Chapter I: Literature (1)

Civilization in Greece was beautiful, in Rome invincible. As this latter empire spread, it invaded savage races on every hand, and gave birth to a new world, still more vast, the world of commercial progress, stretching along the Mediterranean and Baltic shores into the unbounded ocean of the West. While Providence was concentrating its conservative forces in Alexander, for the execution of gracious designs, the future heiress of Greece was slumbering in her cradle on the Sicilian and Italian coasts, near where the new centre was preparing, which was to draw around it the barbarous nations of earth. That the graceful progeny of Athene should have migrated with facility from the serene clime of their native home to the stormy wilds of Etruscan Rome was not strange, since naturalists assert that birds of Paradise fly best against the wind; it drifts their gorgeous plumage behind them, which only impedes when before the gale.

The most careful consideration of ancient history leads to the belief that many of the nations which flourished in Italy, long before the Roman empire attained its height of power and splendor, were distinguished by a harmony of culture, an exuberance of being, a diversity of manifestation, and originality of genius, which Rome in her best days never exceeded. They each contained an important element of civilization, but only in an incipient degree; they were of co-operative capacity, and when the predominant quality of the new cycle arose with complete development to its culminating point, martial Rome executed the most fulminating and comprehensive of primordial missions. Had not Greece preceded them with the humanizing influences of the beautiful, the great nation would have been nothing but a remorseless slayer of men, furnishing no compensation for the thralldom which was imposed from land to land by her fiery and bloody arms. The former caused Beauty to dwell as a divinity in the midst of men; the latter erected the god of war as the national deity, and compelled all peoples to the ignoble worship.

Rome was destined, through force, to show the world, despite the greatest obstacles, what energetic will, unity, earnestness, and pertinacity of purpose, could do. She was doubtless superior to most nations in military skill, and this gave her great advantage; but her unique peculiarity consisted in the fact, that, till her co-operative work was done, she never despaired, and this attribute of fortitude alone conquered the world. Ruin as often threatened the Romans as it did other champions, and they would have fallen as others fell, had not internal resources increased, and heroical resolution been confirmed, in proportion as outward support failed them. The spectacle of physical force which they presented was the grandest of earth; but it was moral force, something grander still, which fortified the physical force, and rendered it such a mighty agent of civilization. War has numerous advantages which are overruled for good, and the misfortunes of some nations are made to supply prosperity to others. The most fruitful fields have been fertilized by wholesale carnage, that scourge and civilizer of mankind. As the sea retires in one quarter at the same time it advances in another, swallows up the productiveness of this shore to augment the territory and richness of that, so do great natural fluctuations transpire under the control of that sovereign law by which all things are changed but nothing destroyed. The invasion of Persia was virtually the creation of Greece, and the overthrow of the latter enriched the world. When the fair continent had fully emerged from the flood of Pelasgic barbarism, afar in the West, on Latian plains, the infant state of Rome was obscurely struggling into power against the neighboring confederacies in which the old Etruscan culture was rapidly sinking into decay. While the gloomy wilds of Gaul and Germany yet lay scarcely known, Gela, in the Greek colony at Syracuse, maintained the splendor of a Grecian name, and by a single defeat in Sicily the pride of Carthage was subdued. Nations, like individuals, have each a special mission on earth. Many are either co-operative only or secondary, and but a few are manifestly primordial. Thus the mission of Greece was beauty, that of Rome, force. In those special spheres they manifested the natural attributes of humanity in a fashion and to a degree never before reached by any nation. But as all secondary nations co-operated to execute the mission given to each great primordial power, so these two predominant branches of the Japhetic race co-operated, in subordination to the one leading purpose of Providence, to perpetuate progress and improve mankind.

The rude elements of the Indo-European stock were early scattered from Caucasus to the Alpine North. The Hellenic family were the first raised to a high degree of refinement, and they planted their offspring even to the extremity of the Italian peninsula. When other kindred branches, like the Oscans and Sabines, superseded these, they gave a composite character to the new language thus formed, an amalgamation of Attic flexibility with Latin strength. But the body was more ponderous than the soul; the plastic property so prominent in the Greek tongue was lost in the harder and stiffer enunciation of unpolished Rome. The former, like a lucid substance, seemed to crystallize spontaneously into the most beautiful forms; but the latter, like granite, could be rendered attractive only by artificial polish, and that of the most laborious kind. It was the language of solidity, gravity, and energy; the fit medium for expressing the dictum of imperial might, but was not adapted to convey either the sentiments of love or the products of meditation. The great orator, in his defense of the poet Archias, informs us that Greek literature was read by almost all nations of the world, while Latin was still confined within very narrow boundaries. Such was the wonderful vitality of Greek in its ancient form, and yet it lived only with such as spoke it as their vernacular in the fatherland or its provinces. Like all true and original creations of genius, it never survived the fostering care of devotees, but sank back with their decay, and again became limited within the boundaries of its first home. In the end, as in the beginning, Athens was the University of the whole classic world. On the contrary, Latin was propagated chiefly by conquest, absorbing all barbarous dialects into itself, and, like the dominion of its masters, becoming the stronger the further west it was spread. Under the auspices of the Republic, it became united with the Celtic and Iberian in Spain, and was planted by Julius Cæsar in Britain, as well as Gaul. Greek is still spoken at Athens; but Latin, when it had been engrafted on the rest of Europe, and gave birth to all modern tongues, became again grossly barbarized and died.

By what route the progenitors of the Oscans, Sabines, Itali, and Umbrians came from the original cradle of the human race, is not clearly known. They were evidently kindred to the Pelasgi of the Morea, and used the Phœnician alphabet. Their dress and national symbol, the eagle, were Lydian, and their theology, like the more refined system of the Greeks, was derived from the remotest East. The Romans were composite from the first, and in every thing. The septi-montium upon which their primitive city stood, was occupied by different tribes. If we may trust mythical tradition, a Latin tribe had their settlement on mount Palatine, and a Sabine community occupied the adjacent Quirinal and Capitoline heights. Mutual jealousy kept them a long time separate, but at length the privilege of intermarriage was conceded, and the different tribes became one people. The Etruscans were of purest Pelasgian origin, and for a long period possessed the greatest civilizing power in the West. When subdued politically, they still left the most indelible stamp on the arts and fortunes of the Roman people. These ethnical affinities are correlative to the linguistic affinities of the great martial cycle, and best indicate out of what elements its language was composed.

The ancient Latin alphabet was an offshoot from primitive Greek, and evidently came from the same source. Its later departure from the original current, and modifications of its forms, are all traceable through the means of inscriptions on funereal urns, coins, and historical monuments. The alphabets of Gaul, Germany, Etruria, and Spain, were formed from the Greek; and even the Latin letters may be termed the universal alphabet, for it was the immediate parent of all the present modes of writing. But this mother-tongue did not, like its nobler parent, proceed from a single germ, and gradually unfold by a natural growth. It merged in the bosom of foreign elements, and presented great and striking contrasts in its progress. In the Republic it was like the people, high-minded, and competent for the debate of mighty interests; under regal or imperial sway, it became the fitting medium of an extravagant court, cramped and debauched by foreign manners. At the epoch of Livius Andronicus, B.C. 240, or the first Punic war, the language was elicited from various dialects, and consolidated into the vernacular of a whole people. The Oscan, Sabine, and Etrurian, or Tuscan, were the leading native elements; but the primitive Greek, or Pelasgic, was early blended with the Latin, greatly enriching it, and imparting to it the chief basis of its forms. From the first Punic to the first civil war, B.C. 88, was a period of marked improvement. Increased intercourse with the Greeks, after the second Punic war, greatly improved their native literature, aroused and directed all their energies to practical life, and the affairs of state. Greek models were held up to the enthusiasm of those who emulated at first, and afterward imitated, the masters whom they could never hope to excel. Thus the language of the Romans did not originate in the rules of art, but in the free outflowings of national character. Hence, Quintilian compares the writings of Ennius to an ancient sacred grove of primeval trees, with their stately trunks. Something of Greek pliancy was imparted, while the tongue was becoming harmonized, by the translations of the Odyssey made by Titus Andronicus, and by Nævius from Æschylus and Euripides. The progress of improvement continued, and by the time of Augustus the Roman language was formed. Then, in distinction from the Latin, or provincial speech, it was said to be "the refined language of the city, containing nothing which could offend, nothing which could displease, nothing which could be reprehended, nothing of foreign sound or odor."

Much of the original material employed in early Roman literature was doubtless furnished by the subjugation of Etruria to her arms; but gross indigenous elements needed to be quickened into symmetrical growth, and the greater conquest of Greece itself was alone equal to that miracle. The beautiful captive wound her charms around the barbarous captor, and held him in subjection to a vassalage infinitely more glorious than all his boasted freedom and universal mastery in arms.

How wise is Providence! The south of Italy had for many centuries been peopled with colonists from Greece, who retained and cultivated the arts and literature of the mother country. When sufficient substance had been collected on the seven rugged hills, to form a basis of national literature, Tarentum was subjugated, and all that was valuable in that interesting country was removed to nourish the first literary pursuits at Rome. Two years after this arose the first Punic war, the result of which was the conquest of Sicily, that charming land whereon the flowers of Grecian poesy had blossomed with even fairer charms than on the neighboring continent. When we come to consider bucolic poetry, the most healthful and original growth of Roman letters, we should remember that this was the spot of its birth. It was in Sicily that the pastoral and comic muses prompted Stersichorus first to reduce lyrical compositions to the regular division of strophe, antistrophe, and epode. It was here that Empedocles "married to immortal verse" the "illustrious discoveries" of his "divine mind." Here Epicharmus invented comedy, which was cultivated by Philemon, Apollodorus, Carcinus, Sophron, and various others. Tragedy also found successful votaries in Empedocles, Sosicles, and Achæus. It was in Sicily, too, that the Mīme was invented, or, at least, perfected; Pindar, Æschylus, and Simonides, had resided at the court of Hiero I., and Theognis of Megara, committed his precepts to elegiacs in Sicily. The Dionysii also were authors, as well as patrons of literary men. It is, moreover, believed that when the Romans came into possession of Sicily, Theocritus was yet living. Many of the most creative minds in the conquered provinces now began to reside at Rome, bringing art and cultivation with them; and from this period literature in the metropolis assumed somewhat of a regular and connected form.

The great majority of the citizens undervalued and even despised devotion to sedentary and contemplative pursuits. They were ambitious, and lived for conquest; but it was the extension of political domination they strove for, not the enlargement of literary renown. The old Roman was charmed by the glory of his country abroad, and the wise administration of her constitution at home. Military prowess was the foundation and guarantee of both, so that beyond politics and war he felt little concern. He was susceptible to every thing that related to success in arms; but exercises of a purer mental cast, even the most exciting, such as tragedy, never captivated the feelings nor acquired an influence over the mass of the people, as was universal in Greece. Amid the dust and destruction of perpetual conflict, learning was but a sickly plant, and it required all the artificial heat of courtly patronage to bring any thing to maturity. Accius was patronized by D. Brutus; Ennius by Lucilius and the Scipios; Terence by Africanus and Lælius; Lucretius by the Memmii; Tibullus by Messala; Propertius by Ælius Gallus; Virgil and his friends by Augustus, Mæcenas, and Pollio; Martial and Quintilian by Domitian.

But, with the utmost adventitious aid, Roman literature, which never appeared greatly to deserve the epithet national, was of the rudest and most meagre description, and should be divided into three periods. The first period was dramatic; the second, prosaic; and the third, rhetorical. All the acting tragedy ever produced by Romans was limited to the first period; also the comedies of Plautus and Terence, the only works which have survived to claim admiration in modern times. It was the era of life, when all the vigorous germs of after growth were started. Epic poetry, rugged and monotonous as it was, yet then had a partial development, simultaneously with the first composition of national annals, and the foundation of accurate and thoughtful jurisprudence. It was also in that primary period that C. Gracchus became the father of Latin prose; but the language of the first great orator of western democracy under Italian skies was yet very inferior to the impassioned and noble sentiments it conveyed.

The second period was that of special refinement in prose, and of increased erudition. Cæsar and Sallust are its exponents as historians, and Cicero is its chief representative as an orator and philosopher. In a word, it was the great culmination of the Augustan age, wherein Lucretius and Catullus were the harbingers of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, and the varied treasures of all the great masters of prose and learned poetry were garnered in the lucid narrative of Livy.

As the first period was redolent of life, and the second teemed with learning, so the third is known by its excessive embellishment. It was called "the silver age," and was covered with abundance of filigree. It produced the only fabulist of Rome, Phædrus; Juvenal, the satirist; Martial, the epigrammatist; Tacitus, the historian; Quintilian, the critic; and the elegant letter-writer, Pliny. These are the best names of the later period of the Augustan age, and these decisively mark the progress of decline. Fancifulness and formalism ruled supreme, and whatever of independent thought the earlier periods had known, was now superseded by servility and decay.

The Romans inherited no legendary stories adapted to the higher order of dramatic composition. The early traditions which formed the groundwork of their history were private, and not public, property--the pedigrees and memorials of separate families, and therefore not interesting to the people at large. There were no Attic Eumolpidæ on the seven hills to preserve antique reminiscences as a national treasure, nor did they, like fragrant plants, twine themselves along the rocky base of the Roman capitol, as the thrilling traditions of ancestral Greece did round the chaste altars of that susceptible people. The Latin poets might sometimes collect withered fictions, and weave them into their rhythmical records of antiquity; but they possessed no vital beauty, no talismanic power for awakening national enthusiasm. Indeed, who could heartily enjoy allusions to the past, since old Rome had been superseded by a new race. The few veterans who yet survived the bloody wars of Greece, Africa, Gaul, and Spain, were settled in remote military colonies, and a careless disregard of every thing in the metropolis, except luxurious sustenance and shows, paved the way for a speedy downfall. Rome was peopled with step-sons only, as Scipio Æmilius designated the populace, and the tragedy most genial to their taste and ambition was that which was most replete with fulsome compliments to favorite individuals. In Greece, the poet was deemed an inspired being, and his tongue was regarded as the divinest medium for the communion of the visible with the invisible; but at Rome, poetry was nothing more than a dull recreation, and its author was no better than a parasite or a slave. At Athens, the impersonation of a tragedy was an act of worship; the theatre was a temple, and the altar of a deity was its central, point. With the Romans, the thymele existed no longer as a memorial of sacred sacrifice, and the stage deteriorated into the mere arena of disgusting amusement. Pliny, in his history, and Cicero, in eloquent regrets, have told us how the bloody combats of gladiators, the miserable captives and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies, or mangled by wild beasts, were the real tragedies coveted by the people. The sham-fights and Naumachiæ, though only imitations, were real dramas, in which those pursuits which most deeply interested the spectators, and which constituted their highest glories, were visibly represented. Gorgeous spectacles fed personal vanity in their national greatness. The spoil of conquered nations, borne in procession across the stage, reminded them of their triumphs and their victories. The magnificent costumes of the actors who attended the model of some captured city, preceded and followed by artistic spoils, represented in mimic grandeur the ovation of a successful warrior, whose return from a distant expedition, laden with plunder, realized the highest aspirations of Rome; whilst corresponding scenery, glittering with glass, silver, and gold, intermingled and sustained by variegated pillars of foreign marbles, told ostentatiously of their mental extravagance and material wealth. To such a people there was neither attraction nor profit in the moral woes of tragedy, and one could not expect that a legitimate drama under such circumstances would be national. Hence, in the popular eye, the scenic decorations and theatrical dresses became the chief objects of regard, while the poet's office was entirely subordinate, and plays became as devoid of intellect as they were debasing to taste.

In reviewing with more detail the three periods of dramatic progress at Rome, such as it was, we have to consider the origin and character of their comedy. The Greek works of Menander, Diphilus, and Apollodorus, formed a rich store of materials for Roman adoption, and were so employed with as much success as Plautus, Cæilius Statius, and Terence could command. Their standard was worldly prudence, resting on the dangerous ground of Epicurean philosophy; and therefore Roman comedy inculcated no virtue even so salutary as Stoicism, though it sometimes encouraged the benevolent affections. Creative imagination was a rare quality in the Roman mind; therefore, literature with them was not of a spontaneous growth. For a short period, it was the recreation of a few; but with the many it was never a valued delight. Even Cicero, the truest literary spirit of his nation, could recognize but one end and object in all study, namely, those sciences which render a man useful to his country. External utility and not internal impulse, was the final cause of Roman literature. In preceding nations poetry was the original and spontaneous production; but the earliest literary effort of the Romans was history, a dry record of facts, and not ideas. The first poetical form ever attempted by them was satire, and it is characteristic of the rude and coarse people among whom it had its origin. They loved strife, both physical and mental; with them was found little or no salutary intellectual exercise, except in legal conflicts and partisan debates. They were gladiators in the forum, as in the circus, and with rustic taste took equal delight in bandying sarcastic words or struggling in a wrestling match. The Romans were a stern, not an æsthetic people; they had a natural aptitude for satire, and that was the only literary merit they possessed. Yet even in this department, as Horace confessed, Lucilius, the founder of Roman satire, was a disciple of the Greek Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. But the cynical humor and prompt extemporaneous gibe native to the progeny of a she-wolf eminently qualified them to excel in a walk wherein they were certainly most at home.

Livius Andronicus, the first literary character at Rome, was a native of the Greek colony at Tarentum, born B.C. 240, and originally a slave. He probably came into that condition by the fortunes of war, and, like many others in the same circumstances, was employed as a tutor in the metropolis. To interest his cotemporaries in the ancient legends of Italy, he translated the Odyssey, in the old Saturnian measure, and also divers ancient hymns. By this means, the conquerors of the day were made to take a lively interest in Circe's fairy abode, within sight of a promontory of Latium, one of whose sons was Latinus, the patriarch of the Latin name.

Nævius, if not actually born at Rome, was from the earliest boyhood a resident in the capital, and was the first poet of real national worth. Like most subsequent writers, he was a servile imitator, but attained more than ordinary success in applying Greek taste to the development of Roman character. A bold republican and brave soldier, he breathed a martial enthusiasm into his poems, which in no slight measure aided the battles of his country in the first Punic war. The upright and inflexible Cato was his fast and enduring friend.

Plautus, unlike his two famous successors, had no patron but the public. Perhaps the Scipios and Lælii, and their fastidious associates, could not endure his broad humor and groveling inuendos. But his coarse fun and audacious action held the not over-critical ears of the undistinguished mass, whom, Horace says, he hurried on from scene to scene, from incident to incident, from jest to jest, so that they had no opportunity of feeling fatigue. Another cause of his popularity was, that although Greek was the fountain whence he drew his stores, his wit, mode of thought, and language, were veritably Roman; his style was not only his own, and Latin in fact, but Latin of the most effective kind.

P. Terentius Afer, born B.C. 195, was a slave in the family of P. Terentius Lucanus, a Roman senator. It was customary to distinguish slaves by an ethical name, and thus Afer points to an African origin. Whether he was a native of Carthage is uncertain, but he doubtless came into Roman hands through the Carthagenian slave-market, and was destined to achieve a high renown. Under Lucanus he acquired a refined and accurate knowledge of the Latin tongue, and, it is probable, also, soon obtained his freedom. A beautiful story is recorded of his original success. Having offered his first dramatic sketch for acceptance to the Curule Ædiles, they referred him to the critical judgment or Cæcilius Statius, then at the height of his popularity. Terence, according to the record, in humble garb was introduced to the poet whilst he was at supper, and, seated on a low stool near the couch on which Cæcilius was reclining, he commenced reading. He had finished but a few lines when he was invited to sit by his critic and sup with him. Before the reading was ended he had won the unqualified admiration of his hearer. The result was that Terence was immediately sought for by the distinguished, and became a favorite guest and companion with those who could appreciate his powers. The great Roman nobility, such as the Scipiones, the Lælii, the Scavolæ, and the Metelli, had some taste for literature; and, like the Tyranni of Sicily in later ages, were accustomed to assemble around them circles of the refined, of whom the hospitable host was proud to be recognized as the nucleus and centre. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in vivacity and intrigue, as well as in the powerful delineation of national character, he was superior in elegance of language and purity of taste. He was the first to substitute delicacy of sentiment for vulgarity, and knew how to touch the heart as well as gratify the intellect.

Cæcilius Statius, the venerable and auspicious friend of Terence, referred to above, was himself an emancipated slave, born at Milan, and who rose to the head of comic poetry at Rome. Greece was the ordinary fountain to him, as to others; but he excelled most of his fellow-imitators in dignity, pathos, and the conduct of his plot. In the estimation of Cicero, Statius excelled in comedy, as Ennius did in epic poetry, and Pacuvius in tragedy.

Roman comedy possessed some claims to originality, though to no exalted degree; but Roman tragedy was derived from Athens almost entire, and had not the merit of either literal translation or clever imitation. Ennius, born B.C. 239, was the transition link between the old school and the new. Originating in the wild and mountainous Calabria, he began life in a military career, and rose to the rank of a centurion. It is said that Cato, in his voyage from Africa to Rome, visited Sardinia, and finding Ennius in that island, took him home with him. He enjoyed the esteem of the leading literary societies at Rome; and at his death, when seventy years old, he was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, at the request of the great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame, embalmed in his verse, he transmitted to posterity. It indicates the progressive condition of literature in the metropolis, that Ennius, who was evidently a gentleman, was the first writer of the time who achieved for himself the enviable privileges of a citizen, to which Livius had not aspired, and Nævius, the freedman, could never attain. Enjoying the friendship of Cato the Censor, and Scipio Africanus the elder, when aristocratic wealth was beginning to be greatly revered, the republican poet, cleaving to his lowly hut on the Aventine, still lived the life of the Cincinnati, the Curii, and the Fabricii of the good old heroic times.

Under the auspices of Pacuvius, and simultaneously with the best comedy, tragedy reached the highest degree of excellence. He was born at Brundusium, B.C. 220, and was nearly related to the poet Ennius. Pacuvius resided at Rome till after his eightieth year, and formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was the chief ornament. In the evening of life he retired to Tarentum, where he died ninety years old. His tragedies were chiefly adaptations of Greek originals to the Roman stage; the plots being entirely borrowed, but the treatment and language were his own.

Attius was born B.C. 170, and became somewhat distinguished while his senior and master, Pacuvius, was yet alive. They met on friendly terms to discuss the young rival's tragedy of "Atreus." Pacuvius commended its good points, but declared it to be somewhat harsh and hard. "You are right," replied Attius, "but I hope to improve. Fruits which are at first hard and sour, become soft and mellow, but those which begin by being soft, end in being rotten." Another fact equally significant of his conscious dignity is given by Valerius Maximus, who relates that in the assemblies of the poets, he refused to rise at the entrance of Julius Cæsar, because he felt that in the republic of letters he was his superior. The statement is plausible, as the great hero was then in his youth. The political state of the people was now rapidly growing worse, and real tragedies were being so violently acted that there was little room in the popular heart for fictitious woes. The sanguinary influence of the amphitheatre seemed to have brutalized the entire nation, the vast area of which was one theatre of dreadful tragic scenes. Amidst these, the voice of the dramatic muse was hushed. Native authors then had no literary quarries of their own to work into original shapes, but they could build up splendid edifices with materials derived from polished and prolific Greece. The existence of tragedy was not long at Rome; the dramatic spirit, as a mental excellence, never belonged to that people, and with Attius, even its form disappeared.

The history of literature among the Romans is without a parallel. So prosaic and practical were the people, that they remained five centuries without an eminent poet. Even when the dazzling glories of the Grecian muse fell upon them it was only the art of imitation that they cultivated. True inspiration was foreign to their cast of mind. The most original of their writers entertained no higher idea of originality than to make it consist in the importation of a new form from Greece; and, on the ground of his own practice, affected to despise those who copied for the second or third time. Indeed, the word imitation was applied only to Latin authors, it being understood that borrowing from the Greeks, or conforming to them, implied their chief excellence. Unkindled by the Grecian torch, Roman intellect was inert; and unillumined by its formative power, their productions were both uncouth and void of enduring worth.

The Mīmi were the most indigenous to the Roman mind, and have left their traces in the modern buffoonery of Pulcinello and Harlequin. It is believed that the Romans owed their first idea of dramatic composition to the Etrurians, and the effusions of a sportive humor to the Oscians; but all matured productions, of a higher order, came from the Greeks. Curtius, sacrificing every personal inclination to an absorbing love of country, was a truer exemplification of their national spirit, than any thing they achieved in elegant letters or art. They always betrayed that their first founder was not suckled at the breast of gentle humanity, but of a ferocious beast. Schlegel has well said of them, "They were the tragedians of the history of the world, who exhibited many a deep tragedy of kings led in chains, and pining in dungeons; they were the iron necessity of other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of rearing at last from the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of an obsequious world, reduced to one dull uniformity."

The style in which the Roman theatres were built, and the means resorted to for the purpose of superficial excitement, indicate that whatever dramatic taste the people may have once possessed, it had come to be greatly decayed. The edifice erected by Pompey was so huge that forty thousand spectators could be seated at once, and must have depended upon something else than the human voice to instruct or please. The relation which Pliny gives of the architectural decoration of the stage erected by Scaurus seems incredible. When magnificence could be carried no further, they endeavored to surprise by mechanical inventions; two theatres, placed on pivots, back to back, were so made that they could be wheeled round and form one vast amphitheatre, thus sinking legitimate tragedy into the lowest clap-trap of melo-dramatic show.

It was not to be expected that a people filled with such an unbounded lust for dominion would excel in the more delicate walks of literature and art. But the unscrupulous desire of the Romans to extend the power and glory of the Republic was compatible with vigorous statesmanship, and all the kindred subjects requisite to the advancement of social science. Their mother tongue was the language of command, and proficients therein could much easier produce works in prose, since these would arise from a practical view to utility only, and would require a treatment characterized by science rather than by art. But, as in poetry, so in prose, the Romans were perpetually imitative; they frequently showed talent, but rarely genius, and aimed at erudition, not invention. Those who first devoted themselves to historical research, were also eminent in the public service. Fabius Pictor belonged to an eminent patrician family, and Cincius Alimentus was of honorable birth. Such were Roman historians until the time of Sulla, whose cotemporary, L. Otacilius Pititus, was the first freedman who began to write history. The primary efforts of these authors and their associates were devoted to the transfer of poetical records into prose, the more appropriate vehicle of national annals.

M. Porcius Cato Censorius was born at Tusculum, B.C. 234. He displayed uncommon versatility of talent, and attained a place among the first orators, jurists, economists, and historians, of his day. Plautus and Terence were his cotemporaries. Cato enjoyed the advantage of a personal acquaintance with Polybius, the Greek historian, and the philosophers, Carneades, Critolaus, and Diogenes, who were compelled from Athens to lecture at Rome. At the same time Crates arrived from Pergamus, and the taste for Greek literature was so quickened, that the venerable prejudice against it in Cato was overcome, and very late in his life he sat down to learn the language of a people whom he had hated and despised. Early in life he became a soldier, served in the Hannibalian war, was under Fabius Maximus, both in Campania and Tarentum, and did the state some service in the decisive battle of the Metaurus. Stern in integrity, and rural in taste, like Carius Dentatus, and Quintius Cincinnatus, between his campaigns he employed himself in agricultural pursuits, on his Sabine farm. Valerius Flaccus invited him to his town-house at Rome, where the rustic pleader almost immediately became famous in the highest courts, and was soon sent to govern the province of Spain. This office was happily fitted to his talents, and on that western field he reaped the richest harvest of fame. The inherent love of truth and justice in Cato made him detest every demand for respect that did not rest on personal merit. Adventitious rank he despised, and was an unrelenting foe to aristocracy, as being arbitrary, conventional, and oppressive. The most amiable trait in his character was a burning indignation against wrong. He was self-educated, and perfectly original in character and genius. His learning was immense, but all his opinions were his own. Despite the imperfections of Cato, he was, intellectually and morally, the greatest man pagan Rome produced. Several inferior historians succeeded, but none worthy of note, previous to the revival-period of Cicero.

Polybius was carried captive to Rome, where he wrote his history in the language of his fallen country; and, when his learned co-patriots were permitted to return, he remained in Rome, greatly respected, and became both friend and adviser to the younger Scipio. The histories of Lucius Lucullus, Aulus Albinus, and Scipio Africanus, designed especially for the educated classes, were written in Greek. The earliest improvements in Latin were made by the epic and dramatic poets. At a later period, statesmen and orators exerted a strong popular influence in regard to prose composition, and thus the common people were gradually fortified with earnestness and practical intelligence.

Caius Julius Cæsar was born B.C. 101, and was a voluminous writer, as well as unequaled soldier. A strong man will stamp his individuality on his pages, as well as exhibit it in his acts. Such was the case with Cæsar, the first Roman whose expressions were well balanced and full of literary force. His composition at night was the fitting counterpart of his conduct by day. Whether he wielded the baton of supreme command on the battle-field, or quietly inscribed its history while the wounds of thousands were yet bleeding, his sword and pen alike went directly to the end desired, and triumph crowned every literary as well as martial attempt. He was said to know every man in his army by name, and he appears to have had an equally intimate acquaintance with the language in which he wrote. Every word, like a mailed soldier, was made to occupy its appropriate place, and his brief sentences stood in serrated strength, doing the most efficient service with least waste of time and space. Nothing could be subtracted from his brevity, or substituted for his chosen elements and positions of might. Xenophon, several of Alexander's generals, and Hannibal himself, also wrote annals of their own achievements; but the great Roman alone was the superlative martial writer, as he was the unconquered champion in war. The history of campaigns was a department of composition in which the genius of that people was best adapted to shine, and the boldest of their conquerors was also the brightest exponent of their national spirit.

Caius Crispus Sallustius, born fifteen years later than the great writer just noticed, and much inferior to him in harmony of arrangement and clearness of expression, yet had few equals among his countrymen as a writer. The beautiful historians of Greece were more easily copied than any other department of their letters, and this enabled the Romans to produce clever imitations. Thucydides was the model followed by Sallust, whose servility crippled the modicum of genius he originally possessed.

Titus Livius was born B.C. 17, at Padua, and removed to Rome, where he enjoyed the protection and regard of Augustus. The gross materialism of Epicurus was most genial to the national sense, and received at their hands a general adoption. The same gloomy impress lies upon the pages of Livy, and we close his work with the feeling that we have been conducted through "a stately gallery of gay and tragic pictures." Battles and triumphs are delineated with circumstantial vividness; but little light is thrown upon the constitution of the immortal mind, nor is the information thus communicated conducive to healthful order or energy.

Caius Cornelius Tacitus was born A.D. 57, forty-three years after the death of Augustus. His father is supposed to have been of the equestrian order, and Procurator of Belgian Gaul. Better auspices dawned when Trajan, the last of efficient Cæsars, ascended the throne, and like the sudden beauty which sometimes adorns the close of a lowering day, rivalled the greatness of old Rome. As his fitting co-operative in concluding the historic cycle of the Augustan age, Tacitus, educated under Vespasian and Titus, and who had learned to analyze his race under Domitian and Nerva, arose with Trajan to enjoy the last bright hour of his nation, and to portray the dreadfulness of the coming night. The depth of his spirit, and pungency of his expressions, are the last and best exponents of Augustan prose literature. What began with Cæsar in simple majesty, and was continued by Livy under the attractions of rhetorical extravagance, was by Tacitus garnered and uttered in the final expression of invincible victory and disdain. The historian of despotic cruelty threw the links of the world's fetters along the iron pages of his masterly Annals, while the shadows of Teutonic grandeur seem already gathering over his sad visage as he writes.

Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos need only be named in this connection, while we pass to a more particular mention of Plutarchus of Chæronea. He was, probably, a few years senior to Tacitus, and also wrote under the reign of Trajan. Plutarch is the representative of popular biography; he stands between the historian, the poet, and the romancer, to catch the beautiful lights of all. His account of Theseus resembles a legend from an old chronicle, or a chapter of magic; memoirs as depicted by his hand are exceedingly picturesque, in the presence of which reading becomes sight, as some vivid touch lights up the centre and animates the whole. For instance, the white charger of Sylla, lashed by a servant who saw his danger, carries the rider with a plunge between two falling spears. Again, Pyrrhus, wounded and faint, suddenly opens his eyes on Zopyrus in the act of waving a sword over his neck, and darts at him so fierce a look, that he springs back in terror, while his guilty hands tremble. And how startling is the aspect of Cæsar in the senate house, surrounded by conspirators, and turning his face in every direction, to meet only the murderous gleamings of steel!

The Roman prose writers excelled the poets in original worth. Their historical style, however, like their Corinthian order of art, was founded upon the Greek, but became much more florid than the original. Livy, for instance, the most perfect master of the Roman tongue as a national historian, is also the best illustration of this fault. Though excessively ornate in his emulation of the ancients, he yet retained something of their merit. Under the later Cæsars, history, that department of Augustan literature of most sterling worth, grew increasingly corrupt in matter, and deteriorated in style, until the fulsome meanness and insipidity of Velleius was reached, the lowest nadir of historic art. The advancement of the government in despotism is marked by a corresponding debasement in cotemporary writing. Seneca, for example, threw himself into the cold embrace of Stoicism, and becamed resigned as far as possible to the philosophy of endurance and the literature of despair.

Eloquence is a plant indigenous to a free soil, and was nearly a stranger to the Romans until it was nurtured in the schools of Tisias and Corax, when, on the dethronement of the tyrants, the dawn of freedom brightened upon Sicily. At length the privilege of unfettered debate which had first found a congenial home in Greece, arose in republican Rome. The plebeians, in their conflicts with the patricians, found an efficient advocate in Menenius Agrippa, who led them back from the sacred mountain with his rustic wisdom. Cases of oppression found some Icilius or Virginius armed with a panoply of burning indignation, and many a Siccius Dentatus, unskilled in pedantic terms, could appeal to his honorable wounds and scars in front received in patriotic service, and to the vestiges of torture marked by cruelty on his back. The unwritten literature of active life long preceded the office of formal history, and efficient oratory gradually arose to counteract by its antagonistic spirit the warlike fierceness of an utilitarian people. As when the great soldier, Scipio Africanus Major, was unjustly accused by a malignant opponent, the necessity of personal defense unexpectedly developed him into a consummate orator. Livy adorned the whole speech with his own rhetoric, but A. Gellius has preserved the peroration intact, which refers to the fortunate anniversary on which the defense was made: "I call to remembrance, Romans," said he, "that this is the very day on which I vanquished in a bloody battle on the plains of Africa the Carthaginian Hannibal, the most formidable enemy Rome ever encountered. I obtained for you a peace and an unlooked-for victory. Let us not, then, be ungrateful to heaven, but let us leave this knave, and at once offer our grateful thanksgivings to Jove, supremely good and great." The people obeyed his summons, the forum was deserted, and crowds followed the eloquent hero with acclamations to the Capitol.

The eloquence of Cato was mentioned, in our general notice of his versatile talents. He was equally successful as a speaker and a writer. The father of the Gracchi was distinguished among his cotemporaries for effective oratory, but no specimens have survived.

Scipio Africanus Minor was admirably qualified to be the link between the old and new style of eloquence. In his soldier-like character, the harder outlines of Roman sternness were modified by an ardent love of learning. His first campaign was in Greece, where he formed a literary friendship with leading minds, and especially with Polybius, which ripened into the closest intimacy when that great historian came as a hostage to Rome. He abhorred the degeneracy of manners, Greek and Roman, but preserving his own moral nature uncorrupted thereby, he was faithful in all the active duties of intelligent citizenship. Greek refinement had not destroyed the frankness, whilst it had humanized the boldness of the Roman; but prompted him to love the beautiful as well as the good, and to believe that elegance was by no means incompatible with strength. Lælius was his friend, and Servius Sulpicius Galba his successor in the more cultivated style of animated oratory.

But the Gracchi have the strongest claim upon the grateful remembrance of all who love democratic freedom. They paid the penalty usually connected with high destinies; but their death was the occasion of a better life to millions. Political changes which had been advancing slowly, but surely, for centuries, found in those two brothers the fitting instruments of a glorious consummation. Under their direction, the result of a long and obstinate struggle was, that the old distinction of patrician and plebeian was abolished. Plebeians held the consulship and censorship, and patricians, like the Gracchi, stood forward as plebeian tribunes and champions of popular rights. Such revolutionary periods usually produce extraordinary powers of eloquence, as in this instance. Lepidus Porcina, greatly imbued with Attic gentleness, was the model followed by Tiberius Gracchus; and Papirius Carbo, who united the gift of a delightful voice to verbal copiousness, was his ultra-liberal colleague; while Æmilius Scaurus, and Rutilius Rufus, were distinguished for opposing strength.

The Gracchi themselves were distinguished for gentle vigor, aided by a happy combination of accomplished endowments. Their father possessed an exalted character, and their mother inherited the strong mind and energetic genius of Scipio. She was well acquainted with Greek and Latin literature, with which she early imbued her aspiring sons. Tiberius was cool and sedate in speech, as in temperament; free from the storms of passion, he was self-possessed in debate, as stoical in disasters as was his philosophic creed. Caius, who was nine years younger, was morally inferior to Tiberius, but greatly his superior in intellect. He was less unswerving in purpose, but he was more susceptible of generous impulses, and had a much greater measure of creative genius. Cicero says that his imagination, lashed by the violence of his passions, required a strong curb; but for that very reason it gushed forth as from a natural fountain, and like a torrent swept all before it. On one occasion, his look, his voice, his gestures, were so inexpressibly affecting, that even his enemies were dissolved in tears. His education enabled him to rid himself of the harshness of the old school, and to gain the reputation of being the father of Roman prose.

M. Antonius entered public life under brilliant auspices, but he was greater as a judicial than as a deliberative orator. L. Licinius Crassus was four years younger than Antony, having been born B.C. 140. The last and most distinguished of the pre-Ciceronian orators, was Q. Hortensius, son of L. Hortensius, prætor of Sicily, and was born B.C. 97. When Crassus and Antony were dead, he was left the acknowledged leader of the forum until the effacing brightness of Rome's culminating star arose. In the cause of Quintius, the two great orators first came into direct conflict, when the mightier rival paid the highest possible compliment to the talents and genius of Hortensius, at the same time he clearly excelled him. As supreme as was the career of Cicero in the realm of eloquence, he was yet more influential in the department of philosophy at Rome, and we reserve a more extended notice of him for the chapter under that head.

After the battle of Actium, the spirit of faction and tumult subsided in a measure; and the love of letters, with a better sway, succeeded to that love of arms which had occupied every Roman mind for seven hundred years. The empire was at peace, and universal plunder had immensely enriched the metropolis. Gorgeous embellishment began to be admired, without producing correct taste; and, as a higher order of mind endeavored to cultivate a national literature, the language, like the capital of brick, seemed to have become marble. But never was Rome able to attain superior distinction in elegant letters, or diffuse among her citizens a general taste for refinement. An Athenian of the humblest rank could sit from morning to evening intent upon the scenes of Æschylus or Sophocles; but the Roman plebeian soon wearied of mental exhilaration, and turned to the more genial enjoyment of beast mangled by beast, and man by man. Nor was this peculiar to the lower classes. Knights and senators would hazard life in forcing their way into the amphitheatre, where they often struggled on the arena with their own slaves. Nothing beautiful was ever loved by them for its own sake, but might be haughtily patronized as an appendage to sensual delights. Throngs of poets and musicians attended at the public baths to recite or sing; and at supper, old and young bound their heads with laurel, not the amaranth of Minerva, but the gory weed of Mars. This was only an affected love of letters, and was equally gratified when entertained, at intervals, by wandering sophists, gladiators, jesters, or conjurors, as was common around the triclinium of the emperor himself. At the best epoch, a passion for literature and art was not the enthusiasm of appreciative genius, but only a transient fashion of the court.

After the death of Brutus, the world of letters shared in the universal change which transpired in the political world, so that literature under Augustus soon assumed a new and general tone entirely its own. The first five centuries of the republic formed the foundation on which the whole superstructure of the Augustan age was built. Literature was the last and least thing for that people to produce, and no indications of valuable fruit appeared until the end of the first Punic war. About two centuries later, Cicero, who became the representative of eloquence, philosophy, and sounding prose, was succeeded by Augustus, under whose auspices passed the golden age of Latin poetry. A hundred and fifty years later, classical literature died with Hadrian; chilled by the baleful influence of his tyrannical successors, the literati who had been patronized by the luxurious court sank into contempt. The only appropriate epithet which cotemporaries employed to characterize the age, was "iron," and it must have been both hard and cold. Sensual enjoyment deteriorated popular taste, and impotent revery took the place of energetic thought in the higher order of minds. Since Cicero, the flourishing period of eloquence had disappeared, and insipid daintiness of language was the only linguistic excellence admired. Seneca referred to this national degradation in literature, when he said, "Wherever you perceive that a corrupt taste pleases, be sure that the morals of the people have degenerated."

Varro, Cæsar, and Cicero contributed most to the perfection of the Roman dialect. The period of its greatest elegance extended from the reign of Augustus to that of Claudius, A.D. 54. By that time the struggle for liberty had been extinguished in those public calamities which plunged so many leading families into wretchedness, and caused the national spirit to be completely broken down. The period which embraced the lives of Cicero and Augustus constituted the best epoch of both prose and poetry. Dramatic literature, it is true, never recovered from the trance into which it fell after the days of Attius and Terence, yet Æsopus and Roscius, the great tragedian and the favorite comedian in the time of the greatest orator at Rome, amassed great wealth. But the theatrical entertainments which had now taken the place of legitimate dramas, were termed mimes, and were ludicrous imitations of popular customs or persons. The name was Greek, but the composition was entirely Roman in style and purpose. Their indecent coarseness of burlesque dialogue gratified the populace, and prepared the way for modern pantomime.

Decius Laberius, born at Puteoli, B.C. 45, under the dictatorship of Julius Cæsar, was a Mīme who became distinguished in this sort of composition, and won even the praise of Horace. Another was C. Valerius Catullus, born B.C. 86, and who was nine years younger than the great didactic poet and philosopher, Lucretius, whom we shall notice under the head of philosophy. Catullus belonged to a respectable family, residing on the Lago di Garda, near Verona. At an early age he went to Rome, became very erudite, and plunged into the licentious excesses of the capital. Catullus possessed captivating talents, but of a perverted use; satire as vindictive in spirit as it was varied in power. His poetry was such as might be expected from the tenor of his life, and a career which began in extravagant debauchery terminated in hopeless ruin.