A History of Roman Classical Literature

Book II — The Era of Cicero and Augustus

Chapter I Prose the Test of the Condition of a Language — Dramatic Literature Extinct — Mimes — Difference Between Roman and Greek Mimes — Laberius — Passages From His Poetry — Matius Calvena — Mimiambi — Publius Syrus — Roman Pantomime — Its Licentiousness — Principal Actors of Pantomime

During the period upon which we are now entering, Roman literature arrived at its greatest perfection. The time at which it attained the highest point of excellence is fixed by Niebuhr438 about A. U. C. 680, when Cicero was between thirty and forty years old. Poetry, indeed, still continued to improve, as regarded metrical structure and diction, in finish, smoothness, and harmony. There is ex. gr. in these respects a marked difference between the works of Lucretius and Virgil; but nevertheless the principles of language now became fixed and settled. In fact, the condition of a language must be judged of by its prose; so must likewise the state of perfection to which its literature has attained. If poetry could be with propriety assumed as the standard, the commencement of the empire of Augustus would constitute the best age of Latin literature, rather than the time when the forum echoed with the eloquence of Cicero; but in the two ages of Cicero and Augustus, taken together as forming one era, is comprehended the golden age both of poetry and prose.

Dramatic literature, however, never recovered from the trance into which it had fallen. The stage had not altogether lost that popularity which it had possessed in the days of Attius and Terence, for Æsopus and Roscius, the former the great tragedian, the latter the favourite comedian, in the time of Cicero, amassed great wealth. Æsopus lived liberally,439 and yet bequeathed a fortune to his son, and Roscius is said to have earned daily the sum of thirty-two pounds.

Notwithstanding, also, the degradation attached to the social position of an actor, both these eminent artists enjoyed the friendship of Cicero and other great men. They brought to the study of their profession industry, taste, talent, and learning, and these qualities were appreciated. Æsopus was on one occasion encored a countless number of times (millies)440 by an enthusiastic audience, and Roscius was elevated by Sulla to the equestrian dignity. But although the standard Roman plays were constantly represented, dramatic literature had become extinct. No one wrote comedy at all, and the tragedies of Valgius Rufus and Asinius Pollio were only intended for reading or recitation. Nor, as has been already shown, does the Thyestes of Varus really form an exception to this statement.

The dramatic entertainments which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy were termed mimes.

Their distinguishing appellation was derived from the Greek, but they entirely differed from those compositions to which the Greeks applied that title. The latter were written not in verse, but in prose;441 they were dialogues, not dramatic pieces, and though they were exhibited at certain festivals, and the parts supported by actors, they were never represented on the stage. Even when Sophron, whose compositions were admired and imitated by Plato,442 raised them to their highest degree of perfection, and made them vehicles of serious moral lessons mingling together ludicrous buffoonery with grave philosophy, their language was only a rhythmical prose, probably somewhat resembling that in which the celebrated despatch of Hippocrates443 was written. Some idea may be formed of their nature from the fact that the idylls of Theocritus were imitated from the mimes of Sophron, and that Persius took them for his model in his peculiarly dramatic satires.444

The Roman mimes were laughable imitations of manners and persons. So far they combined features of comedy and farce; for comedy represents the characters of a class—farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime; mimicry and burlesque dialogue were only accidentally introduced. Their coarseness and even indecency445 gratified the love of broad humour which characterized the Roman people. They became successful rivals of comedy, and thus came to be admitted on the public stage. It is most probable that like other dramatic exhibitions, they originally grew out of the Fabulæ Atellanæ, which they afterwards superseded. But notwithstanding their indecency, their satire upon the living, and their burlesque representations of the illustrious dead, when exhibited at funeral games, they had sometimes, like the mimes of Sophron, a moral character, and abounded in shrewd wisdom and noble sentiments.446 Schlegel asserts that there is a great affinity between the Roman mimes and the pasquinades and harlequinades of modern Italy. He conjectures that in them may be traced the germ of the Comedie dell’ Arte, and states that the very picture of Polichinello is found in some of the frescoes of Pompeii.

After a time, when mimes became established as popular favourites, the dialogue or written part of the entertainment occupied a more prominent position, and was written in verse, like that of tragedy or comedy. In the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, a Roman knight, named Decius Laberius, became eminent for his mimes. Respecting his merits, we have few opportunities of forming a judgment, as the fragments of his writings447 are but few and short; but Horace448 speaks of them in unfavourable language, and finds fault with their carelessness and want of regular plan. He was born about B. C. 107,449 and died B. C. 45, at Puteoli, (Pozzuoli.) The profession of an actor of mimes was infamous; but Laberius was a writer, not an actor. It happened, however, that P. Syrus, who had been first the slave, then the freedman and pupil of Laberius, and lastly a professional actor, challenged all his brethren to a trial of improvisatorial skill. Cæsar entreated Laberius to enter the lists, and offered him five hundred sestertia (about 4,000l.) Laberius did not submit to the degradation for the sake of the money, but he was afraid to refuse. The only method of retaliation in his power was sarcasm. His part was that of a slave, and when his master scourged him, he exclaimed, “Porro, Quirites, libertatem perdimus!” His words were received with a round of applause, and the audience fixed their eyes on Cæsar. On another occasion his attack on the Dictator was almost threatening:—

Necesse est multos timeat quem multi timent.

He appears to have been always quick and ready in repartee. When, on being vanquished by his adversary Syrus, the Dictator said to him with a sneer—

Favente tibi me victus es Laberi a Syro,

He replied with the following sad but true reflections:—

Non possunt primi esse omnes omni in tempore,
Summum ad gradum cum claritatis veneris
Consistes ægre; et quum descendas decides;
Cecidi ego, cadet qui sequitur, laus est publica.

Cæsar, however, restored to him the rank and equestrian privileges of which his act had deprived him; but still he could not recover the respect of his countrymen. As he passed the orchestra in his way to the stalls of the knights, Cicero cried out, “If we were not so crowded, I would make room for you here.” Laberius replied, alluding to Cicero’s lukewarmness as a political partisan, “I am astonished that you should be crowded, as you generally sit on two stools.” The calm and feeling rebuke with which, in the prologue to his mime, he remonstrated against the tyranny of Cæsar, is singularly spirited and beautiful:—

Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum
Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt,
Quo me detrusit pæne extremis sensibus?
Quem nulla ambitio, nulla unquam largitio,
Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas
Movere potuit in juventa de statu;
Ecce in senecta ut facile labefecit loco
Viri excellentis mente clemente edita
Submissa placide blandiloquens oratio!
Etenim ipsi Dii negare cui nihil potuerunt,
Hominem me denegare quis possit pati?
Ergo bis tricenis actis annis sine nota
Eques Romanus lare egressus meo
Domum revertas mimus; Nimirum hoc die
Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit
Fortuna, immoderata in bono æque atque in malo,
Si tibi erat libitum literarum laudibus
Floris cacumen nostræ famæ frangere,
Cur quum vigebam membris præviridantibus,
Satisfacere populo et tali cum poteram viro,
Non flexibilem me concurvasti ut carperes?
Nunc me quo dejicis? quid ad scenam affero?
Decorem formæ, an dignitatem corporis,
Animi virtutem, an vocis jucundæ sonum?
Ut hedera serpens vires arboreas necat,
Ita me vetustas amplexa annorum enecat,
Sepulchri similis nihil nomen retines.

O, strong Necessity! of whose swift course
So many feel, so few escape the force,
Whither, ah whither, in thy prone career,
Hast thou decreed this dying frame to bear?
Me, in my better days, nor foe, nor friend,
Nor threat, nor bribe, nor vanity could bend;
Now, lured by flattery, in my weaker age
I sink my knighthood and ascend the stage.
Yet muse not therefore—how shall man gainsay
Him whom the Deities themselves obey?
Sixty long years I’ve lived without disgrace
A Roman knight!—let dignity give place;
I’m Cæsar’s actor now, and compass more
In one short hour than all my life before.
O Fortune! fickle source of good and ill,
If here to place me was thy sovereign will,
Why, when I’d youth and faculties to please
So great a master, and such guests as these,
Why not compel me then, malicious power,
To the hard task of this degrading hour?
Where now, in what profound abyss of shame,
Dost thou conspire with Fate to sink my name?
Whence are my hopes? What voice can age supply
To charm the ear, what grace to please the eye?
Where is the active energy and art,
The look that guides its passion to the heart?
Age creeps like ivy o’er my withered trunk,
Its bloom all blasted and its vigour shrunk;
A tomb, where nothing but a name remains
To tell the world whose ashes it contains.
          Cumberland.

Another poet of this age who composed mimes was C. Matius, surnamed, from his baldness, Calvena. His mimes were termed Mimiambi, because he wrote in the iambic measure,450 and he was also a translator of the Iliad as well as the author of a work on cookery. His principal merit is said to have been his skill in enriching his native language by the introduction of new words.451 He was somewhat younger than Laberius, and enjoyed the friendship of the greatest amongst his contemporaries. His intimacy with Julius Cæsar,452 to whom he was warmly attached,453 and afterwards with Augustus,454 gave him great influence;455 but he never took much part in the political strife which imbittered his times, nor did he use his influence in order to procure his own advancement.

His retired habits and love of literary leisure saved him from seeking his happiness in the excitements of ambition. Cicero, who loved him dearly, often mentions him in his letters, and pays a compliment456 to his learning and amiability. An interesting letter of his, which is preserved in the collection of Cicero’s epistles to his friends,457 shows that he possessed an accomplished mind and an affectionate heart. It cannot be supposed, therefore, that his Mimiambi were debased by the too common faults of coarseness and immodesty.

Publius Syrus

Publius Syrus was, as his name implies, originally a Syrian slave, and took his prænomen from the master who gave him his freedom. All that is known respecting his life has already been stated in the account of Laberius. The commendations which his mimes received from the ancients, especially from Cicero,458 Seneca,459 and Pliny,460 prove them to have been much read and admired. The fragments which still remain are marked by wit and neatness, and the shrewd wisdom of proverbial philosophy. Tradition has also recorded a bon-mot of his, which is as witty as it is severe. Seeing once an ill-tempered man, named Mucius, in low spirits, he remarked, “Either some bad fortune has happened to Mucius, or some good fortune to one of his friends.” An accurate knowledge of human nature, exhibited in pointed and terse language, most probably constituted the charm of this species of scenic literature. The large collection of his proverbial sayings, entitled P. Syri Sententiæ, are by no means all genuine; but the nucleus around which the collection has grown by successive additions is undoubtedly his, and those which are the work of after ages are formed after the model of his apothegms.

The Roman pantomime differed somewhat from the mime—it was a ballet of action performed by a single dancer. It was first introduced in its complete form in the reign of Augustus: and Suidas,461 misquoting a passage from Zosimus,462 groundlessly attributes the invention to the emperor himself. As the mime bore some resemblance to the Atellan farces, so the pantomime resembled the histrionic performances introduced by Livius Andronicus. In both, the person who recited the words (canticum463) was different from him who represented the characters. In the pantomime, the canticum was sung by a chorus arrayed at the back of the stage. Until the times of the later emperors, when vice was paraded with unblushing effrontery, women never acted in pantomime; but the exhibition itself was sensual and licentious in its character,464 and the actors of it were deservedly deemed infamous, and forbidden by Tiberius to hold any intercourse with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity.465 Nero, however, outraged public decency by himself appearing in pantomime.466 Fortunate was it for the dignity of Rome that the face of the emperor was concealed behind a mask which, unlike the performers in the mimes, the pantomimic actors always wore. The players not only exhibited the human figure in the most graceful attitudes, but represented every passion and emotion with such truth, that the spectators could without difficulty understand the story. Sometimes the scenes represented were founded upon the Greek tragic drama; but for its purifying effect was substituted the awakening of licentious passions.

These were the exhibitions which threw such discredit on the stage—which called forth the well-deserved attacks of the early Christian fathers, and caused them to declare that whoever attended them was unworthy of the name of Christians. Had the drama not been so abused, had it retained its original purity, and carried out the object attributed to it by Aristotle, they would have seen in it not a nursery of vice, but a school of virtue—not only an innocent amusement, but a powerful engine to form the taste, to improve the morals, and to purify the feelings of a people.

The principal actors of pantomime in the reign of Augustus were Bathyllus, Hylas, and Pylades. In the reign of Nero the art was practised by Latinus,467 and Paris, who taught the emperor to dance, and subsequently was put to death by Nero when he became his rival for popular applause.468 But those who attained the highest degree of popularity were another Latinus, and another Paris, who flourished in the reign of Domitian. Both have been immortalized in the epigrams of Martial.469 To the former, Martial attributes the power to fascinate such stern and rigid moralists as resembled Cato, the Curii, and Fabricii. The epitaph concludes with these lines:—

Vos me laurigeri parasitum dicite Phœbi,
Roma sui famulum dum sciat esse Jovis.

Say ye I gained the laurelled Phœbus’ love,
So that Rome hails me servant of her Jove.

The latter, by his popularity, acquired great influence at court, but his profligacy proved his ruin. He intrigued with the empress Domitia; and Domitian consequently divorced his wife, and caused Paris to be assassinated. He has furnished a plot and a hero to Massinger’s play of the “Roman Actor.” The simple and beautiful epitaph written to his memory by Martial is as follows:—

Quisquis Flaminiam teris, viator,
Noli nobile præterire marmor.
Urbis deliciæ, salesque Nili,
Ars et gratia, lusus et voluptas;
Romani decus et dolor theatri,
Atque omnes Veneres, Cupidinesque,
Hoc sunt condita, quo Paris, sepulchro.

Whoe’er thou art, O traveller, stay!
Mark what proud tomb adorns the way.
The town’s delight, the wit of Nile,
Art, grace, mirth, pleasure, sport and smile:
The honour of the Roman stage,
The grief and sorrow of the age:
All Venuses and Loves lie here
Buried in Paris’ sepulchre.

CHAPTER II.
LUCRETIUS A POET RATHER THAN A PHILOSOPHER—HIS LIFE—EPIC STRUCTURE OF HIS POEM—VARIETY OF HIS POETRY—EXTRACTS FROM HIS POEM—ARGUMENT OF IT—THE EPICUREAN DOCTRINES CONTAINED IN IT—MORALITY OF EPICURUS AND LUCRETIUS—TESTIMONIES OF VIRGIL AND OVID—CATULLUS: HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND POETRY—OTHER POETS OF THIS PERIOD.

Lucretius Carus (Born B. C. 95.)

Lucretius Carus might claim a place amongst philosophers as well as poets, for his poem marks an epoch both in poetry and philosophy. But his philosophy is a mere reflexion from that of Greece, whilst his poetry is bright with the rays of original genius. A delineation, therefore, of his characteristics as a writer of the imagination, will present the more accurate idea of the place which he occupies amongst Roman authors. It was no empty boast of his, that, as a poet, he deserved the praise of originality—that he had opened a path through the territory of the muse, untrodden before by poet’s foot—that he had drawn from a virgin fountain, and culled fresh flowers whence the Muse had never yet sought them to wreathe a garland for the poet’s brow.470

Few materials exist for the compilation of his biography. From two passages471 in his work, in which he states that his native language was Latin, it is clear that he was born within the limits of Italy. The date of his birth is generally fixed B. C. 95.472 The prevalence of the Epicurean philosophy, and the additional popularity with which his talents invested the fashionable creed, combined to raise him to the equestrian dignity; and, consistently with his cold and hopeless atheism—his proud disbelief in a superintending Providence—he died by his own hand in the prime of life and in the forty-fourth year of his age.473 The story that his work was written in the lucid intervals of a madness produced by a love-potion, as well as his residence at Athens for the purpose of study, rest upon no foundation.

His poem On the Nature of Things is divided into six books, and is written in imitation of that of Empedocles, who is the subject of his warmest praise and admiration. Whilst its subject is philosophical and its purpose didactic, its unity of design, the one point of view from which he regards the various doctrines of the master whose principles he adopts, claims for it the rank of an epic poem.

This epic structure prevents it from being a complete and systematic survey of the whole Epicurean philosophy; but, notwithstanding this deficiency in point of comprehensiveness, the exactness and fidelity with which he represents those doctrines which he enunciates, renders him deserving of the credit of having given to his countrymen, as far as epic writing permitted, an accurate view of the philosophical system which then enjoyed the highest degree of popularity.

Although Greek philosophy furnished Lucretius with his subject, and a Greek poem served as a model, he also saw and valued the capabilities of the Latin language—he wielded at will its power of embodying the noblest thoughts, and showed how its copious and flexible properties could overcome the hard technicalities of science. Grand as were his conceptions, the language of Lucretius is not inferior to them in majesty. Without violating philosophical accuracy, he never appears to feel it a restraint to his muse: his fancy is always lively, his imagination has free scope even when his thoughts are fixed in the abstrusest theories, and engaged in the most subtle argumentation.474

The great beauty of the poetry of Lucretius is its variety. One might expect sublimity in the philosopher who penetrates the secrets of the natural world, and discloses to the eye of man the hidden causes of its wonderful phenomena. His object was a lofty one; for, although the irrational absurdities of the national creed drove him into the opposite evils of skepticism and unbelief, his aim was to set the intellect free from the trammels of superstition. But besides grandeur and sublimity we find the totally different poetical qualities of softness and tenderness. Rome had long known nothing but war, and was now rent by that worst and most demoralizing kind of war, civil dissension. Lucretius yearned for peace; and his prayer, that the fabled goddess of all that is beautiful in nature would heal the wounds which discord had made, is distinguished by tenderness and pathos even more than by sublimity. The whole passage is superior to the poetry of Ovid in force, although inferior in facility. His versification is not so smooth and harmonious as that of Virgil, who flourished in a period when the language had attained a higher degree of perfection, and the Roman ear was more educated, and therefore more delicately attuned, but it is never harsh and rugged, and always falls upon the ear with a swelling and sonorous melody. Virgil appreciated his excellence, and imitated not only single expressions, but almost entire verses and passages.475

As an example of sublimity, few passages can equal that in which he describes the prostration of human intellect under the grievous superstition, the dauntless purpose of Epicurus to free men from her oppressive rule, and to enable him to burst open the portals of Nature’s treasure-house, and thus gain a victory which will place him on an equality with the inhabitants of heaven:—

Humana ante oculos fede quom vita jaceret
In terris, oppressa gravi sub Religione,
Quæ caput a cœli regionibus ostendebat,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans;
Primum Graius homo mortales tendere contra
Est oculos ausus, primusque obsistere contra;
Quem neque fama deûm nec fulmina nec minitanti
Murmure compressit cœlum, sed eo magis acrem
Irritât animi virtutem, effringere ut arcta
Naturæ primus portarum claustra cupiret.
Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra
Processit longe flammantia mœnia mondi,
Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque;
Unde refert nobis victor, quid possit oriri,
Quid nequeat; finita potestas denique quoique
Quanam sit ratione, atque alte terminus hærens.
Quare Religio, pedibus subjecta, vicissim
Obteritur; nos exæquat victoria cœlo.
          Lib. i. 63.

The idea which the poet here presents to the mind of his readers is of the same kind with that which pervades the writings of the Greek tragedians: it is that of the limited energies of mortals resolutely struggling with a superior and almost irresistible power.

The thrilling narrative of the plague at Athens, with all its physical and moral horrors, is one of the most heart-rending specimens of descriptive poetry. The stern rejection of all fear of death, though based upon a denial of the immortality of the soul, is a noble burst of poetical as well as philosophical enthusiasm; and the fifth book displays that perfect finish and accomplished grace which characterizes all the best Roman poets. Amongst the most affecting passages may be enumerated those which describe the early sorrows of the human race, and the grief of the bereaved animal whose young one has been slain in sacrifice.476 Two other fine passages are the philosophical explanation of Tartarus, and the panoramic view of the tempest of human desires, seen from the rocky heights of philosophy—a glorious descriptive piece which has been imitated by Lord Bacon.

The following lines show how beautifully the poet has caught the spirit and feeling of Greek fancy, and how capable the Latin language now was of adequately expressing them:—

Aulide quo pacto Triviai virginis aram
Iphianassai turparunt sanguine fede
Ductores Danaum delectei, prima virorum
Cui simul infula, virgineos circumdata comtus,
Ex utraque pari malarum parte profusa est;
Et mœstum simul ante aras astare parentem
Sensit, et hunc propter ferrum celare ministros,
Aspectuque suo lacrumas effundere civeis;
Muta metu, terram genibus summissa, petebat:
Nec miseræ prodesse in tali tempore quibat,
Quod patrio princeps donarat nomine regem
Nam sublata virum manibus, tremebundaque, ad aras
Deducta est; non ut, solenni more sacrorum
Perfecto, posset claro comitari hymenæo;
Sed, casta incerte, nubendi tempore in ipso,
Hostia concideret mactatu mœsta parentis,
Exitus ut classi felix faustusque daretur.
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!

By that Diana’s cruel altar flowed
With innocent and royal virgin’s blood:
Unhappy maid! with sacred ribands bound,
Religious pride! and holy garlands crowned;
To meet an undeserved, untimely fate,
Led by the Grecian chiefs in pomp and state;
She saw her father by, whose tears did flow
In streams—the only pity he could show.
She saw the crafty priest conceal the knife
From him, blessed and prepared against her life!
She saw her citizens, with weeping eyes,
Unwillingly attend the sacrifice.
Then, dumb with grief, her tears did pity crave,
But ’twas beyond her father’s power to save.
In vain did innocence, youth, and beauty plead;
In vain the first pledge of his nuptial bed;
She fell—even now grown ripe for bridal joy—
To bribe the gods, and buy a wind for Troy.
So died this innocent, this royal maid:
Such fiendish acts religion could persuade. Creech.

It cannot be denied that there are in the poem of Lucretius many barren wastes over which are scattered the rubbish and débris of a false philosophy; but even in these deserts the oases are numerous enough to prevent exhaustion and fatigue. They recur too frequently to enumerate them all. If the attempt were made, other tastes would still discover fresh examples.

The following is, in a few words, the plan and structure of the poem:—Its professed object is to emancipate mankind from the debasing effects of superstition by an exposition of the leading tenets of the Epicurean school. It is divided into six books. In the first, the poet enunciates and copiously illustrates the grand axiom of his system of the universe, together with the corollaries which necessarily arise from it. “Nothing is created out of nothing.” He commences also the subject of the atomic theory. In the second book he pursues the subject of creation generally, and the various functions of animal life. The third treats of the nature of the soil. The fourth contains the theory of sensation, especially of sight; of the relation which thought bears to matter; of the passions, and especially of the influence of love, both physical and moral. The fifth book is devoted to the history of mankind. The sixth explains the phenomena of the natural world, including those of disease and death.

The following are the leading Epicurean doctrines imbodied in the poem:—There are divine beings, but they are neither the creators477 nor the governors of the world.478 They live in the enjoyment of perfect happiness and repose, regardless of human affairs, unaffected by man’s virtues and vices, happiness or misery. Neither have they the power any more than the will to interfere in the affairs of the world, for they cannot resist the eternal laws of nature and destiny. Whilst, in deference to the innate sense which revolts at the denial of a God, he acknowledges the existence of divine beings, the proofs which he adduces as derived from his great master are weak and unsatisfactory.479 The corollary of this disbelief in Divine Providence is practical atheism. The ideas which man entertains of God are false, because they are the mere creations of the imagination. Ignorant of the real causes which lead to natural phenomena, he conjures up these as the machinery to account for them.480 The popular belief is groundless; and yet the poet believes that if this system is overthrown there is nothing to supply its place, and hence all worship, whether prayer or praise, is grovelling superstition.481 The only true piety consists in calm and peaceful contemplation.482

To those who argue that unbelief leads to ungodliness, his answer is that what man calls religion has led to the greatest crimes.483 He is not entirely destitute of the religious sentiment or the principle of faith, for he deifies nature484 and has a veneration for her laws; and hence his infidelity must be viewed rather in the light of a philosophical protest against the degrading results of heathen superstition than a total rejection of the principle of religious faith.

It is here that Lucretius seems for awhile to leave the authority of Epicurus; and with the inspiration of a poet, which is hardly consistent with a total absence of veneration and faith, to forsake his cold and heartless system. Although he asserts that the phenomena of nature are the result of a combination of atoms, that these elementary particles are self-existent and eternal, he seems to invest nature with a sort of personality. The warm sensibility of the poet overcomes the cold logic of the philosopher. Dissatisfied with the ungenial idea of an abstract lifeless principle, he yearns for the maternal caresses of a being endued with energies and faculties with which he can sympathize. He therefore ascribes to nature an attribute which can only belong to an intelligent agent having ruling power. Nay, he even goes farther than this, and absolutely contradicts the dogmas of the Epicurean school. Even the works of nature are represented as instinct with life.485 The sun is spoken of as a being who, by the warmth of his beams, vivifies all things: the earth, from whose womb all things spring, fosters and nurtures all her children. The very stars may possibly be living beings, performing their stated motions in search of their proper sustenance.486 These are, doubtless, the fancies of the poet rather than the grave and serious belief of the philosopher; but they prove how false, hollow, and artificial is a system which pretends to account for creation by natural causes, and how earnestly the human mind craves after the comfort and support of a personal deity.

The denial of the immortality of the soul is inferred from the destructibility of the material elements out of which it is composed. It must perish immediately that it is deprived of the protection of the body.487 In accordance with this psychical theory, he accounts for the difference of human tempers and characters. Character results from the combination of the elementary principles:—a predominance of heat produces the choleric disposition; that of wind produces timidity; that of air a calm and equable temper.488 But this natural constitution, the strength of the will, acted upon by education, is able, to a certain extent, to modify, though it cannot effect a complete change. Thus it is that, although moral as well as physical phenomena are produced in accordance with fixed laws, human ills result from unbridled passions, and may be remedied by philosophy.

Although, if tried by a Christian standard, the Lucretian morality is by no means pure,489 yet even where he permits laxity he is not insensible to the moral beauty, the happy and holy results of purity and chastity.490 Nor, notwithstanding the assertions of Cicero,491 can the charge of immorality or of a selfish love of impure pleasure be made against Lucretius or Epicurus. The distinction which the latter drew between lawful and unlawful pleasures was severe and uncompromising. The former speaks of the hell which the wicked sensualist always carries within his own breast492—of the satisfaction of true wisdom,493 and of a conscience void of offence.494

Again, Epicurus was a man of almost Christian gentleness. Stoical grossness and contempt of refinement revolted him; the unamiable severity of that sect was alien to his nature. He was thus driven to the opposite extreme; and although he was careful to make pure intellectual pleasure the summum bonum, his standard laid him open to objections from his jealous adversaries. The zeal with which many distinguished females devoted themselves to his system, and became his disciples because his doctrines and character especially recommended themselves to the female sex, made it easy for his enemies to stigmatize them as effeminate, instead of praising them as feminine. With that illiberality which refused to woman freedom of conduct and a liberal education, his adversaries calumniated the characters of his pupils, represented them as unchaste, and their instructor as licentious. Nor did they hesitate even to support these accusations by forgeries.495

A careless reception of their calumnies without investigation, added to the general, and perhaps wilful, misapprehension which prevailed among the Romans in the days of Cicero, led to the misrepresentations which are found in his writings. These have been handed down to after ages: and thus the doctrines taught by Epicurus have been loaded with undeserved obloquy.496 There is, however, no doubt that Epicurism was adopted by the Romans in a corrupt form, and that it became fashionable because it was supposed to encourage indifferentism and sensuality. It is probable, too, that the denial of immortality contributed much to the depravation and distortion of his system. Nothing so surely demoralizes as destroying the hopes of eternity. Man cannot commune with God, or soar on high to spiritual things, unless he hopes to be spiritualized and to see God as He is. Whatever the philosopher may teach as to the true nature of happiness, man will set up his own corrupt standard, which his passions and appetites lead him to prefer: he will act on the principle “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” Still it must be confessed that the views of Epicurus respecting man’s duty to God were disinterested—founded on ideas of the Divine perfections, not merely on hopes of reward.497 His views of sensual pleasures were in accordance with his simple, frugal life, diametrically opposed to intemperance and excess. He taught by example as well as by precept, that he who would be happy must cultivate wisdom and justice, because virtue and happiness are inseparable. He attached his disciples to him by affection rather than by admiration; submitted to weakness and sickness with patient resignation; and died with a heroism which no Stoic could have surpassed.

Such was the master whom Lucretius followed, and the school to which he belonged; and though the sternness of the Roman character breathed into his protest against superstition a bolder spirit of defiance than that of the placid and resigned Greek, his teaching was equally pure and noble, and he would have proudly disdained to make philosophy a cloak for voluptuous profligacy. Poets who surpassed him in gracefulness, and who were fortunate enough to flourish when the Latin language had become more plastic, paid due honour to his greatness. Virgil celebrates the happiness of that man:—

—— qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.498

His muse is instinct with Lucretian spirit when he describes with such graphic skill the murrain attacking the brute creation;499 and Ovid exclaims that the sublime strains of Lucretius shall never perish until the day shall arrive when the world shall be given up to destruction.

Catullus (Born B. C. 86.)

Contemporary with the great didactic poet, but nine years his junior in age, flourished C. Valerius Catullus. He was a member of a good family, residing on the Lago di Garda, in the neighbourhood of Verona,500 and his father had the honour of frequently receiving Cæsar as his guest.501 At an early age he went to Rome, probably for education, but his warm temperament and strong passions plunged him into the licentious excesses of the capital. During this period of his career, passed in the indulgence of pleasure and gayety, and in the midst of a dissipated society, he had no more serious occupation than the cultivation of his literary tastes and talents. The elegant tenderness of his amatory poetry made him a favourite with the fair sex, for its licentiousness was not out of keeping with the sentiments and conversation prevalent in the Roman fashionable world. It must not be supposed that the tone of society amongst the higher classes was pure and moral, like that of Cicero and his friends, or that it was not marked by the same licentious freedom which polluted some even of their most graceful poems.

The poetry of Catullus was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life. The excuse which he made for its character was not a valid one;502 for the line in Hadrian’s epitaph on Voconius could not possibly be applied to him:—

Lascivus versu, mente pudicus eras.503

His mistress, whom he addresses under the feigned name of Lesbia, was really named Clodia.504 It has been said that she was the sister of the infamous Clodius; but there are no grounds for the assertion.

A career of extravagance and debauchery terminated in ruin, and though his fortune had been originally ample, his affairs became hopelessly embarrassed; and in order to retrieve them by colonial plunder, he accompanied Memmius, the friend of Lucretius, when he went as prætor to Bythinia. Owing, however, to the grasping meanness of his patron his expectations were disappointed. He returned home “with his purse full of cobwebs.” Still he enjoyed the privilege of visiting those cities of Greece and Asia which were the most celebrated for literature and the fine arts.

When he went to Asia he visited the grave of a brother who had died in the Troad, and who was buried on the Rhætian promontory; and a poem which he addressed on the occasion to Hortalus, the dissipated son of the orator Hortensius, as well as another dedicated to Manlius, bear witness to the warmth of his fraternal affection. The former is a beautiful and touching specimen of his elegiac style:—

Multas per gentes et multa per æquora vectus,
  Adveni has miseras frater ad inferias.
Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
  Et mutum nequidquam alloquerer cinerem.
Quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum
  Has miser indigne frater adempte mihi!
Nunc tamen interea prisco quæ more parentum
  Tradita sub tristes munera ad inferias
Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
  Atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale!

On his return to Rome he resumed his old habits, and died in the prime of life, probably B. C. 47, as that is the latest date to which allusion is made in his writings.

His works consist of numerous short fugitive pieces of a lyrical character; elegies, such as that already quoted; a secular hymn to Diana; a poem, somewhat of a dithyrambic character, entitled Atys; and the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, a mythological poem in heroic verse. His taste was evidently formed on a study of the Greek poets, from whom he learnt not only his beautiful hendecasyllables, but also their modes of thought and expression. He had skill and taste to adopt the materials with which his vast erudition furnished him, and to conceal his want of originality and inspiration. Some of his pieces are translations from the Greek, as, for example, the elegy on the hair of Berenice, which is taken from the Greek of Callimachus, and the celebrated ode of Sappho.505 He was one of the most popular of the Roman poets—firstly, because he possessed those qualities which the literary society of Rome most highly valued, namely, polish and learning; and secondly, because, although he was an imitator, there is a living reality about all that he wrote—a truly Roman nationality. He did not merely disguise the inspiration of Greece in a Latin dress, but invested Roman life, and thoughts, and social habits with the ideal of Greek love and beauty. For these reasons his fame flourished as long as Rome possessed a classical literature. Two eminent men only have withheld their admiration—Horace in the golden age; Quintilian in the period of the decline. The former disparages him as a lyrical poet; the latter almost passes him over in silence. Horace was jealous of a rival who was so nearly equal to himself: he could not bear the remotest chance of his claim being disputed to be the musician of the Roman lyre;506 and he dishonestly declared that he first adapted Æolian strains to the Roman lyre,507 notwithstanding the Lesbian character and hendecasyllabic metres of his predecessor. Quintilian could not appreciate Catullus, because his own taste was too stiff and affected, and spoilt by the rhetorical spirit of his age.

Catullus had a talent for satire, but his satire was not inspired by a noble indignation at vice and wrong. It was the bitter resentment of a vindictive spirit: his love and his hate were both purely selfish. His language of love expresses the feelings of an impure voluptuary; his language of scorn those of a disappointed one. He gratified his irritable temper by attacking Cæsar most offensively; but the noble Roman would not crush the insect which annoyed him; and although Catullus insulted him personally by reading his lampoons in his presence, not a change passed over his countenance: he would not stoop to avenge himself: and the imperial clemency disarmed the anger of the libeller. The strong prejudice of Niebuhr in favour of Roman antiquity led him to pronounce Catullus a gigantic and extraordinary genius, equal in every respect to the lyric poets of Greece previously to the time of Sophocles; he believed him to be the greatest poet Rome ever possessed, except, perhaps, some few of the early ones; but that great man also thought that Virgil had mistaken his vocation in becoming an epic instead of a lyric poet.508 Catullus certainly possessed great excellences and talents of the most alluring and captivating kind. No genius ever displayed itself under a greater variety of aspects. He has the playfulness and the petulance of a girl, the vivacity and simplicity of a child. He has never been surpassed in gracefulness, melody, and tenderness. No one, unless he possessed the coolness and self-command of a Cæsar, could have avoided wincing under the sharp attacks of his wit: he had passion and vehemence, but he had not the grandeur and sublimity either of Lucretius or Virgil.

Although the peculiar characteristics of his poetry are chiefly to be found in his lyric and elegiac poems, there are in his longer pieces, which are less known and less admired, passages of singular sweetness and beauty. He had not sufficient grasp and comprehensiveness of mind to conduct an epic poem. His knowledge of human nature, confined as it was to one of its phases—the development of the softer affections—did not admit of sufficient variety for so vast a work. His intellectual taste, like his moral principles, was too ill-regulated to construct a well-digested plan, necessary to the perfection of an epic poem; but wherever ingenuity and liveliness in description, or pathos in moving the affections, are required, the poetry of Catullus does not yield to that of Ovid or of Virgil.

The poem, entitled the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, bears some slight resemblance to an heroic poem. Its subject is heroic, for it imbodies a legend of the heroic age. The characters of mythology play a part in it, similar to that which they support in the poems of Homer or Virgil. But it is unconnected and deficient in unity; and the plan is far too extensive for the dimensions by which it is circumscribed. Nevertheless, with all these faults, it is pleasing on account of the luxuriance of its fancy and the brilliancy of its genius. The most beautiful passage, perhaps, is the episode relating the story of Theseus and Ariadne, which is introduced into the main body of the poem as being woven and embroidered on the hangings of the palace of Holeus. The following verses are taken from this episode,509 and form part of the complaint of Ariadne for the perfidious desertion of Theseus:—

  Siccine discedens, neglecto numine Divûm,
  Immemor ah! devota domum perjuria portas?
  Nullane res potuit crudelis flectere mentis
  Consilium? tibi nulla fuit clementia præsto,
  Immite ut nostri vellet mitescere pectus?
  At non hæc quondam nobis promissa dedisti
  Voce; mihi non hoc miseræ sperare jubebas;
  Sed connubia læta, sed optatos hymenæos;
  Quæ cuncta aërii discerpunt irrita venti.
  Jam jam nulla viro juranti fœmina credat,
Nulla viri speret sermones esse fideles;
  Qui, dum aliquid cupiens animus prægestit apisci,
  Nil metuunt jurare, nihil promittere parcunt;
  Sed simul ac cupidæ mentis satiata libido est,
  Dicta nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant.
  Certe ego te in medio versantem turbine leti
  Eripui, et potius germanum amittere crevi,
  Quam tibi fallaci supremo in tempore deessem.
  Pro quo dilaceranda feris dabor, alitibusque
  Præda, neque injecta tumulabor mortua terra.
  Quænam te genuit sola sub rupe leæna?
  Quod mare conceptum spumantibus exspuit undis?
  Quæ Syrtis, quæ Scylla vorax, quæ vasta Charybdis,
  Talia qui reddis pro dulci præmia vitæ?
  Si tibi non cordi fuerant connubia nostra,
  Sæva quod horrebas prisci præcepta parentis;
  Attamen in vestras potuisti ducere sedes,
  Quæ tibi jucundo famularer serva labore,
  Candida permulcens liquidis vestigia lymphis,
  Purpureave tuum consternens veste cubile.
  Sed quid ego ignaris nequicquam conqueror auris,
  Externata malo? quæ nullis sensibus auctæ
  Nec missas audire queunt, nec reddere voces.—132–161.

  And couldst thou, Theseus, from her native land
  Thy Ariadne bring, then cruel so
  Desert thy victim on a lonely strand?
  And didst thou, perjured, dare to Athens go,
  Nor dread the weight of Heaven’s avenging blow?
  Could naught thy heart with sacred pity touch?
  Naught make thy soul the baleful plot forego
  ’Gainst her that loved thee? Ah! not once were such
The vows, the hopes, thy smooth professions did avouch!

  Then all was truth, then did thy honeyed tongue
  Of wedded faith the flattering fable weave.
  All, all unto the winds of heaven are flung!
  Henceforth let never listening maid believe
  Protesting man. When their false hearts conceive
  The selfish wish, to all but pleasure blind,
  No words they spare, no oaths unuttered leave;
  But when possession cloys their pampered mind,
No care have they for oaths, no words their honour bind.

  For this, then, I from instant death did cover
  Thy faithless bosom; and for this preferred,
  Even to a brother’s blood, a perjured lover;
  Now to be torn by savage beast and bird,
  With no due form, no decent rite, interred!
  What foaming sea, what savage of the night,
  In murky den thy monstrous birth conferred?
  What whirlpool guides and gave thee to the light,
The welcome boon of life thus basely to requite?

  What though thy royal father’s stern command
  The bond of marriage to our lot forbade,
  Oh! safely still into thy native land
  I might have gone thy happy serving maid;
  There gladly washed thy snowy feet or laid
  Upon thy blissful bed the purple vest.
  Ah, vain appeal! upon the winds conveyed,
  The heedless winds, that hear not my behest:
No words his ear can reach or penetrate his breast!

The writers of the Augustan age and their successors paid Catullus what they considered the highest compliment, when they called him learned. Criticism referred everything to the Greek standard. The qualities which they recognised by this epithet were those which they deemed most valuable—more so even than originality and invention—an extensive acquaintance with the materials of Greek story, an elaborate study of the poets taken as models, a scientific appreciation of the cadences and harmonies of Greek versification. They were grateful for the blessings which they were conscious of having derived from mental cultivation; and the highest praise which they could bestow was to confer upon a poet the title of a learned and accomplished man.

This period, at which prose reached its zenith, could boast of other poets, also, besides Lucretius and Catullus, whose merits were considerable although they did not satisfy the fastidious taste of the Augustan age. There flourished C. Licinius Calvus,510 C. Helvius Cinna, Valerius Cato, Valgius, Ticida, Furius Bibaculus, and Varro Atacinus.

The first of these was a lively little man,511 an orator as well as a poet. His speeches were elaborately modelled after those of the Attic orators; and had his poems displayed the same polish, they might have satisfied Horace512 and his contemporaries, and thus have been preserved. As it is, the fragments which remain are so brief, that it is impossible to say whether his merits were such as to justify Niebuhr in placing him amongst the three greatest poets of his age. His poetry resembled that of Catullus in spirit and morality. It was the fashionable poetry of the day, and consisted of tender elegy, playful and sentimental epigram, licentious love-songs, and bitter personality.

Cinna,513 besides smaller poems, was the author of an epic, entitled Smyrna; the subject is unknown: but Catullus, who was his intimate friend, praises it highly, and Virgil modestly declares that, as compared with Varius and Cinna, he himself appears a goose amongst swans.514 Valerius Cato was a grammarian as well as a poet. His two principal poems were entitled Lydia and Diana;515 and a fragmentary poem, to which the title Diræ or Curses516 has been given, has been generally attributed to him on the grounds that the author pours forth his woes to a mistress named Lydia. The argument of the piece is as follows:—The estate of Cato, like that of Virgil, was confiscated and made a military colony; and smarting under a sense of wrong, he imprecates curses on his lost home. Then the theme changes: his heart softens; and in sad accents he bewails his separation from his mistress, and from all his rural pleasures. This poem was formerly believed to be the work of Virgil, but neither the language nor the poetry can be compared to those of the Mantuan bard; nor do the sentiments resemble the calmness and resignation with which he bears his misfortunes. J. Scaliger, impressed with these considerations, transferred the authorship from Virgil to Cato. But there are no sufficient grounds for determining the question.

Respecting C. Valgius Rufus all is doubt and obscurity. The grammarians quote from him; Pliny517 speaks of his learning; Horace518 refers to him as an elegiac poet, and expresses the greatest confidence in his critical taste and judgment. Ticida is mentioned by Suetonius as bearing testimony to the merits of Valerius Cato. Bibaculus was a bitter satirist, who spared not the feelings of his friend Cato when reduced from affluence to poverty;519 who himself had the vanity to attempt an epic poem, and by his vulgar taste provoked the severe criticism of Horace.520

P. Terentius Varro Atacinus was a contemporary of Varro Reatinus; and for this reason his works have often been confounded with those of the latter. He was born B. C. 82,521 near the river Atax in Gaul, and hence he was surnamed Atacinus, in order to distinguish him from his learned namesake, who derived his appellation from property which he possessed at Reati. Very few fragments of his works are extant,522 although his poetry was of such a character that Virgil deemed some of his lines worthy of plagiarizing.523 His principal work, which is not spoken of in very high terms by Quintilian,524 is a translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. Besides this, he wrote two geographical poems, namely, the Chorographia and Libri Navales, a heroic poem entitled Bellum Sequanicum, on one of the Gallic campaigns of J. Cæsar, and also some elegies, epigrams, and saturæ.525

A fragment of the Chorographia is preserved by Meyer,526 the concluding lines of which were evidently imitated by Virgil, and also the following severe epigram on Licinius:—

Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato nullo,
  Pompeius parvo; Quis putet esse Deos?
Saxa premunt Licinum, levat altum fama Catonem,
  Pompeium tituli. Credimus esse Deos.

CHAPTER III.
AGE OF VIRGIL FAVOURABLE TO POETRY—HIS BIRTH, EDUCATION, HABITS, ILLNESS, AND DEATH—HIS POPULARITY AND CHARACTER—HIS MINOR POEMS, THE CULEX CIRIS MORETUM COPA AND CATALECTA—HIS BUCOLICS—ITALIAN MANNERS NOT SUITED TO PASTORAL POETRY—IDYLLS OF THEOCRITUS—CLASSIFICATION OF THE BUCOLICS—SUBJECT OF THE POLLIO—HEYNE’S THEORY RESPECTING IT.

P. Virgilius Maro (Born B. C. 70.)

The period at which Virgil flourished was singularly favourable both to the development and appreciation of poetical talent of the most polished and cultivated kind. The indulgent liberality of the imperial court cherished and fostered genius: the ruin of republican liberty left the intellect of the age without any other object except refinement; imagination was not harassed by the cares and realities of life. The same causes contributed to limit the range of prose composition,527 and therefore the field was left undisputed to Virgil and Horace and their friends; and as the age of Cicero was essentially one in which prose literature flourished, so that of Augustus was the golden age of poetry. Of this age, Virgil stands forth pre-eminent amongst his contemporaries, as the representative. He exhibited all its characteristics, polish, ingenuity, and skill, and to these he superadded dignity and sublimity. The life of Virgil, commonly prefixed to his works, professes to be written by Tiberius Claudius Donatus, who lived in the fifth century. If, as Heyne thought, the groundwork is by him, it has been overlaid with fables similar to those found in the Gesta Romanorum, and owing their origin to the inventions of the dark ages. From this biography, stripped of those portions which are clearly fabulous, and from other sources, the following particulars respecting him may be derived:—P. Virgilius Maro was born on the ides (the 15th) of October,528 B. C. 70, on a small estate belonging to his father, at Andes (Pietola,) a village of Cisalpine Gaul, situated about three Roman miles from Mantua. It has been disputed whether his name was Virgilius or Vergilius. Most probably both orthographies are correct, as Diana, Minerva, liber, and other Latin words, were frequently written Deana, Menerva, leber, &c.529

Virgil was by birth a citizen of Mantua,530 but not of Rome, for the full franchise was not extended to the Transpadani until B. C. 49, although they enjoyed the Jus Latii as early as B. C. 89. The varied stores of learning contained in the Georgics and Æneid, abundantly prove that Virgil received a liberal education. It is said that he acquired the rudiments of literature at Cremona, where he remained until he had assumed the toga virilis.531 This event, if the anonymous life is to be depended upon, took place unusually early; for it is there assigned to the consulships of Pompey the Great and Licinius Crassus,532 in the first consulship of whom he was born. From Cremona he went to Milan, and thence to Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy under the direction of Parthenius, a native of Bithynia. Muretus asserts that he diligently read the history of Thucydides; but his favourite studies were medicine and mathematics—an unusual discipline to engage the attention of the future poet, but one which, by its exactness, tended to foster and mature that judgment which distinguishes his poetry. The philosophical sect to which he devoted himself was the Epicurean; and the unfortunate general, P. Quintilius Varus, to whom he addresses his sixth Eclogue,533 studied this system together with him under Syron.

After this, it is probable that he came to Rome, but soon exchanged the bustle of the capital, for which his bashful disposition and delicate health unfitted him, for the quiet retirement of his hereditary estate. Of this he was deprived in B. C. 42, with circumstances of great hardship, when the whole neighbouring district was divided, after the battle of Philippi, amongst the victorious legionaries of Octavius and Antony. The town of Cremona had supported Brutus, and the old republican party, and Mantua, together with its surrounding district, suffered in consequence of its too close vicinity.534 Asinius Pollio was at that time commander of the forces in Cisalpine Gaul. He was grinding and oppressive in his administration; but being himself an orator, poet, and historian, he patronised literary men. Congenial tastes recommended Virgil to his notice, and led him to take compassion on the poet’s desolate condition. By his advice, Virgil proceeded to Rome with an introduction to Mæcenas. Through him he gained access to Octavius, and either immediately before or after the peace of Brundisium535 his little farm was restored to him.

He now became a prosperous man, was a member of the literary society which graced the table of Mæcenas, and basked in sunshine of court favour. Horace, Virgil, Plotius, and Varius, were united by the closest bonds of friendship with Mæecenas, and accompanied him on that cheerful expedition to Brundisium,536 when he went thither in order to negotiate a reconciliation between Octavius and Antony. Henceforth Virgil’s favourite residence was Naples.537 Its sunny climate suited his pulmonary weakness far better than the low and damp banks of his native Mincius (Menzo.) He had, besides, a villa in Sicily, and when at Rome he lived in a pleasant house on the Esquiline, situated near those of his friends Mæcenas and Horace. It is difficult to say how Virgil became so rich: patrons were liberal in those days, and he doubtless owed a portion of his affluence to their munificence. The liberality of Mæcenas is well known; and Martial attributes the prosperity of Virgil to the favour of “the Tuscan knight.”538 Augustus also had great wealth at his disposal, and was profuse in the distribution of it amongst his favourites.

There is a passage in the Odes of Horace539 which seems to hint that he engaged to a slight extent in mercantile concerns: even if this formed one source of his wealth, the love of gain (studium lucri,) and anxiety about the means of living, do not appear to have hindered him from devoting his hours of serious occupation to literary labours and the diligent use of his well-stored library, whilst his leisure was given to the delights of social intercourse, for which he was so eminently qualified by his sweet temper and amiable disposition.

The poet’s term of life was not extended far beyond fifty years. He had never been healthy or robust: he sometimes spat blood, and frequently suffered from headache and indigestion.540 Ill health was the only drawback to a life otherwise passed in calm felicity. In the year B. C. 19 he meditated a tour in Greece, intending, during the course of it, to give the final polish to his great epic poem. Greece and her classic scenes, the favourite haunts of the Muses, the time-honoured contests of Olympia, the living and breathing statues which he beheld in that home of art, evidently inspired the beautiful imagery which adorns the introduction to the third Georgic. He, however, only reached Athens: there he met Augustus, who was on his way back from Samos, and both returned together. On the occasion of this voyage, Horace wrote that tender ode541 in which he affectionately calls him “the half of his soul:”—

Navis quæ tibi creditum
  Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis
Reddas incolumem precor
  Et serves animæ dimidium meæ.

On the way he was seized with a mortal sickness, which was aggravated by the motion of the vessel, and he only lived to land at Brundisium. The powers of nature, already enfeebled, were now totally exhausted, and he expired on the 22nd of September. He was buried rather more than a mile from Naples, on the road to Puteoli (Pozzuoli.) A tomb is still pointed out to the traveller which is said to be that of the poet. Nor is this improbable; for, although it is not situated on the present high-road, it is quite possible that the original direction of the road may have been changed.542 His epitaph is said to have been dictated by himself in his last moments:—

Mantua me genuit; Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc
  Parthenope. Cecini Pascua, Rura, Duces.543

Virgil was deservedly popular both as a poet and as a man. His rivals in literature could not envy one so unassuming and inoffensive his well-merited success, but loved him as much as they admired his poetry. The emperor esteemed him, the people respected him. “Witness,” says Tacitus,544 “the letters of Augustus,—witness the conduct of the people itself, which, when some of his verses were recited in the theatre, rose en masse, and showed the same veneration for Virgil, who happened to be present among the audience, which they were wont to show to Augustus.” He was exceedingly temperate in his manner of living; so pure-minded545 and chaste in the midst of a profligate and licentious age, that the Neapolitans gave him the name of Parthenias (from παρθενος, a virgin,) unselfish, although surrounded by selfishness, kind-hearted, and sympathizing. His talents and popularity never spoiled his natural simplicity and modesty, as his moving in the polite circles of the capital never could entirely wear off his rustic shyness and unfashionable appearance.

He was constitutionally pensive and melancholy, and so distrustful of his own poems, that Augustus could not persuade him to send an unfinished portion of the Æneid to him for perusal. “As to my Æneas,” he writes to the emperor,546 when absent on his Cantabrian campaign, “if I had anything worth your reading I would send it with pleasure, but the work is only just begun, and I even blame my folly for venturing upon so vast a task. But you know that I shall apply fresh and increased diligence to carrying out my design.” It was with real reluctance that he subsequently read the sixth book to the Emperor and Octavia. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole manuscript; and in his will he directed his executors, Varius and Tucca, either to improve it or commit it to the flames.547 He was open-hearted and generous, but not extravagant in the expenditure of his wealth, for he bequeathed to his brother, his friends, and the Emperor, a considerable property.

It is said that Virgil’s earliest poetical essay was an epic poem, the subject of which was the Roman wars; but that the impossibility of introducing Roman names in hexameter verse caused him to desist from the task almost as soon as he had commenced it. The minor poems which are still extant, were probably his first works. These are the Culex, Ciris, Moretum, Copa, and the shorter pieces in lyric, elegiac, and iambic metres,548 commonly known by the name of Catalecta. The “Culex” (Gnat) is a bucolic poem, with something of a mock-heroic colouring, of which the argument is as follows:549 A shepherd, overcome with the heat, falls asleep beneath the shade of a tree, and a venomous serpent from a neighbouring marsh stealthily approaches. A gnat flies to his rescue, and stings him on the brow. The shepherd, awoke by the smart, crushes his rescuer, but sees the serpent and kills it. The ghost of the gnat appears, reproaches him with his ingratitude, and describes the adventures he has met with in the regions of the dead. The shepherd erects a monument in his honour, and indites the following epigram:—

Parve culex, pecudum custos tibi tale merenti
Funeris officium vitæ pro munere reddit.

Poor insect, thou a shepherd’s life didst save;
Thou gavest a life, he gives thee but a grave.

The “Ciris,” which some have attributed to Corn. Gallus, is the Greek legend of Scylla, who was changed into a fish, and her father Nisus into an eagle. Great use has been made by Spenser of this poem in the conversation between Britomart and her nurse Glauce, and also in Glauce’s incantations.550 The “Moretum,” was intended to trace the employments of the agricultural labourer through the day; but it only describes the commencement of them, and the preparation of a dish of olla podrida of garden herbs called moretum. It contains an ingenious description of a cottager’s kitchen garden. The “Copa,” is an elegiac poem, not unlike in jovial spirit the scolia or drinking songs of the Greeks: it represents a female waiter at a tavern, begging for custom by a tempting display of the accommodations and comforts prepared for strangers. It describes the careless enjoyment of rural festivity: the simple luxuries of grapes and mulberries, the fragrant roses, the cheerful grasshoppers, and timid little lizards of Italy. Nor are the excitements of the dice, the joys of wine, the blandishments of love unsung. Dull care is banished far, and the enjoyment of the present hour inculcated:—

    Pereant qui crastina curant
Mors aurem vellens Vivite, ait, venio.

Amongst the lyric poems of Virgil is a very elegant one on the villa of his instructor in philosophy, Syron.

The poems which first established his reputation were his Bucolics or Eclogues. This latter title was given them in later times, implying either that they were selections from a greater number of poems or imitations of passages selected from the works of Greek poets.551

The characters in Virgil’s Bucolics are Italians, in all their sentiments and feelings, acting the unreal and assumed part of Sicilian shepherds. In fact, the Italians never possessed the elements of pastoral life, and therefore could not naturally furnish the poet with originals and models from which to draw his portraits and characters. They were a simple people, but their simplicity was rather Ascræan than Arcadian: the domestic habits and virtues of rural life in Italy were not unlike those of Bœtia, as described by Hesiod. Virgil, therefore, wisely took him as his model, and produced a more natural picture of Italian manners in his Georgics than in his Eclogues. The denizens of the little towns had the manners and habits of municipal life: their cultivation was the artificial refinement of town life, and not the natural sentiments of the contemplative shepherd. Those who lived in the country were hard-working, simple-minded peasants, who gained their livelihood by the sweat of their brow—honest, plain-spoken, rough-mannered, and without a grain of sentimentality. Pastoral poetry owes its origin to, and is fostered by, solitude; its most beautiful passages are of a meditative cast. The shepherd beguiles his loneliness by communing with his own thoughts. His sorrows are not the hard struggles of life, but often self-created and imaginary, or at least exaggerated. When represented as Virgil represents them in his Bucolics, they are in masquerade, and the drama in which they form the characters is of an allegorical kind. The connexion with Italy is rather of an historical than a moral nature: we meet with numerous allusions to contemporary events, but not with exact descriptions of Italian characters and manners. As, therefore, we cannot realize the descriptions, we can neither sympathize nor admire. Menalcas and Corydon and Alexis, and the rest, are as much out of place as the gentlemen and ladies in the garb of shepherds and shepherdesses in English family pictures. Even the scenery is Sicilian, and does not truthfully describe the tame neighbourhood of Mantua. So long as it is remembered that they are imitations of the Syracusan poet, we miss their nationality, and see at once that they are untruthful and out of keeping; and Virgil suffers in our estimation because we naturally compare him with the original whom he professes to imitate, and we cannot but be aware of his inferiority: but if we can once divest ourselves of the idea of the outward form which he has chosen to adopt, and forget the personality of the characters, we can feel for the wretched outcast, exiled from a happy though humble home, and be touched by the simple narrative of their disappointed loves and child-like woes; can appreciate the delicately-veiled compliments paid by the poet to his patron; can enjoy the inventive genius and poetical power which they display; and can be elevated by the exalted sentiments which they sometimes breathe. We feel that it is all an illusion; but we willingly permit ourselves to be transported from the matter-of-fact realities of a hard and prosaic world.

Virgil in his Eclogues was too much cramped by following his Greek original to present us with true pictures of Italian country life; although the criticism of his friend Horace with justice attributes to his rural pieces delicacy of touch and graceful wit:—

    molle atque facetum
Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camœnæ.552

The Idylls of Theocritus are transfusions into appropriate Greek of old popular Sicilian legends which had taken root in the country, and had become part and parcel of the national character. His subjects are not always strictly pastoral, for his characters are sometimes reapers and fishermen.553 His language, characters, sentiments, scenery, habits, incidents, are all Sicilian, and therefore all are in perfect harmony. The characters of Theocritus have a specific individuality, and are therefore different from each other; those of Virgil are generic, the representatives of a class, and therefore there is little or no variety. But still Virgil’s defects do not detract much from the enjoyment experienced in reading his Bucolic poetry. The Aminta of Tasso, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, the Calendar of Spenser, the Lycidas of Milton, the Perdita of Shakspeare, the pastorals of Drayton, Drummond, and Florian, are equally open to objection, and yet who does not admire their beauties?

The Bucolics may be arranged in two classes. Those in the first are composed entirely after the Greek model, and contain the following poems:—

I. The first, in which the poet, representing himself under the character of Tityrus, expresses his gratitude for the restoration of his property, whilst Melibœus, as an exiled Mantuan, bewails his harder fortune.

II. The second, which is generally supposed to have been the first pastoral written by him, and is principally copied from the Cyclops of Theocritus.

III. The third is an imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus, and as well as the seventh, represent improvisatorial trials of musical skill between shepherds.

V. The fifth, in which two shepherds pay the last honours to a departed friend, the one singing his epitaph, the other his apotheosis. Scaliger554 has with good reason supposed that this poem allegorized the murder and deification of Julius Cæsar. It has been often imitated by modern poets: the most beautiful imitations are Spenser’s lament for Dido, Milton’s Lycidas, Drayton’s sixth Eclogue, and Pomfret’s Elegy on Queen Mary.

VIII. The eighth, which is imitated from the second and third Idylls of Theocritus, consists of two parts; and, from the subject-matter of the second portion, is entitled “Pharmaceutria,” (the Enchantress.) Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesibœus, rival Orpheus in their musical skill, for, whilst they sing, heifers forget to graze, lynxes are stupified, and rivers stop their course to listen. It was addressed by Virgil to his kind patron Pollio, whilst employed in his expedition to Illyricum.555 Damon, personifying an unsuccessful lover, laments that a rival has been preferred to himself. Alphesibœus, in the character of an enchantress, goes through a formula of magical incantations in order to regain the lost affections of Daphnis. In this poem a refrain, or intercalary verse, recurs after intervals of a few lines. In the song of Damon, the refrain is—

Incipe Mænalios mecum, mea tibia, versus.

In that of his opponent—

Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim.

IX. In the ninth, two shepherds converse together on the troubles which have befallen their neighbourhood, and one of them is represented as conveying a present of a few kids to court the favour of the new possessor.

The second class are of a more original kind.

IV. The fourth, entitled Pollio, which is the most celebrated of them all, bears no resemblance to pastoral poetry. In the exordium, the poet invokes the Muses of Sicilian song; but he professes to attune their sylvan strain to a nobler theme. The melancholy Perusian war had been brought to a termination. The reconciliation of Anthony and Octavius had been effected by the treaty of Brundisium, and all things seemed to promise peace and prosperity. The contrast was indeed a bright one, after the havoc and desolation which war had spread through Italy. The peace ratified with Sextus Pompey at Puteoli opened the long-closed granaries of Sicily, and plenty succeeded to famine. The enthusiasm of the poet hailed the return of the fabled golden age—the reign of Saturn. The songs which the old bards of Italy professed to have learnt from the Cumæan Sibyl, and to which legendary tradition attributed a prophetical meaning, seemed to point to the new era which now dawned on the Roman empire.

The belief of the civilized world was undoubtedly at this time concentrated on the expectation of some great event, which should bring peace and happiness to mankind. The divine revelation which God’s people enjoyed taught them now to expect the advent of the Messiah; whilst traditions, probably derived through corrupting channels from the true light of prophecy, taught the heathen, though more vaguely, to look for the coming of some great one. The prophetic literature of the East might have travelled to Europe; and the divine prophecies of Isaiah, and the other sacred writers, may have been incorporated by native bards in Italian legends.

Bishop Lowth even supposed that the Sibylline predictions derived their origin from a Greek version of Messianic prophecies.556 A belief in the inspiration of the Sibyls prevailed in the early ages of Christianity, and the Emperor Constantine in one of his orations557 quotes from them, and paraphrases Virgil’s Pollio as an evidence to the truths of the Gospel.

Some of the fathers of the Church attributed to them supernatural power; and the Italian painters, acting under the patronage of the Roman Church, honoured the four Sibyls as participators in a knowledge of the Divine counsels. Ambrose558 allows that they were inspired, but by the spirit of evil. Jerome559 believes that this power was given to them by God as a reward for virginity; and Augustine560 thinks that they predicted many truths concerning Jesus Christ. Justin561 adopts a legend which would account for the similarity between the Sibylline oracles and Hebrew prophecy. He says that the Cumæan Sibyl, celebrated by Virgil, was born at Babylon, and was the daughter of Berosus, the Chaldean historian.

If Virgil, in the fourth eclogue, correctly paraphrased the Sibylline poems, two parallelisms between them and the prophecies of Isaiah are remarkably striking:562—

Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto—
Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras—
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.—v. 6.

Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son.—Is. vii. 14.

Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.—Is. ix. 7.

At tibi prima, puer, nullo munuscula cultu,
Errantes hederas passim cum baccare tellus,
Mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho.—v. 18.

The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.—Is. xxxv. 1.

Many theories have been proposed respecting the child to whom allusion is made in this eclogue, not one of which was satisfactory to Gibbon;563 but the following is adopted by Heyne as the most probable. The peace of Brundisium was cemented by the marriage between Antony and Cæsar’s half-sister Octavia. She was the widow of Marcellus, and appeared likely to give birth to a posthumous child. To this child yet unborn, the poet applies all the blessings promised by the Sibylline oracles, and predicts that, under his auspices, the peace and prosperity already inaugurated shall be confirmed.

VI. In the sixth, Virgil represents allegorically, under the character of Silenus the tutor of Bacchus, his own instructor Syron; and thus makes it the vehicle of a short account of the Epicurean philosophy. It was not long since the same subject had been treated of at greater length by the eloquent Lucretius; and it is said that when Cicero heard it recited by the mime Cytheris, he was so struck with admiration as to exclaim that he was “Magnæ spes altera Romæ.” This eclogue is parodied by Gay in the Saturday of his Shepherd’s Week.

X. The tenth can scarcely be distinguished from any other amatory poem, except that the heroic metre is not so usual in that species of poetry as the elegiac. The loves of the poet Gallus are sung; Arcadia is fixed upon as the place of his exile; and the lay is said to be set to the music of the oaten-pipe of Sicily: but this eclogue has no other claim to be entitled a bucolic poem.

One passage in this eclogue, which suggested the following beautiful lines in Milton’s “Lycidas,” illustrates the truth that poetry often derives additional beauty from the fact of its being a successful imitation:—

Quæ nemora aut qui vos saltus habuere, puellæ
Naiades, indigno cum Gallus amore periret?
Nam neque Parnassi vobis juga nam neque Pindi
Ulla moram fecere, neque Aonia Aganippe.
          Ecl. x. 9.

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
          Milton’s Lycidas.

CHAPTER IV.
BEAUTY OF DIDACTIC POETRY—ELABORATE FINISH OF THE GEORGICS—ROMAN LOVE OF RURAL PURSUITS—HESIOD SUITABLE AS A MODEL—CONDITION OF ITALY—SUBJECTS TREATED OF IN THE GEORGICS—SOME STRIKING PASSAGES ENUMERATED—INFLUENCE OF ROMAN LITERATURE ON ENGLISH POETRY—SOURCES FROM WHICH THE INCIDENTS OF THE ÆNEID ARE DERIVED—CHARACTER OF ÆNEAS—CRITICISM OF NIEBUHR.

Didactic poetry is of all kinds the least inviting. As its professed object is instruction, there is no reason why its lessons should be conveyed in poetical language—its purpose, could in fact, be better attained in prose. Pretending, therefore, to poetry, it demands great skill, elaborate finish and such graces and embellishments as will conceal its dry character, and recommend it to the reader’s attention.

The beauty of a didactic poem depends only partially on the just views and correct discrimination which it evinces, and principally on the beauty of the language, the picturesque force, and pleasing character of the descriptions, and the interest that is thrown into the episodes. In fact, the accessaries are the parts most admired, and extracts brought forward as specimens of this kind of poetry are invariably of this kind. Poetry naturally deals with the beauties and terrors of external nature—with the emotions and passions, whether of a tender or violent kind—the sober practical rules of life are scarcely within its sphere. True it is that when all literature was poetical, the precepts of moral and physical philosophy, and even the dry commands of laws and institutions, were embodied in a metrical form; but when literature divides itself into poetry and prose, the subjects appropriated to each other become spontaneously separate likewise. For this reason, the Georgics of Virgil especially display his ability as a poet, his correct taste the “limæ labor,” the pains which he took in polishing and correcting. In none of his poems can we form a better idea of the description which he gives of his patient toil, when he says, that “like the she-bear he brought his poetical offspring into shape by constantly licking them.”564 The majesty of the language elevates the subject, and divests it of so much of the homeliness as would be inappropriate to poetry, and yet at the same time it is not too grand or elevated.

The following criticism of Addison565 is by no means too favourable:—“I shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Æneis is of a nobler kind; but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Æneis has a greater variety of beauties in it; but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest poet, in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment settled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.”

Rome offered a favourable field for a poet to undertake a poem on the labours and enjoyments of rural life. Agriculture was always there considered a liberal employment: tradition had adorned rustic manners with the attributes of simplicity and honesty, and divested them of the ideas of coarseness usually connected with them. The traditions of those ages of national freedom and greatness, to which the enthusiasm of the poet delighted to carry back the thoughts of his readers, had connected some of the noblest names of history with rural labours. Curius and Cincinnatus were called from the plough to defend and save their country; and after their task was performed they returned with delight to it again. Cato, the representative of the old and respected generation, and other illustrious men, had written on the pursuits and duties of rural life. Agriculture was never connected with ideas of debasing and illiberal gain, such as attached to trade and commerce.

The poet, moreover, had a model ready at hand, after which to construct his work. It was Greek, and therefore sure to be acceptable upon the recognised principles of taste. It described a species of rural life, hard, frugal, and industrious, very much like that led by the agriculturists of Italy. It painted a standard of morals, which even the licentious inhabitants of a luxurious capital could appreciate, though they had degenerated from it. The discriminating judgment of Virgil saw that the rural life of Italy could really be represented, in the same way in which Hesiod had painted that of Bœtia, and he wisely determined—

To sing through Roman towns Ascræan strains.

There exists, however, precisely that difference between the Georgics of Virgil and their model that might be expected. The Hesiodic poem belongs to a period when poetry was the accidental form—instruction the essential object; and, therefore, the teaching is systematic, precise, detailed, homely, sometimes coarse and unpolished. Virgil looks at his subject from the poetical point of view. His precepts are often put, not in a didactic but a descriptive form; they are unhesitatingly interrupted by digressions and episodes, more or less to the point; and out of a vast mass of materials such only are selected as are suitable to awaken the sensibilities.

The state of Italy also contributed to enlist a poet’s sympathies in favour of the rural classes, and to devote his pen to the patriotic task of reviving the old agricultural tastes. War had devastated the land; the peasant population had been fearfully thinned by military conscriptions and confiscation; wide districts had been depopulated and left destitute of cultivation. Instead of the sword being beat into a ploughshare and the spear into a pruning-hook, the Italian peasant had witnessed the contrary state of things. The poet laments the sad change which now disfigured the fair face of Italy:—

          non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,
Et curvæ rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
          Geo. i. 507.

The credit of having proposed this subject to Virgil is given to his patron Mæcenas; and, to him, consequently, the Georgics are addressed; but the poet doubtless gladly adopted the suggestion. When and where it was commenced is uncertain, but the finishing stroke was put to it at Naples566 some time after the battle of Actium.567 Although the “Works and Days” of Hesiod is professedly his pattern, still he derives his materials from other sources. Aratus supplies him with his signs of the weather, and the writers de Re Rustica with his practical directions. His system is indeed perfectly Italian; so much so, that many of his rules may be traced in modern Italian husbandry, just as the descriptions of implements in Hesiod are frequently found to agree with those in use in modern Greece.

The first book treats of tillage, the second of orchards; the subject of the third, which is the noblest and most spirited of them, is the care of horses and cattle; and the fourth, which is the most pleasing and interesting, describes the natural instincts as well as the management of bees.

But the great merit of the Georgics consists in their varied digressions, interesting episodes, and sublime bursts of descriptive vigour, which are interspersed throughout the poem. To quote any of them would be unnecessary, as Virgil and his translations are in every one’s hands. It will be sufficient to enumerate some of the most striking. These are—

I. The Origin of Agriculture, G. I. 125. II. The Storm in Harvest, I. 316. III. The Signs of the Weather, I. 351. IV. The Prodigies at the Death of Julius Cæsar, I. 466. V. The Battle of Pharsalia, I. 489. VI. The Panegyric on Italy, II. 136. VII. The Praises of a Country Life, II. 458. VIII. The Horse and Chariot Race, III. 103. IX. The Description of Winter in Scythia, III. 349. X. The Murrain of Cattle, III. 478. XI. The Battle of the Bees, IV. 67. XII. The Story of Aristæus, IV. 317. XIII. The Legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, IV. 453.

