Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

The second stage in the development of Roman literature was the wholesale adaptation by the Roman writers of such Greek originals as served their purpose. It was principally the dramatic authors whose productions were thus utilized, but the appropriations extended to almost every branch of literature. In a few cases the plays and poems were published simply as translations, due credit being given to the original works, but in the larger number of instances in which the adaptation from the Greek into the Latin was made with considerable freedom and with such modifications as might help to give a local or a popular character to the piece, the Roman playwright would make no reference to the Attic author, but would quietly appropriate for himself the prestige and the profits accruing from his literary ingenuity and industry. It is proper to remember, however, that in few cases could living Greek authors have had any cause for complaint. It was the writings of the dead masters, and particularly, of course, of those whose work, while distinctive and available, was less likely to be familiar to a Roman literary public, which furnished an almost inexhaustible quarry for the rapacity of the plagiarists of the early Republic.

The bearing of this state of things upon the development of real Roman literature and upon any possibility of compensation for the writers of such literature, is obvious. Why should a Roman publisher or theatrical manager pay for the right to publish or to perform a drama by a native writer, when he could secure, for the small cost of a translation or adaptation, a more spirited and satisfactory piece of work from the Attic quarry?

What encouragement could be given, in the face of competition of this kind, to the young Latin poet, striving to secure even a hearing from the public? The practice of utilizing foreign dramatic material by adapting it for home requirements, has, as we know, been very generally followed in later times, the most noteworthy example being the wholesale appropriations made by English dramatists from the dramatic literature of France, prior to the establishment between the two countries of international copyright.

There must also have been a further difficulty on the part of the earlier Roman publishers in the way of finding funds for the encouragement of native talent. Their own work was for many years being carried on at a special disadvantage in connection with the previously referred to competition of Alexandria. As late as the middle of the first century A.D., a large portion, and probably the larger portion, of the work of the copyists in preparing editions had to be done in Alexandria, as there alone could be found an adequate force of trained and competent scribes, the swiftness and accuracy of whose work could be depended upon. Alexandria was also not simply the chief, but practically the sole market in the world for papyrus. The earlier Roman publisher found it, therefore, usually to his advantage to send to Alexandria his original text, and to contract with some Alexandrian correspondent, who controlled a book-manufacturing establishment, for the production of the editions required, while to this manufacturing outlay the Roman dealer had further to add the cost of his freight. There is record of certain copying done for Roman orders during the first and second centuries B.C. in Athens, but this seems in the main to have been restricted to commissions from individual collectors, like Lucullus (B.C. 115-57). The mass of the book-making orders certainly went to Alexandria, which bore a relation to the book-trade of Rome similar in certain respects to that borne to the London publishers in the first half of the present century by the literary circle and by the printers of Edinburgh. The earlier Roman publishers, therefore, in losing the advantage of the manufacturing of books issued by them, found their margin of possible profit seriously curtailed, and the chances of securing for the authors any remuneration from the sales of their books must for many years have been very slight. It seems, in fact, probable that compensation for Roman authors began only when, through the development of publishing machinery, it became possible for the making of books to be done advantageously in Rome. This period corresponds also with the time when a real national literature began to shape itself, and when the development of a popular interest in this literature called for the production of books in the Latin language, which could be prepared by Latin scribes.

The two sets of influences, the one mercantile, the other intellectual and patriotic, worked together, and were somewhat intermingled as cause and effect. The peculiar relation borne to the earlier intellectual development of Rome by the literature of a foreign people has never been fully paralleled in later history. The use of Greek in Italy as the language of learning and of literature, was, as said, very similar to the general acceptance of Latin by the scholars of mediæval Europe as the only tongue worthy of employment for literary purposes. But I can find no other instance in which the literature of one people ever became so completely and so exclusively the authority for and the inspiration of the first literary life of another. During the eighteenth century, North Germany had, under the direction of its Court circles accepted French as the language of refined society, and German literature was to some extent fashioned after French models; but important as this influence appeared to be, at the time, say, of Frederick the Great, it does not seem as if it could have had any large part in shaping the work of the German writers of the following half century.

The literary life of the American Republic has, of course, during a large portion of its independent existence, as in the old colonial days, drawn its inspiration from the literature of its parent state, Great Britain. There has been, in this instance, as in the relation between Rome and Greece, on the part of the younger community, first, an entire acceptance of and dependence upon the literary productions of the older state; later, a very general appropriation and adaptation of such productions; still later (and in part pari passu with such appropriation), a large use of the older literature as the model and standard for the literary compositions of the writers of the younger people; while, finally, there has come in the latter half of the nineteenth century for America, as in the second half of the first century for Rome, the development, in the face of these special difficulties, of a truly national literature. For America, as for Rome, this development was in certain ways furthered by the knowledge and the influence of the great literary works of an older civilization, while for America, as for Rome, the overshadowing literary prestige of these older works, and the commercial difficulties in the way of securing public attention and a remunerative sale for books by native authors in competition with the easily “appropriated” volumes of older writers of recognized authority, may possibly have fully offset the advantage of the inspiration.

In certain important respects the comparison fails to hold good. For America the literary connection with and inspiration from Great Britain was in every way a natural one. In changing their skies, the Americans could not change their mother-tongue, and in the literature of England, prior to 1776, they continued to claim full ownership and inheritance. The peculiar condition for Rome was its acceptance, as the foundations of its intellectual life, of the literature of a conquered people, with which people its own kinship was remote, and whose language was entirely distinct.

The estimate in which the Greeks were held by their conquerors is indicated in the fact that, while the Greeks held all but themselves to be barbarians, by the Romans the term was applied to all but themselves and the Greeks.

While a republican form of government has not usually been considered as unfavorable for intellectual activity, history certainly presents not a few instances in which an absolute monarch has had it in his power, through the direct use of the public resources, to further the literary production of the State in a way which would hardly have been practicable for a republic. It is not to be doubted, for instance, that a ruler in Rome, with the largeness of mind and persistency of will of Ptolemy Philadelphus, could by some such simple measures as those which proved so effective in Alexandria, have hastened by half a century or more the development of a national literature in Italy. But, until the establishment of the Empire, the rulers of the Republic had their hands too full with the work of defending the State and of extending its sway, to be able to give thought to, or to find funds for any schemes for, “Museums,” Academies, or Libraries, planned to supply instruction for the community, and to secure employment and incomes for literary men, under whose direction literary undertakings could be carried on at the expense of the public treasury.

No institution of learning received any endowment from the treasury of the Roman Republic, and the scholars who undertook literary work received no aid or encouragement from the government. Under the limitations and conditions controlling the literary life of the time, it is not to be wondered at that the many attractions held out by the Ptolemies should have caused Alexandria rather than Rome to become the literary centre of the world, a distinction which it seems hardly to have lost until, half a century after, through the conquest of Egypt by Octavius (B.C. 30), it had fallen to the position of a capital of a Roman province.