At once on heaven and on their lover looked!”
Henry King.
With the death of Ovid, the flourishing period of poetry terminated. Among his contemporaries, we may mention, in passing, the epic poets Albinova’nus author of the These’id, and Cornelius Seve’rus, who wrote an heroic on the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. The didactic poets Gratius and Manilius also flourished in the Augustan age; the former memorable for his poem on hunting, the latter for his “Astronomica.”
PROSE WRITERS.
Titus Livius.—The last ornament of the Augustan Era is the historian Livy, born at Pata’vium (now Padua) about 59 B.C.—the scion of a noble line that had figured proudly in the annals of the Republic. His was the uneventful life of the scholar, and few particulars of his biography have therefore been preserved. He appears to have begun his career as a rhetorician; to have come to the capital about B.C. 31, for what precise purpose we cannot say, and there to have gained a ready introduction at court. The emperor, already favorably impressed with his ability, is said to have placed at his disposal a suite of rooms in the palace.
Perhaps, as his importunities made the reluctant Virgil the great epic poet of Rome, so Augustus may have stirred the ambition of Livy to become its historian; whether he did or not, we find the rhetorician of Patavium, soon after taking up his abode at the imperial city, entering upon the composition of his “Annals,” a work which progressed simultaneously with the Æneid. As the different decades (divisions of ten books) were completed, the author, after first reading them to Augustus and Mæcenas, published them for the perusal of his countrymen. They at once made his reputation, and became the received authority on the national history, raising Livy during his lifetime, as at the present day, to the rank of the most distinguished historians. The estimation in which they were held may be inferred from the story of Pliny—that a citizen of Cadiz came all the way to Italy merely to see the great writer the whole Roman world was talking about.
For forty years Livy labored on his history. At the time of his death, which took place in his native town, 17 A.D., he had finished 142 books, covering nearly seven and a half centuries from the founding of Rome. It is supposed that he intended to add eight more, embracing the entire reign of Augustus. Only thirty-five of the original books have been recovered.
The loss of the decades relating to the civil wars is much to be deplored, and it has ever been the hope of scholars that some day the missing parts would be found. Several times has the literary world been thrown into excitement by false rumors of their discovery. Once, we are told, a learned man detected in the parchment covering of a battledoor with which he was playing a page of the favorite historian; but on hastening to the maker of the toy, to rescue the prized manuscript to which it had belonged, he found that all had been utilized in a similar manner. A meagre synopsis of the books that have perished, serves only to make us regret their loss the more keenly. (Read Taine’s “Essai sur Tite Live.”)
Livy’s “Annals” is a model of elegant historical writing, and a repertory of tales and traditions of early heroism, which have made Roman virtue and prowess the admiration of the world; yet his statements must be taken with many grains of allowance. Not that he wilfully misrepresented, but rather that he trusted too implicitly authorities of doubtful veracity, and shrunk from the labor of thorough original investigation. Moreover, a vein of exaggeration runs through his pages. It was doubtless his intention to be impartial; but carried away by a natural bias, he was too ready to color or cover over the blots on his country’s escutcheon. That he stooped not to curry favor with his superiors is evident from the epithet applied to him by Augustus—“the Pompeyite”—by reason of his warm praises of Cæsar’s rival. Ignorance of geography, military science, and even of the constitutional development of Rome, is conspicuous in his narrative.
As an artist, however, Livy was great. He excels in depicting character, whether directly by description, or indirectly in the actions or utterances of the old Roman worthies. Hence, artificial as they are and often smelling of the rhetorician’s lamp, the speeches which Livy puts in the mouths of his different personages display his genius to advantage. One of the finest, given below, is that of the old Horatius, pleading with the people for the life of his son. According to the legend, in a war between Rome and Alba Longa, it was agreed by the contending parties, to save unnecessary bloodshed, that the question at issue should be decided by a hand-to-hand conflict between three champions on each side,—the brothers Horatii for Rome, the Curiatii for Alba. All fell save one Horatius. We leave the conclusion of the story to Livy:—