Part 6

Paulus Emilius is said by Plutarch to have allowed his sons to choose some volumes from the library of Perseus, King of Macedon(89), whom he led captive to Rome in 585. But the honour of first possessing a library in Rome is justly due to Sylla; who, on the occupation of Athens, in 667, acquired the library of Apellicon, which he discovered in the temple of Apollo. This collection, which contained, among various other books, the works of Aristotle and Theophrastus, was reserved to himself by Sylla from the plunder; and, having been brought to Rome, was arranged by the grammarian Tyrannio, who also supplied and corrected the mutilated text of Aristotle(90). Engaged, as he constantly was, in domestic strife or foreign warfare, Sylla could have made little use of this library, and he did not communicate the benefit of it to scholars, by opening it to the public; but the example of the Dictator prompted other commanders not to overlook the libraries, in the plunder of captured cities, and books thus became a fashionable acquisition. Sometimes, indeed, these collections were rather proofs of the power and opulence of the Roman generals, than of their literary taste or talents. A certain value was now affixed to manuscripts; and these were, in consequence, amassed by them, from a spirit of rapacity, and the principle of leaving nothing behind which could be carried off by force or stratagem. In one remarkable instance, however, the learning of the proprietor fully corresponded to the literary treasures which he had collected. Lucullus, a man of severe study, and wonderfully skilled in all the fine arts, after having employed many years in the cultivation of literature, and the civil administration of the republic, was unexpectedly called, in consequence of a political intrigue, to lead on the Roman army in the perilous contest with Mithridates; and, though previously unacquainted with military affairs, he became the first captain of the age, with little farther experience, than his study of the art of war, during the voyage from Rome to Asia. His attempts to introduce a reform in the corrupt administration of the Asiatic provinces, procured him enemies, through whose means he was superseded in the command of the army, by one who was not superior to him in talents, and was far inferior in virtue. After his recall from Pontus, and retreat to a private station, he offered a new spectacle to his countrymen. He did not retire, like Fabricius and Cincinnatus, to plough his farm, and eat turnips in a cottage—he did not, like Africanus, quit his country in disgust, because it had unworthily treated him; nor did he spend his wealth and leisure, like Sylla, in midnight debauchery with buffoons and parasites. He employed the riches he had acquired during his campaigns in the construction of delightful villas, situated on the shore of the sea, or hanging on the declivities of hills. Gardens and spacious porticos, which he adorned with all the elegance of painting and sculpture, made the Romans ashamed of their ancient rustic simplicity. These would doubtless be the objects of admiration to his contemporaries; but it was his library, in which so many copies of valuable works were multiplied or preserved, and his distinguished patronage of learning, that claim the gratitude of posterity. “His library,” says Plutarch, “had walks, galleries, and cabinets belonging to it, which were open to all visitors; and the ingenious Greeks resorted to this abode of the muses to hold literary converse, in which Lucullus delighted to join them(91).” Other Roman patricians had patronized literature, by extending their protection to a favoured few, as the elder Scipio Africanus to Ennius, and the younger to Terence; but Lucullus was the first who encouraged all the arts and sciences, and promoted learning with princely munificence.

But the slave Tyrannio vied with the most splendid of the Romans in the literary treasures he had amassed. A native of Pontus, he was taken prisoner by Lucullus, in the course of the war with Mithridates; and, having been brought to Rome, he was given to Muræna, from whom he received freedom(92). He spent the remainder of his life in teaching rhetoric and grammar. He also arranged the library of Cicero at Antium(93), and taught his nephew, Quintus, in the house of the orator(94). These various employments proved so profitable, that they enabled him to acquire a library of 30,000 volumes(95). Libraries of considerable extent were also formed by Atticus and Cicero; and _Varro_ was not inferior to any of his learned contemporaries, in the industry of collecting and transcribing manuscripts, both in the Greek and Latin language.

The library of Varro, however, and all the others which we have mentioned, were private—open, indeed, to literary men, from the general courtesy of the possessors, but the access to them still dependent on their good will and indulgence. Julius Cæsar was the first who formed the design of establishing a great public library; and to Varro he assigned the task of arranging the books which he had procured. This plan, which was rendered abortive by the untimely fate of Cæsar, was carried into effect by Asinius Pollio, who devoted part of the wealth he had acquired from the spoils of war, to the construction of a magnificent gallery, adjacent to the Temple of Liberty, which he filled with books, and the busts of the learned. Varro was the only living author who, in this public library, had the honour of an image(96), which was erected to him as a testimony of respect for his universal erudition. He also aided Augustus with his advice, in the formation of the two libraries which that emperor established, and which was part of his general system for the encouragement of science and learning. When tyrants understand their trade, and when their judgment is equal to their courage or craft, they become the most zealous and liberal promoters of the interests of learning; for they know that it is for their advantage to withdraw the minds of their subjects from political discussion and to give them, in exchange, the consoling pleasures of imagination, and the inexhaustible occupations of scientific curiosity.

