The History of Roman Literature Part 1

A History of Roman Literature.

by Charles Thomas Cruttwell.

PREFACE.

The present work is designed mainly for Students at our Universities and Public Schools, and for such as are preparing for the Indian Civil Service or other advanced Examinations. The author hopes, however, that it may also be acceptable to some of those who, without being professed scholars, are yet interested in the grand literature of Rome, or who wish to refresh their memory on a subject that perhaps engrossed their early attention, but which the many calls of advancing life have made it difficult to pursue.

All who intend to undertake a thorough study of the subject will turn to Teuffel's admirable History, without which many chapters in the present work could not have attained completeness; but the rigid severity of that exhaustive treatise makes it fitter for a book of reference for scholars than for general reading even among students. The author, therefore, trusts he may be pardoned for approaching the History of Roman Literature from a more purely literary point of view, though at the same time without sacrificing those minute and accurate details without which criticism loses half its value. The continual references to Teuffel's work, excellently translated by Dr. W. Wagner, will bear sufficient testimony to the estimation in which the author holds it, and the obligations which he here desires to acknowledge.

He also begs to express his thanks to Mr. John Wordsworth, of B. N. C., Oxford, for many kind suggestions, as well as for courteous permission to make use of his _Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin_; to Mr. H. A.

Redpath, of Queen's College, Oxford, for much valuable a.s.sistance in correction of the proofs, preparation of the index, and collation of references, and to his brother, Mr. W. H. G. Cruttwell, for verifying citations from the post-Augustan poets.

To enumerate all the sources to which the present Manual is indebted would occupy too much s.p.a.ce here, but a few of the more important may be mentioned. Among German writers, Bernhardy and Ritter--among French, Boissier, Champagny, Diderot, and Nisard--have been chiefly used. Among English scholars, the works of Dunlop, Conington, Ellis, and Munro, have been consulted, and also the _History of Roman Literature_, reprinted from the _Encyclopaedia Metropolitana_, a work to which frequent reference is made, and which, in fact, suggested the preparation of the present volume.

It is hoped that the Chronological Tables, as well as the list of Editions recommended for use, and the Series of Test Questions appended, will materially a.s.sist the Student.

OXFORD, _November_, 1877.

INTRODUCTION.

In the latter part of the seventeenth century, and during nearly the whole of the eighteenth, the literature of Rome exercised an imperial sway over European taste. Pope thought fit to a.s.sume an apologetic tone when he clothed Homer in an English dress, and reminded the world that, as compared with Virgil, the Greek poet had at least the merit of coming first. His own mind was of an emphatically Latin order. The great poets of his day mostly based their art on the canons recognised by Horace. And when poetry was thus affected, it was natural that philosophy, history, and criticism should yield to the same influence. A rhetorical form, a satirical spirit, and an appeal to common sense as supreme judge, stamp most of the writers of western Europe as so far pupils of Horace, Cicero, and Tacitus. At present the tide has turned. We are living in a period of strong reaction. The nineteenth century not only differs from the eighteenth, but in all fundamental questions is opposed to it. Its products have been strikingly original. In art, poetry, science, the spread of culture, and the investigation of the basis of truth, it yields to no other epoch of equal length in the history of modern times. If we go to either of the nations of antiquity to seek for an animating impulse, it will not be Rome but Greece that will immediately suggest itself to us.

Greek ideas of aesthetic beauty, and Greek freedom of abstract thought, are being disseminated in the world with unexampled rapidity. Rome, and her soberer, less original, and less stimulating literature, find no place for influence. The readiness with which the leading nations drink from the well of Greek genius points to a special adaptation between the two.

Epochs of upheaval, when thought is rife, progress rapid, and tradition, political or religious, boldly examined, turn, as if by necessity, to ancient Greece for inspiration. The Church of the second and third centuries, when Christian thought claimed and won its place among the intellectual revolutions of the world, did not disdain the a.n.a.logies of Greek philosophy. The Renaissance owed its rise, and the Reformation much of its fertility, to the study of Greek. And the sea of intellectual activity which now surges round us moves ceaselessly about questions which society has not asked itself since Greece started them more than twenty centuries age. On the other hand, periods of order, when government is strong and progress restrained, recognise their prototypes in the civilisation of Rome, and their exponents in her literature. Such was the time of the Church's greatest power: such was also that of the fully developed monarchy in France, and of aristocratic ascendancy in England.

