CHAPTER XV
NERVA AND TRAJAN
Nerva, 96-98 A. D.—Trajan, 98-117 A. D.—Tacitus, about 55 to about 118 A. D.—Juvenal, 55 (?) to about 135 A. D.—Pliny the younger, 61 or 62 to 112 or 113 A. D.—Other writers.
Under Nerva (96-98 A. D.) and Trajan (98-117 A. D.) freedom of speech and literary utterance, which had been banished under the tyranny of Domitian, were restored. Nerva and Trajan. Nerva and Trajan were educated men. Nothing remains of Nerva’s poems, which led Martial to call him “the Tibullus of our times,” and Trajan’s history of the Dacian War is also, unfortunately, lost. Trajan’s replies to the letters of the younger Pliny show that he could write in a clear, concise, and business-like manner, but exhibit no further literary qualities. He paid attention to the education of the young and founded the Ulpian library, but was not a man of marked literary tastes. Under Nerva and Trajan literature was allowed to take its own course without hindrance and also without that imperial patronage which sometimes stifles free utterance quite as effectually as severity or intimidation. Nevertheless there was little literary production of any importance. There were many writers, but most of them have left not even their names to posterity. The only authors of literary importance under these emperors are Tacitus, Juvenal, and the younger Pliny.
Cornelius Tacitus[105] was born, according to such evidence as exists, in 55 or 56 A. D. Tacitus. The place of his birth is not recorded, and nothing certain is known of his family; but his education, his career, and his marriage to the daughter of Agricola all combine to indicate that he belonged to a family of some importance. His marriage took place in 78 A. D., one year after the consulship of Agricola. Tacitus began his official career under Vespasian, continued it under Titus, and reached the rank of prætor under Domitian, in 88 A. D. Under Trajan, in 97 A. D., he was appointed consul suffectus, and about 112-116 A. D. he was proconsul of Asia. His death took place probably not long after 117 A. D. He had a great reputation as a public speaker, as is evident from the fact that in 97 or 98 A. D. he delivered the funeral oration over Verginius Rufus, and it was probably due in great measure to his eloquence that in 100 A. D. he and Pliny accomplished the conviction of Marius Priscus, proconsul of Africa, for extortion. It was not without knowledge of public affairs that Tacitus turned to the writing of history, nor was it without practical knowledge of oratory that he wrote the dialogue De Oratoribus.
The works of Tacitus in the order of composition are the Dialogue on Orators (Dialogus de Oratoribus), the dramatic date of which is 75 A. D., while the date of composition is uncertain; the Germania, published in 98 A. D.; the Agricola, written early in the reign of Trajan, probably in 98 A. D.; the Histories, written under Trajan, and apparently not completed much before 110 A. D.; and the Annals, published between 115 and 117 A. D. The Dialogue on Orators is an inquiry into the causes of the decay of oratory. Works of Tacitus.
The Dialogus. In form it is an imitation of Cicero’s famous dialogue De Oratore, and the style also imitates that of Cicero. In this respect the dialogue is so unlike the later works of Tacitus that his authorship has been denied by many scholars. It must, however, be remembered that this is his earliest work, and that the Ciceronian style was taught in the school of Quintilian and no doubt in other schools at Rome, so that an imitation of Cicero was a natural beginning for a young author. Moreover, there are in the dialogue traces of the later style of Tacitus, which is distinguished for its epigrammatic utterances and its frequent use of innuendo. The work may therefore be unhesitatingly ascribed to Tacitus. It is an interesting and attractive dialogue, in which the quiet life of the poet is contrasted with the more active career of the orator before the real subject—the reasons for the decay of oratory—is discussed. The conclusion is reached that oratory has declined partly on account of the faulty rhetorical education in vogue, but still more because the orator no longer has under the imperial government the influence and power that belonged to his predecessors in the days of the republic.
