Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

Pomponius Mela lived in the reign of Claudius. He is considered as the representative of the Roman geographers. Though his book, "The Place of the World," is but an epitome of former treatises, it is interesting for the simplicity of its style and the purity of its language.

Columella flourished in the reigns of Claudius and Nero. He is author of an agricultural work, "De Re Rustica," in which he gives, in smooth and fluent, though somewhat too diffuse a style, the fullest and completest information on practical agriculture among the Romans in the first century of the Christian era.

Frontinus (fl. 78 A.D.) left two valuable works, one on military tactics, the other a descriptive architectural treatise on those wonderful monuments of Roman art, the aqueducts. Besides these, there are extant fragments of other works on surveying, and on the laws and customs relating to landed property, which assign Frontinus an important place in the estimation of the students of Roman history.

9. ROMAN LITERATURE FROM HADRIAN TO THEODORIC (138-526 A.D.).—From the death of Augustus, Roman literature had gradually declined, and though it shone forth for a time with classic radiance in the writings of Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, and the Plinies, with the death of freedom, the extinction of patriotism, and the decay of the national spirit, nothing could avert its fall. Poetry had become declamation; history had degenerated either into fulsome panegyric or the fleshless skeletons of epitomes; and at length the Romans seemed to disdain the use of their native tongue, and wrote again in Greek, as they had in the infancy of the national literature. The Emperor Hadrian resided long at Athens, and became imbued with a taste and admiration for Greek; and thus the literature of Rome became Hellenized. From this epoch the term classical can no longer be applied to it, for it no longer retained its purity. To Greek influence succeeded the still more corrupting one of foreign nations. With the death of Nerva, the uninterrupted succession of emperors of Roman or Italian birth ceased. Trajan himself was a Spaniard, and after him not only foreigners of every European race, but even Orientals and Africans were invested with the imperial purple, and the huge empire over which they ruled was one unwieldy mass of heterogeneous materials. The literary influence of the capital was not felt in the interior portions of the Roman dominions. Schools were established in the very heart of nations just emerging from barbarism; and though the blessings of civilization and intellectual culture were thus distributed far and wide, still literary taste, as it flowed through the minds of foreigners, became corrupted, and the language of the imperial city, exposed to the infecting contact of barbarous idioms, lost its purity.

The Latin authors of this age were numerous, but few had taste to appreciate and imitate the literature of the Augustan age. They may be classified according to their departments of poetry, history, grammar and oratory, philosophy and science.

The brightest star of the poetry of this period was Claudian (365-404 A.D.), in whom the graceful imagination of classical antiquity seems to have revived. He enjoyed the patronage of Stilicho, the guardian and minister of Honorius, and in the praise and honor of him and of his pupil, he wrote "The Rape of Proserpine," the "War of the Giants," and several other poems.

His descriptions indicate a rich and powerful imagination, but, neglecting substance for form, his style is often declamatory and affected. Among the earliest authors of Christian hymns were Hilarius and Prudentius, Those of the former were expressly designed to be sung, and are said to have been set to music by the author himself. Prudentius (fl. 348 A.D.) wrote many hymns and poems in defense of the Christian faith, more distinguished for their pious and devotional character than for their lyric sublimity or parity of language. To this age belong also the hymns of Damasus and of Ambrose.

Among the historians are Flavius Eutropius, who lived in the fourth century, and by the direction of the Emperor Valens composed an "Epitome of Roman History," which was a favorite book in the Middle Ages. Ammianus Marcellinus, his contemporary, wrote a Roman history in continuation of Tacitus and Suetonius. Though his style is affected and often rough and inaccurate, his work is interesting for its digressions and observations. Severus Sulpicius wrote the history of the Hebrews, and of the four centuries of the church. His "Sacred History," for its language and style, is one of the best works of that age.

In the department of oratory may be mentioned Cornelius Fronto, who flourished under Domitian and Nerva, and was endowed with a rich imagination and a mind stored with vast erudition in Greek and Latin literature, Symmachus, distinguished for his opposition to Christianity, and Cassiodorus, minister and secretary of the Emperor Theodoric.

In the decline of Roman, as of Greek literature, grammarians took the place of poets and of historians; they commented on and interpreted the ancient classics, and transmitted to us valuable information concerning the Augustan writers. Among the most important works of this kind are the "Attic Nights" of Gellius, who was born in Rome, and lived under Hadrian and the Antonines. In this work are preserved many valuable passages of the classics which would otherwise have been lost. Macrobius, who flourished in the middle of the fifth century, was the author of different works in which the doctrines of the Neo-Platonic school are expounded. His style, however, is very defective.