The time was now evidently approaching when the Romans were beginning to show, that although they did not possess the inventive genius of the Greeks, they were capable of stripping their native language of its rudeness, and of transferring into it the beauties of Greek thought; that they were no longer mere servile copyists, but could use Greek poetry as furnishing suggestions for original efforts. They could not quarry for themselves, but they could now build up Greek materials into a glowing and polished edifice, of which the details were new and the effect original.
The metres which Attius used were chiefly the iambic trimeter and the anapæstic dimeter, but his prætextatæ were written in trochaic and iambic tetrameters, the rhythm of which proves that his ear was more refined than that of his predecessors.[[275]]
It is not known whether he was the author of any comedies, but he was a historian, an antiquarian, and a critic, as well as a poet. He left behind him a review of dramatic poetry, entitled “Libri Didascalion,” “Roman Annals,” in verse, and two other works—“Libri Pragmaticon,” and “Parerga.” The former of these is quoted by Nonius, and A. Gellius. He died at an advanced age, probably about A. U. C. 670, and is thus a link, as it were, which connects the first literary period with the age of Cicero; for the great orator was personally acquainted with him, and at his death must have been about twenty-two years of age.
With Attius Latin tragedy disappeared. The tragedies of the third period were written expressly for reading and recitation, and not for the stage. They may have deserved the commendations which they obtained, but the merit and talent which they displayed were simply rhetorical, and not dramatic; they were dramatic poems, not dramas.
The state of political affairs, which synchronized with the death of Attius, was less congenial than ever to the tragic muse. Real and bloody tragedies were being enacted, and there was no room in the heart of the Roman people for fictitious woes. If it was improbable that a people who delighted in the sanguinary scenes of the amphitheatre should sympathize with the sorrows of a hero in tragedy, it was almost impossible that tragedy should flourish when Rome itself was a theatre in which scenes of horror were daily enacted.
Either then, or not long before, the terrible domination of Cinna and Marius had begun. Massacre and violence raged through the streets of Rome. The best and noblest fell victims to the raging thirst for blood. The aged Marius, distracted by unscrupulous ambition and savage passions, died amidst the delirious ravings of remorse, and thus made way for the tyranny of his perjured accomplice Cinna. Still there was no respite or interruption. The cruel Sulla sent his orders from Antemnæ to slaughter 8,000 prisoners in cold blood. The massacre had hardly begun when he himself arrived, had taken his place in the Senate; and the shrieks of his murdered victims were audible in the house whilst he was coolly speaking. This was the beginning of horrors: the notorious proscription followed. Besides other victims, 5,600 Roman knights perished.
Amidst such scenes as these, the voice of the tragic muse was hushed. Depending for her very existence on the breath of popular favour, she necessarily could not find supporters, and so languished and was silenced. It might appear surprising that literature of any kind should have lived through such times of savage barbarism. But other literature is not dependent upon public patronage: it finds a refuge beneath the shelter of the private dwelling. The literary man finds friends and patrons amongst those who, devoted to the humanities of intellectual pursuits, shuns the scenes of revolutionary strife and the struggles of selfish ambition. Even Sulla himself had a polished and refined taste; and, when he resigned the Dictatorship, passed those hours of retirement in literary studies which were not devoted to depravity and licentiousness.
The style in which the Roman theatres were built, indicate that whatever taste for tragedy the Roman people possessed had now decayed. The huge edifice erected by Pompey was too vast for the exhibition of tragedy. The forty thousand spectators which it contained could scarcely hear the actor, still less could they see the expression of human passions and emotions. The two theatres, placed on pivots, back to back, so that they could be wheeled round and form one vast amphitheatre, show how an interest in the drama was shared with the passion for spectacle; and provision was thus publicly made for gratifying that corrupt taste which had arrived at its zenith in the time of Horace, and, as we have seen, interrupted even comedy so early as the times of Terence.
Satire.
The invention of satire is universally attributed to the Romans, and this assertion is true as far as the external form is concerned; but the spirit of satire is found in many parts of the literature of Greece. It animated the Homeric Margites, the poem on woman by Simonides, the bitter lyrical iambics of Archilochus, Stesichorus’ attack on Helen, and especially, as Horace says, the old comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. Some resemblance may also be discerned between Roman satire and the Greek Silli, poems belonging to the declining period of Greek literature,[[276]] the design of which was to attack vice and folly with severe ridicule.[[277]]