The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 15

The following, again, like similar pa.s.sages already quoted from Ennius and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superst.i.tion which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:--

Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos[44].

Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange vision--

Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt Minus mirum est[45].

Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two pa.s.sages may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet--force of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which a shepherd, who had never before seen a s.h.i.+p, announces the first appearance of the Argo--

Tanta moles labitur Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu: Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat: Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat[46].

There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in this fragment--

Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives[47].

There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the Oenomaus--

Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem, c.u.m e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient, Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent[48].

This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive pa.s.sage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating the common aspects of Nature. Several other short fragments betray the existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility, as, for instance, the following:--

Saxum id facit angust.i.tatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans Scatebra fluviae radit ripam[49].

The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining after effect, as in this fragment:--

Hac ubi curvo litore latratu Unda sub undis labunda sonit.

The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without naming the author, are probably from Accius:--

Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere, Vites laetificae pampinis p.u.b.escere, Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere, Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia, Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.

We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in Plautus, as in the following:--

Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser.

Pro se quisque c.u.m corona clarum cohonestat caput.

Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe.

It remains to sum up the most important results as to the early tragic drama of Rome, which have been obtained from a consideration of ancient testimony and of the fossil remains of this lost literature, as we find them collected and arranged from the works of ancient critics and grammarians. The Roman tragedies seem to have borne much the same relation to the works of the Attic tragedians as Roman comedy to the new comedy of Athens. The expression of Quintilian, 'in comoedia maxime claudicamus[50],' following immediately on the praise which he bestows on Pacuvius and Accius, implies that in his opinion the earlier writers had been more successful in tragedy than in comedy. But a comparison between the fragments of the tragedians and the extant works of Plautus and Terence, proves that, in style at least, Roman comedy was much the most successful; and this superiority is no doubt one main cause of its partial preservation. The style of Roman tragedy appears to have been direct and vigorous, serious, often animated with oratorical pa.s.sion, but singularly devoid of harmony, subtlety, poetical refinement and inspiration. There is no testimony in favour of any great dramatic conceptions or impersonations. The poets appear to have aimed at expressing some particular pa.s.sion oratorically, as Virgil has done so powerfully in his representation of Mezentius and Turnus, but not to have created any of those great types of human character such as the world owes to Homer, Sophocles, and Shakspeare. The popularity and the power of Roman tragedy, during the century preceding the downfall of the Republic, are to be attributed chiefly to its didactic and oratorical force, to the Roman bearing of the persons represented, to the ethical and occasionally the political cast of the sentiments expressed by them, and to the plain and vigorous style in which they are enunciated. The works of the tragic poets aided the development of the Roman language. They communicated new ideas and experience, and fostered among the ma.s.s of the Roman people the only taste for serious literature of which they were capable. They may have exercised a beneficial influence also on the thoughts and lives of men. They kept the national ideal of duty, the 'manners of the olden time,' the 'fas et antiqua cast.i.tudo' (to use an expression of Accius), before the minds of the people: they inculcated by precept and by representations great lessons of fort.i.tude and energy: they taught the maxims of common sense, and touched the minds of their audiences with a humanity of feeling naturally alien to them. No teaching on the stage could permanently preserve the old Roman virtue, simplicity, and loyalty to the Republic, against the corrupting and disorganising effects of constant wars and conquests, and of the gross forms of luxury, that suited the temperament of Rome: but, among the various influences acting on the mind of the people, none probably was of more unmixed good than that of the tragic drama of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius.

[Footnote 1: E.g. the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius.]

[Footnote 2: De Re Rustica, Lib. ii. Praef. Quoted also by Columella, Praef. 15.]

[Footnote 3: De Amicitia, 7.]

[Footnote 4: Cic. Pro P. Sestio, 65.]

[Footnote 5: Chap. 57.]

[Footnote 6: Cicero, Brutus, 48, 45; De Orat. iii. 8. 30: 'Quid noster hic Caesar nonne novam quandam rationem attulit orationis et dicendi genus induxit prope singulare? Quis unquam res praeter hunc tragicas paene comice, tristes remisse, severas hilare, forenses scaenica prope venustate tractavit atque ita, ut neque iocus magnitudine rerum excluderetur nec gravitas facetiis minueretur.']

[Footnote 7: Cf. Cic. De Orat. iii. 7: 'Atque id primum in poetis cerni licet quibus est proxima cognatio c.u.m oratoribus quam sint inter sese Ennius, Pacuvius, Acciusque dissimiles.']

[Footnote 8: 'Sanct.i.tas certe, et, ut sic dicam, virilitas, ab iis petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque ratione defluximus.'--Quintil. Inst. Or. i. 8. 9.]

[Footnote 9: Inst. Or. x. i. 97.]

[Footnote 10: Cf. Cic. Opt. Gen. Orat.: 'Itaque licet dicere et Ennium summum epic.u.m poetam si cui ita videtur, et Pacuvium tragic.u.m, et Caecilium forta.s.se comic.u.m.']

[Footnote 11: Pliny, Hist. Nat. x.x.xv. 7.]

[Footnote 12: xiii. 2.]

[Footnote 13: 'Young man, though thou art in haste, this stone entreats thee to regard it, and then read what is written:--Here are laid the bones of the poet Marcus Pacuvius.

This I desired to be not unknown to thee. Farewell.']

[Footnote 14: Brutus, 74.]

[Footnote 15: The writer of the treatise on Rhetoric addressed to C. Herennius.]

[Footnote 16: 'Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est, qui Ennii Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvii spernat aut rejiciat, quod se eisdem Euripidis fabulis delectari dicat?'--Cic. De Fin. i. 2.]

[Footnote 17: De Oratore, ii. 37.]

[Footnote 18: Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 21.]

[Footnote 19: 'Behold this, which around and above encompa.s.seth the earth, and puts on brightness at the rising of the sun, becomes dark at his setting; that which our people call Heaven, and the Greeks Aether. Whatever this is, it is to all things the source of life, form, nourishment, growth, existence; it is the grave and receptacle of all things, and the parent, too, of all things: all things which arise from it equally lapse into it again.' Compare with this pa.s.sage Lucretius, ii. 991--

'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi,' etc.

Both may be traced to a fragment of the Chrysippus of Euripides, quoted by Ribbeck, Rom. Trag. p. 257; and also by Munro, Lucret. p. 455, third edition.]

[Footnote 20: 'Philosophers say that Fortune is mad, blind, and senseless, and represent her as set on a round rolling stone. They say that she is mad, because she is harsh, fickle, untrustworthy; blind, for this reason, that she can see nothing to which to attach herself; senseless, because she cannot distinguish between the worthy and unworthy. Other philosophers again deny the existence of Fortune, but hold that all things are ruled by chance. That this is more probable, common experience proves, as Orestes was but the other day a king, and is now a beggar.']

[Footnote 21: 'For those men who understand the language of birds, and have more wisdom from examining the liver of other beings than from their own (i.e. understanding), I think should be heard rather than listened to.']

[Footnote 22: 'Thou, too, Ulysses, although we see thee sore wounded, art yet almost too much cast down; thou, who hast been used to pa.s.s thy life in arms!']

[Footnote 23: 'To complain of adverse fortune is well, but not to lament over it. The one is the act of a man; it is a woman's part to weep.']

[Footnote 24: Sueton. Caes. 84.]

[Footnote 25: De Orat. ii. 46.]

[Footnote 26: 'Didst thou venture to let him part from thee, or to enter Salamis without him; and didst thou not fear to see thy father's face, when in his old age, bereft of his children, thou hast torn him with anguish, robbed, crushed him; nor didst thou feel for thy brother's death, and his child, who was trusted to thy protection--?']

[Footnote 27: Compare especially the fragments of the speeches of C. Gracchus.]