No More Learning

These poems lead us alternately to the valleys of the Nile and the Po ; but the poet is incomparably more at home in the latter. His poems are based on Alexandrian art doubtless, but at the same time on the self- consciousness of a burgess and a burgess in fact of a rural town, on the contrast of Verona with Rome, on the contrast of the homely municipal with the high-born lords of the senate who usually maltreat their humble friends — as that contrast was probably felt more vividly than anywhere else in Catullus' home, the flourishing and comparatively vigorous Cisalpine GauL The most beautiful of his poems reflect the sweet pictures of the Lago di Garda, and hardly at this time could any man of the capital have written a poem like the deeply pathetic one on his brother's death, or the excellent genuinely homely festal hymn for the marriage of Manlius and
Aurunculeia. Catullus, although dependent on the Alex andrian masters and standing in the midst of the fashion able and clique poetry of that age, was yet not merely a
scholar among many mediocre and bad ones, but
good
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART
483
himself as much superior to his masters as the burgess of a free Italian community was superior to the cosmopolitan Hellenic man of letters. Eminent creative vigour indeed and high poetic intentions we may not look for in him ; he is a richly gifted and graceful but not a great poet, and his poems are, as he himself calls them, nothing but "pleas antries and trifles. " Yet when we find not merely his con temporaries electrified by these fugitive songs, but the art- critics of the Augustan age also characterizing him along with Lucretius as the most important poet of this epoch, his contemporaries as well as their successors were com pletely right. The Latin nation has produced no second poet in whom the artistic substance and the artistic form appear in so symmetrical perfection as in Catullus ; and in this sense the collection of the poems of Catullus is certainly the most perfect which Latin poetry as a whole can show.
Lastly, poetry in a prose form begins in this epoch. Poems in The law of genuine naive as well as conscious art, which prose- had hitherto remained unchangeable —that the poetical subject-matter and the metrical setting should go together
—gave way before the intermixture and disturbance of all
kinds and forms of art, which is one of the most significant
features of this period. As to romances indeed nothing Romances, farther is to be noticed, than that the most famous historian
of this epoch, Sisenna, did not esteem himself too good to
translate into Latin the much-read Milesian tales of
Aristides —licentious fashionable novels of the most stupid
sort.
A more original and more pleasing phenomenon in this Varro's debateable border-land between poetry and prose was the ^*ne^ aesthetic writings of Varro, who was not merely the most important representative of Latin philologico- historical re
search, but one of the most fertile and most interesting authors in belles-lettres. Descended from a plebeian gens
Varro't
occupied life, that death called him away.
The aesthetic writings, which have made him name,
were brief essays, some in simple prose and of graver contents, others humorous sketches the prose groundwork of which was inlaid with various poetical effusions. The former were the " philosophico-historical dissertations "
the latter the Menippean Satires. In neither case did he follow Latin models, and the Satura of Varro in particular was by no means based on that of Lucilius. In fact the Roman Satura in general was not properly fixed species of art, but only indicated negatively the fact that the " multifarious poem " was not to be included under any of the recognized forms of art and accordingly the Satura- poetry assumed in the hands of every gifted poet different
" For me when boy," he somewhere says, "there sufficed a single tough coat and a single under-garment, shoes without stockings, horse without a saddle had no daily warm bath, and but seldom a river- bath. " On account of his personal valour he obtained in the Piratic war, where he commanded a division of the fleet, the naval crown.
484
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
which had its home in the Sabine land but had belonged for the last two hundred years to the Roman senate, strictly reared in antique discipline and decorum,' and already at the beginning of this epoch a man of maturity, Marcus
116-27. Terentius Varro of Reate (638-727) belonged in politics, as a matter of course, to the constitutional party, and bore an honourable and energetic part in its doings and suffer ings. He supported partly in literature —as when he combated the first coalition, the "three-headed monster," in pamphlets partly more serious warfare, where we found him in the army of Pompeius as commandant of Further Spain (p. 219). When the cause of the republic was lost, Varro was destined his conqueror to be librarian of the library which was to be formed in the capital. The troubles of the following period drew the old man once more into their vortex, and was not till seventeen
years after Caesar's death, in the eighty-ninth year of his well-
{logistorici),
I;
a
1
a a
a
a
; it
in by
it,
;
chap, XH LITERATURE, AND ART
485
and peculiar character. It was rather in the pre- Alexandrian Greek philosophy that Varro found the models
for his more severe as well as for his lighter aesthetic works ; for the graver dissertations, in the dialogues of Heraclides of Heraclea on the Black Sea (t about 450), 300. for the satires, in the writings of Menippus of Gadara in Syria (flourishing about 475). The choice was significant. 280. Heraclides, stimulated as an author by Plato's philosophic dialogues, had amidst the brilliance of their form totally lost sight of the scientific contents and made the poetico- fabulistic dress the main matter ; he was an agreeable and largely-read author, but far from a philosopher. Menippus
was quite as little a philosopher, but the most genuine literary representative of that philosophy whose wisdom consisted in denying philosophy and ridiculing philosophers the cynical wisdom of Diogenes ; a comic teacher of serious wisdom, he proved by examples and merry sayings that except an upright life everything is vain in earth and heaven, and nothing more vain than the disputes of so- called sages. These were the true models for Varro, a man full of old Roman indignation at the pitiful times and full of old Roman humour, by no means destitute withal of plastic talent, but as to everything which presented the appearance not of palpable fact, but of idea or even of system, utterly stupid, and perhaps the most unphilosophical among the unphilosophical Romans. 1 But Varro was no slavish pupil. The impulse and in general the form he derived from Heraclides and Menippus; but his was a
1 There is hardly anything more childish than Varro' s scheme of all the philosophies, which in the first place summarily declares all systems that do not propose the happiness of man as their ultimate aim to be non existent, and then reckons the number of philosophies conceivable under this supposition as two hundred and eighty-eight. The vigorous man was unfortunately too much a scholar to confess that he neither could nor would be a philosopher, and accordingly as such throughout life he per formed a blind dance — not altogether becoming — between the Stoa,
Pythagortanisra, and Diogenism.
V«mi'i philo- sophico- historical ways.
nature too individual and too decidedly Roman not to keep his imitative creations essentially independent and national.
For his grave dissertations, in which a moral maxim or other subject of general interest is handled, he disdained in his framework to approximate to the Milesian tales, as Heraclides had done, and so to serve up to the reader even childish little stories like those of Abaris and of the maiden reawakened to life after being seven days dead. But seldom he borrowed the dress from the nobler myths of the Greeks, as in the essay " Orestes or concerning Madness " ; history ordinarily afforded him a worthier frame for his subjects, more especially the contemporary history of his country, so that these essays became, as they were called, laudationes of esteemed Romans, above all of the Coryphaei of the constitutional party. Thus the dissertation " concerning Peace " was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate ; that " concerning the Worship of the Gods " was at the same time destined to preserve the memory of the highly -respected Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay " on Fate " was connected with Marius, that " on the Writing of History" with Sisenna the first historian of this epoch, that " on the Beginnings of the Roman Stage " with the princely giver of scenic spectacles Scaurus, that ''on Numbers" with the highly-cultured Roman banker Atticus. The two philosophico-historical essays " Laelius or concerning Friendship," " Cato or concerning Old Age," which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro, may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half- didactic, half-narrative, treatment of these subjects.
The Menippean satire was handled by Varro with equal originality of form and contents ; the bold mixture of prose and verse is foreign to the Greek original, and the whole intellectual contents are pervaded by Roman idiosyncrasy
486
RELIGION, CULTURE,
Varro's Menippean satires.
chap, x:i LITERATURE, AND ART
487
—one might say, by a savour of the Sabine soil. These satires like the philosophico-historical essays handle some moral or other theme adapted to the larger public, as is shown by the several titles — Columnae Herculis, mpl Sd^s;
ij Aoiras rb Iltuyxu, irtpl yeya/iijKOTcav J -Est Modus Alatulae, irtpl /te&js; Papiapapae, irtpl tyKiap. iu>v. The plastic dress, which in this case might not be wanting, is of course but seldom borrowed from the history of his native country, as in the satire Serranus, irtpl apxa1pto-1Zv. The Cynic-world of Diogenes on the other hand plays, as might be expected, a great part ; we meet with the Kwurrwp, the "Kwopprpup, the Ithtokvidv, the i8poKvu>v, the KwoS1Sac- Kak1Kov and others of a like kind. Mythology is also laid under contribution for comic purposes ; we find a Prometheus Liber, an Ajax Stramentieius, a Hercules Socratieus, a Sesqueulixes who had spent not merely ten but fifteen years in wanderings. The outline of the dramatic or romantic framework is still discoverable from the fragments in some pieces, such as the Prometheus Liber, the Sexagessis, Manius ; it appears that Varro frequently, perhaps regularly, narrated the tale as his own experience ; e. g. in the Manius the dramatis personal go to Varro and discourse to him "because he was known to them as a maker of books. " As to the poetical value of this dress we are no longer allowed to form any certain judgment ; there still occur in our fragments several very charming sketches full of wit and liveliness —thus in the Prometheus Liber the hero after the loosing of his chains opens a manufactory of men, in which Goldshoe the rich (Chrysosandalos) bespeaks for himself a maiden, of milk and finest wax, such as the Milesian bees gather from various flowers, a maiden without bones and sinews, without skin or hair, pure and polished, slim, smooth, tender, charming. The life-breath of this
poetry is polemics — not so much the political warfare of party, such as Lucilius and Catullus practised, but the
EC/>ev
48S
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
general moral antagonism of the stern elderly man to the unbridled and perverse youth, of the scholar living in the midst of his classics to the loose and slovenly, or at any rate in point of tendency reprobate, modern poetry,1 of the good burgess of the ancient type to the new Rome in which the Forum, to use Varro's language, was a pigsty and Numa, if he turned his eyes towards his city, would see no longer a trace of his wise regulations. In the constitutional struggle Varro did what seemed to him the duty of a citizen ; but his heart was not in such party-doings — " why," he complains on one occasion, " do ye call me from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house ? " He belonged to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic, but the heart was sound. His polemic against the hereditary foes of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit of the new times ; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers and put them accordingly into proportional alarm — it was not without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time transmitted to the " severe man " their newly-issued treatises.
/ Philosophizing is truly no art. With the tenth part of the trouble with which a master rears his slave to be a pro-
1 On one occasion he writes, " Quintiporis Clodii foria acpoemata ejus gargaridians dices ; 0 fortuna, O fors fortunal" And elsewhere, "Cum Quintipor Clodius tot comoedias sine ulla fecerit Musa, ego unum libel! um non ' edolem ' utaitEnnius t" This not otherwise known Clodius must have
been in all probability a wretched imitator of Terence, as those woids sarcastically laid at his door " O fortuna, O fors fortunal" are found occurring in a Terentian comedy.
The following description of himself by a poet in Varro's 'Orot Aipat,
Pacuv1 discipulus dicor, porro is fitit Enni, Ennius Musarum ; Pompilius clueor
might aptly parody the introduction of Lucretius (p. 474), to whom Varro as a declared enemy of the Epicurean system cannot have been well disposed, and whom he never quotes.
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART 489
fessional baker, he trains himself to be a philosopher ; no doubt, when the baker and the philosopher both come under the hammer, the artist of pastry goes off a hundred times dearer than the sage. Singular people, these philo sophers ! One enjoins that corpses be buried in honey— it is a fortunate circumstance that his desire is not complied with, otherwise where would any honey-wine be left? Another thinks that men grow out of the earth like cresses. A third has invented a world-borer (Koo-jwropvvr)) by which the earth will some day be destroyed.
Poslremo, nemo aegrotus quiequam somniat
Tarn infandum, quod non aliquis dicat phihsophus.
It is ludicrous to observe how a Long-beard —by which is meant an etymologizing Stoic—cautiously weighs every word in goldsmith's scales ; but there is nothing that sur passes the genuine philosophers' quarrel — a Stoic boxing- match far excels any encounter of athletes. In the satire Marcopolis, irtpi. apxrjs, when Marcus created for himself a Cloud-Cuckoo-Home after his own heart, matters fared, just as in the Attic comedy, well with the peasant, but ill
with the philosopher ; the Ce/er-8t-cvbs-\rifiiJuiTo<i-\6yo<s, son of Antipater the Stoic, beats in the skull of his opponent — evidently the philosophic Dilemma —with the mattock.
With this morally polemic tendency and this talent for embodying it in caustic and picturesque expression, which, as the dress of dialogue given to the books on Husbandry written in his eightieth year shows, never forsook him down to extreme old age, Varro most happily combined an incom parable knowledge of the national manners and language, which is embodied in the philological writings of his old age after the manner of a commonplace-book, but displays itself in his Satires in all its direct fulness and freshness.
Varro was in the best and fullest sense of the term a local antiquarian, who from the personal observation of many
490
RELIGION, CULTURE, book V
years knew his nation in its former idiosyncrasy and secli> sion as well as in its modern state of transition and dis persion, and had supplemented and deepened his direct knowledge of the national manners and national language by the most comprehensive research in historical and literary archives. His partial deficiency in rational judgment and learning —in our sense of the words —was compensated for by his clear intuition and the poetry which lived within him. He sought neither after antiquarian notices nor after rare antiquated or poetical words ;l but he was himself an old and old-fashioned man and almost a rustic, the classics of his nation were his favourite and long-familiar com panions ; how could it fail that many details of the manners of his forefathers, which he loved above all and especially knew, should be narrated in his writings, and that his dis course should abound with proverbial Greek and Latin phrases, with good old words preserved in the Sabine conversational language, with reminiscences of Ennius, Lucilius, and above all of Plautus ? We should not judge
as to the prose style of these aesthetic writings of Varro's earlier period by the standard of his work on Language written in his old age and probably published in an un finished state, in which certainly the clauses of the sentence are arranged on the thread of the relative like thrushes on a string ; but we have already observed that Varro rejected on principle the effort after a chaste style and Attic periods
458), and his aesthetic essays, while destitute of the mean bombast and the spurious tinsel of vulgarism, were yet written after an unclassic and even slovenly fashion, in sentences rather directly joined on to each other than regularly subdivided. The poetical pieces inserted on the other hand show not merely that their author knew how to
He himself once aptly says, that he had no special fondness for antiquated words, but frequently used them, and that he was very fond of poetical words, but did not use them.
1
(p.
chap, xii LITERATURE, AND ART
491
mould the most varied measures with as much mastery as any of the fashionable poets, but that he had a right to include himself among those to whom a god has granted the gift of " banishing cares from the heart by song and sacred poesy. "1 The sketches of Varro no more created a school than the didactic poem of Lucretius ; to the more general causes which prevented this there falls to be added their thoroughly individual stamp, which was inseparable from the greater age, from the rusticity, and even from the peculiar erudition of their author. But the grace and humour of the Menippean satires above all, which seem to have been in number and importance far superior to Varro's graver works, captivated his contemporaries as well as those in after times who had any relish for originality and national
1 The following description is taken from the Marcipor ("Slave of
Marcus");—
Repente noctis circiter meridie
Cum pictus t1er fervidis late ignibus Caeli chorean astricen ostenderet,
Nubes aquali, frigido veto leves
Caeli cavernas aureus subduxerant, Aquam vomentes inferam mortalibus. Vtntique frigido se at axe eruperant, Pkrenetici scptentrionum filii,
Secum fercntes tegulas, ramos, syrus.
At not caduei, naufragi, ut ciconiae Quarum bipennis fulminis plumas vapor
Perussit, alte maesti in terram cccidimus.
In the 'ArdpwrbroKtt we find the lines :
Nan Jit thesauris, non auropeetu' solutum;
Non demunt animis euros at relligiones Persarum monies, non atria diviti Crassi,
But the poet was successful also in a lighter vein. In the Est Modus Matulae there stood the following elegant commendation of wine :
Vino nihil iucundius quisquam bibit.
Hoc aegritudinem ad medendam invenerunt. Hoc hilaritatis duke seminarium.
Hoc continet coagulum convivia.
And in the HLoofunopivi) the wanderer returning home thus concludes his address to the sailors :
Delis habenas animae lent, Dum nos ventus flamine tudo Suavtm ad patriam perducit.
492
RELIGION, CULTURE, BOOK v
spirit ; and even we, who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments preserved discern in some measure that the writer " knew how to laugh and how to jest in moderation. " And as the last breath of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed, as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth, the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament should commend these his Menippean children to every one "who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium "; and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature as in the history of the Italian people. 1
1 The sketches of Varro have so uncommon historical and even poetical significance, and are yet, in consequence of the fragmentary shape in which information regarding them has reached us, known to so few and so irksome to study, that we may be allowed to give in this place a risumt of some of them with the few restorations indispensable for making them readable.
The satire' 'Manius (Early Up 1) describes the management of a rural household. Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in person conducts them to the scene of their work. The youths make their own bed, which labour renders soft to them, and supply themselves with water-jar and lamp. Their drink is the clear fresh spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish. Everything prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art ; but an architect might learn symmetry from it Care is taken of the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to ruin through slovenliness and neglect ; in return the grateful Cera wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds good ; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome. The bread- pantry and wine -vat and the store of sausages on the rafters, lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him ; contented sits the sated guest, looking neither before nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. The warmest double - wool sheep skin is spread as a couch for him. Here people still as good burgesses obey the righteous law, which neither out of envy injures the innocent,
nor out of favour pardons the guilty. Here they speak no evil agains, their neighbours. Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but honour the gods with devotion and with sacrifices, throw for the house-spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little dish, and when the master of the household dies, accompany the bier with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his grandfather were borne forth. " '' "
In another satire there appears a Teacher of the Old [TepovroSiSdaKokos), of whom the degenerate age seems to stand more urgently in need than of the teacher of youth, and he explains how "once everything in Rome"was chaste and pious," and now all things are so entirely changed. Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see slaves in arms
chap, XII LITERATURE, AND ART 493
The critical writing of history, after the manner in which Historical
the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never properly developed in Rome. Even in the field most adapted for it—the representation of contemporary and of recently past events —there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts ; in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important con tributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field—the labours of Antipater and Asellius—were barely even equalled. The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna
against their masters ? —Formerly every one who did not present himself for the levy, was sold on the part of the state into slavery abroad ; now the censor who allows cowardice and everything to pass is called [by the aristocracy, iii. 10; iv. 125, 380; p. 148] a great citizen, and earns praise because he does not seek to make himself a name by annoying his fellow- citizens. —Formerly the Roman husbandman had his beard shaven once every week ; now the rural slave cannot have it fine enough. — Formerly one saw on the estates a corn-granary, which held ten harvests, spacious cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses ; now the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes bis doors to be inlaid with African cypress- wood. —Formerly the housewife turned the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on the hearth in her eye, that the pottage might not be singed ; now," it is said in another satire, "the daughter begs her father for a pound of precious stones, and the wife her husband for a bushel of pearls. — Formerly a newly-married husband was silent and bashful ; now the wife surrenders herself to the f1rst coachman that comes. —Formerly the blessing of children was woman's pride ; now if her husband desires for himsell children, she replies : Knowest thou not what Ennius says ?
Ter tub armis maiim vitam cerntre Quam semel modo parere. —
Formerly the wife was quite content, when the husband once or twice In the year gave her a trip to the country in the uncushioned waggon ; " now, he could add (comp. Cicero, Pro Mil. 21, 55), the wife sulks if her husband goes to his country estate without her, and the travelling lady is attended to the villa by the fashionable host of Greek menials and (he choir. —In a treatise of a graver kind, "Cams or the Training of Children," Varro not only instructs the friend who had asked him for advice on that point, regarding the gods who were according to old usage to be sacrificed to for the children's welfare, but, referring to the more judicious mode of rearing children among the Persians and to his own strictly spent youth, he warns against over-feeding and over-sleeping, against sweet bread and fine fare—the whelps, the old man thinks, are
tfoSJ,
Sisenn*
494
RELIGION, CULTURE, book V
78. (praetor in 676). Those who had read it testify that it far
excelled in liveliness and readableness the old
chronicles, but was written withal in a style
impure and even degenerating into puerility ; as indeed the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible details,1 and a number of words newly coined or derived from the language of conversation. When it is added that the author's model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate to
recognize in Sisenna's celebrated historical work, not a
dow fed more judiciously than the children—and likewise against the enchantresses' charms and blessings, which in cases of sickness so often take the place of the physician's counsel. He advises to keep the girls at embroidery, that they may afterwards understand how to judge properly of embroidered and textile work, and not to allow them to put off the child's dress too early ; he warns against carrying boys to the gladiatorial games, in which the heart is early hardened and cruelty learned. — In the . ' Man of Sixty Years " Varro appears as a Roman Epimenides who had fallen asleep when a boy of ten and waked up again after half a century. He is astonished to find instead of his smooth-shorn boy's head an old bald pate with an ugly snout and savage bristles like a hedgehog ; but he is still more astonished at the change in Rome. Lucrine oysters, formerly a wedding dish, are now everyday fare ; for which, accordingly, the bankrupt glutton silently prepares the incendiary torch. While formerly the father disposed of his boy, now the disposal is transferred to the latter : he disposes, forsooth, of his father by poison. The comitium had become an exchange, the criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen. No law is any longer obeyed save only this one, that nothing is given for nothing. All virtues have vanished ; in their stead the awakened man is saluted by impiety, perfidy, lewdness, as new denizens. "Alas for thee, Marcus, with such a sleep and such an awakening 1 " — The sketch
17. resembles the Catilinarian epoch, shortly after which (about 697) the old man must have written it, and there lay a truth in the bitter torn at the close ; where Marcus, properly reproved for his unseasonable accusations and antiquarian reminiscences, is — with a mock application of a primitive Roman custom— dragged as a useless old man to the bridge and thrown into the Tiber. There was certainly no longer room for such men in Rome.
1 "The innocent," so ran a speech, "thou draggest forth, trembling in every limb, and on the high margin of the river's bank in the dawn of the morning" [thou causest them to be slaughtered]. Several such phrases, that might be inserted without difficulty in a commonplace novel, occur.
dry thoroughly
chat. XII LITERATURE, AMD ART
495
product of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts life-like and interesting by means of fictitious details and thereby makes it insipid and untrue ; and it will no longer excite surprise that we meet with the same Sisenna also as translator of Greek fashion able romances (p. 483).
That the prospect should be still more lamentable in the field of the general annals of the city and even of the world, was implied in the nature of the case. The increasing activity of antiquarian research induced the expectation that the current narrative would be rectified from documents and other trustworthy sources ; but this hope was not ful filled. The more and the deeper men investigated, the more clearly it became apparent what a task it was to write a critical history of Rome. The difficulties even, which opposed themselves to investigation and narration, were immense ; but the most dangerous obstacles were not those of a literary kind. The conventional early history of Rome, as it had now been narrated and believed for at least ten generations, was most intimately mixed up with the civil life of the nation; and yet in any thorough and honest inquiry not only had details to be modified here and there, but the whole building had to be overturned as much as the Franconian primitive history of king Pharamund or the British of king Arthur. An inquirer of conservative views, such as was Varro for instance, could have no wish to put his hand to such a work; and if a daring freethinker had undertaken an outcry would have been raised all good citizens against this worst of all revolutionaries, who was preparing to deprive the constitutional party even of their
past Thus philological and antiquarian research deterred from the writing of history rather than conduced towards it Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave
Annals d
e
**'
it,
by
Vtkrini
up the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged, as did Titus Fomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists in unpretending tabular shape—a work by which the synchronistic Graeco- Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which it was conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity; it continued to supply its contributions both in prose and verse to the great library written by ennui for ennui, while the makers of the books, in part already freedmen, did not trouble themselves at all about research properly so called. Such of these writings as are mentioned to us—not one of them is preserved—seem to have been not only of a wholly secondary character, but in great part even pervaded by interested falsification. It is true that the chronicle of
781 Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (about 676? ) was written in an old-fashioned but good style, and studied at least a commendable brevity in the representation of the fabulous
66. period. Gaius Licinius Macer (f as late praetor in 688), father of the poet Calvus (p. 481), and a zealous democrat, laid claim more than any other chronicler to documentary research and criticism, but his libri lintei and other matters peculiar to him are in the highest degree suspicious, and an interpolation of the whole annals in the interest of demo cratic tendencies —an interpolation of a very extensive kind,
and which has passed over in part to the later annalists— is probably traceable to him.
Lastly, Valerius Antias excelled all his predecessors in prolixity as well as in puerile story-telling. The falsification of numbers was here systematically carried out down even to contemporary history, and the primitive history of Rome was elaborated once more from one form of insipidity to another ; for instance the narrative of the way in which the wise Numa according to the instructions of the nymph Egeria caught the gods Faunus and Ficuc with wine, and the beautiful
496
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
chap, XII LITERATURE, AND ART
497
conversation thereupon held by the same Numa with the god Jupiter, cannot be too urgently recommended to all worshippers of the so-called legendary history of Rome in order that, if possible, they may believe these things—of course, in substance. It would have been a marvel if the Greek novel-writers of this period had allowed such
materials, made as if for their use, to escape them. In fact there were not wanting Greek literati, who worked up the Roman history into romances ; such a composition, for instance, was the Five Books " Concerning Rome " of the Alexander Polyhistor already mentioned among the Greek literati living in Rome 460), preposterous mixture of vapid historical tradition and trivial, principally erotic, fiction. He, may be presumed, took the first steps towards fill ing up the five hundred years, which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin of Rome into the chronological connection required the fables on either
side, with one of those lists of kings without achievements which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chroniclers for, to all appearance, was he that launched into the world the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii, whom the following times accord ingly did not neglect to furnish in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater definiteness, also
portrait.
Thus from various sides the historical romance of the
Greeks finds its way into Roman historiography and more than probable that not the least portion of what we are accustomed nowadays to call tradition of the Roman
times proceeds from sources of the stamp of Amadis of Gaul and the chivalrous romances of Fouque" — an edifying consideration, at least for those who have relish for the humour of history and who know how to appreciate the comical aspect of the piety still cherished in certain circles of the nineteenth century for king Numa.
primitive
VOL.
165
T
it
a is;
;
a
;
it
by
it
(p.
a
Universal tory-
A novelty in the Roman literature of this period is the appearance of universal history or, to speak more correctly, of Roman and Greek history conjoined, alongside of the native annals. Cornelius Nepos from Ticinum 650— c
498
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
Nepos.
100-30. 125) first supplied an universal chronicle (published before
64.
700) and general collection of biographies —arranged according to certain categories — of Romans and Greeks distinguished in politics or literature or of men at any rate who exercised influence on the Roman or Greek history. These works are of kindred nature with the universal histories which the Greeks had for considerable time been composing and these very Greek world-chronicles, such as that of Kastor son-in-law of the Galatian king Deiotarus, concluded in 698, now began to include in their range the Roman history which previously they had neglected. These works certainly attempted, just like Polybius, to substitute the history of the Mediterranean world for the more local one but that which in Polybius was the result of grand and clear conception and deep historical feeling was in these chronicles rather the product of the practical exigencies of school and self-instruction. These general chronicles, text-books for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging to artistic historical composition and Nepos himself in
66.
was pure compiler distinguished neither spirit nor even merely symmetrical plan.
The historiography of this period certainly remarkable and in high degree characteristic, but as far from pleasing as the age itself. The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history; here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity, in which Polybius
particular
a
is
by
a
it is
is
a
;
by
;
a
;
a
a
(c.
chap, xh LITERATURE, AND ART
499
was so far in advance of his age, was now learned even by Greek and Roman boys at school. But while the Mediterranean state had found a historian before it had become conscious of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained, there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans any man who was able to give to it adequate expression. " There is no such thing," says Cicero, "as Roman historical composi tion " ; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than the simple truth. The man of research turns away from writing history, the writer of history turns away from research ; historical literature oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance. All the species of pure art —epos, drama, lyric poetry, history—are worthless in this worthless world ; but in no species is the intellectual decay of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a
clearness as in its historiography.
The minor historical literature of this period displays on Literatim
the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten "^? T*? productions, one treatise of the first rank—the Memoirs of
Caesar, or rather the Military Report of the democratic Caesar's
eport.
general to the people from whom he had received his commission. The finished section, and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify as 62. well as possible before the public the formally unconstitu tional enterprise of Caesar in conquering a great country and constantly increasing his army for that object without instructions from the competent authority; it was written
and given forth in 703, when the storm broke out against 61. Caesar in Rome and he was summoned to dismiss his army and answer for his conduct. 1 The author of this
1 That the treatise on the Gallic war was published all at once, has been long conjectured ; the distinct proof that it was so, is furnished by the mention of the equalization of the Boii and the Haedui already in the first book (c 28) whereas the Boii still occur in the seventh (c 10) as tributary
500
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
vindication writes, as he himself says, entirely as an officer and carefully avoids extending his military report to the
hazardous departments of political organization and adminis tration. His incidental and partisan treatise cast in the form of a military report is itself a piece of history like the bulletins of Napoleon, but it is not, and was not intended to be, a historical work in the true sense of the word ; the objective form which the narrative assumes is that of the magistrate, not that of the historian. But in this modest
character the work is masterly and finished, more than any
other in all Roman literature. The narrative is always ( terse and never scanty, always simple and never careless,
always of transparent vividness and never strained or affected. The language is completely pure from archaisms and from vulgarisms — the type of the modern urbanitas. In the Books concerning the Civil War we seem to feel that the author had desired to avoid war and could not avoid and perhaps also that in Caesar's soul, as in every other, the period of hope was purer and fresher one than that of fulfilment but over the treatise on the Gallic war there diffused bright serenity, simple charm, which are no less unique in literature than Caesar in history.
subjects of the Haedui, and evidently only obtained equal rights with their former masters on account of their conduct and that of the Haedui in the war against Vercingetorix. On the other hand any one who attentively follows the history of the time will find in the expression as to the Milonian crisis (vii. proof that the treatise was published before the outbreak of the civil war not because Pompeius there praised, but because
62. Caesar there approves the exceptional laws of 702 (p. 146). This he might and could not but do, so long as he sought to bring about a peaceful accommodation with Pompeius (p. 175), but not after the rupture, when he reversed the condemnations that took place on the basis of those laws injurious for him (p. 316). Accordingly the publication of this
ft. treatise has been quite rightly placed in 703.
The tendency of the work we discern most distinctly in the constant,
often—most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the Aquitanian expedition iii. —not successful, justification of every single act of war as defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable.
That the adversaries of Caesar censured his attacks on the Celts and Germans above all as unprovoked, well known (Sueton. Caet. 24).
is
1 1
a
;
is
a a
6) a
is
is
it,
a;
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART
501
Of a kindred nature were the letters interchanged Corre- between the statesmen and literati of this period, which spon oa" were carefully collected and published in the following
epoch; such as the correspondence of Caesar himself, of
Cicero, Calvus and others. They can still less be numbered
among strictly literary performances ; but this literature of correspondence was a rich store-house for historical as for "
all other research, and the most faithful mirror of an epoch
in which so much of the worth of past times and so much
spirit, cleverness, and talent were evaporated and dissipated
in trifling.
A journalist literature in the modern sense was never formed in Rome ; literary warfare continued to be confined to the writing of pamphlets and, along with this, to the custom generally diffused at that time of annotating the notices destined for the public in places of resort with the pencil or the pen. On the other hand subordinate persons were employed to note down the events of the day and news of the city for the absent men of quality ; and Caesar as early as his first consulship took fitting measures for the immediate publication of an extract from the transactions
of the senate. From the private journals of those Roman penny-a-liners and these official current reports there arose
a sort of news-sheet for the capital (acta diurnd), in which News- the resumi of the business discussed before the people and
in the senate, and births, deaths, and such like were recorded. This became a not unimportant source for history, but remained without proper political as without literary significance.
To subsidiary historical literature belongs of right also the composition of orations. The speech, whether written down or not, is in its nature ephemeral and does not belong to literature; but it may, like the report and the letter, and indeed still more readily than these, come to be included, through the significance of the moment and the
Speeches
oratory. oratory.
change occurred on all hands. The composition of political speeches was on the decline like political speaking itself. The political speech in Rome, as generally in the ancient polities, reached its culminating point in the discussions before the burgesses ; here the orator was not fettered, as in the senate, by collegiate considerations and burdensome forms, nor, as in the judicial addresses, by the interests —in themselves foreign to politics —of the accusation and defence; here alone his heart swelled proudly before the whole great and mighty Roman people hanging on his lips. But all this was now gone. Not as though there was any lack of orators or of the publishing of speeches delivered before the burgesses ; on the contrary political authorship only now waxed copious, and it began to become a standing complaint at table that the host incommoded his guests by reading before them his latest orations. Publius Clodius had his speeches to the people issued as pamphlets, just like Gaius Gracchus ; but two men may do the same thing without producing the same effect The more important leaders even of the opposition, especially Caesar himself, did not often address the burgesses, and no longer published the speeches which they delivered ; indeed they partly sought for their political fugitive writings another form than the traditional one of contiones, in which respect more especially the writings praising and censuring Cato 321) are remarkable. This easily explained. Gaius Gracchus had addressed the burgesses; now men addressed the populace; and as
508
RELIGION, CULTURE, book V
of the mind from which it springs, among the permanent treasures of the national literature. Thus in Rome the records of orations of a political tenor delivered before the burgesses or the jurymen had for long played a great part in public life ; and not only so, but the speeches of Gaius Gracchus in particular were justly reckoned among
Decline of the classical Roman writings. But in this epoch a singular
power
is
(p.
chap. XII LITERATURE, AND ART
303
the audience, so was the speech. No wonder that the reputable political author shunned a dress which implied that he had directed his words to the crowd assembled in the market-place of the capital.
While the composition of orations thus declined from Rise of » its former literary and political value in the same way as 0f plead- all branches of literature which were the natural growth of '"S3-
the national life, there began at the same time a singular, non-political, literature of pleadings. Hitherto the Romans
had known nothing of the idea that the address of an advocate as such was destined not only for the judges and
the parties, but also for the literary edification of contem
poraries and posterity ; no advocate had written down and
his pleadings, unless they were possibly at the
same time political orations and in so far were fitted to be circulated as party writings, and this had not occurred very frequently. Even Quintus Hortensius (640-704), the 114-60. most celebrated Roman advocate in the first years of this
period, published but few speeches and these apparently
only such as were wholly or half political. It was his successor in the leadership of the Roman bar, Marcus
Tullius Cicero (648-711) who was from the outset quite
as much author as forensic orator; he published his pleadings regularly, even when they were not at all or but remotely connected with politics. This was a token, not / of progress, but of an unnatural and degenerate state of I things. Even in Athens the appearance of non-political pleadings among the forms of literature was a sign of debility ; and it was doubly so in Rome, which did not like Athens by a sort of necessity produce this malformation
from the exaggerated pursuit of rhetoric, but borrowed it
from abroad arbitrarily and in antagonism to the better traditions of the nation. Yet this new species of literature
came rapidly into vogue, partly because it had various
points of contact and coincidence with the earlier authorship
published
Cicero. 106-48.
Hit
of political orations, partly because the unpoetic, dog matical, rhetorizing temperament of the Romans offered a favourable soil for the new seed, as indeed at the present day the speeches of advocates and even a sort of literature of law-proceedings are of some importance in Italy.
Thus oratorical authorship emancipated from politics was naturalized in the Roman literary world by Cicero We have already had occasion several times to mention this many-sided man. As a statesman without
idea, or purpose, he figured successively as democrat, as aristocrat, and as a tool of the monarchs, and was never more than a short-sighted egotist. Where he exhibited the semblance of action, the questions to which his action applied had, as a rule, just reached their solution ; thus he came forward in the trial of Verres against the senatorial courts when they were already set aside ; thus he was silent at the discussion on the Gabinian, and acted as a champion of the Manilian, law; thus he thundered against Catilina
when his departure was already settled, and so forth. He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks, and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din ; no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him, and the execution of the Catilinarians in particular was far more due to his acquiescence than to his instigation. In a liter ary point of view we have already noticed that he was the creator of the modern Latin prose (p. 456) ; his importance rests on his mastery of style, and it is only as a stylist that he shows confidence in himself. In the character of an author, on the other hand, he stands quite as low as in that of a statesman. He essayed the most varied tasks,
sang the great deeds of Marius and his own petty achieve ments in endless hexameters, beat Demosthenes off the field with his speeches, and Plato with his philosophic dialogues; and time alone was wanting for him to vanquish also Thucydides. He was in fact so thoroughly a dabbler,
S<>4
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
insight,
chap. XII LITERATURE, AND ART
505
that it was pretty much a matter of indifference to what work he applied his hand. By nature a journalist in the worst sense of that term — abounding, as he himself says, in words, poor beyond all conception in ideas —there was no department in which he could not with the help of a few books have rapidly got up by translation or compilation a readable essay. His correspondence mirrors most faithfully his character. People are in the habit of calling it interest ing and clever ; and it is so, as long as it reflects the urban or villa life of the world of quality ; but where the writer is thrown on his own resources, as in exile, in Cilicia, and after the battle of Pharsalus, it is stale and empty as was ever the soul of a feuilletonist banished from his familiar circles. It is scarcely needful to add that such a states man and such a litt'erateur could not, as a man, exhibit aught else than a thinly varnished superficiality and heart- lessness. Must we still describe the orator ? The great author is also a great man ; and in the great orator more especially conviction or passion flows forth with a clearer and more impetuous stream from the depths of the breast than in the scantily-gifted many who merely count and are nothing. Cicero had no conviction and no passion ; he was nothing but an advocate, and not a good one. He under stood how to set forth his narrative of the case with piquancy of anecdote, to excite, if not the feeling, at any rate the sentimentality of his hearers, and to enliven the dry business of legal pleading by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort ; his better orations, though they are far from coming up to the free gracefulness and the sure point of the most excellent compositions of this sort, for instance the Memoirs of Beaumarchais, yet form easy and agreeable reading. But while the very advantages just indicated will appear to the serious judge as advantages of very dubious value, the absolute want of political discern ment in the orations on constitutional questions and of
Mfo- ianism.
juristic deduction in the forensic addresses, the egotism forgetful of its duty and constantly losing sight of the cause while thinking of the advocate, the dreadful barrenness of thought in the Ciceronian orations must revolt every reader of feeling and judgment
If there is anything wonderful in the case, it is in truth nQt ^e orations, but the admiration which they excited. As to Cicero every unbiassed person will soon make up his mind : Ciceronianism is a problem, which in fact cannot be properly solved, but can only be resolved into that greater mystery of human nature — language and the effect of language on the mind. Inasmuch as the noble Latin language, just before it perished as a national idiom, was once more as it were comprehensively grasped by that dexterous stylist and deposited in his copious
something of the power which language exercises, and of the piety which it awakens, was transferred to the unworthy vessel. The Romans possessed no great Latin prose- writer ; for Caesar was, like Napoleon, only incidentally an author. Was it to be wondered at that, in the absence of such an one, they should at least honour the genius of the language in the great stylist ? and that, like Cicero himself, Cicero's readers also should accustom themselves to ask not what, but how he had written ? Custom and the school master then completed what the power of language had begun.
Cicero's contemporaries however were, as may readily be conceived, far less involved in this strange idolatry than many of their successors. The Ciceronian manner ruled no doubt throughout a generation the Roman advocate-world, just as the far worse manner of Hortensius had done ; but the most considerable men, such as Caesar, kept themselves always aloof from and among the younger generation there arose in all men of fresh and living talent the most
Opposition niamsm.
506
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
decided opposition
to that hybrid and feeble rhetoric.
writings,
it,
chap, XII LITERATURE, AND ART
507
They found Cicero's language deficient in precision and chasteness, his jests deficient in liveliness, his arrangement deficient in clearness and articulate division, and above all his whole eloquence wanting in the fire which makes the orator. Instead of the Rhodian eclectics men began to recur to the genuine Attic orators, especially to Lysias and Demosthenes, and sought to naturalize a more vigorous and masculine eloquence in Rome. Representatives of this tendency were, the solemn but stiff Marcus Junius Brutus
Undeniably there was more taste cind more spirit in this younger oratorical literature than in the Hortensian and Ciceronian put together ; but we are not able to judge how far, amidst the storms of the revolution which rapidly swept away the whole of this richly-gifted group with the single exception of Pollio, those better germs attained
Calvus .
86-42. 82-48. 49. 82-48.
76-4 a. d.
(669-712);
the two political partisans Marcus Caelius Rufus (672-706; p. 317) and Gaius Scribonius Curio (t 705; p. 183, 233) — both as orators full of spirit and life; Calvus well known also as a poet (672 — 706), the literary coryphaeus of this younger group of orators ; and the earnest and conscientious Gaius Asinius Pollio (678-
757).
The time allotted to them was but too brief. The new monarchy began by making war on freedom of
speech, and soon wholly suppressed the political oration. Thenceforth the subordinate species of the pure advocate- pleading was doubtless still retained in literature ; but the higher art and literature of oratory, which thoroughly depend on political excitement, perished with the latter of necessity and for ever.
development
Lastly there sprang up in the aesthetic literature of this The period the artistic treatment of subjects of professional ? ^ficIa' science in the form of the stylistic dialogue, which had been applied to very extensively in use among the Greeks and had been ^i^j already employed also in isolated cases among the Romans icience*
(iv. 251).
Cicero especially made various attempts at pre-
508
RELIGION, CULTURE, book *
Cicero's senting rhetorical and philosophical subjects in this form and *"*'' making the professional manual a suitable book for reading. SS. His chief writings are the De Oratore (written in 699), to which the history of Roman eloquence (the dialogue Brutus,
«6. written in 708) and other minor rhetorical essays were added by way of supplement ; and the treatise De Republic^
64. (written in 700), with which the treatise De Legibus (written 62 1 in 702 ? ) after the model of Plato is brought into connec tion. They are no great works of art, but undoubtedly
they are the works in which the excellences of the author are most, and his defects least, conspicuous. The rhetorical writings are far from coming up to the didactic chasteness of form and precision of thought of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, but they contain instead a store of practical forensic experience and forensic anecdotes of all sorts
and tastefully set forth, and in fact solve the
easily
problem
ment. The treatise De RepublicA carries out, in a singular mongrel compound of history and philosophy, the leading idea that the existing constitution of Rome is substantially the ideal state-organization sought for by the philosophers ; an idea indeed just as unphilosophical as unhistorical, and besides not even peculiar to the author, but which, as may readily be conceived, became and remained popular. The scientific groundwork of these rhetorical and political writings of Cicero belongs of course entirely to the Greeks, and many of the details also, such as the grand concluding effect in the treatise De Republic^, the Dream of Scipio, are directly borrowed from them ; yet they possess comparative origin ality, inasmuch as the elaboration shows throughout Roman local colouring, and the proud consciousness of political life, which the Roman was certainly entitled to feel as compared with the Greeks, makes the author even confront his Greek instructors with a certain independence. The form of
Cicero's dialogue
is doubtless neither the genuine inter
of combining didactic instruction with amuse
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART
S°9
rogative dialectics of the best Greek artificial dialogue nor the genuine conversational tone of Diderot or Lessing ; but the great groups of advocates gathering around Crassus and Antonius and of the older and younger statesmen of the Scipionic circle furnish a lively and effective framework, fitting channels for the introduction of historical references and anecdotes, and convenient resting-points for the scien tific discussion. The style is quite as elaborate and
as in the best-written orations, and so far more pleasing than these, since the author does not often in this field make a vain attempt at pathos.
While these rhetorical and political writings of Cicero
with a philosophic colouring are not devoid of merit, the compiler on the other hand completely failed, when in the involuntary leisure of the last years of his life (709-710) 45-44. he applied himself to philosophy proper, and with equal peevishness and precipitation composed in a couple of I months a philosophical library. The receipt was
simple. In rude imitation of the popular writings of Aristotle, in which the form of dialogue was employed chiefly for the setting forth and criticising of the different
older systems, Cicero stitched together the Epicurean,
Stoic, and Syncretist writings handling the same problem,
as they came or were given to his hand, into a so-called dialogue. And all that he did on his own part was, to supply an introduction prefixed to the new book from the ample collection of prefaces for future works which he had beside him ; to impart a certain popular character, inasmuch
as he interwove Roman examples and references, and sometimes digressed to subjects irrelevant but more familiar to the writer and the reader, such as the treatment of the deportment of the orator in the De Officii s ; and to exhibit that sort of bungling, which a man of letters, who has not attained to philosophic thinking or even to philosophic knowledge and who works rapidly and boldly, shows in the
polished
\
very
Profes sional sciences. Latin philology. Vain*.
reproduction of dialectic trains of thought. In this way no doubt a multitude of thick tomes might very quickly come into existence—"They are copies," wrote the author himself to a friend who wondered at his fertility; "they give me little trouble, for I supply only the words and these I have in abundance. " Against this nothing further could be said ; but any one who seeks classical productions in works so written can only be advised to study in literary matters a becoming silence.
Of the sciences only a single one manifested vigorous life, that of Latin philology. The scheme of linguistic and antiquarian research within the domain of the Latin race, planned by Silo, was carried out especially by his disciple Varro on the grandest scale. There appeared
hensive elaborations of the whole stores of the language, more especially the extensive grammatical commentaries of Figulus and the great work of Varro De Lingua Latino. ; monographs on grammar and the history of the language, such as Varro's writings on the usage of the Latin language, on synonyms, on the age of the letters, on the origin of the Latin tongue ; scholia on the older literature, especially on Plautus; works of literary history, biographies of poets, investigations into the earlier drama, into the scenic division of the comedies of Plautus, and into their genuineness. Latin archaeology, which embraced the whole older history and the ritual law apart from practical jurisprudence, was
5io
RELIGION, CULTURE, BOOK T
in Varro's "Antiquities of Things Human and Divine," which was and for all times remained the fundamental treatise on the subject (published between
comprehended
67. 46. 687 and 709). The first portion, "Of Things Human," described the primeval age of Rome, the divisions of city and country, the sciences of the years, months, and days, Iasdy, the public transactions at home and in war ; in the second half, "Of Things Divine," the state -theology, the nature and significance of the colleges of experts, of the
compre
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART
511
holy places, of the religious festivals, of sacrificial and votive gifts, and lastly of the gods themselves were summarily unfolded. Moreover, besides a number of monographs — e. g. on the descent of the Roman people, on the Roman gentes descended from Troy, on the tribes— there was added, as a larger and more independent supplement, the treatise " Of the Life of the Roman People " —a remarkable attempt at a history of Roman manners, which sketched a picture of the state of domestic life, finance, and culture in the regal, the early republican, the Hannibalic, and the most recent period. These labours of Varro were based on an empiric knowledge of the Roman world and its adjacent Hellenic domain more various and greater in its kind than any other Roman either before or after him possessed —a knowledge to which living observation and the study of literature alike contributed. The eulogy of his contemporaries was well deserved, that Varro had enabled his countrymen —strangers in their own world —to know their position in their native land, and had taught the Romans who and where they
were. But criticism and system will be sought for in vain. His Greek information seems to have come from somewhat confused sources, and there are traces that even in the Roman field the writer was not free from the influence of the historical romance of his time. The matter is doubtless inserted in a convenient and symmetrical frame work, but not classified or treated methodically ; and with all his efforts to bring tradition and personal observation into harmony, the scientific labours of Varro are not to be acquitted of a certain implicit faith in tradition or of an unpractical scholasticism. 1 The connection with Greek
1 A remarkable example is the general exposition regarding cattle in the treatise on Husbandry (ii. 1 ) with the nine times nine subdivisions of the doctrine of cattle-rearing, with the "incredible but true " fact that the mares at Olisipo (Lisbon) become pregnant by the wind, and generally
The other
nonai ■deuces.
Alongside of this extraordinary stir in the field of philo- logy the small amount of activity in the other sciences surprising. What appeared of importance in philosophy — such as Lucretius' representation of the Epicurean system in the poetical child- dress of the pre-Socratic philosophy, and the better writings of Cicero —produced its effect and found its audience not through its philosophic contents, but in spite of such contents solely through its aesthetic form; the numerous translations of Epicurean writings and the Pythagorean works, such as Varro's great treatise
with its singular mixture of philosophical, historical, and agricultural notices.
Thus Varro derives facert from fades, because he who makes any thing gives to an appearance, volpes, the fox, after Stilo from volart fediius as the flying - footed Gaius Trebatius, a philosophical jurist of this age, derives sacellum from sacra cetta, Figulus frater from fere alter and so forth. This practice, which appears not merely in isolated instances but as main element of the philological literature of this age, presents a
very great resemblance to the mode in which till recently comparative philology was prosecuted, before insight into the organism of language pot stop to the occupation of the empirics.
'
512
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
philology consists in the imitation of its defects more than of its excellences ; for instance, the basing of etymologies on mere similarity of sound both in Varro himself and in the other philologues of this epoch runs into pure guess work and often into downright absurdity. 1 In its empiric confidence and copiousness as well as in its empiric in adequacy and want of method the Varronian vividly re minds us of the English national philology, and just like the latter, finds its centre in the study of the older drama. We have already observed that the monarchical literature developed the rules of language in contradistinction to this linguistic empiricism 457). It in high degree signi ficant that there stands at the head of the modern gram marians no less man than Caesar himself, who in his
68. 60. treatise on Analogy (given forth between 696 and 704) first undertook to bring free language under the power of law.
a
a
1
;
(p.
it
is
a
is a
chap, xil LITERATURE, AND ART
513
on the Elements of Numbers and the still more copious one of Figulus concerning the Gods, had beyond doubt neither scientific nor formal value.
Even the professional sciences were but feebly cultivated. Varro's Books on Husbandry written in the form of dialogue are no doubt more methodical than those of his predecessors Cato and Saserna—on which accordingly he drops many a side glance of censure—but have on the whole proceeded more from the study than, like those earlier works, from living experience. Of the juristic labours of Varro and of Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul in 703) hardly aught more SI can be said, than that they contributed to the dialectic and philosophical embellishment of Roman jurisprudence. And there is nothing farther here to be mentioned, except perhaps the three books of Gaius Matius on cooking, pickling, and making preserves —so far as we know, the earliest Roman cookery-book, and, as the work of a man of rank, certainly a phenomenon deserving of notice. That mathematics and physics were stimulated by the increased Hellenistic and utilitarian tendencies of the monarchy, is apparent from their growing importance in the instruction
of youth (p. 449) and from various practical applications ; under which, besides the reform of the calendar (p. 438), may perhaps be included the appearance of wall-maps at this period, the technical improvements in shipbuilding and
in musical instruments, designs and buildings like the aviary specified by Varro, the bridge of piles over the Rhine executed by the engineers of Caesar, and even two semi circular stages of boards arranged for
together, and employed first separately as two theatres and then jointly as an amphitheatre. The public exhibition of foreign natural curiosities at the popular festivals was not unusual ; and the descriptions of remarkable animals, which Caesar has embodied in the reports of his campaigns, show that, had an Aristotle appeared, he would have again found
vol. v 166
being pushed
Art.
his patron-prince. But such literary performances as are mentioned in this department are essentially associated with Neopythagoreanism, such as the comparison of Greek and Barbarian, i. e. Egyptian, celestial observations by Figulus, and his writings concerning animals, winds, and generative organs. After Greek physical research generally had swerved from the Aristotelian effort to find amidst individual facts the law, and had more and more passed into an empiric and mostly uncritical observation of the external and surprising in nature, natural science when coming forward as a mystical philosophy of nature, instead of en lightening and stimulating, could only still more stupefy and paralyze ; and in presence of such a method it was better to rest satisfied with the platitude which Cicero delivers as Socratic wisdom, that the investigation of nature either seeks after things which nobody can know, or after such things as nobody needs to know.
Ifj in fine, we cast a glance at art, we discover here the
same unpleasing phenomena which pervade the whole
Arts of design.
SM
RELIGION, CULTURE, book v
Architect- mental life of this period. Building on the part of the
"**
state was virtually brought to a total stand amidst the scarcity of money that marked the last age of the republic We have already spoken of the luxury in building of the Roman grandees ; the architects learned in consequence of this to be lavish of marble—the coloured sorts such as the
Numidian (Giallo antico) and others came into vogue at this time, and the marble-quarries of Luna
were now employed for the first time — and began to inlay the floors of the rooms with mosaic work, to panel the walls with slabs of marble, or to paint the com partments in imitation of marble — the first steps towards the subsequent fresco-painting. But art was not a gainer by this lavish magnificence.
In the arts of design connoisseurship and collecting were aiways on the increase. It was a mere affectation of
yellow
(Carrara)
chap, xii LITERATURE, AND ART
515
Catonian simplicity, when an advocate spoke before the jurymen of the works of art " of a certain Praxiteles " ; every one travelled and inspected, and the trade of the art- ciceroni, or, as they were then called, the exegetae, was none of the worst Ancient works of art were formally hunted after — statues and pictures less, it is true, than, in accordance with the rude character of Roman luxury, artistically wrought furniture and ornaments of all sorts for the room and the table. As early as that age the old Greek tombs of Capua and Corinth were ransacked for the sake of the bronze and earthenware vessels which had been placed in the tomb along with the dead. For a small statuette of bronze 40,000 sesterces (^400) were paid, and 200,000 (^2000) for a pair of costly carpets; a well- wrought bronze cooking machine came to cost more than an estate. In this barbaric hunting after art the rich amateur was, as might be expected, frequently cheated by those who supplied him ; but the economic ruin of Asia Minor in particular so exceedingly rich in artistic products brought many really ancient and rare ornaments and works of art into the market, and from Athens,
Syracuse, Cyzicus, Pergamus, Chios, Samos, and other ancient seats of art, everything that was for sale and very much that was not
migrated to the palaces and villas of the Roman grandees. We have already mentioned what treasures of art were to be found within the house of Lucullus, who indeed was accused, perhaps not unjustly, of having gratified his interest in the fine arts at the expense of his duties as a general. The amateurs of art crowded thither as they crowd at present to the Villa Borghese, and complained even then of such treasures being confined to the palaces and country-houses of the men of quality, where they could be seen only with difficulty and after special permission from the possessor. The public buildings on the other hand were far from filled in like proportion with famous
516
RELIGION, CULTURE, book t
works of Greek masters, and in many cases there still stood in the temples of the capital nothing but the old images of the gods carved in wood. As to the exercise of art there is virtually nothing to report ; there is hardly mentioned by name from this period any Roman sculptor or painter except a certain Arellius, whose pictures rapidly went off not on account of their artistic value, but because the cunning reprobate furnished in his pictures of the goddesses faithful portraits of his mistresses for the time being.
The importance of music and dancing increased in public
Dancing
*" m c- as in domestic life. We have already set forth how theatri
cal music and the dancing-piece attained to an independent standing in the development of the stage at this period
472); we may add that now in Rome itself representa tions were very frequently given by Greek musicians, dancers, and declaimers on the public stage—such as were usual in Asia Minor and generally in the whole Hellenic and Hel- lenizing world. 1 To these fell to be added the musicians
Such "Greek entertainments" were very frequent not merely in the Greek cities of Italy, especially in Naples (Cic pro Arch. 10 Plut. Brut, 21), but even now also in Rome (iv. 192 Cic. Ad Fain. vii. i, Ad Att. xvi. Suetoru Caes. 39 Plut. Brut. 21). When the well- known epitaph of Licinia Eucharis fourteen years of age, which probably belongs to the end of this period, makes this " girl well instructed and taught in all arts by the Muses themselves" shine as a dancer in the private exhibitions of noble houses and appear first in public on the Greek stage (modo noiilium ludot dtcoravi choro, it Graeca in scaena prima
populo apparui), this doubtless can only mean that she was the first girl that appeared on the public Greek stage in Rome as generally indeed was not till this epoch that women began to come forward publicly in Rome (p. 469).
These "Greek entertainments" in Rome seem not to have been properly scenic, but rather to have belonged to the category of composite exhibitions —primarily musical and declamatory —such as were not of rare occurrence in subsequent times also in Greece (Welcker, Gritch. Trag. p. 1277). This view supported by the prominence of flute-playing in Polybius (xxx. 13) and of dancing in the account of Suetonius regarding the armed dances from Asia Minor performed at Caesar's games and in the epitaph of Eucharis the description also of the citharoedus (Ad Her. iv. 47, 60 comp. Vitruv. v. must have been derived from such "Greek entertainments. " The combinations of these representations in Rome with Greek athletic combats significant (Polyb. c. Liv. xxxix.
Dramatic recitations were by no means excluded from these mixed
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517
and dancing-girls who exhibited their arts to order at table and elsewhere, and the special choirs of stringed and wind instruments and singers which were no longer rare in noble houses. But that even the world of quality itself played and sang with diligence, is shown by the very adoption of music into the cycle of the generally recognized subjects of instruction 449) as to dancing, was, to say nothing of women, made matter of reproach even against consulars that they exhibited themselves in dancing performances amidst small circle.
Towards the end of this period, however, there appears Incipient with the commencement of the monarchy the beginning of 0f ^J100
better time also in art. We have already mentioned the monarchy, mighty stimulus which building in the capital received, and
building throughout the empire was destined to receive,
through Caesar. Even in the cutting of the dies of the
coins there appears about 700 remarkable change; the M.