The History of Roman Literature Part 4

Plautus is a complete master of the Latin language in its more colloquial forms. Whatever he wishes to say he finds no difficulty in expressing without the least shadow of obscurity. His full, flowing style, his inexhaustible wealth of words, the pliancy which in his skilful hands is given to the comparatively rude instrument with which he works, are remarkable in the highest degree. In the invention of new words, and the fertility of his combinations, [19] he reminds us of Shakespeare, and far exceeds any other Latin author. But perhaps this faculty is not so much absent from subsequent writers as kept in check by them. They felt that Latin gained more by terse arrangement and exact fitness in the choice of existing terms, than by coining new ones after the Greek manner. Plautus represents a tendency, which, after him, steadily declines; Lucretius is more sparing of new compounds than Ennius, Virgil than Lucretius, and after Virgil the age of creating them had ceased.

It must strike every reader of Plautus, as worthy of note, that he a.s.sumes a certain knowledge of the Greek tongue on the part of his audience. Not only are many (chiefly commercial) terms directly imported from the Greek, as _dica_, _tarpessita_, _logi_, _sycophantia_, _agoranomus_, but a large number of Greek adjectives and adverbs are used, which it is impossible to suppose formed part of the general speech--e.g. _thala.s.sicus_, _euscheme_, _dulice_, _dapsilis_: Greek puns are introduced, as "_opus est Chryso Chrysalo_" in the _Bacchides_; and in the _Persa_ we have the following hybrid t.i.tle of a supposed Persian grandee, "_Vaniloquidorus Virginisvendonides Nugipolyloquides Argentiexterebronides Tedigniloquides Nummorumexpalpouides Quodsemelarripides Nunquamposteareddides_!"

Nevertheless, Plautus never uses Greek words in the way so justly condemned by Horace, viz. to avoid the trouble of thinking out the proper Latin equivalent. He is as free from this bad habit as Cato himself: all his Graecisms, when not technical terms, have some humourous point; and, as far as we can judge, the good example set by him was followed by all his successors in the comic drama. Their superiority in this respect may be appreciated by comparing them with the extant fragments of Lucilius.

In his metres he follows the Greek systems, but somewhat loosely. His iambics admit spondees, &c. into all places but the last; but some of his plays show much more care than others: the _Persa_ and _Stichus_ being the least accurate, the _Menaechmi_ peculiarly smooth and harmonious. The Trochaic tetrameter and the Cretic are also favourite rhythms; the former is well suited to the Latin language, its beat being much more easily distinguishable in a rapid dialogue than that of the Iambic. His metre is regulated partly by quant.i.ty, partly by accent; but his quant.i.ties do not vary as much as has been supposed. The irregularities consist chiefly of neglect of the laws of position, of final long vowels, of inflexional endings, and of double letters, which last, according to some grammarians, were not used until the time of Ennius. His Lyric metres are few, and very imperfectly elaborated. Those which he prefers are the Cretic and Bacchiac, though Dactylic and Choriambic systems are not wholly unknown.

His works form a most valuable storehouse of old Latin words, idioms, and inflexions; and now that the most ancient MSS. have been scientifically studied, the true spelling of these forms has been re-established, and throws the greatest light on many important questions of philology. [20]

After Plautus the most distinguished writer of comedy was STATIUS CAECILIUS (219-166? B.C.), a native of Insubria, brought as a prisoner to Rome, and subsequently (we know not exactly when) manumitted. He began writing about 200 B.C., when Plautus was at the height of his fame. He was, doubtless, influenced (as indeed could not but be the case) by the prestige of so great a master; but, as soon as he had formed his own style, he seems to have carried out a treatment of the originals much more nearly resembling that of Terence. For while in Plautus some of the oddest incongruities arise from the continual intrusion of Roman law-terms and other everyday home a.s.sociations into the Athenian _agora_ or _dicasteries_, in Terence this effective but very inartistic source of humour is altogether discarded, and the comic result gained solely by the legitimate methods of incident, character, and dialogue. That this stricter practice was inaugurated by Caecilius is probable, both from the praise bestowed on him in spite of his deficiency in purity of Latin style by Cicero, [21] and also from the evident admiration felt for him by Terence. The prologue to the _Hecyra_ proves (what we might have well supposed) that the earlier plays of such a poet had a severe struggle to achieve success. [22] The actor, Ambivius Turpio, a tried servant of the public, maintains that his own perseverance had a great deal to do with the final victory of Caecilius; and he apologises for bringing forward a play which had once been rejected, by his former success in similar circ.u.mstances. Horace implies that he maintained during the Augustan age the reputation of a dignified writer. [23] Of the thirty-nine t.i.tles of his plays, by far the larger number are Greek, though a few are Latin, or exist in both languages. Those of Plautus and Naevius, it will be observed, are almost entirely Latin. This practice of retaining the Greek t.i.tle, indicating, as it probably does, a closer adherence to the Greek style, seems afterwards to have become the regular custom. In his later years Caecilius enjoyed great reputation, and seems to have been almost dictator of the Roman stage, if we may judge from the story given by Suetonius in his life of Terence. One evening, he tells us, as Caecilius was at dinner, the young poet called on him, and begged for his opinion on the _Andria_, which he had just composed. Unknown to fame and meanly dressed, he was bidden to seat himself on a bench and read his work.

Scarcely had he read a few verses, when Caecilius, struck by the excellence of the style, invited his visitor to join him at table; and having listened to the rest of the play with admiration, at once p.r.o.nounced a verdict in his favour. This anecdote, whatever be its pretensions to historical accuracy, represents, at all events, the conception entertained of Caecilius's position and influence as introducer of dramatic poets to the Roman public. The date of his death is uncertain: he seems not to have attained any great age.

The judgment of Caecilius on TERENCE was ratified by the people. When the _Andria_ was first presented at the Megalesian games (166 B.C.) it was evident that a new epoch had arisen in Roman art. The contempt displayed in it for all popular methods of acquiring applause is scarcely less wonderful than the formed style and mature view of life apparent in the poet of twenty-one years.

It was received with favour, and though occasional failures afterwards occurred, chiefly through the jealousy of a rival poet, the dramatic career of Terence may, nevertheless, be p.r.o.nounced as brilliantly successful as it was shortlived. His fame increased with each succeeding play, till at the time of his early death, he found himself at the head of his profession, and, in spite of petty rivalries, enjoying a reputation almost equal to that of Plautus himself.

The elegance and purity of his diction is the more remarkable as he was a Carthaginian by birth, and therefore spoke an idiom as diverse as can be conceived from the Latin in syntax, arrangement, and expression. He came as a boy to Rome, where he lived as the slave of the senator Terentius Luca.n.u.s, by whom he was well educated and soon given his freedom. The best known fact about him is his intimate friends.h.i.+p with Scipio Africa.n.u.s the younger, Laelius, and Furius, who were reported to have helped him in the composition of his plays. This rumour the poet touches on with great skill, neither admitting nor denying its truth, but handling it in such a way as reflected no discredit on himself and could not fail to be acceptable to the great men who were his patrons. [24] We learn from Suetonius that the belief strengthened with time. To us it appears most improbable that anything important was contributed by these eminent men.

They might have given hints, and perhaps suggested occasional expressions, but the temptation to bring their names forward seems sufficiently to account for the lines in question, since the poet gained rather than lost by so doing. It has, however, been supposed that Scipio and his friends, desiring to elevate the popular taste, really employed Terence to effect this for them, their own position as statesmen preventing their coming forward in person as labourers in literature; and it is clear that Terence has a very different object before him from that of Plautus. The latter cares only to please; the former is not satisfied unless he instructs. And he is conscious that this endeavour gains him undeserved obloquy. All his prologues speak of bitter opposition, misrepresentation, and dislike; but he refuses to lower his high conception of his art. The people must hear his plays with attention, throw away their prejudices, and p.r.o.nounce impartially on his merits. [25] He has such confidence in his own view that he does not doubt of the issue. It is only a question of time, and if his contemporaries refuse to appreciate him, posterity will not fail to do so. This confidence was fully justified. Not only his friends but the public amply recognised his genius; and if men like Cicero, Horace, and Caesar, do not grant him the highest creative power, they at least speak with admiration of his cultivated taste. The criticism of Cicero is as discriminating as it is friendly: [26]

"Tu quoque, qui solus lecto sermone, Terenti, Conversum espressumque Latina voce Menandrum In medio populi sedatis vocibus effers; Quidquid come loquens atque omnia dulcia dicens."

Caesar, in a better known epigram, [27] is somewhat less complimentary, but calls him _puri sermonis amator_ ("a well of English undefiled").

Varro praises his commencement of the _Andria_ above its original in Menander; and if this indicates national partisans.h.i.+p, it is at least a testimony to the poet's posthumous fame.

The modern character of Terence, as contrasted with Plautus, is less apparent in his language than in his sentiments. His Latin is substantially the same as that of Plautus, though he makes immeasurably fewer experiments with language. He never resorts to strange words, uncouth compounds, puns, or Graecisms for producing effect; [28] his diction is smooth and chaste, and even indelicate subjects are alluded to without any violation of the proprieties; indeed it is at first surprising that with so few appeals to the humourous instinct and so little witty dialogue, Terence's comic style should have received from the first such high commendation. The reason is to be found in the circ.u.mstances of the time. The higher spirits at Rome were beginning to comprehend the drift of Greek culture, its subtle mastery over the pa.s.sions, its humanitarian character, its subversive influence. The protest against traditional exclusiveness begun by the great Scipio, and powerfully enforced by Ennius, was continued in a less heroic but not less effective manner by the younger Scipio and his friends Lucilius and Terence. All the plays of Terence are written with a purpose; and the purpose is the same which animated the political leaders of free thought. To base conduct upon reason rather than tradition, and paternal authority upon kindness rather than fear; [29] to give up the vain attempt to coerce youth into the narrow path of age; to grapple with life as a whole by making the best of each difficulty when it arises; to live in comfort by means of mutual concession and not to plague ourselves with unnecessary troubles: such are some of the principles indicated in those plays of Menander which Terence so skilfully adapted, and whose lessons he set before a younger and more vigorous people. The elucidation of these principles in the action of the play, and the corresponding interchange of thought naturally awakened in the dialogue and expressed with studied moderation, [30] form the charm of the Terentian drama. In the bolder elements of dramatic excellence it must be p.r.o.nounced deficient. There is not Menander's many-sided knowledge of the world, nor the racy drollery of Plautus, nor the rich humour of Moliere, nor the sparkling wit of Sheridan,--all is toned down with a severe self-restraint, creditable to the poet's sense of propriety, but injurious to comic effect. His characters also lack variety, though powerfully conceived. They are easily cla.s.sified; indeed, Terence himself summarises them in his prologue to the _Eanuchus_, [31] and as a rule is true to the distinctions there laid down. Another defect is the great similarity of names. There is a _Chremes_ in four plays who stands for an old man in three, for a youth in one; while the names _Sostrata, Sophrona, Bacchis, Antipho, Hegio, Phaedria, Davus_, and _Dromo_, all occur in more than one piece. Thus we lose that close a.s.sociation of a name with a character, which is a most important aid towards lively and definite recollection. The characters become not so much individuals as impersonations of social or domestic relations.h.i.+ps, though drawn, it is true, with a life-like touch. This defect, which is shared to a great extent by Plautus, is doubtless due to the imitative nature of Latin comedy. Menander's characters were a.n.a.lysed and cla.s.sified by the critics, and the translator felt bound to keep to the main outlines of his model.

It is said that Terence was not satisfied with his delineation of Greek life, but that shortly before his death he started on a voyage to Greece, to acquaint himself at first hand with the manners he depicted. [32] This we can well believe, for even among Roman poets Terence is conspicuous for his striking _realism_. His scenes are fict.i.tious, it is true, and his conversation is cla.s.sical and refined, but both breathe the very spirit of real life. There is, at least, nothing either ideal or imaginative about them. The remark of Horace [33] that "Pomponius would have to listen to rebukes like those of Demea if his father were living; that if you broke up the elegant rhythmical language you would find only what every angry parent would say under the same circ.u.mstances," is perfectly just, and const.i.tutes one of the chief excellences of Terence,--one which has made him, like Horace, a favourite with experienced men of the world.

Terence as a rule does not base his play upon a single Greek original, but levies contributions from two or more, and exercises his talent in harmonising the different elements. This process is known as _contamination_; a word that first occurs in the prologue to the _Andria_, and indicates an important and useful principle in imitative dramatic literature. The ground for this innovation is given by W. Wagner as the need felt by a Roman audience for a quick succession of action, and their impatience of those subtle dialogues which the Greeks had so much admired, and which in most Greek plays occupy a somewhat disproportionate length.

The dramas in which "contamination" is most successfully used are, the _Eunuchus_, _Andria_, and _Adelphoe_; the last-mentioned being the only instance in which the two models are by different authors, viz. the _Adelphoi_ of Menander and the _Synapothnaeskontes_ of Diphilus. So far as the metre and language went, Terence seems to have followed the Greek much more closely than Plautus, as was to be expected from his smaller inventive power. Quintilian, in commending him, expresses a wish that he had confined himself to the trimeter iambic rhythm. To us this criticism is somewhat obscure. Did the Romans require a more forcible style when the long iambic or the trochaic was employed? or is it the weakness of his metrical treatment that Quintilian complains of? Certainly the trochaics of Terence are less clearly marked in their rhythm than those of Ennius or Plautus.

Terence makes no allusion by name to any of his contemporaries; [34] but a line in the _Andria_ [35] is generally supposed to refer to Caecilius, and to indicate his friendly feeling, somewhat as Virgil indicates his admiration for Ennius in the opening of the third Georgic. [36] And the "_vetus poeta_," (Luscius Lavinius) or "_quidam malevoli_," are alluded to in all the prologues as trying to injure his fame. His first play was produced in the year that Caecilius died, 166 B.C.; the _Hecyra_ next year; the _Hauton Timorumenos_ in 163; the _Eunuchus_ and _Phormio_ in 161; the _Adelphoe_ in 160; and in the following year the poet died at the age of twenty-six, while sailing round the coast of Greece. The maturity of mind shown by so young a man is very remarkable. It must be remembered that he belonged to a race whose faculties developed earlier than among the Romans, that he had been a slave, and was therefore familiar with more than one aspect of life, and that he had enjoyed the society of the greatest in Rome, who reflected profoundly on social and political questions. His influence, though imperfectly exercised in his lifetime, increased after his death, not so much through the representation as the reading of his plays. His language became one of the chief standards of cla.s.sical Latin, and is regarded by Mr. Munro as standing on the very highest level--the same as that of Cicero, Caesar, and Lucretius. His moral character was a.s.sailed soon after his death by Porcius Licinius, but probably without good grounds. More might be said against the morality of his plays--the morality of accommodation, as it is called by Mommsen.

There is no strong grasp of the moral principle, but decency and propriety should be respected; if an error has been committed, the best way is, if possible, to find out that it was no error after all, or at least to treat it as such. In no point does ancient comedy stand further apart from modern ideas than in its view of married life; the wile is invariably the dull legal partner, love for whom is hardly thought of, while the sentiment of love (if indeed it be worthy of the name) is reserved for the Bacchis and Thais, who, in the most popular plays turn out to be Attic citizens, and so are finally united to the fortunate lover.

But defective and erroneous as these views are, we must not suppose that Terence tries to make vice attractive. On the contrary, he distinctly says that it is useful to know things as they really are for the purpose of learning to choose the good and reject the evil. [37] Moreover, his lover is never a mere profligate, but proves the reality of his affection for the victim of his wrong-doing by his readiness and anxiety in all cases to become her husband.

Terence has suggested many modern subjects. The _Eunuchus_ is reflected in the _Bellamira_ of Sir Charles Sedley and _Le Muet_ of Brueys; the _Adelphi_ in Moliere's _Ecole des Maris_ and Baron's _L'Ecole des Peres_; and the _Phormio_ in Moliere's _Les Fourberies de Scapin_.

We need do no more than just notice the names of LUSCIUS LAVINIUS, [38]

the older rival and detractor of Terence; ATILIUS, whose style is characterised by Cicero [39] as extremely harsh; TRABEA, who, like ATILIUS, was a contemporary of Caecilius, and LICINIUS IMBREX, who belonged to the older generation; TURPILIUS, JUVENTIUS, and VALERIUS, [40]

who lived to a considerably later period. The former died as late as 103 B.C., having thus quite outlived the productiveness of the legitimate dramatic art. He seems to have been livelier and more popular in his diction than Terence; it is to be regretted that so little of him remains.

The earliest cultivation of the national comedy (_togata_) [41] seems to date from after the death of Terence. Its first representative is t.i.tINIUS, about whom we know little or nothing, except that he based his plays on the Attic comedy, changing, however, the scene and the costumes.

The pieces, according to Mommsen, were laid in Southern Latium, _e.g._ Setia, Ferentinum, or Velitrae, and delineated with peculiar freshness the life of these busy little towns. The t.i.tles of his comedies are--_Coccus, Fullones, Hortensius, Quintius, Varus, Gemina, Iurisperita, Prilia, Privigna, Psaltria, Setina, Tibicina, Velitema, Ulubrana_. From these we should infer that his peculiar excellence lay in satirizing the weaknesses of the other s.e.x. As we have before implied, this type of comedy originally arose in the country towns and maintained a certain antagonism with the Graecized comedy of Rome. In a few years, however, we find it established in the city, under T. QUINTIUS ATTA and L. AFRANIUS. Of the former little is known; of the latter we know that he was esteemed the chief poet of _togatae_, and long retained his hold on the public.

Quintilian [42] recognises his talent, but condemns the morality of his plays. Horace speaks of him as wearing a gown which would have fitted Menander, but this is popular estimation, not his own judgment.

Nevertheless, we may safely a.s.sert that the comedies of Afranius and t.i.tinius, though often grossly indecent, had a thoroughly rich vein of native humour, which would have made them very valuable indications of the average popular culture of their day.

CHAPTER V.

ROMAN TRAGEDY (ENNIUS--ACCIUS, 239-94 B.C.).

As the Italian talent for impromptu buffoonery might perhaps have in time created a genuine native comedy, so the powerful and earnest rhetoric in which the deeper feelings of the Roman always found expression, might have a.s.sumed the tragic garb and woven itself into happy and original alliance with the dramatic instinct. But what actually happened was different.

Tragedy, as well as comedy, took its subjects from the Greek; but though comedy had the advantage of a far greater popularity, and also of a partially native origin, there is reason to believe that tragedy came the nearer of the two to a really national form of art. In the fullest and n.o.blest sense of the word Rome had indeed no national drama; for a drama, to be truly representative, must be based on the deepest chords of patriotic and even religious feeling. And that golden age of a people's history when Patriotism and Religion are still wedded together, seeming but varying reflections from the mirror of national life, is the most favourable of all to the birth of dramatic art. In Greece this was pre- eminently the case. The spirit of patriotism is ever present--rarely, indeed, suggesting, as in the _Persae_ of Aeschylus, the subject of the play, but always supplying a rich background of common sympathy where poet and people can feel and rejoice together. Still more, if possible, is the religious spirit present, as the animating influence which gives the drama its interest and its vitality. The great moral and spiritual questions which occupy the soul of man, in each play or series of plays, try to work out their own solution by the natural human action of the characters, and by those reflections on the part of the chorus to which the action naturally gives rise. But with the transplanted tragedy of the Romans this could no longer be the case. The religious ideas which spoke straight to the Athenian's heart, spoke only to the acquired learning of the Roman.

The idea of man, himself free, struggling with a destiny which he could not comprehend or avert, is foreign to the Roman conception of life. As Schlegel has observed, a truly Roman tragic drama would have found an altogether different basis. The binding force of "Religio," constraining the individual to surrender himself for the good of the Supreme State, and realising itself in acts of patriotic self-devotion; such would have been the shape we should have expected Roman tragedy to take, and if it failed to do this, we should not expect it in other respects to be a great success.

The strong appreciation which, notwithstanding its initial defects, tragedy did meet with and retain for many generations, is a striking testimony to the worth and talent of the men who introduced it. Their position as elevators of the popular taste was not the less real because they themselves were men of provincial birth, and only partially polished minds. Both in the selection of their models and in the freedom of treating them they showed that good sense which was characteristic of the nation. As a rule, instead of trying to familiarise the people with Aeschylus and Sophocles, poets who are essentially Athenian, they generally chose the freethinking and cosmopolitan Euripides, who was easily intelligible, and whose beauties did not seem so entirely to defy imitation. What Euripides was to Greek tragedy Menander was to comedy.

