Chapter VII: Book IX: Luxury and lust, cruelty, anger and hatred, avarice,

arrogance, perfidy, temerity, mistakes, vengeance, wicked
sayings and doings, deaths out of the common, desire of life,
enrolment in families by fraud.

The utility of this fairly full, but not exhaustive, list rests on its indication of the author’s intention to illustrate subjects likely to be touched on by an orator. The design relates the work to the rhetoric of the times. Here was ready for use a collection of noteworthy anecdotes constituting a serviceable _Vade mecum_ for speakers or teachers. And this aim, easily discernible from a table of contents, is openly avowed by the compiler: his task, he tells us, was to make a handy digest of memorable deeds and sayings with a view to saving his readers the trouble of hunting among the scattered authorities whose writings he himself had to consult.[148] It is a fair guess that he was a professor of rhetoric.

Dividing each book into chapters on separate topics, Valerius generally subdivides each chapter into Roman and foreign examples. The latter (_externa_) are fewer and are sometimes omitted.[149] Occasionally he confesses to a sense of perplexity between the mass of available material (_sermo infinitis personis rebusque circumfusus_) and the claims of reasonable brevity:[150] and so he feels bound under certain heads to reduce the number of examples (_satietas modo uitanda est_).[151] Some parts of the work show little sign of systematic dovetailing: others exhibit closer interconnexion. From time to time he is at pains to indicate his method of grouping illustrations; thus, he exemplifies self-confidence, first in war, next in peace, then introduces the poet Accius avowedly as a link between Roman and foreign instances.[152] Or, again, just as he is about to pass to foreign examples, some insistent Roman illustration may arrest his attention with a demand to be recorded (_ad externa ... transire conanti M. Bibulus ... manus inicit_);[153] and equal emphasis marks his transition from Book IV to V—from generosity to its “fit companions, humanity and clemency.” These and other such instances prove that he had an artistic regard for unity, and that it would be unfair to view him as an accumulator of higgledy-piggledy miscellanea.

In subject-matter, and in spirit no less, he is decidedly national. The predominance of examples from native life, custom and history makes this inevitable; yet it is, after all, but one aspect of the Roman in him. He is Roman in the practical aim wherewith he composed his digest for rhetoricians and their pupils; in the typical position assigned to religion at the forefront of the work; and in the conservative note upon which his text opens. This Roman conservatism animates his dignified pride in recording the ancestral habit of referring intricate ceremonial to pontifical wisdom, the sanction for action to augural observation, oracular responses to prophetic books, and the fit treatment for portents to the lore of Etruria. About illustrations from foreign history he is conscious that, if they do not make the same direct appeal as national examples, still they introduce a pleasant variety in the Latin subject-matter (_attingam igitur externa; quae, Latinis inserta literis, ut auctoritatis minus habent, ita aliquid gratae uarietatis afferre possunt_). No less patriotic is the enthusiasm with which, after mentioning the lays of ancient Rome once sung at banquets, he praises the old Roman training, and with a rhetorical climax turns his list of great families so educated into a compliment to the Caesars:

_Maiores natu in conuiuiis ad tibias egregia superiorum opera
carmine comprehensa pangebant, quo ad ea imitanda iuuentutem
alacriorem redderent. Quid hoc splendidius, quid etiam utilius
certamine?... Quas Athenas, quam scholam, quae alienigena
studia huic domesticae disciplinae praetulerim? Inde oriebantur
Camilli, Scipiones, Fabricii, Marcelli, Fabii: ac ne singula
imperii nostri lumina simul percurrendo sim longior, inde,
inquam, caeli clarissima pars diui fulserunt Caesares._

A similar spirit pervades his record of the honour secured for Latin as the official and imperial language everywhere;[154] his apostrophe eulogizing Marius’s disdain for Greek eloquence;[155] and his genuine admiration for the old national deliberative body:

“The Senate-house was the trusty deep-set heart of the commonwealth, fortified, walled all round with the healthiness of silence. As men crossed its threshold, they cast aside personal and put on national affections.”[156] So too one notes his pride in “the most tenacious bond of military discipline,” which he pronounces “the especial glory and mainstay of the Roman power, having been by salutary steadfastness kept untarnished and unscathed to the present time.”[157] It is the same with his panegyrics upon Rome;[158] his gratified consciousness of the progressive evolution from “Romulus’s small hut” (_paruula Romuli casa_) to “the pillar of the world” (_terrarum orbis columen_);[159] his belief in the generosity of the Roman people;[160] his rhapsodic outbursts like _O munificentiam gentis Romanae, deorum benignitati aequandam!_[161] or his satisfaction in Roman justice.[162]

