The History of Rome, Book III

Plautus

His younger contemporary, Titus Maccius Plautus (500?-570), appears to have been far inferior to him both in outward position and in the conception of his poetic calling. A native of the little town of Sassina, which was originally Umbrian but was perhaps by this time Latinized, he earned his livelihood in Rome at first as an actor, and then—after he had lost in mercantile speculations what he had gained by his acting—as a theatrical composer reproducing Greek comedies, without occupying himself with any other department of literature and probably without laying claim to authorship properly so called. There seems to have been at that time a considerable number of persons who made a trade of thus editing comedies in Rome; but their names, especially as they did not perhaps in general publish their works,[210 - This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author, properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a similar uncertainty as to his literary property. In this respect, as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.] were virtually forgotten, and the pieces belonging to this stock of plays, which were preserved, passed in after times under the name of the most popular of them, Plautus. The -litteratores- of the following century reckoned up as many as 130 such "Plautine pieces"; but of these a large portion at any rate were merely revised by Plautus or had no connection with him at all; the best of them are still extant. To form a proper judgment, however, regarding the poetical character of the editor is very difficult, if not impossible, since the originals have not been preserved. That the editors reproduced good and bad pieces without selection; that they were subject and subordinate both to the police and to the public; that they were as indifferent to aesthetical requirements as their audience, and to please the latter, lowered the originals to a farcical and vulgar tone—are objections which apply rather to the whole manufacture of translations than to the individual remodeller. On the other hand we may regard as characteristic of Plautus, the masterly handling of the language and of the varied rhythms, a rare skill in adjusting and working the situation for dramatic effect, the almost always clever and often excellent dialogue, and, above all, a broad and fresh humour, which produces an irresistible comic effect with its happy jokes, its rich vocabulary of nicknames, its whimsical coinage of words, its pungent, often mimic, descriptions and situations—excellences, in which we seem to recognize the former actor. Undoubtedly the editor even in these respects retained what was successful in the originals rather than furnished contributions of his own. Those portions of the pieces which can with certainty be traced to the translator are, to say the least, mediocre; but they enable us to understand why Plautus became and remained the true popular poet of Rome and the true centre of the Roman stage, and why even after the passing away of the Roman world the theatre has repeatedly reverted to his plays.

Caecilius

Still less are we able to form a special opinion as to the third and last—for though Ennius wrote comedies, he did so altogether unsuccessfully—comedian of note in this epoch, Statins Caecilius. He resembled Plautus in his position in life and his profession. Born in Cisalpine Gaul in the district of Mediolanum, he was brought among the Insubrian prisoners of war[211 - III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls] to Rome, and earned a livelihood, first as a slave, afterwards as a freedman, by remodelling Greek comedies for the theatre down to his probably early death (586)His language was not pure, as was to be expected from his origin; on the other hand, he directed his efforts, as we have already said,[212 - III. XIV. Roman Barbarism] to a more artistic construction of the plot. His pieces experienced but a dull reception from his contemporaries, and the public of later times laid aside Caecilius for Plautus and Terence; and, if nevertheless the critics of the true literary age of Rome—the Varronian and Augustan epoch—assigned to Caecilius the first place among the Roman editors of Greek comedies, this verdict appears due to the mediocrity of the connoisseur gladly preferring a kindred spirit of mediocrity in the poet to any special features of excellence. These art-critics probably took Caecilius under their wing, simply because he was more regular than Plautus and more vigorous than Terence; notwithstanding which he may very well have been far inferior to both.

Moral Result

If therefore the literary historian, while fully acknowledging the very respectable talents of the Roman comedians, cannot recognize in their mere stock of translations a product either artistically important or artistically pure, the judgment of history respecting its moral aspects must necessarily be far more severe. The Greek comedy which formed its basis was morally so far a matter of indifference, as it was simply on the same level of corruption with its audience; but the Roman drama was, at this epoch when men were wavering between the old austerity and the new corruption, the academy at once of Hellenism and of vice. This Attico-Roman comedy, with its prostitution of body and soul usurping the name of love—equally immoral in shamelessness and in sentimentality—with its offensive and unnatural generosity, with its uniform glorification of a life of debauchery, with its mixture of rustic coarseness and foreign refinement, was one continuous lesson of Romano-Hellenic demoralization, and was felt as such. A proof of this is preserved in the epilogue of the -Captivi- of Plautus:—

