Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis, nam omnino haut placet.
Degustandum ex ea, non in eam ingurgitandum censeo.
Nevertheless the poem on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman caput mortuum of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course, due commendation of the simple ancestral habits), and, in the case of the book on Oratory, the speeches in Thucydides and more especially the orations of Demosthenes, all of which Cato zealously studied. Of the spirit of these manuals we may form some idea from the golden oratorical rule, oftener quoted than followed by posterity, "to think of the matter and leave the words to follow from it"[68].
Medicine
Similar manuals of a general elementary character were composed by Cato on the Art of Healing, the Science of War, Agriculture, and Jurisprudence - all of which studies were likewise more or less under Greek influence. Physics and mathematics were not much studied in Rome; but the applied sciences connected with them received a certain measure of attention. This was most of all true of medicine. In 535 the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Archagathus, settled in Rome and there acquired such repute by his surgical operations, that a residence was assigned to him on the part of the state and he received the freedom of the city; and thereafter his colleagues flocked in crowds to Italy. Cato no doubt not only reviled the foreign medical practitioners with a zeal worthy of a better cause, but attempted, by means of his medical manual compiled from his own experience and probably in part also from the medical literature of the Greeks, to revive the good old fashion under which the father of the family was at the same time the family physician. The physicians and the public gave themselves, as was reasonable, but little concern about his obstinate invectives: at any rate the profession, one of the most lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands of the foreigners, and for centuries there were none but Greek physicians in Rome.
Mathematics
Hitherto the measurement of time had been treated in Rome with barbarous indifference, but matters were now at least in some degree improved. With the erection of the first sundial in the Roman Forum in 491 the Greek hour (ora, hora) began to come into use at Rome: it happened, however, that the Romans erected a sundial which had been prepared for Catana situated four degrees farther to the south, and were guided by this for a whole century. Towards the end of this epoch we find several persons of quality taking an interest in mathematical studies. Manius Acilius Glabrio (consul in 563) attempted to check the confusion of the calendar by a law, which allowed the pontifical college to insert or omit intercalary months at discretion: if the measure failed in its object and in fact aggravated the evil, the failure was probably owing more to the unscrupulousness than to the want of intelligence of the Roman theologians. Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (consul in 565), a man of Greek culture, endeavoured at least to make the Roman calendar more generally known. Gaius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588), who not only predicted the eclipse of the moon in 586 but also calculated the distance of the moon from the earth, and who appears to have come forward even as an astronomical writer, was regarded on this account by his contemporaries as a prodigy of diligence and acuteness.
Agriculture and the Art of War
Agriculture and the art of war were, of course, primarily regulated by the standard of traditional and personal experience, as is very distinctly apparent in that one of the two treatises of Cato on Agriculture which has reached our time. But the results of Graeco-Latin, and even of Phoenician, culture were brought to bear on these subordinate fields just as on the higher provinces of intellectual activity, and for that reason the foreign literature relating to them cannot but have attracted some measure of attention.
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was only in a subordinate degree affected by foreign elements. The activity of the jurists of this period was still mainly devoted to the answering of parties consulting them and to the instruction of younger listeners; but this oral instruction contributed to form a traditional groundwork of rules, and literary activity was not wholly wanting. A work of greater importance for jurisprudence than the short sketch of Cato was the treatise published by Sextus Aelius Paetus, surnamed the "subtle" (catus), who was the first practical jurist of his time, and, in consequence of his exertions for the public benefit in this respect, rose to the consulship (556) and to the censorship (560). His treatise - the "Tripartita" as it was called - was a work on the Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an explanation - chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible expressions - and the corresponding formula of action. While this process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek grammatical studies, the portion treating of the formulae of action, on the contrary, was based on the older collection of Appius[69] and on the whole system of procedure developed by national usage and precedent.
Cato's Encyclopaedia
The state of science generally at this epoch is very distinctly exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed by Cato for his son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in short maxims what a "fit man" (vir bonus) ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist. A distinction was not yet drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science; but so much of science generally as seemed necessary or useful was required of every true Roman. The work did not include Latin grammar, which consequently cannot as yet have attained that formal development which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical sciences. Throughout it was the directly practical element in science which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and simplicity as possible. The Greek literature was doubtless made use of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled from the mass of chaff and rubbish: it was one of Cato's commonplaces, that "Greek books must be looked into, but not thoroughly studied". Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which, while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek acuteness and depth, but through that very peculiarity moulded the attitude of the Romans towards the Greek sciences for all ages.
Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into Rome along with the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of the age of Cicero:
Poenico bello secundo Musa pennato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram.
In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with Greek comedy. The question accordingly presents itself, whether, contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and Volturnus. But all information on the point is lost, and history can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.
Hellenizing Literature
The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental life of Italy in that sixth century - full of the din of arms and pregnant for the future - during which its distinctively Italian phase closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient civilization. In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and characterized the age of transition. No one of unprejudiced mind, and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand y
ears, can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman literature. Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange-trees; both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them as parallel. This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman literature in a foreign tongue; to a very great extent the former was not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks, Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only acquired by study. Among those who in this age came before the public as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been persons of rank; and not only so, but none can be shown to have been natives of Latium proper. The very name given to the poet was foreign; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a poeta[70]. But not only was this poetry foreign; it was also liable to all those defects which are found to occur where schoolmasters become authors and the great multitude forms the public. We have shown how comedy was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact sank into vulgar coarseness; we have further shown that two of the most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen. In fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature of the sixth century - that poetry followed out professionally and destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of translations, that changeling of epos - we are tempted to reckon it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us. But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very partial sense. We must first of all consider that this artificial literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any national poetic art, but could never attain any such art. In antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life, creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth: without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the primitive stories of human gods and divine men. This basis of ancient poetry was totally wanting in Latium: where the world of gods remained shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry could not voluntarily ripen. To this falls to be added a second and more important consideration.
The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of Hellenism. The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations; and this primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of the Romano-Hellenistic literature. Not a single new and genuine work of art issued from its workshop, but it extended the intellectual horizon of Hellas over Italy. Viewed even in its mere outward aspect, Greek poetry presumes in the hearer a certain amount of positive acquired knowledge. That self-contained completeness, which is one of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for instance, was foreign to ancient poetry; a person unacquainted with the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy. If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current of the other myths[71], this knowledge must have found its way to the public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the Hellenic poetry. But still deeper was the effect - on which the most ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis - produced by the naturalization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek metres in Latium. If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror by art", the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language, so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to germinate; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little susceptible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture. Nor let it be said, that, by virtue of the widely diffused acquaintance with the Greek language, its literature would have sufficed for the susceptible Roman public. The mysterious charm which language exercises over man, and which poetical language and rhythm only enhance, attaches not to any tongue learned accidentally, but only to the mother-tongue. From this point of view, we shall form a juster judgment of the Hellenistic literature, and particularly of the poetry, of the Romans of this period. If it tended to transplant the radicalism of Euripides to Rome, to resolve the gods either into deceased men or into mental conceptions, to place a denationalized Latium by the side of a denationalized Hellas, and to reduce all purely and distinctly developed national peculiarities to the problematic notion of general civilization, every one is at liberty to find this tendency pleasing or disagreeable, but none can doubt its historical necessity. From this point of view the very defectiveness of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was chiefly translation or imitation; but, if the primary object of poetry was simply to form a bridge from Latium to Hellas, Livius and Ennius had certainly a vocation to the poetical pontificate in Rome, and a translated literature was the simplest means to the end. It was still less seemly that Roman poetry preferred to lay its hands on the most worn-out and trivial originals; but in this view it was appropriate. No one will desire to place the poetry of Euripides on a level with that of Homer; but, historically viewed, Euripides and Menander were quite as much the oracles of cosmopolitan Hellenism as the Iliad and Odyssey were the oracles of national Hellenism, and in so far the representatives of the new school had good reason for introducing their audience especially to this cycle of literature.
The instinctive consciousness also of their limited poetical powers may partly have induced the Roman composers to keep mainly by Euripides and Menander and to leave Sophocles and even Aristophanes untouched; for, while poetry is essentially national and difficult to transplant, intellect and wit, on which the poetry of Euripides as well as of Menander is based, are in their very nature cosmopolitan. Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although not exactly in its richest or purest fields. On the whole, however innumerable may be the false accommodations and sins against the rules of art which we can
point out in them, these were just the offences which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism; and they are, in a historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism. We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new gospel; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what, as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to the Roman poets of the sixth century. A fresh and strong sense of the power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to transplant the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of the sixth century, and coincided in a peculiar manner with the thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age. The later refined Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period with some degree of contempt; it should rather perhaps have looked up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine poetical art, than their more cultivated successors. In the bold emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional pride of the poets of this age there is, more than in any other epoch of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to it the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates its praise:
The History of Rome. Book III Page 57