LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS AT THIS PERIOD. ATELLANÆ, PRÆTEXTATÆ; LIVIUS ANDRONICUS; NÆVIUS; ENNIUS; PLAUTUS. ROMAN HISTORIANS IN GREEK.
We are by no means to fancy that the Romans, before they were acquainted with the Greeks, knew as little of Greek literature, as, for instance, our forefathers did at the time of the revival of learning, or that indeed they had had no literature whatever. The class of scholars and writers was then unknown; but the Romans, and all the Italian nations in general, were very well versed in Greek poetry. This is shown by their pictures and monuments of every kind, by the many representations of Greek fables on the vases of the Etruscans and other peoples, and by the idiomatic names of Grecian heroes which were current in Italy; for instance, Ulixes,[38] instead of Odysseus; Catamitus, instead of Ganymedes; Alumentus, instead of Laomedon, and so forth; which are proofs that they really were in the mouths of the people. The religion of the Romans was not mythological, but a regular theology; their deities were νοούμενα, the myths referring but to the gods of lesser rank: they were therefore wanting in that which gives so much life to the Greek poetry. This of course applies rather to the Sabine element in the Roman population; the Pelasgian one was evidently more akin to the Grecian. By the other element, as well as by the Sibylline books and by the oracle of Apollo, they were familiarized with the mythology, and, therefore, likewise with the poetry of the Greeks: that mythology, there can be no doubt, was perfectly intelligible to the Romans. In Rome, after the end of the first Punic war, Greek poetry became still more known through the medium of the Latin language: it is true, however, that it awakened less interest there than in other Italian towns. The theatre at Tusculum, which, if we may judge from the bases found in the orchestra, dates at latest from the war with Hannibal, presupposes the performance of native or Greek pieces.
The Atellan plays, which are mentioned even before the end of the fourth century, are to us a distinct sign of a national literature. The statement that they were extemporised, is surely correct. Thus, before the great change of manners in Italy, there was often some improvisation interwoven with the pantomimes. As in the Atellanæ they possessed a sort of comedy, so in the prætextatæ, they had not only a native, but also a most ancient national tragedy. I believe that there is no mistake in connecting with the prætextatæ, the solemn processions at funerals, in which the masks of deceased men, who had curule ancestors (jus imaginum), were represented in the dress of their rank by men of similar size; yet even without any reference to this, we may ascribe to them a very great antiquity. The first poet whom we know to have treated them according to the rules of art, was Attius: earlier prætextatæ than his are not mentioned; yet this is no proof that they did not exist a long time before.
The translation of Greek poetry into the Latin tongue was a step of immense consequence. That Livius Andronicus had been taken prisoner at Tarentum, may be a mistake, as he is perhaps confounded with M. Livius Macatus; Livius Andronicus could at that time have been but a mere child. The accounts of him are very uncertain; in the earlier ages, little heed was bestowed upon the lives of the first poets, and their sayings and doings were only gathered afterwards: thus it still happened with Plautus and Terence. As far as we can judge from his fragments, he seems not even to have attained to the Greek form at all. The Odyssey, which, from its reference to the native country of the Romans, went indeed nearer home to their hearts, and had greater attraction for them than the Iliad,[39] he seems not to have translated at full length, but to have made an abridgment of it, which was also in the homely Italian measure. The great poem of Nævius was likewise in the saturnian rhythm. Besides the Odyssey, there are only tragedies mentioned of Livius, which, however, like the Atellanæ, were not acted in the theatre, but on a stage in the circus.
Nævius blended the history of the most recent times with Greek mythology; in his great historical poem, for instance, he brought in the myth of the giants. Besides this, he wrote tragedies as well as comedies, as we may see from the titles. That he was a good poet, we may indeed believe on Cicero’s word, who, on the whole, found the old writers very little to his taste.
When Nævius was an old man, Plautus, who was undoubtedly one of the greatest poetical geniuses of ancient times, was growing up by his side. This poet takes Greek plays and treats them with a finished irony, not making a mere version from the original, but displaying in his characters the peculiarities of Roman life, which is that of the lower orders, freedmen, strangers, and naturalized citizens. The scene is at Athens, or Epidamnus, or elsewhere; but he has also Greek characters (for instance, the parasite is thoroughly Greek), and then one is again reminded that one is in the midst of Romans. The cleverness with which he managed this, and with which, on the slippery path where he might so easily have stumbled, he always hits the right point, is quite miraculous. We see how wonderfully rich and refined his language was, a proof that even before his time it had been very much cultivated, otherwise it would not have been changed so quickly. For we have a senatus consultum of the fifth century,[40] and the epitaph of Scipio Barbatus, with which we may compare his style, and we find a remarkable difference.
Livius was a foreign client; Nævius a moneyed man, a maniceps; being too bold for a foreigner, he was prosecuted because he had given offence to one of the Metelli.[41] Of Plautus, we do not even know whether he was a Roman citizen: he must have been poor; but the story of his having worked at a mill does not rest upon any trustworthy authority. The first who really was a Roman citizen, being somewhat younger than Nævius, but standing in quite a different position from his, was Ennius, a gentleman,[42] and certainly a member of the tribes: he lived with Scipio, Fulvius Nobilior, and the first men, and was treated with the highest distinction. It is he who gained for poetry and literature the respect and esteem of the Romans. Among his fragments, there are some very fair pieces; his poetry, however, was not directed to higher objects: in comedy he seems to have been weak, nor does he appear to have held it in particular regard; in epic poetry, on the other hand, he has decided merit. Some of his things were written in a purely Roman form,—this was probably the case with the Sabinæ,[43] and also with the Saturæ,—yet he followed out quite a different idea. Plautus’ metres are by no means thoroughly Greek, though they very often coincide with the latter: the scansion by long and short syllables is Greek, but the Romans were not so strict in their measures, not having the quick ear of the Greeks. A trochaic or iambic movement was of native use among the Romans, and was not measured in the same way as among the Greeks: so it is with anapæsts among the modern Greeks, and with all the metres among some of the Slavonic nations. The senarius may be Greek, and as little peculiar to the Romans as to us (Germans). Even as Plautus introduced the latter, so did Ennius the hexameter, which was quite foreign; and this brought about just such revolution in metres as with us. His hexameters were still clumsy and full of faults, and without any cæsura, or with a false one, though not so bad as in Klopstock. Much as I like the old numeri, the verses of Ennius have something in them which is unpleasing to me. Besides the metres which are properly lyric, he has tried all the rhythmi; and indeed he has done it with much greater trueness than the older dramatists. The senarius has already more of measured syllables, which gave it a firmer hold; but there is between the verses of Ennius and those of Virgil, as wide a gulf as between the first attempts of Klopstock and that height of perfection in metrical art, to which Count Platen has reached. A peculiarity of the old versification which as yet is far from being clearly made out, was the slurring of the short syllables (ecthlipsis): ego was pronounced as one syllable, like the Italian io; accipito, as a dactyl.
Ennius was not an original genius; yet he surely does not deserve the contempt with which Horace speaks of him. He had had a Greek education in Calabria; Greek was his second mother tongue, while the Roman was for him only an acquired language: he therefore wished to help the Romans to a translated Greek literature. If we compare it with what the Greek literature then was, that of the Romans was very brilliant. The Alexandrine period was now already past. Callimachus was dead, when Livius Andronicus began; Antagoras[44] and Aratus were dead; Eratosthenes was a mere versifier. On the other hand, the Romans had a great deal of freshness, and there would have been still more, had not Ennius caused the foreign influence to get so much the upperhand.
Somewhat younger than Ennius was Pacuvius, his sister’s son, justly called the Deep. He scorned the pieces of Euripides, which Ennius had chosen, and only took those of Æschylus and Sophocles, thus putting himself altogether in opposition to the taste of the Greeks of that age.
Q. Fabius Pictor and L. Cincius Alimentus then wrote the history of their own nation in Greek. Dionysius, who finds fault with Fabius as an historian, has never made any objection against his language; on the contrary, the fact that Dionysius wrote his own history only down to the beginning of the first Punic war, when Fabius was getting to be more diffuse, proves that the latter was very readable. Of the same standing was Acilius. The great Scipio wrote in the form of a letter to Philip the history of his own wars,[45] and so did his son-in-law Scipio Nasica that of the war with Perseus. Greek grammarians, statuaries, and painters were brought in already by Æmilius Paullus for the education of his children.