-Spectators, ad pudicos mores facta haec fabulast.
Neque in hoc subigitationes sunt neque ulla amatio
Nec pueri suppositio nec argenti circumductio,
Neque ubi amans adulescens scortum liberet clam suum patrem.
Huius modi paucas poetae reperiunt comoedias,
Ubi boni meliores fiant. Nunc vos, si vobis placet,
Et si placuimus neque odio fuimus, signum hoc mittite;
Qui pudicitiae esse voltis praemium, plausum date!-

We see here the opinion entertained regarding the Greek comedy by the party of moral reform; and it may be added, that even in those rarities, moral comedies, the morality was of a character only adapted to ridicule innocence more surely. Who can doubt that these dramas gave a practical impulse to corruption? When Alexander the Great derived no pleasure from a comedy of this sort which its author read before him, the poet excused himself by saying that the fault lay not with him, but with the king; that, in order to relish such a piece, a man must be in the habit of holding revels and of giving and receiving blows in an intrigue. The man knew his trade: if, therefore, the Roman burgesses gradually acquired a taste for these Greek comedies, we see at what a price it was bought. It is a reproach to the Roman government not that it did so little in behalf of this poetry, but that it tolerated it at all Vice no doubt is powerful even without a pulpit; but that is no excuse for erecting a pulpit to proclaim it. To debar the Hellenic comedy from immediate contact with the persons and institutions of Rome, was a subterfuge rather than a serious means of defence. In fact, comedy would probably have been much less injurious morally, had they allowed it to have a more free course, so that the calling of the poet might have been ennobled and a Roman poetry in some measure independent might have been developed; for poetry is also a moral power, and, if it inflicts deep wounds, it can do much to heal them. As it was, in this field also the government did too little and too much; the political neutrality and moral hypocrisy of its stage-police contributed their part to the fearfully rapid breaking up of the Roman nation.

National Comedy

Titinius

But, while the government did not allow the Roman comedian to depict the state of things in his native city or to bring his fellow-citizens on the stage, a national Latin comedy was not absolutely precluded from springing up; for the Roman burgesses at this period were not yet identified with the Latin nation, and the poet was at liberty to lay the plot of his pieces in the Italian towns of Latin rights just as in Athens or Massilia. In this way, in fact, the Latin original comedy arose (-fabula togata- [213 - -Togatus- denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language, the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also to the Roman burgess. Thus especially -formula togatorum- (Corp. Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions. The designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as -Gallia togata-, which first occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the ordinary -usus loquendi-, describes this region presumably according to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights. Virgil appears likewise in the -gens togata-, which he mentions along with the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation.According to this view we shall have to recognize in the -fabula togata-the comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the -fabula palliata- had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of Rome. That in reality the -togata- could only have its plot laid in the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their scene—Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium,—demonstrably had Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war. By the extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which -de jure- took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off for the dramatists of the capital, and so the -fabula togata- seems in fact to have disappeared. But the -de jure- suppressed communities of Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii. 148), and so far the -fabula Atellana- was in some measure the continuation of the -togata-.]): the earliest known composer of such pieces, Titinius, flourished probably about the close of this period.[214 - Respecting Titinius there is an utter want of literary information; except that, to judge from a fragment of Varro, he seems to have been older than Terence (558-595, Ritschl, Parerg. i. 194) for more indeed, cannot he inferred from that passage, and though, of the two groups there compared the second (Trabea, Atilius, Caecilius) is on the whole older than the first (Titinius, Terentius, Atta), it does not exactly follow that the oldest of the junior group is to be deemed younger than the youngest of the elder.]

This comedy was also based on the new Attic intrigue-piece; it was not translation, however, but imitation; the scene of the piece lay in Italy, and the actors appeared in the national dress,[215 - II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy] the -toga-. Here the Latin life and doings were brought out with peculiar freshness. The pieces delineate the civil life of the middle-sized towns of Latium; the very titles, such as -Psaltria- or -Ferentinatis- , -Tibicina-, -Iurisperita-, -Fullones-, indicate this; and many particular incidents, such as that of the townsman who has his shoes made after the model of the sandals of the Alban kings, tend to confirm it. The female characters preponderate in a remarkable manner over the male.[216 - Of the fifteen comedies of Titinius, with which we are acquainted, six are named after male characters (-baratus-? -coecus-, -fullones-, -Hortensius-, -Quintus-, -varus-), and nine after female (-Gemina-, -iurisperita-, -prilia-? -privigna-, -psaltria- or -Ferentinatis-, -Setina-, -tibicina-, -Veliterna-, -Ulubrana?), two of which, the -iurisperita- and the -tibicina-, are evidently parodies of men's occupations. The feminine world preponderates also in the fragments.] With genuine national pride the poet recalls the great times of the Pyrrhic war, and looks down on his new Latin neighbours,—

-Qui Obsce et Volsce fabulantur; nam Latine nesciunt.-

This comedy belongs to the stage of the capital quite as much as did the Greek; but it was probably animated by something of that rustic antagonism to the ways and the evils of a great town, which appeared contemporaneously in Cato and afterwards in Varro. As in the German comedy, which proceeded from the French in much the same way as the Roman comedy from the Attic, the French Lisette was very soon superseded by the -Frauenzimmerchen- Franziska, so the Latin national comedy sprang up, if not with equal poetical power, at any rate with the same tendency and perhaps with similar success, by the side of the Hellenizing comedy of the capital.

Tragedies

Euripides

Greek tragedy as well as Greek comedy came in the course of this epoch to Rome. It was a more valuable, and in a certain respect also an easier, acquisition than comedy. The Greek and particularly the Homeric epos, which was the basis of tragedy, was not unfamiliar to the Romans, and was already interwoven with their own national legends; and the susceptible foreigner found himself far more at home in the ideal world of the heroic myths than in the fish-market of Athens. Nevertheless tragedy also promoted, only with less abruptness and less vulgarity, the anti-national and Hellenizing spirit; and in this point of view it was a circumstance of the most decisive importance, that the Greek tragic stage of this period was chiefly under the sway of Euripides (274-348). This is not the place for a thorough delineation of that remarkable man and of his still more remarkable influence on his contemporaries and posterity; but the intellectual movements of the later Greek and the Graeco-Roman epoch were to so great an extent affected by him, that it is indispensable to sketch at least the leading outlines of his character. Euripides was one of those poets who raise poetry doubtless to a higher level, but in this advance manifest far more the true sense of what ought to be than the power of poetically creating it. The profound saying which morally as well as poetically sums up all tragic art—that action is passion—holds true no doubt also of ancient tragedy; it exhibits man in action, but it makes no real attempt to individualize him. The unsurpassed grandeur with which the struggle between man and destiny fulfils its course in Aeschylus depends substantially on the circumstance, that each of the contending powers is only conceived broadly and generally; the essential humanity in Prometheus and Agamemnon is but slightly tinged by poetic individualizing. Sophocles seizes human nature under its general conditions, the king, the old man, the sister; but not one of his figures displays the microcosm of man in all his aspects—the features of individual character. A high stage was here reached, but not the highest; the delineation of man in his entireness and the entwining of these individual—in themselves finished—figures into a higher poetical whole form a greater achievement, and therefore, as compared with Shakespeare, Aeschylus and Sophocles represent imperfect stages of development. But, when Euripides undertook to present man as he is, the advance was logical and in a certain sense historical rather than poetical. He was able to destroy the ancient tragedy, but not to create the modern. Everywhere he halted half-way. Masks, through which the expression of the life of the soul is, as it were, translated from the particular into the general, were as necessary for the typical tragedy of antiquity as they are incompatible with the tragedy of character; but Euripides retained them. With remarkably delicate tact the older tragedy had never presented the dramatic element, to which it was unable to allow free scope, unmixed, but had constantly fettered it in some measure by epic subjects from the superhuman world of gods and heroes and by the lyrical choruses. One feels that Euripides was impatient under these fetters: with his subjects he came down at least to semi-historic times, and his choral chants were of so subordinate importance, that they were frequently omitted in subsequent performance and hardly to the injury of the pieces; but yet he has neither placed his figures wholly on the ground of reality, nor entirely thrown aside the chorus. Throughout and on all sides he is the full exponent of an age in which, on the one hand, the grandest historical and philosophical movement was going forward, but in which, on the other hand, the primitive fountain of all poetry—a pure and homely national life—had become turbid. While the reverential piety of the older tragedians sheds over their pieces as it were a reflected radiance of heaven; while the limitation of the narrow horizon of the older Hellenes exercises its satisfying power even over the hearer; the world of Euripides appears in the pale glimmer of speculation as much denuded of gods as it is spiritualised, and gloomy passions shoot like lightnings athwart the gray clouds. The old deeply-rooted faith in destiny has disappeared; fate governs as an outwardly despotic power, and the slaves gnash their teeth as they wear its fetters. That unbelief, which is despairing faith, speaks in this poet with superhuman power. Of necessity therefore the poet never attains a plastic conception overpowering himself, and never reaches a truly poetic effect on the whole; for which reason he was in some measure careless as to the construction of his tragedies, and indeed not unfrequently altogether spoiled them in this respect by providing no central interest either of plot or person—the slovenly fashion of weaving the plot in the prologue, and of unravelling it by a -Deus ex machina- or a similar platitude, was in reality brought into vogue by Euripides. All the effect in his case lies in the details; and with great art certainly every effort has in this respect been made to conceal the irreparable want of poetic wholeness. Euripides is a master in what are called effects; these, as a rule, have a sensuously-sentimental colouring, and often moreover stimulate the sensuous impression by a special high seasoning, such as the interweaving of subjects relating to love with murder or incest. The delineations of Polyxena willing to die and of Phaedra pining away under the grief of secret love, above all the splendid picture of the mystic ecstasies of the Bacchae, are of the greatest beauty in their kind; but they are neither artistically nor morally pure, and the reproach of Aristophanes, that the poet was unable to paint a Penelope, was thoroughly well founded. Of a kindred character is the introduction of common compassion into the tragedy of Euripides. While his stunted heroes or heroines, such as Menelaus in the -Helena-, Andromache, Electra as a poor peasant's wife, the sick and ruined merchant Telephus, are repulsive or ridiculous and ordinarily both, the pieces, on the other hand, which keep more to the atmosphere of common reality and exchange the character of tragedy for that of the touching family-piece or that almost of sentimental comedy, such as the -Iphigenia in Aulis-, the -Ion-, the -Alcestis-, produce perhaps the most pleasing effect of all his numerous works. With equal frequency, but with less success, the poet attempts to bring into play an intellectual interest. Hence springs the complicated plot, which is calculated not like the older tragedy to move the feelings, but rather to keep curiosity on the rack; hence the dialectically pointed dialogue, to us non-Athenians often absolutely intolerable; hence the apophthegms, which are scattered throughout the pieces of Euripides like flowers in a pleasure-garden; hence above all the psychology of Euripides, which rests by no means on direct reproduction of human experience, but on rational reflection. His Medea is certainly in so far painted from life, that she is before departure properly provided with money for her voyage; but of the struggle in the soul between maternal love and jealousy the unbiassed reader will not find much in Euripides. But, above all, poetic effect is replaced in the tragedies of Euripides by moral or political purpose. Without strictly or directly entering on the questions of the day, and having in view throughout social rather than political questions, Euripides in the legitimate issues of his principles coincided with the contemporary political and philosophical radicalism, and was the first and chief apostle of that new cosmopolitan humanity which broke up the old Attic national life. This was the ground at once of that opposition which the ungodly and un-Attic poet encountered among his contemporaries, and of that marvellous enthusiasm, with which the younger generation and foreigners devoted themselves to the poet of emotion and of love, of apophthegm and of tendency, of philosophy and of humanity. Greek tragedy in the hands of Euripides stepped beyond its proper sphere and consequently broke down; but the success of the cosmopolitan poet was only promoted by this, since at the same time the nation also stepped beyond its sphere and broke down likewise. The criticism of Aristophanes probably hit the truth exactly both in a moral and in a poetical point of view; but poetry influences the course of history not in proportion to its absolute value, but in proportion as it is able to forecast the spirit of the age, and in this respect Euripides was unsurpassed. And thus it happened, that Alexander read him diligently; that Aristotle developed the idea of the tragic poet with special reference to him; that the latest poetic and plastic art in Attica as it were originated from him (for the new Attic comedy did nothing but transfer Euripides into a comic form, and the school of painters which we meet with in the designs of the later vases derived its subjects no longer from the old epics, but from the Euripidean tragedy); and lastly that, the more the old Hellas gave place to the new Hellenism, the more the fame and influence of the poet increased, and Greek life abroad, in Egypt as well as in Rome, was directly or indirectly moulded in the main by Euripides.

Roman Tragedy

The Hellenism of Euripides flowed to Rome through very various channels, and probably produced a speedier and deeper effect there by indirect means than in the form of direct translation. The tragic drama in Rome was not exactly later in its rise than the comic;[217 - III. XIV. Livius Andronicus] but the far greater expense of putting a tragedy on the stage—which was undoubtedly felt as a consideration of moment, at least during the Hannibalic war—as well as the nature of the audience[218 - III. XIV. Audience] retarded the development of tragedy. In the comedies of Plautus the allusions to tragedies are not very frequent, and most references of this kind may have been taken from the originals. The first and only influential tragedian of this epoch was the younger contemporary of Naevius and Plautus, Quintus Ennius (515-585), whose pieces were already travestied by contemporary comic writers, and were exhibited and declaimed by posterity down to the days of the empire.

The tragic drama of the Romans is far less known to us than the comic: on the whole the same features, which have been noticed in the case of comedy, are presented by tragedy also. The dramatic stock, in like manner, was mainly formed by translations of Greek pieces. The preference was given to subjects derived from the siege of Troy and the legends immediately connected with it, evidently because this cycle of myths alone was familiar to the Roman public through instruction at school; by their side incidents of striking horror predominate, such as matricide or infanticide in the -Eumenides-, the -Alcmaeon-, the -Cresphontes-, the -Melanippe-, the -Medea-, and the immolation of virgins in the -Polyxena-, the -Erechthides-, the -Andromeda-, the -Iphigenia- —we cannot avoid recalling the fact, that the public for which these tragedies were prepared was in the habit of witnessing gladiatorial games. The female characters and ghosts appear to have made the deepest impression. In addition to the rejection of masks, the most remarkable deviation of the Roman edition from the original related to the chorus. The Roman theatre, fitted up doubtless in the first instance for comic plays without chorus, had not the special dancing-stage (-orchestra-) with the altar in the middle, on which the Greek chorus performed its part, or, to speak more correctly, the space thus appropriated among the Greeks served with the Romans as a sort of pit; accordingly the choral dance at least, with its artistic alternations and intermixture of music and declamation, must have been omitted in Rome, and, even if the chorus was retained, it had but little importance. Of course there were various alterations of detail, changes in the metres, curtailments, and disfigurements; in the Latin edition of the -Iphigenia- of Euripides, for instance, the chorus of women was—either after the model of another tragedy, or by the editor's own device—converted into a chorus of soldiers. The Latin tragedies of the sixth century cannot be pronounced good translations in our sense of the word;[219 - We subjoin, for comparison, the opening lines of the -Medea- in the original of Euripides and in the version of Ennius:——Eith' ophel' 'Apgous me diaptasthai skaphosKolchon es aian kuaneas sumplegadasMed' en napaisi Pelion pesein poteTmetheisa peuke, med' epetmosai cherasAndron arioton, oi to pagchruson derosPelia metelthon ou gar an despoinMedeia purgous ges epleus Iolkias'Eroti thumon ekplageis' 'Iasonos.—-Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibusCaesa accidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,Neve inde navis inchoandae exordiumCoepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomineArgo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viriVecti petebant pellem inauratam arietisColchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum.Nam nunquam era errans mea domo efferret pedemMedea, animo aegra, amort saevo saucia.-The variations of the translation from the original are instructive —not only its tautologies and periphrases, but also the omission or explanation of the less familiar mythological names, e. g. the Symplegades, the Iolcian land, the Argo. But the instances in which Ennius has really misunderstood the original are rare.] yet it is probable that a tragedy of Ennius gave a far less imperfect image of the original of Euripides than a comedy of Plautus gave of the original of Menander.

Moral Effect of Tragedy

The historical position and influence of Greek tragedy in Rome were entirely analogous to those of Greek comedy; and while, as the difference in the two kinds of composition necessarily implied, the Hellenistic tendency appeared in tragedy under a purer and more spiritual form, the tragic drama of this period and its principal representative Ennius displayed far more decidedly an anti-national and consciously propagandist aim. Ennius, hardly the most important but certainly the most influential poet of the sixth century, was not a Latin by birth, but on the contrary by virtue of his origin half a Greek. Of Messapian descent and Hellenic training, he settled in his thirty-fifth year at Rome, and lived there—at first as a resident alien, but after 570 as a burgess[220 - III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition]—in straitened circumstances, supported partly by giving instruction in Latin and Greek, partly by the proceeds of his pieces, partly by the donations of those Roman grandees, who, like Publius Scipio, Titus Flamininus, and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, were inclined to promote the modern Hellenism and to reward the poet who sang their own and their ancestors' praises and even accompanied some of them to the field in the character, as it were, of a poet laureate nominated beforehand to celebrate the great deeds which they were to perform. He has himself elegantly described the client-like qualities requisite for such a calling.[221 - Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,-quocum bene saepe libenterMensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarumCongeriem partit, magnam cum lassus dieiPartem fuisset de summis rebus regundisConsilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:Cui res audacter magnas parvasque iocumqueEloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictuEvomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque,Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadetUt faceret facinus lenis aut malus, doctus fidelisSuavis homo facundus suo contentus beatusScitus secunda loquens in tempore commodus verbumPaucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustasQuem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem,Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque,Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.-In the line before the last we should probably read -multarum leges divumque hominumque.-] From the outset and by virtue of the whole tenor of his life a cosmopolite, he had the skill to appropriate the distinctive features of the nations among which he lived—Greek, Latin, and even Oscan—without devoting himself absolutely to any cne of them; and while the Hellenism of the earlier Roman poets was the result rather than the conscious aim of their poetic activity, and accordingly they at least attempted more or less to take their stand on national ground, Ennius on the contrary is very distinctly conscious of his revolutionary tendency, and evidently labours with zeal to bring into vogue neologico-Hellenic ideas among the Italians. His most serviceable instrument was tragedy. The remains of his tragedies show that he was well acquainted with the whole range of the Greek tragic drama and with Aeschylus and Sophocles in particular; it is the less therefore the result of accident, that he has modelled the great majority of his pieces, and all those that attained celebrity, on Euripides. In the selection and treatment he was doubtless influenced partly by external considerations. But these alone cannot account for his bringing forward so decidedly the Euripidean element in Euripides; for his neglecting the choruses still more than did his original; for his laying still stronger emphasis on sensuous effect than the Greek; nor for his taking up pieces like the -Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once apparent. The sharpest arrows are everywhere—and that partly in passages which can be proved to have been inserted[222 - Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,—Os olig' alethe, polla de pseuon legeiTuchon, otan de me, tuche oioichetai—This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe against the casters of horoscopes:—-Astrologorum signa in caelo quaesit, observat,IovisCum capra aut nepa aut exoritur lumen aliquod beluae.Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.-]—directed against faith in the miraculous, and we almost wonder that the censorship of the Roman stage allowed such tirades to pass as the following:—

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

We have already remarked[223 - III. XII. Irreligious Spirit] that Ennius scientifically inculcated the same irreligion in a didactic poem of his own; and it is evident that he was in earnest with this freethinking. With this trait other features are quite accordant—his political opposition tinged with radicalism, that here and there appears;[224 - In the -Telephus- we find him saying—-Palam mutire plebeio piaculum est.-] his singing the praises of the Greek pleasures of the table;[225 - III. XIII. Luxury] above all his setting aside the last national element in Latin poetry, the Saturnian measure, and substituting for it the Greek hexameter. That the "multiform" poet executed all these tasks with equal neatness, that he elaborated hexameters out of a language of by no means dactylic structure, and that without checking the natural flow of his style he moved with confidence and freedom amidst unwonted measures and forms—are so many evidences of his extraordinary plastic talent, which was in fact more Greek than Roman;[226 - The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the -Phoenix- of Euripides:—-Sed virum virtute vera vivere animatum addecet,Fortiterque innoxium vocare adversum adversarios.Ea libertas est, qui pectus purum et firmum gestitat:Aliae res obnoxiosae nocte in obscura latent.-In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:—– — -mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio,Et Neptunus saevus undis asperis pausam dedit.Sol equis iter repressit ungulis volantibus;Constitere amnes perennes, arbores vento vacant.-This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet worked up his original poems. It is simply an expansion of the words which occur in the tragedy -Hectoris Lustra- (the original of which was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat between Hephaestus and the Scamander:—-Constitit credo Scamander, arbores vento vacant,-and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).] where he offends us, the offence is owing much more frequently to Greek alliteration[227 - Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:—– — -stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,-and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).] than to Roman ruggedness. He was not a great poet, but a man of graceful and sprightly talent, throughout possessing the vivid sensibilities of a poetic nature, but needing the tragic buskin to feel himself a poet and wholly destitute of the comic vein. We can understand the pride with which the Hellenizing poet looked down on those rude strains —

-quos olim Faunei vatesque canebant,-

and the enthusiasm with which he celebrates his own artistic poetry:

-Enni foeta, salve,
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-

The clever man had an instinctive assurance that he had spread his sails to a prosperous breeze; Greek tragedy became, and thenceforth remained, a possession of the Latin nation.

National Dramas

Through less frequented paths, and with a less favourable wind, a bolder mariner pursued a higher aim. Naevius not only like Ennius —although with far less success—adapted Greek tragedies for the Roman stage, but also attempted to create, independently of the Greeks, a grave national drama (-fabula praetextata-). No outward obstacles here stood in the way; he brought forward subjects both from Roman legend and from the contemporary history of the country on the stage of his native land. Such were his Nursing of Romulus and Remus or the Wolf, in which Amulius king of Alba appeared, and his -Clastidium-, which celebrated the victory of Marcellus over the Celts in 532.[228 - Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:—– — -stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,-and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).] After his example, Ennius in his -Ambracia- described from personal observation the siege of that city by his patron Nobilior in 565.[229 - III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome] But the number of these national dramas remained small, and that species of composition soon disappeared from the stage; the scanty legend and the colourless history of Rome were unable permanently to compete with the rich cycle of Hellenic legends. Respecting the poetic value of the pieces we have no longer the means of judging; but, if we may take account of the general poetical intention, there were in Roman literature few such strokes of genius as the creation of a Roman national drama. Only the Greek tragedians of that earliest period which still felt itself nearer to the gods —only poets like Phrynichus and Aeschylus—had the courage to bring the great deeds which they had witnessed, and in which they had borne a part, on the stage by the side of those of legendary times; and here, if anywhere, we are enabled vividly to realize what the Punic wars were and how powerful was their effect, when we find a poet, who like Aeschylus had himself fought in the battles which he sang, introducing the kings and consuls of Rome upon that stage on which men had hitherto been accustomed to see none but gods and heroes.

Recitative Poetry

Recitative poetry also took its rise during this epoch at Rome. Livius naturalized the custom which among the ancients held the place of our modern publication—the public reading of new works by the author—in Rome, at least to the extent of reciting them in his school. As poetry was not in this instance practised with a view to a livelihood, or at any rate not directly so, this branch of it was not regarded by public opinion with such disfavour as writing for the stage: towards the end of this epoch one or two Romans of quality had publicly come forward in this manner as poets.[230 - III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians] Recitative poetry however was chiefly cultivated by those poets who occupied themselves with writing for the stage, and the former held a subordinate place as compared with the latter; in fact, a public to which read poetry might address itself can have existed only to a very limited extent at this period in Rome.

Satura

Above all, lyrical, didactic, and epigrammatic poetry found but feeble representation. The religious festival chants—as to which the annals of this period certainly have already thought it worth while to mention the author—as well as the monumental inscriptions on temples and tombs, for which the Saturnian remained the regular measure, hardly belong to literature proper. So far as the minor poetry makes its appearance at all, it presents itself ordinarily, and that as early as the time of Naevius, under the name of -satura-. This term was originally applied to the old stage-poem without action, which from the time of Livius was driven off the stage by the Greek drama; but in its application to recitative poetry it corresponds in some measure to our "miscellaneous poems," and like the latter denotes not any positive species or style of art, but simply poems not of an epic or dramatic kind, treating of any matters (mostly subjective), and written in any form, at the pleasure of the author. In addition to Cato's "poem on Morals" to be noticed afterwards, which was presumably written in Saturnian verses after the precedent of the older first attempts at a national didactic poetry,[231 - Besides Cato, we find the names of two "consulars and poets" belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4)—Quintus Labeo, consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581. But it remains uncertain whether they published their poems. Even in the case of Cato this may be doubted.] there came under this category especially the minor poems of Ennius, which that writer, who was very fertile in this department, published partly in his collection of -saturae-, partly separately. Among these were brief narrative poems relating to the legendary or contemporary history of his country; editions of the religious romance of Euhemerus,[232 - II. IX. Roman Historical Composition] of the poems dealing with natural philosophy circulating in the name of Epicharmus,[233 - III. XII. Irreligious Spirit] and of the gastronomies of Archestratus of Gela, a poet who treated of the higher cookery; as also a dialogue between Life and Death, fables of Aesop, a collection of moral maxims, parodies and epigrammatic trifles—small matters, but indicative of the versatile powers as well as the neological didactic tendencies of the poet, who evidently allowed himself the freest range in this field, which the censorship did not reach.

Metrical Annals

Naevius

The attempts at a metrical treatment of the national annals lay claim to greater poetical and historical importance. Here too it was Naevius who gave poetic form to so much of the legendary as well as of the contemporary history as admitted of connected narrative; and who, more especially, recorded in the half-prosaic Saturnian national metre the story of the first Punic war simply and distinctly, with a straightforward adherence to fact, without disdaining anything at all as unpoetical, and without at all, especially in the description of historical times, going in pursuit of poetical flights or embellishments—maintaining throughout his narrative the present tense.[234 - III. XII. Irreligious Spirit] What we have already said of the national drama of the same poet, applies substantially to the work of which we are now speaking. The epic, like the tragic, poetry of the Greeks lived and moved essentially in the heroic period; it was an altogether new and, at least in design, an enviably grand idea—to light up the present with the lustre of poetry. Although in point of execution the chronicle of Naevius may not have been much better than the rhyming chronicles of the middle ages, which are in various respects of kindred character, yet the poet was certainly justified in regarding this work of his with an altogether peculiar complacency. It was no small achievement, in an age when there was absolutely no historical literature except official records, to have composed for his countrymen a connected account of the deeds of their own and the earlier time, and in addition to have placed before their eyes the noblest incidents of that history in a dramatic form.

