Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Varro, Cæsar, and Cicero contributed most to the perfection of the Roman dialect. The period of its greatest elegance extended from the reign of Augustus to that of Claudius, A.D. 54. By that time the struggle for liberty had been extinguished in those public calamities which plunged so many leading families into wretchedness, and caused the national spirit to be completely broken down. The period which embraced the lives of Cicero and Augustus constituted the best epoch of both prose and poetry. Dramatic literature, it is true, never recovered from the trance into which it fell after the days of Attius and Terence, yet Æsopus and Roscius, the great tragedian and the favorite comedian in the time of the greatest orator at Rome, amassed great wealth. But the theatrical entertainments which had now taken the place of legitimate dramas, were termed mimes, and were ludicrous imitations of popular customs or persons. The name was Greek, but the composition was entirely Roman in style and purpose. Their indecent coarseness of burlesque dialogue gratified the populace, and prepared the way for modern pantomime.

Decius Laberius, born at Puteoli, B.C. 45, under the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, was a Mīme who became distinguished in this sort of composition, and won even the praise of Horace. Another was C. Valerius Catullus, born B.C. 86, and who was nine years younger than the great didactic poet and philosopher, Lucretius, whom we shall notice under the head of philosophy. Catullus belonged to a respectable family, residing on the Lago di Garda, near Verona. At an early age he went to Rome, became very erudite, and plunged into the licentious excesses of the capital. Catullus possessed captivating talents, but of a perverted use; satire as vindictive in spirit as it was varied in power. His poetry was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life, and a career which began in extravagant debauchery terminated in hopeless ruin.

P. Virgilius Maro, born B.C. 70, was a citizen of Mantua. Most of his early training was at Cremona, whence he removed to Milan, and afterward to Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy under the direction of Parthenius. Congenial tastes recommended him to Assinius Pollio, who aided the poet in his pecuniary distress, and introduced him to the wealthiest patron of literature at Rome. By that means the favor of Octavius was reached, and bright fortunes were secured. In the maturity of his faculties, Virgil visited Greece for the purpose of giving the final polish to his great epic poem. At Athens he met Augustus, who was on his way back from Samos, and both returned together. But the beautiful spirit that yet reigned over the scenes of his recent visit evidently inspired his latest and finest writing. The favorite haunts of the muses, the time-honored contests of Olympia, the living and breathing masterpieces which he admired in that home of art, adorn the opening of the third Georgic. But Virgil had all his life borrowed so unsparingly from Grecian invention, that we may infer his intention to have been, not to produce much, if any thing, new, but skillfully to collect and smoothly repeat in his rougher tongue what long before had been much more elegantly and vividly expressed. His Æneid was artificially polished to a high degree, but can never be taken as a specimen of what great unassisted invention might effect. If from the structure of its fable, one should deduct the portions taken from the Iliad and Odyssey, together with what was appropriated from the Troades of Euripides, and the lost poem of the lesser Iliad, doubtless but little original matter would remain to glorify the best specimen of Augustan poetry in its best time.

Had Virgil given more prominence to the old heroic traditions and rural pursuits of his ancestors, he would have taken a stronger hold upon cotemporaries, and increased his influence with posterity. The enlargement of his epic scope would have added freedom to its treatment, and enhanced the value of its use. But, submitting to court artificialness, rendered more pernicious by his dependance thereon, the stiff arrangement of Virgil's greatest poem grows more and more formal as the plan proceeds. The Æneid opens with a copious use of early Greek inventions respecting the Trojan period, and the origin of the Romans. The further we leave these behind, the duller is the prospect; and when we have finished the greatest national poem of the Augustan age, really valuable as it is, we do not wonder that the author himself, in view of the nobler models he had copied, wished his own work were destroyed. Fine conceptions and careful finish Virgil doubtless possessed, but the corrupt Ovid was perhaps more of a spontaneous poet, and the careless Lucretius bore an intenser charm of nationality, impelled as he was by inspiration more truly Roman. He exhibited less art, and stalked forth with fewer airs of affected dignity; but whatever of strength and elegance he did employ, were more decidedly his own.

The specific qualities of Roman writers are clearly marked. In Livy, it is the manner of telling a story; in Sallust, personal identification with the character; in Tacitus, the analysis of the deed into its motive; and in the style of Virgil, the intimation of rank is equally plain. He who was helped up out of abject dependance, in his pride of place shrunk from all contact with poverty. In the hut of a herdsman, or seated with a shepherd in the shade, he still wears the air of dignity, relaxing with difficulty into bucolics. He accepts a maple cup from a peasant, with the patronizing mien of a courtier, who is thinking all the while of the last amphora opened by the princely Mecænas. Nevertheless Virgil had in him a true and natural love for rural purity, which was so sadly perverted by the astute formalism of the imperial court. In the healthful old times of the Republic, the noblest citizens and most illustrious authors were agriculturists by habitual pursuit, or chosen recreation. This feeling remained in Virgil to the last, glowing in the Eclogues, and especially in the Georgics most happily expressed. If he had given undivided attention to this species of literature in his riper years, he might have been to a still higher degree the poet of his nation; but, like all the rest, he was drawn near the throne of despotic rule, and both lived and died the poet of the metropolis.

But even less original than the epic was the lyrical poetry of the Augustan age, the great master of which was Horatius Flaccus, born B.C. 65. He infused little personal feeling into his writings, especially the lesser odes; in the place of nature, we have art, and instead of grand enthusiasm, a plenty of pretty imitation. Sometimes, however, he leaves the Greeks and draws wholly from himself, which effusions are the means of a permanent influence, and render their author, in his way, the best writer of Rome. Most of the poetry of that age was written to express gratitude to a patron, or court favor from a prince. As the great portion of readers were of the patrician rank, the composition was fashioned to patrician taste, and was as full of sycophancy as the sentiments expressed were undignified. Popular eloquence was no more, and, when free prose was silenced, the fulsome epoch of poetic flattery began. The profuse coffers of Octavius were opened in extravagant rewards to prostituted talents, and Virgil, Propertius, and Horace, polished their praise, and pocketed the gold. Of this talented trio, it is believed that Propertius was best qualified for the execution of an epic worthy of Rome; he, however, aspired less after fame than to enjoy the morbid sensibility of disappointed love, and has left only a few writings steeped in tenderness, but possessing very little worth.

Ovidius Naso, born B.C. 43, lived in a voluptuous age, and his works are imbued with all its grossness. To the first half of the Augustan epoch is commonly attributed the chief aggregate of genius and talent of greatest distinction, but it was only the occasion of their development, and not the period of their origin. All the really great of after renown, were the produce of republicanism, and whose youth had ardently admired the freedom from which their chief strength was derived. The most rugged of those who were drawn to the capital to adorn its imperialism with refined letters, were deteriorated by the frigid subserviency to which they submitted; while those who were actually born under Augustus, and exemplified the spirit of their time, like Ovid, were both in sentiment and style, infamously bad.

Least of all were the Romans successful in tragedy, that noblest form of literary composition, and in which the Greeks most excelled. True, those specimens which were anciently regarded as the best, such as the Medea of Ovid, and the Thyestes of Varius, are not now extant; but all that does remain is stamped with the manners of a people too frivolous and vitiated to render tragedy either dignified or interesting. Their taste and talents were fitted only to produce and relish representations of low comedy. But here, too, as in every other walk, they were radically defective as to original merit, many of their comedies being nothing better than free translations from the Greek. Plautus is infected with all the faults of Aristophanes, and is vastly inferior in the pungency of his wit; though his plots may be more natural, and his talents have a less malicious design. The minor epic poets failed still more egregiously, both as to the sentiments ascribed to their heroes, and the modes of their expression. Ovid is frequently puerile to the last degree; and Lucan labors continually after the happy turn of an epigram, but seldom with success. Claudian and Statius are habitually bombastic, but never sublime; and their successors sunk even lower the depressed level of cotemporary worth. The Augustan age, in its best period, was in some respects like a well-cultivated garden, full of choice exotics, but containing little of natural growth; an assemblage of beauties, gathered from various regions, and sometimes grouped with an approach to elegance.

In the age of Augustus, there were a moderately large number of literati, but few patrons; Mecænas stood first and alone; even the emperor himself was second. The Romans possessed the means of greatly enlarging the field of human knowledge, and the elder Pliny, artificial as he was, indicated how well those means might have been employed. But that people were utterly defective as to simplicity of life, and could not, therefore, excel in the more natural forms of literature. Theocritus, whose genius was Grecian, infused much beauty into his pastorals, and left small room for novelty to his successor, Virgil. The latter gave little attention to the real life of shepherds, and wrote eclogues, highly finished in manner, but in substance, quite unnatural. That author, like all his compeers, lived too much in an artificial world, and was too conversant with corrupt courts, and splendid dissipations, to admire unadorned beauty, and out of it to coin literary delights to nourish and exalt the sons of purity and peace. And yet it was in didactic poetry the Romans were most successful. The Georgics of Virgil, and the poetical dogmatics of Lucretius, display the opened treasures of, perhaps, the only original mine Latins ever worked.

Greeks of the later period were sometimes caustic in their criticisms on cotemporaries, but the great majority of their writers were too amiable to employ satire; and this only novelty in literature, of which they were happily ignorant, it was the equivocal honor of the Romans to invent. It was this form which comedy assumed among a people who could not appreciate the legitimate drama. Ennius was the inventor of the name, Lucilius of its substance. Persius used it for didactic purposes, and Terence and Juvenal gave increased reputation to this new form of lettered malice. But Horace alone seems to have understood the only useful end to which poetic sarcasm might be applied, by making it the vehicle of amusing narrative, and picturesque description. His sometimes elegant raillery at popular foibles, and inveterate vices, doubtless had a better effect than could have been reached by more serious discourse.