PR EFA CE .

A HISTORY of Latin Literature was to have been written for this series of Manuals by the late Professor William

S . A I ellar fter his death was asked, as one of his old h pupils, to carry out the work which e had undertaken ; and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the memory of my dear friend and master.

M. J . W.

CO NT ENT S .

Andronicus and Naevius Ennius Pacuvius Dec ay

‘ The Ear ly j ur ists Cato The Sc ipionic Circ l e r Lru

Cinna and Cal vus

Cle f-mo PAGE

’ ‘ PRO ERTI US AND THE ELEGI SI S . III . P - T bu us Augustan Trage dy Callus Prope rtius i ll m I V. Ov .

Juli a and Sulpic ia Ovid

VY V . LI

TANs. VI . THE LESSER AuGUS

—Tro Minor Aug ustan Poetry Manilius Phae dr us gus and Pate rculus Ce lsus The Elder Se ne ca

THE EMPI RE.

LUCA PET RONI Us . THE ROME OF NERO : SENECA, N ,

Se neca Lucan Pe rsius Col um e lla Pe tronius

VE GE S US THE ELDER P Y MAR THE SI L R A : TATI , LIN ,

U . TIAL, Q INTILIAN — — — Stati us Silius I talic us Martial The Elde r Pliny

—~ Qui ntilian

TACI TUs III .

’ UVENAL TH E YOUNGER P Y SUEI‘O NI US : DECA or I V. J , LIN , Y

CLASSI CAL L ATIN . — Juve nal The Younge r Pliny Sue tonius Aul us C e llins

“ ” THE ELOCUTI O NOVELLA.

Fronto Apul e ius Th e Pe r vigili um Ve neris

EARL L CH R S Y : MI NUCI US E I Y ATIN I TIANIT F L X, TER U LACTANTI U T LLIAN , S .

Minuc ius Fe lix Te rtullian Cyprian and Lactantius — — Comm odianus The Empire and the Church

THE OURT CENTUR : AUSO US AND C UD F H Y NI LA IAN .

Papini an and Ulpi an : Sarnonic us - Til)erianus : the Augustan History Auso ni us Cl audian Prud e n ti us Ammi anus Marce lli nus HE BEGI I GS OF DD E VIII . T NN N MI L — The End of the Ancient World First Period Se c ond and Third Periods Fourth Pe riod - The Wor ld after R ome

I NDEX OF AUTHORS

ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE : EARLY EPI C AND

TRA ED G Y .

TO the Romans themselves, as they looked back two

hundred years later, the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in the generation which passed s between the fir t and second Punic wars . The peace of

B . 2 1 h h the C . 4 closed an epoc throug out which Roman Republic had been fighting for an ' assured place in the

group of powers which controlled the Mediterranean world . This was now gained ; and the pressure of Carthage thus

removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural ex

pansion of her colonies and her commerce . Wealth and peace are comparative terms ; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation Of the long and exhausting war with a Carthage brought, that a leisured class beg n to form itself

at Rome , which not only could take a certain interest in

Greek literature , but felt in an indistinct way that it was i the their duty, as represent ng one of great civilised powers, a -w e r to have a substantial nation l h e of their own . That this new Latin literature must be based on that n of Greece, went without sayi g ; it was almost equally inevitable that its earliest forms should be in the shape of Of translations from that body Greek poetry, epic and n all dramatic, which had for lo g established itself through

- the Greek speaking world as a common basis of culture . 3 4 L atin L ite ra ture . U

f Latin literature, though arti icial in a fuller sense than that of some other nations, did not escape the general law of f all literatures, that they must begin by verse be ore they can go on to prose . i L on Up to this date, nat ve atin poetry had been c fined, h so far as we can judge, to ymns and ballads, both of a A rude nature . longside of these were the p opular festival

rfor c es m . p e man , containing the germs of a dra a If the words O f these performances were ever written down (which is rather more than doubtful), they would help to make the notion Of translating a regular Greek play come more L was easily . But the first certain atin translation a piece of work which showed a much greater audacity, and which in fact, though this did not appear till long afterwards, was

- much more far reaching in its consequences . This was a translation of the Ody ssey into Satum ian verse by one A Of from ndronicus, a Greek prisoner war Tarentum,who lived at Rome as a tutor to children of the governing class r At du ing the first Punic War . the capture of his city, he had become the slave O f one Of the distinguished family Livii f w of the , and a ter his manumission was kno n, accord ing to Roman custom, under the name Of Lu cius Livius A ndronicus . The few fragments of his Ody ssey which survive do not Show any high level of attainment ; and it is interesting to note that this first attempt to create a mould for Latin poetry went on wrong, or, perhaps it would be truer to say, on premature lines . From this time henceforth the whole serious production of Latin poetry for centuries was a continuous effort to master and adapt Greek structu re and ve rsific ation Od sse L s 3 the y y of ivius was the fir t and, with one notable exception, almost the last sustained attempt to use the native forms of Italian rhythm towards any d large achievement this current thereafter sets undergroun ,

and only emerges again at the end of the classical pe riod . S / It is a curious and ignificant fact that the attempt, su ' Andr om cas a nd Na e v iu s . 5

m nOt as it was, was ade by a native, but by a naturalised foreigner .

The heroic hexameter was, of course , a metre much harder to reproduce in Latin than the trochaic and iambic Gr e metres of the e k drama, the former of which especially f accommodated itself without di ficulty to Italian speech .

In his dramatic pieces, which included both tragedies and A comedies, ndronicus seems to have kept to the Greek b measures, and in this he was followed y his successors . Throughout the next two generations the production of m dra atic literature was steady and continuous . Gnaeus Naevius L , the first native atin poet of consequence, beginning to produce plays a few years later than Andro nic us , continued to write busily till after the end of the La second Punic War, and left the tin drama thoroughly established. Only inconsiderable fragments of his writings survive but it is certain that he was a figure of really great

n . Of a disti ction Though not a man birth himself, he h d the skill and courage to match himself against the great M e t lli Me telli. e house of the The , it is true , won the

u - x battle ; Naevi s was imprisoned, and finally died in e ile ; but he had established literature as a real force in Rome . Aulus G ellius has preserved the splendid and haughty verses which he wrote to be engraved on his own tomb

' I mmor tales mor tales sz for etfas fler e ’ ' ’ F/er ent at rj ae Camend e Naema m poeta m ' l tague p ostgu am est Or t z tr aditus thesa u r o

' ' ' ' ' n a a Oblztz sa nt R amaz Iogmer lz g L a tina .

The Latin Muses were, indeed, then in the full pride and hope of a vigorous and daring youth . The greater part of i ’ Naev us plays, both in tragedy and comedy, were, it is true, translated or adapted from Greek originals ; but ’ — Da nae [ izz rem the A nam alongside of these, the , the p g a mac/w, which even his masculine genius can hardly have ' — made more than pale re fle xe s Of Euripides were new L ati i I f n L te r a tu r e . [

be creations, plays of the purple stripe, as they came to a c lled, where he wakened a tragic note from the legendary

’ ' i Of Hi Alimoma m or actual history the Roman race . s E é R omuli et R emi i , though it may have borrowed much from d G the kin red reek legends of Danae or Melanippe, was one of the foundation-stones Of a new national literature ; ’ ’ Of Clastzaiu m w in the tragedy , the scene as laid in his own i r r days, and the act on tu ned on one of the great victo ies Me te lli m won by those very who , in a single stinging line, he afterwards held up to the ridicule of the nation . Na vius In his advanced years, e took a step of even greater consequence . Turning from tragedy to epic, he A f did not now, like ndronicus, translate rom the Greek, but launched out on the new ventu re of a Roman epic . The Latin language was not yet ductile enough to catch the cadences Of the noble Greek hexameter and the native H w Latin Saturnian was the only possible alternative . o far he was successful in giving modulation or harmony to r fe w this rather cumbrous and monotonous ve se , the extant - O f B e P a rzicu m fragments the M , hardly enable us to determine it is certain that it met with a great and ’ H was continued success, and that, even in orace s time , it universally read . The subject was not unhappily chosen r the long st uggle between Rome and Carthage had, in the m great issues involved , as well as in its abounding dra atic o f f incidents and thrilling fluctuations ortune , many elements of the heroic, and almost of the superhuman ; and in his interweaving of this great pageant O f history with the ancient legends of both cities, and his connecting it, through A se Naevius the story of eneas, with the war of Troy it lf, showed a constructive power of a very high order . It doubtless possible to make too much Of the sweeping ,~ ’ statements made in the comments Of Mac iObius and Servius “ on the earlier parts Of the Aeneid this passage is all taken frOm Nae vius all this passage is simply conveyed ’ ' ' r t h from Naevius Pa ms Wa . Yet there is no doubt at I : E us ] ”m . 7 Virgil owed him immense obligations though in the details of the war itself we can recognise little in the fragments beyond the dry and disconnected narrative of the rhyming Nae vius f chronicler . laid the oundation of the Roman epic ; he left it at his death in spite of the despondent and perhaps jealous criticism which he left as his epitaph in a l the h nds of an abler and more i lustrious successor . E s Quintus nnius, the fir t of the great Roman poets, and n and a figure of prodigious literary fecu dity versatility, was born at a small town of c alabria about thirty years later n Nae vius h tha , and, thoug he served as a young man in the z Roman army, did not obtain the full citi enship till fifteen ’ a Naevius ye rs after death, For some years previously he

had lived at Rome, under the patronage Of the great Sc ipio Afr icanus, busily occupied in keeping up a supply of fOI translations from the Greek use on the Roman stage . The easier circumstances of his later life do not seem to have in any way diminished his fertility or the care which “ He he lavished on the practice of his art. was the first

instance in the Western world of the pure man of letters . A longside of his strictly literary production, he occupied himself diligently with the technique of composition

gr ammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, even an elementary transla system of shorthand . Four books of miscellaneous tions from popular Greek authors familiarised the reading public at Rome with several branches of general literature w hitherto only kno n to scholars . Following the demand t of the market, he ranslated comedies, seemingly with ' a indifiere nt success . But his perm nent fame rested on two w rk tra ic in great bodies of o , _ g and epic, both of which he

far eclipsed his predecessors . f We possess the names, and a considerable body of rag Of ments, of upwards twenty of his tragedies ; the greater number of the fragments being preserved in the works of

. Cicero, who was never tired of reading and quoting him

As is usual with such quotations, they throw light more on L a tin L ite ra t u re .

t his mastery of phrase and power of presenting de ached

n m . thoughts, tha on his more strictly dra atic qualities F m the That mastery of phrase is astonishing. ro silver beauty of the moonlit line from his M lamjepe

Lumine sie tr emulo ter m et ear/a eaerula candent, to the thunderous oath of Achilles

Per ego deum sublimas subit es ' ' mule or itu r imber somtu saew et s in tu Umidas, p they give examples Of almost the whole range of beauty n of which the Latin language is capable . Two quotatio s ma as r . f y show his manner a t anslator The first is a rag , ment of question and reply from the splendid prologue

' a ria a t Aults m in to the M , one of the ost thrill g and romantic passages in Attic poetry

’ ’ uid uoeti iae in allisona Agam. Q v tu r Caeli clupea emo su er at Senex . T p Gegem sublime etia m a tque M '

N oetzs iter .

What is singular here is not that the mere words are ff f e wholly di erent rom those of the original, but that in th apparently random variation Ennius produces exactly the s ff same strange and olemn e ect. This is no accident : it A i as is genius . ga n, a specimen of his manner in m ore a ordinary narrative speeches, we may t ke the prologue to edea - n re e k his M , where the well know C is pretty closely followed

’ Utinam m in nemor e P elio seeun bus

Caesa ceeizlisset a bie n a ad ter r a m tr a g des,

’ New inde mmfs inekoa ndae ex or zlzu m

‘ ’ Cae isset uae mm : nomz na r p , g tu nomrne ’ ’ ' Ar o uia Ar ivi in ea azlee g , q g tz viri

1 . L atin L ite rature . [ f m ore ost and representative Roman poem, and even in the centuries which followed, they continued to be read and admired, and their claim to the first eminence was still supported by many partisans . The sane and lucid judgment of Quintilian recalls them to their true place in a felicitous simile he compares them to some sacred grove of aged oaks, which strikes the senses with a solemn awe rather than with he t of . charm beauty Cicero, who again and again speaks E s of nnius in terms of the highest praise, admit that defect of finish on which the Augustan poets lay strong but not L unjustified stress . The noble tribute of ucretius, as our E nnius sang in immortal verse , he who first brought down from lovely Helicon a garland of evergreen leaf to sound ‘ ” u nations of and shine thro ghout the Italy, was no less than due from a poet who owed so m uch to Ennius in manner ve rsific i and at on. It is not known when the A nna/es were lost ; there are doubtful indications O f their existence in the earlier Middle

A . m ges The extant frag ents, though they amount only to ffi a few hundred lines, are su cient to give a clear idea Of the ' ve rsific ation f poet s style and , and O the remarkable breadth and sagacity which made the poem a storehouse of civil wisdom for the more cultured members of the ruling classes at Rome, no less than a treasury of rhythm and phrase for the poets . In the famous single lines like

N on eau ona ntes bellum sed belli er a ntes p g ,

uem nemo er r o otuit su er ar e nee u r a Q f p p a ,

’ I lle air baud ma na cu m r e sed le nu dei g p fi , or the great

M r o ibus a ntiguis r es sta t R amona virisque

E nnius expressed, with even greater point and weight V m than irgil hi self, the haughty virtue, the keen and P c ius a u v .

narrow political instinct, by which the small and struggling mid- Italian town grew to be arbitress of the world ; not Lucretius with his vast and melancholy outlook over a x world where patriotism did not e ist for the philosopher, not Virgil with his deep and charmed broodings over the

mystery and beauty of life and death, struck the Roman

note so exclusively and so certainly . The success of the Latin epic in Ennius ’ hands was indeed for the period so complete that it left no room for further development for the next hundred years the A nnales

remained not only the unique, but the satisfying achievement ne w in this kind of poetry, and it was only when a wave of Greek influence had brought with it a higher and more h refined standard of literary culture, that fres progress could

. o be attained or desired It was not so with tragedy . S

long as the stage demanded fresh material, it continued to h be supplied, and the supply only ceased w en , as had h the appened even in Greece, acted drama dwindled away h - M before the gaudier methods of t e music hall . arcus ac u us E h h P vi , the nephew of nnius, wrote plays for t e t irty ’ h h years after his uncle s deat , w ich had an even greater vogue ; he is placed by Cicero at the head Of Roman

tragedians . The plays have all perished, and even the f ragments are lamentably few ; we can still trace in them, h h Of owever, the copiousness of fancy and ric ness phrase which was marked as his distinctive qu ality by the gr eat O L Ae milius critic Varro . nly one Roman play (on ucius ‘ the P iiha Paulus, conqueror of y is mentioned among his

pieces ; and this, though perhaps accidental, may indicate that tragedy had not really pushed its roots deep enough

at Rome, and was destined to an early decay . Inexhaustible Old as is the life and beauty of the Greek mythology , it was

O ne of the gr e at Sp ee che s in this p lay was p robably m ad e u se of b Liv in his ac c ount of the add ress of Paulus to the p e opl e afte r his y y ‘ h c h has a a n b e e n turne d nto nob e tra c tr um h in 1 6 B .C . w i p 7 , i g i i l gi

e rs b tz e ra d L iter ar R e mains vol. . . 8 . v e y Fi g l , y , ii p 4 3 L atin L iter at u r e . [L m i possible that a Roman audience Should be content to ten for af lis age ter age to the stories of Atalanta and A i O e nt ope , Pentheus and rest s, while they had a new a f n tional li e and overwhelming native interests of their o wn . The Greek tragedy tended more and more to e m b co e the merely literary survival that it was in France L to z th has in under ouis Qua r e , at it been our own day in Mr . Ar Mr . in the hands of nold or Sw burne . But one o f ma more poet re rkable genius carries on its history into the next ag e . Lucius Accius of Pisaurum produced one of his early la in r o B .C . p ys the year 4 , on the same occasion when one his a Pac u of l test was produced by vius, then an Old man of e A ighty. ccius reached a like age himself ; Cicero as a n him l you g man knew wel , and used to relate incidents of ’ the aged poet s earlier life which he had heard from his own the a lips . For greater p rt of the fifty years which include S and the G i A was ulla racch , ccius the recognised literary m s the a ter at Rome, president of college of poets which its s in m M the A held meeting the te ple of inerva on ventine, and associating on terms of full equality with the most A d istingu ished statesman . doubtful tradition mentions him as an nar having also written epic, or at least a rative Anna/es E i ut i in all poem , called , like that of nn us b th s likelihood is a distorted reflection of the fact that he hand ed down and developed the great literary tr adition left Of by his predecessor . The volume his dramatic work was very great the titles are preserved of no less than fort y-five a ra tr agedies . In gener l estimation he brought Roman t gedy fra m S r to its highest point . The g ents how a g ace and fancy which we c an hardly trace in the earlier tragedians .

Accius was the last, as he seems to have been the greatest, of his race . Tragedy indeed continued, as we

. shall see , to be written and even to be acted The literary me n Of the Ciceronian and Augustan age published their plays as a matter of course ; Varius was coupled by his Decay contemporaries with Virgil and Horace and the lost M edea O -finishe d A ax A w of vid, like the never j of ugustus , ould be i the at the least a h ghly interesting literary document . But new age found fresh poetical forms into which it could put its best thought and art ; while a blow was struck directly in at the roots of tragedy by the new invention, the hands Of of Cicero and his contemporaries, a grave, impassioned, and stately prose . E COMEDY : PLAUTUS AND TERENC .

GREAT as was the place occupied in the culture of the A t Greek world by Homer and the ttic ragedians, the M Middle and New Comedy, as they culminated in enander,

exercised an even wider and more pervasive influence . A vast gap lay between the third and fifth centu ries before A s S Christ . eschylu , and even ophocles, had become ancient

literature in the age immediately following their o wn. E uripides, indeed, continued for centuries after his death to be a vital force of immense moment ; but this force he h owed to the qualities in him that make his tragedy transgress the formal limits of the art, to pass into the wider sphere Of the human comedy, with its tears and laughter, its sentiment

and passions . From him to Menander is in truth but a step ; but this step was Of such importance that it was the

comedian who became the Shakespeare of Greece . Omnem vitae imaginem exp r essit are the words deliberately used of i Of t h m by the greatest Roman cri ics .

When, therefore, the impulse towards a national literature

began to be felt at Rome, comedy took its place side by side with tragedy and epic as p art of the Greek secret that had to be studied and mastered ; and this came the more naturally that a sort of comedy in rude but definite forms D was already native and familiar . ramatic improvisations m m were, from an im e orial antiquity, a regular feature of 1 4 IL Or i ins o o e ] g f C m dy .

t . ff Italian fes ivals They were classed under di erent heads, S The S a tu r which cannot be harply distinguished . a seems to have be en peculiarly Latin ; probably it did not differ deeply or essentially from the two other leading types that L arose north and south of atium, and were named from the Of Ee sc e nnium E r A little country towns in tru ia, and tella

in Campania . But these rude performances hardly rose h to the rank of literature ; and here, as elsewhere, t e first literary standard was set by laborious translations from the

Greek . find ac c ordin l A We , g y, that the earlier masters ndronicus, Nae vius E — , nnius all wrote comedies as well as tragedies, “ t he allia ta of type known as p , or dressed in the Greek ” mantle, that is to say, freely translated or adapted from A E Greek originals . fter nnius, this still continued to be the more usual type ; but the development Of technical skill now results in two important changes . The writers of

a comedy become, on the whole and broadly spe king, distinct from the writers Of tragedy ; and alongside of the al/io ta fo a ta p springs up the g , or comedy of Italian dress, persons, and manners . L h As this latter form of atin comedy has perished, wit h the exception of trifling fragments, it may be dismissed ere I n in few words . Its life was comprised less than a century . aéu la to ata Titinius, the first of the writers of thef g of whom we have any certain information, was a contemporary Of S Terence and the younger cipio ; a string of names, which are names and nothing more, carries us down to

L Afranius. the latest and most celebrated of the list, ucius His middle - class comedies achieved a large and a long continued popularity ; we hear Of performances Of them his being given even a hundred years after death, and Horace speaks with gentle sarcasm Of the enthusiasts who his put him on a level with Menander . With contemporary

uinc iu A B . c . Q t s tta (who died 77, in the year of the abortive Of S he revolution after the death ulla), owed much of his L t i L ite a n ra tu r e .

success to the admirable acting of Roscius, who created a

Stage . tr adition that lasted long after his own time . To the mass of the people, comedy (though it did not err in the direction of over- r e fine m ent) seemed tame by com parison with the shows and pageants showered on them AS i n by the ruling class as the price of their suffrages . o other ages and countries, fashionable society f llowed the

mob . The y oung man about town, so familiar to us from Of his the brilliant sketches Ovid, accompanies mistress, not

to comedies of manners, but to the more exciting spectacles of flesh and blood Offered by the ballet- dancers and the

gladiators . Thus the small class who occupied themselves with literature had little counteracting influence pr essed on them to keep them from the fatal habit of perpetually copying from the Greek ; and adaptations from the Attic

New Comedy, which had been inevitable and proper enough

as the earlier essays of a tentative dramatic art, remained the staple of an art which thus cut itself definitely away

from nature . f That we possess, in a fairly complete orm, the works of c f t wo of the most elebrated of these playwrights, and O their many contemporaries and successors nothing but trifling f Of ragments, is due to a chance or a series chances which m we cannot follow, and fro which we must not draw too

precise conclusions . Plautus was the earliest, and apparently he ri wh t most voluminous, of the w ters o devoted themselves w wholly to comedy . Bet een him and Terence a generation Cae c ilius h intervenes, filled by another comedian , , w ose works were said to unite much of the special excellences of both ; While after the death of Terence his work was

' ntinue d on the Tur ilius c o same lines by p and others, and th E dwindled away little by little into e early mpire . But there can be no doubt that Plautus and Terence fully

’ L allza ta represent the strength and weakness of the atin p . A Together with the eleven plays of ristophanes, they have M A been in fact, since the beginning of the iddle ges, the

plays include Specimens of almost every kind of play to

which the name of comedy can be extended . The first Am lzitr uo i on the list, the famous p , is the only surv ving The k specimen of the burlesque . Greeks called this ind of ’ piece iAapor pay rgSra a term for which tr agedie- oouf e would be the nearest modern equivalent ; tr agieo- comoedia is the

name by which Plautus himself describes it i n the prologue . ' Am lzitr u o the The p remains, even now, one of most masterly Of M e specimens of this kind . The version oli re, in which his he did little by way Of improvement on original, has given it fresh currency as a classic ; but the French play gives but an imperfect idea of the spirit and flexibility of ’ the dialogue in Plautus hands . Of a very different type is the piece which comes next the

'

Am l mtu o Ca tivi. p in acknowledged excellence, the p It is

a comedy of sentiment, without female characters, and therefore without the coarseness which (as one is forced to

say with regret) disfigure s some of the other plays . The development of the plot has won high praise from all critics, H u iusmodi a u eas and justifies the boast of the epilogue, p aetae r e er iu nt eomoed as p p i . But the praise which the author gives to his own piece

N on er tr aetate aeta est ne ue item u t eete r ae p f g , N e ue s u r t idiei insu nt ve r sus immemor ao s g p ile , 157i: negue periurus leno est nee mer etrix mala N egue miles glor iosus is really a severe condemnation Of two other gr oups of The Ca sina Plautine plays . and the Tr u culentas (the C latter, as we know from icero, a special favourite with its author) are studies in pornography which only the unflagging animal spirits of the poet can redeem from being disgust ' Asinaria Cu r eulzo [Miles G lo i ing ; and the , , and r osus are Of broad farces with the thinnest thread plot . The last depends wholly on the somewhat forced and exaggerated - I d Pseudolus character of the title le as the , a piece With 1L ] P la u tus .

' r u i er zu r us len ather more s bstance, does ma nly on its p o, Ballio , a character who reminds one of Falstaff in his entire shamelessness and inexhaustible vocabulary .

A f Of - dif erent vein , the domestic comedy middle class life, is opened in one of the most quietly successful of

inummus Thr ee en - r n oit . his pieces, the T , or p y In spite of all the characters being rather fatiguingly virtuous in their Of w sentiments, it is full liveliness, and not ithout graceful A ness and charm . fter the riotous scenes of the lighter the plays, it is something of a comfort to return to good n sense and good feeli g of respectable people . It forms an the B at e/t ides h interesting contrast to , a play whic returns to the world of the bawd and harlot, but with a brilliance Of intrigue and execution that makes it rank high among comedies , h Two other plays are remarkable from the fact t at, though neither in construction nor in workmanship do they Of rise beyond mediocrity, the leading motive the plot in one case and the principal character in the other are in ve ntions i i h of unusual felicity . The Greek or g nal of bot d h h is unknown ; but to it, no oubt, rat er t an to Plautus

‘ the A ulula a himself, we are bound to ascribe the credit of r i /z he A ul la ot o o and M enaee mi. T u ria G ld , or P f , a common

o f m - place story iddle class life, is a mere framework for the Old Euc lio S u portrait of the miser, in itself a ketch f ll of th life and brilliance, and still more famous as e original M e ’ H of oli re s arpagon, which is closely studied from it. M enaee/zmi Comed o E r r or s The , or y f , without any great ingenuity of plot or distinction of character, rests securely on the inexhaustible opportunities Of humour opened up by the happy invention of the twin - brothers who had lost sight of one another from early childhood, and the con fusions that arise when they both find themselves in the same town . There is yet one more O f the Plautine comedies which ff deserves Special notice, as conceived in a di erent vein L a ti n L ite ra tu r e .

and worked out in a different tone from all those already u dens mentioned the charming romantic comedy called R , T/ie Cable or , though a more fitting name for it would be The Tem es t p , Though not pitched in the sentimental key

’ O f Ca tim h h L the p , it has a ig er, and, in atin literature, h a rarer, note . By a happy c ance, perhaps, rather than

from any unwonted effort of skill, this translation of the play of Diphilus has brought with it something of the unique — and unmistakeable Greek atmosphere the atmosphere of

Od sse fishe r - r O f the y y , of the idyl of Theoc itus, the hundreds Of little poems in the Greek Anthology that bear clinging O about their verses the faint murmur and dour of the sea . The C e A scene is laid near yrene, on the strang rich frican u coast ; the prolog e is spoken, not by a character in the piece, nor by a decently clothed abstraction like the figu res of Luxury and Poverty which speak the prologue of the Tr inummus A , but by the star rcturus, watcher and tempest bearer .

ui entes om nes mar ia u e et ter r as mo e Q g , g v t, ' E ius su m t iw s eivita te ea elitu m

’ [ta su m u t w detis s lendens stella ca ndida , p ,

' S ignum guod semper temp or e ex or ztu r s uo Hie a t ue in t a ela nomen r q A etu r o est mini. N ot tu su m in caelo t la r u s atque inter d eos I nter mor tales a mbul inte r d u o i s .

The romantic note struck in these opening lines is con i the h t nned throughout comedy, in w ich, by little touches h here and t ere, the scene is kept constantly before us Of the rocky Shore in the strong brilliant sun after the storm

' the the kindl rie st e ss of night, temple with its y p , and the - - Of the red tiled country house by the reeds lagoon, with the solitary pastures behind it dotted over with fennel . Now ’ I/Vinter s Tale and again one is reminded of the , with fishe r f men instead o shepherds for the subordinate characters P la utus .

more frequently of a play which, indeed, has borrowed a Per icles Pr ince o l r e good deal from this, f y , The remainder of the Plautine plays may be dismissed h with scant notice . T ey comprise three variations on the h theme whic , to modern taste, has become so excessively Of Fou r beries de S ca in — E idicus M ostel tedious, the p the p , lar ia Pe r sa P oenulus , and ; the , a dull play, which owes its only interest to the passages in it written in the Carthaginian u ff e u lang age, which o er a tempting field for the conj ct res

' M er ca tor S tzc/zus of the philologist ; two more , the and , of confused plot and insipid dialogue ; and a mutilated frag Cistella r ia Tr avellin Tr unk ment of the , or g , which would not have been missed had it shared the fate of the Co met

The humour of one age is often mere weariness to the next ; and farcical comedy is , of all the forms of literature, perhaps the least adapted for permanence . It would be affectation to claim that Plautus is nowadays widely read outside Of the inner circle of scholars and there he is read almost wholly on account Of his unusual fertility and interest Ye t he as a field of linguistic study. must always remain h one of the great outstanding influences in literary istory . The strange fate which has left nothing but inconsiderable fragments out Of the immense volume of the later Athenian c o - h Comedy, raised Plautus to a position ordinate wit that Of Aristophanes as a model for the reviving literature of modern Europe ; for such part of that literature (by much the more important) as did not go beyond Latin for its inspiration, Plautus was a source of unique and capital h is Of C value , in own branch literature equivalent to icero V or irgil in theirs .

Plautus outlived the second Punic War, during which, the as we gather from prefaces and allusions, a number of S extant plays were produced . oon after the final collapse Z of the Carthaginian power at ama, a child was born the at Carthage, who, a few years later, in course of L tin L ite ra tu r e a .

- unexplained vicissitudes, reached Rome as a boy slave, and passed there into the possession of a rich and educated Te rentiu h um senator, s Lucanus . The boy s owed some usual turn for books ; he was educated and manumitted

by his master, and took from him the name of Publius Te rentiu s A A the frican . small literary circle of the Roman — aristocracy m e ntoo high in rank to need to be careful what company they kept — admitted young Terence to their intimate companionship and soon he was widely known as making a third in the friendship of Gaius Laelius with the

z the the S A . first citi en of Republic, younger cipio fricanus h its T is society, an informal academy of letters, devoted all energies to the purification and improvement of the Latin u h language . The ro g drafts of the Terentian comedies were h read out to t em, and the language and style criticised in minute detail gossip even said that they were largely written S ’ h by cipio s own and, and Terence himself, as is not sur ix prising, never took pains to deny the rumour . S plays had been subjected to this elaborate correction and pro duc e d the on Roman stage , when Terence undertook a prolonged visit to Greece for the purpose of further study . He — b died of fever the next year y one account, at a village A in rcadia ; by another, when on his voyage home . The six comedies had already taken the place which they have L ever since retained as atin classics . The Terentian comedy is in a way the turning - point of

. E Roman literature Plautus and nnius, how ever largely h w n t ey drew from Greek originals , thre i to all their work a manner and a spirit which were essentially those of a h new literature in the full tide of growt . The imitation O f

Greek models was a means, not an end in both poets the Greek manner is continually abandoned for essays into a

new manner of their own , and they relapse u pon it when their imperfectly mastered powers of invention or expres

sion give way under them . In the circle O f Terence the fatal doctrine was originated that the Greek manner was Te re e nc .

an end in itself, and that the road to perfection lay, not in developing any original qualities, but in reproducing with laborious fidelity the accents of another language and civilisation . Nature took a swift and certain revenge . Correctness of sentiment and smooth elegance Of diction L became the standards of excellence ; and atin literature, still mainly confined to the governing class and their dependents, was struck at the root (the word is used of Terence himself by Varro) with the fatal disease O f mediocrity . But in Terence himself (as in Addison among English h d — a writers) t is mediocrity is, in eed, golden mediocrity h The u nruffle d full of grace and c arm . smoothness of ri of diction, the exquisite pu ty _ language, are qualities

" admirable in themselves, and are accompanied by other c onstruc striking merits not, indeed, by dramatic force or tive power, but by careful and delicate portraiture of b L character, and y an urbanity (to use a atin word which expresses a peculiarly Latin quality) to which the world owes a deep debt for having set a fashion . In some curious S lines preserved by uetonius, Julius Caesar expresses a h Sh criticism , whic we all find it hard to improve, on the “ M ” halved enander, to whom his own fastidious purity h his in the use of language, no less t an tact and courtesy w as a man of the orld, attracted him strongly, while not blinding him to the weakness and flac c idity of the Terentian ff drama . Its e ect on contemporary men of letters was A immediate and irresistible . story is told, bearing all Of the be the marks truth, of young poet when submitted T/ze M aid o A ndr os his first play, f , for the approval of the Of who Commissioners Public Works, were responsible for H e the production Of plays at the civic festivals . was Cae c ilius the h ordered to read it aloud to , who, since deat h i of Plautus, had been supreme wit out a r val on the comic h wh Cae c ilius stage . Terence presented imself modestly ile Sit was at supper, and was carelessly told to down on a stool L i i at n L te ratu r e .

- He in the dining room, and begin. had not read beyond fe w a c iliu im a verses when C e s stopped h , and made him he take a seat at table . After supper was over, heard his guest’s play out with unbounded and unqualified

admiration . But this admiration Of the literary clas s did not make the refined conventional art of Terence successful for its im mediate purposes o u the stage : he was caviare to the the general . Five of six plays were produced at the — spring festival of the Mother of the Gods an occasion when the theatre had not to face the competition of the h ff circus , yet even t en it was only by immense e orts on the part of the management that they succeeded in attract

he M other - in L aw ing an audience . T (not, it is true, a play which shows the author at his best) was twice produced as

a dead failure . The third time it was pulled through by ff Of -m extraordinary e orts on the part the acting anager, Am iviu b s Turpio . The prologue written by Terence for this third performance is one O f the most curious literary He documents of the time . is too angry to extenuate the

. I f w e repeated failure of his play believe him , it fell dead “ ” the first time because that fool, the public , were all excitement over an exhibition on the tight- rope which was to follow the play ; at the second representation only one t act had been gone hrough, when a rumour spread that “ there were going to be gladiators elsewhere, and in five m h inutes the t eatre was empty. The Te rentian prologues (they are attached to all his plays) are indeed all very interesting from the light they

throw on the character of the author, as well as on the ideas and f fashions of his age . In all O them there is a certain hard and acrid purism that cloaks in m odest phrases an immense contempt for all that lies beyond the writer ’s own

. I n Izac est a r a or atio canons of taste p , a phrase of the Tire S e - Tor mentor prologue to lf , is the implied burden Of

them all. H e is a sort of literary Robespierre one seems

L a ti L it t n era u re .

O f r the channel the farces which, fo a hundred years more, u retained a genuine pop larity, but which never took rank E at ula taber as literature of serious value . ven this, the f

’ na r za , or comedy of low life, gradually melted away before the continuous competition O f the shows which so moved the the spleen of Terence the pantomimists, jugglers, the was gladiators . By this time, too, the literary instinct

beginning to explore fresh channels . Not only was prose

becoming year by year more copious and flexible, but the

mixed mode, fluctuating between prose and verse, to which the the was Romans gave name of satire, in process of L n invention . ike the ovel as compared with the play at the ff O present time, it o ered great and bvious advantages S in ease and variety of manipulation , and in the implicity and inexpensiveness with which, not depending on the stated performances of a public theatre, it could be pro d uc e d and circulated . But before proceeding to consider u this new literary invention more f lly, it will be well to as n r pause in order to gather up , its ecessa y complement, h L now the general lines on whic atin prose was developing, h Of whet er in response to the influence Greek models, or in m the course of a ore native and independent growth . THE S A TURA MIXED E EARLY PROSE : , OR MOD .

LAW and government were the two great achievements of the Latin race and the two fountain - heads of Latin prose n m are, on the one ha d, the texts of codes and the comme

: the h taries of jurists on ot er, the annals of the inner con stitution and the external conquests and diplomacy of The n h Rome . begi nings of bot went further back than ut Latin antiquaries could trace them . O of the mists of

a legendary antiquity two fixed points rise, behind which

it is needless or impossible to go . The code known as the Of that of Twelve Tables, which large fragments survive

- in later law books, was drawn up, according to the accepted h 0 t e B . C. th chronology, in year 45 Sixty years later e sack of Rome by the Gauls led to the destruction of nearly all h public and private records, and it was only from t is date onwards that such permanent and contemporary registers asti the the ontific al the the consular f , books of p college, — public collections of engraved laws and treaties were ff extant as could a ord material for the annalist . That a certain amount Of work in the field both Of law and history must have been going on at Rome from a very early period, O the the is, of course , bvious but it was not till time of Punic Wars that anything was produced in either field which could very well be classed as literature . the In history as in poetry, first steps were timidly made 2 7 L atin L ite ra tu r e .

Of with the help Greek models . The oldest and most important of the early historians, Quintus Fabius Pictor, the f Na iu E contemporary O e v s and nnius, actually wrote in L x Greek, though a atin version of his work certainly e isted, whether executed by himself or some other hand is doubtful, E at an almost contemporary date . xtracts are quoted from it by the grammarians as specimens of the language of the h the period . T e scope of his history was broadly same as that Of the two great contemporary poets . It was a narra tive of events starting from the legendary landing of Aeneas in Italy, becoming more copious as it advanced, and dealing ’ with the events of the author s own time at gr eat length

. The and from abundant actual knowledge work ended, so h Of the far as can be judged, wit the close second Punic u War . It long remained the great q arry for subsequent

e historians . Polybius undertook his own great work from ’ dissatisfaction with Fictor s prejudice and inaccuracy ; and he is one of the chief authorities followed in the earlier

L . A decads of ivy younger contemporary of Pictor, L inc ius Alime ntus ucius C , who commanded a Roman army i H in the war aga nst annibal, also used the Greek language Of a in his annals his own life and times, and the same p pears to be the case with the memoirs of other soldiers and statesmen of the period . It is only half a centu ry later h who t at we know certainly of historians wrote in Latin . h L C H m The earliest of t em, ucius assius emina, co posed his annals in the period between the death of Terence and the revolution of the Gracchi a more d istinguished suc L C al urnius cessor, ucius p Piso Frugi, is better known as one of the leading opponents Of the revolution (he was con sul in the year of the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus) than as the author of annals which were certainly written with candour and simplicity, and in a style where the epi ” the ts a A G elliu rtless and elegant, used of them by ulus s, need not be inconsistent with the more disparaging word “ ” C . meagre, with which they are dismissed by icero I I . T i I ] he Ear ly j u r sts . 29

H —as istory might be written in Greek ,indeed, through out the Republican and Imperial times it continued to be by any Roman who was sufficiently conversant with that langu age , in which models for every style of historical the composition were ready to his hand . In province of H L jurisprudence it was different . ere the atin race owed nothing to any foreign influence or example ; and the development of Roman law pursued a straightforward and uninterrupted course far beyond the limits of the classical r pe iod, and after Rome itself had ceased to be the seat even of a divided empire . The earliest juristic writings, consisting of commentaries on collections Of the semi - reli gions enactments in which positive law began, are attributed

, the S to the period of amnite Wars, long before Rome had

M . A 2 00 B C . become a great editerranean power bout . S Ae lius z two brothers, Publius and extus , both citi ens of consular and censorial rank, published a systematic treatise l r er tita h ca led T ip , which was long afterwards eld in re ve renc e cu naoula iu ris as containing the , the cradle out of which the vast systems of later ages sprang . Fifty years the S later, in the circle of younger cipio, begins the illus c i c a la trions line of the Mu i S evo e . Three members of this family, each a distinguished jurist, rose to the consulate in the - stormy half century between the Gracchi and Sulla . The last and greatest of the three represented the ideal m h z Roman ore nearly t an any other citi en of his time . The most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of O rators, he was at the same time a brilliant administrator and a paragon of public and private virtue and his murder V M re sc ri tion at the altar of esta, in the arian p p , was uni ve rsally thought the most dreadful event of an age of His C i horrors . voluminous and exhaustive treatise on iv l a - was found a L w remained a text book for centuries, and a tion for the writings of all later Roman jurists . The combination of jurisconsult and orator in the younger Scaevola was somewhat rare from an early period the two i 1 L at n L itera tu r e . [

professions of jurist and pleader were sharply distinguished,

though both were pathways to the highest civic offices . Neither his father nor his cousin (the other two of the triad) was distinguished in oratory nor were the two great f contemporaries of the ormer, who both published standard M M works on civil law, Manius anilius and arcus Junius

u . Brut s The highest field for oratory was, of course, in S the political, and not in the purely legal, phere and the

unique Roman constitution, an oligarchy chosen almost ff the Of wholly by popular su rage, made practice oratory

more or less of a necessity to every politician . Well established tradition ascribed to the greatest statesman of C C the earlier Republic, Appius laudius aecus, the first His institution of written oratory. famous speech in the senate against peace with Pyrrhus was cherished in Cicero ’s i h t me as one of t e most precious literary treasures of Rome . From his time downwards the stream of written oratory S flowed, at first in a lender stream , which gathered to a larger volume in the works of the elder Cato . In the history of the half- century follow ing the war with H annibal, Cato is certainly the most striking single figure . It is only as a m an of letters that he has to be noticed here and the character of a man of letters was, perhaps, the last in which he would have wished to be remembe red or praised . Yet the cynical and indomitable old man, with his h rough humour, his narrow statesmans ip , his obstinate

- ultra conservatism, not only produced a large quantity of writings, but founded and transmitted to posterity a distinct and important body of critical dogma and literary tradition . Of The influence Greece had, as we have already seen, begun to permeate the educated classes at Rome through

r . A and th ough gainst this Greek influence, alike in liter C ature and in manners, ato struggled all his life with the w whole force of his po erful intellect and mordant wit ; yet it is most characteristic of the man that in his old age m he learned Greek hi self, and read deeply in the master 3! pieces of that Greek literature from which he was too honest and too intelligent to be able to withhold his h admiration . While muc of contemporary literature was launching itself on the fatal course of imitation of Greek was f L l the models, and orcing the atin anguage into C r trammels of alien forms, ato gave it a powe ful impulse towards a purely native, if a somewhat narrow and harsh a development . The nation l prose literature, of which he ma i y fa rly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay La of Rome by a large and powerful minority of tin writers . h What results it mig t have produced, if allowed unchecked m scope, can only be matter for conjecture ; in the ain current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the ’ C the whole, triumphant ; ato s was losing side (if one may L me n so adapt the famous line of ucan), and the of genius took the other . C The speeches of ato, of which upwards of a hundred C ’ m and fifty were extant in icero s ti e, and which the ‘ ’ r tuosz H m of the age of adrian preferred, or professed to ’ prefer, to Cicero s own, are lost, with the exception of inconsiderable fragments . The fragments Show high ora t rical ft S s o gi s ; hrewdness, humour, ter e vigour and con ” h f and rs trolled passion ; somew at con used ha h, says a L t late but competent atin cri ic , but strong and vivid as it is possible for oratory to be . We have suffered a

' k O f On nes heavier loss in his seven boo s gz , the work of his al old age . This may broadly be c led an historical work, O f but it was history treated in a style great latitude, the al al meagre, disconnected method of the ann ists ternating s with digressions into all kinds of subject geography, his s ethnography, reminiscences of own travel and ex e ri nc s l Of p e e , and the politics and socia life his own and d earlier times. It ma e no attempt to keep up either the His dignity or the continuity of history . absence of method made this work, however full of interest, the despair of later historians : what were they to think, they plaintively L i L ite ratu r e a t n .

m asked, of an author who dismissed whole ca paigns without

even giving the names of the generals, while he went into profuse detail over one of the war- elephants in the Car thaginian army ? ’ The only work of Cato s which has been preserved in its integrity is that variously known under the titles De R e u n R stica or De Ag ri Cultur a . It is one ofa umber of treatises t h of a severely didac ic nature, whic he published on various

. subjects agricultural, sanitary, military, and legal This treatise was primarily written for a fi e nd who owned and s s of cultivated far ms in Campania. It consist of a serie w terse and pointed directions follo ing one on another, a but of with no attempt at style or liter ry artifice, full a a w s dr m hard sag city, and ith occasional fla hes of y hu our, which suggest that Cato would have found a not wholly L A uncongenial spirit in President incoln . brief extract one from of the earlier chapters is not without interest, L i bOth as showing the practical atin style, and as g ving the ’ prose groundwork of Virgil s stately and beautiful embroidery in the G eorgia .

’ a omm a matur e con c as ace e Oper fi i f . Nam r s r ustica sic ' e s u uam r em ser o ecer zs o mnia o e r st ; i f , p a sero facies. Stra ' ' menta sz deer unt fr au de m ilig uea m legito ea m subster mto '

ious bubus ue . S ter u ilz niu m ma nu m s ud oo g q g t e u t Izaoeas. S ter cus sedulo conser va cu m ex or tabis s a f to et c m n , p p gi om i ' er a utu mnum e e Cir cu m uito ; p ev /rit . oleas au tu mmtate

a bla uea to et ster cus a ddito. Fr ondem o ulnea m u g p p , lmeam, uer neam caedito er tem us cam condito non er ar ida g , p p , p m, ’

abulum ombus . I tem oenum car da m sicila me nta d p f , c p r ato ; ' ' ea arida condito. P ost zmor em a u tumm r a inam aoulu m p , p ,

lupinumgue ser ita. V To the irgilian student, every sentence here is full of

reminiscences . ar In his p tial yielding, towards the end of a long and m m Of G unco pro ising life, to the rising tide reek influence , Cato was probably moved to a large degree by his personal

i L i e ratu r e L a t n t .

r senato ian houses could hardly avoid, of giving the best of their time and strength to political and administrative

. A duties fter Terence, he is the most distinguished and the most important in his literary influence among the Of h h friends of Scipio . The form literature w ic he invented and popularised, that of familiar poetry, was one which He proved singularly suited to the Latin genius . speaks “ S er mones of his own works under the name of , talks H a name which was retained by his great successor, orace but the peculiar combination of metrical form with wide range of subject and the pedestrian style of ordinary prose, ” he S atu r a . received in popular usage t name , or mixture ir re u The word had, in earlier times, been used of the g lar stage performances, including songs, stories, and semi dramatic interludes, which formed the repertory of strolling artists at popular festivals . The extension of the name to the verse of Lucilius indicates that written literature was now rising to equal importance and popularity with the spoken word . H orace comments, not without severity, on the profuse L Of and careless production of ucilius . the thirty books S a tir es h of his , few fragments of any length survive ; muc , the probably greater part of them, would, if extant, long the have lost its interest . But loss of the bulk of his work is a matter of sincere regret, because it undoubtedly gave a vivid and detailed picture of the social life and the current

' the S atz r es H interests of the time, such as of orace give of H i Rome in the Augustan age . s criticisms on the public men of his day were outspoken and unsparing nor had he more reverence for established reputations in poetry than A in public life . great deal of his work consisted in d e sc rip tions of eating and drinking much, also, in lively accounts t of his own ravels and adventures, or those of his friends . ' One book of the S a ti r es was occupied with an account of ’ E Scipio s famous mission to the ast, in which he visited the A courts of Egypt and sia, attended by a retinue of only u c ili s L u . 35

five servants, but armed with the full power of the terrible A H Republic . nother imitated by orace in his storyof the Brundusium the journey to , detailed petty adventures, the h talk and laug ter by roads and at inns, of an excursion of

' his own through Campania and Bruttiu m to the Sicilian e straits . Many of the fragm nts deal with the literary con

trove rsie s of the time, going down even to the minutiae of spelling and grammar ; many more Show the beginnings of that translation into the language of common life of the w precepts of the Greek Schools, hich was consummated for the world by the poets and prose—writers of the following the S a tir es L the century . But, above all, of ucilius were in

fullest sense of the word an autobiography . The famous H description of orace , made yet more famous for English readers by the exquisite aptness with which Boswell placed it on the title -page of his L ife ofj o/znson

Quo fi t u t omnis Votiua p o tea t velu ti descr zjota ta bella Vita senis

H e expresses the true greatness of Lucilius . invented a h n literary method which, wit out being great, yields to . o h n ot er in i terest and even in charm, and which, for its per

fe c tion a nd . H , requires a rare refined genius Not orace H M only, nor all the satirists after orace, but ontaigne and

Of L . Pepys also, belong to the school ucilius

“

Such was the circle of the younger Scipio, formed in — the happy years as they seemed to the backward gaz e Of the succeeding generation — between the establishment of n r e Roma supremacy at the battle of Pydna, and the volu

tionary movement of Tiberius Gracchus . Fifty years of n stormy turbulence followed, culminati g in the Social War M and C and the reign of terror under arius inna, and finally i - st lled in seas of blood by the counter revolution of Sulla . This is the period which separates the Sc ipionic from the 6 i L i 3 L a t n tera tu r e .

C . pro iceronian age It was naturally, except in the single v fertility ; ince of political oratory, not one of great literary and a brief indication of the m ost notable au thors of the e O f p riod, and the lines on which Roman literature mainly continued to advance during it, is all that is demanded or possible here .

In oratory, this period by general consent represented the golden age of Latin achievement . The eloquence of both the Gracchi was their great political weapon ; that of Gaius was the most powerful in exciting feeling that had ever been known ; his death was mourned, even by fierce

L u . political Opponents, as a heavy loss to atin literat re But th e e Of in the next generation, literary p rfection oratory was carried to an even higher point by Marcus Antonius and Lucius Licinius Crassus . Both attained the highest honours that the Republic had to bestow . By a happy chande, their styles were exactly complementary to one another ; to hear both in one day was the highest in tellec tual entertainment which Rome afforded . By this time the rules of oratory were carefully studied and reduced

. O ne to scientific treatises of these, the work of an other

Cornific ius . wise unknown , is still extant It owes its preservation to an erroneous tradition which ascribed it to C the pen of icero, and regarded it as an earlier draft of e e his treatise D I nv ntione . That treatise goes over much the O same ground, and is ften verbally copied from the earlier Of work, which it was, in fact, a new edition revised and largely rewritten . Latin history during this period made considerable was progress . It a common practice among statesmen to write memoirs Of their own life and times ; among others

S - of less note, ulla the dictator left at his death twenty two Of ommentar n R e r u m G esta r u m h books C , whic were after r e u a wards published by his secretary . In g l r history the most important name is that of Quintus Claudius Quadri His f garins . work di fered from those of the earlier annalists Pr e Cice r onia n Pros e . 37

in passing over the legendary period, and beginning with the ear liest authentic documents ; in research and critical judgment it reached a point only excelled by Sallust . His m t style was for ed on hat of older annalists, and is therefore

w for . C f some hat archaic the period onsiderable ragments, including the well-known description of the single combat M a 1 B . u Tor u tus in 36 C. between Tit s anlius q and the A ellius Gallic chief, survive in quotations by ulus G and the archaists of the later Empire . More voluminous but less valuable than the Annals Of Claudius were those of his V A h m m contemporary, alerius ntias, whic for ed the ain k L w l groundwork for the earlier boo s of ivy, and ere argely r used by him even for later periods, when more t ust worthy authori ties were available . Other historians of this Sisenna M — period, and acer, soon fell into neglect the ' f as iff ormer as too archaic, the latter too d use and rhetorical, for literary permanence . Somewhat apart from the historical writers stand the antiquarians, who wrote during this period in large numbers, m and whose treatises filled the library fro which, in the r age of Cicero, Va ro compiled his monumental works . As of C numerous probably were the writers the school of ato, m t on husbandry, do es ic economy, and other practical and s subjects, the grammarians and philologist , whose t V ’ works formed two other large sec ions in arro s library. O n all sides prose was full of life and growth ; the complete Of literary perfection of the age Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust might already be foreseen as within the grasp of the near

L n m l . The ati poetry, eanwhile, hung in the ba ance first great wave of the Greek impulse had exhausted itself in

' Ennius and the later tragedians . Prose had so developed that the poetical form was no longer a necessity for the a expression of ideas, as it had been in the palmy d ys of

Latin tragedy. The poetry of the future must be, so to speak, poetry for its own sake, until some new tradition L a ti L i n te r at ure .

were formed which should make certain metrical forms once more the recognised and traditional vehicle for certain

kinds of literary expression. I n the blank of poetry we may note a translation of the I liad into hexameters by one G M naeus atins, and the earliest known attempts at imitation of the forms of Greek lyrical verse by an equally obscure Lae vius l Me issus, as dim premonitions of the new growth which Latin poetry was feelin g after ; but neither these, nor the literary tragedies which still were occasionally pro d h are uc e d by a survival of the fas ions of an earlier age, t of any account for their own sake . Prose and poetry s ood at the two opposite poles of their cycle ; and thus it is and - r that, while the poets prose w iters of the Ciceronian re re age are equally imperishable in fame, the latter but p sent the culmination of a broad and harmonious develop ut f m ment, of the former, amidst b apart ro the ' while ne w S beginnings of a literary era, there hine, splendid like stars out of the darkness, the two immortal lights of L ucretius and Catullus . E f C l TH age O icero, a term fami iar to all readers as indi a i t c t ng one of the culmina ing periods of literary history,

’ fix while its central and later years are accurately ed, may be dated in its commencement from varying limits . Cicero

1 06 B . C . was born in , the year of the final conquest of

Jugurtha, and the year before the terrible Cimbrian disaster at Orange : he perished in the proscription of the trium H i D m B . C . s virate in ece ber, 43 first appearance in public life was during the dictatorship of Sulla and either from this date , or from one ten years later when the Sullan con stitutionwas re -established in a modified form by Pompeius l C and Crassus in their first consu ate, the iceronian age extends over a space which approximates in the one case t to thirty, in the other to for y years . No period in ancient, and few in comparatively modern history are so pregnant i with interest or so fully and ntimately known . From the compar ative obscurity of the earlier age we pass into a a full blaz e of daylight. It is hardly an ex ggeration to say that the Rome of Cicero is as familiar to modern English Of n readers as the London Queen A ne, to readers in i modern France as the Par s of Louis Quatorz e. We can still f ollow with unabated interest the daily fluctuations of n its politics, the curre t gossip and scandal of its society, the passing fashions of domestic life as revealed in private 39 [1 L atin L iteratu re . correspondence or the disclosures of the law courts . Yet in the very centre of this brilliantly lighted world, one of its most remarkable figures is veiled in almost complete On tire Natur e of darkness. The great poem of Lucretius, n s extraor fl i g , though it not only revealed a profound and inar ut d y genius, b marked an entirely new technical level in Latin poetry, stole into the world all but unnoticed ; and ’ n of r t of its author s life, though a pure Roma of one the g ea two a governing families, only one or doubtful and isol ted facts could be recovered by the curiosity of later c ommen ’ m Chr onicle St . tators. The single sentence in Jero e s which practically sums up the whole of our information

r B . C runs as follows, under the yea 9 4 ' s u e us oeta nascztu r ostea a mator io oculo in I itu L cr ti p , p p ' fur orem ver sus c u m a liquot lit res per intervalla insamae s sse uos ostea Cicer o emendavit r o r ia se manu conscrip i t g p , p p

interfecit anno aeta/is x liiii. h Brief and straig tforward as the sentence is, every clause Was in it has given rise to volumes of controversy .

Lucretius born in the year named, or is another tradition

correct, which, connecting his death with a particular event V s in the youth of irgil, makes him either be born a few year fe w s ? Did h earlier or die a year younger he ever, whet er f m hi ro a poisonous philtre or otherwise, lose s reason ? and can a poem which ranks among the gr eat masterpieces of genius have been built up into its stately fabric for this is not a question of brief lyrics like those of Smart or Cowper in the lucid intervals of insan ity ? Did Cicero have any thing to do with the editing of the unfinished poem ? I f C M P so, which icero arcus or Quintus and why, in either

case, is there no record of the fact in their correspondence, or in any writing of the period ? All these questions are t probably insoluble, and the no ice of Jerome leaves the whole life and personality of the poet still completely

Yet " hidden . we have little or nothing else to go upon . There is one brief and casual allusion in one of Cicero 's

L a i L iter at r e t n u .

n . great learni g, and its remoteness from nature It was poetry written in a library ; it viewed the world through a

highly coloured medium O f literary and artistic tradition . The laborious perfectness Of execution which the taste of h the time demanded was, as a rule, lavis ed on little subjects, r ne h A patient ca vings in ivory . O branc of the lexandrian school which was largely followed was that of the didactic — A ic and e r E h poets ratus, N , up orion, and a host of others

less celebrated . Cicero, in mature life, speaks with some contempt of the taste for Euphorion among his contempo l raries . But he had himself, as a young man, fo lowed the h Plia enomena A fas ion, and translated the of ratus into won d erfully polished and melodious hexameter verse . ff Not una ected by this fashion of the day, but turning — from it to Older and nobler models H omer and Empe d oc les E L L in Greek, nnius in atin ucretius conceived the

' imposing scheme of a didactic poem dealing with the whole field of life and nature as interpreted by the Epicurean H philosophy . e lived to carry out his work almost to com

ple tion . It here and there wants the final touches of arrangement one or two discussions are promised ”and not s given ; ome paragraphs are repeated, and others have not been worked into their proper place but substantially;as in Aeneid the case of the , we have the complete poem before

us, and know perfectly within what limits it might have been

altered or improved by fuller revision .

As u N atu r e T/zin s p re literature, the of g has all the

defects inseparable from a didactic poem , that unstable com

bination of discordant elements, and from a poem which is u not only didactic , but arg mentative, and in parts highly

controversial . Nor are these difficulties in the least degree

. As evaded or smoothed over by the poet a teacher, he is

in deadly earnest as a controversialist, his first object is t refute and convince . The graces of poetry are never for X moment allowed to interfere with the full development M an argument . uch of the poem is a chain of intrica ucre t ius L . 43

reasoning hammered into verse by sheer force of hand . The ardent imagination of the poet struggles through masses O f intractable material which no genius c Ould wholly fuse into

m. His an a pure metal that could take perfect for l guage, w in the fine prologue to the fourth book of the poem, sho s his attitude towards his art very clearly.

Avia Pier idumper ag r o loca nullius ante Tr ita solo iuvat integ r os a cceder e fontes A t ue au r e u a t ue novos decer er e or es q it ri , i v g p fl I nszgnemgue meo capiti p ete r e inde cor onam Unde p r ius nulli vela r int temp e r a M usae ' mu u d ma nis doceo de e e ar tzs P ri m q a g r bus, t R el onu a nimum nodis ex so e o igi m lv r e peq , Deinde guod obscu r a de r e tam lucidapa ngo

Car mina musaeo contin ens cuncta le or e. , g p

The joy and glory Of his art come second in his mind to his the passionate love of truth, and deep moral purport of a t wh t he believes to be the one rue message for mankind . The human race lies fettered by superstition and ignorance his mission is to dispel their darkness by that light of truth which is clearer than the beams of the sun or the shining " S t . S z haf s of day pino a has been called, in a bold figure, a man drunk with God ; the contemplation of the “ nature ” of things, the physical structure of the universe, and the living and all but impersonate law which forms and sustains L it, has the same intoxicating influence over ucretius . God and man are alike to him bubbles on the ceaseless r h st eam of existence ; yet t ey do not therefore, as they have so often done in other philosophies, fade away to al His a spectr thinness . contemplation of existence is no brooding over abstractions ; Nature is not in his view the majestic and silent figure before whose unchanging eyes the shifting shadow-shapes go and come but an essen f in m cr eatr ix tial life, mani esting itself a illion workings, , L i 44 at n L iterature .

uoer na ns daed l r a a er um . g , The universe is filled through all f its illimitable spaces by the roar o her working, the cease less unexhausted energy with which she alternates life and

death . To our own age the Epicurean philosophy has a double h interest . Not only was it a p ilosophy of life and conduct, a but, in the effort to place life and conduct under scertain

able physical laws, it was led to frame an extremely detailed h h and ingenious body of natural p ilosop y, which, partly

from being based on really sound postulates, partly from t a happy instinct in connec ing phenomena, still remains E interesting and valuable . To the picureans, indeed, as now to all ancient thinkers, the scientific method as it is understood was unknown ; and a series of unverified gen eralisations , however brilliant and acute, is not the true

way towards knowledge . But it still remains an astonishing fact that many of the most important physical discoveries of modern times are hinted at Or even expressly stated by L ucretius . The general outlines of the atomic doctrine have long been accepted as in the main true ; in all im portant features it is superior to any other physical theory

of the universe which existed up to the seventeenth century . his L In theory of light ucretius was in advance o f Newton . In his theory Of chemical a ffinities (for he describes the thing though the nomenclature was unknown to him) he L was in advance of avoisier . In his theory of the ultimate constitution of the atom he is in striking agreement with the h views of the ablest living p ysicists . The essential function O f science to reduce apparently disparate phenomena to the expressions of a single law is not with him the object ’ of a moment s doubt or uncertainty . Towards real progress in knowledge two things are alike : indispensable a true scientific method, and imaginative

insight . The former is, in the main, a creation of the L modern world, nor was ucretius here in advance of his

. age But in the latter quality he is unsurpassed, if not u cre i s L t u . 45

unequalled . Perhaps this is even clearer in another field h h h of science, t at w ic has within the last generation risen h to such immense proportions under the name of ant ropology . Thirty years ago it was the first and second books of the De R eru m N atu r a which excited the greatest enthusiasm in h the scientific world . Now t at the atomic theory has passed S h into the rank of received doctrines, the brilliant ketc , given the in fifth book, of the beginnings of life upon the earth, the evolution of man and the progress of human society, is the portion of the poem in which his scientific imagination h A is displayed most astonis ingly . Roman aristocrat, living h h L among a ig ly cultivated society, ucretius had been yet endowed by nature with the primitive instincts of the savage . H e - sees the ordinary processes of everyday life weaving,

- Of carpentry, metal working, even such specialised forms manual art as the polishing of the surface of marble — with the fresh eye Of one who sees them all for the first time .

Nothing is to him indistinct through familiarity. In virtue of this absolute clearness O f vision it costs him no effort to throw himself back into prehistoric conditions and the E h h h h wild life of the earliest men . ven furt er t an t is e can pierce the strange recesses of the past . Before his h w h imagination the eart rises s at ed in tropical forests, and all strange forms Of life issuing and jostling one another for existence in the steaming warmth of per A p e tual summer . mong a thousand types that flowered and fell, the feeble form of primitive man is distinguished,

h . w ithout fire, without clot ing, without articulate speech h h the Through the midnig t of the woods, s ivering at cries

- he of the stealthy footed prowlers of the darkness, crouches

f . L huddled in allen leaves, waiting for the rose of dawn ittle h by little the prospect clears round him . The branc es of the great trees, grinding one against another in windy h forest, break into a strange red flower ; he gat ers it and h h hoards it in his cave . T ere, w en wind and rain beat

- fire without, the hearth burns through the winter, and round [1 L atin L itera tu re . it gathers that other marvellous invention of which the

the . hearth fire became the mysterious symbol, family

From this point the race is on the full current of progress, of which the remainder of the book gives an account as essentially true as it is incomparably brilliant . If we consider how little Lucretius had to go upon in this m reconstruction of lost history, his i aginative insight seems E almost miraculous . ven for the later stages of human progress he had to rely mainly on the eye which saw deep below the surface into the elementary structure of civilisation . There was no savage life within the scope of his actual observation . Books wavered between traditions of an impossible golden age and fragments of primitive legend h whic were then quite unintelligible, and are only now giving up their secret under a rigorous analysis . Further back, and beyond the rude civilisation of the earlier races of Greece and Italy, data wholly failed . We have supplemented, but hardly given more life to, his picture of i the first beg nnings, by evidence drawn from a thousand

— - sources then unknown or unexplored from coal measures

- and mud deposits, Pictish barrows and lacustrine midden A steads, remote tribes of hidden frica and islands of the

Pacific Sea . S uch are the characteristics which, to one or another epoch of modern times, give the poem of Lucretius so unique an interest . But for these as for all ages, its per m v anent value must lie mainly in more uni ersal qualities . History and physical science alike are in all poetry ancillary

. hi to ideas It is in his moral temper, s profound insight h L into life, t at ucretius rises to the greatest heights Of thought and the utmost perfection of language . The E in picurean philosophy, his hands, takes all the moral fervour, the ennobling influence of a religion . The depth of his religious instinct may be measured by the passion of his antagonism to what be regarded as

. H r superstition uman life in his eyes was made w etched, s L u cr e tiu . 47

mean, and cruel by one great cause the fear of death and of what happens after it . That death is not to be feared, hi that nothing happens after it, is the keystone of s whole

. f system It is after an accumulation of seventeen proo s, hurled one upon another at the reader, of the mortality of h the h the soul, t at, letting himself loose at ighest emotional and imaginative tension, he breaks into that wonderful w V passage , hich irgil himself never equalled, and which in n the its lofty passion, its pierci g tenderness, stately roll of h its cadences, is perhaps unmatched in uman speech.

l a m ia m non domus a cc iet te laeta ne u r ip , g e ux o O tima nec d ulces occu r r ent oscula nati p ,

’ Pr aeriper e et tacita pectus du lcedine ta ngent Non oter is actis lor entious esse fais ue p f f , q ” r aesidiu m miser o miser e a iu nt o a a de P , , mni mit Una dies infesta tioi tot p r aemia vitae Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome h t ee, nor darling children race to snatch thy first kisses and touch thy heart with a sweet and silent content ; no more mayest thou be prosperous in thy doings and a defence to ’ ‘ : ! h thine own alas and woe say t ey, one disastrous day — has taken all these priz es of thy life away from thee but h t ereat they do not add this, and now no more does any ’ lon ing for these thin h e . This did their thought S but clearly see and their peech follow, they would release

h . t emselves from great heartache and fear Thou, indeed, the as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for rest of the ages, severed from all weary pains ; but we, while close by us thou didst turn ashen on the awful pyre, u S made nappeasable lamentation, and everlastingly hall ’ Ask time never rid our heart of anguish . we then this of him, what there is that is so very bitter, if sleep and peace be the conclusion of the matter, to make one fade away in never- ending grief ? “ h Thus too men often do w en, set at the feast, they hold 8 1 4 L a tin L itera tu re . [

i their cups and shade their faces with garlands, say ng sadly,

Brief is this joy for wretched men soon will it have been, and none may ever after recall it !’ as if this were to be h first and foremost of the ills of death, that t irst and dry

burning should waste them miserably, or desire after any an thing else beset them . For not even then does y one miss himself and his life when soul and body together are

deep asleep and at rest for all we care , such slumber might for go on ever, nor does any longing after ourselves touch

first - us then , though then those beginnings through our body swerve away but a very little from the movements that bring back the senses when the man starts up and gathers

himself out of sleep . Far less, therefore, must we think

death concerns us , if less than nothing there can be ; for a

greater sundering in the mass of matter follows upon death,

nor does any one awake and stand, whom the cold stoppage

of death once has reached . sudd enl t Yet again , were the Nature of things y o utter ‘ a voic e , and thus with her own lips upbraid one of us , ‘ h 0 What ails t ee so, mortal, to let thyself loose in too feeble grievings ? why weep and wail at death ? for has th h y past life and overspent been sweet to t ee, and not all

the good thereof, as if poured into a pierced vessel, has run through and joylessly perished, why dost thou not retire

like a banqueter filled with life, and calmly, O fool, take thy peaceful sleep ? But if all thou hast had is perished and

spilt, and thy life is hateful, why seekest thou yet to add more which shall once again all perish and fall joylessly away ? why not rather make an end of life and labour ? for there is nothing more that I can contrive and invent

for thy delight ; all things are the same for ever . Even th were thy body not yet withered, nor y limbs weary and h worn, yet all t ings remain the same, didst thou go on to m live all the generations down, nay, even ore, wert thou never doomed to die what do we answer ? It is in passages of which the two hundred lines beginning

0 L atin L iterat u r e I 5 . [

absolutely peculiar to himself. Both of them under this strangely mixed impulse set themselves to embody their

creed in a great work of art . But the art did not appeal De strongly to sectaries, nor the creed to artists . The the a r adise L ost h P er um N atur a and P , w ile they exercised

a profound influence over later poets, came silently into the m world, and see to have passed over the heads of their o f immediate contemporaries . There is yet another point h E curious resemblance between t em . very student of Milton knows that the only English poet from whom he

systematically borrowed matter and . phrase was one of the h t ird rate, who now would be almost forgotten but for the

use Milton made of him . For one imitation of Spenser or Shakespeare in the Par adise L ost it would be easy to adduce — ten not mere coincidences of matter, but direct trans ’ fe re nc e s of Sylvester s Du Bartas . While Lucretius was a in L the boy, Cicero published the version atin hexameters of Pitae nomena and P r og nostica of Aratus to which reference Of has already been made . These poems consist only

between eleven and twelve hundred lines in all, but had, the A h in later lexandrian period, a reputation (like t at of the S epmaine of Du Bartas) far in excess of their real m erit, and were among the most powerful influences in h The L founding t e new style . many imitations in ucretius of the extant fragments of these Ciceronian versions Show that he must have studied their vocabulary and ve rsific ation h wit minute care . The increased technical possibilities shown by them to exist in the Latin hexameter — for in

them, as in nearly all his permanent work, Cicero was mastering the problem of making his own language an — adequate vehicle of sustained expression may even have been the determining influence that made Lucretius adopt h this poetical form . Till then it may ave been just possible

that native metrical forms might still reassert themselves . Inscriptions of the last century of the Republic Show that the saturnian still lingered in use side by side with the I V . ] L ucr e t ius . rude popular hexameters which were gradually displacing P u nic W r Na viu Lu it ; and the a of e s was still a classic . ’ cretius choice of the hexameter, and his definite conquest of it as a medium of the richest and most varied expression, im e rfec placed the matter beyond recall . The technical p tions which remained in it were now reduced within a vis n ible compass ; its power to convey sustained argume t, to S express the most delicate hades of meaning, to adjust itself to the greatest heights and the subtlest tones of L emotion, was already acquired when ucretius handed it on V And h to irgil . ere, too, as well as in the wide field of w f literature ith which his ame is more intimately connected, from the. actual impulse given by his own early work and heightened by admiration of his brilliant maturity, even more than from the dubious tradition of his editorial care ’ after the poet s death, the glory of the Ciceronian age is in close relation to the personal genius of Cicero . LYRI C POETRY : CATULLUS .

‘ R t l CONTEMPORA Y wi h Lucretius, but, unlike him, iving in

the full whirl and glare of Roman life, was a group of young men who were professed followers of the Alexandrian C school . In the thirty years which separate the ivil war and the Sullan restoration from the sombre period that opened with the outbreak of hostilities between C aesar

and the senate, social life at Rome among the upper classes

was unusually brilliant and exciting . The outward polish a of Greek civilisation was for the first time fully m stered, and an intelligent interest in art and literature was the “ ” . Wn fashion of good society The young man about to , h w om we find later fully developed in the poetry of Ovid,

sprang into existence, but as the government was still in the the hands of aristocracy, fashion and politics were m intimately inter ingled, and the lighter literature Of the h h day touc ed grave issues on every Side . T e poems of Catullus are full of references to his friends and his

Of . the enemies among this group writers Two of former, C C O f inna and alvus, were poets considerable importance . Gaius Helvius Cinna somewhat doubtfully identified with the “ Cinna the poet who met such a tragical end at the hands Of the populace after Caesar ’s assassination carried the Alexandrian movement to its most uncompromising His conclusions . fame (and that fame was very great) V . ] Cinna a nd Ca lvus .

Zm r na rested on a short poem called y , over which he spent ’ ten years labour, and which, by subject and treatment alike, carried the Alexandrian method to its furthest excess . In M its recondite obscurity it outdid Lycophron himself. ore than one grammarian of the time made a reputation solely by a commentary on it . It throws much light on the C peculiar artistic position of atullus, to bear in mind that this masterpiece of frigid pedantry obtained his warm and evidently sincere praise . L M The other member of the triad , Gaius icinius acer

Calvus, one of the most brilliant men of his time, was too deeply plunged in politics to be more than an accomplished

amateur in poetry . Yet it must have been more than his C h intimate friendship with atullus, and t eir common fate

of too early a death, that made the two names so con

stantly coupled afterwards . By the critics of the Silver A e H g , no less than by orace and Propertius, the same idea

- is frequently repeated, which has its best known expression ’ in Ovid s beautiful invocation in his elegy on Tibullus

' u c en as li eder a u e lia c nctus Oovzus Iz i v i , i v ni i

Te m or a cu m Calvo docte Ca tulle tuo. p , , ,

We must lament the total loss of a volume O f lyrics which competent judges thought worthy to be set beside that of

his wonderful friend . V Gaius Valerius Catullus of erona, one of the greatest

names of Latin poetry, belonged, like most of this group,

to a wealthy and distinguished family, and was introduced at an early age to the most fashionable circles of the c L capital . H e was just so mu h younger than ucretius that the Marian terror and the Sullan proscriptions can hardly

have left any strong traces on his memory ; when he died,

Caesar was still fighting in Gaul , and the downfall of the

ould only be dimly foreseen . In time, no less the w nius, he represents fine flo er of the e w age . H was about five and t enty when the ite ra tu r e 54 L atin L . famous liaison began between him and the lady whom he has immortalised under the name of Lesbia . By birth a Cae c ilius M Claudia, and wife of her cousin, a etellus, she belonged by blood and marr iage to the two proudest families C of the inner circle of the aristocracy . lodia was seven years older than Catullus but that only made their mutual attraction more irresistible : and the death of her husband in the year after his consulship, whether or not there was foundation for the common ru mour that She had poisoned him , was an incident that seems to have passed almost unnoticed in the first fervour of their passion . The story of a infatuation, revolt, relapse , fresh revolt and fresh ent ngle

h the C . ment, lives and breat es in verses of atullus It was after their final rupture that Catullus made that journey to

Asia which gave occasion to his charming poems of travel . I n the years which followed his return to Italy, he con tinue d w - m to produce ith great versatility and force, aking and experiments in several new styles, devoting great pains to an elaborate metrical technique . Feats of learning and n i h skill alter ate with political verses, nto w ich he carries all his violence of love and hatred . But while these later poems compel our admiration, it is the earlier ones which win and keep our love . Though the old liquid note ever h and again recurs, the freshness of t ese first lyrics, in which life and love and poetry are all alike in their morning glory, was never to be wholly recaptured . Nor did he d H e live to settle down on any matured secon manner . — was thirty-three at the utmost perhaps not more than — thirty when he died, leaving behind him the volume of poems which sets him as the third beside Sappho and

Shelley . The order of the poems in this volume seems to be an artificial compromise between two systems —one an arrange m ment by metre, and the other by date of co position . In falls into the former view the book , three sections the p r ly ics , the idyllic pieces, and the poems V ~ a t u llus ] C . 5 5 The central place is occupied by the longest and most elaborate, if not the most successful, of his poems, the epic idyl on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis . Before this

the h - are the lyrics, chiefly in p alaecean eleven syllabled C verse which atullus made so peculiarly his own, but in iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of

M n Virri . his friends, alli s and a The transition from this group of lyrics to the M ar r iage of P eleus a nd Titetis is made

h - n with great skill t rough another wedding chant, a idyl in n h form, but approaching to a lyric in to e, wit out any personal allusions, and not apparently written for any particular occasion . Finally comes a third group of poems, all w extending to the end of the volume, ritten in elegiac h verse, but ot erwise extremely varied in date , subject, and The h the manner . only poem t us left unaccounted for, A t s y , is inserted in the centre of the volume, between the h w two hexameter poems, as thoug to make its ild metre and rapid movement the more striking by contrast with their smooth and languid rhythms . Whether the arrange ’ ment of the whole book comes from the poet s own hand His is very doubtful . dedicatory verses, which stand at the head of the volume , are more probably attached to the

Of . t first part only, the book lyrics Catullus almos cer h tainl B . t e y died in 5 4 C . only positive dates assignable to the the particular poems, in either lyric or elegiac section, u alike lie within the three or fo r years previous, and, while f no strict chronological order is ollowed, the pieces at the beginning of the book are almost certainly the earliest, h and t ose at the end among the latest . A C mong the poems of atullus, those connected with

Lesbia hold the foremost place, and, as expressions of direct L personal emotion , are unsurpassed, not merely in atin, but h in any literature . There are no poems of the growt of L love among them ; from the first, esbia appears as the absolute mistress of her lover’s heart L atin L itera tu r e .

Viva mus mea L esbia a t ue a memus , , q , R umor esgue senu m severior u m

Omnes u nius aestimemus assis . S oles occider e et r edir e p ossunt N oois cu m semel occidit br evis lux N ox est perpetua u na dor miend a

thus he cries in the first intoxication of his happiness, as yet ignorant that the brief light of his love was to go out h h before noon . Clodia soon S owed t at the advice not to

care for the opinion of the world was, in her case, infinitely superfluous That intolerable pride which was the pro verbial curse of the Claudian house took in he r the form

of a flagrant disregard of all conventions . In the early h days of t eir love, Catullus only felt, or only expressed, the h His ff C beautiful S ide of t is recklessness . a ection for lodia

had in it, he says, something of the tenderness of parents

for their children and the poems themselves bear this out . We do not need to read deeply in Catullus to be assured that merely animal passion ran as strong in him as it ever L did in any man . But in the earlier poems to esbia all this turns to air and fire ; the intensity of his love melts

its grosser elements into one white flame . There is hardly ’ even a word of Lesbia s bodily beauty ; her great blaz ing eyes have only come down to us in the sarcastic allusions b C A made to them y icero in his speeches and letters . s ’ finést ric s Of C in some of the dy Burns, with whom atullus, Of the as a poet of love , has ten been compared, ardency O f passion has effected for quintessential moments the work that long ages may work out on the whole fabric of a

’ human soul Concr eta m ex emzt la bem p ur u mgu e r eligu it aetit er ium sensu m a t ue a u r a: sim licis nem g p ig . But long after the rapture had passed away the enthral ’ L infid elitie s ment remained . esbia s first only riveted her lover ’s chains

i i L a t n L ter at ur e .

a personal reference are those concerned with his journey A to sia, and the death in the Troad of the deeply loved

brother whose tomb he visited on that journey . The excitement of travel and the delight of return have never

been more gracefully touched than in these little lyrics, of

which every other line has become a household word, the 1 a m ver e elidos r er t te or es P acue insulara m g ef p , and the lovely S ir mio insula ru m ue q , whose cadences have gathered a fresh h sweetness in the hands Of Tennyson . But a hig er note is ’ reached in one or two of the short pieces on his brother s

death, which are lyrics in all but technical name . The finest of these has all the delicate simplicity of an epitaph by the L s A S best Greek artists , eonida or ntipater or imonides L himself, and combines with it the atin dignity, and a range

the - of tones, from ocean roll of its opening hexameter, M ultas er entes et multa er ac uar d vectus p g p q , to the sobbing wail of the Atque in p erpetu u m fr ater a ve atqu e vale in

which it dies away, that is hardly equalled except in some ’ of Shakespeare s sonnets . It is in these short lyrics Of personal passion or emotion that the genius of Catullus is most uniqu e ; but the same high qualities appear in the fe w specimens he has left of Ode to Dia na more elaborate lyrical architecture, the , the

- i M n and V A s. marriage song for alli s inia, and the n The

first of these , brief as it is, has a breadth and grandeur of ’ manner which as in the noble fragment of Keats Ode to — M aia lift it into the rank O f great masterpieces . The h epithalamium, on the other hand, with w ich the book of

S . lyrics ends, while very imple in structure, is large in scale It is as much longer than the rest of the lyrics as the — ' marriage song which stands at the end of I n M e mori a m

is than the other sections of that poem . In the charm of perfect Simplicity it equals the finest of his lyrics ; but

besides this, it has in its clear ringing music what is for this period an almost unique premonition of the ne w world M A that rose out of the darkness of the iddle ges, the Cat u llus . 59

- world that had invented bells and church organs, and ne had added a w romantic beauty to love and marriage . h h the S S With a richness of p rase t at recalls ong of olomon, : O en ou r ba r s 0 ates the verses clash and swing p y , g the b a r ide is t hand L o, how the tor ches shake ou t their ’ splendid tr esses E ven so in a r ich lor d s g a r den -close

mi ht sta nd a - h acinth lower . L o the e g y f , tor ch s shake ou t

their olden tr esses o or th br de s g g f , O i Day w a ne ; g o or th O br ide ! And the f , the verse at the end, about baby on its mother ’s lap

Tor qu a tus volo p ar vulus M atr is e g r emio suae Por r zgcns te ner os manus Dulce r idea t ad p o tr em S emihia nte labello is as incomparable not again till the Florentine art of the fifteenth century was the picture drawn with so true and

tender a hand . Over the A ty s m odern criticism has exhausted itself w h The i h it out any definite result . accident of its be ng t e only Latin poem extant in the peculiar galliambic metre has combined with the nature of the subject ! to induce a tradition about it as though it were the most daring and ex ’

t rao rdinar . ff y of Catullus poems The truth is quite di erent . It stands midway between the lyrics and the idyls in being f h a poem O most studied and elaborate artifice, in w ich C u has h atull s c osen , not the statelier and more familiar h x the rhythms of the e ameter or elegiac, but one of Greek he had al lyric metres, of which ready introduced several As tou r de or ce m others into Latin . a f in metrical for

it is very remarkable , and probably marks the highest point of Latin achievement in imitation of the more complex

" The subje ct was quite a usual o ne among the Al e xand rian p oe ts

h m t r e ad and m tate d . Cf Antholo ia P alatina vii. w o Ca ull us i i . g , 1 4 20 2 7 . L a ti L ite e n r atur .

1 11 I ts , even Greek metres . As a lyric poem it preserves h the direct force and highly artificial structure, muc of ’ that i t goes Simplicity which mark all Catu llus best ly rics I t h r e e ate d transcends beyond this, or t at as is often p f i both the idyls and the briefer lyrics in susta ned beauty and an judgment . passion, cannot be held by y sane C u 15 w in H ow far elaboration could lead at llus sho n the e o P ele us and Thetis long idyllic poem on the M a r r iag f . he Here he entirely aband ons t lyric manner, and adventures

h h he . on a ne w field, in w ic does not prove very successful The poem is full of great beauties of detail but as a whole For lin it is cloying without being satisfying . a few eg together Catullus c an write in hexameter more exquisitely

than any other Latin poet . The description in this piece z w c u a s of the little bree e that rises at da n, beginning Hi q li ' atu lacidu m mar e ma tu tzno fi p , like the more famous lines in his other idyllic poem

Ut os in se tis secr etu m nasc tu r h s fl p i ar ti ,

I notu s ecori nullo contu sus a r r g p , a t o,

uem mulce nt a u r a e r ma t sol edu ca m r Q , fi , t i be ; M u lti illu m aer i nzulta e o taoer e u ellae p , p p has an intangible and inexpressible beauty such as never recurs in the more mature art of greater masters . But Catullus has no narrative gift ; his use of the hexameter is confined to a limited set of rhythms which in a poem about the length of a book of the G eorgi cs become hopelessly ; monotonous and it finally stops, rather than ends, when the writer (as is already the case with the reader)grow s tired h of it . It is remarkable t at the poet who in the lightness and speed of his other metres is u nrivalled in Latin should , , the h when he attempts exameter, be more languid and

heavy, not only than his successors , but than his con H temporaries . ere , as in the elaborate imitations of Callimachus with which he tested his command of the L u off atin elegiac, he is weak beca se he wanders the true llu s Ca tu .

his o wn h h line, not from any failure in special gift, w ic was h he purely and simply lyrical . W en uses the elegiac verse own the to express his feeling, as in attacks on political or the personal enemies, it has same direct lucidity (as of an extraordinarily gifted child) which is the essential charm of r his ly ics . h It is just t is quality, this clear and almost terrible sim lic it C p y, that puts atullus in a place by himself among the

Latin poets . Where others labour in the ore of thought and

gradually forge it out into sustained expression, he sees

l . with a single g ance, and does not strike a second time His imperious lucidity is perfectly unhesitating in its ac tion : whether he is using it for the daintiest flower of sen tim ent fair passions and bou ntzfulpities a nd loves w ithou t — stain or for the expression of his vivid passions and hatreds

in some flagrant obscenity or venomous insult, it is alike u straight and reckless, with no scr ple and no mincing of ’

Mr . Sw words ; in inburne s curiously true and vivid phrase, h h ” he makes mout s at our speec when we try to follow him . C L With the death of atullus and Calvus, an era in atin O h poetry definitely ends . nly t irteen or fourteen years later a new era begins with the appearance of Virgil ; but this small interval of time is sufficient to mark the passage from — — one age we might almost say from one civilisation to D h another . uring t ese years poetry was almost silent, while the Roman world shook with continuous civil war and the Th thunder of prodigious armies . e school of minor Alexandrian poets still indeed continued ; the “ warblers of Euphorion ” with their smooth rhythms and elaborate finesse of workmanship are spoken of by Cicero as still C ’ numerous and active ten years after atullus death . But their artifice had lost the gloss of novelty ; and the u nex ample d enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of the Eclogues was due less perhaps to their intrinsic excellence than to the relief with which Roman poetry shook itself free

from the fetters of so rigorous and exhausting a convention . CICERO .

E s L MEANWHIL , in the la t age of the Republic, atin prose had reached its full splendour in the hands of the most copious and versatile master of style whom the Grac co

Roman world had yet produced . The claims of Cicero to a place among the first rank of Roman statesmen have t in been fiercely canvassed by modern cri ics , and both oratory and philosophy some excess of veneration once paid to him has been replaced by an equally excessive

depreciation . The fault in both estimates lay in the fact C ’s that they were alike based on secondary issues . icero

unique and imperishable glory is not, as he thought himself, t hat of having put down the revolutionary movement of C n atiline, nor, as later ages thought, that of havi g rivalled D S econd Phili a emosthenes in the pp , or confuted atheism the De N a tur a Deor u m in . It is that he created a lan guage which remained for sixteen centuries that of the h civilised world, and used t at language to create a style w h i h hic nineteen centur es ave not replaced, and in some

. H e respects have scarcely altered stands in prose , like d Virgil in poetry, as the bri ge between the ancient and

m . L odern world Before his time, atin prose was, from a

wide point of view, but one among many local ancient As had dialects . it left his hands, it become a universal

langu age, one which had definitely superseded all others,

Greek included, as the type of civilised expression . 62 VI .J 63 Thus the apparently obsolete criticism which ranked D Cicero together with Plato and emosthenes, if not above h h them , was based on real facts, t oug it may be now i apparent that it gave them a wrong nterpretation . Even scholars may admit with but slight reluctance that the h A prose of t e great ttic writers is, like the sculpture of a their contemporary rtists, a thing remote from modern h life, requiring muc training and study for its appreciation , .

and confined at the best to a limited circle . But Ciceronian prose is practically the prose of the human race ; not only

l m an i of the R o empire of the first and second centur es, ac antius A but of L t and ugustine, of the mediaeval Church, he now of t earlier and later Renaissance, and even , when h the the Renaissance is a piece of past istory, of modern

world to which the Renaissance was the prelude . The life of Cicero as a man of letters may be divided

into four periods, which, though not of course wholly r m a distinct from one anothe , y be conveniently treated as h T he separate for t e purpose of criticism . first is that of — his immature early writings poems, treatises on rhetoric, — and forensic speeches covering the period from his boy in Pom e ius hood the Civil wars, to the first consulship of p

0 B . C . and Crassus, in 7 The second, covering his life as

an active statesman of the first prominence , begins with V the errine orations of that year, and goes down to the

C B . C . consulship of Julius aesar, in 5 9 These ten years mark his culmination as an orator ; and there is no trace in them of any large literary work except in the field of

oratory . In the next year came his exile, from which

indeed he returned within a twelvemonth, but as a broken the C statesman . From this point to the outbreak of ivil

0 B . C . war in 5 , the third period continues the record of his h great speeches ; but they are no longer at the old heig t, nor do they occupy his full energy and now he breaks new r ground in two fields with works of extraordinary b illiance, b c D the of the De Or ator e and the De R ep u li a . uring heat L atin L ite ra tu r e .

C the ivil war there follows a period of comparative silence , but for his private correspondence then comes the fourth i h the f and final per od, per aps the most brilliant of all, our

6 B .C . h B . years from 4 to his deat in 43 . C The few speeches of the years 46 and 45 show but the ghost of former

splendours he was turning perforce to other subjects . The political philosophy of the De R epublica is resumed in the De L egibus ; the De Or ator e is continued by the

B r u tus . history of Roman oratory known as the Then, as if realising that his true work in life was to mould his h native language into a ve icle of abstract thought, he sets to work with amaz ing swiftness and copiousness to re a produce whole series of Greek philosophical treatises, l in a style which, for flexibility and grace, reca ls the Greek — De Finibus A ca demics of the best period the , the , the Tuscula ns De N a tu r a Deoru m De Di inatione , the , the o , the

De O cns . C fi oncurrently with these, he continues to throw

' off h the or and furt er manuals of the y practice of oratory, intended' in the first instance for the use of the son who the P a r titiones Or atoriae proved so thankless a pupil, , the o ca De tima ener e r a toru m M h T i O G O . p , the p eanw ile, the Roman world had again been plunged into civil war by the ’ assassination of Caesar . Cicero s political influence was

no longer great, but it was still worth the while of younger and more unscrupulous statesmen to avail themselves of

his eloquence by assumed deference and adroit flattery . The series of fourteen speeches delivered at Rome against M A w S A arcus ntonius, bet een eptember, 44, and pril, 43 th B . e n C . , were last outburst of free Roma oratory before h the final extinction of the Republic . T at even at the — time there was a sense of their unreality of their being rhetorical exercises to interest the capital while the real issues of the period were being fought out elsewhere — is

indicated by the name that from the first they went under, s Ve the Philippic . In the epoch of the r r ines and the ' ' Canlinan a ns it had not been necessary to find titles for

L a tin L ite ra t ure .

f having been one of the great turning - points in the life O ! St . A h h h ugustine, whic he wrote in praise of p ilosop y as

an introduction to the series of his philosophical works . The years which followed Cicero ’s return from the East

were occupied, with the single break of his quaestorship in H . is Sicily, by hard and continuous work at the bar

h - the speeches of t is date, being non political, have for most f a part not been preserved . The two still imper ectly ext nt, ' edo 6 P r o Tullio of t he P r o R oscio Como of 7 , and the h 2 B . . 7 C form , toget er with two other speeches dating from E the Pr o uinctio P r o before his visit to the ast, Q and

R oscio A mer ino , and, with his juvenile treatise on rhetoric the De l noentione known as , the body of prose composition

which represents the first of his four periods . These early speeches are carefully composed according to the scholastic

canons then in vogue, the hard legal style of the older courts alternating with passages of carefully executed arti a fic i l ornament . Their chief interest is one of contrast with his matured style for they show, no doubt with much

accuracy, what the general level of oratory was out of which the C great iceronian eloquence sprang .

- 0 B. C . In 7 , at the age of thirty six, Cicero at last found z his great chance, and sei ed it . The impeachment of Verres for maladministration in the government of Sicily

was a political trial of great constitutional importance . It

t he e Pom e ius was undertaken at direct encourag ment of p , who had entered on his first or democratic consulate, and was indirectly a formidable attack both on the oligarchic administration of the provinces and on the senatorian jury h S panels, in whose ands the ullan constitution had placed

the only check upon misgovernment . The defence of V H erres was undertaken by ortensius the selection of C icero as chief counsel for the prosecution by the demo ' leaders was cratic a public recognition of him as the fore m . He most orator on the Pompeian side threw himself intd

n ass I I Co / " I . iv . 67

h hi hi s . A s the trial wit all energy fter opening speech, h V and the evidence whic followed, erres threw up his

. h h the defence and went into exile T is, of course , broug t case to an end ; but the cause turned on larger issues than h his particular guilt or innocence . The w ole of the material prepared against him was swiftly elaborated by Cicero into

h as . five great orations, and publis ed a political document S econd Action a ainst Ve r r es h These orations, the g as t ey the u are called, were at once most powerf l attack yet m the S ade on the working of ullan constitution, and the ’ - high water mark of the earlier period of Cicero s eloquence . It was not till some years later that his oratory culmi mated but he never excelled these speeches in richness c ase and copiousness of style , in and lucidity of exposition, H e and in power of dealing with large m asses of material . at once became an imposing political force ; perhaps it was hardly realised till later how incapable that force was The of going straight or of bearing down opposition . series of political and semi - political speeches of the next ten the the h years , down to his exile, represent for time istory of Rome ; and together with these we now begin the series h . 66 B . C . of his private letters The year of his praetors ip , , is marked by the two orations which are on the whole his

the h v . The greatest, one public and ot er pri ate first, the P r o L e e M anilia h h h speech known as the g , w ic s ould really be described as the panegyric of Pompeius and of the a not h Rom n people, does s ow any profound appreciation of the problems which then confronted the Republic ; but the greatness of the Republic itself never found a more h august interpreter . The stately passage in whic Italy and the subject provinces are called on to bear witness to the deeds of Pomp e ius breathes the very spirit of an i mperial h h of race . T roughout t is and the other great speeches the period “ the Roman People is a phrase that keeps perpetually recurring with an effect like that of a bourdon Consul a a/i stop . As the eye glances down the page, p p L a ti L ite n r atu re .

a ni R omani lm er iu m P o uli R oma ni For t una P o uli R om , , p p , p glitter out of the voluminous periods with a splendour that i hardly any other words could g ve . C ’ The other great speech of this year, icero s defence of

" Aulus Cluentius Habitus of Lat inum on a charge of poison

a u . ing, has in its own style an equal brilli nce of lang age The story it unfolds of the ugly tragedies of middle-class life in the capital and the provincial Italian towns is famous

as one of the leading documents for the social life of Rome . C d According to Quintilian, icero confessed afterwar s that his client was not innocent , and that the elaborate and impressive story which he unfolds with such vivid detail was in great part an invention of his own . This may be e xtra r i only bar gossip ; true or false, his defence is an o d nary masterpiece of oratorical skill . The manner in which Cicero conducted a defence when the cause was not so grave or so desperate is well illustrated o A r ch a The by a speech delivered four years later, the Pr i . s z ca e here was one of contested citi enship . The defendant, one of the Greek men of letters who lived in great numbers t at Rome, had been for years in imate with the literary circle among the Roman aristocracy . This intimacy gained him the pri vilege of being defended by the first of Roman c orators, who would hardly, in any other ircumstances, h r i ave troubled himself with so t iv al a case . But the speech Cicero delivered is one of the permanent glories L Th of atin literature . e matter immediately at issue is summarily d ealt with in a few pages of cursory and rather h careless argument ; then the sc olar lets himself go . Among the many praises of literature which great men of h letters have delivered , t ere is hardly one more perfect than this ; some of the famous sentences have remained ever since the abiding m otto and blason of literature itself . studia adolescentia nz a u nt senectu H aec g , te /n oblec ta nt , se cu ndas r es or nant adoer sis er u iu m ac sola tiu , p f g m r aebe nt p , e cta nt domi non im ediu nt ori s ernoc ta nt d le , p f , p nobiscum , 69

er e rina ntu r r ustica ntu r N ut/a m enim ir tu p g , ; and again , v s

a lia m mer cedem labar u m er iculor um ue desider a t r aeter p g , p hanc taudis et lor iae ua uide /n detr acta iu dices u id es g q g , , q t

uod in hoc tam e u o vitae cu r ricula et ta m br e i ta n s g n , v , ti nos

in labor ibus ex er ceamus Cer te si nihil a nimus r aesen r e , p ti t in osteru m et si uibus r e ionibus itae s atium c r u m p , q g v p i c scr i tu m est eisde m om nes co ita tiones ter mina r et su as nec p , g ,

’ ta ntzs se labor ibus r a n eret ne ue tot c u r is vi ilzzs ue a n e r e f g , g g g g

tu r ne ue toties dc vita i sa dimicar et . , g p Strange words these ’ to fall from a pleader s lips in the dusty atmosphere of the ’ non or i ne ue iudicia li consuetu dine praetor s court f , g , says h Cicero imself, in the few words of graceful apology with

h . whic the speech ends But, in truth, as he well knew, he was not speaking to the respectable gentlemen on the

benches before him . He addressed a larger audience ;

posterity, and the civilised world . The P r o Ar chia foreshadows already the change which ’ was bound to take place in Cicero s life, and which was M precipitated by his exile four years later . ore and more he found himself forced away from the inner circle of he had politics, and turned to the larger field where an h undisputed supremacy, of political and et ical philosophy clothed in the splendid prose of which he had now

obtained the full mastery . The roll of his great speeches is indeed continued after his return from exile ; but even P r o S estio P r o Co elia 6 in the greatest, the and of 5 , or he he I n Pisonem B . C . t t of 5 5 , something of old tone is missing it is as though the same voice spoke on a smaller And range of notes and with less flexibility of cadence . now alongside of the speeches begins the great series of De r a tor e his works on oratory and philosophy, with the O

De R e ublica B . C . of 5 5 , and the p of 5 4 The three books De Or a tore are perhaps the most

finished examples of the Ciceronian style . The subject (which cannot be said of all the subjects he deals with) in was one of which, over all its breadth and all its details, 0 L a t i [1 7 in L ter atu r e .

he h was completely master ; and, thus left un ampered by f any di ficulties with his material, he could give full scope

to his brilliant style and diction . The arrangement of the work follows the strict scholastic divisions ; but the form h h m of dialogue into which it is t rown, and w ich is anaged

with really great skill, avoids the tediousness incident to a

systematic treatise . The principal persons of the dialogue L are the two great orators of the preceding age , ucius Crassus and Marcus Antonius ; this is only one sign out of many that Cicero was more and more living in a sort of h dream of the past, t at past of his own youth which was

still full of traditions of the earlier Republic . The De Or a tor e was so complete a masterpiece that its au thor probably did not care to weaken its effect by con tinning at the time to bring out any of the supplementary i treatises on Roman oratory for which his library, and st ll his had more memory, accumulated immense quantities of

. De R e ublica material In the treatise p , which was begun

B . C . in 5 4 , though not published till three years later, he carried the achievement of Latin prose into a larger and fi el — less technical d that of the philosophy of politics . Again the scene of the dialogue is laid in a past age ; but now he goes furt her back than he had done in the De O r a tor e the , to circle of the younger Scipio . The work was h received , w en published, with immens e applause but ‘ ; its loss in the Middle Ages is hardly one of those which

are most seriously to be deplored, except in so far as the second and fifth books may have preserved real information on the early history of the Roman State and the develop

ment of Roman jurisprudence . Large fragments were re the m covered early in present century fro a palimpsest,

itself incomplete, on which the work of Cicero had been

expunged to make room for the commentary of St . Augus

ou . S onzniu m S ci ionis tine the Psalms The famous p , with Er ’ which (in imitation of the vision of in Plato s R ep” has i lic the work ended , been ndependently r e se w e ) p d . Though it flagrantly challenges comparison with the nu has h equalled original, it , nevert eless, especially in its opening h and closing passages, a grave dignity whic is purely Roman, and characteristically Ciceronian . Perhaps some of the elaborate fantasies of De Quincey (himself naturally a

Ciceronian , and saturated in the rhythms and cadences of the finest Latin prose) are the nearest parallel to this E ’ piece in modern nglish . The opening words of Scipio s Cu m in A r ica m venissem M a nia M anilio consuli narrative , f , ad u ar tanz le ionem tr ibunas the q g , come on ear like the throb of a great organ ; and here and there through the piece come astonishing phrases of the same organ - music Oste ndeba t a u tem K a r thaginem de ex celso et ple no stella r u zn uis in r eli a is o e inlustr i et cla r o guoda m loco. Q g r i ntzs

' a u t obeu ntzs solis attimis a u t a uilonis a ustr ive ar tibus , g p , tu u m nonzen a udiet ? Deunz te i tu r scito esse si u dem gi , q i deus est ui vi et ui sentit ui meminit u i r o idet , g g , o , g , g p v hardly from the lips of Virgil himself does the noble Latin speech issue with a purer or a more majestic flow. During the next few years the literary activity of Cicero h suffered a c eck . The course of politics at Rome filled a him with profound dis ppointment and disgust . Public n issues, it became more and more plai , waited for their the -h the determination, not on senate ouse or forum, but on the sword . The shameful collapse of his defence of Milo in 5 2 must have stung a vanity even as well ’ hardened as Cicero s to the quick ; and his only importa nt De L e ibus abstract work of this period, the g , seems to have been undertaken with little heart and carried out without h His either researc or enthusiasm . proconsulate in Cilicia in 5 1 and 5 0 was occupied with the tedious details of administration and petty warfare ; six months after his return the Civil war broke out, and, until permitted to he B . C . return to Rome by Caesar in the autumn of 4 7 , was

x his practically an e ile , away from his beloved Rome and the more beloved library, hating and despising ignorant 2 L atin i 1 7 L te ra tu r e . [

t and incompe ence of his colleagues, looking forward with almost equal terror to the c onclusive triumph of his own h s u or the opposite party. W en at la t he ret rned, his mind a was still agitated and unsettled . The Pompei n party held Africa and Spain with large armies ; their open threats that all who had come to terms with C aesar would be proscribed as public enemies were not calculated to restore ' Cicero s confidence . The decisive battle of Thapsus put an end to this uncertainty ; and meanwhile Cicero had ' De Le bus had m resumed work on his gz , and once ore returned to the study of oratory in one of the most ih hi ti B r u tus rte clans r ato b tere sting of s wri ngs, the O ri us, in which he gives a vivid and m asterly sketch of the history n of Roman oratory dow to his own time, filled with bistori f cal matter and admirable sketches o character .

B . C . t of The spring of , 45 brought with it two even s momentous importance to Cicero : the final collapse of the m C Mu ar ed opposition to aesar at the battle of nda, and the loss, by the death of his daughter Tullia, of the one ff H deep a ection of his inner life . enceforth it seemed as if politics had ceased to exist, even had he the heart to n He i terest himself in them . fell back more completely than ever upon philosophy ; and the year that followed — a ti l (45 44 is, in mere qu n ty of iterary production, as well as in the abiding effect on the world of letters of the a nnus mim o work he then produced, the sa! of his life . ' IWo at least of the works of this year, the De Gloria and ’ De Vzr tutibus the , have perished, though the former survived long enough to be read by Petrarch ; but there remain extant (besides one or two other pieces of slighter im

’ ’ a De Fznzbus Aca demics I ns port nce) the , the , the ert io ns, ' r a eor u m De Natu D , D e D ivznatione De F the the , the ate, De O cizs - the fi , and the two exquisite essays De S ena lu te and De Amicitia .

It is the work of this astonishing year which, on the C ’ whole, represents icero s permanent contribution to letters

L ati i e 74 n L t ra tu re.

far - greater philosophic genius, totally failed to do created h forms of thought in which the life of philosop y grew, and a body of expression which alone made its growth in the Latin -speaking world possible ; and to that world he pre sented a political ideal which profoundly influenced the whole course of European history even up to the French h the M A Revolution . Wit out Cicero, iddle ges would not n have had Augustine or Aqui as ; but, without him, the movement which annulled the Middle Ages would have

had neither Mirabeau nor Pitt . ’ The part of Cicero s work which the present a ge

probably finds the most interesting, and the interest of h n which is, in the nature of t ings , peren ial, has been as yet left unmentioned . It consists of the collections of his

private letters from the year 68 B . C . to within a few months

of his death . The first of these contains his letters to the Pom oniu s A intimate friend and adviser, Titus p tticus, with

whom , when they were not both in Rome, he kept up

a constant and an extremely intimate correspondence . A tticus, whose profession, as far as he had one, was that a r of a b nke , was not only a man of wide knowledge and o great political sagacity, but a refined critic and an auth r h of considerable merit . The publis ing business, which he

conducted as an adjunct to his principal profession, made him of great use to Cicero by the rapid multiplication in his workshops of copies of the speeches or other writings h h for w ich t ere was an immediate public demand . But the intimacy was much more than that of the politician his and confidential adviser, or the author and his publisher . Cicero found in him a friend with whom he could on all

occasions be perfectly frank and at his ease , and on whose

sober judgment and undemonstrative, but perfectly sincere , attachment his own excitable and emotional nature could A always throw itself without reserve . bout four hundred of the letters were published by Atticus several y ears after ' Cicero s death . It must always be a source of regret that 75

the he could not, or, at all events, did not, publish other the half of the correspondence ; many of letters, especially the the brief confidential notes, have tantalising interest of the a conversation where one of speakers is inaudible . It is the letters to Atticus that place Cicero at the head of all epistolary stylists . We should hardly guess from the n more formal and finished writi gs what the real man was, w with his excitable Italian temperament, his s ift power of

f . phrase, his sensitive af ections h l C ’ T e other arge collection of icero s letters, the E istolae ad Familiar es p , was preserved and edited by his secretary, Tiro . They are, of course, of very unequal an S value d interest . ome are merely formal documents ; others, like those to his wife and family in book xiv. , are as intimate and as valuable as any we possess . The two smaller collections, the letters to his brother Quintus, and M those to arcus Brutus, of which a mere fragment is

. E istolae extant, are of little independent value The p ’ a d Familia r es C include, besides icero s own letters, a large number of letters addressed to him by various n and not correspo dents ; a whole book, that the least his C interesting, consists of those sent to him during ilician and proconsulate by the brilliant erratic young aristocrat,

Marcus Cae lius Rufus, who was the next successor of

' ’ the C uadrantaria Catullus as favoured lover of lodia Q . h Full of the political and social gossip of the day, t ey are L written in a curiously slipshod but energetic atin, which brings before us even more vividly than Cicero’s own the t he the familiar language of upper classes at Rome at time . e h Another lett r, whic can hardly be passed over in silence L in any history of atin literature, is the noble message of C condolence to icero on the death of his beloved Tullia, S S by the statesman and jurist, ervius ulpicius Rufus, who the Sc aevola carried on in this age great tradition of the e .

It is due to these priceless collections of letters, more than to any other single thing, that our knowledge of the 6 i 7 L at n L iteratu r e .

At Ciceronian age is so complete and so intimate . every point they reinforce and vitalise the more elaborate literary — productions of the period . The art of letter writing sud ’ d enly rose in Cicero s hands to its full perfection . It fell to the lot of no later Roman to have at once such mastery over familiar style, and contemporary events of such engrossing and ever- changing interest on which to exercise

ll he - r it . A t great letter w iters of more modern ages have l more or less, consciously or unconscious y, followed the E Ciceronian model . ngland of the eighteenth century H C was peculiarly rich in them but orace Walpole, owper, h C Gray imself, would willingly have acknowledged icero as their master . ’ 1 th M B .C. Caesar s assassination on the s of arch, 44 , plunged the political situation into a worse chaos than had a ever been reached du ring the civil w rs . For several months it was not at all plain how things were tending, or what fresh combinations were to rise out of the welter in which a vacillating and incapable senate formed the

- only constitutional rallying point . In spite of all his long w cherished delusions, Cicero must have kno n that this way h no hope lay w en at last he flung himself into the conflict, and broke away from his literary seclusion to make the fierce series of attacks upon Antonius which fill the winter — h B . C . e of 44 43 , may have had some vague hopes from A S ' the siatic legions which once before, in ulla s hands, had the checked the revolution , and some from . p owe r of his own once unequalled eloquence ; but on the whole he seems to have undertaken the contest chiefly from the had instinct that become a tradition, and from his deep h ' personal repugnance to Antonius . T e fourteen Philitp zcs as add little to his reputation an orator, and still less to his

as . credit a statesman The old watchwords are there, but their unreality is now more obvious ; the old rhetorical ff l u . skil , but more coarsely and less e ectively sed The last Philippa was delivered to advocate a public thanksgiving 77

vi A Hir ti for the ctory gained over ntonius by the consuls, us

. A h o and Pansa mont later, the consuls were b th dead, and their two armies had passed into the control of the young O c tavianus. In autumn the triumvirate was consti

ut d . t e , with an armed force of forty legions behind it The w n h proscription lists ere issued in November . O the 7t D of ecember, after some aimless wandering that hardly ff w as was a serious e ort to escape, Cicero overtaken near H e w For miae by a small party of Antonian troops . as m ’ killed, and his head sent to Ro e and displayed in the - h h senate house . There was nothing left for w ic he could h have wis ed to live . In the five centuries of the Republic C there never had been a darker time for Rome . icero Th had outlived almost all the great men of his age . e far newer generation, so as they had revealed themselves, were of a type from which those who had inherited the w h great traditions of the Republic shrank ith orror . C c tavianus the aesar O , the future master of world, was a k an delicate boy of twenty, already an object of disli e d dis V trust to nearly all his allies . irgil, a poet still voiceless,

- was twenty seven . ' PROSE OF THE CI CERONIAN AGE : CAESAR AND SALLUST.

FERTILE as the Ciceronian age was in authorship of many kinds, there was only one person in it whose claim to be placed in an equal rank with Cicero could ever be seriously n wa entertained ; and this was, stra gely enough, one who s b as it were only a man of letters y accident, and whose literary work is but among the least of his titles to fame ae Julius C sar himself. That anything written by that remarkable man must be interesting and valuable in a high degree is obvious ; but the combination of literary power of the very first order with his unparalleled military and political genius is perhaps unique in history. It is one of the m ost regrettable losses in Latin literature that Caesar ’s speeches and letters have almost completely O f perished . the latter several collections were made after his the death, and were extant in second century but none are now preserved, except a few brief notes to Cicero, of him A which copies were sent by at the time to tticus . The fragments of his speeches are even less considerable ; yet, according to the unanimous testimony both of contemporary and of later critics, they were unexcelled in that age of great H e L oratory . used the atin language with a purity and distinction that no one else could equal . And along with vi ir a ele antia this quality, the g of Quintilian, his oratory had some kind of severe magnificence which we can partly 78 — ma nz ca e t ener osa guess at from his extant writings g fi g , says Cicero ; fa cultas dicendi imper a tor ia is the phrase of

a later and able critic . f ’ O Caesar s other lost writings little need be said . In m youth, like ost of his contemporaries, he wrote poems , h h including a tragedy, of w ich Tacitus drily observes t at A they were not better than those of Cicero . grammatical e Analo ia treatise, D g , was composed by him during one of his long journeys between Northern Italy and the

- head quarters of his army in Gaul during his proconsulate . A work on astronomy, apparently written in connection hi with s reform of the calendar, two pamphlets attacking

Cato, and a collection of apophthegms, have also dis w the appeared . But we possess what ere by far most

important of his writings, his famous memoirs of the Gallic

and Civil Wars . The seven books of Commentar ies on the G allic Wa r ’ i in C - the were wr tten aesar s winter quarters in Gaul, after ' capture of Alesia and the final suppression of the Ar vem ian

revolt . They were primarily intended to serve an immediate o h political purp se, and are indeed a defence, framed wit ’ the h the most consummate skill, of aut or s whole Gallic h policy and of his constitutional position . T at Caesar was

able to do this without, so far as can be judged, violating, or

even to any large degree suppressing facts, does equal credit to the clearsightedness of his policy and to his e xtraordinary literary power. From first to last there is not a word either of self- laudation or of innuendo ; yet at the h the end we find t at, by the use of simplest and most

lucid narration, in which hardly a fact or a detail can be C controverted, aesar has cleared his motives and justified his conduct with a success the more complete because his An ffi tone is so temperate and seemingly so impartial . o cer f h of his sta f who was with him during t at winter, and who afterwards added an eighth book to the Commenta r ies

to complete the history of the Gallic proconsulate, has L a tin i L te ra tu re . recorded the ease and swiftness with which the work was written . Caesar issued it under the unpretending — “ ” name of Commenta r zz notes on the events of his

m fu ca paigns, which might be use l as materials for history ; but there was no exaggeration in the splendid compliment in paid it a few years later by Cicero, that no one his senses would think of recasting a work whose succinct, perspicuous, and brilliant style pa r a e t inlus tns br evitas has been the model and the despair of later historians . The three books of Commentar ies on the Civil War show the same merits in a much less marked degree . They were C ’ i m not published in aesar s l fetime, and do not see to have received from him any close or careful revision . The literary incompetence of the Caesarian officers into whose his m hands they fell after death, and one or ore of whom m h ust be responsible for t eir publication, is suffi ciently evident from their own awkward attempts at continuing A A them in narratives of the lexandrine, frican, and Spanish campaigns ; and whether from the carelessness of the m original editors or from other reasons, the text is in a ost deplorable condition . Yet this is not in itself sufli cient m to account for any positive misstatements . Either the editors used a very free hand in altering the rough manu or — n script, which is not in itself u likely, and is borne out — ’ by other facts Caesar s own prodigious memory and incomparable perspicuity became impaired in those five years of all but superhuman achievement, when, with the whole weight of the civilised world on his shoulders, feebly served by second- rate lieutenants and hampered at every turn by the open or passive opposition of nearly the whole ni of the trained gover ng classes, he conquered four great u E Roman armies, sec red gypt and U pper Asia and ah u r h exed Numidia to the Rep blic, ca ried out the unific a t e - tion of Italy, established public order and public credit, and left at his death the foundations of the Empire securely laid for his successor .

i i L a t n L te ra ture .

w Greek . The varying fortunes of this struggle bet een Greek and literary Latin as it had been formed under the : Republic, belong to a later period at present we must return to complete a general survey of the prose of the

Ciceronian age . H n istorical writing at Rome, as we have see , had hitherto The been in the form either of annals or memoirs . latter h were, of course, rat er materials for history than history w h w ’ itself, even hen t ey ere not excluded from Quintilian s famous definition of history " by being composed primarily

‘ as political pamphlets . The former had so far been insufli c ient attempted on too large a scale, and with equip

ment either of research or style, to attain any permanent ’ the C L h merit . In ten years after aesar s death atin istory

was raised to a higher level by the works of Sallust, the first

scientific historian whom Italy had produced .

’ Gaius Sallustius Crispus of Amiternum ih Central Italy belonged to that younger generation of which Marcu s A M aelius ntonius and arcus C Rufus were eminent examples .

Clever and dissipated, they revolted alike from the severe traditions and the narrow class prejudices of the c dn stitutional C if party, and aesar found in them enthusiastic, al somewhat imprudent and untrustworthy, supporters . S lust was expelled from the senate just before the outbreak the C i C of iv l war ; was reinstated by aesar, and entrusted with high posts in Illyria and Italy ; and was afterwards A the sent by him to administer frica with rank of proconsul . ’ There he accumulated a large fortune, and, after Caesar s i death, ret red to private life in his beautiful gardens on the

Quirinal, and devoted himself to historical study . The

largest and most important of his works, the five books of

' Histon ae , covering a period of about ten years from the S death of ulla, is only extant in inconsiderable fragments ; but his two monographs on the Jugurthine war and the

4 ' “ Histor ia scr ibitu r ad nar r andum non d a r obandum I nst p . 0r. , i x X. . 3 . VI L ] S allus t .

C h atilinarian conspiracy, w ich have been preserved, place him beyond doubt in the first rank of Roman historians . hi Sallust took Thucydides as s principal literary m odel . His reputation has no doubt suffered by the comparison which this choice makes inevitable ; and though Quintilian did not hesitate to claim for him a substantial equality with A t he the great thenian, no one would now press parallel, ’ except in so far as Sallust s formal treatment of his subject affords interesting likenesses or contrasts with

the h . his T ucydidean manner In his prefatory remarks, his r e flec elaborately conceived and executed speeches, tions on character, and his terse method of narration, H e Sallust closely follows the manner of his master . even copies his faults in a sort of dryne ss of style and h an excessive use of antit esis . But we cannot feel, in Ca tiline u u r tha h reading the or the j g , t at it is the work Ye of a writer of the very first intellectual power . t the two historians have this in common, which is not bor the — rowed by the later from earlier, that they approach h and andle their subject with the matu re mind, the insight and common sense of the grown man, where their prede c e ssors had been comparatively like children . Both are totally free from superstition ; neither allows his own political views to obscure his vision of facts, of men as they were and events as they happened . The respect for truth, which is the first virtue of the historian, is stronger in His Sallust than in any of his more brilliant successors . ideal in the matter of research and documentary evidence

for h . Ca tiline he was, that age, singularly igh In the writes very largely from direct personal knowledge of men and u ur tha h events but the j g , w ich deals with a time two gen e rations earlier than the date of its composition, involved He had wide inquiry and much preparation . translations made from original documents in the Carthaginian language and a complete synopsis of Roman history, for reference during the progress of his work, was compiled for him by i L at n L ite rature .

m a Greek secretary . Such pains were seldo taken by a L atin historian .

The last of the Ciceronians, Sallust is also in a sense the

- His first of the imperial prose writers . style, compressed, h is rhetorical, and very ighly polished, in strong contrast to the graceful and fluid periods which were then, and for some time later continued to be , the predominant fashion, His and foreshadows the manner of Seneca or Tacitus . L archaism in the use of pure atin, and, alongside of it, his free adoption of Grecisms, are the first open sign of two movements which profoundly affected the prose of the A earlier and later empire . The acrid critic of the ugustan A inius age, s Pollio, accused him of having had collections of obsolete words and phrases made for his use out of Cato r and the older Roman w iters . For a short time he was eclipsed by the brilliant and opulent style of Livy ; but L S ivy formed no school, and allust on the whole remained imus R oma na in . M r the first place The line of artial, p ris us in histor ia e C p , expresses the settled opinion h ld of him down t o the final decay of letters ; and even in the

Middle Ages he remained widely read and highly esteemed . r Contemporary with Sallust in this period of transition between the Ciceronian and the Augustan age is Cornelius —2 Nepos (cir c. 99 4 In earlier life he was one of the C l C ’ circle of atul us, and after icero s death was one of the A chief friends of tticus, of whom a brief biography, which A ’ he wrote after tticus death, is still extant . U nlike Sallust,

Nepos never took part in public affairs, but carried on h t roughout a long life the part of a man of letters, honest

and kindly, but without any striking originality or ability . In him we are on the outer fringe of pure literature ; and it is no doubt purposely that Quintilian wholly omits him

from the list of Roman historians . O f his numero us writ

ings on history, chronology, and grammar, we only possess a

fragment of one, his collection of Roman and foreign biogra ' De Vir is I llus us mb . f phies, entitled O this work there Ne os a nd a r r o p V .

De E x cellentibus u is extant one complete section, D cibus E x ter ar u m G entiu m , and two lives from another section, A those of tticus and the younger Cato . The accident of their convenient length and the simplicity of their language has made them for generations a common school - book for L beginners in atin were it not for this, there can be little h e itomators Eutro ius doubt t at Nepos, like the later p , p or A V w urelius ictor, ould be hardly known except to pro fe ssional scholars, and perhaps only to be read in the pages us of some Corp S cr zlfi tor u m R oma nor um . The style of i n these little biograph es is unpretentious, and the la guage

h . fairly pure, though wit out any great command of phrase ‘ A theory was once held that what we possess is merely a

later epitome from the lost original . But for this there is a no rational support . The l nguage and treatment, such as they are (and they do not sink to the level of the histories A S of the frican and panish wars), are of this, and not of a

a e - later g , and quite consonant with the good natured con

tempt which Nepos met at the hands of later Roman critics . The chief interest of the work is perhaps the clearness with w e too which it enforces the truth are apt to forget, that h t e great writers were in their own age, as now, unique, and that there is no such thing as a widely diffused level

of high literary excellence . As remote from literature in the higher sense were the

innumerable writings of the Ciceronian age on science , art, t and m antiqui ies, grammar, rhetoric, a hundred iscellaneous the m subjects, which are, for ost part, known only from notices in the writings of later commentators and e nc yc lo n h pe dists. Foremost amo g the voluminous aut ors of this M Te re ntius class was the celebrated antiquarian, arcus V h arro, whose long and laborious life, reac ing from two years after the death of the elder Cato till the final estab lishme nt E the of the mpire, covers and overlaps entire f h Ciceronian age . O the six or seven hundred volumes w ich

issued from his pen, and which formed an inexhaustible L a tin L ite rat u r e .

u . quarry for his s ccessors, nearly all are lost The most important of them were the one hundred and fifty books

S u tur ae M eni eae of pp , miscellanies in prose and verse in the manner which had been originated by Menipp us of the M Gadara, the master of celebrated eleager, and which had at once obtained an enormous popularity throughout the whole of the Greek- speaking world the forty -one books of e m u ma na r u m et Divina r u m Antiguita tes R r u H , the standard work on the religious and secular antiquities of Rome down I ma ines to the time of Augustine ; the fifteen books of g , biographical sketches, with portraits, of celebrated Greeks and Romans, the first certain instance in history of the publication of an illustrated book ; the twenty- five books De L in ua L a tina im g , of which six are extant in an De R e R ustica perfect condition ; and the treatise , which we possess in an almost complete state . This last work was written at the age of eighty . It is in the form of a dialogue, and is not without descriptive and dramatic power. The tediousness which characterised all Varro ’s writing is less felt where the subject is one of which he had a thorough practical knowledge , and which gave ample scope for the vein of rough but not ungenial humour which he inherited from Cato . O ther names of this epoch have left no permanent mark on literature . The precursors of Sallust in history seem, like the precursors of Cicero in philosophy, to have approached their task with little more equipment than that H of the ordinary amateur . The great orator ortensius wrote A nnals (probably in the form of memoirs of his own time), which are only known from a reference to them in the A a later history written in reign of Tiberius. tticus, who had an interest in literature beyond that of the mere u publisher, drew p a sort of handbook of Roman history, ’ which is repeatedly mentioned by Cicero . Cicero s own brother Quintus, who passed for a man of letters, com posed a work of the same kind ; the tragedies with which P u blilius Sy r us .

- he relieved the tedium of winter quarters in Gaul were, al ’ however, translations from the Greek, not origin s . Cicero s M private secretary, arcus Tullius Tiro, best known by the system of shorthand which he invented or improved, and which for long remained the basis of a standard code, is r also mentioned as the author of wo ks on grammar, and, l his as has already been noticed, edited a col ection of ’ ' iu hi . D i Labe r s master s letters after s death ec mus , a a Publilius S Rom n of equestrian family, and yrus, a natural A ised native of ntioch, wrote mimes, which were performed r with great applause, and gave a fugitive litera y importance A c ll c to this trivial form of dramatic entertainment . o e tion of sentences which passes under the name of the E latter was formed out of his works under the mpire, and M A enlarged from other sources in the iddle ges . It supplies many admirable instances of the terse vigour of the Roman popular philosophy ; some of these lines, like the famous

ene vix it is ui otuit cu m olait mor i B g p v , or u e da na r ub nocens absol tu r l d x m tu i vi , or m s br e em 0 vitam i er o long am, felici v or the perpetually misquoted

tultum acit or tu na uem vult er der e S f f , q p , have sunk deeper and been more widely known than almost A who anything else written in Latin . mong the few poets C succeeded the circle of atullus, the only one of interest is Te rentius V w V Atac inus Publius arro, kno n as arro from A his birthplace on the banks of the ude in Provence, the first of the long list of Transalpine writers who filled Rome the at a later period . Besides usual translations and A adaptations from lexandrian originals, and an elaborate i i r Lat n L te atur e .

m cos ography, he practised his considerable talent in hexa m m eter verse both in epic and satiric poetry, and did so e thing to clear the way in m etrical technique for both Horace and V W irgil. ith these names, among a crowd of others m a d of R ma even ore vague n shadowy, the literature the o n R li A was r a the epub c closes. new g eneration al e dy at

doors.

VIR IL G .

A PUBLrUS VERGILrUs MARO was born at the village of ndes,

M the 1 O 0 B . C . near antua, on 5 th of ctober, 7 The inc or o province of Cisalpine Gaul , though not formally p h rated with Italy till twenty years later, had before t is h become thoroug ly Romanised, and was one of the princi the pal recruiting grounds for the legions . But population C was still , by blood and sympathy, very largely eltic ; and moder n theorists are fond of tracing the new element of V romance, which irgil introduced with such momentous L C results into atin poetry, to the same eltic spirit which A in later ages flowered out in the rthurian legend, and

inspired the whole creative literature of mediaeval Europe . To the countrymen of Shakespeare and Keats it will not

seem necessary to assume a Celtic origin, on abstract

ne w . The grounds, for any birth of this romantic element name Maro may or may not be Celtic ; any argument founded on it is of little more relevance than the fancy V ’ r M which once interpreted the name of irgil s mothe , agia into a the Polla, _ supernatural significance, and, connecting Vir ilius Vir o name g itself with the word g , metamorphosed

the poet into an enchanter born of a maiden mother, the

Merlin of the Roman Empire . ’ A Virgil s father was a small freeholder in ndes, who

- farmed his own land , practised forestry and bee keeping, 9 1 L ati n L ite ra tu re .

and gradually accumulated a sufficient competence to him — n enable to give his son a only child, so far as can be — ascertained the best education that the times could pro H e w i w vide . as sent to school at the ne ghbouring to n of M Cremona, and afterwards to ilan, the capital city of the At province . the age of seventeen he proceeded to Rome, where he studied oratory and philosophy under the best th A i masters of e time . tradit on, which the dates make O Em improbable, was that Gaius ctavius, afterwards the e ror A or w- p ugustus, was f a time his fello scholar under

E idiu - E ic u the rhetorician p s. In the class room of the p rean Siro he may have made his first acquaintance with the L poetry of ucretius . A V ’ For the next ten years we know nothing of irgil s life, His which no doubt was that of a profound student . h had fat er died, and his mother married again, and his patrimony was suffi cient to support him until a turn of the ff wheel of public a airs for a moment lost, and then A permanently secured his fortune . fter the battle of

Philippi, the first task of the victorious triumvirs was to provide for the disbanding and settlement of the immense The armies which had been raised for the Civil war . lands of cities which had taken the Republican side were confiscated right and left for this purpose ; among the V ’ rest, irgil s farm , which was included in the territory V h of Cremona. But irgil found in t e administrator of the a Asinius district, G ius Pollio, himself a distinguished critic man and and of letters, a powerful active patron . By his

influence and that of his friends, Cornelius Gallus and Alfe nu s V the arus former a soldier and poet, the latter an

had - eminent jurist, who both been fellow students of Virgil V at Rome irgil was compensated by an estate in Campania , the O c tavianus and introduced to intimate circle of , who, the under the terms of triumvirate, was already absolute

ruler of Italy . E clo ues It was about this time that the g were published,

L a tiu L ite ra tu e 94 r .

Virgil follows the convention of the Greek pastoral his copy is doubly removed from nature where he ventures on fresh impersonation or allegory of his own, it is generally weak in itself and always hopelessly out of tone with the rest . f Even the ve rsific ation is curiously unequal and imper ect. There are lines in more than one Eclogue which remind one in everything but their languor of the flatte st parts of r far Lucretius . Contemporary c itics even went so as to say that the language here and there was simply not

Latin . all than h Yet granted that this and more all t is is true, it does not touch that specific Virgilian charm of which A these poems first disclosed the secret. lready through t their immature and tremulous cadences here pierces, from h n time to time, t at ote of brooding pity which is unique E in the poetry of the world . The fourth and tenth clogues may be singled out especially as showing the new method, ne w which almost amounted to a human language, as they are also those where Virgil breaks away most decidedly E from imitation of the Greek idyllists . The fourth clogue unfortunately has been so long and so deeply associated with purely adventitious ideas that it requires a consider able effort to read it as it ought to be read. The curious misconception which turned it into a prophecy of the birth of Christ outlasted in its effects any serious belief in its historical truth : even modern critics cite Isaiah for l para lels, and are apt to decry it as a childish attempt t to draw a pic ure of some actual golden age . But the Sibylline verses which suggested its contents and imagery were really but the accidental grain o f dust round which the crystallisation of the poem began ; and the enchanted light which lingers over it is hardly distinguishable from

’

Geor ia . Cedet e t z se mar z e r that which saturates the g p v cto , ‘ nee nauti ca piuus mutaoit mer ees the feeling here is the

same as in his mere descriptions of daily weather, like

‘ ' ’ ‘ the omma plems r ur a uata ntfossis a tque omms namta ponto ’ umiaa oela legit ; not so much a vision of a golden age as

Nature herself seen through a medium of strange gold . r E the O again, in the tenth clogue, where masque of shep herds and gods passes before the sick lover, it is through the same strange and golden air that they seem to move, and the heavy lilies of Silvanus droop in the stillness of the same unearthly day. Seven years following on the publication of the E clogu es e were spent by Virgil on the composition of the G orgia . h A They were publis ed two years after the battle of ctium, the being thus first, as they are the most splendid, literary n the V production of the Empire . They represe t art of irgil in its matured perfection . The subject was one in which he H i was thoroughly at home and completely happy . s own the M early years had been spent in pastures of the incio, ’ among his father s c ornfields and coppices and hives ; and his newer residence, by the seashore near Naples in winter, and in summer at his villa in the lovely hill- country of

Campania, surrounded him with all that was most beautiful His m in the most beautiful of lands . delicate health ade it easier for him to give his work the slow and arduous elaboration that makes the G eorgia in mere technical L finish the most perfect work of atin, or perhaps of any e the literature . Ther is no trace of impatience in work . It was in some sense a commission but Augustus and M h aecenas, if it be true that t ey suggested the subject, had,

n . at all events, the se se not to hurry it The result more fu E clo u es V than lfilled the brilliant promise of the g . irgil was now, without doubt or dispute, the first of contempo rary poets .

But his responsibilities grew with his greatness . The

- scheme of a great Roman epic , which had always floated

‘ ’defi ritél before his own mind, was now r y and indeed urgently pressed upon him by authority which it was d difficult to resist . An many elements in his own mind h n e d drew him in the same direction . Too muc stress p L atin L itera ture .

— f not be laid on the passage in the sixth Eclogue one o the rare autobiographic touc he iy his work in which he t " alludes to his early experiments in singing of kings and battles . Such early exercises are the common field of u young poets . But the mat ring of his mind, which can eor ia him n be traced in the G g , was urging towards certai methods of art for which the epic was the only literary M form that gave sufficient scope . ore and more he was turning from nature to man and human life, and to the contem plation of human destiny . The growth of the psychological instinct in the Georgia is curiously visible h A in t e episode of ristaeus, with which the poem now

A - ends . ccording to a well authenticated tradition, the last two hundred and fifty lines of the fourth Georgie were written several years after the rest of the poem , to replace the original conclusion, which had contained the praises r C of his early f iend, ornelius Gallus, now dead in disgrace and proscribed from court poetry. In the story of O rpheus E V and urydice, in the later version, irgil shows a new ta m ethod and a new power . It s nds between the idyl and

the the . epic, but it is epic method towards which it tends No return upon the earlier manner was thenceforth pos a sible with many se rchings of heart, with much occasional despondency and dissatisfaction, he addressed himself to the composition of the Aeneid . The earlier national epics of Naevius and Ennius had framed certain lines for Roman epic poetry, which it was almost bound to follow. They had established the mythical connection of Rome with Troy and with the great cycle m of Greek legend, and had originated the idea of aking — Rome itself that For tu na Ur ois which later stood in the form of a golden statue in the imperial bedchamber the central interest, one might almost say the central figure,

H - of the story . To adapt the omeric methods to this ne w i purpose, and at the same t me to make his epic the vehicle n for all his own inward broodi gs over life and fate, for

L atin L ite ra tu r e .

” I liad rumoured as something greater than the , and now that it appeared, it at once became the canon of Roman poetry, and immediately began to exercise an unparalleled

as . influence over Latin literature , prose as well verse

Critics were not indeed wanting to point out its defects , and there was still a school (which attained greater im portance a century later) that went back to Lucretius V ’ and the older poets, and refused to allow irgil s pre But the eminence . for Roman world at large, as since L V H for the world of the atin races, irgil became what omer “ had been to Greece, the poet . The decay of art and letters in the third century only added a mystical and Ev hieratic element to his fame . en to the Christian Church he remained a poet sacred and apart : in his profound tenderness and his mystical “ yearning after the further shore as much as in the supposed prophecy of the fourth E f ' clogue, they ound and reverenced what seemed to them The like an unconscious inspiration . famous passage of A St . ugustine, where he speaks of his own early love for

V - h fe ric al irgil, shows in its half y renunciation how great V the charm of the irgilian art had been , and still was, : u id mise r ias miser o non m ser a nte re to him Q , he cries, i am et ente Didonis m or tem uae eoa t a ma ndo Ae nea m im , fl q fi , non flente a u tem mor tem mea nt gu ae fi ebat non a ma ndo te ? Deus lu me n eor dis mei non te a maoa nz e t lzaee non eoa m , , fl , sed ebam Didonem ex stinetam er r o ue ex tr ema seeu ta m fl , f q , sequens ipse ex tr ema condita tua r elit to te/ To the graver D V and more matured mind of ante , irgil was the lord and master who, even though shut out from Paradise, was

" the chosen and honoured minister of God. Up to the beginning of the present century the supremacy of Virgil was hardly doubted . Since then the development of scientific criticism has passed him through all its searching his processes, and in a fair judgment greatness has rather gained than lost . The doubtful honour of indiscriminate

Con ss I x fe " . u . 99

praise was for a brief period succeeded by the attacks An of an almost equally undiscriminating censure . ill judged partiality had once spoken of the Aeneid as some thing greater than a Roman I liad : it was eas y to show that in the most remarkable Homeric qualities the Aeneid

fell far short, and that, so far as it was an imitation of H H omer, it could no more stand beside omer than the imitations of Theocritus in the E clogu es could stand beside

Theocritus . The romantic movement, with its impatience Aene d of established fames, damned the i in one word h the Aeneid as artificial ; forgetting, or not seeing, t at was

- L itself the fountain head of romanticism . ong after the theory of the noble savage had passed out of political and social philosophy it lingered in literary criticism ; and ” ” the distinction between natural and artificial poetry h was held to be like t at between light and darkness . It was not till a comparatively recent time that the leisurely progress of criticism stumbled on the fact that all poetry I liad is artificial, and that the itself is artificial in a very

eminent and unusual degree . No great work of art can be usefully judged by

comparison with any other great work of art . It may,

indeed, be interesting and fertile to compare one with z another, in order to sei e more sharply and appreciate

more vividly the special beauty of each . But to press

comparison further, and to depreciate one because it has

not what is the special quality of the other, is to lose sight

“ of the function of criticism . We shall not find in Virgil

the bright speed, the unexhausted joyfulness, which, in V ’ spite of a view of life as grave as irgil s own, make the I liad Oa 'sse and j y unique in poetry nor, which is more

Aeneid r to the point as regards the , the na rative power, - th the genius for story telling, which is one of e rarest of

literary gifts, and which Ovid alone among the Latin poets

possessed in any high perfection . We shall not find in him that high and concentrated passion which in Pindar L a i t n L ite ratur e .

(as afterwards in Dante) fuses the elements of thought and language into a single white heat . We shall not find in him the luminous and untroubled calm, as of a spirit in which all passion has been fused away, which makes the poetry of Sophocles so crystalline and irreproachable . Nor shall we find in him the great qualities of his own Latin ll m L C . A predecessors, ucretius or atullus this is erely saying in amplified words that Virgil was not Lucretius h H or Catullus, and t at still less was he omer, or Pindar, m a or Sophocles ; and to this y be added, that he lived in the world which the great Greek and Latin poets had created, though he looked forward out of it into another. Ye t the positive excellences of the Aeneid are so numerous and so splendid that the claim of its author to H be the Roman omer is not unreasonable, if it be made the clear that two poems are fundamentally disparate, and that no more is meant than that the one poet is as eminent h in his own form and method as the ot er in his . In our haste to rest Virgil ’s claim to supremacy as a poet on the single quality in which he is unique and unapproachable l we may seem tacitly to assent to the judgment of his detractors on other points . Yet the more one studies the Aeneid , the more profoundly is one impressed by its quality as a masterpiece of construction . The most adverse critic i would not deny that port ons of the poem are , both in dramatic and narrative quality, all but unsurpassed, and in a certain union of imaginative sympathy with their fine dramatic power and their stateliness of narration perhaps the unequalled . The story of last agony of Troy could not be told with more breadth, more richness, more brilliance : e than it is told in the second book here , at l ast, the story neither flags nor hurries ; from the moment when the Greek squadron sets sail from Tenedos and the signal flam e flashes their flagship, the scenes of the fatal “from night pass before us in a smooth swift stream that gathers weight and volume as it goes, till it culminates in the

L a t i L ite ra tu r e n .

- are over . In the battle pieces of the last three books we sometimes cannot help being reminded that Virgil is rather wearily following an obsolescent literary tradition . But i when we have set such passages against others which, w thout being as widely celebrated as the episode of the sack of D Troy or the death of ido, are equally miraculous in their

- workmanship the end of the fifth book, for instance, or

- h the muster roll of t e armies of Italy in the seventh, or, the n above all, last hundred and fifty li es of the twelfth, where Virgil rises perhaps to his very greatest manner we shall not find that the splendour of the poem depends h on detac ed passages, but far more on the great manner w Vir and movement which, interfused ith the unique gilian tenderness, sustains the whole structure through and through . ’ The merely technical quality of Virgil s art has never

. L been disputed The atin hexameter, the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man, was brought by him to a perfection which made any further develop ment impossible . U p to the last it kept taking in his hands new refinements of rhythm and movement which make the later books of the Aeneid (the le ast successful part of the poem in general estimation) an even more fascinating study to the lovers of language than the more G eor ia formally perfect work of the g , or the earlier books Aene d A of the i itself. brilliant modern critic has noted h “ t is in words which deserve careful study. The innova re c e tible tions are individually hardly p p , but taken together they alter the character of the hexameter line in a way A more easily felt than described . mong the more definite changes we may note that there are more full stops in the middle of lines , there are more elisions, there is a larger proportion of short words, there are more words repeated, the more assonances, and a freer use of emphasis gained by the recurrence of verbs in the same or cognate tenses . Where passages thus characterised have come down to u s I .]

the ff still in the making, e ect is forced and fragmentary ;

where they succeed, they combine in a novel manner the rushing freedom of the old trochaics with the majesty V i ’ A which is the distinguishing feature of irg l s style . rt ’ the has concealed its art, and poet s last words suggest to us possibilities in the Latin tongue which no successor has ”

l . A been able to rea ise gain, the psychological interest and insight which keep perpetually growing throughout ’ Virgil s work result in an almost unequalled power -of ex pressing in exquisite language the half- tones and delicate the shades of mental processes . The famous simile in twelfth Aeneid

Ae velu t in somnis oeulos u oi la ng u ida p r essit t e u es ne ui u a m a ridos ex tender e eu r sus N o t g i , g g z Velle idemu r e t in mediis t ona tions ae r v , g z ueeidimus nee lin ua valet nee t or ear e notae S , g , g S ufi eiu nt wir es a u t oox et oer ba sequu ntu r

is an instance of the amaz ing mastery with which he makes ff language have the e ect of music, in expressing the subtlest

processes of feeling . But the specific and central charm of Virgil lies deeper

than in any merely technical quality . The word which

expresses it most nearly is that of pity. In the most famous “ of his single lines he speaks of the tears of things ; just e this sense of tears, this voic that always, in its most sustained o splendour and in its m st ordinary cadences, vibrates with

a strange pathos, is what finally places him alone among

. h t ome eolu i elze ian e e d ice artists T is thrill in the voice, p g , “ ” is never absent from his poetry . In the lonely words, “ ” in the pathetic half- lines spoken of by the two gr eat E modern masters of nglish prose and verse, he perpetually touches the deepest springs of feeling ; in these it is that h he sounds, as no other poet has done, the dept s of beauty h and sorrow, of patience and magnanimity, of onour in

life and hope beyond death . 1 04 L atin L itera tu r e .

A certain number of minor poems have come down to ’ us associated more or less doubtfully with Virgil s name .

Three of these are pieces in hexameter verse , belonging “ ” h e llion broadly to the class of t e py , or little epic, which was invented as a convenient term to include short poems in the epic metre that were not definitely pastorals either A in subject or treatment, and which the lexandrian poets,

headed by Theocritus, had cultivated with much assiduity

and considerable success . The most important of them,

the ulex na t C , or G , is a poem of about four hundred lines, in which the incident of a gnat saving the life of a sleeping shepherd from a serpent and being crushed to death in the act is made the occasion of an elaborate description of the f infernal regions, rom which the ghost of the insect rises V to reproach his unconscious murderer . That irgil in his youth wrote a poem with this title is established by the words of Martial and Statius nor is there any certain argument against the Virgilian authorship of the extant

poem , but various delicate metrical considerations incline recent critics to the belief that it is from the hand of an almost contemporary imitator who had caught the Virgilian

. Cir zs manner with great accuracy The , another piece of h somewhat greater lengt , on the story of Scylla and Nisus , is more certainly the production of some forgotten poet M V s Me ssalla belonging to the circle of arcus aleriu , and is of interest as showing the immense pains taken in the A later ugustan age to continue the Virgilian tradition . The h the M ar etu m t ird poem , , is at once briefer and slighter in

structure and more masterly in form . It is said to be a i close copy of a Greek or ginal by Parthenius of Nicaea, a distinguished man of letters of this period who taught Virgil Greek ; nor is there any grave improbability in supposing that the M or etu m is really one of the early e xe r cises in verse over which Virgil must have spent years of his

laborious apprenticeship, saved by some accident from the

fate to which his own rigorous judgment condemned the rest .

E HORAC .

’ I N that gr eat turning- point of the world s history marked E by the establishment of the Roman mpire, the position of Virgil is so unique because he looks almost equally 0 a His toward s his forwards and b ckwards . attitude own age is that of one who was in it rather than of it . On the one hand is his intense feeling for antiquity, based on and reinforced by that immense antiquarian knowledge h and whic made him so dear to commentators, which renders some of his work so difli c ult to appreciate from our mere want of information ; on the other, is that per e tual f p brooding over uturity which made him , within a comparatively short time after his death, regarded as a prophet and his works as in some sense oracular . The S or ta Vei ilianae g , if we may believe the confused gossip A H S t of the ugustan istory, were almost a tate institu ion, while rationalism was still the State creed in ordinary matters . Thus, while, in a way, he represented and, as it A he were , gave voice to the Rome of ugustus, did so in the h a transcendental manner Rome whic he represents, whether as city or empire, being less a fact than an idea, and already strongly tinged with that mysticism which we m regard as essentially ediaeval, and which culminated later without any violent breach of continuity in the conception m of a spiritual Rome which was a kingdo of God on earth, 1 06 I L]

and of which the Empire and the Papacy were only two imperfect and mutually complementary phases guella R oma onde Cr ista e R omano x , as it was e pressed by Dante with

his characteristic width and precision. To this mystical temper the whole mind and art of Virgil ’s great contemporary stands in the most pointed M contrast . ore than almost any other poet of equal H eminence, orace lived in the present and actual world ; w he h h it is only hen turns aside from it t at he loses imself. Certain external similarities of method there are between h h them above all, in t at mastery of verbal technique w ich m ade the Latin language something new in the hands of h both . Bot were laborious and indefatigable artists, and

in their earlier acquaintanceship , at all events, were close ’ ff h i personal friends . But the five years di erence in t e r ages represents a much more important interval in their poetical H development . The earlier work of orace, in the years V h h when he was intimate with irgil, is that whic least s ows V the real man or the real poet ; it was not till irgil, sunk ene d in his A i , and living in a somewhat melancholy retire w his ment far away from Rome, was ithin a few years of H the the death, that orace, amid gaiety and vivid life of and h capital , found his true scope, produced the work t at

has made him immortal . ’ Ye t the earlier circumstances of the two poets lives had L V H been not unlike . ike irgil, orace sprang from the

- wh the ranks of the provincial lower middle class, in om

virtues of industry, frugality, and sense were generally he accompanied by little grace or geniality. But was h man exceptionally fortunate in his father . T is excellent , who is always spoken of by his son with a deep respect ff V S and a ection, was a freedman of enusia in outhern a his Italy, who had acquired a small est te by economies as H a collector of taxes in the neighbourhood . orace must d have shown some unusual promise as a boy yet, accor ing

to his own account, it was less from this motive than from I L L a tin L iterat ur e . [

disinterested belief in the value of education that his f ather resolved to give him, at whatever personal sacrifice, every advantage that was enjoyed by the children of the

highest social class . The boy was taken to Rome about — V the age of twelve irgil, a youth of seventeen, came there from Milan about the same time — and given the best

education that the capital could provide . Nor did he A stop there ; at eighteen he proceeded to thens, the most

celebrated university then existing, to spend several years in completing his studies in literature and philosophy . C While he was there the assassination of aesar took place, M r and the Civil war broke out . arcus B utus occupied

and c . Macedonia, swept Greece for re ruits The scarcity of Roman officers was so great in the newly levied legions

- that the young student, a boy. of barely twenty one, with r no birth or connection, no expe ience, and no military or organising ability, was not only accepted with eagerness, H e but at once given a high commission . served in the

Republican army till Philippi, apparently without any

flagrant discredit ; after the defeat, like many of his com n h e and pa ions, he gave up the idea of furt er resistanc , made hi H e u the best of s way back to Italy. fo nd his little estate forfeited, but he was not so important a person that he had to fear proscription, and with the strong common sense which he had already developed, he bought or begged himself a small post in the civil service w hich just enabled was him to live . Three years later he introduced by Virgil M to aecenas, and his uninterrupted prosperity began . ’ Did we know more of the history of H orace s life in the

‘ interval between his leaving the university and his becoming A one of the circle of recognised ugustan poets, much in his poetical development might be less perplexing to us . The ff e ect of these years was apparently to throw him back, to arrest or thwart what would have been his natural h who grt . No doubt he was one of the men (like Caesar or Cromwell in ot her fields of action) develop late ; but

. L a tin L itera tur e . [II

t A sa ire, one whose wish it was to bring up to an ugustan polish the literary form already carried to a high degree S atir es of success by Lucilius . The second book of was

published not long after the Epodes. It shows in every He way an enormous advance over the first . has shaken h himself free from t e imitation of Lucilius, which alternates in the earliest satir es with a rather bitter and self-conscious depreciation of the work of the older poet and his suc ’ H own had c e ssors. The prosperous turn orace s life taken f ff was ripening him ast, and undoing the bad e ects of earlier

years . We have passed for good out of the society of A Rupilius R ex and Canidia . t one time Horace must have run the risk of turning out a sort of ineffectual F V rancois illon this, too, is over, and his earlier education a be rs fruit in a temper of remarkable and delicate gifts .

'

This second book of S a tzr es marks in one way . the ’ culmination of H orace s powers . The brilliance of the first years of the Empire stimulated the social aptitude and dramatic perception of a poet who lived in the heart of m Ro e , already free from fear or ambition, but as yet un touched by the melancholy temper which grew ou him in He — later years . employs the semi dramatic form of easy dialogue throughout the book with extraordinar y lightness L and skill . The familiar hexameter, which ucilius had left

still cumbrous and verbose, is like wax in his hands ; his perfection in this use of the metre is as complete as that of V i irg l in the stately and serious manner. And behind this accomplished literary method lies an unequalled perception

of common human nature, a rich vein of serious and quiet n humour, and a power of la guage the more re markable

that it is so unassuming, and always seems as it were to

say the right thing by accident. With the free growth of his natural humour he has attained a power of self-appr e c ia S a tir es tion which is unerring. The are full from end to end of himself and his own affairs but the name of egoism cannot be applied to any self- revelation or self-criticism h w ich is so just and so certain . From the opening lines of the first satire, where he notes the faults of his own w earlier work, to the last line of the book, ith its Parthian shot at Canidia and the j eu nesse or ageu se that he had so w long left behind, there is not a page hich is not full of - h that self reference w ich, in its truth and tact, constantly passes beyond itself and holds up the mirror to universal

human nature . In reading the S a tir es we all read our own h minds and earts . Nearly te n years elapsed between the publication of the second book of the S atir es and that of the first book of E istles the p . Horace had passed meanwhile into later

. He middle life had in great measure retired from society , and lived more and more in the qu ietness of his little estate the h L among Sabine ills . ife was still full of vivid interest d him but books were more than ever a secon world to ,

and V ' , like irgil, he was returning with a perpetually in i ha creas ng absorption to the Greek philosophies, which d Y been the earliest passion of his youth . ears had brought the philosophic mind ; the more so that these years had the Odes w of the been filled with the labour of , a ork r ff the highest and most int icate e ort, and involving constant the m h h an Th study of asterpieces of Greek t oug t d art . e “ monument more imperishable than bronz e had now been completed ; its results are marked in the Epistles by

a new and admirable maturity and refinement . Good

sense, good feeling, good taste, these qualities, latent from the H the first in orace, had obtained a final mastery over coarser strain with which they had at first been mingled ; and in their shadow now appear glimpses of an inner and the n nature even more rare, from which only now _ he

f h a - li ts the veil wit a sort of delic te self depreciation , in an h h in l occasional line of sonorous r yt m , or some ight touch by which he gives a glimpse into a more magical view of the life and nature the earliest swallow of spring on coast , h the mellow autumn suns ine on a Sabine coppice, the I L L a tin L ite ra tu r e . [

unfor everlasting sound of a talking brook ; or, again, the allentis semita vitae uod etis liie gettable phrases, the f , or q p est ir e ta men r esta t h , or , t at have, to so many minds in so

- a the w . many ges, been key words to hole of life It is in the Epistles that Horace reveals himself most intimately, and perhaps with the most subtle charm . But for the great work of his life, posterity as well as for his own Odes h age , was the three books of whic were published h - him 2 B . C . t e by in 3 , at age of forty two, and represent h t e sustained effort of about ten years . This collection of eighty - eight lyrics was at once taken to the heart of h t e world . Before a volume of which every other line is as familiar as a proverb, which embodies in a quintes sential form that imperishable delight of literature to which the great words of Cicero already quoted ! give such ’ beautiful expression, whose phrases are on all men s lips h as those of ardly any other ancient author have been, f criticism is almost silenced . In the brief and grace ul H epilogue, orace claims for himself, with no uncertainty and h . The wit no arrogance, such eternity as earth can give m - clai was completely just . The school book of the E Odes uropean world, the have been no less for nineteen centuries the companions of mature years and the delight — adolesce ntia m a u nt seneetu tem ooleetant of age g , , may be h said of t em with as much truth as ever now . Yet no ind e fina l so analysis will explain their b e charm . If the “ ” r called ly ical cry be of the essence of a true lyric, they are not true lyrics at all . Few of them are free from a ar tific ialit marked y, an almost rigid adherence to canon . Their range of thou ght is not great ; their range of feeling w is studiously narro . Beside the air and fire of a lyric of C H the atullus, an ode of orace for moment grows pale einer is s ecie deeolor atu r and heavy, p . Beside one of the - V h pathetic half lines of irgil, wit their broken gleams and m as H urmurs of another world, a oratian phrase loses lustre

’ "1 u r t S p a , p . 68 .

L a tin L ite ra tu re .

er s l e ss me a u dax u H The phrase, o ai fe i i i , sed of orace as a lyric poet by Quintilian, expresses, with something less h ’ h than t at fine critic s usual accuracy, anot er quality which H ’ goes far to make the merit of the Odes . orace s use of words is, indeed, remarkably dexterous but less so from happy daring than from the tact which perpetually poises and balances words, and counts no pains lost to find the His — if word that is exactly right . audacities one cares to he h call them So r in t use of epit et, in Greek constructions (which he uses rather more freely than any other Latin poet), and in allusive turns of phrase, are all carefully His calculated and precisely measured . unique power of compression is not that of the poet who suddenly flashes h out in a golden phrase, but more akin to the art of t e i who - dist ller imprisons an essence, or the gem engraver working by minute touches on a fragment of translucent h stone . Wit very great resources of language at his disposal, he uses them with singular and scrupulous frugality ; in his measured epithets, his curious fondness for a number of very simple and abstract words, and the studious simplicity ff m of e ect in his ost elaborately designed lyrics, he reminds

- f one of the method of Greek bas relie s, or, still more (after ff m allowing for all the di erence ade by religious feeling), M of the sculptured work of ino of Fiesole, with its pale colours and carefully ordered outlines . Phrases of ordinary ’

fr e el . d o V prose, which he uses y, not, as in irgil s hands, turn into poetry by his mere use of them they give rather d than receive dignity in his verses, an only in a few rare the M otu /n ex M etello eons instances, like stately ule eioieum, h u are t ey completely fused into the struct re of the poem . o - S , too, his vivid and clearly cut descriptions of nature in single lines and phrases stand out by themselves like golden tesserae in a mosaic, each distinct in a glittering atmosphere qu a tu midus rzga t a r oa Nilus op a ea m p or tions ex ezpieoat — Ar eton nee p r a ta ea nis aloiea nt p r u inis a hundred phrases h like t ese, all exquisitely turned, and all with the same I L]

ff e ect of detachment, which makes them akin to sculpture, V rather than painting or music . irgil, as we learn from an interesting fragment of biography, wrote his first drafts swiftly and copiously, and wrought them down by long labour into their final structure ; with Horace we may rather imagine that words came to the surface slowly and the Odes the one by one, and that grew like deposit, cell by cell, of the honeycomb to which, in a later poem, he h compares his own workmanship . In some passages w ere the Odes him flag, it seems as though material had. failed before the poem was finished, and he had filled in the gaps, he h he the not as wis ed, but as could, yet always with same deliberate gravity of workmanship . H or a tii cu r iosa elieitas h c riti f t is, one of the earliest c i m s des h h s made on the O , remains the p rase w ich most u completely describes their value . S ch minute elaboration, w h on so narrow a range of subject, and it in such confined h limits of thoug t and feeling, could only be redeemed from — dulness by the perpetual felicity something between luck ’ — H ow was and skill that was Horace s secret . far it happy h c ance, how far deliberately aimed at and attained, is a h u s question w ich brings _ before one of the insoluble the problems of art ; we may remind ourselves that, in A h h A words of the Greek dramatist gat on, whic ristotle was h so fond of quoting, skill and c ance in all art cling close “ ” to one another . Safe in his golden mediocrity, to use L H the words of his own counsel to icinius, orace has some how or another taken deep hold of the mind, and even the h imagination, of mankind . T is very mediocrity, so fine, so h chastened, so certain, is in truth as inimitable as any ot er m i great artistic quality we ust fall back on the word gen us, and remember that genius does not confine itself within the borders of any theory, but works its own will . Odes With the publication of the three books of the , and ’ he E istles H the first book of t p , orace s finest and maturest work was complete . In the twelve years of his life which L a tin L itera tur e .

were still to run he published but little, nor is there any reason to suppose that he wrote more than he published . l 1 B C . In 7 . , he composed, by specia command, an ode to The be sung at the celebration of the Secular Games . task was one in which he was much hampered by a stringent he religious convention, and t result is interesting, but not the for mu very happy . We may admire skill with which larie s of the national worship are moulded into the sapphic

z l ua h stan a, and prescribed ang ge, ardly, if at all, removed h f from prose, made to run in stately, t ough sti f and monot o nou s but is , verse our admiration of the ingenuity, not of the ubilee Ode L poetry. The j written by ord Tennyson is curiously like the Ca r men S eeula r e in its metrical in enu itie s h g , and in the way in whic the unmistakeable personal note of style sounds through its heavy and formal movement . des Four years later a fourth book of O was published, the greater part of which consists of poems less distinctly offi cial S ecula r H mn than the y , but written with reference to public ff E a airs by the direct command of the mperor, some in celebration of the victories of Drusus and Tiberius on the - i north eastern frontier, and others in more general pra se of the peace and external prosperity established throughout

Italy under the new government . Together with these o fli c ial pieces he included some others an early sketch for Ca r men S eeula r e the , a curious fragment of literary criticism in the form of an ode addressed to one of the young aris t oc rats who followed the fashion of the Augustan age in studying and writing poetry, and eight pieces of the same his kind as earlier odes, written at various times within the ten years which had now passed since the publication of

h . An the first t ree books introductory poem , of graceful

- but half ironical lamentation over the passing of youth, seems placed at the head of the little collection in studious Had depreciation of its importance . it not beenfor the ofli c ial necessity of publishing the odes, it is probable

L i e L a tin ter at u r .

care and formal polish so elaborately taug ht them by the A had the the earlier ugustan poets, and caught ear of town the with work of superficial but, for time, captivating

brilliance . Gloom was already beginning to gather round M the Imperial household ; the influence of aecenas, the

great support of letters for the last twenty years, was fast on th the h h - e wane . In words just quoted, wit their alf sad — “ and half mocking echo of the famous passage of Luc re tiusfi

Horace bids farewell to poetry .

But literary criticism , in which he had so fine a taste, and

on which he was a recognised authority, continued to interest him and the more seriously minded of the younger he w as poets turned to him for advice , which always willing Th istle to t/ze Pisos w m . E to give e p , kno n ore generally A r t o Poetr under the name of the f y , seems to have been

composed at intervals during these later years, and was,

8 B . C. perhaps, not published till after his death in the year

It is a discussion of dramatic poetry, largely based on ’ - H r Greek text books, but full of orace s own expe ience and Y of his own good sense . oung aspirants to poetical fame w H regularly began ith tragedies ; and orace , accepting this as an actual fact, discusses the rules of tragedy with as much gravity as if he were dealing with some really living e and national form ofpo try . This discursive and fragmentary essay was taken in later ages as an authoritative treatise ; and the views expressed by Horace on a form of poetical h he had had art with whic little practical acquaintance , the of at revival literature, and even down to last century, an immense influence over the structure and development h of t e drama . Just as modern comedy based itself on imitation of Plautus and Terence, and as the earliest attempts at tragedy followed haltingly in the steps of S the h H eneca, so as regards t eory of both , orace, and not u the Greeks, was the guiding infl ence . Among the many amaz ing achievements of the Greek

S u r a p , p . 48. genius in the field of human thought were a lyrical poetry t of unexampled beauty, a refined critical facul y, and, later h the than the great t inkers and outside of strict schools, a temperate philosophy of life such as we see afterwards in the h h H beautiful personality of Plutarch . In all t ese t ree orace interpreted Greece to the world, while adding that peculiarly Roman urbanity — the spirit at once of the grown man as the distinguished from children, of man of the world, and — of the gentleman which up till now has been a dominant ideal over the thought and life of Europe . PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS .

THOSE years of the early Empire in which the names of Virgil and Horace stand out above all the rest were

a period of great fertility in Latin poetry . Great poets naturally bring small poets after them ; and there was no age at Rome in which the art was more assiduously C practised or more fashionable in society . The ourt set a w was tone hich followed in other circles, and more espe c iall y among the younger men of the old aristocracy, now largely excluded from the public life which had engrossed

their parents under the Republic . The influence of the A C lexandrian poets, so potent in the age of atullus, was not yet exhausted and a wider culture had now made the educated classes familiar with the whole range of earlier h Greek poetry as well . Rome was full of ighly educated

Greek scholars, some of whom were themselves poets of

considerable merit . It was the fashion to form libraries ; A the public collection, formed by ugustus, and housed in

a sumptuous building on the Palatine, was only the largest

among many others in the great houses of Rome . The earlier Latin poets had known only a sm all part of Greek

literature, and that very imperfectly ; their successors had been trammelled by too exclusive an admiration of the V H Greek of the decadence . irgil and orace, though pro A n fessed students of the lexandria s, had gone back them

selves, and had recalled the attention of the public, to the 1 20

i L at n L itera tu r e .

The extant poems of the Culex and Cir is have already been noted as showing with what skill and grace unknown V poets, almost if not absolutely contemporary with irgil, Variu s could use the slighter epic forms . , when he n aba doned tragedy, wrote epics on the death of Julius

he A . Caesar, and on t achievements of grippa The few fragments of the former which survive show a remarkable power and refinement ; Virgil paid them the sincerest of all compliments by conveying, not once only but again and

Variu s own . A again, whole lines of into his work nother V l Ae milius M V intimate friend of irgi , acer of erona, wrote didactic poems in the Alexandrian manner on several branches of natural history, which were soon eclipsed by the

eor ia re maine d ' a fame of the G g , but model for later

Nic and er . ne imitators of O of these, a younger contem rar V ratius rattius p o y of irgil called G , or G , was the author of a poem on hunting, still extant in an imperfect form . In its tame and laboured correctness it is only interesting as showing the early decay of the Virgilian manner in the hands of inferior men . A more interesting figure, and one the loss of whose works is deeply to be regretted, is that of Gaius Cornelius l Ga lus, the earliest and one of the most brilliant of the

A . L V Atac inus ugustan poets ike arro , he was born in b Narbonese Gaul, and rought into Roman poetry a new vivac it and touch of Gallic y sentiment . The year of his ’ the h V birth was same as t at of irgil s, but his genius matured h muc earlier, and before the composition of the E clog ues he was already a celebrated poet, as well as a distinguished man of action . The history of his life, with its swift rise from the lowest fortune to the splendid viceroyalty of

Egypt, and his sudden disgrace and death at the age of

- forty three, is one of the most dramatic in Roman history . E The translations from uphorion, by which he first made the his reputation, followed current fashion ; but about the m ne w same ti e he introduced a kind of poetry, the erotic had far - elegy, which a swift and reaching success . To

Gallus, more than to any other single poet, is due the a L n turalisation in atin of the elegiac couplet, which, together H the V a with the lyrics of orace and irgili n hexameter, makes up the threefold poetical achievement of the Augustan L period, and which, after the atin lyric had died out with H the orace himself, halved field with the hexameter . For E the remaining literature of the mpire, for that of the Middle A m ges so far as it followed classical odels, and even for h r that of the Renaissance, w ich ca ries us down to within a a measurable distance of the present d y, the hexameter as V fixed by irgil, and the elegiac as popularised by Gallus f and rapidly brought to per ection by his immediate followers, m are the only two poetical forms of real i portance . a use The elegi c couplet had, of course, been in at Rome the long before ; Ennius himself had employed it, and in

Ciceronian age Catullus had written in it largely, and not

without success . But its successful use had been hitherto hi mainly confined to short pieces, such as would fall wit n

the definition of the Greek epigram . The four books of poems in which Gallus told the story of his passion for the courtesan Cytheris (the Lycoris of the tenth

Eclogue) showed the capacities of the metre in a new light. The fashion they set was at once followed by a crowd of M Messalla poets . The literary circles of aecenas and had each their elegiac poet of the first eminence and the early f death of both Propertius and Tibullus was ollowed, amid the decline of the other forms of the earlier Augustan

O . poetry, by the consummate brilliance of vid S Of the Augustan elegiac poets, extus Propertius, a native

of Assisi in Umbria, and introduced at a very early age to h the circle of Maecenas, is muc the most striking and m interesting figure, not only from the formal erit of his t m w poetry, but as representing a type ill then al ost unkno n

f . L in ancient literature . O his life little is known ike V c onfisc ations irgil, he lost his patrimonial property in the 1 2 H o 4 L atin L ite rat u re . [

C he . which followed the ivil war, but was then a mere child He seems to have been introduced to imperial patronage by the publication of the first book of his E legies at the age He -five of about twenty . died young, before he was thirty , if we may draw an inference from the latest allusions in his extant poems ; he had then written four other books of

elegiac pieces, which were probably published separately the at intervals of a few years . In last book there is a n noticeable widening of ra ge of subject, which foreshadows the further development that elegiac verse took in the

hands of O vid soon after his death . V H In striking contrast to irgil or orace, Propertius is

h . His a genius of great and, indeed, p enomenal precocity E le ies C nthia manoailles first book of g , the y of the gram

marians, was a literary feat comparable to the early achieve

ments of Keats or Byron . The boy of twenty had already C mastered the secret of elegiac verse, which even atullus ffl r had used sti y and awkwardly, and w ites it with an ease,

a colour, a sumptuousness of rhythm which no later poet

ever equalled . The splendid cadence of the opening couplet Cy nthia p r ima suis miser a m me eepit oeel lis Contacta m nullis ante eupidinious must have come on its readers with the shock of a new L revelation . Nothing like it had ever been written in atin before : itself and alone it assures a great future to the Hi Latin elegiac . s instinct for richness of sound is equally L conspicuous where it is found in purely atin phrases, as in the opening of the sixteenth elegy

' Quae fuer a m magnis olim p a tqfa eta tr iumplus I anua Tarpeiae nota p udieitiae Cuius inau r a ti eelebr aru nt limina eu r r us

' a tor um laer imis unnda su l e u C p pp i io s,

use n and where it depends on a lavish of Greek orname t, as in the opening of the third

I l . L a tin L ite ra tu r e . [

f r verbally copied rom him, have the p ecise quality of his h rhythms and turns of p rase . But the abandonment to

- sensibility, the absorption in self pity and the sentiment of passion, are carried by Pr opertius to a far greater length . The self-abasement of a line like

S is uod eu m ue oles non aliena tamen g q v , , is in the strongest possible contrast to that powerful h u passion w ich fills the poetry of Cat llus, or to the romantic tenderness of the E clogues ; and in the e xtraordi nary couplet

M e sine uem sem er volu it or tuna iaeer e , g p f , H a ns anima m ex tremae r edder e ne u ae g iti , the expense of spirit in a waste of shame ” reaches its - r culminating point . This tremulous self abso ption, rather than any defect of eye or imagination, is the reason of the extraordinary lapses which now and then he makes both in description and in sentiment . The vivid and picturesque sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering places and country- houses in the eleventh and fourteenth elegies, or single touches, like that in the remarkable couplet

M e mediae nat tes me side r a r ona ia eentem , p , Fr i ida ue E oo me dolet a u r a elu g q g , show that where he was interested neither his eye nor his language had any weakness ; but, as a rule , he is not interested either in nature or, if the truth be told, in

C h . H ynthia, but wholly in imself e ranks among the A most learned of the ugustan poets ; but, for want of the rigorous training and self-criticism in which Virgil and H orace spent their lives, he made on the whole but a weak and ineffective use of a natural gift perhaps equal to either of theirs . Thus it is that his earliest work is m at the sa e time his most fascinating and brilliant . After ia the Cy ntlz he rapidly became , in the mordant phrase I I I . P r o er tius ] p .

’ H De M u n eu e used by eine of usset, j n lzomme d un lien aean asse p . Some premonition of early death seems to have haunted him ; and the want of self- control in his poetry m ay reflect actual physical weakness united with his vivid imagination .

E le ies ale h The second and third books of the g , thoug they show some technical advance, and are without the h the C ntlzia puerilities which ere and there occur in y , are on the whole immensely inferior to it in interest and charm . There is still an occasional line of splendid beauty, like the wonderful

S unt apud infer nos tot milia for mosa r u m

an occasional passage of stately rhythm, like the lines beginning

Quandoeu ngue igitu r nostr os mors elausit ot ellos ; but the smooth ve rsific ation has now few surprises ; the learning is becoming more mechanical there is a tendency wh and to say over again at he had said before, not to say it quite so well . Through these two books Cynthia is still the main the subject . But with advance of years, and his own his — if growing fame as a poet, passion that can be called a passion which was so self- conscious and so sentimental fell away from him, and left his desire for literary repu tation the really controlling motive of his work . In the introductory poem to the fourth book there is a new and almost aggressive tone with regard to his own position s among the Roman poets, which is in strong contra t to Th the modesty of the epilogue to the third book . e inflated invocation of the ghost of Callimachus laid him fatally open to the quietly disdainful reference by which, H without even mentioning Propertius by name, orace met

it f t r nted as book 11 in the o der The se are the two parts o wha is p i . l e d t ons i i . . L atin L iteratur e . [II

E istles I t a year or two later in the second book of the p .

But even Horace is not infallible ; and Propertius was, at all events, justified in regarding himself as the head of a new school of poetry, and one which struck its roots wide and deep . I n the fourth and fifth books of the E legies there is a wide range of subject the verse is being tested for various purposes, and its flexibility answers to almost every de

m . and . But already we feel its fatal facility The passage

At ue uli ia m Vener em beginning q , in the poem where he contrasts his own life with those of the followers of riches and ambition, is a dilution into twelve couplets of eight ‘ eor ia ff noble lines of the G g , with an e ect almost as feeble, if not so grotesque, as that of the later metaphrasts, who occupied themselves in turning heroic into elegiac poems by inserting a pentameter between each two lines . The sixth elegy of the same book is nothing but a cento of f nt/zolo translations rom the A gy, strung together and fastened up at the end by an original couplet in the worst and n most puerile manner of his early writing. O the other hand, these books include fresh work of great merit, and he some of great beauty. T use of the elegiac metre to tell stories from G r aec o - Roman mythology and legendary h u Roman istory is beg n in several poems which, though

r has - f h P opertius not the story telling gi t of Ovid, s owed Fasti the way to the delightful narratives of the . A few of the more personal elegies have a new and not very De M agreeable kind of realism, as though usset had been touched with the spirit of Flaubert . In one, the ninth the of the fourth book, realism is in a different and pleasanter vein ; only Herrick among English poets has given such imaginative charm to straightforward d esc rip tions of the ordinary private life of the middle classes . n The fifth book ends with the noble elegy o Cornelia, Ae milius L the wife of Paulus epidus, in which all that is best in Propertius ’ nature at last finds splendid and

1 0 e 3 L a tin L ite ratur .

Rome, and poetry was r uled by somewhat rigid canons

of taste, it is not surprising that more stress was laid on ’ the defects than on the merits of Propertius poetry . It evidently annoyed Horace ; and in later times Propertius

remained the favourite of a minority, while general taste

preferred the more faultless, if less powerfully original,

Albius . elegiacs of his contemporary, Tibullus This pleasing fe w and graceful poet was a years older than Propertius,

- the five . He and, like him, died at age of about thirty did not belong to the group of court poets who formed M the circle of aecenas , but to a smaller school under h M V Me ssalla t e patronage of arcus alerius , a distinguished who member of the old aristocracy, , though accepting the E new government and loyal in his service to the mperor,

held somewhat aloof from the court, and lived in a small

literary world of his own . Tibullus published in his lifetime two books of elegiac poems after his death a third volume was published, containing a few of his posthumous pieces, h toget er with poems by other members of the same circle . O f i the r these, six are eleg es by a young poet of uppe L damus u class, writing under the name of yg , and pla sibly ne conjectured to have been a near relative of Tibullus . O , Me ssalla a panegyric on , by an unknown author, is without

any poetical merit, and only interesting as an average

specimen of the amateur poetry of the time when, in the phrase of Horace

P op ulus ealet u no S erioendi studio ; p aer i p a tr esque sever i Fr onde eomas ne t ena nt e r vi ti t ea mina dietant.

The curious set of little poems going under the name Sul ic ia of p , and included in the volume, will be noticed

later. Tibullus might be succinctly and perhaps not unjustly V described as a irgil without the genius . The two poets i d ed in the same year, and a contemporary epigram speaks of them as the recognised , masters of heroic and elegiac O verse while the famous tribute of vid, in the third book Amor es of the , shows that the death of Tibullus was regarded h as an overw elming loss by the general world of letters . “ ” - Pure and fine, the well chosen epithets of Quintilian , are in themselves no slight praise ; and the poems reveal a gentleness of nature and sincerity of feeling which make us think of their author less with admiration than with a sort of quiet affection . No two poets could be more strongly contrasted than Tibullus and Propertius, even when their subject and manner of treatment approximate the the most closely . In Tibullus eagerness, audacity, the irregular brilliance of Propertius are wholly absent ; as are the feverish self- consciousness and the want of good taste h and good sense which are equally characteristic of t e latter . the the Poetry is with him , not outburst of passion, or the and fruit of high imagination, but natural refined expression of sincere feeling in equable and melodious d him H verse . The delightful epistle ad ressed to by orace shows how high he stood in the esteem and affection of w as h a severe critic , and a man whose friendship not lig tly He won or lavishly expressed . stands easily at the head a re fine of Latin poets of the second order . In delic cy, in and a me nt, in grace of rhythm diction, he cannot be e sily surpassed ; he only wants the final and incommunicable touch of genius which separates really great artists fromthe rest of the world . Ovm .

E i Ae THE Peace of the mpire, secured by the v ctory of tium, and fully established during the years which followed

by Augustus and his lieutenants, inaugurated a new era of

. A he social life in the capital The saying of ugustus, that

found Rome brick and left it marble, may be applied

beyond the sphere of mere architectural decoration . A now French critic has well observed that , for the first time,

the Cou rt and the City existed in their full meaning . Both had an organised life and a glittering external ease such as was hardly known again in Europe till the reign of

the Grand Monarque . The enormous accumulated wealth of the aristocracy was in the mass hardly touched by all the c onfisc ations waste and of the civil wars ; and, in spite m of a more rigorous ad inistration, fresh accumulations ffi were continually made by the new o cial hierarchy, and flowed in from all parts of the Empire to feed the luxury in and splendour of the capital . Wealth and peace, the of creasing influence Greek culture , and the absence of

political excitement, induced a period of brilliant laxity

among the upper classes . The severe and frugal morals

of the Republic still survived in great families, as well as E among that middle class, from which the mpire drew its solid support ; but in fashionable society there was a marked and rapid relaxation of morals which was vainly

combated by stringent social and sumptuary legislation . 1 32

1 a i u r 34 L t n L itera t e .

in Roman society and under the very eyes of the Emperor h she multiplied her lovers rig t and left, and launched out d m into a career that for years was the scan al of all Ro e . h r - When she had reac ed the age of thi ty seven, in the same ’ A r t o L e year when Ovid s f ov was published, the axe

suddenly fell ; she was banished, disinherited, and kept till i her death in rigorous imprisonment, almost w thout the S firstfruits necessaries of life . uch were the of the social u A H reform ina gurated by ugustus and sung by orace . In the volume of poems w hich includes the posthumous a elegies of Tibullus, there is also cont ined a group of short a pieces by another lady of high birth and soci l standing, la 3. n Me ssal of iece of and a daughter Servius Sulpicius, and so belonging by both parents to the inner circle of

the aristocracy . Nothing is known of her life beyond what

can be gathered from the poems . But that they should

have been published at all, still more that they should have m been published, as they al ost certainly were, with the M salla sanction of es , is a striking instance of the unique m freedo enjoyed by Roman women of the upper classes,

and of their disregard of the ordinary moral conventions. The only ancient parallel is in the period of the Aeolic h Greek civilisation which produced Sapp o . The poems

are addressed to her lover, who (according to the fashion ’ of the time like Catullus Lesbia or Propertius ’ Cynthia) of is spoken by a Greek name, but was most probably

a young Roman of her own circle . The writer, a young, a i and apparently an unm rr ed woman , addresses him with fr s no a ankness of pa sion that has idea of concealment. She does not even take the pains to seal her letters to him h , t ough they contain what most women would hesitate all to put on paper . They have the same directness,

. n which sometimes becomes a splendid simplicity O e note, reproaching him for a supposed infid elity

Si tiéi eu r a tog ae p otior p r essa mane guasillo S eor tu/n oua m Servifilia S ulpieia 1 35

’ f th has all the noble pride of Shakespeare s Imogen . O e world and its ways she has no girlish ignorance ; but the talk of the world, as a motive for reticence, simply does not exist for her . Where young ladies of the upper classes had such freedom as is shown in these poems, and used it, the ordinary lines of demarcation between respectable w omen and women wh h o are not respectable must ave largely disappeared . It has been much and inconclusively debated whether the H Plania h ostia and , to w om , under assumed names, the r amatory poems of P opertius and Tibullus were addressed, were more or less married women (for at Rome there were r h a deg ees of marriage), or women for w om marri ge was a The has remote and immaterial event . same controversy ’ raged over Ovid s Corinna, who is variously identified as h the E h Julia the daug ter of mperor erself, as a figment of

the . The r imagination , or as an ordinary courtesan t uth is, the A r t o L ove that in the society so brilliantly drawn in f , h the suc distinctions were for time suspended, and we are wh was in a world ich, though for the time it living and

u h . actual, is as nreal to us as t at of the Restoration dramatists vidius The young lawyer and man of fashion, Publius O who h Naso, was the laureate of t is gay society, was a few

years younger than Propertius, with whom he was in close

and friendly intimacy . The early death of both Propertius and Tibullus occurred before Ovid published his first H volume ; and orace, the last survivor of the older A ugustans, had died some years before that volume was O ’ followed by any important work . The period of vid s greatest fertility was the decad immediately following the opening of the Christian era ; he outlived Augu stus by

three years, and so laps over into the sombre period of

h - C t e j ulio laudian dynasty, which culminated in the reign

of Nero . As the eldest surviving son of an opulent equestrian

family of Upper Italy, Ovid was trained for the usual I L L atin L ite r a tu r e . [

fli c e H e career of civil and judicial o . studied for the bar r at Rome, and, though he never worked ha d at law, filled wa several judicial offices of importance . But his interest s almost wholly in the rhetorical side of his profession ; he “ hated argument ; and from the rhetoric of the schools to the highly rhetorical poetry which was coming into fashion An there was no violent transition . easy fortune, a brilliant u m wit, an inexha stible emory, and an unfailing social tact, soon made him a prominent figure in society ; and his genuine love of literature and admiration for genius unmingled in his case with the slightest trace of literary jealousy or self- consciousness made him the friend of the He whole contemporary world of letters . did not begin to publish poetry very early not because he had any delicacy ut abo doing so, nor because his genius took long to ripen, but from the good - humoured laz iness which never allowed u him to take his own poetry too serio sly . When he was t he about thirty he published, to be in fashion, a volume

- of amatory elegiacs, which was afterwards re edited and mor es enlarged into the existing three books of A . Probably about the same time he formally graduated in serious poetry

with his tragedy of M edea . For ten or twelve years after he off wards continued to throw elegiac poems, some light, h others serious, but all alike in their easy polis , and written from the very first with complete and effortless mastery of s the metre . To this period belong the H er oide , the later Amor es pieces in the , the elaborate poem on the feminine l De M ediea mine Faeiei toilet ca led , and other poems now

2 1 B . C . lost . Finally, in or , he published what is perhaps his s on the whole mo t remarkable work, the three books

De Ar te Ama tor ia .

A r t o L ove Just about the time of the publication of the f , the exile of the elder Julia fell like a thunderbolt on Roman S society . taggered for a little under the sudden blow, it h soon gathered itself toget er again , and a perpetual influx of younger men and women gathered round her daughter

1 8 L i L it rat u re 3 a t n e .

i of exile, though not w thout their grace and pathos, struggle almost from the first under the crowning unhappiness of un

n . happiness, that it ceases to be interesti g The five books

‘ Tn stia of his of the , written during the earlier years banish h o f ment, still retain, t rough the monotony their subject, A and the abject humility of their attitu de to ugustus , much E istles r om of the old dexterity. In the four books of p f ntus a m Po , which continue the lament tion over his cala ities, H e the failure of power is evident . went on writing pro fuse l hi to y, because there was not ng else do ; panegyrics on Augustu s and Tiberius alternated with a natural history — — of fish the Halieutiea and with abusive poems on his real Au or fancied enemies at Rome . While gustus lived he did a not give up hopes of a remission , or at least an lleviation,

of his sentence ; but the accession of Tiberius , who never m forgot or forgave anything, must have extinguished the

finally ; and he died some three years later, still a heart

broken exile .

Apart from his single tragedy, from a few didactic or - A mock didactic pieces, imitated from lexandrian originals , m M eta mor hoses and from his great poe of the p , the whole ’ in His of Ovid s work was executed the elegiac couplet . earliest poems closely approximate in their management of

this metr e to the later work of Propertius . The narrower range of cadence allowed by the rule which makes every l m couplet regularly end in a dissyl able, involves a onotony which only Ovid’s immense dexterity enabled him to Fa sti h overcome . In the t is dexterity becomes almost : portentous when his genius began to fail him , the essential the m vice of etre is soon evident . But the usage was stereotyped by his exam ple ; all through the Empire and M A through the iddle ges, and even down to the present has the a day, the Ovidian metre been single domin nt type and though no one ever managed it with such ingenuity

again, he taught enough of the secret to make its use m His possible for al ost every kind of subject . own elegiac I V . i ] Ov d .

poetry covers an ample range . In the impassioned rhetoric the H er oides the f of , brilliant pictures of li e and manners De A r te Ama tor ia the l in the , or spark ing narratives of the Fasti w , the same sure and swift touch is applied to idely

diverse forms and moods . Ovid was a trained rhetorician and an accomplished man of the world before he began to his his write poetry ; that, in spite of worldliness and h he has glittering r etoric , so much of feeling and charm, is h hi the hig est proof of s real greatness as a poet . But this feeling and charm are the growth of more h mature years . In his early poetry t ere is no passion and

. H e little sentiment writes of love, but never as a lover ; h h nor, wit all his quickness of insig t and adroitness of ’ impersonation, does he ever catch the lover s tone . From the amatory poems written in his own person one might h judge him to be quite heartless, the mere ard and polished mirror of a corrupt society ; and in the A r t of L ove he is the keen observer of men and women whose wit and lucid common sense are the more insolently triumphant h h because untouc ed by any sentiment or sympat y . We know him from other sources to have been a man of really warm and tender feeling ; in the poetry which he wrote as the he laureate of world of fashion keeps this out of sight, h and outdoes t em all in cynical worldliness . It is only when writing in the person of a woman as in the Phyllis — or Laodamia of the He r oides that he allows himself any A r s Ama tor ia approach to tenderness . The , full as it is of

a not unkindly humour, of worldly wisdom and fine insight, Th is perhaps the most immoral poem ever written . e most m z : immoral , not the ost demorali ing he writes for an m audience for who morality, apart from the code of i x good manners wh ch society required, did not e ist ; and the wholly free as it is from morbid sentiment, one great w demoraliz ing influence over men and omen, it may be doubted whether the poem is one which ever did any h reader serious harm , w ile few works are more intellectually I L L atin L itera tu re . [

stimulating within a certain limited range . To readers for whom its qualities have exhausted or have not acquired their stimulating force, it merely is tiresome ; and this, th indeed, is e fate which in the present age, when wit is not

u e . in vog e , has very largely overtak n it Interspersed in the A r t of L ove are a number of stories from the old mythology, introduced to illustrate the argu n for ment, but set out at greater le gth than was necessary O that purpose, from the active pleasure it always gives vid h l M eta to tell a story . W en he conceived the p an of his mor hoses p , he had recognised this narrative instinct as his Hi M edea special gift . s tragedy of had remained a single ff H er oides a e ort in dramatic form, unless the can be cl ssed ' M edea as dramatic monologues . The , but for two fine O i single lines, is lost ; but all the evidence is clear that v d had no natural turn for dramatic writing, and that it was u r de or t e M eta merely a clever to f . In the idea of the mor hoses p he found a subject, already treated in more than A his one lexandrian poem , that gave full scope for narrative gift and his fertile ingenuity . The result was a poem as d sse unfla in O . A long, and almost as gg g, as the y y vast mass of multifarious stories, whose only connection is the casual fact of their involving or alluding to some transforma tion of human beings into stones, trees, plants, beasts, birds, and the like, is cast into a continuous narrative . The adroitness with which this is done makes the poem rank as a masterpiece of construction . The atmosphere of romantic fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain ff plausibility of e ect almost amounting to epic unity . In ' the fabulous superhuman ele m e nt that appears in all the r sto ies, and in their natural surroundings of wood, or mountain, or sea always realised with fresh enjoyment and vivid form and colour there is something which gives the same sort of unity of effect as we feel in reading the ts A r abia n M glt . It is not a real world ; it is hardly even a world conceived as real ; but it is a world so plausible,

2 1 4 L atin L ite ra tu r e .

of excellence . In his evolution of thought or his play of — he fancy, if the expression be preferred has an alertness and precision akin to great intellectual qualities ; and it is h him t is, perhaps, which has made a favourite with so

» Sh f his many great men o f letters . akespeare himsel , in the the earlier work, alike plays and the poems, writes in

O vidian manner, and often in what might be direct imitation of Ovid the motto from the Amor es prefixed to the Venus

a nd Adonis h . S is not idly c osen till more remarkable, ffi w because less superficially evident, is the a nity bet een

O v M . At id and ilton first sight no two poets, perhaps, could seem less alike . But it is known that Ovid was one ’ of Milton s favourite poets ; and if one reads the M eta mor hoses P a r a dise L ost p with an eye kept on , the intellectual resemblance, in the manner of treatment of thought and language, is abundantly evident, as well in the general structure of their rhetoric as in the lapses of taste and obstinate puerilities (non ignor avit vitia sua st d a mavit m M ight be said of ilton also), which come from time to time in their maturest work . The M e ta morphoses was regarded by Ovid himself as

m . of his asterpiece In the first impulse , his despair at inc m leaving Rome , he burned his own copy of the still o ple te poem . But other copies were in existence ; and though he writes afterwards as though it had been published w his his ithout correction and without consent, we may suspect that it was neither without his knowledge nor against his will when he speaks of the ma nus u ltima as wanting, it is probably a mere piece of harmless affectation

the Aene h to make himself seem liker author of the id . T e f h Fasti case was di ferent wit the , the other long poem h whic he worked at side by side with the M eta morphoses.

The twelve books of this work, dealing with the calendar n h of the twelve mo t s, were also all but complete when he was banished, and the first six, if not actually published, had, at all events, got into private circulation . At Tomi I V. ]

he he began a revision of the poem which , apparently, never h the completed . The first alf of poem , prefaced by a fresh dedication to Germanicus, was published, or republished, the A h after death of ugustus, to w om, in its earlier form , it had been inscribed ; the second half never reached the L public . It cannot be said that atin poetry would be much the The poorer had first six books been suppressed also . e h student of metrical forms would, ind ed, ave lost what is the L a m the metrically most dexterous of all tin poe s, and archaeologist some curious information as to Roman w customs but, for other readers, little ould be missed but fe w the x a of e quisitely told stories, like that of Tarquin L the and ucretia, or of Rape of Proserpine, which vary the somewhat tedious chronicle of astronomical changes and national festivals . ’ T stia The poems of the years of Ovid s exile , the ri and L etter s r om P ontus h the f , are a melanc oly record of n His the flaggi g vitality and failing powers . adulation of Emperor and the imperial family passes all bounds ; it exhausts what would otherwise seem the inexhaustible copiousness of his vocabulary. The long supplication to

A . Tr istia ugustus, which stands by itself as book ii of the , is the most elaborate and skilful of these pieces but those w h the hic may be read with the most pleasure are letters . hi h ff h to s wife , for w om he had a deep a ection , and w om h As he addresses wit a pathos that is quite sincere . hope the of recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more ; incorrect language and slovenly ve rsific ation of some of the L etter s fr om P ontus are in sad contrast to the Ovid of w the ten years before, and if he ent on writing till end , it was only because writing had long been a second nature to him . ’ Of the extraordinary force and fineness of O vid s natural h had genius, there never ave been two opinions ; he but been capable of controlling it, instead of indulging it, he h ’ might ave, in Quintilian s opinion , been second to no M edea Roman poet . In his , the critic adds, he did show L atin L itera tu re .

- some of this self control its loss is the more to be lamented .

- his But the easy good nature of own disposition, no less than the whole impulse of the literary fashion then pre valent, was fatal to the continuous exercise of such severe self- education : and the man who was so keen and shrewd in his appreciation of the follies of lovers had all the weak his ness of a lover for the faults of own poetry . The delightful story of the three lines which his critical friends him h urged to erase proves, if proof were needed, that t is w w as eakness was not blindness, and that he perfectly

the . aware of vices of his own work The child of his time, he threw all his brilliant gifts unhesitatingly into the scale “ his of new ideas and new fashions ; modernity, to use a current phrase of the present day, is greater than that of any other ancient author of anything like his eminence .

' n en al a e o me nu ne deni ue na tu m Pri st a i v t i s, g g G r a tular : haet aetas mor ihus apta meis

this is his deliberate attitude throughout his life . Such a spirit has more than once in the history of the arts m arked the point from which their downward course

ld th s r t e e e a e e . I do not sin the o in o h n w ar r b tt r began g g , f f , the famous Greek musician Timothe us had said four centuries the h earlier, and decay of Greek music was dated from t at re s on period . But to make any artist, however eminent, p u ff sible for the decadence of art, is to conf se cause with e ect and the note of ignominy affixed by Augustus to the Ar t of L ove was as futile as the action of the Spartan ephor h when he cut the strings away from t e cithara of Timotheus . The actual achievement of Ovid was to perfect and p opu larise a poetical form of unusual scope and flexibility ; to throw a vivid and lasting life into the world of Grac co and Roman mythology ; , above all, to complete the work of Cicero and Horace in fixing a certain ideal of civilised L E E manners for the atin mpire and for modern urope . He was not a poet of the first order ; yet few poets of the

first order have done a work of such wide importance .

L a tin L itera tur e .

A 2 2 For Janus by ugustus, in the years 9 and 5 forty years thereafter he continued this colossal task, which, like the Decline a nd Fall ts m to , was published in par from ti e w of time . He lived to bring it do n as far as the death E L the Drusus, the younger son of the mpress ivia, in year t r 9 The division into books, of which he e were one

- the hundred and forty two in whole work, is his own ; these volu mina again were arranged in , or sections issued as separate volumes, and containing a varying number of w books . The division of the work into decads as made a by copyists at a much l ter period, and was no part of the ’ - author s own plan . Only one fourth of the whole history

i M A . h s has surv ved the iddle ges T is consi ts of the first, the f h h the third, ourt , and alf of the fifth decad, or books - - the i. x. and xxi . xlv . of work ; of the rest we only possess brief tables of contents, drawn up in the fourth century, not m from the original work but from an abridg ent, itself now lost, which was then in use . The scale of the history is ff very di erent in the two surviving portions . The first decad carries it from the foundation of the city through the Regal and early Republican periods down to the third ’ r Samnite war, a period of four centu ies and a half. The -five i twenty extant books of the th rd, fourth, and fifth f m the decads cover a period of fifty years, ro beginning of the second Punic to the conclusion of the third Mace

nian . do war This half century, it is true, was second in importance to none in Roman history. But the scale of the work had a constant tendency to expand as it c approa hed more modern times, and more abundant docu ments ; and when he reached his own time, nearly a book the was occupied with events of each year. F a ounded as it was, at le st for the earlier periods, upon of the works preceding annalists, the history of Livy adopted from them the arrangement by years marked by successive to consulates, which was familiar all his readers . He even annales u i speaks of his own work as , tho gh ts formal title 1 47

’ ' seems to have been I fzstor zae (or a b ’ ’ Ur be ona ta C z . There is no reason to suppose that he intended to conclude it at any fixed point . In a preface to one of the later volumes, he observed with justifiable the pride that he had already satisfied desire of fame, and only went on writing because the task of composition had he h become a fixed habit, which could not discontinue wit His his i nu out uneasiness . fame even in lifet me was

He h . bounded . seems to ave made no enemies The Asinius acrid criticism of Pollio, a purist by profession, on certain provincialities of his style, was an insignificant exception to the general chorus of praise . In treading the delicate ground of the Civil wars his candou r towards the Republican party led Augustus to tax him half jestingly as a Pompeian yet Livy lost no favour either with him or with his more jealous successor . The younger Pliny relates how a citiz en of Cadiz was so fired by his fame that m he travelled the whole way to Rome erely, to see him, h and as soon as he had seen him returned home, as thoug ' Rome had no other spectacles to ofie r . Roman history had hitherto been divided between the annalists and the writers of personal and contemporary Sal the memoirs . lust was almost the only example of definite historical treatment of a single epoch or episode of the the past . As a rule each annalist set himself same and task, of compiling, from the work of his predecessors, him such additional information as he found accessible to , n a general history of the Roman people from its beginni gs, carried down as far towards his own day as he found time E or patience to continue it . ach successive annalist tried i w to improve upon prev ous riters, either in elegance of style or in copiousness of matter, and so far as he succeeded in the double task his work replaced those already written . It was not considered unfair to transcribe w hole passages h from former annalists, or even to copy their works wit additions and improvements, and bring them out as new L atin L iteratu r e .

and original histories . The idea of literary property seems,

h . in truth, to be very muc a creation of positive law When

no copyright existed, and when the circulation of any book was confined within very small limits by the cost and labour

of transcription, the vaguest ideas prevailed, not at Rome h h n ow alone , on w at we s ould regard as the elementary V h morality of plagiarism . irgil himself transferred w ole m lines and passages, not merely from earlier, but even fro n contemporary poets ; and in prose writing, one a nalist cut up and reshaped the work of another with as little

- hesitation as a mediaeval romance writer . In this matter Livy allowed himself full liberty ; and his

work absorbed, and in a great measure blotted out, those of

his predecessors . In his general preface he speaks of the two h motives w ich animate new historians , as the hope that

they will throw further light on events, or the belief that

their own art will excel that of a ruder age . The former f he hardly pro esses to do, at least as regards times anterior to his own ; his hope is that by his pen the great story of

the Republic will be told more impressively, more vividly, in a manner more stimulating to the reader and more

worthy of the subject than had hitherto been done . This purpose at least he amply and nobly carried out ; nor can i t be said to be a low ideal of the function of history . So f in far, however, as the o fice of the historian is to ve sti ate g facts, to get at the exact truth of what physically h appened, or to appreciate the varying degrees of proba bilit h h L y wit which t at truth can be attained, ivy falls far His short of any respectable ideal . romantic temper and the ethical bent of his mind alike indisposed him to set His any very great value on facts as such . history bears i little trace of any independent nvestigation . Sources for him history lay round in immense profusion . The enormous collections made by Varro in every field of antiquarian r e at search were his hand, but he does not seem to have

used them, still less to have undertaken any similar labour

L a tin L ite r a tu r e .

own . Ye t day it seemed rude and harsh as a historian,

and not a collector of materials for history, he may plead the privilege of the artist . The modern compromise by which documents are cited in notes without being inserted in the text of histories had not then been invented ; and ’ wh notes, even en as in the case of Gibbon s they have a

substantive value as literature, are an adjunct to the history

h . A itself, rat er than any essential part of it more serious h h he h w charge is, t at w en had trustworthy aut orities to follo , his the he did not appreciate their value . In account of M n acedo ian wars, he often follows Polybius all but word

for word, but without apparently realising the Greek ’ historian s admirable accuracy and judgment . Such ap preciation only comes of knowledge ; and Livy lacked the

vast learning and the keen critical insight of Gibbon, to

whom in many respects he has a strong afli nity . His imperfect knowledge of the military art and of Roman law often confuses his narrative of campaigns and constitutional

struggles, and gives too much reason to the charge of negligence brought against him by that clever and impudent the E critic , mperor Caligula .

Yet, in spite of all his inaccuracies of detail, and in spite f h of the graver defect of insu ficient istorical perspective, which makes him colour the whole political development the his of Roman state with the ideas of own time, the history of Rome as narrated by Livy is essentially true

and vital , because based on a large insight into the perma h nent qualities of human nature . The spirit in whic he h writes history is well illustrated by the speeches . T ese, H e in a way, set the tone of the whole work . does not affect in them to reproduce the substance of words actually the h spoken, or even to imitate the tone of time in w ich H the speech is laid . e uses them as a vivid and dramatic

. The method of portraying character and motive method, u in its brilliance and its tr th to permanent facts, is like ’ or iola nus. that of Shakespeare s C Such truth, according to ’ in A Poetics the celebrated aphorism ristotle s , is the truth of h : the L poetry rather t an of history and history of ivy , in in has f this, as his opulent and coloured diction , some a finity Ye t to poetry . , when such insight into motive and such vivid creative imagination are based on really large knowl f edge and per ect sincerity, a higher historical truth may be reached than by the most laborious accumulation of

documents and sifting of evidence . ’ Livy s humane and romantic temper prevented him from h had being a political partisan, even if political partisans ip

been consistent with the view he took of his own art . his In common with most educated Romans of time, he his idealised the earlier Republic, and spoke of own age

as fatally degenerate . But this is a tendency common to writers of all periods . H e frequently pauses to deplore the loss of the ancient qualities by which Rome had grown great simplicity, equity, piety, orderliness . In his remark able preface he speaks o f himself as turning to historical study in order to withdraw his mind from the evils of his own age, and the spectacle of an empire tottering to the fall under the weight of its own greatness and the vices "

z . of its citi ens Into no State, he continues, were greed and luxury so long in entering ; in these late days avarice has grown with wealth, and the frantic pursuit of pleasure ' leads fast towards a collapse of the whole social fabric ; in our ever- accelerating downward course we have already

“ reached a point where our vices and their remedies are ” alike intolerable . But his idealisation of earlier ages was that of the romantic student rather than the reactionary

. H e w politician is al ays on the side of order, moderation , conciliation ; there was nothing politically dangerous to H e the imperial government in his mild republicanism . shrinks instinctively from violence wherever he meets it, whether on the side of the populace or of the go verning class ; he cannot conceive why people should not be u n reasonable, and live in peace der a moderate and settled L a ti it r a tu re n L e .

government . This was the temper which was welcome at court, even in men of Pompeian sympathies . ’ So Liv s , too, y attitude towards the established religion and towards the beliefs of former times has the same senti A mental tinge . The moral reform attempted by ugustus had gone hand in hand with an elaborate revival and amplification of religious ceremony . Outward conformity ’

z . E x eait esse dear et at least was required of all citi ens p , ' “ u t expeait esse p u temus ; the existence of the gods is a m " matter of public policy, and we ust believe it accordingly, O m vid had said, in the ost daring and cynical of his poems.

The old associations, the antiquarian charm, that lingered th round this faded ancestral belief, appealed strongly to e H i o wn romantic patriotism of the historian . s religion was a sort of mild fatalism he pauses now and then to draw rather commonplace reflections on the blindness of men the destined to misfortune, or helplessness of human wisdom and foresight against destiny. But at the same time he m gravely chronicles miracles and portents, not so much fro any belief in their truth as because they are part of the story . The fact that they had ceased to be regarded m seriously in his own ti e, and were accordingly in a great n measure ceasing to happe , he laments as one among many declensions from older and purer fashions .

As L . a master of style, ivy is supreme among historians H e marks the highest point which the enlarged and enriched prose of the Augustan age reached just before it began u r banus to fall into decadence . It is no longer the famous ser mo of the later Republic, the pure and somewhat austere n V language of a governing class . The influe ce of irgil is L already traceable in ivy, in actual phrases whose use had hitherto been confined to poetry, and also in a certain warmth of colouring unknown to earlier prose . To Augus tan purists this relaxation of the language seemed provincial and unworthy of the severe tradition of the best Latin and in it was this probably, rather than any definite novelties

L a tin L iter atu re . his whole work is a splendid expansion of that vision of Rome w hich passes before the eyes of Aeneas in the

Fortunate Fields of the underworld . In the description of great events, no less than of great characters and actions, His he rises and kindles with his subject . eye for dramatic ff e ect is extraordinary . The picture of the siege and u h storming of Sag ntum , wit which he opens the stately H narrative of the war between Rome and annibal, is an instance of his instinctive skill ; together with the masterly sketch of the character of Hannibal and the description o f the scene in the Carthaginian senate-house at the recep the tion of Roman ambassadors, it forms a complete prelude

His - to the whole drama of the war . great battle pieces, r too, in spite of his imperfect maste y of military science, A are admirable as works of art . mong others may be specially instanced , as masterpieces of execution, the account of the victory over Antiochus at Magnesia in the thirty

h - h sevent book, and, still more , that in the forty fourt of the fiercely contested battle of Pydna, the desperate heroism Pe li nian r of the g cohort, and the final and ter ible destruction of the Macedonian phalanx .

Yet, with all his admiration for great men and deeds, ’ what most of all kindles Livy s imagination and sustains his enthusiasm is a subject larger, and to him hardly more C n abstract, the Roman ommo wealth itself, almost per sonifie d as a continuous living force . This is almost the only matter in which patriotism leads him to marked “ ” partiality . The epithet Roman signifies to him all that is high and noble . That Rome can do no wrong is a sort h of article of fait with him, and he has always a tendency to do less than justice to her enemies . The two qualities of eloquence and candour are justly ascribed to him by

Tacitus, but from the latter some deduction must be made when he is dealing with foreign relations and external i diplomacy . Without any ntention to falsify history, he is sometimes completely carried away by his romantic e nthu ia m s s for Roman statesmanship . V .] I SS

’ This canonisation of Rome is Livy s largest and most S abiding achievement . The elder eneca, one of his ablest e literary contemporaries, observ s, in a fine passage, that when historians reach in their narrative the death of some

- u great man , they give a summing p of his whole life as

h . L t ough it were an eulogy pronounced over his grave ivy, the h his a r ec ia he adds, most candid of all istorians in pp

tion of genius, does this with unusual grace and sympathy . The remark may bear a wider scope ; for the whole of his work is animated by a similar spirit towards the idealised C h ommonwealt , to the story of whose life he devoted his As the esta P o uli R oma ni splendid literary gifts . title of G p Aeneid the H istor iae was given to the on its appearance, so

a b r be Condita U might be called, with no less truth, a — funeral eulogy consu mmatio totius vitae et quasi fu nebr is la u da tio delivered, by the most loving and most eloquent h of her c ildren, over the grave of the great Republic . T ER A HE LESS UGUSTANS .

THE impulse given to Latin literature by the great poets and prose writers of the first century before Christ ebbed

so- A slowly away . The end of the called Golden ge may be conveniently fixed in the year which saw the death of Livy and Ovid ; but the smaller literature of the period f h su ered no violent breach of continuity, and one can ardly n S A ame any definite date at which the ilver ge begins . Until the appearance of a new school of writers in the reign of Nero, the history of Roman literature is a continuation of the Augustan tradition . But it is continued by feeble w hands, and d indles away more and more under several A unfavourable influences . mong these influences may be Em specially noted the growing despotism of the pire, which had already become grave in the later years of Augustus, and under his successors reached a point which made free in writing, like free speech, impossible ; the perpetually of creasing importance the schools of declamation, which forced a fashion of overstrained and unnatural rhetoric on both prose and verse and the paralysing effect of the great A h ugustan writers themselves, w ich led poetry at all events to lose itself in imitations of imitations within an arbitrary and rigid limit of subjects and methods .

In mere amount of production, however, literature re - C mained active during the first half century of the hristian era . That far the greater part of it has perished is probably a r 56

L a tin L ite ra tu r e .

power, and less a mere adaptation of Greek originals, is Astr onom ea the i , ascribed on doubtful manuscript evidence

to an otherwise unknown Gaius or Marcus Manilius . This the the poem, from allusions in it to the destruction of three V legions under arus, and the retirement of Tiberius in h R odes, must have been begun in the later years of A u h ug stus, t ough probably not completed till after his

' h As fi deat . extant it consists of ve books, the last being h incomplete ; the full plan seems to have included a sixt , and would have extended the work to about five thousand

- De K er a ni N atu r a lines, or two thirds of the length of the . L Next to the poem of ucretius it is, therefore, much the L largest in bulk of extant atin didactic poems . The n oblivio into which it has fallen is, perhaps , a little hard if one considers how much Latin poetry of no greater merit now continues to have a certain reputation, and even and

then to be read . The author is not a great poet ; but he

is a writer of real power both in thought and style . The ve rsific ation of his Astr onomiea shows a high mastery of h technique . The matter is often prosaically andled , and often seeks relief from prosaic handling in ill - judged flights of rhetoric ; but throughout we feel a strong and original

d . min , with a large power over lucid and forcible expression In the prologue to the third book he rejects for himself the for common material hexameter poems, subjects from the

h m . His Greek eroic cycle, or fro Roman history total w and flat want of narrative gift, as sho n by the languor ness of the elaborate episode in which he attempts to A n tell the story of Perseus and ndromeda, would have bee h sufii c ient reason for t is decision ; but he justifies it, in m lines of uch grace and feeling, as due to his desire to take f a line O his own, and make a fresh if a small conquest for

Latin poetry .

’ ' s e o s sem ta tr ita es Omnis aa at eessu H lie m i t, ’ E t ia m conf usi m a nant ae fontibus a mnes VI . M ] a nilius .

’ Net ea iu nt naustum tur oa m u e a a nota r u e p , g ntem I ntegr a gu aer amus r or a ntes p r ata p er lzer oas ’ na d e u U amgue oeeultis me ita nt m mu r m r in nu tr is .

n and In a passage of obler more sincere feeling, he breaks off his catalogue of the signs of the Zodiac to vindicate the arduous study of abstract science

M ultum inguis tenuemgue iubes me fer r e labor er : Cer ner e t u m fat iii lut em r a tione ’ ’ uoa uaer is Deus est . Coner is soanaer e eaetum Q q , Fa tague fa tati genitus eog noseer e lege ’ E t tr a nsir e tu u m eetus mu nao ue otiri p , q p

P r o r e labor est nee sunt i/nmnnia ta nta . p tio ,

Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be memorable . The thought is not a mere text of the schools ; it is strongly and finely conceived, and put in a form that anticipates the ardent and lofty manner of

Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression . h h Ot er passages, s owing the same mental force, occur in t he Astr onomiea one might instance the fine passage on the h power of the human eye to take in, wit in its tiny compass, he the t whole immensity of heavens or another, suggested A by the mention of the constellation rgo, on the influence

- h the v of sea power on istory, where ine itable and well worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh life from the citation of the destruction of the Athenian

fleet in the bay of Syracuse, and the great naval battles of O r the h the first Punic war . again, lines with w ich he opens ff the fourth book, weakened as their e ect is by what follows the them , a tedious enumeration of events showing . power of destiny over human fortunes, are worthy of a great poet

’ a m so s a m eonsuminzus a nnis Quia t ilieiti vit , ’ Tor quemur gue metu eaeea que eupiaine r eru n: L a tin L ite ra tu r e .

' ’ Aeternis ue senes ou r zs a u m u aer imus aevum g , g ’ Per aimus et u lo otor um ne bea ti , n l n fi ’ Vietur os a w as sem er nee moimus u n u am t gi p , g

These passages have been cited from the Astr onomien a L bec use, to all but a few professional students of atin, the h poem is practically unknown . The only ot er poet who survives from the reign of Tiberius is in a very different position, being so well known and so slight in literary h quality as to make any quotations superfluous . P aedrus, a Thracian freedman belonging to the household of

A - ugustus, published at this time the well known collection Fables h -A of whic , like the lyrics of the pseudo nacreon, have obtained from their use as a school- book a circulation much out of proportion to their merit . Their chief interest is as the last survival of the ur banus ser mo in Latin poetry.

They are written in iambic senarii, in the fluent and studi o usl L y simple atin of an earlier period, not without occa

’ u sio al vulgarisms , but with a total absence of the turgid Fa bles rhetoric which was coming into fashion . The are the last utterance made by the speech of Terence : it is singular that this intimately Roman style should have begun and ended with two authors of servile birth and foreign blood . But the patronage of literature was now passing out of the hands of statesmen . Terence had moved in the circle of the younge r S c ipio one book of the Fables E of Phaedrus is dedicated to utychus, the famous chariot u driver of the Greens in the reign of Calig la . It was not long before Phaedrus was in use as a school - book but his volume was apparently regarded as hardly coming within i S the province of serious literature . It is gnored by eneca u and not mentioned by Q intilian . But we must remind h ourselves that the most celebrated works, whet er in prose or verse , do not of necessity have the widest circulation or the largest influence . Among the poems produced in the first ten years of this century the Or iginal P oems of j ane

L at in L iteratu r e . of Au w t of regular histories . gustus rote thir een books memoirs of his own life down to the p ac ific ation of the

Empire at the close of the Cantabrian war. These are esta r um r m lost ; but the I ndex R er u m a se G , a b ief epito e

of his career, which he composed as a sort of epitaph r on himself, is extant . This document was eng aved on plates of bronz e affixed to the imperial mausoleum by

the Tiber, and copies of it were inscribed on the various temples dedicated to him in many provincial cities after

his death . It is one of these copies, engraved on the vestibule wall of the temple of Au gustus and Rome at in Ancyra in Galatia, which still exists with considerable M A gaps . His two gr eat ministers, aecenas and grippa,

also composed memoirs . The most important work of d of the latter har ly, however, falls within the province literature ; it was a commentary on the great geographical

survey of the Empire carried out under his supervision . Asiniu G aius s Pollio, already mentioned as a critic and

tragedian, was also the author of the most important ’ A Liv s historical work of the ugustan age after y . His Histor o the Civil War s y f , in seventeen books, from the

the 60 C. formation of first triumvirate in B . to the battle

of Philippi, was undoubtedly a work of great ability and

value . Though Pollio was a practised rhetorician, his

narrative style was simple and austere . The fine ode addressed to him by Horace during the composition of this H ’ history seems to hint that in orace s opinion or perhaps, H ' rather, in that of orace s masters Pollio would find a t a u ruer field for his great literary ability in tr gedy. B t m i f apart fro its art stic quality, the work of Pollio was o the utmost value as giving the view held of the Civil wars the by a trained administrator of highest rank . It was t he m i A one of a n sources used by ppian and Plutarch, m m and its al ost total loss is atter of deep regret . An and author of less eminence , belonging rather to l h n P iu the class of encyc opedists t a of historians, is ompe s ’ s Trog u a na P ater culus .

Tro us g , the descendant of a family of Narbonese Gaul, which had for two generations enjoyed the Roman citiz en h u . s o z s ip Be ides works oology and botany, translated A h or adapted from the Greek of ristotle and T eophrastus, Tro us Histor o tbe Wor t/t g wrote an important y f , exclusive E h of the Roman mpire, whic served as, and may have h h L . T e been designed to be, a complement to t at of ivy

- original work, which extended to forty four books, is not

extant ; but an abridgment, which was executed in the A M unianus age of the ntonines by one arcus J Justinus , and has fortunately escaped the fate which overtook the L abridgment of ivy made about the same time , preserves the h main outlines and much of the actual form of t e original . h Justin, w ose individual talent was but small, had the good sense to leave the diction of his original as far as possible

unaltered . The pure and vivacious style, and the evident h w h Tro us h care and researc hic g imself, or the Greek he historians whom follows, had bestowed on the material, e make the work one of very consid rable value . Its title,

’ H iston ae Pli ili b ieae h h j p , is borrowed from t at of a istory The o o m us conceived on a somewhat similar plan by p p , in the pupil of Isocrates, or after the reign of Alexander the Great ; and it followed The opompus in making the Macedonian Empire the core round which the history of the various countries included in or bordering upon it was

arranged . Velleius Pate rc ulu s ofii c er who Gaius , a Roman , after w m passing ith credit through high ilitary appointments, E entered the general administrative service of the mpire, nd a rose to the praetorship, wrote, in the reign of Tiberius, two an abridgment of Roman history in books, which hardly rises beyond the mark of the military man who

dabbles in letters . The pretentiousness of his style is

partly due to the declining taste of the period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner

of Sallust . It alternates between a sort of laboured L I L a tin L ite ra tu re . [

sprightliness and a careless conversational manner full of Y Velle ius t wo endless parentheses . e t had real merits ;

the eye of the trained soldier for character, and an

ff . una ected, if not a very intelligent, interest in literature he hi Where approaches s own times , his servile attitude the towards all members of the imperial family, and S towards ejanus, who was still first minister to Tiberius w as m when the book published, akes him almost valueless as a historian ; but in the earlier periods his observations he are often just and pointed, and seems to have been almost the first historian who included as an essential part of his work some account of the more eminent A writers of his country . still lower level of aim and attainment is shown in another work of the same date Velle ius as that of , the nine books of historical anecdotes, Fa cta et Dieta M emor abilia V M , by alerius aximus, whose turgid and involved style is not redeemed by any originality

of thought or treatment .

The study of archaeology, both on its linguistic and A a material sides, was carried on in the ugust n age with i u great v gour, tho gh no single name is comparable to that V r ne of arro for extent and va iety of research . O of the most eminent and copious w riters on these subjects was H S i A Gaius Julius yginus , a pan sh freedman of ugustus, who made him principal keeper of the Palatine library . H e C was a pupil of the Greek grammarian, ornelius A h his lexander (called Poly istor, from immense learning), f hi and an intimate acquaintance of Ovid . O s voluminous h works on geography, istory, astrology, agriculture, and

poetry, all are lost but two treatises on mythology, which h in t eir present form are of a much later date, and are m at best only abridged and corrupted versions, if (as any modern critics are inclined to think) they are not wholly the the work of some author of second or third century . Hyginus was also one of the earliest commentators on Virgil ; he possessed among his treasures a manuscript

L a tin L iter a t u re .

rank by his extensive and accurate knowledge , as well the h as by his rare literary skill, with ighest names in his h h profession . T at wit his eminent medical acquirement he should have been able to write at length on so many other subjects as well, has long been a subject of perplexity. h who him s T e cold censure of Quintilian, refers to lightly ” as a man of moderate ability, may be principally aimed the at treatise on rhetoric , which formed a section of his w encyclopedia . Columella, riting in the next age, speaks of him as one of the two leading authorities on agri culture ; and he is also quoted as an authority of some Ye t value on military tactics . we cannot suppose that r the encyclopedist, however g eat his excellence in one or even more subjects, would not lay himself open in others to the censure of the specialist . It seems most reasonable to suppose that Celsus was one of a class which — is not, after all, very uncommon doctors of eminent knowl who the edge and skill in their own art, at same time are men of wide literary cultu re and far- ranging practical interests . In striking contrast to Celsus as regards width of knowl edge and literary skill, though no less famous in the the history of his own art, is his contemporary, celebrated De Ar elzite etur a architect Vitruvius Pollio . The ten books ,

A u 1 B . C . dedicated to ugust s about the year 4 , are the single important work on classical architecture which has come down from the ancient world, and, as such, have been the object of continuous professional study from the Renaissance down to the present day . But their V reputation is not due to any literary merit . itruvius, however able as an architect, was a man of little general w His knowledge, and far from handy ith his pen . style varies between immoderate diffuseness and obscure brevity ; sometimes he is barely intelligible, and he never writes with grace . Where in his introductory chapters or else h he in w ere ventures beyond his strict province, his writ g ’ Tbe E la e r S eneca . is that of a half-educated man who has lost simplicity without acquiring skill . Among the innumerable rhetoricians of this age one L Annaeus S only requires formal notice, ucius eneca of the Cordova, the father of the famous philosopher, and His n grandfather of the poet Lucan . lo g life reached from before the outbreak of war betwee rflCaesar and Pomp eius k h . His x till after the deat of Tiberius only e tant wor , h the h a collection of t emes treated in schools of r etoric, the S was written in his old age, after fall of ejanus, and bears witness to the amaz ing power of memory which he tells us himself was, when in its prime, absolutely How unique . much of his life was spent at Rome is As had h the uncertain . a young man he eard all greatest orators of the time except Cicero ; and up to the end of his life he could repeat word for word and without ff wh e ort whole passages, if not ole speeches, to which i he had listened many years before . H s ten books of Contr over siae i h are only extant in a mut lated form, w ich comprises thirty-fiv e out of seventy- four themes ; to these S u asor iae h al is prefixed a single book of , w ich is so imperfect . The work is a mine of information for the u A history of rhetoric nder ugustus and Tiberius, and ane c incidentally includes many interesting quotations, dotes, and criticisms . But we feel in reading it that we e have passed definitely away from the Golden Age . Y t once more they have forgotten to speak the Latin tongue ” L E at Rome . The atinity of the later mpire is as distinct from that of the Augustan age as this last is from the

L . S atinity of the Republic eneca , it is true, was not an Italian by birth ; but it is just this influx of the provinces into literature, which went on under the early Empire with continually accelerating force, that determined what

the L . S type new atinity should take Gaul, pain, and

Africa are henceforth side by side with Italy, and Italy herself sinks towards the level of a province . Within thirty L atin L ite ra tur e . years of the death of the elder Seneca “ the fatal secret of empire, that Emperors could be made elsewhere than ” S at Rome, was discovered by the panish and German legions ; of hardly less moment was the other discovery, that Latin cou ld be written in another than the Roman manner. In literature no less than in politics the discovery the the meant the final breaking up of old world, and slow birth of a new one through alternate torpors and agonies . It might already have been said of Rome, in the a words of a poet of four hundred ye rs later, that she had made a city of what had been a world . But in this z absorption of the world into a single citi enship, the city itself was ceasing to be a world of its own ; and with - ur bs u r ba nus ser mo the self centred passed away the , that austere and noble language which was the finest flower of her civilisation .

N N THE ROME OF NERO : SENECA, LUCA , PETRO IUS .

h - THE later years of t e julio Claudian dynasty, while they brought about the complete transformation of the govern a laid the fo undations ment into an absolute monarchy, also for that reign of the philosophers which had been dreamed b h h had of y Plato, and w ic never been so nearly realised m as it was in Ro e during the second century after Christ .

The Stoical philosophy, passing beyond the limits of the schools to become at once a religious creed and a practical

code of morals for everyday use, penetrated deeply into At the life of Rome . first associated with the aristocratic h opposition to the imperial government, it passed throug a period of persecution which only strengthened and con h The solidated its growt . final struggle took place under D the hil omitian, whose edict of y ear 94, expelling all p oso he r s p from Rome, was followed two years afterwards by his

assassination and the establishment, for upwards of eighty

years, of a government deeply imbued with the principles

of Stoicism . Of the men who set this revolution in motion by their w a writings, the earliest and the most distinguished s Lucius e u f h Anna s S O t e . h eneca, the son rhetorician T ough only

‘ the he r of second rank as a classic , is a figure of ve y great importance in the history of human thought from the work the he did in the exposition of new creed . As a practical 1 71 I I L L atin L iter atur e . [

exponent of morals, he stands, with Plutarch, at the head

of all Greek and Roman writers . The life of Seneca was one of singularly dramatic con

tr H e B . C. asts and vicissitudes . was born in the year 4 , at C h ordova, w ere, at a somewhat advanced age, his father H and brou ht had married elvia, a lady of high birth, g g up

in the strictest family traditions . Through the influence ’ of his mother s family (her sister had married Vitrasius who x V E Pollio, for si teen years was iceroy of gypt), the im the way was easy to h for advancement in public service . i But delicate health, which continued throughout his l fe, kept him as a young man from taking more than a nominal

share in administrative work. He passed into the senate

the - through quaestorship, and became a well known figure n at court during the reign of Caligula. O the accession of C Claudius, he was banished to orsica at the instance of the E M mpress essalina, on the charge of being the favoured ’ Livilla C . lover of julia , aligula s youngest sister Whether h the scandal which connected his name with ers, or with A i that of her sister grippina, had any other foundat on than the prurient gossip which raged round all the members of the imperial family may well be doubted ; but when e xe c u Agrippina married Claudius, after the downfall and

tion of Messalina seven years later, she recalled him from h exile, obtained his nomination to the quaestors ip , and D h appointed him tutor to her son omitius Nero, t en a boy S of ten . The influence gained by eneca, an accomplished w courtier and a clever man of the world, as ell as a brilliant

scholar, over his young pupil was for a long time almost unbounded and when Nero became Emperor at the age of S seventeen, eneca, in conjunction with his close friend, franius n A Burrus, comma der of the imperial guards , became E Hi practically the administrator of the mpire . s philosophy was not one which rejected wealth or power ; a fortune of three million pounds may have been amassed without

absolute dishonesty, or even forced upon him, as he pleads

L a tin L iter at ur e .

So are totally without any scientific value . , too , the twenty L books of moral letters, nominally addressed to ucilius, the ri procurator of Sicily, merely represent a slight va ation On A n er On of method from the more formal treatises, g ,

Cle menc n onsola tion On Peace o blind On the Snor t y , O C , f , ness o L i e O n ivin a nd R eceivin Favour s f f , G g g , which are ’ the main substance of Seneca s writings .

‘

As S . a moral writer, eneca stands deservedly high h h hi T oug infected with the rhetorical vices of the age, s

treatises are full of striking and often gorgeous eloquence, w and in their combination of high thought ith deep feeling,

as . have rarely, if at all, been surp sed The rhetorical ’ manner was so essentially part of Seneca s nature, that the warm colouring and perpetual mannerism of his language

does not imply any insincerity or want of earnestness . h In spite of t e laboured style, there is no failure either in

lucidity or in force, and even where the rhetoric is most “ profuse , it seldom is without a solid basis of thought . It ” e would not be asy, says a modern scholar, who was

himself averse to all ornament of diction, and deeply “ penetrated with the spirit of Stoicism, to name any modern writer who has treated on morality and has said so h muc that is practically good and true, or has treated the

matter in so attractive a way. In the moral writings we have the picture of Seneca the philosopher Seneca the courtier is less attractively presented A ocoloc ntosis in the curious pamphlet called the p y , a silly the E C s and spiteful attack on memory of the mperor laudiu , written to make the laughter of an afternoon at the court

of Nero . The gross bad taste of this satire is hardly t relieved by any great wit in the treatment, and the repu a tion of the author would stand higher if it had not survived

the occasion for which it was written. Among Seneca’s extant works are also included nine

tragedies, written in imitation of the Greek, upon the well wom At subjects of the epic cycle . what period of his life I . ] I 7S

As they were written cannot be ascertained . a rule, only young authors had courage enough to attempt the dis credited task of flogging this dead horse ; but it is not improbable that these dramas were written by Seneca‘ in ’ m l z ature ife, in deference to his imperial pupil s cra e for ll h his the stage . A the r etorical vices of prose are here

x h r e aggerated . The tragedies are totally wit out d amatic d e c lamatbr life, consisting merely of a series of y speeches, ve rsific ation in correct but monotonous , interspersed with ff choruses, which only di er from the speeches by being r written in ly ic metres instead of the iambic . To say that the w tragedies are ithout merit would be an overstatement, for S eneca, though no poet, remained even in his poetry an extremely able m an of letters and an accomplished His rhetorician . declamation comes in the same tones his from all puppets ; but it is often grandiose, and some h h times really fine . The lines wit w ich the curtain falls in M edea V his remind one, by their startling audacity, of ictor As L Hugo in his most Titanic vein . the only extant atin h i had a ff tragedies, t ese p eces great e ect upon the early in E h drama of the sixteenth century ngland and elsew ere . In the well- known verses prefixed to the first folio Shake ” r him C spea e, Jonson calls on of ordova dead, in the same breath with Aeschylus and Euripides ; and long after the a the J cobean period false tradition remained which, by ' ''- - pti ttifigT e se lifeless copies on the same footing as their stultifie d great originals, perplexed and literary criticism , much as the criticism of classical art was confused by an age which drew no distinction between late Gracco - Roman h sculpture and the finest work of Praxiteles or P eidias. By far the most brilliant poet of the Neronian age was ’ i M Annaeu s Lu . H s h Seneca s nephew, arcus canus fat er, Annaeus M ela, the younger brother of the philosopher, is known chiefly through his more distingu ished son ; an interesting but puz z ling notice in a life of Lucan speaks of him as famous at Rome from his pursuit of quiet .the I e 111 . 76 L atin L itera tu r . [

f life . This may imply refusal of some great o fice when his elder brother was practically ruler of the Empire what ever stirrings of ambition he suppressed broke out with ’ Luc an s accumulated force in his son . short life was one

At - i of feverish activity. twenty one he made his first publ c Po m eius sensation by the recitation, in the theatre of p , of

a panegyric on Nero, who had already murdered his own ’ h had mot er, but not yet broken with the poet s uncle . he Soon afterwards, was advanced to the quaestorship, and a seat in the college of Augurs : but his brilliant poetical reputation seems to have excited the jealousy of the artist

emperor ; a violent quarrel broke out between them , and L ucan, already in theory an ardent republican, became one

of the principal movers in the conspiracy of Piso . The plan discussed among the conspirators of assassinating h Nero w ile in the act of singing on the stage would, no

doubt, commend itself specially to the young poet whom the the Emperor had forbidden to recite in public . When ’ Luc an conspiracy was detected, s fortitude soon gave way ;

he betrayed one accomplice after another, one of the first

A . names he surrendered being that of his mother, cilia

The promise of pardon, under which his confessions were e obtained, was not kept aft r they were completed ; and

L - six the execution of ucan, at the age of twenty , while h it cut s ort a remarkable poetical career, rid the world of ff a very poor creature . The final e ort of bravado with

which he died, declaiming a passage from his own epic, was small ground for Shelley to name him in the same verse with

Sydney and Chatterton . P/za r salia L Yet the , the only large work which ucan left

complete, or all but complete, among a number of essays ff the in di erent styles of poetry, and only work of his

which has been preserved, is a poem which, in spite of its

immaturity and bad taste, compels admiration by its eleva

tion of thought and sustained brilliance of execution . Pure u rhetoric has, perhaps, never come q ite so near being

I 8 7 L atin L ite ra tur e .

and Stoical philosophies according to the convenience of

the moment . Great events and actions do not kindle in him any imaginative sympathy ; they are greedily seiz ed as opportunities for more and more immoderate flights of H e extravagant embellishment . prates of mountains “ his phrase conjures the wandering stars, and makes them

e - stand like wond r wounded hearers freedom , virtue, fate, the the sea and sun , gods and men before whom the gods h h the t emselves stand abased, hurtle t rough poem in a con

of . S fused thunder sonorous phrase uch brilliance, in the

h m z z exact manner that was t en most ad ired, da led his contemporaries and retained a permanent influence over

. S u later poets tatius, himself an a thor of far higher poetical ft gi s, speaks of him in terms of almost extravagant admira tion with a more balanced judgment Quintilian sums him up in words which may be taken as on the whole the final criticism adopted by the world ; a r de ns e t concita tus et

sententiis cla r issirnus et u t dicam uod sentio ma is or a tor i , , g , g bus ua m oetis imita ndus g p . ’ O ne of L uc an s intimate friends was a young man of A lac c us Volate rrae E r high family, ulus Persius F of in tru ia,

A F c . a near relation of the celebrated rria, wife of a tus Through his kinswoman he was early introduced to the circle of earnest thinkers and moralists among whom the higher life was kept up at Rome amid the corrup tion of

the Neronian age . The gentle and delicate boy won the

h . hearts of all w o knew him When he died, at the age of

- twenty eight, a little book of six satires, which he had h ff was written wit much e ort and at long intervals, retouched S C by his master, the toic philosopher ornutus, and published C by another friend, aesius Bassus, himself a poet of some S reputation . everal other writings which Persius left were

destroyed by the advice of Cornutus . The six pieces only between six and seven hundred lines in all —were at once recognised as showing a refined and uncommon literary gift . Persius, we are informed, had no admiration s i P e r us . 1 79

s S for the geniu of eneca ; and, indeed, no two styles, though h both are deeply artificial, could be more unlike one anot er . S With all his moral elevation, eneca was a courtier, an : S opportunist, a man of the world toicism took a very n different colour in the boy of maide ly modesty, as his who h u h biographer tells us, lived in a o se old of devoted and w female relations, only kne the world as a remote h h own spectator . T ough wit in the narrow field of his experience he shows keen observation and delicate power he of portraiture, the world that knows is mainly one of books his perpetual imitations of Horace are not so much plagiarisms as the unaffected outcome of the mind of a S a tir es H w very young student, to whom the of orace ere o more familiar than the Rome of his own day. S , too, the involved and obscure style which has made him the paradise of commentators is less a deliberate literary artifice than the natural effect of looking at everything through a literary medium, and choosing phrases, not for His their own fitness, but for the associations they recall . deep moral earnestness, his gentleness of nature, and, it his must be added, want of humour, made him a favourite author beyond the circles which were merely attracted by his verbal obscurities and the way in which he locks up His his meaning in hints and allusions . unquestionable dramatic power might, in later life, have ripened into really e great achievement as it is, he lives to us chi fly in the few beautiful passages where he slips into being natural, and draws, with a grace and charm that are strikingly absent wn from the rest of his writing, the picture of his o quiet life as a student, and of the awakening of his moral and intellectual nature at the touch of philosophy. Lucan and Persius represent the effect which Roman Stoicism had on two natures of equal sensibility but widely A different quality and taste . mong the many other pro ors S fe ss or adherents of the toic school in the age of Nero, a considerable number were also authors, but the habit of L atin L iter a tu r e .

h h writing in Greek, w ich a undred years later grew to such proportions as to threaten the continued existence of Latin The literature, had already taken root . three most dis tin uish h S C g ed representatives of t e stricter toicism , ornutus, Se xtius Musoniu s Quintus , and Gaius Rufus (the first and last of whom were exiled by Nero) wrote on philosophy h h L in Greek, t ough t ey seem to have written in atin on M usoniu other subjects . s was, indeed, hardly more Roman

h w u o n E . t an his most ill strious pupil, the Phrygian pictetus S it le ft toicism, as they understood , , no room for nationality,

and little for writing as a fine art . This growing prevalence of Greek at Rome combined with political reasons to check the production of important H prose works . istory more especially languished under

th i ~ e jealous censorship of the government . The only m portant historical work of the period is one of which the the L i e o Ale a nde subject could hardly excite suspicion, f f x r

tlze G r ea t C . , by Quintus urtius Rufus The precise date is ff uncertain, and di erent theories have assigned it to an A earlier or later period in the reign of ugustus or of Vespasian . The subject is one which hardly any degree of dulness in

the writer could make wholly uninteresting . But the clear and C r orderly narrative of urtius, w itten in a style studied L from that of ivy, but kept within simpler limits, has real merit of its own ; and against his imperfect technical knowledge of campaigns and battles must be set the pains

he took to consult the best Greek authorities . Memoirs were wr itten in the Neronian age by numbers the A both of men and women . Those of Empress grippina were used by Tacitus and we have references to others by

the two great Roman generals of the period, Suetonius Pau r ul The linus and Domitius Co b o . production of scientific h or technical treatises, w ich had been so profuse in the

. im preceding generation, still went on Only two of any Clzor o a lzia portance are extant ; one of these, the g r p of P m onius M m o p ela, a geographical anual based on the

L a tin L iter a t u r e .

by later poets of high original gift ; but that even poets of the second and third rate should hardly ever have attempted to imitate poems which stood in the very first ’ rank of fame bears striking testimony to Virgil s singular E clo ues Cal urniu quality of unapproachableness . The g of p s E u i (six of them are clog es within the ord nary meaning, the seventh rather a brief Georgic on the care of sheep and n i goats, made formally a pastoral by bei g put nto the mouth

of an old shepherd sitting in the shade at midday) are, V notwithstanding their almost servile imitation of irgil, r r w itten in such graceful verse, and with so few se ious lapses of m a taste, that they y be read with considerable pleasure. u E u The pict re , in the sixth clog e, of the fawn lying among E the white lilies, will recall to nglish readers one of the M prettiest fancies of arvell ; that in the second, of Flora ri scattering her tresses over the sp ng meadow, and Pomona

playing under the orchard boughs, is at least a vivid ffi l - A pictorial presentment of a su ciently we l worn theme . ’ more normal specimen of Calpurnius manner may be 2—62 instanced in the lines (v. 5 ) where one of the most ' Geo c beautiful passages in the third m , the description of

the a l- a long summer day among Itali n hil pastures, is

simply copied in different words . Aetna The didactic poem on volcanoes, called , probably written by the Lucilius to whom Seneca addressed his n writings on atural philosophy, belongs to the same period u f and shows the same infl ences . O the other minor poetical works of the time the only one which requires special e Oc tavia m ntion is the tragedy of , which is written in

the same style as those of Seneca, and was long included

among his works . Its only interest is as the single extant abu la r a etex ta specimen of the f p , or drama with a Roman c subject and characters . The haracters here include Nero m and Seneca himself. But the treat ent is as conventional and declamatory as that of the mythological tragedies h among whic it has been preserved, and the result, if

n m . possible, eve flatter and ore tedious Pe t oni s r u .

O ne other work of extreme and unique interest survives n the from the reig of Nero, fragments of a novel by ’ u A E Petroni s rbiter, one of the mperor s intimate circle in 66 the excesses of his later years . In the year he fell a victim to the jealousy of the infamous and all but omnipotent Tigellinus and on this occasion Tacitus sketches his life

and character in a few of his strong masterly touches . ” “ His days were passed, says Tacitus, in sleep, his nights in the duties or pleasures of life ; where others toiled for he fame he had lounged into it, and had the reputation not, rofli ate like most members of that p g society, of a dissolute

in . A wanton , but of a trained master luxury sort of

- careless ease, an entire absence of self consciousness, added

the charm of complete simplicity to all he said and did . h Yet, as governor of Bit ynia, and afterwards as consul, he showed himself a vigorous and capable administrator then

relapsing into the habit of assuming the mask of vice, he was adopted as Arbiter of Elegance into the small circle of ’ luxur h Nero s intimate companions ; no . y was c arming or i refined till Petron us had given it his approval, and the jealousy of Tigellinus was roused against a r ival and master ” the in science of debauchery . The novel written by this remarkable man was in the h form of an autobiograp y narrating the adventures, in l Th various Ita ian towns , of a Greek freedman . e fragments hardly enable us to trace any regular plot ; its interest probably lay chiefly in the series of vivid pictures which it presented of life among all orders of society from the

highest to the lowest, and its accurate reproduction of

popular language and manners . The hero of the story uses the L h ordinary atin speech of educated persons, t ough, s I S from the nature of the work, the tyle much more colloquial a u than th t of the formal prose used for serious writing . B t the conversation of many of the characters is in the plebeius se r /no the the h , actual speech of lower orders, of w ich so little survives in literature . It is full of solecisms and L a tin L iteratu re .

popular slang and where the scene lies, as it mostly does in

- S the extant fragments, in the semi Greek seaports of outhern h Italy, it passes into w at was almost a dialect of its own,

li u a r a ca E the ng f n of the Mediterranean under the mpire, a dialect of mixed Latin and Greek . The longest and most important fragment is the well- known S upper of

Tr imalch o . the i It is description , full of brilliant wit, of a dinner- party given by a sort of Golden Dustman and w who his ife, people of low birth and little education,

had . Trimalc hio come into an enormous fortune , a figure n drawn with extraordi ary life, is constantly making himself ff a ridiculous by his blunders and a ect tions, while he almost wins our liking by his childlike simplicity and good nature . d The inner itself, and the conversation on literature and

- art that goes on at the dinner table, are conceived in a Trimalc hio has spirit of the wildest humour . , who two libraries, besides everything else handsome about him, is ” . Can anxious to air his erudition you tell us a story, he “ H asks a guest, of the twelve sorrows of ercules, or how the Cyclops pulled Ulysses ’ leg ? I used to read them in ” H . A omer when I was a boy fter an interruption, caused ff by the entrance of a boar, roasted whole and stu ed with sausages, he goes on to talk of his collection of plate ; his u nique cups of Corinthian bronz e (so called from a dealer named Corinthus ; the metal was invented by Hannibal at n the capture of Troy ), and his huge silver vases, a hu dred ” D of them , more or less, chased with the story of aedalus h s utting Niobe into the Trojan horse, and Cassandra killing he r h sons the dead children so good, you would t ink they were alive ; for I sell my knowledge in matters of art " h for no money. Presently t ere follow the two wonderful

- ghost stories that of the wer wolf, told by one of the guests, and that of the witches by Tr imalc hio himself in return A both masterpieces of vivid realism . s the evening advances f k the fun becomes more ast and furious . The coo , who '1 had excelled himself in the ingenuity of his dishes, is calle

THE SILVER AGE : STATIUS THE ELDER PLIN MARTIAL , Y, ,

QUINTI LIAN .

To the age of the rhetoricians succeeded the age of the

. S scholars Quintilian, Pliny, and tatius, the h u aut ors of the Flavia dynasty, have co ; m great learning and sober judgment which“ give the a f certain mutual a finity, and divide them ply from their ff A n immediate predecessors . The e ort the ugusta writers had exhausted itself ; the new 5 0 rather aimed h " h at reproducing t eir manner . In the ands of inferior writers this attempt only issued in tame imitations ; but with those of really original power it carried the Latin of the Silver Age to a point higher in quality than it ever the reached, except in single case of Tacitus, a writer of

unique genius who stands in a class of his own . The reigns of the three Flavian emperors nearly occupy h the last thirty years of t e first century after Christ . The o f E w year . four mperors which passed bet een the down fall o f Nero and the accession of Vespasian had shaken E The the whole mpire to its foundations . recovery from that shock left the Roman world established on a new

n . footi g In literature, no less than in government and

finance, a feverish period of inflated credit had brought it At to the verge of ruin . the beginning of his reign Vespasian announced a deficit of four hundred million pounds (a sum the like of which had never been hear d of 1 86 I I . ] S ta tiu s . before) in the public exchequer some similar estimate might have been formed by a fanciful analogy of the ha collapse that d to be made good in literature , when style could no longer bear the tremendous overd rafts made on And the it by Seneca and Lucan . in literary as in the political world there was no complete recovery throughout the second century we have to trace the gradual decline of letters going on alongside of that mysterious decay of the Empire itself before which a continuously admirable govern

ment was all but helpless . a inius the Publius P p Statius, the most eminent of poets h the the of t is age , was born towards end of reign of h the Tiberius, and seems to ave died before accession of H is D Nerva . poetry can all be assigned to the reign of omi

the . As tian, or few years immediately preceding it to his f h li e little is known, probably because it passed wit out H e much incident . was born at Naples, and returned to it in advanced age after the completion of his T/zebaid ; w but the greater part of his life was spent at Rome, here his father was a grammarian of some distinction who had D He had acted for a time as tutor to omitian . thus access h nu to the court, w ere he improved his opportunities by stinted adulation of the Emperor and his favourite eunuch rinu Ea s. The curious mediaeval tradition of his conversion h u D in to C ristianity, which is so finely sed by ante the

P u r a tor io n g , ca not be traced to its origin , and does not h appear to have any istorical foundation . Twelve years were spent by Statius over his epic poem h on the War of T ebes, which was published about the year

2 D i . A 9 , with a florid dedication to om tian fter its com l ti n p e o he began another epic, on an even more imposing A the h the scale, on the life of chilles and w ole of Trojan f h Ac/zilleid war . O t is only the first and part of the second book were ever completed ; had it continued on the same scale it would have been the longest of Greek or At the Latin epics . various times after publication of the L a i t n L ite r a tu r e .

T/zebaid Silvae appeared the five books of , miscellaneous and occasional poems on different subjects, often of a A h the D personal nature . not er epic, on campaign of omi

h as . tian in Germany, not been preserved fi reba d The i became very famous ; later poets, like

A . usonius or Claudian, constantly imitate it Its smooth v e rsific ation , copious diction , and sustained elegance made it a sort of canon of poetical technique . But, itself, it rises h h beyond the merely mec anical level . Wit out any quality h t at can quite be called genius, Statius had real poetical His feeling . taste preserves him from any great e xtrava gances ; and among much tedious rhetoric and cumbrous m u ythology, there is eno gh of imagination and pathos to the i make poem nteresting and even charming . At a time when Guercino and the Caracci were counted great masters the Tnebaid in sister art, the was also held to be a master piece . Besides complete versions by inferior hands, both Pope and Gray took the pains to translate portions of it E into nglish verse, and it is perpetually quoted in the the literature of eighteenth century. It is, indeed, perhaps h its severest condemnation t at it reads best in quotations. m Not only the ore highly elaborated passages, but almost m any passage taken at rando , may be read with pleasure and admiration ; those who have had the patience to read h it through, however muc they may respect the continuous

“ h ier usa excellence of its workmans ip , will (as with the G lemme Liber ata of Tasso) feel nearly as much respect for h h th their own ac ievement as for t at of e poet . The S ilvae , consisting as they do of comparatively short

S advan pieces , display the excellences of tatius to greater f the h - tage . O t irty two poems, six are in lyric metres, the rest being all written in the smooth graceful hexameters of which the author of the Tbebaid was so accomplished The m a master . subjects, for the ost part of a familiar

. A ff nature, are very various touching and a ectionate poem C to his wife laudia is one of the best known . Several

L a tin L ite ra tur e .

I nde veni : nee te tatas infunder e pennas L uminibus compello meis Izoc tur ba p recatur mine vir ae L aetior ; ex tr enzae me ta nge cacu g ,

u c t a u t le er sus enso o lite tr a nsi. S fi i , vit p p p

Were the three lines beginning Uncle eg o sufi ciam struck out — and one might almost fancy them to have been in se rte d later by an unhappy second thought the remainder

of this poem would be as perfect as it is unique . The famous sonnet of Wordsworth on the same subject must at once occur to an English reader ; but the poem in its tw manner, especially in the dying cadence of the last o

lines, recalls even more strongly some of the finest sonnets ” “ Had w h of Keats . Statius ritten often t us , in the words “ Johnson uses of Gray, it had been vain to blame , and " useless to praise him . The two other epic poets contemporary with Statius V lac c us S en whose works are extant, alerius F and ilius Itali s,

belong generally to the same school, but stand on a much

lower level of excellence . The former is only known as

r u a An the author of the A g ona tic . allusion in the proem of his epic to the recent destruction of Jerusalem by Titus 0 in the year 7 , and another in a later book to the great V the ‘ oe m eruption of esuvius in 79 , fix the date of p and the D Quintilian, writing in later years of omitian, refers to ’ the poet s recent death . From another passage in the A rg ona u tica it has been inferred that Flac c us was one of

h uind e c e mvirs . t e college of q , and therefore of high family The A rg onau tica follows the well- known poem of Apollonius hodius ff R , but by his di use rhetorical treatment the author expands the story to such a length that in between five and six thousand lines he has only got as far as the escape of lc h H Jason and Medea from Co os. ere the poem breaks off abruptly in the eighth book ; it was probably meant to A o consist of twelve, and to end with the return of the rg

n . he na ts to Greece In all respects, except t choice of I L i ] S lius I taliens . 1 9 1

lac c us far subject, Valerius F is inferior to Statius . He cannot indeed wholly destroy the perennial charm of the

story of the Golden Fleece, but he comes as near doing so His v ersific ation as is reasonably possible . is correct, but without freedom or variety ; and incidents and persons are alike presented through a cloud of monotonous and

mechanical rhetoric . If Valerius Flacons to some degree redeemed his imagi of other e ic native poverty by the choice his subject, the p F i C S poet of the lav an era, Tiberius atins ilius Italiens, chose a subject whic h no ingenuity could have ad apted to His P a nic War ma epic treatment . y fairly contend for the distinction of being the worst epic ever written ; and its author is the most striking example in Latin literature H e of. the incorrigible amateur . had, in earlier life, passed ‘ through a distinguished o flic ial career ; he was consul the the year before the fall of Nero, and in political revolutions f h which ollowed conducted himself wit such prudence that, V through an intimate friend of itellius, he remained in A favour under Vespasian . fter a term of further service as A n proconsul of sia, he retired to a dig ified and easy leisure . His love of literature was sincere ; he prided himself on ’ a c owning one of Cicero s villas, and the l nd whi h held ' Virgil s grave, and he was a generous patron to men of lsome letters . The fii compliments paid to him by Martial (who has the e flronte ry to speak of him as a combined are Virgil and Cicero) , no doubt, only an average specimen of the atmosphere which surrounded so m unific ent a patron but the admiration which he openly expressed for the slave

’ i e/lum c E h m . B P u m um pictetus does a truer honour The ,

Od sse . in seventeen books, is longer than the y y It closely follows the history as told by Livy ; but the elements of almost epic grandeur in the contest between Rome and H a s ar m m annib l all di appe amid asses of tedious achinery . h Wit out any invention or constructive power of his own, Silius copies with tasteless pedantry all the outworn traditions I 2 r 9 L atin L ite ra tu e .

