No More Learning

With the complete Latinizing of Italy the growth of Hellenizing went hand in hand. In the higher circles of Italian society Greek training became an integral
181- element of their native culture. The consul of 623, the pontzfix maximur Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment
even of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he delivered his judicial decisions, as the case required, some times in ordinary Greek, sometimes in one of the four dialects which had become written languages. And if the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards the east, Hellenic literature and art now began to look towards the west. Not only did the Greek cities in Italy continue to maintain an active intellectual intercourse with Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the Greek poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like recognition and the like honours among themselves; in Rome also, after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth
146. at his triumph in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recrea tions of the Greeks—competitions in wrestling as well as in music, acting, reciting, and declaiming—came into vogue. 1 Greek men of letters even thus early struck root in the noble society of Rome, especially in the Scipionic circle, the most prominent Greek members of which—the historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius—belong rather to the history of Roman than of Greek development. But even in other less illustrious circles similar relations occur; we may mention another contemporary of Scipio, the philosopher Clitomachus, because his life at the same time presents a vivid view of the great intermingling of
1 The statement that no “ Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 146. 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (rexvf'rar) and I86. athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix. 22), and Greek flute-players, 167 tragedians, and pugilists in 587 (P01. xxx. 13).
can. an AND EDUCATION
r93
nations at this epoch. A native of Carthage, then -a disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards his suc cessor in his professorship, Clitomachus held intercourse from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the historian Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedi cated on the one hand a scientific work to Lucius Censorinus the Roman consul who opened the siege of Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic consolatory treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to Italy
as slaves. While Greek literary men of note had hitherto taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors, exiles, or otherwise, they now began to settle there; for instance, the already-mentioned Panaetius lived in the house of Scipio, and the hexameter-maker Archias of Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and supported himself 102. respectably by the art of improvising and by epic poems
on Roman consulars. Even Gaius Marius, who hardly understood a line of his carmen and was altogether as ill adapted as possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid patronizing the artist in verse. While intellectual and literary life thus brought the more genteel, if not the purer, elements of the two nations into connection with each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops of slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immi gration from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the coarsest strata of Hellenism-largely alloyed with Oriental and generally barbaric ingredients-—into contact with the Italian proletariate, and gave to that also a Hellenic colour ing. The remark of Cicero, that new phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence more widely difi‘used.
The immediate result of this complete revolution in the
VOL xv
113
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, nook IV Mixture of relations of nationality was certainly far from pleasing.
People'
194
Italy swarmed with Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews,
while the provinces swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress of utilitarianism. What the Latin character gained in diffusion it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure cosmopolitan. Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed by the litera ture of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest, and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described
as Latin, than as Roman. That the Italian Hellenism of
the lower orders was in reality nothing but a repulsive
National decomposi tion.
Egyptians,
tainted at once with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially whitewashed barbarism,
is self-evident ; but even in the case of the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not remain the permanent standard. The more the mass of society began to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to work as little as possible. In this sense the Arpinate landlord Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth, the more he understood Greek.
This national decomposition like the whole age, far from pleasing, but also like that age significant and
cosmopolitanism
is,
czar. xu AND EDUCATION
195
momentous. The circle of peoples, which we are ac customed to call the ancient world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting essen tially on Hellenic elements. Over the ruins of peoples of the second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities conclude mutual peace. The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand on a. footing of equality—restricted, it is true, and imperfect— with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter. The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once a Roman and a Greek.
The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual inter penetration of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national education, literature, and art.
The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with Religion. the Roman commonwealth and the Roman household—so thoroughly in fact the pious reflection of the Roman bur gess-world—that the political and social revolution neces
sarily overturned also the fabric of religion. The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground; over its ruins rose --like the oligarchy and the tyranm'r rising over the ruins of the political commonwealth—on the one side unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals. The
germs
Greek philosophy.
I96
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK 1v
certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social revolution also, may be traced back to the previous epoch
Even then the Hellenic culture of the higher circles was secretly undermining their ancestral faith ;
Ennius introduced the allegorizing and historical versions of the Hellenic religion into Italy; the senate, which subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the transference of the worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome, and to take the most serious steps against other still worse superstitions, particularly the Bacchanalian scandal. But, as during the preceding period the revolution generally was rather pre paring its way in men’s minds than assuming outward shape, so the religious revolution was in substance, at any rate, the work only of the Gracchan and Sullan age.
Let us endeavour first to trace the tendency associating itself with Hellenism. The Hellenic nation, which bloomed and faded far earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed the epoch of faith and thenceforth moved exclusively in the sphere of speculation and reflection; for long there had been no religion there—nothing but philosophy. But even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind had, when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left the epoch of productive speculation far behind and had arrived at the stage at which there not only no origina tion of truly new systems, but even the power of appre hending the more perfect of the older systems begins to wane and men restrict themselves to the repetition, soon passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less complete dogmas of their predecessors; at that stage, accordingly, when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and freedom to the mind, rather renders shallow and imposes on the worst of all chains—chains of its own forging. The enchanted draught of speculation, always dangerous,
when diluted and stale, certain poison. The contem porary Greeks presented thus flat and diluted to the
(iii. 109-117).
it
is,
it
it is
it,
CHAP- xn AND EDUCATION
197
Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse it or to go back from the living schoolmasters to the dead masters. Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages before Socrates, remained without material influence on the Roman culture, although their illustrious names were freely used, and their more easily understood writings were probably read and translated. Accordingly the Romans be came in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad teachers.
Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, Leading which resolved the myths into biographies of various schools. benefactors of the human race living in the grey dawn of
early times whom superstition had transformed into gods,
or Euhemerism as it was called (iii. 113), there were chiefly
three philosophical schools that came to be of importance
for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus
and Zeno 491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus 268.
513) and Carneades (541-62 or, to use the school 241. names, Epicureanism, the Stoa, and the newer Academy. 218-129. The last of these schools, which started from the impos Newer
sibility of assured knowledge and in its stead conceded as possible only provisional opinion sufficient for practical needs, presented mainly polemical aspect, seeing that caught every proposition of positive faith or of philosophic dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas. So far stands nearly on parallel with the older method of the sophists; except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war more against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples more against their philosophical colleagues. On the other hand Epicurus and Zeno agreed both in their aim of ration ally explaining the nature of things, and in their physiolo gical method, which set out from the conception of matter. They diverged, in so far as Epicurus, following the atomic theory of Democritus, conceived the first principle as rigid matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things out of this
matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,
Academy.
484) 270.
Epieum and Zeno.
a
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it
it
(1'
a
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5),
Concedes at Rome.
I98-
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces even into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement of fluctuation up and down. From this are derived the further distinctions—that in the Epicurean system the gods as it were did not exist or were at the most a dream of dreams, while the Stoical gods formed the ever active soul of the world, and were as spirit, as sun, as God powerful over the body, the earth, and nature ; that Epicurus did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the world and a personal immortality of the soul; that the proper object of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity always increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the mind and body, and striving after a harmony with nature
in conflict and perpetually at peace. But in one point all these schools were agreed with reference to religion, that faith as such was nothing, and had necessarily to be supplemented by reflection—whether this reflection might consciously despair of attaining any result, as did the Academy; or might reject the conceptions of the popular faith, as did the school of Epicurus ; or might partly retain them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and partly modify them, as did the Stoics.
It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first contact of Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation equally firm in faith and adverse to speculation should be of a thoroughly hostile character. The Roman religion was entirely right in disdaining alike the assaults and the reasoned support of these philosophical systems, both of‘ which did away with its proper character. The Roman state, which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion was attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers the attitude which a fortress assumes towards the spies of the army advancing to besiege and as early as
perpetually
it,
can. x11 AND EDUCATION
199
dismissed the Greek philosophers along with 'the 161. rhetoricians from Rome. In fact the very first dééut
of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal declaration of war against faith and morals. It was occasioned by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians,
a step which they commissioned three of the most esteemed professors of philosophy, including Carneades the master of
the modern sophistical school, to justify before the senate
The selection was so far appropriate, as the utterly 155. scandalous transaction defied any justification in common sense; whereas it was quite in keeping with the circum stances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons might be adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of justice, and when he showed in the best logical form that with equal propriety the Athenians might be required to surrender Oropus and the Romans to confine themselves once more to their old straw huts on the Palatine. The young men who were masters of the Greek language were attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid
and emphatic delivery of the celebrated man; but on this occasion at least Cato could not be found fault with, when
he not only bluntly enough compared the dialectic argu ments of the philosophers to the tedious dirges of the wail ing-women, but also insisted on the senate dismissing a
man who understood the art of making right wrong and wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but a shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong. But such dismissals had no great effect, more especially as the Roman youth could not be prevented from hearing philo sophic discourses at Rhodes and Athens. Men became accustomed first to tolerate philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable, a support in foreign philosophy—-—a support which no doubt ruined it as
593
(599).
300 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the popular creed. But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.
The historical version of the myths came far too rudely ism not an into collision with the popular faith, when it declared the
Euhemer
adequate support.
gods directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on the destinies of men. Between these systems and the Roman religion no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so. Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple of Carneades, as a citizen and
power of attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable, and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies of Zeus the first, second, and third. The modern sophistry could only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous, and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual rubbish. Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character
pontzfex he is an orthodox confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even ultimately to surrender and be converted. No one of these three systems became in any proper sense popular. The plain
intelligible character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain
so
emu’. xu AND EDUCATION so:
thoroughly addressing itself to action. Yet it found more partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against it longest and most seriously. But this Roman Epicureanism was not so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under which—very much against the design of its strictly moral founder-—-thought less sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society; one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.
Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic philosophy in Italy. In direct contrast to these schools it attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science can at all accommodate itself to faith. To the popular faith with its gods and oracles the Stoic adhered on principle, in so far as he recognized in it an instinctive knowledge, to which scientific knowledge was bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases to subordinate itself. He believed in a different way from the people rather than in different objects; the essentially true and supreme God was in his view doubtless the world-soul, but every manifestation of the primitive God was in its turn divine, the stars above all, but also the earth, the vine, the soul of the illustrious mortal whom the
Roman Stun.
honoured as a hero, and in fact every departed spirit of a former man. This philosophy was really better
for Rome than for the land where it first arose. The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the Stoic had neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was converted from a person into a conception, had a meaning in Greece, but not in Rome. The coarse allegorizing and moral purification, which were characteristic of the Stoical doctrine of the gods, destroyed the very marrow of the Hellenic mythology 5 but the plastic power of the Romans,
people
adapted
202 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no more than a light veil enveloping the original intuition or the original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen—a veil that might be stripped off without special damage. Pallas Athene might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not much more. The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman, theology coincided on the whole in their result. But, even if the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous —as when the Stoics, for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw in Hercules, Castor, and Pollux nothing but the spirits of distinguished men, or as when they could not allow the images of the gods to be regarded as representations of divinity—it was at least not the habit of the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous doctrines and to overthrow the false gods; on the contrary, they everywhere evinced respect and reverence for the
of the land even in its weaknesses. The incli- nation also of the Stoa towards a casuistic morality and towards a systematic treatment of the professional sciences was quite to the mind of the Romans, especially of the Romans of this period, who no longer like their fathers practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and good morals, but resolved the simple morality of their ancestors into a catechism of allowable and non-allowable actions; whose grammar and jurisprudence, moreover, urgently demanded a methodical treatment, without possess ing the ability to develop such a treatment of themselves.
religion
So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a influence of plant borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on Stolcism. Italian soil, with the Roman national economy, and we meet
its traces in the most diversified spheres of action. Its earliest appearance beyond doubt goes further back ; but
Wide
cum’. xn AND EDUCATION
:03
the Stoa was first raised to full influence in the higher ranks of Roman society by means of the group which
gathered round Scipio Aemilianus. Panaetius of Rhodes, Panaetius the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio’s intimate friends
in the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train
and usually attended him even on journeys, knew how to
adapt the system to clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers, among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the Socrates of Xenophon. Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and scholars fessed the Stoic philosophy—among others Stilo and Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and of scientific jurisprudence. The scholastic formality of system, which thenceforth prevails at least externally in these professional sciences and is especially associated with a fanciful, charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing, descends from the Stoa. But infinitely more important
was the new state-philosophy and state-religion, which emanated from the blending of the Stoic philosophy and the Roman religion. The speculative element, from the first impressed with but little energy on the system of Zeno, and still further weakened when that system found admission to Rome—after the Greek schoolmasters had already for a century been busied in driving this philosophy into boys’ heads and thereby driving the spirit out of it— fell completely into the shade in Rome, where nobody speculated but the money-changers ; little more was said as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law. The Stoic philo sophers showed themselves not insensible to the very lucrative distinction of seeing their system raised into the semi-official Roman state-philosophy, and proved altogether
prc»
State
more pliant than from their rigorous principles we should have expected. Their doctrine as to the gods and the state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance to the actual institutions of those who gave them bread; instead of illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher, they made their meditations turn on the wise arrangement of the Roman magistracies; and while the more refined Stoics such al Panaetius had left the question of divine revelation by wonders and signs open as a thing conceiv able but uncertain, and had decidedly rejected astrology, his immediate successors contended for that doctrine of revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of the school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions even to astrology. The leading feature of the system came more and more to be its casuistic doctrine of duties. It suited itself to the hollow pride of virtue, in which the Romans of this period sought their compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a befitting dog matism of morality, which, like every well-bred system of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the most complaisant indulgence in the details. 1 Its practical results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare to please the Stoa.
Closely allied to this new state-philosophy—or, strictly speaking, its other side—was the new state-religion ; the essential characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which were recognized as irrational. One of the most prominent men of the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented solely on account
1 Adelightful specimen may be found in Cicero dc Oficiir, iii. 12, 13.
204
NATIONALITY, RELIGION, soox rv
CHAP- XII AN D EDUCATION
:05
of the multitude, which, as reason had no power over required to be ruled signs and wonders, while people of intelligence had certainly no need of religion. Beyond
doubt the Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments, although they did not oppose science and religion to each other in so gross and downright fashion. Neither Laelius nor Scipio Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than political institution yet the national spirit in them was too strong and their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming forward in public with such hazardous explanations. But even in the fol lowing generation the ,panlifix maxz'mur Quintus Scaevola
(consul 659 iii. 481 84) set forth at least in his oral 9L instructions in law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts of religion—one philosophic, adapted to
the intellect, and one traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for the religion of the state, as con tained various things which was useless or even injurious
for the people to know and that accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain as stood. The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion treated throughout as state institution, merely further deve lopment of the same principle. The state, according to his teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter
older than the picture; the question related to making the gods anew, would certainly be well to make and to name them after manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods which only excited erroneous ideas,1 and the mistaken system of sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established, every
In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," be sarcastically set forth how
the primitive men had not been content with the God who alone nized by thought, but had longed after puppets and effigies.
recog
is
I
is
it a
if
is
it
p.
a
in ;
a it
; a by ;
is
it
a
;
it,
Priestly colleges
206 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK rv
good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part, that the “common man” might learn rather to set a higher value on, than to contemn, the gods. That the common man, for whose benefit the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and will be seen in the sequel. Thus then the Roman “ high church” was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an unbeliev ing people. The more openly the religion of the land was declared a political institution, the more decidedly the poli tical parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for attack and defence; which was especially, in a daily-increasing measure, the case with augural science and with the elections to the priestly colleges. The old and natural practice of dismissing the burgess-assembly, when a thunderstorm came on, had in the hands of the Roman augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial omens and rules of conduct associated therewith; in the earlier portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the Aelian and Fufian law, that every popular assembly should be compelled to disperse if it should occur to any of the higher magistrates to look for signs of a thunderstorm in the sky ; and the Roman oligarchy was proud of the cunning device which enabled them thenceforth by a single pious fraud to impress the stamp of invalidity on any decree of the people.
Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the ancient practice under which the four principal colleges of priests filled up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and demanded the extension of popular election to the stalls themselves, as it had been previously introduced with refer ence to the presidents, of these colleges (iii. 57). This was certainly inconsistent with the spirit of these corporations ; but they had no right to complain of after they had become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played
it,
can. x1: AND EDUCATION
:07
into the hands of the government at its request by fur nishing religious pretexts for the annulling of political proceedings. This affair became an apple of contention between the parties: the senate heat off the first attack in 609, on which occasion the Scipionic circle especially turned 145. the scale for the rejection of the proposal; on the other hand the project passed in 650 with the proviso already 104. made in reference to the election of the presidents for the benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole bur
but only the lesser half of the tribes should make the election (iii. 46;) ; finally Sulla restored the right of co-optation in its full extent (p. 115).
With this care on the part of the conservatives for the Practical
usemado ofreliglon.
Hortensius for instance brought roast peacocks
into vogue. Religion was also found very useful in giving greater zest to scandal. It was favourite recreation of
the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of
the gods in the streets night (iii. 480). Ordinary love affairs had for long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become so; but an amour with
Vestal virgin was as piquant as the intrigues with nuns and
the cloister-adventures in the world of the Decamerone.
The scandalous affair of 640 r:y. well known, in which 114. three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then, when sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court instituted by special decree
gesses
pure national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of The practical side of the Roman priesthood was
the priestly :uirine; the augural and pontifical banquets were as were the official gala-days in the life of Roman epicure, and several of them formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the accession of the augur
Quintus
it
by
is
a
a
it
it.
a
Oriental
208 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, soon rv
of the people, and were all condemned to death. Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might, when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each other’s face without detriment to their religious duties. We learn to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of kindred tendencies, when we compare with it the coarse shamelessness of the Roman priests and Levites. The official religion was quite candidly treated as a hollow framework, now serviceable only for political machinists; in this respect with its numerous recesses and trap-doors it might and did serve either party, as it happened. Most of all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the state-religion, and particularly in the augural discipline; but the opposite party also made no resistance in point of principle to an institute, which had now merely a semblance of life; they rather regarded on the whole, as bulwark which might pass from the possession of the enemy into their own.
In sharp contrast to this ghost of religion which we have
religions in just described stand the difi‘erent foreign worships, which
Italy.
this epoch cherished and fostered, and which were at least undeniably possessed of very decided vitality. They meet us everywhere, among genteel ladies and lords as well as among the circles of the slaves, in the general as in the trooper, in Italy as in the provinces. It incredible to what height this superstition already reached. When the Cimbrian war Syrian prophetess, Martha, offered to furnish the senate with ways and means for the vanquishing of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt; nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius’ own wife in particular despatched her to his head-quarters, where the general readily received her and carried her about with him till the Teutones were defeated. The leaders of very
a
a
in
is
a
it,
a
can. xrr AND EDUCATION
209
different parties in the civil war, Marius, Octavius,
coincided in believing omens and oracles. During its course even the senate was under the necessity, in the troubles of 66 7, of consenting to issue directions in accord- 81. ance with the fancies of a crazy prophetess. It is significant
of the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well
as of the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost rank. The copious introduction
of elements from Asia Minor and Syria into the population, partly by the import of slaves, partly by the augmented trafi‘ic of Italy with the east, contributed very greatly to this result.
The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly apparent in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the most part were natives of Syria. Eunus vomited fire, Athenion read the stars; the plummets thrown by the slaves in these wars bear in great part the names of gods, those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that of the mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily and was zealously worshipped there. A similar effect was produced by commercial intercourse, particularly after the wares of Berytus and Alexandria were conveyed directly to the Italian ports; Ostia and Puteoli became the great marts not only for Syrian unguents and Egyptian linen, but also for the faith of the east. Everywhere the mingling of religions was constantly on the increase along with the mingling of nations. Of all allowed worships the most popular was that of the Pessinuntine Mother of the Gods, which made a deep impression on the multitude by its eunuch-celibacy, its banquets, its music, its begging pro cessions, and all its sensuous pomp; the collections from
Sulla‘
VOL. IV
1x4
worships.
are NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK 1v
house to house were already felt as an economic burden. In the most dangerous time of the Cimbrian war Battaces the high-priest of Pessinus appeared in person at Rome, in order to defend the interests of the temple of his goddess there which was alleged to have been profaned, addressed the Roman people by the special orders of the Mother of the Gods, and performed also various miracles. Men of sense were scandalized, but the women and the multitude were not to be debarred from escorting the prophet at his departure in great crowds. Vows of pilgrimage to the east were already no longer un common; Marius himself, for instance, thus undertook a pilgrimage to Pessinus; in fact even thus early (first in
101. 653) Roman burgesses devoted themselves to the eunuch priesthood.
star-gazing
the former Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin to the
appearance;
great
But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally still more popular. As early as Cato’s time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had begun to come into competition with the Etruscan lzaruqfiex and the Marsian bird-seer (iii. I16) ;
and astrology were soon as much at home in I89. Italy as in their dreamy native land. In 615 the Roman praetor peregrinur directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate
Rome and Italy within ten days. The same fate at the same time befel the Jews, who had admitted Italian prose lytes to their sabbath. In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from soothsayers and pious
97. impostors of every sort. Some forty years afterwards (657) it was even found necessary to prohibit human sacrifices. The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy Egyptian worships began to make their
CHAP. XII AND EDUCATION
Sullan period. Men had become perplexed not merely as to the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a. fifty years’ revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil war was still far from being at an end, increased the anxious suspense, the gloomy perplexity of the multi tude. Restlessly the wandering imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh alarms. A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction—political, economic, moral, religious-—the soil which was adapted for and grew with alarming rapidity; was as gigantic trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth worked new wonders and seized like an epidemic on all minds not thoroughly fortified.
