* * * * *
Vim Gallicam obduc contra in acie.” ——
Horace, as is well known, bestowed some commendation on those dramatists who had chosen events of domestic history as subjects for their tragedies—
“Nec minimum meruere decus, vestigia Græca
Ausi deserere, et celebrare domestica facta[351].”
Dramas taken from our own annals, excite a public interest, and afford the best, as well as easiest opportunity of attract[pg 219]ing the mind, by frequent reference to our manners, prejudices, or customs. It may, at first view, seem strange, that the Romans, who were a national people, and whose epics were generally founded on events in their own history, should, when they did make such frequent attempts at the composition of tragedy, have so seldom selected their arguments from the ancient annals or traditions of their country. These traditions were, perhaps, not very fertile in pathetic or mournful incident, but they afforded subjects rich, beyond all others, in tragic energy and elevation; and even in the range of female character, in which the ancient drama was most defective, Lucretia and Virginia were victims as interesting as Iphigenia or Alcestis. The tragic writers of modern times have borrowed from these very sources many subjects of a highly poetical nature, and admirably calculated for scenic representation. The furious combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, the stern patriotic firmness of Brutus, the internal conflicts of Coriolanus, the tragic fate of Virginia, and the magnanimous self-devotion of Regulus, have been dramatized with success, in the different languages of modern Europe. But those names, which to us sound so lofty, may, to the natives, have been too familiar for the dignity essential to tragedy. In Rome, besides the risk of offending great families, the Roman subjects were of too recent a date to have acquired that venerable cast, which the tragic muse demands, and time alone can bestow. They were not at sufficient distance to have dropped all those mean and disparaging circumstances, which unavoidably adhere to recent events, and in some measure sink the noblest modern transactions to the level of ordinary life. This seems to have been strongly felt by Sophocles and Euripides, who preferred the incidents connected with the sieges of Troy and of Thebes, rendered gigantic only by the mists of antiquity, to the real and almost living glories of Marathon or Thermopylæ. But the Romans had no families corresponding to the race of Atreus or Œdipus—they had no princess endowed with the beauty of Helen—no monarch invested with the dignity of Agamemnon—they had, in short, no epic cycle on which to form tragedies, like the Greeks, whose minds had been conciliated by Homer in favour of Ajax and Ulysses[352]. “The most interesting subjects of tragedies,” says Adam Smith[353], “are the misfortunes of [pg 220]virtuous and magnanimous kings and princes;” but the Roman kings were a detested race, for whose rank and qualities there was no admiration, and for whose misfortunes there could be no sympathy. Accordingly, after some few and not very successful attempts to dramatize national incidents, the Latin tragic writers relapsed into their former practice, as appears from the titles of all the tragedies which were brought out from the time of Attius to that of Seneca.
Hence it follows, that those remarks, which have been repeated to satiety with regard to the subjects of the Greek theatre, are likewise applicable to those of the Roman stage. There would be the same dignified misfortune displayed in nobler and imposing attitudes—the same observance of the unities—the same dramatic phrensy, remorse, and love, proceeding from the vengeance of the gods, and exhibited in the fate of Ajax, Orestes, and Phædra—the same struggle against that predominant destiny, which was exalted even above the gods of Olympus, and by which the ill-fated race of Atreus was agitated and pursued. The Latin, like the Greek tragedies, must have excited something of the same feeling as the Laocoon or Niobe in sculpture; and, indeed, the moral of a large proportion of them seems to be comprised in the chorus of Seneca’s Œdipus—
“Fatis agimur—cedite fatis:
Non solicitæ possunt curæ
Mutare rati stamina fusi.”