Part 1

# The Oxford Book of Latin Verse: From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A.D. ### By Unknown

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The Oxford Book Of Latin Verse

From the earliest fragments to the end of the Vth Century A.D.

Chosen by

H.W. Garrod

Fellow of Merton College.

Oxford

At the Clarendon Press

FIRST PUBLISHED 1912

REPRINTED 1921, 1926, 1934, 1940 1943, 1947, 1952, 1964, 1968

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

The plan of this book excludes epic and the drama, and in general so much of Roman poetry as could be included only by a licence of excerpt mostly dangerous and in poetry of any architectonic pretensions intolerable. If any one remarks as inconsistent with this plan the inclusion of the more considerable fragments of Ennius and the early tragedians, I will only say that I have not thought it worth while to be wiser here than Time and Fate, which have of their own act given us these poets in lamentable excerpt. A more real inconsistency may be found in my treatment of the didactic poets. It seemed a pity that Didactic Poetry--in some ways the most characteristic product of the Roman genius--should, in such a Collection as this, be wholly unrepresented. It seemed a pity: and it seemed also on the whole unnecessary. It seemed unnecessary, for the reason that many of the great passages of Lucretius, Vergil, and Manilius hang so loosely to their contexts that the poets themselves seem to invite the gentle violence of the excerptor. These passages are 'golden branches' set in an alien stock--_non sua seminat arbos_. The hand that would pluck them must be at once courageous and circumspect. But they attend the fated despoiler:

Ergo alte uestiga oculis et rite repertum carpe manu, namque ipse uolens facilisque sequetur si te fata uocant.

Even outside Didactic Poetry I have allowed myself an occasional disloyalty to my own rule against excerpts. I have, for example, detached one or two lyrics from the Tragedies of Seneca. And, again, from the long and sometimes tedious _Itinerarium_ of Rutilius I have detached the splendid apostrophe to Rome which stands in the forefront of that poem. These are pieces without which no anthology of Latin poetry would be anything but grotesquely incomplete. And after all we should be the masters and not the slaves of our own rules.

Satire finds no place in this book. Horace is represented only by his lyrics. Juvenal and Persius are not represented at all. The _Satires_ and _Epistles_ of Horace are books of deep and wide influence. They have taught lessons in school which have been remembered in the world. They have made an appeal to natures which teaching more profound and spiritual leaves untouched. By their large temper and by their complete freedom from cant they have achieved a place in the regard of men from which they are not likely to be dislodged by any changes of literary fashion or any fury of the enemies of humane studies. I am content to leave them in this secure position, and not to intrude them into a Collection where Horace himself would have known them to be out of place. Indeed, he has himself said upon this subject all that needs to be said.[1] Persius similarly, in the Prologue to his _Satires_, excludes himself from the company of the great poets. Nor can I believe that Juvenal has any place among them. In the rhetoric of rancour he is a distinguished practitioner. But he wants two qualities essential to great poetry--truth and humanity. I say this because there are critics who speak of Juvenal as though he were Isaiah.

My Selection begins with fragments of the Saliar hymns, and ends with the invocation of Phocas to 'Clio, reverend wardress of Antiquity.' If I am challenged to justify these _termini_, I will say of the first of them that I could not begin earlier, and that it is commonly better to take the beginnings offered to us than to make beginnings for ourselves. The lower _terminus_ is not so simple a matter. I set myself here two rules. First, I resolved to include no verse which, tried by what we call 'classical' standards, was metrically faulty. Secondly, I judged it wiser to exclude any poetry definitely Christian in character--a rule which, as will be seen, does not necessarily exclude all the work of Christian poets. Within these limits, I was content to go on so long as I could find verse instinct with any genuine poetic feeling. The author whose exclusion I most regret is Prudentius. If any one asks me, Where is Merobaudes? where Sedulius? where Dracontius? I answer that they are where they have always been--out of account. Interesting, no doubt, in other ways, for the student of poetry they do not count. Prudentius counts. He has his place. But it is not in this Collection. It is among other memories, traditions, and aspirations, by the threshold of a world where Vergil takes solemn and fated leave of those whom he has guided and inspired:

Non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno.

I have spent a good deal of labour on the revision of texts: and I hope that of some poems, particularly the less known poems, this book may be found to offer a purer recension than is available elsewhere. I owe it to myself, however, to say that I have sometimes preferred the convenience of the reader to the dictates of a rigorous criticism. I have thought it, for example, not humane to variegate the text of an Anthology with despairing _obeli_: and occasionally I have covered up an indubitable lacuna by artifices which I trust may pass undetected by the general reader and unreproved by the charitable critic.

H.W.G.

_Oxford, Sept. 2, 1912._

INTRODUCTION

I

Latin poetry begins where almost all poetry begins--in the rude ceremonial of a primitive people placating an unknown and dreaded spiritual world. The earliest fragments are priestly incantations. In one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god of pestilence and blight (_lues rues_). The gods are most dreaded at the seasons most important to a primitive people, seed-time, for example, and harvest. The Salii celebrated Mars at seed-time--in the month which bears his name, _mensis Martius_. The name of the Arval Brethren betrays their relation to the gods who watch the sown fields. The aim of this primitive priestly poetry is to get a particular deity into the power of the worshipper. To do this it is necessary to know his name and to use it. In the Arval hymn the name of the god is reiterated--it is a spell. Even so Jacob wished to know--and to use--the name of the god with whom he wrestled. These priestly litanies are accompanied by wild dances--the Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'--and by the clashing of shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering to the beat of a three-step dance. The verse is in the main accentual. But the accent is hieratic. The hieratic accent is discovered chiefly in the first half of the verse: where the natural accent of a disyllabic word is neglected and the stress falls constantly on the final syllable.[2] This hieratic accent in primitive Latin poetry is important, since it was their familiar use of it which made it easy for the Romans to adapt the metres of Greece.

The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the people--moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial--the so-called Fescennine poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the priests. It is a charm against _fascinum_, 'the evil eye': and hence the name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin poetry--drama and satire.

There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic dirges (_neniae_) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay. They were chanted by a _praefica_, a professional 'wise woman', who placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to

## particular circumstances. The office of the _praefica_ survived into a

late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in Cato and Varro. This was the _Song in Praise of Famous Men_ which was sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully selected boys (_pueri modesti_), and no doubt its purpose was to propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers disappear, and the _Song_ is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us: even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3] to Livius Andronicus' translation of the _Odyssey_. Yet between the work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.

The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his _Odyssey_ he had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius--and the patriotic nobles whose ideals he represented--saved Rome. It is significant that in his translation of the _Odyssey_ he employs the old Saturnian measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in which he alludes scornfully to the _Punica_ of Naevius as written 'in verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is, of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since naturalized in Rome--perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to learn Greek.

Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues--the Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece. The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy--the period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry. The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical name in it is that of Catullus--for Lucretius is, as it were, a last outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian (perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman _ciuitas_, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through Apollonius.

It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy (which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that Roman poetry reaches its culmination--and at the same time begins to decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus--and, later, Propertius--were Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas, Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian _municipia_ new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry failed--or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it was not before--imitative; that is to say it now for the first time reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying, there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer--_save Vergil himself_. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass, without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant, graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a Spanish origin has been--perhaps hastily--conjectured for Silius. Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul.[4] Rome's rôle in the world is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else _urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat_.

If we are to understand the character, then, of Roman poetry in its best period, in the period, that is, which ends with the death of Augustus, we must figure to ourselves a great and prosaic people, with a great and prosaic language, directing and controlling to their own ends spiritual forces deeper and more subtle than themselves. Of these forces one is the Greek, the other may for convenience be called the Italian. In the Italian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence. No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again--despite its Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism--how un-Greek. It is not Greek and not Roman, and we may call it Italian for want of a better name. The effects of this Italian quality in Roman poetry are both profound and elusive; and it is not easy to specify them in words. But it is important to seize them: for unless we do so we shall miss that aspect of Roman poetry which gives it its most real title to be called poetry at all. Apart from it it is in danger of passing at its best for rhetoric, at its worst for prose.

Ennius is a poet in whom the Roman, as distinct from the Italian, temperament has asserted itself strongly. It has asserted itself most powerfully, of course, in the _Annals_. Even in the _Annals_, however, there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Italian. And a good deal more. But it is in the tragedies--closely as they follow Greek models--that the Italian element is most pronounced. Take this from the _Alexander_:

adest, adest fax obuoluta sanguine atque incendio: multos annos latuit, ciues, ferte opem et restinguite. iamque mari magno classis cita texitur, exitium examen rapit: adueniet, fera ueliuolantibus navibus complebit manus litora.

Mr. Sellar has called attention to the 'prophetic fury' of these lines, their 'wild agitated tones'. They seem, indeed, wrought in fire. Nor do they stand alone in Ennius. Nor is their fire and swiftness Roman. They are preserved to us in a passage of Cicero's treatise _De Diuinatione_: and in the same passage Cicero applies to another fragment of Ennius notable epithets. He speaks of it as _poema tenerum et moratum et molle_. The element of _moratum_, the deep moral earnestness, is Roman. The other two epithets carry us outside the typically Roman temperament. Everybody remembers Horace's characterization of Vergil:

molle atque facetum Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae.

Horace is speaking there of the Vergil of the Transpadane period: the reference is to the _Eclogues_. The Romans had _hard_ minds. And in the _Eclogues_ they marvelled primarily at the revelation of temperament which Horace denotes by the word _molle_. Propertius, in whose Umbrian blood there was, it has been conjectured, probably some admixture of the Celtic, speaks of himself as _mollis in omnes_. The _ingenium molle_, whether in passion, as with Propertius, or, as with Vergil, in reflection, is that deep and tender sensibility which is the least Roman thing in the world, and which, in its subtlest manifestations, is perhaps the peculiar possession of the Celt. The subtle and moving effects, in the _Eclogues_, of this _molle ingenium_, are well characterized by Mr. Mackail, when he speaks of the 'note of brooding pity' which pierces the 'immature and tremulous cadences' of Vergil's earliest period. This _molle ingenium_, that here quivers beneath the half-divined 'pain-of-the-world', is the same temperament as that which in Catullus gives to the pain of the individual immortally poignant expression. It is the same temperament, again, which created Dido. Macrobius tells us that Vergil's Dido is just the Medea of Apollonius over again. And some debt Vergil no doubt has to Apollonius. To the Attic drama his debt is far deeper; and he no doubt intended to invest the story of Dido with the same kind of interest as that which attaches to, say, the Phaedra of Euripides. Yet observe. Vergil has not _hardness_ enough. He has not the unbending righteousness of the tragic manner. The rather hard moral grandeur of the great Attic dramatists, their fine spiritual steel, has submitted to a strange softening process. Something melting and subduing, something neither Greek nor Roman, has come in. We are passed out of classicism: we are moving into what we call romanticism. Aeneas was a brute. There is nobody who does not feel that. Yet nobody was meant to feel that. We were meant to feel that Aeneas was what Vergil so often calls him, _pius_. But the Celtic spirit--for that is what it is--is over-mastering. It is its characteristic that it constantly girds a man--or a poet--and carries him whither he would not. The fourth _Aeneid_ is the triumph of an unconscionable Celticism over the whole moral plan of Vergil's epic.

I will not mention Lesbia by the side of Dido. The Celtic spirit too often descends into hell. But I will take from Catullus in a different mood two other examples of the Italic romanticism. Consider these three lines:

usque dum tremulum mouens cana tempus anilitas omnia omnibus annuit,

--'till that day when gray old age shaking its palsied head nods in all things to all assent.' That is not Greek nor Roman. It is the unelaborate magic of the Celtic temperament. Keats, I have often thought, would have 'owed his eyes' to be able to write those three lines. He hits sometimes a like matchless felicity:

She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die, And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu.

But into the effects which Catullus just happens upon by a luck of temperament Keats puts more of his life-blood than a man can well spare.

Take, again, this from the _Letter to Hortalus_. Think not, says Catullus, that your words have passed from my heart,