LATIN LITERATURE
BY
J. W. MACKAIL
I.
THE REPUBLIC.
III.
EARLY PROSE: THE "SATURA", OR MIXED MODE.
Law and government were the two great achievements of the Latin race;
and the two fountain-heads of Latin prose are, on the one hand, the texts
of codes and the commentaries of jurists; on the other, the annals of the
inner constitution and the external conquests and diplomacy of Rome. The
beginnings of both went further back than Latin antiquaries could trace
them. Out of the mists of a legendary antiquity two fixed points rise,
behind which it is needless or impossible to go. The code known as
that of the Twelve Tables, of which large fragments survive in later
law-books, was drawn up, according to the accepted chronology, in the
year 450 B.C. Sixty years later the sack of Rome by the Gauls led to
the destruction of nearly all public and private records, and it was
only from this date onwards that such permanent and contemporary
registers -- the consular "fasti", the books of the pontifical college,
the public collections of engraved laws and treaties -- were extant as
could afford material for the annalist. That a certain amount of work
in the field both of law and history must have been going on at Rome
from a very early period, is, of course, obvious; but it was not till
the time of the Punic Wars that anything was produced in either field
which could very well be classed as literature.
In history as in poetry, the first steps were timidly made with the help
of Greek models. The oldest and most important of the early historians,
Quintus Fabius Pictor, the contemporary of Naevius and Ennius, actually
wrote in Greek, though a Latin version of his work certainly existed,
whether executed by himself or some other hand is doubtful, at an almost
contemporary date. Extracts are quoted from it by the grammarians as
specimens of the language of the period. The scope of his history was
broadly the same as that of the two great contemporary poets. It was a
narrative of events starting from the legendary landing of Aeneas in
Italy, becoming more copious as it advanced, and dealing with the events
of the author's own time at great length and from abundant actual
knowledge. The work ended, so far as can be judged, with the close of the
second Punic War. It long remained the great quarry for subsequent
historians; and though Polybius wrote the history of the first Punic War
anew from dissatisfaction with Pictor's prejudice and inaccuracy, he is
one of the chief authorities followed in the earlier decads of Livy. A
younger contemporary of Pictor, Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who commanded a
Roman army in the war against Hannibal, also used the Greek language in
his annals of his own life and times, and the same appears to be the case
with the memoirs of other soldiers and statesmen of the period. It is
only half a century later that we know certainly of historians who wrote
in Latin. The earliest of them, Lucius Cassius Hemina, composed his
annals in the period between the death of Terence and the revolution of
the Gracchi; a more distinguished successor, Lucius Calpurnius Piso
Frugi, is better known as one of the leading opponents of the revolution
(he was consul in the year of the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus) than
as the author of annals which were certainly written with candour and
simplicity, and in a style where the epithets "artless and elegant," used
of them by Aulus Gellius, need not be inconsistent with the more
disparaging word "meagre," with which they are dismissed by Cicero.
History might be written in Greek -- as, indeed, throughout the Republican
and Imperial times it continued to be -- by any Roman who was sufficiently
conversant with that language, in which models for every style of
historical composition were ready to his hand. In the province of
jurisprudence it was different. Here the Latin race owed nothing to any
foreign influence or example; and the development of Roman law pursued a
straightforward and uninterrupted course far beyond the limits of the
classical period, and after Rome itself had ceased to be the seat even of
a divided empire. The earliest juristic writings, consisting of
commentaries on collections of the semi-religious enactments in which
positive law began, are attributed to the period of the Samnite Wars,
long before Rome had become a great Mediterranean power. About 200 B.C.
two brothers, Publius and Sextus Aelius, both citizens of consular and
censorial rank, published a systematic treatise called "Tripertita",
which was long afterwards held in reverence as containing the "cunabula
iuris", the cradle out of which the vast systems of later ages sprang.
Fifty years later, in the circle of the younger Scipio, begins the
illustrious line of the Mucii Scaevolae. Three members of this family,
each a distinguished jurist, rose to the consulate in the stormy
half-century between the Gracchi and Sulla. The last and greatest of the
three represented the ideal Roman more nearly than any other citizen of
his time. The most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of orators,
he was at the same time a brilliant administrator and a paragon of
public and private virtue; and his murder at the altar of Vesta, in the
Marian proscription, was universally thought the most dreadful event
Of an age of horrors. His voluminous and exhaustive treatise on Civil
Law remained a text-book for centuries, and was a foundation for the
Writings of all later Roman jurists.
