The Augustan poets attained a still greater success in the variations of words and rhythm; but this success was gained with some loss of direct force and freshness in the expression of feeling. And it may be said generally that the Latin language, in its adaptation to poetry, lost some of its powers as an immediate vehicle of thought. In Virgil and in Horace, words are combined in a less natural order than in Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language does not strike the mind with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry, nor does it seem equally capable of being rapidly followed by a popular audience. Catullus alone among the great Roman poets combines perfect grace with the happiest freedom and simplicity. Yet the studied and compact diction of Latin poetry, if wanting in fluency, ease, and directness, lays a strong hold upon the mind, by its power of marking with emphasis what is most essential and prominent in the ideas and objects presented to the imagination. The thought and sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved on her poetical literature, in deep and enduring characters. And, notwithstanding all manifest traces of imitation, the diction of the greatest Roman poets attests the presence of genuine creative power. A strong vital force is recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of Ennius and Lucretius; and, though more latent, it is not less really present under the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and the subtle moderation of Horace.
Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its contents to Greek thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome and Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian Gods; the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected with the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling, experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from earlier representations. Hence a great deal in Latin poetry appears to come less directly from the poet's heart, and to fit less closely to the facts of human life, than the best poetry both of Greece and of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship is more apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance and thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they reproduce Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own feeling than the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The beautiful and stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second life in the young imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and conventional to Virgil:—
Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes,
Omnia jam vulgata.
The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in the episode of the 'Pastor Aristacus' in the Georgics. Not only are the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is a religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy. The manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and of the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world, and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil. Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the great Roman epic, bears the mark of the artificial construction of a late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes of Horace, yet the mythological accessories of some of those which celebrate the praises of a god, or the charms of a mistress, seem to stand in no vital relation with the genuine convictions of the poet.
Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the civilised world, after it had been thoroughly leavened by Greek thought, taste, and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a living power, after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so that, were it nothing more, that literature would still be valuable as the fruit of the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the earliest poet of the ancient world, there is a kind of promise of the great life that was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a retrospective contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art of the past,—a gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the Roman poets had also a strong vein of original character and feeling, and many phases of national and personal experience to reveal. They had to give a permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to perpetuate the charm of the land and life of Italy. In their highest tones, they give utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified and commanding attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial Republic. But other elements in their art proclaim their large inheritance of the receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient as in modern times, has characterised the Southern nations. As the patrician and plebeian orders were united in the imperial greatness of the commonwealth, as the energy of Rome and of the other Italian communities was welded together to form a mighty national life, so these apparently antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty and beauty of Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself have been unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was too austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create and foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the south, when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and the elevation of higher ideas, tended to degenerate into licentious effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand, gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline. In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of character are most happily combined with susceptibility to the charm and the power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the Augustan age abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their lives, under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue of their forefathers. Their vices, and still more their weaknesses, are of a type apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which, in a better time, the freedom and energy of the Republic had been developed. Ovid, even in his libertinism, displays his vigorous and ardent vitality. The effeminacy of Tibullus looks like the reaction of a nature, enervated by the circumstances of his age, from the high standard of manliness, which a sterner time had maintained.
Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national and patriotic sentiment is prominently conspicuous. Among the poets of the Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by strong political as well as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to the commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions, the advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the whole plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell exercised over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the great destiny of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of Italy, and his pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of men. Horace rises above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the imperial majesty of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the Sabine households, and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of Roman character. The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing its existence to the strong interest which was felt by the Romans in their mythical and early story, so long as any living memory of their political life remained.
The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage in the strife of personal ambition;—
Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.