Thus the two literatures wield alternate influence; the one on the side of liberty, the other on the side of government; the one as urging restless movement towards the ideal, the other as counselling steady acceptance of the real.

From a more restricted point of view, the utility of Latin literature may be sought in the practical standard of its thought, and in the almost faultless correctness of its composition. On the former there is no need to enlarge, for it has always been amply recognised. The latter excellence fits it above all for an educational use. There is probably no language which in this respect comes near to it. The Romans have been called with justice a nation of grammarians. The greatest commanders and statesmen did not disdain to a.n.a.lyse the syntax and fix the spelling of their language.

From the outset of Roman literature a knowledge of scientific grammar prevailed. Hence the act of composition and the knowledge of its theory went hand in hand. The result is that among Roman cla.s.sical authors scarce a sentence can be detected which offends against logical accuracy, or defies critical a.n.a.lysis. In this Latin stands alone. The powerful intellect of an Aeschylus or Thucydides did not prevent them from transgressing laws which in their day were undiscovered, and which their own writing helped to form. Nor in modern times could we find a single language in which the idioms of the best writers could be reduced to conformity with strict rule. French, which at first sight appears to offer such an instance, is seen on a closer view to be fuller of illogical idioms than any other language; its symmetrical exactness arises from clear combination and restriction of single forms to a single use.

English, at least in its older form, abounds in special idioms, and German is still less likely to be adduced. As long, therefore, as a penetrating insight into syntactical structure is considered desirable, so long will Latin offer the best field for obtaining it. In gaining accuracy, however, cla.s.sical Latin suffered a grievous loss. It became a cultivated as distinct from a natural language. It was at first separated from the dialect of the people, and afterwards carefully preserved from all contamination by it. Only a restricted number of words were admitted into its select vocabulary. We learn from Servius that Virgil was censured for admitting _avunculus_ into epic verse; and Quintilian says that the prestige of ancient use alone permits the appearance in literature of words like _balare_, _hinnire_, and all imitative sounds. [1] Spontaneity, therefore, became impossible, and soon invention also ceased; and the imperial writers limit their choice to such words as had the authority of cla.s.sical usage. In a certain sense, therefore, Latin was studied as a dead language, while it was still a living one. Cla.s.sical composition, even in the time of Juvenal, must have been a labour a.n.a.logous to, though, of course, much less than, that of the Italian scholars of the sixteenth century. It was inevitable that when the repositaries of the literary idiom were dispersed, it should at once fall into irrecoverable disuse; and though never properly a dead language, should have remained as it began, an artificially cultivated one. [2] An important claim on our attention put forward by Roman literature is founded upon its actual historical position. Imitative it certainly is. [3] But it is not the only one that is imitative. All modern literature is so too, in so far as it makes a conscious effort after an external standard. Rome may seem to be more of a copyist than any of her successors; but then they have among other models Rome herself to follow. The way in which Roman taste, thought, and expression have found their way into the modern world, makes them peculiarly worthy of study; and the deliberate method of undertaking literary composition practised by the great writers and clearly traceable in their productions, affords the best possible study of the laws and conditions under which literary excellence is attainable. Rules for composition would be hard to draw from Greek examples, and would need a Greek critic to formulate them. But the conscious workmans.h.i.+p of the Romans shows us technical method as separable from the complex aesthetic result, and therefore is an excellent guide in the art.

The traditional account of the origin of literature at Rome, accepted by the Romans themselves, is that it was entirely due to contact with Greece.

Many scholars, however, have advanced the opinion that, at an earlier epoch, Etruria exercised an important influence, and that much of that artistic, philosophical, and literary impulse, which we commonly ascribe to Greece, was in its elements, at least, really due to her. Mommsen's researches have re-established on a firmer basis the superior claims of Greece. He shows that Etruscan civilisation was itself modelled in its best features on the h.e.l.lenic, that it was essentially weak and unprogressive and, except in religion (where it held great sway) and in the sphere of public amus.e.m.e.nts, unable permanently to impress itself upon Rome. [4] Thus the literary epoch dates from the conquest of Magna Graecia. After the fall of Tarentum the Romans were suddenly familiarised with the chief products of the h.e.l.lenic 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 a.s.sumed 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, Sall.u.s.t, 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 cla.s.s. 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 subst.i.tute for the thunders of the a.s.sembly. 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, ant.i.thesis, 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.

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, a.n.a.logous 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 a.s.suming, 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, relations.h.i.+p with the Latin. All three belong to a well-marked division of the Indo-European speech, to which the name of _Italic_ is given. Its nearest congener is the h.e.l.lenic, the next most distant being the Celtic.

The h.e.l.lenic and Italic may thus be called sister languages, the Celtic standing in the position of cousin to both, though, on the whole, more akin to the Italic. [2]

The Etruscan language is still a riddle to philologists, and until it is satisfactorily investigated the ethnological position of the people that spoke it must be a matter of dispute. The few words and forms which have been deciphered lend support to the otherwise more probable theory that they were an Indo-Germanic race only remotely allied to the Italians, in respect of whom they maintained to quite a late period many distinctive traits. [3] But though the Romans were long familiar with the literature and customs of Etruria, and adopted many Etruscan words into their language, neither of these causes influenced the literary development of the Romans in any appreciable degree. Italian philology and ethnology have been much complicated by reference to the Etruscan element. It is best to regard it, like the Iapygian, as altogether outside the pale of genuine Italic ethnography.

The main points of correspondence between the Italic dialects as a whole, by which they are distinguished from the Greek, are as follow:--Firstly, they all retain the spirants S, J (p.r.o.nounced Y), and V, _e.g. sub, vespera, janitrices_, beside _upo, espera, einateres_. Again, the Italian _u_ is nearer the original sound than the Greek. The Greeks sounded _u_ like _ii_, and expressed the Latin _u_ for the most part by _ou_. On the other hand the Italians lost the aspirated letters _th, ph, ch_, which remain in Greek, and frequently omitted the simple aspirate. They lost also the dual both in nouns and verbs, and all but a few fragmentary forms of the middle verb. In inflexion they retain the sign of the ablative (_d_), and, at least in Latin, the dat. plur. in _bus_. They express the pa.s.sive by the letter _r_, a weakened form of the reflexive, the principle of which is reproduced in more than one of the Romance languages.

On the other hand, Latin differs from the other Italian dialects in numerous points. In p.r.o.nouns and elsewhere Latin _q_ becomes _p_ in Umbrian and Oscan _(pis = quis)._ Again, Oscan had two vowels more than Latin and was much more conservative of diphthongal sounds; it also used double consonants, which old Latin did not. The Oscan and Umbrian alphabets were taken from the Etruscan, the Latin from the Greek; hence the former lacked O Q X, and used [Symbol] or [Symbol] (_san_ or soft _z_) for _z_ (_zeta = ds_). They possessed the spirant F which they expressed by [Symbol] and used the symbol [Symbol] to denote V or W. They preserved the old genitive in _as_ or _ar_ (Lat. _ai, ae_) and the locative, both which were rarely found in Latin; also the Indo-European future in _so_ (_didest, herest_) and the infin. in _um_ (_e.g. ezum = esse_).

The old Latin alphabet was taken from the Dorian alphabet of c.u.mae, a colony from Chaleis, and consisted of twenty-one letters, A B C D E F Z H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X, to which the original added three more, O or [Symbol] (_th_), [Symbol] (_ph_), and [Symbol] (_ch_). These were retained in Latin as numerals though not as letters, [Symbol] in the form of C=100, [Symbol] or M as 1000, and [Symbol] or L as 50.

Of these letters Z fell out of use at an early period, its power being expressed by S (_Saguntum = Zakunthos_) or SS (_ma.s.sa = maza_). Its rejection was followed by the introduction, of G. Plutarch ascribes this change to Sp. Carvilius about 231 B.C., but it is found on inscriptions nearly fifty years earlier. [4] In many words C was written for G down to a late period, _e.g._ CN. was the recognised abbreviation for _Gnaeus_.

In Cicero's time Z was taken into use again as well as the Greek Y, and the Greek combinations TH, PH, CH, chiefly for purposes of transliteration. The Emperor Claudius introduced three fresh symbols, two of which appear more or less frequently on monuments of his time. They are [Symbol] or [Symbol], the inverted digamma, intended to represent the consonantal V: [Symbol], or anti-sigma, to represent the Greek _psi_, and [Symbol] to represent the Greek _upsilon_ with the sound of the French _u_ or German _u_. The second is not found in inscriptions.

Other innovations were the doubling of vowels to denote length, a device employed by the Oscans and introduced at Rome by the poet Accius, though Quintilian [5] implies that it was known before his time, and the doubling of consonants which was adopted from, the Greek by Ennius. In Greek, however, such doubling generally, though not always, has a philological justification. [6]

The p.r.o.nounciation of Latin has recently been the subject of much discussion. It seems clear that the vowels did not differ greatly, if at all, from the same as p.r.o.nounced by the modern Italians. The distinction between E and I, however, was less clearly marked, at least in the popular speech. Inscriptions and ma.n.u.scripts afford abundant instances of their confusion. _Menerva leber magester_ are mentioned by Quintilian, [7] and the employment of _ei_ for the _i_ of the dat. pl. of nouns of the second declension and of _n.o.bis vobis_, and of _e_ and _i_ indifferently for the acc. pl. of nouns of the third declension, attest the similarity of sound.

That the spirant J was in all cases p.r.o.nounced as Y there is scarcely room for doubt. The p.r.o.nunciation of V is still undetermined, though there is a great preponderance of evidence in favour of the W sound having been the original one. After the first century A.D. this semi-vowel began to develop into the labiodental consonant _v_, the intermediate stage being a l.a.b.i.al _v_, such as one may often hear in South Germany at the present day, and which to ordinary ears would seem undistinguishable from _w_.

There is little to remark about the other letters, except that S, N, and M became very weak when final and were often entirely lost. S was rehabilitated in the literary dialect in the time of Cicero, who speaks of the omission to reckon it as _subrustic.u.m_; but final M is always elided before a vowel. An ill.u.s.tration of the way in which final M and N were weakened may be found in the nasalised p.r.o.nunciation of them in modern French (_main, faim_). The gutturals C and G have by some been supposed to have had from the first a soft sibilant sound before E and I; but from the silence of all the grammarians on the subject, from the transcriptions of C in Greek by _kappa_, not _sigma_ or _tau_, and from the inscriptions and MSS. of the best ages not confusing CI with TI, we conclude that at any rate until 200 A.D. C and G were sounded hard before all vowels. The change operated quickly enough afterwards, and to a great extent through the influence of the Umbrian which had used _d_ or _c_ before E and I for some time.

In spelling much irregularity prevailed, as must always be the case where there is no sound etymological theory on which to base it. In the earliest inscriptions we find many inconsistencies. The case-signs _m_, _d_, are sometimes retained, sometimes lost. In the second Scipionic epitaph we have _oino (unum)_ side by side with _Luciom_. In the _Columna Rostrata_ (260 B.C.) we have _c_ for _g_, single instead of double consonants, _et_ for _it_ in _ornavet_, and _o_ for _u_ in terminations, all marks of ancient spelling, contrasted with _maximos, maxumos; navebos, navebous; praeda_, and other inconsistent or modern forms. Perhaps a later restoration may account for these. In the decree of Aemilius, _posedisent_ and _possidere_ are found. In the _Lex Agraria_ we have _pequnia_ and _pecunia_, in _S. C. de Baccha.n.a.libus, senatuos_ and _nominus_ (gen.

sing.), _consoluerunt_ and _cosoleretur_, &c., showing that even in legal doc.u.ments orthography was not fixed. It is the same in the MSS. of ancient authors. The oldest MSS. of Plautus, Lucretius, and Virgil, are consistent in a considerable number of forms with themselves and with each other, but vary in a still larger number. In antiquity, as at present, there was a conflict between sound and etymology. A word was p.r.o.nounced in one way; science suggested that it ought to be written in another. This accounts for such variations as _inperium, imperium; atque, adque; exspecto, expecto;_ and the like (cases like _haud, haut; saxum, saxsum;_ are different). The best writers could not decide between these conflicting forms. A still greater fluctuation existed in English spelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, [8] but it has since been overcome.

Great writers sometimes introduced spellings of their own. Caesar wrote _Pompeiii_ (gen. sing.) for _Pompeii_, after the Oscan manner. He also brought the superlative _simus_ into use. Augustus, following in his steps, paid great attention to orthography. His inscriptions are a valuable source of evidence for ascertaining the correctest spelling of the time. During and after the time of Claudius affected archaisms crept in, and the value both of inscriptions and MSS. is impaired, on the one hand, by the pedantic endeavour to bring spelling into accord with archaic use or etymology, and, on the other, by the increasing frequency of debased and provincial forms, which find place even in authoritative doc.u.ments. In spite of the obscurity of the subject several principles of orthography have been definitely established, especially with regard to the older Latin, which will guide future editors. And the labours of Ritschl, Corssen, and many others, cannot fail to bring to light the most important laws of variability which have affected the spelling of Latin words, so far as the variation has not depended on mere caprice. [9]

With these preliminary remarks we may turn to the chief monuments of the old language, the difficulties and uncertainties of which have been greatly diminished by recent research. They are partly inscriptions (for the oldest period exclusively so), and partly public doc.u.ments, preserved in the pages of antiquarians. Much may be learnt from the study of coins, which, though less ancient than some of the written literature, are often more archaic in their forms. The earliest of the existing remains is the song of the Arval Brothers, an old rustic priesthood (_qui sacra publica faciunt propterea ut fruges ferant arva_), [10] dating from the times of the kings. This fragment was discovered at Rome in 1778, on a tablet containing the acts of the sacred college, and was supposed to be as ancient as Romulus. The priesthood was a highly honourable office, its members were chosen for life, and emperors are mentioned among them. The yearly festival took place in May, when the fruits were ripe, and consisted in a kind of blessing of the first-fruits. The minute and primitive ritual was evidently preserved from very ancient times, and the hymn, though it has suffered in transliteration, is a good specimen of early Roman wors.h.i.+p, the rubrical directions to the brethren being inseparably united with the invocation to the Lares and Mars. According to Mommsen's division of the lines, the words are--

ENOS, LASES, IUVATE, (_ter_) NEVE LUE RUE, MARMAR, SINS (V. SERS) INCURRERE IN PLEORES. (_ter_) SATUR FU, FERE MARS. LIMEN SALI. STA. BERBER. (_ter_) SEMUNIS ALTERNEI ADVOCAPIT CONCTOS. (_ter_) ENOS, MARMOR, IUVATO. (_ter_) TRIUMPE. (_Quinquies_)

The great difference between this rude dialect and cla.s.sical Latin is easily seen, and we can well imagine that this and the Salian hymn of Numa were all but unintelligible to those who recited them. [11] The most probable rendering is as follows:--"Help us, O Lares! and thou, Marmar, suffer not plague and ruin to attack our folk. Be satiate, O fierce Mars!

Leap over the threshold. Halt! Now beat the ground. Call in alternate strain upon all the heroes. Help us, Marmor. Bound high in solemn measure." Each line was repeated thrice, the last word five times.

As regards the separate words, _enos_, which should perhaps be written _e nos_, contains the interjectional _e_, which elsewhere coalesces with vocatives. [12] _Lases_ is the older form of _Lares_. _Lue rue = luem ruem_, the last an old word for _ruinam_, with the case-ending lost, as frequently, and the copula omitted, as in _Patres Conscripti_, &c.

_Marmar, Marmor_, or _Mamor_, is the reduplicated form of _Mars_, seen in the Sabine _Mamers_. _Sins_ is for _sines_, as _advocapit_ for _advocabitis_. [13] _Pleores_ is an ancient form of _plures_, answering to the Greek _pleionas_ in form, and to _tous pollous_, "the ma.s.s of the people" in meaning. _Fu_ is a shortened imperative. [14] _Berber_ is for _verbere_, imper. of the old _verbero, is_, as _triumpe_ from _triumpere_ = _triumphare_. _Semunes_ from _semo_ (_se-h.o.m.o_ "apart from man") an inferior deity, as we see from the Sabine _Semo Sancus_ (= _Dius Fidius_).