The main tenets of this, the last attempt to explain the mystery of the universe which gained currency in Rome, were as follows—it will be seen how completely it had passed from philosophy to theosophy:—The supreme being is one, eternal, absolute, indescribable, and incomprehensible; but may be envisaged by the soul for a moment like a flash of lightning. [17] The great gods are of two kinds, visible, as the sun and stars, and invisible, as Jupiter and the rest; both these are inaccessible to human communion. Then come the daemons in their order, and with these man holds intercourse. Plutarch had adopted a tentative and incomplete form of this doctrine, e.g. he denied the visibility of Socrate's daemon, and spoke of the death of Pan. But Apuleius is much more thorough-going; he supposes all the daemons to be at once immortal and visible. Each great god has a daemon or double, who loves to use his name; and all the stories of the gods are in reality true of their daemons. In a moral point of view, daemons are of all characters—good and bad, cheerful and gloomy. [18] Their interventions, which are perpetual, explain what the stories could not explain, viz. the idea of Providence. In fact the whole current theory of the supernatural is easily explained when the existence of these intermediate beings is admitted. Aware that this theory wandered far from Roman ideas, Apuleius tries to reconcile it with the national religion by calling the daemons genii, lares, and manes, which are true Italian conceptions. To a certain extent the device succeeded; at any rate the new philosophy resulted in making devotees of the higher classes, as superstition had long since done with the people.
It seems incredible that any one who had studied the Platonic dialogues should have fancied theories like these to be their essence. Nevertheless, so it was. Men found in them what they wished to find, and perhaps no greater witness could be given to the immense fertility of Plato's thought. However, when these conceptions came to be imported into philosophy, it is clear that philosophy no longer knew herself. She had become hopelessly unable to cope with the problems of actual life; henceforth there was nothing left but the rigours of the ascetic or the ecstacy of the mystic. Into these still later paths we shall not follow it. Apuleius is the last Roman who, writing in the Latin language, pretends to succeed to the line of thinkers of whom Varro, Cicero, and Seneca, were the chief. It is true he is immeasurably below them. In his effeminate union of licentiousness and mysticism he is far removed from the masculine, if inconsistent, practical wisdom of Seneca, further still from the glowing patriotism and lofty aspirations of Cicero. Still as a type of his age, of that country which already exercised, and was soon to exercise in a far higher degree, an influence on the thought of the world, [19] he is well worthy of attentive study.
We may now, in conclusion, very shortly review the main features in the history of Roman literature from Ennius, its first conscious originator, until the close of the Antonine period.
The end which Ennius had set before him was two-fold, to familiarise his countrymen with Greek culture, and to enlighten their minds from error. And to this double object the great masters of Roman literature remained always faithful. With more or less power and success, Terence, Lucilius, the tragedians, and even the mimists, elevated while they amused their popular audiences. In the last century of the Republic, literature still addressed, in the form of oratory, the great masses to whom scarce any other culture was accessible. But in poetry and philosophy it had broken with them, and thus showed the first sign of withdrawal from that thoroughly national mission with which the old father of Latin poetry had set out. Yet this very exclusiveness was not without its use. It enabled the best writers to aim at a far higher ideal of perfection than would have been possible for a popular author, however scrupulously he might strive for excellence. It enabled the best minds to concentrate their efforts upon all that was most strictly national because most strictly aristocratic, and thus to form those great representative works of Roman thought and style which are found in the writings of Cicero and Livy, and the poetry of Horace and Virgil. The responsibility which the possession of culture involves was now acknowledged only within narrow limits. The motto, "pingui nil mihi cum populo," was strictly followed, and all the best literature addressed only to a select circle. Meanwhile the people, for whom tragedy and comedy had done something, however little, that was good, neglected by the literary world, debased by bribery and the coarse pleasures of conquest, sunk lower and lower until they had become the brutal, sensual mob, inaccessible to all higher influences, which satirists and philosophers paint in such hideous colours, but which they did nothing and wrote nothing to improve. Then came the era of the decline, in which, for the first time, we observe that literature has lost its supremacy. It is still cultivated with enthusiasm, and numbers many more votaries than it had ever done before; nevertheless, its influence is disputed, and with success, by other forces; by tyranny in the first place, by a defiant philosophy which set itself against aesthetic culture in the second, and by revived and daily increasing superstition in the third. This is the beginning of the people's retaliation on those who should have enlightened them. In vain do emperors issue edicts for the suppression of foreign rites; in vain do courtly satirists or fierce declaimers complain that Rome will not be satisfied with ancestral beliefs and ancestral virtues. The people are asserting themselves in the sphere of thought, as they had asserted themselves in the sphere of politics ages before. But the difference between the two peoples was immense. The one had consisted of virtuous peasants and industrious tradesmen, working for generations to attain what they knew to be their right; the other was formed of slaves, of freedmen, many of them foreigners, and others engaged in occupations by no means honourable; of all that motley multitude who lived on Caesar's rations and spent their days in idleness, in the circus, and in crime. Rotten in its highest circles, equally rotten in its lowest, society could no longer be regenerated by any of the forces then known to it. The national superstitions, out of which literature had at first emerged, were replaced by cosmopolitan superstitions of an infinitely worse kind, which threatened to engulf it at its close, and against which in the persons of such men as Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus, it strove for a while with convulsive vigour to make head. But these great spirits only arrested, they could not avert, the inevitable decay. Where public morals are corrupt, where national life is diseased, it is impossible that literature can show a healthy life. The despair that has taken possession of men's souls, which sheds a misanthropic gloom over the writings of the elder Pliny and embitters even the noble mind of Tacitus, results from a conviction that things are incurably wrong, and from a feeling that there is no conceivable remedy. Men of feebler mould strive to forget themselves in exciting pleasures, as Statius and Martial; or in courtly society, as the younger Pliny; or in fond study of the past, as Quintilian; or in minute and pedantic erudition, as Aulus Gellius. The literature of the Silver Age is throughout conscious of its powerlessness; and this consciousness deadens it into tame acquiescence or galls it into hysterical effort, according to the time and temperament of the author. Pliny the younger and Quintilian alone show the happily-balanced disposition of the Golden Age; but what they gain in classic finish they lose in human interest. The decay of Greece had been insignificant, pretty but paltry; the decay of Rome on the other hand is unlovely but colossal. Perhaps in native strength none of her earlier authors equal Juvenal and Tacitus; none certainly exceed them. But they are the last barriers that stem the tide. After them the flood has already rushed in, and before long comes the collapse. In Suetonius and Florus we already see the pioneers of a pigmy race; in Gellius, Fronto, and Apuleius, they are present in all their uncouth dwarfishness. Meanwhile the clamours of the world for guidance grow louder and louder, and there is no one great enough or bold enough to respond to them. The good emperor would do so if he could; but in his perplexity he looks this way and that, bringing into one focus all the cults and ceremonies of the known world, in the vain hope that by indiscriminate piety he may avert the calamities under which his empire groans. But nothing is of any avail. The barbarians without, the pestilence within, decimate his subjects, the hostile gods seem to mock his goodness, and the simple people who look up to him as their tutelary power wonder hopelessly why he cannot save them. And thus on all sides the incapacity of the world to right itself is made clearer and clearer. The gross darkness that had been once partly put to flight by the light of Greek genius when philosophy rose upon the world, and once again had been retarded by the heroic examples of Roman conduct and Roman wisdom, now closed murkily over the whole world. It was indeed time that a new order of thought should arise, which should recreate the dead matter and bring out of it a new and more enduring principle of life, which should give the past its meaning and the future its hope; and, in especial, should reveal to literature its true end, the enlightenment and elevation, not of one class nor of one nation, but of every heart and every intellect that can be made to respond to its influence among all the nations of the earth.
