If any one asks me, Where
is Merobaudes?
is Merobaudes?
Oxford Book of Latin Verse
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Title: The Oxford Book of Latin Verse
From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A. D.
Author: Various
Editor: Heathcote William Garrod
Release Date: January 6, 2012 [EBook #38503]
Language: English
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The Oxford Book Of Latin Verse
From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A. D.
Chosen by
H. W. Garrod
Fellow of Merton College.
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
FIRST PUBLISHED 1912
REPRINTED 1921, 1926, 1934, 1940 1943, 1947, 1952, 1964, 1968
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
The plan of this book excludes epic and the drama, and in general so
much of Roman poetry as could be included only by a licence of excerpt
mostly dangerous and in poetry of any architectonic pretensions
intolerable. If any one remarks as inconsistent with this plan the
inclusion of the more considerable fragments of Ennius and the early
tragedians, I will only say that I have not thought it worth while to be
wiser here than Time and Fate, which have of their own act given us
these poets in lamentable excerpt. A more real inconsistency may be
found in my treatment of the didactic poets. It seemed a pity that
Didactic Poetry--in some ways the most characteristic product of the
Roman genius--should, in such a Collection as this, be wholly
unrepresented. It seemed a pity: and it seemed also on the whole
unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary, for the reason that many of the
great passages of Lucretius, Vergil, and Manilius hang so loosely to
their contexts that the poets themselves seem to invite the gentle
violence of the excerptor. These passages are 'golden branches' set in
an alien stock--_non sua seminat arbos_. The hand that would pluck them
must be at once courageous and circumspect. But they attend the fated
despoiler:
Ergo alte uestiga oculis et rite repertum
carpe manu, namque ipse uolens facilisque sequetur
si te fata uocant.
Even outside Didactic Poetry I have allowed myself an occasional
disloyalty to my own rule against excerpts. I have, for example,
detached one or two lyrics from the Tragedies of Seneca. And, again,
from the long and sometimes tedious _Itinerarium_ of Rutilius I have
detached the splendid apostrophe to Rome which stands in the forefront
of that poem. These are pieces without which no anthology of Latin
poetry would be anything but grotesquely incomplete. And after all we
should be the masters and not the slaves of our own rules.
Satire finds no place in this book. Horace is represented only by his
lyrics. Juvenal and Persius are not represented at all. The _Satires_
and _Epistles_ of Horace are books of deep and wide influence. They have
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world. They
have made an appeal to natures which teaching more profound and
spiritual leaves untouched. By their large temper and by their complete
freedom from cant they have achieved a place in the regard of men from
which they are not likely to be dislodged by any changes of literary
fashion or any fury of the enemies of humane studies. I am content to
leave them in this secure position, and not to intrude them into a
Collection where Horace himself would have known them to be out of
place. Indeed, he has himself said upon this subject all that needs to
be said. [1] Persius similarly, in the Prologue to his _Satires_,
excludes himself from the company of the great poets. Nor can I believe
that Juvenal has any place among them. In the rhetoric of rancour he is
a distinguished practitioner. But he wants two qualities essential to
great poetry--truth and humanity. I say this because there are critics
who speak of Juvenal as though he were Isaiah.
My Selection begins with fragments of the Saliar hymns, and ends with
the invocation of Phocas to 'Clio, reverend wardress of Antiquity. ' If I
am challenged to justify these _termini_, I will say of the first of
them that I could not begin earlier, and that it is commonly better to
take the beginnings offered to us than to make beginnings for ourselves.
The lower _terminus_ is not so simple a matter. I set myself here two
rules. First, I resolved to include no verse which, tried by what we
call 'classical' standards, was metrically faulty. Secondly, I judged it
wiser to exclude any poetry definitely Christian in character--a rule
which, as will be seen, does not necessarily exclude all the work of
Christian poets. Within these limits, I was content to go on so long as
I could find verse instinct with any genuine poetic feeling. The author
whose exclusion I most regret is Prudentius. If any one asks me, Where
is Merobaudes? where Sedulius? where Dracontius? I answer that they are
where they have always been--out of account. Interesting, no doubt, in
other ways, for the student of poetry they do not count. Prudentius
counts. He has his place. But it is not in this Collection. It is among
other memories, traditions, and aspirations, by the threshold of a world
where Vergil takes solemn and fated leave of those whom he has guided
and inspired:
Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno.
I have spent a good deal of labour on the revision of texts: and I hope
that of some poems, particularly the less known poems, this book may be
found to offer a purer recension than is available elsewhere. I owe it
to myself, however, to say that I have sometimes preferred the
convenience of the reader to the dictates of a rigorous criticism. I
have thought it, for example, not humane to variegate the text of an
Anthology with despairing _obeli_: and occasionally I have covered up an
indubitable lacuna by artifices which I trust may pass undetected by the
general reader and unreproved by the charitable critic.
H. W. G.
_Oxford, Sept. 2, 1912. _
INTRODUCTION
I
Latin poetry begins where almost all poetry begins--in the rude
ceremonial of a primitive people placating an unknown and dreaded
spiritual world. The earliest fragments are priestly incantations. In
one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of
lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god
of pestilence and blight (_lues rues_). The gods are most dreaded at the
seasons most important to a primitive people, seed-time, for example,
and harvest. The Salii celebrated Mars at seed-time--in the month which
bears his name, _mensis Martius_. The name of the Arval Brethren betrays
their relation to the gods who watch the sown fields. The aim of this
primitive priestly poetry is to get a particular deity into the power of
the worshipper. To do this it is necessary to know his name and to use
it. In the Arval hymn the name of the god is reiterated--it is a spell.
Even so Jacob wished to know--and to use--the name of the god with whom
he wrestled. These priestly litanies are accompanied by wild dances--the
Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'--and by the clashing of
shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which
they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained
the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse
falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil
of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering
to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual.
But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in
the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic
word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final
syllable. [2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is
important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for
the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.
The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the
people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as
happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a
different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the
harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine
poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the
priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the
name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine
poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it
takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine
verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the
harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin
poetry--drama and satire.
There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death
demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments
of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic
dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay.
They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who
placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably
mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to
particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a
late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into
disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an
institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in
Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was
sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully
selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to
propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers
disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony
becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the
vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the
tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its
early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of
written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us:
even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than
the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we
pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3]
to Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_. Yet between the
work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable
literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may
serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known
to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth
century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius
a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and
important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.
The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure
that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the
first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what
does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what
may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his
_Odyssey_ he had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely
the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still
used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman
literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard
him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall
probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the
reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that
the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that
they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had
done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own
for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius--and the patriotic
nobles whose ideals he represented--saved Rome. It is significant that
in his translation of the _Odyssey_ he employs the old Saturnian
measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic
upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself
Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well
mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin
phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius
represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in
which he alludes scornfully to the _Punica_ of Naevius as written 'in
verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is,
of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the
hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler
Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since
naturalized in Rome--perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the
abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five
centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from
those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the
Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his
concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin
language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was
made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly
contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of
the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to
learn Greek.
Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues--the
Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three
hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three
elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to
it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it
owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is
Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals
conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three
elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of
development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of
the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece.
The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force
is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of
Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued
to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not
wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The
second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism
is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy--the
period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry.
The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical
name in it is that of Catullus--for Lucretius is, as it were, a last
outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine
movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian
(perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt
against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal
perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final
conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The
typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman
_ciuitas_, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through
Apollonius.
It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy
(which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that
Roman poetry reaches its culmination--and at the same time begins to
decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius
and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were
natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus--and, later, Propertius--were
Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas,
Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia
Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian
_municipia_ new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in
strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry
failed--or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to
be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it
was not before--imitative; that is to say it now for the first time
reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But
observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying,
there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer--_save
Vergil himself_. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass,
without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman
poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant,
graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work
seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets
of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a
Spanish origin has been--perhaps hastily--conjectured for Silius.
Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul. [4] Rome's rôle in the world
is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else
_urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat_.
If we are to understand the character, then, of Roman poetry in its best
period, in the period, that is, which ends with the death of Augustus,
we must figure to ourselves a great and prosaic people, with a great and
prosaic language, directing and controlling to their own ends spiritual
forces deeper and more subtle than themselves. Of these forces one is
the Greek, the other may for convenience be called the Italian. In the
Italian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we
must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably
Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence.
No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without
feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again--despite its
Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism--how un-Greek. It is
not Greek and not Roman, and we may call it Italian for want of a better
name. The effects of this Italian quality in Roman poetry are both
profound and elusive; and it is not easy to specify them in words. But
it is important to seize them: for unless we do so we shall miss that
aspect of Roman poetry which gives it its most real title to be called
poetry at all. Apart from it it is in danger of passing at its best for
rhetoric, at its worst for prose.
Ennius is a poet in whom the Roman, as distinct from the Italian,
temperament has asserted itself strongly. It has asserted itself most
powerfully, of course, in the _Annals_. Even in the _Annals_, however,
there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an
Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Italian. And a good deal
more.
If any one asks me, Where
is Merobaudes? where Sedulius? where Dracontius? I answer that they are
where they have always been--out of account. Interesting, no doubt, in
other ways, for the student of poetry they do not count. Prudentius
counts. He has his place. But it is not in this Collection. It is among
other memories, traditions, and aspirations, by the threshold of a world
where Vergil takes solemn and fated leave of those whom he has guided
and inspired:
Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno.
I have spent a good deal of labour on the revision of texts: and I hope
that of some poems, particularly the less known poems, this book may be
found to offer a purer recension than is available elsewhere. I owe it
to myself, however, to say that I have sometimes preferred the
convenience of the reader to the dictates of a rigorous criticism. I
have thought it, for example, not humane to variegate the text of an
Anthology with despairing _obeli_: and occasionally I have covered up an
indubitable lacuna by artifices which I trust may pass undetected by the
general reader and unreproved by the charitable critic.
H. W. G.
_Oxford, Sept. 2, 1912. _
INTRODUCTION
I
Latin poetry begins where almost all poetry begins--in the rude
ceremonial of a primitive people placating an unknown and dreaded
spiritual world. The earliest fragments are priestly incantations. In
one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of
lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god
of pestilence and blight (_lues rues_). The gods are most dreaded at the
seasons most important to a primitive people, seed-time, for example,
and harvest. The Salii celebrated Mars at seed-time--in the month which
bears his name, _mensis Martius_. The name of the Arval Brethren betrays
their relation to the gods who watch the sown fields. The aim of this
primitive priestly poetry is to get a particular deity into the power of
the worshipper. To do this it is necessary to know his name and to use
it. In the Arval hymn the name of the god is reiterated--it is a spell.
Even so Jacob wished to know--and to use--the name of the god with whom
he wrestled. These priestly litanies are accompanied by wild dances--the
Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'--and by the clashing of
shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which
they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained
the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse
falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil
of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering
to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual.
But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in
the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic
word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final
syllable. [2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is
important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for
the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.
The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the
people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as
happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a
different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the
harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine
poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the
priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the
name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine
poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it
takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine
verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the
harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin
poetry--drama and satire.
There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death
demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments
of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic
dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay.
They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who
placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably
mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to
particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a
late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into
disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an
institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in
Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was
sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully
selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to
propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers
disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony
becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the
vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the
tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its
early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of
written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us:
even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than
the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we
pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3]
to Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_. Yet between the
work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable
literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may
serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known
to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth
century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius
a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and
important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.
The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure
that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the
first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what
does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what
may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his
_Odyssey_ he had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely
the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still
used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman
literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard
him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall
probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the
reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that
the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that
they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had
done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own
for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius--and the patriotic
nobles whose ideals he represented--saved Rome. It is significant that
in his translation of the _Odyssey_ he employs the old Saturnian
measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic
upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself
Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well
mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin
phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius
represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in
which he alludes scornfully to the _Punica_ of Naevius as written 'in
verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is,
of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the
hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler
Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since
naturalized in Rome--perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the
abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five
centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from
those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the
Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his
concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin
language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was
made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly
contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of
the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to
learn Greek.
Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues--the
Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three
hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three
elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to
it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it
owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is
Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals
conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three
elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of
development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of
the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece.
The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force
is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of
Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued
to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not
wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The
second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism
is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy--the
period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry.
The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical
name in it is that of Catullus--for Lucretius is, as it were, a last
outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine
movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian
(perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt
against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal
perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final
conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The
typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman
_ciuitas_, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through
Apollonius.
It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy
(which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that
Roman poetry reaches its culmination--and at the same time begins to
decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius
and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were
natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus--and, later, Propertius--were
Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas,
Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia
Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian
_municipia_ new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in
strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry
failed--or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to
be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it
was not before--imitative; that is to say it now for the first time
reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But
observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying,
there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer--_save
Vergil himself_. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass,
without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman
poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant,
graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work
seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets
of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a
Spanish origin has been--perhaps hastily--conjectured for Silius.
Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul. [4] Rome's rôle in the world
is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else
_urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat_.
If we are to understand the character, then, of Roman poetry in its best
period, in the period, that is, which ends with the death of Augustus,
we must figure to ourselves a great and prosaic people, with a great and
prosaic language, directing and controlling to their own ends spiritual
forces deeper and more subtle than themselves. Of these forces one is
the Greek, the other may for convenience be called the Italian. In the
Italian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we
must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably
Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence.
No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without
feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again--despite its
Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism--how un-Greek. It is
not Greek and not Roman, and we may call it Italian for want of a better
name. The effects of this Italian quality in Roman poetry are both
profound and elusive; and it is not easy to specify them in words. But
it is important to seize them: for unless we do so we shall miss that
aspect of Roman poetry which gives it its most real title to be called
poetry at all. Apart from it it is in danger of passing at its best for
rhetoric, at its worst for prose.
