LATIN LITERATURE
BY
J. W. MACKAIL
III
THE EMPIRE.
VIII.
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
In August 410, while the Emperor Honorius fed his poultry among the
impenetrable marshes of Ravenna, Rome was sacked by a mixed army of Goths
and Huns under the command of Alaric. Eight hundred years had elapsed
since the imperial city had been in foreign possession; and, though it
had ceased to be the actual seat of government, the shock spread by its
capture through the entire Roman world was of unparalleled magnitude. Six
years later, a wealthy and distinguished resident, one Claudius Rutilius
Namatianus, was obliged to take a journey to look after the condition of
his estates in the south of France, which had been devastated by a band
of wandering Visigoths. A large portion is extant of the poem in which he
described this journey, one of the most charming among poems of travel,
and one of the most interesting of the fragments of early mediaeval
literature. Nowhere else can we see portrayed so strongly the fascination
which Rome then still possessed for the whole of Western Europe, and the
adoration with which she was still regarded as mother and light of the
world. The magical statue had been cast away, with other heathen idols,
from the imperial bedchamber; but the "Fortuna Urbis." itself, the
mystical divinity which the statue represented, still exercised an
overwhelming influence over men's imagination. After all the praises
lavished on her for centuries by so many of her illustrious children, it
was left for this foreigner, in the age of her decay, to pay her the most
complete and most splendid eulogy: --
"Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris;
Excedis factis grandia fata tuis:
Nam solis radiis aequalia munera tendis,
Qua circumfusus fluctuat oceanus.
Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam:
Profuit invitis te dominante capi;
Dumque offers victis proprii consortia iuris,
Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat."
In this noble apostrophe Rutilius addressed the fading mistress of the
world as he passed lingeringly through the Ostian gate. Far away in
Northern Africa, the most profound thinker and most brilliant writer of
the age, as deeply but very differently moved by the ancestral splendours
of the city and the tragedy of her fall, was then composing, with all the
resources of his vast learning and consummate dialectical skill, the
epitaph of the ancient civilisation. It was the capture of Rome by Alaric
which induced St. Augustine to undertake his work on the "City of God".
"In this middle age," he says, -- "in hoc interim seculo" -- the two cities
with their two citizenships, the earthly and the heavenly, are
inextricably enwound and intermingled with each other. Not until the Last
Judgment will they be wholly separated; but the philosophy of history is
to trace the steps by which the one is slowly replaced by, or transformed
into, the other. The earthly Empire, all the splendid achievement in
thought and arts and deeds of the Roman civilisation, already fades away
before that City of God on which his eyes are fixed -- "gloriosissimam
Civitatem Dei, sive in hoc temporum cursu cum inter impios peregrinatur
ex fide vivens, sive in illa stabililate sedis aeternae, quam nunc
exspectat per patientiam, quoadusque iustitia convertatur in iudicium."
The evolution of this change was, even to the impassioned faith of
Augustine, slow, intermittent, and fluctuating: nor, among many landmarks
and turning-points, is it easy to fix any single one as definitely
concluding the life of the ancient world, and marking the beginning of
what St. Augustine for the first time called by the name, which has ever
since adhered to it, of the Middle Age. The old world slid into the new
through insensible gradations. In nearly all Latin literature after
Virgil we may find traces or premonitions of mediaevalism, and after
mediaevalism was established it long retained, if it ever wholly lost,
traces of the classical tradition. Thus, while the beginning of Latin
literature may be definitely placed in a particular generation, and
almost in a single year, there is no fixed point at which it can be said
that its history concludes. Different periods have been assigned from
different points of view. In the year 476, Romulus Augustulus, the last
of the Western Emperors, handed over the name as well as the substance of
sole power to the Herulian chief Odoacer, the first King of Italy; and
the Roman Senate, still in theory the supreme governing body of the
civilised world, formally renounced its sovereignty, and declared its
dominions a diocese of the Byzantine Empire. This is the date generally
adopted by authors who deal with literature as subordinate to political
history. But the writer of the standard English work on Latin grammar
limits his field to the period included between Plautus and Suetonius;
while another scholar, extending his scope three centuries and a half
further, has written a history of Latin literature from Ennius to
Boethius. Suetonius and Boethius probably represent the extreme variation
of limit which can be reasonably adopted; but between them they leave
room for many points of pause. Up to the end of the fourth century we
have followed a stream of tendency, not, indeed, continuous, but yet
without any absolute rupture. Between the writers of the fourth century
and their few successors of the fifth there is no marked change in
language or manner. Sidonius Apollinaris continues more feebly the style
of poetry initiated a century before him by Ausonius. Boethius wrote his
fine treatise "On the Consolation of Philosophy" half a century after the
extinction of the Empire of the West. By a strange freak of history, it
was at the Greek capital that Latin scholarship finally faded away.
Priscian and Tribonian wrote at Constantinople; and the Western world
received its most authoritative works on Latin grammar and Roman law, not
from the Latin Empire, nor from one of the Latin-speaking kingdoms which
rose on its ruins, but from the half-oriental courts of Anastasius and
Justinian.
The two long lives of the great Latin fathers, Jerome and Augustine,
cover conjointly a space of just a century. Jerome was born probably a
few months after the main seat of empire was formally transferred to New
Rome by Constantine. Augustine, born twenty-three years later, died in
his cathedral city of Hippo during its siege by Genseric in the brief war
which transformed Africa from a Roman province to a Vandal kingdom. The
"City of God" had been completed four years previously. A quarter of a
century before the death of Augustine, Jerome issued, from his monastery
at Bethlehem, the Latin translation of the Bible which, on its own
merits, and still more if we give weight to its overwhelming influence on
later ages, is the greatest literary masterpiece of the Lower Empire. Our
own Authorised Version has deeply affected all post-Shakespearian
English; the "Vulgate" of Jerome, which was from time to time revised in
detail, but still remains substantially as it issued from his hands, had
an equally profound influence over a vastly greater space and time. It
was for Europe of the Middle Ages more than Homer was to Greece. The year
405, which witnessed its publication and that of the last of the poems of
Claudian to which we can assign a certain date, may claim to be held, if
any definite point is to be fixed, as marking the end of ancient and the
complete establishment of mediaeval Latin.
In the six and a half centuries which had passed since the Greek prisoner
of war from Tarentum produced the first Latin play in the theatre of the
mid-Italian Republic which was celebrating her victories over the
formidable sea-power of Carthage, Latin literature had shared the
vicissitudes of the Roman State; and the successive stages of its
development and decay are intimately connected with the political and
social changes which are the matter of Roman history. A century passed
between the conclusion of the first Punic war and the tribunate of
Tiberius Gracchus. It was a period for the Republic of internal
tranquillity and successful foreign war. At its conclusion, Italy was
organised under Roman control. Greece, Macedonia, Spain, and Africa had
become subject provinces; a Roman protectorate was established in Egypt,
and the Asiatic provinces of the Macedonian Empire only preserved a
precarious and partial independence. During this century, Latin
literature had firmly established itself in a broad and vigorous growth.
Dramatic and epic poetry, based on diligent study of the best Greek
models, formed a substantial body of actual achievement, and under Greek
impulse the Latin language was being wrought into a medium of expression
at once dignified and copious, a substance capable of indefinite
expansion and use in the hands of trained artists. Prose was rapidly
overtaking verse. The schools of law, and the oratory of the senate-house
and the forum, were developing national forms of literature on
distinctively Roman lines: a beginning had been made in the more
difficult field of history; and the invention and popularisation of the
satire, or mixed form of familiar prose and verse, began to enlarge the
scope of literature over a broader field of life and thought, while
immensely adding to the flexibility and range of the written language.
A century followed during which Roman rule was extended and consolidated
over the whole area of the countries fringing the Mediterranean, while
concurrently a long series of revolutions and counter-revolutions ended
in the overthrow of the republican oligarchy, and the establishment of
the imperial government. Beginning with the democratic movement of the
Gracchi, this century includes the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, the
temporary reconstitution of the oligarchy, the renewed outbreak of war
between Julius Caesar and the senate, and the confused period of
administrative anarchy which was terminated by the rise of Augustus to a
practical dictatorship, and the arrangement by him of a working
compromise between the two great opposing forces. During this century of
revolution the whole attitude of Rome towards the problems both of
internal and of foreign politics was forced through a series of important
changes. The revolt of Italy, which, after bringing Rome to the verge of
destruction, was finally crushed by the Asiatic legions of Sulla, was
almost immediately followed by the unification of Italy, and her
practical absorption into the Roman citizenship. With renewed and
enlarged life, Rome then entered on a second extension of her dominions.
The annexation of Syria and the conquest of Gaul completed the circle of
her empire; the subjugation of Spain was completed, and the Eastern
frontier pushed towards Armenia and the Euphrates; finally Egypt, the
last survivor of the kingdoms founded by Alexander's generals, passed
wholly into Roman hands with the extinction of its own royal house.
During this period of perpetual excitement and high political tension,
literature, in the forms both of prose and verse, rapidly grew towards
maturity, and, in the former field at least, reached its perfection.
Oratory, the great weapon of politicians under the unique Republican
constitution, was in its golden age. Greek culture had permeated the
governing class. History began to be written by trained statesmen, whose
education for the command of armies and the rule of provinces had been
based on elaborate linguistic and rhetorical study. Alongside of grammar
and rhetoric, poetry and philosophy took a place as part of the higher
education of the citizen. The habit and capacity of abstract thought
reached Rome from the schools of Athens; with the growing power of
expression and the increased tension of actual life, the science of
politics and the philosophy of life and conduct became the material of a
new and splendid literature. Along with the world of ideas diffused by
Athens there arrived the immense learning and high technical skill of the
Alexandrian scholars and poets. Roman poetry set itself anew to learn the
Greek lesson of exquisite form and finish. In the hands of two poets of
the first order, and of a crowd of lesser students, the conquest of
poetical form passed its crucial point, and the way was prepared for the
consummation of Latin poetry in the next age.
Another century carries us from the establishment of the Empire by
Augustus to the extinction of his family at the death of Nero. At the
opening of this period the Empire was exhausted by civil war, and
welcomed any form of settled rule. The settlement of the constitution,
based as it was on a number of elaborate legal fictions meant to combine
republican forms with the reality of a strong monarchical government,
left the political situation in a state of very unstable equilibrium; all
through the century the government was in an uncertain or even a false
position, and, when Nero's misrule had made it intolerable, it collapsed
with a crash which almost shivered the Empire into fragments. But it had
lasted long enough to lay the foundations of the new and larger Rome
broadly and securely. The provinces, while still in a sense subordinate
to Italy, had already become organic parts of the Empire, instead of
subject countries. The haughty and obstinate Roman oligarchy was tamed by
long years of proscription, confiscation, perpetual surveillance, careful
exclusion from great political power. The municipal institutions and
civic energy of Rome were multiplied in a thousand centres of local life.
Internal peace allowed commerce and civilisation to spread; in spite of
the immense drain caused by the extravagance of the capital and the
expense of the great frontier armies, the provinces generally rose to a
higher state of material welfare than they had enjoyed since their
annexation.
The earlier years of this century are the most brilliant in the history
of Latin literature. During the last fifty years of the Republic a series
of Roman authors of remarkable genius had gradually met and mastered the
technical problems of both prose and verse. The new generation entered
into their labours. In prose there was little, if any, advance remaining
to be made. In the fields of oratory and philosophy it had already
reached its perfection; in that of history it acquired further amplitude
and colour. But the achievement of the new age was mainly in verse.
Profound study of the older poetry, and the laborious training learned
from the schools of Alexandria, now bore fruit in a body of poetry which,
in every field except that of the drama, excelled what had hitherto been
known, and was at once the model and the limit for succeeding
generations. Latin poetry, like the Empire itself, took a broader basis;
the Augustan poets are still Romans, but this is because Rome had
extended itself over Italy, The copious and splendid production of the
earlier years of the principate of Augustus was followed by an almost
inevitable reaction. The energy of the Latin speech had for the time
exhausted itself; and the political necessities of the uneasy reigns
which followed set further barriers in the way of a weakening literary
impulse. Then begins the movement of the Latin-speaking provinces. Rome
had absorbed Italy; Italy in turn begins to absorb and coalesce with
Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The first of the provinces in the field was
Spain, which had become Latinised earlier than either of the others. At
the court of Nero a single brilliant Spanish family founded a new and
striking style, which for the moment eclipsed that formed by a purer
taste amid a graver and a more exclusive public.
A hundred years from the downfall of Nero carry us down to the reign of
Marcus Aurelius. The Empire, when it recovered from the collapse of the
year 69, assumed a settled and stable organisation. Traditions of the old
jealousies and discontents lingered during the reigns of the three
Flavian Emperors; but the imperial system had now got into permanent
working order. The cataclysm which followed the deposition of Nero is in
the strongest contrast to the ease and smoothness, only broken by a
trifling mutiny of the praetorian guards, with which the principate
passed into the hands of Nerva after the murder of Domitian.
This century is what is properly known as the Silver Age. A school of
eminent writers, in whom the provincial and the Italian quality are now
hardly to be distinguished, produced during its earlier years a large
body of admirable prose and not undistinguished verse. But before the
century was half over, the signs of decay began to appear. A mysterious
languor overcame thought and art, as it did the whole organism of the
Empire. The conquests of Trajan, the peace and material splendour of the
reign of Hadrian, were followed by a series of years almost without
events, suddenly broken by the appalling pestilence of the year 166, and
the outbreak, at the same time, of a long and desperate war on the
northern frontiers. During these eventless years Latin literature seemed
to die away. The classical impulse was exhausted; the attempts made
towards founding a new Latin bore, for the time, little fruit. Before
this period of exhaustion and reaction could come to a natural end, two
changes of momentous importance had overtaken the world. The imperial
system broke down under Commodus. All through the third century the civil
organisation of the Empire was at the mercy of military adventurers.
