The History of Roman Literature Part 34

Historical research flagged; epitomizers had possession of the field. We have the names of L. AMPELIUS, the author of an abridged "book of useful information on various subjects," history predominating, called _Liber Memorialis_, which still remains; and of GRANIUS LICINIa.n.u.s, short fragments of whose Roman history in forty books are left to us.

Poetry was even more meagrely represented. Aulus Gellius [44] has preserved a translation of one of Plato's epigrams, which he calls _ouk amousos_, by a contemporary author, whose name he does not give. It is written in dimeter iambics, an easier measure than the hexameter, and therefore more within the reduced capacity of the time. The loose metrical treatment proceeds not so much from ignorance of the laws of quant.i.ty as from imitation of Hadrian's lax style, [45] and perhaps from a tendency, now no longer possible to resist, to adopt the plebeian methods of speech and rhythm into the domain of recognised literature. As the fragment may interest our readers, we quote it:

"Dum semibiulco savio Meum puellum savior, Dulcemque florem spiritus Duco ex aperto tramite; Animula aegra et saucia Cucurrit ad l.a.b.i.as mihi, Rictumque in oris pervium Et labra pueri mollia, Rimata itineri transitus Ut transiliret, nit.i.tur.

Tum si morae quid plusculae Fuisset in coetu osculi Amoris igni percita Transisset, et me linqueret: Et mira prorsum res foret, Ut ad me fierem mortuus, Ad puerum intus viverem."

In the fifth and last lines we see a reversion to the ante-cla.s.sical irregularities of scansion. The reader should refer to the remarks on this subject on page 20.

Perhaps the much-disputed poem called _Pervigilium Veneris_ belongs to this epoch. [46] It is printed in Weber's _Corpus Poetarum_, [47] and is well worth reading from the melancholy despondency that breathes through its quiet inspiration. The metre is the trochaic tetrameter, which is always well suited to the Latin language, and which here appears treated with Greek strictness, except that in lines 55, 62, 91, a spondee is used in the fifth foot instead of a trochee. The refrain--

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit, eras amet,"

may be called the "last word" of expiring epicureanism.

The last writer that comes before us is the rhetorician and pseudo- philosopher, L. APULEIUS. He was born at Madaura, in Africa, 114 A.D. [48]

and calls himself Seminumida et Semigaetula. [49] His parents were in easy circ.u.mstances, and sent him to school at Carthage, which was fast rising to the highest place among the seminaries of rhetoric. By his father's death he came into a considerable fortune, and in order to finish his education spent some time at Athens, and travelled through many parts of the East hunting up all the information he could find on magic and necromancy, and getting himself initiated into all the different mysteries. About 136 he came to Rome, where he practised at the bar for about two years. He then returned to Madaura; but soon growing discontented determined to indulge his restless craving for travel and acquiring knowledge. He therefore set out for Egypt, the nurse of all occult wisdom, and the centre of attraction for all curious spirits. On his way he fell ill and was detained at Oea, where he met a rich widow named Pudentilla, whom in course of time he married. Her two sons had not been averse to the match, indeed Apuleius says they strongly urged it forward. But very soon they found their step-father an inconvenience, and through their uncle Aemilia.n.u.s inst.i.tuted a suit against him on the ground of his having bewitched their mother into marrying him. This serious charge, which was based princ.i.p.ally on the disparity of years, Pudentilla being sixty (though her husband maintains she is only forty), Apuleius refutes in his _Apologia_, [50] a valuable relic of the time, which well deserves to be read. The accusation had been divided into three parts, to each of which the orator replies. The first part or preamble had tried to excite odium against him by alleging his effeminacy in using dentifrice, in possessing a mirror, and in writing lascivious poems, and also by alluding to his former poverty. His reply to this is ready enough; he admits that nature has favoured him with a handsome person of which he is not ashamed of trying to make the best; besides, how do they know his mirror is not used for optical experiments? As to poverty, if he _had_ been poor, he gloried in the fact; [51] many great and virtuous men had been so too, and some thought poverty an essential part of virtue. The preamble disposed of, he proceeds to the more serious charge of magic. He has, so the indictment says, fascinated a child; he has bought poisons; he keeps something uncanny in his handkerchief, probably some token of sorcery: he offers nocturnal sacrifices, vestiges of which of a suspicious character have been found; and he wors.h.i.+ps a little skeleton he has made and which he always carries about with him. His answer to these charges is as follows:--the child was epileptic and died without his aid; the poisons he has bought for purposes of natural science; the image he carries in his handkerchief is that of Plato's _monarch_ (_vous Basileus_), devotion to which is only natural in a professed Platonist; and as for the sacrifices, they are pious prayers, offered outside the town solely in order to profit by the peaceful inspirations which the country awakens. The third part of the indictment concerned his marriage. He has forced the lady's affections; he has used occult arts as her own letters show, to gain an influence over her; love-letters have pa.s.sed between them, which is a suspicious thing when the lady is sixty years of age; the marriage was celebrated out of Oea; and last but not least, he has got possession of her very considerable fortune. His answers are equally to the point here.

So far from being unwilling to espouse him or needing any compulsion, the good lady with difficulty waited till her sons came of age, and then brooked no further delay; moreover he had not pressed his suit, though her sons themselves had strongly wished him to do so; as regards the correspondence, a son who reads his mother's private letters is hardly a witness to command confidence; as regards her age she is forty, not sixty; as regards the place of her marriage both of them preferred the country to the town; and as regards the fortune, which he denies to be a rich one, the will provides that on her death it shall revert to her sons. Having now completed his argument he lets loose the flood-gates of his satire; and with a violence, an indecency, and a dragging to light of home secrets, scarcely to be paralleled except in some recent trials, he flays the reputation of uncle and nephews, and triumphantly appeals to the judge to give a verdict in his favour. [52]

We next find him at Carthage where he gave public lectures on rhetoric. He had enough real ability joined with his affectation of wisdom to ensure his success in this sphere. Accordingly we find that he attained not only all the civil honours that the city had to bestow, but also the pontificate of Aesculapius, a position even more gratifying to his tastes.

During his career as a rhetorician he wrote the _Florida_, which consists for the most part of selected pa.s.sages from his public discourses. It is now divided into four books, but apparently at first had no such division.

It embraces specimens of eloquence on all kinds of subjects, in a middle style between the comparatively natural one of his _Apologia_ and the congeries of styles of all periods which his latest works present. In these _morceaux_, some of which are designed as themes for improvisation, he pretends to an acquaintance with the whole field of knowledge. As a consequence, it is obvious that his knowledge is nowhere very deep. He was equally fluent in Greek and Latin, and frequently pa.s.sed from one language to the other at a moment's notice.

He now cultivated that peculiar style which we see fully matured in his _Metamorphoses_. It is a mixture of poetical and prose diction, of archaisms and modernisms, of rare native and foreign terms, of solecisms, conceits, and quotations, which render it repulsive to the reader and betray the chaotic state of its creator's canons of taste. The story is copied from Lucian's _Aoukios ae Onos_, but it is on a larger scale, and many insertions occur, such as adventures with bandits or magicians; accounts of jugglers, priests of Cybele, and other vagrants; details on the arts; a description of an opera; licentious stories; and, above all, the pretty tale of Cupid and Psyche, [53] which came originally from the East, but in its present form seems rather to be modelled on a Greek redaction. "The golden a.s.s of Apuleius," as the eleven books of Metamorphoses are called by their admirers, was by no means thought so well of in antiquity as it is now. Macrobius expresses his wonder that a serious philosopher should have spent time on such trifles. St Augustine seems to think it possible the story may be a true one: "aut indicavit aut finxit." It is a fict.i.tious autobiography, narrating the adventures of the author's youth; how he was tried for the murder of three leather-bottles and condemned; how he was vivified by an enchantress with whom he was in love; how he wished to follow her through the air as a bird, but owing to a mistake of her maids was transformed into an a.s.s; how he met many strange adventures in his search for the rose-leaves which alone could restore his lost human form. The change of shape gave him many chances of observing men and women: among other incidents he is treated with disdain by his own horse and mule, and severely beaten by his groom. He hears his character openly defamed; his resentment at this, and the frequent attempts he makes to a.s.sert his rationality, are among the most ludicrous parts of the book; finally, after many adventures, he is restored to human shape by some priests of Isis or Osiris, to whose service he devotes himself for the rest of his life.

Some have considered this extravagant story to be an allegory, [54]

others, again, a covert satire on the vices of his countrymen. This latter supposition we may at once discard. The former is not unlikely, though the exact explanation of it will be a matter of uncertainty. Perhaps the a.s.s symbolizes sensuality; the rose-leaves, science; the priests of Isis, either the Platonic philosophy, or the Mysteries; the return to human shape, holiness or virtue. It is also possible that it may be a plea for paganism against the new religious elements that were gathering strength at Carthage; but if so, it is hard to see why he should have chosen as his model the atheistic story of Lucian. In a similar manner the story of Cupid and Psyche has been made a type of the progress of the soul.

Apuleius was one of those minds not uncommon in a decaying civilization, in which extreme quasi-religious exaltation alternates with impure hilarity. He is a licentious mystic; a would-be magician; [55] a hierophant of pretentious sanct.i.ty, something between a Cagliostro and a Swedenborg; a type altogether new in Roman literature, and a gloomy index of its speedy fall.

Besides these works of Apuleius, we possess some short philosophical tracts, embodying some of his Platonist and Pythagorean doctrines. They are _De deo Socratis_, _De Dogmate Platonis_ in three books, and the _De Mundo_, a popular theologico-scientific exposition, drawn from Aristotle.

The general tenor of these works will be considered in the next chapter, as their bearing on the thought of the times gives them considerable importance.

CHAPTER IX.

STATE OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT DURING THE PERIOD OF THE ANTONINES--CONCLUSION.

During the second century after Christ we have the remarkable spectacle of the renaissance of Greek literature. The eloquence which had so long been silent now was heard again in Dio Chrysostom, the delicate artillery of Attic wit was revived by Lucian, the dignity of sublime thought was upheld by Arrian and Marcus Aurelius. It should be remarked that the Greeks had never quite discontinued the art of eloquence. When their own political independence ended, they carried their talents into other lands, into Egypt, India, Asia Minor, sowing colonies of intelligence wherever they went; but the chief place to which they flocked was Rome. At Rome the hold they gained was such that even tyranny itself could not loosen it. Their light spirits and plastic nature made them adapt themselves to every fas.h.i.+on without difficulty and without regret; even under Tiberius or Domitian there was always something for a cultured Greek to do. [1]

Rhetoric was the inheritance of the dethroned Greek nation, and they clung to it with all the fondness of grat.i.tude. Long after the pacification of the world had destroyed all the subject-matter of oratory, they cherished the form of it, and practised it with a zeal proportioned to its worthlessness. Even in her best days, as we know from Thucydides, Greece had been a victim to fine talking; the words of her delicious language seemed by their mere sound to have power over those that used them; and now that patriotism had ceased to inspire her orators, they naturally sought in the splendour of the Asiatic style an equivalent for the chaste beauties of ancient national eloquence. There were two cla.s.ses of Greeks at this period who effected in no small degree the general spread of culture. These were the rhetors and the sophists; properly speaking distinct, but often confounded under the general name of sophist.

The rhetors proper have been already described. We need only notice here the gradually increasing insignificance of the themes they chose. In the Claudian era the points discussed were either historical, mythical, or legal. All had some reference, however distant, to actual pleading before a court of law. But now even this element of reality has disappeared. The poetical readings which had been the fas.h.i.+on under Domitian gave place to rhetorical _ostentations_ which were popular in proportion to their frivolity or misplaced ingenuity. The heroes of Marathon, [2] the sages of ancient Greece, had once been the objects of praise. They were now made the objects of derision and invective. [3] Speeches against Socrates, Achilles, or Homer, and in favour of Busiris, were commonly delivered, in which every argument was acutely misapplied, and every established belief acutely combated. Panegyrics of cities, G.o.ds, or heroes, had been a favourite exercise of the orator's art. Now these panegyrics were expended upon the most contemptible themes, _infames materiae_ as they were called.

Fronto sang the praises of idleness, of fever, of the vomit, of gout, of smoke, of dust; Lucian, in a speech still extant, of the fly; others of the a.s.s, the mouse, the flea! Such were the detestable travesties into which Greek eloquence had sunk. Roman statesmen frequently displayed their talents in this way; but as a rule they declaimed in Greek. These orations were delivered in a basilica or theatre, and for two days previously criers ranged through the city, advertising the inhabitants of the lecturer's name and subject.

Other aspirants to fame, gifted with less refinement, paraded the streets in rags and filth, and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days in the vicious self-indulgence which was the original inspirer of their tirades.

Every great city was full of these caterers for itching ears, the one sort fas.h.i.+onable, the other vulgar, but both equally acceptable to their audience. Some more ambitious spirits, of whom Apuleius is the type, not content with success in a single town, moved from place to place, challenging the chief sophist in each city to enter the lists against them. If he declined the contest, his popularity was at an end for ever.

If he accepted it, the risk was enormous, lest a people tired of his eloquence might prefer the sound of a new voice, and thus force on him the humiliation of surrendering his crown and his t.i.tles to another. For in their delirious enthusiasm the cities of Greece and Asia lavished money, honours, immunities, and statues, upon the mountebank orators who pleased them. Emperors saluted them as equals; the people chose them for amba.s.sadors; until their conceit rose to such a height as almost to pa.s.s the bounds of belief. [4] And their morals, it will readily be guessed, did not rise above their intellectual capacities. Instead of setting an example of virtue, they were below the average in licentiousness, avarice, and envy. Effeminate in mind, extravagant in purse, they are perhaps the most contemptible of all those who have set themselves up as the instructors of mankind.

But all were not equally debased. Side by side with this truckling to popular favour was a genuine attempt to preach the simple truths of morality and religion. For near a century it had been recognised that certain elements of philosophy should be given forth to the world. Even the Stoics, according to Lactantius, [5] had declared that women and slaves were capable of philosophical pursuits. Apuleius, conspicuous in this department also, was a distinguished itinerant teacher of wisdom.

Lucian at one time lectured in this way. But the most eloquent and natural of all was Dio Chrysostom, who, though a Greek, is so pleasing a type of the best popular morals of the time, that we may, perhaps, be excused for referring to him. He was a native of Bithynia, but in consequence of some disagreement with his countrymen, he came to Rome during the reign of Domitian. Having offended the tyrant by his freedom of speech, he was compelled to flee for his life. For years he wandered through Greece and Macedonia in the guise of a beggar, doing menial work for his bread, but often asked to display his eloquence for the benefit of those with whom he came in contact. Once while present at the Olympic festival and silently standing among the throng, he was recognised as one who could speak well, and compelled to harangue the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes. He chose for his subject the praises of Jupiter Olympius, which he set forth with such majestic eloquence that all who heard him were deeply moved, and a profound silence, broken only by sobs of emotion, reigned throughout the vast crowd. Other stories are told showing the effect of his words. On one occasion he recalled a body of soldiers to their allegiance; on another he quelled a sedition; on a third he rebuked the mob of Alexandria for its immoral conduct, and, strange as it may seem, was listened to without interruption. When Domitian's death allowed him to return to Rome, he maintained the same courageous att.i.tude. Trajan often asked his advice, and he discoursed to him freely on the greatness of royalty and its duties. He seems to have held a lofty view of his mission; he calls it a _proppaesis iera_, [6] or holy proclamation, and he speaks of himself as a _prophaetaes alaethestatos taes athanatou physeus_. [7]

What he taught, therefore, was a popular moral doctrine, based upon some of the simpler theories of philosophy, such as were easily intelligible to the unlearned, and admitted of rhetorical amplification and ill.u.s.tration by mythology and anecdote. Considered in one way, this was a great step in advance from the total neglect of the people by the earlier teachers of virtue. It shows the more humane spirit which was slowly leavening the once proud and exclusive possessors of intellectual culture. By exciting a general interest in the great questions of our being, it paved the way for a readier reception of the Gospel among those cla.s.ses to whom it was chiefly preached. But at the same time by its want of authority, depending as it did solely on the eloquence or benevolence of the individual sophist, it prevented the possibility of anything like a systematic amelioration of the people's character. This side of the question, however, is too wide to be more than alluded to here, and it is besides foreign to our present subject. We must turn to consider the state of cultured thought on matters philosophical and religious; a point of great importance as bearing on the decline and speedy extinction of literary effort in Rome.

To begin with philosophy. We have seen that Rome had gradually become a centre of free thought, as it had become a centre of vice and luxury. The prejudices against philosophy complained of by Cicero, and even by Seneca, had now almost vanished. Instead of being indifferent, men took to it so readily as to excite the fears of more than one emperor. Nero had persecuted philosophers; Vespasian had removed them from Rome, Domitian from Italy. After Domitian's death, they returned with greater influence than ever. Hadrian and Antoninus were favourable to them. Aurelius was himself one of their number. Philosophy had had its martyrs; [8] and, after suffering, it had turned towards proselytism. The provinces had embraced it with enthusiasm. The narrow prejudice which had envied their intellectual culture [9] now envied their moral advancement; but equally without effect. Long before this, Musonius Rufus, an aristocratic Stoic, had admitted slaves to his lectures, [10] and at the risk of his life had preached peace to the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian. [11] And this wide-spread movement had, as we have seen, been continued by men like Dio, and later still by Apuleius.

But by thus gaining in width it lost greatly in depth. There is a danger when teaching becomes mainly practical of its losing sight of the fundamental laws amid the mult.i.tude of details, and attaching itself to trifles. There is a superst.i.tion in philosophy as well as in religion.

Epictetus gives directions for the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of the beard in a tone as serious as if he were speaking of the _summum bonum_. And stoicism from the very first, by its absurd paradox that all faults are equal, obviously fell into this very snare, which, the moment it was popularized, could not fail with disastrous effect to come to the surface.

Again, the intrusive element of rhetoric greatly impeded strength of argument. In all practical teaching the point of the lesson is known beforehand; it is the manner of enforcing it that alone excites interest.

Thus philosophy and rhetoric, which had hitherto been implacable foes, became reconciled in the furtherance of a common object. Seneca had affected to despise learning; Gellius and Favorinus, on the contrary, delighted in its minutest subtleties. Philosophers now declaimed like rhetoricians, and indifferently in either language. But in proportion as they addressed a larger public, it became more necessary to use the Greek, which was now the language of the civilized world. Favorinus, Epictetus, M. Aurelius himself, all wrote and generally spoke in it.

The reconciliation between philosophy and religion was not less remarkable than that between philosophy and rhetoric. It seemed as if all the separate domains of thought were gradually being fused into a kind of popular moral culture. The old philosophers had as a rule kept morals altogether distinct from religion. Epictetus and Aurelius make the two altogether identical. The old philosophers had kept away from the temples, or, if they went, had taken pains to mock the ceremonies they performed and to announce that their conformity was a pure matter of custom. The new philosophers were strictly regular in their religious wors.h.i.+p, and not only observed and respected, but earnestly defended the entire popular cult. The n.o.bler side of this "reconciliation" is shown in Plutarch, the grosser and more material side in Apuleius; but in both there is no mistaking its reality. Plutarch's idea of philosophy is "to attain a truer knowledge of G.o.d." [12] Philostratus, when asked what wisdom was, replied, "the science of prayers and sacrifices." [13] These men sought their knowledge of the Divine, not, as did Aristotle, in speculative thought, but in the collecting and explaining of legends. Stoicism had sought by compromise after compromise to satisfy the general craving for a religious philosophy reconcilable with the popular superst.i.tion. Its great exponents had stretched the elasticity of their system to the uttermost. They had given to their Supreme Being the name of Jove, they had admitted all the other deities of the Pantheon as emanations or attributes of the Supreme, they had justified augury by their theory of fate, they had explained away all the inconsistencies and immoralities of the popular creed by an elaborate system of allegory; but yet they had failed to content the religious ma.s.ses, who divined as by an instinct the hollow and artificial character of this fabric of compromise. Hence there arose a new school more suited to the requirements of the time, which gave itself out as Platonist. This new philosophy was anything but a genuine reproduction of the thought of the great Athenian. With some of his more popular and especially his oriental conceptions, it combined a ma.s.s of alien importations drawn from foreign cults, and in particular from Egypt.

We read how Juvenal deplores the inroads of Eastern superst.i.tion into Rome. [14] Syria, Babylon, and Asia Minor had added their mysteries to the Roman ceremonial. Astrologers were consulted by small and great; the Galli or eunuch-priests of Cybele were among the most influential bodies in Rome; and the impure G.o.ddess Isis was universally wors.h.i.+pped. [15] Egypt, which in cla.s.sic times had been held as the stronghold of b.e.s.t.i.a.l superst.i.tion, was now spoken of as a "Holy Land," and "the temple of the universe." [16] The Stoics had studied in books, or by questioning their own mind; the Platonists sought for wisdom by travelling all over the world. Not content with the rites already known, they raked up obscure ceremonies and imported strange mysteries. Reflection and dialectic were no longer sufficient to ensure knowledge; asceticism, devotion, and initiation, were necessary for divine science. The idea broached by Plato in the _Timaeus_ of intermediate beings between the G.o.ds and man, seemed to meet their requirements; and accordingly they at once adopted it. An entire hierarchy of _daimones_ was imagined, and on this a system of quasi-religious philosophy was founded, of which Apuleius is the popular exponent.

The main tenets of this, the last attempt to explain the mystery of the universe which gained currency in Rome, were as follows--it will be seen how completely it had pa.s.sed from philosophy to theosophy:--The supreme being is one, eternal, absolute, indescribable, and incomprehensible; but may be envisaged by the soul for a moment like a flash of lightning. [17]

The great G.o.ds are of two kinds, visible, as the sun and stars, and invisible, as Jupiter and the rest; both these are inaccessible to human communion. Then come the daemons in their order, and with these man holds intercourse. Plutarch had adopted a tentative and incomplete form of this doctrine, _e.g._ he denied the visibility of Socrate's daemon, and spoke of the death of Pan. But Apuleius is much more thorough-going; he supposes all the daemons to be at once immortal and visible. Each great G.o.d has a daemon or double, who loves to use his name; and all the stories of the G.o.ds are in reality true of their daemons. In a moral point of view, daemons are of all characters--good and bad, cheerful and gloomy. [18]

Their interventions, which are perpetual, explain what the stories could not explain, viz. the idea of Providence. In fact the whole current theory of the supernatural is easily explained when the existence of these intermediate beings is admitted. Aware that this theory wandered far from Roman ideas, Apuleius tries to reconcile it with the national religion by calling the daemons _genii_, _lares_, and _manes_, which are true Italian conceptions. To a certain extent the device succeeded; at any rate the new philosophy resulted in making devotees of the higher cla.s.ses, as superst.i.tion had long since done with the people.

It seems incredible that any one who had studied the Platonic dialogues should have fancied theories like these to be their essence. Nevertheless, so it was. Men found in them what they wished to find, and perhaps no greater witness could be given to the immense fertility of Plato's thought. However, when these conceptions came to be imported into philosophy, it is clear that philosophy no longer knew herself. She had become hopelessly unable to cope with the problems of actual life; henceforth there was nothing left but the rigours of the ascetic or the ecstacy of the mystic. Into these still later paths we shall not follow it. Apuleius is the last Roman who, writing in the Latin language, pretends to succeed to the line of thinkers of whom Varro, Cicero, and Seneca, were the chief. It is true he is immeasurably below them. In his effeminate union of licentiousness and mysticism he is far removed from the masculine, if inconsistent, practical wisdom of Seneca, further still from the glowing patriotism and lofty aspirations of Cicero. Still as a type of his age, of that country which already exercised, and was soon to exercise in a far higher degree, an influence on the thought of the world, [19] he is well worthy of attentive study.

We may now, in conclusion, very shortly review the main features in the history of Roman literature from Ennius, its first conscious originator, until the close of the Antonine period.

The end which Ennius had set before him was two-fold, to familiarise his countrymen with Greek culture, and to enlighten their minds from error.

And to this double object the great masters of Roman literature remained always faithful. With more or less power and success, Terence, Lucilius, the tragedians, and even the mimists, elevated while they amused their popular audiences. In the last century of the Republic, literature still addressed, in the form of oratory, the great ma.s.ses to whom scarce any other culture was accessible. But in poetry and philosophy it had broken with them, and thus showed the first sign of withdrawal from that thoroughly national mission with which the old father of Latin poetry had set out. Yet this very exclusiveness was not without its use. It enabled the best writers to aim at a far higher ideal of perfection than would have been possible for a popular author, however scrupulously he might strive for excellence. It enabled the best minds to concentrate their efforts upon all that was most strictly national because most strictly aristocratic, and thus to form those great representative works of Roman thought and style which are found in the writings of Cicero and Livy, and the poetry of Horace and Virgil. The responsibility which the possession of culture involves was now acknowledged only within narrow limits. The motto, "pingui nil mihi c.u.m populo," was strictly followed, and all the best literature addressed only to a select circle. Meanwhile the people, for whom tragedy and comedy had done something, however little, that was good, neglected by the literary world, debased by bribery and the coa.r.s.e pleasures of conquest, sunk lower and lower until they had become the brutal, sensual mob, inaccessible to all higher influences, which satirists and philosophers paint in such hideous colours, but which they did nothing and wrote nothing to improve. Then came the era of the decline, in which, for the first time, we observe that literature has lost its supremacy. It is still cultivated with enthusiasm, and numbers many more votaries than it had ever done before; nevertheless, its influence is disputed, and with success, by other forces; by tyranny in the first place, by a defiant philosophy which set itself against aesthetic culture in the second, and by revived and daily increasing superst.i.tion in the third. This is the beginning of the people's retaliation on those who should have enlightened them. In vain do emperors issue edicts for the suppression of foreign rites; in vain do courtly satirists or fierce declaimers complain that Rome will not be satisfied with ancestral beliefs and ancestral virtues. The people are a.s.serting themselves in the sphere of thought, as they had a.s.serted themselves in the sphere of politics ages before. But the difference between the two peoples was immense. The one had consisted of virtuous peasants and industrious tradesmen, working for generations to attain what they knew to be their right; the other was formed of slaves, of freedmen, many of them foreigners, and others engaged in occupations by no means honourable; of all that motley mult.i.tude who lived on Caesar's rations and spent their days in idleness, in the circus, and in crime. Rotten in its highest circles, equally rotten in its lowest, society could no longer be regenerated by any of the forces then known to it. The national superst.i.tions, out of which literature had at first emerged, were replaced by cosmopolitan superst.i.tions of an infinitely worse kind, which threatened to engulf it at its close, and against which in the persons of such men as Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus, it strove for a while with convulsive vigour to make head. But these great spirits only arrested, they could not avert, the inevitable decay. Where public morals are corrupt, where national life is diseased, it is impossible that literature can show a healthy life. The despair that has taken possession of men's souls, which sheds a misanthropic gloom over the writings of the elder Pliny and embitters even the n.o.ble mind of Tacitus, results from a conviction that things are incurably wrong, and from a feeling that there is no conceivable remedy. Men of feebler mould strive to forget themselves in exciting pleasures, as Statius and Martial; or in courtly society, as the younger Pliny; or in fond study of the past, as Quintilian; or in minute and pedantic erudition, as Aulus Gellius. The literature of the Silver Age is throughout conscious of its powerlessness; and this consciousness deadens it into tame acquiescence or galls it into hysterical effort, according to the time and temperament of the author.

Pliny the younger and Quintilian alone show the happily-balanced disposition of the Golden Age; but what they gain in cla.s.sic finish they lose in human interest. The decay of Greece had been insignificant, pretty but paltry; the decay of Rome on the other hand is unlovely but colossal.

Perhaps in native strength none of her earlier authors equal Juvenal and Tacitus; none certainly exceed them. But they are the last barriers that stem the tide. After them the flood has already rushed in, and before long comes the collapse. In Suetonius and Florus we already see the pioneers of a pigmy race; in Gellius, Fronto, and Apuleius, they are present in all their uncouth dwarfishness. Meanwhile the clamours of the world for guidance grow louder and louder, and there is no one great enough or bold enough to respond to them. The good emperor would do so if he could; but in his perplexity he looks this way and that, bringing into one focus all the cults and ceremonies of the known world, in the vain hope that by indiscriminate piety he may avert the calamities under which his empire groans. But nothing is of any avail. The barbarians without, the pestilence within, decimate his subjects, the hostile G.o.ds seem to mock his goodness, and the simple people who look up to him as their tutelary power wonder hopelessly why he cannot save them. And thus on all sides the incapacity of the world to right itself is made clearer and clearer. The gross darkness that had been once partly put to flight by the light of Greek genius when philosophy rose upon the world, and once again had been r.e.t.a.r.ded by the heroic examples of Roman conduct and Roman wisdom, now closed murkily over the whole world. It was indeed time that a new order of thought should arise, which should recreate the dead matter and bring out of it a new and more enduring principle of life, which should give the past its meaning and the future its hope; and, in especial, should reveal to literature its true end, the enlightenment and elevation, not of one cla.s.s nor of one nation, but of every heart and every intellect that can be made to respond to its influence among all the nations of the earth.

APPENDIX.

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ROMAN LITERATURE, FROM LIVIUS TO THE DEATH OF M. AURELIUS. [1]

B.C.

240 Livius begins to exhibit.

239 Ennius born.

235 Naevius begins to exhibit.

234 Cato born.

225 Fabius Pictor served in the Gallic War.

219 Pacuvius born.

218 Cincius Alimentus described the pa.s.sage of Hannibal into Italy.

217 Cato begins to be known.

216 Fabius Pictor sent as amba.s.sador to Delphi.