Juvenal, then, was not above his age, as Cicero and Seneca had been. He does protest against the cruel treatment of slaves by the Roman ladies; but he nowhere exerts his eloquence to advocate their rights as men to protection and friendship. Nor does he enter a protest against the gladiatorial shows, which was the first thing a high moralist would have impugned, and which the Christians attacked with equal enthusiasm and courage. We observe, however, with pleasure, that as Juvenal advanced in years his tone became gentler and purer, though his literary powers decayed. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Satires evince a kindly vein which we fail to find in the earlier ones. Some have fancied that in the interval he became acquainted with the teaching of Christianity. But this is a supposition as improbable as it is unsupported.
On the style of Juvenal but little need be added. Its force, brevity, and concision have already been noticed, At the same time they do not seem to have been natural to him. Where he writes more easily he is diffuse and even verbose. The twelfth and fifteenth Satires are conspicuous examples of this. One is tempted to think that the fifteenth, had he written it twenty years earlier, would have been compressed into half its length. The diction is classical; but like that of Tacitus, it is the classicality of the Silver Age. It shows, however, no diminution of power, and the gulf between it and that of Fronto and Apuleius in the next age is immense. Juvenal's language is based on a minute study of Virgil; [38] his rhythm is based rather on that of Lucan, with whom in other respects he shows a great affinity. His verse is sonorous and powerful; he is fond of the break after the fourth foot. Though monotonous, its weight makes it very impressive; it is easily retained in the memory, and stands next to that of Virgil and Lucretius as a type of what the language can achieve.
The resentment that goaded Juvenal to write satire seems also to have inspired the pen of C. CORNELIUS TACITUS. [39] He was born 54 A.D., or, according to Arnold, 57 A.D., probably in Rome. His father was perhaps the same who is alluded to by Pliny [40] as procurator of Belgian Gaul. It is, at any rate, certain that the historian came of a noble and wealthy stock; his habit of thought, prejudices, and tastes all reflect these of the highest and most exclusive society. He began the career of honours under Vespasian [41] by obtaining his quaestorship, and, some years later, the aedileship. The dates of both these events are uncertain—another instance of the vagueness with which writers of this time allude to the circumstances of their own lives. We know that at twenty-one he married the daughter of Cn. Julius Agricola, and that he was praetor ten years afterwards. He was also quindecimvir at the secular games under Domitian (88 A.D.). For some years he held a military command abroad, perhaps in Germany. On his return he was constant in his senatorial duties [42] and we find him joined with Pliny in the accusation of Marius Priscus, which was successful but unavailing. Under Nerva (97 A.D.) he was made consul; but soon retired from public life, and dedicated the rest of his days to literature, having sketched out a vast plan of Roman history the greater part of which he lived to fulfil. The year of his death is uncertain. Brotier, followed by Arnold, thinks he was prematurely cut off before the close of Trajan's reign, but it is possible he lived somewhat longer, perhaps until 118 A.D.
The first remark one naturally makes on reading the life of Tacitus, is that he was admirably fitted by his distinguished military and political career for the duties of a historian. Gibbon said that his year in the yeomanry had been of more service to him in describing battles than any closet study could have been; and Tacitus has this great advantage over Livy that he had helped to make history as well as to relate it. His elevation to the rank of senator enabled him to understand the iniquity of Domitian's government in a way that would otherwise have been impossible; and of the complicity shown by the servile fathers in their ruler's acts of crime, he speaks in the Agricola with something like the shame of repentance. His character seems to have been naturally proud and independent, but unequal to heroism in action. Like almost all literary minds he shrunk from facing peril or discomfort, and tried to steer a course between the harsh self-assertion of a Thrasea [43] and the cringing servility of the majority of senators. This led him to become dissatisfied with himself, with the world, and with Divine Providence, [44] and has left a stamp of profound and rebellious melancholy on all his works.
As a young man he had studied rhetoric under Aper Secundus, [45] and perhaps Quintilian. He pleaded with the greatest success, and Pliny gives it as his own highest ambition to be ranked next, he dare not say second, to Tacitus. [46] Nor was his deliberative eloquence inferior to his judicial. We learn, from Pliny again, that there was a peculiar solemnity in his language, which gave to all he uttered the greatest weight. The panegyric he pronounced on Virginius Rufus, the man who twice refused the chance of empire, "the best citizen of his time," was celebrated as a model of that kind of oratory. [47]
The earliest work of his that has reached us is the Dialogus de caussis corruptae Eloquentiae, composed under Titus, or early under Domitian. It attributes the decay of eloquence to the decay of freedom; but believes in a future development of imperial oratory under the mild sway of just princes, founded not on feeble and repining imitation of the past, but on a just appreciation of the qualifications attainable in the present political conditions and state of the language. The argument is conducted throughout with the greatest moderation, but the conclusion is decided in favour of the modern style, if kept within proper bounds. The time of the dialogue is laid in 75 A.D.; the speakers are Curiatius Maternus, Aper Secundus, and Vipstanus Messala. The point of debate is one frequently discussed in the schools of rhetoric, and the work may be considered as a literary exercise; but the author must have outgrown youth when he wrote it, and its ability is such as to give promise of commanding eminence in the future. The style is free and flowing, and full of imitations of Cicero. This has caused some of the critics to attribute it to other authors, as Pliny the younger and Quintilian, [48] who were known to be Ciceronianists. But independently of the fact that it is distinctly above the level of these writers, we observe on looking closely many indications of Tacitus's peculiar diction. [49] The most striking personal notice occurs in the thirteenth chapter, where the author announces his determination to give up the life of ambition, and, like Virgil, to be content with one of literary retirement. This seems at first hard to reconcile with the known career of Tacitus; but as the dialogue bears all the marks of early manhood, the resolve, though real, may have been a passing one only; or, in comparison with what he felt himself capable of doing, the activity actually displayed by him may have seemed as nothing, and to have merited the depreciatory notice he here bestows upon it.
The work next in order of priority is the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, composed near the commencement of Trajan's reign, about 98 A. D. The talent of the author has now undergone a change; he is no longer the bright flowing spirit of the Dialogus, who acknowledged the decline while making the most of the excellences of his time; he has become the stern, back-looking moralist, the burning panegyrist, whose very pictures of virtue are the most withering rebukes of vice. This treatise represents what Teuffel calls his Sallustian epoch; i.e., a phase or period of his mental development, in which his political and moral feeling, as well as his literary aspirations, led him to recall the manner of the great rhetorical biographer. The short preface, in which occurs a fierce protest against the wickedness of the time just past, reminds us of the more verbose but otherwise not dissimilar introduction to the Catiline: and the subordination of general history to the main subject of the composition is earned out in Sallust's way, but with even greater completeness. At the same time the Silver Age is betrayed by the extremely high colouring of the rhetoric, especially in the last chapters, where an impassioned outpouring of affection and despair seems by its prophetic eloquence to summon forth the genius that is to be. Already, in this work, [50] we find that Tacitus has conceived the design of his Historiae, to which, therefore, the Agricola must be considered a preliminary study.
As yet, Tacitus's manner is only half-formed. He must have acquired by painful labour that wonderful suggestive brevity which in the Annals reaches its culmination, and is of all styles the world of letters has ever seen, the most compressed and full of meaning. The Germania, however, in certain portions [51] approximates to it, and in other ways shows a slight increase of maturity over the biography of Agricola. His object in writing this treatise has been much contested. Some think it was in order to dissuade Trajan from a projected expedition that he painted the German people as foes so formidable; others that it is a satire on the vices of Rome couched under the guise of an innocent ethnographic treatise; others that it is inspired by the genuine scientific desire to investigate the many objects of historic and natural interest with which a vast and almost unknown territory abounded. But none of these motives supplies a satisfactory explanation. The first can hardly be maintained owing to historical difficulties; the second, though an object congenial to the Roman mind, is not lofty enough to have moved the pen of Tacitus; the third, though it may have had some weight with him, would argue a state of scientific curiosity in advance of Tacitus's position and age, and besides is incompatible with his culpable laziness in sifting information on matters of even still greater ethnographic interest. [52]
The true motive was no doubt his fear lest the continual assaults of these tribes should prove a permanent and insurmountable danger to Rome. Having in all probability been himself employed in Germany, Tacitus had seen with dismay of what stuff the nation was made, and had foreseen what the defeat of Varus might have remotely suggested, that some day the degenerate Romans would be no match for these hardy and virtuous tribes. Thus, the design of the work was purely and pre-eminently patriotic; nor is any other purpose worthy of the great historian, patrician, patriot, and soldier that he was. At the same time subsidiary motives are not excluded; we may well believe that the gall of satire kindles his eloquence, and that the insatiable desire of knowledge stimulates his research while inquiring into the less accessible details of the German polity. The work is divided into two parts. The first gives an account of the situation, climate, soil, and inhabitants of the country; it investigates the etymology of several German names of men and gods, describes the national customs, religion, laws, amusements, and especially celebrates the people's moral strictness; but at the same time not without contrasting them unfavourably with Rome whenever the advantage is on her side. The second part contains a catalogue of the different tribes, with the geographical limits, salient characteristics, and a short historical account of each, whenever accessible.
Next come the Histories, which are a narrative of the reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, written under Trajan. This work, of which we possess only four entire books, with part of the fifth, consisted originally of fourteen books, and was the most authentic and complete of all his writings. The loss of the last nine and a half books must be considered irreparable. In the Germania he had shown the power of that liberty which the barbarians enjoyed, had indicated their polity, in which, even then the germs of feudalism, chivalry, the worship of the sex, troubadour minstrelsy, fairy mythology, and, above all, representative government, existed. In the Historiae he paints with tremendous power the disorganisation, of the Roman state, the military anarchy which made the diadem the gift of a brutal soldiery, and revealed the startling truth that an emperor could be created elsewhere than at Rome.