The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 41

The whole of the third book is devoted to this part of his subject, and the argument of the fourth is to a great extent supplementary to that of the third book. The physical doctrine enunciated and ill.u.s.trated in the first half of the third book is the materiality of the soul and its indissoluble connexion with the body. The practical consequence of this doctrine, viz. that death is nothing to us, is there enforced in a long pa.s.sage[12] of sustained power and solemnity of feeling. First, we are made to realise the entire unconsciousness in death throughout all eternity. 'As it was before we were born, so shall it be hereafter. As we felt no trouble in the past at the clash of conflict between Roman and Carthaginian, when all the world shook with alarm, so nothing can touch us or move us then--

Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo[13].

It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any kind of suffering after all consciousness has ceased--

Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse[14].

Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife, and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and longing for them. So, too, men "spice their fair banquets with the dust of death." They say, "our joy is but for a season; it will soon be past, nor ever again be recalled,"--as if forsooth any want or any desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking--

Nec quisquam expergitus exstat, Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[15].

Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: "Thou fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has. .h.i.therto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There is no new thing under the sun"--"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the weak complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away hence with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to enjoy the present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent, that death has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a just charge and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to new; and life is given to no man in possession, to all men for use.

The time before we were born is a mirror to us of what the future shall be. Is there any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper rest than any sleep?'

'The terrors of the unseen world are but the h.e.l.l which fools make for themselves out of their pa.s.sions[16]. The torments of Tantalus, of t.i.tyus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the blind cowardice and superst.i.tion, of the craving pa.s.sions, of the ever-foiled and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent with the natural joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade our mortal existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of the tortures of the d.a.m.ned are creations of a guilty conscience, or the projections into futurity of the experiences of earthly punishment.'

Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have gone before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles--

[Greek: alla, philos, thane kai su; tie olophyreai houtos?

katthane kai Patroklos, hoper seo pollon ameinon][17]--

he reminds us that better and greater men than we have died,--kings and soldiers, poets and philosophers, the mightiest equally with the humblest. In the spirit, and partly too in the words of Ennius, he enforces the thought that 'Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the terror of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he were the meanest slave.' 'Why, then, should one whose life is half a sleep, who is the prey of weak fears and restless discontent, complain that he too is subject to the common law? What is this wretched love of life, which makes us tremble at every danger? Death cannot be avoided; no new pleasure can be forged out by longer living. This evil of our lot is not inflicted by Nature, but by our own craving hearts, which cannot enjoy, and are yet ever thirsting for longer life[18].'

The power of the whole of this pa.s.sage depends partly on the vividness of feeling and conception with which the thought is realised, partly on the august and solemn a.s.sociations with which it is surrounded.

Such graphic touches as these--

Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[19];--

c.u.m summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi[20];--

Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae[21],--

and again, the life, truth, and tenderness of the picture presented in the lines--

Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[22],

bring home to the mind, in startling distinctness, the old familiar contrast between the 'cold obstruction' of the grave and 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day.' But the horror and pain of the thought of death are lost in a feeling of august resignation to the universal law. Though the fact is made present to our minds in its sternest reality, yet it is encompa.s.sed with the pomp and majesty of great a.s.sociations. It suggests the thought of the most momentous crisis in history--

Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis[23],

of the regal state of kings and mighty potentates--

Inde alii multi reges rerumque potentes Occiderunt, magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt[24],

of the simpler and more impressive grandeur of the great men of old, such as the 'good Ancus,' the mighty Scipio, Homer, 'peerless among poets,' the sage Democritus, Epicurus, 'the sun among all the lesser luminaries.' Lastly, we are reminded of the universal law of Nature, that the death of the old is the condition of the life of the new--

Sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri[25].

Even if the spirit of the poet cannot be said to rise buoyantly above the depressing and paralysing influence of this conviction, yet he draws a higher lesson from it than the maxim of 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' He understands the epicurean precept of 'carpe diem' in a sense more befitting to human dignity. The lesson which he teaches is the need of conquering all weakness, sloth, and irresolution in life. This life is all that we have through eternity; let it not be wasted in unsatisfied desires, insensibility to present and regrets for absent good, or restless disquiet for the future; let us understand ourselves and our position here, bear and enjoy whatever is allotted to us during our few years of existence. We are masters of ourselves and of our fortunes, so far at least as to rise clearly above the degradation of ignorance and misery.

The practical use of the study of Nature, according to Lucretius, is, first, to inspire confidence in the room of an ignorant and superst.i.tious fear of supernatural power; and, secondly, to show what man really needs, and so to clear the heart from all artificial desires and pa.s.sions. All that is wanted for happiness in this world is a mind free from error, and a heart neither incapable of natural enjoyment (fluxum pertusumque) nor vitiated by false appet.i.te[26]. Of the errors to which man is liable superst.i.tion and the fear of death are the most deeply seated. Of the artificial desires and pa.s.sions, on the other hand, the most destructive are the love of power and of riches, and the sensual appet.i.te for pleasure. In the opening lines of the second book the strife of ambition, the rivalries of rank and intellect in the warfare of politics are contrasted with the serene life of philosophy, as darkness, error, and danger with light, certainty, and peace--

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios pa.s.simque videre Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae, Certare ingenio, contendere n.o.bilitate, Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri[27].

Yet to be the master of armies and of navies, or to be clothed in gold and purple, gives not that exemption from the real terrors and anxieties of life which the power of reason only can bestow--

Quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus, Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces Nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela, Audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis Versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro Nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai, Quid dubitas quin omni' sit haec rationi' potestas?

Omnis c.u.m in tenebris praesertim vita laboret[28].

The desire of power and station leads to the shame and misery of baffled hopes, of which the toil of Sisyphus is the type, and also to the guilt which deluges the world in blood, and violates the most sacred ties of Nature[29]. While failure in the struggle is degradation, success is often only the prelude to the most sudden downfall. Weary with bloodshed, and with forcing their way up the hostile and narrow road of ambition[30], men reach the summit of their hopes only to be hurled down by envy as by a thunderbolt[31]. They are slaves to ambition, merely because they cannot distinguish the true from the false, because they cannot judge of things as they really are, apart from the estimate which the world puts upon them--

Quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque Res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis.[32]

The love of riches and of luxurious living, which had begun to corrupt the Roman character in the age of Lucilius, had increased to gigantic dimensions in the last age of the Republic. By no aspect of his age was Lucretius more repelled than by this. No doctrine is enforced in the poem with more sincerity of conviction than that of the happiness and dignity of plain and natural living, the vanity of all the appliances of wealth, and their inability to give real enjoyment either to body or mind. In a well-known pa.s.sage at the beginning of the second book he adapts an ideal description from Homer's account of the palace of Alcinous to the costly magnificence and splendour of Roman banquets, with which he contrasts the pleasure of gratifying simple tastes, in fine weather, among the beauties of Nature--

Praesertim c.u.m tempestas adridet et anni Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas[33].

With fervid sincerity he announces the truth that 'to the man who would govern his life by reason plain living and a contented spirit are great riches'--

Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet, Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce Aequo animo[34].

Moderation, independence, and self-control are the virtues which Horace derives from his philosophy. He knew how to enjoy both the luxury of the city and the simple fare of the country. Lucretius is more alive to the dangers of pampering the body and enervating the mind. He is more active in his resistance to the common forms of indulgence: he shows more truly simple tastes, stronger capacity of natural enjoyment. He is vividly sensible of the apathy and _ennui_ produced by the luxury and inaction of his age. Others among the Roman poets, with more or less sincerity and consistency, appear to long for a return to more natural ways, and paint their ideals of the purity and simplicity of country life. But no writer of antiquity is less of an idealist than Lucretius: there is no writer, ancient or modern, whose words are more truthful and unvarnished. There is no romance or self-deception in what he longs for. There may be some antic.i.p.ation of the spirit of Rousseau in Virgil, and still more in Tibullus, but none whatever in Lucretius. The privations and rude misery of savage life are painted in as sombre colours as the satiety and discontent of his own age. It would be difficult to name any writer, ancient or modern, by whom the lesson of 'plain living and high thinking' was more worthily inculcated.

