The style of Phædrus, notwithstanding a few provincialisms,[[1032]] is pure and classical. He does not often indulge in the use of metaphors, but the few which are met with are striking and appropriate. He is not entirely free from some of that far-fetched affectation which characterizes the decline of Roman literature. But his fault is exaggerated conciseness, and the concentration of many ideas within a brief space, rather than the rhetorical ornament which now began to be admired and popular. His endeavour after brevity led him to use abstract substantives far more profusely than is consistent with the practice of the best classical writers. These faults, however, do not interfere with that clearness and simplicity, which, quite as much as the subjects, have rendered the fables of Phædrus a popular book for the young student, and please even those who have the opportunity of comparing his iambics with the liveliness of Gay, the politeness of Florian, the philosophy of Lessing, the sweetness of Cowper, and the unequalled versatility of La Fontaine.

CHAPTER II.
DRAMATIC LITERATURE IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE—REVIVAL UNDER NERO—DEFECTS OF THE TRAGEDIES ATTRIBUTED TO SENECA—INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF THEIR AUTHORSHIP—SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER A STOIC—INCONSISTENT AND UNSTABLE—THE SENTIMENTS OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS FOUND IN HIS TRAGEDIES—PARALLEL PASSAGES COMPARED—FRENCH SCHOOL OF TRAGIC POETS.

Of Roman tragedy in its earliest period, so far as the fragments of it which remain allow a judgment to be formed, an account has already been given; and if circumstances forbade it to flourish then, still less can it be expected that the boldness and independence of Greek tragedy would be found under the empire.

Nevertheless, there were not wanting some imitators of Greece in this noblest branch of Greek poetry, however unsuitable it was to the genius of the Roman people, and unlikely to be appreciated by them.

But their productions were rather literary than dramatic; they were intended to be read, not acted. They were poems composed in a dramatic form, because Athens had set the example of that form to her devoted imitators. Although, therefore, they contain noble philosophical sentiments, lively descriptions, vigorous conceptions and delineations of character, and passages full of tenderness and pathos, they are deficient in dramatic effect, and positively offend against those laws of good taste, which, not arbitrarily assumed, but founded on the principles of the human mind, regulated the Athenian stage.

We have seen that, in the Augustan age, a few writers attained some excellence in tragedy, at least in the opinion of ancient critics. Besides Ovid and Varius, whose tragedies have been already mentioned, Asinius Pollio acquired a high reputation as a tragic poet, and Virgil[[1033]] declares that he is the only one worthy of being compared with Sophocles:—

Sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno.

On the revival of letters under that professor of a love of poetry,[[1034]] the tyrant Nero, dramatic literature reappeared, and perfect specimens are extant in the ten tragedies attributed to Seneca. Various and opposite opinions have been entertained respecting their merits; but there can be no doubt that the genius of the author never can grasp in their wholeness the characters which he attempts to copy; they are distorted images of the Greek originals; the awful and shadowy grandeur of the god-like heroes of Æschylus stand forth in corporeal vastness, and appear childish and unnatural, like the giants of a story-book. The marvels of Greek tragedy and Greek mythology, though merely the unreal conceptions of the imagination, do not appear exaggerated, because the connexion between the theory and the result, the causes and the effects, is so skilfully maintained; but in these Roman tragedies the legends of Greece appear extravagant and absurd: they are as unreal, and therefore seem as affected, as the classical garb in which English poetry was arrayed in the age of Anne. The Greeks believed in the gods and heroes whose agency and exploits constituted the machinery of tragedy—the Romans did not; and thus we cannot sympathize with them, because we see that they are insincere. The style, moreover, of the tragedies, which bear the name of Seneca, is spoiled by that inflated language and redundancy of ornament, the constant effect of which is, as Aristotle observes, frigidity. They bear the visible marks of an age in which genius had given place to an artificial and scholastic rhetoric; and the author seems to have been striving not for tragic pathos so much as brilliant declamation. In the female characters, especially, the Roman tragic poet fails; for, although he can understand heroism, he is unable to accomplish that most difficult of all tasks, the combining it with feminine delicacy. Perhaps the best and noblest of his country-women did not furnish him with such ideals. The Roman matron was the counterpart of her warlike lord. The Lucretias, Porcias, Cornelias, Arrias, though devoted and affectionate, were of sterner mould than Antigone and Deianira.

The tragedies which bear the name of Seneca have been attributed to L. Annæus Seneca, the philosopher, as early as the time of Quintilian,[[1035]] who quotes as Seneca’s a verse from the Medea. The improbability of this being the case is also diminished by the fact that both Tacitus[[1036]] and Pliny the younger[[1037]] speak of him as a poet. Nevertheless, their authorship has been considered a very doubtful question. A passage in an epigram of Martial, in which he speaks of Cordova as the birthplace of two Senecas and one Lucan—

Duosque Senecas unicumque Lucanum