Ennius is a poet in whom the Roman, as distinct from the Italian,
temperament has asserted itself strongly. It has asserted itself most
powerfully, of course, in the _Annals_. Even in the _Annals_, however,
there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an
Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Italian. And a good deal
more. But it is in the tragedies--closely as they follow Greek
models--that the Italian element is most pronounced. Take this from the
_Alexander_:
adest, adest fax obuoluta sanguine atque incendio:
multos annos latuit, ciues, ferte opem et restinguite.
iamque mari magno classis cita
texitur, exitium examen rapit:
adueniet, fera ueliuolantibus
navibus complebit manus litora.
Mr. Sellar has called attention to the 'prophetic fury' of these lines,
their 'wild agitated tones'. They seem, indeed, wrought in fire. Nor do
they stand alone in Ennius. Nor is their fire and swiftness Roman. They
are preserved to us in a passage of Cicero's treatise _De Diuinatione_:
and in the same passage Cicero applies to another fragment of Ennius
notable epithets. He speaks of it as _poema tenerum et moratum et
molle_. The element of _moratum_, the deep moral earnestness, is Roman.
The other two epithets carry us outside the typically Roman
temperament. Everybody remembers Horace's characterization of Vergil:
molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae.
Horace is speaking there of the Vergil of the Transpadane period: the
reference is to the _Eclogues_. The Romans had _hard_ minds. And in the
_Eclogues_ they marvelled primarily at the revelation of temperament
which Horace denotes by the word _molle_. Propertius, in whose Umbrian
blood there was, it has been conjectured, probably some admixture of the
Celtic, speaks of himself as _mollis in omnes_. The _ingenium molle_,
whether in passion, as with Propertius, or, as with Vergil, in
reflection, is that deep and tender sensibility which is the least Roman
thing in the world, and which, in its subtlest manifestations, is
perhaps the peculiar possession of the Celt. The subtle and moving
effects, in the _Eclogues_, of this _molle ingenium_, are well
characterized by Mr. Mackail, when he speaks of the 'note of brooding
pity' which pierces the 'immature and tremulous cadences' of Vergil's
earliest period. This _molle ingenium_, that here quivers beneath the
half-divined 'pain-of-the-world', is the same temperament as that which
in Catullus gives to the pain of the individual immortally poignant
expression. It is the same temperament, again, which created Dido.
Macrobius tells us that Vergil's Dido is just the Medea of Apollonius
over again. And some debt Vergil no doubt has to Apollonius. To the
Attic drama his debt is far deeper; and he no doubt intended to invest
the story of Dido with the same kind of interest as that which attaches
to, say, the Phaedra of Euripides. Yet observe. Vergil has not
_hardness_ enough. He has not the unbending righteousness of the tragic
manner. The rather hard moral grandeur of the great Attic dramatists,
their fine spiritual steel, has submitted to a strange softening
process. Something melting and subduing, something neither Greek nor
Roman, has come in. We are passed out of classicism: we are moving into
what we call romanticism. Aeneas was a brute. There is nobody who does
not feel that. Yet nobody was meant to feel that. We were meant to feel
that Aeneas was what Vergil so often calls him, _pius_. But the Celtic
spirit--for that is what it is--is over-mastering. It is its
characteristic that it constantly girds a man--or a poet--and carries
him whither he would not. The fourth _Aeneid_ is the triumph of an
unconscionable Celticism over the whole moral plan of Vergil's epic.
I will not mention Lesbia by the side of Dido. The Celtic spirit too
often descends into hell. But I will take from Catullus in a different
mood two other examples of the Italic romanticism. Consider these three
lines:
usque dum tremulum mouens
cana tempus anilitas
omnia omnibus annuit,
--'till that day when gray old age shaking its palsied head nods in all
things to all assent. ' That is not Greek nor Roman. It is the
unelaborate magic of the Celtic temperament. Keats, I have often
thought, would have 'owed his eyes' to be able to write those three
lines. He hits sometimes a like matchless felicity:
She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die,
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.
But into the effects which Catullus just happens upon by a luck of
temperament Keats puts more of his life-blood than a man can well spare.
Take, again, this from the _Letter to Hortalus_. Think not, says
Catullus, that your words have passed from my heart,
ut missum sponsi furtiuo munere malum
procurrit casto uirginis e gremio,
quod miserae oblitae molli sub ueste locatum,
dum aduentu matris prosilit, excutitur;
atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu,
huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor,
--'as an apple, sent by some lover, a secret gift, falls from a maid's
chaste bosom.
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Title: The Oxford Book of Latin Verse
From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A. D.
Author: Various
Editor: Heathcote William Garrod
Release Date: January 6, 2012 [EBook #38503]
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The Oxford Book Of Latin Verse
From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A. D.
Chosen by
H. W. Garrod
Fellow of Merton College.
Oxford
At the Clarendon Press
FIRST PUBLISHED 1912
REPRINTED 1921, 1926, 1934, 1940 1943, 1947, 1952, 1964, 1968
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
The plan of this book excludes epic and the drama, and in general so
much of Roman poetry as could be included only by a licence of excerpt
mostly dangerous and in poetry of any architectonic pretensions
intolerable. If any one remarks as inconsistent with this plan the
inclusion of the more considerable fragments of Ennius and the early
tragedians, I will only say that I have not thought it worth while to be
wiser here than Time and Fate, which have of their own act given us
these poets in lamentable excerpt. A more real inconsistency may be
found in my treatment of the didactic poets. It seemed a pity that
Didactic Poetry--in some ways the most characteristic product of the
Roman genius--should, in such a Collection as this, be wholly
unrepresented. It seemed a pity: and it seemed also on the whole
unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary, for the reason that many of the
great passages of Lucretius, Vergil, and Manilius hang so loosely to
their contexts that the poets themselves seem to invite the gentle
violence of the excerptor. These passages are 'golden branches' set in
an alien stock--_non sua seminat arbos_. The hand that would pluck them
must be at once courageous and circumspect. But they attend the fated
despoiler:
Ergo alte uestiga oculis et rite repertum
carpe manu, namque ipse uolens facilisque sequetur
si te fata uocant.
Even outside Didactic Poetry I have allowed myself an occasional
disloyalty to my own rule against excerpts. I have, for example,
detached one or two lyrics from the Tragedies of Seneca. And, again,
from the long and sometimes tedious _Itinerarium_ of Rutilius I have
detached the splendid apostrophe to Rome which stands in the forefront
of that poem. These are pieces without which no anthology of Latin
poetry would be anything but grotesquely incomplete. And after all we
should be the masters and not the slaves of our own rules.
Satire finds no place in this book. Horace is represented only by his
lyrics. Juvenal and Persius are not represented at all. The _Satires_
and _Epistles_ of Horace are books of deep and wide influence. They have
taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world. They
have made an appeal to natures which teaching more profound and
spiritual leaves untouched. By their large temper and by their complete
freedom from cant they have achieved a place in the regard of men from
which they are not likely to be dislodged by any changes of literary
fashion or any fury of the enemies of humane studies. I am content to
leave them in this secure position, and not to intrude them into a
Collection where Horace himself would have known them to be out of
place. Indeed, he has himself said upon this subject all that needs to
be said. [1] Persius similarly, in the Prologue to his _Satires_,
excludes himself from the company of the great poets. Nor can I believe
that Juvenal has any place among them. In the rhetoric of rancour he is
a distinguished practitioner. But he wants two qualities essential to
great poetry--truth and humanity. I say this because there are critics
who speak of Juvenal as though he were Isaiah.
My Selection begins with fragments of the Saliar hymns, and ends with
the invocation of Phocas to 'Clio, reverend wardress of Antiquity. ' If I
am challenged to justify these _termini_, I will say of the first of
them that I could not begin earlier, and that it is commonly better to
take the beginnings offered to us than to make beginnings for ourselves.
The lower _terminus_ is not so simple a matter. I set myself here two
rules. First, I resolved to include no verse which, tried by what we
call 'classical' standards, was metrically faulty. Secondly, I judged it
wiser to exclude any poetry definitely Christian in character--a rule
which, as will be seen, does not necessarily exclude all the work of
Christian poets. Within these limits, I was content to go on so long as
I could find verse instinct with any genuine poetic feeling. The author
whose exclusion I most regret is Prudentius. If any one asks me, Where
is Merobaudes? where Sedulius? where Dracontius? I answer that they are
where they have always been--out of account. Interesting, no doubt, in
other ways, for the student of poetry they do not count. Prudentius
counts. He has his place. But it is not in this Collection. It is among
other memories, traditions, and aspirations, by the threshold of a world
where Vergil takes solemn and fated leave of those whom he has guided
and inspired:
Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno.
I have spent a good deal of labour on the revision of texts: and I hope
that of some poems, particularly the less known poems, this book may be
found to offer a purer recension than is available elsewhere. I owe it
to myself, however, to say that I have sometimes preferred the
convenience of the reader to the dictates of a rigorous criticism. I
have thought it, for example, not humane to variegate the text of an
Anthology with despairing _obeli_: and occasionally I have covered up an
indubitable lacuna by artifices which I trust may pass undetected by the
general reader and unreproved by the charitable critic.
H. W. G.
_Oxford, Sept. 2, 1912. _
INTRODUCTION
I
Latin poetry begins where almost all poetry begins--in the rude
ceremonial of a primitive people placating an unknown and dreaded
spiritual world. The earliest fragments are priestly incantations. In
one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of
lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god
of pestilence and blight (_lues rues_). The gods are most dreaded at the
seasons most important to a primitive people, seed-time, for example,
and harvest. The Salii celebrated Mars at seed-time--in the month which
bears his name, _mensis Martius_. The name of the Arval Brethren betrays
their relation to the gods who watch the sown fields. The aim of this
primitive priestly poetry is to get a particular deity into the power of
the worshipper. To do this it is necessary to know his name and to use
it. In the Arval hymn the name of the god is reiterated--it is a spell.
Even so Jacob wished to know--and to use--the name of the god with whom
he wrestled. These priestly litanies are accompanied by wild dances--the
Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'--and by the clashing of
shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which
they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained
the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse
falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil
of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering
to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual.
But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in
the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic
word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final
syllable. [2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is
important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for
the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.
The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the
people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as
happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a
different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the
harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine
poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the
priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the
name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine
poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it
takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine
verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the
harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin
poetry--drama and satire.
There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death
demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments
of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic
dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay.
They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who
placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably
mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to
particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a
late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into
disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an
institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in
Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was
sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully
selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to
propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers
disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony
becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the
vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the
tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its
early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of
written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us:
even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than
the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we
pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3]
to Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_. Yet between the
work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable
literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may
serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known
to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth
century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius
a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and
important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.
The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure
that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the
first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what
does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what
may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his
_Odyssey_ he had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely
the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still
used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman
literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard
him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall
probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the
reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that
the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that
they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had
done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own
for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius--and the patriotic
nobles whose ideals he represented--saved Rome. It is significant that
in his translation of the _Odyssey_ he employs the old Saturnian
measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic
upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself
Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well
mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin
phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius
represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in
which he alludes scornfully to the _Punica_ of Naevius as written 'in
verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is,
of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the
hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler
Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since
naturalized in Rome--perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the
abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five
centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from
those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the
Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his
concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin
language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was
made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly
contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of
the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to
learn Greek.
Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues--the
Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three
hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three
elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to
it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it
owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is
Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals
conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three
elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of
development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of
the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece.
The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force
is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of
Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued
to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not
wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The
second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism
is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy--the
period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry.
The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical
name in it is that of Catullus--for Lucretius is, as it were, a last
outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine
movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian
(perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt
against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal
perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final
conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The
typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman
_ciuitas_, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through
Apollonius.
It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy
(which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that
Roman poetry reaches its culmination--and at the same time begins to
decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius
and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were
natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus--and, later, Propertius--were
Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas,
Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia
Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian
_municipia_ new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in
strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry
failed--or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to
be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it
was not before--imitative; that is to say it now for the first time
reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But
observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying,
there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer--_save
Vergil himself_. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass,
without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman
poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant,
graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work
seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets
of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a
Spanish origin has been--perhaps hastily--conjectured for Silius.
Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul. [4] Rome's rôle in the world
is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else
_urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat_.
If we are to understand the character, then, of Roman poetry in its best
period, in the period, that is, which ends with the death of Augustus,
we must figure to ourselves a great and prosaic people, with a great and
prosaic language, directing and controlling to their own ends spiritual
forces deeper and more subtle than themselves. Of these forces one is
the Greek, the other may for convenience be called the Italian. In the
Italian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we
must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably
Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence.
No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without
feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again--despite its
Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism--how un-Greek. It is
not Greek and not Roman, and we may call it Italian for want of a better
name. The effects of this Italian quality in Roman poetry are both
profound and elusive; and it is not easy to specify them in words. But
it is important to seize them: for unless we do so we shall miss that
aspect of Roman poetry which gives it its most real title to be called
poetry at all. Apart from it it is in danger of passing at its best for
rhetoric, at its worst for prose.
Ennius is a poet in whom the Roman, as distinct from the Italian,
temperament has asserted itself strongly. It has asserted itself most
powerfully, of course, in the _Annals_. Even in the _Annals_, however,
there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an
Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Italian. And a good deal
more.
If any one asks me, Where
is Merobaudes? where Sedulius? where Dracontius? I answer that they are
where they have always been--out of account. Interesting, no doubt, in
other ways, for the student of poetry they do not count. Prudentius
counts. He has his place. But it is not in this Collection. It is among
other memories, traditions, and aspirations, by the threshold of a world
where Vergil takes solemn and fated leave of those whom he has guided
and inspired:
Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno.
I have spent a good deal of labour on the revision of texts: and I hope
that of some poems, particularly the less known poems, this book may be
found to offer a purer recension than is available elsewhere. I owe it
to myself, however, to say that I have sometimes preferred the
convenience of the reader to the dictates of a rigorous criticism. I
have thought it, for example, not humane to variegate the text of an
Anthology with despairing _obeli_: and occasionally I have covered up an
indubitable lacuna by artifices which I trust may pass undetected by the
general reader and unreproved by the charitable critic.
H. W. G.
_Oxford, Sept. 2, 1912. _
INTRODUCTION
I
Latin poetry begins where almost all poetry begins--in the rude
ceremonial of a primitive people placating an unknown and dreaded
spiritual world. The earliest fragments are priestly incantations. In
one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of
lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god
of pestilence and blight (_lues rues_). The gods are most dreaded at the
seasons most important to a primitive people, seed-time, for example,
and harvest. The Salii celebrated Mars at seed-time--in the month which
bears his name, _mensis Martius_. The name of the Arval Brethren betrays
their relation to the gods who watch the sown fields. The aim of this
primitive priestly poetry is to get a particular deity into the power of
the worshipper. To do this it is necessary to know his name and to use
it. In the Arval hymn the name of the god is reiterated--it is a spell.
Even so Jacob wished to know--and to use--the name of the god with whom
he wrestled. These priestly litanies are accompanied by wild dances--the
Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'--and by the clashing of
shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which
they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained
the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse
falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil
of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering
to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual.
But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in
the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic
word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final
syllable. [2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is
important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for
the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.
The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the
people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as
happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a
different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the
harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine
poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the
priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the
name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine
poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it
takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine
verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the
harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin
poetry--drama and satire.
There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death
demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments
of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic
dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay.
They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who
placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably
mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to
particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a
late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into
disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an
institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in
Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was
sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully
selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to
propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers
disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony
becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the
vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the
tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its
early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of
written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us:
even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than
the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we
pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3]
to Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_. Yet between the
work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable
literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may
serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known
to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth
century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius
a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and
important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.
The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure
that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the
first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what
does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what
may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his
_Odyssey_ he had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely
the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still
used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman
literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard
him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall
probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the
reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that
the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that
they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had
done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own
for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius--and the patriotic
nobles whose ideals he represented--saved Rome. It is significant that
in his translation of the _Odyssey_ he employs the old Saturnian
measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic
upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself
Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well
mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin
phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius
represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in
which he alludes scornfully to the _Punica_ of Naevius as written 'in
verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is,
of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the
hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler
Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since
naturalized in Rome--perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the
abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five
centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from
those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the
Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his
concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin
language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was
made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly
contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of
the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to
learn Greek.
Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues--the
Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three
hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three
elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to
it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it
owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is
Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals
conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three
elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of
development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of
the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece.
The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force
is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of
Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued
to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not
wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The
second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism
is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy--the
period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry.
The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical
name in it is that of Catullus--for Lucretius is, as it were, a last
outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine
movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian
(perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt
against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal
perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final
conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The
typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman
_ciuitas_, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through
Apollonius.
It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy
(which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that
Roman poetry reaches its culmination--and at the same time begins to
decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius
and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were
natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus--and, later, Propertius--were
Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas,
Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia
Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian
_municipia_ new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in
strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry
failed--or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to
be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it
was not before--imitative; that is to say it now for the first time
reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But
observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying,
there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer--_save
Vergil himself_. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass,
without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman
poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant,
graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work
seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets
of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a
Spanish origin has been--perhaps hastily--conjectured for Silius.
Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul. [4] Rome's rôle in the world
is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else
_urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat_.
If we are to understand the character, then, of Roman poetry in its best
period, in the period, that is, which ends with the death of Augustus,
we must figure to ourselves a great and prosaic people, with a great and
prosaic language, directing and controlling to their own ends spiritual
forces deeper and more subtle than themselves. Of these forces one is
the Greek, the other may for convenience be called the Italian. In the
Italian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we
must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably
Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence.
No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without
feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again--despite its
Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism--how un-Greek. It is
not Greek and not Roman, and we may call it Italian for want of a better
name. The effects of this Italian quality in Roman poetry are both
profound and elusive; and it is not easy to specify them in words. But
it is important to seize them: for unless we do so we shall miss that
aspect of Roman poetry which gives it its most real title to be called
poetry at all. Apart from it it is in danger of passing at its best for
rhetoric, at its worst for prose.
Ennius is a poet in whom the Roman, as distinct from the Italian,
temperament has asserted itself strongly. It has asserted itself most
powerfully, of course, in the _Annals_. Even in the _Annals_, however,
there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an
Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Italian. And a good deal
more. But it is in the tragedies--closely as they follow Greek
models--that the Italian element is most pronounced. Take this from the
_Alexander_:
adest, adest fax obuoluta sanguine atque incendio:
multos annos latuit, ciues, ferte opem et restinguite.
iamque mari magno classis cita
texitur, exitium examen rapit:
adueniet, fera ueliuolantibus
navibus complebit manus litora.
Mr. Sellar has called attention to the 'prophetic fury' of these lines,
their 'wild agitated tones'. They seem, indeed, wrought in fire. Nor do
they stand alone in Ennius. Nor is their fire and swiftness Roman. They
are preserved to us in a passage of Cicero's treatise _De Diuinatione_:
and in the same passage Cicero applies to another fragment of Ennius
notable epithets. He speaks of it as _poema tenerum et moratum et
molle_. The element of _moratum_, the deep moral earnestness, is Roman.
The other two epithets carry us outside the typically Roman
temperament. Everybody remembers Horace's characterization of Vergil:
molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae.
Horace is speaking there of the Vergil of the Transpadane period: the
reference is to the _Eclogues_. The Romans had _hard_ minds. And in the
_Eclogues_ they marvelled primarily at the revelation of temperament
which Horace denotes by the word _molle_. Propertius, in whose Umbrian
blood there was, it has been conjectured, probably some admixture of the
Celtic, speaks of himself as _mollis in omnes_. The _ingenium molle_,
whether in passion, as with Propertius, or, as with Vergil, in
reflection, is that deep and tender sensibility which is the least Roman
thing in the world, and which, in its subtlest manifestations, is
perhaps the peculiar possession of the Celt. The subtle and moving
effects, in the _Eclogues_, of this _molle ingenium_, are well
characterized by Mr. Mackail, when he speaks of the 'note of brooding
pity' which pierces the 'immature and tremulous cadences' of Vergil's
earliest period. This _molle ingenium_, that here quivers beneath the
half-divined 'pain-of-the-world', is the same temperament as that which
in Catullus gives to the pain of the individual immortally poignant
expression. It is the same temperament, again, which created Dido.
Macrobius tells us that Vergil's Dido is just the Medea of Apollonius
over again. And some debt Vergil no doubt has to Apollonius. To the
Attic drama his debt is far deeper; and he no doubt intended to invest
the story of Dido with the same kind of interest as that which attaches
to, say, the Phaedra of Euripides. Yet observe. Vergil has not
_hardness_ enough. He has not the unbending righteousness of the tragic
manner. The rather hard moral grandeur of the great Attic dramatists,
their fine spiritual steel, has submitted to a strange softening
process. Something melting and subduing, something neither Greek nor
Roman, has come in. We are passed out of classicism: we are moving into
what we call romanticism. Aeneas was a brute. There is nobody who does
not feel that. Yet nobody was meant to feel that. We were meant to feel
that Aeneas was what Vergil so often calls him, _pius_. But the Celtic
spirit--for that is what it is--is over-mastering. It is its
characteristic that it constantly girds a man--or a poet--and carries
him whither he would not. The fourth _Aeneid_ is the triumph of an
unconscionable Celticism over the whole moral plan of Vergil's epic.
I will not mention Lesbia by the side of Dido. The Celtic spirit too
often descends into hell. But I will take from Catullus in a different
mood two other examples of the Italic romanticism. Consider these three
lines:
usque dum tremulum mouens
cana tempus anilitas
omnia omnibus annuit,
--'till that day when gray old age shaking its palsied head nods in all
things to all assent. ' That is not Greek nor Roman. It is the
unelaborate magic of the Celtic temperament. Keats, I have often
thought, would have 'owed his eyes' to be able to write those three
lines. He hits sometimes a like matchless felicity:
She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die,
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.
But into the effects which Catullus just happens upon by a luck of
temperament Keats puts more of his life-blood than a man can well spare.
Take, again, this from the _Letter to Hortalus_. Think not, says
Catullus, that your words have passed from my heart,
ut missum sponsi furtiuo munere malum
procurrit casto uirginis e gremio,
quod miserae oblitae molli sub ueste locatum,
dum aduentu matris prosilit, excutitur;
atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu,
huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor,
--'as an apple, sent by some lover, a secret gift, falls from a maid's
chaste bosom.
