Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

by Harold Edgeworth Butler

VALERIUS FLACCUS

The political tendency towards retrenchment and reform that marks the reign of Vespasian finds its literary parallel in a reaction against the rhetoric of display that culminated in Seneca and Lucan. This movement is most strongly marked in the prose of Quintilian and the Dialogus of Tacitus, but finds a faint echo in the world of poets as well. The three epic poets of the period—Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus—though they, too, have suffered much from their rhetorical training, are all clear followers of Vergil. They, like their predecessors, find it hard to say things naturally, but they do not to the same extent go out of their way with the deliberate intention of saying things unnaturally.[472] We may condemn them as phrase-makers, though many a modern poet of greater reputation is equally open to the charge. But their phrase-making has not the flamboyant quality of the Neronian age. If it is no less wearisome, it is certainly less offensive. They do not lack invention; their mere technical skill is remarkable; they fail because they lack the supreme gifts of insight and imagination.

Valerius Flaccus chose a wiser course than Lucan and Silius Italicus. He turned not to history, but to legend, for his theme; and the story of the Argonauts, on which his choice lighted, possessed one inestimable advantage. Well-worn and hackneyed as it was, it possessed the secret of eternal youth. 'Age could not wither it nor custom stale its infinite variety.' The poorest of imitative poetasters could never have made it wholly dull, and Valerius Flaccus was more than a mere poetaster.

Of his life and position little is known. His name is given by the MSS. as Gaius Valerius Flaccus Setinus Balbus.[473] The name Setinus suggests that he may have been a native of Setia. As there were three Setias, one in Italy and two in Spain, this clue gives us small help. It has been suggested[474] that the peculiarities of his diction are due to his being of Spanish origin. But we have no evidence as to the nature of Spanish Latin, while the authors of known Spanish birth, who found fame in the Silver Age—Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, Columella—show no traces of their provenance. No more helpful is the view that he is one Flaccus of Patavium, the poet-friend to whom two of Martial's epigrams are addressed.[475] For Martial's acquaintance was poor and is exhorted to abandon poetry as unlucrative, whereas Valerius Flaccus had some social standing and, not improbably, some wealth. From the opening of the Argonautica we learn that he held the post of quindecimvir sacris faciundis.[476] But there our knowledge of the poet ends, save for one solitary allusion in Quintilian, the sole reference to Valerius in any ancient writer. In his survey of Latin literature[477] he says multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus. The work of Quintilian having been published between the years 93 and 95 A.D., the death of Valerius Flaccus may be placed about 90 A.D.

The poem seems to have been commenced shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. At the opening of the first book[478] Valerius addresses Vespasian in the conventional language of courtly flattery with appropriate reference to his voyages in northern seas during his service in Britain, a reference doubly suitable in a poem which is largely nautical and geographical. He excuses himself from taking the obvious subject of the Jewish war on the ground that that theme is reserved for the inspired pen of Domitian. It is for him to describe Titus, his brother, dark with the dust of war, launching the fires of doom and dealing destruction from tower to tower along the ramparts of Jerusalem.[479] The progress of the work was slow. By the time the third book is reached we find references to the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D.,[480] while in the two concluding books there seem to be allusions to Roman campaigns in the Danube lands, perhaps those undertaken by Domitian in 89 A.D.[481] At line 468 of the eighth book the poem breaks off suddenly. It is possible that this is due to the ravages of time or to the circumstances of the copyist of our archetype, but consideration of internal evidence points strongly to the conclusion that Valerius died with his work uncompleted.

Not only do the words of Quintilian (l.c.) suggest a poet who left a great work unfinished, but the poem itself is full of harshnesses and inconsistencies of a kind which so slow and careful a craftsman would assuredly have removed had the poem been completed and received its final revision.[482] These blemishes leave us little room for doubt. The poem that has come down to us is a fragment lacking the limae labor. Like the Thebais of Statius and the Aeneid itself, the work was probably planned to fill twelve books. The poem breaks off with the marriage of Medea and Jason on the Isle of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, where they are overtaken by Medea's brother Absyrtus, who has come in anger to reclaim his sister and take vengeance on the stranger who has beguiled her. It is clear that the Argonauts[483] were, as in Apollonius Rhodius, to escape up the Danube and reach another sea. In Apollonius they descended from the head waters of the Danube by some mythical river to the Adriatic; it is in the Adriatic that Absyrtus is encountered and slain; it is in Phaeacia that Jason and Medea are married. In Valerius both these incidents take place in the Isle of Peuce, at the Danube's mouth. The inference is that Valerius contemplated a different scheme for his conclusion. It has been pointed out[484] that a mere 'reproduction of Apollonius' episodes could not have occupied four books'; and it is suggested that Valerius definitely brought his heroes into relation to the various Italian places[485] connected with the Argonautic legend, while he may even, as a compliment to Vespasian,[486] have brought them back 'by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul'. This ingenious conjectural reconstruction has some probability, slight as is the evidence on which it rests. Valerius was almost bound to give his epic a Roman tinge. More convincing, however, is the suggestion of the same critic[487] that the poem was designed to exceed the scope of the epic of Apollonius and to have included the death of Pelias, the malignant and usurping uncle, who, to get rid of Jason, compels him to the search of the golden fleece. To the retribution that came upon him there are two clear references[488] and only the design to describe it could justify the introduction of the suicide of Jason's parents at the outset of the first book, a suicide to which they are driven to avoid death at the hands of Pelias.

The scope of the unwritten books is, however, of little importance in comparison with the execution of the existing portion of the poem. The Argonaut Saga has its weaknesses as a theme for epic. It is too episodic, it lacks unity and proportion. Save for the struggle in Colchis and the loves of Jason and Medea, there is little deep human interest. These defects, however, find their compensation in the variety and brilliance of colour, and, in a word, the romance that is inseparable from the story. The scene is ever changing, each day brings a new marvel, a new terror. Picturesqueness atones for lack of epic grandeur. For that reason the theme was well suited to the Silver Age, when picturesqueness and rich invention of detail predominated at the expense of poetic dignity and kindling imagination. In many ways Valerius does justice to his subject, in spite of the initial difficulty with which he was confronted. Apollonius Rhodius had made the story his own; Varro of Atax had translated Apollonius: both in its Greek and Latin forms the story was familiar to Roman readers. It was hard to be original.

Much as Valerius owes to his greater predecessor, he yet succeeds in showing no little originality in his portrayal of character and incident, and in a few cases in his treatment of plot.[489] In one particular indeed he has markedly improved on his model; he has made Jason, the hero of his epic, a real hero; conventional he may be, but he still is a leader of men. In Apollonius, on the other hand, he plays a curiously inconspicuous part; he is, in fact, the weakest feature of the poem; he is in despair from the outset, and at no point shows genuine heroic qualities; he is at best a peerless wooer and no more. Here, however, he is exalted by the two great battles of Cyzicus and Colchis; it is in part his prowess in the latter battle that wins Medea's heart. In this connexion we may also notice a marked divergence from Apollonius as regards the plot. Aeetes has promised Jason the fleece if he will aid him against his brother Perses, who is in revolt against him with a host of Scythians at his back. Jason aids him, does prodigies of valour, and wins a glorious victory. Aeetes refuses the reward. This act of treachery justifies Jason in having recourse to Medea's magic arts and in employing her to avenge him on her father. In Apollonius we find a very different story. The sons of Phrixus, who, to escape the wrath of Aeetes, have thrown in their lot with the Argonauts, urge Jason to approach Medea; they themselves work upon the feelings of their mother, Chalciope, till she seeks her sister Medea—already in love with Jason and only too ready to be persuaded—and induces her to save her nephews, whose fate is bound up with that of the strangers. This incident is wholly absent from Valerius Flaccus, with the result that the loves of Jason and Medea assume a somewhat different character. Jason's conduct becomes more natural and dignified. Medea, on the other hand, is shown in a less favourable light. In the Greek poet she has for excuse the desire to save her sister from the loss of her sons, which gives her half a right to love Jason. In the Latin epic she is without excuse, unless, indeed, the hackneyed supernatural machinery,[490] put in motion to win her for Jason, can be called an excuse. This crude employment of the supernatural leaves Valerius small room for the subtle psychological analysis wherein the Greek excels, and this, coupled with the love of the Silver Age for art magic, tends to make Medea—as in Seneca—a sorceress first, a woman after. In Apollonius she is barbaric, unsophisticated, a child of nature; in Valerius she is a figure of the stage, not without beauty and pathos, but essentially melodramatic.