In the absence of systematic acknowledgment of his borrowings, it is impossible to give an exact account of the sources of Valerius. Any reader will observe that Livy has been largely drawn upon, even though he is mentioned but once.[163] Cicero is mentioned oftener;[164] but the mere occurrence of his name is no gauge of the extent to which he was used. Varro must have been an authority in many instances.[165] We may also infer the consultation of Sallust and Asinius Pollio, and, for foreign examples, of Trogus.[166] Besides mention of such poets as Livius Andronicus and Accius, there are references to the historian Caelius (Antipater), to the _Collecta_ of Pomponius Rufus, and to M. Scaurus’s autobiographic _Memoirs_.[167] Cato’s work on _Origines_ is cited definitely in one passage,[168] and may elsewhere be reasonably thought to have supplied material. That work, as well as Cato’s _Orations_, must have been in Valerius’s mind when he wrote the words _ornata sunt ab eo (sc. Catone) literarum Latinarum monimenta_.[169] About a score of Greek authors are cited. His treatment of sources varies. The original may be copied with fidelity, or paraphrased and rhetorically embellished, or condensed, or sometimes misrepresented thanks to bungling; for superficiality betrays him into many confusions.

Yet, blemishes notwithstanding, there are, as testimonies to a great measure of utility and vitality in his work, at least two well-known abridgements[170] of it—one by Julius Paris, made about the fourth century, and intended, like the ampler original, for schools; the other by Januarius Nepotianus, the extant form of which breaks off in the third book (III. ii. 7), but which was evidently drawn from a manuscript of the original superior to any now extant, because it summarizes the gap in the first book (I. i. _ext._ 4–I. iv. _ext._ 1). Possibly the C. Titius Probus, to whom is ascribed in some MSS. the summary on Roman names at the end of Valerius, was an earlier epitomizer than Julius Paris and may have left an epitome afterwards combined with his; but, as the summary on names cannot by any stretch of imagination be called literature, there is scant profit in discussing the date of Titius Probus or his relationship to Julius Paris.[171] Suffice it to add that the existence of late abridgements and the number of MSS. of the full text which have come down are indications of its hold upon medieval education. Niebuhr, indeed, declares that Valerius “was considered the most important book next to the Bible throughout the Middle Ages; it was the mirror of virtues and was translated into all the languages of Europe.”[172] Teuffel[173] more cautiously remarks that he was not rarely read (_nicht selten gelesen_) in the Middle Ages; but even this modified statement is an illustration of the continued enthusiasm for Roman history.

His outlook on the world and his attitude towards historical questions do not argue a penetrating or independent genius. He relates omens and miracles in a spirit of unquestioning superstition; _e.g._ after his record of prodigies sent by Jupiter to dissuade Pompey from resistance to Caesar, Valerius asserts that “the overmastering principles of destiny prevented a heart not otherwise possessed by folly from weighing the prodigies aright.”[174] He is also uncritical in his acceptance of traditional stories; if they are ancient, he argues that antiquity should secure credit for them, while it is his own function not to reject as idle such tales as gained the sanction of famous literary documents.[175]

On many historical matters his attitude is distorted by bias. He is an apologist for Caesarism, animated by an unconcealable dislike for inflammatory agitations conducted by the tribunes of the people in the days of the republic.[176] Thus, although he admits the moderation of Tiberius Gracchus, he elsewhere brands him “an enemy of his fatherland.”[177] Gaius Gracchus he regards as one who might have been a champion of the state, but who preferred to be its impious disturber.[178] Consistently with this anti-democratic leaning, his attitude towards the imperial family is throughout one of such fulsome adulation that the author deteriorates into a toady; and this without, so far as we know, the excuse which may be offered for the flatteries of his contemporary Paterculus, on whose personal notice war had forced some of the admittedly able traits in Tiberius. Valerius’s invocation had described the reigning emperor as one “whose heavenly foresight guarantees a kindly fostering care for the virtues about which I am to speak”; and he delights to note that Tiberius has nobly united the blood of the Nerones with that of the Livii (_in ortum salutaris principis nostri conflueret_).[179] Again, he makes allusions to the blessings of contemporary life under an excellent emperor;[180] but his enthusiasm embraces the whole kith and kin of the Caesars—they are heavenly luminaries risen from the time-honoured Roman training.[181] So Julius Caesar is mentioned or addressed in terms of religious adoration, well seen in the apostrophe[182] _Tuas aras tuaque sanctissima templa, Diue Iuli, ueneratus oro_, ending with an artificially balanced reference to the assassination: “Then burst forth the parricidal act of those whose design to subtract thee from the number of mankind involved thine addition to the conclave of the gods!” Elsewhere Caesar’s good qualities are declared to have given him the _entrée_ into heaven, and his repurchase from pirate captors in earlier days is noted as a strange transaction on the part of Fortune; for then she ordained that a small ransom should buy back “the brightest star in the universe”: why, then, should ordinary men complain concerning Fortune, if she does not spare even the Caesars, “sharers in her own divinity”?[183] This commendation of Caesarism lasts up to the end of the work:[184] now the author couples Julius and Augustus as _patrem et filium ... diuinitatis fastigio coniunctos_;[185] now it is on Augustus that he concentrates attention;[186] now on the palace, as a hallowed abode—_ad Augustam domum, beneficentissimum et honoratissimum templum_.[187] Sycophany reaches its acme of enormity in his shameless association of Chastity with the marriage-bed of the princess Julia.[188]

In another way the narrowness of Valerius’s outlook is discernible. He is given to moralizing, a habit which in itself might afford a thinker opportunities for philosophic criticism of men, conduct and events. As it is, the actual pronouncements cannot hide the shallowness of the author’s intellect. His denunciations of luxury, partly perhaps sincere and usually justifiable, are also partly perhaps suggested by conventional _sententiae_ within the cognizance of all educated Romans. These reflections, many of them second-hand or ready-made, constitute practically all his philosophy. He takes few steps towards scientific history. Eagerness to make a point renders him indifferent to healthy doubt; for his aim is to teach, if not history, at least rhetoric, by examples.[189] With almost a fabulist’s fondness for pointing a moral, he enjoys conveying lessons on the degeneracy of his fatherland. He has praise for the old-fashioned _probitas_ and _continentia_ once under censorial scrutiny and by him regarded as the righteousness that strengthens a nation—_quid enim prodest foris esse strenuum, si domi male uiuitur?_[190] Incidentally his protests afford glimpses of social history. He remarks on the advance in luxury at Rome since the days when Rufinus, an ex-consul, was struck off the senatorial roll for acquiring ten pounds’ weight of silver plate;[191] and he glances at the contemporary craze for building-sites more extensive than the farm-lands of Cincinnatus.[192] So, too, after dating the growth of Roman pleasure-seeking from the close of the Second Punic War and the conquest of Macedon, he contends that the abrogation of the Oppian law regulating the expenses of women was the thin end of the wedge which made an opening for greater extravagance in adornment.[193] Another passage emphasizes the spread of luxurious customs within a single generation—_cuius adulescentia priscos mores uidet, senectus nouos orsa est_.[194] Occasions are fastened upon to inculcate venerable saws on the “riches of him who hath no desires” (_omnia nimirum habet qui nihil concupiscit_), or on the necessity of checking vice at the start (_neque enim ullum finitur uitium ibi ubi oritur_).[195]

His reflections, however, are not confined to the topic of effeminacy; for there is a wealth of general truths and half-proverbial sayings. They have the pointed expression suitable for clinching an argument or adorning a speech: _e.g._ “Necessity makes the most effectual hardening for human weakness” (_humanae imbecillitatis efficacissimum duramentum est necessitas_), or “There is a standing antipathy between valour and poltroonery” (_sic enerues animos odisse uirtus solet_).[196] Similarly, of Theramenes’s bravado in toasting his enemy Critias out of the very poison he had been sentenced to drink, “To face punishment with such ease is assuredly to free oneself from punishment” (_profecto est supplicio se liberare, tam facile supplicium perpeti_);[197] of the harm done to oneself by indulgence in angry passion (_dolorem cum inferre uult, patitur_);[198] or of the altogether admirable bravery that comes from true philosophy (_illa uehemens et constans animi militia_);[199] or yet again, of the vital interconnexion between home and country.[200] Among more elaborate passages of this reflective cast is one (with a typical mixture of metaphors) upon the fleeting nature of human blessings:

Too perishable and frail, too much resembling the toy rattles
of children, are your so-called human strength and human
wealth. Their rising tide is as instantaneous as their ebb
is sudden: at no place and in no person do they stand firmly
fixed to steadfast roots; but, driven hither and thither by the
wayward blast of fortune, they miserably plunge in an abyss
of disaster those whom they have raised aloft and who are now
deserted by an unforeseen retreat. And so things which by their
loss double the bitterness of the hardships inflicted ought to
be neither considered nor called blessings.[201]

To sum up, although he is superstitious, uncritical, time-serving and in his moralizing somewhat hackneyed, yet Valerius is not to be denied credit for protesting against luxury, whether in an independent spirit or from sympathy with the emperor’s policy; and occasionally his genuine appreciation of the greatness of Rome may condone his rhetoric.

This leads to a consideration of his style. Wearing the characteristic guise of the period, it is rhetorical to the verge of bombast; it is metaphorical; it is, as we have seen, given to _sententiae_; and marked by artifice especially in its penchant for the balanced and epigrammatic. At his briefest he does not hold us—the curt paragraphs allotted to some illustrations are little better than a catalogue; and at times he is himself conscious of the defects attendant upon this mode of treatment.[202] Many examples are incidents compressed from such authors as Livy and, it must generally be added, spoiled in the compressing. How much more effective, for instance, and dramatic is Livy’s handling of the trick whereby a Roman cheated a Sabine out of a cow intended for a sacrifice to bring good fortune![203] Still, justice compels the admission that sometimes Valerius relates a story both briefly and well—particularly where there is a neat dialogue to introduce. Such merits, however, as he has fail to raise his conglomerate of anecdotes into an aesthetic whole.

The influence of the rhetorical schools dominates his poetic and exclamatory vein, and not seldom beguiles him into turgidity. A piece representative of his occasional touch of poetic fancy follows his story about the symbolic wheat-grains heaped by ants into the mouth of the sleeping infant, Midas:

To the ants of Midas I incline with justice and reason to
prefer the bees of Plato; for the former proved harbingers
of a prosperity perishable and frail; but the bees foretold
prosperity solid and everlasting, when they placed the honey
inside the lips of the little child asleep in his cradle. On
hearing of what had befallen, the interpreters of prodigies
declared that from his mouth should flow a dulcet eloquence
unparalleled. Yet to my thinking it was not on Mount Hymettus,
fragrant with thyme blossom, that these bees fed, but on the
Heliconian mountain-slopes verdant with learning of every kind,
and so by the inspiration of the goddesses they instilled into
a noble genius the sweetest nourishment of the most exalted
eloquence.[204]

Uncurbed by artistic repression, he indulges too freely in the exclamatory. This tends to inflation, and through over-employment becomes wearisome. Take the outburst (_O spectaculum admirabile!_) on the preparations for carrying out the sentence of scourging passed by the dictator Papirius upon his insubordinate master of the horse; or the apostrophe to the dictator Postumius, who adjudged his own son to death for disobedience to a military command.[205] Touching the Macedonian envoys to Rome, who volunteered to carry the funeral bier of Aemilius Paullus, the author exclaims:

Twice did Macedonia show our city, Paullus, that you were an
illustrious man; during your life, by its spoils; on your
death, by its shoulders![206]

It is a forced point made at the expense of simplicity. The section on the praises of poverty ends in characteristic tones:

Why then do we lacerate with daily invective a moderate
fortune, as if that were an especial hardship for mankind?...
Let us rather rise in spirit and with the memory of the olden
times refresh our souls enfeebled by gazing upon money; for by
the hut of Romulus, and by the modest dwellings of the ancient
Capitol, and by the everlasting hearths of Vesta, content to
this day with earthen vessels, I swear that no riches can be
preferred to the poverty of such men![207]

If the passage were not so declamatory one might accept the suggested implication that the author’s means were moderate; as it stands, its autobiographic significance may be doubted.

Akin to the rhetorical element in Valerius are the copiousness and boldness of his metaphors. Their free introduction without a semi-apologetic _uelut_ or _quoddam_ or _ut ita dicam_, if un-Ciceronian, is in a stylistic sense more modern. The metaphors may be violent, or overdone, or actually mixed. One of many instances occurs in the contrast between Euripides and a self-confident contemporary proud of his powers in rapid composition:

The writings due to the fertile rush (_fertilis cursus_) of the
one have collapsed without reaching the first turning-posts of
memory (_intra primas metas memoriae_); the work of the other,
a product of the lamp and of the hesitating pen, shall be borne
with the full sails of fame along the passage of all time.[208]

Again, the degeneracy of Scipio’s son is “a birth of darkness from the lightning” (_Di boni, quas tenebras ex quo fulmine nasci passi estis!_);[209] and the break in the even tenour of Polycrates’s happiness is thus expressed: “Once only did he change countenance, shaken with a very brief jolt of sadness” (_semel dumtaxat uultum mutauit perquam breui tristitiae salebra succussum_).[210]

The balance so representative of his time is a favourite device in summing up illustrations, as _inimicorum existimatione punitus, suo iudicio finitus_ (of the death of Theramenes), or _ita alteri tectum mendacium, alteri ueritas aperta finis uitae fuit_,[211] or in his prologue to Book I, “the other gods we have received, the Caesars we have given” (_deos enim reliquos accepimus, Caesares dedimus_). In a later book he remarks that the difference between the poet Accius and Julius Caesar lay in books not busts (_ibi uoluminum non imaginum certamina exercebantur_), while of Virginius resolved to deliver his daughter from the designs of Appius Claudius he says: _puellam occidit pudicaeque interemptor quam corruptae pater esse maluit_.[212]

His artificiality is largely due to the inveterate habit of hunting for effective contrasts, and to a passion for the epigrammatic in expressing facts and reflections.[213] Overreaching his aim, he constantly falls into far-fetched conceits. Some of these smart sayings are as heartless and tasteless as the headlines of certain modern newspapers. Take his comment on the intended result of the punishments inflicted upon Romans who had surrendered to a force of slaves: the object was, he says grimly,

that those who had been lured by the desire for life into
permitting runaways richly deserving crucifixion to set up
trophies over them, those who had not blushed to have the
ignominious yoke imposed upon their own liberty by the hands of
slaves, should now find that their share in the light of day
could be embittered, and should now have a manly longing for
that death of which they had felt a womanish dread.[214]

Here the final antithesis between _effeminate timuerant_ and _uiriliter optarent_ is singularly unnatural and strained. He is scarcely less artificial when he declares that “from the gallant wounds” of Cato of Utica “flowed more glory than blood,” and that by falling on his sword he taught mankind “how the upright should prefer honour without life to life without honour.”[215] The tendency resembles Dryden at his earliest and worst, and the riot of conceit during one phase of English literature in the seventeenth century.

No less in the narrower aspect of vocabulary and constructions does the Latin of Valerius Maximus bear the stamp of the Silver Age. His prose shares the fondness noticeable in Phaedrus’s verse for abstract turns of expression. As Phaedrus uses _maiestas ducis_ for “the Emperor,” so Valerius uses _mea paruitas_ for “my humble self.”[216] This liking for the abstract, conjoined with abundance of metaphor, contributes to give his phraseology a more modern ring than the strictly classical Latin idiom has. When Marius is described as hostile to the upholders of ancient lineage, Valerius merges such persons in the abstract term _uetustas_, and the incompetent warriors who belittled successful men risen from lowly origins are grouped under the phrase _militaris ignauia_.[217] He refers to Aemilius Lepidus despatched by the senate to be a guardian for a young Egyptian prince as _amplissimique et integerrimi uiri sanctitatem_.[218] In similar fashion, he mentions “men who have slipped into this deviation (of luxury) unknown to old-world temperance,” where a simpler and earlier style of Latin might have said “unknown to our temperate ancestors.”[219]

As might be expected, new words rise into prominence and old words are used in changed senses. For example, he appears to favour _sugillare_, which, like _sugillatio_,[220] is a Livian word—a significant point when it is remembered that Livy marks the transition between republican and Silver Latinity.[221] Valerius gets the unusual and “post-classical” word _uaframentum_ (“a trick”) into his head at VII. iii. _ext._ 2, and repeats it in the fourth and seventh paragraphs of the chapter. Indeed, he is given to this repetition of words and expressions which capture his fancy. Symptoms of the change coming over the language may be detected in his invention or acceptance of fresh meanings and fresh usages. Thus he widens the metaphorical use of words: _e.g._ _Cimonis incunabula opinione stultitiae fuerunt referta_ (VI. ix. _ext._ 2) is a more artificial employment of _referta_ than in Cicero’s _uita undique referta bonis_ (_Tusc. Disp._ V. xxxi. 86). The adjective _numerosus_, too, appears in its late Latin sense.[222] Nor are his constructions those of stricter days. As in Phaedrus, _persuadere_ is used personally in the passive;[223] and infinitives are joined freely with verbs which in the Golden Age took a dependent _ut_ and subjunctive.[224] In all such linguistic matters Valerius is as symptomatic of his age as when he serves the needs of disputants and declaimers, or makes his verbal obeisances before imperial authority. So, while he is not a thinker even to the limited extent that Paterculus is, while he is casual in investigation, superficial in comment, and too often showy in style, yet, as a literary landmark, he possesses historical importance sufficient to justify an attentive examination of his work.