:
nor was this element in his nature much restrained by the urbanity and
culture on which he and his intimate associates prided themselves.

These poems, however, whether good or bad, serious or trivial, are
all written with such transparent sincerity that they bring the poet
before us almost as if he were our contemporary. They make him known to
us in many different moods,--in joy and grief, in the ecstasy and the
despair of love, in the frank outpouring of affection and the enjoyment
of social intercourse, in the bitterness of his scorn and animosity,
in the license of his coarser indulgences. They enable us to start
with him on his travels; to enjoy with him the beauty of his home on
the Italian lakes; to pass with him from the life of letters and idle
pleasure and the brilliant intellectual society of Rome to the more
homely but not more virtuous ways and the more commonplace people of
his native province; to join with him in ridiculing some affectation of
an acquaintance, or to feel the contagion of his admiration for genius
or wit in man, grace in woman, or beauty in Nature. In the glimpses of
him which we get in the familiar round of his daily life, we seem to
catch the very turn of his conversation[551], to hear his laugh at some
absurd incident[552], to see his face brighten as he welcomes a friend
from a distant land[553], to mark the quick ebullition of anger at some
slight or rudeness[554], or to be witnesses of his passionate tears as
something recalls to him the memory of his lost happiness, or makes him
feel his present desolation[555]. His impressible nature realises with
extraordinary vividness of pleasure and pain experiences which by most
people are scarcely noticed. To be rightly appreciated, his poems must
be read with immediate reference to the circumstances and situations
which gave rise to them. We must take them up with our feelings attuned
to the mood in which they were written. Hence, before attempting to
criticise them, we must try, by the help of internal and any available
external evidence, to determine the successive stages of his personal
and literary career, and so to get some idea of the social relations
and the state of feeling of which they were the expression.

There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of his birth and
death. The statement of Jerome is that he was born at Verona in the
year 87 B.C., and that he died at Rome, at the age of thirty, in the
year 57 B.C. But this last date is contradicted by allusions in the
poems to events and circumstances, such as the expeditions of Caesar
across the Rhine and into Britain, the second Consulship of Pompey,
the preparations for the Eastern expedition of Crassus, which belong
to a later date. The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the
speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 B.C. against
Vatinius[556]. A line in the poem, immediately preceding that
containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,--

    Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,--

was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,'
accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the Consulship
of Vatinius in 47 B.C. But it has been satisfactorily shown that that
line refers to the boasts in which Vatinius used to indulge after the
conference at Luca, or after his own election to the Praetorship,
and not to their actual fulfilment at a later time. There is thus no
evidence that Catullus survived the year 54 B.C.; and some expressions
in some of his later poems, as, for instance,--

    Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo,--

and--

    Quid est Catulle? quid moraris emori?

are thought to indicate the anticipation of approaching death. But if
54 B.C. is to be accepted as the year of his death, one of Jerome's
two other statements, viz., that he was born in the year 87 B.C.
and that he died at the age of thirty, must be wrong. Most critics
and commentators hold that the first date is right, and that the
mistake lies in the words 'xxx. aetatis anno.' Mr. Munro, with more
probability, believes the error to lie in the 87 B.C., and that Jerome,
'as so often happens with him, has blundered somewhat in transferring
to his complicated era, the Consulships by which Suetonius would have
dated.' He argues further, that the phrase 'iuvenalia tempora,' in
the passage quoted above from Ovid and written by him at the age of
twenty-five, is more applicable to one who died at the age of thirty
than of thirty-three. A further argument for believing that the 'xxx.
aetatis anno' is right, and the date 87 B.C. consequently wrong,
is that the age at which a person died was more easily ascertained
than the date at which he was born, owing to the common practice of
recording the former in sepulchral inscriptions. It is easy to see how
a mistake might have occurred in substituting the first of the four
successive Consulships of Cinna (87 B.C.) for the last in 84 B.C.;
but it is not so obvious how the substitution of xxx. for xxxiii.
could have taken place. The only ground for assuming that the date of
87 B.C. is more likely to be right, is that thereby the disparity of
age between Catullus and his mistress Clodia, who must have been born
in 95 or 94 B.C., is somewhat lessened. But when we remember that she
was actually twelve years older than M. Caelius Rufus, who succeeded
Catullus as her lover, and that Cicero in his defence of Caelius
speaks of her as supporting from her own means the extravagance of her
youthful ('adulescentis') lovers[557], there is no more difficulty
in supposing that she was ten than that she was seven years older
than Catullus. Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which Catullus
lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with Caelius
and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 B.C., seem to
indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would have been
if born in 87 B.C. Between the age of twenty and thirty a difference
of five years is not frequent among very intimate associates, who
live together on a footing of perfect freedom. Again, the expression
of the feelings both of love and friendship in the earlier poems of
Catullus--written about the year 61 or 60 B.C.--seems more like that
of a youth of twenty-three or four, than of twenty-six or seven,
especially when we remember that, by his own confession, he had entered
at a precociously early age on his career both of pleasure and of
poetry. The date 84 B.C. accordingly seems to fit the recorded facts of
his life and the peculiar character of his poetry better than that of
87 B.C.; and there seems to be more opening for a mistake in assigning
the particular date of the poet's birth and death, than in recording
the number of years which he lived.

It seems, therefore, most probable that he was born in the year 84
B.C., and that he died at the age of thirty, either late in 54 B.C.
or early in 53 B.C. The much less important, but still more disputed
question as to his 'praenomen,' appears now to be conclusively settled,
in accordance with the evidence of Jerome and Apuleius, in favour of
Gaius, and against Quintus. In the large number of places in which he
speaks of himself, he invariably calls himself 'Catullus'; and in the
best MSS. his book is called 'Catulli Veronensis liber.' His Gentile
name Valerius is confirmed by Suetonius in his life of Julius Caesar;
and the evidence of inscriptions shows that that name was not uncommon
in the district near Verona. How it happened that a branch of this
patrician Roman house was settled in Cisalpine Gaul we do not know;
but that the family of Catullus was one of high consideration in his
native district, and maintained relations with the great families of
Rome, is indicated by the intimate footing on which Julius Caesar lived
with his father, and also by the fact that the poet was received as
a friend into the best houses of Rome,--such as that of Hortensius,
Manlius Torquatus, Metellus Celer,--shortly after his arrival there.
Although some humorous complaints of money difficulties--the natural
consequences of his fashionable pleasures--occur in his poems[558], yet
from the fact of his possessing, in his father's lifetime, a country
house on Lake Benacus and a farm on the borders of the Sabine and the
Tiburtine territories, and of his having bought and manned a yacht in
which he made the voyage from Bithynia to the mouth of the Po, it may
be inferred that he belonged to a wealthy senatorian or equestrian
family. One or two expressions, such as 'se atque suos omnes,' and
again, 'te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua'[559] seem to speak of a large
connexion of kinsmen: but we only know of one other member of his own
family, his brother, whose early death in the Troad is mentioned with
very genuine feeling in several of his poems. The statement of Jerome
that he was born at Verona is confirmed by Ovid and Martial, and by the
poet himself. He speaks of the 'Transpadani' as his own people ('ut
meos quoque attingam'); he addresses Brixia (the modern Brescia), as--

    Veronae, mater amata meae;

he speaks of one of his fellow-townsmen, as--

    Quendam municipem meum.

Besides spending his early youth there, we find him, on three different
occasions, retiring thither from Rome, and making a considerable stay
there; first, at the time of his brother's death, apparently at the
very height of his _liaison_ with Clodia; next, immediately after his
return from Bithynia; and again in the winter of 55-54 B.C., when his
interview and reconciliation with Julius Caesar took place. We find him
inviting his friend, the poet Caecilius, to come and visit him from the
newly established colony of Como. He had his friends and confidants
among the youth of Verona, and he records his intrigues both with
the married women and courtesans of the place[560]. He took a lively
interest in the humorous scandals of the Province, and he has made them
the subjects of several of his poems,--e.g. xvii and lxvii. Although
his life was too full of social excitement and human relations to make
him dwell much on natural beauty, yet the pure feeling expressed in the
Sirmio--

    Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude;
    Gaudete vosque o vividae[561] lacus undae--

shows that he derived keen enjoyment from the familiar loveliness
of that 'ocellus' of 'all isles and capes': and in the illustrative
imagery of his more artistic poems we seem to find traces of the
impression made unconsciously on his imagination by the mountain
scenery of Northern Italy[562].

His native district afforded scope for the culture, which was the
serious charm of his life, as well as for the pleasures which formed
a large part of it. It was in the youth of Catullus that the power of
Greek studies was first felt by the impressionable race, half-Italian,
half-Celtic, of Cisalpine Gaul, which still remained outside of Italy,
and is called by him 'Provincia.' Among the men of letters belonging
to the last age of the Republic, Cornelius Nepos, Quintilius Varus,
Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom were among
the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in, the North
of Italy. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the mistress of
Caecilius as being--

                    Sapphica puella
    Musa doctior,--

an indication that, not only in Rome but even in the northern province,
the finest literary taste and culture was shared by women. Catullus
shows in the earlier stage of his poetic career his familiarity
both with the 'Muse of Sappho,' and with the more laboured art of
Callimachus. His special literary butt, Tanusius Geminus, whose poems
are ridiculed under the title of 'Annales Volusi,' was also his
'Conterraneus.' The strength of the impulse first given to literary
study in this age is marked also by the eminent names from the North of
Italy, which belong to the next generation, those of Virgil, Cornelius
Gallus, Aemilius Macer, Livy, etc. There is no indication that Catullus
left his native district in order to complete his education, nor have
we any sure sign of his presence at Rome before the year 61 B.C.[563].
He tells us that he began his career both as an amatory poet and as a
man of pleasure in his earliest youth,--

    Tempore quo primum vestis mihi tradita pura'st,
      Iucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret,
    Multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri,
      Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.[564]

The early poems there referred to probably gained him his first
reputation and attracted that notice of Cornelius Nepos, which is
gratefully acknowledged in the dedication,--

    Quoi dono lepidum novum libellum.

One or two of those which we still possess--the 'Ianua,' for instance,
the 'O colonia quae cupis ponte ludere magno,' possibly also the
'Vesper adest: invenes consurgite'--may have been written before
Catullus settled in Rome, and before his genius was fully awakened by
his passion for Lesbia: but the great majority belong to a later date;
and if he did write many love poems before leaving Verona, in the
pleasant spring-time of his life, nearly all, if not all, of them were
omitted from the final collection. Even the 'Aufilena poems,' which are
based on an intrigue carried on at Verona, are shown to be subsequent
to the _liaison_ with Clodia by the lines in c.--

    Cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi, nam tua nobis
      Per facta exhibitas't unica amicitia,
    Cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas.

This last line can only refer to the one all-absorbing passion of the
poet's life. His own relations to Aufilena, in whose affections he
seems to have tried to supplant his friend Quintius, were subsequent to
the composition of that poem. It is not unlikely, as Westphal suggests,
that the Veronese bride, 'viridissimo nupta flore puella' of the 17th
poem, in whom Catullus evidently took a lively interest, may have been
this Aufilena, at an earlier stage of her career.

The event which first revealed the full power of his genius, and which
made both the supreme happiness and supreme misery of his life, was his
passion for 'Lesbia.' After the elaborate discussions of the question
by Schwabe, Munro, Ellis and others, it can no longer be doubted
that the lady addressed under that name was the notorious Clodia,
the βοῶπις who appears so prominently in the second book of Cicero's
Letters to Atticus, and the 'Medea Palatina' whose crimes, fascination,
and profligacy stand out so distinctly in the defence of Caelius. We
learn first from Ovid that 'Lesbia' was a feigned name; and the
application of that name is easily intelligible from the admiration
which Catullus felt, and which his mistress probably shared, for the
'Lesbian poetess,' whose passionate words he addressed to his mistress
when he was first dazzled by her exceeding charm and beauty. Apuleius
tells us further that the real name of 'Lesbia' was Clodia; and the
truth of his statement is confirmed by his mention in the same place of
other Roman ladies, who were celebrated by their poet-lovers,--Ticidas,
Tibullus, and Propertius,--under disguised names. The statement made
there that the real name of the Cynthia of Propertius was Hostia, is
confirmed by the line in one of his elegies,

    Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo.[565]

The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also
indicated, and her supposed relations to her brother are hinted at in
the 79th poem of Catullus,

    Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit
      Quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua.

The play on the word _pulcher_ might be illustrated by many parallel
allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The gratitude expressed by
Catullus to Allius[566], a man of rank and position, for having made
arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly
shows that she could not have belonged to the class of _libertinae_,
in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the
language of Catullus in the first period of his _liaison_--

    Ille mi par esse deo videtur;

and again

      Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem
    Intulit,

is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious condescension
of a superior, as well as the delight of passion returned. Of the
two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to be loved' and
are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and those who
are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration of the
object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier time,
unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the part
of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms of
person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought that the
lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest patrician
houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of Rome, who was
either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time when she first
returned the poet's passion. The subsequent course of their _liaison_
affords further corroboration of her identity with the famous Clodia.
The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce and bitter,
is addressed by him as Rufus,[567]--the cognomen of M. Caelius, who
became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year 59, and was
defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her in the early
part of 56 B.C. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the charges of
Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As, therefore,
there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason to accept
the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was Clodia; as
the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of rank and of
great accomplishment[568]; as there was no other Clodia of the family
of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus Celer, to whom
the statements made in the poems of Catullus could apply; and as these
statements closely agree with all that Cicero says of her,--there is no
reasonable ground for doubting their identity. If it is urged, on the
other side, that a lady of the rank and station of Clodia cannot have
sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus imply, it may be
said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath imputed to her need
not have been true, and also that other Roman ladies of as high rank
and position, both in the last age of the Republic and in the early
Empire, did sink as low[569].

That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second
stage--that of the 'amantium irae'--in the lifetime of Metellus,
appears from the 83rd poem,

    Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc.

Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62
B.C., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the
Consulship. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence,
and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho,
which is expressive of passionate and even distant admiration rather
than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's
absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early
days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided by
Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to
himself--

    Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,
      Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[570]--

clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of
Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia--those on her pet
sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris
quot mihi basiationes,'--in all of which the feeling expressed is one
at once of passionate admiration and of perfect security,--belong
probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 B.C. To
this period may, in all probability, be assigned some of the poet's
brightest and happiest efforts,--the Epithalamium in honour of the
marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia,[571] and the poems ix, xii,
xiii, commemorative of his friendship with Veranius and Fabullus. The
words in the last of these--

    Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
    Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque--

show that they were written in the heyday of his passion. The lines in
the poem, welcoming Veranius,--

    Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
    Narrantem loca, facta, nationes--

seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the
fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled
together as inseparables by Catullus, went together on the staff of
Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of
Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[572] that they were
similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in the
train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the
middle of the year 60 B.C. The twelfth poem, which is interesting as a
testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then a boy
of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and Fabullus
were still in Spain.

The first hint of any rift in the loves of Catullus and Clodia is
contained in the 68th poem, written in the form of a letter to Manlius--

    Quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo, etc.

Catullus had retired to Verona on hearing of the death of his
brother, and he was for a time so overwhelmed with grief as to become
indifferent both to poetry and love. He is as sincere and unreserved
in the expression of his grief as of his former happiness, and as
completely absorbed by it. He writes to Hortensius, enclosing, in
fulfilment of an old promise, a translation of the 'Coma Berenices' of
Callimachus, but at the same time expressing his loss of all interest
in poetry owing to his recent affliction,--

    Etsi me adsiduo confectum cura dolore
      Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, etc.

In his letter to Manlius, in which he excuses himself on the same
ground for not sending any poetry of his own, and for not complying
with his request to send him some volumes of Greek poetry, on the
ground that his collection of books was at Rome, he notices, with a
feeling almost of hopeless indifference, a hint conveyed to him by
Manlius, of his mistress' faithlessness.[573] In the poem written
somewhat later to Allius,--

    Non possum reticere deae qua me Allius in re, etc.--

in which his grief is still fresh but more subdued, and in which the
full tide of his old passion, as well as his old delight in his art,
returns to him, he speaks lightly of her occasional infidelities,--

    Quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo
      Rara verecundae furta feremus erae.

If he can no longer be her only lover, he still hopes to be the most
favoured. But he soon finds even this privilege denied to him. His
love-poetry henceforth assumes a different sound. For a time, indeed,
his reproaches are uttered in a tone of sadness not unmixed with
tenderness. Afterwards, even though his passion from time to time
revives with its old vehemence, and he again becomes the slave of
Lesbia's caprice, his tone becomes angry, hard, and scornful. Finally,
the evidence of her shameless life and innumerable infidelities with
Caelius, Gellius, Egnatius, and 'three hundred others,' enables him
utterly to renounce her. The earlier of the poems, both of anger and
reconciliation, may probably have been written in the lifetime of
Metellus, i.e. in 60 or in the beginning of 59 B.C. But later in that
year Metellus died, suspected of being poisoned by his wife, who,
on the ground of that suspicion was named by Caelius Rufus, after
his passion had merged in a hatred equal to that of Catullus, by the
terrible _oxymoron_ of 'Clytemnestra quadrantaria.' Her widowhood
gained for her absolute license in the indulgence of her propensities,
and the first use she made of her liberty was to receive Caelius Rufus
into her house on the Palatine. What her ultimate fate was we do not
know, but the language of Cicero, Caelius, and Catullus show that she
could inspire as deadly hatred as passionate admiration, and that the
'Juno-like' charm of her beauty, the grace and fascination of her
presence, the intellectual accomplishment which made poets and orators
for a time her slaves, did not save her from sinking into the lowest
degradation.

The poems representing the second and third stage--that in which
passion and scorn strive with one another--of the relations to
'Lesbia,' and containing the savage attacks on his rivals, belong to
the years 59 and 58 B.C.: nor do there appear to be any other poems of
importance referable to this latter date. One or two poems, in which
his final renunciation is made with much scornful emphasis, belong to a
later date after his return from Bithynia. He went there early in the
year 57 B.C., on the staff of the Propraetor Memmius, and remained
till the spring of the following year. The immediate motive for this
step may have been his wish to escape from his fatal entanglement, but
the chances of bettering his fortunes, the congenial society of his
friend the poet Helvius Cinna and other members of the staff, and the
attraction of visiting the famous seats of the old Greek civilization,
were also powerful inducements to a man who combined a strong social
and pleasure-loving nature with the enthusiasm of a poet and a scholar.
His severance from his recent associations and from the animosities
they engendered was favourable to his happiness and his poetry. He did
not indeed improve his fortunes, owing, as he says, to the poverty of
the province and the meanness of his chief. He detested Memmius, and
has recorded his detestation in the hearty terms of abuse of which he
was a master; and he expresses his joy in quitting, in the following
spring, the dull monotony of the Phrygian plains and the hot climate of
Nicaea. But he had great enjoyment in his association with his comrades
on the Praetor's staff--

    O dulces comitum valete coetus.--

He was attracted to one of them, Helvius Cinna, by warm admiration
for his poetic accomplishment, as well as by friendship[574]; and the
time spent by them together was probably lightened by the practice of
their art, and the study of the Alexandrine poets. Although the fame of
Cinna did not become so great as that of Catullus or Calvus, he seems
to have been regarded by the poets of that school in the light of a
master[575]; and it is probably owing to the example of his Zmyrna,
so highly lauded in the 95th poem of Catullus, that Catullus composed
his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, and Calvus composed his Io.
A still more remarkable poem of Catullus, the Attis, the subject of
which, so remote not only from Roman but even Greek life, is identified
with the Phrygian highlands and the seats of the worship of Cybele,
probably owes its inspiration as well as its local colouring to
the poet's sojourn in this district. The mention of the 'Catagraphi
Thyni' in a later poem is suggestive of the interest which he took in
the novel aspects of Eastern life opened up to him in the province.
But it is in the poems which are written in the year 56 B.C., that
we chiefly note the happy effect of the poet's absence from Rome,
and of his emancipation from his passion. Some of these poems,--more
especially xlvi, ci, xxxi, and iv,--are among the happiest and purest
products of his genius. They bring him before us eagerly preparing to
start on his journey 'among the famous cities of Asia,'--making his
pious pilgrimage to his brother's tomb in the Troad,--greeting his
beloved Sirmio and the bright waters of the Lago di Garda on his first
return home, and recalling sometime later to his guests by the shores
of the lake the memories of the places visited, and of the gallant
bearing of his pinnace, 'tot per impotentia freta,' on his homeward
voyage. Some of the poems written from Verona--those referring to
his intrigue or perhaps his disappointment with Aufilena, and the
invitation to Caecilius (xxxv), were probably written about this time,
before his return to Rome. The 'Aufilena' poems belong certainly to
a time later than his passion for Lesbia; and during a still later
visit to Verona--that during which he met and was reconciled to Julius
Caesar--Catullus is found engaged in love-affairs in which Mamurra
was his rival. As the invitation to Caecilius was written after the
foundation of Como (B.C. 59), it could not have been sent by Catullus
during his earlier sojourns at Verona: and 'the ideas' which he wished
to interchange with the poet who was then engaged in writing a poem on
Cybele--'Dindymi domina,'--to which Catullus pointedly refers, may well
have been those suggested by his eastern sojourn, and embodied in the
Attis. But soon afterwards we find him back in Rome, and the lively and
most natural piece of 'genre-painting' contained in x--

    Varus me meus ad suos amores
    Visum duxerat e foro otiosum--

bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems
xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy
with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced,
which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of
their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of
Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive of
the famous lines addressed to Cicero--

    Disertissime Romuli nepotum
    Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli--

in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of
Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of
Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But
the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not
interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to him
as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so
perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero
for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet the
reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law
courts,--

    Tanto pessimus omnium poeta
    Quanto tu optimus omnium patronus--

seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an
advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the
great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he
draws between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They
had common friends and acquaintances--Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated
the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate
associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies of the
orator. Cicero, too, was naturally attracted to young men of promise
and genius,--if they did not belong too prominently to the 'grex
Catilinae';--and, like Dr. Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and
Boswell, he may have valued their society more for their intellectual
vivacity than their moral virtues.

The poems written in the two last years of the poet's life do not
indicate any emancipation from the coarser passions and the fierce
animosities of the period immediately preceding the Bithynian journey.
To this later time may be assigned the famous lampoons on Julius Caesar
and Mamurra, the poems referring to some of his Veronese amours, those
addressed to Juventius, and the reckless, half-bantering, half-savage
assaults on 'Furius and Aurelius,' who were both the butts of his wit
and the sharers of his least reputable pleasures. They seem to have
been needy men, though of some social standing[576], probably of the
class of 'Scurrae,' who preyed on his purse and made loud professions
of devotion to him, while they abused his confidence and his character
behind his back. Some of the poems of his last years, however, are
indicative of a more genial frame of mind and of happier relations with
the world. It was at this time that he enjoyed the intimate friendship
of Licinius Calvus[577], to whom he was united by similarity of taste
and of genius, as well as by sympathy in their personal and political
dislikes. Four poems--one certainly among the very last written by
Catullus--are inspired by this friendship, and all clearly prove
that at least this source of happiness was unalloyed by any taint of
bitterness. Two other poems, the final repudiation of Lesbia, and the
bright picture of the loves of Acme and Septimius, which, by their
allusions to the invasion of Britain, and to the excitement preceding
the Parthian expedition of Crassus, show unmistakeably that they belong
to the last year of his life, afford conclusive evidence that neither
the exhausting passions, the rancorous feuds, nor the deeper sorrows
of his life had in any way impaired the vigour of his imagination or
his exquisite sense of beauty. Perhaps the latest verses addressed by
Catullus to any of his friends are those lines of tender complaint to
Cornificius, in which he begs of him some little word of consolation--

    Maestius lacrimis Simonideis.

The lines--

    Malest, me hercule, et est laboriose,
    Et magis magis in dies et horas--

might well have been drawn from him by the rapid advance of his
fatal illness, and the phrase 'lacrimis Simonideis' is suggestive of
the anticipation of death rather than of the misery of unfortunate
love[578]. Yet, if we are to regard Catullus as himself responsible for
the final arrangement of his poems, and if we suppose that there was
any principle in their arrangement, the position of the poem between
those two utterly incongruous in tone, 'Salax taberna,' and 'Egnatius
quod candidos habet dentes,'--both directed against his rivals in the
last stage of his _liaison_ with Lesbia,--leaves some doubt as to
whether the poem may not belong to the period of his fatal passion.

The length as well as the diction, rhythm, and structure of the 64th
poem--

    Peliaco quondam prognatae, etc.--


shows that it was a work of much greater labour and thought than any
of those which sprang spontaneously out of the passion or sentiment of
the moment. Probably in the composition of this, which he must have
regarded as the most serious and ambitious effort of his Muse, Catullus
may have acted on the principle which he commends so warmly in his
lines on the Zmyrna of Cinna--

    Zymrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem
      Quam coepta'st nonamque edita post hiemem,--

and have kept it by him for years, elaborating the unfamiliar poetic
diction in which it is expressed, and enlarging its original plan by
the insertion of the long Ariadne Episode. It is the only poem of
Catullus which produces the impression of the slow and reflective
processes of art as distinct from the rapidly shaping power of
immediate inspiration. From this circumstance alone we should regard
it as a work on which his maturest faculty was employed. But it has
been shown[579] that throughout the poem, and more especially in the
episode of Ariadne, there are clear indications that Catullus had read
and imitated the poem of Lucretius, which appeared about the end of 55
or the beginning of 54 B.C. We may therefore conclude that in the year
54 B.C.--the last of his life--Catullus was still engaged either in
the original composition of his longest poem, or in giving to it the
finishing touches. The concluding lines of the poem--

    Sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando, etc.--

which are written in a more serious spirit, and with a graver judgment
on human life than anything else he has left, perhaps indicate the path
which his maturer genius might have struck out for itself, if he had
ever risen from the careless freedom of early youth to the reflective
habits and steady labour of riper years.

But although longer life might have brought to Catullus a still
higher rank among the poets of the world, the chief charm of the
poems actually written by him arises from the strength and depth
of his personal feelings, and the force, freshness, and grace with
which he has expressed them. Other Roman poets have produced works
of more elaborate composition, and have shown themselves greater
interpreters of Nature and of human life: none have expressed so
directly and truthfully the great elemental affections, or have
uttered with such vital sincerity the happiness or the pain of the
passing hour. He presents his own simple experience and emotions,
uncoloured by idealising fancy or reflexion, and the world accepts
this as among the truest of all records of human feeling. The 'spirat
adhuc amor' is especially true of all the poems inspired by his love
for Lesbia. It is by the union of the utmost fire of passion with a
heart capable of the utmost constancy of feeling that he transcends
all other poets of love. We pass with him through every stage of his
passion, from the first rapture of admiration and the first happiness
of possession, to the biting words of scorn in which he announces to
Lesbia his final renunciation of her. We witness the whole 'pageant of
his bleeding heart,' from the fresh pain of the wound on first fully
realising her unworthiness, through the various stages of superficial
reconcilement,--the 'amoris integratio' following on the 'amantium
irae[580],'--on to the state of torture described by him in the words
'Odi et amo[581],' till at last he obtains his emancipation by the
growth of a savage rancour and loathing in the place of the passionate
love which had tried so long to sustain itself 'like a wild flower at
the edge of the meadow[582].' Among the many poems, written through
nearly the whole of his poetical career, and called forth by this, the
most vital experience of his life, those of most charm and power are
the two on the 'Sparrow of Lesbia' (ii and iii) written in tones of
playful tenderness, not without some touch of the luxury of melancholy
which accompanies and enhances passion;--the two, v and vii,

    Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,

and

    Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes, etc.,--

written in the very height of his short-lived happiness, in the wildest
tumult and most reckless abandonment of passion, when the immediate joy
is felt as the only thing of any moment in life;--the 8th poem--

    Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire--

in which he recalls the bright days of the past--

    Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,--

and steels his heart against useless regret:--and another poem written
in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the
wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,--

    Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.;[583]

in which he prays for a deliverance from his passion as from a foul
disease, or a kind of madness;--and lastly, the final renunciation
(xi),--

    Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,--

in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and
creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpassed in
one or two other of his greatest works,--such as the 'Attis' and the
Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have been
more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue; none
have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate intensity
of feeling.

The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love, rivalling
the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems
which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His
longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of
this passion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or
in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek
legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union
of Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus
and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the
fanatical hatred of love,--'Veneris nimio odio,'--the subject of his
art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness of
his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow when
that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his longer
poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius with
his bride. No truer picture of the passionate devotion of lovers has
ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and tender but
burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own experience did not
teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as at the beginning of
his career, he finds in the union of passion with truth and constancy
the most real source of happiness. The elegiac lines in which he
comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia bear witness to
the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and, along with others
of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure in that age was
not only brightened by genius and culture, but also elevated by pure
affection and unselfish sympathy,--

    Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris
      Accidere a nostro Calve dolore potest,
    Quo desiderio veteres renovamus amores
      Atque olim missas flemus amicitias
    Certe non tanto mors immatura dolori est
      Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo.[584]

The most attractive feature in the character of Catullus is the warmth
of his affection. No ancient poet has left so pleasant a record of
the genial intercourse of friends, or has given such proof of his own
dependence on human attachment and of his readiness to meet all the
claims which others have on such attachment. In his gayest hours and
his greatest sorrow, amid his pleasures and his studies, he shows his
thoughtful consideration for others, his grateful recollection of past
kindness, and his own extreme need of sympathy. Perhaps he expects too
much from friendship, and, in addressing his comrades, is too ready to
assume that whatever gives momentary pleasure or pain to 'their own
Catullus' must be of equal importance to them. No poet makes such use
of terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives in writing both to
and of his friends, and of himself in his relation to them. But if he
expected much from the sympathy of his associates, he possessed in no
ordinary measure the capacity of feeling with and of heartily loving
and admiring them. He often expresses honest and delicate appreciation
of the works, or of the wit, taste, and genius of his friends. The
dedication of his volume to Cornelius Nepos, the lines addressed to
Cicero, the invitation to Caecilius--

    Poetae tenero, meo sodali
    Velim Caecilio papyre dicas,--

the poem in which he recalls to Licinius Calvus a day passed together
in witty talk and the interchange of verses over their wine, the
contrast which he draws between the doom of speedy oblivion which he
pronounces on the 'Annals of Volusius,' and the immortality which he
confidently anticipates for the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna,--all show that,
though fastidious in his judgments, he was without a single touch of
literary jealousy, and that he felt a generous pride in the fame and
accomplishments of men of established reputation as well as of his own
younger compeers. Nor was his affection limited by literary sympathy.
Of none of his associates does he write more heartily than of Veranius
and Fabullus, young men, apparently enjoying their youth, and trying
to better their fortunes by serving on the staff of some Praetor or
Proconsul in his province. The language of affection could not be
uttered with more cordiality, simplicity, and grace than in the poem of
ten or eleven lines welcoming Veranius on his return from Spain,--

    Venistine domum ad tuos Penates
    Fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
    Venisti. O mihi nuntii beati.

There is not a word in the poem wasted; not one that does not come
straight and strong from the heart. The 'Invitation to Fabullus' is in
a lighter strain, and is written with the freedom and humour which he
could use to add a charm to his friendly intercourse[585], and a sting
to his less congenial relations. Yet through the playful banter of
this poem his delicate and kindly nature betrays itself in the words
'venuste noster,' and in those lines of true feeling,--

    Sed contra accipies meros amores
    Seu quid suavius elegantiusve.

His affection for both comes out incidentally in his remonstrance with
Marrucinus Asinius[586] for having filched after dinner, 'in ioco atque
vino,' one of his napkins, which he valued as memorials of the friends
who had sent them to him, and which he endows with some share of the
love he felt for them,--

              Haec amem necessest
    Ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.

The lampoons on Piso and his favourites, Porcius and Socration, show
that those who wronged his friends could rouse in him as generous
indignation as those who wronged himself.

Other poems express the pain and disappointment of a very sensitive
nature, which expects more active and disinterested sympathy from
others than ordinary men care either to give or to receive. Of this
sort are his complaint to Cornificius[587],--

    Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo--

and the affectionate reproach which he addresses to Alphenus (xxx):--

    Certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me
    Inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent.
    Inde nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque
    Ventos irrita ferre ac nebulas aerias sinis.

These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any
coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly
dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of
these poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels
and expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or
treachery. It does great injustice to his noblest qualities, to think
of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his
friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from
his writings. It has been conclusively shown[588] that in the third
line of the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who,
under the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem
with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be
regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as
having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead of
being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere specimen
of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping with the
feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses in his other
poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between their hollow
professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which he assigns to
them,--

    Pauca nuntiate meae puellae
            Non bona dicta.

Catullus could pass from friendship or love to a state of permanent
enmity and hatred, when he believed that those in whom he had trusted
had acted falsely and heartlessly towards him: and then he did not
spare them. But the duties of loyal friendship and affection are to
him a kind of religion. Perfidy and falsehood are regarded by him not
only as the worst offences against honour in man, but as sins against
the Gods. He lays claim to a good conscience and to the character of
piety, on the ground that he had neither failed in acts of kindness or
violated his word or his oath in any of his human dealings;--

    Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas
      Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium,
    Nec sanctam violasse fidem, nec foedere in ullo
      Divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, etc.[589]

That he possessed no ordinary share of 'piety,' in the Roman sense
of the word, appears from the poems which express his grief for his
brother's death. He died in the Troad; and we have seen how, some
years after the event, Catullus turned aside from his pleasant voyage
among the Isles of Greece and coasts of Asia, to visit his tomb and
to offer upon it the customary funeral gifts. His words in reference
to this great sorrow, in all the poems in which he speaks of it, are
full of deep and simple human feeling. He does not venture to comfort
himself with the hope which he suggests to Calvus, in the lines on
the death of Quintilia, of a conscious existence after death; but
he resolves that his love shall still endure even after the eternal
separation from its object. Yet while yielding to the first shock
of this affliction, so as to become for the time indifferent to the
passion which had swayed his life, and to the delight which he had
taken in the works of ancient poets and the exercise of his art, he
does not allow himself to forget what was due to living friends. It is
characteristic of his frank affectionate nature, that, while dead to
his old interests in life and literature, he finds his chief comfort
in unburthening his heart to his friends and in writing to them words
of delicate consideration. He cannot bear that, even in a trifling
matter, Hortalus should find him forgetful of a promise: and he longs
to lighten the sorrow of his friend Manlius, who had written to him in
some sudden affliction,--probably the loss of the bride in whose honour
Catullus had, a short time previously, composed his great Nuptial Ode.
Though all other feelings were dead, and neither love could distract
nor poetry heal his grief, his heart was alive to the memory of former
kindness[590], to the natural craving for sympathy, and to the duty of
thinking of others.

Another, and less admirable, side of the nature of Catullus is
reflected in his short satirical poems. These have nothing in common
with the ethical and reflective satire of Lucilius and Horace: and
although the objects of some of them are the most prominent personages
in the State, yet their motive cannot, in any case, be called purely
political. They are like the lampoons of Archilochus and the early
Greek Iambic writers, purely personal in their object. They are either
the virulent expression of his antipathies, jealousies, and rancours,
or they are inspired by his lively sense of the ridiculous and by his
extreme fastidiousness of taste. The most famous, most incisive, and
least justifiable of these lampoons are the attacks on Julius Caesar,
especially that contained in the 29th poem,--

    Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati.
    Nisi impudicus et vorax et aleo, etc.--

and in the less vigorous but much more offensive 57th poem.

Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni'
generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his
intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian
party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may
have given some political edge to his Satire. He was moved also by a
feeling of disgust towards the habits and manners of some of Caesar's
instruments and creatures,--such as Vatinius, Libo, Mamurra, etc. But
the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,--the two poems which
Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of
Caesar--is the jealousy of Mamurra,--the object also of many separate
satires,--who, through the favour of the Proconsul and the fortune
which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his
provincial love affairs. The indignation of Cicero was roused against
the riches of Mamurra on political grounds: that of Catullus on the
ground that they gave their possessor an unfair advantage in the race
of pleasure:--

    Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens
    Perambulabit omnium cubilia, etc.

Suetonius tells the story, confirmed by the lines in a later poem of
Catullus--

    Irascere iterum meis iambis
    Inmerentibus, unice imperator,--

that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted
the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the same
day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the imputations
contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred years afterwards,
even his magnanimous clemency could not well have tolerated them. But,
as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius, such charges were in
those days regarded as a mere 'façon de parler,' which if made coarsely
were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'), if done wittily, as 'polite
banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must have looked upon the imputations
of the 57th poem as a mere angry ebullition of boyish petulance: and
he showed the same disregard for imputations made by Calvus, which,
though as unfounded, were not so absolutely incredible and unmeaning.
His clemency to Catullus met with a return similar to that which it met
with at a later time from other recipients of his generosity. Catullus,
though the 'truest friend,' was certainly not the 'noblest foe.' The
coarseness of his attack may be partly palliated by the manners of the
age: but the spirit in which he returns to the attack in the 54th poem
leaves a more serious stain on his character. He was too completely in
the wrong to be able frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and
magnanimous treatment.

Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness of
the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the evidence
of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity of life in
the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[591],' and in his strange apology for
the freedom of his verses,--

    Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
    Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est.[592]

He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which
he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them;
and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor sex. It is one
of the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed
with the purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his
vigorous force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coarser in his
language than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the
Augustan age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of
the old Roman life,--'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'--had
not altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was
as much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward
decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of
refinement; it associates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it
was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life.
The coarseness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness
than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to
human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than
when it clings to the imagination, associates itself with the sense of
beauty, and expresses itself in the language of passion. Though, in his
nobler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impassioned, he is much more free
from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life did not
deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his imagination.
It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on life in the spirit
of a humourist, or in moods of bitterness when his antipathies are
roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some violation of
natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he disregards the
restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on the use of
language.

Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and
are not much disfigured by coarseness or indelicacy of expression. As
he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of
mind in his associates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid ways
of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The pieces in
which these characteristics are exposed are marked by keen observation,
a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by a boisterous spirit of
fun. They are expressed with vigour and directness; but they want the
subtle irony which pervades the Satires, Epistles, and Odes of Horace.
Among the best of his lighter satires is the poem numbered xvii:--

    O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,--

which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humourous
extravagance. It is directed against the dullness and stolid
indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a
young and beautiful girl,--

    Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
    (Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
    Asservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis),--

was utterly careless of her, and insensible to the perils to which she
was exposed. To rouse him from his sloth and stupor, Catullus asks to
have him thrown head over heels--

    Munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus--

from a ricketty old bridge into the deepest and dirtiest part of the
quagmire over which it was built. In another piece Catullus laughs at
the affectation of one of his rivals, Egnatius,--a black-bearded fop
from the Celtiberian wilds,--who had a trick of perpetually smiling
in order to show the whiteness of his teeth;--a trick which did not
desert him at a criminal trial, during the most pathetic part of the
speech for the defence, or when he stood beside a weeping mother at the
funeral pyre of her only son. In another of his elegiac pieces he gives
expression to the relief felt on the departure for the East of a bore
who afflicted the ears of the polite world by a superfluous use of his
aspirates--

    Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
      Dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, etc.[593]

Just as the ears of men had recovered from this infliction--

              Subito affertur nuntius horribilis,
    Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
      Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.

Like fastidious and irritable poets of other times (Horace, Pope,
Byron, etc.), Catullus waged internecine war against pedants, literary
pretenders, and poetasters. He remonstrates in a vein of humorous
exaggeration with his friend Licinius Calvus, for palming off on him
as a gift on the Saturnalia (corresponding to our Christmas presents)
a collection of the works of these 'miscreants,' (impiorum) originally
sent to him by some pedantic grammarian, in acknowledgment of his
services as an advocate--

    Dii magni, horribilem ac sacrum libellum.

In the 36th poem he represents Lesbia as offering a holocaust to Venus
of the work of 'the worst of all poets,' 'The Annals of Volusius,' in
quittance of a vow on her reconcilement with Catullus. In another,
addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace quotes
in the 'Ars Poetica[594],' he exposes the absurdity of one of their
friends, who, though in other respects a man of sense, wit, and
agreeable manners, entertained the delusion that he was a poet, and was
never so happy as when he had surrounded himself with the newest and
finest literary materials, and was plying his uncongenial occupation.
In another he records the nemesis, in the form of a severe cough, which
overtook him for allowing himself to be seduced by the hopes of a
good dinner to read (or perhaps listen to the reading of) a speech of
Cicero's friend and client Sestius,--

    Plenam veneni et pestilentiae.

About one half of the shorter poems, and more than half of the
epigrams, are to be classed among his personal lampoons or light
satiric pieces. Many of these show Catullus to us on that side of
his character, which it is least pleasant or profitable to dwell on.
He could not indeed write anything which did not bear the stamp of
the vital force and sincerity of his nature: but even his vigour of
expression does not compensate for the survival in literature of the
feelings and relations which are most ignoble in actual life. Yet
some of these satiric pieces have an interest which amply justifies
their preservation. The greatest of all his lampoons, the 29th, has an
historical as well as a literary value. Tacitus, as well as Suetonius,
refers to it. It is not only a masterpiece of terse invective, but,
like the 11th, it is a powerful specimen of imaginative irony. The
momentous events of a most momentous era--the Eastern conquests of
Pompey, the first Spanish campaign of Caesar, the subjugation of Gaul,
the invasion of Britain, the revolutionary measures of 'father-in-law
and son-in-law,'--are all made to look as if they had had no other
object or result than that of pampering the appetites of a worthless
favourite. Other lampoons, such as those against Memmius and Piso, have
also an historical interest. They testify to the republican freedom
of speech, which was soon to be silenced for ever. They enable us
to understand how strong a social and political weapon the power of
epigram was in ancient Rome,--a power which continued to be exercised,
though no longer with republican freedom, under the Empire. The pen
of the poet was employed in the warfare of parties as fiercely as the
tongue of the orator; and although Catullus did not spare partisans
of the Senate, such as Memmius, yet all his associations and tastes
combined to turn his hostility chiefly against the popular leaders
and their tools. The more genial satiric pieces, again, are chiefly
interesting as throwing light on the social and literary life of Rome
and the provincial towns of Italy. They give us an idea of the lighter
talk, the criticism, and merriment of the younger men in the world of
letters and fashion during the last age of the Republic. If they are
not master-pieces of humour, they are full of gaiety, animal spirits,
shrewd observation, and not very unkindly comment on men and manners.

Besides the poems which show Catullus in various relations of love,
affection, animosity, and humorous criticism, there are still a few
of the shorter pieces which have a personal interest. He had the
purest capacity of enjoying simple pleasures; and some of his most
delightful poems are vivid records of happy experiences procured to him
by this youthful freshness of feeling. Three of these are especially
beautiful,--the dedication of his yacht to Castor and Pollux,--the
lines written immediately before quitting Bithynia,--

    Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--

and the famous lines on Sirmio. They all belong to the same period of
his life, and all show how happy and serene his spirit became, when it
was untroubled by the passions and rancours of city life. The lines on
his yacht--

    Phaselus ille quem videtis, hospites,--

express with much vivacity the feelings of affectionate pride which a
strong and kindly nature lavishes not only on living friends, but on
inanimate objects, associated with the memory of past happiness and
adventure. His fancy endows it with a kind of life from the earliest
time when, under the form of a clump of trees, it 'rustled its leaves'
on Cytorus, till it obtained its rest in a peaceful age on the fair
waters of Benacus. The 46th poem is inspired by the new sense of life
which comes to early youth with the first approach of spring, and by
the eager flutter of anticipation--

    Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
    Iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt--

with which a cultivated mind forecasts the pleasure of travelling
among famous and beautiful scenes. But perhaps the most perfect of his
smaller pieces is that in which the love of home and of Nature, the
sense of rest and security after toil and danger, the glee of a boy and
the strong happiness of a man unite to form the charm of the lines on
Sirmio, of which it is as impossible to analyse the secret as it is to
reproduce in another tongue the language in which it is expressed.

Catullus is one of the great poets of the world, not so much through
gifts of imagination--though with these he was well endowed--as
through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his
keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily,
that, to produce pure and lasting poetry, it was enough for him to
utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. His
interests, though limited in range, were all genuine and human. His
poems inspired by personal feeling seem to come from him without any
effort. He says, on every occasion, exactly what he wanted to say,
in clear, forcible, spontaneous language. There are, indeed, even in
his simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for
instance,--

    Aut quam sidera multa, cum facet nox,
    Furtivos hominum vident amores,[595]--

and this, written with the feeling and with the application which Burns
makes of the same image,--

                           Velut prati
    Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
                  Tactus aratro est;[596]--

and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem
otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,--

                        Nec sapit pueri instar
    Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,--

and--

    Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
    Adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis.[597]


But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its
simple directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. There is nothing,
apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no otiose
epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet it shows the happiest selection,
not only of the most appropriate, but of the most exquisite words.
To no style, in prose or verse, in any language, could the words
'simplex munditiis' be with more propriety applied. It has all the
ease of refined and vigorous conversation, combined with the grace of
consummate art. Though this perfection of expression could not have
been attained without study and labour, yet it bears no trace of them.

In these smaller poems he shows himself as great a master of metre
as of language. The more sustained power which he has over the flow
of his verse, is best exemplified by the skylark ring of his great
Nuptial Ode, by the hurrying agitation of the Attis, and the stately
calm of the Peleus and Thetis, giving place to a more impassioned
movement in the 'Ariadne' episode. But in his shorter poems, also, he
shows the true gift of the ἄοιδος--the power of using musical
language as a symbol of the changing impulses of feeling. Thus the
delicate playfulness and tenderness of his phalaecians,--the lingering
long-drawn out sweetness, and the calm subdued sadness of the scazon,
as exemplified in the 'Sirmio,' and the

    Miser Catulle desinas ineptire,--

the 'bright speed' of the pure iambic, so happily answering to the
subject of the 'phaselus,' and its bold impetus as it is employed in
the attack on Julius Caesar,--the irregular but sonorous grandeur of
his Sapphic[598],--the majesty which in the Hymn to Diana blends with
the buoyant movement of the glyconic,--all attest that the words and
melody of the poems were born together with the feeling and meaning
animating them. Although his elegiac poems are not written with the
smoothness and fluency which was attained by the Augustan poets,
yet those among them which record his graver and sadder moods have
a plaintive force and natural pathos, which their roughness seems
to enhance. If his epigrammatic pieces, written in that metre, want
the polish and point to which his brilliant disciple attained under
the Empire, we may believe that Catullus experienced the difficulty
which Lucilius found, and which Horace at last successfully overcame,
of adapting a metre originally framed for the expression of serious
feeling to the more prosaic interests and experiences of life.

The language of Catullus in these shorter poems is his own, or, where
not his own, is drawn from such wells of Latin undefiled as Plautus
and Terence. His metres are happy applications of those invented or
largely used by the earlier lyric poets of Greece,--Sappho, Anacreon,
Archilochus,--and the later Phalaecus. For the form of some of his
longer poems he has taken, and not with the happiest result, the
Alexandrine poets for his models. But in these shorter poems, so far as
he has had any models, he has tried to emulate the perfection attained
in the older and purer era of Greek inspiration. But it is not through
imitation that he has attained a perfection of form like to theirs. It
is owing to the singleness and strength of his feeling and impression,
that these poems are so exquisite in their unity and simplicity.
Catullus does not care to present the gem of his own thought in an
alien setting, as Horace, in his earlier Odes at least, has often
done. It is one of the surest notes of his lyrical genius that, while
more modest in his general self-estimate than any of the great Roman
poets, he trusts more implicitly than any of them to his own judgment
and inspiration to find the most fitting and telling medium for the
communication of his thought. Thus he presents only what is essential,
unencumbered with any associations from older poetry. The form is
indeed so perfect that we scarcely think of it. We feel only that
nothing mars or interrupts the revelation of the poet's heart and soul.
We apprehend, as perhaps we never apprehended before, some one single
feeling of great potency and great human influence in a poem of some
ten or twenty lines, every word of which adds something to the whole
impression. Thus, for instance, in the poems--

    Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,--

    Acmen Septimius suos amores,--

    Verani, omnibus e meis amicis,--

    Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--

    Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque,--

    Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,--

we apprehend through a perfectly pure medium, and by a single
intuition, the highest pitch of the passionate love of man and woman,
the perfect beauty and joy of self-forgetful friendship, the eager
enthusiasm for travel and adventure, the deep delight of returning to
a beautiful and well-loved home, the 'sorrow's crown of sorrows' in
'remembering happier things.' We may see, too, in a totally different
sphere of experience, how Catullus instinctively seizes the moment of
supreme intensity of emotion, and utters what is vitally characteristic
of it. He is not, in any sense, one of the Anacreontic singers of the
pleasures of wine, of whom Horace is the typical example in ancient
times. Neither was he one, who, like Burns, habitually forgot, in the
excitement of good fellowship, the perils of Bacchanalian merriment.
Yet even the drinking songs of the Scottish poet scarcely realise
with more vivacity the moment of mad elevation when a revel is at its
height, than Catullus has done in the song of seven short lines--

    Minister vetuli puer Falerni
    Inger mi calices amariores, etc.

The 'Hymn to Diana' occupies an intermediate place between the poems
founded on personal feelings and the longer and more purely artistic
pieces. Like the first it seems unconsciously, or at least without
leaving any trace of conscious purpose, to have conformed to the
conditions of the purest art. It is, like them, a perfect whole, one
of those, to quote Mr. Munro, '"cunningest patterns" of excellence,
such as Latium never saw before or after, Alcaeus, Sappho, and the rest
then and only then having met their match'[599]. It resembles some
of the longer poems in being a creation of sympathetic imagination,
not an immediate expression of personal feeling. It must have been
written for some public occasion; and the selection of Catullus to
compose it would imply that he was recognised as the greatest lyrical
poet in his lifetime, and that it was written after his reputation was
established. It is a poem not only of pure artistic excellence, but of
imaginative conception, like that exemplified in the 'Attis' and the
'Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis.' The 'Diana' of Catullus is not a
vague abstraction or conventional figure, as the Gods and Goddesses
in the Odes of Horace are apt to be. The mythology of Greece received
a new life from his imagination. In this poem he shows too, what he
hardly indicates elsewhere[600], that he could identify himself in
sympathy with the national feeling and religion of Rome. The Goddess
addressed is a living Power, blending in her countenance the human
and picturesque aspects of the Greek Artemis with the more spiritual
and beneficent attributes of the Roman Diana. Yet no confusion or
incongruity arises from the union into one concrete representation of
these originally diverse elements. She lives to the imagination as a
Power who, in the fresh morning of the world, had roamed in freedom
over the mountains, the woods, the secret dells, and the river-banks
of earth[601],--and now from a far away sphere watched over women in
travail, increased the store of the husbandman, and was the especial
guardian of the descendants of Romulus.

This poem affords a natural transition to the longer and more purely
artistic pieces in the centre of the volume. Yet with some even of
these a personal element is interfused. The hymn in honour of the
nuptials of Manlius, is, like the short poem on the loves of Acme and
Septimius, inspired by the poet's sympathy with the happiness of a
friend. The 68th poem attempts to weave into one texture his own love
of Lesbia, and the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus. But in general
these poems bring before us a new side of the art of Catullus. In one
way indeed they add to our knowledge of his personal tastes. The
larger place given in them to ornament and illustration lets us know
what objects in Nature afforded him most delight. His life was too full
of human interest to allow him to devote his art to the celebration of
Nature: yet he could not have been the poet he was if he had not been
susceptible to her influence. And this susceptibility, indicated in
occasional touches in the shorter poems, finds greater scope in the
poems of impersonal art which still remain to be considered.

Among the more purely artistic pieces none is more beautiful than the
Nuptial Ode in celebration of the marriage of his friend Manlius,
a member of the great house of the Torquati, and one of the most
accomplished men of his time, with Vinia Aurunculeia. In this poem
Catullus pours forth the fulness of his heart

    'In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.'

It is marked by the excellence of his shorter pieces and by poetical
beauty of another order. Resembling his shorter poems in being
called forth by an event within his own experience, it breathes the
same spirit of affection and of sympathy with beauty and passion.
It is written with the same gaiety of heart, blending indeed with a
graver sense of happiness. The feeling of the hour does not merely
express itself in graceful language: it awakens the active power of
imagination, clothes itself in radiant imagery, and rises into the
completeness and sustained melody of the highest lyrical art. The
tone of the whole poem is one of joy, changing from the rapture of
expectation in the opening lines to the more tranquil happiness of the
close. The passion is ardent, but, on the whole, free from grossness
or effeminate sentiment. Even where, in accordance with the Roman
marriage customs, he abandons himself for a few stanzas to the spirit
of raillery and banter--

    Ne diu taceat procax
      Fescennina locutio[602]--

he remembers the respect due to the innocence of the bride. Thoughts
of her are associated with the purest objects in Nature,--with ivy
clinging round a tree, or branches of myrtle,--

    Quos Hamadryades deae
    Ludicrum sibi roscido
      Nutriunt humore,--

or with a hyacinth growing in some rich man's garden. Like the eager
lover of beauty among our own poets, he sees in other flowers--

    Alba parthenice velut
      Luteumve papaver--

the symbol of maidens--

    'Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale.'

The grace of trees and the bloom of flowers were prized by him
among the fairest things in Nature. The charm in woman which most
moves his imagination is virgin innocence unfolding into love, or
passion ennobled by truth and constancy of affection. So too, in
the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, he compares Ariadne in her
maidenhood to the myrtle trees growing on the banks of Eurotas, and to
the bloom of vernal flowers:--

    Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos
    Aurave distinctos educit verna colores.[603]

In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his
sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater
good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts
of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of
parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the
birth of new defenders of the State.

The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its
clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the
inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony
with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks of
Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus, in
radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice,
beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand.
As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by the
singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all their
eager excitement--

            Viden ut faces
    Splendidas quatiunt comas?

The two pictures, further on in the poem, of a peaceful old age
prolonged to the utmost limit of human life--

    Usque dum tremulum movens
    Cana tempus anilitas
    Omnia omnibus annuit--

and of infancy, awakening into consciousness and affection,--

    Torquatus volo parvulus
    Matris e gremio suae
    Porrigens teneras manus,
    Dulce rideat ad patrem
      Semihiante labello.

    Sit suo similis patri
    Manlio et facile insciis
    Noscitetur ab omnibus,
    Et pudicitiam suae
      Matris indicet ore.[604]

are drawn with the truest and most delicate hand.

The whole conception and execution of this poem, as also of the Attis
and of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, leave no doubt that
Catullus was richly endowed with the vision and the faculty of genius,
as well as with impassioned feeling and the gift of musical expression.

The poem which immediately follows is also an Epithalamium, intended
to be sung by young men and maidens, in alternate parts. It is written
in hexameter verse, and in rhythm, thought, and feeling resembles some
of the golden fragments from the Epithalamia of Sappho. The whole poem
sounds like a song in a rich idyl. Its charm consists in its calm and
mellow tone, in the dramatic truth with which the feelings and thoughts
natural to the young men and maidens are alternately expressed, and
especially in the beauty of its two famous similes. In the first of
these a flower is again the symbol of the bloom and innocence of
maidenhood, growing up apart and safe from all rude contact. The idea
in the concluding lines of the simile--

    Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
    Nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae,--

may probably have been suggested by a passage in Sappho, of which these
two lines remain,

    οἵαν τὰν ὑάκινθον ἐν ὤρεσι ποίμενες ἄνδρες
    πόσσι καταστείβοισι, χάμαι δέ τε πόρφυρον ἄνθος.

In the second simile, which is supposed to be spoken by the young men,
the vine growing upon a bare field, scarcely rising above the ground,
unheeded and untended, is compared to the maid who

    'Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness;'

while the same vine, when wedded to the elm, is regarded as the symbol
of the usefulness, dignity, and happiness which await the bride.

The absence of all personal allusion in this poem, and its resemblance
in tone and rhythm to some fragments of the Lesbian poetess, might
suggest the idea that it was translated, or at least imitated, from
the Greek. But, on the other hand, from its harmony with the kind of
subject and imagery in which Catullus most delights, and from the close
observation of Italian Nature, shown in such lines as this--

    Iam iam contingit summum radice flagellum,--

it seems more probable that it was an adaptation of the style of his
great model to some occasion within his own experience, than that it
was a mere exercise in translation, like his 'Coma Berenices.'

The 'Attis' is the most original of all his poems. As a work of pure
imagination, it is the most remarkable poetical creation in the Latin
language. In this poem Catullus throws himself, with marvellous power,
into a character and situation utterly alien to common experience,
and pours an intense flood of human feeling and passion into a legend
of strange Oriental fanaticism. The effect of the piece is, in a
great measure, produced by the startling vividness of its language
and imagery, and by the impetuous rush of its metre. Though the poem
may have been partly founded on Greek materials, yet Catullus has
treated the subject in a thoroughly original manner. It is difficult
to believe that any translation could produce that impression of
genuine creative power, which is forced upon every reader of the Attis.
There is nothing at all like the spirit of this poem in extant Greek
literature. No other writer has presented so life-like an image of the
frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman
fanaticism; and of the horror and sense of desolation which the natural
man, more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the midst of the
wild and strange scenes described in the poem, when first awaking to
the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the forfeiture of
his country and parents, and the free social life of former days. A
few touches in the poem--as, for instance, the expressions, 'niveis
manibus,' 'roseis labellis,' and 'Ego gymnasii fui flos,'--all
introduced incidentally,--force upon the mind the contrast between the
tender youth and beauty of Attis and the fierce power of the passion
that possesses him. The false excitement and noisy tumult of the
evening deepen the sense of the terrible reality and blank despair of
the morning.

The effect of the whole drama of human passion and agony is intensified
by the vividness of all its pictorial environment;--by the vision of
the wild surging seas, through which the swift ship and its mad crew
were borne, and of the gloom and horror of the woods that hid the
sounding rites of the goddess, and the tall columns of her temple. With
what a powerful and rapid touch he paints the aspect of sky, earth, and
sea in the early morning--

    Sed ubi oris aurei Sol radiantibus oculis
    Lustravit aethera album, sola dura, mare ferum,
    Pepulitque noctis umbras vegetis sonipedibus.

Everything is seen in those sharply-defined forms, which imprint
themselves on the brain in moments of intense excitement or agony.

These three poems are composed with the unity and simplicity of the
purest art. Like the shorter poems they have taken shape under the
influence of one powerful motive; and the feeling with which they were
conceived is sustained at its height through the whole composition. It
is more difficult to find any single motive which combines into unity
the original nucleus of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis with
the long episode of the desertion of Ariadne, which interrupts the
continuity of the 64th poem. The form of art to which it belongs is the
'Epyllion' or heroic idyl, of which several specimens are found among
the poems of Theocritus. This form was due to the invention of the
Alexandrians; and Catullus in the selection of his subject and in his
manner of treating it takes up the position of an imitator. But there
is no reason to suppose that he is reproducing, still less translating,
any particular work of these poets, or that his contemporaries--Cinna,
Calvus, and Cornificius,--merely reproduced some Alexandrine original
in their Zmyrna, Io, and Glaucus. A comparison of the imagery of this
poem with that of the earlier Epithalamia, and a consideration of
the passionate beauty with which the subject of love and marriage is
treated, favour the conclusion that the style and substance of the
poem are the workmanship of Catullus. It may be doubted whether any
Alexandrine poet, except perhaps Apollonius, whom Catullus in this
poem[605] often imitates, but does not translate, had sufficient
imagination to produce the original which Catullus is supposed to
have copied. But the plan of the poem may have been suggested by some
Alexandrine model. The more complicated structure of the 68th poem
is fashioned after a particular style of Greek art: and on entering
upon a new and larger adventure, Catullus may have trusted to the
guidance of those whom he regarded as his masters. The Alexandrians
studied pictorial representation of outward scenes and of passionate
situations, and works of tapestry on which such representations were
wrought were common among their 'deliciae vitae[606].' Thus, the mode
in which the story of Ariadne is told is one likely to have occurred to
an Alexandrine poet. It would be also in keeping with the over-subtlety
of a class of poets who owed more to learning than to inspiration, to
combine apparently incongruous parts into one whole by some obscure
link of connexion. Thus Catullus may have intended, in imitation of
Callimachus or some other Alexandrian, to paint two pictures of the
love of an immortal for a mortal,--the love of Thetis for Peleus, and
of Bacchus for Ariadne,--and to heighten the effect of each by the
contrast presented in the pendent picture. The original good fortune
and the unbroken happiness of Peleus are more vividly realised by the
contrast presented to the imagination in the betrayal and passionate
agitation of Ariadne. The thought of the crowds of mortals and
immortals who come together to celebrate the marriage of the Thessalian
prince brings into greater relief the utter loneliness of Ariadne, when
first discovered by 'Bacchus and his crew.' Or the original unifying
motive of both pictures might be sought in the concluding lines,
written in a graver tone than anything else in Catullus; and it might
be supposed that he intended by the two pictures of divine favour
granted to mortals (in one of which retribution is exacted for what he
regards as the greatest sin in actual life--a violation of good faith)
to enforce the lesson that it is owing to the sins of the latter time
that the Gods have withdrawn their gracious presence from the earth.
The thought contained in the lines

    Sed postquam tellus scelerest imbuta nefando, etc.,

is pure and noble, and purely and nobly expressed. These lines reveal
a genuine and unexpected vein of reverence in the nature of Catullus.
The sins which he specifies as alienating the Gods from men are those
most rife in his own time, with which he has dealt in a more realistic
fashion in his satiric epigrams. All this may, perhaps, be said. But
on the other hand, Catullus is the least didactic of poets. He is
also the least abstract and reflective. We cannot suppose (in the
case of such a writer) all the concrete passionate life of the poem
taking shape in his imagination in order to embody any idea however
noble. The idea was the afterthought, not the creative germ. Nor can
we think that the conception of the whole poem existed in his mind
before, or independently of, the separate conception of its parts. He
was attracted to both subjects by the charm which the Greek mythology
and the bright spectacle of the heroic age had for his imagination,
by their harmony with the feelings and passions with which he had
most sympathy in real life, and by the scope which they afforded to
his peculiar power as a pictorial artist. The device of the tapestry,
by which the tale of Ariadne is told, was especially favourable to
the exercise of this gift. He looked back upon an ideal vision of
the golden morning of the world, when men were so stately and noble,
and women so fair and true, that even the blessed Gods and Goddesses
deigned to visit them, and to unite with them in marriage. The original
motive of the two poems appears to be purely imaginative. If there
was any intention to give artificial unity to the poem, by pointing
the contrast between a love calm and happy from the beginning, and one
at first passionate and afterwards betrayed, or between the holiness
and nobleness of an ideal past, and the sin and baseness of the actual
present, that intention was probably not present to the mind of the
poet when he first contemplated his subject, but came to him in the
course of its development.

It may be said, therefore, that if any principle of unity is aimed at
in the poem, it is one so artificial as rather to detract from the
artistic merit of the composition. There is a similar want of unity in
the 'Pastor Aristaeus' of Virgil, which was also composed in the manner
of the Alexandrine Epyllion. The Alexandrians seem to have aimed rather
at a combination of diverse effects than at a composition 'simplex
et unum.' They cared much for the elaboration of details, little for
the consistency of the whole. And the same tendency appears in their
imitators. Neither can the poem be called a successful specimen of
narrative. There is scarcely any story to tell in connexion with the
marriage of Peleus. It is a succession of pictures, not a tale of
passion or adventure. The romance of Theseus and Ariadne is told much
less distinctly and simply than the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in
Virgil. There is dramatic power in the soliloquy of Ariadne, as in that
of Attis, but the dramatic faculty in Catullus is rather a phase of
his special lyrical gift, which enables him to identify himself with
some single passionate situation, than the power of giving life to
various types of character. The imaginative excellence of the poem is
idyllic rather than epic or dramatic. There is a wonderful harmony of
tone in his whole conception of the heroic age. He does not attempt to
reproduce the picturesque life represented by Homer, nor the majestic
passions imagined by the Attic tragedians, but he has his own vision of
the stately and beautiful figures belonging to an ideal foretime,--

    O nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati
    Heroes, saluete, deum genus.

There is a sense of the freshness and brightness of the early morning
in his conception of the time when the first ship, manned by the flower
of Greek warriors, 'broke the silence of the seas'

    (Illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten),

and when the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, the mysterious Powers
over-ruling mortal destiny, and the other beings, half-human,
half-divine, whom Greek imagination so lavishly created, appeared in
their bodily presence to do honour to the union of a mortal with an
immortal. The poem abounds in pictures, or suggestions of pictures,
taken from the world of divine and human life, and of outward Nature.
Such are those of the Nereids gazing on the Argo--

    Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus
    Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes,--

of Ariadne watching with pale and anxious face the perilous encounter
of Theseus with the Minotaur--

    Quam tum saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri,--

and again, looking on the distant fleet--

    Saxea ut effigies bacchantis,--

of the advent of Bacchus--

    Cum thiaso Satyrorum et Nysigenis Silenis,--

a passage which has inspired one of the masterpieces of modern art,--of
Prometheus--

    Extenuata gerens veleris vestigia poenae,--

of the aged Parcae--

    infirmo quatientes corpora motu--

spinning the thread of human destiny, as with clear-ringing voice they
poured forth their truthful prophecy. So too the eye of an artist is
shown in the description of the scenes in which the action takes place,
and in the illustrative imagery with which the subject is adorned,--as
in the pictures from mountain and sea scenery at lines 240 and 269;
and in that image of a waste expanse of sea called up in the lines--

    Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato
    Discernens ponti truculentum ubi dividit aequor?

A genuine love of Nature, which his more personal poems only faintly
suggest, appears in the lines describing the gifts which Chiron brought
with him from the plains and vast mountain chains and river-banks of
Thessaly--

    Nam quoscumque ferunt campi, quos Thessala magnis
    Montibus ora creat, quos propter fluminis undas
    Aura parit flores tepidi fecunda Favoni,
    Hos indistinctis plexos tulit ipse corollis,
    Quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore[607];

and in the enumeration of the various trees which Peneus, quitting
Tempe,--

    Tempe quae silvae cingunt super inpendentes,--

planted before the vestibule of the palace.

The diction and rhythm of the poem are characterised by excellences of
a quite different sort from those of his other pieces. Both produce the
impression of very careful study and labour. In no previous work of
Latin genius was so much use made of an artificial poetical diction.
Though this diction has not the naïveté or charm of his simpler pieces,
yet it is very effective in its own way. It reveals new and unsuspected
wealth in the ore of the Latin language. The old rhetorical artifices
of alliteration, assonance, &c. are used more sparingly than in
Lucretius, yet they do appear, as in the lines--

    Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,--

    Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant,--

    Putridaque infirmis variabant pectora palmis,--etc., etc.

As in the Attis we find such word-formations as _sonipedibus_,
_silvicultrix_, _nemorivagus_, so in this poem we have _fluentisono_,
_raucisonos_, _clarisona_, _flexamino_, etc. We recognise his old
partiality for diminutives, as in the

    Frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem,

and

    Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos.

But there are many peculiarities of style which are scarcely, if at
all, observable in his other poems. New artifices, such as those
familiar to the Greek idyl, of the recurring chime of the same or
similar words, are frequent, as in the lines--

    Vos ego saepe meo vos carmine compellabo;--

                                Cui Iupiter ipse
    Ipse suos divom genitor concessit amores;--

    Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab oris,
    Perfide, deserto liquisti in litore Theseu?
    Sicine discedens neglecto numine divom;--

    Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; omnia muta
    Omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia mortem, etc.

The phrases are to a much greater extent cast in a Greek mould[608].
The words follow one another in a less natural order. Ornamental
epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the substitution of abstract for
concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for
itself an artificial diction by assimilating, to a much greater extent
than in any earlier work of genius, the long-accumulated wealth of
Greek poetry. This was a gain to its resources, opening up and giving
expression to a new range of emotions, but a gain against which must be
set off a considerable loss of freshness and naïveté.

The rhythm also is elaborately constructed after a Greek model,--the
model, not of Homer, but of the later poets who wrote in his metre.
It is much more carefully and correctly finished than the rhythm of
Lucretius. Each separate line has a smoother cadence. The whole
movement is more regular, more calm, and more stately. But with all
the occasional roughness of Lucretius there is much more life and
force in his general movement. It is much more capable of presenting
a continuous thought or action to the mind. The lines of Catullus
seem intended to be dwelt on separately, and each to bring out some
point of detail. There is generally a pause in the sense at the end
of each line, and thus the lines, when read continuously, produce an
impression of monotony[609], which is increased by the frequent use
of spondaic lines. The uniformity of his pauses, and the sameness of
structure in a large number of his hexameters, enable us to appreciate
the great improvement in rhythmical art which appeared some ten years
later in the Bucolics of Virgil. Yet if Catullus does not, in this his
most elaborate work, equal the natural force of language and rhythm
displayed in his simpler pieces, the poem, as a whole, has a noble and
stately movement, in unison with the noble and stately pictures of an
ideal fore-time which it brings before the imagination.

The four longer elegiac pieces which follow add little to our
impression of the art of Catullus. In the 'Epistle to Manlius'--perhaps
owing to the trouble by which his mind was darkened at the time of its
composition--he does not use the elegiac metre, as a vehicle of his
personal feelings, with much force or clearness. There is much more
than in his phalaecians and iambics the appearance of effort, and there
is much greater uncertainty as to his meaning. The 67th poem keeps
alive with some vivacity a scandalous story of his native province
which might well have been allowed to sink into oblivion. In the 'Coma
Berenices,' and the poem addressed to Allius, he again writes under
the influence of his Alexandrian masters. He seems to have regarded
the 'Carmina Battiadae' with the admiration which youthful genius, not
yet sure of its own powers, entertains for culture and established
reputation,--the kind of admiration which led Burns to imagine that
his own early inspiration might be of less value to the world than
'Shenstone's art.' Like Burns, too, Catullus is least happy when he
gives up his own language, which he wields easily and powerfully, and
the forms of art which came naturally to him, in deference to the
standard of poetic taste recognised in his day. His selection of the
'Coma Berenices' as a task in translation, illustrates the attraction
which the union of beauty and passion with truth and constancy of
affection had for his imagination. The poem to Allius is the most
artificially constructed of all his pieces. He endeavours to unite
in it three distinct threads of interest,--that of his passion for
Lesbia, that of the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus, and that of
his brother's death in the Troad. Although this triple combination
is accomplished with much mechanical ingenuity[610], yet the effect
of the poem as a whole is disappointing, and its motive,--gratitude
for a service which no honourable man, according to our modern ideas
of honour, would have rendered,--does not make amends for the want
of simplicity in its structure. Yet as written in the heyday of his
passion for Lesbia, and largely inspired by that passion, it has, along
with an Alexandrian superfluity of ornament and illustration, many
beauties of expression and feeling. The passionate devotion of Laodamia
for Protesilaus is conceived with sympathetic power,--

    Quo tibi tum casu pulcherrima Laudamia,
      Ereptum est vita dulcius atque anima
    Coniugium[611]--

There is an exquisite picture of his own stolen meetings with his
'candida diva'; and depth and sincerity of affection are purely and
simply expressed in the two last lines--

    Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipso'st
      Lux mea qua viva vivere dulce mihi'st.

In this poem too, although the application of the image is an
incongruous adaptation of an old Homeric simile, we meet with a
descriptive passage which, more perhaps than any other in his poems,
shows that Catullus was a true lover and close observer of Nature,--

    Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
      Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide
    Qui cum de prona praeceps est valle volutus
      Per medium sensim transit iter populi,
    Dulce viatori lasso in sudore levamen,
      Cum gravis exustos aestus hiulcat agros.[612]

The perfection attained by Catullus in his best lyrical poetry, and
the power displayed in his longer pieces, are so high and genuine
that we are hardly surprised at the enthusiasm of those who have
ranked him, in respect both of art and genius, foremost among Roman
poets. If the pure essence of poetry could be separated from the whole
spiritual and intellectual being of the poet, much might be said in
favour of that estimate. Others, who think that the work accomplished
by Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace is, both in quantity and quality, of
more lasting value to the world, cannot forget that had they died at
the same early age as Catullus, their names would have been unknown,
or perhaps remembered as those of Cinna and Cornificius are now. From
the exquisite skill with which Catullus has treated light and playful
themes, he has been sometimes compared to modern poets who have no
other claim to recognition than a similar facility. But if he is to
be compared with any, it is not with the minor poets, ancient or
modern, but with the greater, that he is to be ranked. The two eminent
English scholars who have made a special study of this poet, and have
done more than almost any others in recent times to elucidate his
meaning and gain for him his just recognition, look upon him as the
equal of Sappho and Alcaeus. Among modern poets he has been compared
to one, most unlike him in all the outward conditions of his life,
and in many of the conditions of his art,--the poet Burns[613]. In
general intellectual power, in the breadth of his human sympathies,
the modern poet is much the greater. He is, in all ways, the larger
man. But in some endowments of heart and genius the ancient poet is
far from being the inferior. He was more fortunate in his nearness
to the greatest source of poetic culture, and in the use of a medium
of expression, not of a local and limited influence, but one which
brings him into immediate relation with educated men of all ages and
countries. But in the passionate ardour of their temperament, and the
robustness, too closely allied with coarseness, of their fibre; in
their susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility
of nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to
these; in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and
pain; in their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in
the keenness of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the
world around them;--in their simple and direct force of feeling and
expression; in the freshness of their love for the fairer objects in
Nature with which they were most familiar,--they have much in common.
The resemblance of the concluding lines of the 'Final renunciation of
Lesbia' to the sentiment of the 'Daisy' has been already noticed. The
scornful advice, conveyed in the words 'pete nobiles amicos' finds
many an echo in the tones of the modern poet. The art of both is so
inseparably associated with their lives, that our admiration of it can
hardly help being enhanced or qualified by personal sympathy with,
or dislike of their characters. In the case of Catullus it must be
allowed that if a careless pursuit of pleasure, an apparent absence
of all high aims in life, the too frequent indulgence in the coarsest
language and the vilest imputations, could alienate our affections
from a great poet, his art would be judged at a disadvantage. But his
own frank revelations, from which we learn his faults, must equally
be taken as the unintended evidence of his nobler and more generous
nature. If his passions led him too far astray, he himself, so far as
now appears, alone suffered from them. There is no trace in him of the
selfish calculation, or the baser falsehood, which renders 'the life
of pleasure,' as led by many men, detestable. There was in his case no
'hardening of all within' as its effect. The small volume bequeathed
by him to the world is in itself a sufficient result of his few years.
If he is in a great degree unreflective, if he does not consciously
realise what are the ends of life, yet he does not look on life in a
spirit of cynicism or frivolity. Whatever vein of reflection appears
in him is not devoid of reverence and seriousness. His too frequent
coarseness is to be explained by the manners of his age and race; and
the imputations which he makes on his enemies were, in all probability,
never meant to be taken seriously. Although unfortunate in his love, he
has shown a capacity of ardent, self-forgetful, and constant devotion,
that deserved a better object. He could care for another more than for
his own life and happiness. And he had, in a degree rarely equalled,
a virtue which devoted lovers often want, the truest, kindliest, most
considerate and appreciative affection for many friends. His very
dependence on their sympathy in all his joy and sorrow is a claim
on the sympathy of the world. If to love warmly, constantly, and
unselfishly be the best title to the love of others, few poets, in any
age or country, deserve a kindlier place in the hearts of men than 'the
young Catullus.'