But Apollonius had concentrated all his powers upon Medea, and dwarfs all his other characters, Jason not excepted. It is Medea alone that holds our interests. The little company of heroes embarked on unsailed seas and beset with strange peril are scarcely more than a string of names, that drop in and out, as though the work were a ship's log rather than an epic. In Valerius, though he attempts no detailed portraiture, they are men who can at least fight and die. He has, in a word, a better general conception as to how the story should be told; he is less perfunctory, and strives to fill in his canvas more evenly, whereas Apollonius, although by no means concise, leaves much of his canvas covered by sketches of the slightest and most insignificant character. In the Greek poem, though half the work is consumed in describing the voyage to Colchis, the first two books contain scarcely anything of real poetic interest, if we except the story of Phineus and the Harpies, a few splendid similes, and two or three descriptive passages, as brief as they are brilliant. In Valerius, on the contrary, there is abundance of stirring scenes and rich descriptive passages before the Argonauts reach their goal. His superiority is particularly noticeable at the outset of the poem. Apollonius plunges in medias res and fails to give an adequate account of the preliminaries of the expedition. He has no better method of introducing us to his heroes than by giving us a dreary catalogue of their names. Valerius, too, has his catalogue, but later; we are not choked with indigestible and unpalatable fare at the very opening of the feast. And though both authors take five hundred lines to get their heroes under way, Valerius tells us far more and in far better language; Apollonius does not find his stride till the second book, and forgets that it is necessary to interest the reader in his characters from the very beginning.

But though in these respects Valerius has improved on his predecessor, and though his work lacks the arid wastes of his model, he is yet an author of an inferior class, and comes ill out of the comparison. For he has little of the rich, almost oriental, colouring of Apollonius at his best, lacks his fire and passion, and fails to cast the same glamour of romance about his subject. While the Dido and Aeneas of Vergil are in some respects but a pale reflection of the Medea and Jason of Apollonius, the loves of Jason and Medea in Valerius are fainter still. His heroine is not the tragic figure that stands out in lines of fire from the pages of Apollonius. His lovers' speeches have a certain beauty and tenderness of their own, but they lack the haunting melody and the resistless passion that make the Rhodian's lines immortal. And while to a great extent he lacks the peculiar merits of the Greek,[491] he possesses his most serious blemish, the blemish that is so salient a characteristic of both Alexandrian and Silver Latin literature, the passion for obscure learning. A good example is the huge, though most ingenious, catalogue of the tribes of Scythia at the opening of the sixth book, with its detailed inventory of strange names and customs, and its minute descriptions of barbaric armour. His love of learning lands him, moreover, in strange anachronisms. We are told that the Colchians are descended from Sesostris;[492] the town of Arsinoe is spoken of as already in existence; Egypt is already connected with the house of Lagus.[493]

In addition, Valerius possesses many of the faults from which Apollonius is free, but with which the post-Augustan age abounds. The dangerous influence of Seneca has, it is true, decayed; we are no longer flooded with epigram or declamatory rhetoric. Rhetoric there is, and rhetoric that is not always effective;[494] but it is rather a perversion of the rhetoric of Vergil than the descendant of the brilliant rant of Lucan and Seneca. From the gross lack of taste and humour that characterizes so many of his contemporaries he is comparatively free, though his description of the historic 'crab' caught by Hercules reaches the utmost limit of absurdity:

laetus et ipse Alcides: Quisnam hos vocat in certamina fluctus? dixit, et, intortis adsurgens arduus undis, percussit subito deceptum fragmine pectus, atque in terga ruens Talaum fortemque Eribotem et longe tantae securum Amphiona molis obruit, inque tuo posuit caput, Iphite, transtro. (iii. 474-80.)

Alcides gladdened in his heart and cried: 'Who challenges these waves to combat?' and as he rose against those buffeting waves, sudden with broken oar he smote his baffled breast, and, falling headlong back, o'erthrows Talaus and brave Eribotes and far-off Amphion, that never feared so vast a bulk should fall on him, and laid his head against thy thwart, O Iphitus.

