The Romans inherited no legendary stories adapted to the higher order of dramatic composition. The early traditions which formed the groundwork of their history were private, and not public, property—the pedigrees and memorials of separate families, and therefore not interesting to the people at large. There were no Attic Eumolpidæ on the seven hills to preserve antique reminiscences as a national treasure, nor did they, like fragrant plants, twine themselves along the rocky base of the Roman capitol, as the thrilling traditions of ancestral Greece did round the chaste altars of that susceptible people. The Latin poets might sometimes collect withered fictions, and weave them into their rhythmical records of antiquity; but they possessed no vital beauty, no talismanic power for awakening national enthusiasm. Indeed, who could heartily enjoy allusions to the past, since old Rome had been superseded by a new race. The few veterans who yet survived the bloody wars of Greece, Africa, Gaul, and Spain, were settled in remote military colonies, and a careless disregard of every thing in the metropolis, except luxurious sustenance and shows, paved the way for a speedy downfall. Rome was peopled with step-sons only, as Scipio Æmilius designated the populace, and the tragedy most genial to their taste and ambition was that which was most replete with fulsome compliments to favorite individuals. In Greece, the poet was deemed an inspired being, and his tongue was regarded as the divinest medium for the communion of the visible with the invisible; but at Rome, poetry was nothing more than a dull recreation, and its author was no better than a parasite or a slave. At Athens, the impersonation of a tragedy was an act of worship; the theatre was a temple, and the altar of a deity was its central, point. With the Romans, the thymele existed no longer as a memorial of sacred sacrifice, and the stage deteriorated into the mere arena of disgusting amusement. Pliny, in his history, and Cicero, in eloquent regrets, have told us how the bloody combats of gladiators, the miserable captives and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies, or mangled by wild beasts, were the real tragedies coveted by the people. The sham-fights and Naumachiæ, though only imitations, were real dramas, in which those pursuits which most deeply interested the spectators, and which constituted their highest glories, were visibly represented. Gorgeous spectacles fed personal vanity in their national greatness. The spoil of conquered nations, borne in procession across the stage, reminded them of their triumphs and their victories. The magnificent costumes of the actors who attended the model of some captured city, preceded and followed by artistic spoils, represented in mimic grandeur the ovation of a successful warrior, whose return from a distant expedition, laden with plunder, realized the highest aspirations of Rome; whilst corresponding scenery, glittering with glass, silver, and gold, intermingled and sustained by variegated pillars of foreign marbles, told ostentatiously of their mental extravagance and material wealth. To such a people there was neither attraction nor profit in the moral woes of tragedy, and one could not expect that a legitimate drama under such circumstances would be national. Hence, in the popular eye, the scenic decorations and theatrical dresses became the chief objects of regard, while the poet's office was entirely subordinate, and plays became as devoid of intellect as they were debasing to taste.
In reviewing with more detail the three periods of dramatic progress at Rome, such as it was, we have to consider the origin and character of their comedy. The Greek works of Menander, Diphilus, and Apollodorus, formed a rich store of materials for Roman adoption, and were so employed with as much success as Plautus, Cæilius Statius, and Terence could command. Their standard was worldly prudence, resting on the dangerous ground of Epicurean philosophy; and therefore Roman comedy inculcated no virtue even so salutary as Stoicism, though it sometimes encouraged the benevolent affections. Creative imagination was a rare quality in the Roman mind; therefore, literature with them was not of a spontaneous growth. For a short period, it was the recreation of a few; but with the many it was never a valued delight. Even Cicero, the truest literary spirit of his nation, could recognize but one end and object in all study, namely, those sciences which render a man useful to his country. External utility and not internal impulse, was the final cause of Roman literature. In preceding nations poetry was the original and spontaneous production; but the earliest literary effort of the Romans was history, a dry record of facts, and not ideas. The first poetical form ever attempted by them was satire, and it is characteristic of the rude and coarse people among whom it had its origin. They loved strife, both physical and mental; with them was found little or no salutary intellectual exercise, except in legal conflicts and partisan debates. They were gladiators in the forum, as in the circus, and with rustic taste took equal delight in bandying sarcastic words or struggling in a wrestling match. The Romans were a stern, not an æsthetic people; they had a natural aptitude for satire, and that was the only literary merit they possessed. Yet even in this department, as Horace confessed, Lucilius, the founder of Roman satire, was a disciple of the Greek Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. But the cynical humor and prompt extemporaneous gibe native to the progeny of a she-wolf eminently qualified them to excel in a walk wherein they were certainly most at home.
Livius Andronicus, the first literary character at Rome, was a native of the Greek colony at Tarentum, born B.C. 240, and originally a slave. He probably came into that condition by the fortunes of war, and, like many others in the same circumstances, was employed as a tutor in the metropolis. To interest his cotemporaries in the ancient legends of Italy, he translated the Odyssey, in the old Saturnian measure, and also divers ancient hymns. By this means, the conquerors of the day were made to take a lively interest in Circe's fairy abode, within sight of a promontory of Latium, one of whose sons was Latinus, the patriarch of the Latin name.
Nævius, if not actually born at Rome, was from the earliest boyhood a resident in the capital, and was the first poet of real national worth. Like most subsequent writers, he was a servile imitator, but attained more than ordinary success in applying Greek taste to the development of Roman character. A bold republican and brave soldier, he breathed a martial enthusiasm into his poems, which in no slight measure aided the battles of his country in the first Punic war. The upright and inflexible Cato was his fast and enduring friend.
Plautus, unlike his two famous successors, had no patron but the public. Perhaps the Scipios and Lælii, and their fastidious associates, could not endure his broad humor and groveling inuendos. But his coarse fun and audacious action held the not over-critical ears of the undistinguished mass, whom, Horace says, he hurried on from scene to scene, from incident to incident, from jest to jest, so that they had no opportunity of feeling fatigue. Another cause of his popularity was, that although Greek was the fountain whence he drew his stores, his wit, mode of thought, and language, were veritably Roman; his style was not only his own, and Latin in fact, but Latin of the most effective kind.
P. Terentius Afer, born B.C. 195, was a slave in the family of P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. It was customary to distinguish slaves by an ethical name, and thus Afer points to an African origin. Whether he was a native of Carthage is uncertain, but he doubtless came into Roman hands through the Carthagenian slave-market, and was destined to achieve a high renown. Under Lucanus he acquired a refined and accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue, and, it is probable, also, soon obtained his freedom. A beautiful story is recorded of his original success. Having offered his first dramatic sketch for acceptance to the Curule Ædiles, they referred him to the critical judgment or Cæcilius Statius, then at the height of his popularity. Terence, according to the record, in humble garb was introduced to the poet whilst he was at supper, and, seated on a low stool near the couch on which Cæcilius was reclining, he commenced reading. He had finished but a few lines when he was invited to sit by his critic and sup with him. Before the reading was ended he had won the unqualified admiration of his hearer. The result was that Terence was immediately sought for by the distinguished, and became a favorite guest and companion with those who could appreciate his powers. The great Roman nobility, such as the Scipiones, the Lælii, the Scavolæ, and the Metelli, had some taste for literature; and, like the Tyranni of Sicily in later ages, were accustomed to assemble around them circles of the refined, of whom the hospitable host was proud to be recognized as the nucleus and centre. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in vivacity and intrigue, as well as in the powerful delineation of national character, he was superior in elegance of language and purity of taste. He was the first to substitute delicacy of sentiment for vulgarity, and knew how to touch the heart as well as gratify the intellect.
Cæcilius Statius, the venerable and auspicious friend of Terence, referred to above, was himself an emancipated slave, born at Milan, and who rose to the head of comic poetry at Rome. Greece was the ordinary fountain to him, as to others; but he excelled most of his fellow-imitators in dignity, pathos, and the conduct of his plot. In the estimation of Cicero, Statius excelled in comedy, as Ennius did in epic poetry, and Pacuvius in tragedy.
Roman comedy possessed some claims to originality, though to no exalted degree; but Roman tragedy was derived from Athens almost entire, and had not the merit of either literal translation or clever imitation. Ennius, born B.C. 239, was the transition link between the old school and the new. Originating in the wild and mountainous Calabria, he began life in a military career, and rose to the rank of a centurion. It is said that Cato, in his voyage from Africa to Rome, visited Sardinia, and finding Ennius in that island, took him home with him. He enjoyed the esteem of the leading literary societies at Rome; and at his death, when seventy years old, he was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, at the request of the great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame, embalmed in his verse, he transmitted to posterity. It indicates the progressive condition of literature in the metropolis, that Ennius, who was evidently a gentleman, was the first writer of the time who achieved for himself the enviable privileges of a citizen, to which Livius had not aspired, and Nævius, the freedman, could never attain. Enjoying the friendship of Cato the Censor, and Scipio Africanus the elder, when aristocratic wealth was beginning to be greatly revered, the republican poet, cleaving to his lowly hut on the Aventine, still lived the life of the Cincinnati, the Curii, and the Fabricii of the good old heroic times.
Under the auspices of Pacuvius, and simultaneously with the best comedy, tragedy reached the highest degree of excellence. He was born at Brundusium, B.C. 220, and was nearly related to the poet Ennius. Pacuvius resided at Rome till after his eightieth year, and formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was the chief ornament. In the evening of life he retired to Tarentum, where he died ninety years old. His tragedies were chiefly adaptations of Greek originals to the Roman stage; the plots being entirely borrowed, but the treatment and language were his own.
Attius was born B.C. 170, and became somewhat distinguished while his senior and master, Pacuvius, was yet alive. They met on friendly terms to discuss the young rival's tragedy of "Atreus." Pacuvius commended its good points, but declared it to be somewhat harsh and hard. "You are right," replied Attius, "but I hope to improve. Fruits which are at first hard and sour, become soft and mellow, but those which begin by being soft, end in being rotten." Another fact equally significant of his conscious dignity is given by Valerius Maximus, who relates that in the assemblies of the poets, he refused to rise at the entrance of Julius Cæsar, because he felt that in the republic of letters he was his superior. The statement is plausible, as the great hero was then in his youth. The political state of the people was now rapidly growing worse, and real tragedies were being so violently acted that there was little room in the popular heart for fictitious woes. The sanguinary influence of the amphitheatre seemed to have brutalized the entire nation, the vast area of which was one theatre of dreadful tragic scenes. Amidst these, the voice of the dramatic muse was hushed. Native authors then had no literary quarries of their own to work into original shapes, but they could build up splendid edifices with materials derived from polished and prolific Greece. The existence of tragedy was not long at Rome; the dramatic spirit, as a mental excellence, never belonged to that people, and with Attius, even its form disappeared.