LITMIR.BIZ

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Graecia. After the fall of Tarentum the Romans were suddenly familiarised with the chief products of the Hellenic mind; and the first Punic war which followed, unlike all previous wars, was favourable to the effects of this introduction. For it was waged far from Roman soil, and so relieved the people from those daily alarms which are fatal to the calm demanded by study. Moreover it opened Sicily to their arms, where, more than in any part of Europe except Greece itself, the treasures of Greek genius were enshrined. A systematic treatment of Latin literature cannot therefore begin before Livius Andronicus. The preceding ages, barren as they were of literary effort, afford little to notice except the progress of the language. To this subject a short essay has been devoted, as well as to the elements of literary development which existed in Rome before the regular literature. There are many signs in tradition and early history of relations between Greece and Rome; as the decemviral legislation, the various consultations of the Delphic Oracle, the legends of Pythagoras and Numa, of Lake Regillus, and, indeed, the whole story of the Tarquins; the importation of a Greek alphabet, and of several names familiar to Greek legend—Ulysses, Poenus, Catamitus, &c.—all antecedent to the Pyrrhic war. But these are neither numerous enough nor certain enough to afford a sound basis for generalisation. They have therefore been merely touched on in the introductory essays, which simply aim at a compendious registration of the main points; all fuller information belonging rather to the antiquarian department of history and to philology than to a sketch of the written literature. The divisions of the subject will be those naturally suggested by the history of the language, and recently adopted by Teuffel, i.e.—

      1. The sixth and seventh centuries of the city (240–80 B.C.), from Livius to Sulla.

      2. The Golden Age, from Cicero to Ovid (80 B.C.-A.D. 14).

      3. The period of the Decline, from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Marcus Aurelius (14–180 A.D.).

      These Periods are distinguished by certain strongly marked characteristics. The First, which comprises the history of the legitimate drama, of the early epos and satire, and the beginning of prose composition, is marked by immaturity of art and language, by a vigorous but ill-disciplined imitation of Greek poetical models, and in prose by a dry sententiousness of style, gradually giving way to a clear and fluent strength, which was characteristic of the speeches of Gracchus and Antonius. This was the epoch when literature was popular; or at least more nearly so than at any subsequent period. It saw the rise and fall of dramatic art: in other respects it merely introduced the forms which were carried to perfection in the Ciceronian and Augustan ages. The language did not greatly improve in smoothness, or adaptation to express finished thought. The ancients, indeed, saw a difference between Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, but it may be questioned whether the advance would be perceptible by us. Still the labor limae unsparingly employed by Terence, the rules of good writing laid down by Lucilius, and the labours of the great grammarians and orators at the close of the period, prepared the language for that rapid development which it at once assumed in the masterly hands of Cicero.

      The Second Period represents the highest excellence in prose and poetry. The prose era came first, and is signalised by the names of Cicero, Sallust, and Caesar. The celebrated writers were now mostly men of action and high position in the state. The principles of the language had become fixed; its grammatical construction was thoroughly understood, and its peculiar genius wisely adapted to those forms of composition in which it was naturally capable of excelling. The perfection of poetry was not attained until the time of Augustus. Two poets of the highest renown had indeed flourished in the republican period; but though endowed with lofty genius they are greatly inferior to their successors in sustained art, e.g. the constructions of prose still dominate unduly in the domain of verse, and the intricacies of rhythm are not fully mastered. On the other hand, prose has, in the Augustan age, lost somewhat of its breadth and vigour. Even the beautiful style of Livy shows traces of that intrusion of the poetic element which made such destructive inroads into the manner of the later prose writers. In this period the writers as a rule are not public men, but belong to what we should call the literary class. They wrote not for the public but for the select circle of educated men whose ranks were gradually narrowing their limits to the great injury of literature. If we ask which of the two sections of this period marks the most strictly national development, the answer must be—the Ciceronian; for while the advancement of any literature is more accurately tested by its prose writers than by its poets, this is specially the case with the Romans, whose genius was essentially prosaic. Attention now began to be bestowed on physical science, and the applied sciences also received systematic treatment. The rhetorical element, which had hitherto been overpowered by the oratorical, comes prominently forward; but it does not as yet predominate to a prejudicial extent.

      The Third Period, though of long duration, has its chief characteristics clearly defined from the beginning. The foremost of these is unreality, arising from the extinction of freedom and consequent loss of interest in public life. At the same time, the Romans, being made for political activity, did not readily content themselves with the less exciting successes of literary life. The applause of the lecture-room was a poor substitute for the thunders of the assembly. Hence arose a declamatory tone, which strove by frigid and almost hysterical exaggeration to make up for the healthy stimulus afforded by daily contact with affairs. The vein of artificial rhetoric, antithesis, and epigram, which prevails from Lucan to Fronto, owes its origin to this forced contentment with an uncongenial sphere. With the decay of freedom, taste sank, and that so rapidly that Seneca and Lucan transgress nearly as much against its canons as writers two generations later. The flowers which had bloomed so delicately in the wreath of the Augustan poets, short-lived as fragrant, scatter their sweetness no more in the rank weed-grown garden of their successors.

      The character of this and of each epoch will be dwelt on more at length as it comes before us for special consideration, as well as the social or religious phenomena which influenced the modes of thought or expression. The great mingling of nationalities in Rome during the Empire necessarily produced a corresponding divergence in style, if not in ideas. Nevertheless, although we can trace the national traits of a Lucan or a Martial underneath their Roman culture, the fusion of separate elements in the vast capital was so complete, or her influence so overpowering, that the general resemblance far outweighs the differences, and it is easy to discern the common features which signalise unmistakeably the writers of the Silver Age.

BOOK I.

       Table of Contents

      CHAPTER I.

      ON THE EARLIEST REMAINS OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE.

      The question, Who were the earliest inhabitants of Italy? is one that cannot certainly be answered. That some lower race, analogous to those displaced in other parts of Europe [1] by the Celts and Teutons, existed in Italy at a remote period is indeed highly probable; but it has not been clearly demonstrated. At the dawn of the historic period, we find the Messapian and Iapygian races inhabiting the extreme south and south-west of Italy; and assuming, as we must, that their migrations had proceeded by land across the Apennines, we shall draw the inference that they had been gradually pushed by stronger immigrants into the furthest corner of the Peninsula. Thus we conclude with Mommsen that they are to be regarded as the historical aborigines of Italy. They form no part, however, of the Italian race. Weak and easily acted upon, they soon ceased to have any influence on the immigrant tribes, and within a few centuries they had all but disappeared as a separate nation. The Italian races, properly so called, who possessed the country at the time of the origin of Rome, are referable to two main groups, the Latin and the Umbrian. Of these, the Latin was numerically by far the smaller, and was at first confined within a narrow and somewhat isolated range of territory. The Umbrian stock, including the Samnite or Oscan, the Volscian and the Marsian, had a more extended area. At one time it possessed the district afterwards known as Etruria, as well as the Sabellian and Umbrian territories. Of the numerous dialects spoken by this race, two only are in some degree known to us (chiefly from inscriptions) the Umbrian and the Oscan. These show a close affinity with one another, and a decided, though more distant, relationship with the Latin. All three belong to a well-marked division

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