Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

by Harold Edgeworth Butler

I

DIDACTIC POETRY

Only two didactic poems of this period have survived, the poem of Columella on gardening, and the anonymous work on Mount Etna, setting forth a theory of volcanic action.

i

THE 'AETNA'

The Aetna is a hexameter poem, 646 lines in length. The author laments the indifference shown by poets to the natural phenomena of his day. They waste their time on the description of the marvels of art, the spectacular side of human civilization, and the surface-beauties of Nature.[342] They write trivial epics on the voyage of Argo, the sack of Troy, Niobe, Thyestes, Cadmus, Ariadne, the Battle of the Giants[343]. They tell of the terrors of the underworld[344], and the loves of the gods[345]: they seek the false rather than the true, they neglect the genuine wonders of Nature, the laws that govern heavenly and terrestrial phenomena.

He will be wiser. But there is no need to travel far. He will not soar skyward to treat of the stars in their courses, of the seasons and signs of the weather, to the neglect of the marvels of mother earth.[346] The greatest of miracles is close at hand, Etna, the home of eternal fire. Deep in the heart of earth dwell two irresistible forces, wind and fire.[347] It is their conflict that causes the outbursts of flame and molten rock that devastate the slopes of Etna. It is no smithy of the gods, no Titan's prison. The causes are natural, water and wind and fire. He has seen Etna; he describes the crater,[348] the volcanic rock that can imprison fire,[349] the clouds that continually veil the mountain's crest,[350] the flames that burst from its summit, the subterranean rumblings,[351] the terrors of the lava stream. He concludes with the touching story of the Catanian brothers who, neglecting all else, sought only to save their aged parents from the flames. Their piety had its reward; they, and they alone, escaped from the lava; their neighbours, who sought to save their chattels and their wealth, perished in the stream, encumbered by their belongings.

Of the poet's theory of volcanic action we need not speak; it was the current scientific theory of the day, and has no value for us; nor has the author any claim to originality. As to the style and composition of the work, brief comment will suffice. We may give the author credit for a real enthusiasm, and for a just contempt of the prevailing themes that engaged the attention of the minor poets of the day. But he has no gifts for poetry. His theme, although it gave considerable opportunities for episodic display, was one of great difficulty. Much dry scientific detail was necessarily required. If Lucretius is sometimes tedious and prosaic in spite of the vastness of his theme, the magnificence of his moral background, and his inspired enthusiasm, what can be expected of a poem on a minor scientific theme such as Etna? Volcanoes can hardly compete with the universe as a theme for poetry. The subject is one that might have fascinated an Alexandrian poet and found skilful treatment at his hands. But the author of the Aetna had not the stylistic gifts of the Alexandrian. The actual arrangement of his matter is good, but, even when due allowance is made for the corruption of our text, his obscurity is intolerable, his imagery confused, his language cumbrous and wooden. He has, moreover, no poetic imagination. Aetna, not the poet, provides the fire. Even the beautiful story of the Catanian brothers, which forms by far the best portion of the poem, never rises to the level of pure poetry. It is illumined neither by the fire of rhetoric nor by the lambent light of sensuous diction and rich imagination. A few lines may be quoted to show its general character (605):

Nam quondam ruptis excanduit Aetna cavernis, et velut eversis penitus fornacibus ingens evecta in longum est rapidis fervoribus unda. * * * * * ardebant agris segetes et mollia cultu iugera cum dominis, silvae collesque rubebant. * * * * * tum vero ut cuique est animus viresque rapinae tutari conantur opes, gemit ille sub auro, colligit ille arma et stulta cervice reponit, defectum raptis illum sua carmina tardant, hic velox minimo properat sub pondere pauper. * * * * * … haec nullis parsura incendia pascunt, vel solis parsura piis. namque optima proles Amphinomus fraterque pari sub munere fortes, cum iam vicinis streperent incendia tectis, aspiciunt pigrumque patrem matremque senecta eheu defessos posuisse in limine membra, parcite, avara manus, dulces attollere praedas: illis divitiae solae materque paterque: hanc rapient praedam. mediumque exire per ignem ipso dante fidem properant. o maxima rerum et merito pietas homini tutissima virtus! erubuere pios iuvenes attingere flammae et, quacumque ferunt illi vestigia, cedunt felix illa dies, illa est innoxia terra. dextra saeva tenent, laevaque incendia fervent; ille per obliquos ignes fraterque triumphant tutus uterque pio sub pondere: suffugit illa et circa geminos avidus sibi temperat ignis, incolumes abeunt tandem et sua numina secum salva ferunt. illos mirantur carmina vatum, illos seposuit claro sub nomine Ditis nec sanctos iuvenes attingunt sordida fata, securas cessere domus et iura piorum.