This unheroic episode is a relic of the comic traditions associated with Hercules, traditions which obtrude themselves from time to time in serious and even tragic surroundings.[495] Apollonius describes the same incident[496] with the quiet humour that so strangely tinges the works of the pedants of Alexandria. Valerius, on the other hand, has lost touch with the broad comedy of these traditions, and his attempt to be humorous only succeeds in making him ridiculous.[497]

His worst fault, however, lies in his obscurity and preciosity of diction. The error lies not so much in veiling simple facts under an epigram, as in a vain attempt to imitate the 'golden phrases' of Vergil. The strange conglomeration of words with which Valerius so often vexes his readers resembles the 'chosen coin of fancy' only as the formless designs of the coinage of Cunobelin resemble the exquisite staters of Macedon from which they trace their descent. It requires more than a casual glance to tell that (i. 411)

it quem fama genus non est decepta Lyaei
Phlias inmissus patrios de vertice crines

means that Phlias was 'truly reported the son of Bacchus with streaming locks like to his sire's'; or that (vi. 553)

Argus utrumque ab equis ingenti porrigit arvo

signifies no more than that the victims of Argus covered a large space of ground when they fell.[498] How miserable is such a phrase compared with the [Greek: keito megas megal_osti] of Homer! And though there is less serious obscurity, nothing can be more awkward than the not infrequent inversion of the natural order of words that we find in phrases such as nec pereat quo scire malo (vii. 7).[499]

Of mere preciosity and phrase-making without any special obscurity examples abound.[500] Pelion sinks below the horizon (ii. 6)—

iamque fretis summas aequatum Pelion ornos.

A fight at close quarters receives the following curious description (ii. 524)—

iam brevis et telo volucri non utilis aer.

A spear flying through the air and missing its mark is a volnus raptum per auras (iii. 196). More startling than these is the picture of a charge of trousered barbarians (vi. 702)—

improba barbaricae procurrunt tegmina plantae.

One more peculiarity remains to be noticed. Here and there in the Argonautica we meet with a strange brevity and compression resulting not from the desire to produce phrases of curious and original texture, but rather from a praiseworthy though misdirected endeavour to be concise. The most remarkable example is found in the first book, where Mopsus, the official prophet of the expedition, falls into a trance and beholds a vision of the future (211):

heu quaenam aspicio! nostris modo concitus ausis aequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingens concilium. fremere et legem defendere cuncti hortantur. sic amplexu, sic pectora fratris, Iuno, tene; tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas: nunc patrui nunc flecte minas. cessere ratemque accepere mari. per quot discrimina rerum expedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crines velat Hylas? unde urna umeris niueosque per artus caeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi volnera, Pollux? quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis! tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastae et iam iamque umeri. quem circum vellera Martem aspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser eripe parvos, Aesonide. cerno et thalamos ardere iugales.

Alas! what do I see! Even now, stirred by our daring, lo! Neptune calls the gods to a vast conclave. They murmur, and one and all urge him to defend his rights. Hold as thou holdest now, Juno, hold thy brother in thine embrace: and thou, Pallas, forsake not our ship: now, even now, appease thy brother's threats. They have yielded: they give Argo entrance to the sea. Through what perils am I whirled along! Why does fair Hylas veil his locks with a sudden crown of reeds? Whence comes the pitcher on his shoulder and the azure raiment on his limbs of snow? Whence, Pollux, come these wounds of thine? Ah! what a flame streams from the widespread nostrils of the bulls. Helmets and spears rise from every furrow, and now see! shoulders too! What warfare for the fleece do I see? Who is it cleaves the air with winged snakes, reeking with slaughter? Whom smites she with the sword? Ah! son of Aeson, hapless man, save thy little ones. I see, too, the bridal chamber all aflame.

These lines form a kind of abridgement or précis of the whole Argonautica, or even more, for we can hardly believe that the scheme of it included the murder of Medea's children and her vengeance on the house of Creon[501]. They are also far too obscure to be interesting to any save a highly-trained literary audience, while their extreme compression could only be justified by their having been primarily designed for recitation in a dramatic and realistic manner with suitable pauses between the different visions.[502] A yet worse and less excusable example of this peculiar brevity is the jerky and prosaic enumeration of Medea's achievements in the black art (vi. 442)—

mutat agros fluviumque vias; suus alligat ingens cuncta sopor, recoquit fessos aetate parentes, datque alias sine lege colus.

She changes crops of fields and course of rivers. [At her bidding] deep clinging slumber binds all things; fathers outworn with age she seethes to youth again, and to others she gives new span of life against fate's ordinance.

