Chapter IV: Age of Decline (1)

=Silver Age of Roman Letters.=—With the death of Augustus and the accession of his step-son Tiberius, despotism in its worst form was established at Rome, and, as in Greece, a decline of letters immediately followed. Symptoms of literary decay had already shown themselves in the reign of the first emperor, although he took care to conceal his assumption of absolute power under the mask of republican forms, and was known to all as a patron of learning. Tiberius, on the contrary, openly declared himself the enemy of freedom, both political and intellectual; and when, in 37 A.D., his attendants, no longer able to endure his rule of blood, smothered the monster with pillows, Latin literature was at its lowest ebb.

A brief renaissance, however, succeeded; so that the imperial fiend Nero was able to number among his victims an epic poet, Lucan, and a philosopher and dramatist of no common stamp, Seneca. Under the Cæsars, genius was hopelessly fettered; a chance word might condemn its author to the headsman; the poet, the historian, the orator, must needs suppress his sentiments or forfeit his self-respect by flattering the reigning despot.

A brighter day dawned with the mild rule of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines (96-180 A.D.). During this golden age of the Roman empire, poetry for a time recovered its vitality, and through the stinging satires of Juvenal denounced the abuses that had prevailed in the days of Nero and Domitian; while in the histories of Tacitus, prose indignantly broke its enforced silence, and held up to public detestation the despots of the past. But this revival was short-lived. Latin literature rapidly degenerated, for Latin genius was no more. In the later centuries of the empire, science and jurisprudence alone flourished on the soil where poetry had now ceased to bloom. (_Refer to Nisard’s “Études sur les Poètes Latins de la Décadence”_)

ERA OF THE CÆSARS (14-96 A.D.).

In the reign of Tiberius, we meet with the names of Velleius Paterculus, the court historian, Celsus, and Phædrus.

=Velleius Paterculus= is memorable for his epitome of Roman history, a work in other respects meritorious, but marred by its author’s servile praise of Tiberius. Yet we must remember that Velleius was not permitted to see the worst phase of this emperor’s tyranny. When the treachery of the prime minister Seja’nus was exposed, the historian, though not implicated with him, was one of the first to be put to death. He was thus prevented from witnessing the murders of hundreds of other innocent persons—atrocities that might have altered his estimate of his ungrateful master.

=Valerius Maximus=, his contemporary and fellow-flatterer, prepared a cyclopædia of anecdotes gleaned from the history of Rome and foreign countries, entitled “Remarkable Deeds and Sayings.” It was designed for the use of persons who had not the time or inclination to make original investigations, and, though written in an artificial style, contains much that is interesting.

=Celsus= was the author of a scientific encyclopædia, whose twenty books were devoted to farming, medicine, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and military tactics. The eight books on medicine still survive, constituting the great Roman authority on that subject.

Before his day the art of medicine and surgery had been almost entirely confined to Greek physicians; but Celsus dignified it as a calling worthy of Romans, not only practising with success among his countrymen, but committing to writing the results of his experience. He was the first ancient author who recommended the tying of blood-vessels for the purpose of checking hemorrhage.

=Phædrus=, the only noteworthy poet of Tiberius’s reign, is known to us by his fables. Of his life, we have few facts. He is supposed to have been brought from Thrace to Rome, as a captive; and to have lived there as the slave of Augustus, who, recognizing his latent talent, gave him an education and finally his freedom.

In the sunshine of his patron’s smiles, Phædrus led a happy life; but on the death of Augustus he was exposed to the persecutions of Sejanus, who virtually controlled the state under the succeeding emperor, and who affected to see in the poet’s fables masked attacks upon his own vicious career. Phædrus, however, outlived all his enemies, and died at a good old age.

The fables of Phædrus, preserved in a single manuscript, were discovered in an abbey at Rheims (1561), and, after narrowly escaping destruction at the hands of some French fanatics, were published to the world. In the main translated or imitated from Æsop, whom their author thus made known to the Romans, they commend themselves for their conciseness and simplicity, as well as for the moral lessons they convey. His “pleasant tales” may be judged of by the following specimens:—

THE FOX AND THE GOAT.

“A crafty knave will make escape,
When once he gets into a scrape,
Still meditating self-defence,
At any other man’s expense.
A fox by some disaster fell
Into a deep and fencèd well:
A thirsty goat came down in haste,
And asked about the water’s taste,
If it was plentiful and sweet?
At which the fox, in rank deceit:—
‘So great the solace of the run,
I thought I never should have done.
Be quick, my friend, your sorrows drown.’
This said, the silly goat comes down.
The subtle fox herself avails,
And by his horns the height she scales,
And leaves the goat in all the mire,
To gratify his heart’s desire.”

THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY.

“As on his head she chanced to sit,
A man’s bald pate a gadfly bit;
He, prompt to crush the little foe,
Dealt on himself a grievous blow.
At which the fly, deriding, said:—
‘You who would strike an insect dead
For one slight sting, in wrath so strict,
What punishment will you inflict
Upon yourself, whose heavy arm,
Not my poor bite, did all the harm?’
‘Oh!’ says the party,‘as for me,
I with myself can soon agree;
The intention of the act is all.
But thou, detested cannibal!
Bloodsucker! to have thee secured,
More would I gladly have endured.’
What by this moral tale is meant
Is, those who wrong not with intent
Are venial; but to those that do,
Severity is surely due.”—CHRISTOPHER SMART.

The three great ornaments of Nero’s reign (54-68 A.D.) were Persius the satirist, Seneca, and his nephew Lucan.

=Persius.=—Born at the Etruscan town of Volaterræ (34 A.D.), Persius was brought to Rome by his mother at the age of twelve, and there educated. In the Stoic, Cornu’tus, he found his ideal preceptor, and to this “best of friends” the poet pays a beautiful tribute in the following verses, among the finest he ever wrote:—

“When first I laid the purple[48] by, and free,
Yet trembling at my new-felt liberty,
Approached the hearth, and on the Lares hung
The bulla, from my willing neck unstrung;
When gay associates, sporting at my side,
And the white boss, displayed with conscious pride,
Gave me, unchecked, the haunts of vice to trace,
And throw my wandering eyes on every face,
I fled to you, Cornutus, pleased to rest
My hopes and fears on your Socratic breast;
Nor did you, gentle sage, the charge decline.
Then, dextrous to beguile, your steady line
Reclaimed, I know not by what winning force,
My morals, warped from virtue’s straighter course.
Can I forget how many a summer’s day,
Spent in your converse, stole unmarked away?
Or how, while listening with increased delight,
I snatched from feasts the earlier hours of night?
One time (for to your bosom still I grew),
One time of study and of rest we knew;
One frugal board where, every care resigned,
An hour of blameless mirth relaxed the mind.”—GIFFORD.

Death overtook our poet in his 28th year (62 A.D.). All we have of his writings is six satires—only 650 hexameter lines. After his death these were published, and elicited unbounded admiration. Other works of his were torn up by his mother, who deemed them unworthy of his genius. Persius bequeathed to Cornutus his library of 700 manuscripts.

The satires of Persius were written in the interest of morality, and what gave them weight was that all knew their author to be a man who practised the virtue he commended, a man of stainless character in an age of universal licentiousness. And yet we do not find him lashing vice as we should expect. Was he loath to do so, lest the very pictures he must draw might corrupt? Or, was Persius forced to hold his peace in the presence of a despot who revelled in the vilest excesses, whose policy it was to reduce his subjects to his own low level? Perhaps for both reasons he preferred to assail wickedness in the abstract. Certainly his “maidenly modesty” shrunk from portraying the hideous sins that flaunted around him, while his philosophical tenets inclined him to keep aloof from the world. (_Read Nettleship’s “The Roman Satura.”_)

Poetasters and pedants that pandered to the perverted taste of the day, received the brunt of his attack in his First Satire. The Second discusses the proper subjects of prayer. How few, says the poet, would be willing to have their petitions made public:—

“Hard, hard the task, from the low muttered prayer
To free the fanes; or find one suppliant there,
Who dares to ask but what his state requires,
And live to heaven and earth with known desires!
Sound sense, integrity, a conscience clear,
Are begged aloud, that all at hand may hear;
But prayers like these (half whispered, half suppressed)
The tongue scarce hazards from the conscious breast:—
‘O that I could my rich old uncle see
In funeral pomp!’—’ O that some deity
To pots of buried gold would guide my share!’—
‘O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir,
Were once at rest! poor child, he lives in pain,
And death to him must be accounted gain.’—
‘By wedlock thrice has Nerius swelled his store,
And now—is he a widower once more!’”

The Second Satire concludes with these noble lines:—

“No; let me bring the immortal gods a mind,
Where legal and where moral sense are joined
With the pure essence; holy thoughts, that dwell
In the soul’s most retired and sacred cell;
A bosom dyed in honor’s noblest grain,
Deep-dyed—with these let me approach the fane,
And Heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,
Though all my offering be a barley-cake.”—GIFFORD.

=Lucius Annæus Seneca=, son of the rhetorician, was born at Cordova B.C. 7, but received his education at Rome under the supervision of his father. From the first he displayed great interest in his studies, and as he grew in years he indulged his natural bent for philosophical researches. So thorough a Pythagorean did he become that he even eschewed animal food, lest he should devour flesh that had once been animated by a human soul. On the remonstrance of his parent, however, he renounced vegetarianism and “lived as others lived” again. At a later period we find him the leader of the Stoics at Rome.

Seneca early made his mark as an orator. Hearing him plead eloquently on one occasion in the senate, Caligula, out of jealousy, threatened to have him executed, and was deterred only by the consideration that Seneca had the consumption and was not likely to live for any length of time.

But Seneca survived this imperial butcher, to become the instructor and moral guide of the youthful Nero. While Nero submitted to his counsels, Rome enjoyed a halcyon age, long remembered by her people as _the Five Years_. His influence led to the adoption of many salutary measures; it is thought to have been at his instigation that Nero despatched an expedition to explore the sources of the Nile—the first recorded in history. Well would it have been for Rome, had Nero continued to follow the advice of Seneca.

This, however, was not to be; a sudden change took place in the disposition of the prince, when his mother was charged with conspiring against him. It was her life or his; and Nero won. The taste of blood transformed him into a monster, and he forthwith entered upon a reign of horrors that has no equal in history. Virtue was now the surest road to ruin. Falsely accused of complicity in a conspiracy, Seneca was sentenced to put an end to his own life (65 A.D.). With perfect calmness he received the royal mandate, and caused his veins to be severed; but the blood flowing too slowly, he entered a vapor-bath and ended his sufferings by suffocation. His wife Paulina elected to die with him, and in the same manner; but Nero had her veins ligatured, and thus added several years of misery to her life. To his friends, Seneca was permitted to leave no more valuable legacy than his virtuous example.

Seneca was a great moral leader, the first of a class of philosophers who aimed at winning the people back to the virtue of primitive Rome. His teachings were in strange contrast to the age in which he lived; they bear a striking resemblance to those of the Gospel, with which he may have become acquainted through St. Paul. The fathers of the Church were loud in their praises of “the divine pagan,” but there is no evidence that, as some have stated, Seneca was persuaded by the apostle to become a Christian.

Our philosopher is described as simple in his tastes. Though the envied possessor of a princely fortune, he could consistently write in support of temperance on his table of gold. A cupful of water from the brook was sweeter to him than beakers of Italy’s choicest wines, and the fruits of the wild wood he preferred to the luxurious dishes fashion required him to spread before the rich and great. His fault was weakness, which betrayed him into flattery, and perhaps made him an unwilling accessory to some of his master’s crimes.

Seneca was the author, not only of philosophical treatises, but also of ten tragedies, and one hundred and twenty-four moral epistles. He even attempted a satire on the stupidity of the emperor Claudius, representing him as transformed after death, not into a god, as the senate decreed, but into a pumpkin. Several other works from his pen are lost.

The best of Seneca’s treatises are those on Anger, Providence, and Consolation. His style, labored, antithetical, and full of repetitions, has an artificial glitter about it that impresses the reader unfavorably.

EXTRACTS FROM SENECA’S WRITINGS.

ON ANGER.

“How idle are many of those things that make us stark mad! A resty horse, the overturning of a glass, the falling of a key, the dragging of a chair, a jealousy, a misconstruction. How shall that man endure the extremities of hunger and thirst, that flies into a rage only for the putting of a little too much water in his wine? What haste is there to lay a servant by the heels, or break a leg or an arm immediately for it? The answer of a servant, a wife, a tenant, puts some people out of all patience, and yet they can quarrel with the government for not allowing them the same liberty in public which they themselves deny to their own families. If they say nothing, ’tis contumacy; if they speak or laugh, ’tis insolence. Neither are our eyes less curious and fantastical than our ears. When we are abroad, we can bear well enough with foul ways, nasty streets, noisome ditches; but a spot upon a dish at home, or an unswept hearth, absolutely distracts us. And what’s the reason, but that we are patient in the one place and peevish in the other?

Nothing makes us more intemperate than luxury. When we are once weakened with our pleasures, everything grows intolerable. And we are angry as well with those things that cannot hurt us as with those that do. We tear a book because it is blotted; and our clothes because they are not well made—things that neither deserve our anger nor feel it. The tailor perchance did his best, or had no intent to displease us. If so, first, why should we be angry at all? Secondly, why should we be angry with the thing for the man’s sake? Nay, our anger extends even to dogs, horses, and other beasts.

Cyrus, in his design upon Babylon, found a river in his way that put a stop to his march. The current was strong, and carried away one of the horses that belonged to his own chariot; upon this he swore that, since it had obstructed his passage, it should never hinder that of another, and presently set his whole army to work on it, which diverted it into a hundred and fourscore channels, and laid it dry. In this ignoble and unprofitable employment he lost his time and the soldiers their courage; moreover, he gave his adversaries an opportunity of providing themselves, while he was waging war with a river instead of an enemy.”

ON A HAPPY LIFE.

“It is dangerous for a man too suddenly or too easily to believe himself. Wherefore let us examine, watch, observe, and inspect our own hearts; for we ourselves are our own greatest flatterers. We should every night call ourselves to account—’What infirmity have I mastered to-day? What passion opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired?’ Our vices will abate of themselves, if they be brought every day to the shrift. O the blessed sleep that follows such a diary! O the tranquillity, liberty, and greatness of that mind that is a spy upon itself, and a private censor of its own manners! It is my custom every night, so soon as the candle is out, to run over all the words and actions of the past day; and I let nothing escape me. What can be more reasonable than this daily review of a life that we cannot warrant for a moment?”—L’ESTRANGE.

MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS.

“Those whom God loves, he disciplines.

We can never quarrel enough with our vices.

The day of death is the birthday of eternity.

There is no need to pray the ædile to admit you to the ear of an image, that so your petitions may be heard the better. God is near you; he is with you; a holy spirit resides within us, our constant guardian.

Let us be liberal after the example of our great Creator, and give to others with the same consideration that he gives to us.

How many are unworthy of the light; yet the day dawns.

The good-will of the benefactor is the fountain of all benefits.

To obey God is liberty.

Apply thyself to the true riches. It is shameful to depend for a happy life on silver and gold.”

=Lucan= (39-65 A.D.), the nephew of Seneca, though born at Cordova, was brought up at Rome, and there became the fellow-pupil and favorite companion of Nero. But the superior genius of the Spanish youth provoked the jealousy of his royal master, who had rather too high an opinion of his own attainments, and was nettled by the public verdict that Lucan, then only twenty-three years of age, was the greatest of living poets. At length the awarding of the prize to Lucan in a literary contest between them so enraged the emperor that he forbade his former friend to recite any more pieces.

Lucan’s indiscretion sealed his fate. Not content with libellous attacks upon Nero, he became implicated in a conspiracy against the government, upon the detection of which he was condemned to death. Nero allowing him to choose the manner in which he should suffer, the poet had his veins opened in a hot bath. Becoming faint from loss of blood, he recited a passage from his own “Pharsalia,” descriptive of the death of a snake-bitten soldier:—

“So the warm blood at once from every part
Ran purple poison down, and drained the fainting heart.
Blood falls for tears, and o’er his mournful face
The ruddy drops their tainted passage trace.
Where’er the liquid juices find a way,
There streams of blood, there crimson rivers stray;
His mouth and gushing nostrils pour a flood,
And e’en the pores ooze out the trickling blood.
In the red deluge all the parts lie drowned,
And the whole body seems one bleeding wound”—

and so he passed away.

Lucan was interred at Rome in his own garden. An ancient monument in the church of Santo Paulo contains an inscription to his memory, probably placed there by order of Nero, who seems after all to have rendered secret homage to his genius and virtue. The talents of his wife have been highly commended; and it is probable that she assisted him in composing his work.

The epic “Pharsalia” is the only poem of Lucan’s that we now possess. Its subject is the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey; and it receives its name from the place at which the decisive battle between the rival commanders was fought. Though inferior to the Æneid, it certainly displays talent of a high order. Critics have differed in their estimate of Lucan. That he has faults, none will deny who are familiar with his tumid style and love of tinsel. On the other hand, energy, exuberant imagination, and a fervent love of liberty, are his peculiar excellences. The defects of the Pharsalia are excusable in a youth of twenty-six. Had the author lived to revise and finish the work, it might have equalled Virgil’s epic.

Lucan is partial to the supernatural; dreams, witches, and ghosts, enter freely into his machinery. In the sixth book of the Pharsalia, he makes Pompey’s son consult the witch Erichtho on the eve of the battle. His picture of the weird woman is quoted here as one of the most imaginative passages in the whole range of classical poetry. Erichtho is the type of a class of impostors firmly believed in by the Romans of that day; the powers with which the poet endows her are simply those attributed to her by popular superstition.

THE WITCH ERICHTHO.

“Whene’er the proud enchantress gives command,
Eternal Motion stops her active hand;
No more heaven’s rapid cirles journey on,
But universal Nature stands foredone;
The lazy god of day forgets to rise,
And everlasting night pollutes the skies.
Jove wonders to behold her shake the pole,
And, unconsenting, hears his thunders roll.
Now, with a word she hides the sun’s bright face,
And blots the wide ethereal azure space:
Loosely, anon, she shakes her flowing hair,
And straight the stormy lowering heavens are fair:
At once she calls the golden light again;
The clouds fly swift away, and stops the drizzly rain.

In stillest calms, she bids the waves run high;
And smooths the deep, tho’ Boreas shakes the sky:
When winds are hushed, her potent breath prevails,
Wafts on the bark, and fills the flagging sails.
Streams have run back at murmurs of her tongue,
And torrents from the rock suspended hung:
No more the Nile his wonted seasons knows,
And in a line the straight Mæander flows.
The ponderous earth, by magic numbers struck,
Down to her inmost centre deep has shook;
Then, rending with a yawn, at once made way,
To join the upper and the nether day:
While wondering eyes, the dreadful cleft between,
Another starry firmament have seen.

Each deadly kind, by nature formed to kill,
Fears the dire hags, and executes their will:
Lions to them their nobler rage submit,
And fawning tigers crouch beneath their feet:
For them the snake foregoes her wintry hold,
And on the hoary frost untwines her fold;
The poisonous race they strike with stronger death,
And blasted vipers die by human breath.

But these, as arts too gentle and too good,
Nor yet with death or guilt enough imbrued,
With haughty scorn the fierce Erichtho viewed.
New mischief she, new monsters, durst explore;
And dealt in horrors never known before.
From towns and hospitable roofs she flies,
And every dwelling of mankind defies;
Through unfrequented deserts lonely roams,
Drives out the dead, and dwells within their tombs.
Grateful to hell the living hag descends,
And sits in black assemblies of the fiends.
Dark matted elf-locks dangling on her brow,
Filthy and foul, a loathsome burden grow:
Ghastly, and frightful pale, her face is seen;
Unknown to cheerful day and skies serene;
But, when the stars are veiled, when storms arise,
And the blue forky flame at midnight flies,
Then, forth from graves she takes her wicked way,
And thwarts the glancing lightnings as they play:
Where’er she breathes blue poisons round her spread,
The withering grass avows her fatal tread.

Oft in the grave the living has she laid,
And bid reviving bodies leave the dead:
Oft at the funeral pile she seeks her prey,
And bears the smoking ashes warm away;
Snatches some burning bone, or flaming brand,
And tears the torch from the sad father’s hand.
Her teeth from gibbets gnaw the strangling noose,
And from the cross dead murderers unloose:
Her charms the use of sun-dried marrow find,
And husky entrails withered in the wind.

Where’er the battle bleeds, and slaughter lies,
Thither, preventing birds and beasts, she hies;
Nor then content to seize the ready prey,
From their fell jaws she tears their food away;
She marks the hungry wolf’s pernicious tooth,
And joys to rend the morsel from his mouth:
Nor ever yet remorse could stop her hand,
When human gore her cursed rites demand.
When blooming youths in early manhood die,
She stands a terrible attendant by;
The downy growth from off their cheeks she tears,
Or cuts left-handed some selected hairs.
Oft, when in death her gasping kindred lay,
Some pious office would she feign to pay;
And, while close hovering o’er the bed she hung,
Bit the pale lips, and cropped the quivering tongue;
Then, in hoarse murmurs, ere the ghost could go,
Muttered some message to the shades below.”
ROWE.

The Flavian Era is memorable for a few writers of note. Pliny the Elder, called also the Naturalist, was an intimate friend of the emperor Vespasian; while the names of Martial, Statius, and Quintilian, are associated with the reign of Domitian, Vespasian’s son (81-96 A.D.).

=Pliny the Elder= (23-79 A.D.) was born at Como in Cisalpine Gaul, and there passed his boyhood. We find him afterward at Rome attending rhetorical lectures, and still later in his career serving as a soldier in Germany. Nero made him proconsul of Spain, and at the expiration of his term he returned to Rome to find his old friend Vespasian invested with the purple.

Pliny had already become distinguished as the author of a treatise on “the Use of the Javelin,” a “History of the German Wars,” and eight books on “Difficulties in the Latin Language.” He now devoted himself to the compilation of his “Natural History,” the only work we have left from his pen, which Cuvier pronounced “one of the most precious monuments that have come down to us from ancient times.”

