The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 4

Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[18].

The n.o.bles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him in his comedies. One pa.s.sage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which a failing of the great Scipio is exposed[19]. Other fragments are found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of character:--

Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus, Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?

Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus[20]?

and this also[21]:--

Semper pluris feci potioremque ego Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.

He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.

He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may be regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the Roman Senate ruled the world.

But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and of Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic representation.

Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem of Naevius. There are many pa.s.sages in the Aeneid in which Virgil followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius (as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises, leaving Troy in the night-time,--

Amborum Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis c.u.m multis.

He represents Aeneas as having only one s.h.i.+p, built by Mercury,--a limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal pa.s.sages in Virgil's epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there is no direct evidence that he antic.i.p.ated Virgil in telling the tale of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the wors.h.i.+p of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology compelled Virgil to fill a blank s.p.a.ce of three hundred years with the shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.

Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first a.s.sumed shape in the time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius, that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter, and promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the Romans were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny. How much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention, and of a real adaptation to his main subject.

The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history, and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The slight and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the poem, are expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with the fidelity of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and vigorous, but are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid and graphic condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of impetuosity in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and energetic temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines,

Transit Melitam Roma.n.u.s exercitus, insulam integram Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[22].

But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old grammarian, Atilius Fortunatia.n.u.s, is quoted to the effect that he could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[23].' In the dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Cra.s.sus as comparing the idiomatic purity which distinguished the conversation of his mother-in-law, Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of Plautus and Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum sermonis expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam sic audio, ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis ita recto et simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic majores[24].' Expressions from his plays were, from their weight and compact brevity, quoted familiarly in the days of Cicero, such as 'sero sapiunt Phryges' and 'laudari a laudato viro,' which, like so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to express a distinction that could not be characterised in happier or shorter terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he a.s.sumes to himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote the Latin language.

Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a strong spirit of political partisans.h.i.+p. As an author, he showed great productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and vigorous lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper have left their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his epic poem. Probably his most important service to Roman literature consisted in the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin language. But the conception of his epic poem seems to imply some share of the higher gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head of the line of Roman poets, distinguished by that force of speech and vehemence of temper, which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and Juvenal; distinguished also by that national spirit which moved Ennius and, after him, Virgil, to employ their poetical faculty in raising a monument to commemorate the power and glory of Rome.

[Footnote 1: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. chap. ii. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i. chap. ii. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 3: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]

[Footnote 4: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]

[Footnote 5: Brutus, 18.]

[Footnote 6: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]

[Footnote 7: viii. 138.]

[Footnote 8: xxvii. 17.]

[Footnote 9: Brutus 15.]

[Footnote 10: By Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College, U.S.

'On a patriotic pa.s.sage of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.']

[Footnote 11: Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]

[Footnote 12: Brutus, 15.]

[Footnote 13: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired to Utica till after it fell into the possession of the Romans.]

[Footnote 14: De Senectute, 14.]

[Footnote 15: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king, hasten straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is of nature's growth, not planted by man.']

[Footnote 16: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses about from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she nods, to another winks; she makes love to one, clasps another.

Her hand is busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring to look at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with another corresponds by signs.']

[Footnote 17: The reading of the pa.s.sage here adopted is that given by Munk.]

[Footnote 18: De Senectute, 6.]

[Footnote 19:

Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose, Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat, Eum suus pater c.u.m pallio ab amica abduxit uno.]

[Footnote 20: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by the applause given to me, to think that any of these great people should now dare to interfere with! How much better thing is the slavery _here_' (_i.e._ represented in this play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?']

[Footnote 21: 'I have always held liberty to be of more value and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by Munk.]

[Footnote 22: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this poem, the action is generally represented in the _present tense_.]

[Footnote 23: Brutus, 19.]

[Footnote 24: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions), in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De Oratore iii. 12.]

CHAPTER IV.

ENNIUS.

The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his younger contemporary Plautus; and, in a strictly chronological history of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in order. But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of Roman comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to direct attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of Naevius in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.

The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature.

They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language a vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the metrical conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully to elicit the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national imagination. The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance with Greek literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of his time, the serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which he carried out his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was in action, the most vital representative of his epoch. It has happened too that the fragments from his writings and the testimonies concerning him are more expressive and characteristic than in the case of any other among the early writers. There are none of his contemporaries, playing their part in war or politics, and not many among the writers of later times, of whom we can form so distinct an image.