Roman poetry was more generally understood and more diligently studied in the most polished days of English literature, than the yet scarcely discovered stores of Greek learning. Want of originality was not considered a blemish in an age the taste of which, notwithstanding all its merits, was very artificial; whilst the exquisite polish and elegance which constitute the charm of Latin poetry, recommended it both for admiration and imitation. Hence English poets have been deeply indebted to the Romans for their most happy thoughts, and our native literature is largely imbued with a Virgilian and Horatian spirit. This circumstance adds an especial interest to a survey of Roman literature as the fountain from which welled forth so many of the streams that have fertilized our poetry.

The Georgics have been frequently taken as a model for imitation, and our descriptive poets have drawn largely from this source. Warton568 considered Philips’ “Cyder” the happiest imitation; “The Seasons” of our greatest descriptive poet, Thomson, is a thoroughly Virgilian poem. Many striking instances of Virgilian taste might be adduced, especially the thunder-storm in “Summer,” and the praises of Great Britain, in “Autumn.”

From the letter already quoted as preserved by Macrobius, it is clear that the Æneid was commenced when Augustus was in Spain,569 that it occupied the whole of Virgil’s subsequent life, and was not sufficiently corrected to satisfy his own fastidious taste when he died. Augustus intrusted its publication to Varius and Tucca, with strict instructions to abstain from interpolation. They are said to have transposed the second and third books, and to have omitted twenty-two lines570 as being contradictory to another passage respecting Helen in the sixth book.571 Hence in many early manuscripts these verses are wanting.

The idea and plan of the Æneid are derived from the Homeric poems. As the wrath of Achilles is the mainspring of all the events in the Iliad, so on the anger of the offended Juno the unity of the Æneid depends, and with it all the incidents are connected. Many of the most splendid passages, picturesque images, and forcible epithets are imitations or even translations from the Iliad and Odyssey. The war with Turnus owes its grandeur and its interest to the Iliad—the wanderings of Æneas, their wild and romantic adventures to the Odyssey. Virgil’s battles, though not to be compared in point of vigour with those of Homer, shine with a reflected light. His Necyia is a copy of that in the Odyssey. His similes are most of them suggested by those favourite embellishments of Homer. The shield of Æneas572 is an imitation of that of Achilles. The storm and the speech of Æneas573 are almost translations from the Odyssey.574

The thoughts thus borrowed from the great heroic poems of Greece, Virgil interwove with that ingenuity which distinguishes the Augustan school by means of the double character in which he represented his hero. The narrative of his perils by sea and land were enriched by the marvellous incidents of the Odyssey; his wars which occupy the latter books had their prototype in the Iliad. Greek tragedy, also, which depicted so frequently the subsequent fortunes of the Greek chieftains,575—the numerous translations which had employed the genius of Ennius, Attius, and Pacuvius—were a rich mine of poetic wealth. The second book, which is almost too crowded with a rapid succession of pathetic incidents, derived its interesting details—the untimely fate of Astyanax, the loss of Creusa, the story of Sinon, the legend of the wooden horse, the death of the aged Priam, the subsequent fortunes of Helen—from two Cyclic poems, the Sack of Troy and the little Iliad of Arctinus. For the legend of Laocoon he was indebted to the Alexandrian poet, Euphorion. The class of Cyclic poems entitled the νοστοι suggested much of the third book, especially the stories of Pyrrhus, Helenus, and Andromache. The fourth drew its fairy enchantments partly from Homer’s Calypso, partly from the love adventures of Jason, Medea, and Hypsypile in the Argonautica of the Alexandrian poet, Apollonius Rhodius, which had been introduced to the Romans by the translation of Varro.

The sixth is suggested by the eleventh book of the Odyssey and the descent of Theseus in search of Pirithous in the Hesiodic poems. But notwithstanding the force and originality—the vivid word-painting which adorns this book—it is far inferior to the conceptions which Greek genius formed of the unseen world. In the Æneid the legends of the world of spirits seem but vulgar marvels and popular illusions. Tartarus and Elysium are too palpable and material to be believed; their distinctness dispels the enchantment which they were intended to produce; it is daylight instead of dim shadow. We miss the outlines, which seem gigantic from their dim and shadowy nature, the appalling grandeur to which no one since Æschylus ever attained, except the great Italian poet who has never since been equalled.

To this rich store of Greek learning Italy contributed her native legends. The adventures of Æneas in Italy—the prophecy, of which the fulfilment was discovered by Iulus—the pregnant white sow—the story of the Sibyl—the sylph-like Camilla—were native lays amalgamated with the Greek legend of Troy. Macrobius,576 in three elaborate chapters, has shown that Virgil was deeply indebted to the old Latin poets. In the first he quotes more than seventy parallel turns of expression from Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, Nævius, Lucilius, Lucretius, Catullus, and Varius, consisting of whole or half lines. In the second he enumerates twenty-six longer passages, which Virgil has imitated from the poems of Ennius, Attius, Lucretius, and Varius, amongst which are portions of “The Praises of Rural Life,” and of “The Pestilence.”577 In the third he mentions a few (amongst them, for example, the well-known description of the horse578) which were taken by Virgil from the old Roman poets, having been first adopted by them from the Homeric poems. The following passages are a few of these examples of what would in modern times be considered plagiarisms, but which the ancients admitted without reluctance:—

Qui cœlum versat stellis fulgentibus aptum.
          Ennius.

Axem humero torquet stellis fulgentibus aptum.
          V. Æn. vi. 797.

Est locus Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant.
Est locus Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt.
          Æn. i. 530.

Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.
Unus qui nobis cunctando restituis rem.
          Æn. vi. 846.

Quod per amœnam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen.
          —— arva
Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Tybris.
          Æn. ii. 781.

Hei mihi qualis erat quantum mutatus ab illo.
Hei mihi qualis erat quantum mutatus ab illo.
          Æn. ii. 274.

          —— discordia tetra
Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit.
Belli ferratos rupit Saturnia postes.
          Æn. vi. 622.

The variety of incidents, the consummate skill in the arrangement of them, the interest which pervades both the plot and the episodes, fully compensate for the want of originality—a defect of which none but learned readers would be aware. What sweeter specimens can be found of tender pathos than the legend of Camilla, and the episode of Nisus and Euryalus? Where is the turbulence of uncurbed passions united with womanly unselfish fondness, and queen-like generosity, painted with a more masterly hand than in the character of Dido? Where, even in the Iliad, are characters better sustained and more happily contrasted than the weak Latinus, the soldier-like Turnus, the simple-minded Evander, the feminine and retiring Lavinia, the barbarian Mezentius, who to the savageness of a wild beast joined the natural instinct, which warmed with the strongest affection for his son. The only character of which the conception is somewhat unsatisfactory is that of the hero himself: Æneas, notwithstanding his many virtues, fails of commanding the reader’s sympathy or admiration. He is full of faith in the providence of God, submits himself with entire resignation to His divine will—is brave, patient, dutiful—but he is cold and heartless, and, if the expression is allowable, unchivalrous. In his war with Turnus, he is so decidedly in the wrong, and the character of his injured adversary shines with such lustre, and is adorned with such gallantry, that one is inclined to transfer to him the interest and sympathy which ought to be felt for the hero alone. This is undoubtedly a fault, but it is counterbalanced by innumerable excellences.

In personification, nothing is finer than Virgil’s portraiture of Fame, except perhaps Spenser’s Despair. In description, the same genius which shone forth in the Georgics, embellishes the Æneid also; and both the objects and the phenomena of nature are represented in language equally vivid and striking.

Notwithstanding the question has been much discussed, it is most probable that the opinion of Pope was correct respecting the political object of the Æneid. He affirmed that it was as much a party-piece as Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel; that its primary object was to increase the popularity of Augustus; its secondary one to flatter the vanity of his countrymen by the splendour and antiquity of their origin. Augustus is evidently typified under the character of Æneas: both were cautious and wise in council,579 both were free from the perturbations of passion; they were cold, unfeeling, and uninteresting. Their wisdom and their policy were calculating and worldly-minded. Augustus was conscious, as his last words show, that he was acting a part; and the contrast between the sentiments and conduct of Æneas, wherever the warm impulses of affection might be supposed to have sway, likewise create an impression of insincerity. The characteristic virtue which adorns the hero of the Æneid, as the epithet “Pius” so constantly applied to him implies, was filial piety; and there was no virtue which Augustus more ostentatiously put forward than dutiful affection to Julius Cæsar who had adopted him.

Other characters which are grouped around the central figure are allegorical likewise—Cleopatra is boldly sketched as Dido, the passionate victim of unrequited love. Both displayed the noble, generous qualities, and at the same time the uncontrolled self-will of a woman, who neither had nor would acknowledge any master except the object of her affections: the fortunes of both were similar, for their brothers had become their bitterest enemies, and the fate of both alike was suicide.

Turnus, whose character, as has been already stated, is far more chivalrous and attractive than that of Æneas, probably represented the popular Antony; and as the latter violated the peace ratified at Brundisium and Tarentum, so the former is represented as treacherous to his engagements with Æneas. It has even been thought, and the view has been supported by many ingenious arguments, that Iapis is a portrait of the physician of Augustus.580

Virgil is especially skilful in that species of imitation which consists in the appropriate choice of words, and the assimilation of the sound to the sense. A series of dactyles expresses the rapid speed of horses, and the still more rapid flight of time:—

Quadrupedante putrem Sonitu quatit ungula campum.
          Æn. viii. 591.

Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus.
          Geo. iii. 284.

Dignity and majesty are represented by an unusual use of spondees:—

—— quæ Divum incedo regina.
          Æn. i. 50.

—— penatibus et magnis Dîs.
          Æn. viii. 679.

Accelerated motion by a corresponding change of metre:—

   —— jamjam lapsura cadentique
Imminet assimilis——
          Æn. vi. 602.

Effort by a hiatus:—

Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam.

Abruptness, or the fall of a heavy body, by a monosyllable:—

Insequitur cumulo præruptus aquæ mons.
          Æn. i. 109.

—— procumbit humi bos.
          Æn. v. 481.

Many other examples might be adduced581 of that which, if it were an artifice, would be a very pleasing one, which rather proceeds from the natural impulses of a lively fancy and a delicately-attuned ear.

Dunlop has well observed, that Virgil’s descriptions are more like landscape-painting than any by his predecessors, whether Greek or Roman, and that it is a remarkable fact that landscape-painting was first introduced in his time. Pliny, in his Natural History,582 informs us that Ludius, who flourished in the lifetime of Augustus, invented the most delightful style of painting, compositions introducing porticoes, gardens, groves, hills, fish-ponds, rivers, and other pleasing objects, enlivened by carriages, animals, and figures. Thus, perhaps, art inspired poetry.

No one has ever attempted to disparage the reputation of Virgil as holding the highest rank amongst Roman poets, except the Emperor Caligula, J. Markland, and the great historian Niebuhr. The latter does not hesitate to say that the flourishing period of Roman poetry ceased about the time of the deaths of Cæsar and Cicero.583 Doubtless Roman national poetry then ceased, and was succeeded by the new era of Greek taste; but still the poems of the new school were equally majestic and pathetic, and though less natural, owed to their Greek originals incomparably greater polish, grace and sweetness.

It is difficult to understand the low opinion which Niebuhr entertained of Virgil, and the superiority which he attributes to Catullus. He not only declares that he is opposed to the adoration with which the later Romans regarded him, but he denies his fertility of genius and inventive powers. Although he acknowledges that the Æneid contains many exquisite passages, he pronounces it a complete failure, an unhappy idea from beginning to end. It is evident that he looked at the Æneid with the eye of an historian, and that his objections to it were entirely of an historical character.

Wrapped up in Roman nationality and Italian traditions, he did not forgive Virgil for adulterating this pure source of antiquarian information with Greek legends. He assumes, correctly enough, that an epic poem, in order to be successful, must be a living narrative of events known and interesting to the mass of a nation, and at the same time confesses that, whilst the ancient Italian traditions had already fallen into oblivion, Homer was at that time better known than Nævius. Surely, then, if Virgil had drawn from Italian sources exclusively, he would have omitted much that would have added interest to his poem in the opinion of his hearers, and would not have complied with the epic conditions which Niebuhr himself lays down. Besides, if the traditions of Nævius were Italian, were not many of the Greek and Italian traditions which form the framework of the Æneid identical? Nævius must have drawn largely from the Cyclic poems; and Niebuhr allows that Virgil copied these parts of his poem from Nævius.584 He asserts his conviction that Virgil’s shield of Æneas had its model in Nævius, in whose poem Æneas or some other hero had a shield representing the wars of the giants; and yet no one could doubt that the shield of Nævius must have been suggested by the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. Servius also believed that Virgil borrowed from the poem of Nævius the plan of the early books of the Æneid.585

Some of Virgil’s minor poems are undoubtedly very beautiful;586 but it is absurd to say that even the greatest elegance in fugitive pieces of such a stamp can outshine the noble and sublime passages interwoven throughout the whole structure of the Æneid. The dispraise of Niebuhr is as exaggerated as the fulsome compliment paid by Propertius to the genius of his fellow-countryman:—

Cedite, Romani scriptores, cedite Graii,
  Nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade.
          Eleg. ii. 27.

Chapter V — The Libertini — Roman Feelings as to Commerce — Birth and Infancy of Horace — His Early Education at Rome — His Military Career — He Returns to Rome — Is Introduced to Mæcenas — Commences the Satires — Mæcenas Gives Him His Sabine Farm — His Country Life — The Epodes — Epistles — Carmen Seculare — Illness and Death

Horatius Flaccus (Born B. C. 65.)

Lyric poetry is the most subjective of all poetry, and the musician of the Roman lyre587 was the most subjective of all Latin poets: hence a complete sketch of his life and delineation of his character may be deduced from his works. They contain the elements of an autobiography; and, whilst they constitute the most authentic source of information, convey the particulars in the most lively and engaging form.

At the period of Horace’s birth the Libertini, or freedmen, were rapidly rising in wealth, and, therefore, in position. The Roman constitution excluded the senatorial order from commercial pursuits, and would not even permit them to own vessels of any considerable burden, lest they should be made use of in trade. The old Roman feeling was even more exclusive than the law. There were certain trades in which not only none who had any pretensions to the rank of a gentleman, but even no one who was free-born could engage without degradation. Cicero588 considers that money-lending, manufactures, retail trade, especially in delicacies which minister to the appetite, are all sordid and illiberal. He does not even allow that the professions of medicine and architecture are honourable, except to such as are of suitable rank. Agriculture is the only method of money-making which he pronounces to be without any doubt worthy of free-born men.

Devoted to the duties of public life either as soldiers or citizens, the Romans did not comprehend the dignity of labour. High-minded and unselfish as it may appear to think meanly of employments undertaken simply for the sake of profit and lucre, the political result of this pride was unmixed evil. Commerce was thus thrown into the hands of those whose fathers had been slaves, and who themselves inherited and possessed the usual vices of a slavish disposition.

The middle classes were impoverished, and, as the unavoidable consequence of a system in which social position depended upon property, were rapidly sinking into the lowest ranks of the population. Here then was a gap to be filled up—the question was by what means? Had Roman feeling permitted the free-born citizen to devote his energies to labour and the creation of capital, he would have risen in the social scale, would have occupied the place left vacant, and would have brought with him those sentiments of chivalrous freedom which there can be no doubt distinguished Rome in earlier times, and advanced her in the scale of nations. Thus the circulation would have been complete and healthy, and the national system would have received fresh life and vigour in its most important part. Instead of this, however, slaves and the sons of slaves rose to wealth: not such slaves as those who, well educated and occupying a high or, at least, a respectable position in the conquered Greek states, were appreciated by their conquerors, became their friends and intimates, because of their worth and intellectual acquirements, imbued their masters with their own refinement and taste, and were intrusted with the education of their children, but slaves who had formed the masses of degraded nations. These were driven in hordes to Rome. They swarmed in all the states of Italy and Sicily. Many of them were not deficient in ability and energy, and therefore they rose; but they had little or no moral principle. Their children intermarried with the lower classes of the citizens; their blood infected that of the higher European races which flowed in their veins; and thus the masses of Rome became a mixed race, but not mixed for the better. The character changed; but it changed because the old race had perished, and a new race with new characteristics occupied its place.

Under such circumstances, the Libertini became a powerful and important class, both socially and politically: they were the bankers, merchants, and tradesmen of Rome.

Of this class, the father of Horace was one of the most respectable. His business was that of a coactor, or agent who collected the money from purchasers of goods at public auctions. He was a man of strict integrity, content with his position, and would not have thought himself disgraced if his son had followed his own calling.589 He had made by his industry a small fortune, sufficient to purchase an estate near Venusia (Venosa,) on the confines of Lucania and Apulia, but not sufficient to free him from the appellation of “a poor man.”590

Here, on the 8th of December (vi^to id. Decembr.,) B. C. 65, Q. Horatius Flaccus was born; and on the banks of the obstreperous Aufidus,591 the roar of whose waters could be heard far off,592 Horace passed his infant years, and played and wandered in that picturesque neighbourhood. The natural beauties amidst which he was nursed, probably did much to form and foster his poetic tastes. He himself relates, in one of his finest odes,593 an adventure which befell him in his childhood, and which reminds the reader of the beautiful nursery ballad of the Children in the Wood:——

Me fabulosæ Vulture in Appulo
Altricis extra limen Apuliæ
  Ludo fatigatumque somno
    Fronde nova puerum palumbes

Texere (mirum quod foret omnibus,
Quicumque celsæ nidum Acherontiæ,
  Saltusque Bantinos, et arvum
    Pingue tenent humilis Ferenti,)

Ut tuto ab atris corpore viperis
Dormirem et ursis; ut premerer sacra
  Lauroque collataque myrto
    Non sine Dîs animosus infans.

  Fatigued with sleep and youthful toil of play,
  When on a mountain’s brow reclined I lay,
  Near to my natal soil, around my head
The fabled woodland doves a verdant foliage spread;

  Matter, be sure, of wonder most profound
  To all the gazing habitants around,
  Who dwell in Acherontia’s airy glades,
Amid the Bantian woods, or low Ferentum’s meads.

  By snakes of poison black and beasts of prey,
  That thus in dewy sleep unharmed I lay;
  Laurels and myrtle were around me piled,
Not without guardian gods, an animated child.
          Francis.

He remained amongst his native mountains until his eleventh or twelfth year, when his father, wisely wishing to secure for him the benefits of a liberal education, which the neighbouring village school of Flavius did not furnish, removed with him to Rome.594 Thus he quitted Venusia for ever, of which place many passages in his works prove that he retained very vivid recollections.595

At Rome he was placed under the instruction of Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had been formerly in the army, and had migrated from Beneventum to the capital. He was celebrated as a schoolmaster, but still more for his severity, for he was commonly called the flogging Orbilius (Plagosus Orbilius.596) With him young Horace read in his own language the poems of Livius Andronicus and Ennius; and in the Greek, the Iliad of Homer, whose divine poetry he soon learnt to enjoy.597

Whilst his father took this care of his intellectual education, he enabled him by dress and a retinue of slaves to associate on terms of equality with boys far above him in rank and station;598 and, what was still more important, he kept him under his own roof, and thus secured for his son the benefits of home influences, sage and prudent advice, and the watchful care of the parental eye.599 For his father’s liberality, good example, and constant attention, Horace expresses the deepest gratitude,600 and to him he acknowledges himself indebted for all the good points of his character. The practical nature of this indulgent and devoted father’s instruction—how he delighted to teach by example rather than by precept—is simply told by Horace himself601 in one of his satires.

Before he arrived at man’s estate, it is probable that he lost his wise adviser, for he never mentions his father except in connexion with the years of his boyhood. Perhaps this is the reason why, in his earlier poetry, his genial freedom so often degenerated into licentiousness, and his love of pleasure tempted him to adopt the dissolute manners of a corrupt age. His moral sense was accurate and just—he could see what was useful and approve it; he could censure the vices of his contemporaries—but he had lost that wise counsel which had hitherto preserved him pure.

Athens was at that period the university of Rome. Thither the Roman youth resorted to learn language, art, science, and philosophy:—

Inter sylvas Academi quærere verum.602

To seek for truth in Academic groves.

Horace commenced his residence there at a great political crisis, and the politics of Rome created a vivid interest in the young students at Athens. He had not lived there long, when Julius Cæsar was assassinated; and many of his fellow students, as was natural to youthful and ardent minds, zealously embraced the republican party. Horace, now twenty-two years of age, joined the army of Brutus, and served under him until the battle of Philippi in the rank of a military tribune.603 He must have already become distinguished, since nothing but merit could have recommended the son of a freedman to Brutus for so high a military command. But the event proved that he had sadly mistaken his vocation, for he was totally unfit for the position either of an officer or a soldier.

With the rest of the vanquished he fled from the field of Philippi; and in a beautiful and affectionate ode604 to Pompeius Varus, he confesses that he even threw away his shield; nor was he one of those who rallied, although his friend was carried back again into the bloody conflict of the tide of war. So at any rate he himself tells the story. It may have been, however, that his vanity prompted him to pretend a resemblance in this respect to his favourite Alcæus, or perhaps he wished to address a piece of courtly flattery to the conqueror. Varus was one of his earliest friends: together they had spent days of study and of festivity; and when troublous times had separated them, nothing can exceed the wild and tumultuous joy with which Horace looks forward to a reunion with his friend.

On his return to Rome he found that his father was dead, and his patrimony confiscated.605 In order to obtain a livelihood, he purchased a clerk’s place under the quæstor.606 For its duties he must have been totally unfit, for he hated business607 and loved pleasure and literary ease. But on the income of this office, and the kindness of his friends, he lived a life of frugality and poverty.608 It is possible that even then he gained some profit from his poems, for he says,609 “Audacious poverty drove me to write verses.” Perhaps when he became more prosperous, he resigned his place, for he does not mention it in the account he gives to Mæcenas of the usual, daily avocations of his careless and sauntering life.610

Soon, however, his fortunes began to brighten. His talents recommended him, when about twenty-four years of age, to Virgil and Varius.611 They were then the leading poets at Rome; and Mæcenas, the polished but somewhat effeminate friend of Augustus, was the powerful patron of genius and the head of literary society. These two poets were warmly attached to Horace, whose affection for them was equally strong,612 and to them he owed his introduction to the favourite of the emperor.613 He felt rather timid at the interview: Mæcenas spoke to him with his usual reserved and curt manner, took no notice of him for nine months, and then sent for him and enrolled him in the number of his friends. Thenceforth Horace enjoyed uninterruptedly his friendship and intimacy—of the affectionate nature of which many evidences may be found in those poetical pieces which Horace addressed to him.

As Mæcenas rose in influence and favour with Augustus, he also procured the advancement of his friend. When he was sent by Augustus on the delicate mission of effecting a reconciliation with Anthony, Horace accompanied him;614 and it is not impossible that his shipwreck off Cape Palinurus occurred when he was sailing with Mæcenas on his expedition against S. Pompey.

At this period of his life he commenced the composition of his first book of Satires.615 The knowledge of human life which he had begun to acquire when he lived, as it were, upon the town, and became acquainted with the manners, habits and modes of thinking of the masses, was afterwards cultivated, refined and matured by intercourse with the best literary society. His observant mind found ample materials for satire at the table of the courtly Mæcenas, and amidst the brilliant circle by which he was surrounded. In this, his first publication, he also introduces himself to the reader’s notice, draws a lively picture of his youth, and describes the life which was congenial to his tastes, and which his change of circumstances permitted him to lead.

But it must not be supposed that he wrote nothing at that time except satire. Some of his odes, which display the strength of youthful passions and the loosest morality, were probably written as separate fugitive pieces, and circulated privately amongst his friends. The ode to Canidia narrates a circumstance in the early part of his poetical career. The Epodes breathe the spirit of the satirist rather than of the lyric poet; and therefore the coarsest of them616 also may belong to the same period,617 although the book which bears that name was not completed and published as a whole until some years subsequently.

The bitterness of some of the Epodes is more suitable to his years of adversity, and the hard struggles by which the temper is soured, than to that life of ease and comfort which patronage enabled him to lead. Then his temper resumed its wonted placidity, whilst his moral taste was refined; his Archilochian iambics became less cutting, and his ideas less gross; personal invective was laid aside, and his indignation was only aroused by the prospect of political troubles and the horrors of civil commotions.

Mæcenas accompanied his friendship with substantial favours. He gave him, or procured for him by his influence, the public grant of his Sabine farm. It was situated in a beautiful valley near Digentia (Licenza.) Being about fifteen miles from Tibur (Tivoli,) it was sufficiently near the capital to suit the fickle poet, who, when there, often regretted the luxury, and gossip, and brilliant society of Rome, and, when at Rome, sighed for the frugal table, the quiet retirement, the rural employment of his country abode. The rapid alternation of town and country life, which the possession of this estate enabled Horace to enjoy, gives a peculiar charm to his poetry. The scene is ever changing: his mind reflects the tenor of his life; simple pictures of rural life, and the elegant refinements of polished society, relieve one another, and prevent dulness and satiety. The property was neither extensive nor fertile, but it was sufficient for his moderate wants and wishes, which are so beautifully expressed in his sixth Satire—a poem which has found many modern imitators.

At Rome, Horace occupied a house on the pleasant and healthful heights of the Esquiline. Here he resided during the winter and spring, with the exception of occasional sojourns at Baiæ, or other places of fashionable resort, on the southern coast of Italy. Summer and autumn he passed at his Sabine farm, where he was a great favourite with his simple neighbours, and where he found all that he ever wished for, and even more.

        Modus agri non ita magnus,
Hortus ubi, et tecto vicinus jugis aquæ fons,
Et paulum silvæ super his.618

He coveted not his neighbour’s field,619 even though it disfigured his own. He never prayed that chance might throw in his way a buried vase of silver.620 The calm of his life contrasted favourably with the hundred affairs—not so much his own as of other people—which tormented him at Rome;621 the importunities of his friends that he would use his influence in their behalf with Mæcenas;622 the growing envy to which his good fortune subjected him:623 his only cares were to store up provisions for his frugal maintenance during the year,624 so that he might live in sweet forgetfulness of how he lived.625 His days were divided between the books of the ancients,626 the philosophy of Plato, and the lively scenes of Menander.627

The pleasing labours of the farm served him by way of exercise, although his town habits and awkwardness, and perhaps his short and stout figure, panting and perspiring under the heat and exertion, sometimes provoked good-humoured laughter.628 At times, although he confessed how dangerous was the siren voice of sloth, he would spend hours of musing idleness on the margin of his favourite stream, listening to its murmurs, and to the music of the shepherd’s reed as it echoed through the Arcadian glen.629 The evenings were devoted to social converse with honest and virtuous friends, from which scandal and gossip were banished; the conversation usually turning on moral and philosophical discussion,630 whilst its seriousness was occasionally relieved by witty anecdotes and pointed fables, of which those of the town and country mice, and of the madman who, when cured, complained that his friends had destroyed all the happiness of his dreamy life, furnish examples. At these petits soupers, which he called “suppers of the gods,” the guests drank as much or as little as they pleased of his old wine, and enjoyed perfect freedom from the absurd laws which Roman custom permitted the chairman (arbiter bibendi) on such occasions to impose.

Sometimes, when the heat of summer was intense, he retired to the lofty Præneste (Palestrina,) where the climate was always cool and refreshing.631 At some period of his life, also, he became possessed of a villa at Tibur (Tivoli,) of which the shady groves and roaring waterfalls furnished him a delightful refreshment after “the smoke, and magnificence, and noise of Rome.” Here he wrote many of his satires, and thus achieved the reputation as a satirist of which he had laid the foundation already; and was enabled to boast that, though earnestly desirous of peace with the world, it were better not to provoke him; that he who dared to offend him should smart for it, and be the laughing-stock of the whole city.632

The composition and arrangement of the second book of Satires probably occupied the thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second years of the poet’s life,633 and it was not published until the following year. This date will allow time for the expiration of more than seven or eight years since his intimacy with Mæcenas commenced.634 The Satires were followed by the publication of the Epodes, very soon after the battle of Actium,635 for the ninth is evidently an epinician ode on the occasion of that victory. Many of them contain noble sentiments, patriotic advice, burning indignation against the oriental self-indulgence of Antony,636 the servility of Rome, its civil strife, and the degeneracy of the age; and remind us that, before Horace became an Epicurean and a courtier, he had fought against a tyrant in the ranks of freedom.637 The first Epode was written just before the battle of Actium; the second and third at the period when he first exchanged the life of a fashionable man about town for that of a country gentleman. We see in one the delight which he derived from the consciousness that his estate was his own; that he had no pecuniary embarrassments any longer; his anticipations of the happiness to be enjoyed in the regularly-recurring labours of rural life; in the absence of all care; in the kind-hearted anticipations of humble domestic felicity; the superiority of a healthful meal to all the luxuries that wealth could purchase. In the other, notwithstanding all these professions of sentiment, he shows that his refined urbanity is shocked by the grossness of rural habits. His delicate nose cannot endure the smell of garlic: to him it is nothing less than poison, such as Canidia or Medea might have used. It is more deadly than the malaria of Apulia, or the envenomed robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. Nay, in the same spirit Johnson said that “He who would make a pun would pick a pocket,” he does not scruple to affirm that a garlic-eater would commit parricide.

The seventh Epode is a burst of indignant expostulation against the fratricidal madness which, at the bidding of an unprincipled woman, armed Romans against each other in that tragical episode, the Perugian war, when the first struggle took place between the civilians and the soldiers for political influence and power. In the Epodes the spirit is that of the satirist exaggerated. The outward form which he had modelled by a careful study of the Archilochian verse, prepared him for the cultivation of that poetry in which he stands pre-eminent. It was the state of transition through which he passed before he became a lyric poet.

With their publication concludes the first period of Horace’s literary life. It was now flowing on calmly and peaceably, undisturbed by anxiety either about himself or his country. Although the civil wars were not yet ended, or the peace of the world solemnly and finally proclaimed, until the temple of Janus was closed,638 the course of Octavius to universal empire lay plain and open before him. Rome was at his feet, and owed to him its safety and prosperity.

Public and private well-doing developed a new phase of Horace’s genius. His muse soared to heights which had only been attempted by Pindar and the other Greek lyric poets. It cannot, of course, be supposed that he lived to the age of thirty-five years without having written many of those odes, which are so full of a youthful sprightliness and burning passion; but it is certain that many more were written, and the first three books published, during the period of eight years included between his thirty-fifth and forty-second years;639 some when he was approaching, others when he had passed, his eighth lustre. In these three books it is probable that Horace intended all the products of his lyric muse should be comprised: to this purpose the last ode of the third book640 seems to point. He considered his work done; and he was not insensible to the successful manner in which he had accomplished it. With conscious pride, and in a prophetic spirit, he exclaimed—

Exegi monumentum ære perennius.

He intended his beloved friend and patron, Mæcenas, to be the subject of his last, as he was of his first, song. His introductory satire—the commencement of his published works—was addressed to him; the last ode in the book641 (except that final one which proclaims his task finished) is a noble farewell, breathing the language of affectionate compliment;642 and in the introduction to his new work, the labour of his maturer years, the fruit of careful judgment respecting men and things, he states his determination to finish his career as a poet, and to devote his last verses to his patron.

A few years after the first three books of the Odes, Horace published the first book of the Epistles. Bentley assigns the appearance of these finished and elaborate compositions to B. C. 19, Clinton to B. C. 20. The Carmen Seculare, which appeared B. C. 17, on the occasion of the celebration of the Secular Games, and the fourth book of the Odes, which was published B. C. 13, were written at the personal request of the Emperor. He wished him to celebrate the victories gained over Vindelici by his step-sons, Tiberius and Drusus. His compliance with the wishes of Augustus was a graceful return for the regard and affection which the letters of the Emperor show that he felt for the poet.643 The warm admiration which, these odes express, the praises which are lavished in them, upon Augustus and his step-sons Tiberius and Drusus, may seem inconsistent with the poet’s former republicanism; but who could withstand the proffered friendship, the winning courtesy, the good-tempered condescension of his patron?

Besides, the experience of the past years must have forced him conscientiously to believe that the reign of Augustus was indeed a blessing to his country, and that his countrymen were totally unfit for real liberty, as they showed themselves quite content with the empty shadow of the constitution. He felt peace and repose were to be purchased by almost any sacrifice except that of honourable principle; that not only all the enjoyments of life were secured to himself to an extent equalling, if not surpassing, the wishes of his contented spirit, but that a similar measure of happiness was pretty generally diffused. He could not sympathize with political ambition, which had been the fruitful source of civil anarchy, and it was only the ambitious who had any cause to be dissatisfied. Doubtless the older he grew the stronger was the obligation which he felt to him who, by the lofty position which he had attained, had apparently prevented even the possibility of revolution or change. It is certain that the second book of the Epistles, and that addressed to the Pisos, which is commonly called the Art of Poetry, were written and published during the last years of his life; but the date cannot be exactly determined. He had long bid adieu to the excitements of politics; nor do these, his latest works, exhibit traces of his fondness for discussing questions of moral science, or for the profounder speculations of natural philosophy. He limits himself to the neutral ground of literature; and writes only as a writer whose judgment would be undisputed, because his works in their several departments had actually formed the taste of his contemporaries.

In November, B. C. 8, A. U. C. 746, Horace was seized with a sudden attack of illness, and died in the fifty-seventh year of his age. His old friend Mæcenas had expired but a few months before. They were buried near one another on the slope of the Esquiline.

His death was so sudden that he was unable to write a will; he had but just time before he expired to nominate, according to a common custom, the Emperor his heir.

Horace was never married; he was too general an admirer, and his tastes and habits were too much those of a bachelor, to appreciate the happiness of a wedded life. In this respect his feelings resembled those of the voluptuous and selfish society of his times. He was of small and slight figure,644 but afterwards he grew corpulent.645 The vigour which he enjoyed in early youth646 was diminished by ill health; he became prematurely gray,647 and a passage in one of his Odes seems to imply that he was a valetudinarian at forty.648

Chapter VI — Character of Horace — Descriptions of His Villa at Tivoli, and His Sabine Farm — Site of the Bandusian Fountain — The Neighbouring Scenery — Subjects of His Satires and Epistles — Beauty of His Odes — Imitations of Greek Poets — Spurious Odes — Chronological Arrangement

The life of Horace is especially instructive, as a mirror in which is reflected a faithful image of the manners of his day. He is the representative of Roman refined society, as Virgil is of the national mind. He who understands Horace and his works can picture to himself the society in which he lived and moved. One cannot sympathize with Petrarch, when he says “Se ex nullo poeta Latino evasisse meliorem quam ex Horatio,” or exclaim with the devoted Mæcenas,

Ni te visceribus meis Horati
Plus jam diligo, tu tuum sodalem
Ninnio videas strigosiorem—

but still it is scarcely possible not to feel an affection for him. Notwithstanding his selfish Epicureanism, he possessed those elements of character which constitute the popularity of men of the world. He was a gentleman in taste and sentiments. He would not have denied himself any gratification for the sake of others; but he would not willingly have caused any one a moment’s uneasiness, nor was he ever ungrateful to those who were kind to him. He was a pleasant friend and a good-humoured associate, adroit in using the language of compliment, but not a flatterer, because he was candid and sincere. He changed his politics, but he had good cause for so doing. The circumstances of the times furnished ample justification. His morals were lax, but not worse than those of his contemporaries: all that can be said is, that he was not in advance of his age. His principles will not bear comparison with a high moral standard; but he had good qualities to compensate for his moral deficiencies. He looked at virtue and vice from a worldly, not a moral point of view. With him the former was prudence, the latter folly. Vice, therefore, provoked a sneer of derision, and not indignation at the sin or compassion for the sinner; and for the same reason he was incapable of entertaining a holy enthusiasm for virtue.