Just as in the sphere of religion, the revolution begun in Education.
the previous epoch was now completed also the sphere
of education and culture. We have already shown how
the fundamental idea of the Roman system—civil equality
—had already during the sixth century begun to be under
mined in this field also. Even in the time of Pictor and
Cato Greek culture was widely diffused in Rome, and there
was native Roman culture but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage. Cato’s encyclopaedia shows
tolerably what was understood at this period Romano
Greek model training (iii. 195); was little more than an embodiment of the knowledge of the old Roman house holder, and truly, when compared with the Hellenic culture of the period, scanty enough. At how low stage the average instruction of youth in Rome still stood at the beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from the expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prominently
a
by a
in
; it
if
it,
a
it
312 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK IV
censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as com pared with the intelligent private and public care of his countrymen ; no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could rightly enter into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay at the root of this indifference.
Now the case was altered. just as the naive popular faith was superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so in education alongside of the simple popular instruction a special training, an exclusive lzumam'tar, developed itself and eradicated the last remnants of the old social equality. It will not be superfluous to cast a glance at the aspect assumed by the new instruction of the young, both the
Greek and the higher Latin.
It was‘a singular circumstance that the same man, who
in a political point of view definitively vanquished the Hellenic nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the same time the first or one of the first who fully recognized the Hellenic civilization as—what it has thenceforth continued to be beyond dispute—the civilization of the ancient world. He was himself indeed an old man before it was granted to him, with the Homeric poems in his mind, to stand before the Zeus of Phidias ; but his heart was young enough to carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the Hesperides in his soul; poets and artists had found in the foreigner a more earnest and cordial devotee than was any of the wise men of the Greece of those days. He made no epigram on Homer or Phidias, but he had his children introduced into the realms of intellect. Without
their national education, so far as there was such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical development of his boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises which were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but by instruction in the chase, which was among the Greeks developed almost like an art ,' and he elevated their Greek
neglecting
can. xrr AND EDUCATION 2! ;
instruction in such a way that the language was no longer merely learned and practised for the sake of speaking, but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter of general higher culture was associated with the language and developed out of it—embracing, first of all, the
of Greek literature with the mythological and historical information necessary for understanding and then rhetoric and philosophy. The library of king Perseus was the only portion of the Macedonian spoil that Paullus took for himself, with the view of presenting to his sons. Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his train and completed the aesthetic training of his children. That the time was past when men could in this field pre serve merely repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by Cato; the better classes had probably now presentiment that the noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism as whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode. There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now they arrived in troops—and as teachers not merely of the language but of literature and culture in general—at the newly-opened lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom. Greek tutors and teachers of
who, even they were not slaves, were as
rule accounted as servants,1 were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there statement that 200,000 sesterces (£2000) were paid for Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early
as 593 there existed in the capital number of special 18L establishments for the practice of Greek declamation.
Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more respect fully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense said in
knowledge
philosophy,
Lucilius—
Paenula, . ri quaerir, mnt:riu', rem’, “gum Utilr'or Milli, quam rapienr.
it is
a it
1
a
is aa
a
a
if
a
it,
Latin in struction.
But by its side there sprang up also higher Latin instruction. We have shown the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken by the Latin Odyssey as sort of improved primer, and the Roman boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother tongue by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original: how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus, Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek. These were the first steps towards higher Latin instruc tion, but they did not as yet form such an instruction itself. Instruction in language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as lacks literature. It was not until
m NATIONALITY, RELIGION, BOOK rv
Several distinguished names already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius has been already mentioned 203); the esteemed grammarian Crates of Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal
169. rival of Aristarchus, found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems It true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary and anti-national as was, encountered partially the resistance of the government;
161. but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained (chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but there was no further action. The higher instruction in Greek and the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized as an essential part of Italian training.
a it
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(p.
en. “ xrl AND EDUCATION
:15
there were not merely Latin schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already somewhat rounded
05 in the works of the classics of the sixth century, that
the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered
into the circle of the elements of higher culture ; and the emancipation from the Greek schoolmasters was now not
slow to follow. Stirred up by the Homeric prelections of Public Crates, cultivated Romans began to read the recitative
of
works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius,
Works the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems
of Lucilius first to a select circle, and then in public on
set days and in presence of a great concourse, and oc casionally also to treat them critically after the precedent of the Homeric grammarians. These literary prelections, which cultivated dilettanli (lz'tterati) held
gratuitously, were not formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means of introducing the youth to the
understanding and the discussion of the classic Latin literature.
The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar Rhetorical way. The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an “mm early age incited to come forward in public with panegyrics
and forensic speeches, can never have lacked exercises in
oratory ; but it was only at this epoch, and in consequence
of the new exclusive culture, that there arose a rhetoric
properly so called. Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul in
617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who techni- 187. cally handled the language and subject-matter; the two
famous advocates of the Marian age, the masculine and
Marcus Antonius (6rr-667) and the polished 148-87. and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663) were already 140-91. complete rhetoricians. The exercises of the young men
in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance,
but still remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially limited to the personal attendance of the be
vigorous
Course of literature and rhetoric.
tinguished Roman knight of strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with a select circle of younger men—-including Varro and Cicero—and some times also went over outlines of speeches with the authors, or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends. This was instruction, but Stilo was not a professional school master; he taught literature and rhetoric, just as juris prudence was taught at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men, not of a man hired and holding himself at every one’s command.
But about his time began also the scholastic higher
instruction in Latin, separated as well from
Latin as from Greek instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves. That its spirit and method were throughout borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature and language, was a matter of course; and the scholars also consisted, as at these exercises, of youths, and not of boys. This Latin instruction was soon divided like the Greek into two courses; in so far as the Latin literature was first the subject of scientific lectures, and then a technical introduction was given to the preparation of panegyrics, public, and forensic orations. The first Roman school of literature was opened about Stilo’s time by Marcus Saevius Nicanor Postumus, the first separate school for Latin rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus; but ordin' arily instructions in rhetoric were also given in the Latin schools of literature. This new Latin school-instruction was of the most comprehensive importance. The intro duction to the knowledge of Latin literature and Latin
216 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, noox rv
ginner on the master of the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.
Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin 100. rhetoric was given first about 6 50 by Lucius Aelius Prae coninus of Lanuvium, called the “penman ” (Stilo), a dis
elementary
can. xn AND EDUCATION ' 217
oratory, such as had formerly been imparted by connois seurs and masters of high position, had preserved a certain independence in relation to the Greeks. The judges of language and the masters of oratory were doubtless under the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that of the Greek school-grammar and school-rhetoric ; the latter in particular was decidedly an object of dread. The pride as well as the sound common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt, in telligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue could be learned in the school by school-rules. To the solid practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetori cians, so totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally de veloped rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue. Accord ingly the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hosti lity to the rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or into Latin oratorical instruction. But in the new Latin rhetorical schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by discussing in pairs rhetorical themes ; they accused Ulysses, who was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter’s bloody sword, of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they charged Orestes with the
murder of his mother, or undertook to defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary good
advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in
218 NATIONALITY, RELIGION, AND EDUCATION Book IV
Carthage, or to take flight. It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts of words. The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man, from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus. Of course the Cassandra spoke in vain; de clamatory exercises in Latin on the current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political and to stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.
As the aggregate result of this modern Roman educa tion there sprang up the new idea of “humanity,” as it was called, which consisted partly of a more or less super ficial appropriation of the aesthetic culture of the Hellenes,
of a privileged Latin culture as an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek. This new humanity, as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and combined in itself, jun like our closely kindred “general culture,” a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive character. Here too we trace the revolution, which separated classes and blended nations
players
partly
can. xul LITERATURE AND ART
219
CHAPTER XIII LITERATURE AND ART
THE sixth century was, both in a political and a literary Literary point of view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we reaction. do not find in the field of authorship any more than in
that of politics a man of the first rank ; Naevius, Ennius,
Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of the Punic wars. Much is only artificially transplanted, there are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole per formance betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks. It is otherwise in the epoch before us. The morning mists fell ; what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength hardened amidst war, with youthful want ‘of insight into the difliculty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work, could not be carried farther now, when on the
Sclpionlo
140. 136.
220 LITERATURE AND ART BOOK IV
one hand the dull sultriness of the approaching revolu tionary storm began to fill the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation. The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible minds. The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh called forth a literary reaction, which destroyed the germs of promise contained in those simple imitative attempts by the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted up the wheat and the tares of the older type of literature together.
‘ This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the circle which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and whose most prominent members among the Roman world of quality were, in addition to Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius (consul in 614) and Scipio’s younger companions, Lucius Furius Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius, and the philosopher Panaetius. Those who were familiar with the Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had furnished and Pacuvius con tinued to furnish. While patriotic considerations
might set bounds to criticism in reference to the native chron
icles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed shafts
“the dismal figures from the complicated ex positions of Pacuvius ” ; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius—all those poets "who appeared to have a licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically”—are found in the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written at the close
against
can. xru LITERATURE AND ART 221
of this period. People shrugged their shoulders at the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus. Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his youth; despairing of the trans plantation of the marvellous tree, they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign masterpieces. The
of this epoch displayed itself chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences. The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of persons of culture became separated from the body of the people, was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society and the vulgar Latin of the common
productiveness
The prologues of Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among the Romans now falls decidedly into the shade. - In so far certainly there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin. In like manner literary gradually rises in public opinion from a trade to an art. At the beginning of this period the preparation of theatrical pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative poems, was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of quality; Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces; the
people.
activity
222 LITERATURE AND ART soox rv
writing of dramas was entirely a trade, and not one of golden produce. About the time of Sulla the state of matters had entirely changed. The remuneration given to actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount of which removed the stigma. By this means composing for the stage was raised into a liberal art ; and we accord ingly find men of the highest aristocratic circles, such as
90. 87. Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664;} 667), engaged in writing for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman “poet’s club ” by the side of the ancestorless Accius. Art gains in sympathy and honour; but the enthusiasm has departed in life and in literature. The fearless self confidence, which makes the poet a poet, and which is very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found in none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that fought with Hannibal are correct, but feeble.
Let us first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and the stage itself. Tragedy has now for the first time her specialists ; the tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those of the preceding, cultivate comedy and epos side by side. The appreciation of this branch of art among the writing and reading circles was evidently on the increase, but tragic
itself hardly improved. We now meet with the national tragedy (praetzxta), the creation of Naevius, only in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately— an after-growth of the Ennian epoch. Among the probably numerous poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone
Pacuvius. acquired a considerable name. Marcus Pacuvius from
Tragedy.
219-129.
Brundisium (5 3 5-4 625) who in his earlier years earned his livelihood in Rome by painting and only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within the latter. He composed on the whole after the manner of his country
poetry
can. xru LITERATURE AND ART
:23
man, uncle, and master Ennius. Polishing more carefully and aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic poetry and of rich style : in the fragments, how ever, that have reached us proofs are not wanting to justify the censure of the poet’s language by Cicero and the censure of his taste by Lucilius; his language appears more rugged than that of his predecessor, his style of composition pompous and punctilious. 1 There are traces that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy than to religion ; but he did not at any rate, like the latter, prefer dramas chiming in with neological views and preach ing sensuous passion or modern enlightenment, and drew without distinction from Sophocles or from Euripides—of that poetry with a decided special aim, which almost stamps Ennius with genius, there can have been no vein in the younger poet.
More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy
were furnished by Pacuvius’ younger contemporary, Lucius
Accius, son of a freedman of Pisaurum (584-after 651), 170-10l with the exception of Pacuvius the only notable
poet of the seventh century. An active author also in the
1 Thus in the Paulur, an original piece, the following line occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium (ii. 506) :
Qua uix caprigeua glneri gradz'li: grlm'o at.
And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the following dscription
Quadruper tardig‘rada agrerti: humili: were, Capile brew‘, cert/in anguimz, aspectu trun', Euirc:rata inanima cum animali rm.
To which they naturally reply
Ita razpl‘uam dictione ah I: dalur,
Quad conjecture . rapimr aeg're cont‘uit; Non intellegimur, niri . ri-apan‘e dixerir.
Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to task by the Middle Comedy.
tragic
Aoolll.
Greek comedy.
Terence.
224 LITERATURE AND ART soon iv
field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless laboured to introduce instead of the crude manner of his predecessors greater purity of language and style into Latin tragedy; yet even his inequality and incorrectness were emphatically censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.
Far greater activity and far more important results are apparent in the field of comedy. At the very commence ment of this period a remarkable reaction set in against the sort of comedy hitherto prevalent and popular. Its
196-159. representative Terentius (558-595) is one of the most interesting phenomena, in a historical point of view, in Roman literature. Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to
the Greek culture of the day, he seemed from the very first
destined for the vocation of giving back to the new Attic
comedy that cosmopolitan character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in some measure lost. Even in the selection and employment of models the contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor whom alone we can now compare with him. Plautus chooses his pieces from the whole range of the newer Attic comedy, and by no means disdains the livelier and more popular comedians, such as Philemon; Terence keeps almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished, and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. The method of working up several Greek pieces into one Latin is retained by Terence, because in fact from the state of the case it could not be avoided by the Roman editors; but it is handled with incomparably more skill and careful ness. The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense. The not ‘unfrequently coarse, but always
can. xrn LITERATURE AND ART
225
efl'ective laying on of Roman local tints over the Greek ground-work, which Plautus was fond of, is completely and designedly banished from Terence; not an allusion puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly a reminiscence;1 even the Latin titles are replaced by Greek. The same distinction shows itself in the artistic treatment. First of all the players receive back their appropriate masks, and greater care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, ag. against allegoric dreams. 2 Plautus paints his characters with broad strokes, often after a stock model, always with a view to the gross effect from a distance and on the whole; Terence handles the psycho logical development with a careful and often excellent miniature-painting, as in the Adelplzz' for instance, where the two old men—the easy bachelor enjoying life in town, and
1 Perhaps the only exception is in the Andria (iv. 5) the answer to the question how matters go : " Sic
U! guimur," airmt, " quanda ut wlumu: non lint,"
in allusion to the line of Caecilius. which is, indeed, also imitated from a Greek proverb :-
Viva: ut porris, guanda non qui: at velir.
The comedy is the oldest of Terence’s, and was exhibited by the theatrical
authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius. gratitude is characteristic.
The gentle expression of
9 A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Pharm. prol. 4), may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of the goat and the ape (Merc. 1). Such excrescences are ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (Lg. Eurip. Hec. 90).
vor. 1v
115
ii.
226 LITERATURE AND ART ‘BOOK rv
the sadly harassed not at all refined country-landlord—form a masterly contrast. The springs of action and the language of Plautus are drawn from the tavern, those of Terence from the household of the good citizen. The lazy Plautine hostelry, the very unconstrained but very charming damsels with the hosts duly corresponding, the sabre-rattling troopers, the menial world painted with an altogether peculiar humour, whose heaven is the cellar, and whose fate is the lash, have disappeared in Terence or at any rate undergone improvement. In Plautus we find ourselves, on the whole, among incipient or thorough rogues, in Terence again, as a rule, among none but honest men ; occasionally leno plundered or young man taken to the brothel, done with moral intent, possibly out of brotherly love or to deter the boy from frequenting im proper haunts. The Plautine pieces are pervaded by the significant antagonism of the tavern to the house; every where wives are visited with abuse, to the delight of all husbands temporarily emancipated and not quite sure of an amiable salutation at home. The comedies of Terence are pervaded by conception not more moral, but doubtless
more becoming, of the feminine nature and of married life. As rule, they end with virtuous marriage, or, possible, with two—just as was the glory of Menander that he compensated for every seduction by marriage. The eulogies of bachelor life, which are so frequent in Menander, are repeated by his Roman remodeller only with characteristic shyness,1 whereas the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the amouc/lament, the loving sister the death-bed in the Eunuc/zus' and the Andria are very grace fully delineated; in the Hayra there even appears at the close as delivering angel virtuous courtesan, likewise
Micio in the Adelphi praises his good fortune in life, more particularly because he has never had a. wife, " which those (the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune. "
(i.
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a
it
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genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is true, very properly hissed. In Plautus the fathers through out only exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled by their sons; with Terence in the Heautan Tz'morumenor the lost son is reformed by his father’s wisdom, and, as in general he is full of excellent instructions as to education, so the point of the best of his pieces, the Adelp/zz', turns on finding the right mean between the too liberal training of the uncle and the too rigid training of the father. Plautus writes for the great multitude and gives utterance to profane and sarcastic speeches, so far as the censorship of the stage at all allowed ; Terence on the contrary describes it as his aim to please the good and, like Menander, to offend no body. Plautus is fond of vigorous, often noisy dialogue, and his pieces require a lively play of gesture in the actors; Terence confines himself to “quiet conversation. ” The language of Plautus abounds in burlesque turns and verbal witticisms, in alliterations, in comic coinages of new terms, Aristophanic combinations of words, pithy expressions of the day jestingly borrowed from the Greek. Terence knows nothing of such caprices ; his dialogue moves on with the purest symmetry, and its points are elegant epigrammatic
and sententious turns. The comedy of Terence is not to be called an improvement, as compared with that of Plautus, either in a poetical or in a moral point of view. Originality cannot be aflirmed of either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed by the circum stance that, while the younger poet reproduced the agree ableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander, such as the Sficlmr, the Cirtellaria, the Bacc/tider, probably preserve far more of the flowing charm of the
original than the comedies of the “dz'mz'a'z'atur . Menander. ” And, while the aesthetic critic cannot recognize an improve
228 LITERATURE AND ART noox rv
ment in the transition from the coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating morality of Terence. But in point of language an improvement certainly took place. Elegance of language was the pride of the poet, and it was owing above all to its inimitable charm that the most refined judges of art in aftertimes, such as Cicero, Caesar, and Quinctilian, assigned the palm to him among all the Roman poets of the republican age. In so far it is perhaps justifiable to date a new era in Roman literature-the real essence of which lay not in the development of Latin poetry, but in the development of the Latin language—from the comedies of Terence as the first artistically pure imitation of Hellenic works of art. The modern comedy made its way amidst the most determined literary warfare. The Plautine style of composing had taken root among the Roman bourgeoirie; the comedies of Terence encountered the liveliest opposition from the public, which found their “insipid language,” their “feeble style,” intolerable. The, apparently, pretty sensitive poet
replied in his prologues—which properly were not intended for any such purpose—with counter-criticisms full of de fensive and offensive polemics ; and appealed from the multitude, which had twice run off from his Ifayra to witness a band of gladiators and rope-dancers, to the culti vated circles of the genteel world. He declared that he only aspired to the approval of the “good”; in which doubtless there was not wanting a. hint, that it was not at all seemly to undervalue works of art which had obtained the approval of the “few. ” He acquiesced in or even favoured the report, that persons of quality aided him in composing with their counsel or even with their co
operation. 1
In reality he carried his point; even in
' In the prologue of the Heauton Timer-um he puts the objection into the mouth of his censors :
crrAr. xm LITERATURE AND ART
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literature the oligarchy prevailed, and the artistic comedy
of the exclusives supplanted the comedy of the people:
we find that about 620 the pieces of Plautus disappeared 184. from the set of stock plays. This is the more significant, because after the early death of Terence no man of con spicuous talent at all further occupied this field. Respect
ing the comedies of Turpilius 651 at an advanced age) 108. and other stop-gaps wholly or almost wholly forgotten, connoisseur already at the close of this period gave as
his opinion, that the new comedies were even much worse than the had new pennies
180).
We have formerly shown (iii. 164) that in all probability National
already in the course of the sixth century national Roman comedy. comedy (togata) was added to the Graeco-Roman (palliata),
as portraiture not of the distinctive life of the capital,
Repeat: ad rtudium bum: . te applicau: music-um Amicum ingeniojretum, baud natura . rua.
And in the later prologue (594) to the AdeZp/zi he says— I00.
Nam quad irli dicunt male-001i, hominer nubile: Eur): adiutan, adridueque una . rcn'bere;
Quad illi malediclum wllemem use exirtimanl
Eam laudem hi: ducit maximum, guum illir place! 010' 1106ir uni-unit at populo placard,
Quorum opera in 62110, in alia, in negalia, Suo quirque temper: um: ert . tine ruperbia.
As early as the time of Cicero was the general supposition that Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were desig
nated which were alleged to proceed from them stories were told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to their estates near Rome; and was reckoned unpardonahle that they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his financial circumstances. But
the power which creates legend is, as well known, nowhere more potent
than in the history of literature. It clear, and even judicious Roman writics acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio
who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius who was
not much older.