Hitherto, with one doubtful exception, Latin historical composition was in the hands of the great and noble; the first historian belonging to the order of the libertinei was L. Otacilius Pilitus. Suetonius[[371]] says, that he was not only originally a slave, but that he acted as porter, and, as was the custom, was chained to his master’s door. Nothing is known of his works; it is probable, therefore, that they were of no merit.
Two more important names remain to be mentioned amongst the annalists of this period—L. Cornelius Sisenna and Q. Ælius Tubero. Sisenna, according to the testimony of Cicero,[[372]] was born between B. C. 640 and B. C. 680, and filled the office of quæstor B. C. 676. He was, according to the same authority, a man of learning and taste, wrote pure Latin, was well acquainted with public business, and, although deficient in industry, surpassed all his predecessors and contemporaries in his talents as an historian. Probably his style of writing approached more nearly to that of the new school, although still below the Ciceronian standard. The testimony of Sallust is not so favourable, as he considers him not sufficiently impartial to fulfil adequately the duties of a contemporary historian.[[373]]
No fragments are extant of sufficient length to enable us to form any estimate of his merits, although, on account of the numerous unusual words which occur in his writings, no historian of this period has been more frequently quoted by the grammarians. The probability is that his twenty-three books are of little or no value, as they are never referred to in order to illustrate matters of historical or antiquarian interest.
Tubero was the contemporary of Cicero, and did not write his annals until after Cicero’s consulship. Nevertheless he must be considered as belonging to the old school, and its last as well as one of its most worthy representatives. He was the father of L. Tubero, the legate of Q. Cicero, in Asia. Like Piso, he was a stout opponent of the Gracchic policy, and a firm supporter of the aristocracy. A stoic in philosophy, his life was in strict accordance with his creed, and his style of writing is said to have been marked with Catonian rudeness. He describes, in his history, the cruel tortures of Regulus by the Carthaginians, and relates the story of the wonderful serpent at Bagrada.[[374]] He is once quoted by Dionysius and twice by Livy.
CHAPTER XII.
EARLY ROMAN ORATORY—ELOQUENCE OF APPIUS CLAUDIUS CÆCUS—FUNERAL ORATIONS—DEFENCE OF SCIPIO AFRICANUS MAJOR—SCIPIO AFRICANUS MINOR ÆMILIANUS—ERA OF THE GRACCHI—THEIR CHARACTERS—INTERVAL BETWEEN THE GRACCHI AND CICERO—M. ANTONIUS—L. LICINIUS CRASSUS—Q. HORTENSIUS—CAUSES OF HIS EARLY POPULARITY AND SUBSEQUENT FAILURE.
Eloquence, though of a rude, unpolished kind, must have been in the very earliest times a characteristic of the Roman people. It is a plant indigenous to a free soil. Its infancy was nurtured in the schools of Tisias and Corax, when, on the dethronement of the tyrants, the dawn of freedom brightened upon Sicily; and, just as in modern times it has flourished, especially in England and America, fostered by the unfettered freedom of debate, so it found a congenial home in free Greece and republican Rome. He who could contrast in the most glowing colours the cruelty of the pitiless creditor, with the sufferings of the ruined debtor—who could ingeniously connect those patent evils with some defects in the constitution, some inequalities in political rights hitherto hidden and unobserved—would wield at will the affections of the people, and become the master-spirit amongst his fellow-citizens.
Occasions would not be wanting in a state where, from the earliest times, a struggle was continually maintained between a dominant and a subject race, for the use of those arts of eloquence which nature, the mistress of all art, suggests. The plebeians, in their conflicts with the patricians, must have had some leader, and eloquence, probably to a great extent, directed the selection, even though there was, in reality, no Menenius Agrippa to lead them back from the sacred mountain with his homely wisdom. Cases of oppression, doubtless, inspired some Icilius or Virginius with words of burning indignation, and many a Siccius Dentatus, though he had never learnt technical rhetoric, used the rhetorical artifice of appealing to his honourable wounds and scars in front, which he had received in the service of his country, and to disgraceful weals with which his back was lacerated by the lash of the torturer. In an army where the personal influence of the general was more productive of heroism than the rules of a long-established discipline, a short harangue often led the soldiers to victory. And, lastly, the relation subsisting between the two orders of patron and client taught a milder and more business-like eloquence—that of explaining with facility common civil rights, and unravelling the knotty points of the constitutional law. Oratory, in fact, was the unwritten literature of active life, and recommended itself by its antagonistic spirit and its utility to a warlike and utilitarian people. Long, therefore, before the art of the historian was sufficiently advanced to record a speech, or to insert a fictitious one, as an embellishment or illustration of its pages, the forum, senate, the battle-field, the threshold of the jurisconsult, had been nurseries of Roman eloquence, or schools in which oratory attained a vigorous youth, and prepared for its subsequent maturity.
Tradition speaks of a speech recorded even before the poetry of Nævius was written, and this speech was known to Cicero. It was delivered against Pyrrhus by Appius Claudius the blind.[[375]] He belonged to a house, every member of which, from the decemvir to the emperor, was born to bow down their fellow-men beneath their strong wills. Such a character, united with a poetical genius, implies the very elements of that oratory which would curb a nation accustomed to be restrained by force as much as by reason. On this celebrated occasion,[[376]] the blind old man caused himself to be borne into the senate-house on a litter, that he might confront the wily Cineas whom Pyrrhus had sent to negotiate peace. The Macedonian minister was an accomplished speaker, and his memory, that important auxiliary to eloquence, was so powerful, that in one day he learnt to address all the senators and knights by name, yet it is said that he was no match for the energy of Appius, and was obliged to quit Rome.
Whilst the legal and political constitution of the Roman people gave direct encouragement to deliberative and judicial oratory, respect to the illustrious dead furnished opportunities for panegyric. The song of the bard in honour of the departed warrior gave place to the funeral oration, (laudatio.)
Before the commencement of the second Punic war,[[377]] Q. Metellus pronounced the funeral harangue over his father, the conqueror of Hasdrubal; history also speaks of him as a debator in the senate, and his address to the censors is found in the fourth decade of Livy.[[378]] This funeral oration was admired even in the time of J. Cæsar, and Pliny[[379]] has recorded the substance of one remarkable passage which it contained. The period of the second Punic war produced Corn. Cethegus. Cicero mentions him in his list of Roman orators;[[380]] and although he had never seen a specimen of his style, he states that he retained his force and vigour even in his old age. Ennius also bears testimony to his eloquence in the following line:—