Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet;
and also by the epithets 'altus' and 'animosus' applied by him and Ovid to the poet Accius. Quintilian describes the ancient tragedies as superior to those of his own time in the management of their plots ('oeconomia'), and adds that 'manliness and solemnity of style' ('virilitas et sanctitas')[8], were to be studied in them. He states also that Accius and Pacuvius were distinguished by 'the earnestness of their thought, the weight of their language, the commanding bearing of their personages[9].' The fragments of all the tragic poets bear further evidence to the union of these qualities in their thought and style.
These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that the early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality, and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic. For more than a century new tragedies were written and represented at the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre, but merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to dramatic art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a gorgeous spectacle superseded that afforded by the works of the older dramatists; and dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in popular favour which had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the accomplished Roscius.' The composition of tragedy passed from the hands of popular poets, and became a kind of literary and rhetorical exercise of accomplished men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed four tragedies in sixteen days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and Horace eulogise the dramatic talent of their friend and patron Asinius Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica' implies that the composition of tragedy was the most fashionable form of literary pursuit among the young aspirants to poetic honour at that time, and the Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed a great literary reputation. These were, however, futile attempts to impart artificial life to a withered branch. Though praised by literary critics, they obtained no general favour. Of all forms of poetry the drama is most dependent on popular sympathy and intelligence. With the loss of contact with public feeling the Roman drama lost its vital power. One cause of the change in public taste was the passion for more frivolous and coarser excitement, such as was afforded by the mimes and by gladiatorial combats and shows of wild beasts to a soldiery brutalised by constant wars, and to the civic masses degraded by idleness and by intermixture from all quarters of the world. Other causes may have acted on the poets themselves, such as the exhaustion of the mine of ancient stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the truer sense, acquired through culture, of the bent of Roman genius. But another cause was the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and the people, arising from the decay and final extinction of political life. In ancient, as occasionally also in modern times, the contests and interests of politics were the means of affording the highest intellectual stimulus of which they were capable to the large classes on whom literary influences act only indirectly. So long as the old republican sense of citizenship remained, there was a bond of common feelings, ideas, and sympathies between the body of the people and some of the foremost and most highly educated men in Rome. There was an immediate sympathy between the political orator and his audiences within the Senate or in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy, more remote, but still active, between the poet of the Republic, who had the strong feelings of a Roman citizen, and the great body of his countrymen. With the overthrow of free government, this bond of union between the educated and the uneducated classes was destroyed. The former became more refined and fastidious, but lost something in breadth and genuine strength by the want of any popular contact. The latter became more debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works were more and more addressed to a small circle of men of rank and education, sharing the same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus became more finished as works of art, but had less direct bearing on the passions and great public interests of their time.
The origin and the earliest stage of the Roman drama have been examined in a previous chapter. For about a century after the close of the Second Punic War new tragedies continued to be represented at Rome with little interruption, first by Ennius, afterwards by his nephew Pacuvius and by Accius. They devoted themselves more exclusively than any of their predecessors to the composition of tragedy. While the fame of Ennius chiefly rested on his epic poem[10], Pacuvius and Accius are classed together as representatives of the tragic poetry of the Republic. Though in point of age there was a difference of fifty years between them, yet Cicero mentions, on the authority of Accius himself, that they had brought out plays under the same Aediles, when the one was eighty years of age and the other thirty.
M. Pacuvius, nephew, by the mother's side, of Ennius, was born at Brundusium, in the south of Italy, about 219 b.c., and died at Tarentum about 129 b.c., at the age of ninety. He obtained some distinction as a painter[11], and he is supposed to have written his tragedies late in life. Jerome records of him, 'picturam exercuit et fabulas vendidit.' Cicero represents Laelius as speaking of him as a friend, 'amici et hospitis mei.' A pleasing anecdote is told by Aulus Gellius[12] of his intercourse with his younger rival, L. Accius. 'When Pacuvius, at a great age, and suffering from disease of long standing, had retired from Rome to Tarentum, Accius, at that time a considerably younger man, on his journey to Asia, arrived at that town, and stayed with Pacuvius. And being kindly entertained, and constrained to stay for several days, he read to him, at his request, his tragedy of Atreus. Then, as the story goes, Pacuvius said, that what he had written appeared to him sonorous and elevated but somewhat harsh and crude. "It is just as you say," replied Accius; "and in truth I am not sorry for it, for I hope that I shall write better in future. For, as they say, the same law holds good in genius as in fruit. Fruits which are originally harsh and sour afterwards become mellow and pleasant; but those which have a soft and withered look, and are very juicy at first, become soon rotten without ever becoming ripe. It appears, accordingly, that there should be left something in genius also for the mellowing influence of years and time."' This anecdote, while giving a pleasing impression of the friendly relation subsisting between the older and younger poets, seems to add some corroboration to the opinion that the Romans valued more the oratorical style than the dramatic art of their tragedies. It affords support also to the testimony of Horace and Quintilian in regard to the distinction which the admirers of the old poetry drew between the excellence of Pacuvius and Accius:—
Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti.
Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'—'Epigramma Pacuvii verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.'
Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat,
Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas,