Part 3
These effects of recitation we recognize, of course, easily enough in the case of such a poet as Lucan. But we must go back further. Vergil is, no doubt, as little like Lucan as he well could be. Yet he did not sit at the feet of Epidius for nothing: and he did not forget when he wrote the fourth book of the _Aeneid_ that he would one day read it to Augustus. We know that there are several kinds of oratory. But we are inclined, I think, to suppose that there is only one kind of rhetoric--that rhetoric is always the same thing. Yet there are at least two kinds of rhetoric. In the practical world there are two conquering forces--the iron hand and the velvet glove. Just so in rhetoric--which in the spiritual world is one of the greatest, and very often one of the noblest, of conquering forces--there is the iron manner and the velvet manner. Lucan goes home like a dagger thrust. His is the rhetoric that cuts and beats. The rhetoric of Vergil is soft and devious. He makes no attempt to astonish, to perplex, to horrify. He aims to move us in a wholly different manner. And yet, like Lucan, he aims to move us _once and for all_. He aims to be understood upon a first hearing. I know that this sounds like a paradox. I shall be told that Vergil is of all poets the most indirect. That is perfectly true. But _why_ is Vergil of all poets the most indirect? Just because he is always trying at all costs to make himself clear. Lucan says a thing once and is done with it. Vergil cannot. He begins all over again. He touches and retouches. He has no 'theme' not succeeded by a 'variation'.[8] In Lucan everything depends upon concentration, in Vergil upon amplification. Both are trying painfully to be understood on a first hearing--or, rather, to make, on a first hearing, the emotional or ethical effect at which they aim. Any page of Vergil will illustrate at once what I mean. I select at random the opening lines of the third _Aeneid_:
postquam res Asiae Priamique euertere gentem immeritam uisum superis, ceciditque superbum Ilium, et omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troia; diuersa exsilia et desertas quaerere terras auguriis agimur diuum, classemque sub ipsa Antandro et Phrygiae molimur montibus Idae, incerti quo fata ferant, ubi sistere detur.
The first three lines might have been expressed by an ablative absolute in two words--_Troia euersa_. But observe. To _res Asiae_ in 1 Vergil adds the explanatory _Priami gentem_, amplifying in 2 with the new detail _immeritam_. _Euertere uisum_ (1-2) is caught up by _ceciditque Ilium_ (2-3), with the new detail _superbum_ added, and again echoed (3) by _humo fumat_--_fumat_ giving a fresh touch to the picture. In 4 _diuersa exsilia_ is reinforced by _desertas terras_, _sub ipsa Antandro_ (5-6) by _montibus Idae_ (6). In 7 _ubi sistere detur_ echoes _quo fata ferant_. One has only to contrast the rapidity of Homer, in whom every line marks decisive advance. But Vergil diffuses himself. And this diffusion is in its origin and aim rhetorical.
Yet he did not write, and I do not mean to suggest that he wrote, for an _auditorium_ and {es to parachrêma}, and not for the scrupulous consideration of after ages. He wrote to be read and pondered. But he is haunted nevertheless by the thought of the _auditorium_. It distracts, and even divides, his literary consciousness. He writes, perhaps without knowing it, for two classes--for the members of his patron's salon and for the scholar in his study. We shall not judge his style truly if we allow ourselves wholly to forget the _auditorium_. And here let me add that we shall equally fail to understand the style of Lucan or that of Statius if we remember, as we are apt to do, only the _auditorium_. The _auditorium_ is a much more dominating force in their consciousness than it is in that of Vergil. But even they rarely allow themselves to forget the judgement of the scholar and of posterity. They did not choose and place their words with so meticulous a care merely for the audience of an afternoon. If we sometimes are offended by their evident subservience to the theatre, yet on the whole we have greater reason to admire the courage and conscience with which they strove nevertheless to keep before them the thought of a wider and more distant and true-judging audience.
