The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 25

It endeavoured also, by acting on individual character, to effect objects which the Roman State strove to accomplish by direct legislation. The various sumptuary laws of that age, and the enactments made to repress the study of Greek rhetoric and philosophy, emanated from the same spirit which led Lucilius to denounce the increase of luxury and the affectation of Greek manners among his contemporaries. The strong Roman appet.i.tes and the novelty of new studies prevailed alike over the artificial restraints of legislative enactments, and over the contemptuous and the earnest teaching of satire. But the influence of satire could reach further than that of censors or sumptuary laws. While it could brand notorious offenders it was able also to unmask hypocritical pretences--

Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora Cederet, introrsum turpis.

It could stimulate to virtue as well as denounce flagrant offences.

It wielded something of the power of the preacher to produce an inward change in the characters of men. By its close contact with real experience and its close adherence to the national standard of virtue, it might educate men for the duties of citizens more effectually than the teaching of Greek rhetoric or philosophy.

But while satire in its earlier manifestation, from one side, is to be regarded as the directest expression of Roman public life, it was, at the same time, the truest exponent of the character, pursuits, and interests of the individual writer. The old definition of it by a Latin grammarian, 'Carmen maledic.u.m et ad carpenda hominum vitia compositum,' is quite inapplicable to those familiar writings of Horace, in which he gives a pleasant account of his habits and mode of life in town and country, or that in which he humorously narrates his various adventures on his journey to Brundisium. The writings of Horace and Lucilius bore a more varied and miscellaneous character than that of the satire of the Empire or of modern times. Horace expresses his opinions and feelings in the form sometimes of a dialogue, sometimes of a familiar epistle, sometimes of a discourse put into the mouth of another, sometimes of a moral disquisition. He makes abundant use of fables, anecdotes, personal portraiture, real and imaginary, autobiography, and self-a.n.a.lysis. The fragments of Lucilius, and the notices about him in ancient authors, prove that in these respects Horace followed in his footsteps. The testimony of the lines--

Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim, etc.,

implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the circ.u.mstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature of the topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal revelations, his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,--the father of the prose essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman satire more completely than even the poetical satire of modern times.

Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen.

The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs in Roman history, the end of one great era,--that of the undisputed ascendency of the Senate,--the beginning of the century of revolution which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature.

It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought for its material, not in the representation which had been fas.h.i.+oned by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of the Roman streets, law-courts, public a.s.semblies, dinner-tables, and literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the dates usually a.s.signed for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly the end of the first century B.C. This period is so important and interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.

The dates of his birth and death, according to Jerome, were 148 B.C.

and 102 B.C. We are told, on the same authority, that he died at Naples and received the honour of a public funeral. The chief difficulty in accepting these dates arises from the statement of Velleius that Lucilius served as an 'eques' under Scipio in the Numantine War[3], and from the fact, attested by Horace and other authorities, of his great intimacy with both Scipio and Laelius[4].

Horace also mentions that he celebrated in his writings the justice and valour of Scipio,--

Attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem Scipiadem ut sapiens Lucilius--;

and the parallel there suggested between the relation of Lucilius to the great soldier and statesman of his age, and of Horace to Augustus, would be inappropriate unless the praises there spoken of had been bestowed on Scipio in his lifetime. Fragments from one book of the Satires appear to be parts of a letter written by Lucilius to congratulate his friend on the capture of Numantia[5]. One line of Book xxvi,--

Percrepa pugnam Popilli, facta Corneli cane,

contrasts the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas in 138 B.C. with the subsequent successes of Scipio. In another fragment Lucilius charges Scipio with affectation for p.r.o.nouncing the word 'pertaesum' as if it were 'pertisum[6].' He is also mentioned as one of those whose criticism Lucilius dreaded[7]. These and other pa.s.sages must have been written in the lifetime of Scipio--i.e. before 129 B.C. Thus, if the date a.s.signed for the birth of Lucilius is correct, he must have served in the Numantine War at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he must have been admitted into the most intimate familiarity with the greatest man of the age, and must have composed some books of his Satires, and thus introduced a new form of literature, before the age of nineteen. L. Muller in his edition of the Fragments adduces other considerations for rejecting the dates given by Jerome, such as the allusions to the career of Lupus (whom he supposes to be the same as the Censor of 147 B.C.) and to the war with Viriathus. He holds also that the words of Horace--

Quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita _senis_--

lose their point, unless _senis_ is to be understood in its usual sense. He supposes that the mistake of Jerome arose from a similarity in the names of the Consuls of 148 B.C. and 180 B.C., and would therefore throw the date of the poet's birth more than thirty years further back than that commonly received.

Whatever strength there may be in the other objections urged against accepting the date 148 B.C. as that of the birth of Lucilius, it is difficult to believe that Lucilius should have taken part in the Numantine War, and been admitted to apparently equal intimacy with Scipio before he had attained the age of fifteen. It is still more difficult to suppose that the earliest book or books of his Satires, composed before the death of Scipio, should be the work of a boy under nineteen years of age. But with these admissions it is not necessary to throw back the date of the poet's birth so far as is done by Muller. A more probable explanation of the error in the date was suggested by Mr. Munro in the Journal of Philology. He supposes that Jerome in copying the words of Suetonius referring to the death and funeral of Lucilius subst.i.tuted the 'anno aetatis xlvi. for lxiv. or lxvi., and then adapted the year of birth to the annus Abrahae which would correspond to this false reading.' Mr. Munro adds, 'Everything would now run smooth. Lucilius when he went with Scipio to Spain would be in the prime of manhood, thirty-two or thirty-four years of age.

Soon after that time he would be writing and publis.h.i.+ng his earliest Books, xxvi.-xxix., and then x.x.x. Some of these at all events would be published before the death of Scipio, when the poet would be thirty-seven or thirty-nine[8].' It may be added against the supposition that Lucilius was born in the year 180 B.C., that, in that case, we should have expected to have found in his numerous fragments allusions to events even earlier than the Censors.h.i.+p of P. Cornelius Lupus or the wars with Viriathus. Moreover the notices of his relation to Scipio and Laelius, as in the 'discincti ludere' of Horace, and in the story told by the Scholiast on that pa.s.sage, of Laelius coming on them, when the poet was chasing Scipio round the table with a napkin, seem to indicate the familiar footing of a much younger to older men.

His birth-place was Suessa Aurunca in Campania. Juvenal calls him 'Auruncae magnus alumnus.' He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact indicated in the pa.s.sage in which Horace speaks of himself as 'infra Lucili censum.' The Scholiast on that pa.s.sage mentions that he was on the mother's side grand-uncle to Pompey--a relations.h.i.+p confirmed by a pa.s.sage in Velleius, who mentions that the mother of Pompey was named Lucilia.

His satires were written in thirty Books. The remaining fragments amount to about 1100 lines. Most of these are single lines, preserved by grammarians as ill.u.s.trative of the use of words. The amount and variety of these, if they had no other value, would at least be suggestive of the industry with which grammatical and philological research into their own language was carried on by Roman writers.

Some fragments are found in ancient commentaries on the Satires and Epistles of Horace. The longer pa.s.sages are quoted by Cicero, Gellius, Lactantius, and others. The Books from i. to xx. were written in hexameters; Book xxii., apparently, in elegiacs, a metre which had hitherto been employed only in short epigrams. Of the intervening Books between xxii. and xxvi. there remains only one line[9].

Books xxvi. and xxix., from which a large number of lines have been preserved, were written in trochaics and iambics. The last Book (x.x.x.) was written in hexameters. From the fact that the trochaic and iambic metres had been chiefly employed by the older writers of saturae, it seems probable that Lucilius made his first attempts in these metres, that he afterwards adopted the hexameter, and that in one or two of his latest books he attempted to write continuously in elegiacs. The allusions in Book xxvi. to the Spanish wars and to the 'exploits of Cornelius,' and the statement of his reasons for coming forward as an author, render it not improbable that this Book was the earliest in order of composition. It was in this Book that he appeared most conspicuously as the censor and critic of the older writers, a position not unlikely to have been a.s.sumed, at the very outset of his career, by one who claimed to initiate a change in Roman literature.

The first impression produced by reading these fragments, as they have been arranged by Muller or Lachmann, is one of extreme desultoriness and discursiveness of treatment. The words applied by Horace to Lucilius,--

Garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem,

characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition.

Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces.

He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion, verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.--

Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo, Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est Pars hominum, Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, c.u.m Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te Si minu' delectat, quod [Greek: technion] Isocratium est, [Greek: Lerodes]que simul totum ac [Greek: symmeirakiodes], Non operam perdo[10].

We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity of purpose, the formal discourse and ill.u.s.tration of a set topic, which characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace, in his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation.

Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form--a form which in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman literature. He employs fables, quotations, and parodies, to ill.u.s.trate his subject. He gives a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes and incidents at which he was present, such as a fight between two gladiators, a rustic feast, and a storm which he encountered in his voyage to Sicily. In other places he plays the part of a moralist, and discourses to a friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he takes on himself the special office of a censor, and a.s.sails the vices of the day by direct denunciation and living examples. In other places he appears as a literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar and orthography.

In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of the G.o.ds was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to be preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were exposed by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account of the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line--

Mantica cantheri costas gravitate premebat[11]--

it appears that some part of the journey was made on horseback, but other lines[12] show that the latter part was made by water, and that a severe storm was encountered on the voyage. In Book iv., imitated by Horace (Sat. ii. 2), and by Persius in his third satire, was included the discourse of Laelius against gluttony. In this book mention was made of the sturgeon which gained notoriety for Gallonius[13]. Book v.

contained a letter to a friend of the poet, who had neglected to visit him when ill. Book ix. was composed of a dissertation on questions of grammar, orthography, and criticism. Book xi. treated of the wars in Spain and Transalpine Gaul, and contained criticisms and anecdotes of various public men. Book xvi. was named 'Collyra,' in honour of the poet's mistress. In other books the castigation of particular vices formed a prominent topic, and some of the latest (probably the earliest in the order of composition), were largely filled with personal explanations and with criticisms of the older poets. But the desultory, discursive, self-communing character seems to have been common to all of them; and it would be contrary to our evidence to speak of any single book as composed on a definite plan, or as treating of a special topic.

The fragments however, when read collectively, bring out the main sources of interest which the Romans found in the writings of Lucilius; first, the interest of a self-portraiture and close personal relation established with the reader[14]: second, the interest of a censorious criticism on politics, morals, and literature[15].

Among the personal indications of the author we note the great freedom and independence of his life and character. In his mode of expressing this freedom and independence he reminds us of Horace, who seems to have imitated him in his view of life as well as in his writings.

Thus, Lucilius declares his indifference to public employment, and his unwillingness to change his own position for the business of the Publicani of Asia, just as Horace declares that he would not exchange his leisure for all the wealth of Arabia[16]. Like Horace, he speaks of the joy of escaping from the storms of life into a quiet haven of repose[17], or inculcates contentment with one's own lot[18]

and immunity from envy[19], and the superiority of plain living to luxury[20]. Like Horace, while holding to his independence of life, he put a high value on friends.h.i.+p, and strove to fulfil its duties[21].

Like him, while condemning excess and weakness, he did not conform to any austerer standard of morals than that of the world around him.

Like Horace, too, in his later years, he seems to have been something of a valetudinarian[22], and to have had much of the self-consciousness which accompanies that condition. On the whole the impression we get of him is that of an independent, self-reliant character,--of a man living in strong contact with reality, taking all the rubs of life cheerfully[23],--enjoying society, travelling[24], the exercise of his art[25],--a warm friend and partisan, and a bold and uncompromising enemy,--not professing any austerity of life, but knowing and following the course which gave his own nature most satisfaction[26], while, at the same time, upholding a high standard of public duty and personal honour[27].

This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first of Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire, we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them, from the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting character and intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero and the Satires and Epistles of Horace.

His independent social position, and the character of the times in which he lived, enabled him to perform the office of a political satirist with more freedom than any other Roman writer. He belonged to the middle party between the extreme partisans of the aristocracy and of the democracy, the party of Scipio and Laelius, and that to which Cicero, in a later age, naturally inclined. He directed his satire against the corruption, incapacity, and arrogance[28] of the n.o.bles by whom the wars abroad and affairs at home were mismanaged. His service under Scipio, and his admiration of his generals.h.i.+p, made him keenly sensitive to the disgrace incurred by the Roman arms under 'the limping Hostilius and Manius[29],' and in the war against Viriathus.

Among those a.s.sailed by him on political grounds, L. Hostilius Tubulus, notorious for openly receiving bribes while presiding at a trial for murder, and C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of Tib. Gracchus and the suspected murderer of Scipio, were conspicuous. The more reputable names of Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus and Mucius Scaevola are also mentioned among the objects of his satire[30].

Personal motives--and especially his devotion to Scipio[31]--may have stimulated these animosities; but there were instances enough of incapacity in war, profligacy and extortion in the government of the provinces, corruption and favouritism in the administration of justice, of venality and ignorance in the electoral bodies, to justify the bold exposure by Lucilius of 'the leading men of the State and of the ma.s.s of the people in their tribes.' The personality of his attacks probably made him many enemies; and thus we hear that he was a.s.sailed by name on the stage, and was unable to obtain redress, while a writer who had taken a similar liberty with the tragic poet Accius was condemned. But the honour of a public funeral awarded to him at his death would indicate that the final verdict of his contemporaries was that in a.s.suming the censorial function of attaching marks of infamy against the names of eminent men he was actuated, in the main, by worthy motives, and had done good service to the State.

The chief social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to which the Roman temperament was most p.r.o.ne, rapacity and meanness in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coa.r.s.e sensuality in using it[32]. These were opposite results of a sudden influx of wealth among a people trained through many generations to habits of thrift and self-restraint, and, through this acc.u.mulated vital force, unaccompanied, as it was, with much capacity for refined enjoyment, animated by a strong craving for the coa.r.s.er enjoyments of life. The intensity and concentrativeness of the Roman temperament also tended to produce those one-sided types of character, which are the favourite objects of satiric portraiture. The parasites and spendthrifts, the misers and money-makers of Horace's Satires and Epistles, Maenius and Avidienus for instance, are among the most strongly marked of his personal sketches. Lucilius witnessed the same tendencies in his time and exposed them with greater freedom. The names which are typical of certain characters in Horace, such as Nomenta.n.u.s, Pantolabus (probably a nickname) Maenius and Gallonius, had first been taken by Lucilius from the streets and dinner-tables of Rome. This indifference to the claims of personal feeling, in which Lucilius emulates the license of the old Greek comedy, although sanctioned by the approval of Horace in a poet of an earlier age, would probably have been forbidden by the greater urbanity and decorum of the Augustan age.

The excesses of his contemporaries in the way of good living, against which numerous sumptuary laws (the Lex Fannia and Lex Licinia for instance), enacted in that age, vainly contended, were largely satirised by Lucilius. Such pa.s.sages as these--

O Publi, O gurges Galloni, es h.o.m.o miser, inquit, Cenasti in vita numquam bene, quom omnia in ista Consumis squilla atque acipensere quum dec.u.mano.

Hoc fit item in cena, dabis ostrea millibu' nummum Empta.

Occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri.

Vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventres.

Illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo.

Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas, etc.[33]

show the proportions already a.s.sumed by a form of sensuality the beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius, Vitellius, Elagabalus, and many men of less note.

The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid meanness in h.o.a.rding money, and the discontent produced among all cla.s.ses by the restless pa.s.sion to grow rich, which fills so large a place in the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently in the fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:--

Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum, Vini mille cadum.-- Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia c.u.m sint.-- Rugosi pa.s.sique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.-- Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cib.u.m.-- Aquam te in animo habere intercutem[34].

The following description of a miser seems to have suggested the beginning of one of Catullus' lampoons[35]:--

Cui neque iumentumst nec servos nec comes ullus, Bulgam et quidquid habet nummum sec.u.m habet ipse, c.u.m bulga cenat, dormit, lavit; omnis in unast Spes homini bulga. Bulga haec devincta lacertost[36].

In other pa.s.sages he inculcates the lessons of good sense and moderation in the use of money, or urges, in the person of an objector, that a man is regarded in proportion to the estimate of his means. In his enumeration of the various const.i.tuents of virtue, one on which he dwells with emphasis, is the right estimation of the value of money. In all his thoughts and expressions on this subject it is easy to see how closely Horace follows on his traces.