A History of Roman Classical Literature

CONTENTS.

BOOK I. FIRST ERA. — CHAPTER I. COMPARISON OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE WITH THE GREEK—ERAS OF LATINITY—ORIGIN OF THE ROMANS—ELEMENTS OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE—ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE. — CHAPTER II. THE EUGUBINE TABLES—EXISTENCE OF OSCAN IN ITALY—BANTINE TABLE—PERUGIAN INSCRIPTION—ETRUSCAN ALPHABET AND WORDS—CHANT OF FRATRES ARVALES—SALIAN HYMN—OTHER MONUMENTS OF OLD LATIN—LATIN AND GREEK ALPHABETS COMPARED. — THE UMBRIAN LANGUAGE. — THE OSCAN LANGUAGE. — THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE. — THE OLD LATIN LANGUAGE. — CHAPTER III. SATURNIAN METRE—OPINIONS RESPECTING ITS ORIGIN—EARLY EXAMPLES OF THIS METRE—SATURNIAN BALLADS IN LIVY—STRUCTURE OF THE VERSE—INSTANCES OF RHYTHMICAL POETRY. — CHAPTER IV. THREE PERIODS OF ROMAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE—ITS ELEMENTS RUDE—ROMAN RELIGION—ETRUSCAN INFLUENCE—EARLY HISTORICAL MONUMENTS—FESCENNINE VERSES—FABULÆ ATELLANÆ—INTRODUCTION OF STAGE PLAYERS—DERIVATION OF SATIRE. — CHAPTER V. EMANCIPATION OF LIVIUS ANDRONICUS—HIS IMITATION OF THE ODYSSEY—NEW KIND OF SCENIC EXHIBITIONS—FIRST EXHIBITION OF HIS DRAMAS—NÆVIUS A POLITICAL PARTISAN—HIS BITTERNESS—HIS PUNIC WAR—HIS NATIONALITY—HIS VERSIFICATION. — Livius Andronicus ( FLOURISHED ABOUT B. C. 240.) — CN. NÆVIUS. — CHAPTER VI. NÆVIUS STOOD BETWEEN TWO AGES—LIFE OF ENNIUS—EPITAPHS WRITTEN BY HIM—HIS TASTE, LEARNING, AND CHARACTER—HIS FITNESS FOR BEING A LITERARY REFORMER—HIS INFLUENCE ON THE LANGUAGE—HIS VERSIFICATION—THE ANNALS—DIFFICULTIES OF THE SUBJECT—TRAGEDIES AND COMEDIES—SATIRÆ—MINOR WORKS. — Ennius ( BORN B. C. 239.) — CHAPTER VII. THE NEW COMEDY OF THE GREEKS THE MODEL OF THE ROMAN—THE MORALITY OF ROMAN COMEDY—WANT OF VARIETY IN THE PLOTS OF ROMAN COMEDY—DRAMATIS PERSONÆ—COSTUME—CHARACTERS—MUSIC—LATIN PRONUNCIATION—METRICAL LICENSES—CRITICISM OF VOLCATIUS—LIFE OF PLAUTUS—CHARACTER OF HIS COMEDIES—ANALYSIS OF HIS PLOTS. — PLAUTUS. — CHAPTER VII. STATIUS COMPARED WITH MENANDER—CRITICISM OF CICERO—HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE EARLY LIFE OF TERENCE—ANECDOTE BELATED BY DONATUS—STYLE AND MORALITY OF TERENCE—ANECDOTE OF HIM RELATED BY CORNELIUS NEPOS—HIS PECUNIARY CIRCUMSTANCES AND DEATH—PLOTS AND CRITICISM OF HIS COMEDIES—THE REMAINING COMIC POETS. — CÆCILIUS STATIUS. — P. TERENTIUS AFER. — “ The Andrian. ” — “ Eunuchus. ” — “ Heautontimorumenos. ” — Phormio. — Hecyra. — Adelphi. — CHAPTER VIII. WHY TRAGEDY DID NOT FLOURISH AT ROME—NATIONAL LEGENDS NOT INFLUENTIAL WITH THE PEOPLE—FABULÆ PRÆTEXTATÆ—ROMAN RELIGION NOT IDEAL—ROMAN LOVE FOR SCENES OF REAL ACTION AND GORGEOUS SPECTACLE—TRAGEDY NOT PATRONISED BY THE PEOPLE—PACUVIUS—HIS DULORESTES AND PAULUS. — Pacuvius ( BORN B. C. 220.) — CHAPTER IX. L. ATTIUS—HIS TRAGEDIES AND FRAGMENTS—OTHER WORKS—TRAGEDY DISAPPEARED WITH HIM—ROMAN THEATRES—TRACES OF THE SATIRIC SPIRIT IN GREECE—ROMAN SATIRE—LUCILIUS—CRITICISMS OF HORACE, CICERO, AND QUINTILIAN—PASSAGE QUOTED BY LACTANTIUS—LÆVIUS, A LYRIC POET. — L. Attius ( BORN ABOUT B. C. 170.) — Satire. — LÆVIUS. — CHAPTER X. PROSE LITERATURE—PROSE SUITABLE TO ROMAN GENIUS—HISTORY, JURISPRUDENCE, AND ORATORY—PREVALENCE OF GREEK—Q. FABIUS PICTOR—L. CINCIUS ALIMENTUS—C. ACILIUS GLABRIO—VALUE OF THE ANNALISTS—IMPORTANT LITERARY PERIOD, DURING WHICH CATO CENSORIUS FLOURISHED—SKETCH OF HIS LIFE—HIS CHARACTER, GENIUS, AND STYLE. — Q. Fabius Pictor. — L. Cincius Alimentus. — C. Acilius Glabrio. — M. Porcius Cato Censorius. — CHAPTER XI. THE ORIGINES OF CATO—PASSAGE QUOTED BY GELLIUS—TREATISE DE RE RUSTICA—ORATIONS—L. CASSIUS HEMINA—HISTORIANS IN THE DAYS OF THE GRACCHI—TRADITIONAL ANECDOTE OF ROMULUS—AUTOBIOGRAPHERS—FRAGMENT OF QUADRIGARIUS—FALSEHOODS OF ANTIAS—SISENNA—TUBERO. — L. Cassius Hemina. — CHAPTER XII. EARLY ROMAN ORATORY—ELOQUENCE OF APPIUS CLAUDIUS CÆCUS—FUNERAL ORATIONS—DEFENCE OF SCIPIO AFRICANUS MAJOR—SCIPIO AFRICANUS MINOR ÆMILIANUS—ERA OF THE GRACCHI—THEIR CHARACTERS—INTERVAL BETWEEN THE GRACCHI AND CICERO—M. ANTONIUS—L. LICINIUS CRASSUS—Q. HORTENSIUS—CAUSES OF HIS EARLY POPULARITY AND SUBSEQUENT FAILURE. — M. Antonius. — L. Licinius Crassus. — Q. Hortensius. — CHAPTER XIII. STUDY OF JURISPRUDENCE—EARLIEST SYSTEMATIC WORKS ON ROMAN LAW—GROUNDWORK OF THE ROMAN CIVIL LAW—EMINENT JURISTS—THE SCÆVOLÆ—ÆLIUS GALLUS—C. AQUILIUS GALLUS, A LAW REFORMER—OTHER JURISTS—GRAMMARIANS. — Grammarians.

The various races which, from very remote antiquity, inhabited the peninsula of Italy, necessarily gave a composite character to the Latin language. But as all of them sprang from one common origin, the great Indo-European stock to which also the Hellenic family belonged, a relation of the most intimate kind is visible between the languages of ancient Greece and Rome. Not only are their alphabets and grammatical constructions identical, but the genius of the one is so similar to that of the other, that the Romans readily adopted the principles of Greek literary taste, and Latin, without losing its own characteristic features, moulded itself after the Greek model.

Latin, however, has not the plastic property which the Greek possesses—the natural faculty of transforming itself into every variety of shape conceived by the fancy and imagination. It is a harder material, it readily takes a polish, but the process by which it receives it is laborious and artificial. Greek, like a liquid or a soft substance, seems to crystallize as it were spontaneously into the most beautiful forms: Latin, whether poetry 34or prose, derives only from consummate art and skill that graceful beauty which is the natural property of the kindred language.

Latin, also, to continue the same metaphor, has other characteristic features of hard substances—gravity, solidity, and momentum or energy. It is a fit language for embodying and expressing the thoughts of an active and practical but not an imaginative and speculative people.

But the Latin language, notwithstanding its nervous energy and constitutional vigour, has, by no means, exhibited the permanency and vitality of the Greek. The Greek language, reckoning from the earliest works extant to the present day, boasts of an existence measured by nearly one-half the duration of the human race, and yet how gradual were the changes during the classical periods, and how small, when compared with those of other European languages, the sum and result of them all! Setting aside the differences due to race and physical organization, there are no abrupt chasms, no broad lines of demarkation, between one literary period and another. The transition is gentle, slow, and gradual. The successive steps can be traced and followed out. The literary style of one period melts and is absorbed into that of the following one, just like the successive tints and colours of the prism. The Greek of the Homeric poems is not so different from that of Herodotus and Thucydides, or the tragedians or the orators, or even the authors of the later debased ages, but that the same scholar who understands the one can analyze the rest. Though separated by so many ages, the contemporaries of Demosthenes could appreciate the beauties of Homer; and the Byzantines and early Christian fathers wrote and spoke the language of the ancient Greek philosophers.

The Greek language long outlived Greek nationality. The earliest Roman historians wrote in Greek because they had as yet no native language fitter to express their thoughts. The Romans, in the time of Cicero, made Greek the foundation of a liberal education, and frequented Athens as a University for the purpose of studying Greek literature and philosophy. The great orator, in his defence of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek 35literature was read by almost all nations of the world, whilst Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. At the commencement of the Christian era Greek was so prevalent throughout the civilized world, that it was the language chosen by the Evangelists for recording the doctrines of the gospel. In the time of Hadrian, Greek was the favourite language of literary men. The Princess Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexis, and Eustathius, the commentator on Homer, both of whom nourished in the twelfth century after the birth of Christ, are celebrated for the singular purity of their style; and, lastly, Philelphus, who lived in the fifteenth century, and had visited Constantinople, states, in a letter dated A. D. 1451, that although much bad Greek was spoken in that capital, the court, and especially the ladies, retained the dignity and elegance which characterize the purest writers of the classical ages. “Græci quibus lingua depravata non sit, et quos ipsi tum sequimur tum imitamur ita loquuntur vulgo etiam hac tempestate ut Aristophanes comicus ut Euripides tragicus, ut oratores omnes ut historiographi ut philosophi etiam ipsi et Plato et Aristoteles. Viri aulici veterem sermonis dignitatem atque elegantiam retinebant.”^[3]

Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form; and yet, strange to say, notwithstanding it clung so to existence, it seems as though it was a plant of such delicate nature, that it could only flourish under a combination of favourable circumstances. It pined and withered when separated from the living Greek intellect. It lived only where Greeks themselves lived, in their fatherland or in their colonies. It refused to take root elsewhere. Whenever in any part of the world a Greek settlement decayed, and the population became extinct, even although Greek art and science, and literature and philosophy, had found there a temporary home, the language perished also.

The Greek language could not exist when the fostering care of native genius was withdrawn: it then shrunk back again into its original dimensions, and was confined within the boundaries of its original home. When the Greeks in any place passed away, their language did not influence or amalgamate with that 36of the people which succeeded them. Latin, on the other hand, was propagated like the dominion of Rome by conquest; it either took the place of the language of the conquered nation, or became engrafted upon it and gradually pervaded its composition. Hence its presence is discernible in all European languages. In Spain it became united with the Celtic and Iberian as early as the period of the Gracchi: it was planted in Gaul by the conquests of Julius Cæsar, and in Britain (so far as the names of localities are concerned) by his transient expeditions; and lastly, in the reign of Trajan, it became permanently fixed in the distant regions of Dacia and Pannonia.

It is scarcely correct to term Greek a dead language. It has degenerated, but has never perished or disappeared. Its harmonious modulations are forgotten, and its delicate pronunciation is no longer heard, but Greek is still spoken at Athens. The language, of course, exhibits those features which constitute the principal difference between ancient and modern languages; prepositions and particles have supplanted affixes and inflexions, auxiliary verbs supply the gaps caused by the crumbling away of the old conjugations, and literal translations of modern modes of speech give an air of incongruity and barbarism; but still the language is upon the whole wonderfully preserved. A well-educated modern Greek would find less difficulty in understanding the writings of Xenophon than an Englishman would experience in reading Chaucer, or perhaps Spenser.

Greek has evinced not only vitality, but individuality likewise. Compared with other languages, its stream flowed pure through barbarous lands, and was but little tinged or polluted by the soil through which it passed. There is nothing of this in Latin, neither the vitality nor the power of resistance to change. Strange to say, although partially derived from the same source, its properties appear to be totally different. Latin seems to have a strong disposition to change; it readily became polished, and as readily barbarized; it had no difficulty in enriching itself with new expressions borrowed from the Greek, and conforming itself to Greek rules of taste and grammar. When it came in contact with the languages of other nations, the affinity which it had for them was so strong that it speedily amalgamated 37with them, but it did not so much influence them as itself receive an impress from them. It did not supersede, but it became absorbed in and was corrupted by, other tongues. Probably, as it was originally made up of many European elements, it recognised a relationship with all other languages, and therefore readily admitted of fusion together with them into a composite form. Its existence is confined within the limits of less than eight centuries. It assumed a form adapted for literary composition less than two centuries and a half before the Christian era, and it ceased to be a spoken language in the sixth century.

As long as the Roman empire existed in its integrity, and the capital city retained its influence as the patron to whom all literary men must look for support, and as the model of refinement and civilization, the language maintained its dominion. Provincial writers endeavoured to rid themselves of their provincialisms. At Rome they formed their taste and received their education. The rule of language was the usage of the capital; but when the empire was dismembered, and language was thus set free from its former restrictions, each section of it felt itself at liberty to have an independent language and literature of its own, the classical standard was neglected, Latin rapidly became barbarized. Again, Latin has interpenetrated or become the nucleus of every language of civilized Europe; it has shown great facilities of adaptation, but no individuality or power to supersede; but the relation which it bears to them is totally unlike that which ancient Greek bears to modern. The best Latin scholar would not understand Dante or Tasso, nor would a knowledge of Italian enable one to read Horace and Virgil.

The old Roman language, as it existed previous to coming in contact with Greek influences, has almost entirely perished. It will be shown hereafter that only a few records of it remain; and the language of these fragments is very different from that of the classical period. Nor did the old language grow into the new like the Greek of two successive ages by a process of development, but it was remoulded by external and foreign influences. 38So different was the old Roman from classical Latin, that although the investigations of modern scholars have enabled us to decipher the fragments which remain, and to point out the analogies which exist between old and new forms, some of them were with difficulty intelligible to the cleverest and best educated of the Augustan age. The treaty which Rome made with Carthage in the first year of the Republic was engraved on brazen tablets, and preserved in the archives of the Capitol. Polybius had learning enough to translate it into Greek, but he tells us that the language of it was too archaic for the Romans of his day.^[4]

A wide gap separates this old Latin from the Latin of Ennius, whose style was formed by Greek taste; another not so wide is interposed between the age of Ennius and that of Plautus and Terence, both of whom wrote in the language of their adopted city, but confessedly copied Greek models; and, lastly, Cicero and the Augustan poets mark another age, to which from the preceding one, the only transition with which we are acquainted is the style of oratory of Caius Gracchus, which tradition informs us was free from ancient rudeness, although it had not acquired the smoothness and polish of Hortensius or Cicero.

In order to arrive at the origin of the Latin language it will be necessary to trace that of the Romans themselves. In the most distant ages to which tradition extends, the peninsula of Italy appears to have been inhabited by three stocks or tribes of the great Indo-Germanic family. One of these is commonly known by the name of Oscans; another consisted of two branches, the Sabellians, or Sabines, and the Umbrians; the third were called Sikeli, sometimes Vituli and Itali. What affinities there were between these and the other Indo-European tribes out of Italy, or by what route they came from the original cradle of the human race is wrapped in obscurity. Donaldson considers that all the so-called aboriginal inhabitants of Italy were of the same race as the Lithuanians or old Prussians. The Oscans evidently, from the name which tradition assigns to them, claimed to be the aboriginal inhabitants. The name Osci, or Opici, which is 39a longer form of it, is etymologically connected with Ops, the goddess Earth, and consequently their national appellation is equivalent to the Greek terms αυτοχθονες, or γηγενεις, the “children of the soil.” That the Sabellians and Umbrians are branches of the same stock is proved by the similarity which has been discovered to exist between the languages spoken by them. The Umbrians also claimed great antiquity, for the Greeks are said to have given them their name from ομβρος, rain; implying that they were an antediluvian race, and had survived the storms of rain which deluged the world. Pliny likewise considers them the most ancient race in Italy.^[5]

The original settlements of the Umbrians extended over the district bounded on one side by the Tiber, on the other by the Po. All the country to the south was in the possession of the Oscans, with the exception of Latium, which was inhabited by the Sikeli. But in process of time, the Oscans, pressed upon by the Sabellians, invaded the abodes of this peaceful and rural people, some of whom submitted and amalgamated with their conquerors, the rest were driven across the narrow sea into Sicily, and gave the name to that island.^[6] These native tribes were not left in undisturbed possession of their rich inheritance. There arrived in the north of Italy that enterprising race, famed alike for their warlike spirit and their skill in the arts of peace, the Pelasgians (or dark Asiatics,) and became the civilizers of Italy. Historical research has failed to discover what settlements this wonderful race inhabited immediately previous to their occupation of Etruria. According to Livy’s account^[7] they must have arrived in Italy by sea, for he asserts that their first settlements were south of the Apennines, that thence they spread northwards, and that the Rhæti were a portion of them, and spoke their language in a barbarous and corrupt form. His testimony ought to have some weight, because, as a native of the neighbourhood, he probably knew the Rhætian language. Their immigration must have taken place more than one thousand years before Christ,^[8] and yet they were far advanced in the arts of civilization and refinement, and the science of politics and 40social life. They enriched their newly-acquired country with commerce, and filled it with strongly-fortified and populous cities; their dominion rapidly spread over the whole of Italy from sea to sea, from the Alps to Vesuvius and Salerno, and even penetrated into the islands of Elba and Corsica.^[9] Herodotus^[10] asserts that they migrated from Lydia; and this tradition was adopted by the Romans and by themselves.^[11] Dionysius^[12] rejects this theory on the grounds that there is no similarity between the Lydian and Etruscan language, religion, or institutions, and that Xanthus, a native Lydian historian, makes no mention of this migration. Doubtless the language is unique, nor can a connexion be traced between it and any family; but their alphabet is Phœnician, their theology and polity oriental, their national dress and national symbol, the eagle, was Lydian, and a remarkable custom alluded to both by Herodotus^[13] and Plautus^[14] was Lydian likewise.

Entering the territory of the Umbrians, they drove them before them into the rugged and mountainous districts, and themselves occupied the rich and fertile plains. The head-quarters of the invaders was Etruria; the conquered Umbrians lived amongst them as a subject people, like the Peloponnesians under their Dorian conquerors, or the Saxons under the Norman nobility. This portion of the Pelasgians called themselves Rasena, the Greeks spoke of them as Tyrseni, a name evidently connected with the Greek τυρρις or τυρσις (Latin, Turris,) and which remarkably confirms the assertion of Herodotus, since the only Pelasgians who were famed for architecture or tower-building, were those who claimed a Lydian extraction, namely, the Argives and Etruscans.^[15] This theory of the Pelasgian origin of the Etruscans is due to Lepsius,^[16] and has been adopted by Donaldson;^[17] and if it be correct, the language of Etruria was probably Pelasgian amalgamated with, and to a certain extent corrupted by, the native Umbrian.

41Pelasgian supremacy on the left bank of the Tiber found no one to dispute it. Let us now turn our attention to the influence of these invaders in lower Italy. As they marched southwards, they vanquished the Oscans and occupied the plains of Latium. They did not, however, remain long at peace in the districts which they had conquered. The old inhabitants returned from the neighbouring highlands to which they had been driven, and subjugated the northern part of Latium.

The history of the occupation of Etruria, which has been already related, was here acted over again, with only the following alteration, that here the Oscan was the dominant tribe, and the subject people amongst whom they took up their abode were Pelasgians and Sikeli, by whom the rest of the low country of Latium were still occupied. The towns of the north formed a federal union, of which Alba was the capital, whilst of the southern or Pelasgian confederacy the chief city was Lavinium, or Latinium. The conquering Oscans were a nation of warriors and hunters, and consequently, as Niebuhr remarked, in the language of this district the terms belonging to war and hunting are Oscan, whilst those which relate to peace and the occupations of rural life are Pelasgian. As, therefore, the language of Etruria was Pelasgian, corrupted by Umbrian, so Pelasgian + Oscan is the formula which presents the language of Latium.

But the Roman or Latin language is still more composite in its nature, and consists of more than these two elements. This phenomenon is also to be accounted for by the origin of the Roman people. The septi-montium upon which old Rome was built was occupied by different Italian tribes. A Latin tribe belonging, if we may trust the mythical tradition, to the Alban confederacy, had their settlement upon the Mount Palatine, and a Sabine or Sabellian community occupied the neighbouring heights of the Quirinal and Capitoline. Mutual jealousy of race kept them for some time separate from each other; but at length the privilege of intermarriage was conceded, and the two communities became one people.

The Tyrrhene Pelasgians, however, separated only by a small river from this new state, rapidly rising to power and prosperity, 42were not likely to view its existence without distrust and jealousy. Accordingly, the early Roman historical traditions evidently point to a period during which Rome was subject to Etruscan rule. When the Etruscan dynasty passed away, its influence in many respects still remained. The religion and mythology of Etruria left an indelible stamp on the rites and ceremonies of the Roman people. The Etruscan deities were the natural gods of Rome before the influence of Greek poetry introduced the mythology of Homer and Hesiod into her Pantheon. The characters and attributes of these deities were totally different from those of Greece. No licentious orgies disgraced their worship; they were defiled by none of their vices.^[18] Saturn, Janus, Sylvanus, Faunus, and other Etruscan deities, were grave, venerable, pure, and delighted in the simple occupations of rural life. It was only general features of resemblance which enabled the poets in later ages to identify Saturn with Kronos, Sylvanus with Pan, the prophetic Camenæ of the Janiculum with the muses of Parnassus.^[19] The point, however, most important for the present consideration is that their language was likewise permanently affected.

The ethnical affinities which have been here briefly stated, and which may be considered as satisfactorily established by the investigations of Niebuhr, Müller, Lepsius, Donaldson, and others, are a guide to the affinities of the Latin language, and point out the elements of which it is composed. These elements, 43then, are Umbrian, Oscan, Etruscan, Sabine, and Pelasgian; but, as has been stated, the Etruscan language was a compound of Oscan and Pelasgian, and the Sabine was the link between the Umbrian and Oscan, therefore the elements of the Latin are reduced to three, namely, Umbrian, Oscan and Pelasgian. These may again be classified under two heads, the one which has, the other which has not, a resemblance to the Greek. All Latin words which resemble Greek are Pelasgian,^[20] all which do not are Oscan and Umbrian. From the first of these classes must of course be excepted those words—such, for example, as Triclinium, &c.,—which are directly derived from the Greek, the origin of which dates partly from the time when Rome began to have intercourse with the Greek colonies of Magna Græcia, partly since Greek exercised an influence on Roman literature. It is clear from the testimony of Horace that the enriching of the language by the adoption of such foreign words was defended and encouraged by the literary men of the Augustan age:—

In the neighbourhood of Ugubio,^[21] at the foot of the Apennines (the ancient Iguvium,) were discovered, in A. D. 1444, seven tables, commonly called the Eugubine Tables. They were in good preservation, and contained prayers and rules for religious ceremonies. Some of them were engraved in the Etruscan or Umbrian characters, others in Latin letters. Lepsius^[22] has determined, from philological considerations, that the date of them must be as early as from A. U. C. 400,^[23] and that the letters were engraved about two centuries later. A comparison of the two shows, in the Umbrian character, the letter s standing in the place occupied by r in the Latin, and k in the place of g, because the Etruscan alphabet, with which the Umbrian is the same, did not contain the medial letters B, G, D. An analogous substitute is seen in the transition from the old to the more modern Latin. The names Furius and Caius, for example, were originally written Fusius and Gaius. H is also introduced between two vowels, as stahito for stato, in the same way that in Latin aheneus is derived from aes. It also appears that the termination of the masculine singular was o: thus, orto = ortus; whilst that of the plural was or; e. g., subator = subacti; screhitor = scripti. This mode of inflexion illustrates the form 45amaminor for amamini, which was itself a participle used for amamini estis, an idiom analogous to the Greek τετυμμενοι εισι.

The following extract, with the translation by Donaldson,^[24] together with a few words which present the greatest resemblance to the Latin, will suffice to give a general notion of the relation which the Umbrian bears to it:—

Teio subokau suboko, Dei Grabovi, okriper Fisiu, totaper Jiovina, erer nomne-per, erar, nomne-per; fos sei, paker sei, okre Fisei, Tote Jiovine, erer nomne, erar nomne: Tab. VI. (Lepsius.) Te invocavi invoco, Jupiter Grabovi, pro monte Fisio, pro urbe Iguvina, pro illius nomine, pro hujus nomine, bonus sis, propitius sis, monti Fisio, urbi Iguvinæ, illius nomine, hujus nomine.

The remains which have come down to us of this language belong, in fact, to a composite idiom made up of the Sabine and Oscan. Although its literature has entirely perished, inscriptions fortunately still survive; but as they must have been engraved long subsequently to the settlement of the Sabellians in Southern Italy, the language in which they are written must necessarily be compounded of those spoken both by the conquerors and the conquered. Although Livy^[26] makes mention of an Oscan dramatic literature, for he tells us that the “Fabulæ Atellanæ” of the Oscans were introduced when a pestilence raged at Rome,^[27] together with other theatrical entertainments, he only speaks of the Oscan language in one passage.^[28] This, however, is an important one, because it proves that Oscan was the vernacular tongue of the Samnites at that period. He relates that Volumnius sent spies into the Samnite camp who understood Oscan: “Gnaros Oscæ linguæ exploratum quid agatur mittit.”

It is clear that the reason why the Oscan language prevailed amongst this people is, that the dominant orders in Samnium were Sabines. But there is evidence of the existence of Oscan in Italy at a still later period. Niebuhr^[29] asserts that in the Social War^[30] the Marsi spoke Oscan, although in writing they used the Latin characters. Some denarii still exist struck by the confederate Italian Government established in that war at Corfinium, on which the word Italia is inscribed, whilst others bear the word Viteliu. The latter is the old Oscan orthography, the former the Latin. One class of these coins, therefore, was struck for the use of the Sabine, the other of the Marsian allies. It is said also that Oscan was spoken even after the establishment of the empire.

The principal monument of the Sabello-Oscan is a brass plate which was discovered A. D. 1793. As the word Bansæ occurs in the 23d line of the inscription, it has been supposed to refer to the town of Bantia, which was situated not far from the spot 47where the tablet was found, and it is therefore called the Bantine Table. In consequence of the perfect state of the central portion, much of this inscription has been interpreted with tolerable certainty and correctness. The affinity may be traced between most of the words and their corresponding Latin; and it is perfectly clear that the variations from the Latin follow certain definite rules, and that the grammatical inflexions were the same as in the oldest Latin. A copy of the Table may be found in the collection of Orellius, and also in Donaldson’s “Varronianus.”^[31] The following are a few specimens of words in which a resemblance to the Latin will be readily recognised, and also, in some instances, the relation of the Oscan to the other ancient languages of Italy:—

To these other well-known words may be added, which all philologers allow to be originally Oscan, but which have been incorporated with the Latin—such as, for example, Brutus, Cascus, Catus, Fœdus, Idus, Porcus, Trabea; and names of deities, such as Fides, Terminus, Vertumnus, Fors, Flora, Lares, Mamers, Quirinus, &c.

The difficulty and obscurity in which the Etruscan language is involved are owing to the nature of the inscriptions and monuments which have been discovered. Those records, to which reference has already been made when speaking of the Umbrian 48and Sabello-Oscan, were of a ceremonial or legal character; they therefore contained connected phrases and sentences, varied modes of thought and expression. Monuments such as the Eugubine or Bantine Tables contribute not a little towards a vocabulary of the languages, and still more to a knowledge of their structure and analogies. This, however, is not the case with the Etruscan monuments of antiquity which have been hitherto discovered. They are, indeed, numerous, but they exhibit little variety. They are sepulchral records of a complimentary kind, or titles inscribed on statues and votive offerings. Hence the same brief phraseology continually recurs, and the principal portions of the inscriptions are occupied by proper names.

The most important, because the largest, Etruscan record which has been hitherto discovered, is one which was found near Perugia, A. D. 1822.^[32] This inscription contains one hundred and thirty-one words and abbreviations of words, and of these no fewer than thirty-eight are proper names. Of the rest, a vast number are either frequently repeated, or are etymologically connected. These have not proved sufficient to enable any philologist (although many have attempted it) to give a satisfactory and trustworthy explanation of its contents.

A comparison of the Perugian with the Eugubine inscription shows the existence of similarity between some of the words found in both of them; and this is exactly what we should à priori expect to result from the theory of the Etruscan being a compound of the Pelasgian and Umbrian. In the Perugian inscription, words which resemble the Umbrian forms are more numerous than those which seem to have an affinity for the Pelasgian. Indeed, the language in which it is written appears almost entirely to have lost the Pelasgian element. The same observation may be made with respect to the Cortonian inscription:^[33]—

49Probably, therefore, both these belong to a period at which the old Umbrian of the conquered tribes had been exercising a long-continued influence in corrupting the pure Pelasgian of the conquerors.

One example of the Etruscan alphabet is extant. It was discovered in a tomb at Bomarzo, by Mr. Dennis,^[34] inscribed round the foot of a cup, and probably had been a present for a child. The letters ran from left to right, and are as follows:—

It will be seen from this specimen that the Etruscan language was deficient in the letters Β Γ Δ Ξ Ψ Η Ο Ω.

The following is a catalogue of those Etruscan words which have been handed down to us, together with their Latin interpretation. The list is but a meager one, but valuable as containing some which have been admitted into the Latin, and as exhibiting many affinities to the Pelasgian:—

The discoveries of General Galassi and Mr. Dennis at the Etruscan city of Cervetri have shown to what an extent the Pelasgian 50element prevailed in the old Etruscan. Cervetri was the old Cære or Agylla, which was founded by Pelasgians, maintained a religious connexion with the Greeks as a kindred race,^[36] and remained Pelasgian to a late period.^[37] In the royal tomb discovered in this place the name of Tarquin—

occurs no less than thirty-five times.^[38] On a little cruet-shaped vase, like an ink-bottle, was found inscribed the syllables Bi, Ba, Bu, &c., as in a horn-book, and also an alphabet in the Pelasgian character.^[39] These characters are almost identical with the Etruscan. Again, General Galassi found here a small black pot, with letters legibly scratched, and filled with red paint.^[40] Lepsius pronounced them to be Pelasgian, divided them into words, and arranged them in the following lines, which are evidently hexametrical:—

Mr. Donaldson^[41] has offered some suggestions, with a view to explaining this inscription, and has clearly shown many close affinities to the Greek; but there is another which he quotes, and which is pronounced by Müller^[42] to be pure Pelasgian, which even in its Pelasgian form is almost Greek:—

It would be impossible in this work to attempt the analysis of all the known Etruscan words, and to point out their affinities to the Pelasgian, the Greek, or the Latin; but a few examples may be given, whilst the reader, who wishes to pursue the subject further, is referred to the investigations of the learned author of the “Varronianus.”

Aifil, age, is evidently from the same root as the Greek αἰων, the digamma, which is the characteristic of the Pelasgian, as it was of the derivative dialect, the Æolic, being inserted between 51the vowels. Aruns, an agriculturist, contains the root of ἀρόω, to plough. Capys, a falcon, that of capio, to catch. Cassis (originally capsis,) that of caput, the head. Lituus, a curved staff, that of obliquus. Toga, that of tego, the dress, which was originally as much the Etruscan costume as it subsequently became characteristic of the Roman. Lastly, it is well known that, whereas the Greeks denoted numbers by the letters of the alphabet, the Romans had a system of numeral signs. This was a great improvement. The Greek system of notation was clumsy, because in reality it only pointed out the order in which each number stands. The Roman notation, on the other hand, represented arithmetical quantity, and even the addition and subtraction of quantities; and this elegant contrivance the Romans owed to the Etruscans. Their numerals were as follows:—

This system is identical with the Roman, for Ʌ inverted became Ⅴ, and , , , and became respectively Ⅼ, Ⅽ, Ⅾ, and ⅭⅠↃ, for which Ⅿ was substituted in later times.

From the few examples which have been here given, it is evident that the Pelasgian element of the Etruscan was most influential in the formation of the Latin language, as the Pelasgian art and science of that wonderful people contributed to the advancement and improvement of the Roman character.

The above observations, and the materials out of which the old Latin was composed, have prepared the way for some illustrations of its structure and character. The monuments from which all our information is derived are few in number: the conflagration of Rome destroyed the majority; the common accidents of a long series of years completed the mischief. Almost the only records which remain are laws, ceremonials, epitaphs, and honorary inscriptions.

52An example of the oldest Latin extant is contained in the sacred chant of the Fratres Arvales. The inscription which embodied this Litany was discovered A. D. 1778,^[43] whilst digging out the foundations of the sacristy of St. Peter’s at Rome. The monument belongs to the reign of Heliogabalus;^[44] but although the date is so recent, the permanence of religious formulæ renders it probable that the inscription contains the exact words sung by this priesthood in the earliest times.

The Fratres Arvales were a college of priests, founded, according to the tradition, by Romulus himself. The symbolical ensign of their office was a chaplet of ears of corn (spicea corona,) and their function was to offer prayers in solemn dances and processions at the opening of spring for plenteous harvests. Their song was chanted in the temple with closed doors, accompanied by that peculiar dance which was termed the tripudium, from its containing three beats. To this rhythm the Saturnian measure of the hymn corresponds; and for this reason each verse was thrice repeated. The hymn contains sixteen letters: s is sometimes put for r, ei for i, and p for f or ph. The following is a transcription of it, as given by Orellius, to which an interpretation is subjoined:—

53Of the Salian hymn (Carmen Saliare,) another monument of ancient Latin, the following fragments, preserved by Varro,^[45] are all that remain, with the exception of a few isolated words:—

This has been corrected, arranged in the Saturnian metre, and translated into Latin by Donaldson,^[46] as follows:—

I will be a flute-player in the chorus, for the priests of Janus have sent omens to open ears. Cerus (the Creator) will be propitious so long as Janus shall live.

(2.) Divum empta cante, divum deo supplicante.

i. e. Deorum impetu canite, deorum deo suppliciter canite.

Sing by the inspiration of the gods, sing as suppliants to the god of gods.

The Leges Regiæ are generally considered as furnishing the next examples, in point of antiquity, of the old Latin language; but there can be little doubt that, although they were assumed by the metrical traditions to belong to the period of the kings,^[47] they belong to a later historical period than the laws of the Twelve Tables. Some fragments of laws, attributed to Numa and Servius Tullius, are preserved by Festus^[48] in a restored and corrected form, and, therefore, it is to be feared that they have been modernized in accordance with the orthographical rules of a later age.

One of these laws is quoted by Livy^[49] as put in force in the trial of the surviving Horatius for the murder of his sister when he returned, as the tradition relates, from his victory over the Curatii. Another is alluded to by Pliny,^[50] which forbids the sacrificing all fish which have not scales; but they are given in 54modern Latin, and can only be restored to their old form by conjecture.

We may, therefore, proceed at once to a consideration of the Latin of the Twelve Tables, of which fragments have been preserved by Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Festus, Gaius, Ulpian, and others. These fragments are to be found collected together in Haubold’s “Institutionum Juris Romani privati lineamenta” and Donaldson’s “Varronianus.”^[51] The laws of the Twelve Tables were engraven on tablets of brass, and publicly set up in the Comitium, and were first made public in B. C. 449.^[52] Nor had the Romans any other digested code of laws until the time of Justinian.^[53] The following are a few examples of the words and phrases contained in them:—

The next example of the old Latin is contained in the Tiburtine inscription, which was discovered in the sixteenth century at Tivoli, the ancient Tibur. It came into the possession of the Barberini family; but it was afterwards lost, and has never been recovered. Niebuhr^[54] considers (and his conjecture is probably correct) that this monument is a Senatus-consultum, belonging to the period of the second Samnite war.^[55] The inscription is given at length in the collection of Gruter,^[56] and also by Niebuhr^[57] and Donaldson.^[58] The Latin in which it is written may be considered almost classical, the variations from that of a later age being principally orthographical. For example:—

55This document is followed very closely, in point of time, by the well-known inscription on the sarcophagus of L. Cornelius Scipio^[59] Barbatus, and the epitaph on his son,^[60] which are both written in the old Saturnian metre. Scipio Barbatus was the great-grandfather of the conqueror of Hannibal, and was consul in A. U. C. 456, the first year of the third Samnite war. His sarcophagus was found A. D. 1780 in a tomb near the Appian Way, whence it was removed to the Vatican. The epitaph is as follows:—

“Cornelius L. Scipio Barbatus, son of Cnæus, a brave and wise man, whose beauty was equal to his virtue. He was amongst you Consul, Censor, Ædile. He took Taurasia, Cisauna, and Samnium; he subjugated all Lucania, and led away hostages.”

His son was Consul A. U. C. 495.^[61] The following inscription is on a slab which was found near the Porta Capona. The title is painted red (rubricatus:)—

“Romans for the most part agree, that this one man, Lucius Scipio, was the best of good men. He was the son of Barbatus, Consul, Censor, Ædile. He took Corsica and the city Aleria. He dedicated a temple to the Storms as a just return.”

56It is not a little remarkable that the style of this epitaph is more archaic than that of the preceding.

The consul of the year B. C. 260 was C. Duilius, who in that year gained his celebrated naval victory over the Carthaginians; the inscription, therefore, engraved on the pedestal of the Columna Rostrata, which was erected in commemoration of that event, may be considered as a contemporary monument of the language.^[62] Some alterations were probably made in its orthography at a period subsequent to its erection, for it was rent asunder from top to bottom by lightning A. U. C. 580,^[63] and is supposed not to have been repaired until the reign of Augustus, for the restoration of a temple built by Duilius was begun by that emperor and completed by Tiberius.^[64] The principal peculiarities to be observed in this inscription are, that the ablatives singular end in d, as in the words Siceliad, obsidioned; c is put for g, as in macistratos, leciones; e for i, as in navebos, ornavet; o for u, as in Duilios, aurom; classes, nummi, &c., are spelt clases, numei, and quinqueremos, triremos, quinresmos, triesmos. This monument was discovered A. D. 1565, in a very imperfect state, but its numerous lacunæ were supplied by Grotefend.

About sixty years after the date of this epitaph,^[65] the Senatus-consultum, respecting the Bacchanals, was passed.^[66] This monument was discovered A. D. 1692, in the Calabrian village of Terra di Feriolo, and is now preserved in the Imperial Museum of Vienna.^[67]

There is scarcely any difference between the Latinity of this inscription and that of the classical period except in the orthography and some of the grammatical inflexions. The expressions are in accordance with the usage of good authors, and the construction is not without elegance. Nor is this to be wondered at when it is remembered that, at the period when this decree was published, Rome already possessed a written literature. Ennius was now known as a poet and an historian, and many of the comedies of Plautus had been acted on the public stage.

Having thus enumerated the existing monuments of the old 57Roman language and its constituent elements, it remains to compare the Latin and Greek alphabets, for the purpose of exhibiting the variations which the Latin letters have severally undergone.

The letters then may be arranged according to the following classification:—

Owing to the relation which subsists between P, B, and F or V, as the soft medial and aspirated pronunciation of the same letters, P and B, as well as F and V, in Latin, are the representatives or equivalents of the Greek F sound (φ and Ϝ,) and V also sometimes stands in the place of β. For example (1,) the Latin fama, fero, fugio, vir, &c., correspond to the Greek φημή, φέρω, φεύγω (Ϝ)Ἄρης. (2.) Nebula, caput, albus, ambo, to νεφέλη, κεφαλή, ἀλφός, ἄμφω. Similarly, duonus and duellum become bonus and bellum; the transition being from du to a sound like the English w, thence to v, and lastly to b. The old Latin c was used as the representative of its corresponding medial G, as well as K; for example, magistratus, legiones, Carthaginienses were written on the Columna Rostrata, leciones, macistratus, Cartacinienses. The representative of the Greek κ was c; thus caput stands for κεφαλή: the sound qu also, as might be expected, from its answering to the Greek koppa (Q,) and the Hebrew koph (ק,) had undoubtedly in the old Latin the same sound as C or K, and, therefore, quatio becomes, in composition, cutio; and quojus, quoi, quolonia, become, in classical Latin, cujus, cui, colonia. This pronunciation has descended to the modern French language, although it has become lost in the Italian. A passage from the “Aulularia”^[68] of Plautus illustrates this assertion, and Quintilian^[69] also bears testimony to the existence of the same pronunciation in the time of Cicero.

58The aspirate H is in Latin the representative of the Greek Χ, as, for example, hiems, hortus, and humi correspond to χείμων, χόρτος, χάμαι, whilst the third Greek aspirated mute Θ becomes a tenuis in the mouths of the early Latins, as in Cartaginienses, and the h sound was afterwards restored when Greek exercised an influence over the language as well as the literature of Rome.

The absence of the th sound in the old Latin is compensated for in a variety of ways; sometimes by an f, as fera, fores, for θήρ and θύρα.

The interchanges which take place between the T and D, and the liquids L, N, R, can be accounted for on the grammatical principle,^[70] which is so constantly exemplified in the literal changes of the Semitic languages, that letters articulated by the same organ are frequently put one for the other. Now D, T, L, N are all palatals, and in the pronunciation of R also some use is made of the palate. Hence we find a commutation of r and n in δωρον, donum; æreus, æneus; of t and l in θώρηξ and lorica; d and l in olfacio and odere facio, Ulysses and Οδυσσεύς; r and d in auris and audio, arfuise, and adfuisse.

To the remaining liquid, m, little value seems to have been attached in Latin. In verse it was elided before a vowel; in verbs it was universally omitted from the first person of the present tense, although it was originally its characteristic, and was only retained in sum and inquam: it was also omitted in other words, as omne for omnem;^[71] and Cato the Censor was in the habit of putting dice and facie for dicam(or dicem) and faciam (faciem.)

As the Roman x was nothing more than a double letter compounded of g or c and s, as rego, regsi, rexi; dico, dicsi, dixi, the only consonant now remaining for consideration is the sibilant s. The principal position which it occupies in Latin is as corresponding to the aspirate in Greek words derived from the same Pelasgic roots. Thus ὓς, ἓξ, ὓλη, &c., are represented by sus, sex, silva. This may possibly be accounted for by the fact that S is in reality a very powerful aspirate. It is only necessary 59to try the experiment, in order to prove that a strong expiration produces a hissing sound. Those words which in classical Greek are written without an aspirate, such as εἰ, ἄναξ, &c., which, nevertheless, have an s in Latin, as si, senex, &c., may possibly have been at one period pronounced with the stronger breathing. The most remarkable change, however, which has taken place with respect to this letter, in the transition from the old to the classical Latin, is the substitution of r for s. Thus Fusius, Papisius, eso, arbos, &c., become Furius, Papirius, ero, arbor, &c.

The following table exhibits the principal changes undergone by the vowels and diphthongs:—

In the grammatical inflexions, the principal difference between the old and the new Latin is, that in nouns the old forms were longer, and assumed their modern form by a process of contraction, and that the ablative ended in d, as Gnaivod, sententiad; consequently the adverbial termination was the same as suprad, bonod, malod. The same termination appears in the form of tod in the singular number of the imperative mood.

The origin and progress of the Roman language have now been briefly traced, by the help of existing monuments, from the earliest dawn of its existence, when the fusion of its discordant elements was so incomplete as to be scarcely intelligible, to the period when even in the unadorned form of public records it began to assume a classical shape. But such an analysis will not be complete without some account of the verse in which the earliest national poetry was composed.

The oldest measure used by the Latin poets was the Saturnian. According to Hermann,^[73] there is no doubt that it was derived from the Etruscans, and that long before the fountains of Greek literature were opened; the strains of the Italian bards flowed in this metre, until Ennius introduced the heroic hexameter. The grammarian Diomedes^[74] attributed the invention of it to Nævius, and seems to imply that the Roman poet derived the idea from the Greeks, for his theory is, that he formed the verse by adding a syllable to the Iambic trimeter. Terentianus Maurus, as well as Atilius, professed to find verses of this kind in the tragedies of Euripides and the odes of Callimachus, and Servius and Censorinus attempted to analyze the Saturnian according to the strict rules of Greek prosody; but they were obliged to permit every conceivable license, and to make Roman rudeness an excuse for a violation of those rules which they themselves had arbitrarily imposed. The opinion of Bentley was, that it was a Greek metre introduced into Italy by Nævius.^[75] 61The only argument in favour of the latter theory is the fact that the Saturnian is found amongst the verses of Archilochus; but many circumstances, which shall hereafter be pointed out, combine to make it far more probable that the use of it by the Greek poet is an accidental coincidence, than that the old Roman bards copied it from him.

Whatever be its history, there can be no doubt that, if it did not originate in Italy, its rhythm in very early times recommended itself to the Italian ear, and became the recognised vehicle of their national poetry. A rude resemblance of it is discernible in the Eugubine tables; it had obtained a more advanced degree of perfection in the Arvalian chants, and the axamenta^[76] or Salian hymns. Examples of it are found in fragments of Roman laws, which Livy^[77] refers to the reign of Tullus Hostilius, and Cicero^[78] to that of Tarquinius Priscus. The epitaphs of the Scipios are in fact Saturnian næniæ. Ennius, whose era was sufficiently early for him to know that Nævius, instead of being the inventor of a new verse, or the introducer of a Greek one, followed the example of his predecessors, finds fault with the antiquated rudeness of his Saturnians.

Had the Saturnian been introduced from Greece, Ennius would not have denied to it the inspiration of the Muses, or have doubted that its birthplace was on the rocky peaks of Parnassus, nor would his ear, attuned to the varied melody of Greek poetry, have been unconscious of its simple and natural rhythm, and have entirely rejected it for the more ponderous and grandiloquent hexameter. The truth is, the taste which was formed by 62the study of Greek letters created a prejudice against the old national verse. As it was not Greek, it was pronounced rough and unmusical, and was exploded as old-fashioned. The well-known passage of Horace represents the prevailing feeling, although he says that the Saturnian remained long after the introduction of the hexameter, and that, even in his own day, when Virgil had brought the Latin hexameter to the highest degree of perfection, a few traces of that old long-lost poetry, which Cicero^[79] wished for back again, might still be discovered:—

Some passages of Livy bear evident marks of having been originally portions of Saturnian ballads, although the historian has mutilated the metre by the process of translating them into more modern Latin. The prophetic warning of C. Marcius^[80] has been thus restored by Hermann with but slight alteration of the words of Livy:

The oracle which tradition recorded as having been brought from Delphi respecting the waters of the Alban lake^[81] was evidently embodied in a Saturnian poem, probably the composition of the same Marcius, or one of his contemporaries, such as Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, or Acilius. This lay has also been conjecturally restored by Hermann.

In later times Livius Andronicus translated the whole Odyssey into Saturnians, and Nævius wrote in the same metre a poem consisting of seven books, the subject of which was the first Punic war. Detached fragments of both these have been preserved by Aulus Gellius, Priscian, Festus, and others, which have been collected together by Hermann.^[82]

The structure of the Saturnian is very simple, and its rhythmical arrangement is found in the poetry of every age and country. Macaulay^[83] quotes the following Saturnians from the poem of the Cid and from the Nibelungen-Lied—

He adds, also, an example of a perfect Saturnian, the following line from the well known nursery song—

It was the metre naturally adapted to the national mode of dancing, in which each alternate step strongly marked the time,^[84] and the rhythmical beat was repeated in a series of three bars, which gave to the dance the appellation of tripudium.

The Saturnian consists of two parts, each containing three feet, which fall upon the ear with the same effect as Greek trochees. The whole is preceded by a syllable in thesis technically called an anacrusis. For example—

64The metre in its original form was perfectly independent of the rules of Greek prosody; its only essential requisite was the beat or ictus on the alternate syllable or its representative. The only law to regulate the stress was that of the common popular pronunciation. In fact, stress occupied the place of quantity. Two or three syllables, which, according to the rules of prosody would be long by position, might be slurred over or pronounced rapidly in the time of one, as in the following line:—

Thus it is clear that the principles which regulated it were those of modern versification, without any of the niceties and delicacies of Greek quantity.

The anacrusis resembles the introductory note to a musical air, and does not interfere with the essential quality of the verse, namely, the three beats twice repeated, any more than it does in English poems, in which octosyllabic lines, having the stress on the even places, are intermingled with verses of seven syllables, as in the following passage of Milton’s L’Allegro:—

It is remarkable that in the degenerate periods of Latin literature, there was a return to the same old rhythmical principles which gave birth to the Saturnian verse: ictus was again substituted for quantity, and the Greek rules of prosody were neglected for a rhythm consisting of alternate beats, which pervades most modern poetry.

The empire had become so extensive, that the taste of the people, especially of the provincials, was no longer regulated by that of the capital, and emphasis and accent became, instead of metrical quantity, the general rule of pronunciation. This was the origin of rhythmical poetry. Traces of it may be found as early as the satirical verses of Suetonius on J. Cæsar.

65It is the metre of the little jeu d’esprit addressed by the emperor Hadrian to Florus—^[85]

and also of the historian’s repartee—

The simple grandeur of such strains as—

and other monkish hymns, go far to rescue the old Saturnian from the charge of ruggedness and rusticity ascribed to it by Horace and others, whose taste was formed by Greek poetry, and whose fastidious ears could not brook any harmony but that which had been consecrated to the outpourings of Greek genius.

From this species of verse, which probably prevailed among the natives of Provence (the Roman Provincia) the Troubadours derived the metre of their ballad poetry, and thence introduced it into the rest of Europe. But whatever phases the external form of ancient poetry underwent, the classical writers both of Greece and Rome eschewed rhyme. Even to a modern ear the beautiful effect of the ancient metres is entirely destroyed by it. It was a false taste and a less refined ear which could accept it as a compensation for the imperfections of prosody.

Although rhyme was introduced as an embellishment of verses framed on the principle of ictus, and not of quantity, at a very early period of Christian Latin literature, it is not quite certain when it came to be added as a new difficulty to the metres of classical antiquity. It is recorded by Gray^[86] that when the children educated in the monastery of St. Gall addressed a Bishop 66of Constance on his first visitation with expostulatory orations, the younger ones recited the following doggerel rhymes:—

The elder and more advanced students spoke in rhyming hexameters:—

The era during which Roman classical literature commenced, arrived at perfection, and declined, may be conveniently divided into three periods. The first of these embraces its rise and progress, such traces as are discoverable of oral and traditional compositions, the rude elements of the drama, the introduction of Greek literature, and the cultivation of the national taste in accordance with this model, the infancy of eloquence, and the construction and perfection of comedy.

To this period the first five centuries of the republic may be considered as introductory; the groundwork and foundation were then being gradually laid on which the superstructure was built up; for, properly speaking, Rome had no literature until the conclusion of the first Punic war.^[87]

Independently therefore of these 500 years, this period consists of 160 years extending from the time when Livius Andronicus flourished^[88] to the first appearance of Cicero in public life.^[89]

The second period ends with the death of Augustus.^[90] It comprehends the age of which Cicero is the representative, as the most accomplished orator, philosopher, and prose writer of his times, as well as that of Augustus, which is commonly called the golden age of Latin poetry.

The third and last period of Roman classical literature terminates with the death of Hadrian.^[91] Notwithstanding the numerous 68excellencies which will be seen to distinguish the literature of this period, its decline had evidently commenced. It missed the patronage of Augustus and his refined court, and was chilled by the baneful influence of his tyrannical successors. As the age of Augustus has been distinguished by the epithet “golden,” so the succeeding period has been, on account of its comparative inferiority, designated as “the silver age.”

The Romans, like all other nations, had oral poetical compositions before they possessed any written literature. Cicero, in three places,^[92] speaks of the banquet being enlivened by the songs of bards, in which the exploits of heroes were recited and celebrated. By these lays national pride and family vanity were gratified, and the anecdotes thus preserved by memory furnished the sources of early legendary history.

But these lays and legends must not be compared to those of Greece, which had probably taken an epic form long before they furnished the groundwork of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Roman tradition there are no traces of elevated genius or poetical inspiration. The religious sentiment was the fertile source of Greek fancy, which gave a supernatural glory to the effusions of the bard, painted men as heroes, and heroes as deities; and, whilst it was the natural growth of the Greek intellect, twined itself round the affections of the whole people.

Roman religion was a ceremonial for the priests, not for the people; and its poetry was merely formulæ in verse, and soared no higher than the semi-barbarous ejaculations of the Salian priests or the Arvalian brotherhood. Fabulous legends doubtless formed the groundwork of history, and therefore probably constituted the festive entertainments to which Cicero alludes; but they were rude and simple, and the narratives founded upon them, which are embodied in the pages of Livy and others, are as much improved by the embellishments of the historian, as these in their turn have been expanded by the poetic talent of Macaulay.

It is scarcely possible to conceive that the uncouth literature which was contemporary with such rude relics as have come down 69to modern times should have displayed a higher degree of imaginative power. A few simple descriptive lines, one or two animating and heart-stirring sentiments, and no more, would be tolerated as an interruption to the grosser pleasures of the table amongst a rude and boisterous people. The Romans were men of actions, not of words; their intellect, though vigorous, was essentially of a practical character: it was such as to form warriors, statesmen, jurists, orators, but not poets; in the highest sense of the word, i. e. if by poetic talent is meant the creative faculty of the imagination. The Roman mind possessed the germs of those faculties which admit of cultivation and improvement, such as taste and genius, and the appreciation of the beautiful, and their endowments rendered them capable of attaining literary excellence; it did not possess the natural gifts of fancy and imagination, which were part and parcel of the Greek mind, and which made them in a state of infancy, almost of barbarism, a poetical people.

With the Romans literature was not of spontaneous growth: it was the result of external influence. It is impossible to fix the period at which they first became subject to this influence, but it is clear that in everything mental and spiritual their neighbours the Etruscans were their teachers. The influence exercised by this remarkable people was not only religious, but moral: its primary object was discipline, its secondary one refinement. If it cultivated the intellectual powers, it was with a view to disciplining the moral faculties. To this pure culture the old Roman character owed its vigour, its honesty, its incorruptible sternness, and those virtues which are summed up in the comprehensive and truly Roman word “gravitas.” History proves that these qualities had a real existence—that they were not the mere ideal phantasies of those who loved to praise times gone by. The error into which those fell who mourned over the loss of the old Roman discipline, and lamented the degeneracy of their own times, was, that they attributed this degeneracy to the onward march of refinement and civilization, and not to the accidental circumstance that this march was accompanied by profligacy and effeminacy, and that the race which was the dispensers 70of these blessings was a corrupt and degenerate one. They could not separate the causes and the effects; they did not see that Rome was intellectually advanced by Greek literature, but that unfortunately it was degraded at the same time by Greek profligacy.

For centuries the Roman mind was imbued with Etruscan literature; and Livy^[93] asserts that, just as Greek was in his own day, it continued to be the instrument of Roman education during five centuries after the foundation of the city.

The tendency of the Roman mind was essentially utilitarian. Even Cicero, with all his varied accomplishments, will recognise but one end and object of all study, namely, those sciences which will render a man useful to his country:—“Quid esse igitur censes discendum nobis?... Eas artes quæ efficiunt ut usui civitati simus; id enim esse præclarissimum sapientiæ munus maximumque virtutis vel documentum vel officium puto.”^[94] We must, therefore, expect to find the law of literary development modified in accordance with this ruling principle. From the very beginning, the final cause of Roman literature will be found to have been a view to utility, and not the satisfaction of an impulsive feeling.

In other nations poetry has been the first spontaneous production. With the Romans the first literary effort was history. But their early history consisted simply of annals and memorials—records of facts, not of ideas or sentiments. It was calculated to form a storehouse of valuable materials for future ages, but it had no impress of genius or thought; its merits were truth and accuracy; its very facts were often frivolous and unimportant, neither rendered interesting as narratives, nor illustrated by reflections. These original documents were elements of literature rather than deserving the name of literature itself—antiquarian rather than historical. The earliest records of this kind were the Libri Lintei—manuscripts written on rolls of linen cloth, to which Livy refers as containing the first treaty between Rome and Carthage, and the truce made with Ardea and Gabii.^[95] To these may be added the Annales Maximi, or Commentarii 71Pontificum, of the minute accuracy of which, the following account is given by Servius.^[96] “Every year the chief pontiff inscribed on a white tablet, at the head of which were the names of the consuls and other magistrates, a daily record of all memorable events both at home and abroad. These commentaries or registers were afterwards collected into eighty books, which were entitled by their authors Annales Maximi.”

Similar notes of the year were kept regularly from the earliest periods by the civil magistrates, and are spoken of by Latin authors under the titles of Commentarii Consulares, Libri Prætorum, and Tabulæ Censoriæ. All these records, however, which were anterior to the capture of Rome by the Gauls, perished in the conflagration of the city.

Each patrician house, also, had its private family history, and the laudatory orations said to have been recited at the funerals of illustrious members, were carefully preserved, as adorning and illustrating their nobility; but this heraldic literature obscured instead of throwing a light upon history: it was filled with false triumphs, imaginary consulships, and forged genealogies.^[97]

The earliest attempt at poetry, or rather versification, for it was simply the outward form and not the inward spirit which the rude inhabitants of Latium attained, was satire in somewhat of a dramatic form. The Fescennine songs were metrical, for the accompaniments of music and dancing necessarily subjected their extemporaneous effusions to the restrictions of a rude measure. Like the first theatrical exhibitions of the Greeks, they had their origin, not in towns, but amongst the rural population. They were not, like Greek tragedy, performed in honour of a deity, nor did they form a portion of a religious ceremonial. Still, however, they were the accompaniment of it, the pastime of the village festival. Religion was the excuse for the holiday sport, and amusement its natural occupation. At first they were innocent and gay, their mirth overflowed in boisterous but good-humoured repartee; but liberty at length degenerated into license, and gave birth to malicious and libellous attacks on persons 72of irreproachable character.^[98] As the licentiousness of Greek comedy provoked the interference of the legislature, so the laws of the Twelve Tables forbade the personalities of the Fescennine verses.

This infancy of song illustrates the character of the Romans in its rudest and coarsest form. They loved strife, both bodily and mental: with them the highest exercise of the intellect was in legal conflict and political debate; and, on the same principle, the pleasure which the spectators in the rural theatre derived from this species of attack and defence, approached somewhat nearly to the enthusiasm with which they would have witnessed an exhibition of gladiatorial skill. The rustic delighted in the strife of words as he would in the wrestling matches which also formed a portion of his day’s sports, and thus early displayed that taste, which, in more polished ages, and in the hands of cultivated poets, was developed in the sharp cutting wit, the lively but piercing points of Roman satire.

The Fescennine verses show that the Romans possessed a natural aptitude for satire. The pleasure derived from this species of writing, as well as the moral influence exercised by it, depends not upon an æsthetic appreciation of the beautiful, but on a high sense of moral duty; and such a sense displays itself in a stern and indignant abhorrence of vice rather than a disposition to be attracted by the charms and loveliness of virtue. The Romans were a stern, not an æsthetic people, consequently satire is the most original of all Roman literature, and the perfect and polished form which it afterwards assumed was entirely their own. They did, indeed, afterwards acutely observe and readily seize upon those parts of Greek literature which were subservient to this end, and hence Lucilius, the founder of Roman satire, eagerly adopted the models and materials which Greek comedy placed at his disposal, and thus became, as Horace^[99] writes, a disciple of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes.

So permanent was the popularity of these entertainments that they even survived the introduction of Greek letters, and received a polish and refinement from the change which then took place 73in the spirit of the national poetry.^[100] It has been said, that in these rude elements of the drama, Etruria was the first teacher of Latium, and that the epithet, Fescennine, perpetuates the name of an Etrurian village, Fescennia, from which the amusement derived its origin; but Niebuhr has shown that Fescennia was not an Etruscan village, and, therefore, that this etymology is untenable.

The most probable etymology of the word Fescennine is one given by Festus.^[101] Fascinium was the Greek Phallus, the emblem of fertility; and as the origin of Greek comedy was derived from the rustic Phallic songs, so he considers that the same ceremonial may be, in some way, connected with the Fescennine verses. If this be the true account, the Etruscans furnished the spectacle—all that which addresses itself to the eye, whilst the habits of Italian rural life supplied the sarcastic humour and ready extemporaneous gibe, which are the essence of the true comic; and these combined elements having migrated from the country to the capital, and being enthusiastically adopted by young men of more refined taste and more liberal education, afterwards paved the way for the introduction and adaptation of Greek comedy.

If in these improvisatory dialogues may be discerned the germ of the Roman Comic Drama, the next advance in point of art must be attributed to the Oscans. Their quasi-dramatic entertainments were most popular amongst the Italian nations. They represented in broad caricature national peculiarities: the language of the dialogue was, of course, originally Oscan, the characters of the drama were Oscan likewise.^[102] The principal one was called Macchus, whose part was that of the Clown in the modern pantomime. Another was termed Bucco, who was a kind of Pantaloon, or charlatan. Much of the wit consisted in practical jokes like that of the Italian Polichinello. These entertainments were sometimes called Ludi Osci, but they are more 74commonly known by the title of Fabulæ Atellanæ, from Aderla,^[103] or, as the Romans pronounced it, Atella, a town in Campania, where they were very popular, or perhaps first performed. After their introduction at Rome they underwent great modifications and received important improvements. They lost their native rusticity; their satire was good natured; their jests were seemly, and kept in check by the laws of good taste, and were free from scurrility or obscenity.^[104] They seem in later times to have been divided, like comedies, into five acts, with exodia,^[105] i. e. farcical interludes in verse, interspersed between them. Nor were they acted by the common professional performers. The Atellan actors^[106] formed a peculiar class; they were not considered infamous, nor were they excluded from the tribes, but enjoyed the privilege of immunity from military service. Even a private Roman citizen might take a part in them without disgrace or disfranchisement, although these were the social penalties imposed upon the regular histrio. The Fabulæ Atellanæ introduced thus early remained in favour for centuries. The dictator Sylla is said to have amused his leisure hours in writing them; and Suetonius bears testimony to their having been a popular amusement under the empire.

As early, however, as the close of the fourth century, the drama took a more artificial form. In the consulship of C. Sulpicius Peticus and C. Dicinius Stolo,^[107] a pestilence devastated Rome. In order to deprecate the anger of the gods, a solemn lectisternium was proclaimed; couches of marble were prepared, with cushions and coverlets of tapestry, on which were placed the statues of the deities in a reclining posture. Before them were placed well-spread tables, as though they were able to partake of the feast. On this occasion a company of stage-players (histriones) were sent for from Etruria, as a means, according to Livy^[108] of propitiating the favour of Heaven; but probably also for the wiser purpose of diverting the popular mind from the contemplation of their own suffering. These entertainments were a novelty to a people whose only recognised public sports, up to 75that time, with the exception of the rural drama already described, had been trials of bodily strength and skill. The exhibitions of the Etruscan histriones consisted of graceful national dances, accompanied with the music of the flute, but without either songs or dramatic action. They were, therefore, simply ballets, and not dramas.

Thus the Etruscans furnished the suggestion: the Romans improved upon it, and invested it with a dramatic character. They combined the old Fescennine songs with the newly introduced dances. The varied metres which the unrestrained nature of their rude verse permitted to the vocal parts, gave to this mixed entertainment the name of satura (a hodge-podge or pot-pourri,) from which in after times the word satire was derived. The actors in these quasi-dramas were professed histriones, and no further alteration took place until that introduced by Livius Andronicus.

The events already related had by this time prepared the Roman people for the reception of a more regular drama, when, at the conclusion of the first Punic War, the influence of Greek intellect, which had already long been felt in Italy, extended to the capital. But not only did the Romans owe to Greece the principles of literary taste, and the original models from which the elements of that taste were derived, but their first and earliest poet was one of that nation. Livius Andronicus, although born in Italy, educated in the Latin tongue at Rome, and subsequently a naturalized Roman, is generally supposed to have been a native of the Greek colony of Tarentum. He was a man of cultivated mind, and well versed in the literature of his nation, especially in dramatic poetry. How he came to be at Rome in the condition of a slave, it is impossible to say. Attius stated that he was taken prisoner at Tarentum by Q. Fabius Maximus, when he recovered that city, in the tenth year of the second Punic War. But Cicero shows, on the authority of Atticus, that this date is thirty years later than the period at which he first exhibited at Rome, and Niebuhr^[109] considers that the reason why he is called a Tarentine captive is, from being confounded with one M. Livius Macatus, mentioned by Livy.^[110] He may perhaps have owed his change of fortune to being made a prisoner of 77war; at any rate, he became one of the household of M. Livius Salinator, and occupied the confidential position of instructor to his children. The employment as tutors of Greek slaves, who, being men of education and refinement, had fallen into this position by the fortune of war, was customary with the wealthy Romans. By this means there was rapidly introduced amongst the rising generation of the higher classes a knowledge of that language and learning which the Romans so eagerly embraced and so enthusiastically admired.

Fidelity in so important a situation generally gained the esteem and affection of the patron. The generous Roman became a protector of the man of genius rather than his master, and conferred upon him the gift of freedom. Andronicus was emancipated under such circumstances as these, and according to custom received the name of his former master, Livius, and his civil and political rank became that of an ærarius. He wrote a translation, or perhaps an imitation of the Odyssey, in the old Saturnian metre, and also a few hymns. Niebuhr supposes that the reason why he has translated or epitomized the Odyssey in preference to the Iliad is, that it would have greater attractions for the Romans, in consequence of the relation which it bore to the ancient legends of Italy. The sea which washes the coast of Italy was the scene of many of the most marvellous adventures of Ulysses. Sicily, in which, owing to the wars with Hiero and the Carthaginians, the Romans now began to take a lively interest, was represented in the Odyssey as abounding in the elements of poetry. Circe’s fairy abode was within sight of land—a promontory of Latium bore her name, and one of Ulysses’ sons by her was, according to the legend of Hesiod, Latinus, the patriarch of the Latin name. His principal works, however, were tragedies. The passion of the Romans for shows and exhibitions, the love of action, and of stirring business-like occupation, which characterizes them, would make the drama popular, and it would harmonize with the public entertainments, in which they had been accustomed to take pleasure from the earliest times, when tradition informs us that the founder of their race instituted the solemn games to the equestrian Neptune, and 78invited all the neighbours to the spectacle;^[111] and when Ancus celebrated with unwonted splendour the Great Games, and appointed separate seats and boxes for the knights and senators.^[112] It was probable that Livius Andronicus, coming forward as the introducer of a new era in literature, would study the character as well as the language of his newly-adopted countrymen, and endeavour to please them as well as teach them. In order to become eventually a leader of the public taste, he would at first fall in with it to a certain degree. The process by which he moulded it after the model which he considered the true one, would be gentle and gradual, not sudden and abrupt. The paucity and brevity of the fragments which are extant furnish but little opportunity for forming an accurate estimate of his ability as a poet, and his competency to guide and form the taste of a people. Hermann^[113] has collected together the fragments of the Latin Odyssey which are scattered through the works of Gellius, Priscian, Festus, Nonius, and others, and has compared them with the Homeric passages of which they are the translations. Few of these, however, are longer than a single line; and, therefore, the only opinion which can be formed respecting them is, that although the versification is rough and rhythmical rather than metrical, the language is vigorous and expressive, and conveys, as far as a translation can, the force and meaning of the original.

Nor do the criticisms of the ancient classical authors furnish much assistance in coming to a decision. Their tastes were so completely Greek, and the prejudices of their education so strong, that they could scarcely confess the existence of excellence in a poet so old as Andronicus. Cicero says in the Brutus,^[114] that his Latin Odyssey was as old-fashioned and rude as would have been the sculptures of Dædalus, and that his dramas would not bear a second perusal. Horace, however, is not quite so sweeping in his strictures. He confesses that he would not condemn the poems of Livius^[115] to utter oblivion, although he remembers them in connexion with the floggings of his schoolmaster; but he is 79surprised that any one should consider them polished and beautiful, and not falling far short of critical exactness.

A passage in the history of Livy seems to imply that Andronicus ventured upon some deviations from the ancient plan of scenic exhibitions.^[116] According to him, Livius was the first who substituted, for the rude extemporaneous effusions of the Fescennine verse, plays with a regular plot and fable. He adds, that in consequence of losing his voice from being frequently encored, he obtained permission to introduce a boy to sing the ode, or air, to the accompaniment of the flute, whilst he himself represented the action of the song by his gestures and dancing. He was thus enabled to depict the subject with greater vigour and freedom of pantomimic action, because he was unimpeded by the obligation to use his voice. Hence the custom began of the actor responding by his gesticulation to the song and music of another, whilst the dialogue between the odes was delivered without any musical accompaniment.

The passage of which the above is a paraphrase, is as follows:—“Livius post aliquot annos qui ab saturis ausus est primus argumento fabulam serere (idem scilicet, id quod omnes tum erant, suorum carminum actor) dicitur, quum sæpius revocatus vocem obtudisset, veniâ petitâ, puerum ad canendum ante tibicinem quum statuisset, canticum egisse aliquanto magis vigente motu, quia nihil vocis usus impediebat. Inde ad manum cantari histrionibus cæptum, diverbiaque tantum ipsorum voci relicta.” It is evident that this description points out the introduction of the principles of Greek art. We are reminded of the hyporchemes in honour of Apollo, in which the gestures of certain members of the chorus represented the incidents related or sentiments expressed by the singer, and also the separation of the choral or musical part from the dialogue of a Greek tragedy. Nevertheless, the choral or lyrical portion of the drama to which alone this novel practice introduced by Livius applies, found but a small part in a Latin tragedy, if compared with those of the Greeks. In this alone the poet himself sustained a part, whilst the whole of the dialogue (diverbia) was recited by professional performers.

80This new style of dramatic performances, however, does not appear at first to have taken such hold upon the affections of the people as to supersede their old amusements. They admitted them, and witnessed them with pleasure and applause, but they would not give up the old. The young men wished their amusements to be really games and sports; they were not content to be merely quiet spectators. Extemporaneous effusions were more convenient for amateurs than regular plays, and joke and jest than tragic earnest. The new custom introduced by Livius elevated the drama above the region of ribaldry and laughter, but the art and skill requisite confined the work to the professional performer. The young Romans, therefore, left to the stage-player the regular drama, restored their old amusement as an exodium or after-piece, and did not suffer it, as Livy says, to be “polluted” by the interference of histriones. According to the testimony of Cicero,^[117] who makes his statement on the authority of Atticus, Livius first exhibited his dramas in the year before the birth of Ennius, in the consulship of C. Clodius and M. Tuditanus, A. U. C. 514.^[118] This date is also adopted by Aulus Gellius,^[119] who places his first dramatic representations about a hundred and sixty years after the death of Sophocles, and fifty-two years after that of Menander. The titles of his tragedies which are extant show that they were translations or adaptations from the Greek. Amongst them are those of Egisthus, Hermione, Tereus, Ajax, and Helena. From each of the last two one line is preserved, and four lines are quoted by Terentianus Maurus from his tragedy of Ino;^[120] but the language and metre render it far more probable that they were written by some more modern poet. Two of his tragedies, the Clytemnestra and the Trojan Horse, were acted in the second consulship of Pompey the Great, at the inauguration of the splendid stone theatre^[121] which he built. No expense was spared in putting them upon the stage, for Cicero writes, in a letter to M. Marius,^[122] that three 81thousand bucklers, the spoils of foreign nations, were exhibited in the latter, and a procession of six hundred mules, probably richly caparisoned, were introduced in the former, whilst cavalry and infantry, clad in various armour, mingled in mimic combat on the scene. He considers, however, that this splendour was an offence against good taste, and that the enjoyment was spoilt by the gorgeousness of the spectacle. The taste of his patrons, the Roman people, as well as the testimony of antiquity, render it highly probable that he was the author of comedies^[123] as well as tragedies. Festus speaks of one, of which he quotes a single line, for the sake of its philological value.

Nævius was the first poet who really deserves the name of Roman. His countrymen in all ages, as well as his contemporaries, looked upon him as one of themselves. The probability is, that he was not actually born at Rome, though even this has been maintained with some show of plausibility.^[124] He was, at any rate, by birth entitled to the municipal franchise, and from his earliest boyhood was a resident in the capital. Nor was he a mere servile imitator, but applied Greek taste and cultivation to the development of Roman sentiments. A true Roman in heart and spirit in his fearless attachment to liberty; his stern opposition to all who dared invade the rights of his fellow-citizens; he was unsparing in his censure of immorality, and his admiration for heroic self-devotion. He was a soldier, and imbibed the free and martial enthusiasm which breathes in his poems when he fought the battles of his country in the first Punic War. His honest principles cemented, in his later years, a strong friendship between him and the upright and unbending Cato,^[125]—a friendship which probably contributed to form the political and literary character of that stern old Roman.

82It is generally assumed that Nævius was a Campanian; but the only reason for this assumption is, that A. Gellius^[126] criticises his epitaph, of which Nævius himself was the author, as full of Campanian pride.

The time of his birth is unknown, but it is probable that his public career commenced within a very few years after that of Livius. Gellius fixes the exhibition of his first drama in B. C. 235,^[127] and Cicero places his death in the consulship of M. Cornelius Cethegus and P. Sempronius Tuditanus,^[128] although he allows that Varro, who places it somewhat later, is the most pains-taking of Roman antiquarians. It is also certain that he died at an advanced age, for, according to Cicero, he was an old man when he wrote one of his poems. He was the author of an epic poem, the title of which was the Punic War; but, owing to the popularity of dramatic literature, his earliest literary productions were tragedies and comedies. The titles of most of these show that their subjects were Greek legends or stories. It was, therefore, in his epic poem that the acknowledged originality of his talents was mainly displayed. Nævius was a strong political partisan, a warm supporter of the people against the encroachments of the nobility. In consequence of the expenditure during the war, great part of the population was reduced to poverty, and a strong line of demarkation was drawn between the rich and the poor. The estrangement and want of sympathy between those two classes were daily increasing. The barrier of caste was indeed almost destroyed, but that of class was beginning to be erected in its stead. The passing of the Licinian bills^[129] had led to the gradual rise of a plebeian nobility. The Ogulnian law^[130] had admitted patrician and plebeian to a religious as well as political equality, and more than three-quarters of a century had passed away since Appius Claudius the blind^[131] had given political existence to the freedmen by admitting them into the tribes, and had even raised some whose fathers had been freedmen to the rank of senators, to the exclusion of many distinguished 83plebeians who had filled curule offices. The object which he proposed to himself by this policy was undoubtedly the depression of the rising plebeian nobility, and this object was for a time attained; but the ultimate result was a vast increase in the numbers and the power of those who were opposed to the old patrician nobility, by the formation of a higher class, the only qualification for admission into which was wealth and intelligence. According to the old distinctions of rank it was necessary that even a plebeian should have a pedigree; his father and grandfather must have been born free. Appius, when chosen for the first time, waived this, and introduced a new principle of political party. Of this anti-aristocratic party Nævius was the literary representative, and the vehement opponent of privileges derived from the accident of birth. His position, too, was calculated to provoke a man of better temper. He was a Roman citizen, but, as a native of a municipal town, he did not possess the full franchise which he saw enjoyed by others around him who were intellectually inferior to himself, and the sense of his political inferiority was galling to him. Accordingly he used literature as a new and powerful instrument to foster the jealousy which existed between the orders of the state. He attacked the principle of an aristocracy of birth in the persons of some members of the most distinguished families. He held up Scipio Africanus to ridicule by making him the hero of a tale of scandal.

The public services of the two Metelli could not shield them from the poet’s bitterness, which attributed their consulships not to their own merits, but to the mere will of fate.^[132] One bitter sentence, “Fato Metelli Romæ fiunt consules.” made that powerful family his enemies. The Metellus, who at that time held the office of consul, threatened him with vengeance for his slander in the following verse:—“Dabunt malum Metelli Nævio poetæ.” and the offending poet was indicted for a libel, in pursuance of a law of the Twelve Tables,^[133] and thrown into prison. Whilst 84there he composed two pieces, in which he expressed contrition; and Plautus^[134] describes him as watched by two jailers, pensively resting his head upon his hands:—

Through the influence of the tribunes he was set at liberty.^[135] As, however, is frequently the case, he could not resist indulging again in his satiric vein, and he was exiled to Utica, where he died,^[136] having employed the last years of his life in writing his epic poem. The following laudatory epitaph was written by himself:—

The best and most admired writers have paid their homage to his excellence. Ennius and Virgil discovered in him such a freshness and power that they unscrupulously copied and imitated him, and transferred his thoughts into their own poems as they did those of Homer. Horace writes that in his day the poems of Nævius were universally read, and were in the hands and hearts of everybody, and Cicero^[137] praises him, although he had no taste for the old national literature.

We cannot be surprised at the universal popularity of Nævius. His stern love of liberty, his unsparing opposition to aristocratic exclusiveness, was identical with the old Roman republicanism. His taste for satire exactly fell in with the spirit of the earliest Roman literature, whilst he depicted with life and vigour and graphic skill the scenes of heroism in which the soldier-poet of the first Punic War was himself an actor. His tragedies were probably entirely taken from the Greek, but his comedies had undoubted 85pretensions to originality. The titles of many of them plainly show a Greek origin; but probably all more or less presented pictures of Roman life and manners, and therefore went home to the hearts of the people. This is essential to the complete effectiveness of comedy. Tragedy appeals to higher feelings: it depicts passions and principles of action which are recognised by the whole human race; it may, therefore, enlist the sympathies on the side of those whose habits and manners differ from our own, as it does in favour of those characters which are of a heroic and superhuman mould. Comedy professes to describe real life, and to paint men as they are; it therefore loses part of its power unless it deals with scenes which the experience of the audience can realize. Thus it is with painting. The high art of the Italian school, which selected for its subjects the holy scenes of religion, the heroism of history, and the creatures of classical poetry, was fostered by the taste of the rich and noble amongst a highly cultivated and imaginative people. The homely realities of the Flemish painters, with their accurate and lifelike delineations, were the delight of a rude prosaic nation, who could not appreciate a more elevated style or understand ideal beauties unless brought down to the level of every-day life.

The new form with which Nævius invested comedy gave him scope for holding up to public scorn the prevailing vices and follies of the day. He had also another vehicle for personality in his Ludi or Satiræ, as they were termed by Cicero. These were comic scenes, and not regular dramas, somewhat resembling the Atellan farces, without their extemporaneous character. But his great work was his poem on the first Punic War. We cannot judge of its merits by the few fragments which remain; but the testimony borne to it by Cicero, and the use which was made of it by Ennius and Virgil, prove that it fully deserved the title of an epic poem. The idea was original, the plot and characters Roman. The author, although Greek literature taught him how to be a poet, drew his inspiration from the scenes of his native Italy and the exploits of his countrymen. To this poem Virgil owed that beautiful allegorical representation of the undying enmity between Rome and Carthage, and the disastrous love of 86Æneas and Dido. Here was first painted in such touching colours the self-devoted patriotism of Regulus, whom (although love of historic truth refuses to believe the legend) the poet represents as sacrificing home and wife and children to a sense of honour, and as submitting to a torturing death for the sake of his country. Probably many other heart-stirring legends and tales of prowess which had cheered the nightly bivouac of the soldiers and inspirited them in the field, were embodied in this popular epic. Not that he disdained any more than Virgil the aid of Homer.^[138] The second book of the Iliad suggested to him the enumeration of the opposing forces at the commencement of the struggle, and the description of the storm, from which Virgil, in his turn, copied in the Æneid,^[139] owes much of its energy to the eighth book of the Odyssey. The expostulation of Venus with the father of gods and men,^[140] respecting the perils of her son, and the promise of future prosperity to the descendants of Æneas, with which Jupiter consoles her, as well as the address of Æneas to his companions, are imitations of passages from this poem of Nævius; and Ennius copied so much from him and his predecessors as to have provoked the following rebuke from Cicero:^[141]—“They have written well, if not with all thy elegance, and so oughtest thou to think who have borrowed so much from Nævius, if you confess that you have done so, or, if you deny it, have stolen so much from him.”

The fragments of Nævius extant are not more numerous than those of Livius, but some are rather longer. The two following may be quoted as examples of simplicity and power:—

These few words tell their tale with as much pathos as that admired line in the Andrian of Terence—

The following lines describe the panic of the Carthaginians; 87nor could any Roman poet have sketched the picture in fewer strokes or with more suggestive power:—

Whoever can forgive roughness of expression for the sake of vigorous thought, would, if more had remained, have read with delight the inartificial although unpolished poetry of Nævius. Without that elaborate workmanship which was to the Roman the only substitute for the spontaneous grace and beauty of all that proceeded from the Greek mind, and was expressed in the Greek tongue, there is no doubt that Nævius displayed genius, originality, and dignity. The prejudices of Horace in favour of Greek taste were too strong for him to value what was old in poetry, or to sympathize with the admiration of that which the goddess of death had consecrated.^[144] But Cicero, whilst he attributed to Livius only the mechanic skill and barbaric art of Dædalus, gave to Nævius the creative talent and plastic power of Myron.

Even when Roman critics were not unanimous in assigning him a niche amongst the greatest bards, the Roman people loved him as their national poet, and were grateful to him for his nationality. They paid him the highest compliment possible by retaining him as the educator of their youth. Orbilius flogged his sentiments into his pupil’s memories; and, whilst the niceties of grammar were taught through the instrumentality of Greek by Greek instructors, and poetic taste was formed by a study of the Homeric poems, Nævius still had the formation of the character of the young Roman gentlemen, and his epic was in the hands and hearts of every one.

One more subject remains to be treated of with reference to the literary productions of Nævius, and that is, the metrical character of his poetry. He appreciated that important element of Greek poetic beauty. The varied versification by means of which it appeals at once to the ear, just as physical beauty charms 88long before we are attracted by the hidden power of moral excellence, and external form creates a prejudice in favour of that which is of more intrinsic value, but cannot so readily be perceived, so the melody of verse more readily pleases than the beauty of the imagery and sentiments which the verses convey. Nævius, therefore, did not disdain to recommend his original genius by a study of the principles of Greek versification, and by clothing his thoughts in those which his ear suggested as being most appropriate to the occasion. He does not seem to have overcome the difficulties of the heroic metre, although he studied the Homeric poems.

Probably as the Saturnian, the only natural Italian measure which he found existing, was a triple time, the Roman ear could not at once adapt itself to the common time of the dactylic measures. The versification of our own country furnishes an analogous example. The usual metres of English poetry consist of an alternation of long and short syllables; dactyles and anapæsts are of less frequent occurrence and are of more modern introduction, and the English ear is even yet not quite accustomed to the hexametrical rhythm. The dignity of the epic is expressed in the grave march of the iambus; the ballad tells its story in the same metre, though in shorter lines; the joyous Anacreontic adopts the dancing step of the trochee. For this reason, perhaps, Nævius, as a matter of taste, limited himself to the introduction of iambic and trochaic metres, and the irregular features of Greek lyric poetry to the exclusion of the heroic hexameter.

It was long before the Romans could arrive at perfection in this metre. Ennius was unsuccessful. His hexameters are rough and unmusical; he seems never to have perfectly understood the nature and beauty of the cæsura or pause. The failure of Cicero, notwithstanding his natural musical ear, is proverbial. No one previous to Virgil seems to have overcome the difficulty. Versification seems always to have been somewhat of a labour to the Romans. In the structure of their poetry they worked by rule; their finish was artistic, but it was artificial. Hence the Latin poet allowed himself less metrical liberty than the Greek, whom he made his model. He seemed to feel that the Greek metres, 89which the education of his taste had compelled him to adopt, were not precisely the form into which Latin words naturally fell; that this deficiency must be supplied by the care with which he moulded his verse, according to the strictest possible standard. One can imagine the extemporaneous effusions of a Homeric bard; but to Roman taste which, in every literary work, especially in poetry, looked for elaborate finish, the power of the improvisator, who could pour forth a hundred verses standing on one foot, was a ridiculous pretension.^[145]

As a general rule, no Roman poet attained facility in versification; Ovid was perhaps the only exception. In the early period, when Roman poetry was extemporaneous, their national verse was only rhythmical, and now that modern Italy can boast of the faculty of improvisation, verse has become rhythmical again. But although Nævius introduced a variety of Greek metres to the Romans, the principal part of his poems, and especially his national epic, were written in the old Saturnian measure: its structure was indeed less rude, and its metre more regular and scientific, but still he did not permit the new rules of Greek poetry to banish entirely the favourite verses “in which in olden times Fauns and bards sung,” and which would most acceptably convey to the national ear the achievements of Roman arms.

Nævius appears to have occupied a position between two successive ages; he was the last of the oldest school of writers, and prepared the way for a new one. Although a true Roman in sentiment, he admired Greek cultivation. He saw with regret the old literature of his country fading away, although he had himself introduced new principles of taste to his countrymen. He was not prepared for the shock of seeing the old school superseded by the new. But still the period for this had arrived, and in his epitaph, as we have seen, he deplored that Latin had died with him. A love for old Roman literature remained amongst the goatherds of the hills and the husbandmen of the valleys and plains, in whose memories lived the old songs which had been the delight of their infancy: it survived amongst the few who could discern merit in undisciplined genius; but the rising generation, who owed their taste to education, admired only those productions by which their taste had been formed. Greek literature had now an open field in which to flourish: it had driven out its predecessor, although as yet it had not struck its roots deeply into the Roman mind; a new school of poetry arose, and of that school Ennius was the founder. The principal events in the life of Ennius are as follows:—he was born at the little village of Rudiæ, in the wild and mountainous Calabria, B. C. 239.^[146] Of ancient and honourable descent,^[147] he is said^[148] to 91have begun life in a military career, and to have risen to the rank of a centurion or captain. The anonymous author of the life of Cato, which is generally attributed to Cornelius Nepos, relates that Cato in his voyage from Africa to Rome^[149] visited Sardinia, and finding Ennius in that island took him home with him. But no reason can be assigned why Ennius should have been there, or why Cato should have gone so far out of his way. If the Censor did really introduce the poet to public notice at Rome, he may have made his acquaintance during his quæstorship in Africa, if Ennius was with Scipio in that province; or during his prætorship^[150] in Sardinia, if the poet was a resident in that island. There exist, however, no sufficient data to clear up these difficulties.

It seems, moreover, strange that Cato should have been his patron, and yet that he should have reproached M. Fulvius Nobilior for taking the poet with him as his companion throughout his Ætolian expedition.^[151] With the exception of this campaign, Ennius resided during the remainder of his long life at Rome. Greek and Greek literature were now eagerly sought after by the higher classes, and Ennius earned a subsistence sufficient for his moderate wants by tuition. He enjoyed the friendship and esteem of the leading literary societies at Rome; and at his death, at the age of seventy, he was buried in the family tomb of the Scipios, at the request of the great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame he contributed to hand down to posterity. His statue was honoured with a niche amongst the images of that illustrious race. The following epitaph was written by himself:—^[152]

The epitaph which he wrote in honour of Scipio Africanus has also been preserved:—^[153]

92It is probable that death alone put a period to his career as a poet, and that his last work was completed but a short time before his decease. So popular was he for centuries, and with such care were his poems preserved, that his whole works are said to have existed as late as the thirteenth century.^[154]

Literature, as represented by Ennius, attained a higher social and political position than it had hitherto enjoyed. Livius Andronicus was, as we have seen, a freedman, and probably a prisoner of war. Nævius never arrived at the full civic franchise, nor became anything more than the native of a municipality, resident at Rome. Hitherto the Romans, although they had begun to admire learning, had not learned to respect its professors. Ennius was evidently a gentleman; he was the first to obtain for literature its due influence. Thus he achieved for himself the much-coveted privileges of a Roman citizen, to which Livius had never aspired, and which Nævius was never able to attain. Hence Cicero always speaks of him with affection as a fellow-countryman. “Our own Ennius” is the appellation which he uses when he quotes his poetry. Horace also calls him “Father Ennius,” a term implying not only that he was the founder of Latin poetry, but also reverence and regard.

To discriminating taste and extensive learning he added that versatility of talent which is displayed in the great variety of his compositions. He was acquainted with all the best existing sources of poetic lore, the ancient legends of the Roman people, and the best works of the Greek writers; he had critical judgment to select beautiful and interesting portions, ingenuity to imitate them, and at the same time genius and fancy to clothe them with originality. It was not to be expected that he could be entirely freed from the antiquated style of the old school. The process of remodelling a national literature, including the very language in which it is expressed, and the metrical harmonies in which it falls upon the ear, is almost like reforming the modes of thought, and reconstructing the character of a people. Such a work must be gradual and gentle: a nation’s mind will not bend at once to new principles of taste and new rules of art. 93To attempt a violent revolution would be absurd, and argue ignorance of human nature. The poet who attempted it would fail in gaining sympathy, which is an essential element of success. To cause such a revolution at all requires a strong will and a vigorous manly mind; and these are precisely the characteristic features of the Ennian poetry.

If we were to paint the character best adapted to act the part of a literary reformer to a nation such as the Romans were, it would be exactly that of Ennius. He was, like his friends Cato the Censor and Scipio Africanus the elder, a man of action as well as philosophical thought. He was not only a poet, but he was a brave and stout-hearted soldier. He had all the singleness of heart and unostentatious simplicity of manners which marked the old times of Roman virtue; he lived the life of the Cincinnati, the Curii, and Fabricii, which the poets of the luxurious Augustan age professed to admire, but did not imitate. Rome was now beginning to be wealthy, and wealth to be the badge of rank; yet the noble poet was respected by the rich and great, even in his lowly cottage on the Aventine, and found it no discredit to be employed as an instructor of youth, although it had been up to his time only the occupation of servants and freedmen. He was the founder of a new school, and was leading his admirers forward to a new career; but his imagination could revel in the recollections and traditions of the past. To him the glorious exploits of the patriarchs of his race furnished as rich a mine of fable as the heroic strains of Homer, the marvellous mythologies of Hesiod, and the tragic heroes of Argos, Mycenæ and Thebes. His early training in Greek philosophy and poetry, and in the midst of Greek habits in his native village, had not polished and refined away his natural freshness. He was a child of art, but a child of nature still. He had a firm belief in his mission as a poet, an abiding conviction of his inspiration. He thought he was not metaphorically, but really, what Horace calls him, a second Homer,^[155] for that the soul of the great Greek bard now animated his mortal body. He had all the enthusiasm and boldness necessary for accomplishing a great task, together with a consciousness that his task was a great and honourable one.

94Owing to this rare union of the best points of Roman character with Greek refinement and civilization, he rendered himself as well as his works acceptable to the most distinguished men of his day, and his intimacy and friendship influenced the minds of Porcius Cato, Lælius, Fulvius Nobilior, and the great Scipio.

A comparison of the extant specimens of the old Latin with the numerous fragments^[156] of the poems of Ennius which have been preserved, will show how deeply they were indebted to him for the improvement of their language, not only in the harmony of its numbers and the convenience of its grammatical forms, but also in its copiousness and power.

It must not, however, be supposed that Ennius is to be praised, not only because he did so much, but because he refrained from doing more, as though he designedly left an antiquated rudeness, redolent of the old Roman spirit and simplicity. A language in the condition or phase of improvement to which he brought it is valuable in an antiquarian point of view; but it is not to be admired as if it were then in a higher state of perfection than it afterwards attained. Elaborate polish may, perhaps, overcome life and freshness, but no one who possesses any correctness of ear or appreciation of beauty can prefer the limping hexameters of Ennius to the musical lines of Virgil, or his later style to the refined eloquence of the Augustan age. As Quintilian says, we value Ennius, not for the beauty of his style, but for his picturesqueness, and for the holiness, as it were, which consecrates antiquity, just as we feel a reverential awe when we contemplate the huge gnarled fathers of the forest. “Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus in quibus grandia et antiqua robora, jam non tantam habent speciem, quantam religionem.”

His predecessors had done little to remould the rude and undigested mass which, as has been shown, was made up of several elements, thrown together by the chance of war and conquest, and left to be amalgamated together by the natural genius of the people. Ennius naturally possessed great power over words, and wielded that power skilfully. In reconstructing the edifice he did the most important and most difficult part, although the result of his labours does not strike the eye as perfect and consummate. 95He laid the foundation strongly and safely. What he did was improved upon, but was never undone. The taste of succeeding ages erected on his basement an elegant and beautiful superstructure. To Ennius we owe the fact that after his time Latin literature was always advancing until it reached its perfection. It never went back, because the groundwork on which it was built was sound.

Ennius imitated most of the Greek metrical forms; but he wrote verses like a learner, and not like one imbued with the spirit of the metres which he imitated. He attended to the prosodiac rules of quantity, so far as his observation deduced them from the analogies of the two languages, instead of the old Roman principle of ictus or stress; but, provided the number of feet were correct, and the long and short syllables followed each other in proper order, his ear was satisfied: it was not as yet sufficiently in tune to appreciate those minuter accessaries which embellish later Latin versification. This is the principal cause of that ruggedness with which even the admirers of Ennius justly find fault. But notwithstanding these defects, there are amongst his verses some as musical and harmonious as those of the best poets in the Augustan age.

His great epic poem, entitled “The Annals,” gained him the attachment as well as the admiration of his countrymen. This poem, written in hexameters, a metre now first introduced to the notice of the Romans, detailed in eighteen books the rise and progress of their national glory, from the earliest legendary periods down to his own times. The only portion of history which he omitted was the first Punic war; and the reason which he gives for the omission is that others have anticipated him^[157]—alluding to his predecessors Livius and Nævius.

The subject which he proposed to himself was one of considerable difficulty. The title and scope of his work compelled him to adopt a strict chronological order instead of the principles of epic arrangement, and to invest the truths which the course of history forced upon his acceptance with the interest of fiction. His subject could have no unity, no hero upon whose fortunes 96the principal interest should be concentrated, and around whom the leading events should group themselves. But still no history could be better adapted to his purpose than that of his own country. Its early legends form a long series of poetical romances, fit to be sung in heroic numbers, although from being originally unconnected with each other, incapable of being woven into one epic story. Ennius had to unite in himself the characters of the historian and the poet—to teach what he believed to be truth, and yet to move the feelings and delight the fancy by the embellishments of fiction. The poetical merit in which he must necessarily have been deficient was the conduct of the plot; but the fragments of his poem are not sufficiently numerous for us to discover this deficiency. They are, however, amply sufficient to show that he possessed picturesque power both in sketching his narratives and in portraying his characters. His scenes are full of activity and animation; his characters seem to live and breathe; his sentiments are noble, and full of a healthful enthusiasm. His language is what that of an old Roman ought to be, such as we might have expected from Cato and Scipio had they been poets: dignified, chaste, severe, it rises as high as the most majestic eloquence, although it does not soar to the sublimity of poetry.

The parts in which he approaches most nearly to his great model, or, as he believed, the source of his inspiration, were in his descriptions of battles. Here the martial spirit of the Roman warrior shines forth; the old soldier seems to revel in the scenes of his youth. The poem which occupied his declining years shows that it was his greatest pleasure to record the triumphs of his countrymen, and to teach posterity how their ancestors had won so many glorious fields. His similes are simply imitations; they show that he had taste to appreciate the peculiar features of the Homeric Poem; but as must be the case with mere imitations, they have not the energy which characterizes his battles.

As a dramatic poet, Ennius does not deserve a high reputation. A tragic drama must be of native growth, it will not bear transplanting. The Romans did not possess the elements of tragedy; the genius of Ennius was not able to remedy that defect, and he 97could do no more than select, with the taste and judgment which he possessed, such Greek dramas as were likely to be interesting. Probably, however, his tragedies never became popular; they were admired by the narrow literary circle in which his private life was passed. Those who were familiar with the Greek originals were delighted to see their favourites transferred into their native language; those who were not, had their curiosity gratified, and welcomed even these reflections of the glorious minds of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

But the tribute of admiration which the ancient classical authors paid to Ennius, was paid to him as an epic not as a dramatic poet. Cicero when he speaks in his praise generally quotes from the Annals, only once from a tragedy.^[158] Virgil borrows lines and thoughts, together with the commencement and conclusion of the same poem; and, although the fame of Ennius survived the decline of Roman tragedy, and flourished even in the age of the Antonines,^[159] and his verses were heard in the theatre of Puteoli (Pozzuoli,) the entertainment did not consist of one of his tragedies, but of recitations from his epic poem. Nevertheless his tragedies were very numerous, and the titles and some fragments of twenty-three remain. They are all close imitations, or even translations, of the Greek. Of fifteen fragments of his Medea which are extant, there is not one which does not correspond with some passage in the Medea of Euripides: the little which we have of his Eumenides is a transcript from the tragedy of Æschylus;^[160] and, according to A. Gellius, his Hecuba is a clever translation likewise.

His favourite model was Euripides: nor is it surprising that he should have been better able to appreciate the inferior excellencies of this dramatic poet, when we remember that the birth of Latin literature was coincident with the decay of that of Greece. Callimachus died just as Livius began to write.^[161] Theocritus expired when Ennius was twenty-five years old;^[162] and by this decaying living literature his taste must have been partially educated and formed.

98In comedy, as in tragedy, he never emancipated himself from the trammels of the Greek originals. His comedies were palliatæ; and Terence when accused of plagiarism defends himself by an appeal to the example of Ennius. Fragments are preserved of four only.

The poems which he wrote in various metres, and on miscellaneous subjects, were, for that reason, entitled Satiræ or Saturæ. Ennius does not, indeed, anticipate the claim of Lucilius to be considered the father of Roman satire in its proper sense; but still there can be little doubt that the scope of these minor poems was the chastisement of vice. The degeneracy of Roman virtue, even in his days, provoked language of Archilochian bitterness from so stern a moralist, although he would not libellously attack those who were undeserving of censure. The salutation which he addresses to himself expresses the burning indignation which he felt against wickedness:—

Amongst his minor works were epitaphs on Scipio and on himself, a didactic poem, entitled Epicharmus, a collection of moral precepts, an encomium on his friend Scipio Africanus, a translation in hexameters of a poem on edible fishes and their localities, by Archestratus (Phagetica,) and a work entitled Asotus, the existence of which is only known from its being mentioned by Varro and Festus for the sake of etymological illustration; by some it is thought to have been a comedy. The idea that he was the author of a piece called “Sabinæ” is without foundation.

Cicero^[163] mentions a mythological work (Evemerus,) a translation in trochaics of the Ἱερα Ἀναγραφη of the Sicilian writer who bore that name. It was a work well adapted to the talent which Ennius possessed of relating mythical traditions, in the form of poetical history. The theory embodied in the original was one which is often adopted by Livy in his early history, and therefore most probably entered into the ancient legends, namely, that the gods were originally mighty warriors and benefactors of mankind, who, as their reward, were deified and worshipped.

It has already been shown that the dramatic taste of the Romans first displayed itself in the rudest species of comedy. The entertainment was extemporaneous, and performed by amateurs, and rhythmical only so far as to be consistent with these conditions. It was satirical, personal, full of burlesque extravagances, practical jokes, and licentious jesting. When it put on a more systematic form, by the introduction of music, and singing, and dancing, and professional actors, still the Roman youth would not give up their national amusement, and a marked distinction was made in the social and political condition of the actor and the amateur. Italian comedy made no further progress, but on it was engrafted the Greek comedy, and hence arose that phase of the drama, the representatives of which were Plautus, Cæcilius Statius, and Terence.

Now the old Attic comedy consisted of either political or literary criticism. In Italy, however, the Fescennine verses, and the farces of Atella, were not political, neither was there any literature to criticise or to parody. But the personalities in which the people had taken pleasure prepared them to enjoy the comedy of manners, embodying as it did pictures of social life. The new comedy, therefore, of the Greeks furnished a suitable model; and the comedies of Menander, Diphilus, Apollodorus, and others formed a rich mine of materials for adaptation or imitation.

100From them the Roman poet could derive much more than the “vis comica,” in which Cæsar complained that they were still so deficient. In the extant fragments of Menander may be found powerful delineations of human passions, especially of the pains and pleasures of love, melancholy but true views of the vanity of human hopes, elevated moral sentiments, and noble ideas of the divine nature. A vein of temperate and placid gentleness, intermingled with amiable pleasantry, pervaded the comedies of Philemon, and his sentiments are tender and serious, without being gloomy. These good qualities recommended them to Chrysostom, Eustathius, and other early Christians, by whom so many of their fragments have been preserved.