The Agricola (De Vita et Moribus Iulii Agricolæ) is a biography and panegyric of Gnæus Julius Agricola, Tacitus’s father-in-law. The Agricola. In the introduction Tacitus gives his reasons for having written nothing during the reign of Domitian. The passage deserves to be quoted, not only as a specimen of Tacitus’s style, but because it places in a clear light his view of the imperial government in the first century. Throughout the Histories and the Annals his attitude is the same, and his genius has imposed his view upon all later times. Under Domitian two eminent Stoics, Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Priscus, had been put to death and their works publicly burned. Tacitus mentions this and then expresses himself as follows:
They thought forsooth that in that fire the voice of the Roman people and the freedom of the senate and the conscience of the human race were being consumed, especially since the teachers of philosophy had been banished and every good profession driven into exile, that nothing honorable might offend them. We have indeed given a great proof of our patience; and just as the ancient time saw the utmost limit of liberty, so we have seen the utmost limit of servitude, when even the intercourse of speech and hearing was taken away by the inquisitions. And with our speech we should have lost even our very memory, if we had been as able to forget as to keep silent. Now at last our courage has returned, but although ... Trajan is daily adding to the blessedness of the times, ... and the state has gained confidence and strength, nevertheless by the nature of human weakness remedies are slower than diseases; and just as our bodies grow slowly, but are quickly destroyed, so you can oppress genius and learning more quickly than you can revive them. For the charm of sloth also comes over us, and the inactivity we hated at first grows dear at last. Throughout fifteen years, a great part of the life of man, many have fallen through chance mishaps, and all the most energetic ones by the cruelty of the emperor, and a few of us are left, so to speak, as survivors not only of the others, but even of ourselves, since there have been taken out of our lives so many years, in which we who were youths have passed to old age and as old men have almost reached the limit of life itself without a word.[106]
Agricola was not a great man either in intellect or in force of character. Moreover, he had lived through the reign of Domitian in safety by not opposing the will of the tyrant. Naturally it was hard to write a panegyric on such a man which should interest and please the public. But Tacitus, by laying the chief stress upon Agricola’s successful administration in Britain, which is prefaced by an account of the country and of the previous Roman expeditions thither, made of his panegyric a genuine bit of history with Agricola, the most prominent person in it. Thus the reader’s interest is kept alive and the writer’s purpose accomplished. The work closes with an eloquent and beautiful apostrophe to Agricola.
When he wrote the Agricola, Tacitus was already planning a great history of his own times, for which he had at least begun to accumulate materials. The Germania. In the Germania (De Origine Situ Moribus ac Populis Germaniæ) the material collected to serve as introductory to the account of the wars in Germany is published as a separate work. The little treatise is interesting as the earliest extant connected account of the country and inhabitants of northern Europe. A few of the statements contained in it are manifestly incorrect, but for the most part, what Tacitus tells us agrees with and supplements what we know from other sources. The essay is a compilation from various earlier works, among which Pliny’s History of the German Wars was no doubt the most important, though Tacitus probably consulted the works of Cæsar, Velleius Paterculus, and others, besides obtaining information from some of the many Romans who had served in the army in Germany. There is no indication that Tacitus was ever in Germany himself. As a literary production the Germania is far inferior to the Agricola, though written at about the same time. In the Agricola Tacitus expresses his own feelings for his father-in-law, whom he evidently loved and respected, while in the Germania there is little room for feeling of any sort, and none for emotion. Yet, with all the difference in literary merit, the two works show the style of Tacitus at the same stage. There are still some remnants of Ciceronian smoothness, but these are evidently survivals. The tendency to use concise, even abbreviated phrases, to add point to expressions by verbal antithesis or by inversion of order, and to make his sentences imply more than the words actually express, is characteristic of Tacitus’s mature style and is evident, though not yet fully developed, in the Agricola and the Germania alike.
At least as early as 98 A. D. Tacitus planned to write a history of his own times. His original purpose was to begin with the accession of Galba and continue in chronological order. But after completing the history of the period from Galba to the death of Domitian (68-96 A. D.) he went back to the death of Augustus, and wrote the history of the time to the accession of Galba (14-68 A. D.). The great history. He intended to write the history of the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, but never did so. The part of the work first completed, treating of the events of the author’s own lifetime, is entitled Histories (Historiæ); the part written later, but treating of the earlier period, is usually called the Annals (Annales), though its proper title is Ab Excessu Divi Augusti, in imitation of the title of Livy’s history, Ab Urbe Condita. The two together consisted of thirty books, of which fourteen belong to the Histories and sixteen to the Annals. Of the Annals, the following parts are preserved: Books I-IV and the beginning of Book V, from the death of Augustus to the year 29 A. D., Book VI, with the exception of the beginning, carrying on the story to the death of Tiberius, and Books XI-XVI, from 47-66 A. D., though this long fragment is mutilated at the beginning and the end. The account of the reign of Caligula is lost, as is that of the first seven years of the reign of Claudius, and of somewhat more than two years at the end of the reign of Nero. Of the Histories only the first four books and part of the fifth remain, and this important fragment is preserved in only one manuscript. It contains the history of little more than one year, the memorable year 68-69 A. D., in which Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, in quick succession, gained the imperial power and lost their lives, to be followed by Vespasian.
In the Annals, dealing with a period before his own recollection, Tacitus treats the history of Rome and the empire as if it were directed by the wishes, the whims, and caprices of a few individuals. He depicts the character of Tiberius and the court of Nero in vivid and lurid colors. The Annals. The court intrigues, the judicial and private murders, the licentiousness and corruption of the capital are spread before us with all the power of his brilliant and incisive style. These things appear as the most important matters in the history of the time. Modern scholars have, with the aid of inscriptions, found that the Roman empire was, throughout this period, ably and peaceably administered by permanent officials, and was little affected by the terror that reigned in the capital. But for Tacitus, Rome was the empire. The provinces were in the dim distance and had in his eyes little historical importance. That his view of history is narrow and distorted is clear; yet his genius has made it for centuries the only accepted view of Roman history under the early emperors. In the Histories, dealing with his own times, he sees things more clearly. The uprising of the Batavians under Civilis and the war in Palestine are treated with as much detail as the sanguinary struggles in Rome, though here also the influence of the characters and acts of individuals upon the irresistible course of history is overrated. This view of history, which makes events depend too much upon individuals, joined with a pessimism which sees hidden motives behind even innocent or indifferent acts, is the great defect of Tacitus as an historian. His information is carefully collected, though, as a rule, he neglects all mention of his authorities. In preparing his account of the Jews in the fifth book of the Histories he relied apparently upon hearsay and upon other untrustworthy sources of information, without referring to the Septuagint or to Josephus, but similar carelessness can not be proved in other parts of his work.
His style is impregnated with the words and phrases of the classical writers, especially of Virgil, and with the rhetorical teaching of the Silver Age, and yet it is thoroughly individual. Style of Tacitus. It is concise, sharp, and cutting, but often grandly poetic in its eloquence; it is apparently straightforward, yet somehow often reveals a half-hidden meaning; it is carefully elaborated, yet it affects the reader with rugged earnestness. Such a style is almost inimitable, whether by writers of Latin or by translators. It has been compared to that of Carlyle, and the comparison is worth mentioning, though it should not be pushed too far. Few prose works contain more epigrammatic sentences than those of Tacitus. Examples are: “Traitors are hated, even by those whom they advance”;[107] “None grieve more ostentatiously than those who are most delighted in their hearts”;[108] “Princes are mortal, the state eternal”;[109] “When the state was most corrupt the laws were most numerous”;[110] “New men rather than new measures”;[111] “Vices will exist as long as men”;[112] “Fame does not always err; sometimes it chooses.”[113] Endowed, as he was, with striking stylistic ability, writing, in fact, in a style which could not fail to arouse the interest and hold the attention of his readers, it is no wonder that Tacitus succeeded in imposing upon the world his views of history, which can be only partially corrected by the careful study and interpretation of fragmentary records.
Juvenal can hardly be separated from Tacitus. Both depict the life of Rome in the same lurid light, and the picture presented by each agrees with that of the other. Juvenal. Juvenal’s diatribes seem to illustrate the statements of Tacitus, and Tacitus shows that Juvenal’s violence is justified by the facts. Of Juvenal’s life little is known. His full name is given in some manuscripts as Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis. One vita or life gives the date of his birth as 55 A. D., which may be correct, though there is no especial reason to regard it as exact. He was born at Aquinum, a town of the Volscians, where he held the offices of duumvir quinquennalis and of flamen Divi Vespasiani. He was also at one time a military tribune, serving with the first Dalmatian cohort, perhaps in Britain. This military service probably belongs to his youth, and the local offices to his later life. He evidently received a good education, and he appears to have practised oratory for some years. Martial, who mentions him several times, speaks of him as eloquent, not as poetic or satirical. The lives agree in stating that he was banished, but not in regard to the time or place of his banishment. He came to Rome about 90 A. D., was still there in 101 A. D., and probably spent part of some of the later years in the capital. At Rome he lived in the Subura, the plebeian quarter, but had access to the houses of rich nobles. His satires were written between 100 and 127 A. D., and he died about 135 A. D.
Juvenal is the harshest and most violent of the four great Roman satirists. The Satires. Lucilius was outspoken and sometimes bitter, but aimed to correct while he rebuked the follies of his time; Horace soon lost all bitterness and expressed good-humored raillery; Persius derived his themes from books and preached Stoic doctrines; but Juvenal attacks Roman society in fierce and biting verses, shrinking from no gruesome or indecent detail, showing no humor save of the grimmest and harshest sort, and with no hope of correcting the evils he depicts. He has all the variety of phrase of the accomplished rhetorician, and his lines have a rolling grandeur almost Virgilian. He shows, indeed, the influence of Virgil more than of any other previous writer, though traces of Homer, Herodotus, Plato, nearly all the Roman poets, and among Roman prose writers Cicero, Valerius Maximus, and Seneca are found in his satires. The violence of his satires is, however, not directed against his contemporaries. He seems to have in mind rather the Rome of Domitian than that of Trajan or Hadrian, under whose rule he wrote. The sixteen satires are divided into five books. Book I (Satires i-v) not earlier than 100 A. D., and Book II (Satire vi) not before 116 A. D. These are the most powerful, most violent, and least agreeable books. Book III (Satires vii-ix) was written about 120, Book IV (Satires x-xii) about 125, and Book V (Satires xiii-xvi) in 127 A. D. In these three books there is less virulence, but also less power than in the first two. Old age brought with it a loss at once of fierceness and of strength.
In the first satire, Juvenal gives his reasons for writing as he does. Contents of the Satires. He is tired of listening to endless epics, and the corruptions of the time are such that “it is difficult not to write satire,”[114] and “indignation makes verse.”[115] The evils to be attacked are enumerated in a series of rapidly sketched pictures, and the poet declares that “all that men do, their hope, fear, wrath, pleasure, joys, and gaddings make up the medley of my book.”[116] And in the following satires the faults of men, the dangers of the city, the court of Domitian, the pride of wealth, the crimes of women, the lack of honor paid to intellect, the worthlessness of noble birth without virtue, unnatural lust, the shortsightedness of human wishes, the wrong of setting children a bad example, and other striking features of the life of Rome are vividly presented and ruthlessly attacked. One of the most interesting satires is the third, in which the dangers of the city are described. A man who is leaving Rome for a small country town gives reasons for his departure:
What should I do at Rome? I can not lie;
I can not praise a book that’s bad and beg
A copy of it; I am ignorant
Of the motions of the stars; I neither will
Nor can make promise of a father’s death.[117]
The dirty streets, the water dripping from the aqueduct, the risk from falling tiles or household vessels, the drunken brawls in the streets, the rich man escorted home by clients and slaves with flaming torches, the danger from robbers—these and many other details of the ill regulated capital are set before us. This satire is imitated by Johnson in his London, which has rightly been called one of the finest modern imitations of an ancient poem, and the same author’s poem on The Vanity of Human Wishes is a less accurate, though not less admirable, imitation of Juvenal’s tenth satire. The closing passage of the tenth satire, in which the poet tells what are the proper objects of prayer, is a lofty utterance of human wisdom. The most savage of all the satires is, on the other hand, the sixth, in which the crimes of women are held up to execration.
It is not easy for the modern reader to enjoy Juvenal. His satires are full of allusions to unknown persons and things at Rome; they abound also in mythological references and literary reminiscences, and finally the savage tone of the earlier books is disagreeable. Yet the power of invective, the clearness and vividness of description, the variety of diction, and the beauty of versification have combined to make Juvenal a much read author. That he is also much quoted is due to the epigrammatic and pointed form of many of his phrases. Mens sana in corpore sano,[118] Rara avis,[119] Panem et circenses,[120] Hoc volo, sic iubeo,[121] Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?[122] are among the most familiar Latin quotations, and many other almost equally familiar expressions are derived from Juvenal. Some of these are distinguished for their significance quite as much as for their form. Such are, for instance: “And for the sake of life give up life’s only end[123] and “The greatest reverence is due a child.”[124] It is not without reason that Juvenal has exerted great influence on human thought.
Tacitus and Juvenal resemble each other in their originality and vigor of thought and expression, their severe judgment of men and manners, and their pessimism. Pliny the younger. The younger Pliny contrasts with them in all these respects, and his letters give us an idea of Roman life very different from that which we derive from them. Gaius Plinius Cæcilius Secundus was the son of Lucius Cæcilius Cilo, a wealthy nobleman of Comum, but was adopted by will by his uncle, the elder Pliny. He therefore changed his name, which was originally Publius Cæcilius Secundus, and took that of his uncle, retaining his original family name, Cæcilius, only for legal and formal use. He was born in 61 or 62 A. D., for he was in his eighteenth year when the eruption of Vesuvius took place, August 24, 79 A. D. Cilo had died when Pliny was young, and the boy had become the ward of Verginius Rufus, which fact did not, however, diminish the paternal interest of his uncle, with whom he was at the time of the eruption. Pliny began his career as an advocate in 80 or 81 A. D. He held various offices, was military tribune, quæstor in 89-90 A. D., tribune of the people in 90-91 A. D., prætor in 93 A. D., was one of the prefects in charge of the war treasury and also of the general treasury, became consul in 100 A. D., and succeeded Sextus Julius Frontinus in the college of augurs in 103 or 104 A. D. He was governor of Pontus and Bithynia either in 111-112 or 112-113 A. D., and died before 114 A. D., either in his province or soon after his return to Italy. His life was passed chiefly in the service of the government, and for the most part at Rome. He was married three times, but had no children. He was an orator of some importance, delivering most of his speeches in inheritance cases, though he was employed five times in important criminal suits. He recited his speeches before delivering them in public, and after delivery he published them, sometimes with corrections. He was interested in poetry, and wrote poems of various kinds, but these, as well as his speeches, with the exception of his panegyric on Trajan, are lost.
Pliny’s extant works consist of nine books of letters to various persons, written between 97 and 109 A. D., a panegyric on the Emperor Trajan, delivered in 100 A. D. when Pliny was made consul, and seventy-two letters to Trajan, written between 98 and 106, and from September, 111, to January, 113 A. D. Pliny’s letters. Trajan’s replies to fifty-one of these letters are published which exhibit his firm judgment and practical common sense in striking contrast to Pliny’s indecision and lack of independence. Pliny’s other letters are more interesting. He describes the scenes in the Roman courts, the gatherings where the audience was bored by authors who recited their works, he gives detailed descriptions of his Laurentine[125] and Tuscan[126] villas, in two letters[127] to Tacitus he gives an account of the eruption of Vesuvius, his uncle’s death, and his own feelings. Incidentally he throws much light upon the social and family life of the time. His own character is also clearly portrayed. What a young prig he must have been who refused his uncle’s invitation to accompany him to see, from a nearer point of view, the great eruption, preferring to spend his time over his books, and who even continued to make extracts when awakened by the terrible quaking of the earth—and this at seventeen years of age! His vanity is beautifully exhibited in another letter to Tacitus,[128] in which he tells a story to his own credit, and hopes that Tacitus will insert it in the Histories, and in still another,[129] where he says to the most original and inimitable of all Roman writers since the Augustan times, “You, such is the similarity of our natures, always seemed to me most easy to imitate and most to be imitated. Wherefore I am the more pleased that, if there is any talk about literature, we are mentioned together, that I occur at once to those who are speaking of you.” Other qualities appear no less clearly. Vain he was and fond of praise, but at the same time kind to his slaves, affectionate to his friends, gentle, and conscientious. He seldom speaks unkindly of any one; and when he utters a sharp criticism, he almost always avoids mentioning the name of the person criticized. The love of nature was fashionable at Rome, and Pliny may be only following the fashion when he writes of natural scenery, but it is quite as probable that he really felt its charms. He had a great admiration for Cicero, and it was doubtless owing, in part, at least, to this admiration that Pliny, like Cicero, published his letters. There is, however, a great difference between the two collections. Cicero’s letters were collected and published by others, whereas Pliny’s were from the beginning intended for publication and were published at various times by Pliny himself. They are therefore not unpremeditated utterances, but carefully prepared writings for the perusal of the public. Nevertheless the epistolary style is well preserved, though not without some pedantic elegance, and the letters give us the same insight into Roman life under Trajan as do those of Cicero into the life of the last years of the republic.
The Panegyric on Trajan was delivered as the official expression of thanks on the part of Pliny and his colleague Cornutus Tertullus for their elevation to the consulate. After the speech was delivered it was revised and enlarged. It is therefore in its extant form neither a speech nor an historical essay, but a mixture of the two. The Panegyric.After an introduction, Trajan’s acts before his entrance into Rome are recounted, then his entrance into the city, and his many political, municipal, and financial measures for the good of the state. Trajan’s personal qualities are praised in the most fulsome manner and those of Domitian set forth in the most hateful light. Then comes an account of Trajan’s second and third consulships, his care for the provinces, and his judicial acts, with traits of his private life. The speech or treatise ends with the expression of thanks from Pliny and his colleague. The Panegyric is not an attractive production, but it is the chief source of information concerning the history of the earlier years of Trajan’s rule.
Though not a great man nor a great writer, Pliny was a cultivated gentleman and a useful citizen. Other writers. His letters make us acquainted with Roman life from a side that Tacitus and Juvenal leave practically untouched. They are therefore not only interesting, but, as historical documents of great importance. Besides Tacitus, Juvenal, and Pliny, there are no writers of the time of Trajan who deserve more than passing mention. The names of numerous poets are preserved, chiefly in Pliny’s letters, but their works are lost, and we have no reason to believe that they merited preservation. Orators, jurists, and grammarians continued speaking and writing, and some among them attained eminence, but their works are lost for the most part, and the technical treatises on grammar which are preserved possess little interest for the student of literature. The same remark applies to the treatises on surveying and on the fortification of camps by Hyginus, on geometry by Balbus, and on surveying by Siculus Flaccus. The literature of the period between the death of Domitian and the accession of Hadrian is contained in the works of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Pliny.