Juvenal joins with Martial in characterizing the writing of poetry as an unsatisfactory profession, and hints more strongly than Martial that the profession was spoiled by amateurs. He suggests as a further ground for the absence of first-rate poetry, that all the subjects had been exhausted, meaning, of course, all the mythological subjects. He arrives at the conclusion that poetry and literature in general are dying, and considers this is not to be wondered at, since even if a man of letters makes a sacrifice which ought not to be required of him, and turns schoolmaster, he will be grossly underpaid, and often not able to recover the beggarly pittance which will be due him.[266]
This inadequacy of the legitimate returns for literary work was doubtless considered by Martial as a sufficient justification for utilizing his unquestioned literary cleverness in ways not always legitimate, for, as has been pointed out by Cruttwell, Simcox, and others, not a few of the epigrams look like demands for blackmail. “Somebody”—the poet declines to know who the somebody is—“has given offence”; if the poet should discuss who, so much the worse for somebody. He is full of veiled personalities of the most damaging kind. He deprecates guessing at the persons indicated, but they must have recognized themselves, and have seen the need of propitiating a poet who was at once politic and vindictive. He insists repeatedly upon his successful avoidance of all personal attacks, while he had been lavish of personal compliments. He tells us himself that these were not given gratis, and when somebody whom he has praised ignores the obligation he receives, the fact is published as a general warning. We cannot doubt that when Martial wrote that “there were no baths in the world like the baths of Etruscus,” and that “whoever missed bathing in them would die without bathing,” he expected to be paid in some form or other for the valuable advertisement he was giving to Etruscus.[267] In like manner, when he answers numerous requests for a copy of his poems with a reference to his bookseller, adding a jocose assurance that the poems are not really worth the money, it is fair to assume that the bookseller had paid something for the manuscript or that the author had some continued interest in the sales.[268]
In being obliged by the narrowness of his means to watch thus closely the sales of his booksellers, and in believing himself compelled to pick up sesterces by writing complimentary epigrams or threatening abusive ones, Martial may well have envied the assured position of his contemporary Quintilian, who received from the imperial treasury as a rhetorician a salary, which, with his other emoluments, gave him an income of 100,000 sesterces (about $4000). Quintilian appears to have been the first rhetorician to whom an imperial salary was given.
It is evident that at this time the art of the rhetorician or reciter was still one of importance. The great books of the Claudian period were evidently written to be recited or to please a taste formed by the habit of recitation.[269] After the reign of Claudius the noteworthy works, with the exception perhaps of the Thebaïd of Statius, were certainly written to be read. How many readers they found is a more difficult thing to determine. There was certainly, on the part of some writers at least, no lack of persistency. Labeo, the jurist (who died 13 A.D.), is credited, for instance (or should we say debited?), with the production of no less than four hundred works.[270]
The average editions of works addressed to the general public are estimated by Birt to have comprised not less than five hundred copies, and in many cases a thousand copies.[271] Pliny, writing about 60 A.D., makes reference to a volume by M. Aquilus Regulus (a memoir of his deceased son), of which the author caused to be made one thousand copies for distribution throughout Italy and the provinces. Pliny thinks it rather absurd that for a volume like this, of limited and purely personal interest, the piety and the vanity of the author should have caused an edition to be prepared larger than that usually issued of readable works.[272] Birt is of opinion that there is sufficient evidence in the references of Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Martial, and others, to show the existence of a well organized system for the distribution and sale of books, not only in Italy, but throughout the distant provinces of Gaul, Britain, Germany, and Scythia. Such a distribution, even if restricted to the larger cities, would have been impracticable with editions of much less than one thousand copies.[273] In support of this view regarding a widespread distribution of books, Birt quotes a passage from Pliny concerning the service to literature rendered by Varro.
“Varro was unwilling that the fame of great men should perish, or that the lapse of years should cause the memory of their deeds to be lost. He took pains, therefore, in the almost countless volumes of his writings, to preserve for posterity sketches or studies of more than seven hundred men who had won renown. Such a device might well have aroused the envy of the Gods, for these portraitures were not only thus ensured a permanent existence, but they were distributed to the farthest corners of the earth, so that the names of these heroes of the past would, like those of the Gods themselves, be known in all lands.”[274][275]
Varro, who was a contemporary of Cicero, appears to have interested himself not only in biography, but in almost every department of research. He is credited with forty-one books on antiquities, seventy-six books of edifying dialogues, fifteen books of parallel lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans, twenty-five books on the Latin language, nine books on the “seven liberal arts,” fifteen books on civil law, thirty political memoirs, twenty-two books of speeches, one hundred and fifty satires, and a number of minor works.[276] Such industry and versatility have few parallels in the history of literature, although it is to be borne in mind that the author was favored with length of days, and was able to be active in literary work as late as his eighty-second year. It is evident, however, that there must have been some measure of appreciation on the part of the public and the publisher to have encouraged him to such long-continued production.
Possibly the earliest instance of any practical interest taken by the imperial government in furthering the distribution of literature for the higher education of the public, is presented by an edict of the Emperor Tacitus (275 A.D.), ordering that every public library throughout the Empire should possess not less than ten sets of the writings of his ancestor, Tacitus, the historian. His reign of two hundred days was, however, too brief to enable him to ensure the execution of his decree. It seems probable that if the aged Emperor (he was in his seventy-fifth year when he came to the throne) had been able to carry out his plan, posterity would not have had occasion to mourn the disappearance of so large a portion of the writings of the great historian.
Tacitus, the historian, was born about 60 A.D., in a small town of Umbria. His father was of equestrian rank and a man of importance, and it is interesting to note that the son, instead of being sent to Athens for his education, as was so frequently done with well born youths of the preceding generation, received his university training at Massilia (the modern Marseilles), which by the close of the first century had become an important centre of literature and education. The supremacy of Athens in influencing the higher education of Italy had come to a close, and the centre of intellectual life was moving westward. Tacitus was evidently a man of no little versatility of power. Before achieving lasting fame through his histories and essays, he had won distinction as a lawyer and as an orator, and had served with dignity and success as prætor and consul. He is spoken of as a graceful poet, and was believed also to have been the author of a clever volume of Facetiæ.
His History was published some time during the reign of Trajan, in some thirty books, of which less than five have been preserved. His second historical work was published a few years later, in sixteen books, under the title of Annals, and of this about nine books have been preserved. The frequent references to these two works and to the well known essay on the Germans, in the writings of the contemporaries and successors of Tacitus, show how important a position they occupied in the literature of the Empire, and show also that copies of them were distributed widely throughout the known world. We have unfortunately no details whatever concerning the method of their publication, and no references to the publishers to whose charge they were confided.