-// $ 3>y FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY SOB /S03Y HISTORY ROMAN LITERATURE: INTRODUCTORY MS3ERTATI THE SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. EDITED BY THE REV. HENRY THOMPSON, M.A., CURATE OE WRING TON, SOMERSET; FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. (Tbtro Coition, ilrbiscb anb G-nlargrb. LONDON AND GLASGOW: RICHARD GRIFFIN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OE GLASGOW. PREFACE. In the advertisement to the volume of this Enclycopaedia which contains the History of Greek Literature it has been stated that the plan of that volume would be that of the others. That plan was, in brief, to make the subject complete, so far as an Encyclopaedia could attain completeness, by adding to the articles in the former edition such as should appear necessary for the purpose; and to translate all passages requisite for giving the general reader an intelligible view of the subject. The present editor has endeavoured to achieve this object by considerably enlarging and improving, from sources which have arisen in the interim, the papers on Latin Poetry which he contributed to the first edition ; by adding another on the Latin prose writers, subsequent to the time of the Antonines, writers of whom no mention had been made in that work ; and by prefixing a dissertation on the History of the Latin Language. He has also appended biographical notes to the valuable paper of Dr. Arnold on Eoman History ; added to each article biblio- graphical notices from approved authorities ; and left, he believes, no passage untranslated which it was of importance to render into English. He has, however, assumed that the volume will be chiefly read by those who are not wholly unac- quainted with Latin writers. The articles by Mr. Newman and Mr. Ottley have undergone revision and amplification by their authors. One important improvement, for which the editor confidently expects the gratitude of all readers, is the paper contributed by that eminent scholar, Mr. JNTeale, on Ecclesiastical Poetry. The time is happily gone by when no genius or excellence could be acknowledged in productions which were not cast in a certain arbitrary mould; when all viii PREFACE. architectural beauty was limited to the " five orders," and all poetry to the writers " nielioris awi et notae." The Eccle- siastical poets are now acknowledged to be worthy the study of scholars ; and perhaps there is no individual of our country who has been more instrumental in effecting this happy result than the distinguished author of the article on that subject which enriches this volume. To have treated the Latin prose writers on theology, jurisprudence, or other sciences, great as are the merits of some, and the archaeological value of all, would have extended this volume beyond all proper limits : but the poets of the Church, as the authors of a new literature, having a life and spirit of its own, were entitled to a record in this history. And, although the article on this subject is purely literary, the theological student will find it interesting, as affording a view of the doctrinal purity of the ancient Catholic Church, and the contrasted character of late additions totheFaith. The Illustrations to the present volume will, the editor believes, be deemed an important improvement. A list of them, with the authorities whence they are derived, is appended. A chronology, the result of a careful collation, is also added. The editor, it will be seen, has ventured to continue his scepticism on the existence of such a ballad literature as has been claimed for the Romans by Niebuhr, and by his " popular expositor," Mr. Macaulay, whose magnificent Lays of Ancient Home have given a world-wide interest to the subject. If the editor were at issue with these eminent scholars on any question of fact, he might well indeed distrust himself. But he has not been guilty of any such presumption. The facts are patent. The opinion he makes bold to entertain is only an inference. It is unquestionable that there did exist a rude narrative Latin minstrelsy : but was it of such an order as a Percy or a Scott would have preserved for its poetical merit ? Mr. Macaulay inclines to the affirmative, on the ground that every other nation has possessed a ballad literature — a fact admitted in this work.1 But this supposes a certain amount of the imaginative faculty existing in every community. It is matter of fact that, in this faculty, the Eomans were altogether 1 Page 11. PREFACE. ix deficient. Had they possessed it, they would surely have welcomed the importation of Greek literature after a very different fashion. The old ballads might have been despised, but an original school would still have succeeded. In England, where there had been a noble ballad literature, the revival of learning, though it operated extensively, produced no such servility as resulted from the first intercourse of Latium with the Greek poets — Spenser and Sidney were kindled, not moulded, by the contact. ! Moreover, the old ballads never lost their ground till the nation became influenced by France ; and even then, the pulse of the cold and correct Addison quickened at " Chevy Chase," and Percy's " Relicks " were received with an enthusiasm that broke the chilling spell which .French drawing-rooms had laid on the Muse of England. No country has owed more to Greece than Germany : and she has richly paid her debt ; but not in Greek coinage. On the con- trary, a more original literature than the German cannot exist ; and the classical student, when he enters on it, seems transported to another world. The Italian literature had a powerful influence on that of Spain ; yet it was but a new cos- tume, not an internal and organic change ; and the native school had its readers and its writers. But had not Homer sung, we should have had no iEneid, nor anything approaching one. " Nsevius," says Mr. Macaulay, " seems to have been the last of the ancient line of poets." If he were so, the ballad literature of Rome has been a serious loss to us. But surely this has not been demonstrated. Nsevius wrote after the Greek literature began to operate on the Eoman mind. His dramas appear to have been essentially Greek ; and, if he adopted the Saturnian measure in his epic, it was moulded, rude as it was, on the principles of Greek prosody, not of Latin rhythm, as the Saturnians of the old balladists are said to have been. Nsevius was probably as distinct from the balladists as Pompo- nius from the Atellane poets of old time. His great popu- 1 Milton might seem an eminent instance of the originality compatible with a close adherence to classical models. But as he had for his poem sources, and those of the sublimest kind, which the ancients had not, his example is not here insisted on. x PREFACE. larity in the Augustan day is suggestive. Copies, it seems, were unnecessary to preserve what every Roinan knew by heart. 1 If, therefore, Nsevius was but one, though the last, of the balladists, how happened it that he was the only one remembered and cherished by a people so devoted to national renown as the Romans ? As a matter of fact, the Greek lite- rature did not universally induce a contempt of native antiquity. There was, in the most literary period of Rome, a school which almost made antiquity the criterion of excellence ; which held that the Muses themselves had inspired the early documents of the city ; and which praised, on account of their venerable age, verses which few, if any, could understand. Either JN"a3vius did not belong to the balladists, or, if he did, it will not be easy to solve the phenomenon that those who had preserved his poetry in their memories should have allowed that of his fellow-minstrels to perish. For, be it remembered, the philarchaic school was not a growth of the Augustan age : on the contrary, the spirit of that period sought its extinction ; and, in a great measure, effectually. The old ballads then, in all probability, perished from the mind of the people, because they had no inherent poetic vitality ; as Naevius was treasured by the multitude, because, though rude, he had Greek life and energy. In truth, the poetic element was wanting in the Roman idiosyncrasy. Even • the language had no word for the idea — word- and idea were I equally Greek, for vates properly signified prophet, not poet ; and the latter meaning was secondary, inasmuch as the old [ prophets gave their predictions in verse. While, then, the editor makes no doubt of the existence of Roman ballads, detailing in some instances narratives which, as Mr. Macaulay has manifested, were capable of high poetic development in the hands of imaginative writers, yet he sees no evidence that such ballads told their story in any other form than the baldest and driest — being metrical only for the con- venience of memory : and he therefore adheres to the view which 1 This seems the most natural reading and interpretation. See p. 17. But take the words how we will, the popularity of Nsevius is necessarily their burden. PREFACE. xi lie expressed in the first edition of this work, long before the publication of Mr. Macaulay's book, of dating the true begin- ning of all Roman literature from intercourse with Greece. Closely connected with the subject of early Eoman poetry is that of the metre in which it is supposed to have been written. Much has been said by recent writers on the Saturnian verse ; and the opinions of Niebuhr on this subject will be found dis- cussed in the 4-ith and following pages of this work. The dictum of that great historian, on a question of this kind, would be entitled to an almost reverential regard ; but when he adduces the authorities from which he derives his con- clusion, that conclusion may be examined, without pre- sumption, by scholars of the multitude. The editor will take this opportunity of amplifying a note to page 44, which appears to him to contain a large proportion of the controversy. The term Saturnius, then, like Sat ura, seems to have possessed two quite distinct applications. In both of these, however, it simply meant " as old as the days of Saturn ;" and, like the Greek 'tlyvyios, was a kind of proverbial expression for something antiquated. Hence, (1.) the rude rhythmical effusions which contained the early Eoman story might be called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their antiquity ; and, (2.) the term Saturnius was also applied to a definite measure, on the principles of Greek prosody, though rudely and loosely moulded — the measure employed by Xrevius, which soon became antiquated, when Ennius introduced the hexameter; and which is the met rum Saturnium recognised by the gram- marians. The editor regrets that it has been only since the preliminary dissertation was written, aud since the rest of the volume was printed, that he became acquainted with Dr. Donaldson's learned work, Yarronianus. He has, however, revised the dissertation since ; and it will be seen, by references to Dr. Donaldson's work, where that eminent scholar has been consulted. He alludes to it now, however, for the purpose of shewing how vague and unsatisfactory are the attempts, even of the most accomplished scholars, to elicit a rhythmical verse from the old Latin remains. Dr. Donaldson scans all the epitaphs of the Scipios ; and makes the following remarks on them : — xii PREFACE. " The metre in which these inscriptions are composed is deserving of notice. That they are written in Saturnian verse has long been perceived; Niebuhr, indeed, thinks that they c are nothing else than either complete nenias, or the beginning of them.' (EL K. i. p. 253.) It is not, however, so generally agreed how we ought to read and divide the verses. For instance, Niebuhr maintains that patre in a, 2,1 is, ' beyond doubt, an interpolation ;' to me it appears that it is necessary to the verse. He thinks that there is no ecthlipsis in apice, c. 1 ;2 I cannot scan the line without it. These are only samples of the many differences of opinion which might arise upon these short inscriptions." 3 " Only samples !" and what samples ! Is it conceivable that the word patre would have been cut on the stone, if it had been an interpolation ? And what kind of verse can this be, which one critic finds it necessary to abridge by a word of two syllables, before he can scan it, while another cannot scan it unless those two syllables are present ? Could there be " many differences of opinion " on "these short inscriptions," if they were really subject to a metrical law ? Again, in the epitaph on L. Cornelius Scipio the Elder, Dr. Donaldson scans : — Consul, censor, aidilis | qui fuit apud vos ; while, in that on the Younger Cornelius, he gives us — Consdl, censor, aidiles | hie fuet apud yos : Surely both cannot be right. Is either ? Dr. Donaldson gives "the old Latin translation of an 1 The epitaph on L. Cornelius Scipio. 2 Epitaph on the Flamen Dialis, P. Scipio. This inscription, it is true, is virtually called Carmen by Cicero (de Senect. xvii) who applies that term to the epitaph of Atilius Calatinus, similar in expression. But that very similarity shews that the word is to be rendered formula, as it frequently signifies. So Livy speaks of Duellius reciting the " Carmen rogationis," the legal formula, which was scarcely in verse. Indeed it is given by the historian, and nothing can appear less metrical. The formal differences between the epitaphs of the Flamen and Atilius are of themselves an argument that the inscriptions are not in verse. 3 Varronianus, vi., 20. PHEFACE. xiii epigram, which was written, probably, by Leonidas of Tarentum, at the dedication of the spoils taken at the battles of Heraclea and Asculum (b. c. 280, 279) ; and which," he adds, "should be scanned as follows : — Qui £ntedhac invicti | fuvere viri [ pater dptime Olympi || Hos e'go in pugna vici || Victusque sum ab isdem || He then subjoins : " Xiebuhr suggests (iii. note 341) that the first line is an attempt at an hexameter, and the last two an imitation of the shorter verse ;* and this remark shows the discernment which is always so remarkable in this great scholar. The author of this translation, which was, probably, made soon after the original, could not write in hexameter verse ; but he represented the hexameter of the original, by a lengthened form of the Saturnius, and indicated the two penthemimers of the pentameter, by writing their meaning in two truncated Saturnians, — taking care to indicate, by the anacrusis, that there was really a break in the rhythm of the original pentameter, although it might be called a single line, according to the Greek system of metres." The first of these lines is, probably, a corrupted hexameter ; for the removal of one word leaves it a pure one.2 This word, antedhac, is, in all probability, an interpolation. It is just what a transcriber, ignorant of the law of the verse, would have interpolated, to make, as he might think, a better sense. "Whether the rest be " two truncated Saturnians " or not, quite certain it is that it is a pure hexameter I (Hos ego in pugna vici, victusque sum ab isdem) for the absence of the synalcepha is not worth regarding at such an early period, especially with Greek authority in abun- 1 The pentameter. 2 A pure one, because the first syllable of fuvere for fuere is not only long, but, what is most important in the present controversy, the v, the representative of the digamma, is inserted, apparently, for the express pur- pose of making it so. (See Digamma in the volume on Greek Literature, p. 359, and Priscian's observations there quoted.) Were the line an accen- tual Saturnian, it is manifest that there would be no necessity for departure from the ordinary form, as the accent would not thereby be affected. xiv PREFACE. dance. Surely, it must be evident to every reader unbeset by hypothesis, that, to say the least, if the first line is " an attempt at an hexameter," the last is no less. Dr. Donaldson inclines to press Mr. Macaulay into the controversy ; but clearly on insufficient grounds : for Mr. Macaulay acknowledges no Latin Saturnians which are not prosodiacal.1 All we possess from the pen of Naevius are plainly so. While making these observations, the editor would gratefully express his deep respect for the talent and scholarship of Dr. Donaldson, and his high sense of the value of his philological writings. The Varronianus deserves the gratitude of all who are interested in these studies ; and it has been a great satis- faction to the present writer, on revising his dissertation, to find his general views confirmed by so high an authority, especially on the subject of the Etruscan language ; the affinity of which to the Indo- Germanic dialects will, he believes, one day be demonstrated. Mr. Pococke's remarkable work, India in Greece, -after allowing for many things which are fan- ciful,— scarcely to be avoided by one who had established so much, — is yet conclusive for a very extensive prevalence of Sanscrit and its dialects on the shores of the Mediterranean ; and the editor regrets that The Early History of Borne, promised by that author, should not have been available for these pages. The editor hopes that the improvements of this portion of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana may not be unworthy the memory of the accomplished scholar, under whose auspices the original work was conducted, the late Eev. Edward Smedley. With this brief mention of one who, in no ordinary degree, blended "true religion" with "useful learning," deep, exten- sive, and varied scholarship with pure and practical Christianity, he commends this volume to the public. H. T. Rectory, Wrington, July 26, 1852. 1 "That it " [the Saturnian] "is the same with a Greek measure used by Archilochus is indisputable" — Preface to " Lays of Ancient Rome," p. 19, ed. 1848. CONTENTS. Page PREFACE vii INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE . xxix LATIN POETRY. Part L— THE EARLIER POETIC LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS .3 Ballad Poetry 4 Satyric Drama ......... 7 Regular Drama 14 Livius Andronicus . 14 Comedy 16 N?evius 16 Plautus 17 New Comedy . . 19 Afranius 22 Terence 23 Tragedy 28 Ennius 28 Pacuvius 29 Attius 29 Satire 32 Ennius . 33 Lucilius 35 Varro 39 Epopceia 42 Nsevius .......... 43 Ennius 47 xvi CONTENTS. Page Didactic Poetry ......... 51 Lucretius 51 Cicero 53 Catullus 54 Epigram 57 Catullus 58 ; MSS., Editions, &c, of the Ante- Augustan Poets . . . 62 Part II.— THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF LATIN POETRY . 65 Biography of Horace 65 "Writings of Horace 71 Odes 71 Imitations 72 Iambics or Epodes ........ 73 Ethics and Criticism 74 Carmen Saaculare 102 Epistles to Augustus and the Pisos 103 Chronology of his writings 76 Virgil 78 Eclogues 78 Georgics 83 JSneid 91 Minor poems 95 Alpinus 84 Bibaculus 85 Fundanius 85 Pollio 85 Varius 86 Valgius 86 Cassius of Parma 90 Anser 98 Cornificius 98 Tibullus 100 Propertius 101 Lyric Poetry 102 Dramatic Degeneracy 106 Closet Drama 109 Mimes Ill Laberius * 113 Publius 115 CONTENTS. xvii Pfljre Matins 116 General view of Augustan Poetry . . . . . . 117 Ovid's Catalogue of Poets . . . . . . .118 Gratius 119 Manilius . . 119 Phrcdrus 120 Ovid .121 Character of his Poetry . 125 Maecenas 128 His literary character 129 MSS., Editions, &c, of the Augustan Poets . . . .131 Part III.— DECLINE OF LATIN POETRY 135 Causes of the Decline of Latin Poetry 185 Demoralization of the Romans 136 Exhaustion of Greek Literature 137 Germanicus . . . . 138 Didactic and Epic Poetry 139 Columella 140 Lucan . 140 Polla Argentaria . 143 Seneca 143 Pomponius Secundus 145 Virginius .......... 145 Maternus ........... 146 Memor ........... 146 Varro ........... 146 Seneca s Epigrams ........ 147 Satire 147 Cornutus 149 Persius 150 Palremon 150 Caesius Bassus 152 Petronius 153 Sosianus . . . » . . . . . . 158 Turnus 159 Lenius 159 Silius 159 Juvenal 15ft [r. l.] 6 ii CONTENTS. Page State of Koman Literature 161 Nero 161 Poetry under the Vespasians 164 Salejus Bassus 165 Valerius Flaccus 166 Domitian and his times 167 Sulpicia 168 Satire . 168 Vopiscus 168 Statius the Elder 169 Statius the Younger 170 Stella 171 Martial 172 Canius 174 Theophila 174 Decianus 174 Licianus 174 Parthenius 174 Varus 174 Silius Italicus . . 174 Pliny the Younger 175 Voconius 176 Paullus 177 Pompeius Saturninus 177 Octavius 177 Arrius 177 Secundus 177 Sentius Augurinus . . . 177 Capito 177 Apollinaris 177 Bruttianus 178 Lucius 178 Unicus 178 Vestritius Spurinna 178 Review of the Flavian Age 178 Domitian 178 Nerva 179 Trajan 179 Valerius Pudens 181 Hadrian 181 CONTENTS. Xix Page ^EliusVerus 183 Verus Antonius 183 Age of the Antonines . . 183 Paullus 185 Annianus 185 Serenus Sammonicus . . . . . . . .185 Clodius Albinus 185 Sammonicus the Younger 186 Septimius 186 Terentian 186 The Gordians 187 Balbinus 187 Gallienus 187 Numerian .......... 187 Aurelius Apollinaris 188 Nemesian 188 Calpurnius 189 Tiberian 189 Effects of Christianity on Poetry 190 Cyprian 190 Tertullian 191 Lactantius 192 Fortunatus 192 Symposius 193 Pentadius 193 Flavius 193 Porphyry the Less . . . . . . . . 194 Juvencus ......... 194 Commodian ... ... 195 Victorinus 195 S.Hilary 195 Damasus 195 Callistus 195 Matronianus 195 Severus 195 Ambrosius . . . . . . . . .195 Avienus 195 Avianus 196 State of the Poetical Mind under the Byzantine Emperors and their Western Colleagues 197 62 CONTENTS. Pagre Valentinian . . .198 Gratian 198 Ausonius 198 Arborius 199 Paullinus 199 Delphidius 201 Proculus 201 Alcimus . 201 Alethius 201 Tetradius 201 Crispus 201 Theon 201 Dionysius Cato 201 Claudian 202 Marnercus . 204 Prudentius 204 Rutilius 204 Poetry of the Sixth Century 205 Phocas 205 Flavius Merobaudes . . . , . . . . 205 Priscian 205 Marcianus Capella 205 Prosper Tyro 205 Sidonius Apollinaris 205 MSS., Editions, &c., of the Post- Augustan Poets . . . 207 ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN POETEY. First Period.— THE DECOMPOSITION 216 Commodianus . . . . . . . . .216 Juvencus 217 S. Hilary 219 S.Ambrose 220 Prudentius 222 S. Paulinus 228 Sedulius 228 Dracontius 231 CONTEXTS. xxi Page Arator 232 S. Gregory the Great 232 Victor 234 Avitus 234 Proba Falcoiiia 235 Second Period.— THE RESTORATION 236 Fortunatus 236 Venerable Bede ......... 240 Paulus Diaconus 241 Charlemagne 241 S. Theodulph 241 Robert II. 242 Hartman 242 S. Peter Damiani 242 S. Fulbert 243 Hildebert 244 Marbodus 244 S. Bernard 245 Bernard de Morley 245 S. Notker Balbulus 246 Adam of S. Victor .246 Thomas of Celano 250 James de Benedictis . . . . . . . .251 S. Thomas Aquinas 252 Editions of the Ecclesiastical Latin Poets .... 254 Ox the Measures Employed by Medieval Poets . . 256 LATI]ST PEOSE WBITEKS. CICERO 271 Character of his Philosophical Writings 283 New Academy 285 Carneades 286 Philo and Antilochus 290 Mixed Philosophy of Cicero 290 Rhetorical Works 295 xxii CONTENTS. Page Moral and Physical Writings 298 Poetical and Historical Works 303 Orations 303 Character of his Style 307- Roman Eloquence 309 Orators before Cicero 310 Ciceronian Age 310 Decline of Roman Oratory 310 MSS., Editions, &c, of Cicero's Works 312 CICERONIANISM 321 THE HISTORIANS OF ROME :— Theopompus 329 Clitarchus 329 Theophrastus 330 Hieronymus 330 Timaeus 330 Diodes 330 How much of the Early Roman History is probably of domestic origin . 330 Q. Fabius Pictor 332 Cincius Alimentus . 332 M. Porcius Cato 334 L. Calpurnius Piso 335 L. Caelius Antipater . . . . . . . ..335 Other earlier Historians 336 Lucius Sisenna 336 Polybius 337 Exaggerated reputation of Roman Literature . . . 340 Sallust 341 Caesar 343 Livy 345 Speeches of Livy 350 On the reputation of Livy 351 Contrast between the early and later Grecian writers of History 352 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 354 Diodorus Siculus 356 Dion Cassius 357 CONTENTS. xxiii Tage VeUeiua Paterculus 360 Tacitus 361 Cornelius Nepos ......... 364 Plutarch 365 Suetonius 365 Florus 366 Valerius Maximus 367 Reflections on the duty of a historian .... 367 MSS., Editions, &c, of the Historians of Rome . . . 370 STATE OF ROMAN LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF THE EMPEROR TRAJAN 377 Reciters 378 Decay of learning 380 Pliny the Elder 380 Stoic Philosophy 3S3 Sophists 385 Effects of the Christian Religion 386 Of the government of Trajan ....... 386 Pliny the Younger 388 Editions of the works of Pliny the Elder and of Pliny the Younger 390 LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF THE ANTONINI . . 393 Marcus Aurelius 393 Lucianus 394 Pausanias ........... 401 Julius Pollus 402 Aulus Gellius 403 Galenus .......... 404 Other Medical "Writers 406 Lucius Apuleius . . . . . . . . .406 Athena3us 410 Maximus Tyrius 411 M. Fabius Quinctilianus 414 Ancient Oratory . . . . . . . .416 Editions, &c, of the Works of Roman Authors of the Age of the Antonini 421 xxiv CONTENTS. Page POST-ANTONINIAN PROSE WRITERS 426 History 427 Lost Biographies 428 Historia Augusta 428 iElius Spartianus . 429 Vulcatius Gallicanus 429 Trebellius Pollio 429 Flavius Yopiscus 429 Lampridius 429 Capitolinus 430 Septimius 430 Dares 430 Aurelius Victor 430 Eutropius 430 Rufus 431 Ammianus Mar cell iuus 431 Orosius 432 Sulpicius Severus 432 Oratory 432 Panegyrici Veteres . . . . . . .432 Claudius Mamertinus Major 432 Eumenius 432 Nazarius 433 Mamertinus Minor . 433 Drepanius 433 Rhetoricians 433 Letter Writers 435 Symmachus 434 Cassiodorus 435 Philosophy 435 Macrobius 435 Boethius 436 Editions, &c, of the Post-Antoninian prose-writers . . 438 ROMAN LITERARY CHRONOLOGY . ... 449 INDEX 453 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. »■ Page Vignette. Xa Musee Royale xxv The Tiber. From a Statue in the Vatican . .... lxxv Terence. From an antique bust. G. F. Sargent . . .23 Author reading his Plat at a Roman Entertainment. From a marble cinerarium in the British Museum. G. F. Sargent. 26 Lucius Accius, or Attius. From an antique bust at Rome, engraved by Johannes Antonius 29 Masks. From a Mosaic at Hadrian's Villa 31 Ennius. From a bust found in the tomb of the Scipios, near Porta Capena in Rome 47 Lucretius. From an antique gem, engraved for the Batavian edition of his works in 1725 51 Cicero. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine ..... 53 Catullus. From an antique bust . . . . . . . 55 Musical Entertainment. From a painting at Herculaneum . 63 xxvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page HoRAca From an antique "beryl, in the collection of Lord Grey. VTorlidge. 65 Maecenas. From a colossal bust, Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 68 Brundusium 69 Augustus. Visconti, Mus. Pio. Clementino. . . . . 70 Tivoli. Temples of Vesta and the Sibyl 77 Virgil. From a gem, engraved for the edition of his works edited by Sir H. Justice in 1757 73 Virgil. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 87 Tomb of Virgil. Bartoli, gli. Ant. Sepolc 95 SURRENTUM 96 Tibullus. From an antique bust 100 Propertius. From an antique bust 101 The Coliseum. Piranesi 107 Comic Actor in the Mimes. From a marble statue in the British Museum. G. F. Sargent 110 Remains of the Flaminian Circus. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 116 Obelisk of Augustus. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Roni3 120 Ovid. The portrait from a medal in the Rondanini Collection. G. F. Sargent 121 Mausoleum of Augustus. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 126 Maecenas. From a marble basso-relievo, Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 128 Remains of the Villa of M^cenas 130 Vignette. From a painting at Herculaneum, Antiquites d' Her- culaneum, gravees par F. A. David 133 Remains of the Palace of the Cjesars on Mount Palatine. The modern building is the church of S. Maria Liberatrice. The three columns are the remains of the Temple of Jupiter Stator. Venuti, Antichita di Roma 135 Tiberius Cesar and Livia Augusta. Museum Florentinum . 136 Drusus Germanicus. From a medal in the Florentine Museum 139 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxvii Page Lucan. From a medal engraved for the Venetian edition of his works in 1668 141 Seneca. From an engraving by Vorstermans . . . .143 The Tarpeian Rock. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 147 Persius. From a basso-relievo in marble 150 Juvenal. From an antique bust 159 NERO and Popp^ea. Museum Florentinum 162 Baths of Nero. Venuti, Antichita di Roma . . . .163 Titus. Museum Florentinum 164 Arch of Titus 165 Vespasian. Museum Florentinum 165 Domitian. Museum Florentinum 167 Martial. From an antique gem 172 Nerva. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 179 Hadrian. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine , . . . . 181 Antoninus Augustus Pius. Fromacoin in the Hunterian Museum 184 Numerian. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine . . . .188 Constantine the Great. Visconti, Iconographie Grecque . . 194 Apollo Belvedere 206 Vase. Bacchanals. Real Museo Borbonico 210 Arch of Constantine. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 213 St. Jerom 216 St. Ambrose 220 Gregory the Great 235 The Veneraele Bede 236 Charlemagne . . 241 Medleyal Musical Instruments. Gerbertus Martinus de Cantu et Musica Sacra 253 Cicero. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 271 Temple of Peace. The modern building is the Church of S. Francesca Romana. Venuti, Antichita di Roma . . .272 Temple of Fortuna Virilis 274 Pompey the Great. Visconti, Iconographie Grecque . . .277 xxviii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page Temple op Minerva. Built by Pompey. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 293 Pantheon. A Temple of Agrippa 301 Roman Orators 309 The Forum 311 Vignette. Mural painting at Herculaneum 317 Erasmus 321 Dea Roma. Museum Florentinum 329 Fountain of Egeria. Antonelli's Views in Rome . . . 331 Cato the Censor. From a gem in the Ursini collection . . 334 Sallust. From a marble bust in the Farnese Palace . . . 342 Julius CiESAR. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine . . . . 342 Livy. From an antique bust 345 Halicarnassus. L'Univers pittoresque 355 Tacitus. From an antique gem 361 Plutarch. From an antique gem engraved for Reiski's German edition of his works 365 Lady writing with a Style. Museo Borbonico . . .369 Trajan. Visconti, Iconographie Romaine 377 Pliny the Younger. From a marble bust 388 Column of Trajan. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome . 389 Antoninus Pius. Rossi, Raccolta di Statue .... 393 Marcus Aurelius. From an antique bust. Visconti, Icono- graphie Romaine 394 Lucian. From a marble bust 395 Galen. Visconti, Iconographie Grecque 404 Ruins of Rome 428 Column of Marcus Aurelius. Overbeke, Les Restes de l'ancienne Rome 437 Boy Reading. Panofka, Bilder Antiken Lebens . . .445 Vignette. Mural Painting, Pompeii 452 A Roman Greeting 453 Jupiter with Statue of Victory. Hope's Costumes of the Ancients .... 462 INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. BY THE REV. HEXET THOMPSON, M.A. I.ATB SCHOLAR OF ST JOHX'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; CUBATE OF SVRi>GTON, SOMERSET. INTRODUCTOKY DISSERTATION. It would be foreign to the purposes of this work to enter in is volume largely upon ethnological questions ; and those coll- ected with Italy are singularly obscure and complicated. The ibject has been treated with laborious and erudite research by a ultitude of writers, who have come to the most discordant inclusions. It is here adverted to only because the intricacy hich belongs to it is necessarily derived to the history of a nguage which resulted from a confluence of the various races of aly in that central region termed Latium, or from the prepon- jrating influence, within that region, of certain dominant corn- unities existing without it. To define with certainty the several ibutaries by which the mighty stream of Latin speech was supplied, id to trace with accuracy their several sources and channels, is isolutely impossible ; and were this not evident from the scantiness f documents, it would be so from the extravagance or discordance f the hypotheses which learned men have devised for the solution fthe problem. While, therefore, we refer the reader who desires ) be acquainted with what has been advanced on the subject, to le principal writers who have treated it,1 we prefer to wild and He theorising a simple statement of such phenomena as are either istorically ascertained, or reasonably probable. It is quite obvious then that the Latin language consists of two lements at least — the more influential and prevalent being the Eolic dialect of the Greek. The Eev. F. E. J. Yalpy, in his late ery curious and interesting work, " Yirgilian Hours," professes to 1 Niebuhr, in his Roman History and Lectures. Lanzi, Saggio di Lingua Strusca. Arnold, Roman History. Muller, Etrusker. Dunlop, History of Roman literature. And Klenze, " zur Geschichte der altitalischen Volkstamme." xxxii INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE derive every word in the iEneid from a Greek primitive. Pew scholars, perhaps, will be convinced of his universal success, though i many may be disposed to allow that there is more Greek in Latin I than they imagined ; and some may think his hypothesis even I probable, while all will admire his acuteness and ingenuity, and, gratefully acknowledge the light which he has cast on the principles which govern the more abstruse and secret laws of classic etymology. Could we indeed believe that every word in a long poem like the iEneid was actually of Greek derivation, there would be no difficulty in allowing the same of the whole substance of the language.1 But without for the present either affirming or disputing this point, it isj evident that the Latin language, in literature at least, contained three classes of words. Of these, I. some were simple transplantations Triple from the Greek, apparently after an extensive intercourse subsisted ofStLathi10n with Magna Graacia, or even Greece itself : such are Greek proper names, altered only in inflections ; and such substantives as thesaurus, atlileta, emblema, pJiilosopliia, ephippium, triclinium, See. ; the coinage of Latin literary currency from Greek bullion being much encouraged and practised.2 II. Some were obviously Greek, yet such as entered the language naturally, and were part of its essential elements : to these such proper names as Ajax, Ulysses (or Ulixes), jEscnlapius, Hercules, &c, may be referred; together with such words as fama, triumplms, anchora, vestis, macliina, dexter, ago, lego, &c, &c, which form a large proportion of the language. III. But there still remains a class of words, which, if really of Greek origin, are evidently derived by a very different process. The maternal likeness is completely obliterated ; and the inquirer who would establish the relation must content himself with the indication of minute lineaments, in which few will be able to discover the parentage. Such are meta, lorica, clypeus, infula, &c, to which Mr. Valpy has assigned Greek primitives, but the derivation of which is evidently a very different matter from that of either of the former classes. 1 Mr. Valpy has siDce published u a Manual of Latin Etymology," in which he has advocated the universal descent of Latin from Greek. 2 " Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si Graeco fonte cadant, pared detorta." — Hor.Art. Poet. 52. SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. xxxiii As the Latin literature arose out of the commerce of Latium with Greece, the first class of these words appears even in the earliest literary fragments which have reached us ; no subsequent writers having drawn more unscrupulously on Greek sources than JEnnius and Lueilius. But, in investigating the formation of the language, the consideration of this class may be altogether laid aside, as its origin and history are palpable. There will remain Only two therefore only the two others for examination. challenge Latium lay between the territories of races which we, in the inquiry- popular phraseology of antiquity, may designate Greeks and barbarians. The countries to the south were principally Greek settlements, though the Oscan language was extensively spoken in [that region ; while the northern neighbours were of different descent. It is to these sources respectively, that the second and third classes of words composing the Latin language appear to be traceable. Of the Italian nations dwelling to the north of Latium, [the most conspicuous are the Etrurians, Umbrians, and Oscans or Opicans ; the two last of which were related, and are by some ^writers identified. The Sabines, too, who were early incorporated with the .Romans, were of kindred origin with the Oscan people. Whether the Siculi, Itali, or Vituli, were subdued by the Casci or Prisci, an Oscan tribe, and whether there is any foundation for the well-known legend of iEneas and his Trojans, are investi- gations which belong rather to the history of the country than that of the language. It is sufficient to observe that Latium, situated as it was between the territories of the Greek and barbarian, or semi-barbarian tribes, over-run by both in turn,1 and at last peopled by different races,2 naturally acquired a language partaking the idiom of its neighbours. It is evident, also, that peace and its arts were chiefly cultivated by the Greek portion of the people, while the remainder were principally distinguished for military prowess. The terms of husbandry and rural and domestic occupation are mostly Greek : aratrum, bos, ovis, agnus, sus, aper, equus, canis, sero, ager, sglva, vinum, lac, met, sal, oleum, &c. 1 " Latium colonis saepe mutatis tenuere alii aliis temporibus, Aborigines, Pelasgi, Arcades, Siculi, Aurunci, Rutuli." — Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5. 2 " Quum populus Romanus Etruscos, Latinos, Sabinosque miscuerit, et mum ex omnibus sanguinem ducat, corpus fecit ex membris, et in omnibus unus »t"— Flor. iii. [r. l.] c xxxiv INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Those of warfare, on the contrary, cannot be convincingly deduced from the Greek, and possibly are not Greek at all : arma, tela, cassis, ensis, hasta, gladius, areas, sagitta, jaculum, balteus, ocrea, clypeus, &c. Hence it has been concluded, that the tin- Greek element (as the German writers call it) was introduced by victorious invaders. This view also is countenanced by the tin- Greek terms, referring to government and laws : as rex, civ is, testis, jus, lis, vas, &c. &c. It also appears that the Greek was the primitive constituent of the Latin. The simplest ideas are Greek : as sum, sto, sedeo, cubo, salio, maneo, video, tango, ago, fero, volo, gigno, gnosco, memini, &c. The parts of the body are sometimes, but not always, evidently Greek.1 This general view is aptly elucidated by the English language, the agricultural and rural terms of which are Saxon, as field, plough, ox, sheep, &c. ; while the legal are mostly Norman, as court, judge, law, parliament, &c. The conquerors, on this theory, did not come by sea, since maritime terms are usually Greek, as navis, prora, remits, &c. It must, however, be admitted, that a portion at least of the Italian population which was not Greek, was yet of Greek connec- tion. In one point of view, Mr. Valpy's etymologies are strikingly remarkable. That he should have been able to make out, with any degree of plausibility, the entire identity of the Latin language with the Greek, is at least proof that there must be a Greek element in many of the Latin words, which do not belong to what we should call the Greek division of the language. And, indeed, there is no eminent Italian tribe, to which a Greek origin has not been ascribed by some writer or other. The enigmatical Pelasgians were as rife in Italy as on the opposite coast ; and Greek colonies swarmed along the maritime parts, whose influence on their more inland neighbours cannot but have been considerable. Olivieri is even of opinion that at one time the Greek language prevailed through the length and breadth of Italy.2 If this was ever the case, it must have been such during Lanzi's "second epoch,,, "the mythological," or period when events belong to history, although 1 Words relating to religion are commonly un-Greek. These may come from the Etruscans. 2 " Essendo Tltalia da ogni lato piena di Greci, chi mai creder potra clie altra lingua si usasse in Italia fuor clie la greca?" — Oliv., saggi dell' Accad. di Oort, II. 56 (apud Lanzi, saggio di Lingua Etrusca, I. i. 10). J SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. Xxxv mingled with fable : for liis first is before any records exist ; in his third, the Italian dialects, as migrations became fewer, and tribes more settled, began to assume the character of languages ; so that in this period the Latin language became distinct, though it was not cultivated ; and in his fourth it attained full development and cultivation, and, in literature at least, absorbed all the others. On the manifestly Greek portion of the Latin language it is unnecessary to dilate. The two languages are sufficiently well known to all persons of literature to need any detailed proof of 2SSm5? their substantial identity. The alphabet is essentially the same. £atlJ> with Pliny tells us of a Delphic table of brass, extant in his time in the Palatine, dedicated to Minerva, with the inscription, in Soman letters, " Nausicrates Tisamenu Athenaios anethece."1 The primi- tive alphabet of the Eomans contained only sixteen letters, ABCDEIKLMNOPQEST. C was commonly used for G, agreeably to its position, which corresponded with that of T; B stood for Y ; P for F. According to Tacitus, Dionysius, and Hyginus,2 this alphabet was brought from Arcadia by Evander.3 The declensions of substantives in both languages may be reduced to three ; and their identity is obvious, from the facility with which any word of either language falls into its proper declension in the other. The genders in both are three ; and the three declensions are in both repeated in the adjectives ; the first declension serving to designate the feminine in both, and the second, the masculine and neuter. The third declension in both embraces the three igenders. In both, all neuters plural, substantive and adjective, end in a; and all neuters are alike in the nominative, accusative, ;and vocative. In both, the pronouns are all but identical. 125, ea, id, is as, f) (ea), 6; o being constantly Latinised by i, as in the genitive of the third declension, and the d being an old addition, as in Cnaivod for Cnceo. Nos and vos are found 1 Plin. Nat. Hist. vii. 53. The copies have the inscription in Greek letters; jbut this manifestly renders the passage unmeaning ; the purport of which is to show that Greek was formerly written in what was nearly the Roman character in Fliny's time. 2 Pliny says : " In Latium eas attulerunt Pelasgi" — Hist. Nat. vii. 56*. Diony- sius says : Atyovrai ('A^/caSes) 8e na\ ypa/uL/uLaToou kW-qviitoov xpr^uiv els ''IraXiav tpwToi tiicLKOfxiaai.— I. 36. See Tac. Ann. ix. 14 ; Hyg. Fab. 277. 3 See the nature of the Roman alphabet discussed by Dr. Donaldson, Yarro- nianus, ch. vii. c2 xxxvi INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE in the Greek duals v&i and o-$oh. The irregular formation: coincide. Thus in both languages ego gives me-, and, although tu (rvy Mo\.) gives te, not se, the difference is trifling ; while the t actually goes as far as the dative in the iEolic Greek, The auxiliary verb sum, however apparently differing, is really identical with eljxi. The prefixed s is a characteristic variety of the language, as in virep, super ; e£, sex ; and numerous instances.1 The u, which letter is peculiar to the Latin, is substi- tuted for all manner of Greek vowels. Thus wins comes from els (Jews, whence the German ein) ; and hence we should have elym sumi, or, by aphaeresis, sum ; as ko-ri, est. By applying this principle to the present tense of the verb, the identity is palpable. elfxi, sum. clfj.es, (iEol.) sumus. els, es. f'crre, est is. earl, est. evn, (iEol.) sunt. Ero is the iEolic form for so-opai (ecru). So the iEolians said iroip for irais, whence the Latin pier. The other forms in this verb not derivable from elpl, come from vo> ; as fid, fueram, &c. The Latin regular verbs resemble the Greek more in their roots than their inflexion ; yet the substantial identity may still be traced. The aphseresis explains many forms ; as legit, Xeyer^ai ; legunt, \eyovT-i (iEol.) or \lyovTai. So, too, the dialectical insertion of r ; as arrays, stores ; o-rijuai, stare. Stans for cnas is no variation, as is evident from the genitive aravros. The reduplication of the perfect is often found, as pungo, pupugi ; tundo, tutudi ; and although usually dropped, like the Saxon ge in the English, a trace of its existence is perceptible in the lengthened syllable, as in legi from lelegi ; veni from veveni. The prepositions and numerals are almost the same in both languages. But the substantial identity of the two tongues does not merely rest here. Beside the s, which is so commonly prefixed to Greek words, particularly as a substitute for the aspirate, the digamma, which was especially characteristic of the iEolic dialect, greatly influenced Latin words. Thus ovis is from ots (iEol. oFls) ; vinum from oluos (iEol. foivos) ; ver from eap, rjp (iEol. Ffjp). Again, as the iEolians changed 6qp into 0 X 01 P 1 E 3^ 3 R qa X * =1 I I CH * L 4 >/ B Z ^ 1 Not pure | Etruscan. d J 1 Dion. Hal. i. 30. 2 Probably contracted forms : as Marcani for Marcanie. The Latin vocative i, as ^ftfom, is a contracted form for ie. xliv INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Etruscan was u added : answering to the Latin o, which the Etruscans had language. ° not. Also si is sometimes apparently a dative termination, like the (f)i of the Greek. We find the accusative puiam (Fviav, Jiliam, or puellam l). The ablative is thought to have been formed by the addition of ac, me, or sa. But it is more probable that at least the two latter of these were prepositions affixed, as mecum, tecum, Sec. So nomneper in the Umbrian, which termination is also found in the Etruscan naper. The plural nominative ended in ai, like the old Latin; contracted, perhaps, occasionally, into a ; unless this be an instance of the vowel omitted. So Rasena. The genitive was probably urn. \ Idibus was in Etruscan Itipes, and on a patera we find chusais, probably a dative plural from chusa, a libation. This is as much as can be said with any probability of the Etruscan declensions. Lanzi confuses this part of his subject by mingling with it Umbrian inflexions, which, however, closely resemble the Etruscan, as we shall presently have occasion to observe. The following are some specimens of proper names : a gem, with a figure holding &harpe, or crooked sword, in one hand, and a head in the other, is marked Pherse, manifestly for Perseus ; on another, five chiefs in council have their names circumscribed Tide, Phidnices, Ampldiare, Atresthe, Parthanapae ; who are, no doubt, five of ' the seven anti-Thebans, Tydeus, Polynices, Amphiaraus, Adrastus, and Parthenopseus. We find Pele for Peleus; Atre for Atreus, Menle for Menelaus ; Achmiem for Agamemnon ; Elchsntre for ) Alexander (Paris) ; Addle, Achele, and Aciles for Achilles ; Uluxe for Ulysses (where we have the same deviation from the original 'ohvo-o-evs as in Latin) ; Aivas (At fas) for Ajax (where the Greek type is retained) ; Theses and These for Theseus. The names of divinities are mostly of Greek or Latin character : Jupiter was TUta (Dis, Ditis), or Tina, probably for Tinia, as sometimes 1 This interpretation is rejected by Miiller, Etrusk. Beileg. zu. B. ii. k. 4. 16. There is little doubt, however, that Lanzi's 191st inscription/' Mi Kalairu phuius," is to be rendered u Sum Calairi filii." Dr. Donaldson gives EI/jlI KaXaipov Fvios.* But the termination us is genitive in Etruscan : besides, in inscriptions of this kind, the genitive seems more commonly used, as Mi Larthias. See infra. Nor is Lanzi's interpretation of thui by Jilt a to be rejected merely because it sometimes stands at the beginning of words, as by Miiller, ubi supra. * Varronianus, ch. v. SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. xlv bund (Zeus, Ztjuos) ; Venus, TJialna l (Ta Halna, or, perhaps, Etruscan lalina, the vowel being omitted in writing, tj akiva), or Turan Ta Uran, rj ovpavia) ; Diana, Thana (Thiana, i omitted as before, r Theana, from 0e6s, as Diana from Dius) ; Vulcan, Sethlans ; Apollo, Jplu, Epul, Epure, or Apidu; Bacchus, Fkupluns ; 2 Minerva, /fene?fa, Menirva, or Menerve ; Mercury, Mircurios,3 or Turms ,Tu Herms, 6 "Kpn^s) ; Hercules, Ilerkle, or Herkole ; Neptune, Wethuns ; Pluto, Mantus ; Proserpine, Mania ; the two last mani- estly Latinised, but exhibiting the same root as Manes ; which is tlso found in the Etruscan Summanus (sub Manibus), the god of the light. As this treatise is purely philological, we do not enter on ;hose parts of Etruscan divinity which present no comparative etymologies. The terminations al, isa, ena, about which much has oeen written, but nothing decided, appear to be patronymics, 1 Dr. Donaldson makes Thalna Juno, whom he also designates, after Strabo, Kupra. Cuprus meant good in the Sabine language,* whence Cupra should seem to be Dea bona, as indeed Dr. Donaldson acknowledges ; and therefore Cybele or Proserpine. On a patera + representing the birth of Minerva, the word Thalna is inscribed against a goddess whose symbols are the dove and myrtle-branch. Thana may possibly have been used for Juno, the derivation favouring it. 2 See Donalds. Varron., v. 10. Lanzi makes Bacchus Tinia ; but the juvenile figure with a thunderbolt, which he takes for Bacchus, may be Vejovis. In the patera representing the birth of Bacchus, the word Tinia9 which Lanzi there refers to Bacchus, is clearly inscribed over Jupiter, while Bacchus himself has no inscription. The worship of this deity was imported from Greece ; (see Livy, xxxix. 8) and, though extensive, was " superficial " J in Etruria. Vertumnus, the e;od of the changes of the year, and its productions, consequently of wine, seems to have anciently supplied the place of Bacchus to the Etruscans. The Latinised Etruscan termination tumnus, tumna, we may here observe, may possibly be identical with dominus, domina; as Vertumnus, vertendi dominus ; Voltumna, volgi domina. But it is generally supposed that umnus is equivalent to 6/j.ei/os, or e/mevos. It is remarkable, however, that, in proper names of divinities, the t generally precedes. Another etymology is suggested by the lines of Propertius, — At mihi, quod formas unus vertebar in omnes, Nomen ab eventu patria lingua dedit : as though' the derivation were from verto and unus. If so, umne, or une was probably one. 3 Words containing the o are late, or not pure Etruscan. Yarro de Ling. Lat. v. 159. t Lanzi, Tav. x. 1, X Oberflachlich, Muller, Etrusk. III. iii. 12. xlvi INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Etruscan metronymics, or derivatives. Thus as aivil (ad avum pertinens) seems to have the same character as juvenilis, senilis, &c, (ad juventutem, senectutem pert mens), soZarthal or Lar thiol (ad Lartem, or Lartldam, pertinens) appears to have the form of Martialis (ad Martem per linens). The Latin terms cervical, tribunal have a like substantive reference to other substantives. Isa and ena may correspond to the to-cra and wrj of the Greeks in signification, as they undoubtedly do in form — Tarchisa seems the feminine o Tarchun (Tu Archun, 6 apx<*>v),1 as /3ao-i\io-o-a from fiao-ikevs. Of numerals, it seems likely that clan or clen stood for primus ; eter (erepos) is almost certainly alter or secundus ; and other numerals appear to have answered to the Latin words. Eestus, on the wrord Quinquatrus, observes, that the Tusculans called the 3rd, 6th, and 7th days from the Ides, Triatrus, Sexatrus, and Sepiimatrus, and the Paliscans called the 10th Decimatrus? But the words are, doubtless, Latinised. We have but slight means of ascertaining the character of the Etruscan verb. Under statues, the form mi LartJiias, or mi cana Larthias, is found. El/*i, with the genitive of the person represented, was a common inscription on Greek statues : so that mi Larthias may be rendered eifu AapOias, sum Lartice. Cana is equivalent to xava, interpreted by Hesychius Koa^a-is* a word synonymous with ayaX/xa, which is often used by the Greeks for an image. Tece, on the statue of Metellus, appears equivalent to 6rj<€ (t'OrjKe, for dvi6r]K€, a form common in Greek votive inscriptions). Turce seems used for donavit, the first portion of the word being equivalent to the Greek dcop, in a language which used t for d, and u for o? 1 Tarchon, according to antiquity, was a son or brother of Tyrrhenus, the founder of the Etruscan nation. But it is remarkable that Verrius Fhiccus and Caecina call him Archon, in passages which Miiller corrects into Tarchon.* The correction, however, was not needed. The reading results from the omission of the Etruscan article. It is, however, right to state that Tarchun, according to Miiller, is the Etruscan form of Tuppr)v6s. Yet in Flaccus and Ccecina the two names are distinguished. 2 Fest. in voc. See Varro de L. L. vi. 14. 3 Niebuhr would have Turce to mean Tuscus ; a good derivation as to analogy, but scarcely applicable to the context. * Etrusker. Einleit. ii. 1. SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. xlvii ! The following Etruscan words, gleaned from ancient authors, gems, l ■(terse, funeral monuments, Sec, will sufficiently show how far lie authority of Dionysius is to be respected in regard to the [ barbarism " of the language : and serve to qualify the bold issertion of Niebuhr, that this authority is " but too strongly con- tained by all our inscriptions, in the words of which no analogy vith the Greek language, or with the kindred branch of the Latin, ;an be detected, even by the most violent etymological artifices ; " ■ md elsewhere: <;Wemaysay with certainty that the Etruscan las not the slightest resemblance to Latin or Greek, nay, not to my one of the languages known to us, as was justly remarked )y Dionysius."2 True indeed it is that the Etruscan, as viewed in .he gross, appears to bear little relation to other languages ; but .vherever it has been possible to detect its meaning, its connection .vith Latin and Greek is commonly apparent. A.ecse — equus, (fo<:os). Agalletor — puer, (dydWo/jLai). Andas — Boreas. Antar — aquila, (aeros). Aracos — accipiter, (*Vpa£, Upanos). Arimoi — simiae. Arse — ignem, (ardeo). Ateson — arbustum. Atentu — habeto, (teneto). Aukelos — aurora.3 Cana — decus, imago, (xwa). Canthce— deposuit, (KaTtdrjKe). Capra — capra. Capys — falco, (ko./jlttt(o). Carescara — xaPL, whence too fido). 1 Rom. Hist., Tuscans or Etruscans. 2 Lectures on Rom. Hist. v. This word is evidently Grecised. The authority is Hesychius. xlviii INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Etruscan language. Oscan language. Phanu — fanum. Votum. (No satisfac- tory Gr. or Lat. etymo- logy. Lanzi's o(p\j](ns is very forced.) Phruntac — fulguriator. Puia — filia (Lanzi), (Fvid). Eil. (Apparently a contracted form of some word signifying years. Etym. uncertain.) Subulo — tibicen. Suthil 1 Suthur J Tapi — sepultura, (racpr]). (TUiT7)piOV. Tece — posuit, (e^fce). Tunur — honori, (Tu unur, t£ honori). Turses — mcenia, (turris). Tuthines — quicunque, (o'1[tol] rives). Threce — Te0e*/ce. Thui, or thuia — filia, (Ovta, 7/ [to] via), Thupitaisece — viroTedeiKe. Verse — verte. (Propertius, who gives a long account of Vertumnus (iv. ii.) and the various occasions from which his name was popu larly derived, makes no doubt < the etymology a vertendo, or o j the root being Etruscan.) The Opican or Oscan language was extensively spoken over the middle and southern portions of Italy ; Latium itself was included in Opica by Aristotle.1 It was the language of the Samnites, Campanians, Lucanians, Bruttians : it was spoken by the Mamer- tines of Messana ; and the Sabine language, though not the same, had mingled with it : 2 and the Samnites, who were of Sabine 1 Tov t6ttov\ tovtov ttjs '07n/cr/s, bs KaXrirai Aoltlov. — Aristot. apud Dionys. Halic. Rom. Antiq. i. 72. 2 " Sabina usque radices in Oscam linguam egit.,, The following Sabine words, collected from various authorities, will show the affinity of the language to the Latin, and (partially) to the Greek : — Alpus albus. Herna saxa. Ausum aurum. Idus idus. Cascus antiquus. Lepesta vas vinarium. Catus acutus. Lixula circulus. Ciprus (or cuprus) bonus. Nar sulfur. Creperus dubius. Sal us salus. Cumba lectica. Scesna ccena. Cupencus sacerdos. Strena sanitas. Curis hasta. Tebse colles. Embratur (a Latin imperator Terenus (j4pf)v) tener. word corrupted). Tesqua locasentibus repleta. Fasena arena. Trabea trabea. Februum purgaraentum. Trafo traho. Fcedus licedus. Vefo veho. Fircus hircus. Verna verna. From the above examples it is evident that an h for an /, or an r for an s, would often convert a Sabine word into Latin, and the forms and character of the words suggest a dialectical Latin. S|OUBCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE, xlix descent, spoke it.1 It was thus brought into immediate contact oscan »vith Borne. The Atellane plays, of which notice will be found in "^ our chapters on Latin poetry, were acted in this language ; and, eing intended for popular amusement, could scarcely have been cry unintelligible at Rome. Some German scholars, as Munk 2 ml Klenze,3 have contended that the Atellane plays were always Sn Latin; contrary to the express testimony of Strabo, who, as we ^hall see when we come to that part of our subject, speaks of Oscan Mays acted in his time periodically at Rome. To this competent witness it is not sufficient to reply, as Munk has done, that the Oscan language was unintelligible at Rome in the time of Augustus, 3ii the ground that, as Horace and Quinctilian 4 attest, even the Learned were unable to interpret the old Latin ; and that the tBantine table contains a Latin translation of the Oscan, for the use f the Romans, who did not understand the latter. True enough t may be that the Oscan language was unintelligible to the learned f the Augustan day ; but this is anything but an a fortiori argument for its unintelligibility to the vulgar. The literary and conversational Latin was quite an artificial language, and probably 3iffered more from the Latin of the common people than did the Oscan itself. As to the Bantine table, the argument from that altogether fails, as the Latin and Oscan are not antigraphs, as is shown by Klenze himself. The main ditference between the Oscan land the Latin was dialectical ; a difference, however, progressively enlarged by the great opposition in the habits of the races by whom they were respectively spoken. The Oscan language comprises the larger portion of the un-Greek element, as it is called, of the Latin ; and, whether this term be just or otherwise, certain it is that the Oscan receded considerably from the Greek. This was natural in a people whose minds and occupations appear to have been as opposite as possible, even to a proverb, to the intellectual character of the Greeks ; for the term 0_plcus was used emphatically for ignorance of Greek, and antipathy to it.5 The Oscans were dull* 1 Liv. x. 20. - De Fabb. Atcll. 8 Zur Geschichte tier Altitalischen Yolkstammc. 4 Hor. Epist. II. i. 56. Quinct. I. vi. 40. 5 Aul. Cell, xi. 16 1 xiii. 9. So Juv. iii. 206 :— Jamque vetus Grcecos servabat cista libellos, Et divina Opici rodebant carmina mures. [R.L.] d 1 INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Oscan sensual, and, emphatically, barbarous. Indeed the word Opicm in Latin implies something more than barbarus. "Nos quoqu Grscci barbaros, et spurcius nos quam alios, Oplcos [al. Ojncorum]' appellatione fcedant" says Cato.1 Eestus derives the name of the nation ab oris fceditate; a ludicrous etymology, but exhibiting the common idea of contempt and disgust with which the Oscans were regarded by educated Eomans. With such sentiments, and with the profoundest veneration for Greek taste and litera- ture, which the Oscans did not care to understand, the Eomans, as matter of refinement, continually receded further from Oscan forms. The principal monuments of this language now remaining to us are, some vases from Nola in the museum at Berlin ; an inscription found at Messana, in Greek letters ; another found in Campania ; several at Herculaneum and Pompeii ; a stone table in the ruins of Abella, in Oscan letters ; and one of brass at Oppidum, in Latin letters. This last is the most important, and is commonly known by the name of the Bantine table. The Oscan alphabet did not materially differ from the Etruscan in form, nor from the Latin in amplitude, when the Latin alphabet was employed, as was often the case, in writing this , language.2 But, in the latter instance, the Q was wanting. Vowels, as in Etruscan, were sometimes omitted ; but the writing, when in Latin or Greek Letters, was commonly from left to right ; and the orthography, if we may apply the term, was coarser and more careless than the Etruscan ; as might be expected from an illiterate 1 Ap. Plin. N. H. xxix. 27. 2 The principal differences were as follow :- Lat. Osc. Lat. Osc. A N P n PH 8 6 R 84 TH \J Z X I r "i N \A I SOURCES AM) FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. li iation. The words were even strangely run into each other, as i > frequent in the writings of uneducated people : hence arise Efficulties in the interpretation. Nevertheless, by the light of the patin, some idea may be formed of the language. The Bantine table is, perhaps, the least unintelligible of the Oscan tocuments. As a specimen, we give a part of the 3rd chapter, as t is called by Grotefend, with his version : those of other scholars, s Klenze and Dr. Donaldson, differ, as might be expected. Some if these variations we shall notice. Pr. sva3 profucus,1 pod post exac Bansre fust, sva3 pis Porro si pnrtexuerit, quod posthac Bantise fuerit, si quis p eizois com atrud[iac]ud acum herest, avti pru haec cum fraudulento homine2 agere volet, atque pro ledicatud manimasepum eizazune egmazum, pas exaiscen ompensato mancipium idem exquirere, cujus ex istis igis scriftas set, nep him pruhipid mais zicolois X.3 ?gis scripts sit, neque eum repetat magis (quani) judiciis X. esimois. Sva3 pis contrud exeic pruliipust, molto etanio xmtinuatis. Si quis contra in isto repetierit, multa justa sstudn. (D in svoe pis ionc meddis moltaum herest, licitud ; sto n. M. et si quis eum magistratus multare volet, liceto ; mpert mistreis4 alteis eituas moltas moltaum licitud. ina cum magistris altis aerarii multae multare liceto. ; From this passage it will be seen that there is considerable )bscurity in the remains of the Oscan tongue which antiquity has pared to us. The principles of this language, so far as they are mown, we shall consider in conjunction with those of the Umbrian, o which it bears a close affinity. A vocabulary would almost 1 Klenze renders Prcetor sire prcefectus. Grotefend takes preefucus for ircvfucust, prate wucrit, from fuco, to disguise. \€hmatrudiacud should perhaps be rendered fraud uloitcr ; so compreiratud, mritim; hut Dr. Donaldson gives atrud ud, and renders atro . . . . o, concluding, apparently, that a whole word is lost. The letters iac are less distinct, ndeed, hut seem quite unmistakable. 3 Klenze renders ne quern proJiibcat mayis siculis decern. 4 Klenze renders ampert mistreis by per minutrot. d 2 lii INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE require the transcription of the Oscan remains ; a task equally unsuited to our objects and our dimensions. One of the most ancient and genuine races of Italy was the Umbrian.1 Their city Ameria dates 381 years before Home. Their territory extended at one time over a part of Etruria. Their language, therefore, must be regarded as one of the constituents of the Latin. We have larger means of investigating the nature of this tongue than we possess in regard to the Etruscan and Oscan. In the year 1444, nine brazen tables were discovered in a subterranean vault in the neighbourhood of the ancient theatre at Gubbio, the ancient Eugubium or Iguvium. Two of these were conveyed, in the year 1540, to Venice, and have never been recovered ; the remaining seven are still in existence. Of this number, two are in Latin characters ; the remainder in Umbrian, which do not differ im- portantly from the Etruscan alphabet. These last are earlier than the others, and are referred by Lepsius to about the end of the fourth century u.c. ; the others he places about the middle of the sixth century. In this period the language had undergone alteration, owing, doubtless, in part, to the advancing influence of the Latin; we may, therefore, consider it under the designation of Old and New Umbrian. The declensions of substantives and adjectives are tolerably well ascertained. The Eirst contains the feminine nouns, and is as follows : 1 " Umbrorum gens antiquissima Italiae existimatur, ut quos Ombrios a Grsecis putent dictos, quod inundatione terrarum iuibribus superfuissent. Trecenta eorun oppida Tusci debellasse reperiuntur." — Plin. Nat. Hist. iii. 19. SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. liii TJmbrian language. ^> > > Jzj O A <3 <1 O o QJ C3 rO J2J <1 O ft <1 ■M ff0H W oo PP tf c3 d sS 3 DO J ft 5 43 E 2 5c 2 a 3 ^_^ H ry^ S 0 3 c3 a 02 -t-3 0 "FS 0 © .9 03 ^ ^ "o o 3 00 s aa o 43 a 03 © © s © s ~^> "5? -+3 43 -1-3 -4J +3 Sh 3 43 ^ p 43 43 -*3 43 £ t> O ft << <3 fl o fl ■+=• >— ' © O O © c3 r& © £ > O ft ^ -< liv INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE Umbrian language. The identity of this declension with the first of the Latin, an with the corresponding declension of the Greek, is palpable, Where it differs from the former, it falls back npon the latter. The genitive is purely Greek. The ai of the Oscan dative singular, and the e of the Umbrian, are the original at and rji of the Greek, afterwards contracted into a and rj. The ais of th Oscan dative plural, and the es of the Umbrian, are the Greek and 77s- by similar analogy. The v in the Oscan form is the Gree] digamma. The Second declension corresponds to that of the Latin in us and Greek in os for masculines, and Latin in urn and Greek in ov for neuters. The masculines sometimes undergo a change in the nominative, as by the rejection of the penultimate u : as Ikuvins foi Ikuvinus, an Eugubian. When, after this process, t and s concur, they coalesce in z. So pihatus, pihats, pihaz. In the later Umbrian, this az becomes os. When t and I or r concur, the termination w is rejected, and an e is interposed. Katlas (catulus), katli kate< So in the Oscan, Bantins for Bantinus, Pumpaians for Pumpaian (Pompejanus), hurz for hurtus, &c. Thus from dypos the Lati agrus, agr, ager. The neuter declension (in urn, om, im) onl; differs from the masculine in having the nominative, accusative, and vocative alike in both numbers, and forming those cases in the plural in a or u. e ; UMBRIAN". Old. i New. SINGULAR. ISTom. pupel? Ikuvins (the Eugubian people) popel? Gen. puples Ikuvines popler Dat. puple pople Voc. puplel pople? Ace. puplum poplom Abl. puplu poplu OSCAN. Terminations. ^ el, m. (Famel) us, m. (Ziculus) Bantins (for Bantinus) ^um, n. (sakaraklum) eis (Abellaneis) ui (Abellanui) om (dolom) ud (Abellanud) SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. lv UMBRIAN Umbrian OSCAN". language Old. New. Terminations. Noni. VToc. 1 puplus PLURAL. poplor ] J us, m. (Abellanus) I u, n. (teremenniu) leu. Dat. Vbi. puplum >- puples poplom popl-er, -ir, um (Abellanurn) reis (mistreis) . J uis (Abellanuis), or ] ois (in more modern Vcc. pupluf poplof? L forms) J uf (tribarakkiuf. Qro- L tefend) The characteristic termination of the Third declension is i ; but :there are many rules which dispense with it, unnecessary to ntroduce here, when we are merely investigating the sources of the Latin language. This declension comprehends all the genders : the neuter nominative, accusative, and vocative are alike, as in Greek and Latin. The other nouns are thus declined : 'Nom. Voc. I Gen. Dat. Ace. Abl. UMBRIAN. Old. New. SINGULAR. ukar (for ukri), a hilL "| The Lat. arx, Gr. l-ocar a.Kpa J ukres ocrer ukre ocre ukreni ocrem ukri ocr-i, -e, -eL OSCAK Terminations. im id Xom. 1 m. f. m\ Voc. ] J n- arvia a. > ukres, -is ukres arvia, arviu Gen. Dat. ; Abl. Ace. ukref ocrer arvio term, om (peracniom) ocres, -is, -eis is (ligis, legibus?) ocr-ef, -if, -eif eis The Fourth Umbrian declension corresponds to the fourth of the Latin. It contains the three genders. The nominative ends in u. There is no example of this case, however, in the word here selected. Manu (?) signifies hand. lvi INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION ON THE nbrian lguage. UMBRIAN" Old. New. SINGULAR. Norn. Gen. manus manor Dat. manu mano Ace. manum manom Abl. niani mani There are two other forms, manve and manf, the reference of which is uncertain ; but they are probably dative and accusative. plural. OSCAK > term, us, as berus Feikoss. Grotef. Abl. J J Ace. m. „ uf, as kastruvuf 11. „ a, as berva ; term, o, as pequo. The following, in the form of the Fifth and last Umbrian declen- sion, embraces all the genders : — UMBRIAN. OSCAN". Old. New. SINGULAR. NTom. Voc? } kvestur (quaestor) questur kvaistur, medix, med- dix, meddiss (magistratus) Terminations. Gen. kvestures questurer eis (medikeis) Dat. kvesture questure ei (medikei) Ace. kvesturu questuru im (medicim, N. 0.) Abl. kvesture questure id (prsesentid, N. 0.) PLURAL. (We are here obliged to collect examples from different nouns.) Nom. tuderor (from tuder) Gen. fratrum fratrom (from f rater) I)at- \ fratrus fratrus Abl. J Beside these forms, there are, in Umbrian, two locative cases, as they are called, which are the same in all declensions : but they rather seem to have affinity with the Greek postfixes 0i or o-t, as SOURCES AND FORMATION OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE. lvii 'pavoOi, 'ikioOi, 'A6f]VT](TL ; and oe or (e, as olWcV, MapaBcovahe, X^aC€* uSSS 9r]va(€ : so tutemem Ijovinemem, "in the whole of the Eugubian rritory," or, "in the city of Eugubium," as before; tutamem Ijovina- em, "to," or "into," &c. The termination /m is used in the plural, id in the sense of rest only. The m is sometimes rejected ; but e laws of its rejection are unimportant here. The numerals, as far as known, are unu, one ; dur, two ; thus clined : Masc. Fern. Neut. Nom. dur (N. U.) tuva1? Dat. duir „ tuves 1 Ace. duf tuf tuva Abl. tuve tuves Tri, three, thus declined : Masc. and Fern. Neut. ISTom. tri trijal Ace. tref, tre, trif, treif trija Abl. tris Four is petur (jreropes for Teo-aapes, iEol.1) ; six, se ; nine, nurpier; m, desert? Of the personal pronouns (Umbrian and Oscan), we ;ave mehe (N. U.), mihi ; tiom, or tio (N. U.), tin (0. U.), te; fe, tibi ; seso, sese ; titer, tuus ; vestra, vestra. The demonstrative ■onouns are erek, ere (0. U.), erec, ere, eront (N. U.), idik (0. 0.), ic (X. 0.), answering to the Latin is; esto, to iste ; eso (N. U.), mm (N. O.), to hie; ero, to Me; eno and ho, only found in onjunctional and adverbial forms ; poe, poi, or poei (N. U.), qui ; ie p, both in Umbrian and Oscan, answering to the Latin q ; (so hipumpe, quicunque). In the Greek dialects, in like manner, and k are interchanged : so 71-77, 7700-09, nolos, *a, kuo-os, koIos. lence, too, \vkos, lupus, o-kvKov, spolium, &c. In this respect the )scan was often nearer than the Latin to the Greek. The auxiliary verb es (esse, that) is thus conjugated, as far as e have examples : 1 Hence petorritum. 2 Hence, Dsen, Zen, Zehn, Germ. lviii INTRODUCTORY DISSERTATION. UMBRIAN Old. New. Pres. Ind. 3rd. sing, est 3rd. sing, est 3rd. pi. sent, sont, isunt Pres. Pot. 3rd. sing, si 2nd. sing, sir, si, sei 3rd. pi. sins Inf. eru erom 'he auxiliary verb fu (fuisse, cfrvvai) is thus found : Pres. Pot. 3rd. sing, fuia Fut. Ind. 3rd. sing, finest (Lanzi refers to this tense the forms eront, erihont, erahunt, erefont, erarunt, ererunt. The German philologists regard them as pronouns.) Fut. Perf. Ind. 3rd. sing, fust fust, fus 3rd. pi. furent 2nd. sing, futu Imp. 3rd. sing, futu 2nd. pi. fututu The following fragments of verbs give some, though an imperfect, idea of their conjugation. They are arranged according to the analogous conjugations in Latin. The active and passive are distinguished by the corresponding Latin affixed : ** i_! PSl 'B^ t) t> z* o o^ u 02 ^ < G> -r^ 3 ^~ U U 5 { o © A A A O ■d ^ rd t3 J8 a ~ -^ CS W «2 ^ 2 a « £> *10 0> ^ > <* S-i o £ .^ ^_l ^ ^ P4 SP v pO DQjg; 8 Kg 1 ■9 3 ,fl tf ^ a -S § a Ph Ph Ph CO sa CO ■ w OJ ^Q »H 0> f> -+j >> Tj M fa ^ sd fH (D H £ i O cH ° a d fcl * a -•-j -— -t H-a O o 03 CJ t+ij > OJ 7) Ph CO 09 a> L) -5 '.go a a t3 § 73 = s d 3 a "3 t3 d Pi Pi ^ o W 1 ^~> P4 S> - •u ••* S^ c o "v* r Pi #o t 1 < fin 3 cs C < 1 t5 0) - — i 03 SJ fc p< o >> o Id o Pi S-, o d •** M ■8 P a c3 > «*-■ DO O Gfl ~^> c> O _<; CO <} H-J EH J|3 S Ph a rP *a w & fi d ■9 rP 13 3 -*= F ^5 o &< 580. TERENCE U.C.J pacuvius lived u.c. 534 — 624. ATTIUS .... FLOURISHED ABOUT U.C. 600. LUCILIUS U.C. 630. LUCRETIUS U.I CATULLUS u. c. 1 U70. U.C.J LATIN POETRY. PART I. THE EARLIER POETIC LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS. The history of Latin Poetry presents a phenomenon in literature wholly without parallel. The Komans were, from their origin, a people of activity and intelligence, of strong passions, and romantic patriotism ; and their history and early fictions are so crowded with poetical incident, that some writers have not scrupled to assert that the great historian who records them assumed heroic ballads for the basis of his history. Yet, unlike many nations less favourably circumstanced, they remained for five centuries without a poet of emi- nence. Even when the Muse of Greece had unveiled to them her awful and dazzling beauties, they seemed less to catch the fame of poetry than to learn the art, and to consider their compositions excellent, only in proportion as they were excellent imitations. In their admiration of the beautiful picture which the Grecian genius had produced, they lost sight of the great original, Nature ; and their compositions, accordingly, present, in general, correctness and pre- cision, but are destitute of that life, light, and colouring which the presence of Nature alone can awaken on the canvas. The most original of all their poets himself recommends, as indispensable to the poet, the unremitted study of the Greek writers, as of perfect and infallible models ; l and his own practice abundantly evinces the sincerity of his respect for the precept. Overlooking the real peculiarities of his own original genius, Horace himself entertained no higher idea of originality than to make it consist in the importation of a new form of poetry from Greece : and affected on this ground to despise, as a servile herd of imitators, those who only copied for the second or third time.2 Indeed, an imitator, as 1 Hor. De Art. Poet. 268. 2 1 Ep. xix. 19, seqq. B 2 4 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. the Eomans understood the word, only implied one who imitated Latin authors ; the imitation of Greek in no way detracting, in their ideas, from the originality of a composition, but rather being, in some respect at least, implied in its excellence. The history of Latin Poetiy, accordingly, is the history of the action of the Greek mind on the Roman : every production anterior to that contact having been either lost, or evidencing the poetical incapability of Roman intellect unkindled by the torch of Greece. The beginnings of the Roman State were unfavourable to literary pursuits of any kind. Plutarch1 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus,2 indeed, tell us that Romulus was educated at Gabii in Greek literature and science ; but, even allowing this prince a historical existence, most certain it is that nothing resembling the effects of education in a sovereign appears either in his own conduct or in the character of his subjects. On the contrary, we learn from Dionysius 3 that he committed the cultivation of sedentary and (what he called) illiberal arts to slaves and foreigners; and " such employments," adds the historian, " were long held in contempt by the Romans, whose only occupations were agriculture and war." Yet a specimen of the poetry, if it deserve the name, attributed to his day, has descended to us in the hymn of the Hymn of the Fratres Arvales ; of which, and of the Salian hymn which suc- Arvaiel ceeded it, we have already spoken : and of both which productions it is only necessary to observe in this place that, so far as they can be comprehended, they appear meagre in the extreme, other The triumphal songs, of which frequent mention is made by Hymns, Livy,4 appear to have been merely the rude, extemporaneous effusions of military licence amidst the hilarity of a triumph, and never to have been considered in the light of compositions ; the examples of them given by Suetonius,5 at a time when the lan- guage was highly cultivated, give us no reason to regret the loss of earlier specimens ; and, even in these, Dionysius of Halicarnassus discovers a resemblance to Grecian practices;6 and the style and nature of the sacred hymns may be sufficiently gathered from what has just been said concerning those of Romulus and Xuma.7 Cicero informs us,8 out of Cato's " Origines" that it was the custom of the Romans, many ages before the time even of that philosopher, to commemorate the valiant or virtuous achievements of their 1 In Romulo. 2 Antiq. Rom. i. 84. 3 Antiq. Rom. ii. 28. 4 Liv. iii. 29 ; iv. 20, 53 ; v. 49 ; vi. 10. 5 Suet. Jul. 49, 51. These rude carols not infrequently rather reflected on the triumphant general than celehrated the triumph, as in this reference. 6 Antiq. Rom. vii. 72. ' See infra, Livy's description of a hymn by Livius Andronicus, sung to Juno five hundred years later. 8 Tusc. Quffist. i. 2, and iv. 2. Cf. Val. Max. ii. 1, 60 ; Cic. Brut. 19.; Varro apud iSon. Marcell. ii. 70 ; Hor. iv. od. 15. BALLAD POETRY. 0 Countrymen in songs, accompanied on the flute, in their entertain- ments : and on one occasion he regrets the loss of these ballads.1 Ballads. But how far there was any real cause of regret, we may tolerably well estimate from what is actually known of the state of Eoman Poetry when it first had any sensible existence, and when it was sufficiently bald, though formed on the perfect models of Greece. ISo little groundwork is there for the theory of Niebuhr,2 that the exploits of the Eoman worthies were contained in a series of rhapsodies, and much less that they formed, as he conjectures, the subject of a regular Epic poem. The " Lays of Ancient Borne" represent with great exactness what the primitive poetry of Eome would have been, had she possessed a Macaulay. But there is no evidence that the sentiment of her early ballads was better than their mechanism ; though the subjects, taken from a rude and unformed state of society, doubtless possessed that character of wild poetry which belongs to such a period, and which we recognise in the early books of Livy. It was, most probably, a rude kind of ballad, sung at harvest homes and other rustic festivals, which gave rise to that law of the twelve tables, to which Cicero alludes in order to show that the early ages of Eome were not so totally destitute of cultivation as was generally believed : 3 " Si quia pipulo occentasit, carmenve conclisit, quod infamiam faxit Jlagitiumve alteri, fuste feritor.' The follow- ing is Horace's account of the rise and progress of this species of poetry :4 Agricolse prisci, fortes, parvoque beati, Condita post frumenta, levari tes tempore festo Corpus, et ipsum aniraum spe finis dura ferentem, Cum sociis operum, pueris, et conjuge fida, Tellurem porco, Sylvanum lacte piabant, Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis aevi. Fescennina per liunc inventa licentia moreni Fescennme Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit ; Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, donee jam ssevus apertam In rabiem verti ccepit jocus, et per honestas Ire domos, impune minax : doluere cruento Dente lacessiti ; fuit intactis quoque cura 1 Brut. 19. These were the "laudationes," as the "naeniae" (poems of a similar character, and sometimes, perhaps, perpetuated as " laudationes '*) were the lays sung at the funerals of eminent men. Niebuhr supposes the epitaphs of the Scipios to belong to this class. That these inscriptions are metrical, he argues from the inequality of the lines. Yet he presently observes, when it suits his purpose to alter the arrangement, " Stone-cutters are inaccurate in everything, but most of all in dividing their lines." There is nothing resembling metre in the inscriptions themselves. We shall, however, return to this subject presently. 2 Nieb. Romisch. Gesch. i. pp. 178 — 354, &c. 3 Tusc. Quaest. iv. 2. Cf. Hor. ii. sat. i. 82. 4 Ep. ad Aug. 139. Cf. Virg. Georg. ii. 385, seqq. ; Tibull. I. vii. 35—40 ; II. i. 55. seqq. ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Ludi Scenici. derivation of Satura, Conditione super communi : quinetiam lex Pcenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quenquam Describi. Vertere modum, formidine fustis Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti. With little rich and blest, our hardy hinds Refreshed their toilworn frames and patient minds At harvest homes ; and with their consorts true, Their children, and their mates in order due, Offered to Sylvan milk, to Earth a swine, To life's indulgent Genius flowers and wine. Hence born, Fescennine liberty exprest In verse alternate coarse and rustic jest : For many a circling year the rugged sport Play'd harmlessly ; at length the hard retort Began with furious and unbridled rage War with illustrious families to wage : Then writhed the bitten 'neath the bloody fang : Then winced the unhurt who feared the impending pang : Then law and penalty forbad to claim Poetic licence with a neighbour's fame. Awed by the rod, they grew to change their tone, Content to rally and amuse alone. In the three hundred and ninety-second year of the city, and in the consulship of C. Sulpitius Peticus and C. Licinius Stolo, a pestilence raged in Eome.1 The Senate, after exhausting their whole ritual of superstitions without success, had recourse to that nation from which they obtained almost all their sacred rites, and all their arts of divination; — Etruria. It was then that scenic entertainments (ludi scenici), for dramatic they could not be called, were first exhibited in Rome. Poetry had so little connexion with these, that they did not so much as embrace dumb show, but con- sisted merely of dances to the flute. The Eoman youth were pleased with these exhibitions, and imitated them, accompanying the action with raillery. The Fescennine carols (so called from Fescennium, a town of Etruria2), which were, for the most part, as scurrilous and obscene as they were rude and inharmonious, and which seem to have borne great analogy to the Greek phallics, sank into disrepute, or were only retained as part of nuptial ceremonies, on which they long remained faithful attendants. Frequent repeti- tion advanced the scenic exercises of the Eomans to their first essay towards a regular production, which was called a Salura, and was accompanied with appropriate music. The derivation of this word has been a point of controversy with the learned. Not to mention any other authors who have treated 1 Liv. vii. 2. 2 Of the Faliscans, says Niebuhr, not the Etruscans : he appeals to Virg. JEn. vii. 695, where, however, the Faliscans are distinctly classed among the Etruscan people. SATYRIC DRAMA. 7 it, the Scaligers are divided on it. The word is written variously in MSS. of authority : Satura, satyra, satira. Some derive it from the " lanx satura" a dish of various kinds of fruit, and suppose it to mean an olio ; and in proof of their etymology they adduce the " leges saturce," l which treated on several subjects; satira, as they say, being only a more modern orthography of satura, as " maxi- mus" for the more ancient form " maxumus"2 Others, who contend that the true orthography is satyra, derive it from o-drvpos, and make it somewhat analogous to the early satyric drama of Greece. If this be the right etymology, the early form would still have been, most probably, satura, which orthography we shall accordingly adopt. Whatever be the derivation of the name, the analogy of the thing to the Greek satyrics does not admit of doubt. We are ready to allow, with the great critics who have treated this subject at more extended length than we can do, that its resemblance to such a drama as the " Cyclops " of Euripides must have been very slender : but it seems to have borne a close analogy to the satyric exhibitions of Thespis, and a still nearer to the comic aarvpos of the Greeks. According to Livy, the saturce were dances mingled with raillery, which only differed from the old Fescennine carols in being determinate in respect both of music and verse. Let us compare with this account what Horace says of the satyri of Thespis : 3 Carmine qui tragico vilem certavit ob hircum Mox etiain agrestes satyros nudavit, et asper, Incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit, eo quod Illecebris erat et grat& novitate morandus Spectator, functusque sacris, et potus, et exlex. He who in tragic contests wont to try For a poor goat, next to the public eye Exposed the rustic satyrs, and retainM, Jesting, his tragic dignity unstain'd. Fresh from the feast, and by the wine-cup fired, His lawless audience such new charms required. The old scholiast certainly considered these satyri to be the same as the saturce; for, in explaining this passage, he observes : " Ostendit Saturam natam esse e Tragoediis." One distinction between the satyri and saturce is particularly insisted on; that, in the latter, Satyrs were never introduced ; but this has not been proved ; while we have the testimony of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that dances of Satyrs were at least common in the Koman processions.4 Neither is 1 Harris, Philosophical Arrangements, ch. 18. 2 " Medius est quidarn U et I litterce sonus." — Quinct. i. iv. 3 De Art. Poet. v. 220. 4 Antiq. Rom. vii. 72. Exodia. b ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. the point of much consequence, as Satyrs were not always intro- duced in the Greek satyri ; the resemblance between which and the Eoman satura is acknowledged by Eichstadt, although that author denies their connection, misled by the testimonies of Horace and Quinctilian,1 which refer to a poetry altogether different, the satire ; while Dionysius speaks of the identity of the Eoman and Greek satyric choruses as an acknowledged fact, which it would be wasting words to prove.2 It is true that he is treating of what can scarcely be called dramatic ; yet his language is general. The " satyrick comedies" written by Sylla 3 were, in all probability, only the early satura in a more artificial form. After the introduction of the regular drama by Livius Andronicus, the Eoman youth, leaving the newly discovered art to its professors, continued their saturce, connected with the Atellane plays, under the name of exodia. 'E£6dcov or egodos was the name given by the Greeks to the part which followed the last peXos of a tragedy ;4 whence these saturce were named exodia, from their being brought on the stage after the play. A most striking point of resemblance existed between the exodia and the Greek satyric drama. Dacier,5 who contends against their identity, observes that the actors performed in the same masks and dresses as in the play, and continued their characters ; and cites, in proof, the following passage from Juvenal : Urbicus exodio risum movet Atellanse Gestibus Autonoes. Where it is evident that a serious character was burlesqued. Similarly, when Suetonius says of Domitian,6 " Occidit et Mvidium Jilium, quod quasi scenico exodio sub persona Faridis et (Enones divortium suum cum uxore tract asset" (or, taxdsset.) he evidently refers, by Dacier's admission, to a serious play, in the exodium of which the satire alluded to appeared. Now this was precisely the case with the Greek satyric. Even after tragedy had attained its zenith, it was customary for the poet to complete his rcrpaXoyla with a satyric drama, in which the characters of the previous play were preserved. To this custom Horace alludes in his precepts to the satyric poet : 1 Hor. I. sat. x. 66. Quinct. x. 1. 2 ^Ot* 5e ovre Atyvoou, ovr 'O/j.fipiKaii', ovt #AAcoj/ tivoov fiapfidpccv tu>p eV IraXia kcltoikovvtcov evprj/na rj aarvpiKT) iraidia kclI opxyois i\v, ciAA1 'EWr^vccu, 5e'5oiKa, fi^i kclI oxArjpbs efoai ticti 8($|co, \6yois vXeioai nvLcrrova-Bai OMO- AOrOTMENON IlPArMA ^ov\6^vos.— vii. 72. 3 Plut. Syll. xxxvi. 4 Arist. Poet. 24. e£odos 8e, fispos *6\ov rpayytiias ^€0' ov otfn iari x^Pov fjt.€\os. De voce. e^oSos et ii-ddiou, videantur Lexica, praesertim Stephani. 5 M£m. de FAcad. des Inscr. torn. ii. 6 Suet. Domit. ix. SATYRIC DRAMA. Ne quiciinque Dens, quicunque adhibebitur licros, Regali conspectus in auro nuper et ostro, Migret in obscuras humili sermone tabernas, Aut dum vitat humunj, nubes et inania captet.1 Let not your god or hero, seen of late In regal gold and purple pall of state, With mean discourse descend to tavern crowds, Nor, while he spurns the earth, affect the clouds. And it is obvious that he is here writing to Bomans, on a Eoman subject ; for, independently of the testimony of the scholiast above, he alludes to the Tabernaria, a species of Roman comedy, and makes a distinction between the knights and the plebeians : Offenduntur enim quibus est equus, et pater, et res ; Nee, si quid fricti ciceris probat et nucis emtor, iEquis accipiunt animis, donantve corona.2 Those who can boast a horse, estate, and sire, Recoil ; nor what nut-munching clowns admire Receive with favour, or with honour crown. It is hardly possible to bring stronger proof that the Eomans had a satyric drama, and that it was taken from the satyric drama of the Greeks ; and if this were not the exodium, we have no account of what it really was. And thus we should have the paradox, that the Eomans, who imitated every other species of Greek poetry, except the dithyrambus, to which the language would not rise, had left this untouched, substituting in its place a composition perfectly original, and with a name perfectly Eoman, although almost the same with the Greek appellation of this same neglected species of poetry.3 We have already alluded to the Atellante Fabidce, or Atellane plays. These entertainments had, doubtless, a great affinity to the Horace on the satyric drama. Fabulae Atellanae. 1 De Art. Poet. 227. 2 De Art. Poet. 248. 3 We subjoin the titles of the principal works in which the history and nature of the Roman satura are investigated or illustrated : Isaaci Casauboni de Satyrica Graecorum poesi et Romanorum Satira, Lib. ii. Dissertation sur les Cesars de Julien, et en general sur les ouvrages satyriques des Anciens, prefixed to Spanheim's French translation. Dacier's Discours sur la Satire, in the second volume of the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions. Josephi Scaligeri Castigationes ad Mauilium. Julii Csesaris Scaligeri de Arte Poetica, lib. i. cap. ii. Danielis Heinsii de Satyra Horatiana tractatio. Vulpius de Satyrac Latinae natura, etc. Dryden's Essay on Satire. Brumoy, Discours sur le Cyclope d'Euripide et sur le spectacle satyrique des Grecs. Robortelli liber de Satyra. Heyne de Satyrica poesi Graecorum et Satira Romanorum. Eichstadt de dramate Graecorum comico-satyrico. Conz liber die Satyre der Romer und liber Juvenal. Flogel's Geschichte der komischen Litterattur. Rupertus de Satira Romanorum, prefixed to his Juvenal. See further references in Paehr, Geschichte Romisch. Litteratur. ii. 121. 10 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. saturte,1 and were acted, like those, as exodia, or afterpieces. They were, however, in the Oscan language,2 from a town of which people, Atella, they had been originally introduced; professional actors were not permitted to take part in them ; and the performers were not, like common players, degraded from their tribe, or excluded from military service. They were also permitted to use masks; and, when the permission had been extended to other actors, the Atellane players could not be called on to unmask, as was the custom in other cases. But the style and matter of these pieces was coarse, though in this respect exceeded by the mime, the consi- deration of which we defer to a later period of our narration. The Atellane plays contained certain essential characters, like our pantomimes, and still more like the modern Italian " Commedie dell' arte : " Maccus, a heavy stupid old man, the victim of innume- rable tricks and accidents, like our Pantaloon, and the Italian Arlecchino ; Bucco, a voracious parasite and buffoon, resembling our Clown, and the Italian Brighella (these two characters were called sanniones, as the Italians call the corresponding parties zanni) ; Pappus, an old, silly, avaricious man, resembling the Italian Panta- lone ; and Dossennus, a cheat, and " cunning-man," answering to the Italian "il Dottore." These seem to have been permanent; but, beside these, Manducus, Pytho-Gorgonius, Lamia, and Mania, ogres, ogresses, and bugbears, were occasionally introduced. The plots were rude; the incidents, preposterous. In the history of these productions and of the satura, in order to preserve method, we have been obliged to advance very much beyond the time when the Romans first began to have poets of their own. Before the time of Livius Andronicus, however, the satura was below criticism, and the Atellana, if poetry at all, was unwritten, and not Latin. Until the end of their fifth century, therefore, the Romans may be said to have been without a poet; none of the compositions then extant entitling their authors to that lofty name. Cicero, who 1 Their resemblance to the satyri is noticed by Diomedes (iii. p. 487. Ed. Putsch.) " Atellanae — argumentis dictisque jocularibus similes satyricis fabulis Graecis." The only difference was in the stock characters. " Latina Atellana a Graeca satyrica differt, quod in satyrica fere satvrorum personae inducuntur, aut si quae sunt ridiculae similes satyris, Autolycus, Burrhis : in Atellana, Oscae personae, ut Maccus. (iii. p. 438, Putsch.) A resemblance of the Atellanes to the Greek satyricks is noted by Marius Victorinus (De iamb. metr. ii.) "Superest satyricum; haec apud Graecos metri species frequens est quod genus nostri in Atellanis habent." 2 Munk (de Fabulis Atellanis) contends that they were always Latin. They were undoubtedly so, when they became compositions ; but this was much later. At this time they were extemporaneous. From the testimony of Strabo it appears distinctly that Oscan plays were occasionally acted at Rome in his time : Twv (xeu yap OcrKcau €K\€\onr6T to what these malicious folks object, Terence. That noble men assist him, and write with him ; What they conceive to be a foul reproach He deems the highest praise ; since those applaud him Whom all of you applaud, and all the people; Whose aid in war, in leisure, and in labour, Each man has used as suited his occasion. Similar is the passage in the prologue to the Heautontimoru- nenos .• — Turn, qudd malevolus vetus poi;ta dictitat, Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum, Amicum ingenio fretum, hand natura sua ; Arbitrhmi vostrum, vostra existimatio Valebit. Then, as to what a sour old poet says, That he, our bard, has lately learnt his art, Taught by the genius of his friends, not nature : Your judgment, your good graces, shall avail For his defence. His biographer tells us that Terence was less solicitous to defend himself against this charge, because he knew that the reputation of being the authors of his comedies was by no means unacceptable to his patrons. Prom the same writer we learn that the critic Santra rather thought him indebted to C. Sulpitius Gallus, a man of learning ; or to Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popilius Lenas, who were themselves poets. He was born, according to the same authority, after the second Punic war, and died at Stymphalus, or Leucadia, in Arcadia, in the consulship of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella aud M. Fulvius Xobilior, and, consequently, u. c. 594. He was probably about 34 years of age. Even his personal appearance is noticed by his biographer : middle height, slender figure, dark complexion. AYe have thus traced Latin Comedy to its meridian : the causes of Latin its decline subsequently we shall more conveniently notice when we defective advance to the poetry of the Augustan age ; we will merely observe for the present, that the great Eoman critic, with all his literary patriotism, could only sum the subject by saying, " In Comcedia maxime claudicamus." * The verdict is strange : but even Terence did not reach that Attic perfection which Eoman criticism justly denies to any other section of the Greeks themselves. His licentious versification qualified his elegance in the correct and disciplined ear of Quinctilian.2 The genius of the Eoman people was earnest and stern ; the language, hard and inflexible ; cir- cumstances in which they differed widely from the airy and lively Athenians. It is very probable, therefore, notwithstanding the positive excellence attained by Eoman poets in this department, 1 Quinct. x. 1. - Ibid. 28 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. . that their relative success in imitating the Greek models was lei in Comedy than in other walks of literature. Tragedy. While Thalia had been improving the first essays of Eoman genius into regular Comedy, Melpomene was not without her votaries. As no regular tragic production anterior to the Augustan age has reached us, we must be content to take our estimate of the excellence of Eoman Tragedy from the opinion of Eoman critics ; the fragments extant not being in any instance sufficiently numerous or connected to enable us to judge of the merits of whole compo- sitions. Many of them, indeed, breathe a spirit of the purest poetry ; but the diction is, as might be expected from the age, harsh and unmodulated. As in Comedy, so in this branch of the drama, early excellence was followed by premature decay. The best tragedies, for the most part, had been written before the language had attained vigorous maturity, and there were causes to discourage Tragedy subsequently, which we shall hereafter discuss. Horace accuses the Eoman tragedians of carelessness and inaccuracy,1 while he admits their tragic spirit and the success of their sallies. Quinctilian speaks highly of Attius and Pacuvius ; 2 and yet allows that their writings were deficient in the last polish, which, however, he considers rather the fault of their age than of their talents. The Thyestes of Yarius, according to this author, was comparable to any of the Greek tragedies ; and the Medea of Ovid he considers a remarkable evidence of what that poet could effect, when he pre- ferred the regulation to the indulgence of his genius.3 A similar eulogy on these productions is passed by the author of the Dialogue " de Oratorlbus : " " Nee idlus Asinii aut Messala liber tarn illustris est quam Medea Ovidii, aut Varii Thyestes" Atilius, whom we have already noticed as a comedian, translated, or, as Weichert conjectures,4 travestied, the Elect ra of Sophocles, in a hard, dry style.5 C. Titius is mentioned as a tragedian by Cicero, but as more of an orator, even in his tragedies ; 6 he had, however, the honour to be imitated by Afranius. C. Julius Caesar Strabo wrote tragedies intituled Teuthras and Adrastus. Other names will occur in the course of this memoir. The favourite tragedian of Quinctilian, however, was Pomponius Secundus, whose claims to priority, while his learning and eloquence were admitted, were yet, it seems, disputed at that time.7 Ennius. "We have already seen that Livius Andronicus and Nsevius were tragedians as well as comedians. Ennius, of whom we shall presently have occasion to make more particular mention, com- 1 Ep. ad Aug. 164—167; De Art. Poet. 289—291. 2 Quinct.x.l. 3 Ibid. 4 The conjecture is rightly reprobated by Bahr. (Gesch. der R. L. § 45, anm. 3.) Cicero calls the play w male conversa ;" an expression inapplicable to a burlesque. 6 Cic. de Fin. I. 2. Ep. ad Att. xiv. 20. Suet. Caes. 84 (where a reading is Attius). 6 Brut. 45. ' Quinct. x. 1. PACUVIUS AND ATTIUS. 29 oosed tragedies, and one comedy, the Paucratiastes; two others, Ennius. dmphithraso and Ambracia, are attributed to him; he obtained, lowever, his highest dramatic reputation from his tragedies. But t does not appear that they were in any respect more original than the Eoman Comedy. The titles which have reached us of his tragedies are : — Achilles, Ajax, Alcestis, Alexander, Alcmceon, Andromache, Andromeda, Athamas, Cresphon, Cressce, Dulorestes, Wrechtkeus, Eumenides, Hector is Lutra, Hecuba, Ilione, Ipldgenia, Medea, Melanippa, Nemea, Phoenix, Polydorus, Telamon, Telephus, Thyestes. These names, and those of almost all the Eoman tragedies, preserved by Fabricius, (JBiblioth. Lat. lib. iv. c. 1,) prove that they were commonly translations or imitations from the Greek, perpetually Presenting Thebes, and Pelops' line, And the tale of Troy divine. In their tragic metres the Komans were much severer than in their comic. They seem, indeed, to have admitted the same number of feet in both ; but the iambus occurs much oftener in tragedy, and the whole verse is modulated in a manner which makes it always perceptible, and sometimes even harmonious. The difference which is thus produced between the tragic and comic senarii is even greater than that which exists between the hexameters of Virgil and those of the satirists. As far as we learn, the highest favours of the Tragic Muse were Pafu7JS8 ~ o und Attius reserved for Marcus Pacuvius and Lucius Attius.1 Pacuvius, sister's or Accius. ' son to Ennius, was born at Brundusium, u. c. 534, and died at Tarentum, u. c. 624. He was celebrated as a painter as well as a poet. The names of his plays on Greek subjects are : — Amphion, Anchises, Antiope, Armorum Judicium, Atalanta, Chryses, Dido- restes, Hermiona, Iliona, Medea, Niptra, Orestes, Peribosa, Teucer. Comedies, inti- tuled Mercator, Pseudo, Tarentilla, Tunicu- laria, have also been attributed to him. Attius was the son of a freedman, born u. c. 594, and died about 670. The names of his tragedies on Greek subjects are : — Achilles, JEgisthns, Agamemnonidce, Alcestis, Alcmceon, Alphesibcea, Amphitruo, Andro- meda, Antigona, Antenoridce, Argonautce, Armorum Judicium, Astyanax, Athamas, Atreus, Bacchce, Chrysippus, Clytemnestra, De'iphobus, Diomedes, L. Attius. 1 The Greek "writers give "Attios ; hence most modern scholars have adopted this orthography. But there is authority in MSS. and inscriptions for both forms. 30 ANTE-ATJGUSTAN LATIX POETEY. Attius. Epigoni, Epinausunache, Erigona, EripJ/yla, Eurysaees, Ilione, Hecala, Hellenes, Medea, Jleleager, Melanippa, Myrmidones, Neom tolemus, Xyctegresia, (Enomaus, Paris, Pelopidce, PJiiloctetes, Phinidce, PJicenissce, Prometheus, Teleplius, Tereus, Trachinue.1 The opinion of the critics of Horace's day,- — Ainbigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti fainain senis, Attius alii, is just that of Quinctilian : 3 " tieium plus Attio tribuitur ; Pacu- vium videri doctioeem qui esse docti affectant volunt." Correctness and eloquence seem to have been the great merits of Pacuvius, and in these he probably surpassed all other tragedians of his country. One interesting circumstance is connected with this poet ; his tragedy of Paulus was the first in Latin on a Eoman subject. Who, however, was the hero of this play, is not apparent. Attius also composed tragedies, the subjects of which were Brutus and the younger Decius; a tragedy called MarceUus is also, as we have seen, attributed to him.4 Pacuvius and Attius were patronised severally by the celebrated Laelius and Decimus Brutus. Attius appears to have been intimate with, and almost a pupil of, Pacuvius. His first tragedy was performed under the same aediles as the last of his master.5 He seems to have imitated iEschylus in the lofti- ness of his style and subjects. He is called by Ovid " animosi Attius oris,"6 and Paterculus attributes to him "more spirit than the Greeks possessed ! " " " /// iUis Vivace, in hocpene plus videtur fuisse SANGUINIS." A similar expression occurs in Persius concerning this writer, which, though it is not meant in commendation, seems yet to imply that his fault was turgidity : " VENOSUS liber Atti"3 Two plays are ascribed to him, Mercator, and Nuptia, which, apparently, were comedies. We shall conclude our observations on Eoman Tragedy with two extracts from its most celebrated authors, in which the reader will readily discover the seeds of many well known passages of modern poets. The first is from Attius, of whose poetry we have already given a specimen, and is preserved by Cicero in the second Book of his Treatise on tlie Xature of tlte Gods. It describes the astonishment of a shepherd who beheld " the first bold vessel " from the summit of a mountain ; and is written in iambics : — ■ tanta moles labitur Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu : Pra? se imdas volvit : vortices vi suscitat ; Kuit prolapsa : pelagus respergit ; prorluit. 1 Among the works attributed to Attius are Didascalia (perhaps Dramatic precepts). Pragmatica. Paierga, and Annales, the nature of which can only be conjectured from their titles. ': Ep. ad Aug. 55. 3 Quinct. x. 1. 4 Dion. Gram. iii. p. 487, Putsch. 5 Cic. Brut, lxiii. 6 Amor. i. 15. " Lib. ii. 9. s i. 75. TRAGEDY. 31 Ita, dnm interruptum crcdas nimbum volvicr, Attius. Puin quod sublime ventis cxpulsum rapi Saxum, aut procellis, vel globosos turbines Existere ietos undis concursantibus ; Nisi quas terrestres Pontus stragcs conciet ; Aut, forte, Triton, fuscina evertens specus, Subter radices penitus undanti in freto Molem ex profundo saxearn ad coelum eruit. The monster bulk sweeps on Loud from the deep, with mighty roar and panting. It hurls the waves before ; it stirs up whirlpools ; On, on it bounds : it dashes back the spray. Awhile, it seems a bursting tempest-cloud ; Awhile, a rock uprooted by the winds, And whirled aloft by hurricanes ; or masses Beaten by concourse of the crashing waves : The sea seems battering o'er the wrecks of land ; Or Triton, from their roots the caves beneath Upturning with his trident, flings to heaven A rocky mass from out the billowy deep. The next is from Pacuvius, and describes the storm which assailed Pacuvius. the Greek army on its departure from Troy. It is in trochaics r1 Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare ; Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occsecat nigror ; Flamma inter nubes coruscat, ccelum tonitru contremit, Grando, mixta imbri largifluo, subita turbine praecipitans cadit ; Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines, Fervet aestu pelagus. Now the crested billows whiten as the sun is hasting down ; Twofold darkness falls around us, night and storm-clouds blind the sight; 'Mid the clouds the levin blazes ; trembles heaven beneath the crash ; Hail, with torrent rain commingling, bursts in headlong whirlwind down ; All the winds rush forth about us ; sweeps the wild tornado round ; Boils the sea with glowing fury. — <*&M wm mi- t m ilr^Wf ■^Hfr u jht^m ; r7/ V ■' s *r»j mj- c.^s 1 Cic. dc Div. i. 14. Of. ejusd. Be. Orat. iii. 39. Satire. 32 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Having concluded, for the present, our remarks on the Koinan drama, which had now attained its perfection, and declined as other poetry advanced,1 it may not be deemed impertinent to subjoin the review of popular opinion on its writers which Horace has transmitted : Horace's Naevius in manibus non est, at mentibus haeret Summary. Paene recens ; adeo sanctum est vetus omne poema : Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Attius alti ; Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro ; Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi ; Yincere Caecilius gravitate ; Terentius arte.2 Satirical compositions have always existed in every nation ; human excellences and infirmities are alike engaged in promoting their popularity. The philosopher and the moralist cannot review the follies and vices which degrade and pollute their species, without yielding to the expression of virtuous and philanthropic indignation ; and the malignant passions are gladdened at the exposure of another's faults. TVe have already seen that, in a period of the Eoman history when every species of regular poetry was unknown, the " malum carmen" or libellous verse, was pro- hibited by a statute. The scenic entertainments were the chief vehicles of these offensive compositions, as being the most public'; and when these were improved into saturce, the " mala carmina " were so far from being universally discontinued, that they were rather more systematically pursued. The introduction of the legitimate drama turned them into another channel ; and thus we find Nseviua adapting the satirical vein of the old Greek comedy to the domestic occurrences of his day. The signal example which the Cax'ilian family made of this poet, checked, but could not long arrest the current ; it soon flowed with redoubled strength and impetuosity in another direction ; and, while it retained the old name of satura, with which, from long association, it seemed identified, it so entirely changed its form as to give rise to those expressions of Horace and Quinctilian, which have led so many critics to suppose that the old satura was a Eoman invention. As the English word Satire is generally applied to this poem, we shall, in future, employ it, to distinguish this composition from the satura, from which it differed materially in form and excellence, though possessing the same name. 1 " In Attio circaque eum Romana tragcedia est." — Yell. Pat. i. 17. 2 Ep. ad Aug. 53, seqq. This testimony will be esteemed of more critical value than that of Volcatius Sedigitus (Ap. Aul. Gell. xv. 24), in whose pompous and dictatorial verses the comic poets rank as follows : Caecilius, Plautus, Na?vius- Licinius, Atilius, Terence, Turpilius, Trabea, Luscius. Ennius is added " anti, quitat is causa" only. SATIRE. 33 To the Satire the Latin writers constantly assign a Roman origin : — " Satura tota nostra est"1 — " here, at least, we have drawn from our own resources. " Yet when we come to examine the merits of this solitary pretension to originality, we find them admitting that the same sentiments and modes of thinking had been common among the Greeks, but then, — they had never expressed them in hexameter verse ! Such is the proud title to originality which the Romans acquired by altering the versifica- tion of the old Greek comedy ! The severity of historical justice itself might relent in favour of a claim so rarely made, and so weakly supported. Yet this compels us to assert that the origin- ality of the Roman Satire rests on a very slender foundation. It may be traced to the o-LXkos of the Greeks. Nay, Lucilius himself, g* if we may trust Johannes Lydus, borrowed his form of the Satire, hexameters and all, from a Greek writer, Rhindon, " tcho first wrote comedy in hexameters." 2 Lucilius is asserted by Horace to have been the founder of the New Satire ; and, accordingly, he acknowledges the earlier poet to be his master and model in this species of com- position. But, although Lucilius was the first Roman who composed a regular metrical essay on a satiric subject, the transition from the dramatic to this almost didactic form did not take place imme- diately. The Satires of Ennius and Pacuvius have not reached us ; Ennian those of the latter, indeed, are only mentioned by Diomedes, the Satire- grammarian : but the accounts which ancient authors have left us of the Ennian Satire, prove that it was the rude, but natural, result of the arbitrary proceedings of the Aristocracy, which drove Satire from the stage. " Carmen" says Diomedes, 3 (i quod ex variis poematibus constabat, Satura vocabatur ; quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius." By " varia poemata " Diomedes does not mean, as Mr. Dunlop understands him,4 a cento, or mixture of extracts from various authors ; but a miscellany of subjects, and a mixture of various kinds of metre, wherein dactylic, iambic and trochaic verses were promiscuously confounded, after the manner of the Mapytrrjs of Homer. This interpretation is warranted by the few fragments which remain to us of the Satires of Ennius. They are not, indeed, sufficiently numerous to enable us to judge of the nature of the poems whence they are taken ; but we learn from 1 Quinct. x. 1. So Ennius is styled by Horace (I Sat. x. 66.) " Greeds intacii car minis auctor" — language which has been supposed to apply to Lucilius ; a con- struction, however, which the context will not admit. Ennius and Lucilius were both u auctores* being indeed the founders of different kinds of poetry bearing the same appellation, as we shall see immediately. 2 . . . . tou 'Plvfioova, lbs €^a/uLerpois eypaxpe irpwros KcofjLwBiau' e| ou wpcoTOS Xafiaiv ras acpopfias AovklKios 6 'Payxcuos 7)pcoLKo7s eireaiv iKu/mai^rjae. He is considered the same with Rhinthon, the author of the tragi-comedies : and another reading is 'PivOoova. — Joann. Lydus. de Mag. P.R. 1. 41. 3 Gram. iii. 483. 4 Hist of Rom. Lit. p. 106. [R. L.] d Satire. 34 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Ennius. Aulus Gellius l that iEsop's Eable of "the Lark and her Young" was versified in one of them, probably introduced in the same manner as " the Country Mouse and the City Mouse" in Horace ; Quinctilian also tells us2 that the subject of another was a contest between Life and Death.3 Prom these slight notices, we may infer that the dramatic origin of the Satire was perceptible in its altered form ; as, indeed, it is in several of the satires of Horace. Gellius subjoins the moral of the Fable, which was written " versibus quadratis," i. e. in trochaic tetrameters : Hoc erit tibi argumentuin semper in promtu situm : Ne quid exspectes amicos, quod tute agere possies. Learn from my tale this ready saw and true : Ne'er trust your friends for what yourself can do. Cicero4 has preserved some verses of Ennius, of exquisite point, which, in all probability, belonged to his Satires, and which we subjoin : Non habeo denique nauci Marsum Augurem, Nou vicanos Aruspices, non de Circo Astrologos, Non Isiacos conjectores, non interpretes somnium ; Non enim ii sunt aut scientia, aut arte divini,5 Sed superstitiosi vates,impudentesque harioli, Aut inertes, aut insani, aut quihus egestas imperat. Qui sui quaestus causa fictas suscitant sententias ; Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam : Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam petunt. De divitiis sibi deducant drachmam : reddant caetera. I value not a rush your Marsian augurs, Your village seers, your market fortune-tellers, Egyptian sorcerers, dream-interpreters ; No prophets they by knowledge or by skill : But superstitious quacks, shameless impostors, Lazy, or crazy, slaves of Indigence, Who tell fine stories for their proper lucre : Teach others the highway, and cannot find A by-way for themselves ; promise us riches, And beg of us a drachma ; let them give Their riches first ; then take their drachma out. If this spirited passage be a sample of the Satires of Ennius, there is great reason to deplore their loss. But whatever may have been their intrinsic merits, their absence is materially injurious to the clear understanding of the merits of his successors. Luciiian If, however, the loss of the satiric writings of Ennius and Pacuvius be unfortunate for the illustration of the history of 1 Noct. Att. ii. 29. 2 ix. 2. 3 Quinct. ix. 2. 4 De Div. i. 40. et 58. 5 This line, if a verse, is manifestly corrupt. It has been accordingly thought by some to be an interruption on the part of the speaker ; but the connexion seems to forbid this conjecture. The verses themselves are either corrupted, or admit many licences. They appear to be a mixture of iambics and trochaics. LUCILIUS. 85 Koman Poetry, that of Lucilius's works is still more so for the Ludliua. general interests of literature. Careless and incorrect as this author was held by Horace, that great poet has not hesitated con- fessedly to imitate his style, and to acknowledge his superiority even to himself; an acknowledgment which no student of Horace will refer to diffidence of his own powers. In one respect, indeed, the resemblance of the two writers is remarkable, if the character which Horace gives his master be, in any degree, correct.1 Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris : neque si male cesserat, usquam Decurrens ali5, neque si bene. Quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis. As friend to friend the secrets of the heart, He all he felt did to his books impart ; None other his resource, whate'er befel, Whether the world dealt ill with him, or well ; Hence, as in votive tablet fair outspread, The poet's life may in his page be read. Horace might have drawn this portrait at his mirror. This poet has given us a very elaborate judgment on the writings of Lucilius,2 from which it appears that he copied the old Greek comedians in every thing but metre :3 Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque, poetse, Atque alii, quorum Comoedia Prisca virorum est : ****** Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce sequutus, Mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque. Although Horace accuses him of inelegance in versification, it appears from the fragments of his writings collected by the labo- rious Francis Dousa,4 that he rejected the mixed measures of his predecessors. The first twenty books of his Satires were in hexameters, and the rest, with the exception of the thirtieth and last, which was also in hexameters, were in iambics and trochaics.5 He is censured by Horace for being as careless as voluminous : the fragments of his works now extant, though numerous, are seldom connected ; where they are so, they scarcely bear out the charge. The great poet, however, seems less to 1 II. Sat. i. 30. 2 I. Sat. iv. et x. 3 I. Sat. iv. 1, seqq. 4 The merits of Dousa are so high that it would be injustice not to retain this notice. But the works now (1850) deserving to be consulted for the best acquaintance with Lucilius which can be made are the editions of Corpet, Paris, 1 845, and Gerlach, Zurich, 1846. 5 There is a difference sometimes in the length of the iambic and trochaic verses, and dactylics are occasionally intermixed ; but the corruption of the text, and the mistakes of grammarians in assigning the quotations, may account for this circumstance. d 2 36 ANTE-AUGUSTAS LATIN POETRY. condemn Lncilius than to deprecate the excessive admiration of his writings which was then fashionable among the literati at Eome. Of two faults Lucilius appears to have been clearly guilty ; cor- rupting his native tongue with an inordinate admixture of Greek, (as some modern English writers, in still viler taste, adulterate theirs with French ;) and separating the syllables of a word by a harsh and unusual tmesis. The first of these was, absurdly enough, con- sidered by his admirers as an excellence, and Horace has been not a little severe on the subject : * At magnum fecit, quod verbis Graeca Latinis Miscuit.' 0, seri studiorum ! quine putetis Difficile et mirum Rhodio quod Pitholeonti Contigit ! Of Lucilius's philhellenic propensities the passages remaining to us afford ample proof. We shall instance one or two, in order to show the validity of the grounds which Horace had for his censure. Cicero, in his third book "de Oratore" quotes the following : Quam lepide Ae£e7s compostse ! ut tesserulse omnes Arte, paviniento, atque emblemate vermiculato. And, afterwards : Crassum habeo generum : ne p7]ropiKwT€p6> tu sis. xVnother instance is not less remarkable i1 Nunc censes KaWnrXoKauov KaWivcpvpov ill am * * * ' * « -;.- Compernam aut varam fuisse Amphitryonis olkoitiu Alcmenam, atque alias, Ledam ipsam denique nolo Dicere, tute vide, atque SiavWafiov elige quodvis Tyro eupatcreiam'2 aliquam rem insignem habuisse, Verrucam, nsevum picture, den tern eminulum uuum. This style has been occasionally imitated by Juvenal, the professed follower of Lucilius. The last mentioned fault of Lucilius has been thus illustrated and ridiculed by Ausonius :3 Villa Lucani- mox potieris -aea. [for Lucaniaca] Rescisso discas componere nomine versimi ; Lucili vates sic imitator eris. Lucilius, however, with these and all his other faults, was a great genius and a noble writer, if we can rely on the authority of anti- quity. Yarro, according to the testimony of Aulus Gellius,4 com- mends his gracUitas, which expression is explained as conveying 1 Dous. Rel. Luc. xvii. 1. 2 Or, Tvpw evTrarepeiam, as some give it, still mere strangely. 3 Ep. v. ad Theon. 4 vii. 1 4. LUCILIUS. 37 the complex idea of venustas and sultUitas ; a criticism suited, LudHua. perhaps, to the time; but, when viewed from a later point of literary history, when the Latin language had developed its capa- bilities of refinement, palpably inapplicable. Quinctilian,1 while he studiously expresses his dissent from those who would place Lucilius ou the summit of the Latian Parnassus, (as some even then did not hesitate to do) no less decidedly disclaims the censorious sentiments of Horace, and praises the learning, freedom, sarcasm, and wit of the elder satirist. Pliny and Cicero extol his " urbanitas " and " styli nasus" 2 expressions equivalent to those of Horace : qil(id SALE MULTO Urbem defricuit- and, " Emimctce naris .-" and Aulus Gellius calls him " vir apprime lingua Latine sciens" 3 The animated description of this poet which has been left us by one who, indisputably, had a right to criticise him, is in the memory of every scholar : IEnse velut stricto quoties Lucilius ardens Infremuit, rubet auditor, cui frigida mens est Criminibus : tacita sudant prsecordia culpa.4 Oft as Lucilius waves his ruthless sword, Guilt-frozen minds glow forth in crimson faces ; The labouring heart sweats with the secret sin. The notice of Lucilius by Persius, who, it is said, was excited by his tenth book to satirical composition, though less solemn, is not less in character : Secuit Lucilius urbem ; Te Lupe, te Muti : et genuinum fregit in illis.5 Lucilius slashed the town ; And broke his teeth on Lupus and on Mutius. His acquaintance with the Greek comedians furnished him with the means of polishing while it sharpened his weapon ; and the pro- tection which the friendship of Scipio and Lselius afforded him, enabled him to unmask hypocrisy, and to attack with impunity vice and folly, however well sheltered in the folds of the Prcetexta. Yet was he no less the enemy of plebeian vice : Primores populi arripuit, populumque tributim, Scilicet uni aequus Virtuti, atque ejus amicis. What he considered virtue we learn from a passage preserved to us by Lactantius,6 for the purpose of cavilling at its particulars, although it is indeed a noble monument of heathen morality, and the source, as this father admits, from which Cicero derived the 1 Lib. x. 1. 2 Cir.de Orat. ii. ; Plin. praef. Hist. Nat. 3 Noct. Att. xviii. 5. 4 Juv. Sat. i. 165. 5 i. 11-4. G Inst. Div. vi. 5, 6. 33 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. substance of his Officia. Horace himself might not have blushed to own it : Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere veruni, Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu', potesse : Virtus est homini, scire id, quod quaeque habeat res. Virtus, scire homini rectum, utile quid sit, honestum; Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inlionestum ; Virtus, quaerendae rei finem scire modumque ; Virtus, divitiis pretium persolvere posse ; Virtus, id dare, quod re ipsa debetur honori ; Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum, Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum ; Magnificare lios, his bene velle, his vivere amicum ; Commoda praeterea patriae sibi prima putare ; Deinde parentum ; tertia jam postremaque, nostra. Virtue, Albinus, is the power to give Their due to objects amid which we live ; What each possesses, faithfully to scan ; To know the right, the good, the true for man ; Again, to know the wrong, the base, the ill ; What we should seek, and how we should fulfil ; Honour and wealth at their true worth to prize ; 111 men and deeds repudiate, hate, despise; Good men and deeds uphold, promote, defend, Exalt them, seek their welfare, live their friend ; To place our country's interests first alone ; Our parents' next; the third, and last, our own. It would be scarcely expected that we should give here anything like an analysis of the numerous fragments of Lucilius which remain to us. Most of them are disjointed and corrupt ; but some are written in the finest spirit of satire : in them the private life and public religion of the Romans, especially their idolatry and polytheism, are ridiculed and exposed with the keenest sarcasm. Lucilius was essentially the writer of human nature and the people ; though a man of learning, he wrote neither for scholars nor for the wholly uneducated ;x his language was exuberant and unpo- lished, but free, undisguised, intelligible ; for the present obscu- rity of his fragments is no proof of his obscurity in his own day, but rather the contrary. The unusual words (where not corrupted) are such, because belonging to popular rather than literary lan- guage. No writer of obscurities could have attained the popularity (as distinguished from the celebrity) of Lucilius. Politics and public morals, public and private character, literature, oratory, and the drama, were treated by him with a breadth, liveliness, and pun- gency, which, while they disarmed the severity of the accurate and learned, made him the darling of the general mind. Picturesque 1 Lucilius, homo doctus et pcrurbanus, diccre solcbat ea qua scriberet neque ab indoctissimis se ncque a doctissimis legi veUe. — Cic. de Orat. ii. 6 ; see De Fin. i. 37. VABRO. 39 descriptions, apologues, and adaptations, artfully introduced, con- Luciiiiii. tributed their colour and effect : and though the sentiments, like the language, were not always refined, neither was the age, nor the audience ; and the indignation of heathen virtue was wont to be plain-spoken. The loss of Lucilius's satirical writings is more than a literary misfortune. They would have been all-important for the illustration of contemporary social life ; and while their spirit was that of the old Greek comedy, their value as pictures of society must have equalled, perhaps surpassed, that of the new. Besides his satires, Lucilius wrote a comedy called Nummularia, to other works which, according to Porphyrion, the old scholiast on Horace, that of Lucillus- poet alluded in the line Pythias, emuncto lucrata Simone talentum. He wrote also Ejpocle Hymns, and a poem called Serranus. All these works have perished. Horace tells us that the theme of some of his poems was his friend, the younger Africa nus, whose intimacy he cultivated when serving under him at the siege of Numantia.1 Of his life few particulars are known, though his poetry was, perhaps, even more than that of Horace, an autobio- I graphy. He was a Eoman knight, and was born, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, at Suessa, in the territory of Auruncum, u. c. 606, and died u. c. 651.2 Marcus Terentius Yarro, born at Eeate u.c. 63S, is admitted, by the common consent of antiquity, to have been the most learned of all the Eomans : and the titles preserved to us of his works prove the extent of his information. The doctrines of moral philosophy, Varroni though personally important to all, were too intimately involved with the abstractions of the philosophic schools to reach the generality of readers. Yarro, whose profound acquaintance with the writings of the philosophers and whose extensive general reading peculiarly qualified him for the task, undertook to array in a plain, attractive, and popular dress those wise precepts for the conduct of life, which before had lain concealed under the cumbrous attire of dogmatic philosophy. Such are the motives which Cicero makes him assign for the publication of his Menippean, or cynical,3 Satires ; 4 adding however his own opinion, that, although the work was diversified, and perfectly elegant, it could only be said to have 1 See Yell. Pat. Hist. ii. 9. 2 01. 158, 2. See references for difference on this chronology in Baehr, Geschichte der Rom. Litt. ii. 122 ; note 2. The question is also discussed by Gerlach (Prolegomena in Lucilii Relliquias), who defends the established com- putation. Clinton inclines to amplify the life of Lucilius both ways. 6 Quas alii cynicas, ipse (Varro) appellat Menippeas.- — .4/'/. Gdl. xi. 18. 4 Acad. i. 2, 3. See the passage, somewhat obscure, treated by Oehler, Com. in Varr. iv. ; note 3. Satire. 40 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. entered on philosophy ; and, though it had done much towards in- citing to philosophical study, it had effected little towards instruction. Much the same opinion, as regards the latter part of it, is expressed by Diogenes Laertius of Yarro's prototype Menippus.1 As the works of both writers are now lost, we must content ourselves with Yarro's own assertion in Cicero, that he imitated Menippus without translating him : the probability, however, is in favour of the superiority of Yarro. Menippus indeed, in common with the Sillo- graphers, seems to have introduced much more parody than even the earliest Roman satirists, if his works did not wholly consist of it. In the absence of better information, the " Mcmr?™?, fj vckvo- pavTzla'' of Lucian may be consulted, where his style is caricatured. The satires of Yarro, of which the names are preserved, amount to one hundred and thirty-seven ; but Oehler diminishes this number to ninety-six, considering some of the supposed satires to be referable to other heads. The diversity of their subject matter may be gathered from the following arbitrary selection of titles, comprised under the letter A in Fabricius's alphabetical arrangement. Aborigines , n€p\ avQpumw c^va-ecos. Be Admirandis, vel Gallus Fundanius. Agatlio. Age modo. 'Ah Aipvrj, vel nepl aip€o-€G)v. Ajax stramentitius. "AXkos ovtos 'HpaKXrjs. * h\xp.ov fxerpds, 7T€pl (jjiXapyvplas. Andabatce. Ardhropopolis, nepl ycveSXuiKrjs. Uepl apxns, vel Marcopolis. Wept dpxaipeo-eav, vel Serranus. Ile/n aperrjs KTrjcreos, vel Trihodites. Ilepl cKfipodLo-ioov, vel vinalia. Armorum judicium. Iiep\ app^voTrjros^ vel Tripliallua, Autumedus, vel Mceonius. Dacier, in his Essay on the Eoman Satires, has collected a few fragments cited by ancient authors from the Satires of Yarro. But the most complete collection is that of Oehler (Quedlingb. and Leipz. 1844). The best judgment to be formed of their nature, at the present day, may be obtained from the extant Yarronian Satire of Petronius, the ' AtvokoXokvvtvo-is of Seneca, and the Ccesares and Mio-oTrvycov of the Emperor Julian. They seem to have embraced subjects of the most diverse description, political and literary, as well as philosophical, treated in a satirical vein, in the most modern sense of the word ; humorous, however, rather than sar- castic, though not devoid of sarcasm. They were of the most miscellaneous character in every respect ; and blended prose with verse of various metre. There can be no doubt that literature has sustained a severe loss in the Menippean Satires ; whatever may have been their merit, they must have been invaluable as illustrations of contemporary life. But the only fragments which exhibit connexion impress us with a highly favourable estimate of Yarro's poetical powers. We subjoin two — the first from the " Marcipor," the other from the "Prometheus Liber:" vi. 99. VARRO. ' 1 j. Varro. Repente noctis drciter meridie, Quiim pictus aer fervidis late ignibus C'u'li chorean astricen ostendcret * * « * Nubes aquali frigido velo levcs Coeli cavernas aureaa subduxcrant, Aquam vomcntes inferam mortalibus. » * * * Vcntique frigido se ab axe eruperant Pbrenetici Septemtrionum filii, Secum ferentcs tegulas, ramos, syros. At nos caduci, naufragi, ut ciconise, Quarum bipennis fulniinis plumas vapor Perussit, alte nicesti in terrain cecidimus. Although these fragments are found separately, we agree With Oehler in considering them connected portions, and shall translate them accordingly. All suddenly, about the noon of night, "When far the sky, bedropt with fervid fires, Displayed the starry firmamental dance, The racking clouds, with cold and watery veil, Closed up the golden hollows of the heaven, Spouting on mortals Stygian 1 cataracts. The winds, the frantic offspring of the North, Burst from the frozen pole, and swept along Tiles, boughs, and hurricanes of whelming dust." Cut we, poor trembling shipwrecked men, like storks AY hose wings the double-pinioned thunder-bolt Hath scorched, fell prone in terror on the ground. li. Sum ut supernus cortex, aut cacumina Morientftni in querqueto arborum aritudine. * * * * * Atque exsanguibus3 dolore evirescat4 colos. Mortalis nemo exaudit, sed late incolens Scytharum inhospitalis campos Vastitas. *■* •* * *• Levis mens nunquam somnurnas imagines Adfatur, non unibrantur sonino pupulse. I am become like outer bark, or tops Of oaks, that in the forest die with drought; My blood is drained; my colour wan with anguish ; 1 So we prefer rendering inferos to Oehler's frigid interpretation, "Infer* aqua est aqua ex imbri caduca — 7ie?*a&speiend das Wasser auf die Sterblichen." 8 SyrOS, according to Nonius, brooms, an impossible interpretation ; but the word itself is most probably corrupt. We have considered it as bearing affinity to avpfxbs, or avp(per6s — " Sweeping whirlwinds.1' A Probably exsangui, as Scaliger ; sense and metre requiring it. 4 Evirescit ? Cato.— Dure. 42 ANTE- AUGUSTAN LATIN POETEY. Varro. No mortal bears me; only Desolation, That dwells abroad on Scythia's houseless plains. My spirit n'er parleys with sleep-gender'd forms ; No shade of slumber rests upon my eyelids. With the exception of Varro, history furnishes us with the name of no eminent satirist between the times of Lucilius and Horace. Publius Terentius Varro of Atax is mentioned by Horace * as having attempted satire unsuccessfully, in common with " certain others." These were, perhaps, Saevius Nicanor, mentioned by Suetonius as the author of a satire; Lenaeus, the freedman of Pompey the Great, who satirized the historian Sallust; and Valerius Cato, author of a piece called Indignatio, on the subject of the loss of his patrimony by the soldiers of Sylla, and some amatory poems, of which Lydia and Diana were the inspiring muses.2 Valerius Cato appears to have enjoyed some reputation as a poet ; but his ~ name is chiefly remarkable for the extraordinary and undue interest excited among scholars by a work attributed to him by Joseph Scaliger, but in the MSS. ascribed to Virgil. The poem is intituled Dirce ; it is a fierce denunciation of parties who have despoiled the writer of his property (the case of Valerius as well as of Virgil 3), and concludes with a lament for the loss of a beloved Lydia. These circumstances, however, are the only evidence in favour of Cato's authorship. The Indignatio, with which some suppose the Dirce identical, was, very probably, no poem. Suetonius calls it " libellus ;" and almost immediately adds, " scripsit prater gram- maticos libellos, etiam poemata." Jacobs regards the Dirce as two fragments of distinct poems ; to the former of which alone the title properly belongs ; the latter was, he conceives, probably intituled Lydia. The University of Jena thought the question of sufficient importance to propound an inquiry into the origin, integrity, and period of the poem, as the subject for a prize. Much learning has been expended in the investigation, but to very little purpose, whether we regard the claims of the poem, or the light which has been thrown on it. Hermann has satisfactorily shown that there is very slight internal evidence for attributing any part of it to Valerius Cato. But indeed the subject, except for the exaggerated importance given to it by the labours of the learned, would scarcely merit notice in these pages.4 We shall now return to Naevius, whose dramatic productions we have already noticed, in order to trace the progress of the Latin Epoocpia- Epopceia. Whatever the ingenuity and enthusiasm of some adven- turous modern critics may have conjectured, there is every reason to believe that this author was the first who composed a regular 1 Horace, i. Sat. x. 46. 2 Suet, de 111. Gram, v., xi. et xv. 3 Ibid. xi. 4 See Hermann's Abhandlnngen und Beitrage zur class. Litt. und Alter- thumsk. vi., where the subject is abundantly yet compendiously discussed. X.EV1US. — THE EPOPCEIA. 43 epic in Latin. Naevius patriotically neglected the brilliant fictions Stevius and luxurious imagery of Greece, to sing in austerer strains the triumphs of Duillius, and the sufferings of Eegnlus. His poem on the first Punic war, in which he served, — a poem of which very inconsiderable fragments remain, was divided into seven books by C. Octavius Lampadio, the grammarian, as we learn from Suetonius. Cicero compares this work to the sculptures of Myron, not exact, but pleasing, and even beautiful; and accuses Ennius of plagiarising from it in his Annates : and even Virgil himself has not disdained to have recourse to the imagery of Naevius, as is observed by Macrobius, who informs us that the latter poet describes the Trojans tost in a storm ; Venus complaining to Jupiter thereon, and Jupiter consoling his daughter with the hope of future glories ; all which circumstances are narrated in the first JEneid. It is to Naevius, perhaps, that we are indebted for the anti-Punic spirit of the latter poem ; a spirit which must have considerably died out of the national mind in the days of Virgil, but which, in those of Naevius, was the popular passion. The metre used by Naevius was that called the Saturnian. The ^^ name is supposed to be derived from Saturnus, and to be identical with Italian, Italy being called Saturnia tetlus. But this metre is admitted to be of Greek extraction by Terentianus Maurus, and is proved to be of Greek usage by Bentley.1 It appears, indeed, to have been invented by Archilochus. Notwithstanding, Mr. Macaulay inclines to think the coincidence may be fortuitous, and gives some curious instances in proof that the Saturnian measure is the natural versification of a rude and simple period in all languages. His old German and English specimens are as perfect as the different principles of accentual and temporal versification allow ; his Spanish examples are only approximations. At the same time, he admits that the metre may have been early introduced into Latium from some of the Greek cities of Italy.2 It was, at all events, naturalised among the Romans from a very early period. The nearest metrical definition of this famous verse is an iambic hephthemimer, followed by a trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic. The latter portion of the verse was preserved with tolerable uniformity. The former ordinarily admitted every foot admissible into any part of an iambic verse ; but we have no means of inquiring minutely into the laws of a metre of which few examples are preserved; laws which, it is evident, were extremely lax. So lawless, indeed, was the construction of the Saturnian verse, that Attilius Fortunatianus asserted that he scarcely knew what verses of Naevius to select as a specimen.3 " Nostri antiqui (says he), usi sunt eo, non observatd lege, nee uno genere custodito inter se versus ; sed} prater quam quod 1 Diss, on Epist. of Phalaris. xi. 2 Pref. to Lays of Anc. Rome. 3 De Doctr. Metr. xxvi. 44 a:;te-atjgustan latin poetry. durissimos fecerunt, etiam alios brevioresy alios longiores inseruerunt, ut vix invenerim apud Ncevium quos jpro exemplo ponerem" The great name of Niebuhr seems here to challenge a notice, which a theory scarcely worthy of it would not otherwise have claimed at our hands. Contrary to the universal testimony of antiquity,1 he makes the Saturnian verse altogether accentual, while yet his accent does not correspond to the long syllable, or even the arsis, of the true Saturnian verse. " The prevailing character of the Saturnian verse," he observes, " is that it consists of a fixed number of feet of three syllables each. The number of feet is generally four, and they are either bacchics or cretics, alternating with spondees. Sometimes the cretics predominate, and some- times the bacchics ; when the verses are kept pure, the movement is very beautiful ; but they are generally so much mixed that it is difficult to discern them. This ancient Roman metre occurs throughout in Eoman poetry down to the seventh century [ah urhe cond.]. I have collected a large number of examples of it, and discovered a chapter of an ancient grammarian with most beautiful fragments, especially from Neevius. I shall publish this important treatise on the Saturnian verse ; for the grammarian really understood its nature." 2 It is no disrespect to the memory of the great man whose words we have given, to say that he was ardent and imaginative ; and he certainly seems, in this instance, to have been diverted by these dispositions from that plain track which they sometimes enabled him to pursue with greater success than might have attended a colder temperament. It is a strong presumption against his theory that it will not quadrate with those undoubted Saturnian verses which antiquity has transmitted to us ; that the examples scattered / throughout his works are so unlike verses, that any chapter of Livy might with equal effect be similarly distributed; that the epitaphs of the Scipios, whereon, as we have seen, his testimony is self-contradictory, are included in the number of examples ; 3 and 1 We do not except even Servius (ad Virg. Georg. ii. 385) : " Carrninibus Saturnio metro compositis, quod ad rhythmum solum vulgares componere consue- verunt" For his text shows that he is speaking of rude extemporaneous effusions ; and the very term vulyares appears to distinguish their authors from such writers as Naevius. But it may serve to clear up some part of the confusion in which the subject is involved. It is probable that the term Saturnius, which was used for old- fashioned, may have often been employed to designate the rude rhythmical verses of barbarous times, quite independently of its more restricted and artificial acceptation. 2 Lectures on Hist, of Rom. i. Schmitz's transl. Though Niebuhr uses the terms of Greek prosody, we must understand him to substitute the acute accent for the long syllable. 3 The epitaph on C. Lucius Scipio is thus scanned by Niebuhr : Corneliu' Luciu' Scipio Barbatus Gnaivo prognatu,1 fortis vir sapie'nsque, &c. Whereas the second line (if we must so call it) is Cnaivod patre prognatus, &c. SATURNIAN VERSE. 15 that none of his instances have the smallest affinity with those ferses which antiquity has preserved to us as unquestionably Satnrnian. The grammarian of whom he speaks is Charisius. Niebuhr took a copy of a treatise Be Versu Saturnio, ascribed to that writer, from a MS. in the Bourbon Museum at Xaples. This copy is supposed to have perished in a tire which took place in Niebuhr's house some short time before his death. But a copy has been since taken by Midler, which has been edited with a fac- simile by Prorector Gieseler, of Gbttingen. From his pamphlet 1 we glean the following particulars : — 1. The MS. contains several treatises beside that of Charisius, and several of these are interposed between the undoubted works of Charisius and the chapter in question, which is even headed, apparently in the same hand — " Liber s'cti Columbani" True it is, that these words may indicate the monastery to which the book belonged, not its author ; still, however, there is no evidence that the treatise is the work of Charisius. 2. The treatise contains only two pages, which originally consisted of four columns ; but the two outer columns have perished ; consequently the whole is but a fragment. The hand is exceedingly bad, the abbrevia- tions numerous, and the text, as set forth by Gieseler, confessedly and palpably corrupt ; although he perhaps has made it out with all the probability the case admits. 3. The "beautiful fragments" amount to three, which we append, that our readers may see the foundation on which Niebuhr's ambitious structure reposes. None are from Nseyius ; the first is evidently from Lcevius, who is often confounded with him. Lrevius, however, was a much later poet, about 650 U.C.j author of pieces called Erotopspgnion [liber] and Centauri; and, being distinctly an imitator of the Greeks, was very unlikely to have employed the Saturnian verse at all, which doubtless, like others of the same school, he held in contempt. The name of the poet is indeed lost, except the two first letters, which are indis- putably Le ; and the quotation, specifying the Erotopcpgnion, leaves no doubt of the author. Thus it stands in Gieseler' s edition — " Yenus, amoris altrix, genetrix cupiditatis, in quam diem plenum hilarulum prBepundere fas est opitulse tuse ac ministree. Tametsi neutiquam quid foret ex pavida gravi dura fera asperaque famula potui de domino accipere superbo." In the MS. we have q for fuam, [fpnndere for prcppundere (whatever that may mean), oppetulce clearly for opitulrp. The tametsi neutiquam of Gieseler is no less clearly ta,n et sine uti qua in the MS. ; the gravi is gravis ; the famula \sfamultas; the de domino is dominio. The wordjfas Gieseler thinks may as well be sese ; to which we add, wre think it may as well be anything else. The following two fragments are from Attius : — 1 Academiae Georgia Augusta Prorector J. C. L. Gieseler, D. cum senatu successorem in summo magistratu academico Frider. Bergrnanu, D. civibus suis honoris et officii causa conmiendat. — Gottinga?, 1841. 46 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. I. " Quid istoc gnata unicli est demum . . eel br . . . . prome . . . to expete . . timida me tecto excies." II. " Sed jam Amphilochum hue vadere cerno et nobis datur bona pausa loquendi in tempus obviam." Such are the examples on which a new theory of the Saturnian verse, in direct opposition to the testimony of all antiquity, is to be constructed ! 4. Finally, the theory itself is thus propounded in Gieseler's version : — " Sunt item Saturnii quinum denum et senum denum pedum, in quibus similiter novum genus pedum est et ipsum ametron. De quibus nihil prsecipitur eoque nomen aptius quidem est." Not a very intelligible definition truly ! but we give the original form — " St' (or SP, or El') item Saturnii quin' denum e . i . indeni . . . pedum in q'bz similit' novum genus pedum est eipsu ametron " (perhaps) " de qb. n1 p'cipit' eoq no'e aptior quidem e\" The nomen aptius of Gieseler should be nomine aptior. We are not obliged to reconcile any portion of this scrap with rules of grammar — a task too hard for its learned editor himself. It is surely manifest, that on such a foundation it is quite incompetent to raise the theory of an accentual, nonmetrical Saturnian verse, in the poetry of Naevius and regular writers, in the face too of the positive testimony afforded by writers well acquainted with it : and the name of Niebuhr is our only apology for having dwelt on the subject. A poem, called the Cyprian Iliad, has been attributed to Naevius : it was a translation from a poem called ra Kinrpia, falsely ascribed to Homer. Hermann,1 with great probability, imagines that the grammarians, deceived by the resemblance of names, have ascribed to this author a work of Lasvius, with whom, as we have seen, Nsevius has been confounded by Niebuhr himself. Others attribute this poem to Ninnius Crassus. As this composition was written in hexameters, it is extremely improbable that it was the production of Nsevius ; there being little doubt that this measure was intro- duced in regular poetry by Ennius, who first familiarised his countrymen with the epic Muse of Greece. That Ennius was the first who composed Latin hexameters, is no where, indeed, expressly stated ; but Lucretius intimates that he had made some important improvements in Latin poetry : — -Qui primus amceno Detulitex Helicone perennem fronde coronam, Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret.2 Hermann, however, relies more on the derision which Ennius cast upon the Saturnian verses, and contends that this alone is a sufficient proof that he was the original importer of the hexameter. Although the logic of the philologist in this conclusion is scarcely equal to his criticism, there is every reason to believe that the 1 Ap. Gesner. Thes. Ling. Lat. doc. Saturnius. 2 Lucret. i. 13. ennius. 47 hexameter was not used before the time of Ennius in any com- position of extent or importance. It is possible, however, that, out of regular literature, the hexameter was known to the Eomans. The Oracles of Marcius, Marcian according to Livy, existed before the battle of Cannae, that is, not oradts- later than the five hundred and thirty-third year of Eome, or, before Ennius completed his eighteenth year. These verses are supposed by some critics to have been written in hexameters, while others con- tend that their metre was the Saturnian. To us, with all their corrup- tion, they appear to contain indubitable traces of the former measure -, but it seems not unlikely that their original form was Greek. The Epopceia, which Nsevius had successfully originated, was still more successfully cultivated by Ennius. This illustrious and Ennius. almost universal poet, to whom we have already had frequent occasion to refer, was born at Eudiae, in Calabria, in the five hundred and fifteenth year of Eome. He was a man of unusual learning and accomplishments. He boasted that he had three hearts ; a quaint and enigmatical way of expressing his familiarity with the Greek, Latin, and Oscan languages.1 Silius Italicus2 represents him serving as a centurion under Titus Manlius, in the war which the Eoman government carried on against its rebel subjects in Sardinia. In that island he resided till lie was brought to Eome by the elder Cato ; who, as we observed before, censured the Consul Ennius. Xobilior for his patronage of the same poet. Tiraboschi suggests a probable account of this inconsistency of Cato, supposing that he rather honoured Ennius as a warrior than as a ! poet,3 in which latter character he was patronised by the Consul. 1 Certain it is that his military, no less than his poetical, excellence, i has been the theme of commendation ; according to Claudian,4 he accompanied the elder Africanus in many of his expeditions: but this is inconsistent with what other authors relate of the disposal of his time during the campaigns of that illustrious captain. He was also intimate with Scipio Nasica, and the two Nobiliores, Marcus and Quintus, the former of whom, as we have already seen, he attended in his iEtolian campaign ; and the latter procured him the freedom of Eome. Cherished and courted as he had been by the great, he i was left, in old age and exhaustion, like the worn out Olympian ■ courser,1 to which he compares himself, to poverty and neglect. 1 Aul. Gell. xvii. 17. a Plin# xii< 393i 3 Storia della Lett. Ital. part iii. lib. ii. c. 1. 4 Dc Laud. Stil. iii. prsef. 5 Cic. de Senect. v. 48 ANTE-AUGUSTAN LATIN POETP.Y. Ennius. But his genius was of a proud and enduring cast ; and in those sensibilities which, in their violation, have so often proved fatal to the poet, he seems to have but slightly participated. An exalted consciousness of the dignity of genius was a possession which neither years nor destitution could take away; and this so far supported him under the miseries of both, that he exulted in his independence on their power. His feelings are strongly pourtrayed in the epitaph which he composed for himself : Aspicite, 6 cives, senis Enni imagini' formam. Hie vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum. Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nee funera fletu Faxit. Cur? volito vivu' per c-ra virum. Ho, countrymen ! old Ennius' form behold, Who sang your martial sires' achievements bold. No tears for me ! no dirges at my grave ! I live upon the lips of all the brave. After his death, which happened u.c. 585, his memory was, it is said, honoured with a marble statue, erected in the family sepulchre of the Scipios.1 To the severe injury of the literary world, time has spared us only detached fragments of the poems of Ermius, the best collections of which are those made by Columna and Merula, with copious annotations. From them their author appears to have been what Scaliger designates him, a poet of splendid genius ; yet, though the veneration which the Eoman critics, who called him a second Homer, entertained for this poet, was the most implicit and unqualified, it is probable that much of his popularity among his contemporaries is chiefly referable to the novelty of the wonders which his Muse, opening the exhaustless treasures of Grecian poesy, disclosed. Ennius, however, arrogated to himself the title of Homer, whose soul he feigned to have passed into his own body, after migrating through that of a peacock ; which most unpoetical metempsychosis has afforded amusement to Horace and Persius.2 Horace, indeed, is bold enough to tell the admirers of the father of Eoman poetry, that the truth of his Pythagorean dreams is not always borne out by his productions. Yet it cannot be doubted that the poetry of Ennius was, in general, lofty and dignified, of stern and solemn grandeur, although destitute of polish and orna- ment. Quinctilian has left us a picturesque description of his style, the correctness of which is avouched no less by the testimony of antiquity, and the extant fragments of the poet, than by the judgment of the critic. " We regard Ennius with a kind of adoration, like groves which have acquired sanctity from antiquity, 1 Cic. pro Arch. Poet. ix. ; Liv. xxxviii. 56 ; Plin. vii. 31. 2 Ep. ad Aug. 50, segq.—S&t. vi. 10. ENNIUS. 49 where vast and aged trunks are not so remarkable for beauty as for Ennius. a kind of religious solemnity." ! Even in the fastidious age of Augustus, Yitruvius was bold enough to say " All whose minds are imbued with the beauties of literature must have the image of the poet Ennius, like those of the gods, consecrated in their breasts." 2 The rules of elegant construction, which critics have compiled from the practice of Virgil and Ovid, were entirely unknown to Ennius, whose hexameters exhibit nothing beyond the bare measure of that verse. The harsh elision of the final s is also of frequent occurrence in his extant writings. Virgil has imitated no author more liberally than Ennius. It would not fall within the nature of this work to quote the several passages ; but the reader, who is desirous of knowing how much the " Prince of Eoman Poets " borrowed from the elder bard, may consult, in particular, the two first chapters of Macrobius's sixth book of the Saturnalia. The title of Ennius's great work was Annates ; it comprised the history of Koine from its foundation to the termination of the Histrian war. The first Punic war was omitted, as Ennius himself affirms, because others had written it : — scnpsere alii rem Versibu' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant, Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat, Nee dicti studiosus erat ; hence Cicero takes occasion to observe that he seemed unwilling to risk a competition with the bards he so much affected to despise.3 Nasvius was certainly pointed at in these verses. The Annates, as Suetonius informs us,4 were divided into books 5 by the grammarian Vargunteius, who recited them publicly ; a custom which long prevailed in Italy, since we learn from Gellius that there was in his time, at Puteoli, a person who read the verses of Ennius to the public,6 and who was called an Ennianist (Ennianista). The cast which this poem of Ennius gave to the Eoman literary and civil character was extremely powerful, and Seneca affirms 7 that Virgil was compelled to sacrifice his judgment to the prejudices of an " Ennian Public " (Ennianus populus), as this author calls the Eomans. To make an epic interesting to this people, it was always 1 Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoramus, in quibus grandia et antiqua roborajam non tantam habent speciem, quantam relligionem. — Lib. x. 1. The Ovidian character, Ennius ingenio maximus, arte rudis, is as felicitous in matter as in expression. 2 Qui litterarum jucunditatibus instinctas habent mentes nonpossunt non in suis pectoribus dedicatum habere, sicut deorum, sic Ennii poetm simulacrum. — Vitr. ix. prsef. 15. 3 Brut. xix. 4 De 111. Gram. ii. 5 According to Aulus Gellius, 12, or as other copies, 18 ; from Pliny (vii. 27) we should infer 16. 6 Noct. Att. xviii. 5. 7 Apud Aul. Gell. xii. 2. [r. l.] e 50 ANTE- AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. necessary that it should be national ; and Virgil, with all his art, was yet obliged to connect his poem with the Boman fortunes. Even Ovid, in a work not altogether pretending to the flights of the Epopoeia, felt the necessity of conciliating his readers by enlarging on the mythological and historical glories of the Empire. The influence and popularity of Ennius, therefore, long survived his diction ; and poets who contemned its rudeness and want of modulation were yet compelled, by the strength of popular opinion, to reverence and emulate the grandeur of his genius, and, in their journey to the temple of Fame, to indulge in very limited excursions from the track of his steps. The fragments of the Annals of Ennius are so numerous, and, in general, so well known, that it would be difficult to select passages, and almost superfluous, to all purposes of illustration, to quote them. There is, however, a singularly beautiful fragment of his poem on the exploits of Scipio, preserved by Macrobius,1 which is less known, and which we shall here adduce : -Mundus coeli vastus constitit silentio, Et Neptunus ssevus undeis aspereis pausam dedit ; Sol equeis iter repressit unguleis volantibus ; Constitere anmes perennes : arbores vento vacant. the universe of heaven stood in silence motionless ; Stern Neptunus for a season bade the roughening billows pause ; And the sun refrained the rushing of his pinion-footed steeds ; Paused the ever-flowing rivers ; not a breath is on the boughs. Columna supposes that this poem was written in hexameters, except the procemium or introduction ; as the other few fragments extant are in that measure. Horace speaks in terms of high commendation of the Scipio .-2 Non incisa notis marmora publicis, Per quae spiritus et vita redit bonis Post mortem ducibus ; non celeres fugse, Rejectseque retrorsum Hannibalis mines ; Non incendia Carthaginis impiae, Ejus qui domita nomen ab Africa Lucratus rediit, clarius indicant Laudes, quam Calabrae Pierides. Not marbles traced with public grief, Whereby to the departed chief Life is restored : not foes overthrown, And Hannibal's fierce threat hurled down ; Not Carthage proud in ashes laid, More brightly hath his praise displayed Who bore his vanquished Afric's name, — Than the Calabrian's strain of fame. 1 Sat. vi. 4. 2 iv. Od. 8. LUCRETIUS. 51 The example of Ennius was followed by Hostius, who composed Ennius. a poem called Annates; and another on the Ilistrian war. The title Annates was a favourite with Roman poets. It was adopted by Aulns Furius, of Antium, and Yolusius, the butt of Catullus. Ennius was also a didactic poet, although so i'ew fragments of Didactic his essays in this way are extant, that it is impossible to pronounce voeirj. on their merits. One of his poems was called Phagetica, or Hedp- pathia—a translation or adaptation from Archestratus — and was a treatise on eatables. He wrote also epigrams, and poems called Protrepticus, Proecepta (possibly two titles of the same work), Asotus, Sotadicus (to which also the same observation will apply), and some works in prose. But some of the above titles, if not all, may possibly belong to his Satires. He composed also a poem called Ptthemerus, a free criticism of the Greek mythology. But the noblest strain of his didactic muse was his translation of Epicharmus, On the Nature of Things ; a poem which, apparently, excited the emulation of Lucretius, whose work was destined to obscure its fame. # j, *j-_ s*x p^s-/. Titus Lucretius Cams was born probably at Eome, u. c. 659, Lucretius, and died at the age of forty-three, on the day when Yirgil assumed the toga v iritis ; l and, as some affirm, by his own hand.2 As his life connects the periods, so his poem forms the link between the old and new schools of Latin heroics (we use the word as regards the versification), between Ennius on the one hand, and the Augustan poets on the other. It differs, indeed, from the didactic poetry of Hesiod and Yirgil, as it is occupied rather in stating and rea- soning on philosophical facts, than in delivering practical precepts. Still, it is strictly didactic, according to the derivation of the term. The philo- sophy of Lucretius, as such, it would be irrelevant here to discuss ; yet we may remark that its tendency was to suppress, rather than to kindle, the spirit of poetry. The doctrine which removed man from all connexion with a higher state ; which represented him, by nature, scarcely superior to the brute, and de- graded by superstition ; which regarded with the severest intolerance the most beautiful creations of fancy, and which stigmatised, as un- manly and unphilosophical, some of the most amiable virtues of the Lucre 1 Donat. in Vit. Virgil, ii. But the authority of Donatus is valueless, and Hcyne even regards the passage as an interpolation. 2 Hieronym. Chron. Euseb. E 2 52 ANTE-ATJGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. human breast, could scarcely be expected to develop^ itself success- fully in poetry. Yet these disadvantages Lucretius completely over- came. His poetical studies at Athens, and a discriminating judgment, united, as is rarely the case, with a strong poetical enthusiasm, which the cold and selfish theories of Epicurus, so far from sup- pressing, only enlisted in their active service, enabled him to perform his task. The object of Lucretius appears to have been two-fold ; to introduce to his countrymen in the most alluring colours what he conceived to be the important, though repulsive, dogmata of Epicurus ; and to polish and enrich the Latin language ; for which latter design his extensive acquaintance with the Greek writers, and the profound reverence with which he studied them, rendered him 7 eminently qualified. With this view he adopted an antiquated e* style, as Spenser did at an analogous period of our own poetical his- tory ; judging, perhaps, that the language, taken in its youth, would be more flexible, and more susceptible of the character with which he wished to impress it, than in its nearer advance to maturity. On this account, although the harmony of the Latin hexameter is far from perfection in the lines of Lucretius, the language of his poem is elaborately poetical. He complains, indeed, of the poverty of his native tongue, and the difficulty of applying it to the illustration of a subject so new to his readers as the speculations of the Greek philosophy : Nee me animi fallit, Graiorum obscura reperta Difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse, Multa novis verbis prsesertim quum sit agendum ; Propter egestatem linguae, et rerum novitatem. But he has completely mastered this difficulty, and almost removed it from subsequent writers, by enriching the language in a degree perhaps wholly unparalleled in the history of Latin poetry. The cold and stiff commendation of Quinctilian, " elegans in sua materia,"1 will be readily exchanged by scholars for the generous eulogium of Ovid: " Carmma suhlimis tunc sunt peritura Lucreti, Exitio terras quum dabit una dies/' 2 Yet the term " difficilis," which the critic applies to Lucre- tius, is justified by his archaisms, and by the difficulties of his philosophy, which appear, by Cicero's account, completely to have overwhelmed Sallustius, the writer of the Empedoclea? According to St. Jerome,4 the noble poem of Lucretius was composed during the intervals of an insanity, produced by drinking a philter. 1 x. 1. 2 Amor. i. 15. 3 Virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris : hominem non putabo. — Cic. ad Quinct. Frat. ii. II. Orelli supposes tbis Sallustius to be Cnaeus, the client of Cicero. 4 Chron. Euseb. CICERO. 53 Of the poetry of Cicero, who followed Lucretius in his didactic Cicero, career, and who, if we are to believe the same author, corrected his poem,1 it is usual to speak in terms of disparagement. It is, however, to be recollected that the Phanomenu and Prog- nostica are translations, and from no very poetical writer. They were written by Cicero when very young,2 although it is true that they were approved by him in bis riper years. They afford a great con- trast both to the inartificial versification and poetic fire of his contemporary, Lucretius. But the poetic powers of Cicero are to be best determined from the frag- ments of his historical poems De Consulatu, Cicero and De Temporibus suis; and these cer- tainly do not entitle him to the highest honours of the lyre. ]t is, however, extremely unfair to cite, as a specimen of his general ability, that well-known line from a poem on the events of his own time : 0 fortunatam natam me consule Romam ! As well might we judge the genius of Ennius from a similar jingle : 0 Tite, tute, Tati, tibi tanta, tyranne, tulisti. Voltaire has fallen into the opposite extreme ; 3 and, delighted with some verses of Cicero's Marius, which unquestionably are highly spirited, pronounces Cicero at once " one of the first poets of his age," and balances him against Lucretius ; asserting that it was totally impossible for him to have been the author of the obnoxious verse above quoted. The following is the passage of the Marius alluded to : — Hie Jovis altisoni subito pennata satelles, Arboris e trunco, serpentis saucia morsu, Ipsa feris subigit transfigens unguibus anguem Semianimum, et varia graviter cervice micantem ; Quern se intorquentein lanians, rostroque cruentans, Jam satiata animos, jam duros ulta dolores, Abjicit efflantem, et laceratum affligit in undas, Seque obitu a Solis nitidos convertit ad ortus. 1 Bernhardy, after Lachmarm, supposes (Gesch. der Rom. Lit. Anm. 398) Quintus Cicero, brother of the orator, to be meant. This opinion is derived from an expression in a letter from the latter, but it rests on a very slender foundation : Lucr'etii poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt non multis luminibus ingenii, multce tamen artis. — Cic. ad Quinct. Frat. ii. 11. 2 " Admodum adolescentulo." — Cic. de Nat. Deor. ii. 14. 3 Pref. a la Trag. de Catilina. 54) ANTE- AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Cicero. The plumed attendant of high-thundering Jove, Stung by a serpent, rested on a tree, And his fierce talons through his torturer drove ; Who writhes his spotted neck in agony, Struggling, though mangled and half-dead ; but he, The imperial bird, fares on his vengeful way ; Rends with red beak his coiling enemy, Then to the waves the torn and panting prey Flings forth, and from the west soars to the rising day. Other poems of Cicero are Pontius Glaucus, mentioned by Plutarch,1 Haley one > Uxorius, Nilus, Tamelastis, of which we know only the names ; it being doubtful whether even these are correctly reported. The Limon (Aet/x xiii> 8 et j Ep xx> 2J. 3 See Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, a. c. 65. 4 1. Sat. vi. 86. Suet, in Vita. Or, a collector of payments at auctions, if the reading in Suetonius be exauctionum, not exactionum. This writer also mentions a prevalent opinion that Horace's father was a drysalter. But the testimony of Horace himself is quite express for his having been a collector in some way ; and the passage itself appears interpolated. 5 Some contend that he became " coactor" after his removal to Rome. See Obbarius, Einleit. zu Horaz. Anm. 6. [R. L.] F Horace. 66 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Horace. His education. Battle of Pkilippi. Virgil. strayed, lie tells us, in a playful ramble to Mount Yultur, where, overpowered with fatigue, he fell asleep. Here the wood- pigeons protected him from the gaze of wild beasts under a heap of laurel and myrtle, which they accumulated over him.1 When he was, probably, about twelve years of age, his father removed him to Eome, and there gave him a liberal education under Orbilius Pupillus of Beneventum. 2 By him he was instructed in Greek literature, and had perused the Iliad, as he himself informs us, 3 before he went to Athens, which had long been a place of fashionable literary resort for the Eoman youth, to complete his education. During his abode there the assassination of Caesar, and the consequent troubles, took place ; and Brutus, on his march to Macedonia, took with him, among many other young Eomans of similar pursuits, Horace, who was then in his twenty-third year, and gave him the rank of Military Tribune : 4 in this office he sustained some hard service,5 and possibly crossed into Asia. He freely confesses his cowardice at the battle of Philippi, where he left his shield, 6 a circumstance which the ancients considered particularly ignominious. It is possible, however, that Horace has himself overcharged the picture, wishing, by this stroke of apparent candour and simplicity, to persuade Augustus that his connexion with the adverse party was less the result of political conviction than of the natural activity and restlessness of a youthful mind, ardent for adventure, and only brave while thoughtless of danger. That Augustus could totally forget the circumstances in which Horace had placed himself was not to be expected ; it might, therefore, have been politic in the poet to set them in a less unpleasant light ; and with the mention of the event he has not forgotten to notice the scattering of the brave, and the prostration of the threatening, before the irresistible arm of Caesar. About this time, a youth of like age and similar pursuits with Horace was about to be united with him in the bonds of a life- long friendship, through the sympathies of a common fate, and common tastes and studies. Publius Yirgilius 7 Maro was born at Andes, near Mantua, on the 15th October, u. c. 684. His father, Yirgilius Maro, was an opulent farmer : who, being, like the father of Horace, an intelligent person, gave his son a liberal Greek and Latin education at Cremona and Milan, which was completed under the poet Parthenius, and the Epicurean Syron. Prom his father, Virgil inherited the family estate at Mantua. But before the Triumvirate undertook their expedition against Brutus and Cassius, they had agreed at Mutina, in order 1 3 Od. iv. 9. 2 Ep. ad Aug. 69. 3 2 Ep. ii. 41. 4 1 Sat. vi. 48. 5 2 Od. vii. 1. 6 o od. vii. 3. 7 Vi.yiliud in the oldest Medicean MSS., and in. the Vatican MS. HORACE. THE CONFISCATION. G7 to retain their soldiers in allegiance, to give them, in the event of Hcracc. success, eighteen principal towns of Italy, which had adhered to the opposite faction ; and among these were Yenusium and Cremona. Thus, in the distribution which followed the consum- Confiscation ination of the war, the paternal estate of Horace at the former jJJJjmony of place was confiscated, ' and the neighbourhood of Mantua to the Horace, devoted Cremona ensured it a fate scarcely less deplorable from the p^opertius, lawless soldiery. Virgil was consequently placed in the same andTibuiius. circumstances with Horace. Tibullus and Propertius shared a similar fortune ; at least, Propertius certainly bore part in this extensive calamity. Tibullus deplores a sudden deprivation of his property,2 which is supposed to refer to this circumstance. That he had competent resources after this loss, appears from Horace's address to him, " Dl tibl divitias dederunt ;" although some read " dederant /"3 but it is not to be supposed that Horace would have taunted his friend with the possession of riches which he had lost. It was this competency which enabled Tibullus to live without dependence on court patronage ; for in no part of his works has he celebrated Augustus or Maecenas, while he is profuse in his commendations of his .patron Messala, who had served in the army of Cassius. By whose intercession Virgil regained his patri- mony, authors are not agreed. Asinius Pollio, and Maecenas, the celebrated patron of literature, have the best authorities in their favour. Pollio, having charge of that district, probably recom- mended his case to Maecenas ; who was little likely to have been otherwise acquainted with the son of obscure rustics, as all Virgil's biographers represent his parents to have been. On this event his 1st Eclogue was, most certainly, composed. The character of Tityrus in this poem may not have been intended for Virgil himself, although some of the ancients so understood it, and the poet elsewhere appropriates the name :4 it is? however, a lively picture of the surprise and gratitude of an outcast, who finds himself suddenly restored to his domestic comforts, and contrasts strikingly with the desperate melancholy of the house- less wanderer Melibceus, taking his last survey of the desolated hearth, with which all his dearest affections were associated. The removal of Pollio was attended with disastrous conse- quences to Yirgil. His estate was again seized by the rapa- cious military, and himself compelled to seek his safety by flight to Home. The story of his second expulsion is treated in the IXth Eclogue. He succeeded in again recovering his patrimony, apparently through the interest of one Varus, of whom he speaks in 1 2 Ep. ii. 51. * 1 Ele£. 1. 19—23. Cf. iv. 1. 183—190. 3 1 Ep. iv. 7. The short penultima of the 3rd pi. perf. ind. act., though rare, is not unexampled. See Virg. Eel. iv. 60. ^En. iii. 681. Prop. 3 Eleg. xxiv. ult. 4 Eel. vi. 4. 68 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Horace introduced ■ to Maecenas. the highest strain of commendation in the YIth and IXth Eclogues ; who this Yarus was, cannot now be determined.1 Perhaps he was Quinctilius Yarus, whose death Horace deplores in the XXIYth Ode of the 1st Book, and of whom he there speaks as the especial friend of Virgil. Horace made no solicitations to Augustus. Thrown on his own resources, his habits and pursuits allowed him no other subsistence than literature. Poverty, whose chilling influence on the fire of Poetry the great Satirist has so pathetically lamented,2 was his bold and stimulating Muse.3 What were the productions of her inspiration, or whether any are now extant, is not known ; the situation of public affairs, however, renders it possible that the XIYth Ode of the 1st Book, in which he addresses the Koman State under the allegory of a weather-beaten vessel, was written under these circumstances. This Ode, however, is by Canon Tate referred to Horace's 39th year, when the project of restoring the republic followed the triumph of Augustus over Antony. Whatever were the merits of his early compositions, Horace was soon known to Virgil, the similarity of whose situation almost necessarily interested him in the fate of his brother bard ; and by him was recommended to Maecenas. He had, however, the advantage of a still more powerful friend : Varius, " the lofty bird of Homeric song," as he termed him in his poetical raptures,4 and, in his prosaic moments, "the unrivalled Epic,"5 and whose tragic excellence has been already noticed, became interested in his favour, and also mentioned him to Maecenas. Horace has left us a pleasing and natural account of his introduction to the literary courtier. 6 In few and broken words he candidly ex- plained his simple history ; he received a brief answer, and, in nine months after his introduction, that lordly monarch of wits called him to the number of his subjects. His earliest composition after this event is, probably, that which stands first in his works ; at least, he informs us that his first poem was composed in honour of Maecenas;7 and this Ode has the appearance of being written under such circumstances. It describes the various pursuits of mankind briefly, but comprehensively ; it touches on the addic- tion of each individual to his own ; and it concludes with an Maecenas. 1 Conf. Ilcvnc. Excurs. ii. ad Bucolica. 2 Juv. Sat. vii. '3 2 Ep. ii. 51. 4 1 Od. vi. 2. 5 1 Sat. x. 44. 6 1 Sat. vi. 54. seqq. ' 1 Ep. i. 1. HORACE. JOURNEY TO BRUNDUSHM. G9 animated eulogy on Poetry, describing the author's exclusive Horace. devotion to its cultivation, and expressing a hope that Maecenas would class him among the lyric bards. His patron assented; and the consequent cessation of jealous malevolence is gratefully and exultiugly celebrated by Horace, in the Illrd Ode of his IVthBook. Though Maecenas was slow in the formation of our poet's Journey to acquaintance, he showed himself forward in its cultivation after- Lrumlu>lum wards ; and very shortly after Horace had been thus noticed, he accompanied the Minister on his journey to Brundusium, whither he was sent by Augustus to treat with Antony, who was then menacing Italy with a renewal of the civil wars. This event must have taken place at so early a period of Horace's acquaintance with Maecenas, that some writers have supposed that the poet celebrated in his Journey to Brundusium a subsequent expedition Brandusinm. of a similar nature, which Maecenas undertook two years after, when Antony landed at Tarentum ; but the name of Coccejus Nerva, which occurs in the Satire, restricts the subject to the earlier event, as that person attended only on the former expedition. On this occasion Horace had an opportunity of enjoying the society of his friends Virgil, Yarius, and Plotius. The enthusiasm of his admiration for these illustrious men, and the warmth of his attachment, so exquisitely expressed in his Satire on the occasion, are among the many proofs that rivalry in ingenuous studies is far from being necessarily connected with disingenuous passions ; 70 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. and that the friendships which result from literary, and especially poetical, sympathy, are ordinarily the most exalted and permanent of any. But although Maecenas took every opportunity of conversing; with Horace, his caution and reserve were still main- tained : for that at the end of seven years they had not attained a strictly confidential familiarity, is the least that can be inferred from what Horace himself then says of the state of their acquaint- ance ; ! although it must be admitted that the description is designedly exaggerated. He appears at this time to have been, what Suetonius tells us he was, a Quaestor's secretary : since he mentions the desire of the secretaries to see him on a matter affecting their common interest : — De re communi scribae magna atque nova, te Orabant hodie meminisses, Quinte, reverti. 2 The frankness and warmth of the poet, however, at length prevailed over the caution and formality of the courtier, who afterwards returned the fidelity of Horace with conduct less resembling the patron than the friend. He presented him with an estate in the Sabine territory, which has been commonly thought to be the same with the Tiburtian villa,3 to which the poet frequently alludes. The whole history of Maecenas indeed exhibits aversion to hasty decision, and steadiness of action where he had once decided. By Maecenas Horace was recommended to Augustus, with whom, 1 2 Sat. vi. 40. 2 2 Sat. vi. 37. 3 The reasons for distinguishing these places will be found at length in Tate's Horatius Restitutus, Prel. Diss. Part II. They are plausible, but scarcely demonstrative. See on Horace's Villa a list of authorities in Obbarius (Einleitung zu Horaz, Anm. 27), who inclines to think the Tiburtian villa a residence of Maecenas (Anm. 28). HORACE. — HIS CHARACTER. 71 according to Suetonius, or the writer of the life ascribed to that Horace, historian, he lived on terms of the closest familiarity. How far His he was qualified for the intimacy of princes, he has not left us character. in doubt. That wonderful versatility, which, in the genius of Horace, produced such diversified poetical excellence, seems to have extended to his inclinations. He appears to have enjoyed, with equal intensity, the tranquillity of literary rural seclusion, and the social refinements of the court and city. He could pass, even with delight, from the luxurious table of Maecenas, and the intellectual conversation of Pollio, Yarius, and Virgil, to his rustic beans and bacon, and the old wives' tales of his country neighbour Cervius. l So sensible indeed was he of inconsistency in this respect, that he has put a severe censure of himself, on this very account, into the mouth of one of his own slaves.2 And yet he has, perhaps, accused himself rashly. There is no inconsistency in admiring Eaphael and Teniers ; and the true poetic mind finds elements of beauty, and matter of pleasing contemplation, in every phase of human and inanimate nature. The country, in truth, was the home of Horace's heart : the city having no further attractions for him than such as friendship and literature presented ; and when he could enjoy these by his rural hearth, the proud mistress of the world had parted with all her charms. On his conduct at the court of Augustus, his epistles to Sceeva and Lollius form an admirable commentary. Even in the former of these he admits that a life of obscurity is no misfortune, although he prefers an honourable intercourse with the great. Prom the precepts which he affords for the conduct of every part of life, and from his known familiarity with Augustus, we may conclude, that, in all his transactions with that prince, he was neither importunate nor servile ; that, while loaded with honours, he made no degrading compromise — no unseasonable solicitation : but either complied with freedom, or dissented with modesty and respect. An analysis of the several productions of Horace is foreign to His rvritings. the nature of this work ; we shall notice therefore such only as bear on his biography and the literary history of the time. But, before this is done, it will be convenient to premise a few words on the departments of poetry which he especially cultivated. We have already offered a conjecture in explanation of his repeated claim to the importation of lyric poetry from Greece. To this we may add the undisguised contempt which he entertained for Catullus, and the consciousness of his own great superiority. Indeed, Quinctilian, with an enthusiasm which his subject amply odes. justifies, designates him "lyricorum fere solus legi digitus" But Horace, as we observed in the first part of this memoir, had much 1 1 Sat. vii 89} ecqq. - Ibid. ii. 7. 72 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. more substantial claims to originality than those which he so osten- tatiously put forth; his metres, the introduction of which he so proudly vaunts, are Greek, and, as far as may be conjectured from extant Greek fragments, considerably restricted; but his subjects breathe all the freshness of original conception. Nor can it be objected that the loss of their models allows us no criterion of their excellence ; since many are purely Eoman in sentiment and allusion, while others are totally unlike what ancient authors lead us to conclude respecting the strains of the Lesbian lyre. The elegant negligence of Anacreon, the daring and magnificent sublimity of Pindar, and the plaintive melancholy of Simonides, alternate in the odes of Horace ; but it is the spirit alone of these writers that we recognise ; and it is probable that his imitations of Alcseus and Sappho were of the same nature. At most, they seem to have been that kind of happy adaptation, which is not to be found in the Eclogues of Virgil, and which gives the beauties of an original to an acknowledged imitation. As an illustration of what we mean, we will here adduce a fragment of Alcseus, manifestly corrupt, but which Horace certainly had before his mind when he wrote the IXth Ode of his 1st Book : Tet fihis 6 2Seus, e/c 5' bpavoo tU€yas Xei/naj/, ireirdyacnv 0' vdarwu poai. Ka/3/3aAAe rbu ^et^wz/1, inl filv ridels Uvp, eV Se Kipvais olvov acpeiSeoos Mehixpow avrap ajxcpl tcSpaa MaXdaKov a/jLiTLTLdei yvacpaWov' Yet every Eoman must have felt the originality and domestic senti- ment of Horace's picture, as strongly as we participate in the social cheerfulness of Cowper's snug and curtained fireside. The XXXVIIth Ode of the same Book has been partially imitated from an Ode of Alcseus, beginning : Nvv XPV fJicdvCKeiv, Kal riua npos (Slav Y Tllvetv, iireidri K&rBave MvpaiAos' But the whole spirit of the composition is essentially Eoman, and the magnificent description of Cleopatra stamps it original. The XVIIIth Ode of the same 1st Book is, probably, one of the closest 1 If the reading be, as some give it, X^6va Trpbs @tav TIaleiv, the imitation is yet closer. But the term libera marks the occasion, and the Roman spirit of indignant liberty spurning the riven chain. HORACE. EPODES. 73 imitations of Alcreus in the whole volume : the first line of it is a Horace. strict translation from a passage of Alcseus preserved in Athenseus : MTjSei/ aWo (pvrevcrys irpSr^puu dzi/Speov a/j.Tr€\co' But the u solum Tiburis" and the "mania Catili" domesticate this poem with peculiar felicity. There is another species of poetry of which Horace claims the iambics, or introduction; the Iambic. The word "iambi" separately taken, hpodcs- conveyed a very different idea to the ancients from that of the mere iambic measure ; an idea which the Epodes of Horace express more clearly than any definition. The lambograpliia formed a distinct department of poetry ; approaching indeed to the lyric, and yet distinguished from it by Horace himself.1 The object of Horace in writing his iambics, as declared by himself, was to express the spirit of Archilochus without his malignity : 2 Parios ego primus Iambos Ostendi Latio : nurneros animosque sequutus Archilochi ; non res, et agentia verba Lycamben. Yet the bitterness of Archilochus, we may observe in passing, does, ; notwithstanding, occasionally prevail; and Lycambes was not, perhaps, more keenly assailed than Menas, Msevius, and Canidia ; [to the last of whom, and her daughter, the poet is thought to apologise in the XVIth Ode of his 1st Book. Cassius Severus is even warned to beware of the fate of Lycambes : Cave, cave ! namque in malos asperrimus Parata tollo cornua, Qualis Lycambce spretus infido gener. 3 Catullus and Bibaculus wrote iambics ; still, as Quinctilian informs us,4 they were not professed iambographers, and perhaps Horace did not consider their works of this nature sufficiently perfect to entitle them to notice. But the more probable ground of Horace's assumption is that he first introduced the epode ; for we learn from Quinctilian that it did not appear in the iambics of Catullus or Bibaculus.5 It is true that the Epode Hymns of Lucilius are men- tioned ; but these were, in all probability, compositions widely removed from the Horatian Epode ; perhaps written in the Pindaric fineasures.6 The " Parii iambi " are, therefore, those forms of the 1 2 Ep. ii. 59. 2 Art. Poet. 259. 3 Epod. vi. 11. 4 Inst. Oat. x. 1. ' Such appears to be the meaning of the sentence : " Iambus non sane a Romanis celebratum est ut proprium opus : a quibusdam interpositus : cujus acerbitas in Catullo, Bibaculo, Horatio ; quanquam illi epodos intervenire reperiatur." The word illi seems more applicable to " Horatio n than to " iambo." There is no epode poem in the works of Catullus, as now extant. 3 'E/T^oai and 5E7r^5ol are very different. The former are stanzas added to 74 AUGUSTAS LATIN POETRY. Horace. iambic measure which the book of Epodes exhibits. Gesner quotes a passage from the Enchiridion of Hephaestion which places this matter beyond a doubt.1 Ela-l de kv rot? TToir^xadi ku\ ol dpprjvUcos ovtcd KoXovfievot, €7ro)5oi, orav pcyaXcp oti^o) irtpiTTov tl cnKpepeTai, Ethics and Criticism. Tlarep Au/ca,u/3a, iroiov icppdaco roSe ; Ti eras Traprjeipe (ppevas ; The quotation is from Archilochus, and is exactly the same metre with Ibis Libumis inter alta navium, Amice, propugnacula. The epode is not necessarily iambic, but is a name applied to any metre consisting of a longer and shorter line alternately. Of this measure Archilochus is the reputed inventor, as is expressly asserted by Terentianus Maurus : 2 Hoc [epodon] doctum Archilochum tradunt genuisse magistri ; Tu mihi, Flacce, sat es : " Diffugere nives : redeunt jam gramina campis, Arboribusque comse." Marius Yictorinus is no less explicit : Archilochus primus Epodos excitavit, alios breviores, alios longiores, detrahens unum pedem seu colum metro, tit illi subjiceret id quod ex ipso detractum esse videba- tur. Horatius ejus exemplum sequutus est in ed Ode : " Solvitur acris hyems grata, vice Veris et Favoni ; Trahuntque siccas niaehinse carinas." From these testimonies it appears that the Parian or Archilochian iambic was the epode : of which Horace was the earliest Latin writer. Bassus was afterwards celebrated for his iambics, as we find from Ovid : 3 " Bassus quoque clarus lambo" The division of Horace's Poems remaining to be noticed is his Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry, which are all referable to one head, that of familiar and moral discourses or essays. The original spirit of these productions has gone far towards supporting the hypothesis, that the old Saturce and the Ennian Satire were wholly of Roman origin. Without the slightest appearance of dictation or assumed authority, they contain more real good sense, sound morality, and true philosophy, than perhaps any single work of heathen antiquity : and their frequent perusal has a tendency to the strophe and antistrophe ; the latter, poems in which a shorter verse is added to the longer. The derivation of both is from e7ra5«, accino. 1 In lib. Epod. Horatii. 2 Terentianus has been made, absurdly enough, to call Archilochus the inventor of epic poetry ! See Bayle's Dictionary, Art. Archilochus, note (k). 3 Trist. 10. HORACE. — ETHICAL AND CRITICAL WRITINGS. 75 make the reader satisfied with himself and others, and to produce Horace. on his part a conduct at once conciliatory towards the world, and consistent with his own independence and integrity. They are well described by Persius : — Omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico Tangit, et admissus circum praecordia ludit, Callidus excusso populum suspcndere nasoJ Their character has been exquisitely drawn by one who had imbibed [ a large portion of their spirit : 2 Horace still charms with graceful negligence, And without method talks us into sense ; Will, like a friend, familiarly convey The truest notions in the easiest way. He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ, Yet judg'd with coolness, tho' he sang with fire; His Precepts teach but what his Works inspire. ; Another more diffuse and general character of his writings is con- tained in the following stanzas of De la Motte : — Qu'Horace connut bien l'elegance Romaine ! II met le vrai dans tout son jour, Et l'admiration est toujours incertaine Kntre la pensee et le tour. Sublime, familier, solide, enjou£, tendre, Aise, profond, naif, et fin ; Digne de l'univers ; Funivers, pour l'entendre, Aime a redevenir Latin. There is, however, an observable distinction between the Satires •and the Epistles. The former, as Bahr3 has remarked, possess ;more of the objective character, the latter are more subjective : in (the former, the poet takes his cue commonly from objects or events 1 around him ; in the latter, he speaks more from himself. The Epistles, too, are, for the most part, graver and more regular in their matter, as well as more ornate in their diction. Their form, and the period of their composition, concur to produce this dis- tinction. AVe will not do our readers the injustice to withhold the elegant and truthful criticism of Dean Milman 4 on this portion of Dean [the works of Horace : — " Of him it may be said, with regard to the JJjJSJJgJl 'most perfect form of his poetry, the Epistles, that there is a period in the literary taste of every accomplished individual, as well as of |every country, not certainly in ardent youth, yet far from the decrepitude of old age, in which we become sensible of the extra- 1 Sat. i. 118. - Essay on Crit. 653. 3 Geschicht. der R. L. II., § 125, 126. 4 Life of Horace prefixed to his edition. of his writing! 70 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Horace. ordinary and indefinable charm of these wonderful compositions. It seems to require a certain maturity of mind ; but that maturity by no means precludes the utmost enjoyment of the more imaginative poetry." chronology It would scarcely be possible, even if profitable, in a work like the present, always to adjust the chronology of even the most celebrated pieces which Eoman antiquity has left us ; but that of Horace's writings may seem to demand some more especial notice, inasmuch as it has not only exercised the industry and research of critics, but some idea of it is absolutely necessary to the due comprehension and appreciation of these precious remains. Bentley asserts that Horace not only published each book separately ; but even that he was never engaged in lyric and satiric poetry at the same time ; that he never wrote an ode while he was employed in completing a book of satires, epistles, or epodes. With respect to the publication, there is every reason to suppose that it took place in separate books, and that Bentley's arrangement is substantially correct. Canon Tate, in his " Horatius Restitutus," adopts it implicitly. The high authority of Mr. Fvnes Clinton, while allowing that " the dates of Bentley (which are given upon conjecture), are, in some cases, at variance with facts," admits the general exactness of the great critic. " And it is probable," he adds, " that although these works were originally published in books, and in the order assigned by Bentley ', yet, in the present copies, some pieces may have been transposed. 1 But Bentley entered little into the feelings of a poet, especially a poet of Horace's cast, in supposing that so various and versatile a genius could sit down to the composition of a book of odes or satires, and never deviate from the line which he prescribed. Such an hypothesis is contradictory to all the history of poetical genius, and to every external and internal evidence connected with the writings of Horace. Though Bentley's chronology has been sharply assailed by continental scholars, the confirmation of the " Fasti Hellenici " may amply compensate his memory for the severest attacks. He has, at least, established the order of publication almost beyond dispute ; and this is not unimportant. His criticisms, derived from a comparison of external history with the contents of the Horatian poems, have received confirmation from a quarter which even his sagacity did not anticipate. Canon Tate has clearly demon- strated, from a comparison of the first three books of Odes with the fourth, that the versification is more artificially constructed in the latter, and that time and practice had produced a more sensitive ear and a severer taste. We subjoin a scheme of chronology according to several high authorities. 1 Fast. Hell a. c. 37. HORACE. — MODE OF LIFE. 7 7 Bentley. 1 Bi'rnlmnly. Kirchncr. Obbarius. GrototVml. Paaww. Frankc. Mihnan. lR.it, . . I7.C, 71171.: 718 71!) )..,_ \ 710 715-719 713-714 718-719 719 2 Sat 719-7*21 720-727 s' '~ j 724 7i>:> 724 728-724 719-724 722-724 Epodes .... 722 728 713-724' 718-724: 712-723 715-723 723 713 721 725 1 Od 724 -726 ) f \-v, -oo ") 2 0d 72S 72!) I 734 -^715-736 730-732 724-730 ^tia~ta6 1730-731 3 0d 730-731 J i 786 J 1 Ep 734-735 733 727-739 734-735 733-737 720-734 730-734 735 Carm. Sec, • An* — ai\ * ^^7 737 787 737 737 787 737 4 Od |WM* (aft. 789 730-744 742 738-746 737 737-741 741 2 Ep aft. 740 >_,.-._,„ ( 741-743 ) rt „Ai (733-737 )_.,._., _„0 _._ Ars.Poet. . bef.740 }^3-4b j 744-740 )att '41 j aft. 737 pt-M« - 12 i 16 To return to the subject of our biography. Horace Seven years had elapsed from his first acquaintance with Maecenas Mode of life. when Horace composed the YIth satire of his Ilnd book ; he was then settled in his Tiburtian villa, enjoying poetical and philosophical leisure, and in possession of more than his wishes. It was in this dignified retirement that he became " noble in iEolian song," 3 and, while he was within sight of the waywardness and vanity of man- Tivoli. — Temples of Vesta and the Sioyl. kind, was yet too fin above their atmosphere to imbibe its splenetic contagion, and lose his temper and happiness in the survey ; his own failings bore their due proportion in the picture ; and, while he treated them with no more indulgence than those of others, he 1 The dates of Bentley are corrected to what he himself intended, from Clinton, who shows that he has committed a prochronism of one year. (Fast. Hell. A. d. 17.) The last year mentioned is that of publication. - Time of writing. Publication somewhat later. 3 4 Od, iii. 12, 78 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Virgil. Eclogues. endeavoured, in sowing the fertile soil of his mind, to disencumber it of whatever weeds might impede its culture. l While Horace, from circumstances which promised very different results, was thus enjoying the favour of the great, and the approbation of the wise, Virgil was no less studious of the opportunities which his own good fortune had given him of enriching his country's literature. His local situation, added to his mode of living, had engendered in him a strong perception of the pleasures of rural life. The beauties of Theocritus, therefore, were deeply felt by him, and we have already noticed the 1st and IXth Eclogues, in which he attempted to convey their spirit in his native tongue. Martyn, however, conjectures that the Alexis and FalcFYiioii were the earliest in point of Virgil. composition, from the following passage in the Bajjhds : Hac nos te fragili donabimus ante cicuta : Haec nos : " Formosum Condon ardebat Alexin \" Haec eadem docuit : u Cujuui pecus? an Meliboei?" He then makes the Dcqj/nils the third in order. His argument is : "As the poet does not give the least hint here of his having composed any other, it seems probable that these were the three first Eclogues which our author composed.5 ' 2 The subject is scarcely of sufficient importance to demand a formal refutation of Martyn's argument, which is certainly defective. Suffice it to state that about this time the Bucolics were completed. We shall prefer taking a sketch of the Bucolic Muse, as she appeared attired in the Latian garb by the hand of Virgil. Xo department of Greek Poetry promised less to the Latin imitator than the Pastoral. The poems of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, are distinguished by a simplicity equally remote from epic majesty and sordid rusticity. Every charm of the country has been rifled to adorn them, and almost every deformity carefully concealed. If the Eomans were unfortunate in possessing no Attic dialect for dramatic expression, the want of a Doric was a still greater obstacle to success in the Pastoral. This dialect at once removed the reader from the town, while it afforded the Muse every facility of utterance. The lordly language of Imperial Borne was ill suited to convey the unpremeditated effusions of unlettered herdsmen. If Virgil, therefore, has fallen very far short 1 Hor. 1 Ep. xiv. 5. 2 On the order of the Eclogues, see Bahr. Gesch. d. Rom. Lit. §. 187, and the references. HORACE. — VIRGIl/s ECLOGUES 79 of his great prototype, the difficulty of his attempt must not be VirgiL forgotten. Indeed, he appears not insensible of it himself ; and, by the nature of the language in which he composed, he has been compelled to abandon his original intention, and to attempt loftier flights than the nature of Pastoral Poetry strictly justifies. The Eclogues of Virgil possess one remarkable characteristic : they are allegories. This at once introduces a great difference between them and the Theocritean Idyl. The allegorical veil is, sometimes, allowed to fall, and the shepherds who represent the Poet and his friends converse like scholars and philosophers. It has been a great question, whether the Alexis partakes of this Alexis. figurative character ; many are of opinion that it is merely an imitation of the 'Epaor?)? of Theocritus ; while others, who discover Virgil in Corydon, yet believe the poem an offering to friendship. The latter opinion we consider inadmissible. All the grammarians identify the poet with Corydon ; but the real name of Alexis is a matter of considerable doubt. The opinion mentioned by Servius, that Augustus was intended, scarcely deserves to be noticed. Some make Alexis to have been Alexander, a slave of Pollio ; but most probably he belonged to Maecenas. Although it would be perhaps impossible distinctly to remove this imputation from Virgil,1 Juvenal, most assuredly, did not make any allusion to it in the following lines, which Dryden has most grossly amplified and perverted : a si Virgilio puer et tolerabile deesset Hospitium, caderent oinnes e crinibus hydri, — Surda nihil genieret grave buccina. There are many difficulties in believing this to have been the first of A irgil's compositions, on the supposition of Alexis being the slave either of Maecenas or Augustus ; inasmuch as, in that case, it must 1 Donatus observes, " Boni ita eum pueros aniasse putaverunt, at Socrates Alcibiadem, et Plato suos pueros." — V'tt. Virg. 20. Charity " hopeth all things ;" but the state of heathen morality, even among the most intellectual and refined, was such as to allow and indulge abominations which, in any professedly Christian society, however rude, would cover their perpetrators with infamy : and whatever may have been the conduct of Virgil, Horace, Catullus, Tibullus, and others, they have not hesitated to follow Greek examples of this nature in their writ inns. It is, however, right to observe that the Roman poets generally claimed the privilege of bad morals on paper, while they renounced it in act. See in particular Catull. xvii. ; Ovid. Trist. ii. 154 ; Mart. i. 15 ; Plin. Epist. iv. 14 ; and Hadrian's epitaph onVoconius. Profligate literature was no disgrace, rather otherwise, even when ; a profligate life would have been infamous. The peculiarity of Virgil's case, however, is, that he makes no such apology for himself, and, indeed, needs it less, perhaps, than any of his extant contemporaries ; while yet his identity with his "Corydon" appears, from external evidence, to be indubitable. On this account his memory bears a stain which those of Horace and Tibullus, who have written as offensively, have commonlv escaped. ■ Sat. vii. 69. 80 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Vergil. have been written before we have any account of Virgil's acquaint- ance with either. That Virgil intended himself by Cory don, was believed by his contemporary Propertius, who also identifies him with Tityrus.1 Martial and Apulejus make no doubt of it.2 Foiiio. But the most extraordinary composition of Virgil is his Pollio, a poem which has been the subject of endless conjecture. The much litigated and unsettled question, " whom was it intended to commemorate ? " we shall pass over, as not materially connected with our subject ; only observing that this honour has been ascribed to the young Marcellus, to a son of Pollio, to a son of Augustus, to Asinius Gallus, to Drusus, and, lastly, even to Augustus himself.3 What is principally worthy of notice is, that this poem exhibits a coincidence with the Sacred Writings too close to be fortuitous. That the Greeks had acquired, indirectly, some acquaintance with the histories of the Hebrew Scriptures, is not to be doubted ; as Hesiod and Ovid, the expounders of their theology, have clearly discovered it ; and it is probable that Theocritus, at the Court of Ptolemy, had seen the Sacred Volume, and even borrowed its phraseology. But, in this poem, Virgil only imitated Theocritus in the structure of the composition ; for, with one or two exceptions, there is no similarity in details, which, in Virgil, resemble an epitome of Scripture prophecies of the Messiah. Though much of the fabulous history of the early world is corrupted from Holy Scripture, the Greeks, in general, were ignorant of its source, and were too much possessed with a contempt for " barbarian" literature to study, much less to imitate, the Hebrew writers. The universal contempt entertained for the Jews at Rome made it still less probable that their literature would meet imitation, or even perusal, there. An intelligent writer,4 indeed, imagines that he has dis- covered an avowal, on the part of Virgil, of his intention to avail himself of the treasures of Hebrew poetry, in the line 5 Primus Idumaeas referarn tibi, Mantua, palmas ; but to this it is only necessary to reply, that the line cited was not written until after the Pollio was composed. The inquirer must, therefore, advance on other ground, than that of supposing that Virgil accommodated the prophetic Scriptures to his purpose. The poet has, indeed, given us a clue in our inquiries ; he has asserted that his prophecies are taken from the verses of the Cumsean Sibyl. The fable of the Sibyl's interview with Tarquin is well 1 2 Elcg. xxx iv. 73. 2 Mart. viii. 56, v. 16; Apul. Apolog. i. 13. 3 The last opinion is maintained at great length, in a work entitled, M Obser- vations in Illustration of Virgil's celebrated Fourth Eclogue." London, 1810. 4 Notes on the " Caliph Vathck." 5 Georg. iii. 12. HORACE. — YIRGIl/s POLLIO. 81 known. The books which she was supposed to have given to the Virgfl. Komans were destroyed in the conflagration of the Capitol daring the Marsian war ; emissaries were then despatched by the Senate throughout Italy, Greece, Asia, and the coasts of Africa, to collect the best authenticated prophecies of the various Sibyls ; and the collection thus made was called " Oumaum Carmen'' because it was compiled to supply the loss of the writing of the Cumivan Sibyl. In this miscellany it is nothing improbable that prophecies of the great Person then about to appear should be found ; especially when it is recollected that Tacitus and Suetonius have borne witness to the general expectation of such a Person then prevalent in the East.1 It is also remarkable that ^Elian mentions the Jewish sibyl, together with the CumaBan ; 2 her oracles, therefore, which were, probably, in substance the same as the prophetical writings, were likely to be in the collection. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the authority of Yarro, asserts that such of the prophecies as were not genuine, were written in acrostichs.3 Eusebius has preserved a pretended acrostich oracle of the Erythraean Sibyl, the initial letters of which form the words IH20Y2 XPI2T02 '©EOT TI02 2OTHP 2TATP02; but this is, evidently, a forgery on the bare inspection. We have aap£ used for mankind, ddcoXa for idols, and in one place the very words of Scripture have been quoted : " Qprjvos r Ik TTCLVTUtV kdTLU KCU (SpVyfJLOS oboVTCDV." CoilStailtilie, ill his " \6yOS TO) Tutu ay'iuv o-vWoyco " gives a very elaborate interpretation of the Pollio, with a Greek translation of the greater part of it, and asserts that the oracle, whence it was taken, was translated by Cicero into Latin verse, and annexed to his poems. We have now no trace of this translation, if it ever existed : but it is a curious circumstance, that Cicero informs us that the Sibylline oracles did predict a King, and were written in acrostichs.4 If any name were mentioned in them, it must have been Cornelius ; as we find from Cicero,5 Sallust,6 Plutarch,7 and Appian, that the pretence which Lentulus adduced for his connexion with Catiline was a Sibylline prophecy, por- tending that the Empire of Koine was to be given to three Cornelii ; that China and Sylla were the two former, and the third was to be himself. It is by no means improbable that, among the prophecies copied from the Jewish Scriptures, or gleaned from Jewish tradition, which were, in all probability, found among the Sibylline writings, the great subject of prediction was called ^ pg, the power of God* which would, assuredly, have been translated Cornelius by the Romans. 1 Tac. V. Hist. ix. Suet. Yespas. iv. ■ Antiq. Rom. iv. 62. c Var. Hist. xii. 35. 4 De Div. ii. 54. Cf. etiaui Quinct. v. 10. 5 3 Cat. iv. 6 Bell. Cat. 7 Vit. Cie. 8 Christ is called " the power of God " in 1 Cor. i. 24 ; and Kepas mg) aooTTipias in St. Luke, i. 69. The number three, thus applied, may have been derived from some Old Testament intimations of the Holy Trinity. [r. l.] g 82 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Virgil. The author of the ingenious and elaborate Observations, who conceives that Yirgil meant to refer the Sibyl's prediction to Augustus, imagines the whole poem to be a metrical horoscope, and discovers a clear explanation of every expression and allusion contained in it, by a reference to the phraseology of astrological art. How far this author is bigoted to hypothesis, may be conjectured from his application of the following lines to the sign Aries : Ipse sed in pratis Aries jam suave rubenti Murice, jam croceo mutabit vellera luto. Two lines before occurs the verse Robustus quoque jam Tauris juga solvet arator; and there can be no doubt that the same ingenuity, had this line followed those above cited, would have given an equally convincing interpretation of tauris. Any mind unsophisticated by hypothesis cannot fail to perceive that the poet is describing a time of universal opulence and rest, when agriculture and commerce should be alike unnecessary : and when the ram in the meadows (not in the skies,) should wear his fleece, without the dyer's labour, attired in the most costly and splendid colours.1 Daphnis. That the Daphnis was composed, like Milton's Lycidas, to commemorate the death of some real person, is scarcely to be doubted. That Menalcas represents Virgil is evident from the conclusion, wherein he states himself to be the author of two of Virgil's Eclogues. Mopsus, according to Servius, is iEmilius Macer of Verona, who wrote a poetical history of serpents, plants, and birds, in imitation of Nicander, and a supplement to the Iliad, called Antehomerica and Posthomerica. Bernhardy, Bahr, and others, after Wernsdorf, attribute, however, the epic and didactic poems to different writers of the same name.2 If Daphnis be a personification, Julius Caesar is the only person whom the character can pourtray, as Heyne justly observes : although he believes the poem to be merely a commemoration of the celebrated Sicilian shepherd. Servius and Donatus make Daplinis the poet's brother Flaccus. An uncertain epigrammatist has the following distich : Tristia fata tui dum fles in u Dapbnidc " Flacci, Docte Maro, fratrem Dis imruortalibus a?quas. Oalius. Virgil concluded his Bucolics with an elegant compliment to 1 The reader desirous of prosecuting the subject of Virgil's Pollio is referred to the following works : Heyne's Virgil ; Cudworth's Intellectual System, book i. c. iv. sec. 16 ; Martyn's Virgil ; and Blondel, De Sibyllis. 2 Bernhardy, Grundriss der Rom. Lit. Anm. 434 ; Aeussere Geschichte, 83. Bahr, Geschichte der Rom. Lit. § 83 ; Wernsdorf, Poett. Latt. Minn. torn. iv. p. 579. HORACE. VIRGIl/s ECLOGUES. — CALLUS. 83 Cornelius Gallus, a celebrated contemporary poet, born at Forum Virgil. Julii, in Gaul, about Virgil's own age, and his fellow pupil under Syron, consoling him for the loss of his Lycoris, whom the old commentators assert to have been an actress, whose real name was Cytheris. She was the freed-woman of Volumnius Eutrapelus, and took the name of Volumnia. As she was familiar with Antony, the old commentators have supposed that she deserted Gallus to accompany Antony on his Gallic expedition. Heyne, however, in his argument of the Gallus, has shown, from chronological considerations, that this could not be the case. The genuine poems of Gallus, with the exception of a few fragments, are lost. They consisted of four books of elegies, called Amoves or Lycoris, and a translation of Eupkorion, as we learn from Servius. A pretended edition of the works of Gallus was published by Pomponio Gaurico, at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; but the fraud was soon detected in Italy, and Tiraboschi attributes these poems, 1 according to common report, to a certain Maximinian, who flourished in the time of Boetius. As an elegiac poet, Gallus ranked very high in public opinion. Ovid speaks of his fame as universal ; Propertius and Martial have borne testimony to his excellence ; and Yirgil, in his beautiful and extraordinary YIth Eclogue, has panegyrised his Euphorion in the noblest strains of mythological eulogy. Yirgil had also, according to Servius, celebrated his praises in the conclusion of his Georgics. Gallus was no less distinguished as a warrior than as a poet ; he was of great service to Augustus in the Egyptian war, and assisted in securing the person of Cleopatra. He was, in consequence, constituted the first prefect of Egypt. Here he appears to have conducted himself with arrogance and insolence. He was afterwards condemned to banishment by the command of Augustus, on suspicion of having conspired against him ; a sentence which, however, the poet anticipated by a voluntary death, u. c. 728 ; and Yirgil, at the instance of the emperor, substituted for his eulogy on Gallus the fable of Aristmts. The publication of Yirgil's Bucolics created a powerful sensa- tion in literary Rome. The grammarians tell us that they were recited on the stage ; 2 and that, on one occasion, when Cicero was present in the theatre, and heard some verses of the Silenus recited by Cytheris, he called for the whole eclogue, and, when he had heard it through, exclaimed, "Magna spes altera Rcma." This cannot be true, for Cicero was then dead : but we have better authority for the truth of the honours publicly lavished on Yirgil. Erom the author of the Dialogue de Oratoribus'6 we learn that, when some verses of Yirgil were recited on the stage, and the poet 1 Storia, part. iii. lib. iii. sec. 27. 2 Donat. in Vit. Virg. ; Serv. in Eel. vi. 11. 3 Dial, de Orat. xiii. G 2 84 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Horace and happened to be present, all the spectators rose, and paid him the Virgil. same marks of respect which they would have shown to Augustus. Propertius l has celebrated the conclusion and publication of the Bucolics, and Ovid2 has foretold their immortality. Following the chronology of Bentley, which we have in the main adopted, we must refer the publication of Horace's 1st Book of Satires to nearly the same date with that of Virgil's Bucolics. We shall presently have to notice a different opinion. In the Xth Satire of that Book, Horace gives the following sketch of the poetical proceedings of the day : Turgidus A Ipinus jugulat duin Memnona, dumque Diffingit Rheni luteuni caput, haec ego ludo : * * ♦ te * * * * Arguta meretrice potes, Davoque Chremeta Eludente scnena, coinis garrire libellos, Unus vivoruin, Fundani. Pollio reguin Facta canit pede ter percusso. Forte epos acer Ut nemo, Varius ducit : inolle atque facetum Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Caincenae. If Bentley's chronology be correct, there can be no foundation for the remark with which Heyne opens his preface to the Georgics : " Ad Georgica facetum illud ac molle, quod peculiarl aliquo Musarum munere Virgilio concessum esse Horatius memo rat, proprio quodam Tiiodo spectare videtur." It may not be irrelevant to estimate the force of this eulogy on Virgil, by reference to the exposition of Quiuctilian. "Facetum" says the critic, " non tantum circa ridicula opinor consistere. Nee enim diceret Flora ti 'its, facetum carminis genus naturd concessum esse Virgilio. Decoris lianc tnagis et excultce cujusdam elegantus appellationem puto. Fdeoque m Epistolis Cicero hoc Bruti verba refert : iue Mi sunt pedes faceti, ac deliciis i?igre- dU'iiti molles. Quod convenit cum illo Horatiano, molle atque facetum Virgilio" fyc. 3 Some light may be thrown on the poetical history of the period, by an examination of this concise review. This, therefore, we shall take, before we proceed with what more immediately relates to the subject of our biography. Aipiuus. Who "Alpinus" was, is a question as yet undecided. Priscian4 mentions an Alpinus who wrote a poem on the exploits of Pompey. Dacier and Torrentius suppose him to be Aulus Cornelius Alpinus, who wrote a tragedy, intituled Me union, in imitation of one bearing the same name by iEschylus, and that he is here sarcastically said to have murdered the hero, and anticipated the stroke of Achilles. The Scholiast says that the Memnon was an hexameter poem. The word Alpinus, however, is generally considered, by commentators, 1 ii. ZA. 2 1 Am. 12. 3 Quiuct. vi. 3. 4 vii. 5. HORACE. — CONTEMPORARY POETS. S5 to be the designation of the poet's country, the Alps, and, taken Horace and in this sense, it is applicable to many. Crnqnins, without the "^ shadow of an argument, refers it to Cornelius Gallus. Acron inter- prets the appellation of Yivalius, which Bentley and Sanadon conjecture to be a corruption of Bibaculus, of whom they suppose Alpinus a nickname. M. Furius Bibaculus, to whom we have Bibaculus. before alluded as the writer of many small pieces, was also the author of a poem on the Gallic wars, * a verse of which has been preserved by Horace and Quinctilian ; the former of whom has noticed the bombastic character of his style : pingui tentus omaso Furius " hybernaa cam! nive conspuit Alpes : " the epithet here applied corresponds to " turgid '? vi> n€ 3 ii# 4 Ep. ex Pont. iv. 10. 5 x. 1. 6 Suasor. 1. 7 v. 5. 82 Eleg. i. 90 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Horace and Virgil. Cassius of Parma. Aut regum auratis circumdata colla catenis, Actiaque in sacrd currere rostra via, Te mea Musa illis semper contexeret armis, Et sumta et posita pace, fidele caput. But this would equally prove that Maecenas took part in the battle of Philippi. The IXth Epode has been thought by some to favour the opinion that Maecenas accompanied Augustus ; and Desprez, in his notes on that poem, deliberately tells the reader that it was addressed to Maecenas in his absence on that occasion. The student, by consulting the poem itself, will find nothing, however, positive about the situation of Maecenas at that time. To this poem, to the very elaborate analysis given by Masson, in his Life of Horace, and to the answer of Dacier, prefixed to his edition of the poet, the reader desirous of more precise information on this subject is referred. Horace was, at this time, about thirty-six years of age ; so that, if Bentley's chronology of his works be true, the 1st Book of his Satires had seen the light eight years. Masson, however, refers the Xth Satire of that Book to this date, relying, principally, on his account of the death of Cassius of Parma, who was reported, according to this passage, to have been burned with his books. Cassius of Parma was put to death at this time at Athens, by the direction of Augustus, for having espoused the cause of Antony. We should rather be disposed, as scholars now generally are, to refer what Horace here says to another Cassius, than disturb the chronology of Bentley. Whoever he was, it is nothing wonderful that his books should supply him with a funeral pile, when it is considered that he was in the habit of composing four hundred verses every day. Of Cassius of Parma Horace speaks expressly in his epistle to Tibullus : Quid nunc te dicam facere in regione Pedana ? Scribere quod Cassi Parmensis opuscula vincat? These verses are understood seriously and ironically by different critics. The word " opuscula" however, is sufficiently descriptive of his poems, which were chiefly elegies or epigrams. The Scholiasts on Horace attribute to him tragedies also, and relate that Yarus, who was sent to execute on Cassius the orders of Augustus, embezzled his papers, and from them produced the tragedy of Thyestes. This is the celebrated work which has been before mentioned, as the production of Varius, of whom we have had occasion to speak, and who has here been confounded, as in other places, with Varus. The grammarians, however, as if determined to deprive Yarius of the credit of this tragedy, have attributed it to Virgil. l A poem called Orpheus, consisting of nineteen lines, 1 Donat. Vit. Virg. xx. ; Serv. in Eel. iii. HORACE. VIRGIL. GEORGICS AND yENEID. 91 and which, if genuine, must have been only a fragment of a larger Virgil. composition, was given to the world by Achilles Statius, as the work of Cassius of Parma, discovered among the Bruttii. But as Statius did not condescend to enter minutely on the evidences of its genuineness, there is every reason to believe that it was a forgery.1 | The poem may be found, with numerous illustrative references, in the second volume of Wernsdorf's comprehensive and accurate edition of the Latin minor poets. To the year following the battle of Actium, the completion of the Georgics is commonly assigned. At what time the JEtieid The 2Em\d. was first projected, is uncertain; but Virgil, like our Milton, appears from a very early period to have had a strong desire of composing an epic poem, and, like him also, to have been long undecided on his subject. That he had attempted something of the kind, before the eclogues were finished, is evident from these verses in his Sllenus : Quum canerem reges et prcelia, Cynthius aurem Vellit, et admonuit, — and his ambition to produce some work of distinguished excellence is attested by the ardent exclamation in the opening of the Illrd Georgic : Tentanda via est, qua me quoque possim Tollere humo, victorque viruin volitare per ora. Even in his Cidex, which he is said to have written at fifteen years of age, he gives promise of higher things : Posterius graviore sono tibi Musa loquetur Nostra, dabunt quuin securos mihi tempora fructus Ut tibi digna tuo poliantur carmina sensu. He is said to have begun a metrical chronicle of the Alban kings, but afterwards to have desisted in consequence of the harshness of the names. 2 After the completion of the Georgics, or, perhaps, some short time before, he laid down the plan of a regular epic on the wanderings of iEneas, and the Roman destinies ; to form a sort of continuation of the Iliad to the Eoman times, The Tlind and to combine the features of that poem and the Odyssey. The an idea was sufficiently noble, and the poem, long before its publication, or even conclusion, had obtained the very highest reputation. While Virgil was employed on the JEneid, " quo nullum Latlo clarlus exstat opus" Propertius wrote with generous admiration : Cedite, Romani scriptores ! cedite, Graii ! Nescio quid majus nascitur Iliade ! 1 Bernhardy attributes it to Antonio Telesio the Neapolitan. (Grundriss der Rom. Lit. Anm. 320.) 2 Donat. Vit. Virg. viii. ; Serv. in Eel. vi. 92 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Virgil. Augustus, while absent on his Cantabrian campaign, wrote repeatedly to Virgil for extracts from his poem in progress ; but the poet declined, on the ground that his work was unworthy the perusal of the prince. The correspondence is recorded by Macrobius, in the 1st Book of the Saturnalia; but its genuineness is very questionable. It would be palpably superfluous, in a work of this nature, to attempt an elaborate criticism on this great poem, familiar from their childhood to all persons of education. Most scholars are agreed that it wants the natural freshness and freedom of Homer, while it exhibits a degree of art, elegance, and majesty never attempted in any poem, save the Georgics of its author. It may, however, be pertinent to remark, that, smooth and uniform as its surface seems, it is really, in great measure, mosaic. That Virgil should have translated whole passages out of Homer, or even the Alexandrine writers, is no matter of censure : he and his contem- poraries would have thought the absence of such " purpurei panni" a defect ; and the high authorities of Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, and Milton ratify their opinion. But the same cannot be said of plagiarisms from Latin authors. How unscrupulously he appropriated whole verses of Ennius, of Lucretius, of Lucilius, of even his friend Varius, and of others, the curious reader may find in the Vlth Book of Macrobius's Saturnalia, which will abundantly repay his perusal. It may be right to add that the JEneid is a most conspicuous evidence of the learning, diligence, and antiquarian research of its illustrious author. I1 Availing himself of the pride and superstition of the Eoman people, which never abounded more than during the Augustan age, the poet traces the origin and establishment of the " eternal city " to those heroes and actions which had enough in them of what was human and ordinary to excite the sympathy of his countrymen ; intermingled with persons and circumstances of an extraordinary and superhuman character, to awaken their admiration and their awe. No subject could have been more happily chosen. It has been admired too for its perfect unity of action ; for while the episodes command the richest variety of description, they are always subordinated to the main object of the poem, which is to impress the divine authority under which iEneas first settled in Italy. The wrath of Juno, upon which the whole fate of iEneas seems at first suspended, is at once that of a woman and a goddess : the passion of Dido, and her general character, bring us nearer the present world ; but the poet is continually introducing higher 1 The portion bracketed is taken, with slight alterations, from the article jEneid, formerly printed in the lexicographical part of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana. The writer is unknown to the present editor. HORACE. — YIKGir/s 2ENEID. 93 and more effectual influences, until, by the intervention of the Virgil father of gods and men, the Trojan name is to be continued in the Koman, and thus heaven and earth are appeased. Hinc genus, Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget, Supra homines, supra ire Deos pietate videbia ; Nee gens ulla tuos a?que celebrabit honores. Annuit his Juno, et menteui laetata retorsit. ^F/hid, xii. 841. The style, for sweetness and for beauty, occasionally, and in the author's finished passages, surpasses almost every other production of antiquity. "I see no foundation," says Dr. Blair, "for the opinion entertained by some critics that the Mneld is to be considered as an allegorical poem, which carries a constant reference to the character and reign of Augustus Caesar ; or that Virgil's main design' in composing the JEueid, was to reconcile the Romans to the government of that prince, who is supposed to be shadowed out under the character of .Eneas He had sufficient motives, as a poet, to determine him to the choice of his subject, from its being in itself both great and pleasing ; from its being suited to his genius, and its being attended with peculiar advantages for the full display of poetical talents. " l The first six books of the ^Eueid are the most elaborate part of the poem. The imperfections of the Mneid are alleged to be want of originality in some of the principal scenes, and defectiveness in the exhibition of character. That of Dido is by far the most decided and complete. But Yoltaire has justly observed upon the strange confusion of interest excited by the story of the wTars in Italy, in which one is continually tempted to espouse the cause of Turnus rather than that of .Eneas ; and to which the exquisite scenes for displaying the tenderness of the poet in narrating the story of Lavinia, seem to have been his only temptation.] On his return from the Cantabrian expedition, debilitated by exertion and disease, it is probable that Augustus wrote to Maecenas the letter mentioned by Suetonius in his Life of Horace, in which he offered the poet the office of his private secretary. "Ante" says he, "ipse sufficiebam scribendis epistotis amicorurn : nunc occupatissimus et infirm us Ho rati urn nostrum te cupio adducere. Veniat igitur ab istd parasitica mensd ad lianc rer/iam, et nos in scribendis epistolis juvabit." Horace declined the offer : and the emperor, so far from discovering the least resentment, continued towards him his friendship and familiarity. In the letters which he afterwards addressed to him, he entreated him to assume the liberties of an intimate associate, and, with a felicity wThich only the Greek expression can attempt, courted his acquaintance : " neauesi 1 Lectures on Rhetoric, vol. iii. 94 AUGUSTAN LATIN POETRY. Virgil. ut superbus amicitiam nostram sprevisti, ideo nos quoque avOvnep- (f)pOVOV[JL€V.,n For five years after the return of Augustus, Horace continued to enjoy an uninterrupted tranquillity, in the most perfect conceiv- able independence, although mingling with the utmost intimacy among the great and powerful, who sought his society even to obsequiousness. At the end of this period an event occurred which forms a prominent feature both in the biography of the poet, and in the poetical history of the time. Yirgil, who had just revised and altered the Bucolics and Georgics, with a view to giving the ultimate polish to the 2Eheid> which he had now com- pleted, projected a tour in Greece and Asia. With a dread almost prophetic, and an ardour not disproportionate, Horace addressed the ship which bore his departing friend : Sic te Diva potens Cypri, Sic fratres Helenae, lucida sidera, Ventorumque regat pater, Obstrictis aliis, praeter Iapyga, Navis, quae tibi creditum Debes Virgilium, finibus Atticis Reddas incolumem, precor, Et serves animae dimidium meae ! 2 So speed thee Cyprus' goddess bright, So Helen's brethren, those twin lords of light ; So the great sire of every wind, None, save the soft North-west, for thee unbind — O bark, I thee implore, Thy charge, my Virgil, to the Attick shore In safety waft across the wave, And thus the half of my existence save ! At Athens Virgil met with Augustus, who was returning from Samos, where he had wintered after his Syrian expedition, to Home. Changing his former intention, Yirgil determined to accompany his patron. On a visit to Megara he was seized with a sudden indisposition, which his voyage increased, and he died a few days after his arrival at Brundusium, in his fifty-second year. On his Death of death-bed he earnestly desired that his JEneid might be burned, and even left in his will an injunction to that effect. Being, however, informed by the celebrated Varius and Plotius Tucca, (the same who is mentioned by Horace, in his journey to Brun- dusium,) that Augustus would not permit the destruction of his poem, he left it to them to publish, on condition that they would make no additions to the text, even for the purpose of supplying an unfinished verse. How far his executors were faithful to their 1 Or b.i/Qvirep't]