Chapter I: Front Matter

The Library of Literary History

A LITERARY HISTORY OF INDIA. By R. W. FRAZER, LL.B.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND. By DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF AMERICA. By BARRETT WENDELL.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. By J. H. MILLAR, LL.B.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF PERSIA. By EDWARD G. BROWNE, M.A. (In Two
Volumes.)

A LITERARY HISTORY OF FRANCE. By ÉMILE FAGUET.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ARABS. By REYNOLD A. NICHOLSON, M.A.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF ROME TO THE CLOSE OF THE GOLDEN AGE. By
J. WIGHT DUFF, M.A., D.LITT., LL.D.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF ROME IN THE SILVER AGE. By J. WIGHT DUFF,
M.A., D.LITT., LL.D.

_Other Volumes in Preparation._

A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE JEWS. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, M.A.

A LITERARY HISTORY OF SPAIN. By JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY.

ETC. ETC. ETC.

_THE LIBRARY
OF
LITERARY HISTORY_

A Literary History of Rome
in the Silver Age

_By the same Author_

A Literary History of Rome. _From the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age._

“Mr. Duff’s wide acquaintance with modern literature is not the least of his qualifications.... His treatise, full and erudite, yet everywhere human and interesting, cannot fail to deepen in his readers the sense of the continuity of literature and the relation of literature to life, and the debt of the modern world to Rome.”—_The Times._

“Professor Wight Duff compels us to listen. To those who even dimly remember their Latin there is something irresistible in his style and arrangement, in his knowledge and in the temperate freshness of his criticism.”—_The Nation._

“A work of rare scholarship condensed with consummate care and judgment.”—_Scotsman._

“What particularly marks it out for suggestiveness and vigour is the broad human platform from which it surveys the progress of Latin poetry and prose.”—_The Daily Telegraph._

“An author who can render so many diverse authors adequately appeals to us at once as an understanding critic at any rate.... There is labour and erudition and a keen sense of literary values.”—_Saturday Review._

“The book is thoroughly up-to-date, and incorporates the results of recent philological and historical research. It is written in a style which commands admiration for its lucidity, terseness and vigour.”—_The Classical Review._

“The taste and skill of his illustrative translations indicate a critic whose independent judgment of literary quality, and whose divination of the final and essential charm of a masterpiece are far better worth recording than is usually the case in works of this sort. As a matter of fact, however, we have had no works of this sort, at all events, in our own tongue.”—_American Journal of Philology._

“L’ouvrage s’addresse donc à un large public cultivé, sans exclure les gens de métier.... Ses jugements sont ceux d’un homme de goût qui n’accepte pas sans examen les décisions d’autrui.... Il connaît bien ce dont il parle et il le fait connaître.”—Professor Lejay in _Revue de philologie de littérature et d’histoire anciennes_.

“Ein sympathetisches und wohl zu lesendes Buch, dessen Recht und Wert darin legt dass der Verfasser ein persönliches Verhältnis zu den Personen und Dingen hat über die er schreibt, seine Eindrücke in die Beleuchtung einer feinen und weiten Bildung rückt, stets das Ganze nicht trüben lässt, noch auch umgekehrt. Er hat auch Sinn für den Hintergrund und Zusammenhang der Dinge, wenigstens so weit beides römisch ist.”—Professor Friedrich Leo in _Deutsche Literaturzeitung_.

Reliefs from frieze of temple of Minerva in Nerva’s Forum representing the goddess’s patronage of domestic arts.

_From photograph by Alinari._]

A Literary History
of Rome in the
Silver Age

From Tiberius to Hadrian

_By_
J. Wight Duff

_M.A., D.Litt. (Oxon.), Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), LL.D. (Aberdeen);
Professor of Classics, Armstrong College (in the University
of Durham), Newcastle-upon-Tyne_

Author of
“A Literary History of Rome to the Close of the Golden
Age” and “Writers of Rome”

T. Fisher Unwin Limited
Bouverie House, Fleet Street
1927

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

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Preface

The favourable reception accorded in several countries to my work on _A Literary History of Rome from the Origins to the Close of the Golden Age_, of which the first edition appeared in 1909, suggested the idea of continuing on similar principles the study of Latin literature into the first and second centuries, during which the Roman empire at its zenith in power and efficiency rendered its greatest services to human civilisation. The project was dropped throughout the period of the Great War, when, even if publication had been feasible, duties on a local Brigade Committee and for a time as Acting-Principal of my College effectually removed me from the atmosphere of literary criticism. Even after my publisher, Mr. Fisher Unwin, was good enough to revive the design, progress was extraordinarily slow, owing to the increasing demands made upon time by the recurrent problems of a modern university.

As in the former volume, emphasis has here been laid on the national character imprinted upon Latin literature despite all borrowings from Greek models; and attention has been carefully devoted to the evidence for the facts of an author’s life in an endeavour to recreate the environment amidst which he wrote. Nor have material sources, whether Greek or Latin, been overlooked: indispensable though some account of these must be for a true conception of a writer as at once inheritor and progenitor, it is surprising to note how little in this country scholarship has concerned itself with the origin of encyclopaedic learning like that of the elder Pliny. The arrangement adopted is different from that in Professor Summers’s skilful handling of a slightly shorter period in his _Silver Age of Latin Literature_ under headings of various kinds of literature rather than on chronological lines. In the present work, where historical background and literary evolution are alike regarded as of vital importance, the treatment has been not according to _genre_ but mainly in the order of time. While the limits set for full discussion of authors are A.D. 14–A.D. 138, these dates are not rigidly observed respecting relevant topics, such as the survival of an author’s influence till modern times or the continuance of the Roman educational system; and an epilogue is added to give a brief conspectus of the literature which followed the Silver Age.

An attempt has been made to secure acquaintance with a reasonable proportion of the vast number of treatises and pamphlets written in Latin and in several modern languages upon matters related to the authors of the period. The obligations incurred to such works may be gauged from references in the footnotes. But it is obvious that no amount of reading in books upon books, however valuable in substance, can avail to produce either a vital chronicle of any age or serviceable estimates of its writers without first-hand study of the writers themselves and independent appreciation of their significance. I hope, therefore, for success in conveying to readers, by summary, by quotation, and by criticism, something of the impression made on myself during adventures among the literary products of the Silver Age. The illustrative translations from Latin into prose or verse are my own, and have been for the most part composed specially for this volume. Thanks are due to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for permission to use a few verse renderings which I made for my book on _The Writers of Rome_. The general reader, whose Latin has perhaps grown rusty, may welcome these translations as supplementing the historical and critical portions, while he will doubtless realize that it is optional to consult or not to consult the footnotes.

The bibliographical notes, it should be explained, are intended, not to be exhaustive, but to give by mention of selected editions some clue to the history of the printed text of an author and to include representative modern studies of his literary significance.

I wish to acknowledge kind assistance rendered by Mr. Basil Anderton, M.A., Public Librarian, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and by Miss Constance Shipley, M.A., Lecturer in Classics at Armstrong College, in reading and criticising some of the chapters of this book. My son, Mr. Arnold M. Duff, M.A., B.Litt.(Oxon.), Assistant Lecturer in Greek in the University of Aberdeen, has also perused several chapters and made useful suggestions, while my wife copied for the press either by hand or by typewriter almost the whole manuscript. Both have helped greatly in the checking of proofs and in the verification of references. To Professor Hermann Dessau of Berlin I owe several references to inscriptions which he sent me some years ago to amplify those in my article on “Roman Education” in _The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_. In the choice of a frontispiece, intended to illustrate the art of the period, I had the great benefit of advice from Mrs. Arthur Strong, Litt.D., LL.D., formerly Assistant-Director of the British School at Rome, in whose penetrating discernment of the true ethos of Roman sculpture I have found much to reinforce my argument that within the analogous domain of literature the Romans knew not only how to borrow from Greece but also how independently to create the beautiful.

It is a satisfaction to observe among scholars a growing insistence upon the independent vitality of Roman literature and a growing disinclination to regard it as a pale second-hand reflection of the splendour of Greek literature. My friend, the late Dr. Warde Fowler, appended to his Presidential Address on “The Imagination of the Romans,” read at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting of the central Classical Association of England and Wales in 1920, a note to the effect that he was in agreement with the contentions advocated on the subject in my _Literary History of Rome_; and only last year a German Professor, Herr Günther Jachmann, chose as the theme of an inaugural lecture at Köln “Die Originalität der römischen Literatur”. The value of Roman literature cannot be grasped without recognition of the extent to which Roman authors found fresh stimulus in surroundings widened far beyond those assigned by historical circumstance to the brilliant intellects of Greece.

J. W. D.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE
_July 1927_

Table of Contents

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