Good-tempered as a man, he nevertheless showed that he belonged to the genus irritabile vatum. He was jealous of his poetical reputation; not, indeed, towards his contemporaries, but towards the poets of former ages. He either could not or would not see any merit in old Roman poetry. His prejudice cannot be ascribed only to his enthusiasm for Greek literature, for he did not even appreciate the excellences which the old school of poetry had in common with the Greeks. Party spirit had somewhat to do with it, for a feud on the subject divided the literary society of the day,649 and hence Horace took his side warmly and uncompromisingly.

But the principal cause was jealousy—unless he ignored Lucilius and Catullus, he could not claim to have been the first follower of Archilochus of whom Rome could boast; or, as the representative of Roman lyric poetry, to have first tuned his lyre to Æolian song.

The scenes in which Horace passed his life are so interesting to every reader of his works, that a few words respecting his villa at Tivoli and his Sabine farm will not be out of place here. Tibur650 is situated on one of the spurs of the Appennines, about fifteen or sixteen miles from Rome, on the left bank of the Anio (Teverone.) The river winds gently by the town, separating it from the villa of Horace, and then, falling in a sheet of water over an escarped rock, disappears beneath a rocky cavern. Its roaring echoes are heard far and wide, and justifies the epithet (resonans,) which Horace gives to the dwelling of Albunea, the Tiburtine Sibyl. The villa commanded fine views, and a garden sloped down from it to the river’s bank. From its grounds was visible the palace of Mæcenas: on the opposite shore the wooded Sabine hills sheltered it from the north; and the domain of the poet’s friend, Quintilius Varus, formed its western boundary.

About fifteen miles north-east of Tibur, nestling amongst the roots of Mount Lucretilis, lay the Sabine farm. Fragments of white marble, and mosaic, which have been found there, show that, notwithstanding the simple frugality which Horace delights to describe, it was built and embellished with elegance and taste. From the mountain side, which rises behind the house, trickles a clear stream, the source of which is now called Fonte Bello, and which afterwards becomes the river Digentia (Licenza,) and waters the beautiful valley of the sloping Ustica (Usticæ Cubantis.) This rill, the parent of Horace’s favourite river, the embellisher of that “riant angle of the earth,” is interesting as being probably the fountain of Bandusia, “more transparent than glass,”651 with whose fresh and sparkling waters the poet tempered his wine.

M. de Chaupy652 assumes that the Bandusian fountain, mentioned by Horace, was situated near the birthplace of Horace, on the Lucano-Apulian border. His opinion rests on the words of a grant made by Pope Pascal II. to the abbot of the Bantine monastery; and Mr. Hobhouse653 considers this document as decisive in ascertaining its position. It is decisive as to the existence of a Bandusian fountain near Venusia; but it must be remembered that Horace never saw it after the days of his childhood, when his paternal estate passed away from him for ever, whilst he speaks of his Bandusian fountain as near him, when he writes, and promises to sacrifice a kid to the guardian genius of the spring. What, then, is more probable than the suggestion of Mr. Dunlop,654 that the same pleasing recollections of his early years, which inspired him to relate his touching adventure, led him to “name the clearest and loveliest stream of his Sabine retreat after that fountain which lay in Apulia, and on the brink of which he had no doubt often sported in infancy?”655 He has in one of his odes alluded to this affectionate desire to perpetuate reminiscences of home—a desire which is illustrated by the topographical nomenclature which has been adopted by colonists of every age and country.

Mr. Dennis, however, in a letter written at Licenza,656 in sight of the pleasant shades of M. Lucretilis, although he makes no doubt of the Bandusian fountain being in the neighbourhood, does not identify it with the “Fonte Bello.” He asserts that, although he has traced every streamlet in the neighbourhood, the only one which answers to the classical description is one now called “Fonte Blandusia.” It rises in a narrow glen which divides the Mount Lucretilis from Ustica, which probably derives its modern name Valle Rustica from a corruption of the classical appellation. As you ascend the glen it contracts into a ravine with bare cliffs on either side; the streamlet with difficulty winds its way between mossy rocks (musco circumlita saxa,) overshadowed with dense woods which effectually exclude the heat of the blazing Dog-star. The water issues from a rock, and trickles into two successive natural basins. “The water is indeed splendidior vitro; nothing, not even the Thracian Hebrus, can exceed it in purity, coolness, and sweetness: ‘its loquacious waters still bubble;’ the very ilices still overhang the hollow rocks whence it springs.”

A reference to Horace’s description657 will prove to the modern traveller through this classic region with what fidelity and accuracy the poet has described the natural features of the scenery. The mountain chain is continuous and unbroken (continui montes,) save by the well wooded and therefore shady valley of the Digentia, which intersects it in such a direction that—

    Veniens dextrum latus aspiciat sol,
Lævum decedens curru fugiente vaporet.

Another valley meets it, and on an exposed height, at the point of junction, stands Bardela, in Horace’s time Mandela, and well described by him as rugosus frigore pagus.658 Corn grows on the sunny field (apricum pratum) which slopes from the farm to the river: the ruins of other dwellings mark the spot occupied by five domestic hearths, and sending five honest representatives to the municipal council of the neighbourhood:—

      —— habitatum quinque focis, et
Quinque bonos solitum Variam dimittere patres.659

A comparison of the truthful and descriptive verses of Horace identify the spot which he loved. Nature is the same now as it was then; but human skill and perseverance have adorned with the purple clusters of the vine that “little corner of the world” which Horace said would bear pepper and frankincense more quickly than grapes.660

The Satires of Horace occupy the position of the comedy of manners and the fashionable novel. They are much more appropriately described by the title Sermones (Discourses) which is also given to them. They are, in fact, desultory didactic essays, in which the topics are discussed just as they present themselves. In them is sketched boldly but good-humouredly a picture of Roman social life with its vices and follies. His object was (to use his own words)—

          Ut omnis
Votivâ pateat veluti descripta tabellâ
Vita.
          Sat. II. i. 32.

Vices, however, are treated as follies; and the man of wit and pleasure seldom uses a weapon more keen than the shafts of ridicule:—

Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
Tangit et admissus circum præcordia ludit.
          Persius, S. i. 116.

      Arch Horace, while he strove to mend,
Probed all the foibles of his smiling friend;
Played lightly round and round the peccant part,
And won unfelt an entrance to his heart;
Well skilled the follies of the crowd to trace,
And sneer with gay good humour in his face.
          Gifford.661

There is nothing of the political bitterness of Lucilius,662 the love of purity and honour which adorns Persius, or the burning indignation which Juvenal pours forth at the loathsome corruption of morals. Horace had been a politician and a warm champion of liberty; but the struggle was now over, both with himself and his country. Ease and tranquillity were insured to both by the new régime; and his contented temper disposed him to acquiesce in a state of things which gave Rome time to rest from the horrors of civil war, and did not interfere with the independence of the individual. Hence the circumstances of the times, as well as his own temper, rendered his satires social and not political. Lucilius wrote when the strife between nobles and people was still raging, and the latter had not as yet succumbed. He, therefore, breathed the spirit of the old Athenian comic poets whom he followed and emulated; and the war of public opinion furnished him with topics similar to those which were discussed in the republican commonwealth of Athens.

Circumstances also influenced, in some degree, the tone of Horace’s strictures on the habits of social life. Immoral as society was, its most salient features were luxury, frivolity, extravagance, and effeminacy. Vice had not reached that appalling height which it attained in the time of the emperor who succeeded Augustus. Deficient in moral purity, an Epicurean and a debauchee, nothing would strike him as deserving censure, except such success as would actually defeat the object which he proposed to himself—namely, the utmost enjoyment of life. The dictates of prudence, therefore, would be his highest standard and his strongest check. He saw that public morals were already deteriorated, and threatened to become worse; but though they were bad enough to provoke derision, they did not shock or revolt one who was, and who professed to be, a man of the world. Had Horace lived in the time of Persius or Lucilius, even his satire would probably have been pointed and severe.

Often his satires are only accidentally didactic; he contents himself with graphic delineations of character and manners, and leaves them to produce their own moral effect upon the reader. In one663 he holds up the superstition of the Romans to ridicule by a minute narrative of the absurd ceremonies performed by Canidia and another sorceress in their incantations. In another,664 amusingly describes the annoyance to which he was exposed by the importunities of a gossiping trifler. In the journey to Brundisium he seems to have had no view beyond entertainment; although two incidents give him an opportunity of exposing the pomposity of a municipal official and the superstitious follies of a country town.665 In others, his subjects are the scenery and neighbouring society of his Sabine valley;666 the way in which he is wont to spend his day when at Rome; his own autobiography;667 a laughable trial in Asia;668 an essay on cookery;669 and a candid exposure of his own faults and inconsistencies. Not that he is forgetful of his moral duties as a satirist. He exposes to merited contempt the prevailing iniquities of the day. The meanness of legacy-hunting; the absurdity of pretension and foppery; the folly of an inordinate passion for amassing wealth;670 the dangers of adultery;671 the unfairness of uncharitably misinterpreting the conduct of others.672

Such are the varied subjects contained in the Sermones or Satires of Horace. The Epistles are still more desultory and unrestrained. Epistolary writing is especially a Roman accomplishment. The Romans thought their correspondents deserved that as much pains should be bestowed on that which was addressed to them as on that which was intended for the public eye; and, in addition to the careful polish of which Cicero set the example, Horace brought to the task the embellishment of poetry. In the Epistles, he lays aside the character of a moral teacher or censor. He treats his correspondent as an equal. He opens his heart unreservedly: he gives advice, but in a kind and gentle spirit, not with sneering severity. The satire is delivered ex cathedrâ;—the epistle with the freedom with which he would converse with an intimate friend.

The subjects of the first books are moral, those of the second critical. The Ars Poetica is but a poetical epistle addressed to the Pisos, who had been bitten by the prevailing mania for tragic poetry. The usual title claims a far greater extent of subject than the poet intended. It is not a treatise on poetry, but simply an outline of the history of the Greek drama, and the principles of criticism applicable to it. It harmonizes well with the literary subjects treated of in the second book of the Epistles, and might well be included in it. It is, indeed, longer and more elaborate: a synopsis of so extensive a subject required more careful treatment; but it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the taste and judgment which it displays, unless it is considered as nothing more than an epistle.

The versification of these compositions is more smooth than that of the Satires, but only in proportion to the superior neatness of the style generally. In neither does the metrical harmony rise to the height of poetry, properly speaking. Doubtless this was the poet’s deliberate intention. It cannot be supposed that he who could so successfully introduce all the beautiful Greek lyric metres, and in some cases improve the delicacy of their structure, was incapable of reproducing the rhythm of the Greek hexameter. He felt that in subjects belonging to the prosaic realities of life, and hitherto treated with the conversational facility of the iambic measure, some appearance of negligence and even roughness could alone render the stately hexameter appropriate, and therefore tolerable. But, admirable as the Satires are for their artistic and dramatic power, and the Epistles for their correct taste, lively wit, and critical elegance, it is in his inimitable Odes that the genius of Horace as a poet is especially displayed. They have never been equalled in beauty of sentiment, gracefulness of language, and melody of versification. They comprehend every variety of subject suitable to the lyric muse. They rise without effort to the most elevated topics—the grandest subjects of history, the most gorgeous legends of mythology, the noblest aspirations of patriotism: they descend to the simplest joys and sorrows of every-day life. At one time they burn with indignation, at another they pour forth accents of the tenderest emotions. They present in turn every phase of the author’s character: some remind us that he was a philosopher and a satirist; and although many are sensuous and self-indulgent, they are full of gentleness, kindness, and spirituality. Not only do they evince a complete mastery over the Greek metres, but also show that Horace was thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Greek poetry, and had profoundly studied Greek literature, especially the writings of Pindar and the lyric poets. Numerous as the instances are in which he has imitated them, and introduced by a happy adaptation their ideas, epithets, and phrases, his imitations are not mere plagiarisms or purple patches—they are made so completely his own, and are invested with so much novelty and originality, that, when compared with the original, we receive additional gratification from discovering the resemblance. The sentiments which are paraphrased seem improved: the expressions which are translated seem so appropriate, and harmonize so exactly with the context, that a poet, whose memory was stored with them, would have been guilty of bad taste if he had substituted any others. Greek feelings, sentiments, and imagery, are so naturally amalgamated with Roman manners, that they seem to have undergone a transmigration, and to animate a Roman form. The following are some of the most striking parallelisms:673—

Sunt quos curriculo, &c.
          Carm. 1, 3, seq.

Ἀελλοποδων μεν τινας ευφραινουσιν ἱππων τιμαι και στεφανοι·
τους δ’ εν πολυχρυσοις θαλαμοις βιοτα·
τερπεται δε και τις επ’ οιδμ’ αλιον
ναι θοα σως διαστειχων.
          Pind. Fragm.

---

  Jam te premet nox, fabulæque Manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia: quo simul mearis,
  Nec regna vini sortiere talis, &c.
          Carm. 1, 4, 16, seq.

Κατθανοισα δε κεισ’, ουδεποτε μναμοσυνα σεθεν
εσσετ’ ουδεποτ’ εις υστερον. ου γαρ πεδεχεις βροδων
των εκ Πιεριας. αλλ’ αφανης κην Αιδα δομοις
φοιτασεις πεδ’ αμαυρων νεκυων εκπεποταμενα.
          Sapph. Fragm.

---

Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum
Soracte, nec jam sustineant onus
  Silvæ laborantes, geluque
    Flumina constiterint acuto?
Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco
Large reponens; atque benignius
  Deprome quadrimum Sabina,
    O Thaliarche, merum diota.
          Carm. 1, 9. seq.

Υει μεν ο Ζευς, εκ δ’ ορανω μεγας
χειμων · πεπαγασιν δ’ υδατων ροαι.
· · · ·
· · · · ·
Καββαλλε τον χειμων’, επι μεν τιθεις
πυρ, εν δε κιρναις οινον αφειδεως
  μελιχρον· αυταρ αμπι κορσα
    μαλθακον αμπιτιθει γναφαλλον.
          Alcæi Fragm.

---

Quem virum aut heroa lyra vel acri
Tibia sumis celebrare, Clio?
Quem Deum? cujus recinet jocosa
        Nomen imago, &c.
          Carm. 1, 12, seq.

Ἀναξιφορμιγγες υμνοι
τινα θεον, τιν’ ηρωα, τινα δ’ ανδρα κελαδησομεν.
          Pind. Ol. 2, 1.

O navis, referent in mare te novi
Fluctus? O quid agis? fortiter occupa
  Portum. Nonne vides, ut
    Nudum remigio latus,
Et malus celeri saucius Africo
Antennæque gemant? ac sine funibus
  Vix durare carinæ
    Possint imperiosius
Æquor?
          Carm. 1, 14, seq.

Το μεν γαρ ενθεν κυμα κυλινδεται,
  Το δ’ ενθεν· αμμες δ’ αν το μεσσον
    ναι φορημεθα συν μελαινα,
Χειμωνι μοχθευντες μεγανω καλων·
παρ μεν γαρ αντλος ιοτοπεδαν εχει,
  λαιφος δε παν ζαδηλον ηδη,
    και λακιδες μεγαλαι κατ αυτο
Χαλασι δ’ αγκυραι...
          Alcæi Fragm.

---

Nullam, Vare, sacra vite prius severis arborem.
          Carm. 1, 18, seq.

Μηδεν αλλο φυτευσης προτερον δενδρεον αμπελω.
          Alcæi Fragm.

---

Vitas hinnuleo me similis, Chloe,
Quærenti pavidam montibus aviis
  Matrem, non sine vano
    Aurarum et silvæ metu.
          Carm. 1, 23, seq.

Ατε νεβρον νεοθηλεα γαλαθηνον, ος εν υλη
  Κεροεσσης απολειφθεις υπο μητρος επτοηθη.
          Anacr. Fragm.

---

O Venus, regina Gnidi Paphique,
Sperne dilectam Cypron, &c.
          Carm. 1, 30, seq.

Κυπρον ιμερταν λιποισα και Παφον περιρρυταν.
          Alcman. Fragm.

---

Quid dedicatum poscit Apollinem
Vates? quid orat, de patera novum
  Fundens liquorem? &c.
          Carm. 1, 31, seq.

Τι δ’ ερδων, φιλος σοι τε,
καρτεροβροντα Κρονιδα,
φιλος δε Μοισαις, Ευθυμια τε
μελων ειην, τουτ’ αιτημι σε.
          Pind. Fragm.

---

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus, &c.
          Carm. 1, 37, seq.

Νυν χρη μεθυσκειν, και τινα προς βιαν
πινειν, επειδη κατθανε Μυρσιλος.
          Alcæi Fragm.

---

Nullus argento color est avaris
Abdito terris, inimice lamnæ
Crispe Sallusti, nisi temperato
        Splendeat usu.
          Carm. 2, 2, seq.

Ουκ εραμαι πολυν εν μεγαρω πλουτον κατακρυψαις εχειν
αλλ’ εοντων, ευ τε παθειν και ακουσαι, φιλοις εξαρκεων.
          Pind. Nem. 1, 45.

---

Sævius ventis agitatur ingens
Pinus.
          Carm. 2, 10, 9, seq.

Ου θρυον ου μαλαχην ανεμος ποτε, τας δε μεγιστας,
  η δρυας η πλατανους οιδε χαμαι καταγειν.
          Lucian. in Anthol.

---

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume,
Labuntur anni: nec Pietas moram
  Rugis et instanti Senectæ
    Adferet, indomitæque Morti.
          Carm. 2, 14, seq.

  Ἀλλ’ ολιγοχρονιον γιγνεται, ωσπερ οναρ,
ηβη τιμηεσσα· το δ’ αργαλεον και αμορφον
  γηρας υπερ κεφαλης αυτιχ’ υπερκρεμαται.
          Mimnerm. Fragm.

---

Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo
Multa?
          Carm. 2, 16, 17.

          —— Ω κενοι βροτων,
οι τοξον εντεινοντες ως καιρου περα.
          Eurip. Suppl. 754.

---

—— Nihil est ab omni
         Parte beatum.
          Carm. 2, 16, 27.

Ουκ εστιν ουδεν δια τελους ευδαιμονουν.
          Eurip. Suppl. 281.

---

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
          Carm. 3, 2, 13.

Τεθναμεναι γαρ καλον επι προμαχοισι πεσοντα
  ανδρ’ αγαθον περι η πατριδι μαρναμενον.
          Tyrtæi Fragm.

---

Mors et fugacem persequitur virum.
          Carm. 3, 2, 14.

Ο δ’ αυ Θανατος εκιχε και τον φυγομαχον.
          Simonides.

---

Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit
  Nos nequiores, mox daturos
    Progeniem vitiosiorem.
          Carm. 3, 6, 46, seq.

Οιην χρυσειοι πατερες γενεην ελιποντο
Χειροτερην! υμεις δε κακωτερα τεξειεσθε.
          Arati Phænom. 123.

---

Pulchris excubat in genis.
          Carm. iv. 13, 8.

Ος εν μαλακαις παρειαις
νεανιδος εννυχευεις.
          Soph. Antig. 779.

---

Dis miscent superis.	Ἀθανάτοις ἔμιχθεν.
	Pindar. Isthm. 2, 42.
Nube candentes humeros amictus.	Νεφέλῃ εἰλυμένος ὤμους.
	Hom. Il. εʹ, 186.
Erycina ridens.	Φιλομειδὴς Ἀφροδίτη.
	Hom. Il. νʹ, 424.
Officinas Cyclopum.	Ἡφαίστοιο καμίνοις.
	Callim. Fragm. 129.
Nitidum caput.	Λιπαρὰν ἔθειραν.
	Simonid. (Anth. Gr.)
Duplicis Ulixei.	Διπλοῦς ἀνήρ.
	Eurip. Rhes. 392.
Superis parem.	Δαίμονι ἶσος.
	Hom. Il. εʹ, 438.
Aptum equis Argos.	Ἄργεος ἱπποβότοιο.
	Hom. Il. βʹ, 287.
Ditesque Mycenas.	Μυκήνας τὰς πολυχρύσους.
	Sophocl. Elect. 9.
Nil desperandum.	Ἄελπτον οὐδέν.
	Eurip. Fragm.
Deorum nuntium.	Ἄγγελον ἀθανάτων.
	Hom. Hymn in Merc. 3.
Marinæ filium Thetidis.	Παῖς ἁλίας Θέτιδος.
	Eurip. Androm. 108.
Carpe diem.	Καιρὸν λάβε.
	Æsch. Sept. adv. Th. 65.
Difficile bile.	Χόλου ἀργαλέοιο.
	Hom. Il. κʹ, 107.
Melior patre.	Πατέρων ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι.
	Hom. Il. δʹ, 405.
Mordaces solicitudines.	Γυιοβόρους μελεδῶνας.
	Hesiod. Ἐργ, 66.
Dulce ridentem.	Γελάσας ἰμέροεν.
	Sappho.
Dulce loquentem.	Ἀδὺ φωνοίσας.
	Sappho.
Funera densentur.	Θνῆσκον ἐπασσύτεροι.
	Hom. Il. αʹ, 383.
Fulgentes oculos.	Ομματα μαρμαίροντα.
	Hom. Il. γʹ, 397.
Bellum lacrymosum.	Πόλεμον δακρυόεντα.
	Hom. Il. εʹ, 737.
Vacuum aera.	Ἐρήμας δι’ αἰθέρος.
	Pind. Ol. αʹ, 10.
Loquaces lymphæ.	Λαλὸν ὕδωρ.
Fulmine caduco.	Καταιβάτης κεραυνός.
	Æsch. Pr. V. 359.
Vis consili expers.	Ῥώμη ἀμαθής.
	Eurip. Fragm.
Flagitio additis damnum.	Πρὸς αἰσχύνῃ κακόν.
	Eurip. Rhes. 102.
Aquæ augur cornix.	Ὑετόμαντις κορώνη.
	Euphorion.
Lentus amor.	Βραδινὰ Αφροδίτα.
	Sappho.
Aquosa Ida.	Πολυπίδακος Ἴδης.
	Hom. Il. ξʹ, 157.
Obliquum meditantis ictum.	Δοχμώ τ’ ἀΐσσοντε.
	Hom. Il. μʹ, 148.
Gelu acuto.	Χιόνος ὀξείας.
	Pind. Pyth. αʹ, 39.
Dulci fistula.	Γλυκὺς αὐλός.
	Pind. Ol. ιʹ, 114.
Testudinis aureæ.	Χρυσέα φόρμιγξ.
	Pind. Pyth. αʹ, 1.
Magnæ linguæ.	Μεγάλης γλώσσης.
	Sophocl. Antig. 12.
Morti atræ.	Μέλανος θανάτοιο.
	Hom. Il. βʹ, 834.
Aureo plectro.	Χρυσέῳ πλάκτρῳ.
	Pind. Nem. εʹ, 44.
Supremum iter.	Ὑστάτην ὁδόν.
	Eurip. Alcest. 686.
Nescios fari infantes.	Νήπια τέκνα.
	Hom. Il. βʹ, 311.
Noctilucam.	Νυκτιλαμπής.
	Simonides.
Purpureo ore.	Πορφυρέου ἀπὸ στόματος.
	Simonides.
Mens trepidat metu.	Δειματὶ πάλλει.
	Soph. Æd. Tyr.

The two following674 odes have been attributed to Horace, but there is no doubt that they are spurious. It was pretended that they were discovered in the Palatine Library at Rome by Pallavicini: no MS., however, of Horace, containing them, has ever yet been found:—

AD IULIUM FLORUM.

Discolor grandem gravat uva ramum
Instat Autumnus; glacialis anno
Mox Hiems volvente aderit, capillis
          Horrida canis.
Jam licet Nymphas trepide fugaces
Insequi lento pede detinendas;
Et labris captæ, simulantis iram,
          Oscula figi.
Jam licet vino madidos vetusto
De die lætum recitare carmen;
Flore, si te des, hilarem licebit
          Sumere noctem.
Jam vide curas aquilone sparsas!
Mens viri fortis sibi constat, utrum
Serius leti citiusve tristis
          Advolat aura.

---

AD LIBRUM SUUM.

Dulci libello nemo sodalium
Forsan meorum carior extitit;
    De te merenti quid fidelis
      Officium domino rependes?
Te Roma cautum territat ardua;
Depone vanos invidiæ metus;
    Urbisque, fidens dignitati,
      Per plateas animosus audi.
En quo furentes Eumenidum choros
Disjecit almo fulmine Jupiter!
    Huic ara stabit, fama cantu
      Perpetuo celebranda crescet.

According to Bentley, the works of Horace were written in the following chronological order:—

Satires	Book	I.		in his	26th, 27th, and 28th years.
Satires	“	II.		“	31st, 32d, and 33d years.
Epodes				“	34th and 35th years.
Odes	“	I.		“	36th, 37th, and 38th years.
Odes	“	II.		“	40th and 41st years.
Odes	“	III.		“	42d and 43d years.
Epistles	“	I.		“	46th and 47th years.
Odes	“	IV.	}	“	49th, 50th and 51st years.
Secular Hymn
Epistle to the Pisos			}		uncertain.
Epistles	“	II.

Chapter VII — Biography of Mæcenas — His Intimacy and Influence With Augustus — His Character — Valgius Rufus — Varius — Cornelius Gallus — Biography of Tibullus — His Style — Criticism of Muretus — Propertius — Imitated the Alexandrian Poets — Æmilius Macer

C. Cilnius Mæcenas

In a literary history it is impossible to omit some account of one, who, although his attempts at poetry were very contemptible, exercised, by his good taste and munificence, a great influence upon literature, and to whom the literary men of Rome were much indebted for the use which he made of his confidential friendship with Augustus.

C. Cilnius Mæcenas was a member of an equestrian family, which, though it derived its descent from the old Etruscan kings,675 does not appear to have produced any distinguished individuals. His birth-year is unknown, but his birth-day was the ides (13th) of April.676 We have no information respecting the origin of his intimacy with Augustus. Probably his cultivated taste, his extensive acquaintance with Greek and Roman literature, his imperturbable temper, and love of pleasure, first recommended him as an agreeable companion to Octavius.

His good sense, activity, and energy in business, and decisive character, qualities in which his irresolute and desultory patron was signally deficient, enabled him rapidly to improve the acquaintance into intimacy. It is said by Dion Cassius677 that Augustus obtained from Mæcenas a complete plan for the internal administration of his newly-acquired empire, and that in it were displayed sound judgment and political wisdom. It is probable that there is some exaggeration in this statement; but that, without being a great man, he was in these respects a greater man than Augustus, who, therefore, when he required his support, could lean upon him with safety. And yet his weaknesses were such as to prevent any feeling of jealousy, or appearance of superiority, from endangering his friendship with the emperor. His love of pleasure, and of the quiet and careless enjoyments of a private station, proved, as it turned out, a blessing to his country. His heart was so full of the delights of refined and intellectual society—of palaces and gardens, and wit and poetry, and collections of art and virtû—that there was no room in it for ambition. His careless and sauntering indolence was openly displayed in his lounging gait, and his toga trailing on the ground. No one could possibly suspect such a loiterer of sufficient energy or application to be a politician and an intriguer. Such being his character, tastes, and habits, he felt no temptation to abuse his influence with Augustus. He did not covet honours and office, because he knew they must bring trouble and distraction, perhaps peril with them. He exercised his power, which was undoubtedly great, to promote that luxurious, yet refined elegance, in which he himself delighted, and to secure the welfare of his literary friends. He had wealth enough to gratify his utmost wishes. Augustus, therefore, had nothing more to confer on him which he valued, except personal esteem and regard.

The confidence which the Emperor reposed in him is shown by his employing him in some affairs of great delicacy: first, in arranging a marriage with Scribonia; and, subsequently, on two occasions, in negotiating with Antony.678 In B. C. 36, he accompanied Octavius into Sicily; but was sent back in order to undertake the administration of Rome and Italy;679 and during the campaign at Actium,680 Mæcenas was again vicegerent, in which capacity he crushed the conspiracy of the younger Lepidus. So unlimited was his power, that he was even intrusted with the signet of Octavius, and with authority to open, and even to alter, if necessary, all letters which he wrote to the senate during his campaign; and when the victorious general, on his return to Rome, consulted with him and Agrippa as to the expediency of re-establishing the republic, Mæcenas, in opposition to the recommendation of Agrippa, dissuaded him from taking that step. The moral influence also of Mæcenas over Augustus is very striking. So long as it continued, we see nothing of that heartless cruelty, that disregard of the happiness of others, which deformed the early life of the Emperor: if he was heartless, he at least did that as a matter of taste which a better man would have done on principle; and if he was still selfish, he sought fame and glory by the wise counsels of peace rather than by the brilliant triumphs of war: he conciliated friends instead of crushing enemies.

The intimacy between Mæcenas and the Emperor continued for at least ten years after the battle of Actium: then an estrangement commenced; and in B. C. 16, he was deprived of his official position, and Taurus was intrusted with the administration of Rome and Italy. Scandalous stories have been told about his wife Terentia and the Emperor, in order to account for the interruption of their intimacy; but no special causes are necessary to account for an event so common. The words of Tacitus681 are a sufficient solution of the problem:—“Idque et Mæcenati acciderat; fato potentiæ, raro sempiternæ, an satias capit, aut illos, cum omnia tribuerunt, aut hos, cum jam nihil reliquum est, quod cupiant.” He retained the outward appearance of the imperial friendship, although he had lost the reality. He went to court on the birth-day, but ceased to be of the Emperor’s council. His life was passed in the voluptuous retirement of his palace on the Esquiline, which he had built for himself. This hill was not generally considered wholesome: probably the fact that it had been a burial-ground682 created a prejudice against it; but the loftiness of the site chosen, as well as of the building itself (molem vicinam nubibus,) and the breeze which played freely through the lovely garden with which it was surrounded, rendered it salubrious. All the most brilliant society of Rome was found at his table; and many of the best of them received still more substantial marks of his favour.683 Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Varius, were amongst his friends and constant associates.

Mæcenas was a low-spirited invalid;684 latterly he could not sleep, and endeavoured in vain to procure repose by listening to soft music.685 In his last distressing illness he generally resided at his Tiburtine villa, where the murmuring falls of the Anio invited that sleep which was denied him elsewhere. He died B. C. 8, and was buried on the Esquiline. Though married, he left no children, and bequeathed his property to the Emperor, whom he besought in his will not to forget his beloved Horace. His taste as a critic was evidently far superior to his talents as a writer. Few fragments of his writings remain; and all ancient critics are unanimous in the condemnation of his style. Augustus686 laughed at his affected jargon of mingled Etruscan and Latin. Quintilian687 quotes instances of his absurd inversions and transpositions; and Seneca688 shows, by an example, its unintelligible obscurity.689 He was a sensualist and a voluptuary,690 and an unfaithful husband; and yet he was devotedly fond of his wife, the beautiful but ill-tempered Terentia, who had a great influence over him. He would divorce her one day only to restore her to conjugal rights on the next; and Seneca said that, though he had only one wife, he was married a thousand times. He abhorred cruelty and severity, and would not let it pass unrebuked even in the Emperor; and although he made a boast of effeminacy, he was ready to devote himself heartily to business in cases of emergency. In fact, he was a fair specimen of the man of pleasure and society: liberal, kind-hearted, clever, refined, but luxurious, self-indulgent, indolent, and volatile, with good instincts and impulses, but without principle.

C. Valgius Rufus

Amongst the poets of the Augustan age, whose writings were much admired by their contemporaries, but have not stood the searching test of time, was Valgius Rufus. Of his life no records remain; but he probably belonged to that class of authors of whom Pliny says, “Quibus nos in vehiculo, in balneo, inter cœnam, oblectamus otium temporis.”691 They were light and pleasing, calculated to amuse an idle half-hour, or to relieve the tedium of a journey. They answered the purpose of the railroad literature of our own days. These writers had a correct taste, and a critical discernment of poetical beauty, rather than a genius for poetical composition. Probably their personal characters had something to do with their reputation: they were members of a literary coterie; they lived, thought, and felt together; they defended each other against malicious criticism; and the bonds of friendship by which they were united tempted the greater poets to regard their effusions with kind but undue partiality. Valgius Rufus was a great favourite of Horace,692 but only a few short, isolated passages are extant of his poems.693 Quintilian694 attributes to him a translation of the rhetorical precepts of Apollodorus. Seneca695 mentions him by name: Pliny696 praises his erudition. The testimony borne to his transcendent merits as an epic poet, in the Panegyric of Messala, need scarcely be trusted, because it is almost certain that this piece is spurious.697

Varius

Of L. Varius Rufus also, who was one of the constant guests at Mæcenas’ table, scarcely any thing is known. Horace698 tells us that he was unequalled in epic song, when Virgil had as yet only turned his attention to rustic poetry. The high praise bestowed upon his Thyestes by Quintilian has already been mentioned. To him, together with Virgil, we have seen that Horace owed his introduction to Augustus, and all three were of the party which accompanied Mæcenas to Brundisium. The titles of two of his poems are extant,—I. De Morte; II. Panegyric on Augustus. Of the former, four fragments are preserved by Macrobius, all of which Virgil has deemed worthy of imitation. Of the latter, two lines, containing a delicate compliment to Augustus, are extant, which Horace has introduced entire into one of his Epistles.699 The passage by no means satisfies modern taste, which has been formed by the hexametrical rhythm of Virgil; but Seneca praises his style as free from the usual faults of Latin declamatory poetry—mere bombast on the one hand, and excessive minuteness on the other. Niebuhr conjectures that his Thyestes was too declamatory; and that, like the later Roman tragedies of Seneca and others, it was not an imitation of the Attic drama, but of the degenerate tragedies belonging to the Alexandrian period.

C. Cornelius Gallus (Born B. C. 66 or 69.)

Gallus was more distinguished as a general than as a poet. Except a single line from one of his elegies, not a vestige of his poetry remains; for the short pieces attributed to him700 are undoubtedly not genuine. He owes his fame, probably, to the kind verdict of his contemporaries, whose friendship and amiable affection for each other appear never to have been endangered by the slightest spark of jealousy.

Born at Frejus, of low parentage, he was a fellow-student in philosophy with Virgil701 and Arius—a friendship thus commenced which continued through life. The patronage of Asinius Pollio702 brought him into notice as a poet at the early age of twenty. He was one of the first to attach himself to the cause of Octavius; and, being appointed commissioner for allotting the lands to the military colonies, he had the opportunity of befriending Virgil and the plundered Mantuans. At Actium he commanded a brigade, burnt Antony’s ships in the harbour of Parætonium, was one of the capturers of Cleopatra, and was rewarded by Octavius with being made first prefect of Egypt. How so valuable a servant lost the Emperor’s favour is uncertain. Ovid hints that his crime was one of words, not of deeds:—

Linguam nimio non tenuisse mero.

He was recalled, his property confiscated, and himself exiled. He had not strength of mind to bear his fall, and he committed suicide in the forty-first or forty-third year of his age.703

No judgment respecting his merits can be formed from the contradictory criticism of the ancients. Ovid awards to him the palm among the elegiac poets,704 and Virgil is said to have sung his praises in his fourth Georgic, but afterwards to have omitted the passage and substituted for it the story of Aristæus; whilst Quintilian705 applies the epithet durior to his versification. Perhaps the latter attached too much importance to the grace and sweetness of diction, but neglected the beauty of the sentiments; whilst the former might have been too partial in his sympathy with a fellow exile. He was the author of four books of elegies, in which, under the feigned name of Lycoris, he sings his love for his mistress Cytheris. He also translated the Greek poems of Euphorion.

Albius Tibullus

Tibullus was born of an equestrian family, probably in B. C. 54. He was a contemporary of Virgil and Horace;706 and like them, during the troubles of the civil wars, suffered the confiscation of his paternal estate, which was situated at Pedum, near Tibur. After the conclusion of the struggle a portion was restored to him—small, indeed, but sufficient to satisfy his moderate wants and contented disposition.

Disinclined, as well by his love of quiet, to the labours and perils of a military life, as he was by the tenderness and softness of his character to the horrors of war, circumstances, nevertheless, forced him involuntarily to undertake a campaign. Messala was his patron, to whom he was evidently under great obligations.707 When, therefore, he was sent by Octavia to quell an insurrection in Aquitania, Tibullus accompanied him. This campaign and the successes of Messala furnished the poet with subjects for his muse.708 Tibullus also fully intended to continue his services to Messala in the east, during the following year; but illness compelled him to stop at Corcyra, whence he returned to Rome.709

The mistresses whose beauty, inconstancy, and cruelty Tibullus celebrates in his elegies were, unlike those of Horace, real persons. Delia’s real name is said to have been Plautia or Plania;710 who Nemesis was is not known. These are the only two mentioned by himself or alluded to by Ovid;711 but Horace addresses an ode to him on his passion for a mistress whom he names Glycera. Probably he is speaking of one of Tibullus’ mistresses under a feigned name, in accordance with his habitual practice, for the names introduced by him in his poems, generally speaking, bear no appearance of reality. They are, with very few exceptions, suggested by his study of Greek lyric poets. Chloris, Lycoris, Neobule, Lydia, Thaliarchus, Xanthias, Pholoe, are all Greek characters, translated to Roman scenes, and made to play an artificial part in Roman life. Cinara712 was, perhaps, a real person, as Bassus, the Novii Mævius, and Numida, undoubtedly are. Sometimes, when his object is satire, he speaks of the subject of his irony under a name somewhat resembling the real one; as, for example, when he ridicules Mæcenas under the name of Malthinus,713 Salvidianus Rufus under that of Nasidianus,714 and lampoons Gratidia the sorceress as Canidia. But in the poetry of Tibullus, as in that of Catullus and Propertius, the same names are found in each of a series of poems. Apuleius715 asserts that the real name of the Lesbia of Catullus was Clodia; that of the Cynthia of Propertius, Hostia, and that she was a native of Tivoli.

The style and tone of thought of Tibullus are, like his character, deficient in vigour and manliness, but sweet, smooth, polished, tender, and never disfigured by bad taste. He does not deserve the censure of Niebuhr, who stigmatizes him as a “disagreeable poet, because of his doleful and weeping melancholy and sentimentality, resulting from misunderstanding the ancient elegies of Mimnermus.”716

After his return from Corcyra, Tibullus passed the remainder of his short life in the peaceful retirement of his paternal estate. He died young, shortly after Virgil, if we may trust to an epigram, ascribed to Domitius Marsus, contained in the Latin Anthologia:717—

Te quoque Virgilio comitem non æqua, Tibulle,
  Mors juvenem campos misit in Elysios,
Ne foret, aut elegis molles qui fleret amores,
  Aut caneret forti regia bella pede.

The poems commonly ascribed to Tibullus consist of four books, but only two are genuine, and of these, the second was published posthumously. Two lines in the third book, which fix the date of the poet’s birth in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa,718 have generally been considered as spurious, because such a date is inconsistent with the rest of the chronology; but Voss rejected the whole of that book; and there is no question but that the spirit and character of the elegies, as well as the harmony of the metre, are very inferior to those of the preceding poems. The same inferiority marks the fourth also, with the exception of the smaller poems, which bear the names of Sulpicia and Corinthus. These, as Niebuhr correctly observes, display greater energy and boldness than Tibullus possessed, and are the productions of some poet much superior to him.

That elegant scholar and judicious critic, Muretus,719 has well attributed to him, as his chief characteristics, simplicity, and natural and unaffected genius:—“Illum (i. e. Tibullum) judices simplicius scripsisse quæ cogitaret; hunc (i. e. Propertium) diligentius cogitasse quæ scriberet. In illo plus naturæ, in hoc plus curæ atque industriæ perspicias.”

Sextus Aurelius Propertius

Very little is known respecting the life and personal history of Propertius beyond the few facts which may be gleaned from his poems. He was a native of the border country of Umbria, and was probably born not earlier than A. U. C. 703,720 or later than 700.721 This period will sufficiently agree with the statement of Ovid respecting their relative ages.722 His family had not produced any distinguished member, but possessed a competent estate. Like Virgil and Tibullus, he was a sufferer by the consequences of war; for the establishment of a military colony reduced him from comfort to straitened circumstances.723

Like most young Romans of genius and education, he was intended for the bar;724 but poetry had greater charms for him than severe studies, and he became nothing more than a literary man. He inhabited a house in the now fashionable quarter of the Esquiline, and was on intimate terms with Gallus, Ovid, Bassus, and Virgil. Cynthia, his amour with whom inspired so large a portion of his elegies, was not only a beautiful but an accomplished woman. She was his first love; and it appears to have been some time before she yielded to his solicitations,725 nor was she even then always faithful to him.726 She could write verses and play upon the lyre,727 and was a graceful dancer.728 She owed to him, says Martial, her immortality; whilst he owed to his love for her the inspiration which immortalized himself:—

Cynthia, facundi carmen juvenile Properti,
  Accepit famam nec minus illa dedit.

The date of the poet’s death is unknown, but the probability is that he died young.

Although Propertius was a contemporary and friend of the Augustan poets, he may be considered as belonging to a somewhat different school of poetry. His taste, like theirs, was educated by a study of Greek literature; but the Greek poets whose works he took for his model belonged to a later age. Horace, Virgil and Tibullus imitated and tried to rival the Greek classical poets of the noblest ages: they transferred into their native tongue the ideas of Homer, Pindar, and the old lyric poets. Their taste was formed after the purest and most perfect models. Propertius, on the other hand, was content with a lower flight. He attempted nothing more than to imitate the graceful but feeble strains of the Alexandrian poets, and to become a second Callimachus or Philetas.729 Roman perseverance in the pursuit of learning, and the spirit of investigation in the wide field of Greek literature, had raised up this new standard of taste, which was by no means an improvement upon that which had been hitherto established.

The imitations of Propertius are too studied and apparent to permit him to lay claim to great natural genius. Nature alone could give the touching tenderness of Tibullus or the facility of Ovid—in both of which, notwithstanding his grace and elegance, he is deficient. The absence of original fancy is concealed by minute attention to the outward form of the poetry which he admired. His pentameters are often inharmonious, because they adopt so continually the Greek rules of construction; awkward Greek idioms, and a studious display of his learning, which was undoubtedly great, destroy that greatest charm of style, perspicuity.

According to Quintilian,730 the critics of his day somewhat overrated his merits, for they could scarcely decide the question of superiority between him and Tibullus. This, however, is to be expected in an age of affected rhetoric and grammatical pedantry, when nothing was considered beautiful in poetry except that which was in accordance with the arbitrary rules of cold criticism. They appreciated his correctness, and did not miss the warm heart of his rival. His poetry is not so polluted with indelicacy as that of Ovid, but still it is often sensual and licentious.

It is worthy of remark that the fourth elegy of the third book, entitled “Arethusa to Lycotas,” deprives Ovid of the credit of being the inventor of the elegiac epistle.

Æmilius Macer

The poem of Æmilius Macer is only known through two verses in the Tristia of Ovid,731 which state that it treated of birds, serpents, and medicinal herbs:

Sæpe suas volucres legit mihi grandior ævo
  Quæque necet serpens; quæ juvet herba Macer.

He was born at Verona, and died in Asia, A. D. 16; and the passage already quoted proves that he was older than Ovid.

His poem was a paraphrase or imitation of the Theriaca of Nicander—a physician-poet, who flourished in Ætolia during the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes. Quintilian couples his name with that of Lucretius; and awards him the praise of elegance, but adds that his style is deficient in dignity.

Chapter VIII — Birth and Education of Ovid — His Rhetorical Powers — Anecdote Related by Seneca — His Poetical Genius — Self-Indulgent Life — Popularity — Banishment — Place of His Exile — Epistles and Other Works — Gratius Faliscus — Pedo Albinovanus — Aulus Sabinus — Marcus Manilius

Ovidius Naso (Born B. C. 43.)

Ovid, as he himself states,732 was born at Sulmo (Sulmone,) a town of the Peligni (Abruzzi,) ninety miles distant from Rome. The year of his birth was that in which the consuls Hirtius and Pansa fell in the field of Mutina (Modena.) His family was equestrian, and had been so for some generations. His father lived to the age of ninety; and, as his mother was then alive, it is probable that she also attained an advanced age. He had a brother exactly twelve months older than himself. Their common birthday was the first of the Quinquatria, or festival of Minerva (March 20th.)

Whilst still of tender age the two boys were sent to Rome for education, and placed under the care of eminent instructors. The elder studied eloquence, and was brought up to the bar: but he died at the early age of twenty. Ovid himself also, for a time, studied rhetoric under Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro, and the results of his study are visible in his poems;733 for example, in the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses.734

Seneca has left an interesting account of his rhetorical powers.735 “I remember,” he says, “hearing Naso declaim, in the presence of Arellius Fuscus, of whom he was a pupil; for he was an admirer of Latro, although his style was different from his own. The style of Ovid could at that time be termed nothing else but poetry in prose: still he was so diligent as to transfer many of his sentiments into his verses. Latro had said—

Mittamus arma in hostes, et petamus.

Naso wrote—

Arma viri fortis medios mittantur in hostes
Inde jubete peti.

He borrowed another idea from one of Latro’s Suasorian orations:—

Non vides uti immota fax torpeat et exagitata reddat ignes?

Ovid’s paraphrase of this illustration is—

Vidi ego jactatas mota face crescere flammas,
  Et rursus, nullo concutiente, mori.

When he was a student he was thought to declaim well.”

On the affecting theme of a husband and wife, who had mutually sworn not to survive each other, Seneca asserts that he surpassed his master in wit and talent, and was only inferior in the arrangement of his topics. He then quotes a long passage, in which Ovid analyzes the principles of love, with a skill and ingenuity well worthy of one who, as a poet, made love the subject of his song, and with a purity of sentiment which, it were to be wished, had dignified the sweetness of his verses. Ovid preferred suasoriæ and ethical themes to controversiæ;736 for all argument was irksome to him. In oratory he was very careful in the use of his words: in his poetry he was aware of his faults, but loved them too well to correct them. He then adds the following amusing and characteristic anecdote:—Being once asked by his friends to erase three lines, he consented on condition that he himself should be at liberty to make an exception in favour of three. He accordingly wrote down three which he wished to preserve; his friends those which they wished to erase. The papers were examined, and both were found to contain the same verses. Pedo Albinovanus used to say that one of these was—

Semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem.

The other—

Egelidum Borean, egelidumque Notum.

Hence it is apparent that judgment was not wanting, but the inclination to correct. He defended himself by saying that an occasional mole is an improver of beauty. The former of these miserable conceits is not now to be found in his poems. The latter occurs in the Amores, but it is usually read—

Et gelidum Borean, egelidumque Notum; or—

Et gelidum Borean, præcipitemque Notum.737

The father of Ovid, who took a utilitarian view of life, is said to have discouraged the cultivation of his poetical talents, and to have stigmatized the service of the Muses as barren and unprofitable. Even Homer himself, he was wont to say, left no property behind him. Ovid endeavoured to comply with his father’s wishes; he deserted Helicon, and tried to write plain prose. It was all in vain; his words spontaneously flowed into numbers, and whatever he tried to say was poetry. His natural genius and facility displayed itself when he was quite a boy; for he had not yet put on the toga virilis. When he assumed this badge of mature age, it was bordered with a broad purple stripe, which marked the patrician order; but being unambitious and indolent, he never took his seat in the senate, although he filled several magisterial and judicial offices.

His rank, fortune, and talents enabled him to cultivate the society of men of congenial tastes. He became acquainted with the best poets of his day. Macer and Propertius would recite their compositions to him. Ponticus and Bassus were guests at his table. He had heard the lyrics of Horace read by himself. Virgil he had only seen; and the untimely death of Tibullus prevented him from making the acquaintance of that poet. He was extremely young when his juvenile poems became very popular, and he wrote far more than he published; for he burnt whatever displeased him; and, when sentenced to exile, in disgust he committed the Metamorphoses to the flames.

He himself confesses his natural susceptibility and amorous temperament; but claims the credit of never having given occasion to any scandal. He was three times married. His first wife was unsuitable, and proved unworthy of him, and accordingly he divorced her. His second he divorced also, although no imputation rested on her virtue. From his third, whom, notwithstanding his fickleness and infidelity, he sincerely loved, he was only separated by exile. She was one of the Fabian family, and bore him one daughter.

Epicurean in his tastes, and a skeptic, if not a disbeliever in a future state, he lived a life of continual self-indulgence and intrigue. He was a universal admirer and as universal a favourite among the female sex in the voluptuous capital; for the tone of female morals was in that age low and depraved, and the women encouraged the licentiousness of the men. Although his favourite mistress, whom he celebrated under the fictitious name of Corinna, is unknown, and all the conjectures concerning her identity are groundless, there is no doubt that she was a lady of rank and fortune.

Ovid was popular as a poet, successful in society, and possessed all the enjoyments which wealth can bestow. He had a villa and estate in his native Sulmo, a house on the Capitoline hill, and suburban gardens, celebrated for their beauty. At some period of his life he travelled with Macer into Asia and Sicily; and, in his exile, recalls to mind with sorrowful pleasure the magnificent cities of the former, and the sublime scenery and classic haunts of the latter.738 This sunny life at length came to an end. The last ray of happiness, which he speaks of as beaming on him, was the intelligence that his beloved daughter Perilla, who was twice married, made him a grandfather a second time. When his hair became tinged with white, and he had reached his fiftieth year, he incurred, by some fault or indiscretion, the anger of Augustus, and was banished to Tomi (Tomoswar or Baba.)

The cause of his banishment is involved in obscurity. It was not unknown at Rome; but in his exile he refrains from alluding to it, except in dark allusions, out of fear of giving additional offence to the emperor.739 He speaks of it as an indiscretion (error,) not a crime (scelus, facinus;740) as something which he had accidentally witnessed,741 perhaps had indiscreetly told—a circumstance which deeply and personally affected Augustus, and inflicted a wound which he was unwilling to tear open afresh. He hints also that he fell a victim to the treachery of friends and domestics,742 who enriched themselves by his ruin.

There have been many conjectures743 on this difficult point. Some have imagined an intrigue with the elder Julia, the profligate daughter of Augustus; but this is scarcely consistent with the manner in which Ovid himself speaks of his fault; and besides this, Julia was banished to Pandataria eight years before. The banishment of the younger Julia to Trimerus, about the same time with that of Ovid, would make it far more probable that his fall was connected with that of this equally profligate princess. Tiraboschi supposed that he had surprised one of the royal family in some disgraceful act; and some have even imagined that he might have witnessed such conduct on the part of the Emperor himself. Dryden believed that he accidentally saw Livia in the bath; and the author of the article in the Biographie Universelle, as well as Schoell,744 surmise that he was in some way implicated in the fortunes of Agrippa Posthumus, and thus incurred the hatred of Livia and Tiberius.

Whatever the cause may have been, the punishment was a cruel one, except for a crime of the deepest dye, and would never have been inflicted by the gentle Augustus so long as he was under the salutary influence of Mæcenas and his party. But in his old age he submitted to the baneful rule of the dark Tiberius and the implacable Livia. Any pretext, therefore, sufficed to remove one, who, from some cause or other, had excited their enmity. The alleged reason was the immorality of his writings; but they are not more immoral than those of Horace; and, besides, the worst of them had been published ten years before. Nor was the morality of the Emperor himself of such a character as to lead him to punish so severely a licentious poet in a licentious age. The exclusion of his works from the Palatine745 library was a merited and more appropriate visitation. Nevertheless, this was made the pretext for a banishment, the misery of which was solaced by the empty mockery of the reservation of his civil rights.

Tomi was on the very frontiers of the Roman empire, inhabited by the Getæ, who were rude and uncivilized. The country itself, a barren and treeless waste, cold, damp, and marshy, producing naturally scarcely anything but wormwood, and yielding scanty crops to the unskilled toil of ignorant cultivators, was rendered still more desolate by frequent incursions of the neighbouring savage tribes, who used poisoned arrows, and offered up as sacrifices their prisoners of war.746 Ovid, who, with all his faults, was affectionate and tender-hearted, was torn from all the voluptuous blandishments of the capital, from the sympathies of congenial spirits, who could appreciate his talents, and from the arms of his weeping wife,747 amidst the voice of wailing and of prayer, which filled every corner of his desolate dwelling. The blow fell suddenly upon him like a thunder-clap,748 and so stupefied him that he could make no preparations for his voyage. The season of his departure was the depth of winter, and he was exposed to some peril by a tempest in the Ionian Gulf. The climate of his new abode was as inclement as that of Scythia. Not only the Danube, but even the sea near its mouth, was for some extent covered with ice: even the wine froze into blocks, and was broken in pieces before it could be used. He lived in exile only ten years; constant anxiety preyed upon his bodily health; he suffered languor, but no pain; he loathed all food; the little that he ate would not digest; sleep failed him; his body became pale and emaciated, and so he died. The Tomitæ showed their respect by erecting a tomb to his memory.

In the midst of such a contrast between the present and the past, no wonder that his complainings appear almost pitiful and unmanly, and his urgent petitions to Augustus couched in too fulsome a strain of adulation. No wonder that he painted in the most glowing colours the story of his woes and privations. Yet he was destitute neither of patience nor fortitude: he relied on the independence and immortality of genius; and although the enervating effect of a luxurious and easy life and a delicate constitution, rendered him a prey to grief, and he gradually pined away, still he had strength of mind to relieve his sorrows by devotion to the Muse, and he suffered with tranquillity and resignation. Poetry was his resource during his stormy voyage. Poetry gained him the affection and esteem of his new fellow-citizens, notwithstanding their barbarism,749 and procured him the honour of a tomb.

All the extant poems of Ovid, with the exception of the Metamorphoses, are elegiac. It was the metre then most in vogue. All the minor poets, his contemporaries, wrote in it. One of his earliest works is the “Amores,” a collection of elegies, most of which are addressed to his favourite mistress Corinna. Some of them, however, were composed subsequently to his Epistles and Art of Love.750 An epigram, which is prefixed, states that there were originally five books, but that the author subsequently reduced them to the present number, three. Licentiousness disfigures these annals of his amours; but they teem with the freshness and buoyancy of youth, and sparkle with grace and ingenuity.

The twenty-one Epistolæ Heroidum, i. e. Epistles to and from Women of the Heroic Age, are a series of love-letters: their characteristic feature is passion; the ardour of which is sometimes interfered with by too laboured conceits and excessive refinement. They are, in fact, the most polished efforts of one whose natural indolence often disinclined him from expending that time and pains on the work of amending and correcting which distinguished Virgil. Their great merit consists in the remarkable neatness with which the sentiments are expressed, and the sweetness of the versification; their great defect is want of variety. The subject necessarily limited the topics. The range of them is confined to laments for the absence of the beloved object, the pangs of jealousy, apprehensions of inconstancy, expressions of warm affection, and descriptions of the joys and sorrows of love.

With the exception of the Metamorphoses, the Epistles have been greater favourites than any of the works of Ovid. Some were translated by Drayton and Lord Hervey. The beautiful translation, by Pope, of the epistle from Sappho to Phaon, is familiar to all; and his touching picture of the struggle between passion and principle, in the letter of Eloisa to Abelard, owes a portion of its inspiration to the Epistles of Ovid.

Love in the days of Ovid had nothing in it chivalrous or pure—it was carnal, sensual. The age in which he lived was morally polluted, and he was neither better nor worse than his contemporaries. Great and noble as was the character of the Roman matron, the charms of an accomplished female education were almost as rare as at Athens. She had sterling worth; but she had not often the power to fascinate those numbers who considered woman the minister to the pleasures of man. She was wise, self-sacrificing, patriotic, courageous—a devoted mother, an affectionate wife—and a man of heroic mould valued as she deserved such a partner of his fortunes. But those who sought merely the allurements of passion looked only for meretricious pleasure and sensual enjoyment. Hence grossness is the characteristic of Ovid’s Art of Love. The instructions contained in the first two books, which are addressed to men, are fit only for the seducer. The blandishments in the third are suited only to the abandoned of the other sex.

The Art of Love was followed by the Remedies of Love, in one book: “Let him,” he says, “who taught you to love, teach you also the cure; one hand shall inflict the wound and minister the balm. The earth produces noxious and healthful herbs; the rose is often nearest neighbour to the nettle.”751

His Metamorphoses were just finished, and not yet corrected,752 when his fall took place. When in his despair he burnt it, fortunately for the world some copies transpired. Afterwards he prayed that they might be preserved to remind the readers of the unhappy author. The Metamorphoses consist of fifteen books, and contain a series of mythological narratives from the earliest times to the translation of the soul of Julius Cæsar from earth to heaven, and his metamorphosis into a star. This poem is Ovid’s noblest effort: it approaches as near to the epic form as is possible with so many naturally unconnected episodes. In many parts, especially his descriptions, we do not merely admire his natural facility in making verses, but picturesque truthfulness and force—the richest fancy combined with grandeur and dignity. Amongst the most beautiful portions may be enumerated the story of Phaeton, including the splendid description of the Palace of the Sun;753 the golden age;754 the story of Pyramus and Thisbe;755 the cottage home and the rustic habits of Baucis and Philemon,756 Narcissus at the fountain;757 the powerfully sketched picture of the Cave of Sleep,758 Dædalus and Icarus,759 Cephalus and Procris,760 and the soliloquy of Medea.761 In this poem, especially, may be traced that study and learning by which the Roman poets made all the treasures of Greek literature their own. In fact, a more extensive knowledge of Greek mythology may be derived from it than from the Greeks themselves, because the books which were the sources of his information are unfortunately no longer extant.

The “Fasti” is an antiquarian poem on the Roman calendar. Originally it was intended to have formed twelve books, one for each month of the year, but only the first six were completed:762——

Sex ego Fastorum scripsi totidemque libellos
Cumque suo finem mense volumen habet.

It is a beautiful specimen of simple narrative in verse, and displays more than any of his works, his power of telling a story, without the slightest effort, in poetry as well as prose. As a profound study of Greek mythology and poetry had furnished the materials for his Metamorphoses and other poems, so in this he drew principally from the legends which had been preserved by the old poets and annalists of his own country.

The five books of the Tristia and the four books of the Epistles from Pontus were the outpourings of his sorrowful heart during the gloomy evening of his days. Without the brilliancy, the wit, and the genius, which beamed forth from his joyous spirit in the time of his prosperity, without the graceful and inspired querulousness of the ancient models, they are, nevertheless, conceived in the spirit of the Greek elegy—they utter the voice of complaining, and deserve the Horatian epithet of miserabiles.763 It was natural to him to give utterance to his hope and despair in song: he had sported like a gay insect in the sunshine of prosperity. He was too fragile, delicate, and effeminate to bear the storm of adversity—his butterfly spirit was broken; but, with all his faults, that broken heart was capable of the tenderest emotions, and his letter to his daughter Perilla764 is full of purity and sweetness. The carelessness of one who would not take the trouble to correct, and who was conscious of his dangerous facility, is compensated for by the commiseration which his natural complaints excite, and for the powerful descriptions which occasionally enliven the monotony inseparable from grief.

His minor poems consist of an elegiac poem, “Nux,” in which a nut-tree bewails its hard fate and the ill treatment which it receives; a long and bitter satire, entitled Ibis, on some enemy, or, perhaps, some faithless friend; a poem on Cosmetics (Medicamina facici;765) another on Fishing (Halieutica;766) and an address of condolence to Livia Augusta. None, however, of these last three are universally admitted to be genuine. Other works which were the offspring of his prolific genius have perished. During his exile he acquired sufficient knowledge of the Getan language to write some poems in it; and these were as popular with the barbarians as his Latin works were at Rome. Lastly, he was the author of the Medea; a tragedy of which Quintilian says, that it shows of what grand works he was capable, if he had been willing to curb instead of giving reins to the luxuriance of his genius.767 Two lines only are extant; but we can judge of the conception which he formed of the character of Medea from the epistle in the “Heroides,” and her eminently tragic soliloquy in the Metamorphoses.

Ovid was a voluptuary, but not a heartless one. The age in which he lived was as immoral as himself, and far more gross; he was, therefore, neither a corrupter nor a seducer. His poetry was popular, not only because of its beauty, but because it was in exact accordance with the spirit of the times. His wit was sometimes contrary to good taste, but it was not forced and unnatural. He was betrayed into the appearance, not the reality of affectation, by a luxuriance which required pruning, for which he had neither patience nor inclination. He stored himself with the learning of the ancients, and caught their inspiration; but their severe taste was to him a trammel to which he was too self-willed and self-complacent to submit. The prevalent taste for elegiac poetry pointed out the style which was suited to his caliber; for one cannot help feeling that his genius was incapable of mastering the gigantic proportions of a true epic, and, notwithstanding the favourable criticism of Quintilian, of soaring to the sublimity of tragedy.

Gratius Faliscus

The Cynegetica of Gratius, commonly, though without any reason, surnamed Faliscus, may claim a place beside the Halieutica of Ovid, on account of its subject, but not on the score of genius, poetry, or language. Nothing is known respecting this author, except that Ovid speaks of him as a contemporary.768 The poem is heroic, and consists of 536 lines: its style is hard and prosaic; it describes the weapons and arts of the chase, horses and hounds; but the science is rather Greek than Italian, and the information contained in it is principally derived from Xenophon.769

Pedo Albinovanus

Another poet of the Ovidian age was his trusty friend, C. Pedo Albinovanus. He was of equestrian rank,770 and, unlike most of his contemporaries, an epic poet.771 Ovid in his Epistles from Pontus,772 which are addressed to him, applies to him the epithet, “Sidereus,” either because he had written an astronomical poem, or because his sublime language soared into the starry heavens. Martial speaks of him as having written epigrams which extend to the length of two pages.^[773] A fragment of an epic poem, describing the voyage of Germanicus related by Tacitus, is preserved by Seneca.774 Three elegies are usually ascribed to him; but their style is that of more modern times, and the authority for their genuineness very suspicious.

A. Sabinus

Another contemporary of Ovid was A. Sabinus; and all that is known respecting him is derived from two passages in the works of the former poet.775 In one of these,776 he tells us that Sabinus wrote answers to six of the epistles of the Heroides. None of these, however, are extant. The three which profess to be written by him, entitled Ulysses to Penelope, Demophoon to Phyllis, and Paris to Œnone, are the work of Angelus Sabinus,777 a philologer and poet of the fifteenth century.

Two other works are attributed to him by Ovid in a passage in which he speaks of his death.778 One of these, entitled Trœzen, was probably an epic poem, of which Theseus was the hero;779 the other, Dierum Opus, was a continuation of Ovid’s Fasti. Other elegiac poets flourished at this period, such as Proculus and Montanus; but their poetical talents were of too commonplace a character to deserve special mention. They confer no obligation on literature, and contribute nothing towards the illustration of the literary character of their times.

M. Manilius

The astronomical and astrological poem of Manilius furnishes a series of those historical problems which have never yet been satisfactorily solved. The author has been in turn confounded with every one whom Roman records mention as bearing that name, and in all cases with equally little reason. No one knows when he flourished, where he lived, and of what place he was a native. Bentley determined that he was an Asiatic; Huet that he was a Carthaginian. Internal evidence renders it most probable that he lived in the reign of Tiberius;780 and yet neither he nor his poem are ever mentioned by any ancient author. His work was never discovered until the beginning of the fifteenth century; probably it had never been published, but only a few copies had been made, some of which have been marvellously preserved.

The philosophical principles of the poem are those of a Stoical Pantheism. As one principle of life pervades the whole universe, there is a close connexion between things celestial and things terrestrial. In consequence of this relation, the astrologer can determine the course of the latter by observation of the heavenly bodies. Together with all the assumptions and absurdities of astrology are mingled extensive knowledge of the state of astronomical science in his day: gleams of truth shoot like meteors athwart the darkness. The subject which he has chosen is as unpromising for poetical effect and embellishment as that of Lucretius; but he does not handle it so successfully: he has neither the boldness of thought, the dignity of language, nor the imaginative grandeur which marked the old poet philosopher. The poem is incomplete; and probably owes some of its roughness and obscurity to its never having been corrected for publication.

Chapter IX — Prose Writers — Influence of Cicero Upon the Language — His Converse With His Friends — His Early Life — Pleads His First Cause — Is Quæstor, Ædile, Prætor and Consul — His Exile, Return, and Provincial Administration — His Vacillating Conduct — He Delivers His Philippics — Is Proscribed and Assassinated — His Character

As oratory gave to Latin prose-writing its elegance and dignity, Cicero is not only the representative of the flourishing period of the language, but also the instrumental cause of its arriving at perfection. Circumstances may have been favourable to his influence. The national mind may have been in that stage of progress which only required a master-genius to develop it; but still it was he who gave a fixed character to the language, who showed his countrymen what eloquence especially was in its combination of the precepts of art and the principles of natural beauty; what the vigour of Latin was, and of what elegance and polish it was capable.

His age was not an age of poetry; but he paved the way for poetry by investing the language with those graces which are indispensable to its perfection. He freed it from all coarseness and harshness, and accustomed the educated classes to use language, even in their every-day conversation, which never called up gross ideas, but was fit for pure and noble sentiments. Before his time, Latin was plain-spoken, and therefore vigorous; but the penalty which was paid for this was, that it was sometimes gross and even indecent. The conversational language of the upper classes became in the days of Cicero in the highest degree refined: it admitted scarcely an offensive expression. The truth of this assertion is evident from those of his writings which are of the familiar character—from his graphic Dialogues, in which he describes the circumstances as naturally as if they really occurred; from his letters to Atticus, in which he lays open the secret thoughts of his heart to his most intimate friend, his second self. Cicero purified the language morally as well as æsthetically. It was the licentious wantonness of the poets which degraded the pleasures of the imagination by pandering to the passions at first in language delicately veiled, and then by open and disgusting sensuality.

It is difficult for us, perhaps, to whom religion comes under the aspect of revelation separate from philosophy, and who consider the philosophical investigation of moral subjects as different from the religious view of morals, to form an adequate conception of the pure and almost holy nature of the conversations of Cicero and his distinguished contemporaries. To them philosophy was the contemplation of the nature and attributes of the Supreme Being. The metaphysical analysis of the internal nature of man was the study of immortality and the evidence for another life. Cato, for example, read the Phædo of Plato in his last moments in the same serious spirit in which the Christian would read the words of inspiration. The study of ethics was that of the sanctions with which God has supported duty and enlightened the conscience. They were the highest subjects with which the mind of man could be conversant. For men to meet together, as was the habitual practice of Cicero and his friends, and pass their leisure hours in such discussions, was the same as if Christians were to make the great truths of the gospel the subjects of social converse.

Again, if we examine the character of their lighter conversations, when they turned from philosophy to literature,—it was not mere gossip on the popular literature of the day—it was not even confined to works written in their native tongue—it embraced the whole field of the literature of a foreign nation. They talked of poets, orators, philosophers, and historians, who were ancients to them as they are to us. They did not then think the subject of a foreign and ancient literature dull or pedantic. They did not consider it necessary that conversation should be trifling or frivolous in order to be entertaining.

Nor was the influence which Cicero exercised on the literature of his day merely extensive, but it was permanent. The great men of whom he was the leader and guide caught his spirit. His influence survived until external political causes destroyed eloquence, and its place was supplied by a cold and formal rhetoric: it was felt almost until the language was corrupted by the admixture of barbarisms. It may be discerned in the soldier-like plainness of Cæsar, in the Herodotean narrative of Livy, and its sweetness without its diffuseness occasionally adorns the reflective pages of Tacitus.

It is difficult in a limited space to do justice to Cicero, even as a literary man; such was his versatility of genius, such his indefatigable industry, so vast the range of subjects which he touched and adorned. Of course, therefore, it is impossible to do more than rapidly glance at the leading events of his political career, or at his public character, since his history is, in fact, a history of his stirring and critical times.

M. Tullius Cicero (Born B. C. 106.)

On the banks of the noiseless and gently-flowing781 Liris (Garigliano,) near Arpinum, the birthplace of Marius,782 lived a Roman knight named M. Tullius Cicero. A competent hereditary estate enabled him to devote his time to literary pursuits. He had two sons: the elder, who bore his father’s name, was born January 3rd, B. C. 106. The other, Quintus, was about four years younger. As both, and Marcus especially, displayed quick talents and a lively disposition, and gave promise of inheriting their father’s taste for learning, he migrated to Rome when Marcus was about fourteen years of age. The boys were educated with their cousins, the young Aculei.783 Q. Ælius784 taught them grammar; learned Greeks instructed them in philosophy; and the poet Archias exercised them in the technical rules of verse, although he did not succeed in giving them the inspiration of poetry. Quintus prided himself on his poetic skill; and a poem by him, on the twelve zodiacal signs, is still extant.785 Cicero also had in his boyhood some poetical taste; and there is great elegance in the translations from the Greek which we meet with in his works. He wrote a poem in hexameters, entitled “Pontius Glaucus,” as a sort of juvenile exercise, which was extant in the time of Plutarch; and also when he was a young man in praise of Marius.

After assuming the toga virilis at sixteen years of age, M. T. Cicero attended the forum diligently; and, by carefully exercising himself in composition, made the eloquence of the celebrated orators whom he heard his own, whilst from the lectures and advice of Q. Mucius Scævola, he acquired the principles of Roman jurisprudence.

He served but little in the armies of his country: his only campaign786 was made under the father of Pompey the Great in the social war. During the remainder of this period, Molo, the Rhodian rhetorician, instructed him in oratory, whilst Diodotus the Stoic, Phædrus the Epicurean, and Philo, who had presided over the New Academy at Athens, were his masters in philosophy. The various schools, the principles of which he thus imbibed, led to the eclecticism which characterizes his philosophical creed. The bloody era of the Marian and Sullan war was passed by him in study: he did not interfere in politics, and the fruits of his retirement are extant in the treatise de Inventione Rhetorica.

At twenty-five, he pleaded his first cause,787 and in the following year defended S. Roscius of Ameria; but his constitution was not strong enough to bear great exertion. His friends, therefore, induced him to travel, and he determined to pass some time at Athens.788 There was also another reason for this recommendation. His courageous defence of Roscius had provoked the enmity of Chrysogonus, a creature of Sulla, and it was therefore dangerous for him to remain at Rome. He was accompanied by his brother Quintus,789 and found Pomponius Atticus residing there, who afterwards became his most intimate friend. From Athens he travelled to Asia and Rhodes, employing his time in the cultivation of oratory, his principal study at Athens having been philosophy. From Asia he returned to Rome790 with improved health and an invigorated constitution; where he found a powerful rival, as an orator, in Hortensius, who was then at the zenith of his popularity.

As soon as he was old enough,791 he was elected quæstor, and the province of Sicily was allotted to him. In the exercise of this office, the unusual mildness and integrity of his administration endeared him to the provincials; whilst the judgment with which he regulated the supplies of corn from the granary of Rome, gained him equal credit with his fellow-countrymen. It was during his stay in Sicily that his love of antiquarianism was gratified by the discovery of the tomb of Archimedes.792 On his return home793 he resumed his forensic practice: and in B. C. 70 was the champion of his old friends, the Sicilians, and impeached Verres, who had been prætor of Syracuse, for oppression and maladministration. In the following year794 he was elected curule ædile by a triumphant majority. In the celebration of the games which belonged to the province of this magistrate, he exhibited great prudence by avoiding the lavish expenditure in which so many were accustomed to indulge, whilst, at the same time, no one could accuse him of meanness and illiberality.

In the year B. C. 67, he obtained the prætorship, and notwithstanding the judicial duties of his office, defended Cluentius. Hitherto his speeches had been entirely of the judicial kind. He now for the first time distinguished himself as a deliberative orator, and supported the Manilian law which conferred upon Pompey, to the discomfiture of the aristocratic party, the command in chief of the Mithridatic war.

The great object of his ambition now was the consulship, which seemed almost inaccessible to a new man. As all difficulties and prejudices were on the side of the aristocratic party, his only hope of surmounting them was by warmly espousing the cause of the people.

Catiline and C. Antonius, who were his principal competitors, formed a coalition, and were supported by Cæsar and Crassus, but the influence of Pompey and the popular party prevailed; and Cicero and Antony were elected. He entered upon his office January 1, B. C. 63. At this period, perhaps, the moral qualities of his character are the highest, and his genius shines forth with the brightest splendour.

The conspiracy of Catiline was the great event of his consulship; a plot which its historian does not hesitate to dignify with the title of a war. Yet this war was crushed in an unparalleled short space of time; and a splendid triumph was gained over so formidable an enemy, by one who wore the peaceful toga, not the habiliments of a general. The prudence and tact of the civilian did as good service as the courage and decision of the soldier. The applause and gratitude of his fellow citizens were unbounded, and all united in hailing him the father of his country. One act alone laid him open to attack, and in fact eventually caused his ruin. There is no doubt that it was unconstitutional, although under the circumstances it was defensible, perhaps scarcely to be avoided. This act was the execution of Lentulus, Cethegus, and the other ringleaders, without sentence being passed upon them by the comitia. The senate, seeing that the danger was imminent, had invested Cicero and his colleague with power to do all that the exigencies of the state might require (videre ne quid res publica detrimenti caperet;) and although it was Cicero who recommended the measure and argued in its favour, it was the senate who pronounced the sentence, and assumed that, as traitors, the conspirators had forfeited their rights as citizens.

The grateful people saw this clearly; and when Metellus Celer, one of the tribunes, would have prevented Cicero from giving an account of his administration at the close of the consular year, he swore that he saved his country, and his oath was confirmed by the acclamations of the multitude. This was a great triumph; and in sadder times he looked back to it with a justifiable self-complacency.795 He now, as though his mission was accomplished, refused all public dignities except that of a senator: but he did not thus escape peril; he soon exposed himself to the implacable vengeance of a powerful and unscrupulous enemy. The infamous P. Clodius Pulcher intruded himself in female attire into the rites of the Bona Dea, which were celebrated in the house of Cæsar. Suspicion fell upon Cæsar’s wife, and a divorce was the consequence.796 Clodius was brought to trial on the charge of sacrilege, and pleaded an alibi. Cicero, however, proved his presence in Rome on the very day on which the accused asserted that he was at Interamnum.

Although the guilt of Clodius was fully established, his influence over the corrupt Roman judices was powerful enough to procure an acquittal. Henceforward he never could forgive Cicero, and determined to work his ruin. He caused himself to be adopted in a plebeian family; and thus becoming qualified for the tribunate was elected to that magistracy, B. C. 59. No sooner was he appointed, than he proposed a bill for the outlawry of any one who had caused the execution of a citizen without trial. Cicero at once saw that this blow was aimed against himself. He had disgusted Cæsar by his political coquetry; the false and selfish Pompey refused to aid him in his trouble; and spirit-broken, he fled to Brundisium,797 and thence to Thessalonica. He had an interview with Pompey before his flight, but it led to no results.798 He had sworn to help him as long as he felt that there was danger, lest he should join Cæsar’s party; but when he saw that his foes were successful, he deserted him.

In his absence his exile was decreed, and his town and country houses were given up to plunder. It cannot be denied that during his banishment he exhibited weakness and pusillanimity: his reverses had such an effect upon his mind that he was even supposed to be mad.799 His great fault was vanity, of which defect he was himself conscious, and confessed it;800 and disappointed vanity was the cause of his affliction. He could bear anything better than loss of popular applause; and on this occasion, more than any other, he gave grounds for the assertion, that “he bore none of his calamities like a man, except his death.” Rome, however, could not forget her preserver; and in the following year he was recalled, and entered Rome in triumph, in the midst of the loud plaudits of the assembled people.801 Still, however, he was obliged to secure the prosperity which he had recovered by political tergiversation. The measures of the triumvirate, which he had formerly attacked with the utmost virulence, he did not hesitate now to approve and defend.

After his return802 he was appointed to a seat in the College of Augurs; a dignity which he had anxiously coveted before his exile, and to obtain which, he had offered almost any terms to Cæsar and Pompey.803 The following year, much against his will, the province of Cilicia was assigned to him. Strictly did the accuser of Verres act up to the high and honourable principles which he professed. His was a model administration: a stop was put to corruption, wrongs were redressed, justice impartially administered. Those great occasions on which he was compelled to act on his own responsibility, and to listen to the dictates of his beautiful soul, “seine schöne seele,”804 his pure, honest, and incorruptible heart, are the bright points in Cicero’s career. The emergency of the occasion overcame his constitutional timidity.

In the year B. C. 49, he returned to Rome, and finding himself in a position in which he could calmly observe the current of affairs, and determine unbiassed what part he should take in them, or whether it was his duty to take any part at all, his weak, wavering, vacillating temper again got the mastery over him. He would not do anything dishonest, but he was not chivalrous enough to spurn at once that which was dishonourable. Cæsar and Pompey were now at open war, and he could not make up his mind which to join.805 He felt, probably, that the energy, ability, and firmness of Cæsar, would be crowned with success; and yet his friends, his party, and his own heart were with Pompey, and he dreaded the scorn which would be heaped upon him if he forsook his political opinions. His were not the stern, unyielding principles of a Cato; but the fear of what men would say of him made him anxious and miserable. The struggle was a long one between caution and honour, but at length honour overcame caution. He made his decision, and went to the camp of Pompey; but he could never rally his spirits, or feel sanguine as to the result. He immediately saw that Pharsalia decided the question for ever, and consequently hastened to Brundisium, where he awaited the return of the conqueror. It was a long time to remain in suspense; but at last the generous Cæsar relieved him from it by a full and free pardon.

And now again his character rose higher, and his good qualities had room to display themselves. There were no longer equally balanced parties to revive the discord which formerly distracted his mind, nor were the circumstances of the times such as to demand his active interference in the cause of his country; but he was as great in the exercise of his contemplative faculties as he had been in the brightest period of his political life. The same faults may, perhaps, be discerned in his philosophical speculations: the same indecision which rendered him incapable of being a statesman or a patriot caused him to adopt in philosophy a skeptical eclecticism. Truth was to him as variable as political honesty; but he is always the advocate and supporter of resignation, and fortitude, and purity, and virtue.

He had hitherto suffered as a public man: he was now bowed down by domestic affliction. A quarrel with his wife Terentia ended in a divorce:806 such was the facility with which at Rome the nuptial tie could be severed. His second wife was his own ward—a young lady of large fortune; but disparity of years and temper prevented this connexion from lasting long. In B. C. 45 he lost his daughter Tullia. The blow was overwhelming: he sought in vain to soothe his grief in the woody solitudes of his maritime villa at Astura, and it was long before the bereaved father found consolation in philosophy.

The political crisis which ensued upon the assassination of Cæsar alarmed him for his own personal safety: he therefore meditated a voyage to Greece; but being wind-bound at Rhegium, the hopes of an accommodation between Antony and the senate (a hope destined not to be realized) induced him to return. Antony now left Rome, and Cicero delivered that torrent of indignant and eloquent invective—his twelve Philippic orations.807 He was again the popular idol—crowds of applauding and admiring fellow-citizens attended him to the Forum in a kind of triumphant procession, as they had on his return from exile. But soon the second triumvirate was formed. Each member readily gave up friends to satisfy the vengeance of his colleagues, and Octavius sacrificed Cicero.

The story of his death is a brief and sad one. He was enjoying the literary retirement of his Tusculan villa when his friends warned him of his approaching fate. He was too great a philosopher to fear death; but too high-principled and resigned to the Divine will to commit suicide. Still he scarcely thought life worth preserving: “I will die,” he said, “in my fatherland, which I have so often saved.” However, at the entreaty of his brother, to whom he was affectionately attached, he endeavoured to escape. He first went across the country to Astura, and there embarked. The weather was tempestuous, and as he suffered much from sea-sickness, he again landed at Gaëta. A treacherous freedman betrayed him, and as he was being carried in a litter he was overtaken by his pursuers. He would not permit his attendants to make any resistance; but patiently and courageously submitted to the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands and carried them to Antony. A savage joy sparkled in the eyes of the triumvir at the sight of these bloody trophies. His wife, Fulvia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle that once eloquent tongue. The head and hands were fixed upon the rostrum which had so often witnessed his unequalled eloquence. All that passed by bewailed his death, and gave vent to their affectionate feelings.

Although it is impossible to be blind to the numerous faults of Cicero, few men have been more maligned and misrepresented, and the judgment of antiquity has been, upon the whole, generally unfavourable. He was vain, vacillating, inconstant, constitutionally timid, and the victim of a morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. His amiability, acted upon by timidity, led him to set too high a value on public esteem and favour; and this weakened his moral sense and his instinctive love of virtue. That he possessed heroism is proved by his defence of Roscius, although the favourite of the terrible Sulla was his adversary. He was not entirely destitute of decision, or he would not so promptly have expressed his approbation of Cæsar’s assassins as tyrannicides. He had resolution to strive against his over-sensitiveness, and wisdom to see that mental occupation was its best remedy; for in the midst of the distractions and anxieties of that eventful and critical year which preceded the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa an almost incredible number of works proceeded from his pen.808

There are many circumstances to account for his political inconsistency and indecision. He had an early predilection for the aristocratic party; but he saw that they were narrow-minded and behind their age. All the patricians, except Sulla and his small party, were on the popular side. He was proud of his connexion with Marius; and his friend Sulpicius Rufus, whom he greatly admired, joined the Marians. For these reasons, Cicero was inconsistent as a politician. Again, during periods of revolutionary turbulence, moderate men are detested by both sides; and yet it was impossible for a philosophic temper, which could calmly and dispassionately weigh the merits and demerits of both, to sympathize warmly with either. Cicero saw that both were wrong: he was too temperate to approve, too honest to pretend a zeal which he did not feel, and, therefore, he was undecided.

Again, having a large benevolence, and a firm faith in virtue, he was unconscious of guile himself, and thought no evil of others. He therefore mistook flattery for sincerity, and compliments for kindness. He was vain; but vanity is a weakness not inconsistent with great minds, and in the case of Cicero it was fed by the unanimous voice of public approbation.

As an advocate his delight was to defend, not to accuse.809 In three only of his twenty-four orations did he undertake the office of an accuser.

Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and died as a philosopher.

Chapter X — Cicero No Historian — His Oratorical Style Defended — Its Principal Charm — Observations on His Forensic Oration — His Oratory Essentially Judicial — Political Orations — Rhetorical Treatises — The Object of His Philosophical Works — Characteristics of Roman Philosophical Literature — Philosophy of Cicero — His Political Works — Letters — His Correspondents — Varro

Such were the life and character of Cicero. The place which he occupies in a history of Roman literature is that of an orator and philosopher. It has been already stated that he had some taste for poetry: in fact, without imagination he could scarcely have been so eminent as an orator; but though the power which he wielded over prose was irresistible, he had not fancy enough to give a poetical character to the language.

Nor had he, notwithstanding the versatility of his talents, any taste for historical investigation. He delighted to read the Greek historians, for the same purpose for which he studied the Attic orators, merely as an instrument of intellectual cultivation; but he was ignorant of Roman history, because he took no interest in original research. His countrymen810 expected from him an historical work, but he was unfit for the task. It is plain from his “Republic,” how little he knew as an antiquarian.

The greatest praise of an orator’s style is to say that he was successful. The end and object of oratory is to convince and persuade—to rivet the attention of the hearer, and to gain a mastery over the minds of men. If, therefore, any who study the speeches of Cicero in the closet find faults in his style, they must remember the very faults themselves were suited to the object which he was carrying into execution. During the process of raising the public taste to the highest standard, he carried his hearers with him: he was not too much in advance; he did not aim his shafts too high; they hit the head and heart. Senate, judges, people understood his arguments, and felt his passionate appeals. Compared with the dignified energy and majestic vigour of the Athenian orator, the Asiatic exuberance of some of his orations may be fatiguing to the sober and chastened taste of the modern classical scholar; but in order to form a just appreciation, he must transport himself mentally to the excitements of the thronged Forum—to the senate composed, not of aged, venerable men, but statesmen and warriors in the prime of life, maddened with the party spirit of revolutionary times—to the presence of the jury of judices, as numerous as a deliberative assembly, whose office was not merely calmly to give their verdict of guilty or not guilty, but who were invested as representatives of the sovereign people with the prerogative of pardoning or condemning.

Viewed in this light, his most florid passages will appear free from affectation—the natural flow of a speaker carried away with the torrent of his enthusiasm. The melodious rise and fall of his periods are not the result of studied effect, but of a true and musical ear. Undoubtedly, amongst his earlier orations, are to be found passages somewhat too declamatory and inconsistent with the principles which he afterwards laid down when his taste was more matured, and when he undertook to write scientifically on the theory of eloquence. Nor must it be concealed that some of the staid and stern Romans of his own days were daring enough, notwithstanding his popularity and success, to find the same fault with him. “Suorum temporum homines,” says Quintilian, “incessere audebant eum ut tumidiorem et Asianum811 et redundantem et in repetitionibus nimium et in salibus aliquando frigidum et in compositione fractum et exsultantem et pene viro molliorem.”

But it is not only the brilliance and variety of expression, and the finely-modulated periods, which constituted the principal charm of Ciceronian oratory, and rendered it so effective. Its effectiveness was mainly owing to the great orator’s knowledge of the human heart, and of the national peculiarities of his countrymen. Its charm was owing to his extensive acquaintance with the stores of literature and philosophy, which his sprightly wit moulded at will, to the varied learning which his unpedantic mind made so pleasant and popular, to his fund of illustration at once interesting and convincing. Even if his knowledge, because it spread over so wide a surface, was superficial, in this case profoundness was unnecessary.

In a work like the present it is only possible to devote a few brief observations to the most important of his numerous orations, in which, according to the criticism of Quintilian, he combined the force of Demosthenes, the copiousness of Plato, and the elegance of Isocrates. Knowledge of law, far superior to that possessed by the great orators of the day,812 distinguishes his earliest extant oration, the defence of P. Quinctius.813 Hortensius was the defendant’s counsel. Nævius, the defendant, who had unjustly possessed himself of the property of the plaintiff’s deceased brother, was a deserter from the Marians, and therefore a protégé of Sylla; but, notwithstanding these disadvantages, Cicero gained his cause. In the masterly defence of S. Roscius,814 Cicero again defied Sulla. His client was accused of parricide: there was not a shadow of proof, and Cicero saved the life of an innocent man. The noble enthusiasm with which he inveighs against tyranny in this oration strikingly contrasts with the language, full of sweetness, in which he describes Roman rural life. The passage on parricide was too glowing and Asiatic for the taste of his maturer years, and he did not hesitate to make it the subject of severe criticism.815 Passing over speeches of less interest, we come to the six celebrated Verrian orations. Of these chefs-d’œuvre the first only was delivered.816 The others were merely published; for the voluntary exile of the criminal rendered further pleading unnecessary. The first is entitled “Divinatio,” i. e., an inquiry as to who should have the right of prosecuting: Cæcilius, who had been quæstor to the accused, claimed this privilege, wishing to make the suit a friendly one, and thus quash the proceedings. Nothing can surpass the ironical and sarcastic exposure of this fraudulent attempt to defeat the ends of justice. The noble passages in the succeeding orations of the series are well known; the sketch of the wicked proconsul’s antecedent career; the graceful eulogy of that province, in the welfare of which Cicero himself felt so warm an interest; the tasteful description of the statues and antiquities which tempted the more than Roman cupidity of Verres; the interesting history of ancient art which accompanies it; the burst of pathetic indignation with which he paints the horrible tortures to which not only the provincials, but even Roman citizens, were exposed. Transports of joy pervaded the whole of Sicily at Cicero’s success; and the Sicilians caused a medal to be struck with this inscription—“Prostrato Verre Trinacria.” The oration for Fonteius817 is a skilful defence of an unpopular governor; that in defence of Cluentius818 is one of the most remarkable causes célèbres of antiquity; and the complicated scene of villany which Cicero’s forcible and soul-harrowing language paints, makes one shudder with horror, whilst we are struck with admiration at the clearness of intellect with which he unravels the web of guilt woven by Oppianicus and Sassia. This remarkable oration has been analyzed by Dr. Blair.819

Again, passing over other forensic orations, we come to that on which he had evidently expended all his resources of art, taste, and skill—the speech for the poet Archias.820 If possible it is even too elaborate and polished for so graceful a theme. Although the object of the advocate was simply to establish the right of his client to Roman citizenship, the genius of the poet of Antioch furnished an opportunity not to be neglected for digressing into the fields of literature, and for pronouncing a truly academical eulogium on poetry. It is satisfactory to the admirers of Cicero to find that the attack which has been made on the genuineness of this pleasing oration is groundless and unwarrantable.821

The oration pro Cælio822 is the most entertaining in the whole collection. It contains a rich fund of anecdote, seasoned with witty observations; a knowledge of human nature illustrated in a piquant and humorous style, expressed in a tone of most gentlemanlike yet playful eloquence, and interspersed with passages of great beauty. It presents a marked contrast to the coarse personal abuse which defaces the otherwise powerful invective against L. Piso, which was delivered in the following year.823

The list, though many more marvellous specimens are omitted, must be closed with the oration in defence of T. Annius Milo. On this occasion Cicero lost his wonted self-possession. When the court opened, Pompey was presiding on the bench, and he had caused the Forum to be occupied with soldiers. The sight, added, perhaps, to the consciousness that he was advocating a bad cause, struck Cicero with alarm; his voice trembled, his tongue refused to give utterance to the conceptions which he had formed. The judges were unmoved; and Milo remained in his self-imposed exile at Marseilles. When Cicero left the court his courage and calmness returned. He penned the oration which is now extant. He had little or no proof or evidence to offer, and therefore, as an argumentative work, it is unconvincing; but for force, pathos, and the externals of eloquence, it deserves to be reckoned amongst his most wonderful efforts. When the exiled Milo read it, he is said to have exclaimed, “O, Cicero, if you had pleaded so, I should not be eating such capital fish here!” The author himself and his contemporaries thought this his finest oration; probably its deficiencies were concealed by its eloquence and ingenuity. It appears that the oration which he actually delivered was taken down in writing by reporters, and was extant in the time of Asconius Pedianus, the most ancient commentator on Cicero’s orations.824 Its feebleness proved the correctness of the judgment of antiquity.

The oratory of Cicero was essentially judicial: he was himself conscious that his talents lay in that direction, and he saw that in that field was the best opportunity for displaying oratorical power. Even his political orations are rather judicial than deliberative. He was not born for a politician. He possessed not that analytical character of mind which penetrates into the remote causes of human action, nor the synthetical power which enables a man to follow them out to their farthest consequences; he had not that comprehensive grasp of mind which can dismiss at once all points of minor importance and useless speculation, and, seizing all the salient points, can bring them to bear together upon questions of practical expediency. Of the three qualities necessary for a statesman he possessed only two, honesty and patriotism: he had not political wisdom.

Hence, in the finest specimens of his political harangues, his Catilinarians and Philippics, and that in support of the Manilian law, we look in vain for the calm, practical weighing of the subject which is necessary in addressing a deliberative assembly. This was not the habit of his mind. He was only lashed to action by circumstances of great emergency; but even then he is still an advocate—all is excitement, personal feeling, and party spirit: he deals in invective and panegyric, and the denunciation of the enemies of his country; and the parts which especially call forth our admiration differ in nothing from those which we admire in his judicial orations. Nevertheless, so irresistible was the influence which he exercised upon the minds of his hearers, that all his political speeches were triumphs. His panegyric on Pompey,825 in the speech for the Manilian law, carried his appointment as commander-in-chief of the armies of the East. The consequence of the oration de Provinciis Consularibus continued to Cæsar his administration of Gaul. He crushed in Catiline one of the most formidable traitors that had ever menaced the safety of the republic. Antony’s fall followed the complete exposure of his debauchery in private life, and the factiousness of his public career.826

Of the Catilinarians, the first and fourth were delivered in the senate, the second and third in the presence of the people. Every one knows the burst of indignation which the consul, rising in his place, aims at the audacious conspirator who dared to pollute with his presence the temple of the deity, and the most august assembly of the Roman people. In less than twenty-four hours Catiline had left Rome, and the conspiracy had become a war. In four words Cicero announced this to the assembled Romans the day after he had addressed the senate. The third is a piece of self-complacent but pardonable egotism. Success has overwhelmed him—he sees that all eyes are turned upon himself—he is the hero of his own story; still he demands no reward but the approbation of his fellow-citizens, and reminds them that to the gods alone their gratitude is due.

Two days pass away, and after Cæsar and Cicero had spoken, Cicero again addresses the senate, and recommends that measure which was the beginning of his troubles, the condemnation of the conspirators. The zeal of the senate made the act their own, but Cicero paid the penalty. The position which Cicero occupies on this occasion invests his speech with more dignity than is displayed in any of the preceding. He is the chief magistrate of the republic, performing the duty of pronouncing a capital sentence on the guilty. The excitement of the crisis is subsiding; and he has the more composure, because he knows that he carries with him the sympathies of the senate and people.

The Philippics, so named after the orations of Demosthenes, are fourteen in number. Cicero commenced his attack827 upon the object of his implacable hatred with a defence of the laws of Cæsar, which Antony wished to repeal. He followed it up with the celebrated second oration, in which he demolished the character of Antony; a speech which Juvenal pronounced to be his chef-d’œuvre, but which Niebuhr thought was undeserving of being so highly exalted. He delivered the remaining twelve in the course of the succeeding year; they were the last monuments of his eloquence; he never spoke again. The fourteenth is a brilliant panegyric, but nothing more; the gallant army of Octavius received their deserved applause; but in this political crisis the orator could not discern or even catch a glimpse of the future destinies of his country.

In his rhetorical works, Cicero left a legacy of practical instruction to posterity. The treatise “De Inventione,” although it displays genius, is merely interesting as the juvenile production of a future great man; and the author himself alludes to it as a rude and unfinished production.828 Of the Rhetorical Hand-Book, in four sections, addressed to Herennius, it is unnecessary to speak, as it is now universally pronounced spurious.829 The De Oratore, Brutus sive de claris Oratoribus, and Orator ad M. Brutum,830 are the result of his matured experience. They form together one series; the principles are first laid down; their developments are carried out and illustrated; and lastly, in the Orator, he places before the eyes of Brutus the model of ideal perfection. In his treatment of this subject, he shows a mind imbued with the spirit of Plato: he invests it with dramatic interest, and transports the reader into the scene which he so graphically describes. The conversation contained in the first of these works has been already described. The scene of the second is laid on the lawn of Cicero’s palace at Rome: Cicero, Atticus and M. Brutus are the dramatis personæ; and their taste receives inspiration from a statue of Plato which adorns the garden. In the third, Cicero himself, at the request of M. Brutus, paints, as Plato would have done, the portrait of a faultless orator.

Three more short treatises must be added—(1.) The dialogue, De Partitione Oratoria,831 an elementary book, written for his son. (2.) The De Optimo Genere Oratorum,832 a short preface to a translation of the Greek oration, De Corona. (3.) The Topica,833 i. e., a treatise on the commonplaces of judicial oratory.

Philosophy of Cicero

Cicero somewhat arrogantly claims the credit of being the first to awaken a taste for philosophy, and to illuminate the darkness in which it lay hid by the light of Roman letters.834 He did not confess the obligations under which he lay to his predecessors, because he never could forget that he was an orator.835 He could not deny that some of them thought justly; but he denied that they possessed the power of expressing what they thought. He felt that there was nothing in the philosophical writings already existing to tempt his countrymen to study the subject: they were dry, unadorned, unpolished. It required an orator to array philosophy in an enticing garb. He proposed, therefore, to assuage his anxieties—to seek repose from the harassing cares of politics836—by rendering his countrymen independent of Greek philosophical literature.

This was all he proposed to himself: it was all that his predecessor had attempted; nor did he pretend to originality. The periods which he devoted to the task, and to which all philosophical works belong, were those during which he was excluded from political life. The first of these was the triumvirate of Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus; the second was coincident with the dictatorship of Cæsar and the consulship of Antony. Not only did his contemplative spirit delight in such studies, but, whilst all the avenues to distinction were closed against him, his ambition sought this road to fame, and his patriotism urged him to take this method of benefiting his country. But as he was not the first who introduced philosophy to the Romans, it will be necessary briefly to sketch its progress up to the time at which his labours commenced.

Roman philosophy was neither the result of original investigation nor the gradual development of the Greek system. It arose rather from a study of ancient philosophical literature than from an examination of philosophical principles. The Roman intellect did not possess the power of abstraction in a sufficiently high degree for research, nor was the Latin language capable of representing satisfactorily abstract thoughts. Cicero was quite aware of the poverty of its scientific nomenclature, as compared with that of Greece. In one treatise,837 he writes,—“Equidem soleo etiam, quod uno Græci, si aliter non possum, idem pluribus verbis exprimere.” Pliny838 and Seneca839 assert the same fact. “Magis damnabis,” writes the latter, “angustias Romanas si scieris unam syllabam esse, quam mutare non possim. Quæ hæc sit quæris? το ον.” The practical character also of the people prompted them to take advantage of the material already furnished by others, and to select such doctrines as it approved, without regard to their relation to each other.

The Roman philosopher, therefore, or rather (to speak more correctly) philosophical student, did not throw himself into the speculations of his age, pursue them contemporaneously, or deduce from them fresh results. He went back to the earlier ages of Greek philosophy, studied, commented on, and explained the works of the best authors, and adopted some of their doctrines as fixed scholastic dogmas. Consequently, the spirit in which philosophical study was pursued by the Romans was a literary and not a scientific one. A taste for literature had been awakened, and philosophy was considered only as one species of literature, although its importance was recognised as bearing upon the practical duties, the highest interests and happiness of man. The practical view which Cicero took of philosophy, and the extensive influence which he attributed to it, is manifest from numerous passages in his works,840 and is imbodied in the following beautiful apostrophe in the Tusculan Disputations:841 “O vitæ Philosophia dux! O virtutis indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! Quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine te esse potuisset? Tu urbes peperisti; tu dissipatos homines in societatem vitæ convocasti; tu eos inter se primo domiciliis, deinde conjugiis, tum literarum et vocum communione junxisti; tu inventrix legum, tu magistra morum et disciplinæ fuisti; ad te confugimus, a te opem petimus; tibi nos, ut antea magna ex parte, sic nunc penitus totosque tradimus.”

It is plain, therefore, that the chief characteristics of Roman philosophy would be—(1.) Learning, for it consisted in bringing together doctrines and opinions scattered over a wide field; (2,) Generally speaking, an ethical purpose and object, for Romans would be little inclined to value any subject of study which had no ultimate reference to man’s political and social relations; (3,) Eclecticism; for although there were certain schools, such as the Epicurean and Stoic, which were evidently favourites, the dogmas of different teachers were collected and combined together often without regard to consistency.

The defects of such a system are fatal to its claim to be considered philosophical; for the scientific connexion of its parts is lost sight of, and results are presented independent of the chain of causes and effects by which they are connected with principles. Such a system must necessarily be illogical and inconsequential. Even the liberality which adopts the principle, “Nullius jurare in verba magistri,” and which, therefore, appears to be its chief merit, was absurd; and the willingness with which all views were readily admitted led to skepticism, or doubt whether such a thing as absolute truth had a real existence.

Greek philosophy was probably first introduced into Rome by the Achæan exiles, of whom Polybius was one.842 The embassy of Carneades the Academic, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, followed six years afterwards. In vain the stern M. Porcius Cato caused their dismissal; for some of the most illustrious and accomplished Romans, such as Africanus, Lælius, and Furius, had already profited by their lectures and instructions.843 Whilst the educated Romans were gaining an historical insight into the doctrines of these schools, the Stoic Panætius, who was entertained in the household of Scipio Africanus, was unfolding the mysterious and transcendental doctrines of the great object of his veneration, Plato. But although the Romans could appreciate the majestic dignity and poetical beauty of his style, they were not equal to the task of penetrating his hidden meaning; they were, therefore, content to take upon trust the glosses and commentaries of his expositors. These inclined to the New Academy rather than to the Old: in its skeptical spirit they compared and balanced opposing probabilities; and went no farther than recommending the adoption of opinions upon which they could not pronounce with certainty. Neither did the Peripatetic doctrines meet with much favour, although the works of Aristotle had been brought to Rome by the dictator Sulla, partly, as Cicero says, because of the vastness of the subjects treated, partly because they seemed incapable of satisfactory proof to unskilled and inexperienced minds.844

The philosophical system which first arrested the attention of the Romans, and gained an influence over their minds, was the Epicurean.845 But it is somewhat remarkable that, although this philosophy was in its general character ethical, a people so eminently practical in their turn of mind should have especially devoted themselves to the study of the physical speculations of this school.846 The only apparent exception to this statement is Catius, but even his principal works, although he wrote one, “de Summo Bono,” are on the physical nature of things.847

Cicero accounts for the popularity of Epicureanism by saying that it was easy—that it appealed to the blandishments of pleasure; and that its first professors, Amafanius and Rabirius, used none of the refinements of art or subtleties or dialectic, but clothed their discussions in a homely and popular style, suited to the simple and unlearned. There were many successors to Amafanius; and the doctrines which they taught rapidly spread over the whole of Italy. Many illustrious statesmen, also, were amongst the believers in this fashionable creed; of whom the best known are C. Cassius, the fellow-conspirator of Brutus, and T. Pomponius Atticus, the friend of Cicero. All the monuments and records, however, of the Epicurean philosophy, which were published in Latin, have perished, with the exception of the immortal work of T. Lucretius Carus, “De Naturâ Rerum.”

Nor was Stoicism, the severe principles of which were in harmony with the stern old Roman virtues, without distinguished disciples; such as were the unflinching M. Brutus, the learned Terentius Varro, the jurist Scævola, the unbending Cato of Utica, and the magnificent Lucullus—a Stoic in creed, though not in life and conduct. The part which Cicero’s character qualified him to perform in the philosophical instruction of his countrymen was scarcely that of a guide: he could give them a lively interest in the subject, and reveal to them the discoveries and speculations of others, but he could not mould and form their belief, and train them in the work of original investigation. Not being himself devoutly attached to any system of philosophical belief, he would be cautious of offending the philosophical prejudices of others. He loved learning, but his temper was undecided and vacillating: whilst, therefore, he delighted in accumulating stores of Greek erudition, the tendency of his mind was, in the midst of a variety of inconsistent doctrines, to leave the conclusion undetermined. Although he listened to various instructors—Phædrus the Epicurean, Diodotus the Stoic, and Philo the Academician—he found the eclecticism of the latter more congenial to his taste. Its preference of probability to certainty suited one who shrunk from the responsibility of deciding.

It is this personality, as it were, which gives a special interest to the Ciceronian philosophy. The reflexion of his personal character which pervades it rescues it from the imputation of being a mere transcript of his Greek originals. Cicero brings everything as much as possible to a practical standard. If the question arises between the study of morals and politics and that of physics or metaphysics, he decides in favour of the former, on the grounds that the latter transcends the capacities of the human intellect;848 that in morals and politics we are under obligations from which in physics we are free; that we are bound to tear ourselves from these abstract studies at the call of duty to our country or our fellow-creatures, even if we were able to count the stars or measure the magnitude of the universe.849 In the didactic method which he pursues he bears in mind that he is dealing not with contemplative philosophers, or minds that have been logically trained, but with statesmen and men of the world; he does not therefore claim too much, or make his lessons too hard, and is always ready to sacrifice scientific system to a method of popular instruction. His object seems to be to recommend the subject—to smoothe difficulties, and illustrate obscurities. He evidently admires the exalted purity of Stoical morality; and the principles of that sect are those which he endeavours to impress upon his son.850 His only fear is that their system is impracticable.851

Cicero believed in the existence of one supreme Creator and Governor of the universe, and also in His spiritual nature;852 but his belief is rather the result of instinctive conviction, than of the proofs derived from philosophy; for as to them, he is, as on other points, uncertain and wavering. He disbelieved the popular mythical religion; but, uncertain as to what was the truth, he would not have that disturbed which he looked upon as a political engine.853 Amidst the doubtful and conflicting reasons, respecting the human soul and man’s eternal destiny, there is no doubt that, although he finds no satisfactory proof, he is a believer in immortality.854 It is unnecessary to pursue the subject of his philosophical creed any further, because it is not a system, but only a collection of precepts, not of investigations. Its materials are borrowed, its illustrations alone novel. But, nevertheless, the study of Cicero’s philosophical works is invaluable, in order to understand the minds of those who came after him. It must not be forgotten, that not only all Roman philosophy after his time, but a great part of that of the middle ages, was Greek philosophy filtered through Latin, and mainly founded on that of Cicero. Cicero’s works on speculative philosophy generally consist of—(1.) The Academics, or a history and defence of the belief of the New Academy. (2.) The De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, dialogues on the supreme good, the end of all moral action. (3.) The Tusculanæ Disputationes, containing five independent treatises on the fear of death, the endurance of pain, the power of wisdom over sorrow, the morbid passions, the relation of virtue to happiness. In these treatises Stoicism predominates, although opinions are adduced from the whole range of Greek philosophy. (4.) Paradoxa, in which the six celebrated Stoical paradoxies are touched upon in a light and amusing manner. (5.) A dialogue in praise of philosophy, named after Hortensius. (6.) Translations of the Timæus and Protagoras of Plato. Of these last three treatises only a few fragments remain.