I have intentionally selected for notice that rhetorical feature in Vergil's style which is, I think, the least obvious. How much of the _Aeneid_ was written ultimately by Epidius I hardly like to inquire. Nowhere does Vergil completely succeed in concealing his rhetorical schooling. Even in his greatest moments he is still to a large extent a rhetorician. Indeed I am not sure that he ever writes pure poetry--poetry which is as purely poetry as that of Catullus. Take the fourth book of the _Aeneid_, which has so much passionate Italian quality. Even there Vergil does not forget the mere formal rules of rhetoric. Analyse any speech of Dido. Dido knows all the rules. You can christen out of Quintilian almost all the figures of rhetoric which she employs. Here is a theme which I have not leisure to develop. But it is interesting to remember in this connexion the immense and direct influence which Vergil has had upon British oratory. Burke went nowhere without a copy of Vergil in his pocket. Nor is it for nothing that the fashion of Vergilian quotation so long dominated our parliamentary eloquence. These quotations had a perfect appropriateness in a rhetorical context: for they are the language of a mind by nature and by education rhetorical.
III
Roman poetry continued for no less than five centuries after the death of Vergil--and by Roman poetry I mean a Latin poetry classical in form and sentiment. But of these five centuries only two count. The second and third centuries A.D. are a Dark Age dividing the silver twilight of the century succeeding the age of Horace from the brief but brilliant Renaissance of the fourth century: and in the fifth century we pass into a new darkness. The infection of the Augustan tradition is sufficiently powerful in the first century to give the impulse to poetic work of high and noble quality. And six considerable names adorn the period from Nero to Domitian. Of these the greatest are perhaps those of Seneca, Lucan, and Martial. All three are of Spanish origin: and it is perhaps to their foreign blood that they owe the genius which redeems their work from its very obvious faults. It is the fashion to decry Seneca and Lucan as mere rhetoricians. Yet in both there is something greater and deeper than mere rhetoric. They move by habit grandly among large ideas. Life is still deep and tremendous and sonorous. Their work has a certain Titanic quality. We judge their poetry too much by their biography, and their biography too little in relation to the terrible character of their times. Martial is a poet of a very different order. Yet in an inferior _genre_ he is supreme. No other poet in any language has the same never-failing grace and charm and brilliance, the same arresting ingenuity, an equal facility and finish. We speak of his faults, yet, if the truth must be told, his poetry is faultless--save for one fault: its utter want of moral character. The three other great names of the period are Statius, Silius, and Valerius. Poets of great talent but no genius, they 'adore the footsteps' of an unapproachable master. Religiously careful artists, they see the world through the eyes of others. Sensible to the effects of Greatness, they have never touched and handled it. They know it only from the poets whom they imitate. The four winds of life have never beat upon their decorous faces. We would gladly give the best that they offer us--and it is often of fine quality--for something much inferior in art but superior in the indefinable qualities of freshness and gusto. The exhaustion of the period is well seen in Juvenal--in the jaded relish of his descriptions of vice, in the complete unreality of his moral code, in a rhetoric which for ever just misses the fine effects which it laboriously calculates.