The attempt to be concise and full[503] at one and the same time fails, and fails inevitably.

But for all these faults Valerius Flaccus offends less than any of the Silver Latin writers of epic. He rants less and he exaggerates less; above all, he has much genuine poetic merit. He has been strangely neglected, both in ancient[504] and modern times, and unduly depreciated in the latter. There has been a tendency to rank him with Silius Italicus, whereas it would be truer criticism to place him close to Statius, and not far below Lucan. He is more uneven than the former, has a far less certain touch, and infinitely less command of his instrument. He has less mastery of words, but a more kindling and penetrating imagination. His outlines are less clear, but more suggestive. He has less rhetoric; beneath an often obscure diction he reveals a greater simplicity and directness of thought, and he has been infinitely more happy in his theme. Only the greatest of poets could achieve a genuine success with the Theban legend, only the worst of poets could reduce the voyage of the Argonauts to real dullness. On the other hand, in an age of belles-lettres such as the Silver Age, and by the majority of scholars, whose very calling leads them to set a perhaps abnormally high value on technical skill, Statius is almost certain to be preferred to Valerius. About the relative position of Lucan there is no doubt. He is incomparably the superior of Valerius, both in genius and intellect. But Valerius never sins against taste and reason to the same extent, and though he has less fire, possesses a finer ear for music and rhythm, and more poetic feeling as distinct from rhetoric. Vergil was his master; it has been said with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll' of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. But he has weakened his hexameter by succumbing to the powerful influence of Ovid. His verse is polished and neat to the verge of weakness. Like Ovid, he shows a preference for the dactyl over the spondee, shrinks from elision, and does not understand how to vary his pauses.[506] Too many lines close with a full-stop or colon, and where the line is broken, the same pause often recurs again and again with wearisome monotony. In this respect Valerius, though never monotonously ponderous like Lucan, compares ill with Statius. As a compensation, his individual lines have a force and beauty that is comparatively rare in the Thebais. The poet who could describe a sea-cave thus (iv. 179)—

non quae dona die, non quae trahat aetheris ignem; infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi,

That receiveth never daylight's gifts nor the light of the heavenly fires, the home of gloom all a-tremble with the sound of the deep.

is not to be despised as a master of metre. And whether for picturesqueness of expression or for beauty of sound, lines such as (iii. 596)

rursus Hylan et rursus Hylan per longa reclamat avia; responsant silvae et vaga certat imago,

'Hylas', and again 'Hylas', he calls through the long wilderness;
the woods reply, and wandering echo mocks his voice.

or (i. 291)

quis tibi, Phrixe, dolor, rapido cum concitus aestu respiceres miserae clamantia virginis ora extremasque manus sparsosque per aequora crines!

Phrixus, what grief was thine when, swept along by the swirling tide, thou lookedst back on the hapless maiden's face as she cried for thine aid, her sinking hands, her hair streaming o'er the deep.

are not easily surpassed outside the pages of Vergil. But it is above all on his descriptive power that his claim to consideration rests.[507] For it is there that he finds play for his most remarkable gifts, his power of suggestion of mystery, and his keen sense of colour. These gifts find their most striking manifestation in his description of the Argonauts' first night upon the waters. They

were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.

All is strange to them. Each sight and sound has its element of terror:

auxerat hora metus, iam se vertentis Olympi ut faciem raptosque simul montesque locosque ex oculis circumque graves videre tenebras. ipsa quies rerum mundique silentia terrent astraque et effusis stellatus crinibus aether. ac velut ignota captus regione viarum noctivagum qui carpit iter non aure quiescit, non oculis, noctisque metus niger auget utrimque campus et occurrens umbris maioribus arbor, haud aliter trepidare viri (ii. 38).

The dark hour deepened their fears when they saw heaven's vault wheel round, and the peaks and fields of earth snatched from their view, and all about them the horror of darkness. The very stillness of things and the deep silence of the world affright them, the stars and heaven begemmed with streaming locks of gold. And as one benighted in a strange place 'mid paths unknown pursues his devious journey through the night and finds rest neither for eye nor ear, but all about him the blackness of the plain, and the trees that throng upon him seen greater through the gloom, deepen his terror of the dark—even so the heroes trembled.