For once Etna burst its caves and, glowing with fire, cast forth all that its furnaces contained; a vast wave, swift and hot with fire, streamed forth afar…. Crops blazed along the fields, rich acres with their masters were consumed, forest and hill glowed rosy red…. Then each man, as he had courage and strength to bear away his goods, strove to protect his wealth. One groans beneath a weight of gold, another collects his weapons and slings them on his foolish neck. Another, unable to carry away what he has snatched up, wastes time in repeating charms, while there the poor man moves swift beneath his slender burden…. The fire feeds on all it meets: nought will it spare, or, if aught it spares, only the pious. For Amphinomus and his brother, the best of sons, brave in the toil they shared, when the fires roared loud and were already nigh their home, behold their father and their mother fall fainting on the threshold fordone with years. Cease, greedy folk, to shoulder the spoil of your fortunes that are so dear to you: for these men father and mother are their sole wealth; this only is the spoil that they would save. They hasten to escape through the midst of the fire, which itself gave them confidence. O piety, greatest of all that man may possess, of all virtues that which most saves the righteous. The flames blushed to touch the pious youths, and yield a path wherever they turn their steps. Blest was that day; the ground they trod was unharmed. The fierce burning holds all things on their right and blazes on their left. The brethren move triumphant on their path aslant the flame, each saved by his pious burden: the fire shuns their path and restrains its greedy hunger where pass the twain; scatheless they escape at length and bear those whom they worship to a place of safety. The songs of poets hymn their praise and the underworld gives them a glorious resting-place apart, nor does any unworthy fate befall these youths that lived so holy. They have passed away to dwell among the blessed, and sorrow cometh not nigh their dwelling-place.

The narrative is clear, and the story delightful. But the telling of it, though free from affectation, is dull, prosaic, and uninspired. And it must be remembered that this passage shows the author in his most favourable aspect. In his more technical passages the clearness and simplicity is absent, the prosiness and lack of imagination remain, nakedly hideous.

The author of the poem is unknown, the very date is uncertain. The conception of the work is Lucretian, but in point of style, while full of reminiscences of Lucretius, the poem owes most to Vergil, whose hexameter has undoubtedly been taken for a model, though it has lost all its music. Except in the avoidance of elision there is no trace of the influence of Ovid. The poem might easily have been written in the latter half of the reign of Augustus.[352] The obscurity is due to the lack, not the excess of art, and the poem has no special affinity with the Silver Age. Servius and Donatus, indeed, both seem to ascribe the poem to Vergil,[353] while it is found in the MSS. which give us the Appendix Vergiliana. But there are considerations which have inclined editors to place it later, in the reign of Nero, or in the opening years of the principate of Vespasian. In one of his letters (Sen. 79) Seneca, writing to his friend Lucilius Junior, urges him to 'describe Etna in his poem, and by so doing treat a topic common to all poets'. The fact that Vergil had already treated it was no obstacle to Ovid's essaying the task, nor was Cornelius Severus deterred by the fact that both Vergil and Ovid had handled the theme. Later he adds, 'If I know you aright, the subject of Aetna will make your mouth water.' Lucilius was procurator in Sicily, and had sung the story of the Syracusan nymph Arethusa.[354] It has been suggested that he[355] wrote the Aetna. But Lucilius was an imitator of Ovid,[356] and Seneca advises him not to write a didactic poem on Etna, but to treat it episodically (in suo carmine), as Vergil and Ovid[357] had done. It is conceivable that he may have written a didactic poem on the subject, but Seneca's remarks yield absolutely no evidence for the fact.

Others have made Cornelius Severus the author,[358] though it is practically certain that his description of the volcano must have occurred in his poem On the Sicilian War.[359] But the fact that Seneca makes no reference to the existence of any learned didactic poem on the subject carries a little more weight, and there are marked parallels between Seneca's 'quaestiones Naturales' and passages in the Aetna.[360] Further, the very badness of the poem makes us hesitate to place it in the Augustan period. That age, no doubt, produced much bad work as well as good, but a poem so obscure and inartistically prosaic as the Aetna was more likely to be produced and more likely to survive in an imitative and uninspired age such as that which followed on the death of Augustus. But for the evidence of Seneca we should place the poem in the prosaic reign of Tiberius; the considerations adduced from Seneca lead us, though with the utmost hesitation, to place it somewhere between 57 and 79 A.D.[361] Of the lower limit there can be no doubt. The fires of the Phlegraean plains are extinct,[362] therefore the poem was composed before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.[363] The question of the authorship of the Aetna has necessarily been treated at greater length than the merits of the poem deserve. It is a work of small importance; its chief value is to show how low it was possible for Roman didactic poetry to sink. In the Aetna it sinks lower than epic in the Punica of Silius Italicus. That poem, for all its portentous dullness, shows a certain ponderous technical skill and literary facility. The author of the Aetna, though clearly a man of culture, is never at his ease, the verse is laboured and lacking flexibility, and there is no technical dexterity to compensate for a total absence of genius. The terror and beauty of the mountain crowned with snow and fire find no adequate expression in these monotonous lines. There remains a conglomerate of unoriginal and unsound physical speculation.

ii

COLUMELLA

The Aetna is a Lucretian poem decked out in a Vergilian dress. In the tenth book of Columella we have a didactic poem modelled on the Georgics of Vergil. The author was of Spanish origin, a native of Gades,[364] and the contemporary of his great compatriot the younger Seneca.[365] He had served in a military capacity in Syria,[366] but his real passion was agriculture. His ambition was to write a really practical farmers' manual.[367] He had written nine books in prose, covering the whole range of farming, from the tillage of the soil to the breeding of poultry and cattle, and concluding with a disquisition on wild animals and bee-keeping. But in the tenth book, yielding to the solicitation of his friend Publius Silvinus,[368] he set himself a more exalted task, no less than the writing of a fifth Georgic on gardening. Vergil, in his fourth Georgic (148), had left the theme of gardens for another's singing. Columella takes him at his word. The tenth book is manifestly intended as the crown and conclusion of his work. But later he changed his plan. Another friend, Claudius Augustalis,[369] demanded a paraphrase, or rather an amplification in prose. This resulted in an eleventh book, in which the care of the garden and the duties of the villicus are described, while the work was finally concluded in a twelfth book setting forth the duties of the villica.[370]

It may be doubted whether Columella was well advised when he yielded to the entreaties of his friend Silvinus and wrote his tenth book in verse. He had no great poetic talent, nor did he possess the sleight of hand of Calpurnius, the imitator of the Eclogues. But he possesses qualities which render his work far more attractive than that of Calpurnius. He is a genuine enthusiast, with a real love of the countryside and a charming affection for flowers. And as a stylist he is modest. He makes no attempt at display, no contorted striving after originality. His verse is clear and simple as his tastes. He is content to follow humbly in the footsteps of his great master, the 'starry' Vergil.[371] He imitates and even plagiarizes[372] because he loves, not because it is the fashion. He shows no appreciation of the more intimate harmonies of the Vergilian hexameter; like so many contemporaries, he realizes neither the value of judicious elision nor varied pauses; but his verse, in spite of its monotony and lack of life and movement, is not unmelodious. The poem is a sober work, uninspired in tone, straightforward and simple in plan. It need not be described in detail; its advice is obvious, setting forth the times and seasons to be observed by the gardener, the methods of preparing the soil, the choice of flowers, with all the customary mythological allusions.[373] At its worst, with its tedious lists of the names of flowers, it reads like a seedsman's catalogue,[374] at its best it is lit up with a quaint humour, a love of colour, and a homely yet vivid imagination. Mother earth—'sweet earth' he calls her—is highly personified; that she may be adorned anew, her green locks must be torn from their tangle by the plough, her old raiment stripped from her, her thirst quenched by irrigation, her hunger satisfied with fertilizing manure.[375] The garden is to be no rich man's park for the display of statues and fountains. Its one statue shall be the image of the garden god, its patron and its protector.[376] Its splendour shall be the varied hue of its flower-beds and its wealth in herbs that serve the use of man:

