Rome was destined, through force, to show the world, despite the greatest obstacles, what energetic will, unity, earnestness, and pertinacity of purpose, could do. She was doubtless superior to most nations in military skill, and this gave her great advantage; but her unique peculiarity consisted in the fact, that, till her co-operative work was done, she never despaired, and this attribute of fortitude alone conquered the world. Ruin as often threatened the Romans as it did other champions, and they would have fallen as others fell, had not internal resources increased, and heroical resolution been confirmed, in proportion as outward support failed them. The spectacle of physical force which they presented was the grandest of earth; but it was moral force, something grander still, which fortified the physical force, and rendered it such a mighty agent of civilization. War has numerous advantages which are overruled for good, and the misfortunes of some nations are made to supply prosperity to others. The most fruitful fields have been fertilized by wholesale carnage, that scourge and civilizer of mankind. As the sea retires in one quarter at the same time it advances in another, swallows up the productiveness of this shore to augment the territory and richness of that, so do great natural fluctuations transpire under the control of that sovereign law by which all things are changed but nothing destroyed. The invasion of Persia was virtually the creation of Greece, and the overthrow of the latter enriched the world. When the fair continent had fully emerged from the flood of Pelasgic barbarism, afar in the West, on Latian plains, the infant state of Rome was obscurely struggling into power against the neighboring confederacies in which the old Etruscan culture was rapidly sinking into decay. While the gloomy wilds of Gaul and Germany yet lay scarcely known, Gela, in the Greek colony at Syracuse, maintained the splendor of a Grecian name, and by a single defeat in Sicily the pride of Carthage was subdued. Nations, like individuals, have each a special mission on earth. Many are either co-operative only or secondary, and but a few are manifestly primordial. Thus the mission of Greece was beauty, that of Rome, force. In those special spheres they manifested the natural attributes of humanity in a fashion and to a degree never before reached by any nation. But as all secondary nations co-operated to execute the mission given to each great primordial power, so these two predominant branches of the Japhetic race co-operated, in subordination to the one leading purpose of Providence, to perpetuate progress and improve mankind.
The rude elements of the Indo-European stock were early scattered from Caucasus to the Alpine North. The Hellenic family were the first raised to a high degree of refinement, and they planted their offspring even to the extremity of the Italian peninsula. When other kindred branches, like the Oscans and Sabines, superseded these, they gave a composite character to the new language thus formed, an amalgamation of Attic flexibility with Latin strength. But the body was more ponderous than the soul; the plastic property so prominent in the Greek tongue was lost in the harder and stiffer enunciation of unpolished Rome. The former, like a lucid substance, seemed to crystallize spontaneously into the most beautiful forms; but the latter, like granite, could be rendered attractive only by artificial polish, and that of the most laborious kind. It was the language of solidity, gravity, and energy; the fit medium for expressing the dictum of imperial might, but was not adapted to convey either the sentiments of love or the products of meditation. The great orator, in his defense of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek literature was read by almost all nations of the world, while Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form, and yet it lived only with such as spoke it as their vernacular in the fatherland or its provinces. Like all true and original creations of genius, it never survived the fostering care of devotees, but sank back with their decay, and again became limited within the boundaries of its first home. In the end, as in the beginning, Athens was the University of the whole classic world. On the contrary, Latin was propagated chiefly by conquest, absorbing all barbarous dialects into itself, and, like the dominion of its masters, becoming the stronger the further west it was spread. Under the auspices of the Republic, it became united with the Celtic and Iberian in Spain, and was planted by Julius Cæsar in Britain, as well as Gaul. Greek is still spoken at Athens; but Latin, when it had been engrafted on the rest of Europe, and gave birth to all modern tongues, became again grossly barbarized and died.
By what route the progenitors of the Oscans, Sabines, Itali, and Umbrians came from the original cradle of the human race, is not clearly known. They were evidently kindred to the Pelasgi of the Morea, and used the Phœnician alphabet. Their dress and national symbol, the eagle, were Lydian, and their theology, like the more refined system of the Greeks, was derived from the remotest East. The Romans were composite from the first, and in every thing. The septi-montium upon which their primitive city stood, was occupied by different tribes. If we may trust mythical tradition, a Latin tribe had their settlement on mount Palatine, and a Sabine community occupied the adjacent Quirinal and Capitoline heights. Mutual jealousy kept them a long time separate, but at length the privilege of intermarriage was conceded, and the different tribes became one people. The Etruscans were of purest Pelasgian origin, and for a long period possessed the greatest civilizing power in the West. When subdued politically, they still left the most indelible stamp on the arts and fortunes of the Roman people. These ethnical affinities are correlative to the linguistic affinities of the great martial cycle, and best indicate out of what elements its language was composed.
The ancient Latin alphabet was an offshoot from primitive Greek, and evidently came from the same source. Its later departure from the original current, and modifications of its forms, are all traceable through the means of inscriptions on funereal urns, coins, and historical monuments. The alphabets of Gaul, Germany, Etruria, and Spain, were formed from the Greek; and even the Latin letters may be termed the universal alphabet, for it was the immediate parent of all the present modes of writing. But this mother-tongue did not, like its nobler parent, proceed from a single germ, and gradually unfold by a natural growth. It merged in the bosom of foreign elements, and presented great and striking contrasts in its progress. In the Republic it was like the people, high-minded, and competent for the debate of mighty interests; under regal or imperial sway, it became the fitting medium of an extravagant court, cramped and debauched by foreign manners. At the epoch of Livius Andronicus, B.C. 240, or the first Punic war, the language was elicited from various dialects, and consolidated into the vernacular of a whole people. The Oscan, Sabine, and Etrurian, or Tuscan, were the leading native elements; but the primitive Greek, or Pelasgic, was early blended with the Latin, greatly enriching it, and imparting to it the chief basis of its forms. From the first Punic to the first civil war, B.C. 88, was a period of marked improvement. Increased intercourse with the Greeks, after the second Punic war, greatly improved their native literature, aroused and directed all their energies to practical life, and the affairs of state. Greek models were held up to the enthusiasm of those who emulated at first, and afterward imitated, the masters whom they could never hope to excel. Thus the language of the Romans did not originate in the rules of art, but in the free outflowings of national character. Hence, Quintilian compares the writings of Ennius to an ancient sacred grove of primeval trees, with their stately trunks. Something of Greek pliancy was imparted, while the tongue was becoming harmonized, by the translations of the Odyssey made by Titus Andronicus, and by Nævius from Æschylus and Euripides. The progress of improvement continued, and by the time of Augustus the Roman language was formed. Then, in distinction from the Latin, or provincial speech, it was said to be "the refined language of the city, containing nothing which could offend, nothing which could displease, nothing which could be reprehended, nothing of foreign sound or odor."
Much of the original material employed in early Roman literature was doubtless furnished by the subjugation of Etruria to her arms; but gross indigenous elements needed to be quickened into symmetrical growth, and the greater conquest of Greece itself was alone equal to that miracle. The beautiful captive wound her charms around the barbarous captor, and held him in subjection to a vassalage infinitely more glorious than all his boasted freedom and universal mastery in arms.
How wise is Providence! The south of Italy had for many centuries been peopled with colonists from Greece, who retained and cultivated the arts and literature of the mother country. When sufficient substance had been collected on the seven rugged hills, to form a basis of national literature, Tarentum was subjugated, and all that was valuable in that interesting country was removed to nourish the first literary pursuits at Rome. Two years after this arose the first Punic war, the result of which was the conquest of Sicily, that charming land whereon the flowers of Grecian poesy had blossomed with even fairer charms than on the neighboring continent. When we come to consider bucolic poetry, the most healthful and original growth of Roman letters, we should remember that this was the spot of its birth. It was in Sicily that the pastoral and comic muses prompted Stersichorus first to reduce lyrical compositions to the regular division of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. It was here that Empedocles "married to immortal verse" the "illustrious discoveries" of his "divine mind." Here Epicharmus invented comedy, which was cultivated by Philemon, Apollodorus, Carcinus, Sophron, and various others. Tragedy also found successful votaries in Empedocles, Sosicles, and Achæus. It was in Sicily, too, that the Mīme was invented, or, at least, perfected; Pindar, Æschylus, and Simonides, had resided at the court of Hiero I., and Theognis of Megara, committed his precepts to elegiacs in Sicily. The Dionysii also were authors, as well as patrons of literary men. It is, moreover, believed that when the Romans came into possession of Sicily, Theocritus was yet living. Many of the most creative minds in the conquered provinces now began to reside at Rome, bringing art and cultivation with them; and from this period literature in the metropolis assumed somewhat of a regular and connected form.
The great majority of the citizens undervalued and even despised devotion to sedentary and contemplative pursuits. They were ambitious, and lived for conquest; but it was the extension of political domination they strove for, not the enlargement of literary renown. The old Roman was charmed by the glory of his country abroad, and the wise administration of her constitution at home. Military prowess was the foundation and guarantee of both, so that beyond politics and war he felt little concern. He was susceptible to every thing that related to success in arms; but exercises of a purer mental cast, even the most exciting, such as tragedy, never captivated the feelings nor acquired an influence over the mass of the people, as was universal in Greece. Amid the dust and destruction of perpetual conflict, learning was but a sickly plant, and it required all the artificial heat of courtly patronage to bring any thing to maturity. Accius was patronized by D. Brutus; Ennius by Lucilius and the Scipios; Terence by Africanus and Lælius; Lucretius by the Memmii; Tibullus by Messala; Propertius by Ælius Gallus; Virgil and his friends by Augustus, Mæcenas, and Pollio; Martial and Quintilian by Domitian.
But, with the utmost adventitious aid, Roman literature, which never appeared greatly to deserve the epithet national, was of the rudest and most meagre description, and should be divided into three periods. The first period was dramatic; the second, prosaic; and the third, rhetorical. All the acting tragedy ever produced by Romans was limited to the first period; also the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the only works which have survived to claim admiration in modern times. It was the era of life, when all the vigorous germs of after growth were started. Epic poetry, rugged and monotonous as it was, yet then had a partial development, simultaneously with the first composition of national annals, and the foundation of accurate and thoughtful jurisprudence. It was also in that primary period that C. Gracchus became the father of Latin prose; but the language of the first great orator of western democracy under Italian skies was yet very inferior to the impassioned and noble sentiments it conveyed.
The second period was that of special refinement in prose, and of increased erudition. Cæsar and Sallust are its exponents as historians, and Cicero is its chief representative as an orator and philosopher. In a word, it was the great culmination of the Augustan age, wherein Lucretius and Catullus were the harbingers of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and the varied treasures of all the great masters of prose and learned poetry were garnered in the lucid narrative of Livy.
As the first period was redolent of life, and the second teemed with learning, so the third is known by its excessive embellishment. It was called "the silver age," and was covered with abundance of filigree. It produced the only fabulist of Rome, Phædrus; Juvenal, the satirist; Martial, the epigrammatist; Tacitus, the historian; Quintilian, the critic; and the elegant letter-writer, Pliny. These are the best names of the later period of the Augustan age, and these decisively mark the progress of decline. Fancifulness and formalism ruled supreme, and whatever of independent thought the earlier periods had known, was now superseded by servility and decay.