BY
John Dunlop,
AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF FICTION.

James Kay, Jun. Printer,
S. E. Corner of Race & Sixth Streets,
Philadelphia.

Contents.

[pg iii]

PREFACE.

There are few subjects on which a greater number of laborious volumes have been compiled, than the History and Antiquities of Rome. Everything connected with its foreign policy and civil constitution, or even with the domestic manners of its citizens, has been profoundly and accurately investigated. The mysterious origin of Rome, veiled in the wonders of mythological fable—the stupendous increase of its power, rendered yet more gigantic by the mists of antiquity—its undaunted heroes, who seem to us like the genii of some greater world—its wide dominion, extended over the whole civilized globe—and, finally, its portentous fall, which forms, as it were, the separation between ancient and modern times, have rendered its civil and military history a subject of prevailing interest to all enlightened nations. But, while its warlike exploits, and the principles of its political institutions, have been repeatedly and laboriously investigated, less attention, perhaps, [pg iv]has been paid to the history of its literature, than to that of any other country, possessed of equal pretensions to learning and refinement; and, in the English language at least, no connected view of its Rise, its Progress, and Decline, has been as yet presented to us. When the battles of Rome have been accurately described, and all her political intrigues minutely developed—when so much inquiry and thought have been bestowed, not only on the wars, conquests, and civil institutions of the Romans, but on their most trivial customs, it is wonderful that so little has been done to exhibit the intellectual exertions of the fancy and the reason, of their most refined and exalted spirits.

It cannot, indeed, be denied, that the civil history of Rome, and her military operations, present our species in a lofty aspect of power, magnanimity, and courage—that they exhibit the widest range and utmost extent of the human powers in enterprize and resources—and that statesmen or philosophers may derive from them topics to illustrate almost every political speculation. Yet, however vast and instructive may be the page which unfolds the eventful history of the foreign hostilities and internal commotions of the Roman people, it can hardly be more interesting than the analogies between their literary attainments and the other circumstances of their condition;—the peculiarities of their literature, its peculiar origination, and the peculiar effects which it produced. The literature of a people may indeed, in one sense, be regarded as the most attractive feature of its history. It is at once the effect of leisure and refinement, and the means of increasing and perpetuating the civilization from which it springs. Literature, as a late writer has powerfully and eloquently demonstrated, pos[pg v]sesses an extensive moral agency, and a close connection with glory, liberty, and happiness[1]; and hence the history of literature becomes associated with all that concerns the fame, the freedom, and the felicity of nations. “There is no part of history,” says Dr Johnson, “so generally useful, as that which relates the progress of the human mind—the gradual improvement of reason—the successive advances of science—the vicissitudes of learning and ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings—the extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be neglected[2].” If, then, in the literary history of Rome, we do not meet with those dazzling events, and stupendous results, which, from their lustre and magnitude, still seem, as it were, placed at the summit of human affairs, we shall find in it more intelligence and order, in consequence of its progress being less dependent on passion and interest. The trophies, too, of the most absolute power, and the most unlimited empire, seem destined, as if by a moral necessity, to pass away: But the dominion which the writers of Rome exercise over the human mind, will last as long as the world, or at least as long as its civilization—

“Alas, for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay,

And Livy’s pictured page!—But these shall be

Her resurrection; all beside—decay[3].”

There are chiefly two points of view, in which literary history may be regarded as of high utility and importance. The [pg vi]first is the consideration of the powerful effect of literature on the manners and habits of the people among whom it flourishes. It is noble, indeed, in itself, and its productions are glorious, without any relative considerations. An ingenious literary performance has its intrinsic merits, and would delight an enthusiastic scholar, or contemplative philosopher, in perfect solitude, even though he himself were the only reader, and the work the production of a Being of a different order from himself. But what renders literature chiefly interesting, is the influence which it exercises on the dignity and happiness of human nature, by improving the character, and enlarging the capacity, of our species. A stream, however grand or beautiful in itself, derives its chief interest from a consideration of its influence on the landscape it adorns; and, in this point of view, literature has been well likened to “a noble lake or majestic river, which imposes on the imagination by every impression of dignity and sublimity. But it is the moisture that insensibly arises from them, which, gradually mingling with the soil, nourishes all the luxuriance of vegetation, and fructifies and adorns the surface of the earth[4].”

Literature, however, has not in all ages denoted, with equal accuracy, the condition of mankind, or been equally efficacious in impelling their progress, and contributing to their improvement. In the ancient empires of the East, where monarchies were despotic, and priests the only scholars, learning was regarded by those who were possessed of it rather as a means of confirming an ascendancy over the vulgar, than of improving their condition; and they were more desirous to perpetuate the subjection, than contribute to the melioration of mankind. Ac[pg vii]cordingly, almost every trace of this confined and perverted learning has vanished from the world. In the freer states of antiquity, as the republics of Greece and Rome, letters found various outlets, by which their improving influence was imparted, more or less extensively, to the bulk of the citizens. Dramatic representations were among the most favourite amusements, and oratorical displays excited among all classes the most lively interest. Such public exhibitions established points of contact, from which light was elicited. The mind of the multitude was enriched by the contemplation of superior intellect, and mankind were, to a certain extent, united by the reception of similar impressions, and the excitement of similar emotions.

Still, however, the history of any part of ancient literature is, in respect of its influence on the condition of states, far less important than that of modern nations. From the high price and scarcity of books, a restriction was imposed on the diffusion of knowledge. “A bulwark existed between the body of mankind and the reflecting few. They were distinct nations inhabiting the same country; and the opinions of the one, speaking comparatively with modern times, had little influence on the other[5].” The learned, in those days, wrote only or chiefly for the learned and the great. They neither expected nor cultivated the approbation of the mass of mankind. An extensive and noisy celebrity was interdicted. It was only with the more estimable part of his species that the author was united by that sympathy which we term the Love of Fame. He was the head, not of a numerous, but of a select community. By [pg viii]nothing short of the highest excellence could he hope for the approbation of judges so skilful, or expect an immortality so difficult to be preserved. While this may, perhaps, have contributed to the polish and perfection of literary works, it is obvious that the general influence of letters must have been less humanizing, and must have had less tendency to unite and assimilate mankind. Even philosophers, whose peculiar business was the instruction of their species, had no mode of disseminating or perpetuating their opinions, except by the formation of sects and schools, which created for the masters, pupils who were the followers of his creed, and the depositaries of his claims to immortality.

It is the invention of the art of printing which has at length secured the widest diffusion, and an unlimited endurance, to learning and civilization. As a stone thrown into the sea agitates (it has been said) more or less every drop in the expanse of ocean, so every thought that is now cast into the fluctuating but ceaseless tide of letters, will more or less affect the human mind, and influence the human condition, throughout all the habitable globe, and “to the last syllable of time.”

It is this, and not the height to which individual genius has soared, that forms the grand distinction between ancient and modern literature. The triumph of modern literature consists not in the point of elevation to which it has attained, but in the extent of its conquests—the extent to which it has refined and quickened the mass of mankind. It would be difficult to adjust the intellectual precedence of Newton and Archimedes—of Bacon and Aristotle—of Shakspeare and Homer—of Thucydides and Hume: But it may be declared with certainty, that the people of modern nations, in consequence of literature be[pg ix]ing more widely diffused, have become more civilized and enlightened. The Indus and Oronoko, rolling amid woods and deserts their waste of waters, may seem superior to the Thames in the view of the mere admirer of the grandeur and magnificence of nature; but how inferior are they in the eye of the philosopher and historian!

With regard to the Romans, in particular, they are allowed to have been a civilized nation, powerfully constituted, and wisely governed, previous to the existence of any author in the Latin language. Their character was formed before their literature was created: their moral and patriotic dignity, indeed, had reached its highest perfection, in the age in which their literature commenced—the age of Lælius and Africanus. Except in the province of the drama, it always continued a patrician attribute; and though intellectual improvement could not have facilitated the inroads of vice and guilty ambition, it certainly proved inadequate to stem the tide of moral corruption, to mitigate the sanguinary animosities of faction, or to retard the establishment of despotism.

Literary history is, secondly, of importance, as being the index of the character and condition of a people—as holding up a mirror, which reflects the manners and customs of remote or ancient nations. The less influence, however, which literature exercises, the less valuable will be its picture of life and manners. It must also be admitted, that from a separate cause, the early periods, at least, of Roman literature, possess not in this point of view any peculiar attractions. When literature is indigenous, as it was in Greece, where authors were guided by no antecedent system, and their compositions were shaped on no [pg x]other model than the objects themselves which they were occupied in delineating, or the living passions they portrayed, an accurate estimate of the general state of manners and feeling may be drawn from works written at various epochs of the national history. But, at Rome, the pursuit of literature was neither a native nor predominant taste among the people. The Roman territory was always a foreign soil for letters, which were not the produce of national genius, but were naturalized by the assiduous culture of a few individuals reared in the schools of Greece. Indeed, the early Roman authors, particularly the dramatic, who, of all others, best illustrate the prevalent ideas and sentiments of a nation, were mere translators from the Greek. Hence, those delineations, which at first view might appear to be characteristic national sketches, are in fact the draught of foreign manners, and the mirror of customs which no Roman adopted, or of sentiments in which, perhaps, no Roman participated.

Since, then, the literature of Rome exercised but a limited influence on the conduct of its citizens, and as it reciprocally reflects but a partial light on their manners and institutions, its history must, in a great measure, consist of biographical sketches of authors—of critical accounts of their works—and an examination of the influence which these works have exercised on modern literature. The authors of Rome were, in their characters, and the events of their lives, more interesting than the writers of any ancient or modern land. The authors who flourished during the existence of the Roman Republic, were Cato the Censor, Cicero, and Cæsar; men who (independently of their literary claims to celebrity) were unrivalled in their own age and country, and have scarcely been surpassed [pg xi]in any other. I need not here anticipate those observations which the works of the Roman authors will suggest in the following pages. Though formed on a model which has been shaped by the Greeks, we shall perceive through that spirit of imitation which marks all their literary productions, a tone of practical utility, derived from the familiar acquaintance which their writers exercised with the business and affairs of life; and also that air of nationality, which was acquired from the greatness and unity of the Roman republic, and could not be expected in literary works, produced where there was a subdivision of states in the same country, as in Greece, modern Italy, Germany, and Britain. We shall remark a characteristic authority of expression, a gravity, circumspection, solidity of understanding, and dignity of sentiment, produced partly by the moral firmness that distinguished the character of the Romans, their austerity of manners, and tranquillity of temper, but chiefly by their national pride, and the exalted name of Roman citizen, which their authors bore. And, finally, we shall recognise that love of rural retirement which originated in the mode of life of the ancient Italians, and was augmented by the pleasing contrast which the undisturbed repose and simple enjoyments of rural existence presented to the bustle of an immense and agitated capital. In the last point of view that has been alluded to—the influence which these works have exercised on modern letters—it cannot be denied that the literary history of Rome is peculiarly interesting. If the Greeks gave the first impulse to literature, the Romans engraved the traces of its progress deeper on the world. “The earliest writers,” as has been justly remarked, “took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for [pg xii]fiction, and left nothing to those that followed, but transcriptions of the same events, and new combinations of the same images[6].” The great author from whom these reflections are quoted, had at one time actually “projected a work, to show how small a quantity of invention there is in the world, and that the same images and incidents, with little variation, have served all the authors who have ever written[7].” Had he prosecuted his intention, he would have found the notion he entertained fully confirmed by the history both of dramatic and romantic fiction; he would have perceived the incapacity of the most active and fertile imagination greatly to diversify the common characters and incidents of life, which, on a superficial view, one might suppose to be susceptible of infinite combinations; he would have found, that while Plautus and Terence servilely copied from the Greek dramatists, even Ariosto scarcely diverged in his comedies from the paths of Plautus.

* * * * * * *

But whatever may be the advantages or imperfections of a literary subject in its own nature, it is evident that it can never be treated with effect or utility, unless sufficient materials exist for compilation. Unfortunately, there was no historian of Roman literature among the Romans themselves. Many particulars, however, with regard to it, as also judgments on productions which are now lost, may be collected from the writings of Cicero; and many curious remarks, as well as amusing anecdotes, may be gathered from the works of the latter Classics; as Pliny’s Natural History, the Institutes of Quintilian, the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, and the Saturnalia of Macrobius.

Among modern authors who have written on the subject of Roman literature, the first place is unquestionably due to Tiraboschi, who, though a cold and uninteresting critic, is distinguished by soundness of judgment and labour of research. The first and second volumes of his great work, Della Letteratura Italiana, are occupied with the subject of Roman literature; and though not executed with the same ability as the portion of his literary history relating to modern Italy, they may safely be relied on for correctness of facts and references.

The recent French work of Schoell, entitled, Histoire Abregée de la Litterature Romaine, is extremely succinct and unsatisfactory on the early periods of Roman literature. Though consisting of four volumes, the author, at the middle of the first volume of the book, has advanced as far as Virgil. It is more complete in the succeeding periods, and, like his Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, is rather a history of the decline, than of the progress and perfection of literature.

A number of German works, (chiefly, however, bibliographical,) have lately appeared on the subject of Roman literature. I regret, that from possessing but a recent and limited acquaintance with the language, I have not been able to draw so extensively as might have been wished from these sources of information.

* * * * * * *

The composition of the present volumes was not suggested by any of the works which I have mentioned on the subject of Roman literature; but by the perusal of an elegant, though somewhat superficial production, on “The Civil and Constitutional History of Rome, from its Foundation to the Age of [pg xiv]Augustus[8].” It occurred to me that a History of Roman Literature, during the same period, might prove not uninteresting. There are three great ages in the literary history of Rome—that which precedes the æra of Augustus—the epoch which is stamped with the name of that emperor—and the interval which commenced immediately after his death, and may be considered as extending to the destruction of Rome. Of these periods, the first and second run into each other with respect to dates, but the difference in their spirit and taste may be easily distinguished. Although Cicero died during the triumvirate of Octavius, his genius breathes only the spirit of the Republic; and though Virgil and Horace were born during the subsistence of the commonwealth, their writings bear the character of monarchical influence.

The ensuing volumes include only the first of these successive periods. Whether I shall hereafter proceed to investigate the history of the others, will depend on the reception which the present effort may obtain, and on other circumstances which I am equally unable to anticipate.

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile, I have made considerable alterations, and, I trust, improvements, in the present edition. These, however, are so much interwoven with the body of the work, that they cannot be specified—except some additional Translations from [pg xv]the Fragments of the older Latin poets—a Dissertation on the Tachygraphy, or short-hand writing of the Romans, introduced at the commencement of the Appendix—and a Critical Account of Cicero’s Dialogue De Republica, which, though discovered, had not issued from the press when the former edition was published.

HISTORY

OF

ROMAN LITERATURE, &c.

“Parva quoque, ut ferme principia omnia, et ea ipsa peregrina res fuit.”
Livy, lib. vii. c. 2.

[pg 19]

HISTORY

OF

ROMAN LITERATURE, &c.

In tracing the Literary History of a people, it is important not only to ascertain whence their first rudiments of knowledge were derived, but even to fix the origin of those tribes, whose cultivation, being superior to their own, acted as an incentive to literary exertion. The privilege, however, assumed by national vanity, miscendi humana divinis, has enveloped the antiquities of almost every country in darkness and mystery: But there is no race whose early history is involved in greater obscurity and contradiction than the first inhabitants of those Italian states, which finally formed component parts of the Roman republic. The origin of the five Saturnian, and twelve Etruscan cities, is lost in the mist of ages; and we may as well hope to obtain credible information concerning the monuments of Egypt or India, as to investigate their inscrutable antiquities. At the period when light is first thrown, by authentic documents, on the condition of Italy, we find it occupied by various tribes, which had reached different degrees of civilization, which spoke different dialects, and disputed with each other the property of the lands whence they drew their subsistence. All before that time is founded on poetical embellishment, the speculations of theorists, or national vanity arrogating to itself a Trojan, a Grecian, or even a divine original.

The happy situation of Italy, imbosomed in a sea, which washed not only the coast of all the south of Europe, but likewise the shores of Africa and Asia, afforded facilities for [pg 20]communication and commerce with almost every part of the ancient world. It is probable, that a country gifted like this peninsula, with a fertile soil, incomparable climate, and unusual charms of scenery, attracted the attention of its neighbours, and sometimes allured them from less favoured settlements. “Il semble,” says a recent French writer, “que les Dieux aient lancé l’Italie au milieu du vaste océan comme un Phare immense qui appelle les navigateurs des pays les plus eloignés”[9]. The customs, and even names, which were prevalent in Egypt, Phœnicia, and Greece, were thus introduced into Italy, and formed materials from which the framers of systems have constructed theories concerning its first colonization by the Egyptians, the Pelasgi, or whatever nation they chose. There is scarcely, however, an ancient history or document entitled to credit, and recording the arrival of a colony in Italy, which does not also mention that the new-comers found prior tribes, with whom they waged war, or intermixed.

The ample lakes and lofty mountains, by which Italy is intersected, naturally divided its inhabitants into separate and independent nations. Of these by far the most celebrated were the Etruscans. The origin of this remarkable people, called Tyrrhenians by the Greeks, and Thusci, or Etrusci, by the Latins, has been a subject of endless controversy among antiquarians; and, indeed, had perplexed the ancients no less than it has puzzled the moderns. Herodotus, the earliest authentic historian whose works are now extant, represents them as a colony of Lydians, who were themselves a tribe of the vagrant Pelasgi. In the reign of Atys, son of Menes, the Lydian nation being driven to extremity by famine, the king divided it into two portions, one of which was destined to remain in Asia, and the other to emigrate under the conduct of his son Tyrrhenus. The inhabitants who composed the latter division leaving their country, repaired to Smyrna, where they built vessels, and removed in search of new abodes. After touching on various shores, they penetrated into the heart of Italy, and at length settled in Umbria. There they constructed dwellings, and called themselves Tyrrhenians, from the name of their leader[10]. Some of the circumstances which Herodotus relates as having occurred previous to the emigration of the Lydian colony appear fabulous, as the invention of games, in order to appease the sensation of hunger, and the fasting every alternate day for a space of eighteen years; and it would, perhaps, be too much to assert, that before the Lydians, no other tribe had ever set foot in Umbria or [pg 21]Etruria. But the account of the departure of the colony is itself plausible, and its truth appears to be corroborated, if not confirmed, by certain resemblances in the language, religion, and pastimes of the Lydians, and of the ancient Etruscans[11]. The manners, too, and customs of the Lydians, did not differ essentially from those of the Greeks; and the princes of Lydia, like the sovereigns of Persia, being accustomed to employ Phœnician or Egyptian sailors, the colony of Lydians, which settled in Italy, might thus contain a mixture of such people, and present those appearances which have led some antiquarians to consider the Etruscans as Phœnicians or Egyptians, while others have regarded them as Greeks. The writers of antiquity, though varying in particulars, have followed, in general, the tradition delivered by Herodotus concerning the descent of the Etruscans. Cicero, Strabo[12], Velleius Paterculus[13], Seneca, Pliny, Plutarch[14], and Servius, all affirm that they came from Lydia; and to these may be added Catullus, who calls the lake Benacus Lydiæ lacus undæ, obviously because he considered the ancient Etruscans, within whose extended territory it lay, as of Lydian origin. It is evident, too, that the Etruscans themselves believed that they had sprung from the Lydians, and that they inculcated this belief on others. Tacitus informs us, that, in the reign of Tiberius, a contest concerning their respective antiquity arose among eleven cities of Asia, which were heard by their deputies in presence of the Emperor. The Sardians rested their claims on an alleged affinity to the Etruscans, and, in support of their pretensions, produced an ancient decree, in which that people declared themselves descended from the followers of Tyrrhenus, who had left their native country of Lydia, and founded new settlements in Italy[15].

Hellanicus of Lesbos, a Greek historian, nearly contemporary with Herodotus, and quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, asserted that the Etruscans were a tribe of Pelasgi, not from Lydia, but from Greece, who being driven out of their country by the Hellenes, sailed to the mouth of the Po, and leaving their ships in that river, built the inland town of Cortona, whence advancing, they peopled the whole territory afterwards called Tyrrhenia[16].

Dionysius of Halicarnassus holds the account of those authors, who maintain that the Etruscans were descended from the Lydians, to be utterly fabulous, principally on the ground [pg 22]that Xantus, the chief historian of Lydia, says nothing of any colony having emigrated thence to Italy; and he is of opinion, that those also are mistaken, who, like Hellanicus of Lesbos, believed the Etruscans and Pelasgi to be the same people. He conceives them to have been Aborigines, or natives of the country, as they radically agreed with no other nation, either in their language or manner of life. He admits, however, that a tribe of Pelasgi passed from Thessaly to the mouth of the Po many ages previous to the Trojan war, and directing their course to the south, occupied a considerable portion of the heart of Italy. Soon after their arrival, they assisted the aboriginal Etruscans in their wars with the Siculi, whom they forced to seek refuge in Sicily, the seat of the ancient Sicani. Subsequent to this alliance, they were again dispersed in consequence of disease and famine; but a few still remained behind, and being incorporated with the original inhabitants, bestowed on them whatever in language or customs appeared to be common to the Etruscans, with other nations of Pelasgic descent[17].

Several eminent writers among the moderns have partly coincided with Dionysius. Dempster seems to think that there was an indigenous population in Etruria, but that it was increased both by the Lydian emigration and by colonies of Pelasgi from Greece[18]. Bochart is nearly of the same opinion; only he farther admits of a direct intercourse between the Etruscans and Phœnicians, whence the former may have received many Oriental fables and customs. He denies, however, that there was any resemblance in the languages of these two people; and the Etruscan arts he believes to have been chiefly derived from Greece[19]. The opinion of Bochart on these latter points is so much the more entitled to weight, as his prepossessions would have led him to maintain an opposite system could it have been plausibly supported. Gibbon also declares in favour of Dionysius; and, as to the relation of Herodotus, he says, “L’opinion d’Herodote, qui les fait venir de la Lydie, ne peut convenir qu’aux poetes”[20]. Several recent Italian writers likewise have maintained, that, previous to the arrival of any Lydian or Pelasgic colony, there existed what they term an indigenous population, by which they do not merely signify a population whose origin cannot [pg 23]be traced, since they hint pretty broadly, that Etruria had its Adam and Eve as much as Eden[21].

Gorius derives every thing Etruscan from Egypt or Phœnicia. These countries he considers as the original seats of the Pelasgi, who, being driven out of them, settled in Achaia, Thrace, Arcadia, and Lydia, and from these regions gradually, and at different times, passed into Italy[22].

A similar system has been adopted by Lord Monboddo.—From a resemblance in their letters and language to those of the Greeks, he believes the Etruscans to have been a very ancient colony of the roaming Pelasgi who left Arcadia in quest of new settlements. These Pelasgi, however, he maintains, were not themselves indigenous in Arcadia, as they issued originally from Egypt, where there was a district and a city of the name of Arcadia[23].

Mazzochi follows the oriental theory, but does not venture to determine from what eastern region the Etruscans emigrated. He merely affirms, that they spread from the east, under which term he includes regions very remote from each other—Assyria, Armenia, Canaan, and Egypt[24]. He also thinks that they came directly from the east, without having previously passed through Lydia or Arcadia: For, if they had, the monuments of these latter countries would exhibit (which they do not) still stronger remains of oriental antiquity than those of the Etruscans. This descent Mazzochi attempts to confirm by the most fanciful derivations of words and proper names of the Etruscan nation from the eastern languages, especially from the Hebrew and Syriac. Thus one of the most extensive plains in Italy, and the spot where, in all probability, the oriental colony first landed, is near the æstuary of the Po. This plain they naturally called Paddan, one of the names of the level Mesopotamia, and the appellation of the district soon came to be transferred to the river Padus or Po, by which it was bounded. It occurred to the author, however, that the Eridanus was the more ancient name of the Po; but this only furnishes him with a new argument. Eraz, it seems, signifies in Hebrew, a cedar, or any sort of resinous tree, and the orientals, finding a number of trees of this nature on the banks of the Po, and Z being a convertible letter with D, they could [pg 24]not fail to call the river, near which they grew in such abundance, the Eridanus[25].

Bonarota has deduced the origin of the Etruscans from Egypt—a theory which has chiefly been grounded on the resemblance of the remains of their arts with the monuments of the ancient Egyptians[26].

Maffei brings them directly from Canaan, and supposes them to have been the race expelled from that region by the Moabites, or children of Lot. The river Arnon, (whence Arno,) flowed not far from that part of Canaan, where Lot and Abram first sojourned; one of its districts was called Etroth, (whence Etruria); and on the banks of the Arnon stood the city Ar, a syllable which is a frequent compound in Etruscan appellatives. The Etruscans erected their places of worship on hills or high places—they formed corporeal images of their divine beings like the idolatrous race from whom they sprung—but above all, their divinations and profession of augury, identified them with those original inhabitants of Canaan, of whom it is said, “that they hearkened unto observers of times and unto diviners”[27].

By far the most voluminous, but at the same time one of the most fanciful writers concerning the Etruscans, is Guarnacci, who maintains, that they came directly from the east, and were stragglers who had been dispersed by Noah’s flood, or, at the very latest, by the confusion at Babel. The Umbri and Aborigines, according to him, were the same people, under a different denomination, as the Etruscans: They gradually spread themselves over all Italy, and some tribes of them, called, from their wandering habits, Pelasgi, at length emigrated to Greece and Lydia; so that, whatever similarity has been traced in the language, religion, manners, or arts, of the Greeks and Etruscans, is the consequence of the Etruscan colonization of Greece, and not, as is generally supposed, of Italy having been peopled by Pelasgic colonies from Arcadia or Peloponnesus[28].

In general, the oriental system has been maintained in opposition to all other theories, chiefly on the ground that the Etruscans, like many eastern nations, wrote from right to left, and that, like the Hebrews, they often marked down only [pg 25]the consonants, leaving the reader to supply the auxiliary vowels.

The oriental theory, in all its modifications, has been strenuously opposed by a number of learned Italian, French, and German antiquaries, who have contended for the northern and Celtic origin of the Etruscans, and have ridiculed the opinions of their predecessors as if they themselves were about to promulgate a more rational system. Bardetti, while he admits a colonization of Italy from foreign quarters, prior even to the Trojan war, maintains, that it was inhabited by a primitive population long before the landing of the Lydians or Pelasgi: That previous to the arrival of the latter tribe at the mouth of the Po, which happened 300 years before the siege of Troy, there had been no navigation to Italy from Egypt, or any other country: That, therefore, this primitive population must have come by land, and could have been no other than bands of Celts who were the immediate posterity of Japheth, and who, having originally settled in Gaul, descended to Italy from the Alps by Rhetium, Tirol, and Trent. Their first seats were the regions along the banks of the Po; the earliest tribes of their population were called Ligurians and Umbrians, and from them sprung the Etrurians, and all the other ancient nations of Italy[29].

A system nearly similar has been followed by Pelloutier[30], Freret[31], and Funccius[32], and has been adopted, with some modifications, by Adelung, and also by Heyne[33], who, however, admits that other tribes besides the Gallic race, may have contributed to the population of Etruria[34].

This theory, whether deducing the Etruscans from the Celts of Gaul or from the Teutonic tribes of Germany, is too often supported by remote and fanciful etymologies; and, so far as depends on authority, it chiefly rests on an ambiguous passage of the ancient historian Boccus, (quoted by Solinus,) where it is said, Gallorum veterum propaginem Umbros esse, and taken in connection with this, the assertion of Pliny, Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiæ existimatur[35].

[pg 26]

ETRURIA.

The most learned and correct writer on the subject of the Etruscans is Lanzi. In his elaborate work[36], (in which he has followed out and improved on a system first started by Ulivieri,) he does not pretend to investigate the origin of this celebrated race, though he seems to think that they were Lydians, augmented from time to time by tribes of the Pelasgi. But he has tried to prove that whatever may have been their descent, the religion, learning, language, and arts of the Etruscans must be referred to a Greek origin, and he refutes Gori and Caylus, who, deceived by a few imperfect analogies, ascribed them to the Egyptians. The period of Etruscan perfection in the arts, and formation of those vases and urns which we still admire, was posterior, he maintains, to the subjugation of Etruria by the Romans, and at a time when an intercourse with Greece had rendered the Etruscans familiar with models of Grecian perfection. As to the language, he does not indeed deny that all languages came originally from the east, and that many Greek words sprung from Hebrew roots; but there are in the Etruscan tongue, he asserts, such clear traces of Hellenism, particularly in the names of gods and heroes, that it is impossible to ascribe its origin to any other source. In particular, he attempts to show from the inscriptions on the Eugubian tables, that the Etruscan language was the Æolic Greek, since it has neither the monosyllables characteristic of northern tongues, nor the affixes and suffixes peculiar to oriental dialects[37].

From whatever nation originally sprung, the Etruscans at an early period attained an enviable height of prosperity and power. Etruria Proper, or the most ancient Etruria, reached from the Arno to the Tiber, being nearly bounded all along by these rivers, from their sources to their junction with the Tyrrhenian sea. Soon, however, the Etruscans passed those narrow limits;—to the north, they spread their conquests over the Ligurians, who inhabited the region beyond the Arno, and to this territory the conquerors gave the name of New Etruria. To the south, they crossed the Tiber, made allies or tributaries of the Latins, and introduced among them many of their usages and rites. Having thus opened a way through Latium, they drove the Osci from the fertile plains of Cam[pg 27]pania, and founded the city of Capua, about fifty years before the building of Rome. Colonies, too, were sent out by them to spots beyond their immediate sway, till at length the Italian name was nearly sunk in that of the Etruscans. Their minds, however, were not wholly bent on conquest and political aggrandizement; their attention was also directed to useful institutions, and to the cultivation of the fine arts. The twelve confederated cities of Etruria were embellished with numberless monuments of architecture; wholesome laws were enacted, commerce was extended along all the shores of the Mediterranean: and, in short, by their means the general progress of civilization in Italy was prodigiously accelerated. The glory and prosperity of the Etruscans were at their height before Rome yet possessed a name. But their government, like that of all other republics, contained the seeds of decay. Each state had the choice of remaining as a commonwealth, or electing a king; but the Kings, or Lucumons, as they were usually called, were only the priests and presidents of the different cities of the confederation. There was no monarch of the whole realm; and it is the series of these Lucumons that has swelled the confused list of kings presented by Etruscan antiquaries. Each state had also the privilege of separately declaring war or concluding peace; and each appears, on all occasions, to have been more anxious for its own safety, than for the general interests of the union. Hence, rivalships and dissensions prevailed in the general assemblies of the twelve states. A confederate government, thus united by a link of political connection, almost as feeble as the Amphictyonic council of Greece, afforded no such compact resistance as could oppose an adequate barrier to the unica vis of the intrepid enemies with whom the Etruscans had now to contend. At sea they were assailed by the Syracusans and Carthaginians; the Umbrians retook several of their ancient possessions; they were forced to yield the plains which lie between the Alps and Apennines to the valour of the Gauls; and the Samnites expelled them from the yet more desirable and delicious regions of Campania.

While the Etruscans were thus again confined almost within the territory which still bears their name, and extends from the Tiber northward to the Apennines, a yet more formidable foe than any they had hitherto encountered appeared on the political theatre of Italy. It was Latium, which had the singular fortune to see one of its towns rise to the supreme dominion of Italy, and finally of the world. This city, which Dionysius of Halicarnassus represents as a respectable colony, fitted out from Alba under the escort of Romulus, and thence [pg 28]supplied with money, provisions, and arms; but which was more probably composed of outlaws from the Equi, Marsi, Volsci, and other Latian tribes, had gradually acquired strength, while the power of the Etruscans had decayed. Enervated by opulence and luxury[38], they were led to despise the rough unpolished manners of the Romans; but during centuries of almost incessant warfare, they were daily taught to dread their military skill and prowess. The fall of Veii was a tremendous warning, and they now sought to preserve their independence rather by stratagem than force of arms. At length, in an evil hour, they availed themselves of the difficulties of their enemy; and, while the rival republic was pressed on the south by the Samnites, they leagued with those northern hordes which descended from the Alps to the anticipated conquest of Rome. Before they had fully united with the Gauls, the Consul Dolabella annihilated, near the Lake Vadimona, the military population of Etruria, and the feeble remains of the nation received the imperious conditions of peace, dictated by the victors, which left them nothing but the shadow of a great name,—the glory of attending the Roman march to the conquest of the world, and the vestiges of arts destined to attract the curiosity and research of the latest posterity.

The vicinity of the Etruscans to Rome, from which their territories were separated only by the Tiber,—the alliance of their leader, Cœlius, with Romulus, and the habitation assigned them on the Cœlian Mount,—the accession to the Roman sovereignty of the elder Tarquin, who was descended from a Greek family which had fixed its residence in Etruria,—the settlement of a number of Etruscan prisoners, four years after the expulsion of the kings, in a street called the Vicus Tuscus, in the very heart of the city;—and, finally, the intercourse produced by the long period of warfare and political intrigue which subsisted between the rising republic and their more polished neighbours before they were incorporated into one state, would be sufficient to account for the Roman reception of the customs and superstitions of Etruria, as also for the interchange of literary materials. It does not seem that the hostility of rival nations prevents the reciprocal adoption of manners and literature. The romantic gallantry and learning of the Arabs in the south of Spain soon passed the limits of their splendid empire; and long before the conquest of Wales the Cambrian fables and traditions concerning Arthur and his host of heroes were domesticated in the court [pg 29]of England. Accordingly, we find that the Romans were indebted to the Etruscans for the form of the robes which invested their magistrates, the pomp that attended their triumphs, and even the music that animated their legions. The purple vest, the sceptre surmounted by an eagle, the curule chair, the fasces and lictors, were the ensigns and accompaniments of supreme authority among the Etruscans; while the triumphs and ovations, the combats of gladiators and Circensian games, were common to them and the Romans.

The simple and rustic divinities of Etruria and Latium were likewise the objects of Roman idolatry, long before the introduction of that more imposing and elegant mythology which had been embellished by the conceptions of Homer and the hand of Phidias. Saturn, the reformer of civil life, though afterwards confounded with the Kronos of the Greeks, was not of Greek origin. Janus, the Deorum Deus of the Salian verses, to whom the Romans offered their first sacrifices, and addressed their first prayers, and whom system-framers have identified with Noah[39], the Indian Ganesa[40], the Egyptian Oannes[41], and the Ion of the Scandinavians[42], or have represented as a symbolic type of all things in nature, was truly an Italian God:—

“Nam tibi par nullum Græcia numen habet[43].”

Faunus and Picus, Bona Dea and Marica, were Etruscan or Latian divinities of the Saturnian family. Italy was also filled with many local deities, in consequence of those wonderful natural phænomena which it so abundantly exhibited, and which its early inhabitants ascribed to invisible powers. A sulphuric lake was the residence of the Nymph Albunea, and the medicinal founts of Abano were the acknowledged abodes of a beneficent genius.—“Nullus lucus sine fonte, nullus fons non sacer, propter attributos illis deos, qui fontibus præesse dicuntur[44].” All nature was thus linked by a continued chain of consecrated existence, from the God of Thunder to the simple Faun. The Vacunia and Feronia of the Sabines were naturalized by Numa, and the Vejove of Etruria presided in Rome at the general council of the twelve greater gods, long before a knowledge of the Grecian Mars or Jupiter. In all their mythology we may remark the grave and austere charac[pg 30]ter of the ancient Italians[45]. Their deities resembled not the obscene and vicious gods of Greece. They presided over agriculture, the rights of property, conjugal fidelity, truth and justice; and in like manner in early Rome,

“Cana Fides et Vesta; Remo cum fratre Quirinus

Jura dabant.” ——

Dionysius of Halicarnassus particularly points out the difference between the religion of the Greeks and the Romans. The latter, he informs us, “did not admit into their creed those impious stories told by the Greeks of the castration of their gods, or of destroying their own children, of their wars, wounds, bonds, and slavery, and such like things as are not only altogether unworthy of the divine nature, but disgrace even the human. They had no wailing and lamentations for the sufferings of their gods, nor like the Greeks, any Bacchic orgies, or vigils of men and women together in the temples. And if at any time they admitted such foreign pollutions, as they did with regard to the rites of Cybele and the Idæan goddess, the ceremonies were performed under the grave inspection of Roman magistrates; nor even now does any Roman disguise himself to act the mummeries performed by the priests of Cybele[46]”. Dionysius, who refers every thing to Greece, thinks that the early Roman was just the Greek religion purified by Romulus, to whom, in fact, his country was more indebted than to Numa for its sacred institutions. In reality, however, this superior purity of rites and worship was not occasioned by any such lustration of the Greek fables, but from their being founded on Italian, and not on Grecian superstitions.

But although the Etruscan mythology may have been more pure, and its rites more useful, than those of Greece, its fables were not so ingenious and alluring. Ora, the goddess of health and youth, was less elegant than Hebe; and even the genius of Virgil, who has chosen the Italian Myths for the machinery of the Æneid, could hardly bestow grace or dignity on the prodigy of the swarm of bees that hung in clusters from the Laurentian Laurel—on the story of the robber Cacus vomiting flames, the ships metamorphosed into nymphs, the sow which farrowed thirty white pigs, and thereby announced that the town of Alba would be built in thirty years, the puerile [pg 31]fiction of the infancy of Camilla, or the hideous harpy which hovered round the head of Turnus, and portended his death. Accordingly, when the Romans were allured by the arts of Greece, the rude and simple traditions of Italian mythology yielded to the enticing and voluptuous fictions of a more polished people[47]. The tolerant spirit of Polytheism did not restrict the number of gods, and the ministers of superstition seemed always ready to reconcile the most discordant systems. Hence the poet interwove the national traditions with the Greek fables, and concentrated in one the attributes of different divinities. Thus, the Greek Kronos was identified with Saturn; the rustic deities, Sylvanus and Faunus, peculiar to Latium, being confounded with Pan, the Satyrs, and Silenus, were associated with the train of Bacchus; Portumnus was converted into Palemon—a deity whom the Greeks had received from Phœnicia; Bona Dea was transformed to Hecate, and Libitina to Proserpine; and the Camesnæ, or Camenæ, of the family of Janus, who prophesied in Saturnian verse on the summit of Mount Janiculum, were metamorphosed into Muses[48]. Hercules, Jupiter, and Venus, gods of power and pleasure, occupied, with their splendid temples, the place of the peaceful and pastoral deities of Numa. Still, however, the national religion was in some measure retained, and Apollo and Bacchus, in particular, continued to be decorated with the characteristic emblems of Etruria.

The Etruscans do not seem to have believed, like the Greeks, that they were possessed of those interpretations of passing events or revelations of futurity which were obtained by immediate inspiration, whether delivered from the hill of Dodona, or the Delphian shrine. Their divination was supposed to be the result of experience and observation; and though not destitute of divine direction or concurrence, depended chiefly on human contrivance. Among them peculiar families, like the tribe of Levi, the Peruvian Incas, and the descendants of Thor and Odin, were depositaries of the secrets and ceremonies of religion. Their prognostics were taken from the flight of birds[49], the entrails of animals, and observations on thunder. [pg 32]In the early ages of Rome, a band of Patrician youths was sent to Etruria, to be initiated in the mysteries of its religious rites[50]. The constant practice of consulting the gods on all enterprizes, public or private,—the belief, that prodigies manifested the will of heaven, and that the deities could be appeased, and their vengeance averted by expiations or sacrifices, were common to the Tuscan and Roman creeds. In short, the fervent spirit of Etrurian superstition passed undiminished to the Romans, who owed to its influence much of their valour, temperance, and patriotism. To this, Cicero in a great degree ascribes their political supremacy. The Romans, says he, were not superior in numbers to the Spaniards, in strength or courage to the Gauls, in address to the Carthaginians, in tactics to the Macedonians; but we surpass all nations in that prime wisdom by which we have learned that all things are governed and directed by the immortal gods.

To the same singular people from whom they derived their customs and superstitions, the Romans were much indebted for their majestic language. As their writers in a great measure owe their immortality to the lofty tones and commanding accents of the Latin tongue, it would be improper entirely to neglect its origin in entering on the literary history of Rome.

The supporters of the various systems with regard to the first peopling of Etruria, of course discover the elements of the Etruscan language in that of the different nations by whom they believe it to have been colonized. Lord Monboddo, for example, deduces both the Latin and Etruscan from the old Pelasgic; which language, he asserts, was first brought into Italy by a colony of Arcadians, seventeen generations before the Trojan war. He considers the Latin as the most ancient dialect of the Greek; and he remarks, that as it came off from the original stock earlier than the Doric, or Æolic, or any other Greek dialect now known, it has more of the roughness of the primitive Hebrew, from which he believes the Pelasgic to be derived[51]. Lanzi also thinks that both the Latin and Etruscan flowed from the Greek, and that the resemblance between the Etruscan and Latin was not occasioned by the derivation of the latter from the former, but was the necessary consequence of both having sprung from a common source.

It certainly is not easy to discover the primary elements of the Latin or any other language; but its immediate origin [pg 33]may easily be traced. The inscriptions on the most ancient monuments which have been discovered, from the Alps to Calabria, shew that, from the time of the Etruscan supremacy, there was an universal language in Italy, varied, indeed, by dialects, but announcing a common origin in the inflections of words and the forms of characters. The language of the Etruscans had been so widely spread by their conquests, that it might almost be regarded as the general tongue of Italy, and the Latian, Oscan, and Sabine idioms, were in a great measure the same with the Etruscan. From these the early Latin language was chiefly formed; and what little Greek existed in its original composition came through these languages from the Pelasgic colonies, which in the remotest periods had intermixed with the Etruscans, and with the inhabitants of ancient Latium. “It is a great mistake,” says Horne Tooke, “into which the Latin etymologists have fallen, to suppose that all the Latin must be found in the Greek, for the fact is otherwise. The bulk and foundation of the Latin language is Greek; but great part of the Latin is the language of our northern ancestors grafted on the Greek; and to our northern languages the etymologist must go for that part of the Latin which the Greek will not furnish[52].” This author is correct, in affirming that all the Latin cannot be found in the Greek; but he is far in error if he mean to maintain that any part of the Latin came directly from the language of the Celts, or that their uncouth jargon was grafted on the Greek. The northern tongues, however, whether Celtic or Sclavonic, may have contributed to form those dialects of Italy which composed the original elements of the imperial language, and were exhibited in great variety of combinations for five centuries with little admixture of the Greek. The eminent grammarian is still farther mistaken in declaring that the foundation of the Latin language is Greek. That much of the Augustan Latin is derived from the Greek, is true. Gataker, who strenuously contends for the Greek origin of the whole Latin language, has, as a specimen, attempted to shew, that every word in the first five lines of Virgil’s Eclogues is drawn from the Greek[53]; and though part of his etymologies are fanciful, [pg 34]yet in a very considerable portion of them he has been completely successful. But the case is totally different with the ancient remnants of the Latin language previous to the capture of Tarentum. In the song of the Fratres Arvales, the oldest specimen of the language extant, there seem to be only two words which have any analogy to the Greek—sal from ἅλς and sta from ἱστημι. That there was little Greek incorporated with the Latin during the first ages of the Republic, is evident from the circumstance, that the Latin inscriptions of a former period were unintelligible to the historian Polybius, and the most learned Romans of his age. Now, as he himself was a Greek, and as the most learned Romans, by his time, had become good Greek scholars, any Grecisms in the ancient inscriptions would have been perfectly intelligible. It is evident, therefore, that the difficulty arose from the words of the old Italian dialects occurring instead of the new Greek terms, suddenly introduced after the capture of Tarentum, and to which the Romans having by that time become habituated, could not understand the language of a preceding generation. Besides, when Rome was originally filled with Latian bands—when the Etruscans and Oscans were immediately beyond the walls of Rome,—when, as early as the time of Romulus, the Sabines were admitted within them,—when all the women then in Rome were Sabines, (from which it may be presumed that much of the conversation was carried on in the Sabine dialect,) and, above all, when the Romans, for many centuries, had little intercourse with any other people than the Italian nations, it is not to be supposed that they would borrow their colloquial language from the Celts, on the other side of the Alps, or the Greeks, from whom they were separated by the Adriatic Gulf, and who, as yet, had established only remote, insignificant, and scattered colonies, in Italy. Varro, too, has shewn the affinity between the Sabine and the Latin languages[54]. That the Oscan resembled the old Latin, is proved from its being constantly employed in the most popular dramatic representations at Rome, and from the circumstance that almost every word of its few relics which remain, is the root of some equivalent Latin term. Thus Akeru produced acerra—Anter, inter—Phaisnam, fanum—Tesaur, Thesaurus—Famel, famulus—Multa, mulcta—Solum, (totus,) solus—Facul, Facultas—Cael, cœlum—Embratur, imperator.[55] The copious admixture of Greek only took place [pg 35]after the taking of Tarentum, when the poets of Magna Græcia settled at Rome, and were imitated by native writers,

“—— Cum lingua Catonis et Enni

Sermonem patrium ditaverit, et nova rerum

Nomina protulerit.”

So far, then, from the Latin language being composed of Celtic grafted on the Greek, it appears to me to have been formed from the Greek, grafted on those various dialects of the Etruscan tongue, which prevailed in Italy at the period of the building of Rome.

It would have been singular, when the Romans derived so much from their Etruscan neighbours, if they had not also acquired a portion of those arts which were the chief boast of Etruria. Among the Etruscans, the arts certainly had not the imposing character they assumed in Egypt, or the elegance they exhibited in Greece[56]; but in their vases, tombs, and altars, which have recently been brought to light, we possess abundant proofs of their taste and ingenuity. In these—domestic occupations, marriages, spectacles, masquerades, contests in the Circus, equestrian exercises, the chase, triumphs, mysteries, funeral rites, Lares, Lamiæ, Lemures, and deities of every description,—in short, all ancient Etruria passes in review before the eye, which, in many instances, must admire the boldness of the attitudes, the elegance of the draperies, and justness of the proportions. The art of modelling, or sculpture, appears to have been that in which the Etruscans chiefly excelled. The statues of the first kings erected at Rome, in the reign of the elder Tarquin, were of their workmanship, as well as that of Horatius Cocles, and the equestrian statue of Clelia. The Jupiter of the Capitol was also Tuscan; and the four-wheeled chariot placed in his temple, received its last polish from Etruscan hands, under the first Roman consuls.

In the course of the 5th century of Rome, not fewer than 2000 Etruscan statues, which were probably little figures in bronze, were carried to that city from Volsinium, (now Bolsena,) which the Romans were accused of having besieged, in order to plunder it of these treasures. Architecture was unknown in Rome until the Tarquins came from Etruria: hence the works of the kings, some of which still remain, were [pg 36]built in the Etruscan style, with large and regular, but uncemented blocks[57]. The most ancient and stupendous architectural monuments of Rome, were executed by Etruscan artists. Theirs were the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the Circus, and Cloaca Maxima, which showed such a wonderful anticipation of the future magnitude of Rome[58], and which Livy pronounces equal to anything which had been produced by modern magnificence. Painting, too, was introduced at Rome from the Etruscans, about the middle of the fifth century, by one of the Fabian family, who had long resided in Etruria, and who himself painted in fresco, after his return, the interior of the Temple of Salus, and transmitted the sirname of Pictor to his descendants.

The excellence to which the Etruscans had attained in sculpture and architecture, forms a presumption of their proficiency in those sciences which are essential to eminence in the arts. As not a vestige of their writings remains, it is impossible to judge of the merits of their literary compositions. I suspect, however, that, like the ancient Egyptians, they had made much less progress in literature than in arts or science. What books they had, were extant, and well known, at Rome; yet Cicero and other Latin writers, who have the Greek authors perpetually in their mouths, scarcely ever allude to any works of the Etruscans, except treatises on augury or divination; and the only titles of the books, recorded by Roman writers, are the Libri Fatales, Libri Haruspicinæ, Sacra Acherontia, Fulgurales et Rituales Libri. It is said, indeed, that the Etruscans cultivated a certain species of poetry, sung or declaimed during the pomp of sacrifices, or celebration of marriages[59]. Such verses were first employed in Fescennia, a city of Etruria, whence the ancient nuptial hymns of the Romans were called Fescennine. It is evident, however, that these Etruscan songs, or hymns, were of the very rudest description, and probably never were reduced into writing. They were a kind of impromptus, composed of scurrilous jests, originally recited by the Italian peasants at those feasts of Ceres, which celebrated the conclusion of their harvests; and they resembled the verses described in the well-known lines of Horace—

“Agricolæ prisci, fortes, parvoque beati,

Condita post frumenta, levantes tempore festo

Corpus, et ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentem,

Cum sociis operum pueris, et conjuge fidâ,

Tellurem porco, Sylvanum lacte piabant,

Floribus et vino Genium, memorem brevis ævi;

Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem

Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit[60].”

It appears, also, that some of the ancient rustic oracles and prophecies of the Etruscans, were delivered in a rugged sort of verse called Saturnian—a measure which was adopted from them by the earliest Latin poets—

“Scripsere alii rem

Versibus quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant[61].”

Censorinus informs us, on the authority of Varro, that this ancient people was not without its chroniclers and historians—In Tuscis Historiis quæ octavo eorum sæculo scripta sunt[62]. But this eighth century of the Etruscans, according to the chronology followed by Lanzi, would be as late as the sixth century of Rome[63]; and, besides, it is evident from the context of Censorinus, that these pretended histories were, in fact, mere registers of the foundations of cities, and the births and deaths of individuals. Varro also mentions Etruscan tragedies composed by Volumnius[64]. No date to his productions, however, is specified, and Lanzi is of opinion, that he did not write in Etruria till after the dramatic art had made considerable progress at Rome; and it certainly may at least be doubted, if, previous to that period, the Etruscan stage had ever reached higher than extemporary recitations, or pantomimic entertainments of music and dancing.

But whatever the literature of the Etruscans may have been, it certainly had no influence on the progress of learning among the Romans. Neither the intercourse of the two nations, nor the capture of Veii, though followed by the final subjugation of the Etruscans, was attended with any literary improvement on the part of their unpolished neighbours. In fact, few nations have been more completely illiterate than the Romans were, during five centuries, from the commencement of their history; and of all the nations which have figured in the annals of mankind, none certainly attained the same height of power and grandeur, and civil wisdom, with equal ignorance of literature or the fine arts. For the pretended acquaintance of the elder Brutus with the Pythagorean [pg 38]philosophy, it would be difficult, I suspect, to find any better authority than the romance of Clelia; and the learned academy, which some writers[65] have found in Numa’s College of Pontiffs, must be classed, I fear, with Vockerodt’s literary societies, which existed before the flood[66].

It is not difficult to account for this ignorance of the Romans during the first ages of their history. Rome was not, as has been asserted by Dionysius, a regular colony sent out from a well-regulated state, but was formed from a mixture of all kinds of people unacquainted with social life. It consisted of Romulus’ own troop, and a confluence of banditti inured to lawless acts, and subsisting by rapine, who were called from their fastnesses by the proclamation of a bold, cunning, and hardy adventurer[67]. This desperate band would not be much softened or humanized by their union with the tribe of Sabines, who, in the time of Romulus, became incorporated with the state, if we may judge of Sabine civilization from the story of Tarpeia. Numa did much for the domestic melioration of his people: He subdivided them into classes, impressed their minds with reverence for religion, and encouraged agriculture; but there was no germ of literature which he could foster. For more than three centuries after his death, the persevering hostilities of neighbouring states, and the furious irruptions of the Gauls, scarcely allowed a moment of repose or tranquillity. The safety of Rome depended on its military preparations, and every citizen necessarily became a soldier. Learning and arts may flourish amid the wars and commotions of a mighty empire, because every individual is not essentially or actively involved in the struggle; but in a petty state, surrounded by foes, all are in some shape or other personally engaged in the conflict, and the result, perhaps, is viewed with intenser interest. The enemies of Rome were repeatedly at her gates, and once within her walls; and while the city thus resounded with martial alarms, literary leisure could neither be enjoyed nor accounted among the ingredients—

“Vitam quæ faciunt beatiorem.”

The exercise of arms, which commenced in order to preserve the new-founded city from destruction, was continued for the sake of conquest and dominion; so that the whole [pg 39]pride of the Romans was still placed in valour and military success. At the first formation of their theatre, they were propitiated by the address, Belli duellatores optimi[68]. Whatever time could be snatched from warlike occupations, was devoted to agriculture. Each individual had two acres allotted to him, which he was obliged to till for the maintenance of his family. While thus labouring for subsistence, he had little leisure to cultivate literature or the arts, and could find no inclination for such pursuits. Indeed, he was not allowed the choice of his occupations. The law of Romulus which consigned as ignominious all sedentary employments to foreigners or slaves, leaving only in choice to citizens and freemen the arts of agriculture and arms, long continued in undiminished respect and observance. Romulus, says Dionysius, ordered the same persons to exercise the employments both of husbandmen and soldiers. He taught them the duty of soldiers in time of war, and accustomed them in time of peace to cultivate the land[69].

During this period the Romans had nothing which can properly be termed, or which would now be considered as poetry—the shape in which literature usually first expands amongst a rude people. The verses which have come down to us under the character of Sibylline oracles, are not genuine. There probably at one time existed a few rude lines uttered by pretended prophetesses, and which were doubtless a political instrument, usefully employed in a state subject to popular commotions. The book delivered to Tarquin, and which was supposed to contain those ancient oracles, perished amid the conflagration in the Capitol, during the civil wars of Marius and Sylla. Even those collected in Greece, and the municipal states of Italy, in order to supply their place, and which were deposited in the temple of Apollo, on Mount Palatine, were burned by Stilicho in the reign of the Emperor Honorius. There is still extant, however, the hymn sung by the Fratres Arvales, a college of priests instituted by Romulus, for the purpose of walking in procession through the fields in the commencement of spring, and imploring from the gods a blessing on agriculture. Of a similar description were the rude Saturnian verses prescribed by Numa, and which were chaunted by the Salian priests, who carried through the streets those sacred shields, so long accounted the Palladium of Rome.

About the end of the fourth century from the building of the city, when it was for the first time afflicted with a plague, the Senate having exhausted without effect their own super[pg 40]stitious ceremonies, and run over the whole round of supplications, decreed that histrions or players should be summoned from Etruria, in order to appease the wrath of the gods by scenic representations. These chiefly exhibited rude dances and gesticulations, performed to the sound of the flute[70]. There was no dialogue or song, but the pantomime did not consist merely of unmeaning gestures: It had a certain scope, and represented a connected plot or story[71]; but what kind of action or story was represented, is utterly unknown. This whimsical sort of expiation seems to have attracted the fancy of the Roman youths, who imitated the Etruscan actors; but they improved on the entertainment, by rallying each other in extemporary and jocular lines. The Fescennine verses, originally employed in Etruria at the harvest-homes of the peasants, were about the same period applied by the Romans to marriage ceremonies and public diversions.

There were also songs of triumph in a rude measure, which were sung by the soldiers at the ovations of their leaders. As early as the time of Romulus, when that chief returned triumphant to Rome after his victory over the Ceninenses and Antemnates, his soldiers followed him in military array, singing hymns in honour of their gods, and extemporary verses in praise of their commander[72]. Of this description, too, were the Pæans, with which the victorious troops accompanied the chariot of Cincinnatus, after he subdued the Equi[73], and with which they celebrated a spirited enterprize of Cossus, a tribune of the soldiers[74]. Sometimes these laudatory songs were seasoned with coarse jokes and camp jests, like those introduced at the triumph of C. Claudius, and of M. Livius[75].

The triumphal hymns were not altogether confined to the ceremony performed on the streets of Rome. Cicero informs us, on the authority of Cato’s Origines, that at feasts and entertainments, it was usual for the guests to celebrate the praises of their native heroes to the sound of the flute[76]. Valerius Maximus says, that the verses were sung by the older guests, in order to excite the youth to emulation[77]; and Varro, [pg 41]that they were chaunted by ingenuous youths[78]. The difference, however, between the two authors, is easily reconciled. The former speaks of the original composition of these ballads[79], while Varro, though the passage is imperfect, seems to refer to a later period, when they were brought out anew for the entertainment of the guests. Valerius talks of them as poems or ballads of considerable extent. It was many generations, however, before the age of Cato, that this practice existed; and by the time of Cicero, these national and heroic productions, if they ever had been reduced to writing, were no longer extant[80]. This is all that can be collected concerning these legends, from the ancient Roman writers, who had evidently very imperfect notions and information on the subject. Niebuhr, however, and M. Schlegel, seem as well acquainted with their contents as we are with Chevy Chase, and talk as if these precious relics were lying on their shelves, or as if they had been personally present at the festivals where they were recited. They expressed, it seems, feelings purely patriotic—they contained no inconsiderable admixture of the marvellous—but even the propensity for what was incredible was exclusively national in its character—and the Roman fablers indulged themselves in the creation of no wonders, which did not redound in some measure to the honour of their ancestors. They were founded on the oldest traditions concerning the kings and heroes of the infant city, and the establishment of the republican form of government. “The fabulous birth of Romulus,” says Schlegel, “the rape of the Sabine women, the most poetical combat of the Horatii and Curiatii, the pride of Tarquin, the misfortunes and death of Lucretia, and the establishment of liberty by the elder Brutus—the wonderful war with Porsenna, and steadfastness of Scævola, the banishment of Coriolanus, the war which he kindled against his country, the subsequent struggle of his feelings, and the final triumph of his patriotism at the all-powerful intercession of his mother;—these and the like circumstances, if they be examined from the proper point of view, cannot fail to be considered as relics and fragments of the ancient heroic traditions and heroic poems of the Romans[81].” Niebuhr, not contented with insulated ballads, has [pg 42]imagined the existence of a grand and complete Epopee, commencing with the accession of Tarquinius Priscus, and ending with the battle of Regillus[82]. This is a great deal more information than Cicero or Varro could have afforded us on the subject.

However numerous or extensive these ballads may have been, they soon sunk into oblivion; and in consequence of the overpowering influence of Greek authors and manners, they never formed the groundwork of a polished system of national poetry. The manifold witcheries of the Odyssey, and the harmony of the noble Hexameter, made so entire a conquest of the fancy and ears of the Romans, as to leave no room for an imitation, or even an affectionate preservation, of the ancient poems of their country, and led them, as we shall soon see, exclusively to adopt in their stead, the thoughts, the recollections, and the poetry of the Greeks. Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, mentions a poem by Appius Claudius Cæcus, who flourished in the fifth century of Rome[83]; but he does not say what was the nature or subject of this production, except that it was Pythagorean; and this is the solitary authentic notice transmitted to us of the existence of any thing which can be supposed to have been a regular or continued poem, during the first five centuries that elapsed from the building of the city.

Since, then, we can discover, during this period, nothing but those feeble dawings of dramatic, satiric, and heroic poetry, which never brightened to a perfect day, the only history of Roman literature which can be given during the long interval, consists in the progress and improvement of the Latin language. In the course of these five centuries, it was extremely variable, from two causes.—1st, Although their policy in this respect afterwards changed, one of the great principles of aggrandizement among the Romans in their early ages, was incorporating aliens, and admitting them to the rights of citizens. Hence, there was a constant influx to Rome of stranger tribes; and the dissonance within its walls was probably greater than had yet been any where heard since the memorable confusion at Babel.—2d, The Latin was merely a spoken language, or at least had not received stability by literary composition—writing at that time being confined, (in consequence of the want of materials for it,) to treaties, or short columnar inscriptions. So remarkable was the fluctuation produced by these causes, even during a very short period, that Polybius, speaking of a treaty concluded [pg 43]between the Carthaginians and Romans in the 245th Year of the City, during the Consulship of Publius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, declares, that the language used in it was so different from the Latin spoken in his time, that the most learned Romans could not explain its text[84].

Of this changeable tongue, the earliest specimen extant, and which is supposed to be as ancient as the time of Romulus, is the hymn chaunted by the Fratres Arvales, the college of priests above-mentioned, who were called Fratres, from the first members of the institution being the sons of Acca Laurentia, the nurse of Romulus. This song was inscribed, during the time of the Emperor Heliogabalus[85], on a stone, which was discovered on opening the foundations of the Sacristy at St Peter’s, in the year 1778. It is in the following words:—

“Enos Lases juvate,

Neve luerve Marmar sinis incurrer in pleoris.

Satur fufere Mars: limen sali sta berber:

Semones alternei advocapit cunctos.

Enos Marmor juvate,

Triumpe! triumpe!”

These words have been thus interpreted by Herman: “Nos Lares juvate, neve luem Mamuri sinis incurrere in plures. Satur fueris Mars: limen (i. e. postremum) sali sta vervex: Semones alterni jam duo capit cunctos. Nos Mamuri juvato—Triumphe! Triumphe”[86]! There are just sixteen letters used in the above inscription; and it appears from it, that at this early period the letter s was frequently used instead of r—that the final e was struck out, or rather, had not yet been added—the rich diphthong ei was employed instead of i, and the simple letter p, in words where f or ph came afterwards to be substituted.

Of the Carmen Saliare, sung by the Salian priests, appointed under Numa, for the protection of the Ancilia, or Sacred [pg 44]Shields, there remain only a few words, which have been cited by Varro, who remarks in them, what has already been noticed with regard to the Hymn of the Fratres Arvales, that the letter s often occurs in words where his contemporaries placed r—as Melios, for melior—Plusima, for plurima—Asena, for arena—Janitos, for janitor[87]. The Carmen Saliare, however, can scarcely be taken as a fair specimen of the state of the Roman language at the time it was composed. Among the nations adjacent to Rome, there were Salian priests, who had their hymns and solemn forms of invocation[88], which are said to have been, in part at least, adopted by Numa[89]. So that his Carmen Saliare probably approaches nearer to the Tuscan and Oscan dialects, than the Latin language did, even at that early period of the monarchy.

The fragments of a few laws, attributed to Numa, have been preserved by ancient jurisconsults and grammarians, and restored by Festus, with much pains, to their proper orthography, which had not been sufficiently attended to by those who first cited passages from this Regiam Majestatem of the Romans. One of these laws, as restored by him, is in the following terms:—“Sei cuips hemonem lobsum dolo sciens mortei duit pariceidad estod. sei im imprudens se dolo malod occisit pro capited oceisei et nateis eiius endo concioned arietem subicitod,” which law may be thus interpreted: “Si quis hominem liberum dolo sciens morti dederit parricida esto: Si cum imprudens, sine dolo malo, occiderit, pro capite occisi et natis ejus in concionem arietem subjicito.” A law, ascribed to Servius Tullius, has been thus given by Festus:—“Sei parentem puer verberit ast oloe plorasit, puer diveis parentum sacer esto—sei nurus sacra diveis parentum esto,”—which means, “Si parentem puer verberet, at ille ploraverit, puer divis parentum sacer esto; si nurus, sacra divis parentum esto”[90].

From the date of these Leges Regiæ, no specimen of the Latin language is now extant, till we come down to the Twelve Tables, enacted in the commencement of the fourth century of Rome. These celebrated institutions have descended to us in mutilated fragments, and their orthography has probably been in some respects modernised: yet they bear stronger marks of antiquity than the above-recited law of Servius Tullius, or even than those of Numa. The Latin writers themselves by whom they are quoted did not very well understand them, owing to the change which had taken place [pg 45]in the language. Accordingly, Cicero, and the early grammarians who cite them, have attempted rather to give the meaning than the precise words of the Decemvirs. Terrasson has endeavoured to bring them back to the old Oscan language, in which he supposes them to have been originally written; but his emendations are in a great measure conjectural, and his attempt is one of more promise than fulfilment. On the whole, they have been so much corrupted by modernising them, and by subsequent attempts to restore them to the ancient readings, that they cannot be implicitly relied on as specimens of the Roman language during the period in which they were promulgated. The laws themselves are very concise, and free from that tautology, which seems the characteristic of the enactments of nations farther advanced in refinement. The first law is, “S’ in jus vocat queat,” which is extremely elliptical in its expression, and means, “Si quis aliquem in jus vocet, vocatus eat.” In some respects the language of the Leges Regiæ, and twelve tables, possesses a richness of sound, which we do not find in more modern Latin, particularly in the use of the diphthong ai for æ, as vitai for vitæ, and of the diphthong ei for i, as sei for si. Horace might perhaps be well entitled to ridicule the person,

“Sic fautor veterum, ut tabulas peccare vetantes,

Quæ bisquinque viri sanxerunt, fœdera regum

Vel Gabiis, vel cum rigidis æquata Sabinis,

Pontificum libros, annosa volumina vatum,

Dictitet Albano Musas in monte loquutas:”

Yet he would have done well to have considered, if, amid the manifold improvements of the Augustan poets, they had judged right in rejecting those rich and sonorous diphthongs of the tabulæ peccare vetantes, which still sound with such strength and majesty in the lines of Lucretius.

There is scarcely a vestige of the Latin language remaining during the two centuries which succeeded the enactment of the twelve tables. At the end of that long period, and during the first Punic war, a celebrated inscription, which is still extant, recorded the naval victory obtained by the Consul Duillius, in 492, over the Carthaginians. The column on which it was engraved, and which became so famous by the title of the Columna Rostrata, was, as Livy[91] informs us, struck down by lightning during the interval between the second and third Punic wars. It remained buried among the ruins of Rome, till, at length, in 1565, its base, which contained the [pg 46]inscription, was dug up in the vicinity of the Capitol. So much, however, was it defaced, that many of the letters were illegible. These have been restored in the following manner by the conjectures of the learned:

“C. D[92]. exemet leciones maximosque magistratus novem castreis exfociunt. Macellam pucnandod cepet enque eodem macistratu rem navebos marid consol primos ceset clasesque navales primos ornavit cumque eis navebos claseis pœnicas omnes sumas copias Cartaciniensis præesente dictatored olorum in altod marid pucnandod vicit trigintaque naveis cepet cum socieis septem triremosque naveis XX captum numei DCC. captom æs navaled prædad poplom[93].”

In modern Latin the above inscription would run thus.—“Caius Duillius exemit: legiones, maximusque magistratus novem castris effugiunt. Macellam pugnando cepit; inque eodem magistratu, rem navibus mari Consul primus gessit, classesque navales primus ornavit; cumque iis navibus classes Punicas omnes summas copias Carthaginienses, præsente dictatore illorum, in alto mari pugnando vicit: Trigintaque naves cepit cum sociis septem, triremosque naves decem. Captum nummi, captum æs navali præda, populo donavit.”

There are also extant two inscriptions, which were engraved on the tombstones of Lucius Scipio Barbatus and his son Lucius Scipio, of which the former was somewhat prior, and the latter a year subsequent to the date of the Duillian inscription. The epitaph on Barbatus was discovered in 1780, in the vault of the Scipian family, between the Via Appia and Via Latina. Mr Hobhouse informs us that it is inscribed on a handsome but plain sarcophagus, and he adds, “that the eloquent simple inscription becomes the virtues and fellow-countrymen of the deceased, and instructs us more than a chapter of Livy in the style and language of the Republican Romans”[94]:—

“Cornelius Lucius Scipio Barbatus Gnaivod patre prognatus fortis vir sapiensque quoius forma virtutei parisuma fuit. Consol Censor Aidilis quei fuit apud vos Taurasia Cisauna Samnio cepit subicit omne Loucana opsidesque abdoucit.”

The above may be converted into modern Latin, as follows:

“C. L. Scipio Barbatus, Cneio patre prognatus, fortis vir sapiensque, cujus forma virtuti par fuit. Consul, Censor, [pg 47]Ædilis qui fuit apud vos, Taurasiam, Cisaunam, Samnio cepit; subjecit omnem Lucaniam obsidesque abducit.” The other Scipian epitaph had been discovered long before the above, on a slab which was found lying near the Porta Capena, having been detached from the family vault. Though a good many years later as to the date of its composition, the epitaph on the son bears marks of higher antiquity than that on the father:—

“Honc oino ploirume consentiunt duonoro optumo fuise viro Lucium Scipione. Filios Barbati Consol Censor Ædilis hec fuit. Hec cepit Corsica Aleriaque urbe: dedit tempestatibus aide mereto;” which means, “Hunc unum plurimi consentiunt Romæ bonorum optimum fuisse virum Lucium Scipionem. Filius Barbati, Consul, Censor, Ædilis his fuit. Hic cepit Corsicam Aleriamque urbem: dedit tempestatibus ædem merito”.

The celebrated Eugubian tables were so called from having been found at Eugubium (Gubbio) a city in ancient Umbria, near the foot of the Apennines, where they were dug up in 1444. When first discovered, they were believed to be in the Egyptian language; but it was afterwards observed that five of the seven tables were in the Etruscan character and language, or rather in the Umbrian dialect of that tongue, and the other two in Roman letters, though in a rustic jargon, between Latin and Etruscan, with such mixture of each, as might be expected from an increased intercourse of the nations, and the subjugation of the one by the other.[95] The two tables in the Latin character were written towards the close of the sixth century of Rome, and those in the Etruscan letters a short while previous. So little, however, was the Etruscan language fixed or understood, even in the middle of last century, when the Etruscan rage was at its height in Italy, that Bonarota believed that those tables contained treaties of the ancient Italian nations—Gori, an Oscan poem, and Maffei, legal enactments, till Passerius at length discovered that they consisted solely of ordinances for the performance of sacred rites and religious ceremonies.[96]

On comparing the fragments of the Leges Regiæ with the Duillian and Scipian inscriptions, it does not appear that the Roman language, however greatly it may have varied, had either improved or approached much nearer to modern Latin in the fifth century than in the time of the kings. Short and mutilated as these laws and inscriptions are, they still enable us to draw many important conclusions with regard to the general state of the language during the existence of the monarchy, and the first ages of the republic. It has already been mentioned that the diphthong ai was employed where ae came to be afterwards substituted, as aide for æde; ei instead of i, as castreis for castris; and oi in place of œ, as coilum for cœlum. The vowel e is often introduced instead of o, as hemo for homo, while, on the other hand, o is sometimes used instead of e, as vostrum for vestrum; and Scipio Africanus is said to have been the first who always wrote the e in such words[97]. U is frequently changed into o, as honc for hunc, sometimes into ou, as abdoucit for abducit, and sometimes to oi, as oino for uno. On the whole, it appears that the vowels were in a great measure used indiscriminately, and often, especially in inscriptions, they were altogether omitted, as bne for bene, though sometimes, again, an e final was added, as face for fac, dice for dic. As to the consonants,—b at the beginning of a word was du, as duonorum for bonorum, and it was p at the middle or end, as opsides for obsides. The letter g certainly does not appear in those earliest specimens of the Latin language—the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, and Leges Regiæ, where c is used in its place. Plutarch says, that this letter was utterly unknown at Rome during the space of five centuries, and was first introduced by the grammarian Spurius Carvillius in the year 540[98]. It occurs, however, in the epitaph of Scipio Barbatus, which was written at least half a century before that date; and, what is remarkable, it is there placed in a word where c was previously and subsequently employed, Gnaivo being written for Cnæo. The Letter r was not, as has been asserted, unknown to the ancient Romans, but it was chiefly used in the beginning and end of words—s being employed instead of it in the middle, as lases for lares. Frequently the letters m and s were omitted at the end of words, especially, for the sake of euphony, when the following word began with a consonant—thus we have [pg 49]Aleria cepit, for Aleriam cepit. The ancient Romans were equally careful to avoid a hiatus of vowels, and hence they wrote sin in place of si in. Double consonants were never seen till the time of Ennius[99]; and we accordingly find in the old inscriptions sumas for summas: er was added to the infinitive passive, as darier for dari, and d was subjoined to words ending with a vowel, as in altod, marid, pucnandod. It likewise appears that the Romans were for a long period unacquainted with the use of aspirates, and were destitute of the phi and chi sounds of the Greek alphabet. Hence they wrote triumpe for triumphe, and pulcer for pulcher[100]. We also meet with a good many words, particularly substantives, which afterwards became altogether obsolete, and some are applied in a sense different from that in which they were subsequently used. Finally, a difference in the conjugation of the same verb, and a want of inflection in nouns, particularly proper names of countries or cities, where the nominative frequently occurs instead of the accusative, show the unsettled state of the language at that early period[101].

It is unnecessary to prosecute farther the history of Roman inscriptions, since, immediately after the erection of the Duillian column in 494, Latin became a written literary language; and although the diphthongs ai and ei were retained for more than a century longer, most of the other archaisms were totally rejected, and the language was so enriched by a more copious admixture of the Greek, that, while always inferior to that tongue, in ease, precision, perspicuity, and copiousness, it came at length to rival it in dignity of enunciation, and in that lofty accent which harmonized so well with the elevated character of the people by whom it was uttered.

This sudden improvement in language, as well as the equally sudden revolution in taste and literature by which it was accompanied, must be entirely and exclusively attributed to the conquest of Magna Græcia, and the intercourse opened to the Romans with the Greek colonies of Sicily. Their minds were, no doubt, in some measure prepared, during the five centuries which had followed the foundation of the city, for receiving the seeds of learning. The very existence of social life for so long a period must have in some degree reclaimed them from their native barbarism. Freed from hourly alarms excited by the attacks of foes whose territories [pg 50]reached almost to the gates of the city, it was now possible for them to enjoy those pleasures which can only be relished in tranquillity; but their genius, I believe, would have remained unproductive and cold for half a millennium longer, had it not been kindled by contact with a more polished and animated nation, whose compositions could not be read without enthusiasm, or imitated without advantage.

However uncertain may be the story concerning the arrival of Œnotrus in the south of Italy, the passage of the Pelasgi from Epirus to the Po, seventeen generations before the Trojan war, or the settlement of the Arcadian Evander in Latium, there can be no doubt, that, about the commencement of the Roman æra, the dissensions of the reigning families of Greece, the commotions which pervaded its realms, the suggestions of oracles, the uncertain tenure of landed property, the restless spirit of adventure, and seasons of famine, all co-operated in producing an emigration of numerous tribes, chiefly Dorians and Achæans of Peloponnesus, who founded colonies on the coasts of Asia, the Ægean islands, and Italy. In this latter country, (which seems in all ages to have been the resort and refuse of a redundant or unfortunate population,) the Greek strangers first settled in a southern district, then known by the ancient name of Iapygia, and since denominated Calabria. Serenity of climate, joined to the vigour of laws, simplicity of manners, and the energy peculiar to every rising community, soon procured these colonies an enviable increase of prosperity and power. They gradually drove the native inhabitants to the interior of the country, and formed a political state, which assumed the magnificent name of Magna Græcia—an appellation which was by degrees applied to the whole coast which bounds the bay of Tarentum. On that shore, about half a century after the foundation of Rome, arose the flourishing and philosophic town of Crotona, and the voluptuous city of Sybaris. These were the consolidated possessions of the Grecian colonies; but they had also scattered seats all along the western coast of the territory which now forms the kingdom of Naples.

As in most other states, corruption of manners was the consequence of prosperity and the cause of decay. Towards the close of the third century of Rome, Pythagoras had in some measure succeeded in reforming the morals of Crotona, while the rival state of Sybaris, like the Moorish Grenada, hastened to destruction, amid carousals and civil dissensions; and though once capable, as is said, (but probably with some exaggeration,) of bringing three hundred thousand soldiers [pg 51]into the field[102], it sunk, after a short struggle, under the power of Crotona. The other independent states were successively agitated by the violence of popular revolution, and crushed by the severity of despotism. As in the mother country, they had constant dissensions among themselves. This rivalship induced them to call in the assistance of the Sicilians—a measure which prepared the way for their subjection to the vigorous but detestable sway of the elder Dionysius, and of Agathocles. Tarentum, founded about the same time with Sybaris and Crotona, was the most powerful city of the Grecian colonies toward the conclusion of their political existence, and the last formidable rival to the Romans in Italy. Like the neighbouring states, it was chiefly ruined by the succour of foreign allies. Unsuccessfully defended by Alexander Molossus, oppressed by the Syracusan tyrants, and despoiled by Cleomenes of Sparta, neither the genius of Pyrrhus, nor the power of Carthage, could preserve it from the necessity of final submission to the Romans.

In all their varieties of fortune, the Grecian colonies had maintained the manners and institutions of the mother country, which no people ever entirely relinquish with the soil they have left. A close political connection also subsisted between them; and, about the year 300 of Rome, the Athenians sent to the assistance of Sybaris a powerful expedition, which, on the decay of that city, founded the town of Thurium in the immediate vicinity. This constant intercourse cherished and preserved the literary spirit of the colonies of Magna Græcia. Herodotus, the father of history, and Lysias, whose orations are the purest models of the simple Attic eloquence, were, in early youth, among the original founders of the colony of Thurium[103], and the latter held a share in its government till an advanced period of life. The Eleatic school of philosophy was founded in Magna Græcia; and the impulse which the wisdom of Pythagoras had given to the mind, promoted also the studies of literature. Plato visited Tarentum during the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius Claudius[104], which was in the 406th year of Rome, and Zeuxis was invited from Greece to paint at Crotona the magnificent temple of Juno, which had been erected in that city[105]. [pg 52]History and poetry were cultivated with a success which did not dishonour the Grecian name. Lycus of Rhegium was the civil, and Glaucus of the same city was the literary historian of Magna Græcia. Orpheus of Crotona was the author of a poem on the expedition of the Argonauts, attributed to an elder Orpheus. The lyric productions of Ibicus of Rhegium rivalled those of Anacreon and Alcæus. Two hundred and fifty-five comedies, written by Alexis of Thurium, the titles of which have been collected by Meursius, and a few fragments of them by Stephens, are said to have been composed in the happiest vein of the middle comedy of the Greeks, which possessed much of the comic force of Aristophanes and Cratinus, without their malignity. In his Meropis and Ancylio, this dramatist is supposed to have carped at Plato; and his comedy founded on the life of Pythagoras, was probably in a similar vein of satire. Stephano, the son of Alexis, and who, according to Suidas, was the uncle of Menander, became chiefly celebrated for his tragedies; but his comedies were also distinguished by happy pictures of life, and uncommon harmony of versification.

War, which had so long retarded the progress of literature at Rome, at length became the cause of its culture. The Romans were now involved in a contest with the civilized colonies of Magna Græcia. Accordingly, when they garrisoned Thurium, in order to defend it against the Samnites, and when in 482 they obtained complete possession of Magna Græcia, by the capture of Tarentum, which presented the last resistance to their arms, they could not fail to catch a portion of Grecian taste and spirit, or at least to admire the beautiful creations of Grecian fancy. Many of the conquerors remained in Magna Græcia, while, on the other hand, all the inhabitants of its cities, who were most distinguished for literary attainments, fixed their residence at Rome.

The first Carthaginian war, which broke out in 489, so far from retarding the literary influence of these strangers, accelerated the steps of improvement. Unlike the former contests of the Romans, which were either with neighbouring states, or with barbarous nations who came to attack them in their own territories, it was not attended with that immediate danger which is utterly inconsistent with literary leisure. In its prosecution, too, the Romans for the first time carried their arms beyond Italy. Literature, indeed, was not one of those novelties in which the western part of Africa was fruitful, but, with the exception of Greece itself, there was no country where it flourished more luxuriantly than in Sicily; and that island, as is well known, was the principal scene of the first great strug[pg 53]gle between Rome and Carthage. None of the Grecian colonies shone with such splendour as Syracuse, a city founded by the Dorians of Corinth, in the 19th year of Rome. This capital had attained the summit both of political and literary renown long before the first Carthaginian war. Æschylus passed the concluding years of his life in Sicily, and wrote, it is said, his tragedy of The Persians, to gratify the curiosity of Hiero I. King of Syracuse, who was desirous to see a representation of the celebrated war which the Greeks had waged against Xerxes. Epicharmus, retained in the same elegant court, was the first who rejected, on the stage, the ancient mummeries of the satires, and composed dramas on that regular elaborate plan, which was reckoned worthy of imitation by Plautus—

“Dicitur ————————————

Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi[106].”

Dionysius, the tyrant, was also a patron of learning, and was himself a competitor in the fields of literature. Philistus, the historian, was the friend of the elder, and Plato of the younger Dionysius. Aristippus and Æschines passed some time in the court of these tyrants. Theocritus, and other poets of the Alexandrian constellation, resided in Sicily before they partook in Egypt of the splendid patronage of the Ptolemies. The Syracusans, who put to death so many of their Athenian prisoners in cold blood, and with frightful tortures, spared those of them who could recite the verses of Euripides. Scenic representations were peculiarly popular in Sicily: Its towns were crowded with theatres, and its dramatists were loaded with honours. The theatrical exhibitions which the Roman invaders of Sicily must have witnessed, and the respect there paid to distinguished poets, would naturally awaken literary emulation. During a contest of nearly twenty-four years between Rome and Carthage, Hiero II., King of Syracuse, was the zealous and strenuous ally of the Romans. At the conclusion of peace between these rival nations, in the year 512, part of Sicily was ceded to the Romans, and the intercourse which consequently arose with the inhabitants of this newly-acquired territory, laid the foundation of those studies, which were afterwards brought to perfection by the progress of time, and by direct communication with Greece itself[107].

Accordingly, it is in the end of the fifth, and beginning of the sixth century, from the building of Rome, that we find among its inhabitants the earliest vestiges of literature. Poetry, as with most other nations, was the first of the liberal arts which was cultivated among the Romans; and dramatic poetry, founded on the school of Greece, appears to have been that which was earliest preferred. We have seen, indeed, that previous to this period, and in the year 392, when the city was afflicted with a plague, the Senate decreed that players should be summoned from Etruria to appease the wrath of the gods by scenic representations, and that the Roman youth imitated these expiatory performances, by rallying each other in extemporary verses. This by some has been considered as a dawning of the drama, since the characters probably bore a resemblance to the Arlequin and Scaramouch of the Italian farces. But

LIVIUS ANDRONICUS,

A native of Magna Græcia, was the first who attempted to establish at Rome a regular theatre, or to connect a dramatic fable, free from the mummeries, the ballet, and the melodrama of the ancient satires[108]. Tiraboschi asserts, that when his country was finally subdued by the Romans, in 482, Livius was made captive and brought to Rome[109]. It is generally believed that he there became the slave, and afterwards the freedman of Livius Salinator, from whom he derived one of his names: these facts, however, do not seem to rest on any authority more ancient than the Eusebian Chronicle[110]. The precise period of his death is uncertain; but in Cicero’s Dialogue De Senectute, Cato is introduced saying, that he had seen old Livius while he was himself a youth[111]. Now Cato was born in 519, and since the period of youth among the Romans was considered as commencing at fifteen, it may be presumed that the existence of Livius was at least protracted till the year 534 of the city. It has been frequently said, that he lived till the year 546[112], because Livy[113] mentions that a hymn composed by this ancient poet was publicly sung in that [pg 55]year, to avert the disasters threatened by an alarming prodigy; but the historian does not declare that it was written for the occasion, or even recently before.

The earliest play of Livius was represented in 513 or 514, about a year after the termination of the first Punic war. Osannus, a modern German author, has written a learned and chronological dissertation on the question, in which of these years the first Roman play was performed[114]; but it is extremely difficult for us to come to any satisfactory conclusion on a subject which, even in the time of Cicero, was one of doubt and controversy[115]. Like Thespis, and other dramatists in the commencement of the theatrical art, Livius was an actor, and for a considerable time the sole performer in his own pieces. Afterwards, however, his voice failing, in consequence of the audience insisting on a repetition of favourite passages, he introduced a boy who relieved him, by declaiming in concert with the flute, while he himself executed the corresponding gesticulations in the monologues, and in the parts where high exertion was required, employing his own voice only in the conversational and less elevated scenes[116]. It was observed that his action grew more lively and animated, because he exerted his whole strength in gesticulating, while another had the care and trouble of pronouncing. “Hence,” continues Livy, “the practice arose of reciting those passages which required much modulation of the voice, to the gesture and action of the comedian. Thenceforth the custom so far prevailed, that the comedians never pronounced anything except the verses of the dialogues[117]:” And this system, which one should think must have completely destroyed the theatric illusion, continued, under certain modifications, to subsist on the Roman stage during the most refined periods of taste and literature.

The popularity of Livius increasing from these performances, as well as from a propitiatory hymn he had composed, and which had been followed by great public success, a building was assigned to him on the Aventine hill. This edifice was partly converted into a theatre, and was also in[pg 56]habited by a troop of players, for whom Livius wrote his pieces, and frequently acted along with them[118].

It has been disputed whether the first drama represented by Livius Andronicus at Rome was a tragedy or comedy[119]. However this may be, it appears from the names which have been preserved of his plays, that he wrote both tragedies and comedies. These titles, which have been collected by Fabricius and other writers, are, Achilles, Adonis, Ægisthus, Ajax, Andromeda, Antiopa, Centauri, Equus Trojanus, Helena, Hermione, Ino, Lydius, Protesilaodamia, Serenus, Tereus, Teucer, Virgo[120]. Such names also evince that most of his dramas were translated or imitated from the works of his countrymen of Magna Græcia, or from the great tragedians of Greece. Thus, Æschylus wrote a tragedy on the subject of Ægisthus: There is still an Ajax of Sophocles extant, and he is known to have written an Andromeda: Stobæus mentions the Antiopa of Euripides: Four Greek dramatists, Sophocles, Euripides, Anaxandrides, and Philæterus, composed tragedies on the subject of Tereus; and Epicharmus, as well as others, chose for their comedies the story of the Syrens.

Little, however, except the titles, remains to us, from the dramas of Livius. The longest passage we possess in connection, extends only to four lines. It forms part of a hymn to Diana, recited by the chorus, in the tragedy of Ino, and contains an animated exhortation to a person about to proceed to the chase:—

“Et jam purpureo suras include cothurno,

Baltheus et revocet volucres in pectore sinus;

Pressaque jam gravida crepitent tibi terga pharetra:

Dirige odorisequos ad cæca cubilia canes[121].”

This passage testifies the vast improvement effected by Livius on the Latin Tongue; and indeed the polish of the language and metrical correctness of these hexameter lines, have of late led to a suspicion that they are not the production of a period so ancient as the age of Livius[122], or at least that they [pg 57]have been modernised by some later hand. With this earliest offspring of the Latin muse, it may be curious to compare a production from her last age of decrepitude. Nemesianus, in his Cynegeticon, has closely imitated this passage while exhorting Diana to prepare for the chase:

“Sume habitus, arcumque manu; pictamque pharetram

Suspende ex humeris; sint aurea tela, sagittæ;

Candida puniceis aptentur crura cothurnis:

Sit chlamys aurato multum subtemine lusa,

Corrugesque sinus gemmatis baltheus artet

Nexibus ——”

As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the Ino are the only passage among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved a second perusal[123]. They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry. It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature, there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better models existed:

“Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livi

Esse reor, memini quæ plagosum mihi parvo

Orbilium dictare; sed emendata videri,

Pulchraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror:

Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et

Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter;

Injuste totum ducit venditque poema[124].”

But although Livius may have been too much read in the schools, and too much admired in an age, which could boast of models so greatly superior to his writings, he is at least entitled to praise, as the inventor among the Romans of a species of poetry which was afterwards carried by them to much higher perfection. By translating the Odyssey, too, into Latin verse, he adopted the means which, of all others, was most likely to foster and improve the infant literature of his country—as he thus presented it with an image of the most [pg 58]pure and perfect taste, and at the same time with those wild and romantic adventures, which are best suited to attract the sympathy and interest of a half-civilized nation. This happy influence could not be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian verse, which led Cicero to compare the translation of Livius to the ancient statues, which might be attributed to Dædalus[125].

The Latin Odyssey commenced—

“Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum.”

There have also been three lines preserved by Festus, which are translated from the 8th Book, expressing the effects produced on the mind by a sea-storm—

—— “Namque nilum pejus

Macerat hemonem quamde mare sævom: vires quoi

Sunt magnæ, topper confringent importunæ undæ[126].”

From the æra in which the dramatic productions of Livius appeared, theatrical representations formed the object of a peculiar art. The more regular drama, founded on that of Magna Græcia, or Sicily, being divided into tragedy and comedy, became, in a great measure, the province of professional players or authors, while the Roman youths of distinction continued to amuse themselves with the Fabulæ Atellanæ, and Exodia, a species of satirical medley, derived from the ancient Etruscans, or from the Osci, the nature and progress of which I shall hereafter have occasion more particularly to examine.

CNEIUS NÆVIUS,

A native of Campania, was the first imitator of the regular dramatic works which had been produced by Livius Andronicus. He served in the first Punic war, and his earliest plays were represented at Rome in the year 519[127]. The names of his tragedies, from which as few fragments remain as from those of Livius, are still preserved:—Alcestis, (from which there is yet extant a description of old age in rugged and barbarous verse)—Danae, Dulorestes, Hesiona, Hector, Iphigenia, Lycurgus, Phœnissæ, Protesilaus, and Telephus. All [pg 59]these were translated, or closely imitated from the works of Euripides, Anaxandrides, and other Greek dramatists. Cicero commends a passage in the Hector, one of the above-mentioned tragedies[128], where the hero of the piece, delighted with the praises which he had received from his father Priam, exclaims—

“—— Lætus sum

Laudari me abs te, pater, laudato viro[129].”

Nævius, however, was accounted a better comic than tragic poet. Cicero has given us some specimens of his jests, with which that celebrated wit and orator appears to have been greatly amused; but they consist rather in unexpected turns of expression, or a play of words, than in genuine humour. One of these, recorded in the second Book De Oratore, has found its way into our jest-books; and though one of the best in Cicero, it is one of the worst of Joe Miller. It is the saying of a knavish servant, “that nothing was shut up from him in his master’s house”.—“Solum esse, cui domi nihil sit nec obsignatum, nec occlusum: Quod idem,” adds Cicero, “in bono servo dici solet, sed hoc iisdem etiam verbis.”

Unfortunately for Nævius, he did not always confine himself in his comedies to such inoffensive jests. The dramas of Magna Græcia and Sicily, especially those of Epicharmus, were the prototypes of the older Greek comedy; and accordingly the most ancient Latin plays, particularly those of Nævius, which were formed on the same school, though there be no evidence that they ridiculed political events, partook of the personal satire and invective which pervaded the productions of Aristophanes. If, as is related, the comedies of Nævius were directed against the vices and corporal defects of the Consuls and Senators of Rome, he must have been the most original of the Latin comic poets, and infinitely more so than Plautus or Terence; since although he may have parodied or copied the dramatic fables of the ancient Greek or Sicilian comedies, the spirit and colouring of the particular scenes must have been his own. The elder Scipio was one of the chief objects of his satiric representations, and the poetic severity with which Aristophanes persecuted Socrates or Euripides, was hardly more indecent and misdirected than the sarcasms of Nævius against the greatest captain, the most accomplished scholar, and the most virtuous citizen of his age. [pg 60]Some lines are still extant, in which he lampooned Scipio on account of a youthful amour, in which he had been detected by his father—

“Etiam qui res magnas manu sæpe gessit gloriose,

Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus

Præstat, eum suus pater, cum pallio uno, ab amicâ abduxit.”

The conqueror of Hannibal treated these libels with the same indifference with which Cæsar afterwards regarded the lines of Catullus. Nævius, however, did not long escape with impunity. Rome was a very different sort of republic from Athens: It was rather an aristocracy than a democracy, and its patricians were not always disposed to tolerate the taunts and insults which the chiefs of the Greek democracy were obliged to endure. Nævius had said in one of his verses, that the patrician family of the Metelli had frequently obtained the Consulship before the age permitted by law, and he insinuated that they had been promoted to this dignity, not in consequence of their virtues, but the cruelty of the Roman fate:

“Fato Metelli Romæ fiunt Consules.”

With the assistance of the other patricians, the Metelli retorted his sarcasms in a Saturnian stanza, not unlike the measure of some of our old ballads, in which they threatened to play the devil with their witty persecutor—

“Et Nævio Poetæ,

Cum sæpe læderentur,

Dabunt malum Metelli,

Dabunt malum Metelli,

Dabunt malum Metelli.”

The Metelli, however, did not confine their vengeance to this ingenious and spirited satire, in the composition of which, it may be presumed that the whole Roman Senate was engaged. On account of the unceasing abuse and reproaches which he had uttered against them, and other chief men of the city, he was thrown into prison, where he wrote his comedies, the Hariolus and Leontes. These plays being in some measure intended as a recantation of his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes of the people.[130] He soon, however, relapsed into his former courses, and continued to persecute the nobility in his dramas and satires with such implacable dislike, that he was at length driven from Rome by their in[pg 61]fluence, and having retired to Utica[131], he died there, in the year 550, according to Cicero[132]; but Varro fixes his death somewhat later. Before leaving Rome, he had composed the following epitaph on himself, which Gellius remarks is full of Campanian arrogance; though the import of it, he adds, might be allowed to be true, had it been written by another[133];

“Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,

Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam;

Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,

Oblitei sunt Romæ loquier Latina lingua[134].”

Besides his comedies and the above epitaph, Nævius was also author of the Cyprian Iliad, a translation from a Greek poem, called the Cyprian Epic. Aristotle, in the 23d chapter of his Poetics, mentions the original work, (τα κυπρια,) which, he says, had furnished many subjects for the drama. Some writers, particularly Pindar, have attributed this Greek poem to Homer; and there was long an idle story current, that he had given it as a portion to his daughter Arsephone. Herodotus, in his second Book, concludes, after some critical discussion, that it was not written by Homer, but that it was doubtless the work of a contemporary poet, or one who lived shortly after him. Heyne thinks it most probable, that it was by a poet called Stasinus, a native of the island of Cyprus, and that it received its name from the country of its author[135]. Whoever may have written this Cyprian Epic, it contained twelve books, and was probably a work of amorous and romantic fiction. It commenced with the nuptials of Thetis and Peleus—it related the contention of the three goddesses on Mount Ida—the fables concerning Palamedes—the story of the daughters of Anius—and the love adventures of the Phrygian fair during the early period of the siege of Troy—and it terminated with the council of the gods, at which it was resolved that Achilles should be withdrawn from the war, by sowing dissension between him and Atrides[136].

A metrical chronicle, which chiefly related the events of the first Punic war, was another, and probably the last work of Nævius, since Cicero says, that in writing it he filled up the leisure of his latter days with wonderful complacency and satisfaction[137]. It was originally undivided; but, after his death, was separated into seven books[138].—Although the first Punic war was the principal subject, as appears from its announcement,

“Qui terräi Latiäi hemones tuserunt

Vires fraudesque Poinicas fabor;”

yet it also afforded a rapid sketch of the preceding incidents of Roman history. It commenced with the flight of Æneas from Carthage, in a ship built by Mercury[139]; and the early wars of the Romans were detailed in the first and second books. To judge by the fragments which remain, the whole work appears to have been full of mythological machinery. Macrobius informs us, that some lines of this production described the Romans tost by a tempest, and represented Venus complaining of the hardships which they suffered to Jupiter, who consoles her by a prospect of their future glory—a passage which probably suggested those verses in the first book of the Æneid, where Venus, in like manner, complains to Jupiter of the danger experienced by her son in a storm, and the god consoles her by assurances of his ultimate prosperity[140]. Cicero mentions, that Ennius, too, though he classes Nævius among the fauns and rustic bards, had borrowed, or, if he refused to acknowledge his obligations, had pilfered, many ornaments from his predecessor[141]. In the same passage, Cicero, while he admits that Ennius was the more elegant and correct writer, bears testimony to the merit of the older bard, and declares, that the Punic war of this antiquated poet afforded him a pleasure as exquisite as the finest statue that was ever formed by Myron. To judge, however, from the lines which remain, though in general too much broken to enable us even to divine their meaning, the style of Nævius in this [pg 63]work was more rugged and remote from modern Latin than that of his own plays and satires, or the dramas of Livius Andronicus.

The whole, too, is written in the rough, unmodulated, Saturnian verse—a sort of irregular iambics, said to have been originally employed by Faunus and the prophets, who delivered their oracles in this measure. To such rude and unpolished verses Ennius alludes in a fragment of his Annals, while explaining his reasons for not treating of the first Punic war—

—— “Scripsere alii rem

Versibus, quos olim Fauni, vatesque canebant;

Cum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat,

Nec dicti studiosus erat.”

As this was the most ancient species of measure employed in Roman poetry, as it was universally used before the melody of Greek verse was poured on the Roman ear, and as, from ancient practice, the same strain continued to be repeated till the age of Ennius, by whom the heroic measure was introduced, it would not be suitable to omit some notice of its origin and structure in an account of Roman literature and poetry.

Several writers have supposed that the Saturnian measure was borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks[142], having been used by Euripides, and particularly by Archilochus; but others have believed that it was an invention of the ancient Italians[143]. It was first employed in the Carmen Saliare, songs of triumph, supplications to the gods, or monumental inscriptions, and was afterwards, as we have seen, adopted in the works of Livius Andronicus and Nævius. In consequence of the fragments which remain of the Saturnian verses being so short and corrupted, it is extremely difficult to fix their regular measure, or reduce them to one standard of versification. Herman seems to consider a Saturnian line as having regularly consisted of two iambuses, an amphibrachys, and three trochaës—

˘ _ | ˘ _ | ˘ _ ˘ | _ ˘ | _ ˘ | _ ˘

A dactyl, however, was occasionally admitted into the place of the first or second trochaë, and a spondee was not unfrequently introduced indiscriminately. It also appears that a [pg 64]Saturnian line was sometimes divided into two—the first line consisting of the two iambuses and amphibrachys, and the second of the trochaës, whence the Saturnian verse has been sometimes called iambic, and at others trochaic.

The Hexameter verse, which had been invented by the Greeks, was first introduced into Latium, or at least, was first employed in a work of any extent, by

ENNIUS,

—— “Qui primus amœno

Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,

Per gentes Italas hominum quæ clara clueret.”

This poet, who has generally received the glorious appellation of the Father of Roman Song, was a native of Rudiæ, a town in Calabria, and lived from the year of Rome 515 to 585[144]. In his early youth he went to Sardinia; and, if Silius Italicus may be believed, he served in the Calabrian levies, which, in the year 538, followed Titus Manlius to the war which he waged in that island against the favourers of the Carthaginian cause[145]. After the termination of the campaign, he continued to live for twelve years in Sardinia[146]. He was at length brought to Rome by Cato, the Censor, who, in 550, visited Sardinia, on returning as quæstor from Africa[147]. At Rome he fixed his residence on the Aventine hill, where he lived in a very frugal manner, having only a single servant maid as an attendant[148]. He instructed, however, the Patrician youth in Greek, and acquired the friendship of many of the most illustrious men in the state. Being distinguished (like Æschylus, the great father of Grecian tragedy) in arms as well as letters, he followed M. Fulvius Nobilior during his expedition to Ætolia in 564[149]; and in 569 he obtained the freedom of the city, through the favour of Quintus Fulvius Nobilior, the son of his former patron, Marcus[150]. He was also protected by the elder Scipio Africanus, whom he is said to have accompanied in all his campaigns:

“Hærebat doctus lateri, castrisque solebat

Omnibus in medias Ennius ire tubas[151].”

It is difficult, however, to see in what expeditions he could have attended this renowned general. His Spanish and African wars were concluded before Ennius was brought from Sardinia to Rome; and the campaign against Antiochus was commenced and terminated while he was serving under Fulvius Nobilior in Ætolia[152]. In his old age he obtained the friendship of Scipio Nasica; and the degree of intimacy subsisting between them has been characterised by the well-known anecdote of their successively feigning to be from home[153]. He is said to have been intemperate in drinking[154], which brought on the disease called Morbus Articularis, a disorder resembling the gout, of which he died at the age of seventy, just after he had exhibited his tragedy of Thyestes:

“Ennius ipse pater dum pocula siccat iniqua,

Hoc vitio tales fertur meruisse dolores[155].”

The evils, however, of old age and indigence were supported by him, as we learn from Cicero, with such patience, and even cheerfulness, that one would almost have imagined he derived satisfaction from circumstances which are usually regarded, as being, of all others, the most dispiriting and oppressive[156]. The honours due to his character and talents were, as is frequently the case, reserved till after his death, when a bust of him was placed in the family tomb of the Scipios[157], who, till the time of Sylla, continued the practice of burying, instead of burning, their dead. In the days of Livy, the bust still remained near that sepulchre, beyond the Porta Capena, along with the statues of Africanus and Scipio Asiaticus.[158] The tomb was discovered in 1780, on a farm situated between the Via Appia and Via Latina. The slabs, which have been since removed to the Vatican, bear several inscriptions, commemorating different persons of the Scipian family. Neither statues, nor any other memorial, then existed of Africanus [pg 66]himself, or of Asiaticus[159]; but a laurelled bust of Pepperino stone, which was found in this tomb, and which now stands on the Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus in the Vatican, is supposed to be that of Ennius[160]. There is also still extant an epitaph on this poet, reported to have been written by himself[161], strongly characteristic of that overweening conceit and that high estimation of his own talents, which are said to have formed the chief blemish of his character:—

“Aspicite, O cives, senis Ennî imaginis formam;

Hic vestrum panxit maxuma facta patrum.

Nemo me lacrumis decoret, nec funera fletu

Faxit—cur? volito vivus per ora virûm[162].”

The lines formerly quoted[163], which were written by Nævius for his tomb-stone, express as high a sense of his own poetical merits as the above verses; but there is in them something plaintive and melancholy, quite different from the triumphant exultation in the epitaph of Ennius.

To judge by the fragments of his works which remain, Ennius greatly surpassed his predecessors, not only in poetical genius, but in the art of versification. By his time, indeed, the best models of Greek composition had begun to be studied at Rome. Ennius particularly professed to have imitated Homer, and tried to persuade his countrymen that the soul and genius of that great poet had revived in him, through the medium of a peacock, according to the process of Pythagorean transmigration. It is to this fantastic genealogy that Persius has alluded in his 6th satire:—

“Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse

Mæonides Quintus, pavone ex Pythagoreo.”

From the following lines of Lucretius it would appear, that Ennius somewhere in his works had feigned that the shade of Homer appeared to him, and explained to him the nature and laws of the universe:—

“Etsi præterea tamen esse Acherusia Templa

Ennius æternis exponit versibus edens;

Quo neque permanent animæ, neque corpora nostra,

Sed quædam simulacra modis pallentia miris:

Unde, sibi exortam, semper florentis Homeri

Commemorat speciem, lacrumas effundere salsas

Cœpisse, et rerum naturam expandere dictis.”

Accordingly, we find in the fragments of Ennius many imitations of the Iliad and Odyssey. It is, however, the Greek tragic writers whom Ennius has chiefly imitated; and indeed it appears from the fragments which remain, that all his plays were rather translations from the dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, on the same subjects which he has chosen, than original tragedies. They are founded on the old topics of Priam and Paris, Hector and Hecuba; and truly Ennius, as well as most other Latin tragedians, seems to have anticipated Horace’s maxim—

“Rectus Iliacum carmen deducis in actus,

Quamsi proferres ignota indictaque primus.”

But although it be quite clear that all the plays of Ennius were translated, or closely imitated, from the Greek, there is occasionally some difficulty in fixing on the drama which was followed, and also in ascertaining whether there be any original passage whatever in the Latin imitation. This difficulty arises from the practice adopted by the Greek dramatists, of new modelling their tragedies. Euripides, in particular, sometimes altered his plays after their first representation, in order to accommodate them to the circumstances of the times, and to obviate the sarcastic criticisms of Aristophanes, who had frequently exposed whole scenes to ridicule. With such views, considerable changes were made on Iphigenia in Aulis, the Hippolytus, and Medea. Euripides is the author from whom Ennius has chiefly borrowed the fables of his tragedies; and when Sophocles and Euripides have treated the same subject, the latter poet has been uniformly preferred. Not one of the dramas of Ennius has been imitated from Æschylus. The reason of this is sufficiently obvious: The plays of Æschylus have little involution of plot, and are rather what we should now term dramatic sketches, than tragedies. The plots of Sophocles are more complex than those of Æschylus; but the tragedies of Euripides are the most involved of all. Now, it may be presumed, that a tragedy crowded with action, and filled with the bustle of a complicated fable, was best adapted to the taste of the Romans, because we know that this was their taste in comedy. Plautus combined two Greek comedies to form one Latin; and the representation of the Hecyra of Terence, the only Latin play formed on the [pg 68]simple Greek model, was repeatedly abandoned by the people before it was concluded, for the sake of amusements of more tumult and excitement.

Of Achilles, which, in alphabetical order, is the first of the plays of Ennius, there are just extant seven lines, which have been preserved by Nonius and Festus; and from such remains it is impossible to know what part of the life or actions of the Grecian hero Ennius had selected as the subject of his plot. There were many Greek tragedies on the story of Achilles, of which, one by Aristarchus of Tegea, was the most celebrated, and is supposed to have been that from which Ennius copied.

Ajax. Sophocles was author of two tragedies founded on the events of the life of Ajax;—Ajax Flagellifer, and Ajax Locrensis. The first turns on the phrensy with which the Grecian hero was seized, on being refused the arms of Achilles, and it may be conjectured, from a single fragment, apparently at the very close of the tragedy by Ennius, and which describes the attendants raising the body of Ajax, streaming with blood, that this was the piece translated by the Roman poet.

Alcmæon. This play, of which the fable closely resembles the story of Orestes, has by some been attributed to the Latin poet Quintus Catulus. The transports of Alcmæon had been frequently exhibited on the Greek stage[164]. The drama of Ennius was taken from a tragedy of Euripides, which is now lost, but its subject is well known from the Thebaid of Statius. The soothsayer Amphiaraus, foreseeing that he would perish at the siege of Thebes, concealed himself from the crimps of those days; but his wife, Eryphile, who alone knew the place of his retreat, being bribed by the gift of a mantle and necklace, revealed the secret to one of the “Seven before Thebes,” who compelled him to share in the expedition. Before death, the prophet enjoined his son, Alcmæon, to avenge him on his faithless wife. The youth, in compliance with this pious command, slew his mother, and was afterwards tormented by the Furies, who would only be appeased by a gift of the whole paraphernalia of Eryphile, which were accordingly hung up in their temple. As soon as their persecution ceased, he married the fair Calirrhoe, daughter of Achelous, and precipitately judging that the consecrated necklace would be better bestowed on his beautiful bride than on the beldame by whom he had so long been haunted, he contrived, on false pretences, to purloin it from the place where it was deposited; but the [pg 69]Furies were not to be so choused out of their perquisites, and in consequence of his rash preference, Alcmæon was compelled to suffer a renewed phrensy, and to undergo a fresh course of expiatory ceremonies[165].

Alexander (Paris). The plot of this play hinges on the destruction of Troy. The passages which remain are a heavenly admonition to Priam on the crimes of his son, a lamentation for the death of Hector, and a prediction of Cassandra concerning the wooden horse. Planck, in his recent edition of the Medea of Ennius, while he does not deny that our poet may have written a tragedy with the title of Alexander, is of opinion that the fragments quoted as from this play in the editions of Ennius belong properly to his Alexandra (Cassandra), to which subject they are perfectly applicable. This German critic has also collected a good many fragments belonging to the Cassandra, which had been omitted in Columna and Merula’s editions of Ennius. The longest of these passages, delivered by Cassandra in the style of a prophecy, seems to refer to events previous to the Trojan war—the judgment of Paris, and arrival of Helen from Sparta.

Andromache. It is uncertain from what Greek writer this tragedy has been translated. It seems to be founded on the lamentable story of Andromache, who fell, with other Trojan captives, to the share of Neoptolemus, and saw her only son, Astyanax, torn from her embraces, to be precipitated from the summit of a tower, in compliance with the injunctions of an oracle. Among the fragments of this play, we possess one of the longest passages extant of the works of Ennius, containing a pathetic lamentation of Andromache for the fall and conflagration of Troy, with a comparison between its smoking ruins and former splendour. This passage Cicero styles, “Præclarum Carmen!”—“Est enim,” he adds, “et rebus, et verbis, et modis lugubre[166].”

—— “Quid petam

Præsidi aut exsequar? quo nunc aut exilio aut fuga freta sim?

Arce et urbe orba sum; quo accidam? quo applicem?

Cui nec aræ patriæ domi stant; fractæ et disjectæ jacent,

Fana flamma deflagrata; tosti alti stant parietes.

O Pater, O Patria, O Priami domus;

Septum altisono cardine templum:

Vidi ego te, adstante ope barbarica,

Tectis cælatis, laqueatis,

Auro, ebore instructum regifice.

Hæc omnia vidi inflammari,

Priamo vi vitam evitari,

Jovis aram sanguine turpari[167].”

Andromache Molottus is translated from the Andromache of Euripides, and is so called from Molottus, the son of Neoptolemus and Andromache.

Andromeda. Livius Andronicus had formerly written a Latin play on the well-known story of Perseus and Andromeda, which was translated from Sophocles. The play of Ennius, however, on the same subject, was a version of a tragedy of Euripides, now chiefly known from the ridicule cast on it in the fifth act of Aristophanes’ Feasts of Ceres. That Ennius’ drama was translated from Euripides, is sufficiently manifest, from a comparison of its fragments with the passages of the Greek Andromeda, preserved by Stobæus.

Athamas. There is only one short fragment of this play now extant.

Cresphontes. Merope, believing that her son Cresphontes had been slain by a person who was brought before her, discovers, when about to avenge on him the death of her child, that she whom she had mistaken for the murderer is Cresphontes himself.

Dulorestes. Of this play there is only one line remaining, and of course it is almost impossible to ascertain from what Greek original it was borrowed. Even this single verse has by several critics been supposed to be falsely attributed to Ennius, and to belong, in fact, to the Dulorestes of Pacuvius[168].

Erectheus. There is just enough of this play extant to have satisfied Columna, one of the editors of Ennius, that it was taken from a tragedy of the same name by Euripides. As told by Hyginus, the fable concerning Erectheus, King of Attica, was, that he had four daughters, who all pledged themselves not to survive the death of any one of their number. Eumolpus, son of Neptune, being slain at the siege of Athens, his father required that one of the daughters of Erectheus should be sacrificed to him in compensation. This having [pg 71]been accomplished, her sisters slew themselves as a matter of course, and Erectheus was soon afterwards struck by Jupiter with thunder, at the solicitation of Neptune. The longest passage preserved from this tragedy is the speech of Colophonia, when about to be sacrificed to Neptune by her father.

Eumenides. This play, translated from Æschylus, exhibited the phrensy of Orestes, and his final absolution from the vengeance of the Furies.

Hectoris Lytris vel Lustra, so called from λυω, solvo, turned on the redemption from Achilles by Priam, of the body of Hector. It appears, however, from the fragments, that the combat of Hector, and the brutal treatment of his corpse by Achilles, had been represented or related in the early scenes of the piece.

Hecuba. This is a free translation from the Greek Hecuba, perhaps the most tragic of all the dramas of Euripides. From the work of Ennius, there is still extant a speech by the shade of Polydorus, announcing in great form his arrival from Acheron. This soliloquy, which is a good deal expanded from the original Greek, always produced a great sensation in the Roman theatre, and is styled by Cicero, Grande Carmen[169].—

“Adsum, atque advenio Acherunte, vix via alta, atque ardua,

Per speluncas saxeis structas aspereis pendentibus

Maxumeis; ubi rigida constat et crassa caligo inferûm;

Unde animæ excitantur obscura umbra, aperto ostio

Alti Acheruntis, falso sanguine imagines mortuorum[170].”

A speech of Hecuba, on seeing the dead body of Polydorus, and in which she reproaches the Greeks as having no punishment for the murder of a parent or a guest, seems to have been added by Ennius himself, at least it is not in the Greek original of Euripides. On the whole, indeed, the Hecuba of Ennius appears, so far as we can judge from the fragments, to be the least servile of his imitations. In Columna’s edition of Ennius, an opportunity is afforded by corresponding quotations from the Greek Hecuba, of comparing the manner in which the Latin poet has varied, amplified, or compressed the thoughts of his original. In Euripides, Hecuba, while persuading Ulysses to intercede for Polixena, says—

“Τὸ δ’ αξίωμα, καν κακως λέγῃς, τὸ σόν

Πείσει. Λόγος γαρ ἔκ τ’ αδοξούντων ἰων,

Και ’κ των δοκούντων αὐτὸς, οὐ ταυτὸν σθένει.”

Ennius imitates this as follows:

“Hæc tu, etsi perverse dices, facile Achivos flexeris;

Namque opulenti cum loquuntur pariter atque ignobiles,

Eadem dicta, eademque oratio æqua non æque valent.”

This has been copied by Plautus, and from him by Moliere in his Amphitrion—

“Tous les discours sont des sottises

Partant d’un homme sans eclat;

Ce seroient paroles exquisses,

Si c’etoit un grand qui parlàt.”

The last link in this chain of imitation, is Pope’s well-known lines—

“What woful stuff this madrigal would be,

In some starved hackney sonnetteer or me!

But let a lord once own the happy lines,

How the wit brightens, how the style refines!”

Iliona sive Polydorus.—Priam, during the siege of Troy, had entrusted his son Polydorus to the care of Polymnestor, King of Thrace, who was married to Iliona, daughter of Priam, and slew his guest, in order to possess himself of the treasure which had been sent along with him. The only passage of the play which remains, is one in which the shade of Polydorus calls on Hecuba to arise and bury her murdered son.

Iphigenia.—Ennius, as already mentioned, appears invariably to have translated from Euripides, in preference to Sophocles, when the same subject had been treated by both these poets. Sophocles had written a tragedy on the topic of the well-known Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides; but it is the latter piece which has been adopted by the Roman poet.