The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 6

Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam, Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum.

Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[18].

Two lines from one of his satires--

Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[19],

indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power.

Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:--

Scripsere alii rem Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant, Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat Nec dicti studiosus erat[20].

The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first to introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature.

Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius, nor in Lucretius any sympathy with those mystic speculations which Ennius derived from the lore attributed to Pythagoras. But in both deep feelings of awe and reverence are combined with a scornful disbelief of the superst.i.tion of their time. They both apply the principles of Euhemerism to resolve the bright creations of the old mythology into their original elements. Ennius, like Lucretius, seems to deny the providence of the G.o.ds. He makes one of the personages of his dramas give expression to the thought which perplexed the minds of Thucydides and Tacitus--the thought, namely, of the apparent disconnexion between prosperity and goodness, as affording proof of the divine indifference to human well-being--

Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum, Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus; Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[21]:

and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs, prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a peac.o.c.k[22], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had finally pa.s.sed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype had appeared to him from the invisible world,--

Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris,

and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism.

He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime of Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold fancies of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their later speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus to have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance of tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency.

II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.

II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius displayed not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of genius, but also great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning.

The composition of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most demand on his original gifts, implied also a diligent study of Homer and of the Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the traditions and antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which his highest poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a philosophical, didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of the versatility of his powers and interests. It does not appear that he was the author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than a literal prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was conceived in that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by Plato in the Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology, by representing them as a supernatural account of historical events.

Several extracts of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the translation of Ennius, look as if they had been reduced from a form originally metrical into the prose of a later era[23]. There is thus no evidence, direct or indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in forming the style of Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument which he used, this was certainly not due to the poetical character of all the topics which he treated, but, more likely, to the fact that his acquired apt.i.tude, and the state of the Latin language in his time, made metrical writing more natural and easy than prose composition.

One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius, giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be found, have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as exemplifying that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who treat, either in prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem naturally to adopt, as for instance the Catius of Horace in his discourse on gastronomy[24]. The language in which the _scarus_, a fish unhappily lost to the modern epicure, is described as 'the brain almost of almighty Jove,' fits all the requirements of gastronomic rapture:--

Quid t.u.r.dum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi?

Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque.

He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse, called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian poet, which appear to have resolved the G.o.ds of the Greek mythology into natural substances[25]. A few slight fragments have been preserved from this poem. They speak of the four elements or principles of the universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the blending of heat with cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth bearing and supporting all nations and receiving them again back into herself.' The following is the longest fragment from the poem:--

Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant Aerem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aer denuo, Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi, Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[26].

These fragments and a pa.s.sage from the opening lines of the Annals, where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius (like the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature, which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge.

Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the Roman poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was the first among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the ultimate facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the universe, which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the mind of Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.

Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that all of these works[27], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which t.i.tle Ennius composed four, or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that word[28];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time.

But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the princ.i.p.al authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of various topics of personal and public interest. The few pa.s.sages which ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind of composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura and the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one of these pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and Death;--thus transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very frequently in Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original scenic medley. Ennius also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have communicated in his satires his own personal feelings and experience, as in the fragment already quoted:--

Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager.

Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and by portraiture of individuals and of types, but also by the use of anecdotes and fables. This last mode of inculcating homely lessons on the conduct of life is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have been first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable of the field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully told by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice appended to the fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do for yourself':

Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm: Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[29].

These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas, and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent, and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and literature is discerned.

(2) DRAMAS.

(2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic, had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due to the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried, though without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in favour of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_ and _Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits.

His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as a.s.signing the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments of Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour.

The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits, strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply want of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the following fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the pa.s.sage is more obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon the word _frustra_:--

Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari, Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse.

Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sent.i.t, Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[30].

The love of alliteration and a.s.sonance, which is conspicuous also in Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators, appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the

O t.i.te tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti,

quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light of common sense, not of humour, that he regarded the follies of the world.

The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be ascertained from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the early tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed in the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters. His peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality, are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in the sequel, along with pa.s.sages from the Annals, as important contributions to our estimate of the poet's genius and intellect.

It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero.

While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his life. Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the celebration of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's death[31]. The t.i.tles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known, and a few fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these bear the t.i.tles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan cycle of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_, _Ajax_, _Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_, _Hecuba_, _Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his tragedies, the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of Euripides, whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to the older Attic dramatists. Cicero[32] speaks of it, along with the Antiope of Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek; and a comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the pa.s.sages in the Medea of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original.

In one place he has mistranslated his author,--the pa.s.sage (Eur. Med.

215),

[Greek: oida gar pollous broton semnous gegotas, tous men ommaton apo tous d' en thyraiois],

being thus rendered in Latin,--

Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul.

The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the language:--

Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes, Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium Coep.i.s.set, quae nunc nominatur nomine Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum; Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[33].

In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[34]. The subjects of many of his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the soldierly character. Cicero[35] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an example of the kind of fort.i.tude and superiority to pain produced by the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle'; and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis contemnitur! Sent.i.t omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ...

praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[36].'

In the former of these scenes Ca.s.sandra, under the influence of Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:--

Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio: Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite.

Iamque mari magno cla.s.sis cita Texitur: exitium examen rapit.

Advenit, et fera velivolantibus Navibus complevit ma.n.u.s litora[37].

We see in this pa.s.sage how the pa.s.sionate character of the situation is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Ca.s.sandra. A similar excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in a fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another the motive is the awe a.s.sociated with the dim and pale realms of the dead[38]. In these and similar pa.s.sages we note the power of expressing the varying moods of pa.s.sion by varied effects of metre.

Horace characterises his ordinary verse in the line,