Ennius

Ennius proposed to himself the very same task as Naevius; but the similarity of the subject only brings out into stronger relief the political and poetical contrast between the national and the anti- national poet. Naevius sought out for the new subject a new form; Ennius fitted or forced it into the forms of the Hellenic epos. The hexameter took the place of the Saturnian verse; the ornate style of the Homeridae, striving after plastic vividness of delineation, took the place of the homely historic narrative. Wherever the circumstances admit, Homer is directly translated; e. g. the burial of those that fell at Heraclea is described after the model of the burial of Patroclus, and under the helmet of Marcus Livius Stolo, the military tribune who fights with the Istrians, lurks none other than the Homeric Ajax; the reader is not even spared the Homeric invocation of the Muse. The epic machinery is fully set agoing; after the battle of Cannae, for instance, Juno in a full council of the gods pardons the Romans, and Jupiter after obtaining the consent of his wife promises them a final victory over the Carthaginians. Nor do the "Annals" fail to betray the neological and Hellenistic tendencies of the author. The very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears this stamp. The remarkable vision, with which the poem opens, tells in good Pythagorean style how the soul now inhabiting Quintus Ennius had previously been domiciled in Homer and still earlier in a peacock, and then in good physicist style explains the nature of things and the relation of the body to the mind. Even the choice of the subject serves the same purpose—at any rate the Hellenic literati of all ages have found an especially suitable handle for their Graeco-cosmopolite tendencies in this very manipulation of Roman history. Ennius lays stress on the circumstance that the Romans were reckoned Greeks:

-Contendunt Graecos, Graios memorare solent sos.-

The poetical value of the greatly celebrated Annals may easily be estimated after the remarks which we have already made regarding the excellences and defects of the poet in general. It was natural that as a poet of lively sympathies, he should feel himself elevated by the enthusiastic impulse which the great age of the Punic wars gave to the national sensibilities of Italy, and that he should not only often happily imitate Homeric simplicity, but should also and still more frequently make his lines strikingly echo the solemnity and decorum of the Roman character. But the construction of his epic was defective; indeed it must have been very lax and indifferent, when it was possible for the poet to insert a special book by way of supplement to please an otherwise forgotten hero and patron. On the whole the Annals were beyond question the work in which Ennius fell farthest short of his aim. The plan of making an Iliad pronounces its own condemnation. It was Ennius, who in this poem for the first time introduced into literature that changeling compound of epos and of history, which from that time up to the present day haunts it like a ghost, unable either to live or to die. But the poem certainly had its success. Ennius claimed to be the Roman Homer with still greater ingenuousness than Klopstock claimed to be the German, and was received as such by his contemporaries and still more so by posterity. The veneration for the father of Roman poetry was transmitted from generation to generation; even the polished Quintilian says, "Let us revere Ennius as we revere an ancient sacred grove, whose mighty oaks of a thousand years are more venerable than beautiful;" and, if any one is disposed to wonder at this, he may recall analogous phenomena in the successes of the Aeneid, the Henriad, and the Messiad. A mighty poetical development of the nation would indeed have set aside that almost comic official parallel between the Homeric Iliad and the Ennian

Annals as easily as we have set aside the comparison of Karschin with Sappho and of Willamov with Pindar; but no such development took place in Rome. Owing to the interest of the subject especially for aristocratic circles, and the great plastic talent of the poet, the Annals remained the oldest Roman original poem which appeared to the culture of later generations readable or worth reading; and thus, singularly enough, posterity came to honour this thoroughly anti- national epos of a half-Greek -litterateur- as the true model poem of Rome.

Prose Literature

A prose literature arose in Rome not much later than Roman poetry, but in a very different way. It experienced neither the artificial furtherance, by which the school and the stage prematurely forced the growth of Roman poetry, nor the artificial restraint, to which Roman comedy in particular was subjected by the stern and narrow-minded censorship of the stage. Nor was this form of literary activity placed from the outset under the ban of good society by the stigma which attached to the "ballad-singer." Accordingly the prose literature, while far less extensive and less active than the contemporary poetical authorship, had a far more natural growth. While poetry was almost wholly in the hands of men of humble rank and not a single Roman of quality appears among the celebrated poets of this age, there is, on the contrary, among the prose writers of this period hardly a name that is not senatorial; and it is from the circles of the highest aristocracy, from men who had been consuls and censors—the Fabii, the Gracchi, the Scipios—that this literature throughout proceeds. The conservative and national tendency, in the nature of the case, accorded better with this prose authorship than with poetry; but here too—and particularly in the most important branch of this literature, historical composition—the Hellenistic bent had a powerful, in fact too powerful, influence both on matter and form.

Writing of History