The second century is barren. Yet we are dimly aware in the reign of Hadrian of an abortive Revival. We hear of a school of _neoterici_: and these _neoterici_ aimed at just what was needed--greater freshness and life. They experimented in metre, and they experimented in language. They tried to use in poetry the language of common speech, the language of Italy rather than that of Rome, and to bring into literature once again colour and motion. The most eminent of these _neoterici_ is Annius Florus, of whom we possess some notable fragments. But the movement failed; and Florus is the only name that arrests the attention of the student of Roman poetry between Martial and Nemesianus. Nemesianus is African, and his poems were not written in Rome. But his graceful genius perhaps owes something to the impulsion given to literary studies by Numerian--one of the few emperors of the period who exhibit any interest in the progress of literature. The fourth century is the period of Renaissance. We may see in Tiberianus the herald of this Renaissance. The four poems which can be certainly assigned to him are distinguished by great power and charm. It is a plausible view that he is also the author of the remarkable _Peruigilium Veneris_--that poem proceeds at any rate from the school to which Tiberianus belongs. The style of Tiberianus is formed in the academies of Africa, and so also perhaps his philosophy. The Platonic hymn to the Nameless God is a noble monument of the dying Paganism of the era. Tiberianus' political activities took him to Gaul: and Gaul is the true home of this fourth-century Renaissance. In Gaul around Ausonius there grew up at Bordeaux a numerous and accomplished and enthusiastic school of poets. To find a parallel to the brilliance and enthusiasm of this school we must go back to the school of poets which grew up around Valerius Cato in Transpadane Gaul in the first century B.C. The Bordeaux school is particularly interesting from its attitude to Christianity. Among Ausonius' friends was the austere Paulinus of Nola, and Ausonius himself was a convert to the Christian faith. But his Christianity is only skin-deep. His Bible is Vergil, his books of devotion are Horace and Ovid and Statius. The symbols of the Greek mythology are nearer and dearer to him than the symbolism of the Cross. The last enemy which Christianity had to overcome was, in fact, Literature. And strangely enough the conquest was to be achieved finally, not by the superior ethical quality of the new religion, but by the havoc wrought in Latin speech by the invasion of the Barbarians, by the decay of language and of linguistic study. To the period of Ausonius--and probably to Gaul--belong the rather obscure Asmenidae--the 'sons', or pupils, of Asmenius. At least two of them, Palladius and Asclepiadius, exhibit genuine poetical accomplishment. But the schools both of Ausonius and of Asmenius show at least in one particular how relaxed had become the hold even upon its enthusiasts of the true classical tradition. All these poets have a passion for triviality, for every kind of _tour de force_, for conceits and mannerisms. At times they are not so much poets as the acrobats of poetry.
The end of the century gives us Claudian, and a reaction against this triviality. 'Paganus peruicacissimus,' as Orosius calls him, Claudian presents the problem of a poet whose poetry treats with real power the circumstances of an age from which the poet himself is as detached as can be. Claudian's real world is a world which was never to be again, a world of great princes and exalted virtues, a world animated by a religion in which Rome herself, strong and serene, is the principal deity. Accident has thrown him into the midst of a political nightmare dominated by intriguing viziers and delivered to a superstition which made men at once weak and cruel. Yet this world, so unreal to him, he presents in a rhetorical colouring extraordinarily effective. Had he possessed a truer instinct for things as they are he might have been the greatest of the Roman satirists. He has a real mastery of the art of invective. But, while he is great where he condemns, where he blesses he is mostly contemptible. He has too many of the arts of the cringing Alexandrian. And they availed him nothing. Over every page may be heard the steady tramp of the feet of the barbarian invader.
After Claudian we pass into the final darkness. The gloom is illuminated for a brief moment by the Gaul Rutilius. But Rutilius has really outlived Roman poetry and Rome itself. Nothing that he admires is any longer real save in his admiration of it. The things that he condemns most bitterly are the things which were destined to dominate the world for ten centuries. Christianity is 'a worse poison than witchcraft'. The monastic spirit is the 'fool-fury of a brain unhinged'. The monasteries are 'slave-dungeons'.
It was these 'slave-dungeons' which were to keep safe through the long night of the Middle Ages all that Rutilius held dear. It was these 'slave-dungeons' which were to afford a last miserable refuge to the works of that long line of poets of whom Rutilius is the late and forlorn descendant. Much indeed was to perish even within the fastnesses of these 'slave-dungeons': for the monasteries were not always secure from the shock of war, nor the precious memorials which they housed from the fury of fanaticism. Yet much was to survive and to emerge one day from the darkness and to renew the face of the world. Rutilius wrote his poem in 416 A.D. If he could have looked forward exactly a thousand years he would have beheld Poggio and the great Discoverers of the Italian Renaissance ransacking the 'slave-dungeons' of Italy, France, and Germany, and rejoicing over each recovered fragment of antiquity with a pure joy not unlike that which heavenly minds are said to feel over the salvation of souls. These men were, indeed, kindling into life again the soul of Europe. They were assisting at a New Birth. In this process of regeneration the deepest force was a Latin force, and of this Latin force the most impelling part was Latin poetry. We are apt to-day, perhaps, in our zeal of Hellenism, to forget, or to disparage, the part which Latin poetry has sustained in moulding the literatures of modern Europe. But if the test of great poetry is the length and breadth of its influence in the world, then Roman poetry has nothing to fear from the vagaries of modern fashion. For no other poetry has so deeply and so continuously influenced the thought and feeling of mankind. Its sway has been wider than that of Rome itself: and the Genius that broods over the Capitoline Hill might with some show of justice still claim, as his gaze sweeps over the immense field of modern poetry, that he beholds nothing which does not owe allegiance to Rome:
Iupiter arce sua totum cum spectat in orbem, nil nisi Romanum quod tueatur habet.
NVMA POMPILIVS (?)
715-673 B.C.
_1. Fragments of the Saliar Hymns_
_i_
DIVOM templa cante, diuom deo supplicate.
_ii_
QVOME tonas, Leucesie, prae tet tremonti. quor libet, Curis, decstumum tonare?
_iii_
CONSE, ulod oriese: omnia tuere, adi, Patulci, coi isse: Sancus Ianes Cerus es. Duonus Ianus ueuet po melios, eu, recum.
THE ARVAL BROTHERHOOD
_2. Against Plague upon the Harvest_
_Incertae Aetatis._
ENOS, Lases, iuuate, enos, Lases, iuuate, enos, Lases, iuuate. neue lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleoris, neue lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleoris, neue lue rue, Marmar, sers incurrere in pleoris. satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber, satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber, satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber, semunis alternei aduocapit conctos, semunis alternei aduocapit conctos, semunis alternei aduocapit conctos. enos, Marmor, iuuato, enos, Marmor, iuuato, enos, Marmor, iuuato. triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe.
ANONYMOUS
_3. Charms_
_i. Against the Gout_
_Incertae Aetatis._
EGO tui memini, medere meis pedibus: terra pestem teneto, salus hic maneto in meis pedibus.
_ii. At the Meditrinalia_
NOVOM uetus uinum bibo, nouo ueteri morbo medeor.
_4. An Ancient Lullaby_
_Incertae Aetatis._
LALLA, lalla, lalla: i, aut dormi aut lacta.
_5. Epitaphs of the Scipios_
284-176 B.C.
_i_
CORNELIVS Lucius Scipio Barbatus, Gnaiuod patre prognatus fortis uir sapiensque, quoius forma uirtutei parisuma fuit, consol, censor, aidilis quei fuit apud nos, Taurasia, Cisauna, Samnio cepit, subigit omne Loucanam opsidesque abdoucsit.
_ii_
HONC oino ploirime cosentiont Romai duonoro optumo fuise uiro Lucium Scipione. filios Barbati consol, censor, aidilis hic fuet apud nos: hic cepit Corsica Aleriaque urbe, dedet Tempestatebus aide meretod.
_iii_
QVEI apice insigne Dialis flaminis gesistei, mors perfecit tua ut essent omnia breuia, honos fama uirtusque, gloria atque ingenium. quibus sei in longa licuiset utier tibi uita, facile facteis superases gloriam maiorum. qua re lubens te in gremiu Scipio, recipit terra, Publi, prognatum Publio, Corneli.
_iv_
MAGNA sapientia multasque uirtutes aeuitate quam parua posidet hoc saxsum. quoiei uita defecit, non honos, honore, is hic situs, quei nunquam uictus est uirtutei, annos gnatus uiginti is Diteist mandatus, ne quairatis honore quei minus sit mactus.
L. LIVIVS ANDRONICVS
284-204 B.C. (?)
_6. Fragments of the Odyssey_
_i_
VIRVM mihi, Camena, insece uersutum.
_ii_
Mea puera quid uerbi ex tuo ore supera fugit?
_iii_
Mea puer quid uerbi ex tuo ore audio? neque enim te oblitus sum, Laertie noster.
_iv_
Simul ac dacrimas de ore noegeo detersit.
_v_
Namque nullum peius macerat hemonem quamde mare saeuom: uires quoi sunt magnae, topper eas confringunt importunae undae.
_vi_
Topper citi ad aedis uenimus Circai. simul duona eorum portant ad naues: milia alia in isdem inserinuntur.
_vii_
In Pylum deuenies aut ibi ommentans.
_viii_
Inferus an superus tibi fert deus funera, Vlixes?
_ix_
Cum socios nostros mandisset impius Cyclops.
_x_
At celer hasta uolans perrumpit pectora ferro.
_7. Dramatic Fragments_
_i_
TVM autem lasciuum Nerei simum pecus ludens ad cantum classem lustratur choro.
_ii_
Ipsus se in terram saucius fligit cadens.
_iii_
Quin quod parere uos maiestas mea procat, toleratis templo, letoque hanc deducitis?
_iv_
Nam praestatur uirtuti laus, sed gelu multo ocius uento tabescit.
_v_
Confluges ubi conuentu campum totum inumigant.
_vi_
Florem anculabant Liberi ex carchesiis.
_vii_
Quo Castalia per struices saxeas lapsu accidit.
_viii_
Quem ego nefrendem alui lacteam inmulgens opem.
_ix_
Puerarum manibus confectum pulcerrime.
_x_
Iamne oculos specie laetauisti optabili?
CN. NAEVIVS
270-199 B.C. (?)
_8. Fragments of the Bellum Poenicum_
_i_
NOVEM Iouis concordes filiae sorores.
_ii_
Postquam auem aspexit in templo Anchisa, sacra in mensa penatium ordine ponuntur, immolabat auream uictimam pulcram.
_iii_
Amborum uxores noctu Troiad exibant capitibus opertis, flentes ambae, abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.
_iv_
Blande et docte percontat, Aenea quo pacto Troiam urbem liquisset.
_v_
Deinde pollens sagittis inclutus Arquitenens sanctus Ioue prognatus Pythius Apollo.
_vi_
Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram urit, populatur, uastat, rem hostium concinnat.
_vii_
Sin illos deserant fortissimos uiros, magnum stuprum populo fieri per gentis.
_viii_
Seseque ei perire mauolunt ibidem quam cum stupro redire ad suos populares.
_ix_
Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules.
_9. Dramatic Fragments_
_i_
LAETVS sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato uiro.
_ii_
Vos qui regalis corporis custodias agitatis, ite actutum in frondiferos locos, ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita.
_iii_
Cedo, qui rem uestram publicam tantam amisistis tam cito? proueniebant oratores nouei, stulti adulescentuli.
_iv_
Ego semper pluris feci potioremque habui libertatem multo quam pecuniam.
_v_
Si quidem loqui uis, non perdocere multa longe promicando oratiost.
_vi_
Quasi in choro ludens datatim dat se et communem facit: alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet, alibi manus est occupata, alii pede percellit pedem, anulum dat alii spectandum, a labris alium inuocat, cum alio cantat, at tamen alii suo dat digito litteras.
_10. His Own Epitaph_
IMMORTALES mortales si foret fas flere, flerent diuae Camenae Naeuium poetam. itaque, postquam est Orchi traditus thesauro, obliti sunt Romai loquier lingua Latina.
T. MACCIVS PLAVTVS
254-184 B.C.
_11. His Own Epitaph_
POSTQVAM est mortem aptus Plautus, Comoedia luget, scaena est deserta, dein Risus Ludus Iocusque et Numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt.
MARCIVS VATES
250-200 B.C. (?)
_12. Precepts_
_i_
POSTREMVS dicas, primus taceas.
_ii_
Quamuis nouentium duonum negumate.
_13. Vaticinium_
250-200 B.C. (?)
AQVAM Albanam, Romane, caue lacu teneri, caue in mare manare flumine sinas suo. emissam agris rigabis, dissipatam riuis exstingues: tum tu insiste muris hostium audax, memor, quam per tot annos obsides urbem, ex ea tibi his quae iam nunc panduntur fatis uictoriam oblatam. bello perfecto donum peramplum uictor ad mea templa portato: patria sacra, quorum cura dudum est omissa, endostaurata, ut adsolet, facito.
Q. ENNIVS
239-169 B.C.
FROM THE ANNALS
_14. The Vision of Ilia_
ET cita cum tremulis anus attulit artubus lumen. talia tum memorat lacrimans exterrita somno: 'Eurydica prognata, pater quam noster amauit, uires uitaque corpus meum nunc deserit omne. nam me uisus homo pulcher per amoena salicta et ripas raptare locosque nouos: ita sola postilla, germana soror, errare uidebar tardaque uestigare et quaerere te neque posse corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat. exim compellare pater me noce uidetur his uerbis: "O gnata, tibi sunt ante gerendae aerumnae, post ex fluuio fortuna resistet." haec effatus pater, germana, repente recessit nec sese dedit in conspectum corde cupitus, quamquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa tendebam lacrumans et blanda uoce uocabam. uix aegro cum corde meo me somnus reliquit.'
_15. Romulus and Remus_
CVRANTES magna cum cura tum cupientes regni dant operam simul auspicio augurioque. ... Remus auspicio se deuouet atque secundam solus auem seruat. at Romulus pulcher in alto quaerit Auentino, seruat genus altiuolantum. certabant urbem Romam Remoramne uocarent. omnibus cura uiris uter esset induperator. expectant, ueluti consul cum mittere signum uolt omnes auidi spectant ad carceris oras, quam mox emittat pictis e faucibus currus: sic expectabat populus atque ore timebat rebus, utri magni uictoria sit data regni. interea sol albus recessit in infera noctis. exin candida se radiis dedit icta foras lux et simul ex alto longe pulcherruma praepes laeua uolauit auis. simul aureus exoritur sol, cedunt de caelo ter quattuor corpora sancta auium, praepetibus sese pulchrisque locis dant. conspicit inde sibi data Romulus esse priora, auspicio regni stabilita scamna solumque.
_16. The Speech of Pyrrhus_
NEC mi aurum posco nec mi pretium dederitis: non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes, ferro, non auro, uitam cernamus utrique, uosne uelit an me regnare era quidue ferat Fors uirtute experiamur. et hoc simul accipe dictum: quorum uirtuti belli fortuna pepercit, eorundem libertati me parcere certum est. dono, ducite, doque uolentibus cum magnis dis.
_17. Character of a Friend of Servilius_[9]
HAECCE locutus uocat, quocum bene saepe libenter mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum omne iter impertit magnam cum lassus diei partem fuisset de summis rebus regundis consilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu, cui res audacter magnas paruasque iocumque eloqueretur et incaute malaque et bona dictu euomeret si qui uellet tutoque locaret, quocum multa uolup sibi fecit clamque palamque, ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suaset ut faceret facinus leuis aut malus, doctus, fidelis, suauis homo, facundus, suo contentus, beatus, scitus, secunda loquens in tempore, commodus, uerbum paucum, multa tenens antiqua, sepulta uetustas quae facit; et mores ueteresque nouosque tenentem, multorum ueterum leges diuumque hominumque, prudentem, qui dicta loquiue tacereue posset, hunc inter pugnas conpellat Seruilius sic.
_18. M. Cornelius Cethegus_
ADDITVR orator Cornelius suauiloquenti ore Cethegus Marcus Tuditano collega Marci filius ... ... is dictust ollis popularibus olim qui tum uiuebant homines atque aeuum agitabant flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla.