The History of Roman Literature Part 8

A third writer who flourished about the same time was C. ACILIUS (circ.

184 B.C.), who, like the others, began with the foundation of the city, and apparently carried his work down to the war with Antiochus. He, too, wrote in Greek, [9] and was afterwards translated into Latin by Claudius Quadrigarius, [10] in which form he was employed by Livy. Aulus Postumius Albinus, a younger contemporary of Cato, is also mentioned as the author of a Greek history. It is very possible that the selection of the Greek language by all these writers was partly due to their desire to prove to the Greeks that Roman history was worth studying; for the Latin language was at this time confined to the peninsula, and was certainly not studied by learned Greeks, except such as were compelled to acquire it by relations with their Roman conquerors. Besides these authors, we learn from Polybius that the great Scipio furnished contributions to history: among other writings, a long Greek letter to king Philip is mentioned which contained a succinct account of his Spanish and African campaigns.

His son, and also Scipio Nasica, appear to have followed his example in writing Greek memoirs.

The creator of Latin prose writing was CATO (234-149 B.C.). In almost every department he set the example, and his works, voluminous and varied, retained their reputation until the close of the cla.s.sical period. He was the first thoroughly national author.

The character of the rigid censor is generally a.s.sociated in our minds with the contempt of letters. In his stern but narrow patriotism, he looked with jealous eyes on all that might turn the citizens from a single-minded devotion to the State. Culture was connected in his mind with Greece, and her deleterious influence. The emba.s.sy of Diogenes, Critolaus, and Carneades, 155 B.C. had shown him to what uses culture might be turned. The eloquent harangue p.r.o.nounced in favour of justice, and the equally eloquent harangue p.r.o.nounced next day against it by the same speaker without a blush of shame, had set Cato's face like a flint in opposition to Greek learning. "I will tell you about those Greeks," he wrote in his old age to his son Marcus, "what I discovered by careful observation at Athens, and how far I deem it good to skim through their writings, for in no case should they be deeply studied. I will prove to you that they are one and all, a worthless and intractable set. Mark my words, for they are those of a prophet: whenever that nation shall give us its literature, it will corrupt everything." [11]

With this settled conviction, thus emphatically expressed at a time when experience had shown the realization of his fears to be inevitable, and when he himself had so far bent as to study the literature he despised, the long and active public life of Cato is in complete harmony. He is the perfect type of an old Roman. Hard, shrewd, n.i.g.g.ardly, and narrow-minded, he was honest to the core, unsparing of himself as of others, scorning every kind of luxury, and of inflexible moral rect.i.tude. He had no respect for birth, rank, fortune, or talent; his praise was bestowed solely on personal merit. He himself belonged to an ancient and honourable house, [12] and from it he inherited those harsh virtues which, while they enforced the reverence, put him in conflict with the spirit, of the age.

No man could have set before himself a more uphill task than that which Cato struggled all his life vainly to achieve. To reconstruct the past is but one step more impossible than to stem the tide of the present. If Cato failed, a greater than Cato would not have succeeded. Influences were at work in Rome which individual genius was powerless to resist. The ascendancy of reason over force, though it were the n.o.blest form that force has ever a.s.sumed, was step by step establis.h.i.+ng itself; and no stronger proof of its victory could be found than that Cato, despite of himself, in his old age studied Greek. We may smile at the deep-rooted prejudice which confounded the pure glories of the old Greek intellect with the degraded puerilities of its unworthy heirs; but though Cato could not fathom the mind of Greece, he thoroughly understood the mind of Rome, and unavailing as his efforts were, they were based on an unerring comprehension of the true issues at stake. He saw that Greece was unmaking Rome; but he did not see that mankind required that Rome should be unmade.

It is the glory of men like Scipio and Ennius, that their large- heartedness opened their eyes, and carried their vision beyond the horizon of the Roman world into that dimly-seen but ever expanding country in which all men are brethren. But if from the loftiest point of view their wide humanity obtains the palm, no less does Cato's pure patriotism shed undying radiance over his rugged form, throwing into relief its ma.s.sive grandeur, and enn.o.bling rather than hiding its deformities.

We have said that Cato's name is a.s.sociated with the contempt of letters.

