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The History of Roman Literature. Charles Thomas Cruttwell
Читать онлайн.Название The History of Roman Literature
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isbn 4064066230036
Автор произведения Charles Thomas Cruttwell
Жанр Документальная литература
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The stern and somewhat narrow training which was the inheritance of the governing class necessarily confined their minds to the hard realities of life. Whatever poetical capacity the Romans may once have had was thus effectually checked. Those aspirations after an ideal beauty which most nations that have become great have embodied in "immortal verse"—if they ever existed in Rome—faded away before her greatness reached its meridian, only to be rekindled into a shadowy and reflected brightness when Rome herself had begun to decay.
There is nothing that so powerfully influences literature as the national religion. Poetry, with which in all ages literature begins, owes its impulse to the creations of the religious imagination. Such at least has been the case with those Aryan races who have been most largely endowed with the poetical gift. The religion of the Roman differed from that of the Greek in having no background of mythological fiction. For him there was no Olympus with its half-human denizens, no nymph-haunted fountain, no deified heroes, no lore of sacred bard to raise his thoughts into the realm of the ideal. His religion was cold and formal. Consisting partly of minute and tedious ceremonies, partly of transparent allegories whereby the abstractions of daily life were clothed with the names of gods, it possessed no power over his inner being. Conceptions such as Sowing (Saturnus), War (Bellona), Boundary (Terminus), Faithfulness (Fides), much as they might influence the moral and social feelings, could not be expanded into material for poetical inventions. And these and similar deities were the objects of his deepest reverence. The few traces that remained of the ancient nature-worship, unrelated to one another, lost their power of producing mythology. The Capitoline Jupiter never stood to the Romans in a true personal relation. Neither Mars nor Hercules (who were genuine Italian gods) was to Rome what Apollo was to Greece. Whatever poetic sentiment was felt centred rather in the city herself than in the deities who guarded her. Rome was the one name that roused enthusiasm; from first to last she was the true Supreme Deity, and her material aggrandisement was the never-exhausted theme of literary, as it had been the consistent goal of practical, effort.
The primitive culture of Latium, in spite of all that has been written about it, is still so little known, that it is hard to say whether there existed elements out of which a native art and literature might have been matured. But it is the opinion of the highest authorities that such elements did exist, though they never bore fruit. The yearly Roman festival with its solemn dance, [1] the masquerades in the popular carnival, [2] and the primitive litanies, afforded a basis for poetical growth almost identical with that which bore such rich fruit in Greece. It has been remarked that dancing formed a more important part of these ceremonies than song. This must originally have been the case in Greece also, as it is still in all primitive stages of culture. But whereas in Greece the artistic cultivation of the body preceded and led up to the higher conceptions of pure art, in Rome the neglect of the former may have had some influence in repressing the existence of the latter.
If the Romans had the germ of dramatic art in their yearly festivals, they had the germ of the epos in their lays upon distinguished warriors. But the heroic ballad never assumed the lofty proportions of its sister in Greece. Given up to women and boys it abdicated its claim to widespread influence, and remained as it had begun, strictly "gentile." The theory that in a complete state place should be found for the thinker and the poet as well as for the warrior and legislator, was unknown to ancient Rome. Her whole development was based on the negation of this theory. It was only when she could no longer enforce her own ideal that she admitted under the strongest protest the dignity of the intellectual calling. This will partly account for her singular indifference to historical study. With many qualifications for founding a great and original historical school, with continuous written records from an early date, with that personal experience of affairs without which the highest form of history cannot be written, the Romans yet allowed the golden opportunity to pass unused, and at last accepted a false conception of history from the contemporary Greeks, which irreparably injured the value of their greatest historical monuments. Had it been customary for the sober-minded men who contributed to make Roman history for more than three centuries, to leave simple commentaries for the instruction of after generations, the result would have been of incalculable value. For that such men were well qualified to give an exact account of facts is beyond doubt. But the exclusive importance attached to active life made them indifferent to such memorials, and they were content with the barren and meagre notices of the pontifical annals and the yearly registers of magistrates in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter.
These chronicles and registers on the one hand, and the hymns, laws, [3] and formulas of various kinds on the other, formed the only written literature existing in the times before the Punic wars. Besides these, there, were a few speeches, such as that of Ap. Claudius Caecus (280 B.C.) against Pyrrhus, published, and it is probable that the funeral orations of the great families were transmitted either orally or in writing from one generation to another, so as to serve both as materials for history and models of style.
Much importance has been assigned by Niebuhr and others to the ballad literature that clustered round the great names of Roman history. It is supposed to have formed a body of national poetry, the complete loss of which is explained by the success of the anti-national school of Ennius which superseded it. The subjects of this poetry were the patriots and heroes of old Rome, and the traditions of the republic and the struggles between the orders were faithfully reflected in it. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome are a brilliant reconstruction of what he conceived to be the spirit of this early literature. It was written, its supporters contend, in the native Saturnian, and, while strongly leavened with Greek ideas, was in no way copied from Greek models. It was not committed to writing, but lived in the memory of the people, and may still be found embedded in the beautiful legends which adorn the earlier books of Livy. Some idea of its scope may be formed from the fragments that remain of Naevius, who was the last of the old bards, and bewailed at his own death the extinction of Roman poetry. Select lays were sung at banquets either by youths of noble blood, or by the family bard; and if we possessed these lays, we should probably find in them a fresher and more genuine inspiration than in all the literature which followed.
This hypothesis of an early Roman epos analogous to the Homeric poems, but preserved in a less coherent shape, has met with a close investigation at the hands of scholars, but is almost universally regarded as "not proven." The scanty and obscure notices of the early poetry by no means warrant our drawing so wide an inference as the Niebuhrian theory demands. [4] All they prove is that the Roman aristocracy, like that of all other warlike peoples, listened to the praises of their class recited by minstrels during their banquets or festive assemblies. But so far from the minstrel being held in honour as in Greece and among the Scandinavian tribes, we are expressly told that he was in bad repute, being regarded as little better than a vagabond. [5] Furthermore, if these lays had possessed any merit, they would hardly have sunk into such complete oblivion among a people so conservative of all that was ancient. In the time of Horace Naevius was as well known as if he had been a modern; if, therefore, he was merely one, though, the most illustrious, of a long series of bards, it is inconceivable that his predecessors should have been absolutely unknown. Cicero, indeed, regrets the loss of these rude lays; but it is in the character of an antiquarian and a patriot that he speaks, and not of an appraiser of literary merit. The really imaginative and poetical halo which invests the early legends of Rome must not be attributed to individual genius, but partly to patriotic impulse working among a people for whom their city and her faithful defenders supplied the one material for thought, and partly, no doubt, though we know not in what degree, to early contact with the legends and culture of Greece. The epitaphs of the first two Scipios are a good criterion of the state of literary acquirement at the time. They are apparently uninfluenced by Greek models, and certainly do not present a high standard either of poetical thought or expression.
The fact, also, that the Romans possessed no native term for a poet is highly significant. Poeta, which we find as early as Naevius, [6] is Greek; and vates, which Zeuss [7] traces to a Celtic root, meant originally "soothsayer," not "poet." [8] Only in the Augustan period does it come