His moral philosophy comprehends—(1.) The De Officiis, a Stoical treatise on moral obligations, addressed to his son Marcus, at that time a student at Athens. (2.) The unequalled little essays on Friendship and Old Age. A few words also are preserved of two books on Glory, addressed to Atticus; and one which he wrote on the Alleviation of Grief when bereaved of his beloved daughter.855 He left one theological work in three parts: the first part is on the “Nature of the Gods;” the second on the “Science of Divination;” the third on “Fate,” of which an inconsiderable fragment is extant. His office of augur probably suggested to him the composition of these treatises.

His political works are two in number—the De Republica856 and De Legibus; both are imperfect. The remains of the former are only fragmentary; of the latter, three out of six books are extant, and those not entire. Nevertheless, sufficient of both remains to enable us to form some estimate of their philosophical character. Although he does not profess originality, but confesses that they are imitations of the two treatises of Plato, which bear the same name, still they are more inductive than any of his other treatises. His purpose is, like that of Plato, to give in the one an ideal republic, and in the other a sketch of a model legislation; but the novelty of the treatment consists in their principles being derived from the Roman constitution and the Roman laws.

The questions which he proposes to answer are, what is the best government and the best code: but the limits within which he confines himself are the institutions of his country. In the Republic he first discusses, like the Greek philosophers, the merits and demerits of the three pure forms of government; and upon the whole decides in favour of monarchy857 as the best. With Aristotle858 he agrees that all the pure forms are liable to degenerate,859 and comes to the conclusion that the idea of a perfect polity is a combination of all three.860 In order to prove and illustrate his theory, he investigates, though it must be confessed in a meager and imperfect manner, the constitutional history of Rome, and discovers the monarchical element in the consulship, the aristocratic in the senate, and the popular in the assembly of the people and the tribunitial authority.

The Romans continued jealously to preserve the shadow of their constitution even after they had surrendered the substance. Nominally, the titles and offices of the old republic never perished—the Emperor was in name nothing more than (Imperator) the commander-in-chief of the armies of the republic, but in him all power centred: he was absolute, autocratic, the chief of a military despotism.861 Cicero, as the treatise De Legibus plainly shows, saw, with approbation, that this state of things was rapidly coming to pass; that the people were not fitted to be trusted with liberty, and yet that they would be contented with its semblance and name.

The method which he pursues, is, firstly, to treat the subject in the abstract, and to investigate the nature of law; and, secondly, to propose an ideal code, limited by the principles of Roman jurisprudence. Thus Cicero’s polity and code were not Utopian—the models on which they were formed had a real tangible existence. His was the system of a practical man, as the Roman constitution was that of a practical people. It was not like Greek liberty, the realization of one single idea; it was like that of England, the growth of ages, the development of a long train of circumstances, and expedients, and experiments, and emergencies. Cicero prudently acquiesced in the ruin of liberty as a stern necessity; but he evidently thought that Rome had attained the zenith of its national greatness immediately before the agitations of the Gracchi.

Both these works are written in the engaging form of dialogues. In the one, Scipio Æmilianus, Lælius, Scævola, and others, meet together in the Latin holidays (Feriæ Latinæ,) and discuss the question of government. In the other, the writer himself, with his brother Quintus and Atticus, converse on jurisprudence whilst they saunter on a little islet near Arpinum at the confluence of the Liris and Fibrena.

We must, lastly, contemplate Cicero as a correspondent. This intercourse of congenial minds separated from one another, and induced by the force of circumstances to digest and arrange their thoughts in their communication, forms one of the most delightful and interesting, and at the same time one of the most characteristic, portions of Roman literature. A Roman thought that whenever he put pen to paper it was his duty, to a certain extent, to avoid carelessness and offences against good taste, and to bestow upon his friend some portion of that elaborate attention which, as an author, he would devote to the public eye. In fact the letter-writer was almost addressing the same persons as the author; for the latter wrote for the approbation of his friends, the circle of intimates in which he lived: the approbation of the public was a secondary object. The Greeks were not writers of letters: the few which we possess were mere written messages, containing such necessary information as the interruption of intercourse demanded. There was no interchange of hopes and fears, thoughts, sentiments, and feelings.

The extent of Cicero’s correspondence is almost incredible: even those epistles which remain form a very voluminous collection—more than eight hundred are extant. The letters to his friends and acquaintances (ad Familiares) occupy sixteen books; those to Atticus sixteen more; and we have besides three books of letters to Quintus, and one to Brutus; but the authenticity of this last collection is somewhat doubtful. It is quite clear that none of them were intended for publication, as those of Pliny and Seneca were. They are elegant without stiffness, the natural outpourings of a mind which could not give birth to an ungraceful idea. When speaking of the perilous and critical politics of the day, more or less restraint and reserve are apparent, according to the intimacy with the person whom he is addressing, but no attempt at pompous display. His style is so simple that the reader forgets that Cicero ever wrote or delivered an oration. There is the eloquence of the heart, not of the rhetoric school. Every subject is touched upon which could interest the statesman, the man of letters, the admirer of the fine arts, or the man of the world. The writer reveals in them his own motives, his secret springs of actions, his loves, his hatreds, his strength, his weakness. They extend over more than a quarter of a century, the most interesting period of his own life, and one of the most critical in the history of his country. The letters to Quintus are those of an elder brother to one who stood in great need of good advice. Although Quintus was not deserving of his brother’s affection, M. Cicero was warmly attached to him, and took an interest in his welfare. Quintus was proprætor of Asia, and not fitted for the office; and Cicero was not sparing in his admonitions, though he offered them with kindness and delicacy. The details of his family concerns form not the least interesting portion of this correspondence. There is, as might be expected, more reserve in the letters ad Familiares than in those addressed to Atticus. They are written to a variety of correspondents, of every shade and complexion of opinions, many of them mere acquaintances, not intimate friends; but whilst, for this reason, less historically valuable, they are the most pleasing of the collection, on account of the exquisite elegance of their style. They are models of pure Latinity. In the letters to Atticus, on the other hand, he lays bare the secrets of his heart; he trusts his life in his hands; he is not only his friend but his confidant, his second self. Were it not for the letters of Cicero, we should have had but a superficial knowledge of this period of Roman history, as well as of the inner life of Roman society.

An elegant poetic compliment paid to Cicero by Laurea Tullus, one of his freedmen, has been preserved by Pliny.862 The subject of it is a medicinal spring in the neighbourhood of the Academy.

Quo tua Romanæ vindex clarissime linguæ
  Silva loco melius surgere jussa viret
Atque Academiæ celebratam nomine villam
  Nunc reparat cultu sub potiore Vetus:
Hic etiam adparent lymphæ non ante repertæ
  Languida quæ infuso lumina rore levant.
Nimirum locus ipse sui Ciceronis honori
  Hoc dedit hac fontes cum patefecit opes
Ut quoniam totum legitur sine fine per orbem
  Sint plures oculis quæ medeantur, aquæ.

Father of eloquence in Rome,
  The groves that once pertained to thee
Now with a fresher verdure bloom
  Around thy famed Academy.

Vetus at length this favoured seat
  Hath with a tasteful care restored;
And newly at thy loved retreat
  A gushing fount its stream has poured.

These waters cure an aching sight;
  And thus the spring that bursts to view
Through future ages shall requite
  The fame this spot from Tully drew. Elton.

The correspondents of Cicero included a number of eminent men. Atticus was the least interesting, for his politic caution rendered him unstable and insincere; but there was Cassius the tyrannicide; the Stoical Cato of Utica; Cæcina, the warm partisan of Pompey; the orator Cælius Rufus; Hirtius and Oppius, the literary friends of Cæsar; Lucceius the historian; Matius the mimiambic poet; and that patron of arts and letters,863 C. Asinius Pollio.

Pollio was a scion of a distinguished house, and was born at Rome B. C. 76.864 Even as a youth he was distinguished for wit and sprightliness;865 and at the age of twenty-two was the prosecutor of C. Cato. He was with Cæsar at the Rubicon, at Pharsalia, in Africa, and in Spain; and was finally intrusted with the conduct of the war in that province against Sextus Pompey. On the establishment of the first triumvirate, Pollio, after some hesitation, sent in his adhesion; and Antony intrusted him with the administration of Gallia Transpadana, including the allotment of the confiscated lands among the veteran soldiers. He thus had opportunity of protecting Virgil and saving his property. In B. C. 40, Octavian and Antony were reconciled at Brundisium by his mediation. A successful campaign in Illyria concluded his military career with the glories of a triumph,866 and he then retired from public life to his villa at Tusculum, and devoted himself to study. He enjoyed life to the last, and died in his eightieth year. He left three children, one of whom, Asinius Gallus,867 wrote a comparison between his father and Cicero, which was answered by the Emperor Claudius.868

In oratory, poetry, and history, Pollio enjoyed a high reputation among contemporary critics, and yet none of his works have survived. The solution of this difficulty may, perhaps, be found in the following circumstances:—1. His patronage of literary men rendered him popular, and drew from the critics a somewhat partial verdict. His kindness caused Horace to extol869 him, and Virgil to address to him his most remarkable eclogue.870 2. His taste was formed before the new literary school commenced. He had always a profound admiration for the old writers, and frequently quoted them. His style probably appeared antiquated and pedantic, and, therefore, never became generally popular. A later writer871 says, that he was so harsh and dry as to appear to have reproduced the style of Attius and Pacuvius, not only in his tragedies, but also in his orations. Quintilian observes,872 that he seemed to belong to the pre-Ciceronian period. Niebuhr, who could only form his opinion upon the slight fragments preserved by Seneca, for the three letters in Cicero’s collection873 are only despatches, affirms that he seems to stand between two distinct generations,874 namely, the literary periods of Cicero and Virgil. His great work was a history of the civil wars, in seventeen books. He pretended to be a critic, but his criticism was fastidious and somewhat ill-natured. He found blemishes in Cicero, inaccuracies in Cæsar, pedantry in Sallust, and provincialism (Patavinitas) in Livy. The correctness of his judgment respecting the charming narratives of the great historian has been assumed from generation to generation, yet no one can discover in what this Pativinity consists. It was easier to find fault than to write correctly; for, whilst all the labours of the critic have perished, Cicero, Cæsar, Sallust, and Livy are immortal. Vehemence and passion developed his character.

Still he was one of the greatest benefactors to the literature of his country; more especially as he was the first to found a public library. Books had already been brought to Rome, and collections formed. Æmilius Paulus had a library—Lucullus had one also, to which he allowed learned men to have access. Sulla enriched Rome with the plunder of the Athenian libraries; and in his time Tyrannis the grammarian was the possessor of three thousand volumes. Julius Cæsar employed the learned Varro to collect books with a view to a national collection, but death put a stop to his intentions.875 Pollio expended the spoils of Dalmatia in founding a temple to Liberty in the Aventine, and furnishing it with a library, the nucleus of which were the collections of Sulla and Varro. After this time, the work was carried on by imperial munificence. Augustus founded the Octavian library in the temple of Juno, and the Palatine in the palace. Tiberius augmented the latter. Vespasian placed one in the temple of Peace. Trajan formed the Ulpian; Domitian the Capitoline; Hadrian a magnificent one at his own villa; and in the reign of Constantine the number of public libraries exceeded twenty.

M. Terentius Varro Reatinus (Born B. C. 116.)

On an ancient medal is represented the effigy of Julius Cæsar bearing a book in one hand and a sword in the other,876 with the legend “Ex utroque Cæsar.” This device represents the genius of many a distinguished citizen of the republic, and that of Varro amongst the number, for he was a soldier, and at the same time the most learned of his countrymen. He was born877 at Reate (Rieti,) a Sabine town situated in the Tempe of Italy, in the neighbourhood of the celebrated cascade of Terni. Ælius Stilo, the antiquarian, was the instructor of his earlier years,878 and from him he derived his thirst for knowledge, and his ardent devotion to original investigation. He subsequently studied philosophy under Antiochus, a professor of the Academic school.879 In politics he was warmly attached to the party of Pompey, under whom he served in the Piratic and Mithridatic wars. He was also one of his three Legati in Spain, and did not resign his command until the towns in the south of that province eagerly submitted to Cæsar. After the battle of Pharsalia, he experienced the clemency of the conqueror, but not soon enough to save his villa from being attacked and plundered.880

Cæsar appreciated Varro’s extensive learning and intrusted to him the formation of the great public library.881 Henceforth he shunned the perils of political life,882 and in the retirement of his villas devoted himself zealously to the pursuit of literature. Nevertheless he could not escape the unrelenting persecution of political party; for in that proscription to which Cicero fell a victim, his name was in the list until it was erased by Antony.883 Although he was seventy years old, his industry was unabated, and he continued his literary labours until his death, which took place in the eighty-ninth year of his age.884 Varro was a man of ponderous erudition and unwearied industry,885 without a spark of taste and genius. No Roman author wrote so much as he did, no one read so much except Pliny; yet, notwithstanding all this practice and study, he never acquired an agreeable style. He dissected and anatomized the Latin language with all the powers of critical analysis; but he was never imbued with its elegant polish or its nervous eloquence.

Wherever, as in the case of his treatise on agriculture, he had access to sound information and good authority, his habits of arrangement, the clearness with which he classified, and the careful judgment with which he adduced his facts, render his works valuable. Few men have possessed greater powers of combining and systematizing: his mind was, as it were, full of compartments, in which each species of knowledge had its proper place, but it was nothing more. Whenever he left the beaten track of other men’s discoveries, and indulged in free conjecture or original thought, as in his grammatical works, his learning seems to desert him; and etymology, which has tempted so many mere conjecturers to go astray, led him also into absurdity.

One of his works, Antiquitates Divinarum Rerum, acquires a peculiar interest from the fact of its having been the storehouse from which St. Augustine, who was a great admirer of his learning, derived much of his treatise De Civitate Dei. How this laborious compilation was lost it is impossible to say. We can only lament the accident which deprives us of the work to which especially the author owes his reputation. In the treatise, which together with this forms one work, namely, Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum, he investigated the early history and chronology of Rome,886 and fixed the date of the building of the city in the year B. C. 753, a date which is now commonly received by the best historians.887

A catalogue of his numerous books and tracts on almost every subject which then engaged the attention of literary men—on history, biography, geography, philosophy, criticism, and morals—would be uninteresting, but his principal works were as follows:—

I. De Re Rustica, Libri III. II. De Lingua Latina, Libri XXIV., of which only six are extant, and these in a mutilated condition. III. Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum, Libri XXV. Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, Libri XVI. IV. Saturæ, partly in prose, partly in verse; consisting of moral essays and dialogues, exposing the vices and follies of the day, and teaching their lessons rather in a light and amusing than a didactic form. V. Poems, of which eighteen short epigrams of no great merit are extant.

Chapter XI — Roman Historical Literature — Principal Historians — Lucceius — Lucullus — Cornelius Nepos — Opinions of the Genuineness of the Works Which Bear His Name — Biography of J. Cæsar — His Commentaries — Their Style and Language — His Modesty Overrated — Other Works — Character of Cæsar

Historical Writers

In historical composition alone can the Romans lay claim to originality; and in their historical literature especially is exhibited a faithful transcript of their mind and character. History at once gratified their patriotism, and its investigations were in accordance with their love of the real and practical. Thus those natural powers which had been elicited and cultivated by an acquaintance with Greek literature were applied with a naïve simplicity to the narration of events, and embellished them with all the graces of a refined style. The practical good sense and political wisdom which the Roman social system was admirably adapted to nurture found food for reflection: their shrewd insight into character, and their searching scrutiny into the human heart gave them a power over their materials; and hence they were enabled in this department of literature to emulate, not merely imitate, the Greeks, and to be their rivals, and sometimes their superiors. The elegant simplicity of Cæsar is as attractive as that of Herodotus; not one of the Greek historians surpasses Livy in talent for the picturesque, and in the charm with which he invests his spirited and living stories; whilst for condensation of thought, terseness of expression, and political and philosophical acumen, Tacitus is not inferior to Thucydides.

The subjects which historical investigation furnished were so peculiarly national, so congenial to the character of the mind of the Romans, that they seem to have cast aside their Greek originals, and to have struck out an independent line for themselves.

The catalogue of Roman historians is a proud one. At the head of it stand the four great names of Cæsar, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus; all of whom, except the last, belong to the Augustan age. It comprehends those of Cornelius Nepos, Trogus Pompeius, Cremutius Cordus, Aufidius Bassus, and Sallust, in the golden age; Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Q. Curtius, Suetonius, and Florus, in the succeeding one; nor must L. Lucceius and L. Licinius Lucullus be passed over without mention.

L. Lucceius

L. Lucceius, the friend and correspondent of Cicero,888 was an orator who espoused the party of J. Cæsar, and relying on his influence, became, together with him, a candidate for the consulship.889 Being unsuccessful, he quitted politics for the calm enjoyment of a literary life. His right to be called an historian is founded on his having commenced a history of the Social and Civil Wars, but it was never completed or published. Cicero890 entreats him to speak of the events which he was recording, as well as of his own character and conduct, with partiality; it is, therefore, impossible to trust the encomiums which accompany this request, as they were probably dictated by a wish to purchase his favourable opinion. The period of his retirement from public affairs was not of long duration, for he afterwards again engaged in the civil strife which agitated Rome, and joined the party of Pompey, who held him in high estimation.891 On his downfall he shared with other Pompeians the clemency of the dictator.

L. Licinius Lucullus

L. Licinius Lucullus,892 the illustrious but luxurious conqueror of Mithridates, did not disdain to devote his leisure to the composition of history, although his works are not of such merit as to claim for him a distinguished position among the historians of his country. The stirring events of the Social War tempted him to record them.893 Part of his enormous wealth he had expended on a magnificent library: to the poet Archias he was a kind friend;894 and his patronage was liberally granted to literary men, especially to those philosophers who held the doctrines of his favourite Academy. Like most of those who combined with a love of literature a life of activity in the public service of his country, he was an orator of no mean abilities.895 His love of Greek, and his habits of intercourse with Greek philosophers, led him to write his history in the Greek language, and to select and transcribe extracts from the histories of Cælius Antipater and Polybius.

Cornelius Nepos

Cornelius Nepos was a contemporary of Catullus, and lived until the sixth year of the reign of Augustus.896 Ausonius says that he was a Gaul,897 Catullus that he was an Italian.898 Both are probably right, as the prevailing opinion is, that he was born either at Verona, or the neighbouring village of Hostilia in Cisalpine Gaul. Besides Catullus, he reckoned Cicero899 and Atticus amongst the number of his friends.900 These circumstances constitute all that is known respecting his personal history.

All his works which are mentioned by the ancients are unfortunately lost; but respecting the genuineness of that with which every scholar is familiar from his childhood, strong doubts have been entertained. His lost works were, (1.) Three books of Chronicles, or a short abridgment of Universal History. They are mentioned by A. Gellius,901 and allusion is made to them by Catullus.902 (2.) Five books of anecdotes styled “Libri Exemplorum,”903 and also entitled “The Book of C. Nepos de Viris illustribus.” (3.) A Life of Cicero,904 and a collection of Letters addressed to him.905 (4.) “De Historicis,” or Memoirs of Historians.906 The work now extant which bears his name is entitled “The Lives of Eminent Generals.” But besides the biographies of twenty generals, it contains short accounts of some celebrated monarchs, lives of Hamilcar and Hannibal, and also of Cato and Atticus. The Proëmium of the book is addressed to one Atticus, and to the first edition was prefixed a dedication to the Emperor Theodosius, from which it appeared that the author’s name was Probus. These biographical sketches continued to be ascribed to this unknown author until the latter half of the sixteenth century.

At that time the celebrated scholar Lambinus, Regius Professor of Belles Lettres at Paris, argued from the purity of the style that it was a work of classical antiquity, and, from a passage in the life of Cato, that the Atticus, to whom it was dedicated, was the well-known correspondent of Cicero, and the author no other than Cornelius Nepos. The argument derived from the Latinity is unanswerable; that, however, from the life of Cato is a “petitio principii,” inasmuch as there is no more evidence in favour of the life of Cato having been written by Nepos, than the other biographies. The life of Atticus, which is a complete model of biographical composition, is ascribed to him by name in some of the best MSS. Of the rest nothing more can be affirmed with certainty, than that they are a work, or the epitome of a work, belonging to the Augustan age.

The strongest evidence which exists in favour of the authorship of C. Nepos, is that Jerome Magius, a contemporary of Lambinus, who also published an annotated edition of the “Vitæ Illustrium Imperatorum,” found a MS. with the following conclusion: “Completum est opus Æmilii Probi Cornelii Nepotis.” These words would seem to assert the authorship of Nepos, and at the same time to admit that Probus was the editor or epitomator, and thus support the theory of Lambinus, without accusing Probus of a literary forgery.

C. Julius Cæsar (Born B. C. 100.)

To give a biographical account of Cæsar would be, in fact, nothing less than to trace the contemporary history of Rome; for Roman history had now become the history of those master-minds who seized upon, or were invested by their countrymen with, supreme power. Although the rapid and energetic talents of Cæsar never permitted him to lose a day, his active devotion to the truly Roman employments of politics and war, left him little time for sedentary occupations. His literary biography, therefore, will necessarily occupy but a short space, compared with the other great events of his career.

C. Julius Cæsar was descended from a family of the Julian gens, one of the oldest among the patrician families of Rome, of which all but a very few had by this time become extinct. The Cæsar family was not only of patrician descent, but numbered amongst its members, during the century which preceded the birth of the Dictator, many who had served curule offices with great distinction. He was born on the 4th of the ides of July (the 12th,) B. C. 100, and attached himself, both by politics and by matrimonial connexion to the popular party: his good taste, great tact, and pleasing manners, contributed, together with his talents, to insure his popularity. He became a soldier in the nineteenth year of his age; and hence his works display all the best qualities which are fostered by a military education, and which therefore characterize the military profession—frankness, simplicity, and brevity. He served his first campaign at the conclusion of the first Mithridatic war, during which he was present at the siege and capture of Mitylene,907 and received the honour of a civic crown for saving the life of a citizen.

His earliest literary triumph was as an orator. Cn. Dolabella was suspected of oppressive extortion in the administration of his province of Macedonia, and Cæsar came forward as his accuser. The celebrated Hortensius was the advocate for the accused; and although Cæsar did not gain his cause, the skill and eloquence which he displayed as a pleader gave promise of his becoming hereafter a consummate orator. The following year he increased his reputation by taking up the cause of the province of Achaia against C. Antonius, who was accused of the same crime as Dolabella; but he was again unsuccessful in the result.

He subsequently sailed for Rhodes, in order to pursue the study of oratory under the direction of Apollonius Molon,908 who was not only a teacher of rhetoric, but also an able and eloquent pleader in the courts of law. Cicero909 bears testimony to his being a skilful instructor and an eloquent speaker, and received instruction from him when he came to Rome as an ambassador from Rhodes.910 Cæsar, on his voyage, was captured by pirates; but after he was ransomed, he carried his intention into effect, and placed himself for a short time under the tuition of Molon. After his return to Rome,911 a proposition was made to recall from exile those of the party of Lepidus, who had joined Sertorius, and he spoke in favour of the measure. Two years subsequently he delivered funeral orations in praise of his wife Cornelia, who was the daughter of Cinna, and his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius.

The Catilinarian conspiracy, in which, without reason, he was suspected of having been concerned, furnished him with another opportunity of displaying his ability as an orator. His speech in the senate on the celebrated nones of December, would probably have saved the lives of the conspirators, had not Cato’s influence prevailed. Cæsar pleaded that it was unconstitutional to put Roman citizens to death by the vote of the senate, without a trial; but his arguments were overruled, and the measure which subsequently led to the fall and assassination of Cicero was carried. The following year,912 when Metellus made this a subject of accusation against Cicero, Cæsar again supported the same view with his eloquence, but was unsuccessful.

Great, therefore, although it is said that his talents as an orator were, he never appears to have convinced his hearers. This may have been owing, not to deficiency in skill, but to the unfortunate nature of the causes which he took in hand, or to the superior powers of his opponents, for there is no doubt that his manner of speaking was most engaging and popular. Tacitus speaks of him not only as the greatest of authors,913 but also as rivalling the most accomplished orators;914 whilst Suetonius praises his eloquence, and quotes the testimony of Cicero himself in support of his favourable criticism.915

Hitherto, with the exception of his first campaign, the life of Cæsar was of a civil complexion. His literary eminence took the colouring of the public occupations in which he was engaged. Like a true Roman, literature was subordinate to public duty, and his taste was directed into the channel which was most akin to, and identified with, his life. His intellectual vigour, however, demanded employment as well as his practical talents for business; and for this reason, as has been seen, he devoted himself to the study of oratory; and the principal works which as yet obtain for him a place in a history of Roman literature are merely orations.

His next official appointment opened to him a new field for thought. In B. C. 63 he obtained the office of Pontifex Maximus, and examined so diligently into the history and nature of the Roman belief in augury, of which he was the official guardian, that his investigations were published in a work consisting of at least sixteen books (Libri Auspiciorum.916) In order to fit himself for discharging the duties of his office he studied astronomy, and even wrote a treatise on that science,917 entitled “de Astris”, and a poem somewhat resembling the Phenomena of Aratus. His knowledge of this science enabled him, with the aid of the Alexandrian astronomers, to carry into effect some years918 afterwards the reformation of the calendar.

The works above mentioned are philosophically and scientifically valueless, but curious and interesting; but we have now to view Cæsar in that capacity which was the foundation of his literary reputation. He obtained the province of Hispania Ulterior;919 and at this post his career as a military commander began. As had been the case during his previous career, so now the almost incessant demands on his thoughts and time did not divert him from literary pursuits, but determined the channel in which his tastes should seek satisfaction, and furnished the subject for his pen. He had evidently an ardent love for literature for its own sake. It was not the paltry ambition of showing that he could achieve success, and, even superiority, in every thing which he chose to undertake, although his versatility of talent was such as to encourage him to expect success, but a real attachment to literary employment. Hence whatever leisure his duties as a military commander permitted him to enjoy was devoted, as to a labour of love, to the composition of his Memoirs or Commentaries of the Gallic and Civil Wars.

His comprehensive and liberal mind was also convinced of the embarrassing technicalities which impeded the administration of the Roman law. Its interpretation was confined to a few who had studied its pedantic mysteries; and the laws which regulated the dies fasti and nefasti had originally placed its administration in the hands of the priests and patricians. Appius Claudius had already commenced the work of demolishing the fences which to the people at large were impregnable; and Cæsar entertained the grand design of reducing its principles and practice to a regular code.920 His views he imbodied in a treatise,921 which, as is often the case with pamphlets, perished when the object ceased to exist for which it was intended.

It is said that he also contemplated a complete survey and map of the Roman empire.922 But his greatest benefaction, perhaps, to the cause of Roman literature was the establishment of a public library.923 The spoils of Italy, collected by Asinius Pollio, furnished the materials, just as the museums of Paris were enriched by the great modern conqueror from the plunder of Europe; but it was, nevertheless, a great and patriotic work; and he enhanced its utility by intrusting the collection and arrangement of it to the learned Varro as librarian.

Besides the works already named, Cæsar left behind him various letters, some of which are extant amongst those of Cicero; orations, of which, if the panegyrics of Cicero, Tacitus, and Quintilian924 are not exaggerated, it is deeply to be regretted that the titles are alone preserved;925 a short treatise or pamphlet, called Anticato; a work on the analogy of the Latin language; a collection of apothegms; and a few poems.

These are the grounds on which the claims of the great conqueror to literary fame rest in the various capacities of orator, historian, antiquarian, philosopher, grammarian, and poet; but by far the most important of his works is his “Commentaries.” These have fortunately come down to us in a tolerably perfect state, although much still remains to be done before we can be said to possess an accurate edition.926 Seven books contain the history of seven years of the Gallic war, and three carry the history of the civil war down to the commencement of the Alexandrine. These are the works of Cæsar himself. The eighth book, “De Bello Gallico,” which completes the subject, and the three supplemental books of the work, “De Bello Civili,” which contain the Alexandrine, African, and Spanish wars, have been variously ascribed to the friends of Cæsar, A. Hirtius, C. Oppius, and even to Pansa. The claims of the latter, however, are entirely groundless. The marked similarity between the style of the eighth book of the Gallic war and that of the Alexandrine war proves that they were written by the same author; and from the elegance and purity of the Latinity, and the confidential footing on which the author must have been with Cæsar, there is a probability, almost amounting to a certainty, that the History of the Alexandrine War must be the work of A. Hirtius. It may also be remarked that this opinion is in unison with that of Suetonius.927

Hirtius was the only one of the three who united in himself both these important qualifications. C. Oppius was indeed equally in the confidence of Cæsar; he was his inseparable companion.928 But, nevertheless, Oppius was not so highly educated as Hirtius. Niebuhr, therefore, is probably correct in attributing to him, “without hesitation,”929 the book on the African war. The intelligence and information displayed in it are worthy of the sensible soldier and confidential friend, with whom he corresponded in cipher, and whom he intrusted with writing the introduction to his defence in the “Anticato;” whilst the inferiority of the language marks a less skilful and practised hand than that of the refined Hirtius. The book on the Spanish war is by some unknown author: it is founded on a diary kept by some one engaged in the war; but neither its language nor sentiments are those of a liberally educated person.930 The Greek term “Ephemerides” has sometimes been applied to the “Commentaries,” though Bayle931 thought that they were different works.

These memoirs are exactly what they profess to be, and are written in the most appropriate style. Few would wish it to be other than it is. They are sketches taken on the spot, in the midst of action, whilst the mind was full: they have all the graphic power of a master-mind, and the vigorous touches of a master-hand. Take, for example, the delineation of the Gallic character, and compare it with some of the features still to be found in the mixed race, their successors, and no one can doubt of its accuracy, or of the deep and penetrating insight into human nature which generally indicates the powerful and practical intellect. Their elegance and polish is that which always mark even the least-laboured efforts of a refined and educated taste, not that which proceeds from careful emendation and correction. The “Commentaries” are the materials for history; notes jotted down for future historians. It is evident that no more time was spent upon them than would naturally be devoted to such a work by one who was employing the inaction of winter quarters in digesting the recollections stored up during the business of the campaign; and for this reason few faults have been found with the “Commentaries,” even by the most fastidious critics. The very faults which may be justly found with the style of Cæsar are such as reflect the man himself. The majesty of his character principally consists in the imperturbable calmness and equability of his temper. He had no sudden bursts of energy, and alternations of passion and inactivity: the elevation of his character was a high one, but it was a level table-land. This calmness and equability pervades his writings, and for this reason they have been thought to want life and energy; whereas in reality they are only deficient in contrast, and light and shade. The uniformity of his active character is interesting as one great element of his success; but the uniformity of style may perhaps be thought by some readers to diminish the interest with which his work is read.

The simple beauty of his language is, as Cicero says, statuesque rather than picturesque. Simple, severe, naked—“omni ornatu orationis tanquam veste detracto;” and whilst, like a statue, it conveys the idea of perfect and well-proportioned beauty, it banishes all thoughts of human passion. It was this perfect calm propriety, perhaps this absence of all ornamental display, which prevented him from being a successful orator, and his orations from surviving, although he had every external qualification for a speaker932—a fine voice, graceful action, a noble and majestic appearance, and a frank and brilliant delivery.

The very few instances of doubtful Latinity which a hypercritical spirit may detect are scarcely blemishes, and fewer than might have been expected from the observation of Hirtius,933 “Ceteri quam bene atque emendate, nos etiam, quam facile ac celeriter eos perscripserit, scimus.” When A. Pollio934 called his “Commentaries” hasty, his criticism was fair; but he was scarcely just in blaming the writer for inaccuracy and credulity. These faults, so far as they existed, were due to circumstances, not to himself. His observing mind wished to collect information with respect to the foreign lands which were the field of his exploits, and the habits of the inhabitants, quite as much as to describe his own tactics and victories. He naturally accepted the accounts given him, even when he had no means of testing their veracity. He is, therefore, not to blame for recording those which subsequent discoveries have shown to be untrue.

His digressions of this character yield in interest to no portion of his work; and though some of his accounts of the Gauls and Germans are incorrect, many were subsequently confirmed by the investigations of Tacitus. The only quality in the character of Cæsar which has been sometimes exaggerated is modesty. He does not, indeed, add to his own reputation by detracting from the merits of those who served under him. He is honest, generous, and candid, not only towards them, but also towards his brave barbarian enemies. Nor is he guilty of egotism in the strict literal sense of the term. This, however, is scarcely enough to warrant the eulogy which some have founded upon it. He has too good taste to recount his successes with pretension and arrogance; but he has evidently no objection to be the hero of his own tale. He skilfully veils his selfish, unpatriotic, and ambitious motives; and his object evidently is to leave such memoirs, that future historians may be able to hand down the most favourable character of Cæsar to posterity.

Though himself is his subject, his memoirs are not confessions. Not a record of a weakness appears, nor even of a defect, except that which the Romans would readily forgive, cruelty. His savage waste of human life he recounts with perfect self-complacency. Vanity was his crowning error in his career as a statesman; and though hidden by the reserve with which he speaks of himself, it sometimes discovers itself in the historian.

The “Commentaries” of Cæsar have sometimes been compared with the work of the great soldier historian of Greece, Xenophon. Both are eminently simple and unaffected; but there the parallel ends. The severe contempt of ornament which characterizes the stern Roman is totally unlike the mellifluous sweetness of the Attic writer.

The “Anticatones”935 were two books in answer to Cicero’s panegyric of Cato, which he had written immediately after the philosopher’s death. Hirtius first, at the request of Cæsar, wrote a reply, and sent it to Cicero from Narbonne. Although he denied the justice of Cicero’s eulogium, he secured the good-will of the orator himself by liberal commendations.936 This prepared the way for Cæsar’s own pamphlet.

His philological work, de Analogia, or de Ratione Latine Loquendi, is commended by Cicero937 for its extreme accuracy, and was held in high estimation by the Roman grammarians. Probably, in liveliness and originality, it was far superior to any of their works. Wonderful to say, it was written during the difficulties and occupations of a journey across the Alps. From the quotations from it, in the writings of the grammarians, we learn that he proposed that the letter V should be written Ⅎ, to mark its connexion with the Greek digamma; and that the new orthography, which substituted lacrimæ for lucrumæ, maximus for maxumus, &c., was established by his authority.

The “Apophthegmata” is said to have been a collection of wise and witty sayings by himself and others, although it is remarkable not a single witty saying of Cæsar is on record.938 He began it early in life, and was continually making additions to it.

His poetical attempts consisted of a tragedy entitled “Œdipus;” a short piece, the subject of which was the praises of Hercules (both of these, as well as the Apophthegmata, were suppressed by Augustus;939) “Iter,” an account of his march into Spain; the astronomical poem already mentioned; and some epigrams, of which three are extant, although their authenticity is somewhat doubtful.940

The character of Cæsar is full of inconsistencies; but they are the inconsistencies which are natural to man, and are sometimes found in men of a strong will and commanding talents who are destitute of moral principle. His faults and excellences, his capability and talents, were the result of his natural powers—not of pains or study. He was one of the greatest as well as one of the worst men who ever lived. He was an Epicurean in faith, and yet he had all the superstition which so often accompanies infidelity. His habitual humanity and clemency towards his fellow-citizens were interrupted by instances of stern and pitiless cruelty. He shed tears at the assassination of Pompey, and yet could massacre the Usipetes and the Tenchteri, and acted like a savage barbarian towards his chivalrous foe Vercingetorix. He delighted in the pure and refined pleasures of literature, and his intimate associates were men of taste and genius; and yet he was the slave of his sensual passions, and indulged in the grossest profligacy. He was candid, friendly, confiding, generous; but he was attracted by brilliant talents, and the qualities of the head, rather than the affections of the heart. The mainspring of his conduct as a general and a statesman exhibits a strong will and perfect self-reliance; and in like manner he owes the energy of his style of writing, and the persuasive force of his oratory, to the influence of no other minds: they are the natural fruit of clear perceptions, a penetrating intellect, an observing mind capable of taking a wide and comprehensive view of its subject. Men of varied acquirements and extensive knowledge, but of pedantic taste, are said to talk like books; the writings of Cæsar, on the contrary, are like lively and unconstrained conversation: they have all the reality which constitutes the great charm of his character.

He was above affectation, for his was a mind born to lead the age in which he lived, not to think with others merely in deference to established usage and custom; and although his natural vanity and self-confidence led him to set his own character in the most favourable light, his vanity was honest: he had no intention wilfully to deceive. His wonderful memory fitted him for the task of faithfully recording the events in which he himself was an actor; and his power of attention and abstraction, which enabled him to write, converse, and dictate at the same time, shows how valuable must be a work on which were concentrated at once all the energies of his penetrating mind.

Chapter XII — Life of Sallust — His Insincerity — His Historical Works — He Was a Bitter Opponent of the New Aristocracy — Profligacy of That Order — His Style Compared With That of Thucydides — His Value as an Historian — Trogus Pompeius — His Historiæ Philippicæ

C. Sallustius Crispus (Born B. C. 85.)

C. Sallustius Crispus was fifteen years junior to Cæsar: he was born at Amiternum941 in the territory of the Sabines, A. U. C. 669, B. C. 85. He was a member of a plebeian family; but, having served the offices of tribune and quæstor, attained senatorial rank. In A. U. C. 704, he was expelled from the senate942 by the censors Ap. Claudius Pulcher and L. Calpurnius Piso.943 It is said that, although he was “a most severe censurer of the licentiousness of others,”944 he was a profligate man himself, and that the scandal of an intrigue with Fausta, the daughter of Sulla and the wife of Milo, was the cause of his degradation.

Through the influence of Cæsar, whose party he espoused, he was restored to his rank, and subsequently became prætor. He accompanied his patron in the African war, and was made governor of Numidia. Whilst in that capacity, he accumulated by rapacity and extortion enormous wealth,945 which he lavished on expensive but tasteful luxury. The gardens on the Quirinal which bore his name were celebrated for their beauty; and beneath their alleys, and porticoes, surrounded by the choicest works of art, he avoided the tumultuous scenes of civil strife which ushered in the empire, and devoted his retirement to composing the historical records which survived him. His death took place B. C. 35.

Those who have wished to defend the character of Sallust from the charges of immorality, to which allusion has been made, have attributed them to the groundless calumnies of Lenæus, a freedman of Cæsar’s great rival Pompey. It is not improbable that his faults may have been exaggerated by the malevolence of party-spirit in those factious times; but there are no sentiments in his works which can constitute a defence of him. If an historian is distinguished by a high moral tone of feeling, this quality cannot but show itself in his writings without intention or design. But in Sallust there is always an affectation and pretence of morality without the reality. His philosophical reflections at the commencement of the Jugurthine and Catilinarian wars are empty, cold, and heartless. There is a display of commonplace sentiment, and an expressed admiration of the old Roman virtue of bygone days, but no appearance of sincerity. The language may be pointed enough to produce an effect upon the ear, but the sentiments always fail to probe the recesses of the heart. Sallust lived in an immoral and corrupt age; and though, perhaps, he was not amongst the worst of his contemporaries, he had not sufficient strength of principle to resist the force of example and temptation.

It is almost certain that, as a provincial governor, Sallust was not more unscrupulous than others of his class; but wealth such as he possessed could not have been acquired except by extortion and maladministration. As a politician, he was equally unsatisfactory: he was a mere partisan of Cæsar, and therefore, a strenuous opponent of the higher classes as supporters of Pompey; but he was not an honest champion of popular rights, nor was he capable of understanding the meaning of patriotism. If, however, we make some allowance for the political bias of Sallust, which is evident throughout his works, his histories have not only the charms of the historical romance, but are also valuable political studies. His characters are vigorously and naturally drawn, as though he not only personally knew them, but accurately understood them. The more his histories are read the more will it be discovered that he always writes with an object. He eschews the very idea of a mere dry chronicle of facts, and uses his facts as the means of enforcing a great political lesson.

For this reason, like Thucydides, whom he evidently took as his model, not only in style but in the use of his materials, his speeches are his own compositions. Even when he had an opportunity, as in the case of Cæsar’s and Cato’s speeches in the “Bellum Catilinarium,” he contented himself with giving the substance of them, clothed it in his own language, and imbodied in them his own sentiments. According to his own statement, there is one exception to his practice in this respect. He asserts that the speech of Memmius, the tribune of the people,946 is the very one which he delivered. If this be really the case, it is a most valuable example of the style in which a popular leader addressed his audience. But it is to be feared that this is not strictly and literally true: the style is indeed somewhat different from that of the other speeches, but does not exhibit freedom enough to assure us that he has actually reported it as delivered. It may be only a specimen of that consummate skill which constitutes the principal charm of Sallust’s manner, and made him a complete master of composition. Sallust never attempted anything more than detached portions of Roman history. “I have determined,” he says, “to write only select portions of Roman history,” (carptim perscribere.947) He himself gives an explanation of his motives for so doing,948 when he complains of the manner in which this department of literature was neglected. Wherever a satisfactory account existed, he thought it unnecessary to travel over the same ground a second time.

His first work, reckoning according to the chronological order of events, is the Jugurthine war, which commenced B. C. 111, and ended B. C. 106. The next period, comprehending the social war and the war of Sulla, extending as far as the consulship of M. Æmilius Lepidus, B. C. 78, had already been related by Sisenna, a friend of Cicero.949 Where Sisenna left off, the Histories of Sallust (Historiarum Libri V.) began, and continued the narrative without interruption until the prætorship of Cicero.950 This work is unfortunately lost, with the exception of some letters and speeches, and a few fragments relating to the war of Spartacus. Niebuhr951 considers this one of the most deplorable losses in Roman literature; less, however, on account of its historical importance, than as a perfect model of historical composition. A break of two years ensues, and then follows the “Bellum Catilinarium,” or history of the Catilinarian conspiracy in the year of Cicero’s consulship.952

This completes the list of those works which are undoubtedly genuine. No satisfactory opinion has been arrived at respecting the authorship of the two letters to Cæsar, “De Republicâ Ordinandâ;” and it is now unhesitatingly admitted, that the declamation against Cicero, must have been, as well as its counterpart, the declamation against Sallust, the work of some rhetorical writer of a later period. The subject of this imaginary disputation was naturally suggested by the known fact that Sallust was no friend to Cicero.

It has already been stated that Sallust was a bitter opponent of the principles and policy of the aristocratic party; but it must be carefully explained what is meant by that assertion. The object of his hatred was not the old patrician blood of Rome, but the new aristocracy, which had of late years been rapidly rising up and displacing it.

This new nobility was utterly corrupt; and their corruption was encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Everything at Rome, as Juvenal said in later times, had its price. Sallust adds to the severity of his strictures upon his countrymen by the force of contrast; he represents even Jugurtha as asserting that the republic itself might be bought, if a purchaser could be found; and paints the barbarian as more honest and upright than his conquerors. The ruined and abandoned associates of Catiline represented a numerous class among the younger members of the upper classes, who, by lives devoted to lawless pleasures, had become ruined, reckless, and demoralized. They were ripe for revolution, because they had nothing to lose: they could not gratify their vicious propensities without wealth; they had no principles or scruples as to the means of acquiring it; their best prospects were in anarchy, proscription, and confiscation. The debauched and ruined nobleman, and the vulgar profligate of the lowest class, forgot their mutual differences, and thus a combination was formed, the members of which were the sink and outscourings of society.

Such degenerate profligacy is an ample justification of Sallust’s hatred towards the new aristocracy; and the object of all his works evidently was to place that party in the unfavourable light which it deserved. In the Jugurthine war he describes the unworthiness of the foreign policy of Rome under its maladministration. His “Histories,” according to the statement of Niebuhr, describe the popular resistance to the revolutionary policy of Sulla, the profligate leader of the same party; and in the “Catilinarian war” he paints in vivid colours the depravity of that order of society, who, bankrupt in fortune and dead to all honourable feelings, still plumed themselves on their rank and exclusiveness. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the picture which Sallust draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the mainspring of his politics; and it is scarcely possible to avoid seeing that he is anxious to set himself off to the best advantage. His hollowness is that of a vain and conceited man, who measures himself by too high a standard, and appears chagrined and disappointed that others do not estimate him as highly as he does himself.

These are the blots in his character as a man and a citizen; but we must not forget his real merits as an historian. To him must be conceded the praise of having first conceived the notion of a history in the true sense of the term. He saw the lamentable defects in the abortive attempts made by his predecessors;953 and the model was a good one which he left for his successors to follow. It is scarcely too much to suppose, that if it had not been for Sallust, Livy might not have been led to conceive his vast and comprehensive plan. He was the first Roman historian, and the guide to future historians. Again, his style, although almost ostentatiously elaborate and artificial, and not without affectation, is, upon the whole, pleasing, and almost always transparently clear. The caution of Quintilian respecting his well-known brevity (“vitanda est illa Sallustiana brevitas”954) is well-timed in his work, as being addressed to orators, for public speaking necessarily requires a more diffuse style; and it is probable that Quintilian would not appreciate its merits, because he himself was a rhetorician, and his taste was formed in a rhetorical age. Seneca, for the same reasons, finds similar faults, not only with Sallust, but with the favourite literature of his day. “When Sallust flourished, abrupt sentences, unexpected cadences, obscure expressions, were considered signs of a cultivated taste.”955 But the brevity of Sallust does not produce the effect of harsh or disagreeable abruptness, whilst it keeps the attention awake, and impresses the facts upon the memory. How powerful and suggestive, for example, how abundant in material for thought, are those few words in which he describes Pompey as “oris probi, animo inverecundo!” There is, however, this difference between the brevity of Sallust and that of his supposed model, Thucydides. That of the Greek historian was natural and involuntary; that of the Roman intentional and the result of imitation. Thucydides thought more quickly than he could write: his closely-packed ideas and condensed constructions, therefore, constitute a species of shorthand, by which alone he could keep pace with the rapidity of his intellect. He is, therefore, always vigorous and suggestive; and the necessities of the case make the reader readily pardon the difficulties of his style.

The brevity of Thucydides is the result of condensation; that of Sallust is elliptical expression. He gives a hint and the reader must supply the rest; whilst Thucydides only expects his readers to unfold and develop ideas which already existed in a concentrated form. Sallust requires addition; Thucydides dilution and expansion. Neither does the brevity of Sallust resemble that of Cæsar or of Tacitus: the former was straight-forward and business-like, requiring neither addition nor expansion, because he wished to make his statements as clear as they were capable of being expressed, without ornament or exaggeration. He was brief, because he never wished to say more than was absolutely necessary, and therefore his brevity is the very cause of perspicuity. The mind of Tacitus was, from its thoughtfulness and philosophical character, the very counterpart of that of Thucydides: his brevity was therefore natural and the result of the same causes.

There is one point of view in which Sallust is invaluable as an historian. He had always an object to which he wished all his facts to converge: he brought forward his facts as illustrations and developments of principles. He analyzed and exposed the motives of parties, and the secret springs which actuated the conduct of individuals, and laid bare the inner life of those great actors on the public stage, in the interesting historical scenes which he undertakes to describe.

Trogus Pompeius

Trogus Pompeius was a voluminous historian of the Augustan age, whose father was private secretary to Julius Cæsar.956 His work was of such vast extent, and embraced so great a variety of subjects, that it has even been termed by Justin, who published a large collection of extracts from it, an Universal History. Its title, however, “Historiæ Philippicæ,” proves the writer’s primary object was the history of the Macedonian monarchy, together with the kingdoms which arose out of it at the death of Alexander; and that all the rest of the information contained in it were digressions into which he was naturally led, and episodes incidentally introduced into the main stream of the history.

For the materials contained in his work, which consisted of forty-four books, he was indebted to the Greek historians, but especially to Theopompus of Chios,957 from whose principal work he derived the title, “Philippica,” as well as the practice of branching out into long and frequent digressions. It is easy to imagine over how vast an area a history of the Macedonian empire was capable of extending. The subjugation of the East by the conquests of Alexander naturally made a rapid sketch of the Assyrian, Median, and Persian empires, an appropriate introduction to the work: the connexion of Persia with Greece and Egypt furnished an opportunity of imbodying the records of Greek history, and a description of Egypt and its inhabitants. Once embarked in Greek history, the writer pursued it until it became interwoven, through the interference of Philip, with the affairs of Macedon. Alexander and his successors succeed: the campaigns of Pyrrhus bring the Romans upon the stage; Carthage and Sicily for awhile occupy the scene; and the main body of the work is completed by a sketch of the gradual consolidation of that vast empire, of which subjugated Macedonia became a province. Nor is this all—other less important nations, states, and cities are ever and anon introduced, according as they act their part in the great drama of history.

CHAPTER XIII.
LIFE OF LIVY—HIS OBJECT IN WRITING HIS HISTORY—ITS SPIRIT AND CHARACTER—LIVY PRECISELY SUITED TO HIS AGE—NOT WILFULLY INACCURATE—HIS POLITICAL BIAS ACCOUNTED FOR—MATERIALS WHICH HE MIGHT HAVE USED—SOURCES OF HIS HISTORY—HIS DEFECTS AS AN HISTORIAN—HIS STYLE—GRAMMARIANS—VITRUVIUS POLLIO AN AUGUSTAN WRITER—CONTENTS OF HIS WORK.

T. Livius Patavinus (Born B. C. 59.)

The biographical records of many great literary men of Rome are most meager and unsatisfactory. Modern critics who have written their lives have drawn largely upon their own imaginations for their materials; whilst all the information to be derived from ancient writers is often comprised in a few vague allusions and notices. Some of these have been misunderstood, and from others unwarrantable deductions have been derived. These observations are particularly applicable to him who is the only illustrious Roman historian in the Augustan age.

Universal tradition assigns to Patavium (Padua) the honour of being the birthplace of Titus Livius; but notwithstanding the general belief, some doubt has been thrown upon the fact by an epigram of Martial.958 He came to Rome during the reign of Augustus, where he resided in the enjoyment of the imperial favour and patronage.959 He was a warm and open admirer of the ancient institutions of the country, and esteemed Pompey as one of its greatest heroes; but Augustus, with his usual liberality, did not allow political opinions to interfere with the regard which he entertained for the historian. Livy had a great admiration for oratory, and advised his son to study the writings of Demosthenes and Cicero.960 At his recommendation the stupid Claudius wrote history;961 and it has even been asserted, though on insufficient authority, that he was his instructor. His fame rapidly spread beyond the limits of Italy, for Pliny the younger962 relates that an inhabitant of Cadiz came to Rome for the express purpose of seeing him; a fact which St. Jerome963 expands into an assertion that many noble Gauls and Spaniards were attracted to the capital, far more by the reputation of Livy than by the splendour of the imperial city.

His great work is a history of Rome, which he modestly terms “Annals,” in one hundred and forty-two books, preceded by a brief but elaborately-written preface,964 and extending from the earliest traditions to the death of Drusus.965 Of this history thirty-five books are extant, which were discovered at different periods.966 Of the rest we have only dry and meager epitomes, drawn up by some uncertain author, and of these two are lost.967

Besides his History, Livy is said968 to have written books which professed to be philosophical, and dialogues, the subjects of which are partly philosophical, and partly historical. Late in life he returned to Patavium, and there died A. D. 18, in the seventy-seventh year of his age.969 He left one son, and one daughter who married L. Magius, a teacher of rhetoric, of no great talent, who owed his reputation principally to his connexion with the historian.970 Livy had one great object in view in writing his History, namely, to celebrate the glories of his native country, to which he was devotedly attached. He was a patriot: his sympathy was with Pompey, called forth by the disinterestedness of that great man, and perhaps by his sad end, after having so long enjoyed universal popularity. The character of the historian would lead us to suppose that his attachment was personal rather than political, for the general spirit of his work shows that he was a man of pure mind and gentle feelings. He began his great work about nine or ten years before the Christian era, a period singularly favourable for such a design. The passages in which especially he delights to put forth his powers, and on which he dwells with the greatest zest, show the truth of Quintilian’s well-known criticism, “that he is especially the historian of the affections, particularly of the softer sensibilities.”971 A lost battle is misery to him; he trembles at the task of relating it. Nor does he appear to have been a stern republican. He could admire enthusiastically, and describe with spirit, the noble qualities and self-devotion which the old republican freedom fostered; but his object is rather to paint the heroes, and to give graphic representations of the struggles which they maintained in defence of liberty, than to show any love of liberty in the abstract, or a predilection for any particular form of constitution. To Livy political struggles were no more than subjects for picturesque delineations, the moral of which was the elevation of national grandeur, just as successful foreign wars were the records of national glory. Hence he is a biographer quite as much as an historian: he anatomizes the moral nature of his heroes, and shows their inner man, and the motive springs of their noble exploits. This gives to his narratives the charm of an historical romance, and makes up for the want of accurate research and political observation. His characters stand before us objectively, like epic heroes; and thus he is “the Homer of the Roman people,” whilst the charm of his narratives makes him the “Herodotus of Roman historians.”

Rome was now the mistress of the world: her struggles with foreign nations had been rewarded with universal dominion; so that when the Roman empire was spoken of, no title less comprehensive than “the world” (orbis) would satisfy the national vanity. The horrors of civil war had ceased, and were succeeded by an amnesty of its bitter feuds and bloody animosities. Liberty indeed had perished, but the people were no longer fit for the enjoyment of it; and it was exchanged for a mild and paternal rule, under which all the refinements of civilization were encouraged, and its subjects could enjoy undisturbed the blessings of peace and security.

Rome, therefore, had rest and breathing-time to look back into the past—to trace the successive steps by which that marvellous edifice, the Roman empire, had been constructed. She could do this, too, with perfect self-complacency, for there was no symptom of decay to check her exultation, or to mar the glories which she was contemplating.

Livy, the good, the affectionate, the romantic, was precisely the popular historian for such times as these. His countrymen looked naturally for panegyric rather than for criticism. They were not in a temper to bear one who could remorselessly tear open and expose to view all the faults and blemishes which blotted the pages of their history; who could be a morose and querulous praiser of times gone by, never to return, at the expense of their present greatness and prosperity. He lived in happy times, before Rome had learnt by sad experience what the tyranny of absolutism really was. He tells his story like a bard singing his lay at a joyous and festive meeting, chequered by alternate successes and reverses, prosperity and adversity, but all tending to a happy end at last. These features of his character, and this object of his work, whilst they constitute his peculiar charm as a narrator, obviously render him less valuable as an historian. Although he was not tasteless and spiritless, like Dionysius, he was not so trustworthy. He would not be wilfully inaccurate, or otherwise than truth-telling; but if the legend he was about to tell was captivating and interesting, he would not stop to inquire whether or not it was true. He would take upon trust the traditions which had been handed down from generation to generation without inquiry; and the more flattering and popular they were, the more suitable would he deem them for his purpose. Without being himself necessarily superstitious, he would see that superstitious marvels added to the embellishments of his story, and, therefore, would accept them without pronouncing upon their truth or falsehood.

Wilful unfairness can never be attributed to Livy: he was prejudiced, but he was not party-spirited. He loved his country and his countrymen, and could scarcely persuade himself of the possibility of their doing wrong. He could scarcely believe anything derogatory to the national glory. When (to take a striking example,) in the case of the treaty with Porsena, there were two opposite stories, he was led by this partiality to ignore the well-authenticated fact of the capture of Rome, and to adopt that account which was most creditable to his countrymen.972 Whenever Rome was false to treaties, unmerciful in victory, or unsuccessful in arms, he is always anxious to find excuses. His predilections are evidently aristocratic; and although he states the facts fairly, he wishes his reader to sympathize with the patricians.

The plebeians of the days in which he lived were not the fair representatives of that enterprising class in the early ages of the republic, who were as well born as the patricians, although of different blood; the strength and sinews of the state in its exhausting wars—dependent only upon them from stern necessity, because they were ground down to the dust by poverty, and debt, and oppression, but independently maintaining themselves by their own industry, gradually acquiring wealth, rising to the position of a middle class, winning their way perseveringly, step by step, to political privileges.

The lower orders of Rome, in the time of Livy—for the term plebeian, in its original sense, was no longer applicable—were debased and degraded; they cared not for liberty or political power, or self-government; their bosoms throbbed not with sympathy for the old plebeians, who retired to Mount Sacer, and shed their blood for their principles. It was difficult, therefore, for him not to believe that the popular leaders of old times were unprincipled men, who sought to repair their fortunes by the arts of the demagogue. In his eyes resistance to tyranny was treason and rebellion.973 But when, as in the story of Virginia, his gentler affections were enlisted, Livy’s heart warmed with a generous admiration towards the champions of the people’s rights, and his political predilections gave way to his sensibilities. In treating of history almost contemporaneous, Tacitus confesses his liberality. Although it might have rendered him more acceptable at the court of his patron if he had vilified his political foes, yet even imperial favour, acting on the same side as political prejudice, did not tempt him to unfairness.974 He could see and acknowledge noble qualities and disinterested patriotism, and give credit for sincere motives, even to those who differed in political opinions.

From a character such as has been described, much care is not to be expected as to the sources from which historical information was derived. Many original documents must have existed in his day, which he evidently never took the trouble to consult. A rich treasure of original monuments relating to foreign and domestic affairs were ready at hand, which might have been examined without much trouble.975 The great Annals of the Pontifex Maximus were digested into eighty books; and these contained the names of the magistrates, all memorable events at home and abroad—even the very days on which they occurred being marked. The commentaries not only of the priests and augurs, but of the civil magistrates, were kept with exactness and regularity. There is no reason for supposing that the Libri Lintei976 were lost in Livy’s time, although he quotes from Licinius Macer,977 instead of consulting them himself. Three thousand brazen tablets, on which were engraved acts of the senate and the plebeians, extending backwards (says Suetonius978) almost to the building of the city, existed in the Capitol until it was burnt in the reign of Vespasian. The corpus of civil law, which is known to have existed in the time of Cicero,979 was full of antiquarian lore; and the twelve tables furnished invaluable information, not only on language, but on the manners and habits of bygone times. Nevertheless the fragments of the Leges Regiæ and the laws of the twelve tables have been more carefully examined by critics of modern times than they were by Livy, when they existed in a more perfect condition.

Lachmann980 has satisfactorily shown that the assertions of Livy are not based upon personal investigation, but that he trusted to the annalists, and took advantage of the researches of preceding historians. This is all that he himself professes to do; and even these professions he does not always satisfactorily perform. He does not appear to have profited by the Annals of Varro or the Origines of Cato, a work which, according to the testimony of Cicero, must have been invaluable to an historian; and although the Archæologia of Dionysius were published about the time at which Livy commenced his history,981 there is no evidence that he makes use of it; certainly he never acknowledges any obligation to the indefatigable researches of the Greek historian. According to his own confession,982 Roman history is total darkness until the capture of Rome by the Gauls; and although a dim light then begins to break, a twilight period succeeds, which continues until the first Punic war. But it cannot be asserted that he prepared himself for his difficult task as he ought, or took advantage of all the means at his disposal to enlighten the obscurity in which his subject was involved. The authorities on which he principally depends for the contents of the first Decade were such as Ennius, Fab. Pictor, Cincius, and Piso. It is evident that he also consulted Greek writers. In the third, which contains the most beautiful and elaborate passages of the whole work, he follows Polybius. Nor could he, in this portion of his history, follow a safer one. The Romans, notwithstanding all their practical tendencies, did little to promote geographical science. It is amongst the Greeks that we find the most accurate and indefatigable geographers, such as were Polybius, Strabo, and Ptolemy.

Polybius prepared himself for the task of narrating the Italian campaign of Hannibal by personal inspection. Livy did nothing of the kind. The former travelled through the Alpine passes; and his authority was considered so good that Strabo implicitly followed him. It is to be lamented that, as he was writing to his countrymen, he seldom mentions the name of places; probably he thought they would not be the wiser for the enumeration of unknown barbarian names. But his accuracy in dates and distances enables us to trace Hannibal’s route with correctness. These prove that the passage of Hannibal was by the Alpis Graia, the Little St. Bernard; a statement which had been made by that veracious983 historian, Cælius Antipater, and also by Cornelius Nepos.984 It has been since confirmed by the researches of modern travellers, such as General Melville, M. de Luc, Cramer, and Wickham. Strange to say, Livy, although following the route marked out by Polybius almost step by step, at length ends it with the Alpis Cottia (M. Genevre.) The absence of names left the fireside traveller at fault. Cæsar985 had crossed the Alps by that pass; and, perhaps, Livy named it at a venture, as the most familiar to him. In the succeeding portions of his work, so complete is the confidence which he reposes upon the guidance of Polybius, that the fourth and fifth Decades are little more than the history of Polybius paraphrased.

Niebuhr,986 from internal evidence, gives an interesting account of the manner in which it is probable that Livy wrote his history. He supposes that, like most of the ancients, he employed a secretary, who read to him from existing authorities the events of a single year. These the historian mentally arranged, and then dictated his own narrative. The work, therefore, was composed in portions; the connexion of the events of one year with those of the preceding one was lost sight of, and thus they seem isolated; and the conclusion of a series of events sometimes unaccountably synchronizes with the conclusion of a year.

To his deficiencies in the habit of diligent and accurate investigation are added others which singularly disqualify him for the task of a faithful historian. He was a reader of books rather than a student of men and things; he took upon trust what other people told him, instead of acquiring knowledge in a practical manner. He was ill-acquainted with the history of foreign countries. He was not, like Cæsar, a soldier; and therefore his descriptions of military affairs are often vague and indistinct, for he did not understand the tactics which he professed to describe. He was not, like Thucydides, a politician or a philosopher; and hence the little trustworthy information which we derive from him on questions connected with constitutional changes. He did not fit himself, like Herodotus, by travelling; and thus he is often ignorant of the localities which he describes, even though they are within the limits of Italy. Hence the difficulties in the way of understanding the route of Hannibal and his army across the Alps, the battle of Thrasimene, and the defeat at the Caudine Forks. He was not a philosopher, a lawyer, or a politician: he could embrace with the eye and depict with the hand of an artist everything which was external and tangible; but he could not penetrate the secret motives which actuate the human will, nor form a clear conception of the fundamental, legal and political principles which animated the institutions, and gave rise to the peculiarities, of Roman constitutional history.

With respect to the speeches which he attributes to his principal heroes, a greater degree of accuracy cannot be expected, than is found in those of Thucydides. But they do not possess that verisimilitude which is so admirable in those of the Greek historian. As works of art they are faultless, but Livy does not keep in view the principle adhered to by Thucydides, that they should be such as the speakers were likely to have delivered on the occasions in question. His great authority, Polybius, disapproves of imaginary speeches altogether;987 but it must be remembered that, without some oratorical display, he would not have pleased the Roman people. The speeches of Thucydides, although they bear the stamp of the writer’s mind, are, to a certain extent, characteristic of the speaker, and seem inspired by the occasion. If a Spartan speaks, he is laconic; if a general, he is soldier-like; if a statesman or demagogue, he is logical or argumentative, or appeals to the feelings and passions of the Athenian people. Consistency produces variety. The speeches of Livy are pleasing and eloquent,988 but they are always, so to speak, Livian; they are frequently not such as Romans would have spoken in times when eloquence was rude, though forcible. They partake of the rhetorical and declamatory spirit, which was already beginning to creep over Roman literature; and often, from being unsuitable to time, place, and person, diminish, instead of heightening, the dramatic effect.

Such are the principal defects which cause us to regret that, whilst Livy charms us with his romantic narratives and almost faultless style, he is too often a fallacious guide as an historian, and gives, not intentionally or dishonestly, but from the character of his mind, and the object which he proposed to himself, a false colouring or a vague and inaccurate outline to the events which he narrates. No one can avoid relishing the liveliness, freshness, and “lactea ubertas,” of Livy’s fascinating style; but its principal excellence is summed up in the expression of Quintilian, “clarissimus candor,” (brightness and lucidity.989) On the authority of Asinius Pollio, quoted by the same writer,990 a certain fault has been attributed to him, termed “Patavinity,” i. e., some peculiar ideas not admissible in the purest Latin, which mark the place of his nativity. So little pains do people take in the investigation of truth, and so ready are they to take upon trust what their predecessors have believed before them, that generation after generation have assumed that Livy’s clear, eloquent, and transparent style is disfigured by what we term provincialisms.991 The penetrating mind of Niebuhr finds no ground for believing the story. If there is any truth in it, he supposes the criticism must have applied to his speaking, and not to his writing.992 His style is always classical, even in the later decades: though prolix and tautologous, it is invariably marked by idiomatic purity and grammatical accuracy.

Grammarians

The grammarians may be passed over with little more notice than the simple mention of their names, because, although they contributed to the stock of their country’s literature, they added little or nothing to its literary reputation. The most conspicuous amongst them were—Atteius Philologus, a freedman and friend of Sallust; Staberius Eros, who taught Brutus and Cassius; Q. Cæcilius Epirota, the correspondent of Cicero; C. Julius Hyginus, a Spaniard, the friend of Ovid, and curator of the Palatine library; Verrius Flaccus, the tutor to the grandsons of Augustus; Q. Cornificius, who was augur at the same time with Cicero; and P. Nigidius Figulus, an orator and philosopher as well as a grammarian.

M. Vitruvius Pollio

The distinguished name of M. Vitruvius Pollio claims a place in a catalogue of the Augustan writers. His subject, indeed, belongs to the apartment of the fine arts; but his varied acquirements and extensive knowledge, as well as the manner in which, notwithstanding some faults, he treats his subject, shed some lustre upon Roman literature, and stamp him as one of the didactic writers of his country.

Little information exists respecting this celebrated architect; and this circumstance has led to his being confounded with another professor of the same art, L. Vitruvius Cerdo. The name of the latter is thus inscribed on an arch, which was his work, at Verona:993 “Q. Vitruvius L. L. Cerdo, Architectus.” That Cerdo was not the author of the treatise extant under the name of Vitruvius, may be satisfactorily proved:—Firstly. The letters L. L. signify that he was Lucii Libertus (the freedman of Lucius,) whereas M. Vitruvius Pollio was born free. Secondly. The arch on which the name appears belongs to an age when the Romans had begun, in defiance of the precepts of Pollio, to neglect the principles of Greek architecture.994

Both the place and date of his birth are unknown. According to some authorities he was born at Verona; according to others at Formiæ;995 but he himself asserts that he received a good liberal education; and the truth of this statement is confirmed by the knowledge which he displays of Greek and Roman literature, and his acquaintance with works which treat, not only of architecture, but also of polite learning and even philosophy996—the writings, for example, of Lucretius, Cicero, and Varro. But the great object of his studies was, undoubtedly, professional, and to this he made literature a handmaid.

Vitruvius served under Julius Cæsar in Africa as a military engineer; and was subsequently employed by one of the emperors, to whom his treatise is dedicated, in the direction and control of that department of the public service. By his favour, and the kindness of his sister, he was thus placed in a condition, if not of affluence, at least of competency. Who his imperial patron was has been disputed; but the widely extended conquests, the augmentation of the empire, the political institutions, and, moreover, the taste for architecture which Vitruvius attributes to him, renders it most probable that it was Augustus, the sovereign who found the city of bricks and left it of marble. It is clear that his work was written after the death of Julius Cæsar, and not later than that of Titus, for the former he prefixes the word Divus, whilst he does not mention the Coliseum; and, although he speaks of Vesuvius,997 he is evidently not aware of any eruptions having taken place except in ancient times. Notwithstanding the arguments adduced by W. Newton998 to prove that he wrote in the reign of Titus, it is now universally admitted that Vitruvius was a writer of the Augustan age. The inferiority of his style to that of his contemporaries, its occasional obscurity and want of method, the not unfrequent occurrence of inelegant, and even barbarous expressions, notwithstanding his classical education, may be accounted for by what has already been stated respecting the professional object of all his studies. He himself claims indulgence on this score,999 and states that he writes as an architect, and not as a literary man. So much of its difficulty as arises from conciseness he considers a matter for boasting rather than apology.

In forming an estimate of the Latinity of an author like Vitruvius, it must not be forgotten that our taste is formed by authority and by a study of the best models. Novelty is exceptional, and therefore displeases. But technical subjects render not only the introduction of new terms necessary, but even, owing to the poverty of language, awkward periphrases and obscure phraseology. Nevertheless, upon the whole, the language of Vitruvius is vigorous, his descriptions bold, and seem the work of a true and correct hand, and a practised draughtsman.

His work consists of ten books, in which he treats of the whole subject in a systematic and orderly manner.

The following are its principal contents:—A general view of the science and of the education suitable to an architect; the choice of sites; the arrangement of the buildings and fortifications of a city;1000 an interesting essay on the earliest human dwellings, building materials,1001 temples, altars,1002 forums, basilicæ, treasuries, jails, court-houses, baths, palæstræ, harbours, theatres, together with their acoustic principles, and the theory of musical sounds and harmonies.1003 Private dwellings, both in town and country;1004 decoration;1005 water, and the means of supply;1006 chronometrical instruments;1007 surveying1008 and engineering, both civil and military.

His work is valuable as a conspectus of the principles of Greek architectural taste and beauty, of which he was a devoted admirer, and from which he would not willingly have permitted any deviation. But he was evidently deficient in the knowledge of the principles of Greek architectural construction.1009 His taste was pure, too pure probably for the Romans; for, notwithstanding his theoretical excellence, we have no evidence of his being employed, practically, as an architect, except in the case of the Basilica,1010 at Colonia Julia Fanestris, now Fano, near Ancona.