We might well wonder how, in the face of his onerous public duties, Pliny found time for literary pursuits so engrossing, did not his nephew, Pliny the Younger, describe to us his wonderful industry. His day’s work began at 1 or 2 A.M., even in winter; sometimes at midnight. Before sunrise he repaired to the palace to chat informally with Vespasian, who like him was accustomed to rob the night of a few hours; after which he applied himself to business and study, devoting every spare moment to the accumulation of knowledge. “No book so bad but that something good may be gleaned from it,” was his motto. To be without a volume and a portable writing-desk was a crime in Pliny’s eyes. A slave constantly attended him, to take down his words in short-hand; during his meals he employed a reader, and even in his bath he dictated or listened. “I remember his chiding me,” said his nephew, “for taking a walk, saying‘You might have saved three hours.’ Compared with him, I am an idle vagabond.”

Pliny the Elder was a martyr to science. In August, 79 A.D., while in command of the Mediterranean squadron, to which he had been appointed by Vespasian, word was brought him that Vesuvius was in a state of eruption. Desiring to investigate the phenomenon, he steered straight for the blazing mountain, pushed on through the rain of hot ashes and pumice-stones, and when advised by the pilot to turn back fearlessly replied, “Fortune favors the brave!” He effected a landing, but only to be suffocated by the sulphurous vapors that proved fatal to so many of the inhabitants of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Pliny was the master-compiler of antiquity; and he was only a compiler, as he himself acknowledged. His Natural History, in thirty-seven books, is a storehouse of quaint lore, according to its author a condensation of two thousand volumes, relating to astronomy, geography, zoölogy, botany, mineralogy, diseases and their remedies, etc. A penchant for the marvellous, which shows him to have been a man of infinite credulity, was a weakness of Pliny; yet his stories were implicitly trusted in the Dark Ages, and many of them reappeared in the tales of the Arabian Nights. A few of his curious statements are subjoined:—

ECCENTRICITIES OF NATURE.

“Some individuals are born with certain parts of the body endowed with properties of a marvellous nature. Such was the case with King Pyrrhus, the great toe of whose right foot cured diseases of the spleen merely by touching the patient. We are also informed that this toe could not be reduced to ashes together with the other portions of the body.

India and Ethiopia abound in wonders. According to Megasthenes, on a mountain called Nulo there dwells a race of men who have their feet turned backward, with eight toes on each foot. On many of the mountains, again, there is a tribe of men who have the heads of dogs; instead of speaking they bark, and, furnished with claws, they live by hunting and catching birds. According to Ctesias, the number of this people is more than 120,000. This author speaks also of another race of men called Single-legs, who have only one limb, but are able to leap with surprising agility. The same people are also called Foot-shadowers, because they are in the habit of lying on their backs, and protecting themselves from the sun by the shade of their feet.

At the very extremity of India, near the source of the river Ganges, there is the nation of Mouthless people; their bodies are rough and overgrown with hair, and they cover themselves with a down plucked from the leaves of trees. These people subsist only by breathing and by the odors which they inhale through the nostrils. They support themselves upon neither meat nor drink; when they go upon a long journey, they carry with them only odoriferous roots and flowers, and wild apples, that they may not be without something to smell at. But an odor which is a little more powerful than usual easily destroys them.”

HYDROPHOBIA.

“Canine madness is fatal to man during the heat of the Dog-star, and proves so in consequence of those who are bitten having a deadly horror of water. For this reason, during the thirty days that the star exerts its influence, we try to prevent the disease in dogs; or, if they are attacked by it, give them hellebore.

We have a single remedy against the bite, which has been but lately discovered—the root of the wild rose, which is called dog-rose. Columella informs us that if, on the fortieth day after the birth of a pup, the last bone of the tail is bitten off, the sinew will follow with it; after which the tail will not grow, and the dog will never become rabid.”

REMEDIES FOR TOOTHACHE, ETC.

“Toothache is alleviated by scarifying the gums with bones of the sea-dragon, or by rubbing the teeth once a year with the brains of a dog-fish boiled in oil. It is a very good plan, too, for the cure of toothache, to lance the gums with the sting of the ray. This sting is pounded and applied to the teeth with white hellebore, having the effect of extracting them without the slightest difficulty. A decoction is made of a single frog boiled in two-thirds of a pint of vinegar, and the teeth are rinsed with it. It is generally thought that this recipe applies more particularly to the double teeth, and that the vinegar prepared as above mentioned is remarkably useful for strengthening them when loose. Ashes, also, of burnt crabs make an excellent dentifrice.

There is a small frog which ascends trees, and croaks aloud there; if a person suffering from cough spits into its mouth and then lets it go, he will experience a cure. For cough attended with spitting of blood, it is recommended to beat up the raw flesh of a snail, and to drink it in hot water.”—RILEY.

=Martial= (43-117 A.D.).—The chief poet of Domitian’s reign was Martial, master of the Latin epigram. Born in Spain, Martial came to Rome in Nero’s time and began the study of law. But finding it uncongenial, he adopted literature as a profession, and rose to distinction under Titus and Domitian, his sordid flattery of the latter securing him wealth and honors.

The epigrams of Martial are pithy, pointed with satire, and not without elegance; but the pleasure of reading them is constantly interrupted by coarse allusions and even downright obscenity. Hence it has been justly said that Martial taught vice while reproving it. His poems, however, contain valuable pictures of Roman manners.

THE BEAU.

“They tell me, Cotilus, that you’re a beau:
What this is, Cotilus, I wish to know.
‘A beau is one who, with the nicest care,
In parted locks divides his curling hair;
One who with balm and cinnamon smells sweet,
Whose humming lips some Spanish air repeat;
Whose naked arms are smoothed with pumice-stone,
And tossed about with graces all his own.
A beau is one who takes his constant seat,
From morn to evening, where the ladies meet;
And ever, on some sofa hovering near,
Whispers soft nothings in some fair one’s ear;
Who scribbles thousand billets-doux a day;
Still reads and scribbles, reads and sends away.
A beau is one who shrinks, if nearly pressed
By the coarse garment of a neighbor guest;
Who knows who flirts with whom, and still is found
At each good table in successive round.
A beau is one—none better knows than he
A race-horse and his noble pedigree.’—
Indeed? Why, Cotilus, if this be so,
What teasing trifling thing is called a beau!”

“With but one eye Philœnis weeps. How done
If you inquire, know she hath got but one.”

=Statius= (61-96 A.D.), a contemporary and rival of Martial, was the author of the epic “Theba’is,” based on the strife of the sons of Œdipus (see p. 200). Despite the fact that the poet gave a year’s work to each of its twelve books, this epic has little to recommend it.

Statius began another poem on the life of Achilles, which he did not live to finish. His forte lay not in the line of epics, but in the improvising of short pointed pieces, thirty-two of which are preserved in the collection called “Silvæ.” Juvenal bears witness to his popularity.

Statius was patronized by the emperor Domitian, but is said to have been stabbed by the latter with a stylus, in a fit of anger. The following tender lines are from a poem addressed to his wife Claudia.

STATIUS TO HIS WIFE.

“Whither could ocean’s waves my bark convey,
Nor thou be fond companion of my way?
Yes—did I seek to fix my mansion drear
Where polar ice congeals the inclement year;
Where the seas darken round far Thule’s isle,
Or unapproached recedes the head of Nile;
Thy voice would cheer me on. May that kind Power,
Who joined our hands when in thy beauty’s flower,
Still, when the blooming years of life decline,
Prolong the blessing, and preserve thee mine!
To thee, whose charms gave first the enamoring wound,
And my wild youth in marriage fetters bound;
To thee submissive, I received the rein,
Nor sigh for change, but hug the pleasing chain.

And thou hast listened, with entranced desire,
The first rude sounds that would my lips inspire;
Thy watchful ear would snatch, with keen delight,
My verse, low-murmured through the live-long night.
To only thee my lengthened toils were known,
And with thy years has my Thebaid grown.
I saw thee, what thou art, when late I stood
On the dark verge of the Lethæan flood;
When glazed in death, I closed my quivering eyes,
Relenting Fate restored me to thy sighs;
Thou wert alone the cause, the Power above
Feared thy despair and melted to thy love.”—ELTON.

SULPICIA.—We must not pass over the Roman lyric poetess Sulpicia, the Sappho of Domitian’s age—a noble lady of exceptional genius, who claims that she

“First taught the Roman dames to vie
With Græcia’s nymphs of lyric minstrelsy.”

A short satire on Domitian’s expulsion of the Greek philosophers from Italy, bearing the name of Sulpicia, still survives. It is valuable, as the only fragment we have from a Roman poetess. From it we extract the following apt simile:—

“It fares with Romans as with wasps, whose home
Is hung where Juno’s temple rears its dome;
A bristling crowd, they wave their flickering wings,
Their yellow bodies barbed with quivering stings.
But not like wasps, thus tremblingly alive,
The bee, secure returning, haunts her hive;
Forgetful of the comb, by sloth oppressed,
The swarm, the queen, die slow in pampered rest:
And this the sons of Romulus have found,
Sunk in the lap of peace, in long perdition drowned.”

=Quintilian= (35-95 A.D.), of Spanish parentage but Roman education, for many years taught eloquence successfully in the capital, numbering among his pupils the nephews of Domitian. He had the good fortune to enjoy the favor of the emperor, and filled a professorship to which was attached an annual salary of about $4,000.

Quintilian is honored as the author of the “Institutes of Oratory,” an exhaustive rhetorical treatise in twelve books, devoted to the education of the orator from infancy. “No other author,” it has been said, “ever adorned a scientific treatise with so many happy metaphors.” No other author, it may be added, ever succeeded better in investing a dry subject with general interest. The “Institutes” may be read with profit by all who desire to improve their style.

Quintilian insists on virtue as a requisite of the perfect orator; yet with strange inconsistency excuses a falsehood if told in a good cause, and justifies the doing of evil that good may come. We present a few paragraphs on

THE EMBELLISHMENT OF STYLE.

“By polish and embellishment of style the orator recommends himself to his auditors in his proper character; in his other efforts he courts the approbation of the learned, in this the applause of the multitude. Cicero, in pleading the cause of Cornelius, fought with arms that were not only stout, but dazzling; nor would he, merely by instructing the judge, or by speaking to the purpose in pure Latin and with perspicuity, have caused the Roman people to testify their admiration of him not only by acclamations, but even by tumults of applause. It was the sublimity, magnificence, splendor, and dignity of his eloquence, that drew forth that thunder of approbation.

This grace of style may contribute in no small degree to the success of a cause; for those who listen with pleasure are both more attentive and more ready to believe; they are very frequently captivated with pleasure, and sometimes hurried away in admiration. Thus the glitter of a sword strikes something of terror into the eyes; and thunderstorms themselves would not alarm us so much as they do, if it were their force only, and not also their flame, that was dreaded. Cicero, accordingly, in one of his letters to Brutus, makes with good reason the following remark:‘That eloquence which excites no admiration, I account as nothing.’ Aristotle, also, thinks that to excite admiration should be one of our greatest objects.

But let the embellishment of our style be manly, noble, and chaste; let it not affect effeminate delicacy, or a complexion counterfeited by paint, but let it glow with genuine health and vigor. Should I think a piece of land better cultivated, in which the owner should show me lilies, anemonies, and violets, and fountains playing, than one in which there is a plentiful harvest, or vines laden with grapes? Should I prefer barren plane-trees, or clipped myrtles, to elms embraced with vines, and fruitful olive-trees? The rich may have such unproductive gratifications; but what would they be, if they had nothing else?

Whatever may be attractive in conception, elegant in expression, pleasing in figures, rich in metaphor, or polished in composition, the orator, like a dealer, as it were, in eloquence, will lay before his audience for them to inspect, and almost to handle; for his success entirely concerns his reputation, and not his cause. But when a serious affair is in question, and there is a contest in real earnest, anxiety for mere applause should be an orator’s last concern. Indeed, no speaker, where important interests are involved, should be very solicitous about his words.”—WATSON.

Among the lesser lights of the first Christian century were QUINTUS CURTIUS, who compiled a “History of Alexander the Great;” COLUMELLA, a writer on agriculture; POMPONIUS MELA, the first Latin geographer; PROBUS, the grammarian; VALERIUS FLACCUS, who wrote the epic “Argonautica,” in imitation of Apollonius Rhodius; and SILIUS ITALICUS, author of a third-rate epic on the Punic Wars.

AGE OF TRAJAN AND THE ANTONINES.

=Juvenal= (40-125 A.D.), the single poet of this age, ranks with Rome’s great writers. The accounts of his life are fragmentary and obscure. A native of Aqui’num in Latium, he came to Rome, and was apparently a student of rhetoric, perhaps an advocate. A chance lampoon on an actor revealed to him his satirical talent, and forthwith he applied himself to that branch of poetry in which he became so eminent. Too modest at first to read his satires even before his friends, Juvenal postponed publishing them until his sixtieth year, when they took Rome by storm. Sixteen of them survive.

His fierce diatribes not unnaturally gave offence in high places; and at length the emperor Ha’drian[49] quietly sent their author off to Egypt, to command a Roman cohort stationed there—a disgrace which brought the old satirist in sorrow to the grave.

Juvenal probed Roman society to its very depths, laying bare vices of the blackest dye. In his day, the degenerate masters of the world even out-sodomed Sodom in depravity. Nobles and emperors openly perpetrated the vilest crimes. High-born ladies, in male attire, entered the arena to fight like gladiators; revelled in reckless extravagance; plunged into immoralities that call up a blush in the very recital, and even added the arts of the poisoner to their accomplishments. Thus the poet exclaims against these fashionable murderesses:—

“They see upon the stage the Grecian wife
Redeeming with her own her husband’s life;
Yet, in her place, would willingly deprive
Their lords of breath, to keep their dogs alive!
Abroad, at home, the Belides[50] you meet,
And Clytemnestras swarm in every street;
But here the difference lies—those bungling wives
With a blunt axe hacked out their husbands’ lives;
While now the deed is done with dexterous art,
And a drugged bowl performs the axe’s part.”

In the blaze of his satire Juvenal brought out the representative characters of his time. Parasites, hypocrites, and panders, upstarts, legacy-hunters, and gamblers, ballet-dancers and fortune-tellers, gluttons and sots,—defile before us in his pages till we turn with nausea from the revolting panorama. Well might the poet sigh:—

“Oh! happy were our sires, estranged from crimes;
And happy, happy were the good old times,
Which saw beneath their kings’, their tribunes’ reign,
One cell the nation’s criminals contain!”

Juvenal’s vividness of description and minuteness of detail show him to have been personally familiar with the vices he lashed; that he kept himself unspotted we can neither assert nor deny. His satires are full of moral precepts and virtuous sentiments; the Tenth, perhaps the gem of the collection, has lent more thoughts and expressions to modern times than any other Latin poem of equal length. It closes with a beautiful petition:—

JUVENAL’S PRAYER.

“O Thou who know’st the wants of human kind,
Vouchsafe me health of body, health of mind;
A soul prepared to meet the frowns of fate,
And look undaunted on a future state;
That reckons death a blessing, yet can bear
Existence nobly, with its weight of care;
That anger and desire alike restrains,
And counts Alcides’ toils, and cruel pains,
Superior far to banquets, wanton nights,
And all the Assyrian monarch’s soft delights!
Here bound, at length, thy wishes. I but teach
What blessings man, by his own powers, may reach.
The path to peace is virtue. We should see,
If wise, O Fortune, naught divine in thee:
But we have deified a name alone,
And fixed in heaven thy visionary throne!”

Brevity, intensity, and vigor, are conspicuous elements in our author’s style. He always used “the best words in the right places.” Said Dryden, his only peer in satiric poetry, “Juvenal gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.” We extract from the Tenth Satire one of his most graphic passages:—

THE INSTABILITY OF FORTUNE.

[Illustrated by the fall of Sejanus.]

“Some, Power hurls headlong from her envied height;
Some, the broad tablet, flashing on the sight,
With titles, names: the statues, tumbled down,
Are dragged by hooting thousands through the town;
The brazen cars torn rudely from the yoke,
And, with the blameless steeds, to shivers broke—
Then roar the flames! The sooty artist blows,
And all Sejanus[51] in the furnace glows;
Sejanus, once so honored, so adored,
And only second to the world’s great lord,
Runs glittering from the mould, in cups and cans,
Basins and ewers, plates, pitchers, pots, and pans.
‘Crown all your doors with bay, triumphant bay!
Sacred to Jove, the milk-white victim slay;
For lo! where great Sejanus by the throng,
A joyful spectacle! is dragged along.
What lips! what cheeks! ha, traitor! for my part,
I never loved the fellow—in my heart.’
‘But tell me, why was he adjudged to bleed?
And who discovered, and who proved the deed?’
‘Proved!—a huge wordy letter came to-day
From Capreæ.’ Good! what think the people? They—
They follow fortune, as of old, and hate,
With their whole souls, the victim of the state.
Yet would the herd, thus zealous, thus on fire,
Had Nursia[52] met the Tuscan’s fond desire,
And crushed the unwary prince, have all combined,
And hailed Sejanus master of mankind!
Lured by the splendor of his happier hour,
Wouldst thou possess Sejanus’ wealth and power;
See crowds of suppliants at thy levee wait,
Give this to sway the army, that the state;
And keep a prince in ward, retired to reign
O’er Capreæ’s crags, with his Chaldean train?
Yes, yes, thou wouldst (for I can read thy breast)
Enjoy that favor which he once possessed,
Assume all offices, grasp all commands,
The Imperial Horse, and the Prætorian Bands,
’Tis Nature, this; e’en those who want the will,
Pant for the dreadful privilege to kill:
Yet what delight can rank and power bestow,
Since every joy is balanced by its woe!”—GIFFORD.

=Tacitus= (54-118 A.D.).—Foremost among the prose writers of this later period was Caius Cornelius Tacitus, by some considered the greatest of Roman historians. Of his early life we know nothing, though as a youth he seems to have mastered those arts which afterward made him a successful orator. In the reign of Vespasian he took to wife the daughter of Julius Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain, and began a public career which culminated under Nerva (97 A.D.) in the consulship. After this he probably confined his attention to literature, busying himself with the compilation of historical works until death put an end to his labors.

The first of these in the order of time was the “Agricola,” an admirable biography of the author’s father-in-law, “the hero of a hundred fights, the conqueror of those warlike islanders whom the mighty Julius left to their original freedom, and whom Claudius and his captains imperfectly subdued.” It is particularly valuable for the light it casts on the history of Britain, and the influence of Roman institutions.

“Agricola,” said Tacitus, “gave private encouragement and public aid to the building of temples, courts of justice, and dwelling-houses, praising the energetic and reproving the indolent. Thus an honorable rivalry took the place of compulsion. He likewise provided a liberal education for the sons of the chiefs, and showed such a preference for the natural powers of the Britons over the industry of the Gauls that they who lately disdained the tongue of Rome now coveted its eloquence. Hence, too, a liking sprung up for our style of dress, and the _toga_ became fashionable. Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice—the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this, in their ignorance, they called civilization.”

The “Agricola” was followed by “the Germania,” a treatise on the situation, customs, and tribes of Germany, in whose freedom-loving warriors Tacitus saw an enemy to be feared. What more caustic satires than his telling contrasts of their simple habits with Roman luxury, their stern morality with Roman profligacy? The Germania may be regarded as a warning from a patriotic historian to his vice-ridden, enervated countrymen—a warning which they would have done well to regard. Particularly pleasing are its picturesque sketches of German life, written in concise, vigorous language.

The remaining works of Tacitus are his “Histories,” “Annals,” and a Dialogue on “the Decline of Eloquence.” The Histories covered the reigns of the Roman emperors from Galba to Domitian inclusive (69-96 A.D.); about one-third of the work is preserved. The genius of Tacitus did ample justice to the tremendous issues of this eventful period, described by him as follows:—

“I am entering on the history of a period rich in disasters, frightful in its wars, torn by civil strife, and even in peace full of horrors. Four emperors perished by the sword. There were three civil wars: there were more with foreign enemies: there were often wars that had both characters at once. Now, too, Italy was prostrated by disasters, either entirely novel or that recurred only after a long succession of ages. Cities in Campania’s richest plains were swallowed up and overwhelmed; Rome was wasted by conflagrations, its oldest temples were consumed, and the Capitol itself was fired by the hands of citizens. Never, surely, did more terrible calamities of the Roman people, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment.”

In the “Annals” (sixteen books), which traced the history of the emperors from the death of Augustus up to the point at which the Histories had opened, the voice of the indignant satirist is everywhere heard. Portions of this work, which were published about 115 A.D., are lost. We extract the historian’s vivid description of the burning of Rome.

THE BURNING OF ROME.

“There followed a dreadful disaster, whether fortuitously or by the wicked contrivance of the prince is not determined, for both are asserted by historians. But of all the calamities which ever befell this city from the rage of fire, this was the most terrible. It broke out in that part of the Circus which is contiguous to mounts Palatine and Cœlius, where, by reason of shops in which were kept such goods as minister aliment to fire, the moment it commenced it acquired strength, and being accelerated by the wind, it spread at once through the whole extent of the Circus. For neither were the houses secured by enclosures, nor the temples environed with walls, nor was there any other obstacle to intercept its progress; but the flame, spreading every way impetuously, invaded first the lower regions of the city, then mounted to the higher; then again ravaging the lower, it baffled every effort to extinguish it, by the rapidity of its destructive course, and from the liability of the city to conflagration in consequence of the narrow and intricate alleys, and the irregularity of the streets in ancient Rome.

Add to this the wailings of terrified women, the infirm condition of the aged, and the helplessness of childhood; such as strove to provide for themselves, and those who labored to assist others; these dragging the feeble, those waiting for them; some hurrying, others lingering; altogether created a scene of universal confusion and embarrassment. While they looked back upon the danger in their rear, they often found themselves beset before, and on their sides; or if they had escaped into the quarters adjoining, these too were already seized by the devouring flames; even the parts which they believed to be remote and exempt, were found to be in the same distress.