Were I writing the history of Roman arts, it would be necessary to mention that Varro excelled in his knowledge of all those that are useful, and in his taste for all those that are elegant. He was the contriver of what may be considered as the first hour clock that was made in Rome, and which measured time by a hand entirely moved by mechanism. That he also possessed a Museum, adorned with exquisite works of sculpture, we learn from Pliny, who mentions, that it contained an admirable group, by the statuary Archelaus, formed out of one block of marble, and representing a lioness, with Cupids sporting around her—some giving her drink from a horn; some in the attitude of putting socks on her paws, and others in the act of binding her. The same writer acquaints us, that, in the year 692, Varro, who was then Curule Ædile, caused a piece of painting, in fresco, to be brought from Sparta to Rome, in order to adorn the Comitium—the whole having been cut out entire, and enclosed in cases of wood. The painting was excellent, and much admired; but what chiefly excited astonishment, was that it should have been taken from the wall without injury, and transported safe to Italy(97).

I fear I have too long detained the reader with this account of the life and writings of Varro; yet it is not unpleasing to dwell on such a character. He was the contemporary of Marius and Sylla, of Cæsar and Pompey, of Antony and Octavius, these men of contention and massacre; and amid the convulsions into which they threw their country, it is not ungrateful to trace the _Secretum Iter_, which he silently pursued through a period unparalleled in anarchy and crimes. Uninterrupted, save for a moment, by strife and ambition, he prosecuted his literary labours till the extreme term of his prolonged existence. “In eodem enim lectulo,” says Valerius Maximus, with a spirit and eloquence beyond his usual strain of composition—“In eodem enim lectulo, et spiritus ejus, et egregiorum operum cursus extinctus est.”

NIGIDIUS FIGULUS

was a man much resembling Varro, and next to him was accounted the most learned of the Romans(98). He was the contemporary of Cicero, and one of his chief advisers and associates in suppressing the conspiracy of Catiline(99). Shortly afterwards he arrived at the dignity of Prætor, but having espoused the part of Pompey in the civil wars, he was driven into banishment on the accession of Cæsar to the supreme power, and died in 709, before Cicero could obtain his recall from exile(100). He was much addicted to judicial astrology; and ancient writers relate a vast number of his predictions, particularly that of the empire of the world to Augustus, which he presaged immediately after the birth of that prince(101).

Nigidius vied with Varro in multifarious erudition, and the number of his works—grammar, criticism, natural history, and the origin of man, having successively employed his pen. His writings are praised by Cicero, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, and Macrobius; but they were rendered almost entirely unfit for popular use by their subtlety, mysteriousness, and obscurity(102)—defects to which his cultivation of judicial astrology, and adoption of the Pythagorean philosophy, may have materially contributed. Aulus Gellius gives many examples of the obscurity, or rather unintelligibility, of his grammatical writings(103). His chief work was his Grammatical Commentaries, in thirty books, in which he attempted to show, that names and words were fixed not by accidental application, but by a certain power and order of nature. One of his examples, of terms being rather natural than arbitrary, was taken from the word _Vos_, in pronouncing which, he observed, that we use a certain motion of the mouth, agreeing with what the word itself expresses: We protrude, by degrees, the tips of our lips, and thrust forward our breath and mind towards those with whom we are engaged in conversation. On the other hand, when we say _nos_, we do not pronounce it with a broad and expanded blast of the voice, nor with projecting lips, but we restrain our breath and lips, as it were, within ourselves. The like natural signs accompany the utterance of the words _tu_ and _ego_—_tibi_ and _mihi_(104). Nigidius also wrote works, entitled _De Animalibus_, _De Ventis_, _De Extis_, and a great many treatises on the nature of the gods. All these have long since perished, except a very few fragments, which have been collected and explained by Janus Rutgersius, in the third book of his _Variæ Lectiones_, published at Leyden in 1618; 4to. In this collection he has also inserted a Greek translation of another lost work of Nigidius, on the presages to be drawn from thunder. The original Latin is said to have been taken from books which bore the name of the Etruscan Tages, the supposed founder of the science of divination. The Greek version was executed by Laurentius, a philosopher of the age of Justinian, and his translation was discovered by Meursius, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the Palatine library. It is a sort of Almanack, containing presages of thunder for each particular day of the year, and beginning with June. If it thunder on the 13th of June, the life or fortunes of some great person are menaced—if on the 19th of July, war is announced—if on the 5th of August, it is indicated that those women, with whom we have any concern, will become somewhat more reasonable than they have hitherto proved(105).

With Varro and Nigidius Figulus, may be classed Tiro, the celebrated freedman of Cicero, and constant assistant in all his literary pursuits. He wrote many books on the use and formation of the Latin language, and others on miscellaneous subjects, which he denominated _Pandectas_(106), as comprehending every sort of literary topic.

Quintus Cornificius, the elder, was also a very general scholar. He composed a curious treatise on the etymology of the names of things in heaven and earth, in which he discovered great knowledge, both of Roman antiquities, and the most recondite Grecian literature. It was here he introduced an explication of Homer’s dark fable, where Jupiter and all the gods proceed to feast for twelve days in Ethiopia. The work was written in 709, during the time of Cæsar’s last expedition to Spain, and was probably intended as a supplement to Varro’s treatise on a similar topic.

HISTORY.

From our supposing that those things which affected our ancestors may affect us, and that those which affect us must affect posterity, we become fond of collecting memorials of prior events, and also of preserving the remembrance of incidents which have occurred in our own age. The historic passion, if it may be so termed, thus naturally divides itself into two desires—that of indulging our own curiosity, and of relating what has occurred to ourselves or our contemporaries.

Monuments accordingly have been raised, and rude hymns composed, for this purpose, by people who had scarcely acquired the use of letters. Among civilized nations, the passion grows in proportion to the means of gratifying it, and the force of example comes to be so strongly felt, that its power and influence are soon historically employed.

The Romans were, in all ages, particularly fond of giving instruction, by every sort of example. They placed the images of their ancestors in the Forum and the vestibules of their houses, so that these venerable forms everywhere met their eyes; and by recalling the glorious actions of the dead, excited the living to emulate their forefathers. The virtue of one generation was thus transfused, by the magic of example, into those by which it was succeeded, and the spirit of heroism was maintained through many ages of the republic—

“Has olim virtus crevit Romana per artes: Namque foro in medio stabant spirantia signa Magnanimûm heroum; hîc Decios, magnosque Camillos Cernere erat: vivax heroum in imagine virtus, Invidiamque ipsis factura nepotibus, acri Urgebat stimulo Romanum in prælia robur(107).”

History, therefore, among the Romans, was not composed merely to gratify curiosity, or satiate the historic passion, but also to inflame, by the force of example, and urge on to emulation, in warlike prowess. An insatiable thirst of military fame—an unlimited ambition of extending their empire—an unbounded confidence in their own force and courage—an impetuous overbearing spirit, with which all their enterprises were pursued, composed, in the early days of the Republic, the characteristics of Romans. To foment, and give fresh vigour to these, was a chief object of history.—“I have recorded these things,” says an old Latin annalist, after giving an account of Regulus, “that they who read my commentaries may be rendered, by his example, greater and better.”

Accordingly, the Romans had journalists or annalists, from the earliest periods of the state. The Annals of the Pontiffs were of the same date, if we may believe Cicero, as the foundation of the city(108); but others have placed their commencement in the reign of Numa(109), and Niebuhr not till after the battle of Regillus, which terminated the hopes of Tarquin(110). In order to preserve the memory of public transactions, the Pontifex Maximus, who was the official historian of the Republic, annually committed to writing, on wooden tablets, the leading events of each year, and then set them up at his own house for the instruction of the people(111). These Annals were continued down to the Pontificate of Mucius, in the year 629, and were called _Annales Maximi_, as being periodically compiled and kept by the Pontifex Maximus, or _Publici_, as recording public transactions. Having been inscribed on wooden tablets, they would necessarily be short, and destitute of all circumstantial detail; and being annually formed by successive Pontiffs, could have no appearance of a continued history. They would contain, as Lord Bolingbroke remarks, little more than short minutes or memoranda, hung up in the Pontiff’s house, like the rules of the game in a billiard room: their contents would resemble the epitome prefixed to the books of Livy, or the Register of Remarkable Occurrences in modern Almanacks.

But though short, jejune, and unadorned, still, as records of facts, these annals, if spared, would have formed an inestimable treasure of early history. The Roman territory, in the first ages of the state, was so confined, that every event may be considered as having passed under the immediate observation of the sacred annalist. Besides, the method which, as Cicero informs us, was observed in preparing these Annals, and the care that was taken to insert no fact, of which the truth had not been attested by as many witnesses as there were citizens at Rome, who were all entitled to judge and make their remarks on what ought either to be added or retrenched, must have formed the most authentic body of history that could be desired. The memory of transactions which were yet recent, and whose concomitant circumstances every one could remember, was therein transmitted to posterity. By these means, the Annals were proof against falsification, and their veracity was incontestibly fixed.

These valuable records, however, were, for the most part, consumed in the conflagration of the city, consequent on its capture by the Gauls—an event which was to the early history of Rome what the English invasion by Edward I. proved to the history of Scotland. The practice of the Pontifex Maximus preserving such records was discontinued after that eventful period. A feeble attempt was made to revive it towards the end of the second Punic war; and, from that time, the custom was not entirely dropped till the Pontificate of Mucius, in the year 629. It is to this second series of Annals, or to some other late and ineffectual attempt to revive the ancient Roman history, that Cicero must allude, when he talks of the Great Annals, in his work _De Legibus_(112), since it is undoubted that the pontifical records of events previous to the capture of Rome by the Gauls, almost entirely perished in the conflagration of the city(113). Accordingly, Livy never cites these records, and there is no appearance that he had any opportunity of consulting them; nor are they mentioned by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the long catalogue of records and memorials which he had employed in the composition of his _Historical Antiquities_. The _books_ of the Pontiffs, some of which were recovered in the search made to find what the flames had spared, are, indeed, occasionally mentioned. But these were works explaining the mysteries of religion, with instructions as to the ceremonies to be observed in its practical exercise, and could have been of no more service to Roman, than a collection of breviaries or missals to modern history.

Statues, inscriptions, and other public monuments, which aid in perpetuating the memory of illustrious persons, and transmitting to posterity the services they have rendered their country, were accounted, among the Romans, as the most honourable rewards that could be bestowed on great actions; and virtue, in those ancient times, thought no recompense more worthy of her than the immortality which such monuments seemed to promise. Rome having produced so many examples of a disinterested patriotism and valour must have been filled with monuments of this description when taken by the Gauls. But these honorary memorials were thrown down along with the buildings, and buried in the ruins. If any escaped, it was but a small number; and the greatest part of those that were to be seen at Rome in the eighth century of the city, were founded on fabulous traditions which proved that the loss of the true monuments had occasioned the substitution of false ones. Had the genuine monuments been preserved at Rome, even till the period when the first regular annals began to be composed, though they would not have sufficed to restore the history entirely, they would have served at least to have perpetuated incontestably the memory of various important facts, to have fixed their dates, and transmitted the glory of great men to posterity.

On what then, it will be asked, was the Roman history founded, and what authentic records were preserved as materials for its composition? There were first the _Leges Regiæ_. These were diligently searched for, and were discovered along with the Twelve Tables, after the sack of the city: And all those royal laws which did not concern sacred matters, were publicly exposed to be seen and identified by the people(114), that no suspicion of forgery or falsification might descend to posterity. These precautions leave us little room to doubt that the _Leges Regiæ_, and Laws of the Tables, were preserved, and that they remained as they had been originally promulgated by the kings and decemvirs. Such laws, however, would be of no greater service to Roman history, than what the _Regiam Majestatem_ has been to that of Scotland. They might be useful in tracing the early constitution of the state, the origin of several customs, ceremonies, public offices, and other points of antiquarian research, but they could be of little avail in fixing dates, ascertaining facts, and setting events in their true light, which form the peculiar objects of civil history.

Treaties of peace, which were the pledges of the public tranquillity from without, being next to the laws of the greatest importance to the state, much care was bestowed, after the expulsion of the Gauls, in recovering as many of them as the flames had spared. Some of them were the more easily restored, from having been kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which the fury of the enemy could not reach(115). Those which had been saved, continued to be very carefully preserved, and there is no reason to suspect them of having been falsified. Among the treaties which were rescued from destruction, Horace mentions those of the Kings, with the Gabii and the Sabines (_Fœdera Regum_(116).) The former was that concluded by Tarquinius Superbus, and which, Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us, was still preserved at Rome in his time, in the temple of Jupiter Fidius, on a buckler made of wood, and covered with an ox’s hide, on which the articles of the treaty were written in ancient characters(117). Dionysius mentions two treaties with the Sabines—the first was between Romulus and their king Tatius(118); and the other, the terms of which were inscribed on a column erected in a temple, was concluded with them by Tullus Hostilius, at the close of a Sabine war(119). Livy likewise cites a treaty made with the Ardeates(120); and Polybius has preserved entire another entered into with the Carthaginians, in the year of the expulsion of the kings(121). Pliny has also alluded to one of the conditions of a treaty which Porsenna, the ally of Tarquin, granted to the Roman people(122). Now these leagues with the Gabii, Sabines, Ardeates, and one or two with the Latins, are almost the only treaties we find anywhere referred to by the ancient Latin historians; who thus seem to have employed but little diligence in consulting those original documents, or drawing from them, in compiling their histories, such assistance as they could have afforded. The treaties quoted by Polybius and Pliny, completely contradict the relations of the Latin annalists; those cited by Polybius proving, in opposition to their assertions, that the Carthaginians had been in possession of a great part of Sicily about a century previous to the date which Livy has fixed to their first expedition to that island; and those quoted by Pliny, that Porsenna, instead of treating with the Romans on equal terms, as represented by their historians, had actually prohibited them from employing arms,—permitting them the use of iron only in tilling the ground(123).