H V ‘ of the heroic epic . What omer or irgil has done, he D must needs do too . The Romans are the ardanians or ’ the Ae ne ad ae : Juno interferes in Hannibal s favour, and V h the Trebia enus , idden in a cloud, watches battle of the H k from a hill . annibal is urged to war by a dream li e that of Agamemnon in the I liad ; he is equipped with a spear

fatal to many thousands of the enemy, and a shield, like A C that of eneas, embossed with subjects from arthaginian h E the d istory, and with the river bro flowing round e ge as an ingenious variant of the Ocean-river on the shield A r off of Achilles . Carthaginian fleet c uising the coast of

Italy falls in with Proteus, who takes the opportunity of H prophesying the course of the war . annibal at Zama S pursues a phantom of cipio, which flies before him and A disappears like that of eneas before Turnus . Such was the degradation to which the noble epic machinery had S now sunk . oon after the death of Silius the poem seems to have fallen into merited oblivion ; there is a single u reference to it in a poet of the fifth cent ry, and thereafter it remained unknown or unheard of until a manuscript discovered by Poggio Bracciolini brought it to light again early in the fifteenth century. Curiatius Maternus The works of the other Flavian poets, . , ale ius Arruntius S Sul ic ia S Bassus, tella, and the poetess p , are lost ; all else that survives of the verse of the period d ff is the work of a writer of a i erent order, but of consider

M . able importance and value, the epigrammatist artial By no means a poet of the first rank, hardly perhaps a poet at all according to any strict definition, he has yet a genius of his own which for many ages m ade him the chief and l almost the sole model for a particu ar kind of literature . Marcus Valerius Martialis was born at Augusta Bilbilis in Central Spain towards the end of the reign of Tiberius . He came to Rome as a young man during the reign of S L Nero, when his countrymen, eneca and ucan , were at the height of their reputation . Through their patronage

I t e 111 . 94 L a tin L ite ra u r . [

E i r a ms of modern times . But the twelve books of p g , while they include work of all degrees of goodness and badness, are invaluable from the vivid picture which they give of

actual daily life at Rome in the first century . Few writers of equal ability show in their work such a total absence of h h ff a c aracter, suc indi erence to all ide s or enthusiasms yet this very quality makes the verse of Martial a more

perfect mirror of the external aspects of Roman life . A certain intolerance of hypocrisy is the nearest approach His Martial ever makes to moral feeling. perpetual flattery D — i of omitian , though gross as a mountain t generally takes the S form of comparing him with the upreme Being, to the disadvantage of the latter — has no more serious political import than there is serious moral import in the almost e unexampled indecency of a large proportion of the pigrams. The “ candour noted in him by Pliny is simply that of a sheet of paper which is indifferent to what is written upon H e — it, fair or foul . may claim the merit nor is it an

- f inconsiderable one o being totally free from pretence .

In one of the most graceful of his poems, he enumerates “ to a friend the things which make up a happy life : Be

yourself, and do not wish to be something else, is the line

which sums up his counsel . To his own work he extends the same easy tolerance with which he views the follies and A ff vices of society . few good, some indi erent, the greater number bad so he describes his epigrams what opening is left after this for hostile criticism ? If elsewhere he hints that only indolence prevented him from producing more ff t important work, so harmless an a ecta ion may be passed over in a writer whose clearness of observation and mastery

of slight but lifelike portraiture are really of a high order . By one of the curious accidents of literary history L l Martial, as the only atin epigrammatist who left a arge ,

mass of work, gave a meaning to the word epigram from now which it is only beginning to recover. The art, practised with S uch infinite grace by Greek artists of almost T l r P lin 1 be E de y . 9 5

u every age between Solon and Justinian, was j st at this period sunk to a low ebb . The contemporary Greek epigrammatists whose work is preserved in the Palatine Nic arc hus L S Anthology, from and ucilius to trato, all show the same heaviness of handling and the same tiresome ’ m n h M insistence on aki g a point, w ich prevent artial s epigrams from being placed in the first rank . But while in any collection of Greek epigrammatic poetry these authors h M the naturally sink to t eir own place, artial, as well by hi u mere mass of s work some twelve h ndred pieces in all, exclusive of the cracker mottoes as by his animation and h pungent wit, set a narrow and rat er disastrous type for H e later literature . appealed strongly to all that was worst

— - in Roman taste its heavy handedness, its admiration of H verbal cleverness , its tendency towards brutality . alf a V C h century later, erus aesar, t at wretched creature whom H adrian had adopted as his successor, and whose fortunate the E A death left mpire to the noble rule of ntoninus Pius, called Martial “ his Virgil the incident is highly significant of the corruption of taste which in the course of the second century concurred with other causes to bring Latin literature to decay and almost to extinction . h Among the learned Romans of t is age of great learning,

' aetatis su a e d octzssimus i the elder Pliny, , eas ly took the first i place . Born in the middle of the re gn of Tiberius, Gaius Plinius Secundus of Comum passed his life in high public h him employments, bot military and civil, which took successively over nearly all the provinces of the Empire . D H e served in Germany, in the anubian provinces, in A S Spain, in Gaul, in frica, and probably also in yria, on

f . A the sta f of Titus, during the Jewish war In ugust of the year 79 he was in command of the fleet stationed at Mise num when the memorable eruption of Vesuvius took his z he place . In eal for scientific investigation set sail for

' -o f- lin eiin z the spot in a man war, and, g g too near the one ’

he ff rain of . of t eruption, was su ocated by the hot ashes 1 96 L a tin L ite rature .

h his The account of his deat , given by nephew in a letter the to the historian Tacitus, is one of best known passages

in the classics . m m By amaz ing industry and a ost rigid economy of ti e, Pliny combined with his continuous official duties an immense reading and a literary production of great scope A x o and value . hundred and si ty v lumes of his extracts

from writers of all kinds, written, we are told, on both sides

of the paper in an extremely small hand, were bequeathed

him w . by to his nephe Besides works on grammar, rhetoric, he military tactics, and other subjects, wrote two important the w the histories one, in twenty books, on ars on German

- frontier, the other a general history of Rome in thirty one the r h books, from the accession of Nero to joint t iump of Vespasian and Titus after the subjugation of the Jewish h h revolt . Bot t ese valuable works are completely lost, nor is it possible to determine how far their substance S reappears in Tacitus and uetonius the former, however,

' Annals a nd H iston es in both , repeatedly cites him as an

authority. But we fortunately possess the most important

- h N a tu r al Histo . of his works, the t irty seven books of his ry w This is not, indeed, a great ork of literature, though its m style, while sometimes heavy and sometimes annered, is h on the whole plain, straig tforward, and unpretentious ; but it is a priceless storehouse of information on every

branch of natural science as known to the ancient world . It was published with a dedication to Titus two years before ’ Pliny s death; but continued during the rest of his life to his receive additions and corrections . It was compiled

from a vast reading . Nearly five hundred authors (about fi the a hundred and fty Roman, rest foreign) are cited in his he catalogue of authorities . T plan of this great encyclopedia was carefully thought out before its composition was begun . It opens with a general system of physiography, and then passes successively to geography, anthropology, ol z human physi ogy, oology and comparative physiology,

L a tin L iter a tu re .

He so largely in the history of the first century . was educated at Rome, and afterwards returned to his native m town as a teacher of rhetoric . There he made, or i proved, the acquaintance of Servius Sulpicius Galba, proconsul of

Tarrac one nsian Spain in the later years of Nero . When E the Galba was declared mperor by senate, he took

Quintilian with him to Rome. There he was appointed the a public teacher of rhetoric, with a salary from privy H e purse . retained his fame and his favour through the D h succeeding reigns . omitian made him tutor to t e two

- he grand nephews whom destined for his own successors, hi and raised m to consular rank . For about twenty years he remained the most celebrated teacher in the capital, combining his professorship with a large amount of actual

h - His pleading in t e law courts . published works belong the had to later years of his life, when he retired from the His bar and from public teaching . first important treatise, De Causis or r u tae E lo uentiae on the decay of oratory, C p q , followe d a is not extant . It was , few years later, in or the I nstitu tio Or a toria about year 93, by his great work, the , which sums up the teaching and criticism of his life .

The contents of this work, which at once became the final and standard treatise on the theory and practice of

L m . atin oratory, are very elaborate and co plete In the

first book, Quintilian discusses the preliminary training required before the pupil is ready to enter on the study of his art, beginning with a sketch of the elementary education the the of child from time he leaves the nursery, which is no even w of remarkable interest . The second book deals th with e general principles and scope of the art of oratory, and continues the discussion of the aims and methods of education in its later stages . The five books from the third to the seventh are occupied with an exhaustive treatment of the matter of oratory, under the heads of what were known to the Roman schools by the names of invention '

dis osition. of and p The greater part of these books is, i i i 1 Qu nt l an. 99

h . course , highly tec nical The next four books, from the the h eighth to elevent , treat of the manner of oratory, or all that is included in the word sty le in its widest signific a

tion . It is in this part of the treatise that Quintilian, in relation to the course of general reading both in Greek and h Latin that s ould be pursued by the young orator, gives the masterly sketch of Latin literature which is the most the famous portion of whole work . The twelfth book, he which concludes t work, reverts to education in the i h ghest and most extended sense, that of the moral quali a he i n fic tions of t great orator, and the exhaustive disc pli e of the whole nature throughout life which must be con th tinned unfalteringly to e end . Now that the formal study of rhetoric has ceased to be

a part of the higher education, the more strictly technical ’ w the R hetor ic of parts of Quintilian s ork, like those of A l ristotle , have, in a great measure, ost their relevance to

actual life, and with it their general interest to the world

at large . Both the Greek and the Roman masterpiece are read now rather for their incidental observations upon and l h human nature the fundamenta principles of art, t an h h for instruction in a particular form of art w ic , in the

has . course of time, become obsolete These observations, h Ar in Quintilian no less t an in istotle, are often both A luminous and profound . collection of the memorable has sentences of Quintilian, such as been made by his

modern editors, is full of sayings of deep wisdom and

N ulla mansit a r s ualis in en a s . v t e t ne enduring value g , c

intr a initiu m stetit Pler um ue a cilius est lus acer e ua m ; g f p f , g ide m ; [Vi/t il in studiis pa r vu m est ; Cito scr ibendo non fi t u t ’ bene s iba tu r bene scr enao it a t cito cr , ib f Omnia nostr a d u m

nascu ntu r la cent alio ui nec sc r iber entu r p , g ; such sayings as

h ar e t ese, expressed with admirable terseness and lucidity, the scattered all over work, and have a value far beyond the limits of any single study . If they do not drop from Quintilian with the same curious negligence as they do I I L L atin L ite ra t ure . [ from Aristotle (whose best things are nearly always said in a parenthesis), the advantage is not wholly with the Greek author ; the more orderly and finished method of the Roman teacher marks a higher constructive literary power h A h than t at of ristotle, w ose singular genius made him h indeed t e prince of lecturers, but did not place him in the

first rank of writers .

Beyond these incidental touches of wisdom and insight, which give an enduring value to the whole substance of the the I nstitu work, chief interest for modern readers in the tio O r a toria h lies in t ree portions which are , more or less, episodic to the strict purpose of the book, though they sum up the spirit in which it is written . These are the dis e n the ussio s on the education of children in first, and on the larger education of mature life in the last book, and the r m c itical sketch of ancient literature up to his own ti e, h A whic occupies the first chapter of the tenth . lmost for — the first time in history for the ideal system of Plato, ff however brilliant and suggestive, stands on quite a di erent w as footing the theory of education , in this age, made a h subject of profound thoug t and study . The precepts of

Quintilian, if taken in detail, address themselves to the E z formation of a Roman of the mpire , and not a citi en of m odern Europe . But their main spirit is independent of the accidents of any age or country . In the breadth of his ideas, and in the wisdom of much of his detailed advice , Quintilian takes a place in the foremost rank of educational writers . The dialogue on oratory written a few y ears earlier by Tacitus names, as the main cause of the decay of the liberal arts, not any lack of substantial encouragement, but the negligence of parents and the want off of skill in teachers . To leave vague and easy declama a tions against luxury and the decay of mor ls, and to fix on the great truth that bad education is responsible for bad f li e, was the first step towards a real reform . This Quin tilian insists upon with admirable clearness . Nor has any

111 . L atin L ite ra tu r e . [ than to censure faults : even his pronounced aversion from the style of Seneca and the authors of the Neronian age

does not prevent him from seeing their merits, and giving

these ungrudging praise .

It is, indeed, in Quintilian that the reaction from the early S imperial manner comes to its climax . tatius had, to a V certain degree, gone back to irgil ; Quintilian goes back H e to Cicero without hesitation or reserve . is the first of Lac antius the the Ciceronians t in fourth century, John

of Salisbury in the twelfth, Petrarch in the fourteenth,

E x rasmus in the si teenth, all in a way continue the tradition which he founded ; nor is it surprising that the discovery of a complete manuscript of the I nstitu tio Or a tor ia early in the fifteenth century was hailed by scholars as one of H e h . the most important events of t e Renaissance is not, ’ however, a mere imitator of his master s style ; indeed, his

style is, in some features and for some purposes, a better h ’ one t an his master s . It is as clear and fluent, and not H e C so verbose . cannot rise to the great heights of icero ; but for ordinary use it would be diffi cult to name a manner that combines so well the Ciceronian dignity with the rich colour and high finish added to Latin prose by the writers

of the earlier empire . J The body of criticism left by Quintilian in this remark able chapter is the more valuable because it includes nearly h t e L . C all great atin writers lassical literature, little as it h r may ave seemed so at the time, was already nea ing its h h d . f llowe end With the generation w ic immediately q , A e that of his younger contemporaries, the Silver g closes, u and a new age begins, which, tho gh full of interest in

m . any ways, is no longer classical After Tacitus and the

younger Pliny, the main stream dwindles and loses itself

among quicksands . The writers who continue the pure

classical tradition are few, and of inferior power ; and the chief interest of Latin literature becomes turned in other C directions, to the hristian writers on the one hand, and ili Qu int an. on the other to those authors in whom we may trace the beginning of new styles and methods, some of which bore h fruit at the time, while ot ers remained undeveloped till ff the later Middle Ages . Why this final e ort of purely m Roman culture , ade in the Flavian era with such sustained h energy and ability, on t e whole scarcely survived a single h m generation, is a question to whic no si ple answer can be given. It brings us once more face to face with the other u n h L q estion, which, i deed, aunts atin literature from the i outset, whether the conquest and absorpt on of Greece by Rome did not carry with it the seeds of a fatal weakness U G in the victorious literature . p to the end of the olden Age fresh waves of Greek influence had again and again given new vitality and enlarged power to the Latin language . That influence had now exhausted itself ; for the Latin L world Greece had no further message . That atin literature began to decline so soon after the stimulating Greek influ a ence ce sed to operate, was partly due to external causes ; the empire began to fight for its existence before the end of the second century, and never afterwards gained a pause n in the co tinuous drain of its vital force . But there was another reason more intimat e and inherent ; a literature formed -so completely on that of Greece paid the penalty in a certain loss of independent vitality . The gap between the literary Latin and the actual speech of the mass of -s r Latin peaking people became too great to b idge over . C L lassical atin poetry was, as we have seen, written h throughout in alien metres, to w ich indeed the language t re was adapted with immense dexterity, but which s ill mained foreign to its natural structure . To a certain degree im the same was even true of prose, at least of the more aginative prose which was developed through a study of m the great G reek asters of history, oratory, and philosophy . A e La In the Silver g tin literature , feeling a great past behind m it, definitely tried to cut itself away fro Greece and stand ’ f i r m on its own eet. Qu ntilian s c iticis implies throughout L a tin L ite ra tu r e . that the two literatures were on a footing of substantial

u C f V for S . eq ality icero is su ficient for him , as irgil is tatius E M has h ven artial , it been noted, ardly ever alludes to h h Greek aut ors, while he is full of references to t ose of his own country . The eminent grammarians of the age, Ae milius A M V A sper, arcus alerius Probus, Quintus sco Pe dianus h nius , s ow the same tendency ; their main work was in commenting on the great Latin writers . The the L L elaborate editions of atin poets, from ucretius to the Persius, produced by Probus, and commentaries on C S V A c Terence , icero, allust, and irgil by s onius and A w sper, were the work of a generation to hom these h f a . aut ors had become in ef ect the cl ssics But literature, as the event proved not for the first or the last time, cannot live long on the study of the classics alone .

L a tin L ite r a tu r e .

His career under the three Flavian Emperors . marriage, V h towards the end of the reign of espasian, to the daug ter and only surviv ing child of the eminent soldier and ad A ministrator, Gnaeus Julius gricola, aided him in obtaining rapid promotion ; he was praetor in the year in which

Domitian celebrated the Secular Games, and rose to the d the h the ignity of consuls ip during brief reign of Nerva.

H e was then a little over forty . When still quite a young he had h man written the dialogue on oratory, w ich is one of the most interesting of Latin works on literary criticism but throughout the reign of Domitian his pen was wholly A r icola laid aside . The celebrated passage of the g in which he accounts for this silence may or may not give all an adequate account of the facts, but at events gives

the keynote of the whole of his subsequent work, and of that view of the imperial government of the first centu ry which his genius has fixed ineradicably in the imagination D of the world . Under omitian a servile senate had ordered the works of the two most eminent martyrs of reactionary S i Arulenus H ere nnius S toic sm, Rusticus and enecio, to be “ publicly burned in the forum ; thinking that in that fire the they consumed the voice of Roman people, their own ” freedom, and the conscience of mankind . Great indeed, “ he bitterly continues, are the proofs we have given of what we can endure . The antique time saw to the utmost

bounds of freedom, we of servitude robbed by an inquisi

tion of the common use of speech and hearing, we should

have lost our very memory with our voice, were it as much

in our power to forget as to be dumb . Now at last our breath has come back ; yet in the nature of human frailty

remedies are slower than their diseases, and genius and learning are more easily extinguished than recalled . Fifteen h years ave been taken out of our lives, while youth passed

silently into age ; and we are the wretched survivors, not h only of t ose who have been taken away from us, but of ” ourselves . Even a colourless translation may give some T i s 20 ac tu . 7

idea of the distilled bitterness of this tremendous indict

ment . We must remember that they are the words of a man in the prime of life and at the height of public dis r he tinction, under a p ince of whose government speaks in

terms of almost extravagant hope and praise, to realise the spirit in which he addressed himself to paint his lurid

portraits of Tiberius or Nero or Domitian .

- in- The exquisitely beautiful memoir of his father law, in

the introduction to which this passage occurs, was written s the his by Tacitu in year which succeeded own consulship, h the H e was h and w ich saw accession of Trajan . t en already meditating a large historical work on the events of o w n n his lifetime, for which he had, by reading and reflectio , own ac c u mu as well as by his administrative experience,

h De r i ne S itu M ar bas lated large m aterials . T e essay O gi i a c Pop ulis G er ma niac was published about the same time

or a little later, and no doubt represents part of the material which he had collected for the chapters of his h history dealing wit the German wars, and which, as much the of it fell outside scope of a general history of Rome, h he found it worth his while to publis as a separate treatise . The scheme of his work became larger in the course of its As l progress . he origina ly planned it, it was to begin with d h the accession of Galba, thus ealing with a period w ich w h h fell entirely it in his own lifetime, and indeed within is

own recollection . But after completing his account of t he D he six reigns from Galba to omitian, he did not, as had

at first proposed, go on to those of Nerva and Trajan, but an resumed his task at earlier period, and composed an equally elaborate history of the empir e from the death of A his ugustus down to the point where earlier work began . H e still cherished the hope of resuming his history from u h h he the accession of Nerva, but it is doubtf l w et er lived A the E long enough to do so . llusions to astern conquests of Trajan in the A nnals show that the work cannot have

1 1 ~ been published till after the year 5 , and it would seem L a tin L ite ra tu r e .

though nothing is known as to the events or employments — of his later life that he did not long survive that date . hi na stor ies But the thirty books of s A n ls and Hi , themselves

splendid work for a lifetime, gave the continuous history of the empire in the most crucial and on the whole the

the - most remarkable period of its existence , eighty two

years which succeeded the death of its founder. As m in so any other cases, this memorable work has A only escaped total loss by the slenderest of chances . s it

- h is, only about one half of the w ole work is extant, consist

ing of four large fragments . The first of these, which the ff begins at beginning, breaks o abruptly in the fifteenth A year of the reign of Tiberius . gap of two years follows, and the second fragment carries on the history to Tiberius ’

of u death . The story of the reign Calig la is wholly lost ; the i h third fragment beg ns in the sevent year of Claudius,

. h and goes on as far as the thirteenth of Nero The fourt , consisting of the first four and part of the fifth book of

the earlier part of the work, contains the events of little

more than a year, but that the terrible year of Emperors which followed the overthrow of Nero and shook the A Roman world to its foundations . single manuscript has preserved the last two of these four fragments to the hand of one nameless Italian monk of the eleventh century we owe our knowledge of one of the greatest masterpieces of

the ancient world . Not the least interesting point in the study of the writings of Tacitus is the way in which we can see his unique style gradually forming and changing from his earlier to his later The De Or ator ibus manner . dialogue is his earliest extant

work . Its scene is laid in or about the year 75 . But Tac itu s was then little if at all over twenty, and it may have

been written some five or six years later . In this book the influence of Quintilian and the Ciceronian school is strongly marked ; there is so much of Ciceronianism in the style that many scholars have been inclined to assign it to some

L a in L i e a tur e t t r .

A style would prescribe that it should be said . comparison has often been drawn between Tacitus and Carlyle in this

matter. It may easily be pressed too far, as in some rather grotesque attempts made to translate portions of the Latin author into phrases chosen or copied from the modern ; but there is enough likeness to give some colour even to h t ese attempts . Both authors began by writing in the rather mechanical and commonplace style which was the current fashion during their youth ; in both the evolution of the personal and inimitable manner from these earlier essays into the full perfection of the A nnals and the Fr ench R e o u v l tion is a lesson in langu age of immense interest . The fifteen silent years of Tacitus followed the publi A r icola cation of the dialogue on oratory. In the g and er ma nia G the distinctively Tacitean style is still immature, er mani though it is well on the way towards maturity . The G a is less read for its literary merit than as the principal extant

account, and the only one which professes to cover the E ground at all systematically, of Central urope under the

E . early Roman mpire It does not appear whether, in f the course of his o ficial employments, Tacitus had ever been stationed on the frontier either of the Rhine or of the fir t Danube . The treatise bears little or no traces of s h and knowledge nor does he mention his authorities, with ’ h allic Wa r t e single exception of a reference to Caesar s G . We can hardly doubt that he made free use of the material B ella er ma niac amassed by Pliny in his G , and it is quite

possible that he really used few other sources . For the h h n work, t oug full of information, is not critically writte ,

and the historian constantly tends to pass into the moralist . C has The iceronian style now completely worn away, but hi s manner is still as deeply rhetorical as ever . What he has in view throughout is to bring the vices of civilised luxury into stronger relief by a contrast with the idealised simplicity of the German tribes and though his knowledge and his candour alike make him stop short of falsifying Tac it us . f his acts, selection and disposition of facts is guided less by Hi a historical than by an ethical purpose . s lucid and accurate description of the amber of the Baltic seems merely introduced to point a sarcastic reference to Roman luxury ; and the whole of the extremely valuable general account of the social life of the Western German tribes is drawn in implicit or expressed contrast to the elaborate social con v e ntio ns of what he considers a corrupt and degenerate h civilisation . The exaggeration of t e sentiment is more marked than in any of his other writings ; thus the fine

' ' N e mo illic vi lza r idet nec cor r u m er e et cor r u m i outburst, , p p seculu m voca tu r , concludes a passage in which he gravely suggests that the invention of writing is fatal to moral innocence ; and though he is candid enough to note the qualities of laz iness and drunkenness which the Germans

- shared with other half barbarous races, he glosses over the other quality common to savages, want of feeling, with the n sounding and gra diose commonplace , expressed in a h emin s lu er e phrase of c aracteristic force and brevity, f i g

li ones m est r s me sse . tu , vi i mini A r icola The g , perhaps the most beautiful piece of h h biograp y in ancient literature, stands on a muc higher G er ma nia level than the , because here his heart was in the work. The rhetorical bent is now fully under control, while his mastery over disposition (to use the term of the schools), or what one might call the architectural quality of the book, could only have been gained by such large and deep study of the art of rhetoric as is inculcated by Quin A r icola t tilian . The g has the sta eliness, the ordered movement, of a funeral oration the peroration, as it might h not unfairly be called, of the two concluding c apters, l reaches the highest level of the grave Roman e oquence , and its language vibrates with a depth of feeling to which Lucretius and Virgil alone in their greatest passages ofler a h V L . T e parallel in atin sentence, with its subtle irgilian ’ in c his echoes, whi h he laments own and his wife s absence i i e u L at n L t r a t r e .

’ m A - a s e dubio o timc a r en fro gricola s death bed omni in , p p tu m a dsidente a mantiss ma ux or e su er uer e lionor i tuo , i p f aucior ibus ta men lacr imis com lor a tus es et novissima in [ace p p , — desider aver u nt aliqu id oculi tui shows a new and strange the power in Latin . It is still ancient language, but it anticipates in its cadences the language of the Vulgate and of the statelier mediaeval prose . Together with this remarkable power over new prose the A r icola rhythms , Tacitus shows in g the complete mastery of mordant and unforgettable phrase which makes his

mature writing so unique . Into three or four ordinary words he can put more concentrated meaning than any

other author . The likeness and contrast between these “ ” brief phrases of his and the half- lines of Virgil might

repay a long study. They are alike in their simple language , which somehow or other is charged with the whole person ality of the author but the personality itself is in the sharpest

h s . V antit e is The irgilian phrases, with their grave pity, are steeped in a golden softness that is just touched with a x - far off trouble , a pathetic waver in the voice as if tears were

not far below it . Those of Tacitus are charged with “ indignation instead of pity ; like a jewel hung in ghastly ” S ’ night, to use hakespeare s memorable simile, or like the u I liad red and angry aut mnal star in the , they quiver and ubi solitudinem aciunt acem burn . Phrases like the famous f p a ella nt elix o or tu nitate mor tis e pp , or the f pp , are the con en

trate d u tterance of a great but deeply embittered mind . In this spirit Tacitus set himself to narrate the history of he the first century of the Empire . U nder t settled equable

the - government of Trajan, reigns of the Julio Claudian house h rapidly became a legendary epoc , a region of prodigies

and nightmares and Titanic crimes . Even at the time they happened many of the events of those years had thrown

the imagination of their spectators into a fever . The strong taint of insanity in the Claudian blood seemed to have communicated itself to the world ruled over by that extra

L a tin L ite r a tu re .

to carry the imperial system finally out of danger ; but

when this end was at last attained, the era of the Good Emperors succeeded as a matter of course ; much as in the France, the success of Revolution once fairly secured, the moderate government of the Directory and Consulate quietly succeeded to the Terror and the Revolutionary

Tribunal . h i E Suc is one v ew now taken of the early Roman mpire . H . ow Its weakness is that it explains too much or why,

if the matter was really as simple as this, did the traditional legend of the Empire grow up and extinguish the real facts ? Is it possible that the m alignant genius of a single h h h istorian s ould outweigh, not only peris able facts, but the large body of imperialist literature which extends from the great Augustans down to Statius and Quintilian ? Even if we set aside Juve nal and Suetonius as a rhetorician h and a gossipmonger, that only makes the weig t Tacitus

has to sustain more overwhelming. It is hardly possible to overrate the effect of a single work of great genius ; but the more we study works of great genius the m ore h certain does it appear that t ey are all founded on real,

h it . S may be transcendental, truth ystems, like thoug , E persons, are to be known by their fruits . The mpire

produced , as the flower of its culture and in the inner

circle of its hierarchy, the type of men of whom Tacitus is the most eminent example ; and the indignant hatred it kindled in its children leaves it condemned before the judgment of history . The surviving fragments of the Annals and Histor ies leave three great pictures impressed upon the reader’s h the mind : t e personality of Tiberius, court of Nero, and the whole fabric and machinery of empire in the year The r of the four Emperors . lost history of the eigns of Caligula and Domitian Would no doubt have added two

other picture s as memorable and as dramatic, but could hardly make any serious change in the main structure of Ta it s c u . the imperial legend as it is successively presented in these three imposing scenes . The character and statesmanship of Tiberius is one of the most vexed problems in Roman history ; and it is fi v the signi cant to obser e how, in all discussions about — it, the question perpetually reverts to another the view to be taken of the personality of the historian who wrote ’ nearly a century after Tiberius accession, and was not his born till long after his death . In no part of work does Tacitus use his great weapon, insinuation of motive, ' e flec with such terrible t . All the speeches or letters of E the mperor quoted by him , almost all the actions he records, are given with this malign sidelight upon them E that, in spite of it, we lose our respect for neither mperor nor historian is strong evidence both of the genius of h The the latter and the real greatness of t e former . case of Germanicus Caesar is a cardinal instance . In the whole account of the relations of Tiberius to his nephew there is nothing in the mere facts as stated inconsistent with confidence and even with cordiality . Tiberius pronounces a long and stately eulogy on Germanicus in the senate for his suppression of the revolt of the German legions . him H e recalls from the German frontier, where the h t e - Roman supremacy was now thoroug ly established, and where the hot-headed young general was on the point of entangling himself in fresh and dangerous conquests, in order to place him in supreme command in the Eastern provinces ; but first he allows him the splendid pageant of a Roman triumph, and gives an immense donative ’ to the population of the capital in his nephew s name . Germanicus is sent to the East w ith maius imp er iu m over the whole of the transmarine provinces, a position more splendid than any that Tiberius himself had held during Au u him the lifetime of g stus, and one that almost raised to the rank of a colleague in the Empire . Then Germanicus embroils himself hopelessly with his principal subordinate, L atin L ite ra tur e .

his the imperial legate of Syria, and illness and death at Antioch put an end to a situation which is rapidly His becoming impossible . remains are solemnly brought i back to Rome, and honoured with a splend d funeral ; the proclamation of Tiberius fixing the termination of the public mourning is in its gravity and good sense one of the most striking documents in Roman history . But in Tacitus every word and action of Tiberius has its malignant He interpretation or comment . recalls Germanicus from the Rhine out of mingled jealousy and fear ; he makes him Viceroy of the East in order to carry out a diabolically elaborate scheme for bringing about his destruction . The vague rumours of poison or magic that ran during his last illness among the excitable and grossly superstitious populace of Antioch are gravely recorded as ground for the worst suspicions . That dreadful woman, the elder ' A had h grippina, , even in her husband s lifetime, made erself ’ intolerable by her pride and jealousy ; after her husband s and death she seems to have become quite insane, the h r recklessness of e tongue knew no bounds . To Tacitus i in all her rav ngs, collected from hearsay or preserved

' the m e moirs of her equally appalling daughter, the mother a of Nero, represent serious historic l documents ; and the portrait of Tiberius is from first to last deeply influenced n by, and i deed largely founded on, the testimony of a madwoman . The three books and a half of the Annals which contain the principate of Nero are not occupied with the portrai u t re of a single great personality, nor are they full, like ar the e lier books , of scathing phrases and poisonous insinuations . The reign of Nero was, indeed, one which required little rhetorical artifice to present as something E portentous . The external history of the mpire, till towards its close, was without remarkable incident . The wars on the Armenian frontier hardly affected the general quiet of the Empire ; the revolt of Britain was an isolated

L a tin L itera tu r e .

a common heart and brain . The provinces had been the spoil of Rome ; Rome herself is now becoming the spoil of the provinces . The most splendid piece of narration Histor ies in the , and one of the finest in the work of any Be driac um historian, is the story of the second battle of , and the storm and sack of Cremona by the Moesian and

Pannonian legions . This is the central thought which makes it so tragical . The little vivid touches in which ' Tacitus excels are used towards this purpose with ex traordinary effect ; as in the incident of the third ' legion — saluting the rising sun ita in S u r ia mos est which brings before our imagination the new and fatal character of the great provincial armies, or the casual words of the u Tli e bat/z w ill soon be li ot enou li Flavia general, g , which h gave the signal for t e burning of Cremona. In these E scenes the whole tragedy of the mpire rises before us . The armies of the Danube and Rhine left the frontiers defenceless while they met in the shock of battle on n h Italian soil , still soaki g wit Roman blood and littered with unburied Roman corpses ; behind them the whole armed strength of the Empire immensa belli moles was S H gathering out of Gaul, pain, Syria, and ungary ; and f C be ore the year was out, the Roman apitol itself, in a trifling struggle between small bodies of the opposing forces, went up in flame at the hands of the German troops V of itellius . This great pageant of history is presented by Tacitus in a style which, in its sombre yet gorgeous colouring, is unique in literature . In mere grammatical mechanism it f L bears close a finity to the other atin writing of the period, but in all its more intimate qualities it is peculiar to Tacitus alone ; he founded his own style, and did not transmit u V it to any successor . The infl ence of irgil over prose D reaches in him its most marked degree . irect transfer e nc e s of phrase are not infrequent and throughout, as one s Aeneid reads the Historie , one is reminded of the , not only “

1 ac t i ns .

h ind e fina le by particular p rases, but by a more b quality The the permeating the style . narrative of siege and firing

of the Capitol , to take one striking instance, is plainly from the hand of a writer saturated with the movement ’ A h and language of Virgil s S ac/a of Tr oy . modern istorian might have quoted Virgil in a note ; with Tacitus the Virgilian reminiscences are interwoven with the whole h structure of his narrative . The whole of the t ree fine chapters will repay minute comparison ; but some of the more striking resemblances are worth noting as a study E r z u nt a ciem h us ue ad in language . g , says the istorian , q p r im as Capitolinae a r cis for es in tectum eg r essi sax is teg ulisque Vitellia nos obru eba nt u i r evolsas u ndique as decor a malar a m in i so a ditu obiecissent is statu , , p v pr opior a tque a cr ior ing r u eba t qua m non Por sena dedita s e t nr ur be neque G alli temer a r e potui s n . z u mp u nt Vitellia nz r a mm s ue s e e t cu ncta sa ngu ine fe r o fl i q mi c nt . We seem to be present once more at that terrible night in Troy

Vestibulu m a nte ipsu m p r imoque in limine Py r r lzus E va do a d su mmifas tzgia culminis ta r r es ac tecta domor um

Culmina convellu nt ve ter u m decor a alta par e ntu m u u m D evolvunt nec sax a , nec ll Telor um inter ea t essa t g e nus a r mor u mque ing r u it lzor r or e t ia m pe r ni oenia clar ior ignis A adita r r o ius ue a estus incendia volvu nt , p p q uos ne ue T dides nec L a r issaeus A cliilles Q q y , ,

ue r e decem non mil/e ca r inae N on a nni dom , Fit via vi r ump unt adit us p r imosque tr u cidant

I nmissi Da nai et late loca milite com leat . , p

These quotations indicate strikingly enough the way in which Tacitus is steeped in the Virgilian manner and wh diction . The ole passage must be read continuously to a i L i er L t n t atu r e .

realise the immense skill with which he uses it, and the tragic height it adds to the narrative .

Nor is the deep gloom of his history, though adorned the with utmost brilliance of rhetoric, lightened by any v the belief in Pro idence or any distinct hope for future . The artificial optimism of the Stoics is alien from his whole temper ; and his practical acquiescence in the existing system under the reign of Domitian only added bitterness

i ~ to his inward revolt from t . The phrases of religion are merely used by him to darken the shades of his narrative ; Deu m ir a in r emR omana m r , one of the most st iking of h h t em, mig t almost be taken as a second title for his n r A nnals history . O the ve y last page of the he concludes a C Asc le iod tu brief notice of the ruin and exile of assius p o s, whose crime was that he had not deserted an unfortunate

S the -h friend, with the striking words, uch is even anded ness of H eaven towards good and evil conduct . Even his praises of the government of Trajan are half- hearted and incredulous “ the rare happiness of a time when men ” m a h y t ink what they will, and say what they think, is to

‘ his mind a mere interlude, a brief lightening of the dark ness before it once more descends on a world where the ambiguous power of fate or chance is the only permanent ruler, and where the gods intervene, not to protect, but only to avenge .

L a t in L iter atu r e .

M Pius . artial, by whom he is repeatedly mentioned,

alludes to him only as a rhetorician, not as a satirist . ii h T e sixteen satires (of which the last is, per aps, not genuine) were published at intervals under Trajan and h the Hadrian . T ey fall into two groups ; first nine , which h are at once t e most powerful and the least agreeable, being separated by a considerable interval of years from the h h ot ers, in whic a certain softening of tone and a tendency to dwell on the praise of virtue more than on the ignoble details of vice is united with a failing power that marks he t approach of senility . Juvenal is the most savage — one might almost say the — o f L most brutal all the Roman satirists . ucilius, when “ ” he the the scourged town, did so in high spirits and H voluble diction of a comparatively simple age . orace soon learned to drop the bitterness which appears in his h earlier satires, and to make them the ve icle for his gentle

wisdom and urbane humour . The writing of Persius was that of a student who gathered the types he satirised h h from books rather t an from life . Juvenal broug t to his k task not only a wide nowledge of the world or, at least, of the world of the capital but a singular power of

mordant phrase, and a mastery over crude and vivid effect that keeps the reader suspended between disgust

and admiration . In the commonplaces of morality, though w often elevated and occasionally noble, he does not sho

any exceptional power or insight ; but his graphic realism, . combined (as realism often is) with a total absence of all out but the grimmest forms of humour, makes his verses Facit indz natio er sum his like a knife . g v , he truly says of

own work ; with far less flexibility, he has all the remorse d lessness of Swift . That singular product of the last ays Palla as A is of paganism , the epigrammatist d of lexandria, Of the only ancient author who shows the same spirit . n his earlier work the second a d ninth satires, and a great

part of the sixth, have a cold prurience and disgustingness u e na t J v .

S h of detail, that even wift only approac es at his worst und eni moments . Yet the sixth satire, at all events, is an the h e xa able masterpiece ; however raw colour, owever g gerated the drawing, his pictures of Roman life have a force that stamps them permanently on the imagination ; hi e end o B ad Wome n fialled s L g f , as this satire might be , has gone far to make history . It is in the third satire that his peculiar gift of vivid h painting finds its best and easiest scope . In t is elaborate the h indictment of the life of capital, put into the mout of a man who is leaving it for a little sleepy provincial town, he draws a picture of the Rome he knew, its social h h life and its p ysical features, its everyday sig ts and sounds, that brings it before us more clearly and sharply than even the the Rome of Horace or Cicero . The drip of water from the aqueduct that passed over the gate from which the dusty squalid Appian Way stretched through its long suburb ; the garret under the tiles where, just as now, the pigeons sleeked themselves in the sun and the rain drummed on the roof ; the narrow crowded streets, half ’ h - c oked with the builders carts, ankle deep in mud, and the pavement ringing under the heavy military boots of guardsmen the tavern waiters trotting along with a pyra mid of hot dishes on their head the flowe rpots falling n the h from high window ledges ; ight, with shuttered s ops, a the silence broken by some sudden street br wl, the dark n h ess s aken by a flare of torches as some great man , wrapped in his scarlet cloak, passes along from a dinner party with his long train of clients and slaves these scenes h live for us in Juvenal, and are per aps the picture of ancient Rome that is most abidingly impressed on our the E m emory . The substance of satire is familiar to nglish L ondon readers from the fine copy of Johnson, whose follows it closely, and is one of the ablest and most m i n animated odern imitations of a classical or gi al . The ’ ' / same author s noble poem on the Vaniyt of H u ma n IVzlsbes L a tin L ite ratu re .

of is a more free, but equally spirited rendering the tenth satire, which stands at the head of the later portion of ’ Juvenal s work . In this , and in those of the subsequent a satires which do not show tr ces of declining power, notably n h h the the eleventh a d t irteent , rhetoric is less gaudy and the thought rises to a nobler tone . The fine passage the ts ou at the end of tenth satire, where he poin t what i and t it is permitted mank nd to pray for, hat in the thir t s te enth, where he pain s the torment of conscience in the h m unpunished sinner, ave something in the which combines the lofty ardour of Lucretius with the subtle psychological i H s all nsight of orace, and to reader in ages have been, as n they still remain, a powerful i fluence over conduct. t h Equally elevated in one, and wit a temperate gravity l t pecu iar to i self, is the part of the fourteenth satire which deals with the education of the young. We seem to hear once more in it the enlightened eloquence of Quintilian in the famous M ax imo debetu r puer o r everentia he sums up in a single memorable phrase the whole spirit of the instructor and the moralist . The allusions to childhood here and elsewhere show Juvenal on his most pleasing side his rhetorical vices had not infected the real simplicity of his nature, or his admiration for goodness and innocence . In his power over trenchant expression he rivals Tacitus

f. S m himsel o e of his phrases, like the one just quoted, have n - obtai ed a world wide currency, and even reached the crowning honour of habitual misquotation ; his Hoc volo sic iubeo Mens sa na in cor or e sano is , his p , his Qu custodiet ipsos custodes 7 are more familiar than all but the be st-known lines of Virgil and Horace . But perhaps his most charac teristic lines are rather those where his moral indignation bre aks forth in a sort of splendid violence quite peculiar to himself; lines like

' E t r o ter itam vivendi eraere causas p p v p , or

’ ' M a a ue numznibus vota exaudita mal ms gn q gg ,

i i r e L at n L tera t u .

with whom he was throughout life in close intimacy, are among the most interesting and the fullest of unintentional humour . Tacitus was the elder of the two ; and Pliny, had when very young the words are his own , chosen “ him as his model and sought to follow his fame . There were t hen many writers of brilliant genius ; but you, he f writes to Tacitus, so strong was the a finity of our natures, seemed to me at once the easiest to imitate and the most worthy of imitation . Now we are named together ; both I of us have, may say, some name in literature, for, as I I include myself, must be moderate in my praise of ” you . This to the author who had already published the

' ’ - Histon es . Before so exquisite a self revelation criticism itself is silenced . The cult of Ciceronianism established by Quintilian is ’ etters the real origin of the collection of Pliny s L . Cicero and Pliny had many weaknesses and some virtues in common, and the desire of emulating Cicero, which Pliny l open y and repeatedly expresses, had a considerable effect

. C in exaggerating his weaknesses icero was vain, quick tempered, excitable ; his sensibilities were easily moved, and found natural and copious expression in the language of which he was a consummate master. Pliny, the most

- steady going of mankind, sets himself to imitate this ex citable temperament with the utmost seriousness ; he culti i vates sensibility, he even cultivates vanity . H s elaborate and graceful descriptions of scenery — the fountain of Cli — tumnus or the villa overlooking the Tiber valley are no more consciously insincere than his tears over the death of friends, or the urgency with which he begs his wife to write to him from the country twice a day. But these fine feelings are meant primarily to impress the public and a public which could be impressed by the spectacle

- his of a man giving a dinner party, and actually letting untitled guests drink the same wine that was being drunk at

bf . the head of the table , put little check upon lapses taste I V . P li ] T/te You ng er ny .

Y f e t with all his af ectations and fatuities, Pliny compels respect, and even a measure of admiration, by the real i goodness of his character . Where a good l fe is lived, it hardly becomes us to be too critical of motives and springs ' of action 5 and in Pliny s case the practice of domestic and civic virtue was accompanied by a considerable literary gift . H ad we a picture drawn with equal copiousness and he M A h grace of t Rome of arcus urelius alf a century later, h ’ it would be a priceless addition to istory . Pliny s world partly because it is presented with such rich detail reminds h us , more t an that of any other period of Roman history, C ’ of the society of our own day . To pass from icero s letters to his is curiously like passing from the eighteenth to the h nineteenth century . In other respects, indeed, t ey have S what might be called an eighteenth century flavour . ome of the more elaborate of them would fall quite naturally n S ecta tor the R a mble r into place amo g the essays of the p or , ih many others the combination of thin and lucid common sense with a vein of calculated sensibility can hardly be paralleled till we reach the age of Rousseau . Part of this real or assumed sensibility was the interest in scenery and the beauties of nature, which in Pliny, as in the eighteenth centu ry authors, is cultivated for its own sake as

- h h h he an element in self culture . In the words wit w ic winds up one of the most elaborate of his descriptive pieces,

' that on the lake of Vadim o in Tuscany M e mkil aeqae a e na tu r a e op er a delectant there is an accent which hardly ’ easons L etter s recurs till the age of the S and of Gray s . L ike Gray, Pliny took a keen pleasure in exploring the more romantic districts of his country ; his description of the lake in the letter just mentioned is curiously like passages from the journal in which Gray records his — — discovery for it was little less of Thirlmere and De r e litumnus wentwate r . H views the C with the eye of an accomplished landscape -gardener ; he notes the cypresses ’ on the hill, the ash and poplar groves by the water s edge 5 L a tin L ite r atu re . he counts the shining pebbles under the clear ice - cold fl i water, and watches the green re ections of the overhang ng C trees ; and finally, as Thomson or owper might have done, mentions the abundance of comfortable villas as the last charm of the landscape . The munific e nt benefactions of Pliny to his native town hi h of Comum , and s anxiety t at, instead of sending its most promising boys to study at Milan only thirty miles off it should provide for them at home what would now be called a university education , are among the many indications ff which show us how Rome was di using itself over Italy,

- as Italy was over the Latin speaking provinces . Under Hadrian and the Antonines this process went on with even town ‘ and growing force . Country life, or that mixture of country life afforded by the small provincial towns, came h the to be more and more of a fas ion, and depopulation of the capital had made insensible progress long before the period of renewed anarchy that followed the assassination L of C ommodus . Whether the rapid decay of atin literature which took place after the death of Pliny and Tacitus was connected with this weakening of the central z life of Rome, is a question to which we hardly can ha ard the h n a definite answer . Under t ree reig s which succeeded

d - that of Trajan , a perio of sixty four years of internal peace, bene fic e nt u of r le, of enlightened and humane legislation, ’ the cultured society shown to us in Pliny s L etter s as diffused ’ f al all over Italy remained strangely silent . O l the streams he of tradition which descended on this age , t schools of law and grammar alone kept their course the rest dwindle S away and disappear. ixty years pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate ; one or two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inc on sid e rable - and e itom ators extract makers p , who barely rise out of the common herd of undistinguished grammarians . A mong the obscure poets mentioned by Pliny, the name of Ve rgilius Romanus may excite a momentary curiosity ; he

L a tin L iter a tu r e .

literary research and compilation, somewhat in the manner, the V though without encyclopedic scope , of arro . In his

youth he had been an intimate friend of the younger Pliny, h i who speaks in igh terms of his learning and ntegrity . The greater part of his voluminous writings are lost 5 they

included many works on grammar, rhetoric, and archae

ology, and several on natural history and physical science . e Vir is Fragments survive of his elaborate treatise .D I llustr ious h L , an exhaustive istory of atin literature up to

his own day : excerpts made from it by St . Jerome in his Chr onicle are the source from which much of our informa L is tion as to atin authors derived, and several complete lives have been prefixed to manuscripts of the works of the h h respective aut ors, and t us independently preserved .

