LITMIR.BIZ

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nobler term, denoting that inspiration which is the gift of heaven and forms the peculiar privilege of genius. [9] The names current among the ancient Romans, librarius, scriba, were of a far less complimentary nature, and referred merely to the mechanical side of the art. [10] These considerations all tend to the conclusion that the true point from which to date the beginning of Roman literature is that assigned by Horace, [11] viz. the interval between the first and second Punic wars. It was then that the Romans first had leisure to contemplate the marvellous results of Greek culture, revealed to them by the capture of Tarentum (272 B.C.), and still more conspicuously by the annexation of Sicily in the war with Carthage. In Sicily, even more than in Magna Graecia, poetry and the arts had a splendid and enduring life. The long line of philosophers, dramatists, and historians was hardly yet extinct. Theocritus was still teaching his countrymen the new poetry of rustic life, and many of the inhabitants of the conquered provinces came to reside at Rome, and imported their arts and cultivation; and from this period the history of Roman poetry assumes a regular and connected form. [12]

      Besides the scanty traces of written memorials, there were various elements in Roman civilisation which received a speedy development in the direction of literature and science as soon as Greek influence was brought to bear on them. These may be divided into three classes, viz. rudimentary dramatic performances, public speaking in the senate and forum, and the study of jurisprudence.

      The capacity of the Italian nations for the drama is attested by the fact that three kinds of dramatic composition were cultivated in Rome, and if we add to these the semi-dramatic Fescenninae, we shall complete the list of that department of literature. This very primitive type of song took its rise in Etruria; it derives its name from Fescennium, an Etrurian town, though others connect it with fascinum, as if originally it were an attempt to avert the evil eye. [13] Horace traces the history of this rude banter from its source in the harvest field to its city developments of slander and abuse, [14] which needed the restraint of the law. Livy, in his sketch of the rise of Roman drama, [15] alludes to these verses as altogether unpolished, and for the most part extemporaneous. He agrees with Horace in describing them as taking the form of dialogue (alternis), but his account is meagre in the extreme. In process of time the Fescennines seem to have modified both their form and character. From being in alternate strains, they admitted a treatment as if uttered by a single speaker—so at least we should infer from Macrobius's notice of the Fescennines sent by Augustus to Pollio, [16] which were either lines of extempore raillery, or short biting epigrams, like that of Catullus on Vatinius, [17] owing their title to the name solely to the pungency of their contents. In a general way they were restricted to weddings, and we have in the first Epithalamium of Catullus, [18] and some poems by Claudian, highly-refined specimens of this class of composition. The Fescennines owed their popularity to the light-hearted temper of the old Italians, and to a readiness at repartee which is still conspicuous at the present day in many parts of Italy.

      With more of the dramatic element than the Fescennines, the Saturae appear to have early found a footing in Rome, though their history is difficult to trace. We gather from Livy [19] that they were acted on the stage as early as 359 B.C. Before this the boards had been occupied by Etruscan dancers, and possibly, though not certainly, by improvisers of Fescennine buffooneries; but soon after this date Saturae were performed by one or more actors to the accompaniment of the flute. The actors, it appears, sang as well as gesticulated, until the time of Livius, who set apart a singer for the interludes, while he himself only used his voice in the dialogue. The unrestrained and merry character of the Saturae fitted them for the after-pieces, which broke up the day's proceedings (exodium); but in later times, when tragedies were performed, this position was generally taken by the Atellana or the Mime. The name Satura (or Satira) is from lanx saturu, the medley or hodge-podge, "quae referta variis multisque primitiis in sacro apud priscos diis inferebatur." Mommsen supposes it to have been the "masque of the full men" (saturi), enacted at a popular festival, while others have connected it with the Greek Satyric Drama. In its dramatic form it disappears early from history, and assumes with Ennius a different character, which has clung to it ever since.

      Besides these we have to notice the Mime and the Atellanae. The former corresponds roughly with our farce, though the pantomimic element is also present, and in the most recent period gained the ascendancy. Its true Latin name is Planipes (so Juvenal Planipedes audit Fabios [20] in allusion to the actor's entering the stage barefoot, no doubt for the better exhibition of his agility). Mimes must have existed from very remote times in Italy, but they did not come into prominence until the later days of the Republic, when Laberius and Syrus cultivated them with marked success. We therefore defer noticing them until our account of that period.

      There still remain the fabulae Atellanae, so called from Atella, an Oscan town of Campania, and often mentioned as Osci Ludi. These were more honourable than the other kinds, inasmuch as they were performed by the young nobles, wearing masks, and giving the reins to their power of improvisation. Teuffel (L. L. § 9) considers the subjects to have been "comic descriptions of life in small towns, in which the chief personages gradually assumed a fixed character." In the period of which we are now treating, i.e. before the time of a written literature, they were exclusively in the hands of free-born citizens, and, to use Livy's expression, were not allowed to be polluted by professional actors. But this hindered their progress, and it was not until several centuries after their introduction, viz., in the time of Sulla, that they received literary treatment. They adopted the dialect of the common people, and were more or less popular in their character. More details will be given when we examine them in their completer form. All such parts of these early scenic entertainments as were not mere conversation or ribaldry, were probably composed in the Saturnian metre.

      This ancient rhythm, the only one indigenous to Italy, presents some points worthy of discussion. The original application of the name is not agreed upon. Thompson says, "The term Saturnius seems to have possessed two distinct applications. In both of these, however, it simply meant 'as old as the days of Saturn,' and, like the Greek Ogugios, was a kind of proverbial expression for something antiquated. Hence (1) the rude rhythmical effusions, which contained the early Roman story, might be called Saturnian, not with reference to their metrical law, but to their antiquity; and (2) the term Saturnius was also applied to a definite measure on the principles of Greek prosody, though rudely and loosely moulded—the measure employed by Naevius, which soon became antiquated, when Ennius introduced the hexameter—and which is the metrum Saturnium recognised by the grammarians." [21] Whether this measure was of Italian origin, as Niebuhr and Macaulay think, or was introduced from Greece at an early period, it never attained to anything like Greek strictness of metrical rules. To scan a line of Livius or Naevius, in the strict sense of the word, is by no means an easy task, since there was not the same constancy of usage with regard to quantity as prevailed after Ennius, and the relative prominence of syllables was determined by accent, either natural or metrical. By natural accent is meant the higher or lower pitch of the voice, which rests on a particular syllable of each word e.g. Lúcius; by metrical accent the ictus or beat of the verse, which in the Greek rhythms implies a long quantity, but in the Saturnian measure has nothing to do with quantity. The principle underlying the structure of the measure is as follows. It is a succession of trochaic beats, six in all, preceded by a single syllable, as in the instance quoted by Macaulay:

      "The | queén was ín her chámber eáting bréad and hóney,"

      So in the Scipionic epitaph,

      "Qui | bús si in lónga lícuisét tibi útier víta."

      These are, doubtless, the purest form of the measure. In these there is no break, but an even continuous flow of trochaic rhythm. But even in the earliest examples of Saturnians there is a very strong tendency to form a break by making the third trochaic beat close a word, e.g.

      "Cor | néliús Lucíus || Scípió Barbátus,"

      and this structure prevailed, so that in the fragments of Livius and Naevius by far the greater number exhibit it.

      When Greek patterns of versification were introduced, the Saturnian rhythm seems to have received a different

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