The combination of jurisconsult and orator in the younger Scaevola was
somewhat rare; from an early period the two professions of jurist and
pleader were sharply distinguished, though both were pathways to the
highest civic offices. Neither his father nor his cousin (the other two
of the triad) was distinguished in oratory; nor were the two great
contemporaries of the former, who both published standard works on civil
law, Manius Manilius and Marcus Junius Brutus. The highest field for
oratory was, of course, in the political, and not in the purely legal,
sphere; and the unique Roman constitution, an oligarchy chosen almost
wholly by popular suffrage, made the practice of oratory more or less of
a necessity to every politician. Well-established tradition ascribed to
the greatest statesman of the earlier Republic, Appius Claudius Caecus,
the first institution of written oratory. His famous speech in the senate
against peace with Pyrrhus was cherished in Cicero's time as one of the
most precious literary treasures of Rome. From his time downwards the
stream of written oratory flowed, at first in a slender stream, which
gathered to a larger volume in the works of the elder Cato.
In the history of the half-century following the war with Hannibal, Cato
is certainly the most striking single figure. It is only as a man of
letters that he has to be noticed here; and the character of a man of
letters was, perhaps, the last in which he would have wished to be
remembered or praised. Yet the cynical and indomitable old man, with his
rough humour, his narrow statesmanship, his obstinate ultra-conservatism,
not only produced a large quantity of writings, but founded and
transmitted to posterity a distinct and important body of critical dogma
and literary tradition. The influence of Greece had, as we have already
seen, begun to permeate the educated classes at Rome through and through.
Against this Greek influence, alike in literature and in manners, Cato
struggled all his life with the whole force of his powerful intellect and
mordant wit; yet it is most characteristic of the man that in his old age
he learned Greek himself and read deeply in the masterpieces of that
Greek literature from which he was too honest and too intelligent to be
able to withhold his admiration. While much of contemporary literature
was launching itself on the fatal course of imitation of Greek models,
and was forcing the Latin language into the trammels of alien forms, Cato
gave it a powerful impulse towards a purely native, if a somewhat narrow
and harsh development. The national prose literature, of which he may
fairly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay of Rome by a
large and powerful minority of Latin writers. What results it might have
produced, if allowed unchecked scope, can only be matter for conjecture;
in the main current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the
whole, triumphant; Cato's was the losing side (if one may so adapt the
famous line of Lucan), and the men of genius took the other.
The speeches of Cato, of which upwards of a hundred and fifty were extant
in Cicero's time, and which the "virtuosi" of the age of Hadrian
preferred, or professed to prefer, to Cicero's own, are lost, with the
exception of inconsiderable fragments. The fragments show high oratorical
gifts; shrewdness, humour, terse vigour and controlled passion; "somewhat
confused and harsh," says a late but competent Latin critic, "but strong
and vivid as it is possible for oratory to be." We have suffered a
heavier loss in his seven books of "Origines", the work of his old age.
This may broadly be called an historical work, but it was history treated
in a style of great latitude, the meagre, disconnected method of the
annalists alternating with digressions into all kinds of subjects --
geography, ethnography, reminiscences of his own travels and experiences,
and the politics and social life of his own and earlier times. It made no
attempt to keep up either the dignity or the continuity of history. His
absence of method made this work, however full of interest, the despair
of later historians: what were they to think, they plaintively asked,
of an author who dismissed whole campaigns without even giving the names
of the generals, while he went into profuse detail over one of the
war-elephants in the Carthaginian army?
The only work of Cato's which has been preserved in its integrity is that
variously known under the titles "De Re Rustica" or "De Agri Cultura". It
is one of a number of treatises of a severely didactic nature, which he
published on various subjects -- agricultural, sanitary, military, and
legal. This treatise was primarily written for a friend who owned and
cultivated farms in Campania. It consists of a series of terse and
pointed directions following one on another, with no attempt at style or
literary artifice, but full of a hard sagacity, and with occasional
flashes of dry humour, which suggest that Cato would have found a not
wholly uncongenial spirit in President Lincoln. A brief extract from one
of the earlier chapters is not without interest, both as showing the
practical Latin style, and as giving the prose groundwork of Virgil's
stately and beautiful embroidery in the "Georgics".
"Opera omnia mature conficias face. Nam res rustica sic est; si unam rem
sero feceris, omnia opera sero facies. Stramenta si deerunt frondem
iligneam legito; earn substernito ovibus bubusque. Sterquilinium magnum
stude ut habeas. Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportabis spargito et
comminuito; per autumnum evehito. Circum oleas autumnitate ablaqueato et
stercus addito. Frondem populneam, ulmeam, querneam caedito, per tempus
eam condito, non peraridam, pabulum ovibus. Item foenum cordum,
sicilimenta de prato; ea arida condito. Post imbrem autumni rapinam,
pabulum, lupinumque serito."
To the Virgilian student, every sentence here is full of reminiscences.
In his partial yielding, towards the end of a long and uncompromising
life, to the rising tide of Greek influence, Cato was probably moved to a
large degree by his personal admiration for the younger Scipio, whom he
hailed as the single great personality among younger statesmen, and to
whom he paid (strangely enough, in a line quoted from Homer) what is
probably the most splendid compliment ever paid by one statesman to
another. Scipio was the centre of a school which included nearly the
whole literary impulse of his time. He was himself a distinguished orator
and a fine scholar; after the conquest of Perseus, the royal library was
the share of the spoils of Macedonia which he chose for himself, and
bequeathed to his family. His celebrated friend, Gaius Laelius, known in
Rome as "the Wise," was not only an orator, but a philosopher, or deeply
read, at all events, in the philosophy of Greece. Another member of the
circle, Lucius Furius Philus, initiated that connection of Roman law with
the Stoic philosophy which continued ever after to be so intimate and so
far-reaching. In this circle, too, Roman history began to be written in
Latin. Cassius Hemina and Lucius Calpurnius Piso have been already
mentioned; more intimately connected with Scipio are Gaius Fannius, the
son-in-law of Laelius, and Lucius Caelius Antipater, who reached, both in
lucid and copious diction and in impartiality and research, a higher
level than Roman history had yet attained. Literary culture became part
of the ordinary equipment of a statesman; a crowd of Greek teachers,
foremost among them the eminent philosopher, afterwards Master of the
Portico, Panaetius of Rhodes, spread among the Roman upper classes the
refining and illuminating influence of Greek ideas and Attic style.
Meanwhile, in this Scipionic circle, a new figure had appeared of great
originality and force, the founder of a kind of literature which, with
justifiable pride, the Romans claimed as wholly native and original.
Gaius Lucilius was a member of a wealthy equestrian family, and thus
could associate on equal terms with the aristocracy, while he was removed
from the necessity, which members of the great senatorian houses could
hardly avoid, of giving the best of their time and strength to political
and administrative duties. After Terence, he is the most distinguished
and the most important in his literary influence among the friends of
Scipio. The form of literature which he invented and popularised, that of
familiar poetry, was one which proved singularly suited to the Latin
genius. He speaks of his own works under the name of "Sermones", "talks"
-- a name which was retained by his great successor, Horace; but the
peculiar combination of metrical form with wide range of subject and the
pedestrian style of ordinary prose, received in popular usage the name
"Satura", or "mixture." The word had, in earlier times, been used of the
irregular stage performances, including songs, stories, and semi-dramatic
interludes, which formed the repertory of strolling artists at popular
festivals. The extension of the name to the verse of Lucilius indicates
that written literature was now rising to equal importance and popularity
with the spoken word.
Horace comments, not without severity, on the profuse and careless
production of Lucilius. Of the thirty books of his "Satires", few
fragments of any length survive; much, probably the greater part of them,
would, if extant, long have lost its interest. But the loss of the bulk
of his work is matter of sincere regret, because it undoubtedly gave a
vivid and detailed picture of the social life and the current interests
of the time, such as the "Satires" of Horace give of Rome in the Augustan
age. His criticisms on the public men of his day were outspoken and
unsparing; nor had he more reverence for established reputations in
poetry than in public life. A great deal of his work consisted in
descriptions of eating and drinking; much, also, in lively accounts of
his own travels and adventures, or those of his friends. One book of the
"Satires" was occupied with an account of Scipio's famous mission to the
East, in which he visited the courts of Egypt and Asia, attended by a
retinue of only five servants, but armed with the full power of the
terrible Republic. Another, imitated by Horace in his story of the
journey to Brundusium, detailed the petty adventures, the talk and
laughter by roads and at inns, of an excursion of his own through
Campania and Bruttium to the Sicilian straits. Many of the fragments deal
with the literary controversies of the time, going down even to the
minutiae of spelling and grammar; many more show the beginnings of that
translation into the language of common life of the precepts of the
Greek schools, which was consummated for the world by the poets and
prose-writers of the following century. But, above all, the "Satires" of
Lucilius were in the fullest sense of the word an autobiography. The
famous description of Horace, made yet more famous for English readers by
the exquisite aptness with which Boswell placed it on the title-page of
his "Life of Johnson" --
"Quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis -- "
expresses the true greatness of Lucilius. He invented a literary method
which, without being great, yields to no other in interest and even in
charm, and which, for its perfection, requires a rare and refined
genius. Not Horace only, nor all the satirists after Horace, but
Montaigne and Pepys also, belong to the school of Lucilius.
Such was the circle of the younger Scipio, formed in the happy years -- as
they seemed to the backward gaze of the succeeding generation -- between
the establishment of Roman supremacy at the battle of Pydna, and the
revolutionary movement of Tiberius Gracchus. Fifty years of stormy
turbulence followed, culminating in the Social War and the reign of
terror under Marius and Cinna, and finally stilled in seas of blood by
the counter-revolution of Sulla. This is the period which separates the
Scipionic from the Ciceronian age. It was naturally, except in the single
province of political oratory, not one of great literary fertility; and
a brief indication of the most notable authors of the period, and of the
lines on which Roman literature mainly continued to advance during it, is
all that is demanded or possible here.
In oratory, this period by general consent represented the golden age of
Latin achievement. The eloquence of both the Gracchi was their great
political weapon; that of Gaius was the most powerful in exciting feeling
that had ever been known; and his death was mourned, even by fierce
political opponents, as a heavy loss to Latin literature. But in the next
generation, the literary perfection of oratory was carried to an even
higher point by Marcus Antonius and Lucius Licinius Crassus. Both
attained the highest honours that the Republic had to bestow. By a happy
chance, their styles were exactly complementary to one another; to hear
both in one day was the highest intellectual entertainment which Rome
afforded. By this time the rules of oratory were carefully studied and
reduced to scientific treatises. One of these, the "Rhetorica ad
Herennium", is still extant. It was almost certainly written by one
Quintus Cornificius, an older contemporary of Cicero, to whom the work
was long ascribed. It, no doubt, owes its preservation to this erroneous
tradition. The first two books were largely used by Cicero in his own
treatise "De Inventione", part of a work on the principles of rhetoric
which he began in early youth.
Latin history during this period made considerable progress. It was a
common practice among statesmen to write memoirs of their own life and
times; among others of less note, Sulla the dictator left at his death
twenty-two books of "Commentarii Rerum Gestarum", which were afterwards
published by his secretary. In regular history the most important name
is that of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius. His work differed from those
of the earlier annalists in passing over the legendary period, and
beginning with the earliest authentic documents; in research and critical
judgment it reached a point only excelled by Sallust. His style was
formed on that of older annalists, and is therefore somewhat archaic for
the period, Considerable fragments, including the well-known description
of the single combat in 361 B.C. between Titus Manlius Torquatus and the
Gallic chief, survive in quotations by Aulus Gellius and the archaists of
the later Empire. More voluminous but less valuable than the "Annals" of
Claudius were those of his contemporary, Valerius Antias, which formed
the main groundwork for the earlier books of Livy, and were largely used
by him even for later periods, when more trustworthy authorities were
available. Other historians of this period, Sisenna and Macer, soon fell
into neglect -- the former as too archaic, the latter as too diffuse and
rhetorical, for literary permanence.
Somewhat apart from the historical writers stand the antiquarians, who
wrote during this period in large numbers, and whose treatises filled the
library from which, in the age of Cicero, Varro compiled his monumental
works. As numerous probably were the writers of the school of Cato, on
husbandry, domestic economy, and other practical subjects, and the
grammarians and philologists, whose works formed two other large sections
in Varro's library. On all sides prose was full of life and growth; the
complete literary perfection of the age of Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust
might already be foreseen as within the grasp of the near future.
Latin poetry, meanwhile, hung in the balance. The first great wave of the
Greek impulse had exhausted itself in Ennius and the later tragedians.
Prose had so developed that the poetical form was no longer a necessity
for the expression of ideas, as it had been in the palmy days of Latin
tragedy. The poetry of the future must be, so to speak, poetry for its
own sake, until some new tradition were formed which should make certain
metrical forms once more the recognised and traditional vehicle for
certain kinds of literary expression. In the blank of poetry we may note
a translation of the "Iliad" into hexameters by one Gnaeus Matius, and
the earliest known attempts at imitation of the forms of Greek lyrical
verse by an equally obscure Laevius Melissus, as dim premonitions of the
new growth which Latin poetry was feeling after; but neither these, nor
the literary tragedies which still were occasionally produced by a
survival of the fashions of an earlier age, are of any account for their
own sake. Prose and poetry stood at the two opposite poles of their
cycle; and thus it is that, while the poets and prose-writers of the
Ciceronian age are equally imperishable in fame, the latter but represent
the culmination of a broad and harmonious development, while of the
former, amidst but apart from the beginnings of a new literary era, there
shine, splendid like stars out of the darkness, the two immortal lights
of Lucretius and Catullus.
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