There are few more vivid pictures in Latin poetry than that of the benighted wanderer lost on some wide plain studded with clumps of trees that seem to throng upon him in the gloom, seen greater through the darkness. Not less imaginative, though less clear cut and precise, is his picture of the underworld in the third book:

est procul ad Stygiae devexa silentia noctis Cimmerium domus et superis incognita tellus, caeruleo tenebrosa situ, quo flammea numquam Sol iuga sidereos nec mittit Iuppiter annos. stant tacitae frondes inmotaque silva comanti horret Averna iugo; specus umbrarumque meatus subter et Oceani praeceps fragor arvaque nigro vasta metu et subitae post longa silentia voces (iii. 398).

Far hence by the deep sunken silence of the Stygian night lies the Cimmerians' home, a land unknown to denizens of upper air, all dark with gloomy squalor. Thither the sun hath never driven his flaming car nor Jupiter sent forth his starry seasons. Silent are the leaves of its groves, and all along its leafy hill bristles unmoved Avernus' wood: thereunder are caverns, and the shades go to and fro; there Ocean plunges roaring to its fall, there are plains with dark fear desolate, and after long silences sudden voices thunder out.

It is a more theatrical underworld than that of Vergil, and the picture is not clearly conceived, but its very vagueness is impressive. The poet gives us, as it were, the scene for the enactment of some dim dream of terror. He is equally at home in describing the happy calm of Elysium. Though the picture lacks originality, it has no lack of beauty:

hic geminae infernum portae, quarum altera dura semper lege patens populos regesque receptat; ast aliam temptare nefas et tendere contra; rara et sponte patet, siquando pectore ductor volnera nota gerens, galeis praefixa rotisque cui domus aut studium mortales pellere curas, culta fides, longe metus atque ignota cupido; seu venit in vittis castaque in veste sacerdos. quos omnes lenis plantis et lampada quassans progenies Atlantis agit. lucet via late igne dei, donec silvas et amoena piorum deveniant camposque, ubi sol totumque per annum durat aprica dies thiasique chorique virorum carminaque et quorum populis iam nulla cupido (i. 833).

Here lie the twin gates of Hell, whereof the one is ever open by stern fate's decree, and through it march the peoples and princes of the world. But the other may none essay nor beat against its bars. Barely it opens and untouched by hand, if e'er a chieftain comes with glorious wounds upon his breast, whose halls were decked with helm and chariots, or who strove to cast out the woes of mankind, who honoured truth and bade farewell to fear and knew no base ambition. Then, too, it opens when some priest comes wearing sacred wreath and spotless robe. All such the child of Atlas leads along with gentle tread and waving torch. Far shines the road with the fire of the god until they come to the groves and plains, the pleasant mansions of the blest, where the sun ceases not, nor the warm daylight all the year long, nor dancing companies of heroes, nor song, nor all the innocent joys that the peoples of the earth desire no more.

Many lines might be quoted that startle us with their unforeseen vividness or some unexpected blaze of colour; when the fleece of gold is taken from the tree where it had long since shone like a beacon through the dark, the tree sinks back into the melancholy night,

tristesque super coiere tenebrae (viii. 120).

At their bridal on the desolate Isle of Peuce under the shadow of approaching peril, Jason and Medea gleam star-like amid the company of heroes (viii. 257):

ipsi inter medios rosea radiante iuventa altius inque sui sternuntur velleris auro.

Themselves in their comrades' midst, bright with the rosy glow of youth, above them all, lie on the fleece of gold that they had made their own.

This characteristic is most evident in the similes over which Valerius, like other poets of the age, would seem to have expended particular labour. He scatters them over his pages with too prodigal a hand, and they suffer at times from over-elaboration and ingenuity.[508] Desire for originality has led him to such startling comparisons as that between a warrior drawn from his horse and a bird snared by the limed twig of the fowler,[509] surely as inappropriate a simile as was ever framed. More distressing still is the maudlin pathos of the simile which likens Medea to a dog on the verge of madness.[510] But such gross aberrations are rare; against them may be set some of the freshest and most beautiful similes in the whole range of Latin poetry. The silence that follows on the wailing of the women of Cyzicus is like the silence of Egypt when the birds that wintered there have flown to more temperate lands. 'And now they had paid due honour to their ashes; with weary feet, wives with their babes wandered away and the waves had rest, the waves long torn by their wakeful lamentation, even as when the birds in mid-spring have returned to the north that is their home, and Memphis and their yearly haunt by sunny Nile are dumb once more'—

qualiter Arctos
ad patrias avibus medio iam vere revectis
Memphis et aprici statio silet annua Nili (iii. 358).

The beauty of Medea among her Scythian maidens is likened to that of
Proserpine leading her comrades over Hymettus' hill or wandering with
Pallas and Diana in the Sicilian mountains—

altior ac nulla comitum certante, prius quam palluit et viso pulsus decor omnis Averno (v. 346).

Taller than all her comrades and fairer than them all or ever she turned pale, and at the sight of Hell all beauty was banished from her face.

The relief of the Argonauts, when at last they reach haven after their fearful passage of the Symplegades, is like that of Theseus and Hercules, when they have forced a way through the gates of hell to the light of day once more.[511] Most remarkable of all is the strange accumulation of similes that describe the meeting of Jason and Medea. Medea is going through the silent night chanting a song of magic, whereat all nature trembles. At last, when she has come 'to the shadowy place of the triune goddess', Jason shines forth before her in the gloom, 'as when in deepest night panic bursts on herd and herdsman, or shades meet blind and voiceless in the deep of Chaos; even so, in the darkness of the night and of the grove, the two met astonied, like silent pines or motionless cypress, ere yet the whirling breath of the south wind has caught and mingled their boughs'[512]—

obvius ut sera cum se sub nocte magistris inpingit pecorique pavor, qualesve profundum per chaos occurrunt caecae sine vocibus umbrae; haut secus in mediis noctis nemorisque tenebris inciderant ambo attoniti iuxtaque subibant, abietibus tacitis aut immotis cyparissis adsimiles, rapidus nondum quas miscuit Auster (vii. 400).

These similes suffer from sheer accumulation.[513] Taken individually they are worthy of many a greater poet.

In his speeches Valerius is less successful, though rarely positively bad. But with few exceptions they lack force and interest. At times, however, his rhetoric is effective, as in the speech of Mopsus (iii. 377), where he sets forth the punishment of blood-guiltiness, or in the fierce invective in which the Scythian, Gesander, taunts a Greek warrior with the inferiority of the Greek race (vi. 323 sqq.). This latter speech is closely modelled on Vergil (A. ix. 595 sqq.), and although it is somewhat out of place in the midst of a battle, is not wholly unworthy of its greater model. But it is to the speeches of Jason and Medea that we naturally turn to form the estimate of the poet's mastery of the language of passion. These speeches serve to show us how far he falls below Vergil (A. iv) and Apollonius (bk. iii). They offer a noble field for his powers, and it cannot be said that he rises to the full height of the occasion. On the other hand, he does not actually fail. There is a note of deep and moving appeal in all that Medea says as she gradually yields to the power of her passion, and the thought of her father and her home fades slowly from her mind.

quid, precor, in nostras venisti, Thessale, terras? unde mei spes ulla tibi? tantosque petisti cur non ipse tua fretus virtute labores? nempe, ego si patriis timuissem excedere tectis, occideras; nempe hanc animam sors saeva manebat funeris. en ubi Iuno, ubi nunc Tritonia virgo, sola tibi quoniam tantis in casibus adsum externae regina domus? miraris et ipse, credo, nec agnoscunt hae nunc Aeetida silvae. sed fatis sum victa tuis; cape munera supplex nunc mea; teque iterum Pelias si perdere quaeret, inque alios casus alias si mittet ad urbes, heu formae ne crede tuae.

'"Why,"' she cries (vii. 438), '"why, I beseech thee, Thessalian, camest thou ever to this land of ours? Whence hadst thou any hope of me? And why didst thou seek these toils with faith in aught save thine own valour? Surely hadst thou perished, had I feared to leave my father's halls—aye, and so surely had I shared thy cruel doom. Where now is thy helper Juno, where now thy Tritonian maid, since I, the queen of an alien house, have come to help thee in thy need? Aye, even thyself thou marvellest, methinks, nor any more does this grove know me for Aeetes' daughter. Nay, 'twas thy cruel fate overcame me; take now, poor suppliant, these my gifts, and, if e'er again Pelias seek to destroy thee and send thee forth to other cities, ah! put not too fond trust in thy beauty!"' Yet again, before she puts the saving charms into his hands, she appeals to him (452):

si tamen aut superis aliquam spem ponis in istis, aut tua praesenti virtus educere leto si te forte potest, etiam nunc deprecor, hospes, me sine, et insontem misero dimitte parenti. dixerat; extemploque (etenim matura ruebant sidera, et extremum se flexerat axe Booten) cum gemitu et multo iuveni medicamina fletu non secus ac patriam pariter famamque decusque obicit. ille manu subit, et vim conripit omnem. inde ubi facta nocens, et non revocabilis umquam cessit ab ore pudor, … … … … … … … pandentes Minyas iam vela videbat se sine. tum vero extremo percussa dolore adripit Aesoniden dextra ac submissa profatur: sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quando hinc aberis, die quaeso, profundi quod caeli spectabo latus? sed te quoque tangat cura mei quocumque loco, quoscumque per annos; atque hunc te meminisse velis, et nostra fateri munera; servatum pudeat nec virginis arte. hei mihi, cur nulli stringunt tua lumina fletus? an me mox merita morituram patris ab ira dissimulas? te regna tuae felicia gentis, te coniunx natique manent; ego prodita obibo.

'"If thou hast any hope of safety from these goddesses, that are thine helpers, or if perchance thine own valour can snatch thee from the jaws of death, even now, I pray thee, stranger, let me be, and send me back guiltless to my unhappy sire." She spake, and straightway—for now the stars outworn sank to their setting, and Bootes in the furthest height of heaven had turned him towards his rest—straightway she gave the charms to the young hero with wailing and with lamentation, as though therewith she cast away her country and her own fair fame and honour.' And then, 'when her guilt was accomplished and the blush of shame had passed from her face for evermore,' she saw as in a vision (474) 'the Minyae spreading their sails for flight without her. Then in truth bitter anguish laid hold of her spirit, and she grasped the right hand of the son of Aeson and humbly spake: "Remember me, I pray, for I, believe me shall forget thee never. When thou art hence, where on all the vault of heaven shall I bear to gaze? Ah! do thou too, where'er thou art, through all the years ne'er let the thought of me slip from thy heart. Remember how thou stood'st to-day, tell of the gifts I gave, and feel no shame that thou wast saved by a maiden's guile. Alas! why stream no tears from thine eyes? Knowest thou not that the death I have deserved waits me at my father's hand? For thee there waits a happy realm among thine own folk, for thee wife and child; but I must perish deserted and betrayed."'[514]

All this lacks the force and passion of the corresponding scene in Apollonius. This Medea could never have cried, 'I am no Greek princess, gentle-souled,'[515] nor have prayed that a voice from far away or a warning bird might reach him in Iolcus on the day when he forgot her, or that the stormwind might bear her with reproaches in her eyes to stand by his hearth-stone and chide him for his forgetfulness and ingratitude. The Medea of Apollonius has been softened and sentimentalized by the Roman poet. Valerius knows no device to clothe her with power, save by the narration of her magic arts (vii. 463-71; viii. 68-91). Yet she has a charm of her own; and it needed true poetic feeling to draw even the Medea of Valerius Flaccus.

In no age would Valerius have been a great poet, but under happier circumstances he would have produced work that would have ranked high among literary epics. As it is, there is no immeasurable distance between the Argonautica and works such as the Gerusalemme liberata, or much of The Idylls of the King. He is a genuine poet whose genius was warped by the spirit of the age, stunted by the inherent difficulties besetting the Roman writer of epic, overweighted by his admiration of his two great predecessors, Ovid and Vergil. He is obscure, he is full of echoes, he staggers beneath a burden of useless learning, he overcrowds his canvas and strives in vain to put the breath of life into bones long dry; in addition, his epic suffers from the lack of the reviser's hand. And yet, in spite of all, his characters are sometimes more than lay-figures, and his scenes more than mere stage-painting. He has the divine fire, and it does not always burn dim. Others have greater cunning of hand, greater force of intellect, and have won a higher place in the hierarchy of poets. He—though, like them, he lacks the 'fine madness that truly should possess a poet's brain'—yet gives us much that they cannot give, and sees much that they cannot see. With Quintilian, though with altered meaning, we too may say multum in Valerio Flacco amisimus.