This is no doubt the fact. Nevertheless, Cato was by far the most original writer that Rome ever produced. He is the one man on whose vigorous mind no outside influence had ever told. Brought up at his father's farm at Tusculum, he spent his boyhood amid the labours of the plough. Hard work and scant fare toughened his sinews, and service under Fabius in the Hannibalic war knit his frame into that iron strength of endurance, which, until his death, never betrayed one sign of weakness or fatigue. A saying of his is preserved [13]--"Man's life is like iron; if you use it, it wears away, if not, the rust eats it. So, too, men are worn away by hard work; but if they do no work, rest and sloth do more injury than exercise." On this maxim his own life was formed. In the intervals of warfare, he did not relax himself in the pleasures of the city, but went home to his plough, and improved his small estate. Being soon well known for his shrewd wit and ready speech, he rose into eminence at the bar; and in due time obtained all the offices of state. In every position he made many enemies, but most notably in his capacity of censor. No man was oftener brought to trial. Forty-four times he spoke in his own defence, and every time he was acquitted. [14] As Livy says, he wore his enemies out, partly by accusing them, but still more by the pertinacity with which he defended himself. [15] Besides private causes, he spoke in many important public trials and on many great questions of state: Cicero [16]

had seen or heard of 150 orations by him; in one pa.s.sage he implies that he had delivered as many as Lysias, _i.e._ 230. [17] Even now we have traces, certainly of 80, and perhaps of 13 more. [18] His military life, which had been a series of successes, was brought to a close 190 B.C., and from this time until his death, he appears as an able civil administrator, and a vehement opponent of lax manners. In the year of his censors.h.i.+p (184 B.C.) Plautus died. The tremendous vigour with which he wielded the powers of this post stirred up a swarm of enemies. His tongue became more bitter than ever. Plutarch gives his portrait in an epigram.

_Pyrron, pandaketaen, glaukommaton, oude thanonta Porkion eis aidaen Persephonae dechetai._

Here, at 85 years of age, [19] the man stands before us. We see the crisp, erect figure, bristling with aggressive vigour, the coa.r.s.e, red hair, the keen, grey eyes, piercingly fixed on his opponent's face, and reading at a glance the knavery he sought to hide; we hear the rasping voice, launching its dry, cutting sarcasms one after another, each pointed with its sting of truth; and we can well believe that the dislike was intense, which could make an enemy provoke the terrible armoury of the old censor's eloquence.

As has been said, he so far relaxed the severity of his principles as to learn the Greek language and study the great writers. Nor could he help feeling attracted to minds like those of Thucydides and Demosthenes, in sagacity and earnestness so congenial to his own. Nevertheless, his originality is in nothing more conspicuously shown than in his method of treating history. He struck a line of inquiry in which he found no successor. The _Origines_, if it had remained, would undoubtedly have been a priceless storehouse of facts about the antiquities of Italy. Cato had an enlarged view of history. It was not his object to magnify Rome at the expense of the other Italian nationalities, but rather to show how she had become their greatest, because their truest, representative. The divisions of the work itself will show the importance he attached to an investigation of their early annals. We learn from Nepos that the first book comprised the regal period; the second and third were devoted to the origin and primitive history of each Italian state; [20] the fourth and fifth embraced the Punic wars; the last two carried the history as far as the Praetors.h.i.+p of Servius Galba, Cato's bold accusation of whom he inserted in the body of the work. Nepos, echoing the superficial canons of his age, characterises the whole as showing industry and diligence, but no learning whatever. The early myths were somewhat indistinctly treated.

[21] His account of the Trojan immigration seems to have been the basis of that of Virgil, though the latter refas.h.i.+oned it in several points. [22]

His computation of dates, though apparently exact, betrays a mind indifferent to the importance of chronology. The fragments of the next two books are more copious. He tells us that Gaul, then as now, pursued with the greatest zeal military glory and eloquence in debate. [23] His notice of the Ligurians is far from complimentary. "They are all deceitful, having lost every record of their real origin, and being illiterate, they invent false stories and have no recollection of the truth." [24] He hazards a few etymologies, which, as usual among Roman writers, are quite unscientific. Graviscae is so called from its unhealthy climate (_gravis aer_), Praeneste from its conspicuous position on the mountains (_quia montibus praestet_). A few scattered remarks on the food in use among different tribes are all that remain of an interesting department which might have thrown much light on ethnological questions. In the fourth book, Cato expresses his disinclination to repeat the trivial details of the Pontifical tables, the fluctuations of the market, the eclipses of the sun and moon, &c. [25] He narrates with enthusiasm the self-devotion of the tribune Caedicius, who in the first Punic war offered his life with that of 400 soldiers to engage the enemy's attention while the general was executing a necessary manoeuvre. [26] "The Laconian Leonides, who did the same thing at Thermopylae, has been rewarded by all Greece for his virtue and patriotism with all the emblems of the highest possible distinction-- monuments, statues, epigrams, histories; his deed met with their warmest grat.i.tude. But little praise has been given to our tribune in comparison with his merits, though he acted just as the Spartan did, and saved the fortunes of the State." As to the t.i.tle _Origines_, it is possible, as Nepos suggests, that it arose from the first three books having been published separately. It certainly is not applicable to the entire treatise, which was a genuine history on the same scale as that of Thucydides, and no mere piece of antiquarian research. He adhered to truth in so far as he did not insert fict.i.tious speeches; he conformed to Greek taste so far as to insert his own. One striking feature in the later hooks was his omission of names. No Roman worthy is named in them. The reason of this it is impossible to discover. Fear of giving offence would be the last motive to weigh with him. Dislike of the great aristocratic houses into whose hands the supreme power was steadily being concentrated, is a more probable cause; but it is hardly sufficient of itself. Perhaps the omission was a mere whim of the historian. Though this work obtained great and deserved renown, yet, like its author, it was praised rather than imitated. Livy scarcely ever uses it; and it is likely that, before the end of the first century A.D. the speeches were published separately, and were the only part at all generally read. Pliny, Gellius, and Servius, are the authors who seem most to have studied it; of these Pliny was most influenced by it. The Natural History, especially in its general discussions, strongly reminds us of Cato.

Of the talents of Cato as an orator something will be said in the next section. His miscellaneous writings, though none of them are historical, may be noticed here. Quintilian [27] attests the many-sidedness of his genius: "M. Cato was at once a first-rate general, a philosopher, an orator, the founder of history, the most thorough master of law and agriculture." The work on agriculture we have the good fortune to possess; or rather a redaction of it, slightly modernized and incomplete, but nevertheless containing a large amount of really genuine matter. Nothing can be more characteristic than the opening sentences. We give a translation, following as closely as possible the form of the original: "It is at times worth while to gain wealth by commerce, were it not so perilous; or by usury, were it equally honourable. Our ancestors, however, held, and fixed by law, that a thief should be condemned to restore double, a usurer quadruple. We thus see how much worse they thought it for a citizen to be a money-lender than a thief. Again, when they praised a good man, they praised him as a good farmer, or a good husbandman. Men so praised were held to have received the highest praise. For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and studious of gain; but it is a career, as I have said, that leads to danger and ruin. But farming makes the bravest men, and the st.u.r.diest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have the fewest bad thoughts." The sententious and dogmatic style of this preamble cannot fail to strike the reader; but it is surpa.s.sed by many of the precepts which follow. Some of these contain pithy maxims of shrewd sense, _e.g._ "Patrem familias vendacem non emacem esse oportet." "Ita aedifices ne villa fundum quaerat, neve fundus villam." The Virgilian prescription, "Laudato ingentia rura: exiguam colito," is said to be drawn from Cato, though it does not exist in our copies. The treatment throughout is methodical. If left by the author in its present form it represents the daily jotting down of thoughts on the subject as they occurred to him.

In two points the writer appears in an unfavourable light--in his love of gain, and in his brutal treatment of his slaves. With him farming is no mere amus.e.m.e.nt, nor again is it mere labour. It is primarily and throughout a means of making money, and indeed the only strictly honourable one. However, Cato so far relaxed the strictness of this theory that he became "an ardent speculator in slaves, buildings, artificial lakes, and pleasure-grounds, the mercantile spirit being too strong within him to rest satisfied with the modest returns of his estate." As regarded slaves, the law considered them as chattels, and he followed the law to the letter. If a slave grew old or sick he was to be sold. If the weather hindered work he was to take his sleep then, and work double time afterwards. "In order to prevent combinations among his slaves, their master a.s.siduously sowed enmities and jealousies between them. He bought young slaves in their name, whom they were forced to train and sell for his benefit. When supping with his guests, if any dish was carelessly dressed, he rose from table, and with a leathern thong administered the requisite number of lashes with his own hand." So pitilessly severe was he, that a slave who had concluded a purchase without his leave, hung himself to avoid his master's wrath. These incidents, some told by Plutarch, others by Cato himself, show the inhuman side of Roman life, and make it less hard to understand their treatment of vanquished kings and generals. For the other s.e.x Cato had little respect. Women, he says, should be kept at home, and no Chaldaean or soothsayer be allowed to see them. Women are always running after superst.i.tion. His directions about the steward's wife are as follows. They are addressed to the steward:-- "Let her fear you. Take care that she is not luxurious. Let her see as little as possible of her neighbours or any other female friends; let her never invite them to your house; let her never go out to supper, nor be fond of taking walks. Let her never offer sacrifice; let her know that the master sacrifices for the whole family; let her he neat herself, and keep the country-house neat." Several sacrificial details are given in the treatise. We observe that they are all of the rustic order; the master alone is to attend the city ceremonial. Among the different industries recommended, we are struck by the absence of wheat cultivation. The vineyard and the pasture chiefly engage attention, though herbs and green produce are carefully treated. The reason is to be sought in the special nature of the treatise. It is not a general survey of agriculture, but merely a handbook of cultivation for a particular farm, that of Manlius or Mallius, and so probably unfit for wheat crops. Other subjects, as medicine, are touched on. But his prescriptions are confined to the rudest simples, to wholesome and restorative diet, and to incantations. These last have equal value a.s.signed them with rational remedies. Whether Cato trusted them may well be doubted. He probably gave in such cases the popular charm-cure, simply from not having a better method of his own to propose.

Another series of treatises were those addressed to his son, in one of which, that on medicine, he charitably accuses the Greeks of an attempt to kill all barbarians by their treatment, and specially the Romans, whom they stigmatise by the insulting name of _Opici_. [28] "I forbid you, once for all, to have any dealings with physicians." Owing to their temperate and active life, the Romans had for more than five hundred years existed without a physician within their walls. Cato's hostility to the profession, therefore, if not justifiable, was at least natural. He subjoins a list of simples by which he kept himself and his wife alive and in health to a green old age. [29] And observing that there are countless signs of death, and none of health, he gives the chief marks by which a man apparently in health may be noted as unsound. In another treatise, on farming, also dedicated to his son, for whom he entertained a warm affection, and over whose education he sedulously watched, he says,--"Buy not what you want, but what you must have; what you don't want is dear at a farthing, and what you lack borrow from yourself." Such is the homely wisdom which gained for Cato the proud t.i.tle of _Sapiens_, by which, says Cicero, [30] he was familiarly known. Other original works, the product of his vast experience, were the treatise on eloquence, of which the pith is the following: "Rem tene: verba sequentur;" "Take care of the sense: the sounds will take care of themselves." We can well believe that this excellent maxim ruled his own conduct. The art of war formed the subject of another volume; in this, too, he had abundant and faithful experience.

An attempt to investigate the principles of jurisprudence, which was carried out more fully by his son, [31] and a short _carmen de moribus_ or essay on conduct, completed the list of his paternal instructions. Why this was styled _carmen_ is not known. Some think it was written in Saturnian verse, others that its concise and oracular formulas suggested the name, since _carmen_ in old Latin is by no means confined to verse. It is from this that the account of the low estimation of poets in the early Republic is taken. Besides these regular treatises we hear of letters, [32] and _apophthegmata_, or pithy sayings, put together like those of Bacon from divers sources. In after times Cato's own apophthegms were collected for publication, and under the name of _Catonis dicta_, were much admired in the Middle Ages. We see that Cato's literary labours were encyclopaedic. In this wide and ambitious sphere he was followed by Varro, and still later by Celsus. Literary effort was now becoming general.

FULVIUS n.o.bILIOR, the patron of Ennius and adversary of Cato, published annals after the old plan of a calendar of years. Ca.s.sIUS HEMINA and Calpurnius Piso, who were younger contemporaries, continued in the same track, and we hear of other minor historians. Ca.s.sius is mentioned more than once as "_antiquissimus auctor_," a term of compliment as well as chronological reference. [33] Of him Niebuhr says: "He wrote about Alba according to its ancient local chronology, and synchronised the earlier periods of Rome with the history of Greece. He treated of the age before the foundation of Rome, whence we have many statements of his about Siculian towns in Latium. The archaeology of the towns seems to have been his princ.i.p.al object. The fourth book of his work bore the t.i.tle of _Punic.u.m bellum posterius_, from which we infer that the last war with Carthage had not as yet broken out."

About this epoch flourished Q. FABIUS MAXIMUS SERVILIa.n.u.s, who is known to have written histories. He is supposed to be miscalled by Cicero, [34]

Fabius Pictor, for Cicero mentions a work in Latin by the latter author, whereas it is certain that the old Fabius wrote only in Greek. The best authorities now a.s.sume that Fabius Maximus, as a clansman and admirer of Pictor, translated his book into Latin to make it more widely known. The new work would thus be indifferently quoted as Fabius Pictor or Fabius Maximus.

L. CALPURNIUS PISO FRUGI CENSORIUS (Cons. 133), well known as the adversary of the Gracchi, an eloquent and active man, and staunch adherent of the high aristocratic party, was also an able writer of history. That his conception of historical writing did not surpa.s.s that of his predecessors the annalists, is probable from the t.i.tle of his work; [35]

that he brought to bear on it a very different spirit seems certain from the quotations in Livy and Dionysius. One of the select few, in breadth of views as in position, he espoused the rationalistic opinions advocated by the Scipionic circle, and applied them with more warmth than judgment to the ancient legends. Grote, Niebuhr, and others, have shown how unsatisfactory this treatment is; illusion is lost without truth being found; nevertheless, the man who first honestly applies this method, though he may have ill success, makes an epoch in historical research.

Cicero gives him no credit for style; his annals (he says) are written in a barren way. [36] The reader who wishes to read Niebuhr's interesting judgment on his work and influence is referred to the _Introductory Lectures on Roman History_. In estimating the very different opinions on the ancient authors given in the cla.s.sic times, we should have regard to the divers standards from time to time set up. Cicero, for instance, has a great fondness for the early poets, but no great love for the prose writers, except the orators, nearly all of whom he loads with praise.

Still, making allowance for this slight mental bias, his criticisms are of the utmost possible value. In the Augustan and early imperial times, antiquity was treated with much less reverence. Style was everything, and its deficiency could not be excused. And lastly, under the Antonines (and earlier [37]), disgust at the false taste of the day produced an irrational reaction in favour of the archaic modes of thought and expression, so that Gellius, for instance, extols the simplicity, sweetness, or n.o.ble vigour of writings in which we, like Cicero, should see only jejune and rugged immaturity. [38] Pliny speaks of Piso as a weighty author (_gravis auctor_), and Pliny's penetration was not easily warped by style or want of style. We may conclude, on the whole, that Piso, though often misled by his want of imagination, and occasionally by inaccuracy in regard to figures, [39] brought into Roman history a rational method, not by any means so original or excellent as that of Cato, but more on a level with the capacities of his countrymen, and infinitely more productive of imitation.

The study of Greek rhetoric had by this time been cultivated at Rome, and the difficulty of composition being materially lightened [40] as well as its results made more pleasing, we are not surprised to find a number of authors of a somewhat more pretentious type. VENNONIUS, CLODIUS LICINUS, C. FANNIUS, and GELLIUS are little more than names; all that is known of them will be found in Teuffel's repertory. They seem to have clung to the t.i.tle of annalist though they had outgrown the character. There are, however, two names that cannot be quite pa.s.sed over, those of SEMp.r.o.nIUS ASELLIO and CAELIUS ANTIPATER. The former was military tribune at Numantia (133 B.C.), and treated of that campaign at length, in his work. He was killed in 99 B.C. [41] but no event later than the death of Gracchus (121 B.C.) is recorded as from him. He had great contempt for the old annalists, and held their work to be a mere diary so far as form went; he professed to trace the motives and effects of actions, rather, however, with the object of stimulating public spirit than satisfying a legitimate thirst for knowledge. He had also some idea of the value of const.i.tutional history, which may be due to the influence of Polybius, whose trained intelligence and philosophic grasp of events must have produced a great impression among those who knew or read him.

We have now mentioned three historians, each of whom brought his original contribution to the task of narrating events. Cato rose to the idea of Rome as the centre of an Italian State; he held any account of her inst.i.tutions to be imperfect which did not also trace from their origin those of the kindred nations; Piso conceived the plan of reducing the myths to historical probability, and Asellio that of tracing the moral causes that underlay outward movements. Thus we see a great advance in theory since the time, just a century earlier, when Fabius wrote his annals. We now meet with a new element, that of rhetorical arrangement. No one man is answerable for introducing this. It was in the air of Rome during the seventh century, and few were unaffected by it. Antipater is the first to whom rhetorical ornament is attributed by Cicero, though his attainments were of a humble kind. [42] He was conspicuous for word painting. Scipio's voyage to Africa was treated by him in an imaginative theatrical fas.h.i.+on, noticed with disapproval by Livy. [43] In other respects he seems to have been trustworthy and to have merited the honour he obtained of being abridged by J. Brutus.

In the time of Sulla we hear of several historians who obtained celebrity.

The first is CLAUDIUS QUADRIGARIUS (fl. 100 B.C.). He differs from all his predecessors by selecting as his starting-point the taking of Rome by the Gauls. His reason for so doing does him credit, viz. that there existed no doc.u.ments for the earlier period. [44] He hurried over the first three centuries, and as was usual among Roman writers, gave a minute account of his own times, inserting doc.u.ments and speeches. So archaic was his style that his fragments might belong to the age of Cato. For this reason, among others, Gellius [45] (in whom they are found) greatly admires him. Though he outlived Sulla, and therefore chronologically might be considered as belonging to the Ciceronian period, yet the lack of finish in his own and his contemporaries' style, makes this the proper place to mention them.

The _period_, [46] as distinct from the mere stringing together of clauses, was not understood even in oratory until Gracchus, and in history it was to appear still later. Cicero never mentions Claudius, nor VALERIUS ANTIAS (91 B.C.), who is often a.s.sociated with him. This writer, who has gained through Livy's page the unenviable notoriety of being the most lying of all annalists, nevertheless obtained much celebrity. The chief cause of his deceptiveness was the fabrication of circ.u.mstantial narrative, and the invention of exact numerical accounts. His work extended from the first mythical stories to his own day, and reached to at least seventy-five books. In his first decade Livy would seem to have followed him implicitly. Then turning in his later books to better authorities, such as Polybius, and perceiving the immense discrepancies, he realised how he had been led astray, and in revenge attacked Antias throughout the rest of his work. Still the fact that he is quoted by Livy oftener than any other writer, shows that he was too well-known to be neglected, and perhaps Livy has exaggerated his defects.

L. CORNELIUS SISENNA, (119-67 B.C.), better known as a statesman and grammarian, treated history with success. His daily converse with political life, and his thoughtful and studious habits, combined to qualify him for this department. He was a conscientious man, and tells how he pursued his work continuously, lest if he wrote by starts and s.n.a.t.c.hes, he might pervert the reader's mind. His style, however, suffered by this, he became prolix; this apparently is what Fronto means when he says "_scripsit longinque_." To later writers he was interesting from his fondness for archaisms. Even in the senate he could not drop this affected habit. Alone of all the fathers he said _adsentio_ for _adsentior_, and such phrases as "_vellicatim aut sultuatim scribendo_" show an absurd straining after quaintness.

C. LICINIUS MACER (died 73 B.C.) the father of the poet Calvus, was the latest annalist of Rome. Cicero, who was his enemy, and his judge in the trial which cost him his life, criticises his defects both as orator and historian, with severity. Livy, too, implies that he was not always trustworthy ("Quaesita ea propriae familiae laus leviorem auctorem facit,"

[47]) when the fame of his _gens_ was in question, but on many points he quotes him with approval, and shows that he sought for the best materials, _e.g._ he drew from the _lintei libri_, [48] the books of the magistrates, [49] the treaty with Ardea, [50] and where he differed from the general view, he gave his reasons for it.

The extent of his researches is not known, but it seems likely that, alone of Roman historians, he did not touch on the events of his day, the latest speech to which reference is made being the year 196 B.C. As he was an orator, and by no means a great one, being stigmatised as "loquacious" by Cicero, it is probable that his history suffered from a rhetorical colouring.

In reviewing the list of historians of the ante-cla.s.sical period, we cannot form any high opinion of their merits. Fabius, Cincius, and Cato, who are the first, are also the greatest. The others seem to have gone aside to follow out their own special views, without possessing either accuracy of knowledge or grasp of mind sufficient to unite them with a general comprehensive treatment. The simultaneous appearance of so many writers of moderate ability and not widely divergent views, is a witness to the literary activity of the age, but does not say much for the force of its intellectual creations.

NOTE.--The fragments of the historians have been carefully collected and edited with explanations and lists of authorities by Peter. (_Veterum Historicorum Romanorum Relliquiae_. Lipsiae, 1870.)

APPENDIX.

_On the Annales Pontific.u.m._ (Chiefly from _Les Annales des Pontifes_, Le Clerc.)

The _Annales_, though not literature in the proper sense, were so important, as forming materials for it, that it may be well to give a short account of them. They were called _Pontific.u.m_, _Maximi_, and sometimes _Publici_, to distinguish them from the _Annales_ of other towns, of families, or of historical writers. The term _Annales_, we may note _en pa.s.sant_, was ordinarily applied to a narrative of facts preceding one's own time, _Historiae_ being reserved for a contemporary account (Gell. v. 8). But this of course was after its first sense was lost. In the oldest times, the Pontifices, as they were the lawyers, were in like manner the historians of Rome (Cic. de Or. ii. 12). Cicero and Varro repeatedly consulted their records, which Cicero dates from the origin of the city, but Livy only from Aneus Martius (i. 32). Servius, apparently confounding them with the _Fasti_, declares that they put down the events of every day (ad Ac. i. 373); and that they were divided into eighty books. Semp.r.o.nius Asellio (Gell. v. 18) says they mention _bellum quo initum consule, et quo modo confectum, et quis triumphans introierit_, and Cato ridicules the meagreness of their information. Nevertheless it was considered authentic. Cicero found the eclipse of the year 350 duly registered; Virgil and Ovid drew much of their archaeological lore (_annalibus eruta priscis_, Ov. Fast i. 7.) and Livy his lists of prodigies from them. Besides these marvellous facts, others were doubtless noticed, as new laws, dedication of temples or monuments, establishment of colonies, deaths of great men, erection of statues, &c.; but all with the utmost brevity. _Unam dicendi laudem putant esse brevitatem_ (De Or. ii.

12). Sentences occur in Livy which seem excerpts from them, _e.g._ (ii.

1).--_His consulibus Fidenae obssesae, Crustumina capta, Praeneste ab Latinis ad Romanos descivit_. Varro, in enumerating the G.o.ds whose altars were consecrated by Tatius, says (L. L. v. 101), _ut Annales veteres nostri dic.u.n.t_, and then names them. Pliny also quotes them expressly, but the word _vetustissimi_ though they make it probable that the Pontifical Annals are meant, do not establish it beyond dispute (Plin. x.x.xiii. 6, x.x.xiv. 11).

It is probable, as has been said in this work, that the _Annales Pontific.u.m_ were to a great extent, though not altogether, destroyed in the Gallic invasion. But Rome was not the only city that had Annales.

Probably all the chief towns of the Oscan, Sabine, and Umbrian territory had them. Cato speaks of Antemna as older than Rome, no doubt from its records. Varro drew from the archives of Tusculum (L. L. vi. 16), Praeneste had its Pontifical Annals (Cic de Div. ii. 41), and Anagnia its _libri lintei_ (Fronto, Ep. ad Ant. iv. 4). Etruria beyond question possessed an extensive religious literature, with which much history must have been mingled. And it is reasonable to suppose, as Livy implies, that the educated Romans were familiar with it. From this many valuable facts would be preserved. When the Romans captured a city, they brought over its G.o.ds with them, and it is possible, its sacred records also, since their respect for what was religious or ancient, was not limited to their own nationality, but extended to most of those peoples with whom they were brought in contact. From all these considerations it is probable that a considerable portion of historic record was preserved after the burning of the city, whether from the Annals themselves, or from portions of them inscribed on bronze erstone, or from those of other states, which was accessible to, and used by Cato, Polybius, Varro, Cicero, and Verrius Flaccus. It is also probable that these records were collected into a work, and that this work, while modernized by its frequent revisions, nevertheless preserved a great deal of original and genuine annalistic chronicle.

The _Annales_ must be distinguished from the _Libri Pontific.u.m_, which seem to have been a manual of the _Jus Pontificale_. Cicero places them between the _Jus Civile_ and the Twelve Tables (De Or. i. 43.) The _Libri Pontificii_ may have been the same, but probably the term, when correctly used, meant the ceremonial ritual for the _Sacerdotes_, _flamines_, &c.

This general term included the more special ones of _Libri sacrorum_, _sacerdotum_, _haruspicini_, &c. Some have confounded with the _Annales_ a different sort of record altogether, the _Indigitamenta_, or ancient formulae of prayer or incantation, and the _Axamenta_, to which cla.s.s the song of the Arval Brothers is referred.

As to the amount of historical matter contained in the Annals, it is impossible to p.r.o.nounce with confidence. Their falsification through family and patrician pride is well known. But the earliest historians must have possessed sufficient insight to distinguish the obviously fabulous.

We cannot suspect Cato of placing implicit faith in mythical accounts. He was no friend to the aristocratic families or their records, and took care to check them by the rival records of other Italian tribes. Semp.r.o.nius Asellio, in a pa.s.sage already alluded to (ap. Gell. v. 18), distinguishes the annalistic style as puerile (_fabulas pueris narrare_); the historian, he insists, should go beneath the surface, and understand what he relates.

On comparing the early chronicles of Rome with those of St Bertin and St Denys of France, there appears no advantage in a historical point of view to be claimed by the latter; both contain many real events, though both seek to glorify the origin of the nation and its rulers by constant instances of divine or saintly intervention.

CHAPTER X.

THE HISTORY OF ORATORY BEFORE CICERO.

As the spiritual life of a people is reflected in their poetry, so their living voice is heard in their oratory. Oratory is the child of freedom.

Under the despotisms of the East it could have no existence; under every despotism it withers. The more truly free a nation is, the greater will its oratory be. In no country was there a grander field for the growth of oratorical genius than in Rome. The two countries that approach nearest to it in this respect are beyond doubt Athens and England. In both eloquence has attained its loftiest height, in the one of popular, in the other of patrician excellence. The eloquence of Demosthenes is popular in the n.o.blest sense. It is addressed to a sovereign people who knew that they were sovereign. Neither to deliberative nor to executive did they for a moment delegate that supreme power which it delighted them to exercise. He that had a measure or a bill to propose had only to persuade them that it was good, and the measure pa.s.sed, the bill became law. But the audience he addressed, though a popular, was by no means an ordinary one. It was fickle and capricious to a degree exceeding that of all other popular a.s.semblies; it was critical, exacting, intellectual, in a still higher degree. No audience has been more swayed by pa.s.sion; none has been less swayed by the pretence of it. Always accessible to flattery, Athens counts as her two greatest orators the two men who never stooped to flatter her.

The regal tones of Pericles, the prophetic earnestness of Demosthenes, in the response which each met, bear witness to the greatness of those who heard them. Even Cleon owed his greatest triumphs to the plainness with which he inveighed against the people's faults. Intolerant of inelegance and bombast, the Athenians required not only graceful speech, but speech to the point. Hence Demosthenes is of all ancient orators the most business-like. Of all ancient orators, it has been truly said he would have met with the best hearing from the House of Commons. Nevertheless there is a great difference between Athenian and English eloquence. The former was exclusively popular; the latter, in the strictest sense, is hardly popular at all. The dignified representatives of our lower house need no such appeals to popular pa.s.sion as the Athenian a.s.sembly required; only on questions of patriotism or principle would they be tolerated.

Still less does emotion govern the sedate and masculine eloquence of our upper house, or the strict and closely-reasoned pleadings of our courts of law. Its proper field is in the addresses of a popular member to one of the great city const.i.tuencies. The best speeches addressed to hereditary legislators or to elected representatives necessarily involve different features from those which characterised orations addressed directly to the entire nation a.s.sembled in one place. If oratory has lost in fire, it has gained in argument. In its political sphere, it shows a clearer grasp of the public interest, a more tenacious restriction to practical issues; in its judicial sphere, a more complete abandonment of prejudice and pa.s.sion, and a subordination, immeasurably greater than at Athens, to the authority of written law.

Let us now compare the general features of Greek and English eloquence with those of Rome. Roman eloquence had this in common with Greek, that it was genuinely popular. In their comitia the people were supreme. The orator who addressed them must be one who by pa.s.sion could enkindle pa.s.sion, and guide for his own ends the impulses of a vast mult.i.tude. But how different was the mult.i.tude! Fickle, impressionable, vain; patriotic too in its way, and not without a rough idea of justice. So far like that of Greece; but here the resemblance ends. The mob of Rome, for in the times of real popular eloquence it had come to that, was rude, fierce, bloodthirsty: where Athens called for grace of speech, Rome demanded vehemence; where Athens looked for glory or freedom, Rome looked for increase of dominion, and the wealth of conquered kingdoms for her spoil.

That in spite of their fierce and turbulent audience the great Roman orators attained to such impressive grandeur, is a testimony to the greatness of the senatorial system which reared them. In some respects the eloquence of Rome bears greater resemblance to that of England. For several centuries it was chiefly senatorial. The people intrusted their powers to the Senate, satisfied that it acted for the best; and during this period eloquence was matured. That special quality, so well named by the Romans _gravitas_, which at Athens was never reached, but which has again appeared in England, owed its development to the august discipline of the Senate. Well might Cineas call this body an a.s.sembly of kings.

Never have patriotism, tradition, order, expediency, been so powerfully represented as there; never have change, pa.s.sion, or fear had so little place. We can well believe that every effective speech began with the words, so familiar to us, _maiores nostri voluerunt_, and that it ended as it had begun. The aristocratic stamp necessarily impressed on the debates of such an a.s.sembly naturally recalls our own House of Lords. But the freedom of personal invective was far wider than modern courtesy would tolerate. And, moreover, the competency of the Senate to decide questions of peace or war threw into its discussions that strong party spirit which is characteristic of our Lower House. Thus the senatorial oratory of Rome united the characteristics of that of both our chambers. It was at once majestic and vehement, patriotic and personal, proud of traditionary prestige, but animated with the consciousness of real power.

In judicial oratory the Romans, like the Greeks, compare unfavourably with us. With more eloquence they had less justice. Nothing sets antiquity in a less prepossessing light than a study of its criminal trials; nothing seems to have been less attainable in these than an impartial sifting of evidence. The point of law is obscured among overwhelming considerations from outside. If a man is clearly innocent, as in the case of Roscius, the enmity of the great makes it a severe labour to obtain an acquittal; if he is as clearly guilty (as Cluentius would seem to have been), a skilful use of party weapons can prevent a conviction. [1] The judices in the public trials (which must be distinguished from civil causes tried in the praetor's court) were at first taken exclusively from the senators.

Gracchus (122 B.C.) transferred this privilege to the Equites; and until the time of Sulla, who once more reinstated the senatorial cla.s.s (81 B.C.), fierce contests raged between the two orders. Pompey (55 B.C.), following an enactment of Cotta (70 B.C.), threw the office open to the three orders of Senators, Knights, and Tribuni Aerarii, but fixed a high property qualification. Augustus added a fourth _decuria_ from the lower cla.s.ses, and Caligula a fifth, so that Quintilian could speak of a juryman as ordinarily a man of little intelligence and no legal or general knowledge. [2]

This would be of comparatively small importance if a presiding judge of lofty qualifications guided, as with us, the minds of the jury through the mazes of argument and sophistry, and set the real issue plainly before them. But in Rome no such prerogative rested with the presiding judge, [3]

who merely saw that the provisions of the law under which the trial took place were complied with. The judges, or rather jurors, were, in Rome as in Athens, [4] both from their number and their divergent interests, open to influences of prejudice or corruption, only too often unscrupulously employed, from which our system is altogether exempt. In the later republican period it was not, of course, ignorance (the jurors being senators or equites) but bribery or partisans.h.i.+p that disgraced the decisions of the bench. Senator and eques unceasingly accused each other of venality, and each was beyond doubt right in the charge he made. [5] In circ.u.mstances like these it is evident that dexterous manipulation or pa.s.sionate pleading must take the place of legitimate forensic oratory.