Twenty-five recognised Emperors, besides a swarm of pretenders, most of
them raised to the purple by mutinous armies, succeeded one another in
the hundred years between Commodus and Diocletian. At the same time the
Christian religion, already recognised under the Antonines as a grave
menace to the very existence of the Empire, was extending itself year by
year, rising more elastic than ever from each fresh persecution, and
attracting towards itself all the vital forces which go to make
literature.
The coalition between the Empire and the Church, which, after various
tentative preliminaries, was finally effected by Constantine, launched
the world upon new paths: and his transference of the main seat of empire
to the shores of the Bosporus left Western Europe to pursue fragmentary
and independent courses. The Latin-speaking provinces were falling away
in great lumps. An independent empire of Britain had already existed for
six or seven years under the usurper Carausius. After the middle of the
fourth century Gaul was practically in possession of the Visigoths and
the Salian Franks. During the reign of Honorius mixed hordes of Vandals,
Suabians, and Alans poured through Gaul across the Pyrenees, and divided
Spain into barbarian monarchies. A few years later the Vandals, called
across the Straits of Gibraltar by the treachery of Count Boniface,
overran the province of Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, whose
fleets, issuing from the port of Carthage, swept the Mediterranean and
sacked Rome itself. Rome had, by the famous edict of Antoninus Caracalla,
given the world a single citizenship; to give organic life to that
citizenship, and turn her citizens into a single nation, was a task
beyond her power. So long as the Latin-speaking world remained nominally
subject to a single rule, exercised in the name of the Senate and People
of Rome, Latin literature had some slight external bond of unity; after
the Western Empire was shattered into a dozen independent kingdoms, the
phrase almost ceases to have any real meaning. Latin, in one form or
another, remained an almost universal language; but we must speak
henceforth of the literatures of France or Spain or Britain, whether the
work produced be written in a provincial dialect or in the international
language handed down from the Empire and preserved by the Church.
For the Catholic Church now became the centre of European cohesion, and
gave continuity and common life to the scattered remains of the ancient
civilisation. Already, in the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great is a more
important figure than his contemporary, Valentinian the Second, for
thirty years the shadowy and impotent Emperor of the West. Christian
literature had taken firm root while the classical tradition was still
strong; in the hands of men like Jerome and Augustine that tradition was
caught up from the wreck of the Empire and handed down, not unimpaired,
yet still in prodigious force and vitality, to the modern world.
Latin is now no longer a universal language; and the direct influence of
ancient Rome, which once seemed like an immortal energy, is at last, like
all energies, becoming slowly absorbed in its own results. Yet the Latin
language is still the necessary foundation of one half of human
knowledge, and the forms created by Roman genius underlie the whole of
our civilisation. So long as mankind look before and after, the name of
Rome will be the greatest of those upon which their backward gaze can be
turned. In Greece men first learned to be human: under Rome mankind first
learned to be civilised. Law, government, citizenship, are all the
creations of the Latin race. At a thousand points we still draw directly
from the Roman sources. The codes of Latin jurists are the direct source
of all systems of modern law. The civic organisation which it was the
great work of the earlier Roman Empire to spread throughout the provinces
is the basis of our municipal institutions and our corporate social life.
The names of our months are those of the Latin year, and the modern
calendar is, with one slight alteration, that established by Julius
Caesar. The head of the Catholic Church is still called by the name of
the president of a Republican college which goes back beyond the
beginnings of ascertained Roman history. The architecture which we
inherit from the Middle Ages, associated by an accident of history with
the name of the Goths, had its origin under the Empire, and may be traced
down to modern times, step by step, from the basilica of Trajan and the
palace of Diocletian. These are but a few instances of the inheritance we
have received from Rome. But behind the ordered structure of her law and
government, and the majestic fabric of her civilisation, lay a vital
force of even deeper import; the strong grave Roman character, which has
permanently heightened the ideal of human life. It is in their literature
that the inner spirit of the Latin race found its most complete
expression. In the stately structure of that imperial language they
embodied those qualities which make the Roman name most abidingly great --
honour, temperate wisdom, humanity, courtesy, magnanimity; and the
civilised world still returns to that fountain-head, and finds a second
mother-tongue in the speech of Cicero and Virgil.
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