verum ubi iam puro discrimine pectita tellus deposito squalore nitens sua semina poscet, pingite tunc varios, terrestria sidera, flores, candida leucoia et flaventia lumina caltae narcissique comas et hiantis saeva leonis ora feri calathisque virentia lilia canis, nec non vel niveos vel caeruleos hyacinthos, tum quae pallet humi, quae frondens purpurat auro, ponatur viola et nimium rosa plena pudoris (94).

But when earth, with parted locks combed clear, gleams, all soilure cast aside, and demands the seeds that are her due, call forth the varied hues of flowers, earth's constellations, the white snowflake and the marigold's golden eyes, the narcissus-petals and the blossom that apes the fierce lion's gaping maw; the lily, too, with calix shining white amid its green leaves, the hyacinths white and blue; plant also the violet lying pale upon the ground or purple shot with gold among its leafage, and the rose with its deep shamefaced blush.

He loves the return of spring with as deep a love as Vergil's, though he must borrow Vergil's language to describe its coming and its power.[377] But his painting of its harvest of colour is his own:

quin et odoratis messis iam floribus instat: iam ver purpureum, iam versicoloribus anni fetibus alma parens pingi sua tempora gaudet. iam Phrygiae loti gemmantia lumina promunt et coniventis oculos violaria solvunt (255).

Nay, more, the harvest-time draws near for sweet-scented flowers. The purple spring has come, and kindly mother earth rejoices that her brows are painted bright with all the many-coloured offspring of the year. Now the Phrygian lotus puts forth its jewelled orbs and the violet beds open their winking eyes.

All the glories of an Italian spring are in the lines in which a little later he describes the joy of living when the year is young, and the wasting heat of summer is still far off, when it is sweet to be in the sun and watch the garden with its rainbow colours:

nunc ver egelidum, nunc est mollissimus annus, dum Phoebus tener ac tenera decumbere in herba suadet et arguto fugientes gramine fontes nec rigidos potare iuvat nec sole tepentes, iamque Dionaeis redimitur floribus hortus, iam rosa mitescit Sarrano clarior ostro. nec tam nubifugo Borea Latonia Phoebe purpureo radiat vultu, nec Sirius ardor sic micat aut rutilus Pyrois aut ore corusco Hesperus, Eoo remeat cum Lucifer ortu, nec tam sidereo fulget Thaumantias arcu quam nitidis hilares conlucent fetibus horti (282).

Now cool spring is come, the gentlest season of the year, while Phoebus yet is young and bids us recline in the young herbage, and 'tis sweet to drink the rill that flows among the murmuring grass, with waters neither icy cold nor warm with the sun's heat. Now, too, the garden is crowned with the flowers Dione loves, and the rose ripens brighter than Tyrian purple. Not so brightly does Phoebe, Leto's daughter, shine with radiant face when Boreas has dispersed the clouds, nor glows hot Sirius so, nor ruddy Pyrois, nor Hesperus with shining countenance when he returns as the daystar at the break of dawn, not so fair gleams Iris with her starry bow, as shines the joyous garden with its bright offspring.

These are the words of an enthusiast and a poet, and these few outbursts of song redeem the poem from dullness. There is wafted from his pages the perfume of the countryside, and the fresh air breathes welcome amid the hothouse cultures of contemporary poets. And he is almost the only poet of the age that can be read without a wince of pain. He is at least as good a laureate of the garden as Thomson of the seasons, and he has all the grace of humility. Even when the artist fails us, we love the man.