Both denationalised their respective fields of poetry; both thereby acquired a vast ascendancy over the Roman mind, ready as it was to be taught, and only awaiting a teacher whose views it could understand. Now although Livius actually introduced, and Naevius continued, the translation of tragedies from the Greek, it was Ennius who first rendered them with a definitely conceived purpose. This purpose was--to raise the aesthetic sense of his countrymen, to set before them examples of heroic virtue, and, above all, to enlighten their minds with what he considered rational views on subjects of morals and and religion; though, after all, the fatal facility with which the sceptical theories of Euripides were disseminated and embraced was hardly atoned for by the gain to culture which undoubtedly resulted from the tragedian's labours. Mommsen says with truth that the stage is in its essence anti-Roman, just as culture itself is anti-Roman; the one because it consumes time and interest on things that interfere with the serious business of life, the other because it creates degrees of intellectual position where the const.i.tution intended that all should be alike. But amid the vast change that came over the Roman habits of thought, which men like Cato saw, resisted, and bewailed, it mattered little whether old traditions were violated. The stage at once became a powerful engine of popular education; and it rested with the poet to decide whether it should elevate or degrade. Political interests, it is true, were carefully guarded. The police system, with which senatorial narrowness environed the stage as it did all corporations or voluntary societies, rigidly repressed and made penal anything like liberty of speech. But it was none the less possible to inculcate the stern Roman virtues beneath the mask of an Ajax or Ulysses; and Sellar has brought out with singular clearness in his work on the poets of the Republic the national features which are stamped on this early tragedy, making it in spite of its imperfections worthy of the great Republic.

The oratorical mould in which all Latin poetry except satire and comedy is to a great extent cast, is visible from the beginning in tragedy. Weighty sentences follow one another until the moral effect is reached, or the description fully turned. The rhythm seems to have been much more often trochaic [1] than iambic, at least than trimeter iambic, for the tetrameter is more frequently employed. This is not to be wondered at, since even in comedy, where such high-flown cadences are out of place, the people liked to hear them, measuring excellence by stateliness of march rather than propriety of diction.

The popular demand for grandiloquence ENNIUS (209-169 B.C.) was well able to satisfy, for he had a decided leaning to it himself, and great skill in attaining it. Moreover he had a vivid power of reproducing the original emotion of another. That reflected fervour which draws pa.s.sion, not direct from nature, but from nature as mirrored in a great work of art, stamps Ennius as a genuine Roman in talent, while it removes him from the list of creative poets. The chief sphere of his influence was epic poetry, but in tragedy he founded a school which only closed when the drama itself was silenced by the b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacres of the civil wars. Born at Rudiae in Calabria, and so half Greek, half Oscan, he served while a young man in Sardinia, where he rose to the rank of centurion, and was soon after brought to Rome by Cato. There is something striking in the stern reactionist thus introducing to Rome the man who was more instrumental than any other in overthrowing his hopes and fixing the new culture beyond possibility of recall. When settled at Rome, Ennius gained a living by teaching Greek, and translating plays for the stage. He also wrote miscellaneous poems, and among them a panegyric on Scipio which brought him into favourable notice. His fame must have been established before B.C. 189, for in that year Fulvius n.o.bilior took him into Aetolia to celebrate his deeds a proceeding which Cato strongly but ineffectually impugned. In 184 B.C., the Roman citizens.h.i.+p was conferred on him. He alluded to this with pride in his annals--

"Nos sumus Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini."

During the last twenty years of his life his friends.h.i.+p with Scipio and Fulvius must have ensured him respect and sympathy as well as freedom from distasteful labour. But he was never in affluent circ.u.mstances; [2] partly through his own fault, for he was a free liver, as Horace tells us [3]--

"Ennius ipse pater nunquam nisi potus ad arma Prosiluit dicenda;"

and he himself alludes to his lazy habits, saying that he never wrote poetry unless confined to the house by gout. [4] He died in the seventieth year of his age and was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, where a marble statue of him stood between those of P. and L. Scipio.

Ennius is not merely "the Father of Roman Poetry;" he held also as a man a peculiar and influential position, which we cannot appreciate, without connecting him with his patron and friend, the great Scipio Africa.n.u.s.

Nearly of an age, united by common tastes and a common spiritual enthusiasm, these two distinguished men wrought together for a common object. Their familiarity with Greek culture and knowledge of Greek religious ideas seem to have filled both with a high sense of their position as teachers of their countrymen. Scipio drew around him a circle of aristocratic liberals. Ennius appealed rather to the people at large.

The policy of the elder Scipio was continued by his adopted son with far less breadth of view, but with more refined taste, and more concentrated effort. Where Africa.n.u.s would have sought his inspiration from the poetry, Aemilia.n.u.s went rather to the philosophy, of Greece; he was altogether of a colder temperament, just as his literary friends Terence and Lucilius were by nature less ardent than Ennius. Between them they laid the foundation of that broader conception of civilisation which is expressed by the significant word _humanitas_, and which had borne its intellectual fruit when the whole people raised a shout of applause at the line in the _Hautontimorumenos_--

"h.o.m.o sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."

This conception, trite as it seems to us, was by no means so when it was thus proclaimed: if philosophers had understood it (_apas anthropos anthropo oikeion kai philon_.--_Ar. Eth. N._ lib. 9), they had never made it a principle of action; and the teachers who had caused even the uneducated Roman populace to recognise its speculative truth must be allowed to have achieved something great. Some historians of Rome have seen in this att.i.tude a decline from old Roman exclusiveness, almost a treasonable conspiracy against the Roman idea of the State. Hence they have regarded Ennius with something of that disfavour which Cato in his patriotic zeal evinced for him. The justification of the poet's course, if it is to be sustained at all, must be sought in the necessity for an expansion of national views to meet the exigences of an increasing foreign empire. External coercion might for a time suffice to keep divergent nationalities together; but the only durable power would be one founded on sympathy with the subject peoples on the broad ground of a common humanity. And for this the poet and his patron bore witness with a consistent and solemn, though often irreverent, earnestness. Ennius had early in life shown a tendency towards the mystic speculations of Pythagoreanism: traces of it are seen in his a.s.sertion that the soul of Homer had migrated into him through a peac.o.c.k, [5] and that he had three souls because he knew three languages; [6] while the satirical notice of Horace seems to imply that he, like Scipio, regarded himself as specially favoured of heaven--

"Leviter curare videtur Quo promissa caadant et somnia Pythagorea." [7]

At the same time he studied the Epicurean system, and in particular, the doctrines of Euhemerus, whose work on the origin of the G.o.ds he translated. His denial of Divine Providence is well known [8]--

"Ego deum genus esse dixi et dicam semper caelitum: Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.

Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest."

Of these two inconsistent points of view, the second, as we should expect in a nature so little mystical, finally prevailed, so that Ennius may well be considered the preacher of scepticism or the bold impugner of popular superst.i.tion according to the point of view which we a.s.sume. In addition to these philosophic aspirations he had a strong desire to reach artistic perfection, and to be the herald of a new literary epoch. Conscious of his success and proud of the power he wielded over the minds of the people, he alludes more than once to his performances in a self-congratulatory strain--

"Enni poeta salve, qui mortalibus Versus propinas flammeos medullitus."

"Hail! poet Ennius, who pledgest mankind in verses fiery to the heart's core." And with even higher confidence in his epitaph--

"Aspicite, o cives, senis Enni imagini' formam: Hic vostrum panxit maxima faeta patrum.

Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu Faxit. Cur? volito vivu' per ora virum."

We shall ill.u.s.trate the above remarks by quoting one or two pa.s.sages from the fragments of his tragedies, which, it is true, are now easily accessible to the general reader, but nevertheless will not be out of place in a manual like the present, which is intended to lead the student to study historically for himself the progress of the literature. The first is a dialogue between Hecuba and Ca.s.sandra, from the _Alexander_.

Ca.s.sandra feels the prophetic impulse coming over her, the symptoms of which her mother notices with alarm: