H. NOVELS WRITTEN BY AUTHORS WHO HAVE PORTRAYED ROMAN LIFE FROM AN ESTHETIC VIEWPOINT
Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean appeared in 1885. While Pater was a tutor at Oxford, Marius the Epicurean is so far removed from being a school-book, that it was impossible to consider it in the class of novels written by teachers to illustrate Roman life or a certain period of Roman history in a pedagogical way. In fact Pater’s work is so different from most novels of Roman life, and has a literary value so much higher than most novels of any kind, that it is best considered in a class by itself. Nothing has ever been written exactly like Marius the Epicurean, which ranks above Pater’s other literary productions, fine as they are, and furnishes his principal contribution to posterity. It was indeed written for posterity, and not intended to be read as an interesting novel and then forgotten. Marius the Epicurean is the finest piece of pure literature that will be considered in this study. Moreover it cannot escape consideration as a novel of Roman life. Its full title is Marius the Epicurean, His Sensations and Ideas. Its hero is a Roman boy, who advances in years, until he arrives at mature manhood, and whose death is recorded at the end of the story. “It would probably have been called a novel had its chief claim and merit not been independent of fiction.”[34] In following the development of Marius, Pater is showing what might have happened to a young man in the Rome of Marcus Aurelius, if he were possessed of a particularly fine esthetic sense, and devoted his life to an esthetic ideal. There is sufficient binding material in the form of narrative to make Marius the Epicurean rather a novel than a series of essays, though it contains fine studies of the physical and spiritual life of Rome. Such novels of Roman life as George Gissing’s Veranilda, (1904), and Mr. Eden Phillpotts’ Pan and the Twins, (1922), have derived much inspiration from both the substance and quality of Pater’s work. Such a thorough classical scholar and ardent lover of the classics as Lionel Johnson could say of its exactness, in Post Liminium: “Readers, accustomed by long experience to use Marius for a text-book,—exact, precise, rigorous, well warranted and attested,—of the Antonine age, do not need to be told that Mr. Pater never writes without his facts and evidences.”[35]
Pater’s aim in Marius the Epicurean had something in common with the aim of some of the best novels of Roman life, that have been considered, however unique his method may have been. He purposes to show a young man in an age similar to our own, and one who exhibited “a sort of religious phase possible for the modern mind.” Marius is like Pater in his serious and refined nature, and his esthetic delight in religious ceremonial, but represents better Pater’s ideal. Though he is taught to believe in the outworn system of paganism, he takes delight only in the most beautiful elements in pagan religious ceremonials. In his quest of the fine and the beautiful in religious emotion, he is led to higher and higher forms of philosophy, each step in his development being minutely described by Pater, not with the accompaniment of abstract philosophizing, but with the desire to portray in simple terms the beauty of esthetic experience. At each step toward a higher intellectual existence Marius approaches the ideal of a Christian life; his soul is said to be “naturally Christian,” and he admires elements of beauty in the thought and life of a Christian comrade. Finally by a mere accident, he dies a Christian. Marius the Epicurean simply portrays the life of Rome, as it appeared to a young Roman who lived only to seek the highest good in esthetic experience. It clearly shows that life governed by an esthetic ideal, could and did exist in the days of Marcus Aurelius, just as it can and does exist today.
In Marius the Epicurean, Pater, as the author, shows himself to be more a true Hellenist than any writer appears to be in any novel of Roman life written before Pater’s work,—though his truly Greek appreciation of the beautiful is in no way inconsistent with Christianity. But the book portrays not merely the beauty of Greek philosophy. Viewed as a portrayal of life, Marius the Epicurean may be fairly said to portray essentially the entire course of the religious life of Rome,—starting with the primitive and patriarchal “religion of Numa,” and passing through later forms, (whether wholly Roman or including foreign elements); and further on through the abstractions of Greek philosophy, to the highest form of Christianity. The social and moral phenomena to be seen at Rome in the times of Marcus Aurelius, are shown, and the part which great schools of Greek philosophy played in the life of Rome, is made to appear important.
While no great character portrayals are attempted in Marius the Epicurean, Marius is made to meet with such great characters as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, Apuleius, and Lucian. Marcus Aurelius is portrayed in a very modern light as a public lecturer, through whose example Marius determines to become a student of rhetoric at Rome; yet to Marius he seemed to be, (as he actually was), the greatest thinker and the greatest man of his time. In his representation of the character of Faustina, who is seen surrounded by her children, including the supposedly illegitimate Commodus, Pater may owe something to Swinburne’s poem, Faustine. Roman customs are well represented, when we see people performing sacrifices or going to the theatre to celebrate a holiday; and the life of Rome is made to seem real by minute descriptive touches, such as those which describe the evidences of the ravages of the great pestilence. Roman shops, inns, temples, and other buildings appear crowded with people, and a multitude of human types are shown, as soldiers, courtesans, beggars and little children. Some description is also made of a Roman marriage ceremony; and the mythological burlesques and gladiatorial contests of the amphitheatre are described as affecting different individuals in different ways. In the death of Verus appears something of the spirit which made the Romans turn such a matter into a public event; the great Galen, making his way through the throng to the side of the sufferer, is a figure which is familiar elsewhere in the novel of Roman life.
But the most characteristic scenes taken from the outward life of the Romans’ are the banquet and the Triumph of Marcus Aurelius. Pater adds to the reality of these Roman scenes by portraying not only the characteristics of men, but also those of children, and even animals. Thus in the triumphal procession go “the ibex, the wild-cat, and the reindeer stalking and trumpeting grandly.” Though scenes of the martyrdom of the Christians only appear as told at second-hand, a characteristic Roman brutality is shown by the guards in charge of Christian prisoners. Thus the material life of Rome, as well as its religious life, is portrayed in Marius the Epicurean. What Pater did for the novel of Roman life was to show the possibility of portraying not merely the material existence of the Romans, but the whole life of Rome considered from a religious and esthetic standpoint. Marius the Epicurean has been said to stand without fiction; but the highest hope of any fiction might well be to rise to the level of Pater’s work. It took five or six years to write, and shows Pater’s thorough scholarship, and his appreciation of the beautiful in Latin and Greek literature. Mr. Edward Hutton sums up its excellence when he says that, “In Marius the Epicurean, Pater gave us a book profound and simple, bounded by the great refusals of an artist, perfect in prose, stooping to nothing, having the dignity of a great poem, and the thoughtfulness that is characteristic of the writers of the Augustan age.”
George Gissing in Veranilda, (1904), seems to be the first author of a novel of Roman life to derive much inspiration from Pater’s Marius the Epicurean, (1885). Gissing resembles Pater in his exact scholarship, his love of Greek things, and his estheticism. Veranilda was to have in it the love of the classics, but is unfinished. Yet it is evident that only a few chapters at the end are missing, and what we have of Veranilda is finished with Gissing’s finest and most delicate touches. The late Mr. Frederic Harrison says of Gissing in the preface to Veranilda, that in this novel, “his poetical gift for local color, his subtle insight into spiritual mysticism and, above all, his really fine scholarship and classical learning had ample field.” Mr. Harrison considers Veranilda “far the most important book which George Gissing ever produced,” and most readers of Gissing will concur in this opinion. Though the subject-matter of Veranilda is somewhat different from that of Marius the Epicurean, there is much similarity between the two books in the way subjects are presented, and at times Gissing’s purity of style approaches that of Pater. In many respects Veranilda is the greatest novel of its kind. Not only does it show thoroughness and accuracy in scholarship, but it has very genuine characterization and atmosphere. The spirit of Veranilda is the spirit of the time it describes,—the spirit of disillusion, unrest, and uncertainty amid scenes of strife, sorrow, and decay. Yet there are gleams of hope to be found in Gissing’s great novel, which portrays life in and near Rome in the “Era of Justinian.” While the outward, physical life of fallen Rome is portrayed accurately, as it would appear to the eye, the special excellence of Veranilda lies in its exact reproduction of the spirit of the time with which it deals. In this respect it probably excels any other historical novel in English,—bar none,—and deserves a high position as pure literature. Moreover in his portrayal of life in the past, Gissing has not failed to establish its connection with life of the present; realistic effect is never lacking in Veranilda. Yet even when portraying life in the most general terms, Gissing continually shows the same selection and preference for the esthetic, the same search for the beautiful, which marks the work of Walter Pater in Marius the Epicurean.
The plan of Veranilda is more complete than that of most historical novels; it deals chiefly with real historical characters and actual historical events, yet there is not too much formal history in the novel. It was carefully written after a most thorough study of the best modern writers, (especially Gibbon), who deal with the age of Justinian and Belisarius, and of the remains of the literature of the time. The scene is Rome and Central and Southern Italy, and local color is obtained not at second-hand, but from the author’s direct observation of the places he describes, and a careful review of extant documents concerning them. Gissing had spent some time travelling in Italy and Veranilda may be considered his most original novel. In selecting the scene and the time of Veranilda, Gissing evidently intended to write a novel which should convey a sense of Rome’s former greatness. The center and source of power of the Roman Empire had shifted to Constantinople, though even here the power of Rome was none too strong. Felix Dahn’s two novels, A Struggle for Rome, (1876), and The Scarlet Banner, (1894), deal with the same period with which Veranilda deals; The Scarlet Banner being concerned with the overthrow of the Vandal king, Gelimer, by Belisarius. A Struggle for Rome, is like Veranilda in its subject matter, since it is concerned with the struggle between the Ostrogoths and Belisarius, and mentions some of the same characters that appear in Veranilda. The characterization of Totila, the Gothic king, especially suggests Veranilda. But while A Struggle for Rome is Dahn’s greatest novel, it does not appear that Gissing was so much indebted to it in Veranilda, as to original historical sources. The period with which Veranilda deals comes somewhat after the true end of Pagan Rome, and no novel will be discussed which deals with a later period.
Gissing preserves a fine unity of effect in making the events of his story center about Rome, and not about Constantinople. “The Eternal City” lies there as of old, and its inhabitants cannot shake off the feeling that it still is “eternal.” The wise Justinian is to them a foreign tyrant, under whose governor they are harshly oppressed. The great commander Belisarius, though he has temporarily defeated the Goths, has now left Italy, and is no longer thought of as deliverer of Rome; the fame of Totila is spreading. Throughout this book, with its descriptions of ruined towns, ruined families, and the ruins of the City of Rome itself, one feels the former greatness of Rome. Everywhere is decay, everywhere is to be seen a dying out of the best elements of Roman civilization. Many of the scenes which form the setting for the principal action in the story, are typical of this lingering death of the great city. While everywhere the old Rome is dying out, is there springing up anything new to take its place? Even though the novel is incomplete, one can see that the author means to show conclusively that the Goths will furnish new life, and new strength, to Rome and to civilization.