The dissolution of traditional beliefs and of the old loyalty to the State produced very different results on the art and life of the younger poets of that generation. The pursuit of pleasure, and the cultivation, purely for its own sake, of art which drew its chief materials from the life of pleasure became the chief end and aim of their existence. In so far as they turned their thoughts from the passionate pleasures of their own lives and the contemplation of passionate incidents and situations in art, it was to give expression to the personal animosities which they entertained to the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Nor did this animosity spring so much from public spirit as from a repugnance of taste towards the coarser partisans of the popular cause, and from the instinctive sense that the privileges enjoyed by their own caste were not likely to survive any great convulsion of the State. The intensity of their personal feelings of love and hatred, and the limitation of their range of view to the things which gave the most vivid and immediate pleasure to themselves and to others like them, were the sources of both their strength and weakness.
Of the poetry which arose out of these conditions of life and culture, two representatives only are known to us in their works, Lucretius and Catullus. From the testimony of their contemporaries we know them to have been recognised as the greatest of the poets of that age. Lucretius in his own province held an unquestioned pre-eminence. Yet that other minds were occupied with the topics which he alone treated with a masterly hand is proved by the existence of a work, of a somewhat earlier date, by one Egnatius, bearing the title 'De Rerum Natura,' and also by Cicero's notice, in connexion with his mention of Lucretius, of the 'Empedoclea' of Salustius. Varro also is mentioned by ancient writers, in connexion with Empedocles and Lucretius, as the author of a metrical work 'De Rerum Natura[339].' More satisfactory evidence is afforded by the discussions in the 'De Natura Deorum,' the 'Tusculan Questions,' and the 'De Finibus,' of the interest taken by educated men in the class of questions which Lucretius professed to answer. Yet neither the antecedent nor the later attention devoted to these subjects explains the powerful attraction which they had for Lucretius. In him, more than in any other Roman, we recognise a fresh and deep source of poetic thought and feeling appearing in the world. The culture of his age may have suggested or rendered possible the channel which his genius followed, but cannot account for the power and intensity with which it poured itself into that channel. He cannot be said either to sum up the art and thought contemporary with himself, or, like Virgil, to complete that of preceding times. The work done by him, and the influence exercised by him on the poetry of Rome and on the world, are to be explained only by his original and individual force.
Catullus, on the other hand, was the most successful among a band of rival poets with most of whom he lived in intimacy. Among the men older than himself, Hortensius, the orator, and Memmius were known as writers of amatory poetry. His name as a lyric poet is most usually coupled with that of his friend Calvus; and a well-known passage of Tacitus[340] brings together his lampoons and those of Bibaculus as being 'referta contumeliis Caesarum.' Among others to whom he was bound by the ties of friendship and common tastes were C. Helvius Cinna, author of an Alexandrine epic, called Zmyrna, and Caecilius, author of a poem on Cybele. Ticidas and Anser, mentioned by Ovid among his own precursors in amatory poetry, also belong to this generation. Among the swarms of poetasters—
Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae,—
a countryman of his own, Tanusius Geminus, the author of a long Annalistic epic, is held up by Catullus to especial obloquy under the name of Volusius.
While so much of the literature of that age has perished, we are fortunate in possessing the works of the greatest masters in prose and verse. The poems of Lucretius and Catullus enable us, better perhaps than any other extant Latin works, to appreciate the most opposite capacities and tendencies of the Roman genius. In their force and individuality, they are alike valuable as the last poetic voices of the Republic, and as, perhaps, the most free and sincere voices of Rome. The first is one of the truest representatives of the national strength, majesty, seriousness of spirit, massive constructive energy; the second is the most typical example of the strong vitality and passionate ardour of the Italian temperament and of its vivid susceptibility to the varied beauties of Greek art.
[336] Mr. Munro, in his Introduction to Part II of his Commentary on Lucretius, illustrates this relation of the work of the poet to this youthful production of Cicero.
[337] v. 1451.
[338] ii. 412; cf. also ii. 505-6:—
Et cycnea mele Phoebeaque daedala chordis