Latin Literature

by J. W. Mackail

Ilia cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum? Quando fiam uti chelidon ut tacere desinam?

A second spring, in effect, was not to come for poetry till a thousand years later; once more then we hear the music of this strange poem, not now in the bronze utterance of a mature and magnificent language, but faintly and haltingly, in immature forms that yet have notes of new and piercing sweetness.

Bels dous amicx, fassam un joc novel Ins el jardi on chanton li auzel—

so it rings out in Southern France, "in an orchard under the whitethorn leaf;" and in England, later, but yet a century before Chaucer, the same clear note is echoed, bytuene Mershe ant Averil, whan spray bigineth to spring.

But in the Roman Empire under the Antonines the soil, the race, the language, were alike exhausted. The anarchy of the third century brought with it the wreck of the whole fabric of civilisation; and the new religion, already widely diffused and powerful, was beginning to absorb into itself on all sides the elements of thought and emotion which tended towards a new joy and a living art.

VI.

EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY: MINUCIUS FELIX, TERTULLIAN, LACTANTIUS.

The new religion was long in adapting itself to literary form; and if, between the era of the Antonines and that of Diocletian, a century passes in which all the important literature is Christian, this is rather due to the general decay of art and letters, than to any high literary quality in the earlier patristic writing. Christianity began among the lower classes, and in the Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire; after it reached Rome, and was diffused through the Western provinces, it remained for a long time a somewhat obscure sect, confined, in the first instance, to the small Jewish or Graeco-Asiatic colonies which were to be found in all centres of commerce, and spreading from them among the uneducated urban populations. The persecution of Nero was directed against obscure people, vaguely known as a sort of Jews, and the martyrdom of the two great apostles was an incident that passed without remark and almost without notice. Tacitus dismisses the Christians in a few careless words, and evidently classes the new religion with other base Oriental superstitions as hardly worth serious mention. The well-known correspondence between Pliny and Trajan, on the subject of the repressive measures to be taken against the Christians of Bithynia, indicates that Christianity had, by the beginning of the second century, taken a large and firm footing in the Eastern provinces; but it is not till a good many years later that we have any certain indication of its obtaining a hold on the educated classes. The legend of the conversion of Statius seems to be of purely mediaeval origin. Flavius Clemens, the cousin of the Emperor Domitian, executed on the ground of "atheism" during the year of his consulship, is claimed, though without certainty, as the earliest Christian martyr of high rank. Even in the middle of the second century, the Church of Rome mainly consisted of people who could barely speak or write Latin. The Muratorian fragment, the earliest Latin Christian document, which general opinion dates within a few years of the death of Marcus Aurelius, and which is part of an extremely important official list of canonical writings issued by the authority of the Roman Church, is barbarous in construction and diction. It is in the reign of Commodus, amid the wreck of all other literature, that we come on the first Christian authors. Victor, Bishop of Rome from the year 186, is mentioned by Jerome as the first author of theological treatises in Latin; taken together with his attempt to excommunicate the Asiatic Churches on the question, already a burning one, of the proper date of keeping Easter, this shows that the Latin Church was now gaining independent force and vitality.

Two main streams may be traced in the Christian literature which begins with the reign of Commodus. On the one hand, there is what may be called the African school, writing in the new Latin; on the other, the Italian school, which attempted to mould classical Latin to Christian use. The former bears a close affinity in style to Apuleius, or, rather, to the movement of which Apuleius was the most remarkable product; the latter succeeds to Quintilian and his contemporaries as the second impulse of Ciceronianism. The two opposing methods appear at their sharpest contrast in the earliest authors of each, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. The vast preponderance of the former, alike in volume of production and fire of eloquence, offers a suggestive parallel to the comparative importance of the two schools in the history of ecclesiastical Latin. Throughout the third and fourth centuries the African school continues to predominate, but it takes upon itself more of the classical finish, and tames the first ferocity of its early manner. Cyprian inclines more to the style of Tertullian; Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero," reverts strongly towards the classical forms: and finally, towards the end of the fourth century, the two languages are combined by Augustine, in proportions which, throughout the Middle Ages, form the accepted type of the language of Latin Christianity.

In a fine passage at the opening of the fifth book of his Institutes of Divinity, Lactantius regrets the imperfect literary support given to Christianity by his two eminent predecessors. The obscurity and harshness of Tertullian, he says (and to this may be added his Montanism, which fluctuated on the edge of heresy), prevent him from being read or esteemed as widely as his great literary power deserves; while Minucius, in his single treatise, the Octavius, gave a brilliant specimen of his grace and power as a Christian apologist, but did not carry out the task to its full scope. This last treatise is, indeed, of unique interest, not only as a fine, if partial, vindication of the new religion, but as the single writing of the age, Christian or pagan, which in style and diction follows the classical tradition, and almost reaches the classical standard. As to the life of its author, nothing is known beyond the scanty indications given in the treatise itself. Even his date is not wholly certain, and, while the reign of Commodus is his most probable period, Jerome appears to allude to him as later than Tertullian, and some modern critics incline to place the work in the reign of Alexander Severus. The Octavius is a dialogue in the Ciceronian manner, showing especially a close study of the De Natura Deorum. A brief and graceful introduction gives an account of the scene of the dialogue. The narrator, with his two friends, Octavius and Caecilius, the former a Christian, the latter a somewhat wavering adherent of the old faith, are taking a walk on the beach near Ostia on a beautiful autumn morning, watching the little waves lapping on the sand, and boys playing duck-and-drake with pieces of tile, when Caecilius kisses his hand, in the ordinary pagan usage, to an image of Serapis which they pass. The incident draws them on to a theological discussion. Caecilius sets forth the argument against Christianity in detail, and Octavius replies to him point by point; at the end, Caecilius professes himself overcome, and declares his adhesion to the faith of his friend. Both in the attack and in the defence it is only the rational side of the new doctrine which is at issue. The unity of God, the resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future state, make up the sum of Christianity as it is presented. The name of Christ is not once mentioned, nor is his divinity directly asserted. There is no allusion to the sacraments, or to the doctrine of the Redemption; and Octavius neither quotes from nor refers to the writings of either Old or New Testament. Among early Christian writings, this method of treatment is unexampled elsewhere. The work is an attempt to present the new religion to educated opinion as a reasonable philosophic system; as we read it, we might be in the middle of the eighteenth century. With this temperate rationalism is combined a clearness and purity of diction, founded on the Ciceronian style, but without Cicero's sumptuousness of structure, that recalls the best prose of the Silver Age.