Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

With the Romans, literature was not of spontaneous growth, but was chiefly the result of the influence exerted by the Etruscans, who were their first teachers in everything mental and spiritual.

The earliest literary efforts of the Greeks, or at least the earliest which are known to us, were, as we have seen, epic poems, setting forth the deeds of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes. The earliest literary productions of the Romans were historical narratives, bald records of events real or imaginary.

Simcox refers to the curious feature of Latin literature, that “It is in its best days a Roman literature without being the work of Romans.”[139] The great writers of Athens were Athenians, but from Ennius to Martial, a succession of writers who were not natives of Rome lived and worked in the metropolis and owed their fame to the Roman public.

Authors came to Rome from all parts of the civilized world, there to make their literary fortunes. They needed, in order to secure a standing in the world of literature, the approval of the critics of the capital, and in the latter period, they required also, for the multiplying and distributing of their books, the service of the Roman publishers.

Géraud points out that the Romans came very near to the acquisition of the art of printing. It was the aim of Trajan, in his Asiatic expeditions, to surpass Alexander in the extent of his conquests and journeyings eastward. “If I were but younger!” murmured Trajan, as he stood on the shores of the mysterious Erythrean Sea (the Indian Ocean). And there was in fact probably little but lack of time to prevent him from passing Alexander’s limit of the Indus, and, marching across the Indian peninsula, from arriving within the borders of the “everlasting empire” of the Chinese. In the time of Trajan, however (100 A.D.), the Chinese had already mastered the art of xylographic printing, or printing from blocks. If, therefore, Trajan had arrived at the imperial power say ten years earlier, literary property might have saved thirteen centuries in securing the most essential condition of substantial existence.

There are, however, compensations for all losses. If printing had come into Europe in the first century, the world might to-day be buried under the accumulated mass of its literature, and my subject, already sufficiently complex, would have assumed unmanageable proportions.

With the knowledge of the language and literature of Greece, which came to the Romans partly through the commerce of the Greek traders of the Mediterranean, partly through the Greek colonies in Italy, and partly, probably, through the intercourse brought about by war, a new literary standard was given to Rome. The dry annals of events, and the crude and barely metrical hymns or chants, which had hitherto comprised the entire body of national literature, were now to be brought into contrast with the great productions of the highest development of Greek poetry, drama, and philosophy. As a result the literary thought and the literary ideals of Rome were, for a time, centred in Athens.

It would not be quite correct to say that from the outset Athenian literature served as a model for Roman writers. This was true only at a later stage in the development of literary Rome. The first step was simply the acceptance of the works of Greek writers as constituting for the time being all the higher literature that existed. Greek became and for a number of years remained the literary language of Rome. Such libraries as came into existence were at first made up exclusively, and for centuries to come very largely, of works written in Greek. The instructors, at least of literature, philosophy, and science, taught in Greek and were in large part themselves Greeks. In fact the Greek language must have occupied in Italy, during the two centuries before Christ, about the place which, centuries later, was held throughout Europe by Latin, as the recognized medium for scholarly expression.

There is, however, this difference to note. The Latin of mediæval Europe, though the language of scholars, was for all writers an acquired language, and its use for the literature of the middle ages gave to that literature an inevitable formality and artificiality of style. The Greek used in early Rome was the natural literary language, because it was the language of all the cultivated literature that was known, and it was learned by the Romans of the educated classes in their earliest years, becoming to them if not a mother tongue, at least a step-mother tongue. In the face of this all-powerful competition of the works of some of the greatest writers of antiquity, works which were the result of centuries of intellectual cultivation, the literary efforts of the earlier Roman authors seemed crude enough, and the development of a national literature, expressed in the national language, progressed but slowly.

With the capture of Corinth in 146 B.C., the last fragment of Greek independence came to an end, and the absorption of Greece into the Roman empire was completed. But while the arms of Rome had prevailed, the intellect of Greece remained supreme, and, in fact, its range of influence was enormously extended through the very conquests which gave to the Romans the mastery, not only of the little Grecian peninsula, but of the whole civilized world.