by Tibullus
Oraque magnanimum spirantia paene virorum
In rostris iacuere suis: sed enim abstulit omnis,
Tanquam sola foret, rapti Ciceronis imago.
Tunc redeunt animis ingentia consulis acta
Iurataeque manus deprensaque foedera noxae
Patriciumque nefas extinctum: poena Cethegi
Deiectusque redit votis Catilina nefandis.
Quid favor aut coetus, pleni quid honoribus anni
Profuerant? sacris exculta quid artibus aetas?
Abstulit una dies aevi decus, ictaque luctu
Conticuit Latiae tristis facundia linguae.
Unica sollicitis quondam tutela salusque,
Egregium semper patriae caput, ille senatus
Vindex, ille fori, legum ritusque togaeque,
Publica vox saevis aeternum obmutuit armis.
Informes voltus sparsamque cruore nefando
Canitiem sacrasque manus operumque ministras
Tantorum pedibus civis proiecta superbis
Proculcavit ovans nec lubrica fata deosque
Respexit. Nullo luet hoc Antonius aevo.
Hoc nec in Emathio mitis victoria Perse,
Nec te, dire Syphax, non fecerat hoste Philippo;
Inque triumphato ludibria cuncta Iugurtha
Afuerant, nostraeque cadens ferus Hannibal irae
Membra tamen Stygias tulit inviolata sub umbras.
From these it will be seen that he was a poet of considerable power. Another epicist of some celebrity, whom Quintilian thought worth reading, was PEDO ALBINOVANUS; he was also an epigrammatist, and in conversation remarkable for his brilliant wit. There is an Albinus mentioned by Priscian who is perhaps intended for him. Other poets referred to in the long list which closes the letters from Pontus are RUFUS, LARGUS, probably the perfidious friend of Gallus so mercilessly sketched by Bekker, CAMERINUS, LUPUS, and MONTANUS. All these are little more than names for us. The references to them in succeeding writers will be found in Teuffel. RABIRIUS is worth remarking for the extraordinary impression he made on his contemporaries. Ovid speaks of him as Magni Rabirius oris, a high compliment; and Velleius Paterculus goes so far as to couple him with Virgil as the best representative of Augustan poetry! His Alexandrian War was perhaps drawn from his own experience, though, if so, he must have been a very young man at the time.
From an allusion in Ovid we gather that GRATIUS was a poet of the later Augustan age. His work on the chase (Cynegetica) has come down to us imperfect. It contains little to interest, notwithstanding the attractiveness of its subject: but in truth all didactic poets after Virgil are without freshness, and seem depressed rather than inspired by his success. After alluding to man’s early attempts to subdue wild beasts, first by bodily strength, then by rude weapons, he shows the gradual dominion of reason in this as in other human actions. Diana is also made responsible for the huntsman’s craft, and a short mythological digression follows. Then comes a description of the chase itself, and the implements and weapons used in it. The list of trees fitted for spearshafts (128- 149), one of the best passages, will show his debt to the Georgics — more than half the lines show traces of imitation. Next we have the different breeds of dogs, their training, their diseases, and general supervision discussed, and after a digression or two — the best being a catalogue of the evils of luxury — the poem (as we possess it) ends with an account of the horses best fitted for hunting. The technical details are carefully given, and would probably have had some value; but there is scarcely a trace of poetic enthusiasm, and only a moderate elevation of style.
The last Augustan poet we shall notice is M. MANILIUS, whose dry subject has caused him to meet with very general neglect. His date was considered doubtful, but Jacob has shown that he began to write towards the close of Augustus’s reign. The first book refers to the defeat of Varus (7 A.D.), to which, therefore, it must be subsequent, and the fourth book contemplates Augustus as still alive, though Tiberius had already been named as his successor. The fifth book must have appeared after the interval of Augustus’s death; and from one passage which seems to allude to the destruction of Pompey’s theatre, Jacob argues that it was written as late as 22 A.D. The danger of treating a subject on which the emperor had his own very decided views may have deterred Manilius from completing his work. Literature of all kinds was silent under the tyrant’s gloomy frown, and the weak style of this last book seems to reflect the depressed mind of its author.