The pa.s.sion of love, which, in its more violent phases, was seen to be a prominent motive in the comedy of Plautus, became a very powerful influence in actual life during the last years of the Republic and the early years of the Empire. Extreme license in the pursuit of pleasure was common among men and women of the highest rank: but, over and above this, the poetry of Catullus and of the elegiac poets of the Augustan age shows that in the case of young men of fas.h.i.+on and literary accomplishment (and these were often combined) intrigue and temporary _liaisons_ had become the absorbing interest and occupation of life. With these claims of pa.s.sion and sentiment, apparently so alien to the ancient strength and dignity of the Roman character, Lucretius felt no sympathy. No writer has shown a profounder reverence for human affection. In his eyes the crowning guilt of superst.i.tion is the cruel violation of natural ties exacted by it: the chief bitterness of death is the thought of eternal separation from wife and children: the first civilising influence acting on the world is traced to the power of the blandishments of children over the savage pride of strength. The pathos of the famous pa.s.sage, at Book ii. 350, attests his sympathy with the sorrow caused by the disruption of natural ties, even in the lower animals. Other casual expressions, as in that line of profound feeling--

Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[35];--

or such pictures, as that at iii. 469, of friends and relatives surrounding the bed of one who has sunk into a deep lethargy--

Ad vitam qui revocantes Circ.u.mstant lacrimis rorantes ora genasque[36],--

show how strong and real was his regard for the great elemental affections of human nature. But, on the other hand, he is austerely indifferent to the follies and the idealising fancies of lovers. With satirical and not fastidious realism he strips pa.s.sion of all romance, and exhibits it as a bondage fatal alike to character and independence, to peace of mind and to self-respect. But it is the weakness, not the immorality of licentious pa.s.sion which he condemns.

And it would be altogether an anachronism to attribute to a writer of that age sentiments on this subject in harmony either with the austere virtue of the primitive Romans, or with the moral standard of modern times. It is not the indulgence of inclination, but its excess and perversion, by which the happiness and dignity of life are placed in another's power, which he condemns.

In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary to contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought in modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the result perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by seclusion in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly exaggerates the influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over the world. There is little trace, either in the literature[37] or in the sepulchral inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'--

Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo Omnia suffendens mortis nigrore neque ullam Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit.

The answer of Cicero to the exaggerated pretensions of Epicureanism seems to express the common sense of his age, 'Where can you find an old woman fatuous enough to believe what you forsooth would have believed, if you had not studied physical science[38]?' The pa.s.sionate protest of Lucretius seems more applicable to times of religious persecution, and to extreme forms of fanaticism in modern times, than to the tolerant spirit and the not unkindly superst.i.tion of the Greek and Roman world, as they are known in its literature. But if the experience of the modern world gives a still more startling significance to the words--

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,--

that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the baser influences of fear in man's whole att.i.tude to a supernatural Power. His ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that pa.s.sage[39] where he resolves the pa.s.sions of ambition and avarice into the fear of death, and that again into the dread of eternal punishment.

The limitation of his philosophy is also apparent in his want of sympathy with the active duties and pursuits of life. He can see only different modes of evil in the busy interests of the world.

War, politics, commerce, appeared to him a mere struggle of personal pa.s.sion with a view to personal aggrandis.e.m.e.nt. A life of peace, not of energetic action, was his ideal. In eternal peace he placed the supreme happiness of the G.o.ds: a state of peaceful contemplation--

Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri--