A History of Roman Literature

by Harold North Fowler

It would occupy too much space to try to give specimens of all the varieties of Livy’s style and composition. His descriptions of battles, among which that of the defeat of Antiochus at Magnesia[88] deserves special mention, are masterpieces of painting in words, even when they betray his lack of military knowledge, and his summaries of the characters of important persons are admirable. The introduction to the history of the war with Hannibal, with the description of the siege of Saguntum, the hesitation at Rome, and the scene in the Carthaginian senate, is unsurpassed. Speech of Hanno. The speech of Hanno, who alone among the Carthaginian senators wished to preserve peace by relinquishing Saguntum and delivering Hannibal into the hands of the Romans, is one of the most remarkable of the many striking passages in this wonderful history:[89]

You have sent to the army, adding, as it were, fuel to the fire, a youth who burns with the desire of ruling, and who sees only one way to his end, if he lives girt with arms and legions, sowing from wars the seed of wars. You have therefore nourished this fire with which you are now burning. Your armies are now surrounding Saguntum, which the treaty forbids them to approach; presently the Roman legions will surround Carthage under the leadership of those same gods by whom in the last war the broken treaties were avenged. Do you not know the enemy, or yourselves, or the fortune of the two peoples? Your good general refused to admit to his camp envoys who came from allies in behalf of allies; they, nevertheless, though refused admittance where even the envoys of enemies are not forbidden to enter, have come to us; they demand restitution in accordance with the treaty; that there may be no deceit on the part of the state, they ask that the author of the wrong and the accused person be delivered up. The more gently they act, the more slowly they begin, the more persistently, I fear, they will rage when once they have begun. Place before your eyes the Ægates islands and Eryx and what you suffered by land and sea for twenty-four years. And that leader was no boy, but his father Hamilcar himself, a second Mars, as his partisans will have it. But we had not kept our hands off from Tarentum, that is from Italy, in obedience to the treaty, as now we are not keeping them off from Saguntum. Therefore the gods overcame men, and in the question at issue, which people had broken the treaty, the event of war, like a just judge, gave the victory to that side on which right stood. It is against Carthage that Hannibal is now moving up his screens and towers; he is shaking the walls of Carthage with his battering-ram. The ruins of Saguntum (may I prove a false prophet!) will fall upon our heads, and the war begun against the Saguntines must be carried on against the Romans. “Shall we then give up Hannibal?” some one will say. I know that in his case my influence has little weight on account of my enmity to his father; but I have been glad that Hamilcar is dead, because if he were living we should already be at war with the Romans, and I hate and detest this youth as the fury and fire-brand of this war, as one who ought not only to be given up as an expiation for the broken treaty, but if no one demanded him, should be carried away to the uttermost shores of sea and land, removed to such a distance that his name and fame could not reach to us nor he disturb the condition of our quiet state. I make this motion: That ambassadors be sent at once to Rome, to give satisfaction to the senate; other envoys to announce to Hannibal that he withdraw his army from Saguntum, and to hand Hannibal himself over to the Romans in pursuance of the treaty; I move a third embassy to restore their property to the Saguntines.

This speech, composed with powerful rhetoric and placed in a dramatic setting, serves not only to bring before our eyes the fruitless errand of the Roman envoys at Carthage, but to emphasize the justice of the Roman cause and to predict the ultimate success of the Romans, on whose side the gods that watch over treaties were enlisted. It is an example of Livy’s oratorical composition, of his dramatic power, of his desire to show that historical events are the result of moral causes, and of his conviction that the Roman power was founded upon right and justice.

Livy’s great work was the first complete history of Rome composed in fine literary form. The time was ripe for such a work. The Roman people had spread its power over the whole civilized world, and the peace and order established by Augustus made it natural that men should wish to read the history of the long struggles of the republic that led up to the present peace of the empire. Livy’s history, therefore, appealed directly to a large circle of readers. But in extending its power over the world, the Roman people had come in contact with various nations, and it was natural that the history of those nations should be of interest to the Romans. The task of writing this history was undertaken by Pompeius Trogus. By descent he was a Vocontian, of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, but his grandfather had received the Roman citizenship from Pompey, and his father had served under Cæsar in Gaul. Pompeius Trogus. Pompeius Trogus himself is mentioned as a writer on zoology, but his most important work was his universal history entitled Historiæ Philippicæ, in forty-four books. Trogus began with the history of the Oriental empires, Assyria, Media, and Persia, passing from the Persians to the Scythians and the Greeks. The greater part of his work was taken up with the account of the Macedonian Empire founded by Philip, and of the kingdoms that arose from it after the death of Alexander the Great. The history of each of these kingdoms is continued to its absorption in the Roman Empire. It is from this part of the work (Books VII-XL) that the whole received its title. The forty-first and forty-second books contained the history of the Parthians, the forty-third told of the beginnings of Rome and treated of affairs in Gaul, and the forty-fourth book contained the history of Spain, ending with the victory of Augustus over the Spaniards.

The history of Trogus is not preserved in its original form, but only in a brief summary made in the second or third century after Christ by an otherwise unknown Marcus Junianus Justinus. Justin’s summary. It is evident that Trogus was not an original investigator, and his work was probably little more than a translation of a Greek original, perhaps by Timagenes of Alexandria, who came to Rome in the time of the civil wars. Nevertheless, the work was important, as it was based on good authorities. It never became so popular as Livy’s history, but it was evidently much used by later writers, and Justin’s summary was much read in the Middle Ages. Of the style of Trogus it is difficult to judge, but so far as it can be appreciated in Justin’s abridgment, it was clear and lively, with a good deal of rhetorical adornment. Even the abridgment is a valuable work on account of the importance of its contents.

Several other historians of the Augustan period are known by name, but their works are lost and have left few traces. Fenestella. The most important of these writers was probably Fenestella, who lived from 52 B. C. to 19 A. D. He wrote Annals in at least twenty-two books, and probably also a variety of works on antiquarian subjects.

The oratory of this period was far inferior to that of the age of Cicero. Oratory. It was for the most part without serious purpose, and the productions of the orators were little more than school exercises to show their skill and serve as models for their pupils. Messalla, Pollio, and some others continued the earlier style of oratory in the Augustan age, but they found few imitators or successors. Among other early Augustan orators was Titus Labienus, who wrote a history as well as speeches. He was so bitterly opposed to the rule of Augustus that his works were burned by decree of the senate. Cassius Severus made in his speeches and writings such violent attacks upon the aristocracy that he was banished by Augustus, and his property was confiscated under Tiberius. He died in great poverty at Seriphus in 32 A. D. Other orators, whose speeches were almost exclusively school exercises, were Marcus Porcius Latro, Gaius Albucius Silus, Quintus Haterius, Lucius Junius Gallio, and the two Asiatic Greeks, Arellius Fuscus and Lucius Cestius Pius. Seneca the elder. Little or nothing is known about any of these men except what is derived from the works of Annæus Seneca, the father of the philosopher Lucius Annæus Seneca and grandfather of the epic poet Lucan. Of the life of the elder Seneca little is known. He was born at Corduba, in Spain, probably as early as 55 B. C., and spent part of his life in Rome. He lived to a great age, for his only extant work was written as late as 37 A. D. This is a series of recollections of famous orators and rhetoricians, written at the request of the author’s sons, Novatus, Seneca, and Mela. It originally contained ten books of Controversiæ or arguments, and one book of Suasoriæ or speeches advising some particular course of conduct. The most important parts of the work are the introductions, which contain much information on the history of oratory. The ten books of Controversiæ treated of seventy-four subjects, the book of Suasoriæ of seven. The beginning of the Suasoriæ is now lost, and of the Controversiæ only thirty-five are preserved. The subject-matter is throughout insipid and dull. Such things are discussed as this: “A man and his wife swore that if anything happened to one of them the other would die. The man went on a journey and sent a message to his wife that he was dead. The wife threw herself down from a high place. She was brought to herself again, and her father ordered her to leave her husband. She refused.” The utterances of the masters of rhetoric on such matters as this are given by Seneca, whose prodigious memory made him able to repeat them almost, if not quite, in the original words. The most interesting single theme is the sixth Suasoria, in which the question is answered whether Cicero should beg Antony to spare his life. The answers given contain several judgments on Cicero, among them those of Asinius Pollio and Livy. But the folly and emptiness of the sort of oratorical study with which Seneca makes us acquainted can not fail to impress every reader. Seneca himself expresses his disgust. His remarkable memory enabled him to hand down to later ages specimens of the oratorical teaching which, even in the Augustan age, began to corrupt Latin style. Seneca’s own style is not far removed from that of Cicero’s time, and Seneca, though he wrote under Caligula, probably acquired his style in the early part of the Augustan period. The specimens he has preserved show, however, that the influential teachers of his early days had far less taste than he.

Among the learned writers on special subjects one of the most important was Verrius Flaccus, of whose life little is known, except that he was chosen by Augustus to educate his grandsons Gaius and Lucius, and that he died in old age during the reign of Tiberius. Verrius Flaccus. Of his numerous works on grammatical and antiquarian subjects one only, On the Meaning of Words (De Verborum Significatu), is partially preserved in an abridgment by Pompeius Festus, who seems to have lived in the third or fourth century after Christ. Only part of this abridgment remains, but this is important for the information it contains concerning Roman antiquities and early Latin words. A further abridgment of Festus was made in the eighth century by Paulus, and even this is of value, though it is a mere skeleton of the original work of Verrius Flaccus. Another scholar was Gaius Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus and librarian of the Palatine library. Hyginus. His life extended from about 64 B. C. to about 17 A. D. He composed works on agriculture, history, geography, and antiquities, besides commentaries on Virgil and on Cinna’s poem to Asinius Pollio. Of all these works nothing remains; but two works under the name of Hyginus are extant. One of these is a treatise on astronomy, including myths relating to the stars, the other a mythological handbook entitled Fabulæ, to which a series of genealogies is appended. The handbook is valuable chiefly because the myths told in it are taken from Greek tragedies for the most part, and through them we learn the plots of many lost works of Greek authors. These extant works are, however, not by the librarian Hyginus, but by a later writer, who lived probably in the second century after Christ. Labeo and Capito. Of the legal writings of Marcus Antistius Labeo and Gaius Ateius Capito nothing remains. Each was the head of a school of writers and teachers on legal subjects. Labeo tried to explain changes and growth in legal matters, as well as in grammar, by the principle of analogy or likeness, while Capito regarded anomaly or difference as more important.

A work of no literary excellence, but of great value on account of the information it contains, is the treatise On Architecture (De Architectura), in ten books, by Vitruvius Pollio. Vitruvius. Vitruvius was a practical architect, who built a basilica at Colonia Fanestris and had charge of the construction of machines of war under Augustus.[90] His books appear to have been written between 16 and 13 B. C., and dedicated to Augustus. They form the only systematic treatise on architecture preserved to us from antiquity, and are for that reason of the greatest importance to architects and archæologists. The style is, however, inelegant and obscure, though its obscurity is due in part to the necessary employment of technical expressions. Vitruvius was evidently a man of no great literary education or ability, however able he may have been as an architect.

The age of Augustus is marked by the highest development of Roman poetry. Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid are, each in his own way, the greatest of the Roman poets. Only Catullus and Lucretius can be compared with any one of them. The only great prose writer of the period is Livy. His style is still pure, and is certainly very charming; but even Livy departs somewhat from the dignity and beauty of the sermo urbanus, the Latin of Cicero and Cæsar. The extracts preserved by Seneca show that the rhetorical teaching of the time was artificial and tasteless, and was leading the way to decline, to the so-called silver Latin of the imperial epoch.