The birth and parentage of Manilius are not known. That he was a foreigner is probable, both from the uncouthness of his style at the outset, and from the decided improvement in it that can be traced through succeeding books. Bentley thought him an Asiatic; if so, however, his lack of florid ornament would be strange. It is more likely that he was an African. But the question is complicated by the corrupt state of his text, by the obscurity of his subject, and by the very incomplete knowledge of it displayed by the author. It was not considered necessary to have mastered a subject to treat of it in didactic verse. Cicero expressly instances Aratus as a man who, with scarce any knowledge of astronomy, exercised a legitimate poetical ingenuity by versifying such knowledge as he had. These various causes make Manilius one of the most difficult of authors. Few can wade through the mingled solecisms in language and mistakes in science, the empty verbiage that dilates on a platitude in one place, and the jejune abstract that hurries over a knotty argument in another, without regretting that so unreadable a poet should have been preserved.
And yet his book is not altogether without interest. The subject is called Astronomy, but should rather be called Astrology, for more than half the space is taken up with these baseless theories of sidereal influence which belong to the imaginary side of the science. But in the exordia and perorations to the several books, as well as in sundry digressions, may be found matter of greater value, embodying the poet’s views on the great questions of philosophy. On the whole he must be reckoned as a Stoic, though not a strictly dogmatic one. He begins by giving the different views as to the origin of the world, and lays it down that on these points truth cannot be attained. The universe, he goes on to say, rests on no material basis, much less need we suppose the earth to need one. Sun, moon, and stars, whirl about without any support; earth therefore may well be supposed to do the same. The earth is the centre of the universe, whose motions are circular and imitate those of the gods. The universe is not finite as some Stoics assert, for its roundness (which is proved by Chrysippus) implies infinity. Lucretius is wrong in denying antipodes; they follow naturally from the globular shape, from which also we may naturally infer that seas bind together, as well as separate, nations. All this system is held together by a spiritual force, which he calls God, governing according to the law of reason. He next describes the Zodiac and enumerates the chief stars with their influences. Following the teaching of Hegesianax, he declares that those which bear human names are superior to those named after beasts or inanimate things. The study of the stars was a gift direct from heaven. Kings first, and after them priests, were guided to search for wisdom, and now Augustus, who is both supreme ruler and supreme pontiff, follows his divine father in cultivating this great science. Mentioning some of the legends which recount the transformations of mortals into stars, he asserts that they must not be understood in too gross a sense. Nothing is more wonderful than the orderly movement of the heavenly bodies. He who has contemplated this eternal order cannot believe the Epicurean doctrine. Human generations pass away, but the earth and the stars abide for ever. Surely the universe is divine. Passing on to the milky way, he gives two fanciful theories of its origin, one that it is the rent burnt by Phaethon through the firmament, the other that it is milk from the breast of Juno. As to its consistency, he wavers between the view that it is a closely packed company of stars, and the more poetical one that it is formed by the white-robed souls of the just. This last theory leads him to recount in a dull catalogue the well-worn list of Greek and Roman heroes. Comets are mysteriou
s bodies, whose origin is unknown. The universe is full of fiery particles ever tending towards conglomeration, and perhaps their impact forms comets. Whether natural or supernatural, one thing is certain — they are never without effect on mankind.
In the second book he begins by a complaint that the list of attractive subjects is exhausted. This incites him to essay an untried path, from which he hopes to reap no stolen laurels as the bard of the universe! He next expounds the doctrine of an ever-present spirit moving the mass of matter, in language reflected from the sixth Aeneid. Men must not seek for mathematical demonstration. Considerations of analogy are enough to awaken conviction. The fact that, e.g., shell-fish are affected by the moon, and that all land creatures depend on solar influence, should forbid us to dissociate earth from heaven, or man’s activity from the providence of the gods. How could man have any knowledge of deity unless he partook of its nature? The rest of the book gives a catalogue of the different kinds of stars, their several attributes, and their astrological classification, ending with the Dodecatemorion and Oclotopos.
The third book, after a short and offensively allusive description of the labours of preceding poets, sketches the twelve athla or accidents of human life, to each of which is assigned its special guardian influence. It then passes to the horoscope, which it treats at length, giving minute and various directions how to draw it. The extreme importance attached to this process by Tiberius, and the growing frequency with which, on every occasion, Chaldeans and Astrologers were now consulted, made the poet specially careful to treat this subject with clearness and precision. It is accordingly the most readable of all the purely technical parts of the work. The account of the tropics, with which the book closes, is singularly inaccurate, but contains some rather elegant descriptions: at the tropic of Cancer summer always reigns, at Capricorn there is perpetual winter. The book here breaks off quite abruptly; apparently he intended to compose the epilogue at some future time, but had no opportunity of doing it.
The exordium to the fourth book, which sometimes rises into eloquence, glorifies fate as the ultimate divine power, but denies it either will or personality. He fortifies his argument, according to his wont, by a historical catalogue, which exemplifies the harshness that, except in philosophical digressions, rarely leaves his style. Then follow the horoscopic properties of the Zodiacal constellations, the various reasons for desiring to be born under one star rather than another, a sort of horoscopico-zodiacal account of the world, its physical geography, and the properties of the zones. These give occasion for some graphic touches of history and legend; the diction of this book is far superior to that of the preceding three, but the wisdom is questionable which reserves the “good wine” until so late. Passing on to the ecliptic, he drags in the legends of Deucalion, Phaethon, and others, which he treats in a rhetorical way, and concludes the book with an appeal to man’s reason, and to the necessity of allowing the mental eye free vision. Somewhat inconsistently with the half-religious attitude of the first and second books, he here preaches once more the doctrine of irresistible fate, which to most of the Roman poets occupies the place of God. The poem practically ends here. He himself implies at the opening of Book V., that most poets would not have pursued the theme further; apparently he is led on by his interest in the subject, or by the barrenness of his invention which could suggest no other. The book, which is unfinished, contains a description of various stars, with legends interspersed in which a more ambitious style appears, and a taste which, though rhetorical and pedantic, is more chastened than in the earlier books.
It will be seen from the above résumé that the poem discusses several questions of great interest. Rising above the technicalities of the science, Manilius tries to preach a theory of the universe which shall displace that given by Lucretius. He is a Stoic combating an Epicurean. A close study of Lucretius is evidenced by numerous passages, and the earnestness of his moral conclusions imitates, though it does not approach in impressiveness, that of the great Epicurean. Occasionally he imitates Horace, much more often Virgil, and, in the legends, Ovid. His technical manipulation of the hexameter is good, though tinged with monotony. Occasionally he indulges in licenses which mark a deficient ear or an imperfect comprehension of the theory of quantity. He has few archaisms, few Greek words, considering the exigencies of his subject, and his vocabulary is greatly superior to his syntax; the rhetorical colouring which pervades the work shows that he was educated in the later taste of the schools, and neither could understand nor desired to reproduce the simplicity of Lucretius or Virgil.
PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS by J. W. Mackail
Those years of the early Empire in which the names of Virgil and Horace stand out above all the rest were a period of large fertility in Latin poetry. Great poets naturally bring small poets after them; and there was no age at Rome in which the art was more assiduously practised or more fashionable in society. The Court set a tone which was followed in other circles, and more especially among the younger men of the old aristocracy, now largely excluded from the public life which had engrossed their parents under the Republic. The influence of the Alexandrian poets, so potent in the age of Catullus, was not yet exhausted; and a wider culture had now made the educated classes familiar with the whole range of earlier Greek poetry as well. Rome was full of highly educated Greek scholars, some of whom were themselves poets of considerable merit. It was the fashion to form libraries; the public collection formed by Augustus, and housed in a sumptuous building on the Palatine, was only the largest among many others in the great houses of Rome. The earlier Latin poets had known only a small part of Greek literature, and that very imperfectly; their successors had been trammelled by too exclusive an admiration of the Greek of the decadence. Virgil and Horace, though professed students of the Alexandrians, had gone back themselves, and had recalled the attention of the public, to the poets of free Greece, and had stimulated the widely felt longing to conquer the whole field of poetry for the Latin tongue.
For this attempt, tradition and circumstance finally proved too strong; and Augustan poetry, outside of a few definite forms, is largely a chronicle of failure. This was most eminently so in the drama. Augustan tragedy seems never to have risen for a moment beyond mere academic exercises. Of the many poets who attempted it, nothing survives beyond a string of names. Lucius Varius Rufus, the intimate friend of both Virgil and Horace, and one of the two joint-editors of the Aeneid after the death of the former, wrote one tragedy, on the story of Thyestes, which was acted with applause at the games held to celebrate the victory of Actium, and obtained high praise from later critics. But he does not appear to have repeated the experiment like so many other Latin poets, he turned to the common path of annalistic epic. Augustus himself began a tragedy of Ajax, but never finished it. Gaius Asinius Pollio, the first orator and critic of the period, and a magnificent patron of art and science, also composed tragedies more on the antique model of Accius and Pacuvius, in a dry and severe manner. But neither in these, nor in the work of the young men for whose benefit Horace wrote the Epistle to the Pisos, was there any real vitality; the precepts of Horace could no more create a school of tragedians than his example could create a school of lyric poets.
The poetic forms, on the other hand, used by Virgil were so much more on the main line of tendency that he stands among a large number of others, some of whom might have had a high reputation but for his overwhelming superiority. Of the other essays made in this period in bucolic poetry we know too little to speak with any confidence. But both didactic poetry and the little epic were largely cultivated, and the greater epic itself was not without followers. The extant poems of the Culex and Ciris have already been noted as showing with what skill and grace unknown poets, almost if not absolutely contemporary with Virgil, could use the slighter epic forms. Varius, when he abandoned tragedy, wrote epics on the death of Julius Caesar, and on the achievements of Agrippa. The few fragments of the former which survive show a remarkable power and r
efinement; Virgil paid them the sincerest of all compliments by conveying, not once only but again and again, whole lines of Varius into his own work. Another intimate friend of Virgil, Aemilius Macer of Verona, wrote didactic poems in the Alexandrian manner on several branches of natural history, which were soon eclipsed by the fame of the Georgics, but remained a model for later imitators of Nicander. One of these, a younger contemporary of Virgil called Gratius, or Grattius, was the author of a poem on hunting, still extant in an imperfect form. In its tame and laboured correctness it is only interesting as showing the early decay of the Virgilian manner in the hands of inferior men.
A more interesting figure, and one the loss of whose works leaves a real gap in Latin literature, is Gaius Cornelius Gallus, the earliest and one of the most brilliant of the Augustan poets. Like Varro Atacinus, he was born in Narbonese Gaul, and brought into Roman poetry a new touch of Gallic vivacity and sentiment. The year of his birth was the same as that of Virgil’s, but his genius matured much earlier, and before the composition of the Eclogues he was already a celebrated poet, as well as a distinguished man of action. The story of his life, with its swift rise from the lowest fortune to the splendid viceroyalty of Egypt, and his sudden disgrace and death at the age of forty-three, is one of the most dramatic in Roman history. The translations from Euphorion, by which he first made his reputation, followed the current fashion; but about the same time he introduced a new kind of poetry, the erotic elegy, which had a swift and far-reaching success. To Gallus, more than to any other single poet, is due the naturalisation in Latin of the elegiac couplet, which, together with the lyrics of Horace and the Virgilian hexameter, makes up the threefold poetical achievement of the Augustan period, and which, after the Latin lyric had died out with Horace himself, halved the field with the hexameter. For the remaining literature of the Empire, for that of the Middle Ages so far as it followed classical models, and even for that of the Renaissance, which carries us down to within a measurable distance of the present day, the hexameter as fixed by Virgil, and the elegiac as popularised by Gallus and rapidly brought to perfection by his immediate followers, are the only two poetical forms of real importance.