There is no doubt that the comic, as well as the tragic poet of Greece, considered himself as a public instructor; but it is difficult to say how far the Roman author recognised a moral object, because it cannot be determined what moral sentiments were designedly introduced, and what were merely transcriptions from the original. It is plain, however, that Roman comedy was calculated to produce a moral result, although the morality which it inculcated was extremely low: its standard was merely worldly prudence, its lessons utilitarian, its philosophy, like that of Menander himself, Epicurean, and therefore it did not inculcate an unbending sense of honour, the self-denying heroism of the Stoic school, or that rigid Roman virtue which was akin to it—it contented itself with encouraging the benevolent affections.

It did not profess to reform the knave, except by showing him that knavery was not always successful. It taught that cunning must be met with its own weapons, and that the qualities necessary for the conflict were wit and sharpness. The union between the moral and the comic element was exhibited in making intrigue successful wherever the victim was deserving of it, and in representing him as foiled by accidents and cross-purposes, because the prudence and caution of the knave are not always on a par with his cunning. It also had its sentimental side, and the sympathies of the audience were enlisted in favour of good temper, affection, and generosity.

But the new Attic comedy presented a truthful portraiture 101of real native life. This was scarcely ever the case with the Romans; the plots, characters, localities, and political institutions, were all Greek, and therefore it can only be said that the whole was in perfect harmony and consistency with Roman modes of thinking and acting. The comedies of Plautus probably, as will be seen hereafter, form the only exception.

It cannot be denied that there is a want of variety in the plots of Roman comedy;^[164] but this defect is owing to the political and social condition of ancient Greece. Greece and the neighbouring countries were divided into numerous independent states; its narrow seas were, even more than they are now, infested with pirates, who had their nests and lurking-places in the various unfrequented coasts and islands; and slaves were an article of merchandise. Many a romantic incident therefore occurred, such as is found in comedy. A child would be stolen, sold as a slave, educated in all the accomplishments which would fit her to be an Hetæra, engage the affections of some young Athenian, and eventually, from some jewels or personal marks, be recognised by her parents, and restored to the rank of an Athenian citizen.

Again, in order to confine the privilege of citizenship, marriages with foreigners were invalid, and this restriction on marriage caused the Hetæra to occupy so prominent a part in comedy; besides, love was little more than sensual passion, and marriage generally a matter of convenience: the Hetæræ, too, were often clever and accomplished, whilst the virtuous matron was fitter for the duties of domestic life than for society. The regulations of the Greek theatre also, which were adopted by the Romans, caused some restrictions upon the variety of plots. In comedy the scene represented the public street, in which Greek females of good character did not usually appear unveiled: matrons, nurses, and women of light character alone are introduced upon the stage, and in all the plays of Terence, except the Eunuch, the heroine is never seen.

As the range of subjects is small, so there is a sameness in the dramatis personæ: the principal characters are a morose and parsimonious, or a gentle and easy father, who is sometimes, also, 102the henpecked husband of a rich wife, an affectionate or domineering wife, a young man who is frank and good-natured but profligate, a grasping or benevolent Hetæra, a roguish servant, a fawning favourite, a hectoring coward, an unscrupulous procuress, and a cold calculating slave-dealer.

The actors wore appropriate masks, sometimes partial, sometimes covering the whole face, the features of which were not only grotesque, but much exaggerated and magnified. This was rendered absolutely necessary by the immense size of the theatre, the stage of which sometimes measured sixty yards, and which would contain many thousands of spectators; the mouth, also, answered the purpose of a sounding board, or speaking-trumpet to assist in conveying the voice to every part of the vast building. The characters, too, were made known by a conventional costume: old men wore ample robes of white; young men were attired in gay parti-coloured clothes; rich men in purple; soldiers in scarlet; poor men and slaves in dark-coloured and scanty dresses.

The names assigned to the characters of the Roman comedy have always an appropriate meaning. Young men, for example, are Pamphilus, “dear to all;” Charinus, “gracious;” Phædria, “joyous:” old men are Simo, “flat-nosed,” such a physiognomy being considered indicative of a cross-grained disposition: Chremes, from a word signifying troubled with phlegm. Slaves generally bear the name of their native country, as Syrus, Phrygia; Davus, a Dacian; Byrrhia, a native of Pyrrha in Caria; Dorias, a Dorian girl; a vain-glorious soldier is Thraso, from θρασος, boldness; a parasite, Gnatho, from γναθος, the jaw; a nurse, Sophrona (discreet;) a freedman, Sosia, as having been spared in war; a young girl is Glycerium, from γλυκυς, sweet; a judge is Crito; a courtesan, Chrysis, from χρυσος, gold. These examples will be sufficient to illustrate the practice adopted by the comic writers.

It is very difficult to understand the relation which music bore to the exhibition of Roman comedy. It is clear that there was always a musical accompaniment, and that the instruments used were flutes; the lyre was only used in tragedy, because in comedy there was no chorus or lyric portion. The flutes were at first 103small and simple; but in the time of Horace were much larger and more powerful, as well as constructed with more numerous stops and greater compass.^[165]

Flutes were of two kinds. Those played with the right hand (tibiæ dextræ) were made of the upper part of the reed, and like the modern fife or octave flute emitted a high sound: they were therefore suitable to lively and cheerful melodies; and this kind of music, known by the name of the Lydian mode, was performed upon a pair of tibiæ dextræ. The left-handed flutes (tibiæ sinistræ) were pitched an octave lower: their tones were grave and fit for solemn music. The mode denominated Tyrian, or Sarrane,^[166] was executed with a pair of tibiæ sinistræ. If the subject of the play was serio-comic, the music was in the Phrygian mode, and the flutes used were impares (unequal,) i. e., one for the right, the other for the left hand.^[167] In tragedy the lyrical portion was sung to music and the dialogue declaimed. But if that were the case in comedy, it is difficult to imagine what corresponded to the lyrical portion, and therefore where music was used. Quintilian informs us that scenic modulation was a simple, easy chant,^[168] resembling probably intonation in our cathedrals. Such a practice would aid the voice considerably; and if so, the theory of Colman is probably correct, that there was throughout some accompaniment, but that the music arranged for the soliloquies (in which Terence especially abounds) was more laboured and complicated than that of the dialogue.^[169]

In order to understand the principles which regulated the Roman comic metres, some remarks must be made on the manner in which the language itself was affected by the common conversational 104pronunciation. In most languages there is a natural tendency to abbreviation and contraction. As the object of language is the expression of thought, few are inclined to take more trouble or to expend more time than is absolutely necessary for conveying their meaning: this attention to practical utility and convenience is the reason for all elliptical forms in grammatical constructions, and also for all abbreviated methods of pronunciation by slurring or clipping, or, to use the language of grammarians, by apocope, syncope, synæresis, or crasis.

The experience of every one proves how different is the impression which the sound of a foreign language makes upon the ear, when spoken by another, from what it makes upon the eye when read even by one who is perfectly acquainted with the theory of pronunciation. Until the ear is habituated, it is easier for an Englishman to speak French than to understand it when spoken. If we consider attentively the manner in which we speak our own language, it is astonishing how many letters and even syllables are slurred over and omitted: the accented syllable is strongly and firmly enunciated, the rest, especially in long words, are left to take care of themselves, and the experience of the hearer and his acquaintance with the language find no difficulty in supplying the deficiency. This is universally the case, except in careful and deliberate reading, and in measured and stately declamation.

With regard to the classical languages, the foregoing observations hold good; in a slighter degree, indeed, with respect to the Greek, for the delicacy of their ear, their attention to accent and quantity, not only in poetry but in oratory, and even in conversation, caused them to give greater effect to every syllable, and especially to the vowel sounds. But even in Greek poetry elision sometimes prevents the disagreeable effect of a hiatus, and in the transition from the one dialect to the other, the numerous vowels of the Ionic assume the contracted form of the Attic.

The resemblance between the practice of the Romans and that of modern nations is very remarkable; with them the mark of good taste was ease—the absence of effort, pedantry, and affectation. 105As they principally admired facility in versification, so they sought it in pronunciation likewise. To speak with mouthing (hiulce,) with a broad accent (late, vaste,) was to speak like a clown and not like a gentleman (rustice et inurbaniter.) Cicero^[170] admired the soft, gentle, equable tones of the female voice, and considered the pronunciation of the eloquent and cultivated Lælia as the model of purity and perfection: he thought that she spoke as Plautus or Nævius might have spoken. Again, he speaks of the habit which Cotta had of omitting the iota; pronouncing, for example, dominus, dom’nus, as a prevalent fashion; and although he says,^[171] that such an obscuration argues negligence, he, on the other hand, applies to the opposite fault a term (putidius) which implies the most offensive affectation. From these observations, we must expect to find that Latin as it was pronounced was very different from Latin as it is written; that this difference consisted in abbreviation either by the omission of sounds altogether, or by contraction of two sounds into one; and that these processes would take place especially in those syllables which in poetry are not marked by the ictus or beat, or in common conversation by the stress or emphasis. Even in the more artificial poetry and oratory of the Augustan age, in which quantity was more rigidly observed by the Roman imitators than by the Greek originals, we find traces of this tendency; and Virgil does not hesitate to use in his stately heroics such forms as aspris, for asperis, semustum for semiustum, oraclum for oraculum, maniplus for manipulus; and, like Terence, to make rejicere (rēīcĕrĕ) a dactyle.^[172] A number of the most common words, sanctioned by general usage, and incorporated into the language when in its most perfect state, were contractions—such as amassent for amavissent, concio for conventio, cogo from con and ago, surgo from sub and rego, malla for maxilla, pomeridianus from post-mediam-diem, and other instances too numerous to mention.

But in the earlier periods, when literature was addressed still more to the ear than to the eye, when the Greek metres were 106as yet unknown, and even when, after their introduction, exact observation of Greek rules was not yet necessary, we find, as might be expected, these principles of the language carried still further. They pervade the poems of Livius and Ennius, and the Roman tragedies, even although their style is necessarily more declamatory than that of the comic writers; but in the latter we have a complete representation of Latin as it was commonly pronounced and spoken, and but little trammelled or confined by a rigid adhesion to the Greek metrical laws. In the prologues, indeed, which are of the nature of declamation, and not of free and natural conversation, more care is visible; the iambic trimeters in which they are written fall upon the ear with a cadence similar to those of the Greek, with scarcely any license except an occasional spondee in the even places. But in the scenes little more seems to have been attended to, than that the verse should have the required number of feet, and the syllables pronounced the right quantity, in accordance with the widest license which the rules of Greek prosody allowed. What syllables should be slurred, was left to be decided by the common custom of pronunciation.

Besides the licenses commonly met with in the poets of the Augustan age, the following mutilations are the most usual in the poetical language of the age of which we are treating:—

1. The final s might be elided even before a consonant, and hence the preceding vowel was made short: thus mălīs became mali, on the same principle that in Augustan poetry aūdīsnĕ was contracted into audĭn’. Thus the short vowel would suffer elision before another, and the following line of Terence would consequently be thus scanned:—

2. Vowels and even consonants were slurred over; hence Liberius became Lib’rius; Adolescens, Ad’lescens; Vehemens, Vemens; Voluptas, V’luptas (like the French voila, v’la;) meum, eum, suum, siet, fuit, Deos, ego, ille, tace, became monosyllables; and facio, sequere, &c., dissyllables.

3. M and D were syncopated in the middle of words: thus 107enimvero became en’vero; quidem and modo qu’en and mo’o, circumventus, circ’ventus.

4. Conversely d was added to me, te, and se, when followed by a vowel, as Reliquit med homo, &c., and in Plautus, med erga.

Observations of such principles as these enable us to reduce all the metres of Terence, and nearly all of Plautus, to iambic and trochaic, especially to iambic senarii and trochaic tetrameters. Many of those which defy the attempt have become, by the injudicious treatment of transcribers or commentators, wrongly arranged: for example, one of four lines in the Andria of Terence, which has always proved a difficulty, might be thus arranged:—

instead of the usual unmanageable form—

Volcatius Sedigitus, a critic and grammarian, assigns an order of merit to the authors of Roman comedy in the following passage:—

However correct this judgment may be, Plautus is the oldest, if not the most celebrated of those who have not as yet been mentioned.

T. Maccius Plautus was a contemporary of Ennius, for it is generally supposed that he was born twelve years later,^[173] and died fifteen years earlier^[174] than the founder of the new school of Latin poetry. The flourishing period, therefore, of both coincide. He was a native of Sarsina, in Umbria, but was very young when he removed to Rome. Very little is known respecting his life; but it is universally admitted that he was of humble origin, and owing to the prevalence of this tradition we find Plautinæ prosapiæ homo, used as a proverbial expression. The numerous examples in his comedies of vulgar taste and low humour are in favour of this supposition.

He had no early gentlemanlike associations to interfere with his delineations of Roman character in low life. His contemporary, Ennius, was a gentleman; Plautus was not: education did not overcome his vulgarity, although it produced a great effect upon his language and style, which were more refined and cultivated than those of his predecessors. Plautus must have lived and associated with the class whose manners he describes; hence his pictures are correct and truthful.

The class from which his representations of Roman life was taken is that of the ærarii, who consisted of clients, the sons of freedmen, and the half-enfranchised natives of Italian towns. His plots are Greek, his personages Greek, and the scene is laid in Greece and her colonies; but the morality, manners, sentiments, wit, and humour, were those of that mixed, half-foreign, class of the inhabitants of the capital, which stood between the slave and the free-born citizen. One of his characters is, as was observed by Niebuhr,^[175] not Roman, for the parasite is a Greek, not a Roman character; but then a flatterer is by profession a citizen of the world, and his business is to conform himself to the manners of every society. How readily that character became naturalized, we are informed by some of the most amusing passages in the satires of Horace and Juvenal.

The humble occupation which his poverty compelled him to 109follow was calculated to draw out and foster the comic talent for which he was afterwards distinguished, for Varro^[176] tells us that he acted as a stage-carpenter (operarius) to a theatrical company; he adds, also, that he was subsequently engaged in some trade in which he was unsuccessful, and was reduced to the necessity of earning his daily bread by grinding in a mill. To this degrading labour, which was not usually performed by men, except as a punishment for refractory slaves, it has been supposed that he owed his cognomen, Asinius, which is sometimes appended to his other names. Ritzschl, however, has most ingeniously and satisfactorily proved that the name of Asinius is a corruption of Sarsinas (native of Sarsina:) he supposes that Sarsinas became Arsinas, that this was afterwards written Arsin, then Asin, and that this was finally considered as the representative of Asinius.

This view is further supported by the fact that, in all cases in which the name Asinius is used, the poet is called not Asinius Plautus, but Plautus Asinius, like Livius Patavinus, this being the proper position for the ethnic name. Another error respecting the poet’s name has been perpetuated throughout all the editions of his works, although it is not found in any manuscript. It was discovered by Ritzschl^[177] whilst examining the palimpsest MS. in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. He thus found that his real names were Titus Maccius, and not Marcus Accius. The name Plautus was given him because he had flat feet, this being the signification of the word in the Umbrian language. Niebuhr,^[178] although he does not deny his poverty, gives no credit to the story of his working at a mill.

The earliest comedies which he wrote are said to have been entitled “Addictus,” and “Saturio,” but they are not contained amongst the twenty which are now extant. As soon as he became an author there can be no doubt that he emerged from his state of poverty and obscurity, for he had no rival during his whole career, unless Cæcilius Statius, a man of very inferior talent, can be considered one. Comedies began now to be in great demand: 110the taste for the comic drama was awakened; it was precisely the sort of literature likely to be acceptable to an active, bustling, observant people like the Romans. They liked shows of every kind, and public speaking, and had always their eyes and their ears open, loved jokes and rude satire and boisterous mirth, and would appreciate bold and fearless delineations of character, which they met with in their every-day life. The demand for the public games, therefore, began to be quite as great as the supply, and the theatrical managers would take care always to have a new play in rehearsal, in case they should be called upon for a public representation.

Plautus had no aristocratic patrons, like Ennius and Terence—probably his humour was too broad, and his taste not refined enough, to please the Scipios and Lælii, and their fastidious associates. Horace finds fault with Plautus because his wit was not sufficiently gentlemanlike, as well as his numbers not sufficiently harmonious. Probably the higher classes might have observed similar deficiencies; with the masses, however, the comedies of Plautus, notwithstanding their faults, retained their original popularity even in the Augustan age. The Roman public were his patrons. His very coarseness would recommend him to the rude admirers of the Fescennine songs and the Atellan Fabulæ. His careless prosody and inharmonious verses would either escape the not over-refined ears of his audience, or be forgiven for the sake of the fun which they contained. Life, bustle, surprise, unexpected situations, sharp, sprightly, brilliant, sparkling raillery, that knew no restraint nor bounds, carried the audience with him. He allowed no respite, no time for dulness or weariness. To use an expression of Horace, he hurried on from scene to scene, from incident to incident, from jest to jest, so that his auditors had no opportunity for feeling fatigue.

Another cause of his popularity was, that although Greek was the fountain from which he drew his stores, and the metres of Greek poetry the framework in which he set them, his wit, his mode of thought, his language, were purely Roman. He had lived so long amongst Romans that he had caught their national spirit, and this spirit was reflected throughout his comedies. The 111incidents of them might have taken place in the streets of Rome, so skilful was he in investing them with a Roman dress.

His style too was truly Latin, and Latin of the very purest and most elegant kind.^[179] He did not, like Cato and Ennius, carry his admiration for Greek so far as to “enrich” his native tongue with new and foreign words. Nor would this feature be without some effect in gaining him the sympathy of the masses. They admire elegance of language if it is elegant simplicity. They appreciate well-chosen and well-arranged sentences, if the words are such as fall familiarly, and, therefore, intelligibly on their ears.

The coarseness of Plautus, however, was the coarseness of innuendo, and even if the allusion was indelicate, it was veiled in decent language. This quality of his wit called forth the approbation of Cicero.^[180] But it is difficult to conceive how he could compare him, in this particular, with the old Athenian comedy, the obscenity of which is so gross and palpable, as to constitute the sole blemish of those delightful compositions.

The following laudatory epigram written by Varro is found in the Noctes Atticæ of A. Gellius:^[181]—

The same grammarian paid to his style a compliment similar to that which had been paid to Plato, by saying, that if the Muses spoke in Latin they would borrow the language of Plautus.^[182] Whatever might have been the faults of the Plautian comedy, it maintained its position on the Roman stage for at least five centuries, and was acted as late as the reign of Dioclesian.

It does not appear that Plautus ever attained the full privileges of a Roman citizen. Probably he had no powerful friends to press his claims, and therefore enjoyed no more than the Italian franchise to the end of his days. No fewer than one hundred and thirty comedies have been attributed to him, but of these many were spurious. Varro considers the twenty which 112are now extant genuine, together with the Vidularia, of which only a few lines remain, and those only in the palimpsest MS. already mentioned. The rest, the titles of which alone survive, are of doubtful authority.

All the comedies of Plautus, except the Amphitruo, were adapted from the new comedy of the Greeks. The statement that he imitated the Sicilian Epicharmus,^[183] and founded the Menæchmi on one of his comedies, rests only on a vague tradition. There can be no doubt that he studied also both the old and the middle comedy; but still Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon furnished him the originals of his plots. The popularity of Plautus was not confined to Rome, either republican or imperial. Dramatic writers of modern times have recognised the effectiveness of his plots, and, therefore, have adopted or imitated them, and they have been translated into most of the European languages.

The following is a brief sketch of the subjects of his extant comedies.

I. Amphitruo. This is the only piece which Plautus borrowed from the middle Attic comedy; the plot is founded on the well-known story of Jupiter and Alcmena, and has been imitated both by Molière and Dryden.

II., III., IV. The Asinaria, Casina, and Mercator, depict a state of morals so revolting that it is impossible to dwell upon them.

V. In the Aulularia, a very amusing play, a miser finds a pot of gold (aulula,) and hides it with the greatest care. His daughter is demanded in marriage by an old man named Megadorus, the principal recommendation to whose suit is, that he is willing to take her without a dowry. Meanwhile the slave of her young lover steals the gold, and, as may be conjectured, for no more of the play is preserved, the lover restores the gold, and the old man, in the joy of his heart, gives him his daughter.

This comedy suggested to Molière the plot of L’Avare, the best play which he ever wrote, and one in which he far surpasses the original. Two attempts have been made to supply the lost scenes, which may be found in the Delphin and Variorum edition.

113VI. The Bacchides are two twin sisters, one of whom is beloved by her sister’s lover. He does not know that there are two, and, misled by the similarity of the name, thinks himself betrayed. Hence arise amusing situations and incidents, but at length an éclaircissement takes place.

VII. The Captivi, for its style, sentiments, moral, and the structure of the plot, is incomparably the best comedy of Plautus. In a war between the Ætolians and Eleians, Philopolemus, an Ætolian, the son of Hegio, is taken prisoner, whilst Philocrates is captured by the Ætolians. Philocrates and his slave Tyndarus are purchased by Hegio, with a view to recover his son by an exchange of prisoners. The master and slave, however, agree to change places; and thus Philocrates is sent back to his country, valued only as a slave. Hegio discovers the trick, and condemns Tyndarus to fetters and hard labour. Philocrates, however, returns, and brings back Philopolemus with him, and it also turns out that Tyndarus is a son of Hegio whom he had lost in his infancy.

VIII. The Curculio derives its name from a parasite, who is the hero, and who acts his part in a plot full of fraud and forgery; the only satisfactory point in the comedy being the deserved punishment of an infamous pander.

IX. In the Cistellaria, Demipho, a Lemnian, promises his daughter to Alcesimarchus, who is in love with Silenium. The young lady has fallen into the hands of a courtesan, who endeavours to force her into a vicious course of life; she, however, steadily refuses; and it is at length discovered, by means of a box of toys (cistella,) that she is the illegitimate daughter of Demipho, and had been exposed as an infant. Her virtue is rewarded by her being happily married to her lover.

X. The Epidicus was evidently a favourite play with the author, for he makes one of the characters in another comedy say that he loves it as dearly as himself.^[184] The plot turns on the common story of a lost child recognised. The intrigue, which is remarkably clever, is managed by Epidicus, a cunning slave, who gives the name to the play.

114XI. The Mostellaria is exceedingly lively and amusing. A young man, in his father’s absence, makes the paternal mansion a scene of noisy and extravagant revelry. In the midst of it the father returns, and in order to prevent discovery, a slave persuades him that the house is haunted. When he discovers the trick he is very angry, but ultimately pardons both his son and the slave. The name is derived from Mostellum, the diminutive of Monstrum, a prodigy, or supernatural visitor.

XII. The Menæchmi is a Comedy of Errors, arising out of the exact likeness between two brothers, one of whom was stolen in infancy, and the other wanders in search of him, and at last finds him in great affluence at Epidamnus. It furnished the plot to Shakspeare’s play, and likewise to the comedy of Regnard, which bears the name of the original.

XIII. The Miles Gloriosus was taken from the Ἀλαζων (Boaster) of the Greek comic drama. Its hero, Pyrgopolinices, is the model of all the blustering, swaggering captains of ancient and modern comedy. The braggadocio carries off the mistress of a young Athenian, who follows him, and takes up his abode in the next house to that in which the girl is concealed. Like Pyramus and Thisbe the lovers have secret interviews through a hole in the party-wall. (The device being borrowed from the “Phantom” of Menander.)^[185] When they are discovered, the soldier is induced to resign the lady by being persuaded that another is desperately in love with him, but the only reward which he gets is a good beating for his pains.

XIV. In the Pseudolus, a cunning slave of that name procures, by a false memorandum, a female slave for his young master; and when the fraud is discovered the matter is settled by the 115payment of the price by a complaisant father. Notwithstanding the simplicity of the plot, the action is bustling and full of intrigue; and from a passage of Cicero,^[186] it appears that this play and Truculentus were favourites with the author himself. The procurer in this comedy was one of the characters in which Roscius especially excelled.

XV. The Pœnulus derives its name from its romantic plot. A young Carthaginian slave is adopted by an old bachelor, who leaves him a good inheritance. He falls in love with a girl, a Carthaginian like himself, who had been kidnapped with her sister, and now belonged to a procurer. The arrival of the father leads to a discovery that they are free-born, and that they are the first cousins of the young man. Thus it comes to pass that the girls are rescued, and the lovers united. The most curious portion of this comedy is that in which Hanno, the father, is represented as talking Punic;^[187] and his words bear so close a resemblance to the Hebrew that commentators have expressed them in Hebrew characters, and rendered them, after a few emendations, capable of translation.^[188]

XVI. The tricks played upon a procurer by a slave, aided by a Persian parasite, furnish the slender plot of the Persa.

XVII. The Rudens derives its name from the rope of a fishing-net, and, with the exception perhaps of the Captivi, is the most affecting and pleasing of all the twenty plays. The morality is pure, the sentiments elevated, the poetic justice complete. A female child has fallen into the hands of a procurer. Her lover in vain endeavours to ransom her, and being shipwrecked, the toys with which she played in infancy are lost in the waves, but are eventually brought to shore by the net of a fisherman. She is thus recognised by her father, and is married to her lover, whilst the procurer is utterly ruined by the loss of his property in the wreck.

XVIII. Stichus is the name of the slave on whom the intrigue of the play which bears this name mainly depends. The plot is very simple. Two brothers marry two sisters, and are ruined 116by extravagant living; they determine therefore to go abroad and repair their fortunes. After they have been many years absent the ladies’ father wishes them to marry again. They, however, steadily refuse, and their constancy is rewarded by the return of their husbands with large fortunes.

XIX. The Trinummus is a translation from the Thesaurus of the Greek comic poet Philemon.^[189] It derived its Latin title from the incident of the informer being bribed with three nummi.^[190] An old merchant on leaving home places his son and daughter, together with a treasure which he has buried in his house, under the guardianship of his friend Callicles. The son squanders his father’s property, and is even forced to sell his house, which Callicles purchases. Soon a young man of good family and fortune makes proposals for the daughter’s hand, and Callicles is at a loss to know how to give her a dowry without saying something about the treasure. At length he hires a man to pretend that he has come from the absent father, and has brought one thousand pieces of gold. The return of the father interferes with the plan; but everything is explained, the daughter is married, and the son forgiven.

XX. The Truculentus, although the moral picture which it presents is detestable, is remarkably clever, both for the variety of incidents and the graphic delineations of character which it contains. The artful courtesan who dupes and ruins her lovers; the three lovers themselves—one a man of the town, another an unpolished but generous rustic, the third a stupid and conceited soldier; and, lastly, the slave, whose rude sagacity and bluff hatred of courtesans expose him to the imputation of being actually savage (truculentus,) are powerfully drawn; but notwithstanding its merits, it is not a play which can possibly please the tastes and sentiments of modern times.

Plautus must not be dismissed without some notice of his prologues. The prologue of the Greek drama prepared the audience for the action of the play, by narrating all the previous events of the story which were necessary in order to understand the plot. That of the modern stage is an address of the 117poet to the spectators, praying for indulgence, deprecating severe criticism, enlivened frequently by characteristic sketches and satirical observations on the manners and habits of the age. In these features it sometimes resembles the parabasis of the old Attic comedy. The prologues of Plautus united all these objects; and whilst they introduced the comedy, their amusing gayety was calculated to put the audience in good humour and secure their applause. The shrewd knowledge which the author displayed in them of the character of his fellow-countrymen claimed their sympathies, and called forth their prejudices in his favour; whilst their polish and finish must have been appreciated by an assembly whose attention had not begun to flag or to weary. Some are long pieces. That of the Amphitruo, which is the longest, extends to upwards of one hundred and fifty lines. That of the Trinummus takes the unusual form of a brief allegorical dialogue between Luxury and her daughter Poverty.

Between Plautus and Terence flourished Cæcilius Statius, whom Volcatius, as well as Cicero,^[191] places at the head of the list of Roman comic poets. He was an emancipated slave, and was born at Milan. The time of his birth is unknown, but he died A. U. C. 586, and was therefore a contemporary of Ennius. He did not depart from the established custom of transferring the comedy of the Greek stage to that of Rome, and as far as a judgment can be formed from the titles of his forty-five comedies which are extant, they were all “Palliatæ.” The collection of fragments remaining of his works is a large one, but they are not sufficiently long or connected to test the favourable opinion entertained by the critics of ancient times.

Aulus Gellius^[192] enables us to estimate the powers of C. Statius as a translator by a comparison of two passages taken from his “Plocius” with the original of Menander. The result is, that the usual fault of translations is too plainly manifest, namely, the loss of the spirit and vigour. “Our comedies,” he remarks, “are written in an elegant and graceful style, and may be read with pleasure; but if compared with the Greek originals, they fall so far short that the arms of Glaucus could not have been more inferior to those of Diomede: the Greek is full of emotion, wit, and liveliness; the Latin dull and uninteresting.” Cicero, 119likewise, and Varro have pronounced judgment upon his merits and demerits. The sum and substance of their criticisms appear to be that his excellencies consisted in the conduct of the plot,^[193] dignity,^[194] and in pathos,^[195] whilst his fault was not sufficient care in preserving the purity of the Latin style.

Cicero,^[196] though not without hesitation, assigns the palm to him amongst the writers of Latin comedy, as he awards that of epic poetry to Ennius, and that of tragedy to Pacuvius.^[196] He says, on the other hand,^[197] that the bad Latin of Cæcilius and Pacuvius formed exceptions to the usual style of their age, which was as commendable for its Latinity as for its innocence. And in a letter to Atticus,^[198] he writes:—“I said, not as Cæcilius, Mane ut ex portu in Piræum, but as Terence, whose plays, on account of their elegant Latinity, were thought to have been written by C. Lælius, Heri aliquot adolescentuli coimus in Piræum.” Horace,^[199] without stating his own opinion, gives, as that commonly received in his day, that Cæcilius is superior in dignity (gravitate,) Terence in skill (arte.)

The prologue of Terence’s comedy of the Hecyra proves that the earlier plays of Cæcilius had a great struggle to achieve success. The actor who delivers it, an old favourite with the public, and probably the manager, apologizes for bringing forward a play which had been once rejected (exacta,) on the ground that by perseverance in a similar course he had caused the reception and approval of not one but many of the comedies of Cæcilius which had been unsuccessful, and adds, that of those which did succeed, some had a narrow escape.

P. Terentius Afer was a slave in the family of a Roman senator, P. Terentius Lucanus. His early history is involved in obscurity, but he is generally supposed to have been born A. U. C. 561.^[200] His cognomen, Afer, points to an African origin, for it was a common custom to distinguish slaves by an ethnical name. Whether there is any sufficient authority for the tradition that 120he was a native of Carthage is uncertain. He could not, as was rightly observed by Fenestella,^[201] have been actually a prisoner of war, because he was both born and died in the interval between the first and second Punic Wars; nor, if he had been captured by the Numidians or Gætulians in any war which these tribes carried on with Carthage, could he have come into the possession of a Roman general by purchase, for there was no commercial intercourse between these nations and Rome until after the destruction of Carthage.

Another hypothesis has been suggested, which is by no means improbable.^[202] During the interval which elapsed between the first and second Punic Wars, the Carthaginians were involved in wars with their own mercenaries, the Numidians, and the southern Iberians. Some embassies from Rome also visited Carthage. Terence, therefore, may possibly have been taken prisoner in one of these wars, have been purchased by a Roman in the Carthaginian slave-market, and so have been carried to Rome. What his condition was in the house of Lucanus is not known; but it is clear that he had opportunities of cultivating his natural talents, and acquiring that refined and masterly acquaintance with all the niceties and elegancies of the Latin language which his comedies exhibited, and it is probable, also, that very early in life he obtained his freedom.

His first essay as a dramatic author was the “Andrian,” perhaps the most interesting, certainly the most affecting of all his comedies. Terence, an unknown and obscure young man, offered his play to the Curule Ædiles. They, accordingly, we are told, referred the new candidate to the experienced judgment of Cæcilius Statius, then at the height of his popularity. Terence, in humble garb, was introduced to the poet whilst he was at supper, and seated on a low stool near the couch on which Cæcilius was reclining, he commenced reading. He had finished but a few lines when Cæcilius invited him to sit by him and sup with him. He rapidly ran through the rest of his play, and gained the unqualified admiration of his hearer. This story is related by Donatus, but whether there is any truth in 121it is very doubtful. It is, at any rate, certain that “The Andrian” was not brought forward immediately after obtaining this decision in its favour, for the date of its first representation^[203] is two years subsequent to the death of Cæcilius.

Talents of so popular a kind as those of Terence, and a genius presenting the rare combination of all the fine and delicate touches which characterize true Attic sentiment, without corrupting the native ingenuous purity of the Latin language, could not long remain in obscurity. He was soon eagerly sought for as a guest and a companion by those who could appreciate his powers. The great Roman nobility, such as the Scipiones, the Lælii, the Scavolæ, and the Metelli, had a taste for literature. Like the Tyranni in Sicily and Greece, and like some of the Italian princes in the middle ages, they assembled around them circles of literary men, of whom the polite and hospitable host himself formed the nucleus and centre.

The purity and gracefulness of the style of Terence, “per quam dulces Latini leporis facetiæ nituerunt,”^[204] show that the conversation of his accomplished friends was not lost upon his correct ear and quick intuition. To these habits of good society may also be attributed the leading moral characteristics of his comedies. He invariably exhibits the humanity and benevolence of a cultivated mind. He cannot bear loathsome and disgusting vice: he deters the young from the unlawful indulgence of their passions by painting such indulgence as inconsistent with the refined habits and tastes of a gentleman.

His truthfulness compels him to depict habits and practices which were recognised and allowed, as well by the manners of the Athenians, from whom his comedies were taken, as by the lax morality of Roman fashionable society. Nor can we expect from a heathen writer of comedy so high a tone of morality as to lash vice with the severe censure which the Christian feels it deserves, however venial society may pronounce it to be. It is as much as can be hoped for, if we find the principles of good taste brought forward on the stage to influence public morals. Even the code of Christian society too often contents itself with 122rebuking such vice as interferes with its own comfort or safety, and stigmatizes conduct, not for its immorality, but for its being unbecoming a gentleman. It is a standard which has its use, but it is not higher than the Terentian.

And if the plays of Terence are compared with those of authors professing to be Christians, which form part of the classical literature of the English nation, and were unblushingly witnessed on their representation by some of both sexes, who, nevertheless, professed a regard for character, how immeasurably superior are the comedies of the heathen poet! Point out to the young the greater light and knowledge which the Christian enjoys, and the plays of Terence may be read without moral danger. No amount of colouring and caution would be sufficient to shield the mind of an ingenuous youth from the imminent peril of being corrupted by those of Wycherly and Congreve. Pictures of Roman manners must represent them as corrupt, or they would not be truthful; but often a good lesson is elicited from them. When the deceived wife reproachfully asks her offending husband with what face he can rebuke his son because he has a mistress when he himself has two wives,^[205] one is far more struck with the honour which the strictness of Roman virtue paid to the nuptial tie, than offended at the lenient view which is taken of the young man’s fault. The knaveries and tricks of Davus^[206] meet with sufficient poetical justice in his fright and his flogging. The very dress in which the Meretrix, or woman of abandoned morals, was costumed, kept constantly before the eyes of the Roman youth their grasping avarice, and therefore warned them of the ruin which awaited their victims; and the well-known passage,^[207] in which the loathsome habits of this class are described, must have been, as Terence himself says, a preservative of youthful virtue:—

The Pander, who basely, for the sake of filthy lucre, ministers to the passions of the young, is represented as the most degraded and contemptible of mortals. The Parasite, who earns his meal 123by flattering and fawning on his rich patron, is made the butt of unsparing ridicule. And the timid, simple maiden, confiding too implicitly in the affections of her lover, and sacrificing her interests to that love, and not to lust or love of gain, is painted in such colours as to command the spectator’s pity and sympathy, and to call forth his approbation when she is deservedly reinstated in her position as an honourable matron. Lastly, her lover is not represented as a profligate, revelling in the indiscriminate indulgence of his passions, and rendering vice seductive by engaging manners and fascinating qualities: but we feel that his sin necessarily results from the absence of a high tone of public morality to protect the young against temptation; and in all cases the reality and permanency of his affection for the victim of his wrongdoing is proved by his readiness and anxiety to become her husband.

So far as it can be so, comedy was in the hands of Terence an instrument of moral teaching, for it can only be so indirectly by painting men and manners as they are, and not as they ought to be.

It is said that the patrons of Terence assisted him in the composition of his comedies, or, at least, corrected their language and style, and embellished them by the insertion of scenes and passages. An anecdote is related by Cornelius Nepos,^[208] which, if true, at once proves the point. He says that Lælius was at his villa near Puteoli during the festival of the Matronalia. On this holiday the power of the Roman ladies was absolute. Lælius was ordered by his wife to come to supper early. He excused himself on the ground that he was occupied, and begged not to be disturbed. When he appeared in the supper-room, he said he had never been so well satisfied with his compositions. He was asked for a specimen of what he had written, and immediately repeated a scene in the “Self-Tormentor”^[209] of Terence. Terence, however, gently refutes this story in the prologue to the “Adelphi,” and gives it a positive contradiction in the prologue to the comedy in which the passage occurs. Perhaps he 124may at first have permitted the report to be credited for the sake of paying a compliment to his patron.

There is a tradition that he lived and died in poverty, and this tale is perpetuated in the following lines by Porcius Licinius:——

The patrons of Terence, however, never deserved the reproach of meanness. Nor could the comic poet have been very poor. He received large sums for his comedies; he had funds sufficient to reside for some time in Greece; and at his death he possessed gardens on the Appian Way twenty jugera in extent.

A mystery hangs over his death, which took place B. C. 158.^[210] It is not known whether he died in Greece, or was lost at sea, together with all the comedies of Menander, which he had translated whilst in Greece, or whether, after embarking for Asia, he was, as Volcatius writes, never seen more:——

One daughter married to a Roman knight survived him.

Six comedies by Terence remain, and it is probable that these are all that he ever wrote; they belong to the class technically denominated Palliatæ.

“The Andrian” was exhibited at the Magalensian games, A. U. C. 588,^[211] when the poet was in his twenty-seventh year. The musical accompaniment was performed on equal flutes, right-handed and left-handed (tibiis paribus dextris et sinistris;) i. e., as the action was of a serio-comic character, the lively music of the tibiæ dextræ was used in the comic scenes; the solemn sounds of the tibiæ sinistræ accompanied the serious portion. The manners are Greek, and the scene is laid at Athens.

The plot is as follows:—Glycerium, a young Athenian girl, is placed under the care of an Andrian, who educates her with his daughter Chrysis. On his death Chrysis migrates to Athens, taking Glycerium with her as her sister, and is driven by distress to become a courtesan. Pamphilus, the son of Simo, falls in love with Glycerium, and promises her marriage. Simo accidentally discovers his son’s attachment in the following manner:—Chrysis dies, and at her funeral Glycerium imprudently approaches too near to the burning pile. Her lover rushes forward and embraces her, and affectionately expostulates with her for thus risking her life. “Dearest Glycerium!” he exclaims, “what are you doing? Why do you rush to destruction?” Upon this the girl burst into a flood of tears, and threw herself into his arms. Simo had meanwhile betrothed Pamphilus to Philumena, the daughter of Chremes; and although he had discovered his son’s passion, and Chremes had heard of the promise of marriage, he pretends that the marriage with Philumena shall still take place, in order that he may discover what his son’s real sentiments are. In this difficulty, Pamphilus applies to Davus, a cunning and clever slave, who advises him to offer no opposition. At this crisis Glycerium is delivered of a child, which Davus causes to be laid at the door of Simo. Chremes sees the infant, and, understanding that Pamphilus is the father, refuses to give him his daughter. The opportune arrival of Crito, an Andrian, discovers to Chremes that Glycerium is his own daughter, whom on a former absence from Athens he had intrusted to his brother Phania, now dead. Consequently Glycerium is married to Pamphilus, 126and Philumena is given to a young lover, named Charinus, who had hitherto pressed his suit in vain.

“The Andrian” was, as it deserved to be, eminently successful, and encouraged the young author to persevere in the career which he had chosen. The interest is well sustained, the action is natural, and many scenes touching and pathetic, whilst the serious parts are skilfully relieved by the adroitness of Davus, and his cleverness in getting out of the scrapes in which his cunning involves him. Cicero^[212] praises the funeral scene^[213] as an example of that talent for narrative which Terence constantly displays. The substance of his criticism is, that the poet has attained conciseness without the sacrifice of beauty; and whilst he has avoided wearisome affectation, has not omitted any details which are agreeable and interesting. Nothing can be more beautiful than the struggle between the love and filial duty of Pamphilus,^[214] which ends with his determination to yield to his father’s will; nothing more candid than his confession, or more upright than his earnest desire not to be suspected of suborning Crito.

“The Andrian” has been closely imitated in the comedy of “The Conscious Lovers,” by Sir Richard Steele; but in natural and graceful wit, as well as ingenuity, the English play is far inferior to the Roman original.

“The Eunuch” is a transcript of a comedy by Menander. Even the characters are the same, except that Gnatho and Thraso together occupy the place of Colax (the flatterer) in the original Greek. It was represented in the consulship of M. Valerius Messala and C. Fannius Strabo.^[215] The musical accompaniment was Lydian. It was the most popular of all Terence’s plays, and brought the author the largest sum of money that had ever been paid for a comedy previously, namely, 8,000 sestertii, a sum equivalent to about 65l. sterling. In vain Lavinius, Terence’s most bitter rival, endeavoured to interrupt the performance, 127and to accuse the author of plagiarism. His defence was perfectly successful, and Suetonius states^[216] that it was called for twice in one day.

“The Eunuch” is not equal to some of Terence’s plays in wit and humour; but the plot is bustling and animated, and the dialogue gay and sparkling: it is also unquestionably the best acting play of the whole. There is no play in which there is a greater individuality of character, or more effect of histrionic contrast. The lovesick and somewhat effeminate Phædria contrasts well with the ardent and passionate Chærea, the swaggering, bullying Thraso with the pompous, philosophical parasite, who proposes to found a Gnathonic School. Parmeno is quite as crafty, but far more clever, than Davus, and his description of the evils of love is the perfection of shrewd wisdom.

The plot is as follows:—Pamphila, the daughter of an Athenian citizen, was kidnapped in her infancy, and sold to a Rhodian. He gave her to a courtesan, who educated her with her own daughter Thais. Subsequently Thais removes to Athens; and on the mother’s death Pamphila is sold to a soldier, named Thraso. The soldier, being in love with Thais, resolves to make her a present of his purchase; but Thais has got another lover, Phædria, and Thraso refuses to give Pamphila to Thais unless Phædria is first turned off. She, thinking that she has discovered Pamphila’s relations, and anxious to restore her to them, persuades Phædria to absent himself for two days, in order that Thraso may present her with the maiden. Meanwhile Chærea, Phædria’s younger brother, sees Pamphila accidentally, and falls desperately in love with her. He, therefore, persuades his brother’s slave, Parmeno, to introduce him into Thais’ house in the disguise of a eunuch, whom Phædria has intrusted him to convey to her during his absence. This leads to an éclaircissement. Pamphila is discovered to be an Athenian citizen, and her brother Chremes gives her in marriage to Chærea.

The most skilful part of this play is the method by which Terence has connected the underplot between Parmeno and Pythias, the waiting-maid of Thais, with the main action, their 128quarrels being entirely instrumental in bringing about the dénouement. Of all the comedies of Terence, the moral tone of this is the lowest and most degrading. The connivance of Laches the father of Chærea, at his son’s illicit amour with Thais, presents a sad picture of moral corruption, as the arrangement coolly made between Phædria and Gnatho^[217] displays the meanness, which evidently was not considered inconsistent with the habits of Roman society.

Grievous as are these blemishes, this comedy must always be a favourite. There are in it passages of which the lapse of ages has not diminished the pungency: take, for example, the quiet satire contained in the contrast which Chærea draws between the healthful and natural beauty of his mistress and the “every-day forms of which his eyes are weary:”—

Ch.

Haud similis virgo est virginum nostrarum; quas matres student
Demissis humeris esse, vincto pectore, ut graciles sient;
Si qua est habitior paulo, pugilem esse aiunt; deducunt cibum,
Tametsi bona est natura, reddunt curatura junceas:
Itaque ergo amantur.

Pa.

      Quid tua istæc.

Ch.

                     Nova figura oris.

Pa.

                                      Papæ!

Ch.

Color verus, corpus solidum et succi plenum.^[218]

“The Eunuch” suggested the plot of Sir Charles Sedley’s “Bellamira,” was translated by Lafontaine, and imitated in “Le Muet” of Brueys.

“The Self-Punisher” is a translation from Menander. It was acted the first time with Phrygian music, the second time with Lydian, in the consulship of the celebrated Ti. Sempronius Gracchus and M. Juventius Thalna.^[219] This play may be considered as the masterpiece of Terence; it was a great favourite, notwithstanding its seriousness, and the absence of comic drollery throughout. Steele^[220] remarks with truth, that it is a picture of human life; but there is not in the whole one passage which 129could raise a laugh. It is a good specimen of the refined taste of Terence, who, unlike Plautus, abhorred vulgarity and ribaldry, and did not often condescend even to humour. Its favourable reception, moreover, proves that, notwithstanding the preference which the Roman people were inclined to give to gladiatorial shows, and the more innocent amusements of buffoons and rope-dancers, and the noisy mirth with which theatrical entertainments were frequently interrupted, they could appreciate and enjoy a skilfully-constructed plot, and that quality which Terence especially claims for this comedy,^[221] purity of style. The noble sentiment,

was received by the whole audience with a burst of applause.

Plot.——Clinia, the son of Menedemus, falls in love with Antiphila, supposed to be the daughter of a poor Corinthian woman, and, to avoid his father’s anger, enters the service of the king of Persia. Menedemus, repenting of his severity, punishes himself by purchasing a farm, and, giving up all the luxuries of a town life, works hard from morning to night. Like Laertes, in the Odyssey, he seeks by occupation to divert his mind from the contemplation of his son’s absence:—

Clinia returns from Asia, and takes up his abode at the house of his friend Clitipho, the son of Chremes. This Clitipho has fallen in love with Bacchis, an extravagant courtesan; and Syrus, an artful slave, persuades him to pass off Bacchis as the object of Clinia’s affection, and Antiphila as her waiting-maid. Chremes, next day, to whom Menedemus had communicated his grief and remorse, acquaints him with the return of his son, and recommends him to pretend ignorance of his amour. By the intrigues and knavery of Syrus, Chremes is induced to pay 10 minæ (40l.) to Clitipho for the support of Bacchis. Sostrata, 130the wife of Chremes, has mean while discovered, by a ring in her possession, that Antiphila is her daughter. She had, according to the cruel Athenian practice, given her to the Corinthian in infancy that she might not be exposed; she had given the ring, the means of her discovery, at the same time. Clinia, therefore, marries Antiphila; and Chremes, although enraged at the imposition of Syrus, forgives him and his son, and Clitipho promises that he will give up Bacchis and marry a neighbour’s daughter.

This play abounds in amiable and generous sentiments and passages of simple and graphic beauty. The whole scene, in which the habits of the poor girl whom Clinia loves is described, is exquisitely true to nature. Her occupation is like that of the chaste Lucretia in the legend:—

The reader cannot but sympathize with the remark of Clitipho, when he has heard this description of virtuous poverty,—“If all this is true, as I believe it is, you are the most fortunate of men.”

The degraded Bacchis also reads a valuable lesson to her sex, when she shows the blessings of the path of virtue from which she has strayed:—

How beautiful, too, is the unselfish devotion of Antiphila, when she artlessly professes to know nothing of other women’s feelings, but to know this one thing only, that her happiness is wrapped up in that of her lover!——

The Phormio is a translation or adaptation of the Epidicazomene (the subject of the law suit) of Apollodorus: it was entitled Phormio.

It was acted four times; on the last occasion, in the consulship of C. Fannius Strabo and M. Valerius Messala,^[223] at the Roman or Circensian games.

Plot.——Chremes, an Athenian, although he has a wife at Athens, (Nausistrata,) marries another at Lemnos under the feigned name of Stilpho. By her he has a daughter, Phanium. When she has 132attained a marriageable age, Chremes arranges with his brother Demipho, that she shall become the wife of his son Antipho. After this, the two old men leave Athens; and in their absence Demipho’s son, Phædria, falls in love with a minstrel-girl, and the Lemnian wife arrives at Athens, together with her daughter Phanium. There she dies; and Antipho, seeing Phanium at the funeral, becomes enamoured of her. Not knowing what to do, he takes the advice of Phormio. In the case of a destitute orphan, the Athenian law compelled the nearest of kin to marry her or to give a portion. Phormio brings an action against Antipho; the case is proved, and he marries Phanium. The old men return, and Chremes, not knowing that Phanium is his own daughter, is desperately angry. Mean while, Dorio, the owner of Pamphila, threatens to sell her to some one else unless Phædria will immediately pay him thirty minæ. Geta, a knavish servant of Demipho, procures this money by telling the old gentleman that Phormio is willing to take Antipho’s wife off his hands on condition of receiving thirty minæ. Phanium is eventually discovered and acknowledged, and thus matters are happily concluded. Nausistrata is at first very angry, but relents on the submission of the repentant Chremes.

This comedy supplied Molière with a large portion of the materials for “Les Fourberies de Scapin.”

This comedy, which, if the inscription may be trusted, is a translation or adaptation from one by Menander, was the least successful of all the plays of Terence. Twice it was rejected; on the first occasion, as the prologue to its second representation informs us, owing to “an unheard-of calamity and impediment.”^[224] The thoughts of the public were so occupied by a rope-dancer that they would not hear a word. Terence feared to risk a second representation on the same day; but such confidence had he in the merits of the play, that he offered it a second time for sale to the ædiles, and it was acted again in the consulship of Cn. Octavius and T. Manlius.^[225] It was acted a third time at the 133funeral games of L. Æmilius Paulus, when it was again rejected. On its next representation, it was successful; and Ambivius Turpio, by whose theatrical company it was performed, and whose popularity had already caused the revival of some unsuccessful plays,^[226] undertook to plead its cause in a new prologue. This prologue enters fully into the circumstances which caused its rejection. It states that some renowned boxers and expected performances of a rope-dancer caused a great tumult and disturbance, especially among the female part of the audience; that, at the next representation, the first act went off with applause, but a rumour spread of a gladiatorial combat, the people flocked to a show which was more congenial to their taste, and the theatre was deserted. In conclusion, for the sake of the art of poetry, for the encouragement of himself to buy new plays, and for the protection of the poet from malicious critics, Ambivio entreated the patient attention of the audience; and the appeal of the old favourite servant of the public was successful.

The Hecyra is, without doubt, inferior to the other plays of Terence, and probably for that reason has never been imitated in modern literature. It is a drama of domestic life, and yet the plot is deficient in interest, and the scenes want life and variety.

Plot.—Pamphilus, at the desire of his father, Laches, marries Philumena, the daughter of Phidippus and Myrrhina, but being involved in an amour with Bacchis, has no affection for his wife, and avoids all intercourse with her. Meanwhile, Bacchis offended at his marriage, shows such an ill-temper, that his affection is weaned from her and transferred to Philumena. Pamphilus then goes to Imbrus, and on his return is surprised with the news that Philumena has left his father’s house, and subsequently discovers that she has given birth to a son. He refuses, consequently, to receive her as his wife; but as he loves her to distraction, he promises her mother that he will keep her shame secret. As he will neither live with his wife nor assign any reason, Bacchis is suspected of being the cause. But she clears herself from the suspicion. Myrrhina, however, recognises upon 134her finger a ring belonging to her daughter. This leads to the dénouement. Pamphilus had one night when intoxicated met Philumena, and offered her violence. He had forced a ring from her finger and given it to Bacchis. He, therefore, with joy, acknowledges the child as his own, and restores his injured wife to his affections.

The comedy derives its title, Hecyra (the mother-in-law,) from the part taken by Sostrata, the mother of Pamphilus. Laches, unable to account for the conduct of Philumena and his son, is firmly persuaded that his wife Sostrata had taken a prejudice against her daughter-in-law, and Pamphilus, notwithstanding his dutiful affection for his mother, cannot avoid being under a similar impression. Sostrata, in order to remove this suspicion, offers with noble generosity to leave the house in order that Philumena may return.

This amiable rivalry of maternal devotion on the one hand, and filial respect on the other, constitutes the most interesting portion of the comedy; and Terence has thus endeavoured to rescue the relation of mother-in-law from the prejudice which, too often deservedly, attached to it.

This comedy was acted at the funeral games of L. Æmilius Paulus Macedonius, the conqueror of Perseus, in the consulship of L. Anicius Gallus and M. Cornelius Cethegus.^[227] The music was Sarrane or Tyrian, the grave character of which was suitable to the solemnity of the occasion. The cost of the representation was borne by Q. Fabius Maximus, and P. C. Scipio Africanus, the sons of the deceased.

Plot.—Demea, a country gentleman and a strict disciplinarian, has two sons, Æschinus and Ctesipho. Æschinus, the elder, is adopted by his uncle Micio, a bachelor of indulgent temper and somewhat loose principles, who lives a town life at Athens. Whilst Ctesipho is brought up strictly in the country, Æschinus is educated with too great indulgence, and pursues a course of riot and extravagance. One night, in a moment of drunken 135passion, he offers violence to Pamphila, a young maiden, well born but poor; for which outrage he makes amends by a promise of marriage. Ctesipho soon after falls in love with a minstrel girl whom he accidentally meets; and Æschinus, to save his brother from his father’s anger, conceals his amour and takes the discredit of it upon himself. At last he assaults the pander to whom the girl belongs, takes her away by force, and gives her to his brother. The affair comes to Demea’s ears, who severely reproves Micio for ruining his son by injudicious indulgence. Matters are at length explained, and the marriage between Æschinus and Pamphila takes place, the minstrel girl is assigned to Ctesipho, and the price for her paid. The old bachelor, Micio, marries Sostrata, the mother of Pamphila, and, according to the usual rule of comedy, all the inferior persons of the drama are made happy.

Lax as the morals are which Micio refrains from correcting, his conduct illustrates a valuable principle in education; that——

Nor are the evils likely to arise from indifference to moral principle left entirely without an antidote. A wise and not indiscriminate indulgence is upheld by Demea; and, at the conclusion of the play, he announces his deliberate change of character, but, at the same time, points out the pernicious errors of that kindness and indulgence which proceeds from impulse and not from principle.

This twofold lesson is by no means a useless one to parents, not to purchase the affection of their children by injudicious indulgence like Micio, nor, on the other hand, like Demea, to strain the cord too tight, and thus tempt their children to pursue a course of deceit, and to refuse their confidence to their natural advisers and guardians. The most beautiful feature, however, of the play is the picture which it gives of fraternal affection. This was the last comedy of the author. It furnished Molière with the idea of his “Ecole des Maris,” and Baron with great part of the plot of “L’Ecole de Pères.” Shadwell was also indebted to it for his “Squire of Alsatia,” and Garrick for his comedy of “The Guardian.”

The following comparison of the two great Roman comic poets by a French critic is a just one:——

“Ce poète (Térence) a beaucoup plus d’art, mais il me semble que l’autre a plus d’esprit. Terence fait beaucoup plus parler qu’agir; l’autre fait plus agir que parler: et c’est le véritable caractère de la comédie, qui est beaucoup plus dans l’action que dans le discours. Cette vivacité me paroît donner encore un grand avantage à Plaute; c’est que ses intrigues sont bien variées, et ont toujours quelque chose qui surprend agréablement; au lieu que le théâtre semble languir quelquefois dans Térence, à qui la vivacité de l’action et les nœuds des incidens et des intrigues manquent manifestement.”

If Terence was inferior to Plautus in life and bustle and intrigue, and in the powerful delineation of national character, he is superior in elegance of language and refinement of taste; he far more rarely offends against decency, and he substitutes delicacy of sentiment for vulgarity. The justness of his reflections 137more than compensates for the absence of his predecessor’s humour: he touches the heart as well as gratifies the intellect.

If he was deficient in vis comica, it is only the defect which Cæsar attributed to Roman comedy generally; and Cicero, who thought that Roman wit was even more piquant than Attic salt itself, paid him a merited compliment in the following line:——

It has been objected to Terence that he superabounds in soliloquies;^[228] but it is not surprising that he should have delighted in them, since no author ever surpassed him in narrative. His natural and unaffected simplicity renders him the best possible teller of a story: he never indulges in a display of forced wit or in attempts at epigrammatic sharpness; there are no superfluous touches, although his pictures are enlivened by sufficient minuteness; his moral lessons are conveyed in familiar proverb-like suggestions, not in dull and pedantic dogmatism.

The remaining comic poets will require but brief notice. L. Afranius was a contemporary of Terence, and flourished about B. C. 150. His comedies were all of the lowest class of fabulæ togatæ (tabernariæ;) and he was generally allowed by the critics to possess great skill in accommodating the Greek comedy to the representation of Roman manners:——

His style was short and eloquent (perargutus et disertus,)^[229] but he was a man of low tastes and profligate morals;^[230] and, therefore, although, from living amidst the scenes of vulgar vice which he delighted to paint, his characters were true to nature, they were revolting and disgusting. His immorality, probably, as much as his talent, caused him to continue a favourite under the most corrupt times of the empire. Fragments and titles of many of his comedies have been preserved.

The name of Atilius is made known to us by Cicero, who mentions 138him three times. In a letter to Atticus,^[231] he calls him a most crabbed poet (poeta durissimus,) and quotes the following line from one of his comedies:—

In the treatise “De Finibus,”^[232] he speaks of him as the author of a bad translation of the Electra of Sophocles, and refers to the testimony of Licinius, who pronounces him as “hard as iron”——

and, lastly, in the “Tusculan Disputations,”^[233] he gives the title of one of his plays—Μισογυνος (the Woman-hater.) Of his birth and private history nothing has been recorded.

P. Licinius Tegula is generally supposed to have been one of the oldest of the Latin comic writers, having flourished as early as the beginning of the second century B. C. The few fragments which remain of his works afford no opportunity of determining how far he deserved the place assigned to him in the epigram of Volcatius.

Lavinius Luscius is severely criticised by Terence in his prologues to the Eunuchus, Heautontimorumenos, and Phormio, although he is not mentioned by name. Terence, however, defends the severity of his strictures, on the ground that Luscius was the first aggressor. In the first of the above-mentioned prologues, we are informed that he translated well; but, by unskilful alterations and adaptations of the plots, made bad Latin comedies out of good Greek ones:—

Two plays of Menander are mentioned as having been thus ill-treated—the Phasma (Phantom,) and the Thesaurus (Treasure.) How he spoilt the plot of the former is not stated; but in the version of the Thesaurus, Terence convicts 139Luscius of a legal blunder. A young prodigal has sold his inheritance, on which his father’s tomb stands, to an old miser. The father, foreseeing the consequence of his son’s extravagance, had, before his death, bid him open the tomb after the expiration of ten years. He does so, and finds a treasure. The old man claims the treasure as his own, and the young man brings an action to recover it. The mistake of which Luscius was guilty, was, that in the conduct of the cause he made the defendant open the pleadings instead of the plaintiff.

Of the works of Q. Trabea no fragments remain except the short passages quoted by Cicero,^[234] and the time at which he flourished is unknown. There is an anecdote which relates that Muretus presented to Jos. Scaliger a translation in Latin verse from a poem of Philemon, preserved by Stobæus, which he pretended was by Trabea. Scaliger was imposed upon; and in his notes on Varro, quoted the verses of Muretus as the work of Trabea. When he discovered the trick, he suppressed them in the Latin editions of his notes, and revenged himself on Muretus by a libellous epigram.^[235]

The last of these dramatic writers who remains to be mentioned is Sextus Turpilius. A few fragments, as well as the titles of some of his plays, are still extant. All the titles are Greek, and, therefore, probably his comedies were Fabulæ Palliatæ. He flourished during the second century B. C., and died, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, at the commencement of the first century.^[236]

From what has been already said, it is sufficiently clear that the Italians, like all other Indo-European races, had some taste for the drama, but that this taste developed itself in a love for scenes of humorous satire. Whilst, therefore, Roman comedy originated in Italy, and was brought to perfection by the influence of Greek literature, Roman tragedy,^[237] on the other hand, was transplanted from Athens, and with the exception of a very few cases, was never anything more than translation or imitation.

In the century, during which, together with comedy, it flourished and decayed, it boasted of five distinguished writers—Livius, Nævius, Ennius, Pacuvius, and Attius. The only claim of Atilius to be considered as a tragic poet is his having been the translator of one Greek tragedy. But, in after ages, Rome did not produce one tragic poet unless Varius can be considered an exception. His tragedy, Thyestes, which enjoyed so high a reputation amongst the critics of the Augustan age, that Quintilian, whose judgment generally agrees with them, pronounces it as able to bear comparison with the productions of the Greek tragic poets. It was acted on one occasion, namely, after the return of Octavius from the battle of Actium, and the poet received for it 1,000,000 sesterces (about 8,000l.)^[238] The tragedies attributed to Seneca were never acted, and were only composed for reading and recitation.

Some account has already been given of Livius, Nævius, and Ennius, because their poetical reputation rests rather on other 141grounds than on their talents for dramatic poetry. But, before proceeding with the lives and writings of Pacuvius and Attius, it will be necessary to examine the causes which prevented tragedy from flourishing at Rome.

In endeavouring to account for this phenomenon, it is not sufficient to say, that in the national legends of the Hellenic race were imbodied subjects essentially of a dramatic character, and that epic poetry contained incidents, characters, sentiments, and even dramatic machinery, which only required to be put upon the stage. Doubtless the Greek epics and legends were an inexhaustible source of inspiration to the tragic poets. But it is also true that the Romans had national legends which formed the groundwork of their history, and were interwoven in their early literature. These legends, however, were private, not public property; they were preserved in the records and pedigrees of private families, and ministered to their glory, and were therefore more interesting to the members of these houses than to the people at large: they were not preserved as a national treasure by priestly families, like those of the Attic Eumolpidæ, nor did they twine themselves around the hearts of the Roman people, as the venerable traditions of Greece did around those of that nation. The Romans did not live in them—they were embalmed in their poets as curious records of antiquity or acknowledged fictions—they did not furnish occasions for awakening national enthusiasm. Although, therefore, they existed, they were comparatively powerless over the popular mind as elements of dramatic effect.

They were jealously preserved by illustrious houses, furnished materials in a dry and unadorned form to the annalists, and were embellished by the graphic power of the historian; but it is not probable that they ever constituted, in the same sense as the Greek legends, the folklore of the Roman people. In themselves, the lays of Horatius and of the lake Regillus were sufficiently stirring, and those of Lucretia, Coriolanus, and Virginia sufficiently moving, for tragedy, but they were not familiar to the masses of the people.

A period at length arrived in which there was a still further 142reason why Roman national legends, however adapted for tragedy they might be abstractedly, had not power to move the affections of the Roman populace. It ceased to have a personal interest in them. The masses had undergone a complete change. The Roman people of the most flourishing literary eras were not the descendants of those who maintained the national glory in the legendary period. Not only were almost all the patrician families then extinct, but war and poverty had extinguished the middle classes, and miserably thinned the lower orders. The old veterans of pure Roman blood who survived were settled at a distance from Rome in the different military colonies. Into the vacancy thus caused had poured thousands of slaves, captives in the bloody wars of Gaul and Spain, and Greece and Africa. These and their descendants replaced the ancient people. Many of them received liberty and franchise, and some by their talents and energy arrived at wealth and station. But they could not possibly be Romans at heart, or consider the past glories of their adopted country as their own. They were bound by no ties of old associations to it. The ancient legends had no especial interest in their eyes. It mattered little whether the incidents and characters of the tragedy which they witnessed were Greek or Roman. It was to the rise of this new element of population, and the displacement or absorption of the old race, that the decline of patriotism was owing—the careless disregard of everything except daily sustenance and daily amusement,^[239] which paved the way for the empire, and marked the downfall of liberty. From this cause, also, resulted in some degree the non-influential position which national traditions occupied at Rome; and tragedy, though for a time popular, could not maintain its popularity. Thus it entirely disappeared; and, when it revived, it came forth, not as the favourite of the people, but under the patronage of select circles, and took its place, not like Athenian tragedy, as the leading literature of the age, but simply as one species of literary composition.

A people made up of these elements held out no temptation to the poet to leave the beaten track of his predecessor, the 143imitations of Greek tragedy. They were step-sons of Rome, as Scipio Æmilianus called the mob, who clamoured at his saying that the death of Tiberius Gracchus was just:—

The poet’s real patrons had been educated on Greek principles; and hence Greek taste was completely triumphant over national legend, and the heroes of Roman tragedy were those who were celebrated in Hellenic story. The Roman historical plays, (prætextatæ,) which approached most nearly towards realizing the idea of a national tragedy, were graceful compliments to distinguished individuals. They were usually performed at public funerals; and as, in the procession, masks representing the features of the deceased were borne by persons of similar stature, so incidents in his life formed the subject of the drama which was exhibited on the occasion.

The list of Fabulæ Prætextatæ, even if it were perfect, would occupy but narrow limits; nor had they sufficient merits to stand the test of time. They survive but in name, and the titles extant are but nine in number:——

The Paulus of Pacuvius, which represented an incident in the life of L. Æmilius Paulus.^[240]

The Brutus, Æneadæ, and Marcellus of Attius.^[241]

Iter ad Lentulum, a passage in the life of Balbus.^[242]

Cato.

Domitius Nero, by Maternus, in the time of Vespasian.

Vescio, by the Satirist (?) Persius.

Octavian, by Seneca, in the reign of Trajan.

Nor must it be forgotten, in comparing the influence which tragedy exercised upon the people of Athens and Rome, that with the former it was a part and parcel of the national religion. By it not only were the people taught to sympathize with their heroic ancestors, but their sympathies were hallowed. In Greece, the poet was held to be inspired—poetry was the voice of deified 144nature—the tongue in which the natural held communion with the supernatural, the visible with the invisible. With the Romans, poetry was nothing more than an amusement of the fancy; with the Greeks, it was a divinely originating emotion of the soul.

Hence, in Athens, the drama was, as it were, an act of worship,—it formed an integral part of a joyous, yet serious, religious festival. The theatre was a temple; the altar of a deity was its central point; and a band of choristers moved in solemn march and song in honour of the god, and, in the didactic spirit which sanctified their office, taught men lessons of virtue. Not that the audience entered the precincts with their hearts imbued with holy feelings, or with the thoughts of worshippers; but this is always the case when religious ceremonials become sensuous. The real object of the worship is by the majority forgotten. But still the Greeks were habituated unconsciously to be affected by the drama, as by a development of religious sentiments. With the Romans, the theatre was merely a place of secular amusement. The thymele existed no longer as a memorial of the sacrifice to the god. The orchestra, formerly consecrated to the chorus, was to them nothing more than stalls occupied by the dignitaries of the state. Dramas were certainly exhibited at the great Megalensian games, but they were only accessories to the religious character of the festival. A holy season implies rest and relaxation—a holiday in the popular sense of the word—and theatrical representations were considered a fit and proper species of pastime; but as religion itself did not exercise the same influence over the popular mind of the Romans which it did over that of the Greeks, so neither with the Romans did the drama stand in the place of the handmaid of religion.

Again, their religion, though purer and chaster, was not ideal like that of the Greeks. Its freedom from human passions removed it out of the sphere of poetry, and, therefore, it was neither calculated to move terror nor pity. The moral attributes of the Deity were displayed in stern severity; but neither the belief nor the ceremonial sought to inflame the heart of the 145worshipper with enthusiasm. Rome had no priestly caste uniting in one and the same person the character of the bard and of the minister of religion. In after ages, she learned from the Greeks to call the poet sacred, but the holiness which she attributed to his character was not the earnest belief of the heart. The Roman priests were civil magistrates; religion, therefore, became a part of the civil administration, and a political engine. It mattered little what was believed as true. The old national faith of Italy, not being firmly rooted in the heart, soon became obsolete: it readily admitted the engrafting of foreign superstitions. The old deities assumed the names of the Greek mythology: they exchanged their attributes and histories for those of Greek legend, and a host of strange gods filled their Pantheon. They had, however, no hold either on the belief or the love of the people: they were mythological and unreal characters, fit only to furnish subjects and embellishments for poetry.

Nor was the genius of the Roman people such as to sympathize with the legends of the past. The Romans lived in the present and the future, rather than in the past. The poet might call the age in which he lived degenerate, and look forward with mournful anticipations to a still lower degradation, whilst he looked back admiringly to bygone times. Through the vista of past years, Roman virtue and greatness seemed to his imagination magnified: he could lament, as Horace did, a gradual decay, which had not as yet reached its worst point:——

But the people did not sympathize with these feelings: they delighted in action, not in contemplation and reflection. They did not look back upon their national heroes as demigods, or dream over their glories: they were pressing forward and extending the frontiers of their empire, bringing under their yoke tribes and nations which their forefathers had not known. If they regarded their ancestors at all, it was not in the light of 146men of heroic stature, as compared with themselves, but as those whom they could equal or even surpass: they lived in hope and not in memory.

These are not the elements of character which would lead a people to realize to themselves the ideal of tragedy. The tragic poet at Athens would have been sure that the same subject which inspired him would also interest his audience—that if his genius rose to the height which their critical taste demanded, he could reckon up the sympathy of a theatre crowded with ten thousand of his countrymen. A Roman tragic poet would have been deserted for any spectacle of a more stirring nature—his most affecting scenes and noble sentiments, for scenes of real action and real life. The bloody combats of the gladiators, the miserable captives and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies, or mangled by wild beasts, were real tragedies—the sham fights and Naumachiæ, though only imitations, were real dramas, in which those pursuits which most deeply interested the spectators, which constituted their chief duties and highest glories, were visibly represented. Even gorgeous spectacles fed their personal vanity and pride in their national greatness. The spoil of conquered nations, borne in procession across the stage, reminded them of their triumphs and their victories; and the magnificent dress of the actors—the model of the captured city, preceded and followed by its sculptures in marble and ivory—represented in mimic grandeur the ovation or the triumph of some successful general, whose return from a distant expedition, laden with wealth, realized the rumours which had already arrived at the gates of Rome; whilst the scene, glittering with glass, and gold, and silver, and adorned with variegated pillars of foreign marble, told ostentatiously of their wealth and splendour.^[243]

Again, the Romans were a rough, turbulent people, full of physical rather than intellectual energy, loving antagonism, courting peril, setting no value on human life or suffering. Their very virtues were stern and severe. The unrelenting justice of a Brutus, representing as it did the victory of principle 147over feeling, was to them the height of virtue. They were ready to undergo the extreme of physical torture with Regulus, and to devote themselves to death, like Curtius and the Decii. Hard and pitiless to themselves, they were, as might be expected, the same towards others. They were, in fact, strangers to both the passions, which it was the object of tragedy to excite and to purify, Pity and Terror.^[244] They were too stern to pity, too unimaginative to be moved by the tales of wonder and deeds of horror which affected the tender and marvel-loving imagination of the Greeks. Being an active, and not a sentimental people, they did not appreciate moral suffering and the struggles of a sensitive spirit. They were moved only by scenes of physical suffering and agony.

The public games of Greece at Olympia, or the Isthmus, were bloodless and peaceful, and the refinements of poetry mingled with those which were calculated to invigorate the physical powers and develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were exhibitions, not of moral, but of physical courage and endurance: they were sanguinary and brutalizing,—the amusements of a nation to whom war was not a necessary evil or a struggle for national existence, for hearths and altars, but a pleasure and a pastime—the means of gratifying an aggressive ambition. The tragic feeling of Greece is represented by the sculptured grief of Niobe, that of Rome by the death-struggles which distort the features and muscles of the Laocoon. It was, if the expression is allowable, amphitheatrical, not theatrical.

To such a people the moral woes of tragedy were powerless; and yet it is to the people that the drama, if it is to flourish, must look for patronage. A refined and educated society, such as always existed at Rome during its literary period, might applaud a happy adaptation from the Greek tragedians, and encourage a poet in his task—for it is only an educated and refined taste which can appreciate such talent as skilful imitation displays; but a tragic drama under such circumstances could hardly hope to be national. Nor must it be forgotten, with reference to their taste for spectacle, that the artistic accessories of the 148drama would have a better chance of success with a people like the Romans than literary merit, because the pleasures of art are of a lower and more sensuous kind. Hence, in the popular eye, the decoration of the theatre and the costume of the performers naturally became the principal requisites, whilst the poet’s office was considered subordinate to the manner in which the play was put upon the stage; and thus the degenerate theatrical taste which prevailed in the days of Horace called forth the poet’s well-known and well-deserved criticism.^[245]

It cannot, indeed, be asserted that tragedy was never, to a certain extent, an acceptable entertainment at Rome, but only that it never flourished at Rome as it did at Athens—that no Roman tragedies can, notwithstanding all that has been said in their praise and their defence, be compared with those of Greece, and that the tragic drama never maintained such a hold on the popular mind as not to be liable to be displaced by amusements of a more material and less intellectual kind. It was imitative and destitute of originality. It was introduced from without as one portion of the new literature; it did not grow spontaneously by a process of natural development out of preceding eras of epic and lyric poetry, and start into being, as it did at Athens, at the very moment when the public mind and taste was ready to receive and appreciate it.

Three eras, separated from one another by chasms, the second wider than the first, produced tragic poets. In the first of these flourished Livius Andronicus, Nævius, and Ennius; in the second Pacuvius and Attius; in the third Asinius Pollio^[246] wrote tragedies, the plots of which, as the words of Virgil seem to imply, were taken from Roman history.^[247] Varius either wrote, or, as some of the Scholiasts assert, stole, the “Thyestes” from Cassius or Virgil. Ovid attempted a “Medea,” of which Quintilian speaks, as being, to say the least, a promising performance; and even the Emperor Augustus himself, together with other men of 149genius, tried their hands, though unsuccessfully, at tragedy. The epistle of Horace to the Pisos shows at once the prevalence of this taste, and that general ignorance of the rules and principles of art required instruction. Ten rhetorical dramas, attributed with good reason to the philosopher Seneca, complete the catalogue of tragedies belonging to this era, but with the exception of these, no specimens remain; most probably they did not merit preservation. The tragedies of the older school were of a higher stamp, and they kept their place in the public estimation long enough to give birth to the newer and inferior school. Passages from the old Latin tragedies quoted by Cicero well deserve the admiration with which he regarded them; and a fragment of the “Prometheus” of Attius is marked by a grandeur and sublimity which makes us regret the almost total loss of this branch of Roman literature.

The era at which Roman tragedy reached its highest degree of perfection was the second of those mentioned, and was simultaneous with that of comedy. Both nourished together; for, whilst Terence was so successfully reproducing the wit and manners of the new Attic comedy, M. Pacuvius was enriching the Roman drama with free imitations of the Greek tragedians. He was a native of Brundisium, and nephew,^[248] or, according to St. Jerome, grandson of the poet Ennius. Although born as early as B. C. 220, he does not appear to have attained the height of his popularity until B. C.^[249] During his residence at Rome, where he remained until after his 80th year,^[250] he distinguished himself as a painter as well as a dramatic poet; and one of his pictures in the temple of Hercules was thought only to be surpassed by the work of Fabius Pictor.^[251] He formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was so great an ornament. The close of his long life was passed in the retirement of Tarentum, where he died in the ninetieth year of his age. A simple and 150unpretending epigram is preserved by Aulus Gellius,^[252] which may probably have been written by himself:——

Pacuvius was a great favourite with those who could make allowances for the faults, and appreciate the merits, of the great writers of antiquity, and his verses were popular in the time of J. Cæsar;^[253] and that lover of the old Roman literature, Cicero, though not blind to his faults, is warm in his commendations. He was not without admirers in the Augustan age, and even his defects had zealous defenders in the time of Persius amongst those who could scarcely discover a fault in any work which savoured of antiquity.^[254] The archaic ruggedness of his language, his uncouth forms, such as axim, tetinerim, egregiissimus, and his unauthorized constructions, like mihi piget, were due to the unsettled state of the Latin language in his days. His strange combinations, such as repandirostrum and incurvicervicum, may possibly have been suggested by the study of Greek, and by his overweening admiration for its facility of composition. But his polish, pathos, and learning,^[255] the harmony of his periods,^[256] his eloquence,^[257] his fluency, his word-painting,^[258] are peculiarly his own.

The tragedies of Pacuvius were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts. His plots were borrowed from the Greek, but the plan and treatment were his own. The lyric portion appears to have occupied an important place in his tragedies, and displays considerable imaginative power. It is evident that his mind only required suggestions, and was sufficiently original, to form new combinations. The titles of thirteen of his tragedies are preserved,^[259] 151of which the most celebrated were the “Antiopa” and “Dulorestes” (Orestes in Slavery.) Of the former, the only fragment extant is one severely criticised by Persius. The latter was principally founded on the “Iphigenia in Tauris” of Euripides,^[260] although the author was evidently inspired with the poetical conceptions of Æschylus. In fact, Pacuvius is less Euripidean than the other Roman tragic poets. The very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of Attic tragedy.

The subject of the “Dulorestes” was the adventures of the son of Agamemnon. When driven from the palace of his ancestors, he was in exile and in slavery.^[261] On the first representation of this play, the generous friendship of Orestes and Pylades called forth the most enthusiastic applause from the audience, who then probably heard the legend for the first time. “What acclamations,” says Lælius,^[262] “resounded through the theatre at the representation of the new play of my guest and friend, M. Pacuvius, when the king, being ignorant which of the two was Orestes, Pylades affirmed that he was Orestes, that he might be put to death in his place, whilst Orestes persevered in asserting that he was the man!”

One of his plays, “Paulus,” was a fabula prætextata: its subject was taken entirely from Roman history, the hero being L. Æm. Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus. Besides tragedies, the grammarians have attributed to him one satura.^[263] He is said also to have written comedies; but there is no evidence in favour of any, with the exception of one, entitled “Mercator.”

Although born about fifty years later than Pacuvius,^[264] Attius was almost his contemporary, and a competitor for popular applause. The amiable old poet lived on the most friendly terms with his young rival; and A. Gellius tells us that after he withdrew from the literary society of Rome to retirement at Tarentum, he on one occasion invited the rising poet to be his guest for some days, and made him read his tragedy of “Atreus.” Pacuvius criticised it kindly, fairly praised the grandeur of the poetry, but said that it was somewhat harsh and hard. “You are right,” replied Attius, “but I hope to improve. Fruits which are at first hard and sour, become soft and mellow, but those which begin by being soft, end in being rotten.” Valerius Maximus^[265] relates that in the assemblies of the poets he refused to rise at the entrance of J. Cæsar, because he felt that in the republic of letters he was the superior. If this anecdote is genuine, it does not prove that the aged poet was guilty of unwarrantable self-esteem, for Cæsar must then have been quite a youth, and if he had any claim to reputation as a poet, he was, at any rate, not yet distinguished as a warrior or a statesman. Amongst the great men whose friendship the poet enjoyed was Dec. Brutus, who was consul A. U. C. 616.^[266] Nothing more is known respecting his private history, except that his parents were 153freedmen, and that he was one of the colonists settled at Pisaurum, where, in after times, a farm or estate (fundus Attianus) continued to bear his name. His tragedies were very numerous. He is said to have written more than fifty. Three at least were prætextatæ, their titles being “Brutus,” “The Æneadæ,” or “Decius,”^[267] and “Marcellus.” His “Trachiniæ” and “Phœnissæ” were almost translations, the one from Sophocles, the other from Euripides; the rest were free imitations of Greek tragedies. They were distinguished both for sublimity and pathos; and although he was warmed by the fiery spirit and tragic grandeur of Æschylus, he evidently evinced a predilection for Sophocles.^[268] His taste is chastened, his sentiments noble, his versification elegant. His language is almost classical, and was deservedly admired by the ancients for its polish as well as its vigour. The “Brutus” was written at the suggestion of his friend Decimus. The plot was the expulsion of the Tarquins, the hero Brutus, the heroine Lucretia. He had chosen one of the noblest romances in Roman history. Two passages,^[269] quoted by Cicero, are all that remain of this national tragedy. In them the tyrant relates to the augurs a dream which had haunted him, and they, at his request, give their interpretation of it. Varro has also preserved the soliloquy of Hercules in the agonies of death, from the Trachiniæ,^[270] a noble paraphrase of Sophocles. This fine specimen of his genius extends to the length of forty-five lines. In another passage, Philoctetes pours forth his sufferings in language as touching as the original Greek; and in a third, Prometheus, now delivered from the tyranny of Jupiter, addresses to his assembled Titans a strain of indignant eloquence not unworthy of Æschylus.^[271] The following lines from the “Phœnissæ” and the “Complaint of Philoctetes,” are, though brief, fair examples of his language and versification:——

These are the most important of the numerous fragments which are extant of the various tragedies of the lofty Attius.^[274] He has been considered by some as the founder of the Tragœdia Prætextatæ. This, however, is not true, for there is no doubt that such dramas were written by his predecessors. Nevertheless, he brought the natural tragedy to its highest state of perfection.

The time was now evidently approaching when the Romans were beginning to show, that although they did not possess the inventive genius of the Greeks, they were capable of stripping their native language of its rudeness, and of transferring into it the beauties of Greek thought; that they were no longer mere servile copyists, but could use Greek poetry as furnishing suggestions for original efforts. They could not quarry for themselves, but they could now build up Greek materials into a glowing and polished edifice, of which the details were new and the effect original.

The metres which Attius used were chiefly the iambic trimeter and the anapæstic dimeter, but his prætextatæ were written in trochaic and iambic tetrameters, the rhythm of which proves that his ear was more refined than that of his predecessors.^[275]

It is not known whether he was the author of any comedies, but he was a historian, an antiquarian, and a critic, as well as a poet. He left behind him a review of dramatic poetry, entitled “Libri Didascalion,” “Roman Annals,” in verse, and two other works—“Libri Pragmaticon,” and “Parerga.” The former of these is quoted by Nonius, and A. Gellius. He died at an advanced age, probably about A. U. C. 670, and is thus a link, as it were, which connects the first literary period with the age of 155Cicero; for the great orator was personally acquainted with him, and at his death must have been about twenty-two years of age.

With Attius Latin tragedy disappeared. The tragedies of the third period were written expressly for reading and recitation, and not for the stage. They may have deserved the commendations which they obtained, but the merit and talent which they displayed were simply rhetorical, and not dramatic; they were dramatic poems, not dramas.

The state of political affairs, which synchronized with the death of Attius, was less congenial than ever to the tragic muse. Real and bloody tragedies were being enacted, and there was no room in the heart of the Roman people for fictitious woes. If it was improbable that a people who delighted in the sanguinary scenes of the amphitheatre should sympathize with the sorrows of a hero in tragedy, it was almost impossible that tragedy should flourish when Rome itself was a theatre in which scenes of horror were daily enacted.

Either then, or not long before, the terrible domination of Cinna and Marius had begun. Massacre and violence raged through the streets of Rome. The best and noblest fell victims to the raging thirst for blood. The aged Marius, distracted by unscrupulous ambition and savage passions, died amidst the delirious ravings of remorse, and thus made way for the tyranny of his perjured accomplice Cinna. Still there was no respite or interruption. The cruel Sulla sent his orders from Antemnæ to slaughter 8,000 prisoners in cold blood. The massacre had hardly begun when he himself arrived, had taken his place in the Senate; and the shrieks of his murdered victims were audible in the house whilst he was coolly speaking. This was the beginning of horrors: the notorious proscription followed. Besides other victims, 5,600 Roman knights perished.

Amidst such scenes as these, the voice of the tragic muse was hushed. Depending for her very existence on the breath of popular favour, she necessarily could not find supporters, and so languished and was silenced. It might appear surprising that literature of any kind should have lived through such times of 156savage barbarism. But other literature is not dependent upon public patronage: it finds a refuge beneath the shelter of the private dwelling. The literary man finds friends and patrons amongst those who, devoted to the humanities of intellectual pursuits, shuns the scenes of revolutionary strife and the struggles of selfish ambition. Even Sulla himself had a polished and refined taste; and, when he resigned the Dictatorship, passed those hours of retirement in literary studies which were not devoted to depravity and licentiousness.

The style in which the Roman theatres were built, indicate that whatever taste for tragedy the Roman people possessed had now decayed. The huge edifice erected by Pompey was too vast for the exhibition of tragedy. The forty thousand spectators which it contained could scarcely hear the actor, still less could they see the expression of human passions and emotions. The two theatres, placed on pivots, back to back, so that they could be wheeled round and form one vast amphitheatre, show how an interest in the drama was shared with the passion for spectacle; and provision was thus publicly made for gratifying that corrupt taste which had arrived at its zenith in the time of Horace, and, as we have seen, interrupted even comedy so early as the times of Terence.

The invention of satire is universally attributed to the Romans, and this assertion is true as far as the external form is concerned; but the spirit of satire is found in many parts of the literature of Greece. It animated the Homeric Margites, the poem on woman by Simonides, the bitter lyrical iambics of Archilochus, Stesichorus’ attack on Helen, and especially, as Horace says, the old comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. Some resemblance may also be discerned between Roman satire and the Greek Silli, poems belonging to the declining period of Greek literature,^[276] the design of which was to attack vice and folly with severe ridicule.^[277]

157Satire is, in fact, if Horace may be believed, the form which comedy took amongst the people with whom the drama did not flourish. Ennius was the inventor of the name, but Lucilius^[278] was the father of satire, in the proper sense, and was at Rome what the writers of the old comedy were at Athens. It subsequently occupied a wider field: Persius and Juvenal confined themselves to its didactic purpose, but Horace made it a vehicle for the narration of amusing adventure, and picturesque descriptions of human life.

The Satires of Lucilius mark an era in Roman literature, and prove that a love for this species of poetry had already made great progress. Hitherto, science, literature, and art, had been considered the province of slaves and freedmen. The stern old Roman virtue despised such sedentary and inactive employment as intellectual cultivation, and thought it unworthy of the warrior and statesman. Some of the higher classes loved literature and patronised it, but did not make it their pursuit. Cato blamed M. Fulvius Nobilior for being accompanied by poets when he proceeded to his provincial government,^[279] and did not until advanced in years undertake to study Greek.^[280] C. Lucilius was by birth of equestrian rank, the first Roman knight who was himself a poet.^[281] He was born at Suessa Aurunca, B. C. 148,^[282] and lived to the age of forty-six years.^[283] At fourteen, he served 158under Scipio at the siege of Numantia.^[284] He was the maternal great-uncle of Pompey, and numbered amongst his friends and patrons, Africanus and Lælius. His Satires were comprised in thirty books, of which the first twenty and the thirtieth were written in hexameters, the rest in iambics or trochaics. Numerous fragments are still extant, some of considerable length. The Satires were probably arranged according to their subject-matter; for those in the first book are on topics connected with religion, whilst those in the ninth treat of literary and grammatical criticism. His versification is careless and unrefined; very inferior in this respect to that of his predecessors. He sets at defiance the laws of prosody, and almost returns to the usage of that period in which the ear was the only judge.

The prejudices of Horace^[285] against the ancient Roman literature render him an unsafe guide in criticism. Even in his own time his attacks were considered by some indefensible; but his strictures on the style of Lucilius are not undeserved; it was unmusical, affected, and incorrect. His sentences are frequently ill-arranged, and therefore deficient in perspicuity. His mixture of Greek and Latin expressions, without that skill and art with which Horace considered it allowable to enrich the vernacular language, is itself offensive to good taste, and is rendered still more disagreeable by unnecessary diminutives and forced alliteration. On these grounds, and on these alone, he merits the contemptuous criticism of Horace.

His real defect was want of facility; and it is not improbable that, if prose had been considered a legitimate vehicle, he would have preferred pouring forth in that unrestricted form his indignant eloquence, rather than that, as Horace says, every verse should have cost him many scratchings of the head, and biting his nails to the quick. Whilst the criticism of Horace errs on the side of severity, that of Cicero^[286] is somewhat too partial: firstly, because he himself was deficient in poetical facility; secondly, because in his time there were no models of perfection wherewith to compare the works of Lucilius. The 159judgment of Quintilian^[287] is moderate; and although the taste for poetry was then corrupted by a love of quietness and rhetorical affectation, the praise is well merited which he bestows on the frank honesty and biting wit of the Satires of Lucilius. As he took the writers of old Attic comedy for his models, it cannot be a matter of surprise that he occasionally added force to his attacks on vice by coarseness and personality. Like them, if Lucilius found any one who deserved rebuke for his crimes, he did not trouble himself to make general remarks, and to attack vice in the abstract, but to illustrate his principles by living examples.

The education of Lucilius had probably been desultory, and his course of study not sufficiently strict to give the rich young Roman knight the accurate training, the critical knowledge, necessary to make him a poet as well as a satirist. It had given him learning and erudition—it had furnished him with the wealth of two languages, both of which he used whenever he thought they supplied him with a two-edged weapon—but it had not sufficiently cultivated his ear and refined his taste. On the other hand, his Satires must have possessed nobler qualities than those of style. He was evidently a man of high moral principle, though stern and stoical, devotedly attached to the cause of virtue, a relentless enemy of vice and profligacy, a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty. He must have felt with Juvenal, “difficile est satiram non scribere.” He was under an obligation which he could not avoid. What cared he for correct tetrameters, or heroics, or senarii, so that he could crush effeminacy, and gluttony, and self-indulgence, and restore the standard of ancient morals, to which he looked back with admiration?

This chivalrous devotion inspired him with eloquence, and gave a dignity to his rude verses, although it did not invest them with the graces and charms of poetry. Nor is it only when he declares open war against corruption that he must have made his adversaries tremble, or his victims, conscience-stricken, writhe beneath his knife. His encomiums upon virtue form as striking pictures; but in both it is the masterly outline 160of the drawing which amazes and instructs, not the mere accessory of the colouring. See, for example, the following noble passage, with its unselfish conclusion, preserved by Lactantius:^[288]—

Had they been extant, we should have found useful information and instruction in his faithful pictures of Roman life and manners in their state of moral transition—amusement in such pieces as his journal of a progress from Rome to Capua, from which Horace borrowed the idea of his journey to Brundisium, whilst in his love poems, addressed to his mistress, Collyra, we should have traced the tender sympathies of human nature, which the sternness of stoicism was unable to overcome.

Besides satire, Lucilius is said to have attempted lyric poetry: if this be the case, it is by no means surprising that no specimens have stood the test of time, for he possessed none of the qualifications of a lyric poet.

After the death of Lucilius, satire languished. Varro Atacinus attempted it and failed.^[289] Half a century subsequently it assumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put forth its original vigour in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.

This literary period was entirely destitute of lyric poetry, unless Niebuhr is correct in supposing that Lævius flourished contemporaneously with Lucilius.^[290] Nothing is known of his 161history; and such uncertainty prevails respecting him that his name is constantly confounded with those of Livius and Nævius. It is not improbable, that some passages attributed to them, which appear to belong to a later literary age, are, in reality, the work of Lævius—for example, the hexameters which are found in the Latin Odyssey of Livius. He translated the Cyprian poems, and wrote some fugitive amatory pieces entitled Erotopægnia. They seem to have possessed neither the graceful simplicity nor the tender warmth which are essential to lyric poetry, although they perhaps attained as great elegance of expression as the state of the language then admitted. Short fragments are preserved by Apuleius and in the Noctes Atticæ of A. Gellius.^[291]

Prose was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation they had little or no ideality or imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, no acute perception of the sympathy and relation existing between man and the external world. In the Greek mind a love of country and a love of nature held a divided empire—they were poets as well as patriots. Roman patriotism had indeed its dark side—an unbounded lust of dominion, an unscrupulous ambition to extend the power and glory of the republic; but, nevertheless, it prompted a zealous devotion to whatever would promote national independence and social advancement. Statesmanship, therefore, and the subjects akin to it, constituted the favourite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman, who sought a distinguished career of public usefulness; and, therefore, that literature which tended to advance the science of social life had a charm for him which no other literature possessed.

The branches of knowledge which would engage his attention were History, Jurisprudence, and Oratory. They would be studied with a view to utility, and in a practical spirit they would require a scientific and not an artistic treatment; and, therefore, their natural language would be prose and not poetry. As matter was more valued than manner by this utilitarian people, it was long before it was thought necessary to embellish prose literature with the graces of composition. The earliest orators 163spoke with a rude and vigorous eloquence which is always captivating: they wrote but little; their style was stiff and dry, and very inferior to their speaking. Cato’s prose was less rugged than that of his contemporaries or even his immediate successors. Sisenna was the first historian to whom gracefulness and polish have been attributed; and C. Gracchus is spoken of as a single exception to the orators of his age, on account of the rhythmical modulation of his prose sentences—a quality which he probably owed not more to a delicate ear than to the softening influence of a mother’s education. Even the prose of that celebrated model of refinement and good taste, C. Lælius, was harsh and unmusical.^[292]

Besides the influence which the practical character of the Roman mind exercised upon prose writing, it must not be forgotten that Roman literature was imitative: its end and object, therefore, were not invention, but erudition; it depended for its existence on learning, and was almost synonymous with it. This principle gave a decidedly historical bias to the Roman intellect: an historical taste pervades a great portion of the national literature. There is a manifest tendency to study subjects in an historical point of view. It will be seen hereafter that it is not like the Greek, original and inventive, but erudite and eclectic. The historic principle is the great characteristic feature of the Roman mind; consequently, in this branch of literature, the Romans attained the highest reputation, and may fairly stand forth as competitors with their Greek instructors. Not that they ever entirely equalled them; for though they were practical, vigorous, and just thinkers, they never attained that comprehensive and philosophical spirit which distinguished the Greek historians.

The work of an historian was, in the earliest times, recognised as not unworthy of a Roman. It was not like the other branches of literature, in which the example was first set by slaves and freedmen. Those who first devoted themselves to the pursuit were also eminent in the public service of their country. Fabius Pictor was of an illustrious patrician family. Cincius Alimentus, 164Fulvius Nobilior, and others, were of free and honourable birth. Such were Roman historians until the time of Sulla; for L. Otacilius Pilitus, who flourished at that period, was the first freedman who began to write history.^[293][294]

Again, the science of jurisprudence formed an indispensable part of statesmanship. It was a study which recommended itself by its practical nature: it could not be stigmatized even by the busiest as an idle and frivolous pursuit, whilst the constitutional relation which subsisted between patron and client, rendered the knowledge of its principles, to a certain extent, absolutely necessary. Protection from wrong was the greatest boon which the strong could confer upon the weak, the learned on the unlearned. It was, therefore, the most efficacious method of gaining grateful and attached friends; and by their support, the direct path was opened to the highest political positions. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, even when elegant literature was in its infancy, so many names are found of men illustrious as jurists and lawyers.

Practical statesmanship, in like manner, gave an early encouragement to oratory. It is peculiarly the literature of active life. The possession of eloquence rendered a man more efficient as a soldier and as a citizen. Great as is the force of native, unadorned eloquence, vigorous common sense, honest truthfulness, and indignant passion, nature would give way to art as taste became more cultivated. Nor could the Romans long have the finished models of Greek eloquence before their eyes, without transferring to the forum or the senate-house somewhat of their simple grandeur and majestic beauty.

The first efforts of the Roman historians were devoted to the transfer of the records of poetry into prose, as their more appropriate and popular vehicle. The national lays which tradition had handed down were the storehouses which they ransacked to furnish a supply of materials. As far as the records of authentic history are concerned, they performed the functions of 165simple annalists: they related events almost in the style of public monuments, without any attempt at ornament, without picturesque detail or political reflection. When Cicero compares the style of Fabius Pictor, Cato, and Piso, to that of the old Greek logographers,^[295] Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus, the points of resemblance which he instances are, that both neglected ornament, were careful only that their statements should be intelligible, and thought the chief excellence of a writer was brevity. Probably the subject-matter of the Roman annalists was the more valuable, whilst the Greeks had the advantage in liveliness and skill. Some of the earliest historians wrote in Greek instead of Latin. Even, in later times, such men as Sulla and Lucullus, and also Cn. Aufidius, who flourished during the boyhood of Cicero, wrote their memoirs in a foreign tongue. There was some reason for this. The language in which the higher classes received their education was Greek—the tutors, even the nurses, were Greek, as well as the librarians, secretaries, and confidential servants in most distinguished families. Such was the humanizing spirit of literature that these distinguished foreigners found an asylum in the households of noble Romans, notwithstanding the severity with which the law treated prisoners of war. Fashionable conversation, moreover, was interlarded with Greek phrases, and, in some houses, Greek was habitually spoken. Even so late as the times of Cicero,^[296] Greek literature was read and studied in almost every part of the civilized world, while the works of Latin writers were only known within the circumscribed limits of Italy.

The most ancient prose writer of Roman history was Q. Fabius Pictor, the contemporary of Nævius. He belonged to that branch of the noble house of the Fabii, which derived its distinguishing appellation from the eminence of its founder as a painter. The temple of Salus, which he painted, was dedicated B. C. 302, by the dictator, C. Junius Bubulcus; and this oldest known specimen of Roman fine art remained until the conflagration 166of the temple in the reign of Claudius. It must, therefore, have been subjected to the criticisms of an age capable of forming a correct judgment respecting its merits; and it appears from the testimony of antiquity to have possessed the two essentials of accurate drawing and truthful colouring, and to have been free from the fault of conventional treatment.^[297]

The Fabii were an intellectual family as well as a distinguished one: perhaps the numerous records of their exploits which exist were, in some degree, owing to their learning. The grandson of the eminent artist was Fabius Pictor the historian. Livy^[298] continually refers to him, and throughout his narrative of the Hannibalian war, he professes implicit confidence in him on the grounds of his being a contemporary historian,^[299] (æqualem temporibus hujusce belli;) he is likewise the authority on whom the greatest reliance was placed by Dion Cassius and Appian. Nor did the accurate and faithful Polybius consider him otherwise than trustworthy upon the whole, although he accuses him of partiality towards his countrymen.^[300] Niebuhr^[301] attributes to Fabius Pictor the accurate knowledge of constitutional history displayed by Dion Cassius, and acknowledges how deeply we are indebted to him for the information which we possess concerning the changes which took place in the Roman constitution. It is to his care that we owe the faithfulness of Dion, whilst Dionysius and Livy too often lead us astray. It constitutes some justification of his partiality as an historian, that Philinus of Agrigentum had also written a history of the first Punic war in a spirit hostile to Rome, and that this provoked Pictor to a defence of his country’s honour. His work was written in Greek, and its principal subject was a history of the first and second Punic wars, especially that against Hannibal. It has been held by some, on the authority of a passage in the “De Oratore” of Cicero,^[302] that he wrote in Latin as well as in Greek; but Niebuhr believes that Cicero is in error, and has confused him with a Latin annalist, named F. Max. Servilianus. The period to which 167his work extended is uncertain; but the last event alluded to by Livy, on his authority, is the battle of Trasymenus,^[303] and the last occasion on which he mentions his name is when he records his return from an embassy to Delphi in the following year.^[304] The earlier history of Rome was prefixed by way of introduction; for his object was not merely to assist in constructing the rising edifice of Roman literature, but to spread the glory of his country throughout that other great nation of antiquity, which now, for the first time, came in contact with a worthy rival. The pontifical annals, the national ballads, the annals of his own house, so rich in legendary tales of heroism, furnished him with ample materials; but he is also said to have drawn largely on the stores of a Greek author, named Diocles, a native of Peparethus, who had preceded him in the work of research and accumulation.

Contemporary with Fabius was the other annalist of the second Punic war, L. Cincius Alimentus. He was prætor in Sicily^[305] in the ninth year of the war, and took a prominent part in it.^[306] The soldiers who fought at Cannæ^[307] were placed at his disposal, his period of command was prolonged, and after his return home he was sent as legatus to the consul Crispinus, on the occasion of the melancholy death of his colleague, Marcellus.^[308] Some time after this, he was taken prisoner by Hannibal.^[309] Like Fabius, he wrote his work in Greek, and prefixed to it a brief abstract of early Roman history.^[310] Livy speaks of him as a diligent antiquarian, and appeals to his authority to establish the Etruscan origin of the custom of the dictator driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.^[311] As his accurate investigation of original monuments gives a credibility to his early history, so his being personally engaged in the war in a high position, renders him trustworthy in the later periods. It is also said that, when he was a prisoner of war, Hannibal, who delighted in the 168society of literary men, treated him with great kindness and consideration, and himself communicated to him the details of his passage across the Alps into Italy.

To him, therefore, and to the opportunities which he enjoyed of gaining information, we owe the credibility of this portion of Livy’s history^[312] on a point on which authors were at variance, namely, the number of Hannibal’s forces at this time. Livy appeals to the statement of Cincius as settling the question, and says, Hannibal himself informed Cincius how many troops he had lost between the passage of the Rhone and his descent into Italy.

His accurate habit of mind must have made his annals a most valuable work; and, therefore, it was most important that the variation of his early chronology from that which is commonly received should be explained and reconciled. This task Niebuhr has satisfactorily accomplished. He supposes that Cincius took cyclical years of ten months, which were used previous to the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, in the place of common years of twelve months. The time which had elapsed between the building of Rome and this epoch was, according to the pontifical annals, 132 years. The error, therefore, due to this miscalculation would be 132 - 132 + 10
12 = 22 years. If this be added to the common date of the building of Rome, B. C. 753 = Ol. vii. 2, the result is the date given by Cincius, namely Ol. vii. 4.^[313]

A few words may be devoted to C. Acilius Glabrio, the third representative of the Græco-Roman historic literature. Very little is known respecting him. He was quæstor A. U. C. 551, tribune A. U. C. 557, and subsequently attained senatorial rank; for Gellius^[314] relates that, when the three Athenian philosophers visited Rome as ambassadors, Acilius introduced them to the senate and acted as interpreter. His story was considered worthy of translation by an author named Claudius, and to this translation reference is twice made by Livy.^[315]

169Valuable though the works of these annalists must have been as historical records, and as furnishing materials for more thoughtful and philosophical minds, they are only such as could have existed in the infancy of a national literature. They were a bare compilation of facts, the mere scaffolding and framework of history; they were diversified by no critical remarks or political reflections. The authors made no use of their facts, either to deduce or to illustrate principles. With respect to style, they were meager, insipid, and jejune.

The versatility and variety of talent displayed by Cato claim for him a place amongst orators, jurists, economists, and historians. It is, however, amongst the latter, as representatives of the highest branch of prose literature, that we must speak of the author of the “Origines.” His life extends over a wide and important period of literary history: everything was in a state of change—morals, social habits, literary taste. Not only the influence of Greek literature, but also that of the moral and metaphysical creed of Greek philosophy, was beginning to be felt when Cato’s manly and powerful intellect was flourishing. When he filled the second public office to which the Roman citizen aspired, Nævius was still living. He was censor when Plautus died; and, before his own life ended, the comedies of Terence had been exhibited on the Roman stage.

Three political events took place during his lifetime, which must have exercised an important influence on the mental condition of the Roman people. When Macedonia, at the defeat of Perseus,^[316] was reduced to the condition of a Roman province, nearly a thousand Achæans, amongst whom was the historian Polybius, were sent to Rome, and detained in Italy as hostages during nearly seventeen years. The thirteenth year from that event witnessed the dawn of philosophy at Rome, for previously to this epoch, the philosophical schools of Magna Græcia appear to have been unnoticed and disregarded. But now^[317] Carneades 170the academic, Critolaus the peripatetic, and Diogenes the stoic,^[318] came to Rome as ambassadors from Athens, and delivered philosophical lectures, which attracted the attention of the leading statesmen, whilst the doctrines which they taught excited universal alarm. The following year Crates arrived as ambassador from Attalus, king of Pergamus, and during his stay delighted the literary society of the capital with commentaries on the Greek poets.^[319] It is not surprising that one who lived through a period during which Greek literature had such favourable opportunities of being propagated by some of its most distinguished professors, sufficiently overcame his prejudices as to learn in his old age the language of a people whom he both hated and despised.

M. Porcius Cato Censorius was born at Tusculum, B. C. 234.^[320] His family was of great antiquity, and numbered amongst its members many who were distinguished for their courage in war and their integrity in peace. His boyhood was passed in the healthy pursuits of rural life, at a small Sabine farm belonging to his father; and his mind, invigorated by stern and hardy training, was early directed to the study as well as the practice of agriculture. To this rugged yet honest discipline may be traced the features of his character as displayed in after life, his prejudices as well as his virtues.

He became a soldier at a very early age, B. C. 217, served in the Hannibalian war, was under the command of Fabius Maximus both in Campania and Tarentum, and did good service at the decisive battle of the Metaurus. Between his campaigns he did not seek to exhibit his laurels in the society of the capital, but, like Curius Dentatus and Quintius Cincinnatus, employed himself in the rural labours of his Sabine retirement.

His shrewd remarks and easy conversation, as well as the skill with which he pleaded the causes of his clients before the rural magistracy, soon made his abilities known, and his reputation attracted the notice of one of his country neighbours, L. Valerius Flaccus, who invited him to his town-house at Rome. 171Owing to the patronage of his noble friend, and his own merits, his rise to eminence as a pleader was rapid. He was a quæstor in B. C. 206, ædile in B. C. 199, prætor the following year, and in B. C. 195 he obtained the consulship, his patron Flaccus being now his colleague. His province was Spain;^[321] and, whilst stern and pitiless towards his foes, he exhibited a noble example of self-denying endurance in order to minister to the welfare of his army. At the conclusion of his consulship, he served as legatus in Thrace and Greece; and in B. C. 189 was sent on a civil mission to Fulvius Nobilior in Ætolia.

After experiencing one failure, he was elected censor in B. C. 184; and he had now an opportunity of making a return for the obligations which his earliest patron had conferred upon him; for, by his influence, Flaccus was appointed his colleague. This office was, above all others, suited to his talents; and to his remarkable activity in the discharge of his duties, he owes his fame and his surname.

He had now full scope for displaying his habits of business, his talents for administration, his uncompromising resistance to all luxury and extravagance, his fearlessness in the reformation of abuses: and though he was severe, public opinion bore testimony to his integrity, for he was rewarded with a statue and an inscription. He had now served his country in every capacity, but still he gave himself no rest; advancing age did not weaken his energies; he was always ready as the champion of the oppressed, the advocate of virtue, the punisher of vice. He prosecuted the extortionate governors of his old province, Spain.^[322] He pleaded before the senate the cause of the loyal Rhodians.

He caused the courteous dismissal of the three Greek philosophers, because the arguments of Carneades made it difficult to discern what was truth.^[323] Although his prejudice against Greeks prevented him sympathizing with the sorrows of the Achæan exiles, he supported the vote for their restoration to their native land. Neither his enemies nor his country would allow him rest. In his eighty-sixth year, he had to defend himself against a capital charge. In his eighty-ninth, he was sent to Africa as 172one of the arbitrators between the Carthaginians and Massinissa,^[324] and in his ninetieth, the year in which he died,^[325] his last public act was the prosecution of Galba for his perfidious treatment of the conquered Lusitanians.^[326]

Cato loved strife, and his long life was one continued combat. He never found a task too difficult, because difficulty called forth all his energies, and his strong will and invincible perseverance insured success. His inherent love of truth made him hate anything conventional. As a politician, he considered rank valueless, except it depended upon personal merit; and therefore he was an unrelenting enemy of the aristocracy. As a moralist, he indignantly rejected that false gloss of modern fashion which was superseding the old plainness, and which was, in his opinion, the foundation of his country’s glory. In literature, he distrusted and condemned every thing Greek, because he confounded the sentiments of its noblest periods as a nation with those of the degenerate Greeks with whom he came in contact. But, at length, his candid and truthful disposition discovered and confessed his error on this point, and his prejudices gave way before conviction.

Cato, with all his virtues, was a hard-hearted man.^[327] He had no amiability, no love, no affection; he did not love right, for he loved nothing; but he had a burning indignation against wrong. This was the mainspring of his conduct. He did not feel for the oppressed, but he declared war against the oppressor. He never could sympathize with living men. In his youth, all his admiration was for the past generation. In his old age, his feeling was that his life had been spent with the past, and he had nothing in common with the present.

173As is usually the case with those who live during a period of transition, his feelings were so interested in that past by which his character was formed, that he was incapable of discerning any good whatever in change and progress. For this reason he dreaded the invasion of refinement and civilization. Accustomed to connect virtue and purity with the absence of temptations, he was prepared to take an exaggerated view of the relation between polish and effeminacy, between a taste for the beautiful and luxury.

He was a bitter hater of those who opposed his prejudices. His enmity to Carthage sprung much more from his antagonism to Scipio, as the leader of the Greek or movement party, than from fears for the safety of Rome. Scipio said, Let Carthage be; therefore Cato’s will was, let Carthage be destroyed. When his hatred of injustice was aroused, as, for example, by the perfidy of S. Sulpicius Galba towards the Lusitanians, he could support the cause of foreigners against a fellow-countryman. His character is full of apparent inconsistencies. Although he hated oppression, he was cruel to his slaves; tyrannical and implacable, simply because he would not brook opposition to his will. His integrity was incorruptible, and yet he was a grinding usurer; frugal in his habits, and notwithstanding his few wants, grasping and avaricious; but it was his love of business that he was gratifying, rather than a love of money. Trade was with him a combat in which he would not allow an advantage to be gained by his adversary. Virtue did not present itself to Cato in an amiable form. He had but one idea of it—austerity; and, as his hatred of wrong was not counterbalanced by a love of right, the intensity of his hatred was only kept in check by the practical good sense and utilitarian views which occupy so prominent a place in the Roman character. Being himself reserved and undemonstrative, he expected others to be so likewise, and thought it unbecoming the dignity of a Roman to exhibit tenderness of feeling. On one occasion we are told that he degraded a Roman knight for embracing his wife in the presence of his daughter. His personal appearance was not more prepossessing than his manners, as we learn from the following severe epigram:—^[328]

As, notwithstanding his defects, Cato was morally the greatest man ever Rome produced, so he was one of the greatest intellectually. His genius was perfectly original; his character was not moulded by other men; he had no education except self-education. He had immense power of acquiring learning, and he ransacked every source to increase his stores; but he was indebted to no man for his opinions—they were self-formed, except those which he inherited, and in which his own independent convictions led him to acquiesce. He had the ability and the determination to excel in everything which he undertook, politics, war, rural economy, oratory, history. His style is rude, unpolished, ungraceful, because to him wit was artifice, and polish superficial, and therefore unreal. For this reason he did not profit by the inconceivably rapid change which was then taking place in the Latin language, and which is evident from the comparison of the fragments of Cato’s works with the polished comedies of Terence.

His statements, however, were clear and transparent; his illustrations, though quaint, were striking; the words with which he enriched his native tongue were full of meaning; his wit was keen and lively, although he never would permit it to offend against gravity, or partake of irreverence.^[329] His arguments went straight to the intellect, and carried conviction with them.

The character of Cato forms one of the most beautiful passages in the works of Livy:^[330] “In hoc viro tanta vis animi ingeniique fuit, ut, quocunque loco natus esset, fortunam sibi ipse facturus fuisse videretur. Nulla ars, neque privatæ, neque publicæ rei gerendæ, ei defuit. Urbanas rusticasque res pariter callebat. Ad summos honores alios scientia juris, alios eloquentia, 175alios gloria militaris provexit. Huic versatile ingenium sic pariter ad omnia fuit, ut natum ad id unum diceres, quodcunque ageret. In bello manu fortissimus, multisque insignibus clarus pugnis; idem, postquam ad magnos honores pervenit, summus imperator: idem in pace, si jus consuleres, peritissimus; si causa oranda esset, eloquentissimus. Nec is tantum, cujus lingua vivo eo viguerit, monumentum eloquentiæ nullum exstet: vivit immo vigetque eloquentia ejus, sacrata scriptis omnis generis. Orationes et pro se multæ, et pro aliis et in alios; nam non solum accusando, sed etiam causam dicendo, fatigavit inimicos. Simultates nimio plures et exercuerunt eum, et ipse exercuit eas; nec facile dixeris, utrum magis presserit eum nobilitas, an ille agitaverit nobilitatem. Asperi proculdubio animi, et linguæ acerbæ, et immodice liberæ fuit; sed invicti a cupiditatibus animi, et rigidæ innocentiæ; contemptor gratiæ divitiarum. In parsimonia, in patientia laboris, periculi, ferrei prope corporis animique; quam neque senectus quidem, quæ solvit omnia, fregerit. Qui sextum et octogesimum annum agens causam dixerit, ipse pro se oraverit, scripseritque; nonagesimo anno Ser. Galbam ad populi adduxerit judicium.”

Cato’s great historical and antiquarian work, “The Origines,” was written in his old age.^[331] Its title would seem to imply that it was merely an inquiry into the ancient history of his country; but in reality it comprehended far more than this—it was a history of Italy and Rome from the earliest times to the latest events which occurred in his own lifetime. The contents of the work are thus described by Cornelius Nepos.^[332] It is divided into seven books. The first treats of the history of the kings; the second and third of the rise and progress of the Italian states; the fourth contains the first Punic war; the fifth the war with Hannibal; the remaining two the history of the subsequent wars down to the prætorship of Servius Galba.

It was a work of great research and originality. For his archæological information, he had consulted the records and documents, not only of Rome, but of the principal Italian towns. It is probable that their constitutional history was introduced incidentally to the main narrative; and that the rise and progress of the Roman constitution was illustrated by the political principles of the Italian nations. The “Origines” also contained valuable notices respecting the history and constitution of Carthage,^[333] his embassy having furnished him with full opportunity for collecting materials. It was, in fact, a unique work: no other Roman historian wrote in the same spirit, or was equally laborious in the work of original investigation.

177The truthfulness and honesty of Cato must have rendered the contemporary part of the history equally valuable with the antiquarian portion. He could not have been guilty of flattery, he had no regard for the feelings of individuals. Not only he never mentions himself, but, except in times long gone by, he never names any one.^[334] The glory of a victory, or of a gallant exploit, belongs to the general, or consul, or tribune, as the representative of the republic. He does not allow either individual or family to participate in that which he considered the exclusive property of his country.

Sufficient fragments of the “Origines” remain to make us regret that more have not been preserved; but though very numerous, they are, with the exception of two, excessively brief. One of these is a portion of his own speech in favour of the Rhodians;^[335] the other a simple and affecting narrative of an act of self-devoted heroism. A consular army was surprised and surrounded by the Carthaginians in a defile, from which there was no escape. The tribune, whom Cato does not name, but who, as A. Gellius informs us, was Cædicius, went to the consul and recommended him to send four hundred men to occupy a neighbouring height. The enemy, he added, will attack them, and without doubt they will be slain to a man. Nevertheless, whilst the enemy is thus occupied, the army will escape. But, replied the consul, who will be the leader of this band? I will, said the tribune; I devote my life to you, and to my country. The tribune and four hundred men set forth to die. They sold their lives dearly, but all fell. “The immortal gods,” adds Cato, for Gellius is here quoting his very words, “granted the tribune a lot according to his valour. For thus it came to pass. Though he had received many wounds, none proved mortal; and when his comrades recognised him amongst the dead, faint from loss of blood, they took him up, and he recovered. But it makes a vast difference in what country a generous action is performed. Leonidas, of Lacedæmon, is praised, who performed a similar exploit at Thermopylæ. On account of his valour united Greece testified her gratitude in every possible way, and 178adorned his exploit with monumental records, pictures, statues, eulogies, histories. The Roman tribune gained but faint praise, and yet he had done the same, and saved the republic.” The most pathetic writer could not have told the tale more effectively than the stern Cato.

Circumstances invest his treatise “De Re Rustica” with great interest. The population of Rome, both patrician and plebeian, was necessarily agricultural. For centuries they had little commerce: their wealth consisted in flocks and herds, and in the conquered territories of nations as poor as themselves. The ager Romanus, and subsequently as they gained fresh acquisitions, the fertile plains, and valleys, and mountain sides of Italy, supplied them with maintenance. The statesman and the general, in the intervals of civil war or military service, returned, like Cincinnatus and Cato, to the cultivation of their fields and gardens. The Roman armies were recruited from the peasantry; and when the war was over, the soldier returned to his daily labour; and, in later times, the veteran, when his period of service was completed, became a small farmer in a military colony. To a restless nation, who could not exist in a state of inactivity, a change of labour was relaxation; and the pleasures of rural life, which were so often sung by the Augustan poets, were heartily enjoyed by the same man whose natural atmosphere seemed to be either politics or war.

Besides the possession of these rural tastes the Romans were essentially a domestic people. The Greeks were social; they lived in public; they had no idea of home. Woman did not with them occupy a position favourable to the existence of home-feeling. The Roman matron was the centre of the domestic circle; she was her husband’s equal, sometimes his counsellor, and generally the educator of his children in their early years. Hundreds of sepulchral inscriptions bear testimony to the sweet charities of home-life, to the dutiful obedience of children, the devoted affection of parents, the fidelity of wives, the attachments of husbands. Hence, home and all its pursuits and occupations had an interest in the eyes of a Roman. For this reason there were so many writers on rural and domestic economy. From Cato to Columella 179we have a list of authors whose object was instruction in the various branches of the subject. They were thus enumerated by Columella himself:^[336] “Cato was the first who taught the art of agriculture to speak in Latin; after him it was improved by the diligence of the two Sasernæ, father and son; next it acquired eloquence from Scrofa Tremellius; polish from M. Terentius, (Varro;) poetic power from Virgil.” To their illustrious names he adds those of J. Hyginus, the Carthaginian Mago, Corn. Celsus, J. Atticus, and his disciple J. Græcinus.

The work of Cato, “De Re Rustica,” has come down to us almost in form and substance as it was written. It has not the method of a regular treatise. It is a commonplace-book of agriculture and domestic economy under one hundred and sixty-three heads. The subjects are connected, but not regularly arranged; they form a collection of useful instructions, hints, and receipts. Its object is utility, not science. It serves the purposes of a farmers’ and gardeners’ manual; a domestic medicine, an herbal, and cookery-book; prudential maxims are interspersed, and some favourite charms for the cure of diseases in man and beast. Cato teaches his readers, for example, how to plant ozier-beds, to cultivate vegetables, to preserve the health of cattle, to pickle pork, and to make savoury dishes. He is shrewd and economical, but he never allows humanity to interfere with profits; for he recommends his readers to sell every thing which they do not want, even old horses and old slaves. He is a great conjurer, for he informs us that the most potent cure for a sprain is the repetition of the following hocus-pocus:^[337] “Daries dardaries, astataries dissunapitea;” or, “Huat hanat, huat hista, pista sista, domiabo damnaustra;” or, “Huat huat, huat, ista sis tar sis, ordannabon damnaustra.” This miscellaneous collection is preceded by an introduction, in which is maintained the superiority of agriculture over other modes of gaining a livelihood, especially over that of trade and money-lending.

180Cato was a conscientious father. He could not trust Greeks, but undertook the education of his son himself. As a part of his system, he addressed to him, in the form of letters, instruction on various topics—historical, philosophical, and moral. A very few fragments of this work, unfortunately, remain. In one of them he recommends a cursory view of Greek literature, but not a profound study of it. He evidently considered Greek writings morally dangerous; but he entertained a still greater horror of their medicine. He had confidence in his own old-fashioned charms and rural pharmacopeia; but he firmly believed, as he would the voice of an oracle, that all the Greek physicians were banded together to destroy the Romans as barbarians.

Of the orations of Cato, ninety titles are extant, together with numerous fragments.^[338] Some of these were evidently judicial, but the majority deliberative. After what has been said of his works it is scarcely necessary to describe the style of his eloquence. Unless a man is a mere actor, his character is generally exemplified in his speaking. This is especially true of Cato. He despised art. He was too fearless and upright, too confident in the justice of his cause, to be a rhetorician; too much wrapt up in his subject to be careful of the language in which he conveyed his thoughts. He imitated no one, and no one was ever able to imitate him. His style was abrupt, concise, witty, full of contrast; its beauty that of nature, namely, the rapid alternations of light and shade. Now it was rude and harsh, now pathetic and affecting. It was the language of debate—antagonistic, gladiatorial, elenchtic.

Plutarch compares him to Socrates; but he omits the principal point of resemblance, namely, that he always speaks as if he was hand to hand with an adversary. Even amidst the glitter and polish of the Augustan age, old Cato had some admirers.^[339] But this was not the general feeling. The intrinsic value of the rough gem was not appreciated. Cicero^[340] tells us that, to his astonishment, Cato was almost entirely unknown. The time afterwards arrived when criticism became a science, and he was 181estimated as he deserved to be; but this admiration for the antique form was not a revival of the antique spirit; it was only an attempt to compensate for its loss; it was an imitation, not a reality.

Such was the literary position occupied by him whom Niebuhr pronounces to be the only great man in his generation, and one of the greatest and most honourable characters in Roman history.^[341]

There was no one worthy to follow Cato as an historian but L. Cassius Hemina. A. Postumius Albinus, consul B. C. 151, was, according to Cicero,^[342] a learned and eloquent man, and wrote a history of Rome in Greek;^[343] but it was so inelegant that he apologized on the ground that he was a Roman writing in a foreign language.^[344] It is probable, also, that he was inaccurate and puerile. He tells us, for example, that Baiæ was so named after Boia, the nurse of one of Æneas’ friends, and that Brutus used to eat green figs and honey.^[345]

Hemina wrote Roman annals in five or six books, and published them about the time of the fall of Carthage:^[346] a considerable number of fragments are extant. He was the last writer of this period who investigated the original sources of history. His researches went back to very early times; and he appears to have attempted, at least, a comparison of Greek and Italian chronology, for he fixes the age of Homer and Hesiod in the dynasty of the Silvii, more than 160 years after the siege of Troy. He relates the original legend of Cacus and the oxen of Hercules, the finding of Numa’s coffin, and the celebration of the fourth sæcular games in the consulship of Lentulus and Mummius.^[347] This was probably the last event of importance previous to the publication of his work. Only two fragments are of sufficient length to enable us to form any judgment respecting his style. Many of his expressions are very archaic, but the story of Cacus is told in a simple and pleasing manner.

182After Hemina, Roman history was, for some years, nothing more than a compilation from the old chronicles, and from the labours and investigations of previous authors. Q. Fabius Maximus Servilianus was consul A. U. C. 612. His Latin style must have been very deficient in euphony, if he frequently indulged in such words as litterosissimum, which occurs in one of the fragments extant. C. Fannius, prætor A. U. C. 617, wrote a meager history^[348] in not inelegant Latin. Vennonius, his contemporary, was the author of annals which are referred to by Dionysius. To this list of historians may be added C. Sempronius Tuditanus, a polished gentleman as well as an elegant writer.^[349]

The days of the Gracchi were very fruitful in historians and autobiographers. At the head of them stands L. Cælius Antipater,^[350] a Roman freedman, an eloquent orator, and skilful jurist. His work consisted of seven books, and many fragments are preserved by the grammarians. He seems to have delighted in the marvellous; for Cicero quotes from two remarkable dreams in his treatise on divination. He is also frequently referred to by Livy in his history of the Punic wars.

Contemporaneously with Cælius lived Cn. Gellius, whose voluminous history extended to the length of ninety-seven books at least. Livy seldom refers to him. Probably, in this instance, he acted wisely; for he seems to have been an historian of little or no authority. Two other Gellii, Sextus and Aulus, flourished at the same time.

Publius Sempronius Asellio wrote, about the middle of the seventh century of Rome, a memoir of the Numantian war. He was an eye-witness of the scenes which he describes, for he was tribune at Numantia under Scipio Africanus.^[351]

The only constitutional history of Rome was the work of C. Junius, who was surnamed Gracchanus, in consequence of his intimacy with C. Gracchus. It is certain that this work must have been the result of original research, as there are no remains extant of any history which could have furnished the materials. The legal and political knowledge which it contained was evidently 183considerable, for it is quoted by the jurists as a trustworthy authority.^[352]

Servius Fabius Pictor^[353] wrote annals; but his principal work was a treatise on the pontifical law, an antiquarian record of rites and ceremonies. L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi Censorius was consul in the year in which Ti. Sempronius Gracchus was killed, and censor the year after the murder of C. Gracchus:^[354] he is occasionally quoted by Dionysius, and twice by Livy, who, on the points in question, consider his authority less trustworthy than that of Fabius Pictor.^[355] Gellius^[356] quotes from him the following traditional anecdote of Romulus. Once upon a time the king was invited out to supper. He drank very little, because he had business to transact on the following day. Some one at table remarked, if every body did so, wine would be cheaper. “Nay,” replied Romulus, “I have drank as much as I wished; if every body did so, it would be dear.”

Piso was an honest man, but not an honest historian. He acquired the surname Frugi by his strict integrity and simple habits; but his ingenuity tempted him to disregard historical truth. Niebuhr considers him the first who introduced systematic forgeries into Roman history. Seeing the discrepancies and consistencies between the accounts given by previous annalists, instead of weighing them together, and adopting those which were best supported by the testimony of antiquity, he either invented theories, in order to reconcile conflicting statements, or substituted some narrative which he thought might have been the groundwork of the marvellous legend. Niebuhr observes, that he treated history precisely in the same way in which the rationalists endeavoured to divest the scripture of its miraculous character.

M. Æmilius Scaurus, P. Rutilius Rufus, and Q. Lutatius Catulus, were the first Roman autobiographers; and their example was afterwards followed by Sulla, who employed his retirement in writing his own memoir in twenty-two books. Scaurus was the son of a charcoal-dealer, who, by his military talents, twice raised himself to the consulship, and once enjoyed the honour of 184a triumph. A few unimportant fragments of his personal memoirs are preserved by the grammarians. Rutilius was consul A. U. C. 649: he wrote his own life in Latin, and a history of Rome in Greek.^[357] Catulus is praised by Cicero for his Latinity, who compares his style to that of Xenophon.^[358]

The other historians, who flourished immediately before the literary period of Cicero, were C. Licinius Macer, Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, and Q. Valerius Antias.

Macer^[359] was a prolix and gossiping writer: he was not deficient in industry; he spared no pains in collecting traditions; but he had no judgment in selection, and accepted all the Greek fables respecting Italy without discrimination. Hence he makes some statements which were rejected by annalists of greater authority. Niebuhr^[360] defends him, and regrets deeply the loss of his annals. He thinks it not improbable that Cicero’s unfavourable criticism may have been owing to political prejudice. His work was voluminous, and probably traced the Roman history from the commencement to his own times.

Quadrigarius is much quoted both by Livy and the grammarians. From the fragments extant it is clear that his history commenced with the Gallic wars; and from a passage in Plutarch’s Life of Numa,^[361] he appears to have been actuated by a motive indicative of his truthfulness as an historian. He was not content with fabulous legends; and there were no documents in existence anterior to the capture of Rome by the Gauls. His work consisted of twenty-three books: it carried the history, as is generally supposed, as far as the death of Sulla,^[362] or, as Niebuhr believed, down to the consulship of Cicero.^[363] The longest fragment extant has been preserved by Gellius, and relates the combat of Manlius Torquatus with the gigantic Gaul.

The style is abrupt and sententious, and the structure of the sentences loose; but the story is told in a naïve and spirited manner. One can realize the scene as the historian describes it—the awe of the Roman host at the unwonted sight—the gigantic stature, the truculent countenance of the Goliath-like youth—the 185unbroken silence, in the midst of which his voice of thunder uttered his defiance—the scorn with which he sneered and put out his tongue when no one accepted his challenge—the shame and grief of the noble Manlius—the struggle—the cutting off the monster’s head, and the wreathing his own neck with the collar still reeking with blood.

It has been suggested that this historian received the surname Quadrigarius because, in the games of the circus, celebrated after the victory of Sulla, he won the prize in the chariot-race.

No Roman historian ever made greater pretensions to accuracy than Valerius Antias, and no one was less trustworthy. Livy, on one occasion,^[364] accuses him of either negligence or impudent exaggeration; but there is no doubt that he was guilty of the latter fault. Almost all the places in which he is quoted by Livy have reference to numbers, and in all he not only goes far beyond all other historians,^[365] but even transgresses the bounds of possibility. Livy never hesitates to call him a liar. In all cases he is guilty of falsehood; the only question is whether his falsehood is more or less moderate. The following examples are sufficient to convict him. He undertakes to assert that the exact number of the Sabine virgins was 527.^[366] If one historian states that 60 engines of war were taken, he makes the number 6,000;^[367] when all authors, Greek and Latin, unite in asserting that in A. U. C. 553, there was no memorable campaign, he says a battle was fought in which 12,000 of the enemy were slain and 1,200 taken prisoners.^[368] In another place 10,000 slain become 40,000;^[369] and a fine which Quadrigarius states was to be paid by instalments in thirty years, he distributes only over the space of ten.^[370] With matter of this unauthentic kind, he filled no less than seventy-five books, of which a large portion of passages have been preserved, especially by Livy.

Hitherto, with one doubtful exception, Latin historical composition was in the hands of the great and noble; the first historian 186belonging to the order of the libertinei was L. Otacilius Pilitus. Suetonius^[371] says, that he was not only originally a slave, but that he acted as porter, and, as was the custom, was chained to his master’s door. Nothing is known of his works; it is probable, therefore, that they were of no merit.

Two more important names remain to be mentioned amongst the annalists of this period—L. Cornelius Sisenna and Q. Ælius Tubero. Sisenna, according to the testimony of Cicero,^[372] was born between B. C. 640 and B. C. 680, and filled the office of quæstor B. C. 676. He was, according to the same authority, a man of learning and taste, wrote pure Latin, was well acquainted with public business, and, although deficient in industry, surpassed all his predecessors and contemporaries in his talents as an historian. Probably his style of writing approached more nearly to that of the new school, although still below the Ciceronian standard. The testimony of Sallust is not so favourable, as he considers him not sufficiently impartial to fulfil adequately the duties of a contemporary historian.^[373]

No fragments are extant of sufficient length to enable us to form any estimate of his merits, although, on account of the numerous unusual words which occur in his writings, no historian of this period has been more frequently quoted by the grammarians. The probability is that his twenty-three books are of little or no value, as they are never referred to in order to illustrate matters of historical or antiquarian interest.

Tubero was the contemporary of Cicero, and did not write his annals until after Cicero’s consulship. Nevertheless he must be considered as belonging to the old school, and its last as well as one of its most worthy representatives. He was the father of L. Tubero, the legate of Q. Cicero, in Asia. Like Piso, he was a stout opponent of the Gracchic policy, and a firm supporter of the aristocracy. A stoic in philosophy, his life was in strict accordance with his creed, and his style of writing is said to have been marked with Catonian rudeness. He describes, in his history, the cruel tortures of Regulus by the Carthaginians, and relates the story of the wonderful serpent at Bagrada.^[374] He is once quoted by Dionysius and twice by Livy.

Eloquence, though of a rude, unpolished kind, must have been in the very earliest times a characteristic of the Roman people. It is a plant indigenous to a free soil. Its infancy was nurtured in the schools of Tisias and Corax, when, on the dethronement of the tyrants, the dawn of freedom brightened upon Sicily; and, just as in modern times it has flourished, especially in England and America, fostered by the unfettered freedom of debate, so it found a congenial home in free Greece and republican Rome. He who could contrast in the most glowing colours the cruelty of the pitiless creditor, with the sufferings of the ruined debtor—who could ingeniously connect those patent evils with some defects in the constitution, some inequalities in political rights hitherto hidden and unobserved—would wield at will the affections of the people, and become the master-spirit amongst his fellow-citizens.

Occasions would not be wanting in a state where, from the earliest times, a struggle was continually maintained between a dominant and a subject race, for the use of those arts of eloquence which nature, the mistress of all art, suggests. The plebeians, in their conflicts with the patricians, must have had some leader, and eloquence, probably to a great extent, directed the selection, even though there was, in reality, no Menenius Agrippa to lead them back from the sacred mountain with his homely wisdom. Cases of oppression, doubtless, inspired some Icilius or Virginius with words of burning indignation, and many a Siccius Dentatus, 188though he had never learnt technical rhetoric, used the rhetorical artifice of appealing to his honourable wounds and scars in front, which he had received in the service of his country, and to disgraceful weals with which his back was lacerated by the lash of the torturer. In an army where the personal influence of the general was more productive of heroism than the rules of a long-established discipline, a short harangue often led the soldiers to victory. And, lastly, the relation subsisting between the two orders of patron and client taught a milder and more business-like eloquence—that of explaining with facility common civil rights, and unravelling the knotty points of the constitutional law. Oratory, in fact, was the unwritten literature of active life, and recommended itself by its antagonistic spirit and its utility to a warlike and utilitarian people. Long, therefore, before the art of the historian was sufficiently advanced to record a speech, or to insert a fictitious one, as an embellishment or illustration of its pages, the forum, senate, the battle-field, the threshold of the jurisconsult, had been nurseries of Roman eloquence, or schools in which oratory attained a vigorous youth, and prepared for its subsequent maturity.

Tradition speaks of a speech recorded even before the poetry of Nævius was written, and this speech was known to Cicero. It was delivered against Pyrrhus by Appius Claudius the blind.^[375] He belonged to a house, every member of which, from the decemvir to the emperor, was born to bow down their fellow-men beneath their strong wills. Such a character, united with a poetical genius, implies the very elements of that oratory which would curb a nation accustomed to be restrained by force as much as by reason. On this celebrated occasion,^[376] the blind old man caused himself to be borne into the senate-house on a litter, that he might confront the wily Cineas whom Pyrrhus had sent to negotiate peace. The Macedonian minister was an accomplished speaker, and his memory, that important auxiliary to eloquence, was so powerful, that in one day he learnt to address 189all the senators and knights by name, yet it is said that he was no match for the energy of Appius, and was obliged to quit Rome.

Whilst the legal and political constitution of the Roman people gave direct encouragement to deliberative and judicial oratory, respect to the illustrious dead furnished opportunities for panegyric. The song of the bard in honour of the departed warrior gave place to the funeral oration, (laudatio.)

Before the commencement of the second Punic war,^[377] Q. Metellus pronounced the funeral harangue over his father, the conqueror of Hasdrubal; history also speaks of him as a debator in the senate, and his address to the censors is found in the fourth decade of Livy.^[378] This funeral oration was admired even in the time of J. Cæsar, and Pliny^[379] has recorded the substance of one remarkable passage which it contained. The period of the second Punic war produced Corn. Cethegus. Cicero mentions him in his list of Roman orators;^[380] and although he had never seen a specimen of his style, he states that he retained his force and vigour even in his old age. Ennius also bears testimony to his eloquence in the following line:—

At the conclusion of the second war, Fabius Cunctator pronounced the eulogium^[381] of his elder son; and Cicero, although he denies him the praise of eloquence, states that he was a fluent and correct speaker.

Scipio Africanus Major, on that memorable day when his enemies called upon him to render an account of the moneys received from Antiochus, proved himself a consummate orator: he disdained to refute the malignant charges of his opponents, but spoke till dusk of the benefits which he had conferred upon his country. Thus it came to pass that the adjourned meeting was held on the anniversary of Zama. Livy has adorned the simple words of the great soldier with his graceful language, but A. Gellius^[382] has preserved the peroration almost in his own 190words. “I call to remembrance, Romans,” said he, “that this is the very day on which I vanquished in a bloody battle on the plains of Africa the Carthaginian Hannibal, the most formidable enemy Rome ever encountered. I obtained for you a peace and an unlooked-for victory. Let us then not be ungrateful to heaven, but let us leave this knave, and at once offer our grateful thanksgivings to Jove, supremely good and great.”

The people obeyed his summons—the forum was deserted, and crowds followed him with acclamations to the Capitol.

Mention has already been made of the stern eloquence of his adversary Cato. He was equally laborious as a speaker and a writer. No fewer than one hundred and fifty of his orations were extant in Cicero’s time, most of which were on subjects of public and political interest.

The father of the Gracchi was distinguished amongst his contemporaries for a plain and nervous eloquence, but no specimens of his oratory have survived.

Scipio Africanus Minor (Æmilianus) was precisely qualified to be the link between the new and the old school of oratory. His soldier-like character displayed all the vigour and somewhat of the sternness of the old Roman, but the harder outlines were modified by an ardent love of learning. His first campaign was in Greece, under his father Æmilius Paulus. His first literary friendship was formed there with the historian Polybius, which ripened into the closest intimacy when Polybius came as a hostage to Rome. Subsequently he became acquainted with Panætius, who was his instructor in the principles of philosophy. His taste was gratified with Greek refinement, although he abhorred the effeminacy and profligacy of the Greeks themselves. In the spirit of Cato, for whom he entertained the warmest admiration, he indignantly remonstrated against the inroad of Greek manners. In his speech in opposition to the law of C. Gracchus, he warned his hearers of the corruptions which were already insinuating themselves amongst the Roman youth. “I did not believe what I heard,” he says, “until I witnessed it with my own eyes: at the dancing-school I saw more than five hundred of the youth of both sexes. I saw a boy, of at least twelve years old, wearing 191the badge of noble birth, who performed a castanet dance, which an immodest slave could not have danced without disgrace.”

The degeneracy of Greek manners had not corrupted his moral nature, or rendered him averse to the active duties of a citizen; it had not destroyed the frankness, whilst it had humanized the rough honesty, of the Roman, and taught him to love the beautiful as well as the good, and to believe that the former was the proper external development of the latter.

One friend, whose influence contributed to form the mind of Scipio, was the wise and gentle Lælius. In other places, as well as in the “de Amicitia,” Cicero associates their names together. These distinguished friends were well suited to each other. The sentiments of both were noble and elevated. “Both,” as Cicero^[383] says, “were ‘imprimis eloquentes.’” Their discrepancies were such as draw men of similar tastes more closely together, in those hours which they can devote to their favourite pursuits. Scipio was an active man of business—Lælius, a contemplative philosopher: Scipio, a Roman in heart and soul—Lælius, a citizen of the world: Scipio was rather inclined to ostentatious display—Lælius was retiring. The former had a correct taste, spoke Latin with great purity, and had an extensive acquaintance with the literature both of Greece and his own country. The attainments of the latter were more solid, and his acquaintance with the mind of Greece more profound. But Lælius was not equally calculated to occupy a place in history; and hence, perhaps, although a few fragments of the eloquence of Scipio are extant,^[384] the remains of that of Lælius extend only to as many lines. Cheerfulness, (hilaritas,) smoothness, (lenitas,) and learning distinguished the speeches of Lælius, whilst spirit, genius, and natural power marked those of Scipio.

Servius Sulpicius Galba, whom Cato^[385] prosecuted for his treachery to the Lusitanians, obtained from Cicero the praise of having been the first Roman who really understood how to apply the theoretical principles of Greek rhetoric. He is said likewise to have carried away with him the feelings of his auditors by his animated and vehement delivery. How skilful he was in the 192use of rhetorical artifice is shown by his parading before the assembly of the people, when brought to trial, his two infant sons, and the orphan of his friend Sulpicius Gallus. His tears and embraces touched the hearts of his judges, and the cold-blooded perjurer was acquitted. External artifice, however, probably constituted his whole merit. He had the tact thus to cover a dry and antique style, destitute of nerve and muscle, of which no specimen except only a few words remain.

All periods of political disquiet are necessarily favourable to eloquence, and the era of the Gracchi was especially so. Extensive political changes were now established. They had been of slow and gradual growth, and were the natural development of the Roman system; but they were changes which could not take place without the crisis being accompanied by great political convulsions. In order to understand the state of parties, of which the great leaders and principal orators were the representatives, it is necessary to explain briefly in what these changes consisted. The result of an obstinate and persevering struggle during nearly four centuries was, that the old distinction of patrician and plebeian no longer existed. Plebeians held the consulship^[386] and censorship,^[387] and patricians, like the Gracchi, stood forward as plebeian tribunes and champions of popular rights.

The distinctions of blood and race, therefore, were no longer regarded. Most of the old patrician families were extinct. Niebuhr believes that at this period not more than fifteen patrician “gentes” remained; and the individual members of those which survived, if they maintained their position at all, maintained it by personal influence. The constitutional principle which determined the difference of ranks was property. This line of demarkation between rich and poor was not an impassable one like that of birth, but it had now become very broad and deep, owing to the accumulation of wealth in few hands; and thus between these two orders there was as little sympathy as there had been between the patrician creditors and the plebeian debtors in the earlier times of the republic.

But besides this constitutional principle of distinction, there 193was another of a more aristocratic nature, which owed its erection to public opinion. Those families the members of which had held high public offices were termed nobiles (nobles.) Those individuals whose families had never been so distinguished were termed new men (novi homines.) Thus a man’s ancestors were made hostages for his patriotism; and so trustworthy a pledge was hereditary merit considered for ability and fidelity in the discharge of high functions, that only in a few exceptional cases was the consulship, although open to all, conferred upon a new man. One consequence of all these changes was, that the struggle for political distinction became hotter than ever, and the strife more vehement between the competitors for public favour.

These stirring times produced many celebrated orators. Papirius Carbo, the ultra-liberal and unscrupulous colleague of Tiberius Gracchus, who united the gift of a beautiful voice to copiousness and fluency; Lepidus Porcina, who attained the perfection of Attic gentleness, and whom Tib. Gracchus took as his model; Æmilius Scaurus, whom Statius libelled as of ignoble birth; Rutilius Rufus, who was too upright to appeal to the compassion of his judges;^[388] M. Junius Pennus, who met by an insulting alien act the bill of Gracchus for the enfranchisement of the Italians.

The Gracchi themselves were each in a different degree eloquent, and possessed those endowments and accidents of birth which would recommend their eloquence to their countrymen. Gentleness and kindness were the characteristics of this illustrious race. Their father, by his mild administration, attached to himself the warm affection of the Spaniards. Their mother inherited the strong mind and genius of Scipio. To a sound knowledge of Greek and Latin literature^[389] and a talent for poetry, she added feminine accomplishments. She danced elegantly, more elegantly, indeed, than according to the strict notions of Roman morality a woman of character need have done. She could also sing and accompany herself upon the lute. To her care in early youth the illustrious brothers owed the development of their natural endowments, and the direction of their generous 194principles. Cicero tells us that he had seen the letters of this remarkable woman, which showed how much her sons were indebted to her teaching. Greek philosophers aided her in her work; and the accomplished Lælius contributed to add grace and polish to the more solid portions of her education.

Notwithstanding that the political principles which the Gracchi embraced were the same, their characters, or, more properly speaking, their temperaments, widely differed, and their style of speaking was, as might be expected, in accordance with their respective dispositions. Tiberius was cold, deliberate, sedate, reserved. The storms of passion never ruffled the calmness of his feelings. His speaking, therefore, was self-possessed and grave, as stoical as his philosophical creed. His conduct was not the result of impulse, but of a strict sense of duty. Cicero termed him homo sanctissimus, and his style was as chastened as his integrity was spotless. Such, if we may trust Plutarch, was the character of his oratory, for no fragments remain.

Caius, who was nine years younger than his brother, was warm, passionate, and impetuous: he was inferior to Tiberius morally, as he was intellectually his superior. His impulses were generous and amiable, but he had not that unswerving rectitude of purpose which is the result of moral principle. He had, however, more genius, more creative power. His imagination, lashed by the violence of his passions, required a strong curb; but for that reason it gushed forth as from a natural fountain, and like a torrent carried all before it. On one occasion, to which Cicero alludes,^[390] his look, his voice, his gestures, were so inexpressibly affecting, that even his enemies were dissolved in tears. It is said that in his calmer moments he was conscious that his vehemence was apt to offend against good taste, and employed a slave to stand near him with a pitch-pipe, in order that he might regulate his voice when passion rendered the tones unmusical. His education enabled him to rid himself of the harshness of the old school, and to gain the reputation of being the father of Roman prose. But his impetuosity made him leave unfinished that which he had well begun. “His language was noble, his sentiments wise; gravity pervaded his whole style, but his works 195wanted the last finishing stroke. There were many glorious beginnings, but they were not brought to perfection.”^[391] Several fragments remain, which confirm the correctness of Cicero’s criticism—one of the most beautiful is from his speech against Popilius Lænas, which drove that blood-thirsty tyrant into voluntary exile.

Oratory began now to be studied more as an art, and to be invested with a more polished garb. The interval between the Gracchi and Cicero boasted of many distinguished names, such as those of Q. Catulus, Curio, Fimbria, Scævola, Cotta, P. Sulpicius, and the Memmii. The most illustrious names of this epoch were M. Antonius, L. Licinius Crassus, and Cicero’s immediate predecessor and most formidable rival, Hortensius. Antony and Crassus, says Cicero, were the first Romans who elevated eloquence to the heights to which it had been raised by Greek genius.^[392] From this complaint it may be inferred that, notwithstanding the popular prejudice which existed against Greek taste, and to which even Cicero himself sometimes conceived himself obliged to yield,^[393] the leading orators had ceased to take the specimens of old Roman eloquence as their models. Cicero asserts^[394] that both Antony and Crassus owed their eminence to a diligent study of Greek literature, and to the instructions of Greek professors. The former, he says, attended regularly lectures at Athens and Rhodes, and the latter spoke Greek as if it had been his mother tongue. Yet both had the narrow-minded vanity to deny their obligations: they thought their eloquence would be more popular, the one by showing contempt for the Greeks, the other by affecting not to know them.

M. Antonius entered public life as a pleader, and thus laid the foundation of his brilliant political career; but he was through life greater as a judicial than as a deliberative orator. He was indefatigable in preparing his case, and made every point tell: he was a great master of the pathetic, and knew the 196way to the hearts of the judices. He was not free from the prevailing fault of advocates, of being somewhat unscrupulous in his assertions; and the reason which he is said to have given for never having published any of his speeches was, lest he should be forced to deny his words. This statement, however, is refuted by Cicero.^[395] Although he did not himself give his speeches to posterity, some of his most pointed expressions and favourite passages left an indelible impression on the memories of his hearers: many are preserved by Cicero, who has given us also a complete epitome of one of them.^[396] In the prime of life, he fell a victim to political fury; and his bleeding head was placed upon the rostrum which was so frequently the scene of his eloquent triumphs.

L. Licinius Crassus was four years younger than Antonius, having been born B. C. 140. It is not known whether he was connected with the distinguished family whose name he bore. He commenced his career at the Roman bar.^[397] At the early age of twenty-one, he successfully impeached C. Carbo, and in the year B. C. 118 supported the foundation of a colony at Narbo, in Gaul. A measure so beneficial to the poorer citizens increased his popularity as well as his professional fame. He went to Asia as quæstor, and there studied under Metrodorus the rhetorician. On his way home he remained a short time at Athens, and attended the lectures of the leading professors.

Notwithstanding his knowledge of jurisprudence, and his early eminence as a pleader, the speech which established his reputation was a political one. Under the Roman judicial system, the prætor presided in court, with a certain number of assessors, (judices,) who gave their verdict like our jurymen. These were chosen from the senators. Experience proved that not only in their determination to stand by their order they were guilty of partiality, but that they had also been open to bribery. The knights constituted the nearest approach which could be found to a rich middle class. C. Gracchus, therefore, by the “Lex 197Sempronia,” transferred the administration of justice to a body of three hundred men, chosen from the equestrian order. This promised to be a salutary change; but so corrupt was the whole framework of Roman society, that it did not prove effectual. The Publicani, who farmed the revenues of the provinces, were all Roman knights. The new judges, therefore, were as anxious to shield the peculations and extortions of their own brethren as the old had been.

In B. C. 106, L. Servilius Cæpio brought in a bill for the restoration of the judicial office to the senators. In support of this measure (the first Lex Servilia,) Crassus delivered a powerful and triumphant oration, in which he warmly espoused the cause of the senate, whom he had before as strenuously opposed on the question of the colony to Narbo. This speech was his chef-d’œuvre.^[398] After serving the office of consul,^[399] in which he seems to have mistaken his vocation by exchanging the toga for the sword, he was raised to the censorship.^[400] His year of office is celebrated for the closing the schools of the Latin rhetoricians by an edict of himself and his colleague. The foundations of these schools had been laid in the ruins of the Greek schools, when the philosophers and rhetoricians were banished from Rome.^[401] Although the censorial power could suppress the schools, it could not put a stop to the education given there. The professors found a refuge in private mansions; and thus, protected and fostered by intelligent patrons, continued to fulfil their duties as instructors of youth. How often did literature at Rome have to seek an asylum from private patronage against the rude attacks of public prejudice! The reasons for the measure of Crassus are stated in the preamble.^[402] These schools were a novelty; they were contrary to ancient institutions; they encouraged idle habits among the Roman youth. Cicero defended this arbitrary act on the ground that the professors pretended to teach subjects of which they were themselves ignorant; but Cicero could scarcely find a fault in Crassus. He thought him a model of perfection—the 198first of orators and jurists.^[403] He saw no inconsistency in his conduct in the cases of the Narbonne colony and the Servilian law.^[404] He is lavish in his praises of his wit and facetiousness, (lepor et facetiæ,^[405]) and applies to his malignant and ill-natured jokes the term urbanity. The bon-mots of Crassus were by no means superior to the generality of Roman witticisms, which were deficient in point, although they were personal, caustic, and severe.^[406] The grave Romans were content with a very little wit; the quality for which they looked in an oration was not playfulness, but skill in the art of ingenious tormenting. Crassus never uttered a jest equal to that of old Cato, when he said of Q. Helvidius, the glutton, whose house was on fire, “What he could not eat he has burned.”^[407]

His conduct with respect to the Latin schools, and his self-indulgent life in his magnificent mansion on the Palatine, prove that he had retained the narrow-mindedness of the old Romans without their temperance and self-denial, and had acquired the luxury and taste of the Greeks without their liberality. If, however, we make some allowance for partiality, Crassus deserves the favourable criticism of Cicero.^[408] His style is careful and yet not laboured—it is elegant, accurate, and perspicuous. He seems to have possessed considerable powers of illustration, and great clearness in explaining and defining; his delivery was calm and self-possessed, his action sufficiently vehement, but not excessive.^[409] He took especial pains with the commencement of his speech. When he was about to speak, every one was prepared to listen, and the very first words which he uttered showed him worthy of the expectation formed. No one better understood the difficult art of uniting elegance with brevity.

From amongst the crowd of orators which were then flourishing in the last days of expiring Roman liberty, Cicero selected Crassus to be the representative of his sentiments in his imaginary conversation in the de Oratore. He felt that their tastes were congenial. In this most captivating essay, he introduces 199his readers to a distinguished literary circle, men who united activity in public life with a taste for refined leisure. Antony, Crassus, Scævola, Cotta, and Sulpicius, met at Tusculum to talk of the politics of the day. For this especial purpose they had come, and all day long they ceased not to converse on these grave matters. They spoke not of lighter matters until they reclined at supper. Their day seemed to have been spent in the senate, their evening at Tusculum. Next day, in the serene and sunny climate of Frascati, a scene well fitted for the calm repose of a Platonic dialogue, Scævola proposed to imitate the Socrates of Plato, and converse, as the great philosopher did, beneath the shade of a plane-tree. Crassus assented, suggesting only that cushions would be more convenient than the grass. So the dialogue began in which Crassus is made the mouthpiece to deliver the sentiments of Cicero.

Like our own Chatham, Crassus almost died on the floor of the senate-house, and his last effort was in support of the aristocratic party. His opponent, Philippus the consul, strained his power to the utmost to insult him, and ordered his goods to be seized. His last words were worthy of him. He mourned the bereavement of the senate—that the consul, like a sacrilegious robber, should strip of its patrimony the very order of which he ought to have been a kind parent or faithful guardian. “It is useless,” he continued, “to seize these: if you will silence Crassus, you must tear out his tongue, and even then my liberty shall breathe forth a refutation of thy licentiousness!” The paroxysm was too much for him; fever ensued, and in seven days he was a corpse.

We must pass over numerous names contained in the catalogue of Cicero, mentioning by the way Cotta and the two Sulpicii. Cotta’s taste was pure; but his delicate lungs made his oratory too tame for his vehement countrymen. Publius Sulpicius had all the powers of a tragic actor to influence the passions, but professed that he could not write, and therefore left no specimens behind him. His reluctance to write must have been the result of reserve or of indolence, and not of inability, for nothing can be more tender and touching, and yet more philosophical, 200than his letter to Cicero on the death of his beloved daughter.^[410] Servius, like too many orators, and even Cicero himself, at first despised an accurate knowledge of the Roman law. The great Scævola, however, rebuked him, and reminded him how disgraceful it was for one who desired the reputation of an advocate to be ignorant of law. These words excited his emulation; he ardently devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence,^[411] and at length is said to have surpassed even Scævola himself.

The last of the pre-Ciceronian orators was Hortensius. Although he was scarcely eight years senior to the greatest of all Roman orators, he cannot be considered as belonging to the same literary period, since the genius and eloquence of Cicero constitute the commencement of a new era. He was, nevertheless, his contemporary and his rival; and all that is known respecting his career is derived from the writings of Cicero.

Q. Hortensius was the son of L. Hortensius, prætor of Sicily, B. C. 97. He was born B. C. 114; and, as it was the custom that noble Roman youths should be called to the bar at an early age, he commenced his career as a pleader at nineteen, and pleaded, with applause and success, before two consuls who were excellent judges of his merits, the orator Crassus and the jurist Scævola. His first speech was in support of the province of Africa against the extortions of the governor. In his second he defended Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, against his brother, who had dethroned him. When Crassus and Antony were dead, he was left without any rival except Cotta, but he soon surpassed him.^[412] The eloquence of Cotta was too languid to stand against the impetuous flow, and he thus became the acknowledged leader of the Roman bar until the star of Cicero arose. They first came in contact when Cicero pleaded the cause of Quintius, and in that oration he pays the highest possible compliment to the talents and genius of Hortensius.

His political connexion with the faction of Sulla, and his unscrupulous 201support of the profligate corruption which characterized that administration both at home and abroad, enlisted his legal talents in defence of the infamous Verres; but the eloquence of Cicero, together with the justice of the cause which he espoused, prevailed, and from that time forward his superiority over Hortensius was established and complete. But the admiration which Cicero entertained for his rival had ripened into friendship, which neither the fact of their being retained on opposite sides, nor even difference in politics, had power to interrupt. The only danger which ever threatened its stability was some little jealousy on the part of Cicero—a jealousy which must be attributed to his morbid temperament and susceptible disposition. But Hortensius was always a warm and affectionate friend to Cicero, and Cicero was affected with the deepest grief when he heard of the death of Hortensius.^[413] The time at length arrived when identity of political sentiments drew them more closely together; and it is to this we owe the place which Hortensius so often occupies in the letters and other works of the great Roman orator.

Cicero had originally espoused the popular cause; but his zeal gradually became less ardent, and the Catilinarian conspiracy threw him entirely into the arms of the aristocratic party. At the Roman bar politics had great influence in determining the side taken by the leading advocates. They were virtually the great law officers of the party in the republic to which they belonged, and had, as it were, general retainers on their own side. Hence Hortensius generally advocated the same side with Cicero. Together they defended Rabirius, Muræna, Flaccus, Sextius, Scaurus, and Milo; but the former seems to have at once acknowledged his inferiority, and henceforward to have taken but little part in public life. In B. C. 51, he defended his nephew from a charge of bribery; but the guilt of the accused was so plain that the people hissed him when he entered the theatre.^[414] The following year he died, at the age of seventy-five, and left behind him a daughter, whose eloquence is celebrated in history. An oration, of which she was the author, 202was read in the time of Quintilian for the sake of its own merits, and not as a mere compliment to the female sex. Q. Hortensius has been accused of corruption; and his attachment to a corrupt party, his luxurious habits, extravagant expenditure, numerous villas, and enormous wealth, make it probable that this suspicion was not unfounded. He was an easy, kind-hearted, hospitable, but self-indulgent man. His park was a complete menagerie; his fish-ponds were stocked with fish so tame that they would feed from his hand. His gardens were so carefully kept that he even watered his trees with wine. He had a taste for both poetry and painting, wrote some amatory verses, and for one picture gave 140,000 sesterces, (about 1,100l.) His table was sumptuous; and peacocks were seen for the first time in Rome at his banquets. His cellar was so well supplied that he left 10,000 casks of Chian wine behind him.^[415]

Cicero^[416] tells us that the principal reason of Hortensius’ early popularity and subsequent failure was, that his style of eloquence was suited to the brilliance and liveliness of youth, but not the dignity and gravity of mature age. In those days there were two parties,^[417] who differed in their views as to the theory of eloquence; the one admired the oratory of the Attic rhetoricians, which was calm, polished, refined, eschewing all redundancies; the other that of the Asiatic schools, which was florid and ornate.

Cicero^[418] tells us that the style of Hortensius’ eloquence was Asiatic; and as the characteristic of his own eloquence is Asiatic diffuseness rather than Attic closeness, and he often seems to consider this quality of Asiatic eloquence least worthy of admiration, it is possible that Hortensius carried it to excess, perhaps even to the borders of affectation. In a youthful orator excess of ornament is pardonable, because it is natural; it gives promise of future excellence when genius becomes sobered and luxuriance retrenched.

Hortensius, a prosperous and spoilt child of nature, was a 203young man all his life: there was nothing to cast a gloom over his gayety; and to those of his auditors who possessed good taste, this juvenility seemed inconsistent, and threw into the shade the finish, polish, and animation which characterized his style. His delivery was probably no less unsuitable to more advanced years. We are told that Æsop and Roscius used to study his action as a lesson;^[419] and that one Torquatus sneeringly called him Dionysius, who was a celebrated dancer of that day. His defence was clever: “I had rather,” he said, “be that than a clumsy Torquatus.” But these very anecdotes seem to imply that his delivery was somewhat foppish and theatrical.

Politics and jurisprudence were the subjects on which the Romans especially pursued independent lines of thought; but their jurisprudence was the more original of the two. Although the practical development of their political system was entirely the work of this eminently practical people, still in the theory of political science they were followers and imitators of the Greeks. But in jurisprudence, the help which they derived from Greece was very slight. The mere framework, so far as the laws of the Twelve Tables are concerned, came to them from Athens; but the complete structure was built up by their own hands; and by their skill and prudence they were the authors of a system possessing such stability, that they bequeathed it as an inheritance to modern Europe, and traces of Roman law are visible in the legal systems of the whole civilized world.

Roman jurisprudence is, of course, a subject of too great extent to be treated of as its importance deserves in a work like the present; but still it is so closely connected with eloquence that it cannot be dismissed without a few words. It has been already stated that arms, politics, and the bar were the avenues to distinction; and thus many an ambitious youth, who learned the art of war in a foreign campaign under some experienced general, occupied himself also at home in the forum. Not only was the young patrician conscious that he could not efficiently discharge his first duty to his clients without possessing sufficient ability and knowledge to defend their rights in a court of law, but this was an effectual method of showing his fitness for a 205public career. Eminence as a jurisconsult opened a direct path to eminence as a statesman.^[420] He must be like Pollio, “Insigne mæstis præsidium reis,” as well as “Consulenti curiæ.”^[421]

Hence the complicated principles of jurisprudence and of the Roman constitution became a necessary part of a liberal education. The brilliant orator, indeed, did sometimes affect to look down with contempt on such black-letter and antiquarian lore, and stigmatize it as pedantry;^[422] but still common sense compelled the sober-minded to acknowledge the necessity of the study. They saw that in the courts eloquence could only be considered as the handmaid to legal knowledge, even though the saying of Quintilian were true—“Et leges ipsæ nihil valent nisi actoris idoneâ voce munitæ.”^[423] When, therefore, a Roman youth had completed his studies under his teacher of rhetoric, he not only frequented the forum in order to learn the practical application of the oratorical principles which he had acquired, and frequently took some celebrated orator as a model, but also studied the principles of jurisprudence under an eminent jurist, and attended the consultations in which they gave to their clients their expositions of law. In fact the young Roman acquired his legal knowledge in the atrium of the jurisconsult, somewhat in the same manner that the law student of the present day pursues his education in the chambers of a barrister. He studied the subject practically and empirically rather than in its theory and general principles.

Almost all the knowledge which we possess is derived from the labours of writers who flourished long after constitutional liberty had expired.

The earliest systematic works on Roman law were the Enchiridion or Manual of Pomponius, and the Institutes of Gaius, who flourished in the times of Hadrian and the Antonines. Both these works were for a long time lost, although numerous fragments were preserved in the Pandects or Digest of Justinian. In 1816, however, Niebuhr discovered a palimpsest MS., in which the Epistles of St. Jerome were written over the erased Institutes of 206Gaius. But owing to the decisions and interpretations of the great practising jurists, to the want of any system of reporting and recording, and to the numerous misunderstandings of the Roman historians respecting the laws and constitutional history of their country, the whole subject long continued in a state of confusion: new contradictory theories had been gradually introduced, and old difficulties had not been explained and reconciled. Gian Baptista Vico, in his Scienza Nova, was the first who dispelled the clouds of error and reduced it to a system; and his example was afterwards so successfully followed by Niebuhr, that modern students can understand the subject more clearly, and have a more comprehensive antiquarian knowledge of it, than the writers of the Augustan age.

The earliest Roman laws were the Leges Regiæ, which were collected and codified by Sextus Papirius, and were hence called the Papirian Code. But these were rude and unconnected—simply a collection of isolated enactments. The laws of the Twelve Tables stand next in point of antiquity. They exhibited the first attempts at regular system, and imbodied not only legislative enactments but legal principles.^[424] So popular were they, that when Cicero was a child every Roman boy committed them to memory as our children learn their catechism,^[425] and the great orator laments that in the course of his lifetime this practice had become obsolete. The explanation of these laws was a privilege confined to the pontifical college. This body alone prescribed the form of pleading, and published the days on which the courts were held. Hence, not only the whole practice and exposition of the law was in the hands of the patricians, but they had also the power of obstructing at their pleasure all legal business. But in the censorship of Appius Claudius, his secretary, Cn. Flavius, set up, at the suggestion of Appius, a Calendar in the Forum, which made known to the public the days on which legal business could be transacted. In vain the patricians endeavoured to maintain their monopoly by the invention of new formulæ, called Notes, for Tiberius Coruncanius, the first plebeian Pontifex Maximus, who was consul A. U. C. 474, opened a public school 207of jurisprudence, and in the middle of the next century^[426] the “Notes” were published by Sextus Ælius Catus.

The oral traditional expositions of these laws formed the groundwork of the Roman civil law. To these were added from time to time the decrees of the people (plebiscita,) the acts of the senate (senatus-consulta,) and the prætorian edicts, which announced the principles on which each successive prætor purposed to administer the statute law.

Such were the various elements out of which the whole body of Roman law was composed; and in such early times was the subject diligently studied and expounded that the latter half of the sixth century A. U. C. was rich in jurists whose powers are celebrated in history. Besides S. Ælius Catus, already mentioned, P. Licinius Crassus, surnamed “the rich,” who was consul A. U. C. 549, is mentioned by Livy^[427] as learned in the pontifical law, the canon law of the ancient Romans. L. Acilius also wrote commentaries on the laws of the Twelve Tables; and to these may be added T. Manlius Torquatus, consul A. U. C. 589, S. Fabius Pictor, and another member of the same distinguished family, Q. Fabius Labeo, Cato the censor and his son Porcius Cato Licinianus, and lastly P. Cornelius Nasica, whose services as a jurist were recognised by the grant of a house at the public expense.

The most eminent jurists who adorned the next century were the Scævolæ. In their family the profession of the jurisconsult seems to have been hereditary; of so many bearing that distinguished name, it might have been said that their house was the oracle of the whole state; “Domus jurisconsulti totius oraculum civitatis.”^[428] Quintus, the augur, was Cicero’s first instructor in the science of the law: his cousin Publius enjoyed also a high reputation; and Quintus, the son of Publius, who became Cicero’s tutor after the death of his elder kinsman, combined the genius of an orator with the erudition of a jurist, and was called by his distinguished pupil “the greatest orator among jurists, and the greatest jurist among orators.” The compiler of the digest also 208quotes as authorities M. Manilius and M. Junius Brutus.^[429] Manilius is one of the characters introduced in Cicero’s dialogue de Republica: he was consul A. U. C. 604, and is said to have been the author of seven legal treatises; but of all these, except three, Cicero denies the authority. Brutus was the son of the ambassador of that name who was employed in the war with Perseus, and left a treatise in three books on the civil law.^[430]

In the next century flourished one Ælius Gallus, who was somewhat senior to Cicero, and was the author of a treatise on the signification of law terms. Several of his definitions are given by Festus, and fragments are preserved by A. Gellius,^[431] and in the Digest. By some he has been considered identical with Ælius Gallus, the prefect of Egypt in the reign of Augustus,^[432] who was the friend of the geographer Strabo; but as there is little doubt that he is quoted by Varro,^[433] such identity is impossible, since Varro died B. C. 28, and yet he speaks of Gallus as an aged man. Another distinguished jurist of this era was his namesake C. Aquilius Gallus. He was a pupil of Q. Mucius Scævola, and surpassed all his contemporaries in that black-letter knowledge of law, which in olden time was more highly valued than in the more brilliant days of Cicero. Learning then began to be ridiculed and lightly esteemed, and oratorical powers were more admired in proportion as the Roman mind became more alive to the refinements and beauties of language.

But Gallus was most eminent as a law reformer. The written law of Rome presented by its technicality the greatest impediments to actions on the unwritten principle of common right and equity. To obviate this he invented legal fictions, i. e. formulæ by which the effects of the statute could be annulled without the necessity of abrogating the statute itself. His practice must have been large, for Pliny mentions that he was the owner of a splendid palace on the Viminal Hill.^[434] In B. C. 67, he served the office of prætor together with Cicero, and both before and 209after that he frequently sat as one of the judices. Cicero pleaded before him in the defence both of Cæcina and Cluentius.

Besides Aquilius Gallus, three of the most distinguished jurists, who were a few years senior to Cicero, owed their legal knowledge to the instructions of Mucius Scævola. These were—C. Juventius, Sextus Papirius, and L. Lucilius Balbus, the last of whom is mentioned by Cicero,^[435] and his works are quoted by his eminent pupil Sulpicius Rufus.

Towards the conclusion of this literary period a great increase took place in the numbers of those learned men whom the Romans termed “Litterati,”^[436] but afterwards, following the custom of the Greeks, Grammarians, (Grammatici.^[437]) To them literature was under deep obligations. Although few of them were authors, and all of them men of acquired learning rather than of original genius, they exercised a powerful influence over the public mind as professors, lecturers, critics, and school-masters. By them the youths of the best families not only were imbued with a taste for Greek philosophy and poetry, but also were taught to appreciate the literature of their own country.

Suetonius places at the head of the class Livius Andronicus and Ennius; but their fame as poets eclipses their reputation as mere critics and commentators.

The first professed grammarian whom he mentions is Crates Mallotes, who, between the first and second Punic wars, was sent to Rome by Attalus. The unfortunate ambassador fell into an open drain and broke his leg, and beguiled the tediousness of his confinement by reading a course of philological lectures. After him C. Octavius Lampadio edited the works of Nævius; Q. Vargunteius those of Ennius; and Lælius, Archelaus, Vectius, and Q. Philocomus read and explained to a circle of auditors the Satires of Lucilius.

210Most of these grammarians were emancipated slaves: some were Greeks, some barbarians. Sævius Nicanor and Aurelius Opilius were freedmen: the latter had belonged to the household of some Epicurean philosopher. Cornelius Epicadus was a freedman of Sulla, and completed the Commentaries which his patron left unfinished, and Lenæus was freedman of Pompey the Great. M. Pompilius Andronicus was a Syrian; M. Antonius Gnipho, though of ingenuous birth, a Gaul. Servius Clodius, however, and L. Ælius Lanuvinus were Roman knights. Nor were the labours of these industrious scholars confined to Rome, or even to Italy; for Octavius Teucer, Siscennius Iacchus and Oppius Chares gave instructions in the province of Gallia Togata.

To the names already mentioned may be added those of L. Ælius Stilo, who accompanied L. Metellus Numidicus into exile, and Valerius Cato, who not only taught the art of poetry, but was himself a poet.

We have now traced from its infancy the rise and progress of Roman literature, and watched the gradual opening of the national intellect. The dawn has gently broken, the light has steadily increased, and is now succeeded by the noon-day brilliance of the “golden age.”