The Roman Poets of the Republic, 3rd edition

by W. Y. Sellar

It is remarkable that nearly all the early poets lived to a great age, and maintained their intellectual vigour unabated to their latest years; while of their successors none reached the natural term of human life, and some among them, like many great modern poets, were cut off prematurely before their promise was fulfilled. The finer sensibility and more passionate agitation of the poetic temperament appear, in some cases, to exhaust prematurely the springs of life; while, in natures more happily balanced, or formed by more favourable circumstances, the gifts of genius are accompanied by stronger powers of life, and thus maintain the freshness of youth unimpaired till the last. The length of time during which Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and probably Lucilius, exercised their art suggests the inference, either that they were men of firmer fibre than their successors, or that they were braced to a more enduring strength by the action of their age. As the work of men writing in the fulness of their years, the serious poetry of the time appealed to the mature sympathies of manhood; and even the comic poetry of Plautus deals with the follies of youth in a genial spirit of indulgence, tempered by the sense of their absurdity, such as might naturally be entertained by one who had outlived them.

But perhaps the most important condition determining the original scope of Roman poetry was the predominance in that era of public over personal interests. Like Virgil and Horace, most of the early poets were men born in comparatively a humble station; yet by their force of intellect and character they became the familiar friends of the foremost men in the State. But while the poets of the Augustan age owed the charm of their existence to the patronage of the great, the earlier poets depended for their success mainly on popular favour. The intimacy subsisting between the leaders of action and of literature during the second century b.c. arose from the mutual attraction of greatness in different spheres. The chief men in the Republic obtained their position by their services to the State, and thus the personal attachment subsisting between them and men of letters was a bond connecting the latter with the public interest. The early poetry of the Republic is not the expression of an educated minority keeping aloof from public life. If it is animated by a strong aristocratic spirit, the reason is that the aristocratic spirit was predominant in the public life of Rome during that century.

In this era, more than in any later age, the poetry of Rome, like that of Greece in its greatest eras, addressed itself to popular and national, not to individual tastes. The crowds that witnessed and applauded the representations of tragedy as well as comedy, afford a sufficient proof that the reproduction of Greek subjects and personages could be appreciated without the accomplishment of a Greek education. The popularity of the poem of Ennius is attested by his own language, as well as by the evidence of later writers. The honour of a public funeral awarded to Lucilius, implies the general appreciation with which his contemporaries enjoyed the verve, sense, and moral strength which secured for his satire the favour of a more refined and critical age.

This general popularity is an argument in favour of the original spirit animating this early literature. It implies the power of embodying some sentiment or idea of national or public interest. Thus Roman tragedy appears to have been received with favour, chiefly in consequence of the grave Roman tone of its maxims, and the Roman bearing of its personages. The epic poetry of the age did not, like the Odyssey, relate a story of personal adventure, but unfolded the annals of the State in continuous order, and appealed to the pride which men felt, as Romans, in their history and destiny. The satire of Lucilius was not intended merely to afford amusement by ridiculing the follies of social life, but played a part in public affairs by political partisanship and antagonism, and maintained the traditional standard of manners and opinions against the inroads of foreign influences. Latin comedy, indeed, was a more purely cosmopolitan product. The plays of Terence especially would affect those who listened to them simply as men and not as Roman citizens. But the comedy of Plautus abounded in the humour congenial to the Italian race, and owed much of its popularity to the strong Roman colouring spread over the Greek outlines of his representations.

The national character of this poetry is attested also by the spirit and character which pervades it. Among all the authors who have been reviewed, Ennius alone possessed in a large measure that peculiar vein of imaginative feeling which is the most impressive element in the great poets of a later age. The susceptibility of his mind to the sentiment that moulded the institutions and inspired the policy of the Imperial Republic, entitles him to rank as the truest representative of the genius of his country, notwithstanding his apparent inferiority to Plautus in creative originality. The glow of moral passion, which is another great characteristic of Latin literature, as it was of the best types of the Latin race, reveals itself in the remains of all the serious writers of the age. The struggle between the old Roman self-respect and the new modes of temptation, is exemplified in the antagonistic influence exercised by the tragic, epic, and satiric poetry on the one hand, and the comedy of Plautus and Terence on the other. The more general popularity of comedy was a symptom of the facility with which the severer standard of life yielded to the new attractions. The graver writers, equally with the writers of comedy, shared in the sceptical spirit, or the religious indifference, which was one of the dissolving forces of social and political life during this age. The strong common sense which characterised all the writers of the time, could not fail to bring them into collision with the irrational formalism of the national religion; while the distaste for speculative philosophy which Ennius and Plautus equally express, and the strong hold which they all have on the immediate interests of life, explain the absence of any, except the most superficial, reflections on the more mysterious influences which in the belief of the great Greek poets moulded human destiny.

The political condition of Rome in the second century b.c. is reflected in the changes through which her literature passed. For nearly two-thirds of that century, Roman history seems to go through a stage of political quiescence, as compared at least with the vigorous life and stormy passions of its earlier and later phases. But under the surface a great change was taking place, both in the government and the social condition of the people, the effects of which made themselves sufficiently manifest during the last century of the existence of the Republic. The outbreak of the long gathering forces of discontent and disorder is as distinctly marked in Roman history, as the outbreak of the revolutionary forces in modern Europe. The year 133 b.c., the date of the first tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, has the same kind of significance as the year 1789 A.D. Nor is it a mere coincidence that about the same time a great change takes place in the spirit of Roman literature. The comedies of Plautus, written in the first years of the century, while they reflect the political indifference of the mass of the people, are yet indicative of their general spirit of contentment, and their hearty enjoyment of life. The epic of Ennius, written a little later, proclaims the undisputed ascendency of an aristocracy, still moulded by its best traditions, and claiming to lead a united people. The remains of Roman tragedy breathe the high spirit of the governing class, and attest the severer virtue still animating its best representatives. The comedies of Terence seem addressed to the taste of a younger generation of greater refinement, but of a laxer moral fibre than their fathers, and of a class becoming separated by more elaborate culture from ordinary Roman citizens. Expressions in his prologues[²], however, show that there was as yet no division between classes arising from political discontent. But in the satire of Lucilius we read the protest of the better Roman spirit against the lawless arrogance of the nobles, their incapacity in war, their corrupt administration of justice, their iniquitous government of the provinces; against the ostentatious luxury of the rich; the avarice of the middle classes; the venality of the mob, and the profligacy of their leaders; and against the insincerity and animosities fostered among the educated classes by the contests of the forum and the law-courts.

In passing from the substance and spirit of this early literature to its form and style, we can see by the rudeness of the more original ventures which the Roman spirit made, how slowly it was educated by imitative effort to high literary accomplishment. The only writer who aimed at perfection of form was Terence, and his success was due to his close adherence to his originals. But as some compensation for their artistic defects, these early writers display much greater productiveness than their literary successors. They were like the settlers in a new country, who are spared the pains of exact cultivation owing to the absence of previous occupation of the soil, and the large extent of ground thus open to their industry. The contrast between the standard aimed at, and the results attained by the sincerest literary force in two different eras of Roman literature, is brought home to the mind by contrasting the rude fragments of the lost works of Ennius, embodying the results of a long, hearty, active, and useful life, with the small volume which still preserves the flower of a few passionate years, as fresh as when the young poet sent it forth:—

Arido modo pumice expolitum.

The style of the early poets was marked by haste, harshness, and redundance, occasionally by verbal conceits and similar errors of taste. That of the writers of comedy, on the other hand, is easy, natural, and elegant. The Latin language seems thus to have adapted itself to the needs of ordinary social life more readily than to the expression of elevated feeling. Though many phrases in the fragments which have been reviewed are boldly and vigorously conceived, few passages are written with continuous ease and smoothness, and the language constantly halts, as if inadequate to the meaning which labours under it. The style has, in general, the merits of directness and sincerity, often of freshness and vigour, but wants altogether the depth and richness of colour, as well as the finish and moderation which we expect in the literature of a people to whom poetry and art are naturally congenial, and associated with many old memories and feelings. Their merits of style, such as the simple force with which they go directly to the heart of a matter, and the grave earnestness of their tone, are qualities characteristic rather of oratory than of poetry. But this colouring of their style is very different from the artificial rhetoric of the literature of the Empire. The oratorical style of the early poets was the natural result of a sympathy with the most practical intellectual instrument of their age. The rhetoric of the Empire was the expression of an artificial life, in which literature was cultivated to beguile the tedium of compulsory inaction, and the highest form of public speaking had sunk from its proud office as the organ of political freedom into a mere exercise of pedants and schoolboys[³].

The same impulse in this age which gave birth to the forms of serious poetry, stimulated also the growth of oratory and history. While these different modes of mental accomplishment all acted and reacted on one another, oratory appears to have exercised the most influence on the others. Roman literature is altogether more pervaded by oratorical feeling than that of any other nation, ancient or modern. From the natural deficiency of the Romans in the higher dramatic and speculative genius, the rhetorical element entered largely into their poetry, their history, and their ethical discussions. Cicero identifies the faculties of the orator with those of the historian and the philosopher. His treatise De Claris Oratoribus bears witness to the energy with which this art was cultivated for more than a century before his own time; and the remains of Ennius and Lucilius confirm this testimony. It was from the impassioned and dignified speech of the forum and senate-house that the Roman language first acquired its capacity of expressing great emotions. All the serious poetry of the age bears traces of this influence. Roman tragedy shows its affinity to oratory in its grave and didactic tone. This affinity is further implied in the political meaning which the audience attached to the sentiments expressed, and which the actor enforced by his voice and manner. It is also attested by the fact that in the time of Cicero, famous actors were employed in teaching the external graces of public speaking. The theatre was a school of elocution as much as a place of dramatic entertainment. Cicero specifies among the qualifications of a speaker, 'Vox tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum actorum.' Although the epic poetry of the time mainly appealed to a different class of sympathies, yet the fragments of speeches in Ennius indicate that kind of rhetorical power which moves an audience by the weight and authority of the speaker. Roman satire could wield other weapons of oratory, such as the fierce invective, the lashing ridicule, the vehement indignation which have often proved the most powerful instruments of debate in modern as well as ancient times.