APPENDIX.
A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ROMAN LITERATURE, FROM LIVIUS TO THE DEATH OF M. AURELIUS. [1]
B.C. 240 Livius begins to exhibit. 239 Ennius born. 235 Naevius begins to exhibit. 234 Cato born. 225 Fabius Pictor served in the Gallic War. 219 Pacuvius born. 218 Cincius Alimentus described the passage of Hannibal into Italy. 217 Cato begins to be known. 216 Fabius Pictor sent as ambassador to Delphi. 207 The poem on the victory of Sena entrusted to Livius. 204 Cato quaestor; brings Ennius to Rome. 201 Naevius dies (?). 191 Cato military tribune. 190 Cincius still writes. 189 Ennius goes with Fulvius into Aetolia. 185 Terence born. [2] 184 Cato censor. Plautus dies. 179 Caecilius flourished. 173 Ennius wrote the twelfth book of the Annals. 170 Accius born. 169 Ennius dies. Cato's speech pro lege Voconia. 168 Caecilius dies. 166 Terence's Andria. 165 Terence's Hecyra. 163 Terence's Hautontimorumenos. 161 Terence's Eunuchus and Phormio. 160 Terence's Adelphoe. 159 Terence dies. 154 Pacuvius flourished. 151 Albinus, the consul, writes history (Gell. xi. 8). 150 Cato finishes the Origines. 149 Cato, aged 85, accuses Galba. Dies in the same year. C. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, the historian. 148 Lucilius born. 146 Cassius Hemina flourished. C. Fannius, the historian, serves at Carthage. 142 Antonius, the orator, born. 140 Crassus, the orator, born. Accius, aged 30, Pacuvius, aged 80, exhibit together. 134 Sempronius Asellio served at Numantia. Lucilius begins to write. 123 Caelius Antipater flourished. 119 Crassus accuses Carbo. 116 Varro born. 115 Hortensius born. 111 Crassus and Scaevola quaestors. [3] 109 Atticus born. 107 Crassus tribune. 106 Cicero born. 103 The Tereus of Accius. Death of Turpilius. 102 Furius Bibaculus born at Cremona. 100 Aelius Stilo. 98 Antonius defends Aquillius. 95 First public appearance of Hortensius. Lucretius born (?). 92 Crassus censor. Opilius teaches rhetoric. 91 Crassus dies. Pomponius flourished. 90 Scaurus flourished. 89 Cicero serves under the consul Pompeius. 88 Cicero hears Philo and Molo at Rome. Rutilius resident at Mitylene. Plotius Gallus first Latin teacher of Rhetoric. 87 Antonius slain. Sisenna the historian. Catullus born (?). 86 Sallust born. 82 Varro of Atax born. Calvus born. 81 Cicero pro Quinctio. Valerius Cato Grammaticus. Otacilius, first freedman who attempts history. 80 Pro Roscio. 79 Cicero at Athens; hears Antiochus and Zeno. 78 Cicero hears Molo at Rhodes. 77 Cicero returns to Rome. 76 Asinius Pollio born (?). 75 Cicero quaestor in Sicily. 74 Cicero again in Rome. 70 Divinatio and Actio I. in Verrem. Virgil born. 69 Cicero aedile. 67 Varro wins a naval crown under Pompey in the Piratic War (Plin. N. H. xvi. 4). 66 Cicero praetor. Pro lege Manilia. Pro Cluentio. M. Antonius Gnipho flourished. 65 Pro Cornelia. Horace born. 64 In toga candida. 63 Consular orations of Cicero. Pro Murena. 62 Pro P. Sulla. 61 Annaeus Seneca born. 59 Livy born(?). Aelius Tubero with Cicero in Asia. Pro A. Thermo. Pro L. Flacco. 58 Cicero goes into exile. 57 Cicero recalled. Calidius a good speaker. 56 Pro Sextio. In Vatinium. De Provinciis Consularibus. 55 In Calpurnium Pisonem. De Oratore. Virgil assumes the toga virilis. 54 Pro Vatinio. Pro Scauro. De Republica. 52 Pro Milone. Lucretius dies(?). [4] 51 Cicero proconsul in Cilicia. 50 Death of Hortensius. Sallust expelled from the senate. 49 Cicero at Rome. Varro lieutenant of Pompey in Spain. 48 Lenaeus satirizes Sallust. Cicero in Italy. 47 Cicero at Brundisium. Hyginus brought to Rome by Caesar. Catullus still living (C. 52). 46 The Brutus written. Calvus dies. Sallust praetor. Pro Marcello. Pro Ligario. 45 Cicero's Orator. Pro Deiolaro. 44 The first four Philippics. Death of Caesar. 43 The later Philippics. Death of Cicero. Birth of Ovid. 42 Horace at Philippi. 40 Cornelius Nepos flourished. Perhaps Hor. Sat. i. 2. Epod. xiii. 39 Ateius Philologus born at Athens. Perhaps Virg. Ecl. vi. viii. Hor. Od. ii. 7. Epod iv. 38 Perhaps Ecl. vii. Hor. Sat. i. 3. 37 Varro (aet. 80) writes de Re Rustica. Perh. Ecl. x. Sat. i. 5 and 6. Epod. v. 36 Cornelius Severus(?) Hor. Sat. i. 8, 35 Bavius dies. Hor. Sat. i. 4, 9, 10. 34 Sallust dies. Sat. ii. 2. Epod. iii. 33 Sat. ii. 3. Epod. xi. xiv. 32 Atticus dies. Sat. ii. 4, 5. Epod. vii. 31 Messala consul. Sat. ii. 6. Epod. i. and ix. 30 Gallus made praefect of Egypt. Cassius Severus dies. Tibullus El. i. 3. The Georgics published. Hor. Sat. ii. 7, 8, and perhaps 1, Epod ii. 29 Livy writing his first book. Propertius I. 6. 28 Varro dies. 27 Od. i. 35. Vitruvius writing his work. 26 Gallus dies (aet. 40). Second book of Propertius published (?). [5] 25 Livy's first book completed before this year. Hor. Od. ii. 4. 24 Quintil. Varus dies (= the poet of Cremona, mentioned in the ninth Eclogue [?]). 23 The first three books of the Odes published. 22 Marcellus dies. Virgil reads the sixth Aeneid to Augustus and Livia. Third book of Propertius (?). 21 Hor. writes Ep. i. 20 (aet. 44). 20 First book of Epistles. 19 Virgil dies at Brundisium. His epitaph:
"Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc
Parthenope: cecini pascua rura duces."
Tibullus dies. Domitius Marsus writes.
18 Livy working at his fifty-ninth book.
17 Porcius Latro. The Carmen Saeculare. Varius and Tucca edit the
Aeneid.
16 Aemilius Macer of Verona dies. Od. iv. 9, to Lollius.
15 Death of Propertius. Victories of Drusus. Od. iv. 4.
14 The fourth book of the Odes(?).
13 Cestius of Smyrna teaches rhetoric.
12 Death of Agrippa.
11 The Epistle to Augustus (Ep. ii. 1).
10 Passienus and Hyginus Polyhistor.
9 Ovid's Amores.
8 Death of Horace.
7 Birth of Seneca (?).
6 Albucius Silo a professor of rhetoric.
5 Tiro, Cicero's freedman, dies (aet. 100).
4 Porcius Latro commits suicide. Ovid now in his fortieth year.
2 Ovid's Art of Love.
A.D.
1 The Remedium Amoris.
2 Velleius Paterculus serves under C. Caesar.
4 Pollio dies. Velleius serves with Tiberius in Germany.
7 Velleius quaestor.
8 Verrius Flaccus, the grammarian, flourished. Ovid banished to Tomi, in
December (Tr. 1, 10, 3).