But . his most interesting, and probably his most valuable L ines o tlze Tmeloe Caesar s work, the f , has made him one of the most widely known of the later classical H writers . It was published under adrian in the year 1 2 0 r Se tic ius , and dedicated to his praeto ian prefect, p

Clarus . Tacitus (perhaps because he was still alive) is

never mentioned, and not certainly made use of. Both

authors had access, in the main, to the same materials 5 but ’ the confidential position of Suetonius as Hadrian s secretary no doubt increased his natural tendency to collect stories h and preserve all sorts of trivial or scandalous gossip, rat er w r than make any attempt to rite se ious history . It is just the this, however, which gives unique interest and value to L ives the aesa r s of C . We can spare political insight or consecutive arrangement in an author who is so lavish in the personal detail that makes much o f the life of history ’ who C who tells us the colour of aesar s eyes, quotes from z A a do en private letters of ugustus, who shows us Caligula

shouting to the moon from his palace roof, and Nero lecturing on the construction of the organ . There perhaps h never was a series of biograp ies so crammed with anecdote . h Nor is the style wit out a certain sort of merit, from its A u lus G e lli s u .

ff A entire and una ected simplicity . fter all the fine writing h h of t e previous century it is, for a little w ile, almost a h who relief to come on an aut or is frankly without style ,

and says what he has to say straightforwardly . But it is only the absorbing interest of the matter which makes this

n . h the kind of writi g long endurable It is, in trut , beginning of barbarism and Suetonius measures more than half the distance from the fine familiar prose of the Golden Age to the base jargon of the authors of the A ugusta n H istory a

h D . century and a alf later, under iocletian Amid the decay of imagination and of the higher qualities

of style , the tradition of industry and accuracy to some The S degree survived . biographies of uetonius show con sid e rable research and absolute candour ; and the same l h qua ities, t ough united with a feebler judgment, appear in his the interesting miscellanies of younger contemporary,

A u ellius. h ul s G T is work, published under the fanciful oetes Attieae title of N , is valuable at once as a collection of extracts from older writers and as a source of information hi a regarding the knowledge and studies of s own ge . Few authors are more scrupulously accurate in quotation ; and h by t is conscientiousness, as well as by his real admiration

for the great writers, he shows the pedantry of the time on

its most pleasing side . The twenty books of the N at tes A ttieae were the compi lation of many years but the title was chosen from the fact of the work having been begun during a winter spent by H e A h wh h . the author at t ens, en about t irty years of .age

was only one among a number of his countrymen, old as who o well as young, found the atm sphere of that university w u to n more congenial to study than the noisy, nhealthy,

but - and crowded capital, or than the quiet, ill equipped, A provincial towns of Italy . thens once more became, for

E . H a short time, the chief centre of uropean culture erodes A who his tticus, that remarkable figure traced descent to the very beginnings of Athe nian history and the semi in L ite ra t u r e L at .

A w as mythical Aeacidae of egina, and who consul of Rome u A his nder ntoninus Pius, had taken up permanent residence in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to the munific ent architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a A t m patronage of letters . Plutarch and r ian , the two ost eminent authors of the age, both spent much of their time h E H there ; and t e mperor adrian , by his repeated and — protracted visits he once lived at Athens for three years together — e stablished the reputation of the city as a fashion able resort, and superintended the building of an entirely ne w quarter to accommodate the great influx of permanent residents . The accident of imperial patronage doubtless added force to the other causes which m ade Greek take fresh growth, and become for a time almost the dominant h language of the Empire . T ough two centuries were still i C to pass before the foundat on of onstantinople , the centre of gravity of the huge fabric of government was already l passing from Italy to the Balkan peninsula, and Ita y itself was becoming slowly but surely one of the Western h h x E provinces . Nature erself seemed to ave fi ed the astern L A limit of the atin language at the driatic, and even in Italy Greek was equally familiar with Latin to the educated S H classes . uetonius Fronto, adrian himself, wrote in L ff M atin and Greek indi erently . arcus Aurelius used Greek by preference, even when writing of his predecessors and h the events of Roman istory. From Plutarch to Lucian the Greek authors completely predominate over the Latin . w In the sombre century hich followed, both Greek and Latin literature were all but extinguished ; the partial revival of the latter in the fourth century was artificial and short- lived and though the tradition of the classical manner took long to die away, the classical writers themselves

S . A L completely cease with uetonius new atin, that of the M A iddle ges, was already rising to take the place of the speech handed down by the Republic to the Empire .

i I I I . 2 34 L a tin L te ra tu re . [ with the extreme subtleties and refinements introduced by the ablest of the new writers, who were no longer content, like Quintilian and Pliny, to rest satisfied with the manner and diction of the Golden Age . The work of this school of authors is therefore of unusual interest ; for they may w not unreasonably be called a school, as orking, though ff “ unconsciously, from di erent directions towards the same common end . The theory of this new manner has had considerable light thrown upon it by the fragments of the works of

Marcus Cornelius Fronto, recovered early in the present century by Angelo Mai from palimpsests in the Vatican and Ambrosian libraries at Rome and Milan . Fronto was ‘ r he toric ian of his the most celebrated time, and exercised a commanding influence on literary criticism . The reign of the Spanish school was now over ; Fronto was of African origin ; and though it does not follow that he w as not of

m - pure Ro an blood, the influence of a semi tropical atmos he re and A the p frican surroundings altered type, and produced a new strain, which we can trace later under different forms in the great African school of ecclesiastical h C writers eaded by Tertullian and yprian, and even to a A He modified degree in ugustine himself. was born in the C Roman colony of irta, probably a few years after the H e death of Quintilian . rose to a conspicuous position at H Rome under adrian, and was highly esteemed by Marcus A i the nton nus, who not only elevated him to consulship , but made him one of the principal tutors of the joint- heirs the E M A L V He to mpire, arcus urelius and ucius erus . M died a few years before arcus Aurelius . The recovered fragments of his writings, which are lamentably scanty and interrupted, are chiefly from his correspondence with his

. M two imperial pupils With both of them , and arcus A urelius especially, he continued in later years to be on ff the most intimate and a ectionate relations . The elderly h r etorician, a martyr, as he keeps complaining, to gout, and 2 Fronto . 35 the philosophic Emperor write to each other with the ff - e usiveness of two school girls . It is impossible to suspect M u A arc s urelius of insincerity, and it is easy to understand what a real fervour of admiration his saintly character might awaken in any one who had the privilege of watching and aiding its development ; but the endearments exchanged in the letters that pass between “ my dearest master " and my life and lord ” are such as modern taste finds it hard to sympathise with, or even to understand. The single cause for complaint that Fronto had against his he pupil was that, as he advanced in life, gradually withdrew from the study of literature to that of philosophy . the n To Fronto, literature was one really important thi g in his h the world and in perpetual recurrence to this t eme , he finds occasion to lay down in m u ch detail his own h hi E locu tio literary t eories and s canons of style . The N ovella w , which he considered it his great ork in life to expound and to practise , was partly a return upon the L style of the older atin authors, partly a new growth based, as theirs had been , on the actual language of he h common life . The prose of Cato and t Gracc i had been , in vocabulary and structure, the living spoken the language of streets and farms, wrought into shape the in hands of men of powerful genius . To give fresh L saw i t he vitality to atin , Fronto saw, and r ghtly, that same process of literary genius working on living material His m must once more take place . istake was in fancy ing it possible to go back again to the second century C h before hrist, and make a fres start from that point as u h a tho gh nothing had appened in the me ntime . In our own age we have seen a somewhat similar fallacy committed h h by writers who, in t eir admiration of the ric ness and E z E flexibility of li abethan nglish, have tried to write with the same copiousness of vocabulary and the same freedom

E z w h of structure as the li abethans . Bet een t ese and their object lies an insuperable barrier, the formed and finished i L i L at n ter a tu r e . prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ; between he m the Froute and his lay t whole ass of what , in sustained

and secure judgment of mankind, is the classical prose

m C . of the Latin language, fro icero to Tacitus In the simplicity which he pursued there was something ine radi

c a l b y artificial, and even unnatural, and the fresh resources from which he attempted to enrich the literary language L and to form his new atin resembled, to use his own m striking simile, the exhausted and unwilling population fro which the legions could only now be recruited by the most

drastic conscription . L Ye t if Fronto hardly succeeded in founding a new atin, he was a powerful influence in the final collapse and dis His appearance of the old . reversion to the style and language of pre- Ciceronian times was only a temporary fashion ; but in the general decay of taste and learning it was sufficient to break the contin uity of Latin literature; z E The bron e age of nnius and Cato had been succeeded, an in a broad and stately development, by the Golden d h L Silver periods . Under t is fresh attack the atin of the A e u Silver g breaks p and goes to pieces, and the failure of Fronto and his contemporaries to create a new language h opens the age of t e base metals . The collapse of the imperial system after the death of Marcus Aurelius is not more striking or more complete than the collapse of litera

ture after that of his tutor . O f the actual literary achievement of this remarkable k critic, when he turned from criticism and too to construe

tion, the surviving fragments give but an imperfect idea. Most of the fragments are from private letters the rest are

s - from rhetorical exercises, including those of the o called ' P n ne ia H zlstor iae ip , a panegyric upon the campaigns and V A administration of erus in the siatic provinces . But among

the letters there are some of a more studied eloquence, which show pretty clearly the merits and defects of their

author as a writer . In narrative he is below mediocrity

L atin L iter a tur e .

h carried on their business alike by nig t as by day, and gave h no part at all to repose . Then it was t at Jupiter formed the design of creating Sleep ; and he added him to the him h number of the gods , and gave the c arge over night and

the h . rest, putting into his hands keys of uman eyes With his own hands he mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should — soothe the hearts of mortals herb of Enjoyment and herb h H of Safety , gat ered from a grove in eaven 5 and, from the h D h meadows o f Ac eron , the herb of eat 5 expressing from l r h it one sing e d op only, no bigger t an a tear that one ’ ‘ h h he h . mig t hide Wit t is juice, said, pour slumber upon So the eyelids of mortals . soon as it hath touched them

they will lay themselves down motionless , under thy power .

But be not afraid : they will revive, and in a while stand ’ A up again upon their feet . fter that, Jupiter gave wings to M ’ Sleep , attached, not to his heels like ercury s, but to his

L . shoulders like the wings of ove For he said, It becomes thee not to approach men ’s eyes as with the noise of a the chariot and rushing of a swift courser, but with placid h the w — and merciful flig t, as upon wings of a swallo nay ! ’ not so much as with the fluttering of a dove . Alike in the naive and almost childlike simplicity of its

ru and general st cture, and in its minute intricate ornament, h like t at of a diapered wall or a figured tapestry, where hardly an inch of space is ever left blank this new style is m uch more akin to the manner of the thirteenth or four nth r A te e centu y than to the classical . similar quality is w w h sho n , not more strikingly, but on a larger scale and it a n of more certai touch, in the celebrated prose romance ’ m ronto s n L A . F co te porary, ucius puleius

L A A . He ike Fronto, puleius was of frican origin was M born at the Roman colony of adaura in Numidia, and

educated at Carthage, from which he proceeded afterwards ' A semi-Numzda to the university of thens . The epithets of

se mi- Gaetulus s t e and , which he applie to himself, indica that he fully felt himself to belong to a civilisation which s Ap u le iu .

h the c - S was not purely European . Together wit Gra co yrian

h - A the Lucian, t is Romano frican represents last extension which ancient culture took before finally fading away or becoming absorbed in new forms . Both were by profession travelling lecturers 5 they were the nearest approach which the ancient world made to what we should no w call the

i . L his h gher class of journalist ucian, in later life like a journalist nowadays who should enter Parliament — com bine d his profession with high public employment 5 but A puleius, so far as is known, spent all his life in writing and he h lecturing . Though was not strictly eit er an orator or a h his h h and h philosop er, works include bot speec es p ilosoph ical treatises 5 but his chief distinction and his permanent interest are as a novelist both in the literal and in the — accepted sense of the w ord a writer of prose romances in

' which he carried the novella elocutzo to the highest point it He 1 2 th M e reached . was born about the year 5 ; e ta mor /zoses his his p , most famous and only extant romance , h h was written at Rome before he was t irty, soon after e m A h had co pleted his course of study at thens . The p ilo

O n tlze sophical or mystical treatises of his later life, ’ Universe O n tlze G oa o S ocr a tes On Plato a nd his Doctr ine , f , , do not rise above the ordinary level of the Neo - Platonist w school, Platonism half understood, mixed ith fanciful O r z ientalism, and enveloped in a ma e of verbiage . That the A olo ia known as p g , an elaborate literary amplification of the defence which he had to make before the proconsul A of frica against an accusation of dealing in magic, is the only one which survives of his oratorical works ; and his miscellaneous writings on many branches of science and h natural istory, which are conjectured to have formed a sort

C a of encyclopedia like those of elsus and Pliny, r e all but : bu t Flor ida completely lost the , a collection, probably m h - ade by imself, of twenty four selected passages from the C public lectures which he delivered at arthage, give an idea of his style as a lecturer, and of the scope and variety of i L it L at n er atur e .

his his talent . The Ciceronian manner of Quintilian and The school has now completely disappeared . new style he S re may remind one here and t re of eneca, but the

far . C semblance does not go Fronto, who speaks of icero

with grudging and lukewarm praise, regards Seneca as on

the whole the most corrupt among Roman writers, and H e Apuleius probably held the same view . produces his ff of rhetorical e ects, not by daring tropes or accumulations

sonorous phrases, but by a perpetual refinement of diction

which keeps curiously weighing and rejecting words, and giving every other word an altered value or an unaccustomed The ff h h setting. e ect is like t at of strange and rat er A barbarous jewellery. remarkable passage, on the power

of sight possessed by the eagle , may be cited as a charac uu m t e ristic specimen of his more elaborate manner . Q

' se nubiu m tenus altissime suolz ma vit he evecta alis , writes, ’ totu m istan s a tium ua luitu r ct nin itu r ultr a uad p , q p g , q ca cu men nec ulrnini nec ul u r i locus est in i so u i ita f f g , p , ' ' dixen m solo aetizer is et astz io l uenzis nu tu clemen , f g ti ’ laevor su m vel aex tr or suni tota mole corp or is labit ur incle ' ' cuncta des icie ns ioiaem inna r u m e minas inac esso r em o p , p f igi , ' ' ac p aulisper cu nctaou nao vola tu pacue eadem loco p en/lula cir ’ cumtuetu r e t guaer it ouor sus p otissirnu nz inp r aeaa nz super ne se ’ r or ua t ulminis vice a caelo im r ovisa simul c a m is ecua p f , e p p p , ' ' simul nzontiou s er as simul u r ozous Izom es u no su f , zn , obta in o ’ aem m etu cer nens eo i p . The first thing that strikes a reader accustomed to classical Latin in a passage like this is the

short broken rhythms, the simple organism of archaic prose being artificially imitated by carefully and deliberately breaking up all the structure which the language had The been wrought into through the handling of centuries .

x h ne t t ing is that half the phrases are , in the ordinary sense

L . A of the word, barely atin puleius has all the daring, V though not the genius, of irgil himself in inventing new L L ne w atin or using old atin in senses . But Virgil is old Latin to him no less than Ennius or Pac uvius 5 in this very

i ra tu r e L atin L t e .

' ’ lu nu nosa culmina ma r is salu br ia amina in er or u m ae , fl , f

’ ' lor a a e s w as p t sil ntio nations mezs (lzsp en o. It in virtue of such passages as that from which these words are quoted that Apuleius came to be regarded soon after his death as

‘ A x the an incarnation of ntichrist, sent to perple worshippers A L ac tantius he of the true God . lready to is not a curious a artist in l nguage, but a magician inspired by diabolical A A agency 5 St . ugustine tells us that, like pollonius of

Tyana, he was set up by religious paganism as a rival to

Jesus Christ . Of the new elements interwoven by Apuleius in the story of the transformations and adventures of Lucius of Patrae L M a h h ( ucius of adaur , he calls him , t us inting, to the and the mingled awe confusion of his readers, that events h m the had happened to i self), fervid religion of the con e lusion is no doubt historically the most important 5 but that which made it universal and immortal is the famous Cu id a nd Ps c/ze wo story of p y , which fills nearly t books of e a m r ses h the M t o pho . With the strangeness c aracteristic

of the whole work, this wonderful and exquisitely told story h z is put in the mout of a half cra y and drunken old woman, ’ the the in robbers cave where part of action passes . But

- z h er r a n t in uariam c ta e r her first half do en words, t e g ivi t ex

' et r e zna the g , lift it in a moment into golden world of pure

romance . The story itself is in its constituent elements a

- mar e/zen well known specimen of the , or popular tale, which the A is not only current throughout ryan peoples, but may

be traced in the popular mythology of all primitive races .

' It is beyond doubt in its essential features of immemorial antiquity 5 but what is unique about it is its sudden appear ance in literature in the full flower of its most elaborate A perfection . Before puleius there is no trace of the story in Greek or Roman writing ; he tells it with a daintiness of touch and a wealth of fanciful ornament that have left

- later story tellers little or nothing to add . The version by

which it is best known to modern readers, that in the The P e r v ig iliu m Vener is .

’ r thl P ar adise h m E a y , w ile, after the odern poet s manner,

expanding the descriptions for their own sake, follows

Apuleius otherwise with exact fidelity . ' ’ h Cu ia a na In the more highly wroug t episodes, like the p

Ps che L A y , the new atin of puleius often approximates B h and nearly to assonant or rhymed verse . oth r yme assonance were to be found in the early Latin which he

had studied deeply, and may be judged from incidental fragments of the popular language never to have wholly

disappeared from common use during the classical period . V irgil, in his latest work, as has been noticed, shows a tendency to experiment in combining their use with that

- h L . t e of the Gracco atin rhythms The combination, in h h h writing of the new sc ool, of a sort of inc oate verse wit an elaborate and even pedantic prose was too artificial to be permanent 5 but about the same time attempts were

made at a corresponding ne w style in regular poetry . Rhymed verse as such does not appear till later 5 the work the novelli oetae h the r of p , as t ey were called by gramma ians, partly took the form of reversion to the trochaic metres L which were the natural cadence of the atin language ,

' fre sh e x e rime nts partly of p in hitherto untried metres, in

both cases with a large employment of assonance, and the beginnings of an accentual as opposed to a quantitative Of h u h treatment . these experiments few ave s rvived ; t e most interesting is a poem of remarkable beauty preserved in the Latin Anthology under t he name of the P ervigilium

’ Vener zs h n r . Its aut or is unknown, o can its date be de

t e rmine d . The V with certainty worship of enus Genetrix,

for whose spring festival the poem is written, had been H revived on a magnificent scale by adrian ; and this fact, h toget er with the internal evidence of the language, make it A assignable with high probability to the age of the ntonines . ' the ae The use of preposition , almost as in the Romance

- infle xi ns languages, where case o would be employed in L A classical atin, has been held to argue an frican origin 5 n iter t ur 111 . 244 L a ti L a e . [

while its remarkable m ediaevalisms have led some critics ,

against all the other indications, to place its date as low as

the fourth or even the fifth century. The Pervigiliurn Vener is is written in the trochaic septe narian verse which had been freely used by the earliest

Roman poets, but had since almost dropped out of literary the n use . With the revival of trochaic movement the lo g divorce between metrical stress and spoken accent begins

to break down . The metre is indeed accurate, and even

rigorous, in its quantitative structure ; but instead of the prose and verse stresses regularly clashing as they do in th n e hexameter or elegiac, they te d broadly towards coin

- ciding, and do entirely coincide in one third of the lines of

the poem . We are on the very verge of the accentual M A f Latin poetry of the iddle ges, and the a finity is made

closer by the free use of initial and terminal assonances, z h and even of occasional rhyme . The use of stan as wit V i a recurring refrain was not unexampled 5 irg l, following h u the w T eocrit s and Catullus, had employed device ith singular beauty in the eighth E clog ue ; but this is the first known instance of the refrain being added to a poem in ' stanz as of a fixed and equal length 5 it is more than half way towards the structure o f an eleventh- century Provencal alha . The keen additional pleasure given by rhyme was easily felt in a language where accidental rhymes come so L the often as they do in atin, but rhyme here, so far as h h t ere is any, is rat er incidental to the way in which the n la guage is used, with its silvery chimes and recurrences, than sought out for its own sake 5 there is more of actual A rhyming in some of the prose of puleius . The refrain itself

Cr as a met ui nu n uam amavit ui ue a ma cr g g , g g vit as a met

I n the p oe m as it has c ome d own to us the re frain c o me s in at irreg ular inte rvals ; but the most pl au sibl e re constitutio n of a so m e what c orru t and d sord e re d te xt m ake s it re c ur afte r e ve r fo urth ne p i y li , thus mak n u the twe nt -two stanz as m e nt one d in the t t e i g p y i i l .

111 . L a tin L ite r a tu r e . [ them into a sheet of flowers 5 among them the boy Love h is - flowe red goes, wit out h torch and his arrows 5 amid gold broom, under trees unloosening their tresses, in myrtle thicket and poplar shade, the whole land sings with the voices of innumerable birds . Then with a sudden sob the pageant ceases

a nos ta cemus u a ndo ver venit meum t I ll ca nta t, q ’ Qua noo fi a m u ti chelidon u t tacer e desina m t A ff second spring, in e ect, was not to come for poetry till a thousand years later 5 once more then we hear the n z music of this stra ge poem , not now in the clear bron e u utterance of a mature and magnificent lang age , but faintly h n l and alti g y, in immature forms that yet have notes of new and piercing sweetness .

B els dons a micx assa m nu oe novel , f j I ns elj a r di on cha nton li auz el

S so it rings out in outhern France , in an orchard under the E whitethorn leaf ; and in ngland, later, but yet a Ch the century before aucer, same clear note is echoed, h tuene M er she a nt Aver il w ha n s r a hi ineth to s r in y , p y g p g . E the A But in the Roman mpire under ntonines the soil,

. Th the race , the language , were alike exhausted e anarchy of the third century brought with it the wreck of the whole i fabric of civil sation 5 and the new religion, already widely f u dif used and powerf l , was beginning to absorb into itself on all sides the elements of thought and emotion which tended towards a new joy and a living art . NIT : MINUCIUS ELIX TERTULLIAN EARLY LATIN CHRI STIA Y F , ,

LACTANTIUS .

THE ne w religion was long in adapting itself to literary w the A i form 5 and if, bet een era of the nton nes and that of h the Diocletian , a century passes in w ich all important literature is Christian, this is rather due to the general h decay of art and letters, t an to any high literary quality in the earlier patristic writing . Christianity began among the - lower classes, and in the Greek speaking provinces of the E ff h h mpire 5 after it reached Rome , and was di used t roug the Western provinces, it remained for a long time a some in t what obscure sect, confined, the firs instance, to the small Jewish or G raec o - Asiatic colonies which were to be found in all centres of commerce, and spreading from them among the uneducated urban populations . The persecution of Nero was directed against obscure people , vaguely known the rd o m the as a sort of Jews, and W y of two great apostles was an incident that passed without remark and m i al ost without notice . Tacitus d smisses the Christians in the a few careless words, and evidently classes new religion with other? base Oriental superstitions as hardly worth

- serious mention . The well known correspondence between

Pliny and Trajan, on the subject of the repressive measures a Ch to be taken gainst the ristians of Bithynia, indicates C i that hristianity had , by the beg nning of the second century, taken a large and firm footing in the Eastern 247 I I L L a tin L itera tu r e . [ provinces 5 but it is not till a good m any years later that we have any certain indication of its obtaining a hold on the S educated classes . The legend of the conversion of tatius C seems to be ofpurely mediaeval origin . Flavius lemens, the

cousin of the Emperor Domitian, executed on the ground

of atheism during the year of his consulship , is claimed, h C h though wit out certainty, as the earliest ristian martyr of E m the the high rank . ven in the iddle of second century, Church of Rome m ainly consisted of people who could M L . barely speak or write atin The uratorian fragment, h a h t e e rliest Latin C ristian document, which general opinion dates within a few years of the death of Marcus A urelius, and which is part of an extremely important official list of canonical writings issued by the authority of

C . the Roman hurch, is barbarous in construction and diction the C the It is in reign of ommodus, amid wreck of all other

h . literature, t at we come on the first Christian authors V 1 8 6 ictor, Bishop of Rome from the year , is mentioned by Jerome as the first author of theological treatises in Latin 5 taken together with his attempt to excommunicate the

Asiatic Churches on the question, already a burning one, th E sh of e proper date of keeping aster, this ows that the Latin Church was now gaining independent force and

vitality . Two main streams may be traced in the Christian litera O n ture which begins with the reign of Commodus . the A one hand, there is what may be called the frican school, L writing in the new atin 5 on the other, the Italian school, h h a L w ic ttempted to mould classical atin to Christian use . f A The former bears a close a finity in style to puleius , or, h the m h A rat er, to ovement of whic puleius was the most remarkable product 5 the latter succeeds to Quintilian and the his contemporaries as second impulse of Ciceronianism . The two opposing methods appear at their sharpest contrast

in the earliest authors of each, Tertullian and Minuc ius

F . elix The vast preponderance of the former, alike in volume

L tin L ite a tu a r r e .

he The account of t scene of the dialogue . narrator , with h c ilius the is two friends, Octavius and Cae , former a h the h C ristian, latter a somewhat wavering ad erent of the h the O old fait , are taking a walk on beach near stia on m a beautiful autumn orning, watching the little waves

- - lapping on the sand, and boys playing duck and drake Cae c ilius with pieces of tile, when kisses his hand, in the S ordinary pagan usage, to an image of erapis which they pass . The incident draws them on to a theological dis ae c ilius Ch c ussion. C sets forth the argument against risti anit O him y in detail, and ctavius replies to point by point ; Caec ilius at the end, professes himself overcome, and declares his adhesion to the faith of his friend . Both in the attack and in the defence it is only the rational side of h the the new doctrine w ich is at issue . The unity of God, resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future state, make up the sum of Christianity as it is presented . The C name of hrist is not once mentioned, nor is his divinity directly asserted . There is no allusion to the sacraments, or to the doctrine of the Redemption 5 and Octavius neither quotes from nor refers to the writings of either Old or New A h Testament . mong early Christian writings , t is method of treatment is unexampled elsewhere . The work is an attempt to present the new religion to educated opinion as a reasonable philosophic system 5 as we read it, we might th be in e middle of the eighteenth century . . With this temperate rationalism is combined a clearness and purity d C of iction, founded on the iceronian style, but without 3 Cicero s sumptuousness of structure, that recalls the best prose of the Silver Age. Octavius The author of the was a lawyer, who practised the in Roman courts . The literary influence of Quintilian no doubt lasted longer among the legal profession , for whose guidance he primarily wrote, than among the gram r n l ma ians and jour a ists, who represent in this age the general tendency of the world of letters . But even in the 2 I Ter tu llian . 5

legal profession the new Latin had established itself, and, h except in the capital, seems to ave almost driven out the classical manner . Its most remarkable exponent among the his Christian writers was, up to time of conversion,

- a pleader in the Carthaginian law courts . Quintus Septimius Florens T e r tullianus was born at

Carthage towards the end of the reign of Antoninus Pius . A When he was a young man, the fame of puleius as a writer and lecturer was at its height 5 and though Tertullian A himself never mentions him (as puleius, on his side, never refers in specific terms to the Christian religion), they must have been well known to each other, and their antagonism is of the kind which grows out of strong similarities of A : w as nature . puleius passed for a magician Tertullian his Ch a firm believer in magic, and conversion to ristianity he was, himself tells us, very largely due to confessions of an its truth extorted from demons, at the str ge spiritualistic séa nces which were a feature of the time among all classes .

His conversion took place in the last year of Commodus . h A The tension between t e two religions for in frica, at all the the h events , old and new were followed wit equally fiery a — ha d A enthusi sm d already reache breaking point . h r M ater et eathen mob, headed by the p iestesses of the Vir o Caelestis c g , the obje t of the ecstatic worship afterwards h transferred to the mother of Christ, had two or t ree years before besieged the proconsul of Africa in his own house because he refused to order a general massacre of the i h Chr stians . In the anarc y after the assassination of Com r modus, the pe secution broke out, and continued to rage h u n e imiu t rougho t the reig of S pt s Severus . It was in these years that Tertullian poured forth the series of apologetic and controversial writings whose fierce enthusiasm and im e tuous the L p eloquence open history of atin Christianity . A olo eticu m The p g , the greatest of his earlier works, and, h upon the w ole, his masterpiece, was composed towards the beginning of this persecution, in the last years of the I I L L atin L ite ra tu r e . [

he i its a second century . T terms in wh ch purport is st ted,

a non sit nisi ualis s Quod r eligio Chr istia na da mn nda , q it rius intelli a tur h to r and p g , mig t lead one expect a g ave ne w t reasoned defence of the doctrine, like hat of the ' ‘ ’ Octavius ertullian s r a . But I st ength is in att ck, not in defence 5 and his apology passes almost at once into a fierce i the indictment of pagan sm , painted in all gaudiest colours a the of African rhetoric . Tow rds end, he turns violently upon those who say that Christianity is merely a system of philosophy : and writers like Minuc ius ar e included with

the eclectic pagan schoolmen in his condemnation . Here,

for the first time, the position is definitely taken which has

since then had so vast and varied an influence, that the H m oly Scriptures are the source of all wisdo , and that the poetry and philosophy of the G rae c o - Roman world were alike derived or perverted from the inspired writings of the ld M O Testament . oses was five hundred years before

‘ H m u n o er 5 and therefore , r ns his gra diose and sweeping H M fallacy, omer is derived from the books of oses . The u arg ment, strange to say, has lived almost into our own

day .

In thus breaking with heathen philosophy and poetry, Tertullian necessarily broke with the literary traditions of H . S r ur Europe for a thousand years The oly c ipt es, as a al canon of reve ed truth, became incidentally but inevitably

a canon of literary style likewise . Writings soaked in quotations from the Hebrew poets and prophets could not A but be affected by their style through and through. current Latin translation of the Old and New Testament - I tala u the the so called , which itself only s rvives as ground f — work o later versions had already been made, and was in r r wide use. Its ude literal fidelity imported into Ch istian Latin an enormous mass of Grecisms and Hebraisms — the f m latter derived from the original writings, the ormer fro the Septuagint version of the Old Testament — which combined with its free use of popular language and its

2 54 L a tin L iter a tu r e .

Coming ? Yet for te n years or more he continued to pour forth his own brilliant essays 5 and while the substance of his n teaching becomes more and more harsh and vi dictive, the his v force of his rhetoric, command over irony and invecti e , the gorgeous richness of his vocabulary, remain as striking

as ever . In the strange and often romantic psychology of

De Anima h - the , and in the singular clot es philosophy of the De P o llio he th e S , appears as precursor of wedenborg and T ufe l dr c kh A e s i . remarkable passage in the former treatise, in which he speaks of the growing pressure of over - population E in the mpire , against which wars, famines, and pestilences

had become necessary if unwelcome remedies, may lead us no w to reconsider the theory, largely accepted, that the

Roman Empire decayed and perished for want of men . With the advance of years his growing antagonism to the

' Catholic Churc h is accompanied by a further hardening of the De M ono amia his style . The savage Puritanism of g and De I eiu nio is couched in a scholastic diction where the tradition of culture is disappearing ; and in the gloomy De ud ci a ferocity of the P i ti , probably the latest of his

extant works, he comes to a final rupture alike with Catholicism and with humane letters A The frican school of patristic writers, of which Tertullian

is at once the earliest and the most imposing figure, and of h he w ich was indeed to a large degree the direct founder, continued for a century after his death to include the main Thasc ius Caec ilius literary production of Latin Christianity . C r ianu s C 2 8 h yp , Bishop of arthage from the year 4 , t ough

a pupil and an admirer of Tertullian, reverts in his own writings at once to orthodoxy and to an easy and copious

diction . In earlier youth he had been a professor of

rhetoric ; after his conversion in mature life, he gave up all

his wealth to the poor, and devoted his great literary gifts to He apologetic and hortatory writings . escaped the Decian persecution by retiring from Carthage 5 but a few years later he was executed in the renewed outbreak of judicial 2 Cyp r ia n a nd L acta ntius . 5 5 massacres which sullied the short and disastrous reign o f C ’ h Valerian . Forty years after yprian s death the r etorician Arnobius of Sicca in N umidia renewed the attack on pagan h or x C ism , rat er than the defence e position of hristianity, Ad er sus N ationes in the seven books v , which he is said to h hi have written as a proof of t e s incerity of s conversion .

- Uneven and ill proportioned, in the phrase of Jerome, this work follows neither the elaborate rhetoric of the early

African school, nor the chaster and more polished style of

Cyprian, but rather renews the inferior and slovenly manner A of the earlier an tiquarians and encyclopedists . free use of the rhetorical figu res goes side by side with a general His want of finish and occasional lapses into solecism . d the literary gift is so small, and his knowle ge of religion he professes to defend so slight and so excessively inaccurate, that theologians and men of letters for once agree that his main value consists in the fragments of antiquarian informa h has tion w ich he preserves . But he a further claim to notice as the master of a celebrated pupil . L Caec ilius ir mianu s Lac tantius ucius F , a name eminent among patristic authors, and not inconsiderable in humane had C h i an letters, , like yprian, been a professor of r etor c, d h h embraced C ristianity in mature life . T at he was a pupil of Arnobius is established by the testimony of Jerome ; his A nl h frican birth is o y a doubtful inference from t is fact. Towards the end of the third century he established a w school at Nicomedia, hich had practically become the seat of empire under the rule of Diocletian 5 and from there he was summoned to the court of Gaul to superintend the C - education of rispus, the ill fated son of Constantine . The new religion had passed through its last and sharpest t D the tw persecu ion under iocletian 5 now, of o joint s C C r i emperor onstantine openly favoured the h ist ans, and Licinius had been forced to relax the hostility towards h had t em which he at first shown . As it permeated the court and saw the reins of government almost within its L a t in L iter a tu re .

the C grasp, hurch naturally dropped some of the anathema tising spirit in which it had regarded art and literature in " Lac tantius the days of its earlier struggles . brought to its service a taste trained in the best literary tradition 5 and while some doubt was cast on his dogmatic orthodoxy as

regards the precise definition of the Persons of the Trinity, his pure and elegant diction was accepted as a model for His later writers. greatest work, the seven books of the tes o i ini I nstitu f D v yt , was published a few years before the victory of Constantine over Maxe ntius outside the

h r - walls of Rome, whic was the tu ning point in the contest

between the two religions . It is an able exposition of

Christian doctrine in a style which, for eloquence, copi r ousne ss, and refinement, is in the most st iking contrast to the wretched prose produced by contemporary pagan

writers . The influence of Cicero is obvious and avowed throughout 5 but the references in the work show the author to have been familiar with the whole range of the

L . E atin classics, poets as well as prose writers nnius, V H the comedians and satirists, irgil and orace, are cited by

him freely 5 he even dares to praise Ovid . In his treatise ’ O n G od s Wor kma nship De Opificio Dei the arguments C are often borrowed with the language from icero, but L c h ucretius is also quoted and ombated . T e more fanatical side of the new religion appears in the curious De M or tihus Per secu tor u m work, , written after Constantine h had definitely t rown in his lot with Christianity. It is famous as containing the earliest record of the vision of Constantine before the battle of the Mulvian Bridge ; and its highly coloured account of the tragical fates of the E D persecuting mperors, from Nero to iocletian, had a large effect in fixing the tradition of the later Empire as viewed M throughout the iddle Ages . The long passionate pro test of the Church against heathen tyranny breaks out here into equally passionate exultation 5 the Roman Empire

St . A is already seen , as it was later by ugustine, fading and

L a ti L i r n te a tu re .

h and h accentual, except w ere accent quantity appen to M h the coincide . uc of pronunciation of modern Italian may be traced in his remarkable accentuation of some be h h the off words 5 like Italian, bot t rows back accent a long syllable and slides it forward upon a short one . , h Assonance is used freely, but t ere is not more rhyming than is usual in the poetry of the late empire . Not only in infle xion pronunciation , but in grammatical , the beginnings

- of Italian here and there appear . The case forms of the different declensions are beginning to run into one another insi nis insi nes the plural, for example , of g is no longer g , but, insi ni - infle xions as in Italian, g ; and the case themselves are dwindling away before the free use of prepositions, which was already beginning to show itself in the Pervigiliu m

Ve ner is . Popular poetry was now definitely asserting itself along

- side of book poetry formed on the classical model . But authors who kept up a high literary standard in prose continued to do so in verse also . The elegiac piece De Ave Pho nice a e , found in e rly mediaeval collections under Lac tantius the name of , and accepted as his by recent w critics , is ritten in accurate and graceful elegiac couplets, which are quite in accordance with the admiration L ac tantius On the Wr a th o od , in his work f G , expresses for

Ovid . It is perhaps the earliest instance outside the field of prose of the truce or coalition which was slowly form ing itself between the new religion and the old culture . m Beyond a certain faint and almost i palpable mysticism , which hints at the legend of the Phoenix as symbolical of the doctrine of the Resurrection , there is nothing in the poem which is distinctively Christian . Phoebus and the lyre of Cyllene are invoked, as they might be by a pagan poet . But the language is from beginning to end full of C hristian or, at least, scriptural reminiscences, which could ' only be possible to a writer familiar with the Psalter . The description with which the poems opens of the Earthly 2 The Emp ir e a nd the Chu r ch . 59

“ Paradise, a land east of the sun, where the bird has has n the E H its home, mi gled touches of lysium of omer V and irgil, and the New Jerusalem of the Revelation 5 as the sun in Psalms, the is a bridegroom coming out of his h c amber, and night and day are full of a language that is not speech . In the literary revival of the latter half of the fourth h century t ese tendencies have developed themselves, and A taken a more mature but a less interesting form . fter

Christianity had . become formally and irrevocably the State n L religio , it took over what was left of atin culture as part of the chaotic inheritance which it had to accept the h A as price for civil establis ment . heavy price was D ’ paid on both sides when Constantine, in ante s luminous ” The E phrase, turned the eagles . mpire definitively parted with the splendid administrative and political tra dition founded on the classical training and the Stoic philosophy 5 though shattered as it had been in the anarchy irre c e r of the third century, that was perhaps in any case ov

. C ou w able The hurch, its side, dre away in the persons n w h of its leaders from its earlier traditio , ith all t at it h u h and involved in the growth of a w olly new tho g t art, and armed or hampered itself with that classicalism from wh ich it never again got quite free . It is in the century C e before onstantine , therefore, wh n old and new were in the sharpest antagonism, and yet were both full of a — strange ferment the ferment of dissolution in the one the — case, in other that of quickening that the end of the h ancient world, and wit it the end of Latin literature as such, might reasonably be placed . But the first result of the alliance between the Empire and the Church was to give added dignity to the latter and renewed energy the to former . The partial revival of letters in the fourth century may induce us to extend the period of the ancient Latin literature so far as to include Ausonius and Claudian as i m leg ti ate, though remote, successors of the Augustan poets. IAN THE FOURTH CENTUR Y : AUSONIUS AND CLAUD .

h M A FOR a full century after the deat of arcus urelius, L a C r atin literature was , part from the h istian writers, h the practically extinct . The aut ors of least importance, or whose names even are known to any but professional

un h . scholars, may be co ted on the fingers of one and The stream of Roman law, the one guiding thread down those dark ages, continued on its steady course . Papinian and the Se timius Ulpian, the two foremost jurists of reigns of p and Alexander Severus, bear a reputation as high as that of any of their illustrious predecessors . Both rose to what was in this century the highest administrative position in

the E . mpire, the prefecture of the praetorian guards the S w E Papinian , a native it seems of yrian to n of mesa, S Se timius and a kinsman of the yrian wife of p Severus, was the author of numerous legal works, both in Greek and

Latin . U nder Severus he was not only commander of the household troops, but discharged what we should now call Hi the duties of H ome Secretary . s genius for law was united with an independence of judgment and a sense of equity which rose beyond the limits of formal jurisprudence, and made him one of the great humanising influences of He d m his profession . was mur ered, with circu stances of r C g eat brutality, by the infamous aracalla, almost immediately

D l ianus after his accession to sole power . omitius U p , ’ L Papinian s successor as the head of atin jurists, was also 260

L a t i L ite a n r tu r e .

’ ’ I nscr ibis cha r tae noa n adabr a g icita r Abr a c , ' ' ' Sae zns et snbt r r e etzs sea detr ahe r a mmam p g p , ’ ' t ma is at ne ma n ir E g o gi: aesznt cleme nta fig r z ,

' S zng ala quae semper r apier et ceter a figes ' Donec in a ng ustnm r edig atu r li te r a connm 7 lai: lino nex is co/lnm r edimir e memento.

Nor is his alternative remedy of a piece of coral hung round ’ the patient s neck much more rational . The drop from the science of Celsus is much more striking here than the drop ’ h M An from t e art of Celsus contemporary anilius . inter mittent imperial patronage of letters lingered on . The ' elder and younger Gordian (the latter a pupil of Sammonic us h fat er, who bequeathed his immense library to him) had

. lo iu some reputation as writers C d s Albinus, the governor Se timius of Britain who disputed the empire with p Severus, A was a devoted admirer of puleius, and wrote romances in a similar manner, which, according to his biographer, had no inconsiderable circulation . Under Diocletian and his successors there was a slight and partial revival of letters, which chiefly showed itself on

’ C ne etzca the side of verse . The y g , a didactic poem on M A l m hunting, by the Carthaginian poet arcus urelius O y pius Ne me sianus , is, together with four bucolic pieces by the same author, the chief surviving fragment of the main line

V . C ne etica of irgilian tradition The y g , in spite of its good ve rsific ation taste and its excellent , is on the whole a dull performance ; but in the other p ieces, the pastoral form gives the author now and then an opportunity of introducing a little touch of the romantic tone which is partly imitated V ne L from irgil, but partly natural to the w atin .

’ ' ’ ' ' Per azt sp zna r osar nec semper hlia canaent N ee lon a /n tenet noa coma: nec o ular mbr as g p p a , ' ’ ' Donum or ma bre e est nec re u com n f v , q oa moaet a ms in these graceful lines the copied Virgilian cadence is VI L] Tiber ianus the A ug ustan H istory . united with the directness and the real or assumed simplicity L which belongs to the second childhood of atin literature, and which 18 so remarkable i n the authors who founded the r i new style . The new style itself was also largely p act sed, Tibe rianus but only a few scattered remnants survive . , V S Count of Africa, icar of pain, and praetorian prefect of Gaul (the whole nomenclature of the Empire is now passing from the Roman to the mediaeval type) under Constantine the Great, is usually identified with the author of some of h the most strikingly beautiful of t ese fragmentary pieces .

A descriptive passage, consisting of twenty lines of finely

‘ ' ‘ m Pervz zlzum Vener zs written trochaics, re inds one of the g in the richness of its language and the delicate simplicity of s its style . The la t lines may be quoted for their singular likeness to one of the most elaborately beautiful stanz as ae e ueene h of the F ri Q , t at which describes the sounds “ consorted in one harmony which Guyon hears in the gardens of Acrasia

’ Has per nmbr as omnzs ales plus canor a quam pntes ‘ ' ‘ Ca ntzbns vernzs str ep eba t e t snsnr r zs dulcibns

' ’ ' ' Hi c logaentls mur mu r a mms concznebatfr onrlzb ' uas melos vocalis au r ae mum Ze h r z move r a t Q , p y , ’ Sic ca ntem per vir ecta p ulcr a oaor a ct musica ' ' s ur a ocus os et nm n e Ale amms a l fl bra z v r a t.

w The principal prose work, however, hich has come down from this age, shows a continued and even increased degra ' ' a so- H zstor za Au u sta d tion of style . The called g , a series ’ S Li es o t e of memoirs, in continuation of uetonius v f h Tw elve Caesars E H um , of the Roman mperors from adrian to N erian 1 1 7 was begun under Diocletian and finished

C a w — Aelius S artianu under onst ntine by six riters p s, Julius Ca itolinus Vulc acius G allic anus Tre bellius p , , Pollio, Aelius ’

Lam n dius i Vo isc us. M p , and Flav us p ost of them , if not ffi all, were o cials of the imperial court, and had free access to the registers of the senate as well as to more private L ati n L ite ra tu r e .

n of sources of informatio . The extreme feebleness the con tents of this curious work is only exceeded by the poverty w had and childishness of the riting . H istory sunk into a

collection of trivial gossip and details of court life, couched in a language worthy of a second- rate chronicler of the Dark

Ages . The mere outward circumstances of the men whose ' ' — the u f nr a tz A u u stz lives they narrated p p g , as one of the authors calls them in a romantically sonorous phrase w ere

- a indeed of world wide importance, and among the m sses of rubbish of which the memoirs chiefly consist there is

included much curious information and striking incident . But their main interest is in the light they throw on the gradual sinking of the splendid administrative organisation of the second century towards the sterile Chinese hierarchy z E of the By antine mpire, and the concurrent degradation of

paganism, both as a political and a religious system . Vo isc us p , the last of the six authors, apologises, in draw

ing the work to a close, for his slender literary power, and expresses the hope that his material at - least may be found useful to some “ eloquent man who may wish to unlock ” ' the actions of princes . What he had in his mind was probably not so much regular history as the panegyrical oratory which about this same time became a prominent

feature of the imperial courts, and gave their name to a

Pane ric i. whole school of writers known as the gy Gaul, for a long time the rival of Africa as the nu rse of judicial

oratory, was the part of the Empire where this new form

of literature was most assiduously cultivated . U p to the C e age of onstantin , it had enjoyed practical immunity from n ha barbarian invasio , and d only had a moderate share of the civil wars which throughout the third century desolated E all parts of the mpire . In wealth and civilisation, and in the arts of peace, it probably held the foremost place among M the provinces . arseilles, Narbonne , Toulouse , Bordeaux, A utun, Rheims , and Treves all possessed famous and

- flourishing schools of oratory . The last named town was

L a tin i 111 L ter a tu r e . [

After Gratian was succeeded by Theodosius he retired t his he a lettered ease near native town, where lived ti the is : nearly end of the century . H numerous poetic the works are of most miscellaneous kind, ranging fror Christian hymns and elegies on deceased relations to trans

' lations from the Greek Anthology and centos from Virgi ’ ’ Among them the volume of lay llza constitutes his chie claim to eminence , and gives him a high rank among th later Latin poets . The gem of this collection is the famou M os a 0 Th ell e . e m , written at Tr ves about the year 3 7 os v L beautiful of purely descripti e atin poems, it is unique i: the felicity with which it unites Virgilian rhythm and dic tio with the new romantic sense of the beauties of nature The feeling for the charm of landscape which we hat occasion to note in the letters of the younger Pliny is hen fully developed, with a keener eye and an enlarged power 0 ’ litumnu . expression . Pliny s description of the C s may b interestingly compared with the passage of this poem ll h A w whic usonius recounts, ith fine and observant touches — the beauties of his northern river the liquid lapse o: the waters, green wavering reflections, the belt of cris] ’ sand by the water s edge and the long weeds swaying witl

the - the stream , gleaming gravel beds under the water witl their patches of moss and the quick fishes darting hithe and thither over them or the oftener - quoted and not les beautiful lines where he breaks into rapture over the sunse e colouring of stream and bank, and the glassy water wher

- at evening, all the hills waver and the vine tendril shake

- v irtui and the grape bunches swell in the crystal mirror . In A al of this poem usonius ranks not merely as the last, or Hi L . but the last, of atin, but as the first of French poets feeling for the country of his birth has all the romantit patriotism which we are accustomed to associate with 1 much earlier or a much later age . The language of D Bellay in the sixteenth century Auson ins.

’ ’ b e dur me laist l am oise ne Plus que le mar r p fi , Plus mon Loir e Gaulois one le Tj /br e Latin

h la is anticipated here. The softer nort ern loveliness, ne A niu douceur Angevi , appeals to uso s more than all the the traditional beauties of Arcadia or Sicily. It is with ' Gallic rivers that he compares his loved Moselle : N on tzbi t t er e) non Axona r aece s te s a r sis incer ta se Liser an e/ ; p p p is Druentia r ip .

’ ’ 0 lor aly flozv the L oire a na S eine And load the dark Dur a nce I we seem to hear the very words of the modern ballad and at the end of the poem his imagination returns, with the fondness of a lover, to the green lakes and sounding streams A - of quitaine, and the broad sea like reaches of his native

Garonne. a In this poem, alike by the classic beauty of his l nguage m A and the modernis of his feeling, usonius marks one of th He the great divisions in e history of poetry . is the last of the poets of the Empire which was still nominally c o E extensive with the world, which held in itself ast and West, he t old and the new. The final division of the Roman d worl , which took place in the year 395 between the two a sons of Theodosius, synchronises with a division s definite and as final between classical and mediaeval poetry ; and in the last year s of the fourth century the parting of the the two streams, separation of the dying from the dawning h h ' lig t, is placed in s arp relief by the works of two con temporary poets, Claudian and Prudentius . The singular u C and isolated fig re of laudian, the posthumous child of the h h classical world, stands alongside of t at of t e first great Christian oet the a p like figures which were fabled to st nd, n A regarding the risi g and setting sun, by the tlantic gates where the Mediterranean opened into the unknown Western seas . C C As i laudius laudianus was of iat c origin, and lived at L a tin L itera tu re .

Alexandria until, in the year of the death of Theodosius, he passed into Italy and became the laureate of the court of M h his ilan . Till t en he had, according to own statement, written in Greek, his life having been passed wholly in the

- Greek speaking provinces . But immediately on his arrival at the seat of the Western or Latin Empire he showed him self a master of the language and forms of Latin poetry such as had not been known since the end of the first His century . poems, so far as they can be dated, belong H e u entirely to t he next ten years . is conject red not to his have long survived the downfall of patron Stilicho, h V who as t e great andal general , guardian of the young ' H Emperor onorius, was practically ruler of the Western He m was Empire . was the last e inent man of letters who

a professed pagan .

The. historical epics which Claudian produced in rapid succession during the last five years of the fourth and the h first five of t e fifth century are now little read, except by historians who refer to them for details of the wars A or court intrigues of the period . hundred years ago, when Statius and Silius I talic us formed part of the regular

course of classical study, he naturally and properly stood His L alongside of them . atin is as pure as that of the best poets of the Silver Age ; in wealth of langu age and he S in fertility of imagination is excelled, if at all, by tatius A his h alone . lone in age he in erits the scholarly tradition

which still lingered among the libraries of Alexandria . Nonnus the , the last and not one of least learned and who graceful of the later Greek epicists, probably lived not E long after Claudian , was also of gyptian birth and training, and he and Claudian are really the last representatives of that Alexandrian school which had from the first had so

large and deep an influence over the literature of Rome . The immense range of time covered by Greek literature is brought more vividly to our imagination when we consider h A d t at this single lexan rian school, which began late in

I I L L at in L ite r a tu re . [

Claudian used the heroic hexameter for mythological as f G i a ntoma chia well as historical epics . O his g we possess only an inconsiderable fragment ; but the three books of the unfinished R ape of P r oserpine are among the finest

examples of the purely literary epic . The description of the flowery spring meadows where Proserpine and he r companions gather blossoms for garlands is a passage per l p e tual y quoted . It is interesting to note how the rising C tide of romanticism has here , as elsewhere, left laudian

wholly untouched . The passage, though elaborately ornate, is executed in the clear hard manner of the Alexandrian school ; it has not a trace of that sensitiveness to nature s which vibrates in the P erv igilium Ve ner i . We have gone back for a moment to that poetical style which perpetually z in reminds us of the sculptured frie es of Greek art, severe

outline, immensely adroit and learned in execution, but a little chilly and colourless except in the hands of its A greatest masters . fter paying to the full the tribute of admiration which is due to Claudian ’s refined and dignified n h workmanship, we are still left with the feeli g that t is h kind of poetry was already obsolete . It is not only t at, m s as has been re arked with truth of his historical epic , the elaboration of the treatment is disproportionate to the M a ter ia m su er abat importance or interest of the subject. p op us might be said with equal truth of much of the work

of his predecessors . But a new spirit had by this time

penetrated literature , and any poetry wholly divorced from — it must be not only ar tific ial for that alone would prove it nothing against but unnatural . Claudian is a precursor of the Renaissance in its narrower aspect ; the last of the

classics, he is at the same time the earliest, and one of the n most disti guished, of the classicists . It might seem a mere chance whether his poetry belonged to the fourth

or to the sixteenth century. C ’ In laudian s distinguished contemporary, the Spanish A poet urelius Prudentius Clemens, Christian Latin poetry VI I P r ud n i s e t u .

His reached complete maturity . collected poems were in 0 published at Rome 4 4, the year celebrated by Claudian h H as that of the sixth consuls ip of onorius . Before Pru n C had h denti s, hristian poetry been slig t in amount and

rude or tentative in manner . We have already had occa sion to notice its earliest efforts in the rude verses of

mmodianus . the Co The revival of letters in fourth century, ' aflec te d C so far as it went, hristian as well as secular U C S poetry . nder onstantine, a panish deacon, one Gaius u A uilinus uv enc us n Vetti s q J , put the Gospel arrative into h respectable hexameters, w ich are still extant . The p oems and hymns which have come down under the name of H Bishop ilary of Poitiers are probably spurious, and a similar doubt attaches to those ascribed to the eminent h M V grammarian and r etorician, Gaius arius ictorinus, after f h his his conversion . Be ore Prudentius publis ed collection ,

h t . Am w the ymns of S brose had been ritten, and were the C h h h in use among Western hurches . But t ese, t oug

the - they formed type for all later hymn writers, were few O ut so - A in number . of the called mbrosian hymns a

six h rigorous criticism only allows five or as aut entic .

- These, however, include two world famed pieces, still in the Aeter ne r er um Conditor daily use by the Church, and e u r a o omnium e the D s C e t r , and the equally famous V ni

R edemp tor . A St . To the form thus established by mbrose , Prudentius,

r in his two books of lyrical poems, gave a la ger volume

. Ca theme r ina and a more sustained literary power The ,

the Ch P er a series of poems on ristian life, and the iste ha non Ch — t p , a book of the praise of ristian martyrs S .

L St . V St . A h awrence, incent, gnes, among ot er less cele — brate d names at once represent the most substantial L H addition made to atin lyrical poetry since orace, and the ne w n the complete triumph of religio . They are not, the A h like mbrosian ymns , brief pieces meant for actual

O ut - singing in churches . of the twenty six poems only i i tu e 2 72 L at n L tera r .

e h three are under one hundr d lines in lengt , and that on A the martyrdom of St . Romanus of ntioch runs to no less

than eleven hundred and forty, almost the proportions of

a small epic . But in the brilliance and vigour of their h the ne w language, t eir picturesque style, and joy that, h in spite of t eir asceticism , burns throughout them, they gave an impulse of im mense force towards the development

of Christian literature . In merely technical quality they

are superior to any poetry of the time, Claudian alone h the h excepted in t eir fulness of life , in exultant tone w ich C kindles and sustains them, they make laudian grow pale

- like a candle flame at dawn . h C Wit Prudentius, however, as with laudian, we have almost passed beyond the strict limit of a history of ancient

: Latin literature and any fuller discussion, either of these

remarkable lyrical pieces, or of his more voluminous ex itor p os y or controversial treatises in hexameter, properly i belongs to a history of the Christ an Church . The two most eminent and copious prose writers of the later fourth A am century, Jerome and ugustine, occupy the same

bi uous . A g position part from them , and from the less celebrated Christian writers who were their predecessors or m the conte poraries, prose of the fourth century is both n small in amount and insignifica t in quality . The revival in verse composition which followed the settlement of the Empire under Constantine scarcely spread to the less

imitable art of prose . The school of eminent Roman grammarians who flourished about the middle of the S D century , and among whom ervius and onatus are the

leading names , while they commented on ancient master w h pieces it inexhaustible industry, and often with really n sou d judgment, wrote themselves in a base and formless A a h r style . few ut o s of technical manuals and epitomes h of istory rise a little above the common level , or have

a casual importance from the contents of their works . The Palladius treatises on husbandry by , and on the art of war

L a i L i I I I t n tera tu r e . [

The besieged by the conquerors . elevation Theo dosius to the purple bore back a time the tide disaster ; once more t he civilised world staggered its a with strength and cour ge fatally broken . At this dramatic moment in the downfall of the Roman Empire s L the la t of the atin historians closes his narrative . VIII .

THE BE INNIN S OF THE MIDDLE A G G GES .

I N A u 1 0 E H ug st 4 , while the mperor onorius fed his poultry among the impenetrable marshes of Ravenna, Rome was sacked by a mixed army of Goths and Huns under E had the command of Alaric . ight hundred years elapsed had i and since the imperial city been in fore gn possession , h t ough it had ceased to be the actual seat of government . the shock spread by its capture through the entire Roman Six world was of unparalleled magnitude . years later, C R u tilius a wealthy and distinguished resident, one laudius Namatianus l , was ob iged to take a journey to look after the had condition of his estates in the south of France, which b V A een devastated by a band of wandering isigoths . large portion is extant of the poem in which he described this journey, one of the most charming among poems of the travel, and one of the most interesting of fragments h w e of early mediaeval literature . Now ere else can see portrayed so strongly the fascination which Rome then still the E possessed for whole of Western urope , and the adoration with which she was still regarded as mother and h h had w lig t of the world . T e magical statue been cast a ay , h h the h with ot er heat en idols, from imperial bedc amber the For t una r b s the v h h but U i itself, mystical di inity w ic h the statue represented, still exercised an overw elming ’ A the influence over men s imagination . fter all praises lavished on he r for centu ries by so many of he r illustrious 2 75 atin L ite ratu re 276 L .

i of children, it was left for this fore gner, in the age her m decay, to pay her the ost complete and most splendid eulogy

’ Que /1 r egnas minus est quam quoa r egnar e mereris ; ’ ’ E x ceais factis gr annia fata tuis ’ sol r azl s c u alta muner a tenais Na m is ii a q , uctu a t ocea Qua cir cumfusus fl nus . ’ ’ Feczlsti pa triam azver szs g entibus unam Pr ofuit invitzs te domina nte capi ; ' u e o rs ictzs r o rii consor tia iu r is Du mg f e v p p , ’ oa r ius b s r t Ur bemfecisti qu p or i e a .

In this noble apostrophe R utilius addressed the fading mistress of the world as he passed lingeringly thr ough the a r A O stian gate . F r away in Northe n frica, the most m w profound thinker and ost brilliant riter of the age, as deeply. but very differently m oved by the ancestral splen he dours of the city and t tragedy of her fall , was then m co posing, with all the resources of his vast learning and a i consummate di lect cal skill, the epitaph of the ancient of A civilisation . It was the capture Rome by laric which A t induced St. ugus ine to undertake his work on the (fin “ ” o o - n f G d . In this middle age, he says, i hoe interim seculo z the two cities with their two citi enships, the earthly and the heavenly, are inextricably enwound and intermingled with each other . Not until the Last Judg ment will they be wholly separ ated ; but the philosophy of history is to trace the steps by which the one is slowly f m replaced by, or trans or ed into, the other. The earthly E mpire , all the splendid achievement in thought and arts and deeds of the Roman civilisation, already fades away before that City of God on which his eyes are fixe d ’ lon ostssima m Civitatem Dei sive n tem g , i hoe p or u m cu rsu ’ cum inter im ies er e n natu r ex cte i ons p p g fi v v , sive in illa

' stabilita te sedis aeter nae uam nu ne exs ecta t er a tien a , q p p p a m, ’ ’ uoarius ue iu sntza con e u r n g g v r ta t i iuclicium .

2 8 a tin ite r a t 7 L L u r e .

of the fifth there is no marked change in language or S u A l manner . idoni s pol inaris continues more feebly the A style of poetry initiated a century before him by usonius . Boethius wrote his fine treatise On the Consolation of Philosophy half a century after the extinction of the Empire

of the West . By a strange freak of history, it was at the al L Greek capit that atin scholarship finally faded away. Priscian and Tr ibo nian wrote at Constantinople ; and the Western w orld received its most authoritative works on L law L E atin grammar and Roman , not from the atin mpire, nor from one of the Latin- speaking kingdoms which rose

a - on its ruins, but from the h lf oriental courts of Anastasius

and Justinian . The L two long lives of the great atin fathers, Jerome and A ugustine , cover conjointly a space of just a century . Jerome was born probably a few months after the main

’ seat of empire was formally transferred to Ne w Rome by

- C . A onstantine ugustine, born twenty three years later, died in his cathedral city of Hippo during its siege by Genseric in the brief war which transformed Africa from a V Ci od Roman province to a andal kingdom . The yt of G A had been completed four years previously . quarter of A i a century before the death of ugustine , Jerome ssued, L from his monastery at Bethlehem, the atin translation of the Bible which, on its own merits, and still more if we n give weight to its overwhelmi g influence on later ages, is the L E ur greatest literary masterpiece of the ower mpire . O ' own Authorised Version has deeply afle c te d all post Sli ake s e arian E Vul a te was p nglish ; the g of Jerome , which o fr m time to time revised in detail, but still remains sub stantiall f y as it issued rom his hands, had an equally

profound influence over a vastly greater space and time . It was for Europe of the Middle Ages more than Homer The 0 was to Greece . year 4 5 , which witnessed its publica tion and that of the last of the poems of Claudian to d m which we can assign a certain ate , may clai to be held, First P er io 2 d . 79

as r if any definite point is to be fixed, ma king the end of ancient and the complete establishment of mediaeval

Latin . In the six and a half centuries which had passed since the Greek prisoner of war from Tare ntu m produced the first Latin play in the theatre of the mid- Italian Republic , which was celebrating her victories over the formidable sea-power n literature had shared the vicissitudes State ; and the successive stages of its devel cay are intimately connected with the political and social changes which are the matter of A the Roman history. century passed between conclusion of the first Punic war and the tribunate of Tiberius

Gracchus . It was a period for the Republic of internal At n tranquillity and successful foreign war . its conclusio ,

Italy was organised under Roman control . Greece, A Macedonia, Spain, and frica had become subject prov inc es E a Roman protectorate was established in gypt, and the Asiatic provinces of the Macedonian Empire only D preserved a precarious and partial independence . uring L h this century, atin literature had firmly establis ed itself in D . t a broad and vigorous growth ramatic and epic poe ry, based on diligent study of the best Greek models, formed a substantial body of actual achievement, and under Greek impulse the Latin language was being wrought into a medium and of expression at once dignified copious, a substance capable of indefinite expansion and use in the hands of

i . trained art sts . Prose was rapidly overtaking verse The

- schools of law, and the oratory of the senate house and the u for m, were developing national forms of literature on distinctively Roman lines : a beginning had been made in the more difficult field of history ; and the invention and the popularisation of satire, or mixed form of familiar prose a and verse, began to enlarge the scope of literature over m broader field of life and thought, while i mensely adding to the flexibility and range of the written language . in L ite r tu r e L a t a .

A century followed during which Roman rule was extended and consolidated over the whole area of the M countries fringing the editerranean, while concurrently a long series of revolutions and counter -revolutions ended h in the overt row of the republican oligarchy, and the establishment of the imperial government . Beginning with m of i the democratic ovement the Gracch , this century of M ri u S includes the civil wars a s and ulla, the temporary reconstitution of the oligarchy, the renewed outbreak of war w bet een Julius Caesar and the senate, and the confused period of administrative anarchy which was terminated by A the rise of ugustus to a practical dictatorship, and the arrangement by him of a working compromise between the

D re volu two great opposing forces . uring this century of tion the whole attitude of Rome towards the problems both of internal and of foreign politics was forced through a series of important changes . The revolt of Italy, which, the v of u fi after bringing Rome to erge destr ction , was nally u h A S im cr s ed by the siatic legions of ulla, was almost mediately followed by the unification of Italy, and her z h practical absorption into the Roman citi enship . Wit f renewed and enlarged li e , Rome then entered on a second a extension of her dominions . The annex tion of Syria and the conquest of Gaul completed the circle of he r empire ; the S E n subjugation of pain was completed, and the aster frontier pushed towards Armenia and the Euphrates ; E n finally gypt, the last survivor of the ki gdoms founded by A ’ lexander s generals , passed wholly into Roman hands h he wit t extinction of its own royal house . During this period of perpetual excitement and high i pol tical tension, literature, in the forms both of prose and d verse, rapi ly grew towards maturity, and, in the former

. O field at least, reached its perfection ratory, the great weapon of politicians under the unique Republican con stitution was , in its golden age . Greek culture had per H meated the governing class . istory began to be written

] . L a tin L ite r a tu r e . [II

confiscation, perpetual surveillance , careful exclusion from great political power . The municipal institutions and civic energy of Rome were multiplied in a thousand centres of local life . Internal peace allowed commerce and civilisa tion to spread ; in spite of the immense drain caused by the extravagance of the capital and the expense of the great frontier armies, the provinces generally rose to a higher state of material welfare than they had enjoyed since their annexation . The earlier years of this century are the most brilliant in D the history of Latin literature . uring the last fifty years of the Republic a series of Roman authors of remarkable genius had gradually met and mastered the technical problems - of both prose and verse . The new generation entered into their labours . In prose there was little, if any, advance remaining to be made . In the fields of oratory and philosophy it had already reached its p e rfec tion in that of history it acquired further amplitude and h colour . But the ac ievement of the new age was mainly

. u r in verse Profound st dy of the older poet y, and the labori A n ous training learned from the schools of lexandria, ow bore fruit in a body of poetry which , in every field except h t at of the drama, excelled what had hitherto been known, and was at once the model and the limit for succeeding L E generations . atin poetry, like the mpire itself, took a the A broader basis ; ugustan poets are still Romans, but x this is because Rome had e tended itself over Italy . The copious and splendid production of the earlier years of the principate of Augustus was followed by an almost inevitable reaction . The energy of the Latin speech had for the time exhausted itself ; and the political necessities of the uneasy reigns which followed set further barriers in the way of a weakening literary impulse . Then begins the L - movement of the atin speaking provinces. Rome had absorbed Italy Italy in turn begins to absorb and coalesce

G S A . with aul, pain, and frica The first of the provinces Fo r P od u th e ri .

h had L in the field was Spain , w ich become atinised earlier At h than either of the others . t e court of Nero a single h a brilliant Spanis family founded new and striking style, which for the moment eclipsed that formed by a purer taste amid a graver and a more exclusive public . A hundred years from the downfall of Nero carry us M A the . E h down to reign of arcus urelius The mpire, w en 6 it recovered from the collapse of the year 9, assumed a old settled and stable organisation . Traditions of the jealousies and discontents lingered during the reigns‘ of the three Flavian Emperors ; but the imperial system had The now got into permanent working order . cataclysm which followed the deposition of Nero is in the strongest o contrast to the ease and smo thness, only broken by a a h trifling mutiny of the praetori n guards, with w ich the principate passed into the hands of Nerva after the murder

of Domitian . This century is what is properly known as the Silver A e A g . school of eminent writers, in whom the provincial u and the Italian quality are now hardly to be disting ished, produced during its earlier years a large body of admirable h prose and not undistinguis ed verse . But before the

' c entur was y half over, the signs of decay began to appear . A a t mysterious languor overcame thought and r , as it did E the whole organism of the mpire . The conquests of m Trajan, the peace and aterial splendour of the reign of H adrian , were followed by a series of years almost without h events, suddenly broken by the appalling pestilence of t e 1 year 66, and the outbreak, at the same time , of a long and D desperate war on the northern frontiers . uring these

eventless years Latin literature seemed to die away . The classical impulse was exhausted ; the attempts made to r f a L i wa ds ounding new at n bore, for the time, little fruit. Before this period of exhaustion and reaction could come

to a natural end, two changes of momentous importance ha : d overtaken the world . The imperial system broke down 28 L 4 at in L ite ratur e .

C t he under ommodus . All through the third century civil organisation of the Empire was at the mercy of military w - adventurers . T enty five rec ognised emperors, besides a

swarm of pretenders, most of them raised to the purple

by mutinous armies, succeeded one another in the hundred At years between Commodus and Diocletian . the same

time the Christian religion, already recognised under the Antonines as a grave menace to the very existence of the

Empire, was extending itself year by year, rising more

elastic than ever from each fresh persecution, and attract ing towards itself all the vital forces which go to make

literature . E C The coalition between the mpire and the hurch, which, m r ff after various tentative preli ina ies, was finally e ected by : Constantine, launched the world upon new paths and his transference of the main seat of empire to the shores of the Bosporus left Western Europe to pursue fragmentary and L - v independent courses . The atin speaking pro inces were An falling away in great lumps . independent empire of Britain had already existed for six or seven years under the a au si A t usurper C r us. fter the middle of the four h century Gaul was practically in possession of the Visigoths and the D Salian Franks . uring the reign of Honorius mixed hordes V Sua ians A of andals, b , and lans poured through Gaul

across the Pyrenees, and divided Spain into barbarian

. A fe w V monarchies years later the andals, called across

the straits of Gibraltar by the treachery of Count Boniface, A overran the province of frica, and established a powerful e kingdom , whose fle ts, issuing from the port of Carthage, M swept the editerranean and sacked Rome itself. Rome A n had, by the famous edict of ntoni us Caracalla, given the world a single citiz enship ; to give organic life to that z z citi enship, and turn her citi ens into a single nation, was

- a task beyond her power . So long as the Latin speaking

world remained nominally subject to a single rule, exercised S o m L in the name of the enate and People f Ro e, atin

L a t i L i n te ra tu r e .

throughout the provinces is the basis of our municipal

institutions and our corporate social life . The names of L m our months are those of the atin year, and the odern

calendar is, with one slight alteration, that established by s Julius Caesar . The head of the Catholic Church is till called by the name of the president of a Republican college which goes back beyond the beginnings of ascertained r Roman history. The architecture which we inhe it from M A the iddle ges, associated by an accident of history with E the name of the Goths, had its origin under the mpire,

and may be traced down to modern times, step by step,

from the basilica of Trajan and the palace of Diocletian . These are but a few instances of the inheritance we have i received from Rome . But beh nd the ordered structure of

her law and government, and the majestic fabric of her c v i i ilisation, lay a vital force of even deeper mport ; the

strong grave Roman character, which has permanently in heightened the ideal of human life . It is their literature that the inner spirit of the Latin race found its most

complete expression . In the stately structure of _that imperial language they embodied those qualities which

make the Roman name most abidingly great honour, m an temperate wisdom, humanity, courtesy, agn imity and

the h - civilised world still returns to t at fountain head, and finds a second mother- tongue in the speech of Cicero and

Virgil . I NDEX O F A U T H O RS

PAGE

Acc us L . Caelius see An a e r . i , , tip t

lius see R uf . Aelius, P Cae , us

ex. Cae sar . u us Aelius, S , G J li

emilianus Pal adns R u Cae sar Tib . C aud us Dru A , l i , l i tilius Taurus sus Nero '

l rnius see ic ulus . Afranius, L . Ca pu , S Mac er fr canus P. Corne us Ca us . L c n us A i , li lv , G i i i 53 c o Aemilianus Ca itolinus u us 26 S ipi p , J li 3

a M. Carus T . L uc re us Ag ripp , , ti 39 Alb nus Clodi us Cass us see H e m na i , i , i

Alimentus L . Cincius Ca o M . Por c us , t , i

Ambros us Ca u us . Va er us i t ll , G l i

n ron c us L . Liv us Celsus A . Cor ne us A d i , i , li

Ant as Vale r us Cice r o M . Tu ius i , i , ll

An a e r L . Caelius C ce ro . Tull us tip t , i , Q i

An onius M . Cinc ius see Alim e ntus . t , ,

oll nar s see S donius. C nna . Helvius Ap i i , i i , G

ule L . C aud anus C aud us Ap ius, l i , l i

rb er Pe ron us . C aud us see Cae c us. A it , t i l i , Arnobius C e m e ns Aur e us Prude n us 2 0 l , li ti 7 n Co ume a L un us M Asc onius see Pe dia us. od , l ll , J i As er Ae milius 20 c ratus 1 8 1 p , 4. a uinctius 1 Comm odianus 2 Att , Q 5 5 7

At c us T . Pem onius 86 Corbulo Dom us 1 80 ti , p 74, , iti

Au us . ul us Caesar Cornific ius 6 gust , G J i 3

ianus . 1 2 1 1 62 Crassus L . L c nius 6 Oc tav , i i 3

Auson us De c . Ma nus 26 Ckis us . Sallustius 8 2 i , g 5 p , G

Cur t us see R ufus . i , Bassus a 1 C rianus Thasci ili 2 , C esius 78 yp , us Caec us 54 Bassus 1 , Sale ius 92 Boeth us Anic ius Manl us i , i Dona us Aelius t , Torquatus S everinus Brutus M un us , . J i

Enn us . i , Q Caec l as ti 1 6 Eum e ni i i , Sta us us Cae cus A C au us 0 Eutro ius , p . l di 3 p 287 I ndex o Au thor f s.

p ac e

ab us see P c or Lucanus M. Annae us F i , i t .

Fannius . Luc l us . , G i i , G

e Minucius L uc us see un or. F lix, ili , J i

e x. Pom eius Lucre us see Carus. Fe stus, S p ti ,

Flac c us . Hora us L damus , Q ti yg Flacc us A. Pe rs us , i Mac c us . Vale r us er Aemilius Flac , G i ,

Mac e r . L n ons M . Ve rr ns c us Flac , i , G i i i

rus ul us or Lucius Macer see Ca us. Flo , J i ( ) , lv

Annae us Mae c e nas, G. Cilnius M an lius . or M. s ex . u us Frontinu , S J li i , G ( ) M n M r on o M . Corne lius a us F t , ili , i L al urnius Piso Marc ell nus Amm anus Frug , . C p i , i Mar us see Max mus i , i . Mar us see V c orinus Gaius i , i t

i Maro P. Ve r li G allicanus, Vulcac us , gi us

Mar s M. V a us . Corne us a aler us G ll , G li ti li , i M e ns A . aternus Curiatius C lli , ,

us Matius Gn. Germanic , M n Maurus Te re ntianu Gor ianus . A on us s d , t i , Max m s M rac c hus . S e m ronius u ar us G . G p i , i axim Va e G ratius (or G rattius) us, l rius Me a Pom oni l , p us He m na L Cass us Me lissus L ae vius i , i ,

s Minuc ius see e lix . Hilar iu , F

Hirtius, A .

Honoratus Mar us Naevius Gn . , i , 5 ' Maurus S er v us 2 2 Namatianus Claudius Rutilius 2 ) i 7 , 75

Horace see ac e as Naso P . O vidius , Fl , 1 35

. o 86 e i Hortalus H r e ns us 6 Ne m s anus M . A el us , Q t i 5 , , ur i

te ns us see Hor alus . l i Hor i , t O ymp as 262

H inus G . u us . Ne os Cornel us yg , J li p , i 84

I s Tib. Cat ns S i a e n us us . t li , i ili Opp , G 8 1

‘ vi e O d, se Naso .

avole nus see Prisc us. J ,

u anus Salvius 22 Pac uvi M . J li , 9 us, un or L uc us 1 82 Palae mon R e mmi u J i , ili , Q . s ust nus M . unianus 1 6 22 Pa a see J i , J 3, 9 ll dins, Ae milianus

uve nalis D. un us 22 1 n J , J i Papi ianus, Ae milius

uve nc us . Vettius A uilin 2 1 Pate rc l us u . V J , G q 7 us, G elle ius

Pau nus . ue o li , G S t nius

Laberius De c . 8 Pau n s Me ro iu n , 7 li u , p s Po tius Lactantius, L Caecilius Anicius 1rm1anus 2 2 8 Pa us F 55 , 5 ul (Diac onus)

Lae us . Pau us u li , G 33 l , J lius m r li La idius Ae us 26 Pe dianus . Asconiu p , 3 , Q s L vius see Andronic us i , Pe do, Albinovanus

L v us T . Pe rs se i i , ius, e Flac cus.

THE UNIVERS ITY SERIES

E DI T ED BY PR O FES S O R WM . K N I G HT

’ N S P u b lis h e r s C H A R L E S S C R I B N E R S S O ,

S E RIES of volumes d ea ling w ith separate sec S h h H tions of L iterature , cience , P ilosop y , istory Art t he d w d l and , and desig ned to supply nee so i e y felt of authoriz ed books for study and reference both

' by students and by t he general public .

’ VOL UM E S [N P k EP A /t A TI O/V AN INTRO DU CTIO N TO PHYSICAL S CIENCE

c G ill C o e e . B O N C ox P r o fe sso r o f Ph s c s , M g y J H , y i ll THE ENG LISH PO ETS A B R OO K E k B R e v . S TO PFO R D . Fr o m B l a e t o Te nny so n . y

T r n t Co e e Du b n. i i y ll g , li THE HISTO RY O F ASTRO NO MY '

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J AMES DONAL DSON U n v e r s t o f S t . A nd r e w . By , i i y AN INTRO DU CTIO N TO PHILO SO PHY

' f c nr . By Pro . ELEMENTS O F PSYCHO LO G Y

EO R G E C ROOM R O BER T SON a t e r e e k P ro fe sso r U n i By G , l G , No e o f h e C o e e Lo n d o n . Ed te d fr o m t s t ve r si t ll g , i y — v e re d a t h e Co e e 1 8 0 1 8 2 B C A . L e c t ure s d e li t ll g , 7 9 . y . - o e Rh s Dav d s . U n v e s t S e e s . 1 2 m o F l y y i ( i r i y ri ) ,

net . ELEMENTS O F G ENERAL PHILO SO PHY

B t he sa m e a u t h o r Ed te d fr o m No t e s o f t h e L e c t u re s d e y . i ' d 1 8 0—1 2 e Rh e e a t the C o e e 8 B C . A . o s liv r ll g , 7 9 y F l y y

. t Da d s e S e r e s 1 2 m o ne . U n r t . vi . ( iv si y i ) T hese tw o v ol ume s ha v e be e n c o mp il e d fro m no t e s ta ke n by th e s t u d e nts o f Dr . Robe r tson and in a w a a r e a m e m o r ia l t o that r e a t t e ac h e r . , y g At the sam e t im e t he y take t he i r plac e in the U ni v e rsity S e r i es by r e aso n o f t he e x c e t ona e d uc at ona v a u e th e h av e and w be fo u nd t o a ffo rd p i l i l l y , ill no t me r e an nt r od uc t on t o s c h o o and also t o h oso h bu t an ly i i p y l g y p il p y , n r n t o h h b w a o f s ho i t od u c tio p ilosop y y y p y c l og y . N o ot he r two man ual s so a a t e d ha e e t a e ar e d . d p . v y p p T H E U N I V ER SI T Y S ER I ES

O UTLIN ES O F ENG LISH LITERATU RE

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h D net . r s iti s. 1 2 v e e mo , wit iagrams ,

—1 1 The CO NTE NT S : Fi rs t Pe r i o d [600 pa g e s 9 2 : 1 . a A n O ld Eng lish Me t r i c a nd C h r o n i c l e [600 . g l o — - — A n o No r m a n I l . T he R e n a sc e n c e 1 0 1 00 S a x o n ; b. g l [35 5 ] — — I I I Th e R e fo r m a t o n 1 0 1 600 I V . T he R o m a n t c . i [5 5 ] i Dra m a 1 0 S e c o nd Pe r o d 1 600 a e s [5 5 —i — p g - — Th e S e r o u s A e 1 600 1 00 VI . T h e A e o f 1 32 2 32 V. i g [ 7 g ' - — The S e nt e n t o u s A e 1 00 - 1 800 Ga i e t y [1 65 0 1 75 0] Vl l. i g [7 ] — ‘ T h e S m a t h e t c A e 1 800 1 00 — A e nd x : L te r a V I I I . y p i g [ 9 ] p p i i — — t u r e o f Am e r i c a [1 600 1 900] I nd e x : Co nsp e c t u s o f B r i t i s h a o e t r a nd A m e r i c n P y . T he g e ne r al a r ra ng e me nt o f th e book and v a l uabl e d iag rams sh ow ing h o f it e r u r e a c c o r d n n d r t e d iv isw n l at i g t o ag e s a c ha r a c te istic s c ombi ne to ma t h s m a nu a l es e c a fi t t d u in t he c a ss - r o o m ke i p i ll y e to Se l . C r t c sm is s u e m e nte d b e x o sit ion w ith e x t ra c ts t o e x h b t the i i i pp l y , i i

fash on of a e r o d o r t h e s t e 0 a m aste r . T he n u mbe r o f au t h o rs i p i , y l nd cat e s th e m o r ta nc e o f a e r o d a nd nt r ns c o w e r t he m o r ta nc e i i i p p i , i i i p i p

o f a n a utho r . Am e r c a n t e r a t u r e is c o ns id e r e d a s a a r t o f th e w ho e i li p l , but a b rie f s u m ma ry o f it s his to r y a nd g e ne ra l c harac t e ristic s is also g i ve n.

THE PHILO SO PHY O F THE BEAUTIFU L

I LL I A M N I T h h t he By W K G H , Professor of P ilosop y in

A . . 1 2 U S t . niversity of ndrew s In two parts mo ,

each net .

I H I ST O R C O NT ENT S I nt o d u c t o —P re Pa r t I n . : ( . Y ) r ry — — h i s to r i c O r ig i ns O ri e nta l A r t a nd S pe c u l a t i o n T h e P hil — — 05 0p hy o f Gre e c e T h e Ne o p l a t o n i s t s The G r azc o -R o m a n — — — Pe r i o d Me di aeva li s m T he Phil o so ph y o f G e r m any o i — — — f r a n— o f A m e r c a Fra nc e o i I ta l y o f Ho ll a nd o B i t i i .

I n T EO R AND I N R ELAT I O N T O T HE A RT S . (Pa r t I I . H Y ) — f B e a u — I I I r m I he Na t u r e o t . P o e o e na I . T C O NT ENTS : I . l g y h R — I nad e u a t e o r Pa r t a Th e o r e s T h e I d e a l a nd t e e a l I V . q i l i — S u e s t o ns t o w a d s a m o re C o m e t e T h e o r o f B e a u t y V . g g i r p l y — — V I I T he Na t u re a nd u nc t o ns . o f B e a u t V I . A r t I t s y , F i — a De fi n t o n s a n d r r e a o n o f t he A r t s VI I I . Po e t r . . Co l t i y , i i b T he o r e s f Po e r c A u e o n d The S . o t . s t Di s t i nc t i o ns . i y ; g g i — M u 0 N r nc e b O r n o f Po e t r I X . s c . I t s a t u e a nd Esse . ig i y i , e o f M u s c w t h Po e t r a nd t h e o t h e r A r ts c Th e Alli anc i i y ; . - — — I X A r h e c t u r e X I c u r e X I . c t . S tu T h e O r i g i n o f M u s i c . i l p — Da nc n —A e nd x A : R u ss a n A e s th e t c Pa i nt i ng XI I I . i g p p i i i - x B Da n s h Ae he c Appe ndi : i st t i .

T H E U N I VE R SI T Y SE R I ES

THE FIN E ARTS

B A L W I B R W N f A . D N O o By G , Professor Fine rts in t he E h z m o h o U s . I niver ity of dinburg , wit Illustrati ns ,

net.

S a r t I —Ar t a s th e Ex r e s s o n o f P o u a C O NT ENT : P . p i p l r — — Fe e li n g s a nd I d e a ls z The B e g i nn i ng s o f A r t The Fe s t i v a l in it s R e l at i o n to t h e Fo rm a nd S p i r i t o f C l a ssi c al Ar t a e r Pa n te rs Pa r I I - Th e o m a Me d i aeva l Fl o r e nc e nd h i . t . F r l — C o nd i t i o n s o f A r t i s t i c Ex p r e ss io n z S o m e El e m e n t s o f Effe c t — — in t h e Arts o f Fo r m T h e Wo r k o f A r t as Sig n ifi c a n t T h e — f o m Wo r k o f A r t a s B e a u t fu . P a r t I I l . T h e A ts o i l r — F r A r c h i te c tu ra l B e a u t y i n R e l a t i o n to C o ns t r u c t i o n Th e C on io n o f c u t u r e — Pa nt n O ld a nd Ne w v e n t s S l p i i g .

AL E AR T S C H O O L N e w AV EN C O N N . Y , H , ’ M E S S R S . C H AR L ES S CR I BN E R S S O NS ,

e nt le m e nr—As a te x t -b o o fo r th e st ud o f the ne Ar t s th e r e G k y Fi , is nothing in t h e lit e r at u r e o f t he subj e c t t hat ans w e r s th e r e quir e me nts a s this litt le bo o k . ’ t o f a w d e T h e o rig inality o f Profe sso r Brow n s w o r k is ap a re nt . O u i fam iliar ity w ith th e c lassi c al lite r at u re o f t h e subj e c t Iie has sifte d the e s se n And o f the mod e r n w r te r s on ze sthe t ic s h e now s an d d es ts t ial t r uth s . i k ig B n u s hes t h s e v e ry thing fro m Winke lm a nn t o Wh ist le r . ut w hat d is ti g i i “ book fr o m othe rs a nd g iv e s it a sp e c ial v a l ue is t he t r e a tm e nt o f th e Fine h s s h t e r Ar ts from th e i r te c h nic al sid e . T i is es p e c iall y e v id e nt in hi c ap o n a nt in w h c h c ont a ns m an s u e st on s o f va ue t o th e oun art st g , i i y g g i l y g i n a (paim at e u r .

N M E R . R es ec tfu ou rs O N H . I E E p ll y y , J H Y

THE LITERATURE O F FRANC E

N E H n M A r z m H EE o . . . O . o By . G . K , x on ,

net .

d — f f a B r t h CO NTENT S : I n t ro u c t i o n Th e Ag e o I n a nc y ( . i ) — f I n fa n b r w h — h A o f Ad s c e n c e T h e A e o c ( . G o t ) T e g e o e g —y l x t e e n t h C e n t u r The A e o f o r P a t I . Poe t e t c . (Si y) g Gl y , r ry , - f r a r I — f e a s o n T h e A e o G o , P t I . P o se Th e A e o R , —g l y r — g . h e A e o f R e aso n Pa r I I h e A o f Na t u re P ar t I T t . T e — g , g — S o u r ce s o f Mo d e r n F re nch Li te ra r y A r t : Po e t ry S o u r c e s n— A e n d x—I nd e x o f P r o se Fi c t i o p p i .

A D v n e s e ss o e r /z a r o E DW R S . J o , P r of or f M od n L em uag es ,S out C

. fi r o n T he boo is lina Colleg e M y st i mp re ssi s are fu lly c on rme d . k d d int e r e sti ng a nd abl e . I t w o u l be ifiic ult t o c o m p re ss into eq ua l c om n pass a m o re sa tisfac tory or s ug g e stiv e v ie w o f so g reat a subj e c t . As a I nt r od uc to r t e x t fo r sc h oo s and c o e e s o r r v ate r ea d e rs l hav e see n y l ll g p i ,

noth n so ood . T he boo d e ser v e s and I ho e w re c e v e a w d e i g g k , p ill i , i m " w e l c o e . T HE U N I VER SI T Y SER I ES

THE REALM O F N ATURE

An h HU O BER T O utline of P ysiography . By GH R MI LL D so E n t he S , . . di . ; Fellow of Royal ociety x L M 68 of Edinburgh : O ford ecturer . aps and

I a net . Illustrations . mo, — C ONTENTS - S t—or y o f Na t u re S u bstance —of Nat u re Po we r o f Na t u re The Ea rth a S p i n ni ng B a ll The Ea r th a — — Pl ane t The S o l a r Sy ste m a nd U n ive rse The Atm osph e r e — — — A t mosphe r i c Phe no m e na C li m a te s The Hyd rosphe re Be d of the O c e a ns—C r u s t o f t h e Eart h—Ac io n of Wa e o n — — t — t r Land Re cord of th e R o c ks C on t i ne ntal Are a Life a nd L n C e a u e s—Ma n in Nat u e—A e nd c e s—I nd e x ivi g r t r r p p i . —“ Prof. W . M . DAV I S o H a r v a r d An exc e ent boo c ear c o m , ll k , l , rehens v a r n ho ra c he s a ood p i e and re m kab y ac c u rat e . O e w g u nd e rs tand ng of the bo o k ma y r e g a rd h mse f as hav ng m ad e a rea i i l i ” l ad va nc e in his ed u at on t ow ard s an a r n a ur c i p p ec iatio of n t e . Pr of. AM E D DANA Yale . Ev d e nt re ared b one who und e r J S . . i l y p p y s ” tood his subjec t .

OU RNAL o n EDUC AT I O N . I t sho u d not on be read but ow ned b J l ly , y " e ve ry t eac he r .

THE ELEMENTS O F ETHICS An M h H Introduction to oral P ilosophy. By J . . MU I R EAD M A H . . C En H , , Royal olloway ollege , g t I a ne . land . mo,

C ONTENTS : B oo k I . Th e Sc e n c e o f Eth c s : Pro b e m s o f i i l , Ca n t he re be a Sc e n c e o f S c O e o f t he Scie nc e—B o o k I i , p I . Mo ra J ud me nt : O b e c t o f S ta nd a r d o f Mora Law— k l g j , , l B oo - I I I . The o e s of th e En d : A s P e a s u r e as Se f sac rifice ri l , l , E o u o na H e d o n s m — B o o k I T h e End a v l ti ry i V . s Good As Common ood o r m s o f t he oo d—Boo k V Mo al G , F G . r Prog re ss : S a nd a d as R e a e a s P o re s si e as I d e al— t r l tiv , r g v , Bibli og ra phy .

T HE AC ADEMY nd on . T he re is n o o th . L o er introd uc tion whic h c an " be re c o mmend ed .

' ' Prof. A. J AR L ES Wa s hin t on a J, I , g nd L ee Um ve r szty . I am ' ‘ ’ e ase d W lth uirhe a E d s e m e nts o f Et h c s . I t s e p e ms fre sh , br g ht , l . l i ” i thou htfu stlmulatin . I s ha ll u se it r obab n x g l , g p ly e t y e ar . ’ ’ ’ ' —“ Prof. . ST EAR NS m ve r s zt s J , U y of Wz cons zn . An ad mirabl c e a r . _ l p r es e ntat io n and c rit ic ism of th e t eac hing s o f the c hie f sc hools of thoug ht u on th e e ad n o n h " p l i g p i ts of e t ic al th e o r y . ‘ ‘ Prof. EO R GE S . U L L E R T O N Um v e r szt G F , of P er m. I fi nd the boo k y e r c lu r . s m e and for c b e a nd I sha t a e e as ur y i p l i l , ll p l e in r ecomme nding i t to my stud ents . T H E U N I V E R S I T Y SER I ES

THE STU DY O F ANIMAL LIFE A R T U R O MS O . N M A U By J H TH , . . , niversity

E . 1 2 d net . of dinburgh mo, Illustrate ,

T H E V E F A NI MALS . C O NT ENTS : Pa r t I . E R YDAY L I F E O — — The We a l th o f Li fe T h e We b o f L I FE Th e S t ru g g le h f s fo r a L n — S o c a L fe —Do m e s t c L fe — I nd u st r e s S i t ivi g i l i i i i . W F V t a —Th e D v d e I T H E P O ER S O LI F E . d Pa r t I . i lity i i — f I n n P a r t I I I . TH E O R MS O F L a bo r s o t h e Bo d y s t i c t. F I MAL L I FE E e m e n t s o f S t u c t u re —L fe H s to r —Pa s t AN . l r i i y — — His t o r y The S i m p l e s t A ni m a l s B a c k bo n e l e ss An i m a l s k ne d A n m s a r I V T H E V U T I O N F A o a P t . E OL O NI B ac b i l . M AL L I FE E d e nce s o f E o u t o n— E o u t o n The o r e s . vi v l i v l i i t s a nd r r o d —H e r e I A Ha bi S u u n i ngs d i t y . Ap pend ix . n i m a l L fe a nd O u rs . A e nd x I I Be st Bo o ks o n An i~ i p p i . m l fe a Li . ‘ '

Pr o f H . C O MS TO CK e r z r z . J , L land S t anf or d . j u nio . Un ve s ty . I — h a v e r ea d i t w th rea t d e ht . I t is a n a dm r ab e w o r v n a t r u e i g lig i l k , g i i g v ie w of th e e x is ting s ta t e a nd t e nd e nc i e s o f z o olog y ; a nd it p osse sse s th e r a r e m e r t o f be in an e e m e nta r w or w r tt e n fr o th e sta nd o nt o f i l y k , i m i th e most ad v anc e th o ug ht , a nd in a m anne r to be u nd e rs to o by t he " n n u nt beg i ni g st d e . THE FRENCH REVO LUTIO N E M A L L C A R L ES . ET C O . By H , Balliol olleg e , xford a n t 1 m o , e . T his book has a S p e c ia l v al u e t o st ud e nts an d r ead e r s w h o d o no t o w n the re a t w o r s o f s uc h w r t e rs as De T o c u e v le T a ne M c he e t and g k i q il , i , i l . M a r n M r . e t es e t s e c onom c a nd o t c a as e t s o f s o V o n S y be l. ll p i p li i l p c c ie ty be fo re the Re v o l u tio n a tte m p ts to e x plain w hy the R e v o l u tion c a m e ; w hy the m e n w ho m ad e it fa e d t o at ta n th e be r t th e s o a r d e nt d e s re d o r il i li y y ly i , to fo u nd th e ne w o rd e r w h ic h the y hop ed t o s e e in F r a nc e by w ha t a r ts a nd ac c d e nts ow n to w hat d e e e r c auses an nc o ns ic u o u s m no r t i , i g p , i p i i y g rad ually g re w into a v ic to r i o u s a r ty ; h o w e x t e r na l c i r c u m s tanc e s k e p t h r v u na r fe v e r u a nd o r c e he R e v o u r t e e o t o d t t on fo w a r d . st o r l i y p , l i Hi y o ffe r no p r obl e m o f m o r e s urp assing i nt e re s t a nd none mo r e p e r p l e x i ng or 0ssc u r e .

' G REECE IN THE AG E O F PERICLES ’ B A R T R R A N T m U . C Ca y H J G of King s olleg e , m h . r z o w s s net bridg e , it Illu tration , .

N ENT S I Th e E e n a f k — CO T : ss t s o re e C z a t o n I I . . i l G ivili i — — T he R e o n o f t he re e k s I I I . S a r a I V The Ea r e r li g i G p t . li H o r o f A h e n —V Th e R v a r o f A t he ns a n d S a r t a i s t y t s . i l y p — V I C v War n re e c e V I I . Th e A th e n a n De m o c r a c . i il i G i y — V I I I . P e c e s : His P o c a nd h is r e nd s I X S o c e t in ri l li y F i . i y — T h e Pe o o n ne a n Wa r G re e c e X . l p s i t o th e De a th o f Pe r i c e s— X I Th e Pe o o n ne s a n W r— l l p i a X I I . T h o u g h t a nd A r t i h e ns n A t .

T H E U N I VER S I TY S ER I ES

THE ENG LISH NO VEL Being a S hort Sketch of its H istory from t he Ear e liest Tim s to the A ppearance o f Waverley . By A L T ER A L EI M d L W R G H , Professor of o ern itera m o U i L . I z ture at n versity College , iverpool ,

net .

T he bo ok fu r nis he s c r itic a l s t u d ie s o f the w o r k o f t he c hie f Eng lish no v s ts be fo r e S c o t t c o nne c t e d b c e r ta n e ne ra ne s o f r e as o ni n a nd e li , y i g l li g M os t o f t he sp e c u lat io n o n the na t u re and d e v e l opm e nt o f t he nov e l . m ate r has be e n v e n b t he a u t ho r I I I t he fo r m o f le c t u r e s t o h is c asses ia l g i y l , and p osse sse s t he me r it o f be ing spe c ia lly p re pare d fo r u se I n t he c lass HISTO RY O F RELIG IO N A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Pr ac tices and of the O rig inal Character of t he Great D s A L L A N M EN ZI Es D. . S . ystems By , , Profe sor of

t A . Biblical Criticism in the U niversity of S . ndrews 1 2 8 t ne . mo, 43 pag es , T his book make s no p re t e nc e to be a g u id e t o all the my thol og ies o r l r o us r a t r d I t i t o a l t he e li i p c ic e s w hi c h ha v e p r e v a ile d in t he w o l . s i nte nd e d t o a igthe st ud e nt w ho d e si r es to o btain a g e ne ra l id e a o f c o m pa ra tiv e r e lig io n by e x hibit i ng t he s u bje c t a s a c o nne c t e d a nd o rga nic w ho e and b ndic at n the e ad n o nts o f v e w fr o m w h c h ea c h o f l . y i i g l i g p i i i th r te ms ma be be nd e g e at sy s y st u e rst o o d . LATIN LITERATURE M AC K A I L S By J . W . . ometime Fellow of Balliol 86 C O . 1 2 2 s net olleg e, xford mo , pag e , .

P r of. T R AC Y PEC K Ya le Un iv e r s it . I now no t w he re t o hu d n , y k _i s uc h a c o nv e nie nt c om p ass so c lea r a s tate me nt o f the e c ulia r q u a l it ies ' p o f Ro me s L t e ra t u re and suc h s m athe t and d e fe nsib e u d m e nt in i , y p ic l j g " t he c h e f a utho r s i . ' SHAKS PE E AND HIS P EDECESSO S 1“ R R R

R EDER I C K S . O A m E By F B S . For erly xhibitioner at 1 am C O . o n t Balliol olleg e, xford , e .

’ S hakspe r e s w riting s a re t re a te d in this w o rk in t he i r a p p r o x imate c h ro no o ic a o r d e r . T he re at o n o f t he w r t n s to the r so u rc e s t h e r l g l l i i i g i , i t e c hni ue a nd e ne ral im o r t and the r o nt s o f c o ntac t w t h th e t e ra g , i p i i li t u r e 0pt he r ’ o w n a nd e ar ie r t me s e n a e t h e autho r s at te nt on . T he i i , g g i ‘ R ise o f th e En sh Dra ma is c e a r s e tc he d w h e S ha s e re s nsh g li l l y k , il k p ki ip to h is re d e c e sso rs is v e n m uc h r e a t e r r o m ne nc e than is us ua p g i g p i l .

’ C HARLES SC RIBN ER S ' SO NS — 1 5 3 1 5 7 FI FTH A VENUE NEW YO R K CI TY