[Footnote 547: Cf. 'L. Julium Calidum, quern post Lucretii Catullique
mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse aetatem vere videor
posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att. 12.]

[Footnote 548: 'Multa satis lusi.'--lxviii^a. 17. The context shows
that the 'lusi,'--like Horace's 'lusit Anacreon,'--refers to the
composition of amatory poetry founded on his own experience. It was
for this kind of poetry that Manlius had applied to him, and he pleads
his grief as an excuse for his inability to write any at that time,
although he had written much in his earliest youth.]

[Footnote 549: E. g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.]

[Footnote 550: Three poems formerly attributed to Catullus,--those
between xvii and xxi,--are now omitted from all editions. On the other
hand, one poem, lxviii must certainly be divided into two, and possibly
some lines now attached to others are parts of separate poems.]

[Footnote 551: x. 6.]

[Footnote 552: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.]

[Footnote 553: ix.]

[Footnote 554: xxv, xl, xlii, etc.]

[Footnote 555: Cf. viii, xxxviii, lxv, etc.]

[Footnote 556: liii.]

[Footnote 557: Cf 'quae etiam aleret adulescentis et parsimoniam patrum
suis sumptibus sustentaret.' Cic. Pro M. Caelio, 16, 38. Gellius,
another of her lovers, was probably about the same age, or a year or
two younger than Caelius. Cf. Schwabe, p. 112, etc.]

[Footnote 558: Cf. x, xiii, xxvi, xli, ciii.]

[Footnote 559: lviii. 3; lxxix. 2.]

[Footnote 560: Cf. cx, xli.]

[Footnote 561: Reading suggested by Mr. Munro.]

[Footnote 562: E.g. lxiv. 240-41:--

         'Ceu pulsae ventorum flamine nubes,
    Aerium nivei montis liquere cacumen.'

And this most characteristic feature of Alpine scenery.--lxviii^b.
17, etc.:--

    'Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
      Rivos muscoso, prosilit e lapide,' etc.

]

[Footnote 563: The epigram on Cominius (cviii.) was probably written at
Rome, as he was not of sufficient importance to have made an impression
on the people of Verona. The accusation of C. Cornelius, which excited
odium against him, was made in 65 B.C. But it does not follow that
the poem was written by Catullus at that time. He may have become
acquainted with him later, and avenged some private pique by reference
to the unpopularity formerly excited by him. There is no direct
reference to the trial of Cornelius in the poem, which appears among
others referring to a much later date.]

[Footnote 564: lxviii. 15-18.]

[Footnote 565: In the 'docto avo' we have an allusion to the author of
the 'Istrian War.']

[Footnote 566: lxviii^b.]

[Footnote 567: The _Caelius_ addressed in some of the poems is not M.
Caelius Rufus, but a Veronese friend and confidant of Catullus--

    'Flos Veronensum. .. iuvenum.'

Caesar, Bell. Civ. i. 2. mentions M. Caelius Rufus simply as M. Rufus.
Cicero also, in his letters to Caelius, addresses him as mi Rufe,
Ep. II. 9. 3, 12. 2.]

[Footnote 568: Among other indications the vow of Lesbia (xxxvi.)
throws light on her literary taste and accomplishment.]

[Footnote 569: On the whole question compare Mr. Munro's Criticisms and
Elucidations, etc., pp. 194-202.

It has been argued on the other side that public opinion would not have
tolerated the publicity given to an adulterous intrigue, especially one
with a Roman matron so high in rank as the wife of Metellus Celer. But
the state of public opinion in the last years of the Republic is not
to be gauged either by that of an earlier time, or by that existing
during the stricter censorship of the Augustan régime. Catullus himself
(cxiii.) testifies to what is known from other sources, the extreme
laxity with which the marriage tie was regarded in the interval between
'the first and second consulships of Pompey.' Perhaps, however, if
Metellus Celer had survived Catullus, the Lesbia-poems might never have
been publicly given to the world. After his death Clodia by her manner
of life forfeited all claim to the immunities of a Roman matron.]

[Footnote 570: lxviii^b. 105-6.]

[Footnote 571: The poem lxviii:--

    'Quod mihi fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo'--

was addressed to Manlius just after Catullus had heard of his brother's
death, i.e. probably late in the year 60, or early in the year 59 B.C.
Manlius was himself suffering then from a great and sudden sorrow. The
expressions in lines 1, 5, 6, 'casu acerbo,' 'sancta Venus,' 'desertum
in lecto caelibe,' make it at least highly probable that this sorrow
was the premature death of his young bride. If this generally accepted
opinion is true the Epithalamium must have been written some time
before 59 B.C.]

[Footnote 572: That of Westphal.]

[Footnote 573: There is some uncertainty both as to the reading and
interpretation of the lines (lxviii. 15-19). The most generally
accepted view is that Manlius had written to let Catullus know that
several fashionable rivals were supplanting him in his absence. Mr.
Munro supposes that the letter was written from Baiae, and that the
_hic_ is so to be explained. Another view of the passage is that
Manlius had, without any reference to Clodia, merely rallied Catullus
on leading a dull and lonely life at Verona, a place quite unsuitable
for the pleasures of a man of fashion.]

[Footnote 574: Cf. poems x. 30, etc., and xcv.]

[Footnote 575: Cf. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus, p.
214.]

[Footnote 576: Cf. xxiv. 7:--

    'Qui? non est homo bellus? inquies. Est.'

]

[Footnote 577: Two of the four poems connected with Calvus allude to
his antagonism to Vatinius, which went on actively between the years 56
and 54 B.C. In none of them is there any allusion to Lesbia, who was
never out of Catullus' thoughts or his verse till after his Bithynian
journey.]

[Footnote 578: Horace contrasts the 'dirge of Simonides' ('Ceae
retractes munera neniae') with the lighter poetry of love.]

[Footnote 579: Cf. Munro's Lucretius, p. 468, third edition.]

[Footnote 580: lxxii. 5-8:--

    'Nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror,
      Multo mi tamen es vilior et levior.
    Qui potis est? inquis. Quia amantem iniuria talis
      Cogit amare magis, set bene velle minus.'

]

[Footnote 581: lxxxv. 1.]

[Footnote 582: xi. 23.]

[Footnote 583: lxxvi.]

[Footnote 584:

    'Calvus, if those now silent in the tomb
      Can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears
    For those we loved, who perished in their bloom,
      And the departed friends of former years:
    Oh then, full surely thy Quintilia's woe.
      For the untimely fate that bade ye part,
    Will fade before the bliss she feels to know
      How very dear she is unto thy heart.'--Martin.

]

[Footnote 585: Compare also his humourous notice of the compliment
which he heard in the crowd paid to the speech of Calvus against
Vatinius--

    'Dii magni, salaputium disertum.'

]

[Footnote 586: xii.]

[Footnote 587: xxxviii.]

[Footnote 588: Mr. Munro, in his Elucidations (pp. 209, etc.), shows
that the whole point of the poem consists in the contrast drawn between
the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna and the 'Annals of Volusius.' Baehrens admits the
reading 'Hortensius' into the text, but adds in a note on the word,
_vox corrupta est_.]

[Footnote 589: lxxvi. 1-4.]

[Footnote 590: Cf. lxviii. 12:--

    'Neu me odisse putes hospitis officium.'

]

[Footnote 591: lxxvi. 19.]

[Footnote 592: xvi. 5-6.]

[Footnote 593: lxxxiv.]

[Footnote 594: Hor. A. P. 437-38:--

    'Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes,
    Hoc aiebat et hoc'--
]

[Footnote 595: vii. 7-8.]

[Footnote 596: xi. 22-24.]

[Footnote 597: xvii. 12-13 and 15-16.]

[Footnote 598: E.g.

    'Litus ul longe resonante Eoa
                Tunditur unda.'
]

[Footnote 599: 'Criticisms and Elucidations, etc.' p. 73.]

[Footnote 600: The pride of Roman nationality, is perhaps,
unconsciously betrayed in such phrases as 'Romuli nepotum,' in the
lines addressed to Cicero.]

[Footnote 601: xxxiv. 7-12:--

    'Quam mater prope Deliam
       Deposivit olivam,
     Montium domina ut fores
     Silvarumque virentium
     Saltuumque reconditorum
       Amniumque sonantum.'
]

[Footnote 602: lxi. 122-46.]

[Footnote 603: lxiv. 89-90.]

[Footnote 604:

    'Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
    Young Torquatus on the lap
    Of his mother, as he stands
    Stretching out his tiny hands,
    And his little lips the while
    Half-open on his father's smile.

    'And oh! may he in all be like
    Manlius his sire, and strike
    Strangers when the boy they meet
    As his father's counterfeit,
    And his face the index be,
    Of his mother's chastity.'--Martin.
]

[Footnote 605: Cf. Mr. Ellis' notes on the poem.]

[Footnote 606: Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 147:--

    'Neque Alexandrina beluata conchyliata tapetia.'

Mr. Ellis, in his Commentary on Catullus, p. 226, mentions that both
the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the legend of Ariadne, were
common subjects of ancient art. He points out also that the idea of
the quilt on which the Ariadne story was represented was borrowed from
Apollonius, i. 730-06.]

[Footnote 607:

    'Whate'er of loveliest decks the plain, whate'er
    The giant mountains of Thessalia bear,
    Whate'er beneath the west's warm breezes blow,
    Where crystal streams by flowery margents flow,
    These in festoons or coronals inwrought
    Of undistinguishable blooms he brought,
    Whose blending odours crept from room to room,
    Till all the house was gladdened with perfume.'--Martin.
]

[Footnote 608: E.g. 'Argivae robora pubis'--'decus innuptarum'--'funera
nec funera,' etc., etc. Mr. Ellis's commentary largely illustrates the
influence exercised by the phraseology of the Greek poets,--especially
Homer, Euripides, Apollonius--on the poetical diction of Catullus in
this poem.]

[Footnote 609: This monotony, as is pointed out by Mr. Ellis, is,
in a great degree, the result of the coincidence of the accent and
rhythmical ictus in the last three feet of the line.]

[Footnote 610: Westphal, pp. 73-83, has given an elaborate explanation
of the principle on which the various parts of the poem are arranged
and connected with one another.]

[Footnote 611: The lines immediately following these are in the worst
style of learned Alexandrinism.]

[Footnote 612:

    'As some clear stream, from mossy stone that leaps,
      Far up among the hills, and, wimpling down
    By wood and vale, its onward current keeps
      To lonely hamlet and to stirring town,
    Cheering the wayworn traveller as it flows
      When all the fields with drought are parched and bare.'

    Martin.
]

[Footnote 613: This parallel was first pointed out by the writer of an
excellent article on Catullus in the North British Review, referred to
by Mr. Munro in his 'Criticisms and Elucidations,' p. 234.]