Thus improved (if the word may be allowed of such barbarous amusements), they formed, for near three centuries, the delight of that nation: popular favor, however, had a dangerous effect on the performers, whose licentiousness degenerated at length into such wild invective, that it was found necessary to restrain it by a positive law: "Si qui populo occentassit, carmenve condisit, quod infamiam faxit flagitiumve alteri, fuste ferito." From this time we hear no farther complaints of the Fescennine verses, which continued to charm the Romans; until, about a century afterward, and during the ravages of a dreadful pestilence, the senate, as the historians say, in order to propitiate the gods, called a troop of players from Tuscany, to assist at the celebration of their ancient festivals. This was a wise and a salutary measure: the plague had spread dejection through the city, which was thus rendered more obnoxious to its fury; and it therefore became necessary, by novel and extraordinary amusements, to divert the attention of the people from the melancholy objects around them.
As the Romans were unacquainted with the language of Tuscany, the players, Livy tells us, omitted the modulation and the words, and confined themselves solely to gestures, which were accompanied by the flute. This imperfect exhibition, however, was so superior to their own, that the Romans eagerly strove to attain the art; and, as soon as they could imitate what they admired, graced their rustic measures with music and dancing. By degrees they dropped the Fescennine verses for something of a more regular kind, which now took the name of Satire.[16]
These Satires (for as yet they had but little claim to the title of dramas) continued, without much alteration, to the year 514, when Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, and a freedman of L. Salinator, who was undoubtedly acquainted with the old comedy of his country, produced a regular play. That it pleased can not be doubted, for it surpassed the Satires, even in their improved state; and, indeed, banished them for some time from the scene. They had, however, taken too strong a hold of the affections of the people to be easily forgotten, and it was therefore found necessary to reproduce and join them to the plays of Andronicus (the superiority of which could not be contested), under the name of Exodia or After-pieces. These partook, in a certain degree, of the general amelioration of the stage; something like a story was now introduced into them, which, though frequently indecent and always extravagant, created a greater degree of interest than the reciprocation of gross humor and scurrility in unconnected dialogues.
Whether any of the old people still regretted this sophistication of their early amusements, it is not easy to say; but Ennius, who came to Rome about twenty years after this period, and who was more than half a Grecian, conceived that he should perform an acceptable service by reviving the ancient Satires.[17] He did not pretend to restore them to the stage, for which indeed the new pieces were infinitely better calculated, but endeavored to adapt them to the closet, by refining their grossness and softening their asperity. Success justified the attempt. Satire, thus freed from action, and formed into a poem, became a favorite pursuit, and was cultivated by several writers of eminence. In imitation of his model, Ennius confined himself to no particular species of verse, nor indeed of language, for he mingled Greek expressions with his Latin at pleasure. It is solely with a reference to this new attempt that Horace and Quintilian are to be understood, when they claim for the Romans the invention[18] of this kind of poetry; and certainly they had opportunities of judging which we have not, for little of Ennius, and nothing of the old Satire, remains.
It is not necessary to pursue the history of Satire farther in this place, or to speak of another species of it, the Varronian, or, as Varro himself called it, the Menippean, which branched out from the former, and was a medley of prose and verse; it will be a more pleasing, as well as a more useful employ, to enter a little into what Dryden, I know not for what reason, calls the most difficult part of his undertaking—"a comparative view of the Satirists;" not certainly with the design of depressing one at the expense of another (for, though I have translated Juvenal, I have no quarrel with Horace and Persius), but for the purpose of pointing out the characteristic excellencies and defects of them all. To do this the more effectually, it will be previously necessary to take a cursory view of the times in which their respective works were produced.
Lucilius, to whom Horace, forgetting what he had said in another place, attributes the invention of Satire, flourished in the interval between the siege of Carthage and the defeat of the Cimbri and Teutons, by Marius. He lived therefore in an age in which the struggle between the old and new manners, though daily becoming more equal, or rather inclining to the worse side, was still far from being decided. The freedom of speaking and writing was yet unchecked by fear, or by any law more precise than that which, as has been already mentioned, was introduced to restrain the coarse ebullitions of rustic malignity. Add to this, that Lucilius was of a most respectable family (he was great-uncle to Pompey), and lived in habits of intimacy with the chiefs of the republic, with Lælius, Scipio, and others, who were well able to protect him from the Lupi and Mutii of the day, had they attempted, which they probably did not, to silence or molest him. Hence that boldness of satirizing the vicious by name, which startled Horace, and on which Juvenal and Persius delight to felicitate him.
Too little remains of Lucilius, to enable us to judge of his manner: his style seems, however, to bear fewer marks of delicacy than of strength, and his strictures appear harsh and violent. With all this, he must have been an extraordinary man; since Horace, who is evidently hurt by his reputation, can say nothing worse of his compositions than that they are careless and hasty, and that if he had lived at a more refined period, he would have partaken of the general amelioration. I do not remember to have heard it observed, but I suspect that there was something of political spleen in the excessive popularity of Lucilius under Augustus, and something of courtly complacency in the attempt of Horace to counteract it. Augustus enlarged the law of the twelve tables respecting libels; and the people, who found themselves thus abridged of the liberty of satirizing the great by name, might not improbably seek to avenge themselves by an overstrained attachment to the works of a man who, living, as they would insinuate, in better times, practiced without fear, what he enjoyed without restraint.
The space between Horace and his predecessor, was a dreadful interval "filled up with horror all, and big with death." Luxury and a long train of vices, which followed the immense wealth incessantly poured in from the conquered provinces, sapped the foundations of the republic, which were finally shaken to pieces by the civil wars, the perpetual dictatorship of Cæsar, and the second triumvirate, which threw the Roman world, without a hope of escape, into the power of an individual.
Augustus, whose sword was yet reeking with the best blood of the state, now that submission left him no excuse for farther cruelty, was desirous of enjoying in tranquillity the fruits of his guilt. He displayed, therefore, a magnificence hitherto unknown; and his example, which was followed by his ministers, quickly spread among the people, who were not very unwilling to exchange the agitation and terror of successive proscriptions, for the security and quiet of undisputed despotism.