The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman, by Frank Justus Miller This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman Author: Frank Justus Miller Release Date: February 5, 2011 [EBook #35174] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POETRY OF ITALY, I. ROMAN *** Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Pat McCoy and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
The accumulated literature of centuries of ancient Roman life, even after the loss of more works than have survived, is still so large that, were we to attempt to cover the whole field, the space allotted to this volume would suffice for only the most superficial mention of the extant authors. The writer has therefore chosen to present to his readers the field of poetry only, and to narrow the scope of his work still further by the selection of certain important and representative phases of poetry, namely, the dramatic, satiric, and epic.
These different phases of the Roman poetic product will be presented in the order named, although it is by no means certain which class of poetry was first developed at Rome. It is more than likely that satire and comedy had a common origin in the rude and unrecorded literary product of ancient Italy. Ennius, indeed, prior to whose time the extant fragments are exceedingly meager, produced both drama, satire, and epic. And the same is true, though to a more limited extent, of other writers of the same early period.
Each of these phases of poetry is treated separately in this volume, according to its chronological development. We shall, therefore, traverse the field three times by three parallel paths: from Andronicus to Seneca, from Ennius to Juvenal, and from Nævius to Vergil.
BOOK I. ROMAN
PART I. THE DRAMA
PART II. SATIRE
PART III. EPIC POETRY
"Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own features, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
When Greece was at the height of her glory, and Greek literature was in its flower; when Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all within two brilliant generations, were holding the polite world under the magic spell of their dramatic art, their rough and almost unknown Roman neighbors were just emerging from tradition into history. There the atmosphere was altogether one of struggle. The king-ruled Romans, long oppressed, had at last swept away that crumbling kingdom, and established upon its ruins the young republic; the unconsidered masses, still oppressed, were just heaving themselves up into legal recognition, and had already obtained their tribunes, and a little later the boon of a published law—the famous Law of the Twelve Tables, the first Roman code.
Three years before this, and in preparation for it, a committee of three Roman statesmen, the so-called triumvirs, had gone to Athens to study the laws of Solon. This visit was made in 454 B. C. Æschylus had died two years before; Sophocles had become famous, and Euripides had just brought out his first play. As those three Romans sat in the theater at Athens, beneath the open sky, surrounded by the cultured and pleasure-loving Greeks, as they listened to the impassioned lines of the popular favorite, unable to understand except for the actor's art—what a contrast was presented between these two nations which had as yet never crossed each other's paths, but which were destined to come together at last in mutual conquest. The grounds and prophecy of this conquest were even now present. The Roman triumvirs came to learn Greek law, and they learned it so well that they became lawgivers not alone for Greece but for all the world; the triumvirs felt that day the charm of Greek art, and this was but a premonition of that charm which fell more masterfully upon Rome in later years, and took her literature and all kindred arts completely captive.
Still from that day, for centuries to come, the Romans had sterner business than the cultivation of the arts of peace. They had themselves and Italy to conquer; they had a still unshaped state to establish; they had their ambitions, growing as their power increased, to gratify; they had jealous neighbors in Greece, Africa, and Gaul to curb. In such rough, troubled soil as this, literature could not take root and flourish. They were not, it is true, without the beginnings of native literature. Their religious worship inspired rude hymns to their gods; their generals, coming home, inscribed the records of their victory in rough Saturnian verse on commemorative tablets; there were ballads at banquets, and dirges at funerals. Also the natural mimicry of the Italian peasantry had no doubt for ages indulged itself in uncouth performances of a dramatic nature, which developed later into those mimes and farces, the forerunners of native Roman comedy and the old Medley-Satura. Yet in these centuries Rome knew no letters worthy of the name save the laws on which she built her state; no arts save the arts of war.
But in her course of Italian conquest, she had finally come into conflict with those Greek colonists who had long since been taking peaceful possession of Italy along the southeastern border. These Græco-Roman struggles in Italy, which arose in consequence, culminated in the fall of Tarentum, B. C. 272; and with this victory the conquest of the Italian peninsula was complete.
This event meant much for the development of Italian literature; it meant new impulse and opportunity—the impulse of close and quickening contact with Greek thought, and the opportunity afforded by the internal calm consequent upon the completed subjugation of Italy. Joined with these two influences was a third which came with the end of the first Punic War, a generation afterward. Rome has now taken her first fateful step toward world empire; she has leaped across Sicily and set victorious foot in Africa; has successfully met her first great foreign enemy. The national pride and exaltation consequent upon this triumph gave favorable atmosphere and encouragement for those impulses which had already been stirred.
The first Punic War was ended in 241 B. C. In the following year the first effects of the Hellenic influence upon Roman literature were witnessed, and the first literary work in the Latin language of which we have definite record was produced at Rome. This was by Livius Andronicus, a Greek from Tarentum, who was brought to Rome as a captive upon the fall of that city. He came as the slave of M. Livius Salinator, who employed him as a tutor for his sons in Latin and Greek, and afterward set him free to follow the same profession independently. That he might have a Latin text from which to teach that language, he himself translated into the Roman tongue the Odyssey of Homer and some plays of the Greek tragedians—the first professor of Latin on record! These same translations, strangely enough, remained school text-books in Rome for centuries.
His first public work, to which we have referred above, was the production of a play; but whether tragedy or comedy we do not know. It was at any rate, without doubt, a translation into the crude, unpolished, and heavy Latin of his time, from some Greek original. His tragedies, of which only forty-one lines of fragments, representing nine plays, have come down to us, are all on Greek subjects, and are probably only translations or bald imitations of the Greek originals.
The example set by Andronicus was followed by four Romans of marked ability, whose life and work form a continuous chain of literary activity from Nævius, who was but a little younger than Andronicus, and who brought out his first play in 235 B. C.; through Ennius, who first established tragedy upon a firm foundation in Rome; through Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius and his worthy successor, to the death of Accius in (about) 94 B. C., who was the last and greatest of the old Roman tragedians.
As to the themes of these early tragedies, a few of them were upon subjects taken from Roman history. Tragedies of this class were called fabulæ prætextæ, because the actors wore the native Roman dress. When we think of the great value which these plays would have to-day, not only from a literary but also from a historical point of view, we cannot but regret keenly their almost utter loss. In the vast majority of cases, however, the old Roman tragedy was upon subjects taken from the traditional Greek cycles of stories, and was closely modeled after the Greek tragedies themselves. Æschylus and Sophocles were imitated to some extent, but Euripides was the favorite.
While these tragedies were Greek in subject and form, it is not at all necessary to suppose that they were servile imitations or translations merely of the Greek originals. The Romans did undoubtedly impress their national spirit upon that which they borrowed, in tragedy just as in all things else. Indeed, the great genius of Rome consisted partly in this—her wonderful power to absorb and assimilate material from every nation with which she came in contact. Rome might borrow, but what she had borrowed she made her own completely, for better or for worse. The resulting differences between Greek literature and a Hellenized Roman literature would naturally be the differences between the Greek and Roman type of mind. Where the Greek was naturally religious and contemplative, the Roman was practical and didactic. He was grave and intense, fond of exalted ethical effects, appeals to national pride; and above all, insisted that nothing should offend that exaggerated sense of both personal and national dignity which characterized the Roman everywhere.
All these characteristics made the Romanized Greek tragedies immensely popular; but, strangely enough, this did not develop a truly national Roman tragedy, as was the case, for instance, with epic and lyric literature. We have already seen how meager was the production of the fabulæ prætextæ. With the rich national traditions and history to inspire this, we can account for the failure to develop a native Roman tragedy only upon the assumption that the Roman lacked the gift of dramatic invention, at least to the extent of originating and developing great dramatic plots and characters, which form the essential elements of tragic drama.
We shall not weary the reader with quotations from the extant fragments of old Roman tragedy, fragments which, isolated as they are, can prove next to nothing as to the development of the plot or the other essential characteristics of a drama. A play is not like an animal: it cannot be reconstructed from a single fragment. It will be profitable, however, to dwell upon a few of these fragments, in order to get some idea of the nature and contents of all that is left of an extensive literature.
There is a very dramatic fragment of the Alexander or Paris of Ennius. It represents Cassandra, in prophetic raving, predicting the destruction which her brother Paris is to bring upon his fatherland. It is said that Hecuba, queen of Troy, before the birth of Paris, dreamed that she had brought forth a firebrand. Remembering this, Cassandra cries out at sight of her brother:
Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire and blood. Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and extinguish it. For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries along a host of calamities. They come: a fierce host lines the shores with sail-winged ships.
Sellar.
Several of the fragments show a certain measure of descriptive power and poetic imagination in these early tragedians. The following passage from the Argonautæ of Accius shows this to a marked degree. It is a description of the first ship, Argo, as she goes plowing through the sea. It is supposed to be spoken by a rustic who from the shore is watching the vessel's progress. It should be remembered that the great boat is as strange a sight to him as were the ships of Columbus to the natives of newly discovered America. Hence the strange and seemingly strained metaphors.
Sellar, in speaking of the feeling for natural beauty, says of Accius: "The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of natural beauty which enters largely into a later age"; and quotes the following passage from the Oenomaus as "perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating the common aspects of nature":
By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays, when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest into the fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled soil with the plough, and turn up the clods from the soft soil.
When we read this delightful passage, and then turn to the exquisite and fuller pictures of natural beauty which Lucretius and Vergil have left us, we shall agree that Accius was himself indeed the "harbinger of burning rays."
Tragedy long continued to flourish after Accius, but its vitality was gone. Such men as Pollio, Varius, and Ovid in the Augustan period, and Maternus, Pomponius Secundus, and Lucan in the first century A. D., amused themselves by writing tragedies, and even produced some commendable work. Varius, who was the personal friend of Vergil and Horace, was perhaps the most gifted of these. He wrote a tragedy on Thyestes which was presented as part of the public rejoicings after the battle of Actium. Of this play Quintilian said that it would stand comparison with any Greek tragedy. Ovid also wrote a tragedy on Medea, which was highly praised by Roman critics. Maternus wrote tragedies on Medea and Thyestes, as well as prætextæ on Domitius and Cato. Of all these nothing remains but the barest fragments. But it is certain that the efforts of these later tragedians were for the most part of a dilettante sort, and that their plays were purely literary (see, however, the case of Varius), intended for dramatic reading and declamation, rather than for presentation upon the stage.
Of this sort also were the ten tragedies commonly attributed to L. Annæus Seneca, the philosopher, who is better known as the author of numerous philosophical essays. He lived in the time of Nero, and was, indeed, the tutor of that emperor. Of these ten plays, nine are modeled after the Greek, and one, the Octavia, which is undoubtedly not Seneca's, is a prætexta, in which Seneca himself appears.
These plays are of especial interest to us, aside from their intrinsic value, for the triple reason that they are the sole representatives of Roman tragedy preserved entire, that they reflect the literary complexion of the artificial age in which they were produced, and that they had so large an influence in shaping the early English drama. They are, in fact, the stepping-stone between ancient and modern, Greek and English, drama.
As to their style, even a cursory reading reveals their extreme declamatory nature, the delight of the author in the horrible and weird, the pains he has taken to select from the Greek sources the most harrowing of all the tales as the foundation of his tragedies, the boldness with which he has broken over the time-honored rule that deeds of blood should not be done upon the stage, and his fondness for abstruse mythological allusions. Add to these features the dreary prolixity with which the author spoils many of his descriptive passages, protracting them often into veritable catalogues of places and things, also his frequent exaggerations and repetitions, and we have the chief defects of these tragedies.
And yet they have equally marked excellences. They abound in brilliant epigrams, graphic descriptions, touching pathos, magnificent passion, subtile analysis of character and motive. But when all is said, it must be admitted that the plays, faults and virtues included, are highly rhetorical and artificial, such alone as that artificial age would be expected to produce.
Such as they were, and perhaps because they were what they were, the tragedies of Seneca, rather than the Greek plays, were the model for Italian, French, and early English tragedy. The first and obvious reason for this no doubt is the fact that the Middle Age of Europe was an age of Latin rather than of Greek scholarship, so far as popular scholarship was concerned. And this made Seneca rather than Euripides available. But it is also probable that his style and spirit appealed strongly to those later-day imitators. So great, indeed, was the popularity of Seneca's tragedies in the early Elizabethan age, that he might be said to have monopolized the attention of writers of that time. He was a favorite with the schools as a classical text-book, as old Roger Ascham testifies; and his works were translated entire into English then for the first time by five English scholars, and collected into a single volume in 1581 by Thomas Newton, one of the translators.
In addition to the version of 1581, the tragedies of Seneca were again translated into English by Glover in 1761. Since that date no English version was attempted until the present writer a few years ago undertook the task again, and produced a metrical version of three of these plays.
We have selected the tragedy of Medea for presentation to the readers of this volume as an illustration of the Senecan tragedy, and (alas for the fate of so many noble works!) of the entire field of Roman tragedy. It follows Euripides in general development of the plot; but if the reader will take the trouble to compare the two plays, he will find that the imitation is by no means close.
Although the play is confined in time to the final day of catastrophe at Corinth, the background is the whole romantic story of the Argonauts: how Jason and his hero-comrades, at the instigation of Pelias, the usurping king of Thessalian Iolchos, undertook the first voyage in quest of the golden fleece; how after many adventures these first sailors reached the kingdom of Æëtes, who jealously guarded the fleece, since upon its possession depended his own kingship; how the three deadly labors were imposed upon Jason before the fleece could be won; how, smitten by love of him, the beautiful, barbaric Medea, daughter of the king, by the help of her magic, aided Jason in all his labors and accompanied him in his flight; how, to retard her father's pursuit, she slew her brother and scattered his mangled remains in the path as she fled; how again, for love of Jason, she restored his father to youth, and tricked Pelias' own daughters into slaying their aged sire; how, for this act, Medea and her husband were exiled from Thessaly and went and dwelt in Corinth; how, for ten happy years, she lived with her husband and two sons in this alien land, her wild past almost forgotten, her magic untouched. But now Jason has been gradually won away from his wife, and is about to wed Creüsa, the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth. The wedding festivities have already begun, when the play opens and reveals Medea invoking all the powers of heaven and hell in punishment of her false lord.
Into her frenzied and dreadful imprecations breaks the sound of sweet voices from without of a chorus of Corinthian women, chanting the epithalamium for the nuptials of Jason and Creüsa.
Hearing this cruel song in praise of her rival and of her false husband, Medea goes into a wilder passion of rage. Medea's old nurse tries to soothe her mistress and recall her to her right mind by wise saws and prudent philosophy. But the flood of passion will not be checked.
Creon claims to have been merciful in having shielded Jason and Medea all these years from the just resentment of the king of Thessaly. Jason's cause would be easy enough to defend, for he has been innocent of guilt; but it is impossible longer to shield Medea, who has committed so many bloody deeds in the past, and is capable of doing the like again.
Creon goes out toward his palace. Medea remains gazing darkly after him for a few moments, and then takes her way in the opposite direction.
The chorus sings in reminiscent strain of the old days before the Argo's voyage, the simple innocent life of the golden age when each man was content to dwell within the horizon of his birth; the impious rash voyage of the Argonauts, their dreadful experiences in consequence, their wild adventure's prize of fatal gold and more fatal Colchian sorceress; their dark forebodings of the consequences in after years, when the sea shall be a highway, and all hidden places of the world laid bare. Medea comes rushing in bent upon using for vengeance the day which Creon has granted her. The nurse tries in vain to restrain her.
But Medea hastens by without answering or noticing her. The nurse, looking after her, reflects in deep distress:
Our own imaginations and our fears keep pace with those of the devoted nurse, and we listen in fearful silence while Medea, communing with her tortured soul, reveals the depth of suffering and hate into which she has been plunged.
But this wild rage can lead nowhere. She struggles to calm her terrible passion to still more terrible reason and resolve.
As Medea hastens from the scene, Jason himself enters; and now we hear from his own lips the fatal dilemma in which he finds himself. Regard for his marriage vows, love for his children, and fear of death at the hands of Creon—all are at variance and must be faced. It is the usual tragedy of fate.
But Medea's passion has for the moment spent itself. She is now no sorceress, no mad woman breathing out dreadful threatenings; but only the forsaken wife, indignant, indeed, but pathetic in her appeals for sympathy and help from him for whose sake she had given up all her maiden glory, and broken every tie that held her to the past. Her quiet self-control is in marked contrast to her recent ravings.
And now again we have a situation which only the quick, sharp flashes, the clash of words like steel on steel, can relieve. Here is no chance for long periods, nor flights of oratory; but sentences as short and sharp as swords, flashes of feeling, stinging epigrams.
Here, apparently, is the first suggestion to Medea of the most terrible part of the revenge which she was to take upon Jason. The obvious revenge upon Creon and his daughter, as well as upon her husband, Medea had already foreshadowed in her opening words; but her deadly passion had not yet been aimed at her children. It is true that twice she had bitterly renounced them, once to the nurse, and again but now to Jason himself, since they were Jason's also, and were likely now to be brothers to the sons of her hated rival; nevertheless her mother-love still is strong. But now, by Jason's unfortunate emphasis upon the love he bears his sons, she sees a chance to obtain that measure of revenge which in her heart she has already resolved to find. And yet this thought is so terrible to her that, even though we see her shape her present course in reference to it, it is evident that she gives it no more than a subconscious existence.
But now she resolves to conceal her purposes of revenge and overcome Jason with guile, and thus addresses him:
Jason is completely deceived, as Creon had been, by Medea's seeming
humility, as if, indeed, a passionate nature like hers, inflamed by
wrongs like hers, could be restrained and tamed by a few calm words of
advice! He says:
advice! He says:
[Exit Jason.
As Jason leaves her, calmly satisfied with this disposition of affairs, with no recognition of his wife's great sufferings, the thought of this adds fresh fuel to her passion.
The chorus, which is supposed to be present throughout the play, an interested though inactive witness of all that passes, has already been seen to be a partisan of Jason, and hostile to Medea. It now sings a choral interlude opening on the text "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," and continuing with a prayer for Jason's safety. It then recounts the individual history of Jason's companions subsequent to the Argonautic expedition, showing how almost all came to an untimely end. These might indeed be said to have deserved their fate, for they volunteered to assist in that first impious voyage in quest of the golden fleece; but Jason should be spared the general doom, for the task had been imposed upon him by his usurping uncle, Pelias.
As the next scene opens, the old nurse voices the feeling that we all have upon the eve of some expected but unknown horror.
We omit the remainder of the nurse's speech out of regard for Seneca's reputation as an artist, for in a long passage of sixty lines he proceeds to scour heaven, earth, and the waters under the earth, for every form of venomous serpent, noxious herb, and dread, uncanny thing that the mind of man can conceive; and by the time he has his full array of horrors marshaled before us, we have grown so familiar with the gruesome things that we cease to shiver at them. But at last the ingredients for the hell-broth are ready.
Medea now enters, chanting her incantations. Madness has done fearful work with her in the last few hours. We see at a glance that she has indeed, as the nurse has told us, gone back to
and has been changed from a true wife and loving mother to a wild and murderous witch once more. She calls upon the gods of the underworld, the silent throng from the dark world of spirits, the tormented shades, all to come to her present aid. She recounts her miraculous powers over nature which she has used aforetime, and which are still in her grasp.
Here again Seneca's love for the curious runs counter to his art; for he represents Medea as possessed of a veritable museum of curious charms which she has in some occult way gathered from various mythological and traditionary sources, and which she now takes occasion to recount. And it is to this catalogue that we are compelled to listen, though we are waiting in breathless suspense to know what is to come of all this preparation!
After these and much more somewhat confused ravings, Medea at last says to her attendants:
We are told that these magic flames are compounded of some of that fire which Prometheus stole from heaven; certain sulphurous fire which Vulcan had given her; a flame gained from the daring young Phaëthon, who had himself perished in flames because of his overweening folly; the fiery Chimera's breath, and some of "that fierce heat that parched the brazen bull of Colchis." The imagination flags before such an array of fires. The mystery of the burning robe and crown is no longer mysterious. Truly, he doth explain too much.
But now, in more hurried strain, we hasten on the dénouement.
[Exit sons toward the palace, Medea in the
opposite direction.]
The chorus, which but dimly comprehends Medea's plans, briefly voices its dread of her unbridled passion. It knows that she has one day only before her banishment from Corinth, and prays that this day may soon be over.
And now, as the chorus and the old nurse wait in trembling suspense for what is to follow, a messenger comes running breathless from the direction of the royal palace. All ears are strained to hear his words, for his face and manner betoken evil tidings. He gasps out his message:
Medea has entered meanwhile, and has heard enough to be assured that her magic has been successful. The nurse, seeing her, and fearing for her mistress, exclaims:
But now, forgetful of all around her, she becomes absorbed in her own meditations. And here follows a masterful description of the struggle of conflicting passions in a human soul. The contending forces are mother-love and the passionate hate of an outraged wife. And when the mother-love is at last vanquished, we may be sure that all the woman is dead in her, and she becomes what the closing scene of the play portrays—an incarnate fury.
This mood culminates in an ecstasy of madness as she dwells upon her former successful deeds of blood.
But she remembers, even as she embraces her children, that this is her last embrace.
She suddenly falls distraught, as one who sees a dreadful vision.
Roused to the point of action by this vision, and still at the very pitch of frenzy, she plunges her dagger into the first of her sons. (The poet thus violates the canons of the classical drama in representing deeds of blood upon the stage.)
But now hoarse shouts and the quick tramping of many feet are heard; and well does Medea know their meaning.
Medea disappears within, leading one son, terrified and reluctant, and bearing the body of her other child in her arms. Jason and a crowd of Corinthian citizens rush upon the stage. Stopping in front of his own palace, he shouts:
At this moment, though as yet unseen by those below, Medea emerges upon the palace roof.
For there suddenly appears in the air a chariot drawn by dragons.
We have already said that the natural mimicry of the Italian peasantry no doubt for ages indulged itself in uncouth performances of a dramatic nature, which developed later into those mimes and farces, the forerunners of Roman comedy and the old Medley-Satura. We have also shown how powerfully Rome came under the influence of Greek literature and Greek art; and how the first actual invasion of Rome by Greek literature was made under Livius Andronicus, who, in 240 B. C., produced the first play before a Roman audience translated from the Greek into the Roman tongue. What the history of native comedy would have been, had it been allowed to develop entirely apart from Greek influence, we shall never know, since it did come powerfully under this influence, and retained permanently the form and character which it then acquired.
When Rome turned to Greece for comedy, there were three models from which to choose: the Old Athenian Comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, full of criticism boldly aimed at public men and policies, breathing the most independent republican spirit; the Middle Comedy, which was still critical, directed, however, more at classes of men and schools of thought than at individuals; and New Comedy, the product of the political decadence of Greece, written during a period (340-260 B. C.) when the independence which had made the trenchant satire of the Old Comedy possible had gone out of Greece. These plays aimed at amusement and not at reform. Every vestige of politics was squeezed out of them, and they were merely society plays, supposed to reflect the amusing and entertaining incidents of the social life of Athens. The best known writers of New Comedy were Philemon, Apollodorus, and Menander, only fragments of whose works have come down to us.
Which of these models did the Romans follow? There is some evidence in the fragments of the plays of Nævius, a younger contemporary of Andronicus, and who produced his first play in 235 B. C., that he wrote in the bold spirit of the Old Comedy, and criticized the party policies and leaders of his time. But he soon discovered that the stern Roman character was quite incapable of appreciating a joke, especially when its point was directed against that ineffably sacred thing, the Roman dignity. For presuming to voice his criticisms from the stage the poet was imprisoned and afterward banished from Rome.
Perhaps warned by the experience of Nævius, Roman comic poets turned to the perfectly colorless and safe society plays of the New Comedy for translation and imitation. They not only kept within the limitations of these plays as to spirit and plot, but even confined the scene itself and characters to some foreign city, generally Athens, and for the most part were careful to exclude everything Roman or suggestive of Rome from their plays.
Judging from the remaining fragments, there must have been many writers of comedy during this period of first impulse; but of all these, the works of only two are preserved to us. These are Titus Maccius Plautus, who died in 184 B. C., and Publius Terentius Afer, commonly known as Terence, who was born in 195 B. C., and died in 159 B. C. These two writers have much in common, but there are also many important points of difference. Plautus displays a rougher, more vigorous strength and a broader humor; and, within the necessary limitations of which we have spoken, he is more national in his spirit, more popular in his appeal. Terence, on the other hand, no doubt because he was privileged to associate with the select and literary circle of which Scipio and Lælius were the center, was more polished and correct in style and diction. But while he thus gains in elegance as compared with Plautus, he loses the breezy vigor of the older poet.
As an illustration of the society play of the New Comedy, we are giving with some abridgment the Phormio of Terence, which we have taken the liberty of translating into somewhat free modern vernacular. This is perhaps the best of the six plays of Terence which we have, and was modeled by him after a Greek play of Apollodorus. It is named Phormio from the saucy parasite who takes the principal rôle. The other characters are two older men, brothers, Demipho and Chremes; two young men, sons of these, Antipho and Phædria; a smart slave, Geta; a villainous slave-driver, Dorio; Nausistrata, wife of Chremes, and Sophrona, an old nurse. The scene, which does not change throughout the play, is laid in Athens. As for the plot, it will develop itself as we read.
A shock-headed slave comes lounging in from the direction of the Forum and stops in front of Demipho's house. He carries in his hand a purse of money which, it appears, he has brought in payment of a debt:
Friend Geta paid me a call yesterday; I've been owing him a beggarly balance on a little account some time back, and he wanted me to pay it. So I've got it here. It seems that his young master has gone and got married; and this money, I'm thinking, is being scraped together as a present for the bride. Things have come to a pretty pass, to be sure, when the poor must all the time be handing over to the rich. What my poor gossip has saved up out of his allowance, a penny at a time, almost starving himself to do it, this precious bride will gobble up at one fell swoop, little thinking how hard Geta had to work to get it. Pretty soon he will be struck for another present when a child is born; for another when its birthday comes around, and so on, and so on. The mother will get it all; the child will be only an excuse. But here comes Geta himself.
The private marriage of the young man Antipho, mentioned in this slave's soliloquy, is one of the important issues of the play. The real situation is revealed in the following conversation between the two slaves. After the payment of the money and an interchange of civilities, says the friend:
Davus. But what's the matter with you?
Geta. Me? Oh, you don't know in what a fix we are.
Da. How's that? Ge. Well, I'll tell you if you won't say anything about it. Da. O, come off, you dunce, you have just trusted money with me; are you afraid to lend me words? Besides, what good would it do me to give you away? Ge. Well, listen then. You know our old man's brother Chremes? Da. Well, I should say. Ge. And his son Phædria? Da. As well as I do you. Ge. Both the old men went away, Chremes to Lemnos, and his brother to Cilicia, and left me here to take care of their two sons. My guardian spirit must have had it in for me. At first I began to oppose the boys; but there—my faithfulness to the old men I paid for with my bones. Then I just gave it up and let them do as they pleased. At first, my young master Antipho was all right; but his cousin Phædria lost no time in getting into trouble. He fell in love with a little lute-player—desperately in love. She was a slave, and owned by a most villainous fellow. Phædria had no money to buy her freedom with—his father had looked out for that; so the poor boy could only feast his eyes upon her, tag her around and walk back and forth to school with her. Antipho and I had nothing else to do, so we watched Phædria. Well, one day when we were all sitting in the barber-shop across the street from the little slave-girl's schoolhouse, a fellow came in crying like a baby. When we asked him what the trouble was, he said: "Poverty never seemed to me so dreadful before. Just now I saw a poor girl here in the neighborhood crying over her dead mother. And there wasn't a single soul around, not an acquaintance or a relative or any one at all to help at the funeral, except one little old woman, her nurse. I did feel sorry for the girl. She was a beauty, too." Well, he stirred us all up. Then Antipho speaks up and says: "Let's go and see her; you lead the way." So we went and saw her. She was a beauty. And she wasn't fixed up a bit either: her hair was all hanging loose, she was bare-footed, unkempt, eyes red with weeping, dress travel-stained. So she must have been an all-round beauty, or she couldn't have seemed so then. Phædria says: "She'll do pretty well." But Antipho— Da. O yes, I know, he fell in love with her. Ge. But do you know how much? Wait and see how it came out. Next day he went straight to the nurse and begged her to let him see the girl; but the old woman wouldn't allow it. She said he wasn't acting on the square; that the girl was a well-born citizen of Athens, and that if he wanted to marry her he might do so in the legal way. If he had any other object it was no use. Our young man didn't know what to do. He wanted to marry her fast enough, but he was afraid of his absent father. Da. Why, wouldn't his father have forgiven him when he came back? Ge. What, he allow his son to marry a poor girl that nobody knew anything about? Not much! Da. Well, what came next? Ge. What next? There is a certain parasite named Phormio, a bold fellow—curse his impudence! Da. What did he do? Ge. He gave this precious piece of advice. Says he: "There is a law in Athens that orphan girls shall marry their next of kin, and the same law requires the next of kin to marry them. Now I'll say that you are related to this girl, and will bring suit against you to compel you to marry her. I'll pretend that I am her guardian. We'll go before the judges; who her father was, who her mother, how she is related to you—all this I'll make up on the spur of the moment. You won't attempt any defense and of course I shall win the suit. I'll be in for a row when your father gets back, but what of that? You will be safely married to the girl by that time." Da. Well, that was a jolly bluff. Ge. So the youth was persuaded, the thing was done, they went to court, our side lost the suit, and Antipho married the girl. Da. What's that? Ge. Just what I say. Da. O Geta, what will become of you? Ge. I'll be blessed if I know. I'm sure of one thing, though: whatever happens, I'll bear it with equanimity. Da. That's the talk! You've got the spirit of a man! But what about the pedagogue, the little lute-player's young man? How is he getting on? Ge. Only so so. Da. He hasn't much to pay for her, I suppose? Ge. Not a red; only his hopes. Da. Has Antipho's father come back yet? Ge. No. Da. When do you expect him? Ge. I'm not sure, but I have just heard that a letter has been received from him down at the custom-house, and I'm going for it now. Da. Well, Geta, can I do anything more for you? Ge. No. Be good to yourself. Good-by.
We see from the foregoing conversation what the situation is at the opening of the play, and can guess at the problems to be solved by the development of the action: How shall Phædria obtain the money with which to buy his sweetheart? and how shall Antipho's father be reconciled to the marriage so that he may not annul it or disown both the young people upon his return?
The two cousins Antipho and Phædria now appear, each envying the seemingly happy lot of the other, and deploring his own. Antipho has already repented of his hasty action, and is panic-stricken when he thinks of the wrath of his father. While Phædria can think only of his friend's good fortune in being married to the girl of his heart. Geta's sudden appearance from the direction of the harbor strikes terror into Antipho, and both the cousins retire to the back of the stage. The slave is evidently much disturbed, though the young men can catch only a word now and then.
Desirous, yet fearful of knowing the worst, Antipho now calls out to his slave, who turns and comes up to him.
Antipho. Come, give us your news, for goodness' sake, and be quick. Ge. All right, I will. Ant. Well, out with it, then. Ge. Just now at the harbor— Ant. What, my— Ge. That's right. Ant. I'm done for!
Phædria has not Antipho's fear-sharpened imagination to get Geta's news from these fragmentary statements, and asks the slave to tell him what it is all about.
Geta. I tell you that I have seen his father, your uncle. Ant. [frantically]. How shall I meet this sudden disaster? But if it has come to this, Phanium [his wife], that I am to be separated from you, then I don't want to live any longer. Ge. There, there, Antipho, in such a state of things you ought to be all the more on the watch. Fortune favors the brave, you know. Ant. [with choking voice]. I'm not myself to-day. Ge. But you must be, Antipho; for if your father sees that you are timid and meek about it, he'll think of course that you are in the wrong. Ant. But, I tell you, I can't do any different. Ge. What would you do if you had some harder job yet? Ant. Since I can't do this, I couldn't do that. Ge. Come, Phædria, there's no use fooling with this fellow; we're only wasting our time. Let's be off. Phæd. All right, come on. Ant. O say, hold on! What if I pretend to be bold. [Strikes an attitude]. Will that do? Ge. Stuff and nonsense. Ant. Well, how will this expression do? Ge. It won't do at all. Ant. How is this? Ge. That's more like it. Ant. Is this better? Ge. That's just right. Keep on looking that way. And remember to answer him word for word, tit for tat, and don't let the angry old man get the better of you. Ant. I—I—w-won't. Ge. Tell him you were forced to it against your will— Phæd. By the law, by the court. Ge. Do you catch on?—But who is this old man I see coming up the street?
Antipho casts one look of terror down the street, cries: "It's father himself, I just can't stay," and takes to his heels.
Phæd. Now, Geta, what next? Ge. Well, you're in for a row; and I shall be hung up by the heels and flogged, unless I am much mistaken. But what we were advising Antipho to do just now, we must do ourselves. Phæd. O, come off with your "musts"! Tell me just what to do. Ge. Do you remember how you said when we were planning how to get out of blame for this business that "Phormio's suit was just dead easy, sure to win"? Well, that's the game we want to work now,—or a better one yet, if you can think of one. Now you go ahead and I'll wait here in ambush, in case you want any help.
They retire to the back of the stage as Demipho enters from the direction of the harbor. The old man is in a towering rage, for he has heard the news, which by this time is all over town. After listening awhile to his angry soliloquy, and interjecting sneering comments sotto voce, Geta and Phædria conclude that it is time to act. So Phædria advances to his uncle with an effusive welcome:
Phæd. My dear uncle, how do you do? Demipho [crustily]. How are you? But where is Antipho? Phæd. I'm so glad to see— Dem. Oh, no doubt; but answer my questions. Phæd. Oh, he's all right; he's here in the house. But, uncle, has anything gone wrong with you? Dem. Well, I should say so. Phæd. What do you mean? Dem. How can you ask, Phædria? This is a pretty marriage you have gotten up here in my absence. Phæd. Why, uncle, you aren't angry with him for that, are you? Dem. Not angry with him, indeed? I can hardly wait to see him and let him know how through his own fault his indulgent father has become most stern and angry with him. Phæd. Now, uncle, if Antipho has been at fault in that he wasn't careful enough of his purse or reputation, I haven't a word to say to shield him from blame. But if some one with malicious intent has laid a trap for him and got the best of him, is that our fault, or that of the judges, who often decide against the rich through envy, and in favor of the poor out of pity? Dem. But how is any judge to know the justice of your case, when you don't say a word in self-defense, as I understand he didn't? Phæd. Well, in that he acted like a well-bred young man; when he came before the judges, he couldn't remember a word of his speech that he had prepared; he was so bashful.
Seeing that Phædria is getting along so well, Geta decides to come forward.
Ge. Hail, master! I'm very glad to see you home safe again. Dem. [with angry irony]. Hail! A fine guardian you are! A regular pillar of the family! So you are the fellow that I left in charge of my son when I went away?
Geta plays injured innocence, and wants to know what Demipho would have had him do. Being a slave, he could neither plead the young man's cause nor testify in his behalf.
Dem. O, yes; I admit all that. But even if the girl was never so much related, he needn't have married her. Why didn't you take the other legal alternative, give her a dowry, and let her find another husband? Had he no more sense than to marry her himself? Ge. O, he had sense enough; it was the dollars he lacked. Dem. Well, he might have borrowed the money. Ge. Borrowed it? That's easier said than done. Dem. He might have gotten it from a usurer on a pinch. Ge. Well, I do like that! As if any one would lend him money in your lifetime!
The old man, beaten to a standstill, can only fall back upon his obstinate determination, and vow that he won't have it.
Dem. No, no; it shall not be, it cannot be! I won't permit this marriage to continue for a single day longer. Now, I want to see that other fellow, or at least find out where he lives. Ge. Do you mean Phormio? Dem. I mean that woman's guardian. Ge. I'll go get him for you. Dem. Where is Antipho now? Ge. O, he's out somewhere. Dem. Phædria, you go hunt him up and bring him to me. Phæd. Yes, sir; I'll go find him right away. Ge. [leering at Phædria as the latter passes him]. You mean you'll go to Pamphila [Phædria's sweetheart].
Demipho, left alone, announces that he will get some friends together to advise him in the business, and prepare him for his interview with Phormio. The act ends with the prospect pretty dark for Antipho, and with no plan of action formed in his behalf.
We are now introduced, at the opening of the second act, to the actor of the title rôle, the keen-witted, reckless parasite, Phormio. He is accompanied upon the stage by Geta, who is telling him the situation. Geta beseeches Phormio to come to their aid, since he is, after all, entirely responsible for the trouble. Phormio remains buried in thought awhile, and then announces that he has his plans formed, and is ready to meet the old man.
[Enter Demipho and three friends from the other side of the stage. Demipho is talking to his friends.]
Dem. Did you ever hear of any one suffering more outrageous treatment than I have? I beg you to help me. Ge. [apart to Phormio]. My, but he's mad! Phor. You just watch me now; I'll stir him up. [Speaking in a loud enough tone to be overheard by Demipho]. By all the powers! Does Demipho say that Phanium isn't related to him? Does Demipho say so? Ge. Yes, he does.
Demipho is caught by this bait, as Phormio had intended, and says to his friends in an undertone:
I believe this is the very fellow I was seeking. Let's go a little nearer.
Phormio continues in a loud voice to berate Demipho for his neglect of the supposed relative, while Geta noisily takes his master's part. Demipho now interrupts this sham quarrel, and after snubbing Geta, he turns with mock politeness to Phormio.
Dem. Young man, I beg your pardon, but will you be kind enough to tell me who that friend of yours was that you are talking about, and how he said I was related to him? Phor. O, you ask as if you didn't know. Dem. As if I didn't know? Phor. Yes. Dem. And I say that I don't know. Now do you, who say that I do, refresh my memory. Phor. Didn't you know your own cousin? Dem. O, you make me tired. Tell me his name. Phor. The name? Why, certainly.
But now the name by which he had heard Phanium speak of her father has slipped from his mind, and he is forced to awkward silence. Demipho is quick to see his embarrassment:
Well, why don't you speak? Phor. [aside]. By George! I'm in a box! I have forgotten the name. Dem. What's that you say? Phor. [aside in a whisper to Geta]. Say, Geta, if you remember that name we heard the other day, tell it to me. [Then determining to bluff it out, he turns to Demipho]. No, I won't tell you the name. You are trying to pump me, as if you didn't know it already. Dem. [angrily]. I pump you? Ge. [whispering]. It's Stilpho. Phor. [to Demipho]. And yet what do I care? It's Stilpho. Dem. Who? Phor. [shouting it at him]. Stilpho, I say. Did you know him? Dem. No, I didn't, And I never had a relative of that name. Phor. No? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Now if he had left a matter of ten talents— Dem. Confound your impudence! Phor. You would be the first to come forward, with a very good memory, and trace your connection with him for generations back. Dem. Well, have it as you say. Then when I had come into court. I should have told just how she was related to me. Now you do the same. Come, how is she related to me? Phor. I have already explained that to those who had a right to ask—the judges. If my statement was false then, why didn't your son refute it? Dem. Don't mention my son to me! I can't possibly express my disgust at his folly. Phor. Then do you, who are so wise, go before the magistrates and ask them to reopen the case. [This, according to the law of Athens, was impossible.]
Demipho has twice been completely beaten in a war of words—once by Geta and now by Phormio. He chokes down his rage as best he can, and now makes a proposition to his enemy. He is still too angry to express himself very connectedly.
Dem. Although I have been outraged in this business, still, rather than have a quarrel with such as you, just as if she were related to me, since the law bids to give her a dowry, take her away from here, and make it fui minæ. Phor. Ho! ho! ho! Well, you are a cheerful idiot! Dem. What's the matter? Have I asked anything wrong? Or can't I get even what is my legal right? Phor. Well, really now, I should like to ask you, when you have once married a girl, does the law bid you then to give her some money and send her packing? On the contrary, it is for the very purpose that a citizen of Athens may not come to shame on account of her poverty, that her next of kin is bidden to take her to wife. And this purpose you are attempting to thwart. Dem. Yes, that's just it—"her next of kin." But where do I come in on that score? Phor. O pshaw! don't thresh over old straw. Dem. Sha'n't I? I vow I shall not stop until I have accomplished my ends.
After further badgering and bear-baiting on the part of Phormio, Demipho finally falls back upon his dogged determination as before, and gives his ultimatum:
See here, Phormio, we have said enough. Unless you take immediate steps to get that woman away, I'll throw her out of the house. I have spoken, Phormio.
Phormio is not to be outdone in bluster, and adopting Demipho's formula, as well as his tone and gestures, he says:
And if you touch that girl except as becomes a free-born citizen, I'll bring a cracking suit against you. I have spoken, Demipho.
So saying, he turns and swaggers off the stage, much to the secret delight of Geta, the impotent rage of Demipho, and the open-mouthed amazement of the three friends.
Demipho now appeals to his friends for advice as to how to proceed in this crisis; but they are so obsequious in their manner, and so contradictory in their advice, that Demipho is in greater perplexity than before, and decides to take no action at all until his brother Chremes comes home. He accordingly leaves the stage in the direction of the harbor, his three friends having already bowed themselves out.
This temporary disposition of Antipho's case is fittingly followed by the appearance of the young man himself in self-reproachful soliloquy that he should have run away and left his young wife in the lurch. Geta appears, and tells Antipho all that has passed in his absence, much to Antipho's gratitude and relief, though he sorely dreads the return of his uncle, who, it seems, is to be the arbiter of his destiny.
Phædria and his troubles now claim the center of the stage. As Antipho and Geta stand talking, they hear a pitiful outcry, and looking up, they see a black-browed, evil-faced, typical stage villain, who we presently discover is Dorio, the slave-driver who owns Phædria's sweetheart. Things have evidently come to a crisis with that young man. He is following Dorio, and imploring him to wait three days until he can get money enough to buy his sweetheart. But Dorio says he has a customer who offers cash down. After much entreaty, however, he tells Phædria that if the money is forthcoming before to-morrow morning he will consider the bargain closed. So there Phædria's business is brought to a head, and the attention of us all must be at once turned to what has suddenly become the paramount issue. What is to be done? Phædria is too hysterical to be of any help in the matter, and Antipho tells the faithful and resourceful Geta that he must get the money somehow. Geta says that this is liable to be a pretty difficult matter, and doesn't want to undertake it, but is finally persuaded by Phædria's pitiful despair to try. He asks Phædria how much money he needs.
Phæd. Only six hundred dollars. Ge. Six hundred dollars! Whew! she's pretty dear, Phædria. Phæd. [indignantly]. It's no such thing! She's cheap at the price. Ge. Well, well! I'll get you the money somehow.
The third act gives a picture of the situation from the point of view of the two old men, Demipho and Chremes, for the latter has just returned from Lemnos, and now comes upon the stage fresh from his travels, in company with his brother. We now discover for the first time what is probably the real reason for the opposition to Antipho's marriage to the orphan girl.
Dem. Well, Chremes, did you bring your daughter with you, for whose sake you went to Lemnos? Chr. No, I didn't. Dem. Why not? Chr. When her mother saw that I was delaying my coming too long, and that my negligence was harming our daughter, who had now reached a marriageable age, she simply packed up her whole household, and came here to hunt me up—so they told me over there. And then I heard from the skipper who brought them that they reached Athens all right. Dem. Have you heard what has happened to my son while I was gone? Chr. Yes, and it's knocked all my plans into a cocked hat. For if I make a match for my daughter with some outsider, I'll have to tell him categorically just how she comes to be mine, and who her mother is. I was secure in our proposed match between her and Antipho, for I knew that my secret was as safe in your hands as in my own; whereas if an outsider comes into the family, he will keep the secret as long as we are on good terms; but if we ever quarrel, he will know more than is good for me [looking around cautiously, and speaking with bated breath]; and I'm dreadfully afraid that my wife will find it out in some way. And if she does, the only thing left for me to do is to take myself off and leave home; for my soul is the only thing I can call my own in this house.
From this it develops that Chremes has had a wife and daughter in Lemnos, and now lives in wholesome fear of his too masterful Athenian spouse.
Geta now comes upon the stage in fine spirits, loud in his praises of the shrewdness of Phormio, with whom he has just concluded a scheme for getting the money. He is in search of Demipho, and is surprised to find Chremes on hand as well. Meanwhile, Antipho has come cautiously upon the stage in search of Geta, just as the latter goes boldly up to the two old men. As yet unseen by any one, Antipho retires to the back of the stage, and overhears the following conversation:
Ge. O, how do you do, good Chremes! Chr. [crustily]. How are you? Ge. How are things with you? Chr. One finds many changes on coming back, as is natural enough—very many. Ge. That's so. Have you heard about Antipho? Chr. The whole story. Ge. [to Demipho]. O, you've been telling him? [To Chremes]. It's a shame, Chremes, to be taken in that way! Dem. I have been discussing the situation with him. Ge. I've been thinking it over, too, and I think I have found a way out of it. Chr. How's that, Geta? Dem. A way out of it? Ge. [in a confidential tone]. Just now when I left you, I chanced to meet Phormio. Chr. Who's Phormio? Ge. That girl's— Chr. O, I see. Ge. I thought I'd test the fellow, so I got him off alone, and said: "Now, Phormio, don't you see that it's better to settle this matter in a friendly way than to have a row about it? My master is a gentleman, and hates a fuss. If it wasn't for that he would have sent this girl packing, as all his friends advised him to do." Ant. [aside]. What in the world is this fellow getting at? Ge. "Do you say that the law will make him suffer for it if he casts her out? Oh, we've looked into that point. I tell you you'll sweat for it if you ever get into a law-suit with that man. He's a regular corker. But suppose you do win out; it's not a matter of life and death, but only of damages. Now here, just between ourselves, how much will you take, cash down, to take this girl away and make us no more trouble." Ant. [aside]. Good heavens, is the fellow crazy? Ge. "For I know that if you make any sort of an offer, my master is a good fellow, and will take you up in a minute." Dem. Who told you to say that? Chr. There, there, we couldn't have gained our point better. Ant. [aside]. I'm done for! Dem. Well, go on with your story. Ge. At first the fellow was wild. Chr. Come, come, tell us how much he wants. Ge. How much? Altogether too much. Said he: "Well, a matter of twelve hundred dollars would be about right." Dem. Confound his impudence! Has he no shame? Ge. That's just what I said. Said I: "What if he were marrying off an only daughter? Small gain it's been to him not to have raised a girl. One has been found to call for a dowry just the same." Well, to make a long story short, he finally said: "I've wanted from the first to marry the daughter of my old friend, as was right that I should; but, to tell you the honest truth, I've got to find a wife who will bring me in a little something, enough to pay my debts with. And even now, if Demipho is willing to pay me as much as I am getting from the other girl to whom I am engaged, I'd just as soon turn around and marry this girl of yours." Dem. What if he is over his head in debt? Ge. Says he: "I have a little farm mortgaged for two hundred dollars." Dem. Well, well! Let him marry her; I'll give him that much. Ge. "And then there's a bit of a house mortgaged for two hundred more." Dem. Ow! that's too much. Chr. No, that's all right. Let him have that two hundred from me. Ge. "Then I must buy a little maid for my wife," says he, "and I've got to have a little more furniture, and then there's all the wedding expenses. Put all that down at an even two hundred more." Dem. [in a rage]. Then let him bring as many suits as he wants to. I won't give a cent. What, is the dirty fellow making game of me? Chr. O, do please keep still! I only ask that you have your son marry that girl that we know of. This girl is being sent off for my sake; so it's only right that I should pay for it. Ge. Phormio says to let him know as soon as possible if you are going to give Phanium to him, in order that he may break his engagement with the other girl; for her people have promised the same dowry. Chr. Well, we will give it to him, so let him break his other engagement and marry the girl. Dem. And a plague on him into the bargain! Chr. [to Demipho]. Very fortunately, I have brought some money with me—the rent I have collected from my wife's Lemnian estate. I'll take it out of that, and tell her that you needed it.
The two old men go into Chremes' house; and now Geta finds himself confronted by the indignant Antipho, who has hardly been able to contain himself during this (to him) inexplicable dialogue, in which his wife was being coolly bargained away. It is only with the greatest difficulty that Geta can make the angry bridegroom appreciate the ruse by which the money has been obtained for Phædria's use. In the end Antipho goes off to tell the news to Phædria. Demipho and Chremes now come out, the former with a bag of money in his hand. He wants it understood that no one can cheat him; he is going to be very business-like and have ample witness to the transactions. Chremes' only desire is that the business may be settled as soon as possible. Demipho now tells Geta to lead the way to Phormio, and they start toward the Forum. Chremes' troubles are only in part allayed. His Lemnian daughter's marriage with Antipho seems now safely provided for, but where is his Lemnian daughter and her mother? That they are here in Athens fills him with terror. He paces back and forth in deep thought, muttering:
Where can I find those women now, I wonder?
And just at this moment out from Demipho's house comes old Sophrona, Phanium's nurse, who also seems to be in great distress:
O, what shall I do? Where shall I find a friend in my distress, or to whom shall I go for advice? Where get help? For I'm afraid that my young mistress is going to get into trouble from this marriage that I persuaded her into. I hear that the young man's father is very much put out about it. Chr. [aside]. Who in the world is this old woman coming out of my brother's house? So. But want made me advise her as I did, though I knew that the marriage was a bit shaky, in order that for awhile at least we might be sure of our living. Chr. [aside in great excitement]. By Jove! unless I'm much mistaken, or my eyes don't see straight, that's my daughter's nurse! So. And I can't get any trace of the man who is her father. Chr. [aside]. Shall I go up to her, or shall I wait until I understand better what she's talking about? So. But if I could only find him now, I'd have nothing to fear. Chr. [aside]. It is Sophrona; I'll speak to her. [Calling softly]. Sophrona! So. Who is this I hear calling my name? Chr. Look here, Sophrona. So. [finally looking the right way]. My goodness gracious! Is this Stilpho? Chr. No. So. No? Chr. [drawing her cautiously away from the vicinity of his house]. Say, Sophrona, come away a little from that door, will you? And don't you ever call me by that name again. So. O, my goodness, aren't you the man you always said you were? Chr. Sh! So. What makes you so afraid of that door? Chr. I've got a savage wife shut up there. I gave you the wrong name on purpose, that you might not thoughtlessly blurt it out in public sometime, and so let my wife here get wind of it. So. And so that's the reason why we poor women could never find you here. Chr. Tell me now what business you have with this household from which you have just come out. Where are those women? So. [with a burst of tears]. O dear me! Chr. How? What's that? Aren't they alive? So. Your daughter is. But the mother, sick at heart over this business, is dead. Chr. That's too bad! So. And then, considering that I was just a lonely old woman, in a strange city without a cent of money, I think I did pretty well for the girl, for I married her off to the young man the heir of this family here. Chr. What, Antipho? So. Why, yes! Chr. You don't mean to say he's got two wives? So. O gracious, no! This is the only one. Chr. But what about that other girl who is said to be related to him? So. Why, this is the one. Chr. [beside himself with joy and wonder]. You don't mean it! So. That was a cooked up scheme that her lover might marry her without a dowry. Chr. Thank heaven for that! How often things come about by mere chance that you wouldn't dare hope for! Here I find my daughter happily married to the very man I had picked out for her! What my brother and I were taking the greatest pains to bring about, here this old woman, without any help from us, all by herself, has done. So. But now, sir, we've got to bestir ourselves. The young man's father is back, and they say he's in a terrible stew about it. Chr. O, there's no danger on that score. But, for heaven's sake, don't let any one find out that she's my daughter. So. Well, no one shall find it out from me. Chr. Now you follow me, we'll talk about the rest inside. [They go into Demipho's house.]
Demipho and Geta appear in a brief scene, in which the former grumblingly comments upon the bargain which they have just made with Phormio. He disappears into his brother's house. Geta, left alone, soliloquizes upon the situation and sums it up so far as it is known to him. As he disappears into Demipho's house, the latter is seen coming out of his brother's house with his brother's wife, Nausistrata, whom in fulfilment of his promise he is taking in to see Phanium in order to reconcile the bride to the new arrangements that have been made for her.
And just at this moment Chremes comes rushing out of his brother's house; he calls to Demipho, not seeing in his excitement that Nausistrata is also on the stage.
Chr. Say, Demipho! Have you paid the money yet? Dem. Yes, I've tended to that. Chr. Well, I wish you hadn't. [Aside as he sees his wife]. Gracious! There's my wife! I almost said too much. Dem. Why do you wish it, Chremes? Chr. O, that's all right. Dem. What do you mean? Have you talked with the girl on whose account I'm taking Nausistrata in? Chr. Yes, I've had a talk with her. Dem. Well, what does she say? Chr. She can't be disturbed. Dem. Why can't she? Chr. O, because—they're so fond of each other. Dem. What difference does that make to us? Chr. A great deal. And besides, I've found that she's related to us, after all. Dem. What's that? You're off your base. Chr. No, I'm not. I know what I'm talking about. I remember all about it now. Dem. Surely, you are crazy. Naus. I beg you won't do any harm to a relative. Dem. She's no relative. Chr. Don't say that. She gave the wrong name for her father. That's where you make your mistake. Dem. Nonsense! Didn't she know her own father? Chr. Yes, she knew him. Dem. Well, then, why didn't she tell his right name? Chr. [apart to Demipho, in low, desperate tones]. Won't you ever let up? Won't you understand? Dem. How can I, if you tell me nothing? Chr. O, you'll be the death of me. Naus. I wonder what it's all about. Dem. I'll be blest if I know. Chr. Do you want to know? I swear to you there's no one nearer to her than you and I. Dem. Good gracious! Let's go to her, then. Let's all together get to the bottom of this business. [He starts toward his house with Nausistrata]. Chr. I say, Demipho! Dem. Well, what now? Chr. [angrily]. Have you so little confidence in me as that? Dem. Do you want me to take your word for it? Do you want me to seek no further in the matter? All right, so be it. But what about the daughter of our friend? What's to become of her? Chr. She'll be all right. Dem. Are we to drop her, then? Chr. Why not? Dem. And is Phanium to remain? Chr. Just so. Dem. Well, Nausistrata, I guess we will excuse you. [Exit Nausistrata into her own house]. Now, Chremes, what in the world is all this about? Chr. Is that door tight shut? Dem. Yes. Chr. [leading his brother well out of earshot of the house]. O Jupiter! The gods are on our side. My daughter I have found—married—to your son! Dem. What? How can that be? Chr. It isn't safe to talk about it here. Dem. Well, go inside then. Chr. But see here, I don't want even our sons to find this out. [They go into Demipho's house.]
Antipho has seen Phædria's business happily settled, and now comes in, feeling very gloomy about his own affairs. His deep dejection serves as a happy contrast to the fortunate turn of his affairs which we have just witnessed. In his unsettled state he starts off to find the faithful Geta, when Phormio comes on the stage, in high spirits over his success in cheating the old men out of their money in behalf of Phædria. It is his own rôle now, he says, to keep well in the background. Now the door of Demipho's house opens and out rushes Geta, shouting and gesticulating:
O luck! O great good luck! How suddenly have you heaped your choicest gifts on my master Antipho this day! Ant. [apart]. What can he mean? Ge. And freed us all from fear! But what am I stopping here for? I'll throw my cloak over my shoulder and hurry up and find the man, that he may know how things have turned out. Ant. [aside]. Do you know what this fellow is talking about? Pho. No, do you? Ant. No. Pho. No more do I. Ge. I'll run over to Dorio's house. They are there now. Ant. [calling]. Hello, Geta! Ge. [without looking back]. Hello yourself! That's an old trick, to call a fellow back when he's started to run. Ant. I say, Geta! Ge. Keep it up; you won't catch me with your mean trick. Ant. Won't you stop? Ge. You go hang. Ant. That's what will happen to you, you rogue, unless you hold on. Ge. This fellow must be one of the family by the way he threatens. But isn't it the man I'm after—the very man? Come here right off. Ant. What is it? Ge. O, of all men alive you are the luckiest! There's no doubt about it, Antipho, you are the pet child of heaven. Ant. I wish I were. But please tell me how I am to believe it. Ge. Isn't it enough if I say that you are fairly dripping with joy? Ant. You're just killing me. Pho. [coming forward]. Why don't you quit your big talk, Geta, and tell us your news. Ge. O, you were there, were you, Phormio? Pho. Yes, I was; but hurry up. Ge. Well, then, listen. Just now, after we gave you the money in the Forum, we went straight home; and then my master sent me in to your wife. Ant. What for? Ge. Never mind that now, Antipho; it has nothing to do with this story. When I am about to enter the woman's apartments, the slave-boy Mida runs up to me, plucks me by the coat and pulls me back. I look around, and ask him what he does that for; he says, it's against orders for any one to go to the young mistress. "Sophrona has just taken the old man's brother Chremes in there," he says, "and he's in there with 'em now." As soon as I heard that, I tiptoed toward the door of the room—got there, stood still, held my breath and put my ear to the key-hole. So I listened as hard as I could to catch what they said. Ant. Good for you, Geta! Ge. And then I heard the finest piece of news. I declare I almost shouted for joy! Ant. What for? Ge. What do you think? Ant. I haven't the slightest idea. Ge. But, I tell you, it was the grandest thing! Your uncle turns out to be—the father of—Phanium—your wife! Ant. What? How can that be? Ge. He lived with her mother secretly in Lemnos. Pho. Nonsense! Wouldn't the girl have known her own father? Ge. Be sure there's some explanation of it, Phormio. You don't suppose that I could hear everything that passed between them, from outside the door? Ant. Now I think of it, I too have had some hint of that story. Ge. Now I'll give you still further proof: pretty soon your uncle comes out of the room and leaves the house, and before long he comes back with your father, and they both go in. And now they both say that you may keep her. In short, I was sent to hunt you up and bring you to them. Ant. [all excitement]. Well, why don't you do it then? What are you waiting for? Ge. Come along. Ant. O my dear Phormio, good-by! Pho. Good-by, my boy. I declare, I'm mighty glad it's turned out well for you.
Antipho and Geta hurry away to Demipho's house, while Phormio retires up a convenient alley to await future developments.
The only problem now remaining on Phormio's side is how to keep the money that has been given him by the old men, so that Phædria may not be again embarrassed; on the side of the old men the problem is to get back their money. How the poet treats us to the liveliest scene of all after the more important matters have been settled, is now to be seen. Demipho and Chremes come upon the stage, congratulating each other upon the happy turn which their affairs have taken.
Dem. I ought to thank the gods, as indeed I do, that these matters have turned out so well for us, brother. Chr. Isn't she a fine girl, just as I told you? Dem. Yes, indeed. But now we must find Phormio as soon as possible, so as to get our six hundred dollars back again before he makes away with it.
Phormio now walks across the stage in a lordly way without seeming to see the old men, and goes straight to Demipho's door, upon which he raps loudly and calls to the attendant within:
If Demipho is at home. I want to see him, that— Dem. [stepping up from without]. Why, we were just coming to see you, Phormio. Pho. On the same business, perhaps? Dem. Very likely. Pho. I supposed so. But why were you coming to me? It's absurd. Were you afraid that I wouldn't do what I had promised? No fear of that. For, however poor I may be, I have always been particularly careful to keep my word. And so I have come to tell you, Demipho, that I am ready; whenever you wish, give me my wife. For I put all my own private considerations aside, as was quite right, when I saw that you wanted this so much. Dem. [who does not know quite what to say]. But my brother here has asked me not to give her to you. "For," says he, "what a scandal there will be if you do that! At the time when she could have been given to you honorably it was not done; and now it would be a disgrace to cast her off." Almost the same arguments that you yourself urged upon me not long ago. Pho. Well, you have got gall! Dem. What do you mean? Pho. Can't you see? I can't even marry that other girl now; for with what face could I go back to her after I had once thrown her over? Chr. [prompting Demipho, sotto voce]. "Then I find that Antipho is unwilling to to let his wife go"—tell him that. Dem. And then I find that my son objects to letting his wife go. But come right over to the Forum, if you please, Phormio, and sign this money back to me again. Pho. How can I, when I have already used it to pay my debts with? Dem. Well, what then? Pho. [pompously]. If you are willing to give me the girl you promised for my wife, I'll marry her: but if you want her to stay with you, why, the dowry stays with me, Demipho. For it isn't right that I should lose this on your account, when it was for the sake of your honor that I broke with the other girl who was offering the same dowry. Dem. Go be hanged, with your big talk, you jail-bird! Do you suppose that I don't see through you and your tricks? Pho. Look out, I'm getting hot. Dem. Do you mean to say you would marry this girl if we gave her to you? Pho. Just try me and see. Dem. [with a sneer]. O yes, your scheme is to have my son live with her at your house. Pho. [indignantly]. What do you mean? Dem. Come, give me that money. Pho. Come, give me my wife. Dem. [laying hands on him]. You come along to court with me. Pho. You'd better look out! If you don't stop— Dem. What will you do? Pho. I? [Turning to Chremes]. Perhaps you think that I take only poor girls under my protection. I'll have you know I sometimes stand as patron to girls with dowries too. Chr. [with a guilty start]. What's that to us? Pho. O nothing. I knew a woman here once whose husband had— Chr. O! Dem. What's that? Pho. Another wife in Lemnos— Chr. I'm a dead man. Pho. By whom he had a daughter; and he's bringing her up on the quiet. Chr. I'm buried. Pho. And these very things I'll tell his real wife. Chr. Good gracious, don't do that! Pho. Oho! You were the man, were you, Chremes? Dem. [in a rage]. How the villain gammons us! Chr. You may go. Pho. The deuce you say! Chr. Why, what do you mean? We are willing that you should keep the money. Pho. Yes, I see. But what, a plague! do you mean? Do you think you can guy me by changing your minds like a pair of silly boys? "I won't, I will—I will, I won't, again—take it, give it back—what's said is unsaid—what's been agreed on is no go"—that's your style. [He turns to go away]. Chr. [apart]. How in the world did he find that out? Dem. I don't know, but I'm sure I never told any one. Chr. Lord! it seems like a judgment on me! Pho. [gleefully, aside]. I've put a spoke in their wheel! Dem. [aside]. See here, Chremes, shall we let this rascal cheat us out of our money and laugh in our faces besides? I'd rather die first. Now make up your mind to be manly and resolute. You see that your secret is out, and that you can't keep it from your wife any longer. Now what she is bound to learn from others it will be much better for her to hear from your own lips. And then we will have the whip hand of this dirty fellow. Pho. [overhearing these words, aside]. Tut! tut! Unless I look out, I'll be in a hole. They're coming at me hard. Chr. But I am afraid that she will never forgive me. Dem. O, cheer up, man. I'll make you solid with her again, more especially since the mother of this girl is dead and gone. Pho. Is that your game? I tell you, Demipho, it's not a bit to your brother's advantage that you are stirring me up. [To Chremes]. Look here, you! When you have followed your own devices abroad, and haven't thought enough of your own wife to keep you from sinning most outrageously against her, do you expect to come home and make it all up with a few tears? I tell you, I'll make her so hot against you that you can't put out her wrath, not if you dissolve in tears. Dem. Confound the fellow! Was ever a man treated so outrageously? Chr. [all in a tremble]. I'm so rattled that I don't know what to do with the fellow. Dem. [grasping Phormio's collar]. Well I do. We'll go straight to court. Pho. To court, is it? [Dragging off toward Chremes' house]. This way, if you please. Dem. [hurrying toward his own house]. Chremes, you catch him and hold him, while I call my slaves out. Chr. [holding off]. I can't do it alone; you come here and help.
Demipho comes back and lays hold of Phormio, and all engage in a violent struggle mingled with angry words and blows. Phormio is getting the worst of it, when he says:
Now I'll have to use my voice. Nausistrata! Come out here! Chr. Stop his mouth. Dem. [trying to do so, without success]. See how strong the rascal is. Pho. I say, Nausistrata! Chr. Won't you keep still? Pho. Not much.
Nausistrata now appears at the door of her house; Phormio, seeing her, says, panting but gleeful:
Here's where my revenge comes in. Naus. Who's calling me? [Seeing the disordered and excited condition of the men]. Why, what's all this row about, husband? Who is this man? [Chremes remains tongue-tied]. Won't you answer me? Pho. How can he answer you, when, by George, he doesn't know where he is? Chr. [trembling with fear]. Don't you believe a word he says. Pho. Go, touch him; if he isn't frozen stiff, you may strike me dead. Chr. It isn't so. Naus. What is this man talking about, then? Pho. You shall hear; just listen. Chr. You aren't going to believe him? Naus. Good gracious, how can I believe one who hasn't said anything yet? Pho. The poor fellow is crazy with fear. Naus. Surely it's not for nothing that you are so afraid. Chr. [with chattering teeth]. Wh-wh-who's afraid? Pho. Well then, since you're not afraid, and what I say is nothing, you tell the story yourself. Dem. Scoundrel! Shall he speak at your bidding? Pho. [contemptuously]. O you! you've done a fine thing for your brother. Naus. Husband, won't you speak to me? Chr. Well—Naus. Well? Chr. There's no need of my talking. Pho. You're right; but there's need of her knowing. In Lemnos— Chr. O don't! Pho. unbeknown to you— Chr. O me! Pho. he took another wife. Naus.[screaming]. My husband! Heaven forbid. Pho. But it's so, just the same. Naus. O wretched me! Pho. And by her he had a daughter—also unbeknown to you. Naus. By all the gods, a shameful and evil deed! Pho. But it's so, just the same. Naus. It's the most outrageous thing I ever heard of. [Turning her back on Chremes]. Demipho, I appeal to you; for I am too disgusted to speak to him again. Was this the meaning of those frequent journeys and long stays at Lemnos? Was this why my rents ran down so? Dem. Nausistrata, I don't deny that he has been very much to blame in this matter; but is that any reason why you should not forgive him? Pho. He's talking for the dead. Dem. For it wasn't through any scorn or dislike of you that he did it. And besides, the other woman is dead who was the cause of all this trouble. So I beg you to bear this with equanimity as you do other things. Naus. Why should I bear it with equanimity? I wish this were the end of the wretched business; but why should I hope it will be? Am I to think that he will be better now he's old? But he was old before, if that makes any difference. Or am I any more beautiful and attractive now than I was, Demipho? What assurance can you give me that this won't happen again?
Phormio now comes to the front of the stage and announces in a loud official voice to the audience:
All who want to view the remains of Chremes, now come forward! The time has come.—That's the way I do them up. Come along now, if any one else wants to stir up Phormio. I'll fix him just like this poor wretch here.—But there! he may come back to favor now. I've had revenge enough. She has something to nag him with as long as he lives. Naus. But I suppose I have deserved it. Why should I recount to you, Demipho, all that I have been to this man? Dem. I know it all, Nausistrata, as well as you. Naus. Well, have I deserved this treatment? Dem. By no means! but, since what's been done can't be undone by blaming him, pardon him. He confesses his sin, he prays for pardon, he promises never to do so again: what more do you want? Pho. [aside]. Hold on here; before she pardons him, I must look out for myself and Phædria. Say, Nausistrata, wait a minute before you answer him. Naus. Well? Pho. I tricked Chremes out of six hundred dollars; I gave the money to your son, and he has used it to buy his wife with. Chr. [angrily]. How? What do you say? Naus. [to Chremes]. How now? Does it seem to you a shameful thing for your son, a young man, to have one wife, when you, an old man, have had two? Shame on you! With what face will you rebuke him? Answer me that? [Chremes slinks back without a word]. Dem. He will do as you say. Naus. Well, then, here is my decision: I'll neither pardon him, nor promise anything, nor give you any answer at all, until I have seen my son. And I shall do entirely as he says. Pho. You are a wise woman, Nausistrata. Naus. [to Chremes]. Does that suit you? Chr. Does it? Indeed and truly I'm getting off well—[aside] and better than I expected. Naus. [to Phormio] Come, tell me your name. What is it? Pho. Mine? It's Phormio; I'm a great friend to your family, and especially to Phædria. Naus. Phormio, I vow to you I am at your service after this, to do and to say, so far as I can, just what you want. Pho. I thank you kindly, lady. Naus. No, upon my word, you've earned it. Pho. Do you want to begin right off, Nausistrata, and do something that will both make me happy and bring tears to your husband's eyes? Naus. That I do. Pho. Well, then, invite me to dinner. Naus. With all my heart, I do. Dem. Come then, let's go inside. Chr. Agreed; but where is Phædria, my judge? Pho. I'll soon have him here.
And so ends this merry play, as the whole party moves toward Chremes' house, where, let us hope, all family differences were forgotten in the good dinner awaiting them.
Meanwhile the man before the curtain reminds us that we still have a duty to perform:
Fare you well, my friends, and give us your applause.
The Roman Drama, as illustrated by the works of the early tragedians, from 240 to the first century B. C.: Andronicus Nævius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius. The later tragedians to the close of the first century A. D.: Pollio, Varius, Ovid, Maternus, Secundus, Lucan, and Seneca. The writers of comedy, second century B. C.: Plautus and Terence.
1. How did the civilization of Rome in 454 B. C. compare with that of Greece? 2. How did Rome's conquest of the Greek colonies in Italy help the development of Italian literature? 3. How did the First Punic War affect this development? 4. Who was the "first professor of Latin on record"? 5. From what sources were the subjects of the old Roman tragedies taken? 6. How did the Roman spirit differ from that of the Greek? 7. Why did the Romans fail to develop a truly national tragedy? 8. What four names besides that of Andronicus are representative of the old Roman tragedy? 9. What qualities of Accius do we find in the fragments of his writings which remain? 10. What is true of the writers of tragedy after Accius? 11. Why have the tragedies of Seneca special interest? 12. What are their defects? 13. What their strong qualities? 14. Why did the plays of Seneca have such an influence in England? 15. What is the outline of the story of Medea? 16. How does it illustrate Seneca's defects of style? 17. Quote passages which illustrate his skill in epigram. 18. In graphic description. 19. In pathos and passion. 20. In subtile analysis of character and motive. 21. Describe the three great types of Greek comedy. 22. What result followed the attempts of Nævius to write in the spirit of Old Comedy? 23. What two writers alone of comedy are known to us from their works? 24. What are the chief characteristics of Phormio of Terence?
1. OLD ROMAN TRAGEDY.
2. LATER ROMAN TRAGEDY AND SENECA.
3. ROMAN COMEDY.
What prophecy was to the ancient Hebrews, the drama to the Greeks, the purpose-novel and the newspaper editorial to our own day, satire was to the Roman of the republic and the early empire—the moral mentor of contemporary society. This conception of the prophet as the preacher of his day is often obscured by the conception of him as one who could reveal the future; but a closer study of the life and times of these great religious leaders shows them to have been men profoundly interested in current life, who gave all their energies to the task of raising the standard of the religious and social thought of their own day. The function of Greek tragedy was ever religious. It had its very origin in the worship of the gods; and the presence of the altar as the center of the strophic movements of the chorus was a constant reminder that the drama was dealing with the highest problems of human life. Added to the general religious atmosphere of tragedy were the direct moral teachings, the highest sentiments of ancient culture, which constantly sounded through the play. Greek comedy, especially of the old and middle type, also served a distinct moral purpose in society. It did not, indeed, sound the same lofty notes as did its sister tragedy; but it was the lash which was mercilessly applied, at first with bolder license to individual sinners in high places, and afterward in a more guarded manner to the vices and follies of men in general. In either case, the powerful stimulus of fear of public ridicule and castigation must have had a real effect upon the manners and morals of the ancient Greeks.
When we turn to our own time, we find the literary preacher at the novelist's desk or in the editor's chair. The influence of the purpose-novel and the editorial can hardly be overestimated. In the generation immediately preceding our own, a very direct influence upon the public social life of his day was wielded by the pen of Dickens. His eyes were open to abuses of every kind—in educational, charitable, legal, and criminal institutions; and he used every weapon known to literary art to right these wrongs. In this task he was ably assisted by men like Thackeray, Reade, Kingsley, and others. And there can be little doubt that the improved conditions in the England of to-day are due in generous measure to the work of these novelist preachers. The editor's function is still more intimately and constantly to hold the mirror up to society, revealing and reproving its faults. And to-day there is probably no more potent force acting directly upon the opinions and conduct of men than the daily editorial.
Now, the literary weapon of the Roman moralist was satire. It flourished in all periods of Roman literature, both the word satire and the thing itself being of Latin origin. In other fields of literature there is a large imitation of Greek models. Roman tragedy was at first but little more than a translation of the Greek plays, and the same is true of comedy. Cato, Varro, Vergil, and the rest who wrote of agriculture, had a Greek prototype in Hesiod, who in his Works and Days had treated of the same theme; Lucretius was the professed disciple and imitator of Epicurus; Cicero, in oratory, had ever before his eyes his Demosthenes, and in philosophy his Plato and Aristotle; Vergil had his Homer in epic and his Theocritus in pastoral; Horace, in his lyrics, is Greek through and through, both in form and spirit, for Pindar and Anacreon, Sappho, Alcæus, Archilochus, and the whole tuneful line are forever echoing through his verse. Ovid, in his greatest work, only succeeded in setting Greek mythology in a frame of Latin verse, though he told those fascinating stories as they had never been told before; while the historians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers—all had their Greek originals and models.
But in the field of satire the Romans struck out a new literary path for themselves. Even here we are bound to admit that the spirit is Greek, the spirit of the old comedy, of bold assault upon the evils of government, of society, of individuals. But still satire, as a form of literature, is the Roman's own; and beginning with Lucilius, the father of satire in the modern sense, the long line of satirists who followed his lead sufficiently attests the strong hold which this particular form of literature gained upon the Roman mind.
We have said that Lucilius was the father of satire in the modern sense; but the name at least, together with many of the features of his satire and that of his successors, reaches far back of him into the recesses of an ancient Italian literature, long since vanished, of which we can gain only the faintest hints. These hints as to the character of that ancient forerunner of the Lucilian satire come to us from two sources—the discussions of the Latin grammarians as to the derivation of the word satura (satire), and the remote reflections and imitations of the old satura in later works.
These far-off imitations give some idea of the character of the genuine satire of the earliest time,—that of a medley of verse of different meters, intermingled with prose, introducing words and phrases of other languages, and treating of a great variety of subjects. This literary medley or jumble probably had its origin in the farm or vineyard, where, in celebration of the "harvest home" or other joyous festival, it would be brought out, perhaps accompanied by some kind of musical recitation, and of course loaded with the rude wit of the time.
Such, then, we may suppose, was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy. But alas for any real personal knowledge which we may gain of it, those merry, clumsy jests, those rustic songs, are vanished with the simple sun-loving race which produced them. The olive orchards still wave gray-green upon the sunny slopes, the vineyards still cling to every hillside and nestle in every valley; but the ancient peasantry who once called this land their home, whose simple annals old Cato loved to tell, and who could have given us material for precious volumes upon the folk-lore and customs of their times, have gone, and left scarcely a trace of their rude, unlettered literature.
The first tangible literary link that binds us to the old Roman satire is found in the poet Ennius, who flourished about two hundred years before Christ. The story of his life is outlined elsewhere in this book. His satires seem to have been a sort of literary miscellany which included such of his writings as could not conveniently be classified elsewhere.
The merest handful of fragments of these satires remains, although there is good ground for believing that there were six books of these. No adequate judgment can therefore be formed as to their character. It can with safety be said, however, that they were in a sense the connecting link between the early satire and the literary satire of the modern type. As has been said above, they were a literary miscellany or medley, and as such contain some salient features of their predecessors; and it is highly probable that they contained attacks upon the vices and follies of the time, in which respect they looked forward to a more complete development in Lucilian satire.
A most interesting fragment of the Epicharmus describes the nature of the gods according to the philosophy of Ennius:
There was a satire by Ennius, as Quintilian tells us, containing a dialogue between Life and Death; but of this we have not a remnant. He also introduced the fables of Æsop into his writings. The following is the moral which he deduces from the story of the lark and the farmers—a moral which Aulus Gellius assures us that it would be worth our while to take well to heart. It may be freely translated as follows:
Surely Miles Standish might have gained from his Ennius, as well as from his Cæsar, that famous motto:
We may leave our present notice of Ennius with a glance at the epitaph which he wrote for himself. It is classed with his epigrams, but it may properly be considered in connection with the medley of his satires. In it he claims that unsubstantial immortality of remembrance and of mention among men which is even now, as we write and read, being vouchsafed to him.
We have seen that the spirit of invective in Lucilius, which became in his hands the spirit of satire, is traceable to the old Greek comedy. The poetic form (the dactylic hexameter in which he wrote twenty of the thirty books of his satire) had already been naturalized in Roman literature by Ennius in his great epic poem. But to Lucilius is due the credit of being the first to incarnate this spirit in this form, and thus to establish an entirely new type in literature.
His satires contain invectives against luxury, avarice, and kindred vices, and prevalent superstitions; an attack upon the rich; ridicule of certain rhetorical affectations; grammatical remarks, and criticisms on art; observations upon the Stoic philosophy; the poet's own political experiences and expectations, also other anecdotes and incidents gathered from his own experience; an interesting account of a journey to Sicily, from which Horace probably obtained the model for his famous journey to Brundisium. These and many other subjects filled his pages, and suggest by their wide range the old-time medley-satire.
The poet lived in stirring times. Born in 180 B. C., eleven years before the death of Ennius, he died about 103 B. C., three years after Cicero's birth and the year before the birth of Cæsar. He was thus contemporary with some of the most important and striking events in Roman history—the third Macedonian War; the Third Punic War; the Numantian War, in which he himself served as a knight under Scipio Africanus in 133 B. C.; the troubled times of the two Gracchi; the Jugurthine War, and the rise of Caius Marius. He was of equestrian rank, and lived on terms of intimacy with some of the best men at Rome, notably the younger Scipio and Lælius. With such backing as this, of family and friends, he was in good position to direct his satire against the wicked and unscrupulous men of his time, regardless of their rank, without fear or favor.
What did the Romans themselves think of Lucilius? To judge from the frequency and character of their references to him, the poet must have made a profound impression upon his countrymen. A study of these references shows that in the main this impression was favorable. He is doctus, that is, profoundly learned in the wisdom of the Greeks; and, according to Aulus Gellius, he was equally well versed in the language and literature of his own land. He is to Juvenal the magnus, the "father of satire," who has well-nigh preempted the field, to follow whom requires elaborate explanation and apology on the part of the would-be satirist. He is to Cicero perurbanus, preëminently endowed with that subtle something in spirit and expression which marks at once the polished man of the world. He is to Fronto remarkable for his gracilitas, that plainness, directness, and simplicity of style which, joined with the "harshness" and "roughness" of his "eager" spirit and of his righteous indignation, made his satire such a formidable weapon against the vices of his day. Persius says of him that he "slashed the citizens of his time and broke his jaw-teeth on them." And the testimony of Juvenal is still more striking: "But whenever Lucilius with drawn sword fiercely rages, his hearer, whose soul is cold within him because of his crimes, blushes with shame, and his heart quakes in silent fear because of his guilty secrets."
Like those of so many of his predecessors in literature, the works of Lucilius remain to us only in the merest fragments. For these we are indebted largely to the Latin grammarians, who quote freely from him, usually in illustration of the meaning of some word which they may be discussing. A comparatively small number of the fragments have come down to us through quotations on account of their sentiment, as when Cicero says: "Lucilius used to say that he did not write to be read by either of the extremes of society, because one would not understand him, and the other knew more than he did."
We shall now examine a few of the more important of the fragments which have been preserved to us. The following has been thought to be a vivid picture of the unworthy struggle of life as he saw it in the Rome of his own time. Lactantius, however, whose quotation of the fragment has saved it, thinks that the poet is portraying in a more general way the unhappy, unrestful life of mankind, unrelieved, as Lucretius would say, by the comforting reflections of philosophy.
But now, from morning to night, on holidays and work days, in the same place, the whole day long, high and low, all busy themselves in the forum and never depart. To one and the same pursuit and practice have they all devoted themselves: to cheat as guardedly as possible, to strive craftily, to vie in flattery, to make a pretense of being good men, to lay snares just as if they were all the foes of all.
There was a certain Titus Albucius, who, it seems, was so enamored with everything Greek that he was continually affecting the manners and language of that country. Such running after foreign customs and speech has not yet wholly disappeared. This weakness is the object of the poet's wit in the following passage, in which he tells how Scævola, the proprætor of Asia, once "took down" the silly Albucius in Athens:
A Greek, Albucius, you would be called, and not a Roman and a Sabine, a fellow-townsman of Pontius and Tritanius, though they are both illustrious men, and first-rate standard-bearers. And so, as prætor at Athens, when I meet you, I salute you in the foreign style which you are so fond of: "χᾶιρε!"[A] I say; and my lictors and all my retinue inquire: "χᾶιρε?" Fie, Albucius! for this thou art my country's foe, and my own enemy!
[A] Hail.
The fourth satire, says an ancient scholiast, was an attack upon luxury and the vices of the rich. The following passage might well have been the opening lines of this satire, representing Lælius as exclaiming in praise of a vegetable diet and against gluttony:
over his mess of sorrel Lælius the wise used to cry out, chiding one by one the gluttons of our day.
And that he did not hesitate to call the glutton and spendthrift by name is shown by this fragment, which is evidently a continuation of the same diatribe:
"O Publius Gallonius, thou spendthrift," said he, "thou art a wretched fellow. Never in all thy life hast thou dined well, though all thy wealth on that lobster and that sturgeon thou consumest."
The last selection which we shall present from Lucilius is the longest extant fragment. The passage is a somewhat elaborate definition of virtue as the old Roman understood it. We use the translation of Sellar.
Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give their true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among which we live. The virtue of a man is to understand the real meaning of each thing: to understand what is right, useful, honorable for him; what things are good, what bad, what is unprofitable, base, dishonorable; to know the due limit and measure in making money; to give its proper worth to wealth; to assign what is really due to office; to be a foe and enemy of bad men and bad principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their friend through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our country's weal as the chief good; next to that the weal of our parents; third and last, our own weal.
Horace well sustains the character of preacher whose function it has already been said that satire performs. He found in his world the same frail human nature which had aroused the righteous scorn of Lucilius, and had led him to those bitter attacks upon the follies of his time for which his satire was justly dreaded. But Horace is cast in a different mold from Lucilius. While he sees just as clearly the shortcomings of society, he has a realizing sense that he himself is a part of that same society, guilty of the same sins, subject to the same criticism.
This consciousness of common frailty leads to moderation on the part of the preacher. He manifests a kindly sense of human brotherhood for better or for worse, which forms one of his most charming characteristics, and differentiates him from his great predecessor as well as from those who followed in the field of satire. It is true that Horace is sufficiently strenuous and severe in his polemics against the prevalent frailties of society as he saw them; but he has a habit of taking his hearers into his confidence at the end of his lecture, and reassuring them by some whimsical jest or the information that the sermon was meant as much for himself as for them. He had no idea of reforming society from the outside as from a separate world; but he proceeded upon the principle that, as real reformation and progress must be the result of reformed internal conditions, so the reformer himself must be a sympathetic part of his world.
It was in a homely and wholesome school that our poet learned his moral philosophy. In a glowing tribute of filial affection for his father, he tells us how that worthy man, who was himself only a freedman—a humble collector of debts by trade, or possibly a fishmonger, away down in his provincial home in Apulia—decided that his son should have a better chance in life than had fallen to his own lot. The local school in the boy's native village of Venusia, where the big-boned sons of retired centurions gained their meager education, was not good enough for our young man. He must to Rome and afterward to Athens, and have all the chances which were open to the sons of the noblest families of the land. And so we have the pleasing picture of the sensible old father, not sending but taking his boy to Rome, where he was the young student's constant companion, his "guide, philosopher, and friend," attending him in all his ways, both in school and out.
Horace tells us how this practical old father taught him to avoid the vices of the day. No fine-spun, theoretical philosophy for him; but practical illustration drove every lesson home. The poet dwells with pleasure upon this element in his education.
That Horace was a worthy son of a worthy father is proved in many ways, but in none more clearly than when, in after years, as a welcome member of the most exclusive social set in Rome, he affectionately recalls his father's training, and tells his high-born friends that, if he had the chance to choose his ancestry, he would not change one circumstance of his birth.
The practice of personal observations of the life around him, which he learned from his father, the poet carried with him through life, and is the explanation of the intensely practical and realistic character of his satire. See him as he comes home at night and sits alone recalling the varied happenings of the day. These are some of the thoughts, as he himself tells us, which come to him at such times, and find half-unconscious audible expression:
Now that's the better course.—I should live better if I acted along that line.—So-and-so didn't do the right thing that time.—I wonder if I shall ever be foolish enough to do the like.
It is after such meditations as these that he takes up his tablets and outlines his satires. We are reminded in this of the practice of the great Cæsar, who is said to have recalled, as he rested in his tent at night, the stirring events of each day, and to have noted these for his history.
This method of composition from practical observation explains many peculiarities of the style of Horace's satires. They are absolutely unpretentious, prevailingly conversational in tone, abounding in homely similes and colloquialisms, pithy anecdotes, familiar proverbs, and references to current people and events which make up the popular gossip of the day. He also has an embarrassing habit of suddenly turning his "thou-art-the-man" search-light upon us just when we are most enjoying his castigation of our neighbors. He employs burlesque and irony also among his assortment of satiric weapons. He is, above all, personal, rarely allowing the discourse to stray from the personality of himself and his audience.
The following outline of one of his "sermons" will afford a good illustration of his style and method of handling a discourse. Its subject is the sin and folly of discontent and greed for gain, a sin which he frequently denounces, not alone in his satires, but in his odes as well. This satire is addressed by way of compliment to his patron Mæcenas, and is placed at the beginning of his two books of satires.
How strange it is that no one lives content with his lot, but must always be envying his neighbor! The soldier would be a merchant, the merchant a soldier; the lawyer would be a farmer, the farmer a lawyer. But these malcontents are not in earnest in this prayer for a change; should some god grant their petition, they would one and all refuse to accept the boon.
The excuse of those who toil early and late is, that when they have "made their pile" and have a modest competency for a peaceful old age, they will retire. They say that they seek gold only as a means to an end, and cite the example of the thrifty ant. But herein they show their insincerity; for, while the ant lives upon its hoarded wealth in winter, and stops its active life, the gain-getter never stops so long as there is more to be gotten.
"But," you say, "it is so delightful to have a whole river to drink from." Why so? You can't possibly drink it all, and besides, the river water is apt to be muddy. I prefer to drink from a clear little spring myself. And then, too, you are liable to be drowned in your attempt to drink from the river.
"But one must have money. A man's social standing depends upon his bank account." It's useless to argue with such a man. He can see nothing but the almighty dollar. If he did but know it, he is simply another Tantalus, surrounded by riches which he cannot, or, in his case, will not enjoy. And besides he does not really care for popular opinion as he professes to do. Poor wretch! he has all the care and none of the pleasures of his wealth. Heaven keep me poor in such possessions!
You say that money secures help in sickness? But such help! Your greed has alienated all who would naturally love and care for you; and you must not be surprised if you do not keep the love which you are doing nothing to preserve.
No, no! away with your greed; cease to think that lack of money is necessarily an evil; and beware lest your fate at last be miserably to lose your all by a violent death. No, I am not asking you to be a spendthrift. Only seek a proper mean between this and the miser's character.
But, to get back to the original proposition, no one is content with his lot, but is constantly trying to surpass his fellows. And so the jostling struggle for existence goes on, and rare indeed is it to find a man who leaves this life satisfied that he has had his share of its blessings.
With this conclusion another man would have been content. But Horace somehow feels that he has been a little hard upon his kind, and by way of softening down the seriousness of the lecture, and at the same time saving himself from the fault of verbosity, which he detests, he ends with a characteristic jibe at the wordy Stoic philosophers:
But enough of this. Lest you think that I have stolen the notes of the blear-eyed Crispinus, I'll say no more.
In another satire, Horace rebukes the fault of censoriousness. His text practically is: "Judge not that ye be not judged." With characteristic indirect approach to his subject, he begins with a tirade against one Tigellius, until we begin to be indignant with this censorious preacher; when suddenly he whips around to the other side, assumes the rôle of one of his hearers, and puts the question to himself: "Have you no faults of your own?" And then we see that he has only been playing a part, and giving us an objective illustration of how it sounds when the other man finds fault, thus exposing to themselves those who, habitually blind to their own faults, are quick to discover those of other men.
The dramatic element, which seems to have been inherent in satire from the beginning, is one of the most noticeable characteristics of style in the satires of Horace. Indeed, his favorite method of expression is the dialogue, carried on either between himself and some other person, real or imaginary, or between two characters of his creation, whom he introduces as best fitted to conduct the discussion of a theme.
The most dramatic of his satires is that in which he introduces the bore. In this, the poem consists solely of dialogue and descriptions of action which may be taken as stage direction. It therefore needs but slight change to give it perfect dramatic form. The problem of the episode is how to get rid of the bore and at the same time keep within the bounds of gentlemanly conduct. This famous satire is given below in full.
THE BORE: A DRAMATIC SATIRE IN ONE ACT
The persons of the drama: Horace; the Bore; Aristius Fuscus, a friend of Horace; an adversary of the Bore; Horace's slave-boy; a street mob.
Scene: The Sacred Way in Rome, extending on during the action into the Forum.
[Enter Horace, walking along the street in deep thought. To him enters Bore, who grasps his hand with great show of affection and slaps him familiarly on the shoulder.]
Bore. How are you, my dear old fellow? Horace [stiffly]. Fairly well, as times go. I trust all is well with you? [As the Bore follows him up, Horace attempts to forestall conversation, and to dismiss his companion with the question of formal leave:] There's nothing I can do for you is there? Bore. Yes, make my acquaintance. I am really worth knowing; I'm a scholar. Horace. Really? You will be more interesting to me on that account, I am sure. [He tries desperately to get rid of the Bore, goes faster, stops, whispers in the slave-boy's ear; while the sweat pours down his face, which he mops desperately. He exclaims aside:] O Bolanus, how I wish I had your hot temper! Bore [chatters empty nothings, praises the scenery, the buildings, etc. As Horace continues silent, he says:] You're terribly anxious to get rid of me; I've seen that all along. But it's no use, I'll stay by you, I'll follow you. Where are you going from here? Horace [trying to discourage him]. There's no need of your going out of your way. I'm going to visit a man—an entire stranger to you. He lies sick at his house away over beyond the Tiber, near Cæsar's gardens. Bore. O, I have nothing else to do, and I'm a good walker. I'll just go along with you. [As Horace keeps on doggedly in sullen silence, he continues:] Unless I am much mistaken in myself, you will find me a more valuable friend than Viscus or Varius. There's no one can write more poetry in a given time than I, or dance more gracefully; and as for singing, Hermogenes himself would envy me. Horace [interrupting, tries to frighten him off by suggesting that the sick man whom he is going to visit may be suffering from some contagious disease]. Have you a mother or other relative dependent on you? Bore. No, I have no one at all. I've buried every one of them. Horace [aside]. Lucky dogs! Now I'm the only victim left. Finish me up; for a dreadful fate is dogging my steps, which an old Sabine fortune-teller once warned me of when I was a boy. She said: "No poisonous drug shall carry this boy off, nor deadly sword, nor wasting consumption, nor crippling gout; in the fulness of time some chatterbox will talk him to death. So then, if he be wise, when he shall come to man's estate, let him beware of all chatterboxes." [They have now come opposite the Temple of Vesta in the south end of the Forum, near which the courts of justice were held. The hour for opening court has arrived.] Bore [suddenly remembering that he has given bond to appear in a certain suit, and that if he fails to appear this suit will go against him by default]. Won't you kindly attend me here in court a little while? Horace. I can't help you any. Hang it, I'm too tired to stand around here; and I don't know anything about law, anyhow. Besides, I'm in a hurry to get—you know where. Bore. I'm in doubt what to do, whether to leave you or my case. Horace. Leave me, by all means. Bore [after a brief meditation]. No, I don't believe I will. [He takes the lead, and Horace helplessly follows. The Bore starts in on the subject which is uppermost in his mind.] How do you and Mæcenas get on? He's a very exclusive and level-headed fellow, now, isn't he? No one has made a better use of his chances. You would have an excellent assistant in that quarter, one who could ably support you, if only you would introduce yours truly. Strike me dead, if you wouldn't show your heels to all competitors in no time. Horace. Why, we don't live there on any such basis as you seem to think. There is no circle in Rome more free from self-seeking on the part of its members, or more at variance with such a feeling. It makes no difference to me if another man is richer or more learned than I. Every man has his own place there. Bore. You don't really mean that? I can scarcely believe it. Horace. And yet such is the case. Bore. You only make me more eager to be admitted. Horace [with contemptuous sarcasm]. O, you have only to wish it: such is your excellence, you'll be sure to gain your point. To tell the truth, Mæcenas is a soft-hearted fellow, and for this very reason guards the first approach to his friendship more carefully. Bore [taking Horace's suggestion in earnest]. O, I shall keep my eyes open. I'll bribe his servants. And if I don't get in to-day, I'll try again. I'll lie in wait for chances, I'll meet him on the street corners, and walk down town with him. You can't get anything in this life without working for it. [Enter Aristius Fuscus, an intimate friend of Horace. They meet and exchange greetings]. Horace [to Fuscus]. Hello! where do you come from? Fuscus. Where are you going? [Horace slyly plucks his friend's toga, pinches his arm, and tries by nods and winks to get Fuscus to rescue him from the Bore. But Fuscus pretends not to understand.] Horace [to Fuscus]. Didn't you say that you had something to say to me in private? Fuscus. Yes, but I'll tell you some other time. To-day is a Jewish festival. You wouldn't have me insult the Jews, would you? Horace. O, I have no such scruples myself. Fuscus. But I have. I'm just one of the plain people—not as strong-minded as you are. You really must excuse me; I'll tell you some other time. [Fuscus hurries away, with a wicked wink, leaving his friend in the lurch.] Horace [in a despairing aside]. O, to think that so dark a day as this should ever have dawned for me! [At this juncture the Bore's adversary at law comes running up.] The Adversary [to Bore, in a loud voice.] Where are you going, you bail-breaking rascal? [To Horace.] Will you come witness against him? [Horace gives him his ear to touch in token of his assent, and the Bore is hurried off to court, with loud expostulations on both sides, and with the inevitable jeering street crowd following after.] Horace [left alone]. Saved, by the grace of Apollo!
The fourth and tenth satires of the first book are of especial value to us, because they contain Horace's own estimate of his predecessor, Lucilius; answers to popular criticism against the spirit and form of satire; much general literary criticism; and many personal comments by the poet upon his own method and spirit as a satirist. Following is an abstract of the tenth:
Yes, Lucilius is rough—anybody will admit that. I also admit that he is to be praised for his great wit. But wit of itself does not constitute great poetry. There must also be polish, variety of style, sprightliness and versatility. This is what caused the success of the old Greek comedy. "But," you say, "Lucilius was so skilled in mingling Latin and Greek." That, I reply, neither requires any great skill, nor is it a thing to be desired. This last assertion is at once apparent if you take the discussion into other fields of literature than poetry. I myself have been warned by Quirinus not to attempt Greek verse.
I have looked over the literary field and found it occupied by men who could write better than I in each department—comedy, tragedy, epic, pastoral. Satire alone promised success to me; but still I do not profess to excel Lucilius. I freely leave the crown to him.
But for all that I cannot help seeing his faults which I mentioned in my former satire—his extreme verbosity and roughness. In criticizing him I take the same license which he himself used toward his predecessors, and which he would use now toward his own extant works were he alive to-day. He surely would be more careful, and take more pains with his work, if he were now among us.
And that is just the point. One must write and rewrite, and polish to the utmost, if he would produce anything worth reading. He must not be eager to rush into print and cater to the public taste. Let him be content with the applause of men of culture, and strive to win that; and let him leave popular favor to men who are themselves no better than the rabble whom they court.
Few Roman writers are more frankly autobiographical than Horace. His odes, epodes, satires, and epistles are full of his own personality and history. From various references in these poems, we learn that he was born in 65 B. C., in Venusia, a municipal town in Apulia; that his father was a freedman, a small farmer, and debt collector by trade; that he was educated in Rome under his father's personal care; that he finished his education in Athens, where he eagerly imbibed Greek philosophy and literature. But now the long storm of civil war, which had attended the rise of Julius Cæsar and the struggle between that leader and Pompey for supremacy, and which had been temporarily allayed by the complete ascendency of Cæsar, broke out afresh with renewed violence upon the assassination of the great dictator. The verse of Horace, especially in his odes, is full of the consciousness of this civil strife, and of deep and sincere regret for its consequence to the state.
The young student was just twenty-one years of age when the fall of Cæsar startled the world. And when Brutus reached Athens on his way to Macedonia, and called upon the young Romans there to rally to the republic and liberty, the ardent heart of the youthful Horace responded to the summons. He joined the ill-fated army of the liberators, was made a military tribune, and served as such until the disastrous day of Philippi, when Horace's military and political ambition left him forever, together with all hope which he may have cherished of the lost cause. He made his way back to Rome under shelter of the amnesty which the merciful conqueror had granted, and there found himself in an unfortunate plight indeed; for his father was now dead, his modest estate lost, probably swallowed up in the general confiscations, and he himself with neither money, friends, nor occupation. He managed in some way, however, to secure a small clerkship, the income from which served to keep the wolf from his humble door.
But in this obscure, unfriended clerk one was now walking the streets of Rome to whom Rome's proudest and most princely mansions were before many years to open as to a welcome guest. For he carried within him, concealed in a most unpretentious personality, a rich store of education, experience, and genius, which was to prove the open sesame for him to the world's best gifts. To the exercise of this genius he now turned; and the appearance of the earliest of his satires, with perhaps some of his odes and epodes as well, was the result. All these things and much more the poet tells us, frankly giving the whole of his story with neither boasting on the one hand nor false pride on the other.
And now the event occurred which was the first link that bound Horace tangibly to his future greatness—his meeting with the poet Vergil, who was at this time famous and powerful in the friendship of Mæcenas, Pollio, and even the emperor himself. This sweet and generous-souled poet, recognizing the kindred spirit of genius in the youthful Horace, straightway admitted him to his own friendship, a friendship which is one of the most charming pictures of that brilliant age, and which was destined to endure unbroken until parted by the death of Vergil himself. It was Vergil who in due time introduced Horace to another friend, a man who was one of the great personages of that age, a leading statesman, a man of letters himself, and a generous patron of letters—Mæcenas, under whose sheltering patronage our poet grew and expanded to the full development of those poetic powers which first had brought him recognition.
From this shelter Horace writes a satire addressed to Mæcenas, in which he recounts, among other circumstances of his life, the occasion of his introduction to his patron; and takes occasion to answer the envious criticisms which were aimed against him, that he, a mere freedman's son, should be elevated above his betters to this high social position. The theme of this satire, which he sturdily maintains, is, that in social, even if not in political matters, character, not family, should be the standard; or, in the language of another gifted son of poverty:
We give quotations from this satire in the translation of Francis.
The poet feels justified in addressing it to his patron, because, though Mæcenas is of noble birth himself, he does not hold in contempt the worthy of lowly descent. Horace says that it is all very well to deny a man political advancement on the score of low birth; but when it comes to denying social advancement upon this score to a man of worth, that is quite unbearable. Horace cannot rightly be envied or criticized for his friendship with Mæcenas, for this came to him purely on his merits and not by chance. A pleasing picture is given of his first introduction to Mæcenas, and his final admission to that nobleman's charmed circle of friends.
The poet here pays a glowing tribute of filial affection to his father, to whose faithful care and instruction he owes it that he has been shielded from the grosser sins and defects of character.
Horace proceeds to draw a strong contrast between the very onerous duties and social obligations which fall to the lot of the high-born, and his own simple, quiet, independent life.
This friendship with Mæcenas, of which the preceding satire relates the foundation, began in the year 38 B. C., when Horace was twenty-seven years of age. From this time on the poet received many substantial proofs of his patron's regard for him, the most notable of which was the gift of a farm among the Sabine hills about thirty miles from Rome.
Such a gift meant to Horace freedom from the drudgery of the workaday world, consequent leisure for the development of his literary powers, a proper setting and atmosphere for the rustic moods of his muse; while his intimacy in the palace of Mæcenas on the Esquiline gave him standing in the city and ample opportunity for indulging his urban tastes.
Although this gift of the farm and other favors derived from the friendship of Mæcenas were so important to Horace as to color all his after life and work, he nowhere manifests the slightest spirit of sycophancy toward his patron. While always grateful, he makes it very clear that the favors of Mæcenas cannot be accepted at the price of his own personal independence. Rather than lose this, he would willingly resign all that he has received.
The following satire expresses that deep content which the poet experiences upon his farm, the simple delights which he enjoys there, and, by contrast, some of the amusing as well as annoying incidents of his life in Rome as the favorite of the great minister Mæcenas. The satire is in the translation of Sir Theodore Martin.
[B]Mercury, the god of gain, and protector of poets.
The poet proceeds to contrast with his restful country life the vexatious bustle of the city, and the officious attentions which people thrust upon him because of his supposed influence with Mæcenas.
At some such informal gathering of neighbors as this the story of the city mouse and the country mouse would be told. The poet's own moral of this homely tale is gathered from the farewell words of the country mouse as he escapes from the splendors—and terrors of the city:
The mantle of the satirist preacher which had fallen from Horace found no worthy claimant for nearly half a century. The successor, and, so far as in him lay, the sincere imitator of Horace, was Aulus Persius Flaccus. His circumstances were as unlike those of his great predecessor as can well be imagined. Horace was the son of a freedman, with no financial or social backing save that which he won by his own genius; Persius was, like Lucilius, of noble equestrian rank, rich, and related by birth to some of the first men of his time. Horace, while he had every opportunity for learning all that books and the schools could teach him, was, as we have already seen, preëminently a student of real life, having been taught by his father to study men as they actually were. Persius, on the other hand, saw little of the world except through the medium of books and teachers. When the future satirist was but six years of age, his father died, and he was brought up chiefly in the society of his mother and sister, carefully shielded from contact with the rough and wicked world. At the age of twelve he was taken from his native Volaterræ in Etruria to Rome, where his formal education was continued in the same careful seclusion until he assumed the toga of manhood. His writings do not, therefore, smack of the street and the world of men as do those of Horace, but they savor of the cloister and the library. Horace preached against the sins of men as he saw them; Persius, as he imagined them and read of them, taking his texts often from the more virile satires of Horace himself. Horace was devoted to no school of philosophy, but accepted what seemed to him best and sanest from all schools, and jeered alike at the follies of all. But Persius was by birth, education, and choice a Stoic. He became an ardent preacher and expounder of the Stoic philosophy, just as Lucretius had thrown his whole heart into expounding the doctrine of Epicurus a hundred years before.
Stoicism, as Tyrrell says, was the "philosophy in which under the Roman Empire the human conscience sought and found an asylum. It had ceased now to be a philosophy, and had become a religion, appealing to the rich and great as Christianity appealed to the poor and humble."
Persius, accordingly, following his early bent, as soon as he arrived at man's estate, placed himself under the care and instruction of Cornutus, a Stoic philosopher. His own account of this event forms one of the most pleasing passages in his works, and is found in the fifth satire, which is a confession of his own ardent devotion both to his friend the Stoic, and to Stoicism as well.
The lofty and almost Christian tone of this ardent young Stoic preacher was greatly admired in the Middle Ages, and he was much quoted by the Church Fathers. His high moral truths sounded out in an age of moral laxity, when faith in the old religious beliefs had given way, and had not yet laid hold upon the nascent doctrine of Christianity which was even now marching westward and was soon to gain admission to Rome itself. To the Stoic, virtue was the bright goal of all living. To gain her was to gain life indeed; and to lose her was to suffer loss irreparable. This loss the poet invokes in a masterly apostrophe in the third satire upon those rulers who basely abuse their power.
The Christian tone of Persius is perhaps best seen in the second satire, which is a sermon on prayer. The tone throughout is far above the level of the thinking of his time, and shows a lofty conception of the deity and of spiritual things. In the closing lines especially, he reaches so high and true a spiritual note that he seems almost to have caught a glimpse of those high conceptions which inspired his great contemporary, the apostle Paul. This sermon might well have had for its text the inspired words of the Old Testament prophet Hosea: "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
That the Romans were not without their own light as to the acceptable offering to heaven is further seen in an ode of Horace, in which he voices the same high truth, that the thought of the heart is of more moment in the sight of God than the offering of the hand. This fine ode ends with the following stanza:
But let us now return to our poet's sermon on prayer. Persius addresses it to his friend Plotius Macrinus, congratulating him upon the returning anniversary of his birthday.
Amid the prayers to his tutelary genius this day, Macrinus will not offer those selfish and impious prayers with which men are too prone to come before the gods, prayers which they would not dare to utter to a man, or even in the hearing of men.
The ingenious manner in which this prayer is framed so as to calm the conscience of the votary is admirably pointed out by Gifford. "The supplicant meditates no injury to any one. The death of his uncle is concealed under a wish that he could see his magnificent funeral, which, as the poor man must one day die, is a prayer becoming a pious nephew. The second petition is quite innocent.—If people will foolishly bury their gold and forget it, there is no more harm in his finding it than another. The third is even laudable; it is a prayer uttered in pure tenderness of heart, for the relief of a poor suffering child. With respect to the last, there can be no wrong in mentioning a fact which everybody knows. Not a syllable is said of his own wife; if the gods are pleased to take a hint and remove her, that is their concern; he never asked it."
Again, the ears of heaven are assailed by ignorant and superstitious prayers, against which the poet inveighs. Then follows a rebuke to those who pray for health and happiness, but who, by their vices and folly, thwart their own prayer.
Why do men pray so impiously and foolishly? It is because they entertain such ignorant and unworthy conceptions of the gods, because they think that they are beings of like passions with themselves. No, no! the gods have no such carnal passions, nor do they care for gold and the rich offerings of men's hands. They regard the heart of the worshiper, and if this is pure, even empty hands may bring an acceptable offering.
When one has read his Horace, one feels personally acquainted with the poet, so frankly biographical is he. This is true, though to a much less extent, of Persius. But Juvenal is almost sphinxlike in regard to himself. What little we know is gained from a few indirect references in his writings themselves, and from the numerous and contradictory ancient lives which have come down to us prefaced to the different manuscripts of Juvenal's satires. From these we gather that he was born sometime between 48 and 55 A. D., at the town of Aquinum in Latium, and was the son of a well-to-do freedman who left him a patrimony sufficient for his modest maintenance through life. He had a good education in grammar and rhetoric, and devoted himself through a large part of his earlier life to rhetorical declamation; though he seems not to have made any professional or profitable use of the talent which he undoubtedly possessed for the vocation of the advocate. He enjoyed some unimportant though honorable civil employment under Titus and Domitian, and served for one period of his life in the army, probably in Britain, with the rank of military tribune.
In Juvenal's later life he seems to have given offense either to Domitian by some lines which he wrote upon a favorite pantomime dancer of the emperor, or to Hadrian for a similar cause. By one or the other of these emperors, according to tradition, he was practically exiled by an appointment to a command of a legion in Africa. The date of his death is as uncertain as that of his birth, but it seems to lie between 128 and 138 A. D.
It will be seen, therefore, that our poet was contemporaneous with ten Roman emperors, his life covering the period from Nero to Hadrian, inclusive. It was during the reign of Domitian, however, that Juvenal, now already well advanced to middle life, took up his residence in Rome and began that work which was to be his material contribution to life and letters.
Life in Rome under Domitian!—what a challenge to the satirist! what a field for the preacher! These were the crowning years of well-nigh a century of ever-increasing horror. With the downfall of liberty and the republic, both of which had perished in fact long before their name and semblance vanished, wealth and luxury had poured into Rome from the conquered provinces, and with these that moral laxity against which Horace had aimed his satire, then in four successive reigns Rome had cringed and groaned under the absolute sway of cynic, madman, fool, and flippant murderer, each more recklessly disregardful than the last of civic virtue and the lives and common rights of man. Then three puppets within a year involving the world in civil strife were themselves swept off the stage by Vespasian and Titus, who did indeed give passing respite to the state. And then for fifteen years—Domitian! Of these fifteen years Tacitus, just emerging into the grateful light of Nerva's and of Trajan's reigns, indignantly exclaims:
They had besides expelled all the professors of philosophy, and driven every laudable science into exile, that naught which was worthy and honest might anywhere be seen. Mighty, surely, was the testimony which we gave of our patience; and as our forefathers had beheld the ultimate consummation of liberty, so did we of bondage, since through dread of informers and inquisitions of state, we were bereft of the common intercourse of speech and attention. Nay, with our utterance we had likewise lost our memory, had it been equally in our power to forget as to be silent.... Few we are who have escaped; and, if I may so speak, we have survived not only others, but even ourselves, when from the middle of our lives so many years were rent; whence from being young we are arrived at old age, from being old we are nigh come to the utmost verge of mortality, all in a long course of awful silence.—Galton.
Somewhat earlier than this, though within the same generation, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, the preacher of that dark age, had written a letter to the infant Christian church at Rome in which he had drawn a terrible picture of what human society can become when it has thrown off all checks and abandoned itself to profligacy. His picture, we may be sure, was drawn from the life.
And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful: who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they which practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practice them.
Upon such a world as this did Juvenal, in the prime of manhood, his powers of reason, observation, and expression fully ripened, look out from his home in the Roman Subura;[C] with the product of such times did he mingle in the crowded reception-rooms of rich and noble patrons. He looked upon society and noted it, and long restrained his speech. But at last, as Tyrrell has well expressed it, "the flood of indignation, pent up in furious silence for forty years, once loose, carried away on its current or tossed aside every obstacle that impeded its onward rush."
[C] A quarter in Rome given up to markets and tenement-houses.
And this is that which mainly distinguishes him from Horace—his tremendous moral earnestness, his fiery indignation. His spirit did not allow him to play with his theme; there were hard blows to strike at outbreaking sins, and he would strike them. And if venial faults were struck as hard as more serious offenses, that was a proof not of inconsistency, but of an earnestness that could not stop to distinguish; if he writes of practices too shameful for telling in the hearing of polite ears, it is because his righteous indignation was in no mood to mince words, but would hold up vice in all its hideousness to the fatal light. He speaks with frankness of shameful sins, but only to hurl his denunciations at them. He is always in a rage,—strenuous where Horace is gently satirical and whimsical; didactic and straightforward where Horace is conversational and dramatic. At the same time he paints most vivid pictures, filling in the lines with tremendous sweeps of his rhetorical brush.
He tells us that he was fairly driven to write satire by the very atmosphere and daily occurrences of folly and sin around him.[D]
[D] The quotations from Juvenal which follow are taken from the excellent prose version of Leeper.
For who so tolerant of this wrong-headed city, who so callous, that he can contain himself when lawyer Matho's brand-new litter comes along, filled with his Greatness, and after him the betrayer of his distinguished friend, who will soon finish off the remnants of our nobility already preyed upon.... Is not one moved to fill a bulky note-book right in the middle of the cross-roads, when a man is carried past, already indulging in six bearers, showing himself to view on both sides—a forger who has made himself aristocrat and millionaire with a little tablet and a damp seal? Now you are confronted by a lady of position, who, when her husband is thirsty, just before she hands him the mild Calenian, puts in a dash of poison, and, like a superior Lucusta, teaches her unsophisticated kinswomen to carry their livid husbands to burial right through the town and all its gossip.... It is to crime that men owe their pleasure-grounds, their castles, banquets, old silver, and goblets with goat's figure in relief.... When nature refuses, sheer scorn produces verse—the best it can.
He cannot abide the Greeks. His national pride is touched at the thought that not only do they swarm in Rome, monopolizing by their superior shrewdness all profitable employments, but that Rome itself has gone crazy after them, and things Greek are all the rage.
And now I will at once admit to you,—no false shame shall stop me,—what class is most in favor with our wealthy men, and whom most of all I am flying from. I cannot abide, fellow-citizen, a Greecized Rome.... Your yeoman citizen, Quirinus, dons his Greek boots and wears a Greek collar upon a neck rubbed with Greek ointment.... What a quick intellect, what desperate effrontery, what a ready tongue, surpassing Isæus himself in fluency. Tell me now, what do you take him for? In his own person he has brought us—why, whom you will—critic, rhetorician, geometer, painter, trainer, prophet, rope-dancer, doctor, sorcerer. The starveling Greek knows everything.... Mark how that race, so adroit in flattery, extols the foolish friend's conversation, the ill-favored friend's features; how they compare some weakling's scraggy neck with the throat of a Hercules, or admire a harsh voice which is not a whit better than the cry of a cock.... The whole breed of them are actors. If you but smile, your Greek shakes his sides with heartier merriment; he weeps, if he has spied a tear in his friend's eye, and yet he feels no grief. If you ask in winter time for a bit of a fire, he takes an overcoat: should you remark, "I feel warm," he is in a sweat.
Juvenal complains bitterly of the unproductiveness of honest toil in literature and the professions. It's all very well to talk about the poet's inspiration, but Pegasus does not fly upon an empty stomach.
He has dined, has Horace, when he shouts his "Evoe." ... Were Vergil left without a slave and a decent lodging, then every snake would tumble from his locks: his trumpet would be hushed, and sound forth no more impressive notes.... Historians, is your toil more productive? It demands more time and more oil. Each of you, doubtless, has his pages rising by the hundred, knowing no limit, growing towards bankruptcy with the pile of papyrus. But what is your harvest—what does opening up that field yield you? Who will pay a historian as much as he would pay a reporter?... Then say what public services and the ever-present big packet of documents bring in to our advocates. Would you know their real gains? In one scale set a hundred advocates' estates; in the other just that of Lacerna, the Red Jockey.
The teacher fares no better:
Who places in Celadus' and learned Palæmon's lap a due reward for their scholastic toils? Yet, little as it is, the pupil's stupid body servant takes the first bite, and the steward will snip off a something for himself. Submit to it, Palæmon; let something be abated of your due, as if you were a-huckstering winter blankets and white counterpanes.
Here is his exhortation to those degenerate Roman nobles who prided themselves upon their blue blood and ancient names, but whose lives belied their birth. The sentiment may seem a commonplace, but it still inspires our modern poets, as in Tennyson:
Of what avail are pedigrees? What boots it, Ponticus, taking rank by length of descent, and having one's ancestors' portrait-masks to show off? What do you gain by the display of a Corvinus in your big family roll, or by your affinity with smoke-begrimed Masters of the Horse, if you live a life of shame in the very face of the Lepidi?... No, though time-honored waxen likenesses adorn the length and breadth of your hall, still virtue is the sole and only nobility. Be a Paulus, a Cossus, or a Drusus in character. Rank that above the statues of your ancestors. The first thing you are bound to show me is a good heart. If by word and deed you deserve the character of a blameless man, one who cleaves to the right—good: I recognize the noble; I salute you, Gætulicus be you, or Silanus, or of whatever other blood you come.... For who will call "noble" one who shames his race, and challenges notice by the luster of his name alone?
The very horse is ranked and valued by what he does; so much more man, and besides, noblesse oblige:
He is a "noble" steed, whatever grass he comes from, who takes rank above his fellows—in pace, and who raises the dust upon the course ahead of all; but the progeny of Coryphæus and Hirpinus are "stock for sale"—if Victory has rarely perched on their collar. There is no regard for ancestors, no favoritism toward the shades of the departed.... Therefore, so that we may admire yourself and not your belongings, give me something of your own to carve 'neath your statue, beyond the honors which we have rendered, and render still, to those who made you all you are.
Juvenal's most famous satire is the tenth, upon the theme "The Vanity of Human Wishes." It is more general in scope than the other satires, but is nevertheless full of the moral earnestness that everywhere characterizes the author. Here is the broad thesis:
Through all lands but few are they who can clear themselves of the mists of errors, and discriminate between the real blessings and what are quite the reverse. For in what fear or wish of ours are we guided by reason's rule? No matter how auspiciously you start with a plan, do you not live to regret your efforts and the attainment of your desire? Whole households have been overthrown ere now, at their own petition, by a too gracious heaven. By the arts of peace and war alike we strive for what will only hurt us.
Wealth is notoriously a fatal gift, and should be shunned, not sought. No one need fear poison if he drinks his wine out of a cheap cup. If the love of money is the root of all evil, the possession of money is a challenge to all evil-doers. What, then, may one rightly desire? Power? This is just as fatal to its possessor.
Some are brought to ruin through their great power, subject itself to envy just as great; they are wrecked by their long and brilliant roll of honors; down from the pedestals come their statues, and now the stroke of the axe shatters the very wheels of the triumphal cars. Hark! now the fires are hissing, now, by dint of bellows and forge, that head, the people's idol, is aglow; and the great Sejanus is a crackling! And soon from the face, second to one only in the whole world, they are making pipkins, and basins, and a pan—ay, and even meaner vessels!... What laid low a Crassus, and a Pompey, and that leader who broke the proud Romans' spirit and brought them under his lash? Why, it was just the unscrupulous struggling for the highest place, and the prayer of ambition, heard but too well by the malicious gods. It is but seldom that a king does not take a murderous crowd with him down to Ceres' son-in-law; seldom that a despot dies without blood-letting.... Just weigh Hannibal. How many pounds' weight will you find in that greatest of leaders? This is the man for whom Africa is too small—Africa, lashed by the Moorish main, and stretching thence to the tepid Nile; and, on another side again, to the Ethiopian tribes with their towering elephants! He adds Spain to his empire; he bounds over the Pyrenees; Nature barred his path with her Alp and her snow; he rives the rocks and bursts the mountain with vinegar. Now he holds Italy, yet he still strains forward. "Nothing," cries he, "is gained unless we storm the city gates with our Punic soldiery, and this hand plants my standard in the very heart of Rome!" Oh, what a sight! oh, what a subject for a caricature—the one-eyed general bestriding the Gætulian monster! What, then, is his end? Fie, glory! Why, he in his turn is conquered, and flies headlong into exile; and there he sits, that august dependent—a gazing stock at a king's gates—until it may please His Majesty of Bithynia to awake. The soul which once turned the world upside down shall be quelled, not by a sword, not by a stone, no, nor by a javelin; but by that Nemesis of Cannæ, the avenger of all that blood—just a ring.[E] Off with you, madman! Scour the bleak Alps, that so you may—catch the fancy of schoolboys, and become a theme for declamation!
[E] Hannibal always carried with him, concealed in a ring, a dose of poison, with which, at last, he took his own life, to escape capture by the Romans.
If any are disposed to pray for long life and length of days, Juvenal's dark and repulsive picture of old age would effectually banish that desire. One by one the physical and mental powers fail and the man is left but a pitiful wreck of his former self.
But suppose his faculties be sound, yet still he must conduct his sons to their burial; must gaze at the pyre of his beloved wife, and of his brother, and on urns filled with what was once his sisters. This is the forfeit laid upon longevity, to pass to old age amid bereavement after bereavement, thick-coming griefs, and one weary round of lamentations, with the garb of the mourner never laid aside.
But age brings not alone loss of friends, but in many instances personal suffering and disaster from which one would be mercifully delivered by a more timely death. This, Caius Marius, the great Roman general, found to his cost:
That banishment, that jail, Minturnæ's swamps, and the bread of beggary in conquered Carthage, all had their origin in a long life. What happier being in the world than that Roman could nature, could Rome ever have produced, if, after leading round the train of captives amid all the circumstance of war, he had breathed out his soul in glory, when just stepping down from his Teutonic car?
As for beauty, foolish indeed is that mother who prays for her son or her daughter that he or she may possess this; for it is the most fatal possession of all. Not even the most rugged training of the old Sabine school of morality can shield the possessor of great beauty from the poisonous, insidious temptations, if not actual violence, of the wicked world. What then?
Shall men then pray for nothing? If you will take my advice, you will allow the gods themselves to determine what is meet for us, and suited to our lot; for the gods will give us—not what is pleasant, but what is most befitting in each case. Man is dearer to them than to himself. Urged on by impulse, by blind and violent desires, we pray for a wife, and for offspring; but only they (the gods) know what the children will be, and of what character the wife. Still, if you must make your petition, and must vow a meat offering at the shrine, then pray for a healthy mind in a healthy body; pray for a brave spirit free from the fear of death—a spirit that regards life's close as one of nature's boons, that can endure any toil, that is innocent of anger and free from desire, and that looks on the sufferings of Hercules and his cruel labors as more blessed than all the wantoning, and reveling, and down-couches of a Sardanapalus.
Perhaps the appeal of Juvenal that comes most powerfully to the present generation, and contains the most solemn lesson for us, is his warning to fathers and mothers that all unconsciously to them their sons and daughters are following in their footsteps, bound to copy them, and reproduce their faults in later life. The presence of a child is as sacred as a temple shrine, and should be as carefully guarded from every profaning influence. It is surely notable to find this wholesome teaching springing like a lily out of the mire of that degenerate age. It smacks neither of fervid rhetoric nor of cold and formal philosophy, but rings true and natural as childhood itself.
Let no foul word or sight come nigh the threshold where dwells the father of a family. You owe your boy the profoundest respect. If meditating aught that is base, despise not your boy's tender years; but let the image of your infant son arrest you on the verge of sin. For should he some day do a deed to earn the censor's wrath, and show himself not only your counterpart in face and figure, but heir of your character as well—one to follow in your steps, and sin every sin in worse degree—you will chide and scold him, no doubt, with loud reproaches, and then proceed to change your will. But whence that boldness, whence those parental rights, when you do worse, despite your age? If company is coming, none of your people will have any rest. Sweep the pavement! Let me see the pillars glistening! Down with the shriveled spider and all her web! Ho! you polish the plain silver, and you the figured cups! So the master storms at the top of his voice, urging them on, with rod in hand. Poor wretch! are you in such a fidget lest the hall may offend your friend's eye, when he comes, and lest the vestibule be splashed with mud—all of which one little page with one half-peck of sawdust puts to rights—but yet bestow no thought on this, that your son's eye shall rest upon a household unsullied, stainless, innocent of vice? We thank you that you gave a citizen to your country and your people, if you make him worthy of that country, helpful to its soil, helpful in public work, in peace and war; for it will matter much in what lessons and principles you train him.
Such wholesome truths as these and many more did Juvenal press home upon his generation. And he speaks no less to all humanity; for the problems of human life and conduct are not peculiar to any age, but are always and everywhere the same.
We have now reviewed two centuries of Roman preachers, and it may naturally be asked, "What was their influence upon the Roman world?" No direct results are traceable to their efforts. Society went on its accustomed course; the seeds of decay and death sprang up, grew to maturity, and brought forth their natural fruits of national destruction in due season, apparently unchecked by the counter influences of which we have spoken. These influences cannot yet be weighed and known—not until account has been taken of all the factors in the world's life problem, the grand totals cast up and the trial balance made. But in that time the bead-roll of the world's real benefactors will contain the names of these Roman satirists whose voices were raised against an age of wrong in immemorial protest, who were the numb and dormant conscience of the human race awakened and incarnate in a human tongue.
Roman Satire, as illustrated by the works of Ennius (239-169 B. C.), Lucilius (180-103 B. C.), Horace (65-8 B. C.), Persius (34-62 A. D.), and Juvenal (48(?)-138(?) A. D.).
1. What position did the Roman satirist occupy as a teacher of morals? 2. Show how the great Greek writers served as models for the leading Roman men of letters. 3. In what literary field did the Romans strike out for themselves? 4. What may we suppose was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy? 5. What position does Ennius hold among Roman satirists? 6. What famous events took place within the lifetime of Lucilius? 7. How did his social position help to make his writings effective? 8. What did the Romans themselves think of him? 9. How have fragments of his works been preserved to us? 10. What picture of life in the Roman Forum does he present? 11. Give other examples of the teachings of Lucilius. 12. Quote his definition of virtue. 13. How does Horace's attitude toward his fellow-men differ from that of Lucilius? 14. What advantage had he in his early education? 15. Illustrate his habit of personal reflection upon the events of the day. 16. What are the marked qualities of his style? 17. Describe his argument in favor of contentment. 18. What qualities of the "bore" are brought out in his famous satire on this subject? 19. What is his criticism of Lucilius? 20. Give an account of Horace's own life. 21. What ideas does he set forth in his satire to Mæcenas? 22. What description does he give of his father? 23. What picture does he give of his life on his farm as contrasted with his life in Rome? 24. How did the circumstances of the life of Persius differ from those of Horace? 25. How different is his poetry for this reason? 26. Illustrate the poet's high estimate of Stoicism. 27. How does he treat the subject of prayer in one of his famous satires? 28. How is his skill shown in his picture of the false suppliant? 29. What do we know of the life of Juvenal? 30. What was the character of the times in which he lived? 31. How does his style differ from that of Horace? 32. How does he deal with the Hellenizing tendencies of his time? 33. Give an outline of his satire upon the vanity of human wishes. 34. What is his solemn warning to parents?
We have already seen how the national pride of Rome was stirred by the completed subjugation of Italy and the first successful step in foreign conquest as the result of the First Punic War, and how this quickened national pride gave a new impulse to literature. We have seen how from this period under the powerful stimulus of Greek influence the drama sprang into being in its literary form. And it was in this same soil of awakened national consciousness, and in this same atmosphere of Greek thought and expression that the Roman epic had its beginnings.
The rude translation of Homer's Odyssey made by Livius Andronicus is not to be considered in this connection, for this was produced with no national feeling, but only that he might have a text-book from which to instruct his Roman schoolboys in their native tongue. The honor of producing the first heroic poem in Roman literature belongs to Cn. Nævius, to whom Mommsen accords the high praise of "the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet." He was a native of the district of Campania, of plebeian family, of most sturdy and independent character. The period of his life falls approximately between the years 269 and 199 B. C. We know that he was a soldier in his earlier life, serving in the First Punic War in Sicily, that he was imprisoned for his bold attacks from the stage upon the noble family of the Metelli, and afterward banished to Africa, where he ended his days.
The tragedies and comedies of Nævius date from his life in Rome, but the occupation, and we may well believe the solace, of his old age in exile was the composition of his Bellum Punicum, a heroic poem upon the First Punic War. This poem is a truly national epic written in the rough old Saturnian verse which came down from hoary antiquity as a native Roman metrical product. This verse has a jingle not unlike some of our familiar nursery rhymes, of which
The king was in his counting-house counting out his money,
is a fair sample. Roman in form, the epic of Nævius was also intensely national in spirit and content. It was written in seven books, of which the first two form a kind of mythological background or prelude, and the remaining five books tell the story of the first great duel between Rome and Carthage.
In the scanty fragments of this poem, especially in the introductory books, we are surprised to find ourselves upon familiar ground, until we discover that we are dealing with one of the great sources of Vergil's inspiration. For here in these broken scraps as in a shattered mirror we catch glimpses of Æneas and Anchises departing from Troy with their wives and treasure, and of the storm that drove the Trojans out of their course and wrecked them upon the shores of Africa; we hear snatches of Venus' appeal to Jupiter in their behalf, of Jove's reply promising to the Trojans a mighty destiny, and of Dido's request to Æneas for his tale of the Trojan War.
The whole seems to have been written in an exceedingly simple and direct style, without much attempt at poetic embellishment. The poet prided himself upon his unadulterated Latinity, and protested against the strong Hellenizing tendency that was setting in. His epitaph (Roman writers had a weakness for composing their own epitaphs) may seem a bit over-laudatory of self from our modest modern standpoint, but it is quite in keeping with the outspoken style of his time, and is very interesting in the claim that he makes to be the mouthpiece and perhaps the last disciple of the native Italian muses (Camenæ). Here is his epitaph:
The Hellenizing tendency of which Nævius complains was setting in strongly already during his life at Rome. But it was especially the influence of his literary successor, an influence still more strongly tending toward Greek forms and motives, which the unfortunate Nævius mourned from his place of exile and which gave added bitterness to the lament which the sturdy old Roman has left us in his epitaph.
This literary successor was the poet Quintus Ennius, who may almost be said to have met Nævius at the gates of Rome, since he arrived at Rome at about the time when Nævius went into banishment. Ennius was not a Roman citizen at this time, having been born and reared down in the extreme heel of Italy, at Rudiæ in Calabria, a section which had for many generations been under Greek influence. He was of good local family, familiar with the rough Oscan speech of his native village, with the polished Greek of neighboring Tarentum, where he was probably at school, and with the Roman tongue, which had become the official language of his district after Rome had pushed her conquests to the limits of Italy. He was wont to say of himself that he had three hearts—Oscan, Latin, and Greek; and certainly by the circumstances of his birth and education he was a good representative of the threefold national influences which were rapidly converging.
Ennius was born in 239 B. C., shortly after the close of the First Punic War; but he comes first into notice as a centurion in the Roman army in Sardinia during the Second Punic War. Here Cato, while acting as quæstor in the island, found him, and no doubt attracted by the sturdy scholarly soldier, took him to Rome in 204 in his own train. The poet afterward accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior on that general's expedition to Ætolia, a privilege which he richly repaid later by immortalizing in verse the Ætolian campaign. He obtained Roman citizenship in 184 through the instrumentality of the son of Fulvius. He was most fortunate, moreover, in enjoying the friendship of the great Scipio, with whom he lived on the most intimate terms. For himself, he lived always at Rome in humble fashion on a slope of the Aventine Hill, and gained a modest living by teaching Greek to the youths of Rome. There is a tradition not very trustworthy that it was of him that Cato himself "learned Greek at eighty."
That Ennius was fitted to be a confidential friend to great men of affairs we may well believe if, as Aulus Gellius, who has preserved the passage, would have us understand, the following picture was intended by the poet as a self-portraiture. The passage is from the seventh book of the "Annals," and has a setting of its own, but may well represent the familiar intercourse of the poet with Marcus Fulvius or with Scipio. If this is indeed a portrait, it is a passage of great value, for it pictures the character in great detail.
Ennius died in 169 B. C., and tradition says that his bust was placed in the tomb of the family of his great patron, whereby the poet-soldier and the soldier-statesman were mutually honored. Upon that sarcophagus of Scipio surmounted by the poet's bust might well have been inscribed the saying of Sellar: "Ennius was in letters what Scipio was in action—the most vital representative of his epoch."
Ennius wrote satires and tragedies as we have seen; but it is because of his great epic poem the Annales, the work of his ripe age, that he deserves the high title accorded to him by the Romans themselves—"the father of Roman literature." This work is epoch-making because of its form and because of its important contribution to the development of the Latin language itself. The poet perceived that the native Saturnian verse was rude and unfitted to serve as a vehicle for the highest form of literary expression. His feeling toward this verse is shown in a fragment upon the First Punic War in which he refers to the Bellum Punicum of Nævius:
Others have treated the subject in the verses which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before any one had climbed to the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care to style.
Sellar.
From the Saturnian he turned to the hexameter, whose "ocean-roll of rhythm" had resounded in the great epics of Homer. But it was one thing to admire the Greek dactylic hexameter, with its smooth-flowing cadences, and quite another to force the heavy, rough Latin speech into this measure. But this task, difficult as it was, Ennius essayed, and by the very attempt to force the Latin into the shapely Greek mold, he modified and polished that language itself, and handed it down to his literary successors as a far more fitting vehicle of noble expression than he had found it. It is true that in comparison with the hexameters of Vergil and Ovid the lines of Ennius are noticeably rough and heavy; but still it must be remembered that it was the older poet's pioneer labors that made the verse of Vergil and Ovid possible.
The "Annals" of Ennius is an attempt to gather up the traditions of early Roman history and the facts of later times, and present them in a continuous narrative. Ennius was the pioneer in this work, and shows, as he says in the supposed self-portraiture quoted above, a very extensive knowledge of Roman antiquities, as well as a vivid first-hand perception of contemporary men and events. His active service as a soldier in the Second Punic War especially fitted him to write the story of a warlike nation. His descriptions of wars and stirring events are con amore. He breathed the air of victory in the long series of Roman triumphs following the Second Punic War, and infused into his great national poem something of that exaltation of spirit which animated his times, and which raised his work far above the plane which his modest title suggests. The poem sank deep into the national heart, and became a very bible of the race, from which his successors drew freely as from a public fountain.
This poem, the work of the poet's old age, contained eighteen books, of which only about six hundred lines of fragments remain. The first book covers the period from the death of Priam to the death of Romulus. This period is, however, not as long as it is usually represented by tradition, for Ennius passes over the three hundred years of the Alban kings and represents Æneas as the father of Ilia, the mother of Romulus. One of the longest fragments describes the dream of Ilia in which the birth of Romulus and Remus is foreshadowed.
Then follow scattered fragments relating to the birth and exposure of the twins, their nourishment by the wolf, their growth to manhood, a long fragment on the taking of the auspices by which the sovereignty of Romulus over his brother was decided, and at the end a spirited passage from the lamentation of the Romans over the death of Romulus.
The second and third books give a history of the Roman kings after Romulus, with glimpses of the victory of the Horatii, the dreadful death of the treacherous Mettius Fufetius, the disgusting impiety of Tullia, and the rape of Lucretia, which precipitated the banishment of the Tarquins. The fourth and fifth books cover the period from the founding of the republic to the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus, which is described in the sixth book. This contains the fine passage in which King Pyrrhus refuses to accept money for the ransom of captives. He says to the Roman ambassadors:
The seventh book treats of the First Punic War, which he touches upon but lightly, since this subject had been so fully covered by his predecessor. Then follow, in the remaining books, the Macedonian, Ætolian, and Istrian wars, the history being brought down to within a few years of the writer's death. In the last book the old poet very fittingly compares himself to a spirited horse who has won victories in his day, but now enjoys his well-earned rest in the dignity and inactivity of age.
As we survey these broken fragments, we gain some appreciation of the cruelty of that fate which preserved to posterity the ten tedious books of Lucan's Pharsalia, the seventeen books of Silius' Punica, and the twelve books of the Thebaid of Statius, but swept away this great work of Rome's first genuine poet—a work rendered triply valuable because it was the first Roman experiment in hexameters, because in it the Latin language was just molding into literary form, retaining still much of its early roughness and heaviness, and because of the priceless contribution to Roman antiquities which it could have furnished us.
We turn from Ennius to Vergil as from prophecy to fulfilment. A hundred years separated the death of the one from the birth of the other, and nearly a century and a half stood between their maturer works, a period covering almost the whole range of republican literature. During this time many hands had been at work importing literary treasures from Greece, gleaning from native Italian sources the riches of ancient folk-lore, customs, traditions, and annals; many minds had pondered over the problems of life and human destiny, evolving and compiling treasures of philosophy. And the combined labors of all these had so enlarged, polished, and enriched the Latin speech, their common instrument, that, in the single generation embracing the Augustan age, that finished product was reached which we call the golden age of the language and its literature, and to the standard of which we refer all Latinity of earlier or later date.
During this period of development the "inspired" Accius, the immediate successor of Ennius, had given to the world those works which won for him the name of the greatest Roman tragic poet; Lucilius, the father of Roman satire, had left his strong imprint upon his country's life and language; Varro's tremendous diligence had stored up, among much other treasure, material upon agriculture and Roman history and antiquities; Lucretius had written his great didactic poem upon the Epicurean philosophy; Catullus, an older contemporary of Vergil, had finished his brief literary as well as earthly career before Vergil had well begun to write; and lastly, Cicero, Cæsar, and Sallust had wrought in their strong, polished prose for the further perfecting of the Latin speech.
With such a birthright was Vergil born; in such a school and from such masters did he gain the equipment for his literary career, which was destined to make him the most brilliant representative of the most brilliant period in Roman literature.
His origin was certainly humble enough to hide him from fate. He was born (B. C. 70) the son of a potter, or as some say a farmer, in an obscure little village near Mantua, in northern Italy, and received his early education in the not far away towns of Cremona and Mediolanum. Thence he went to Rome for his higher education, where he acquired the usual accomplishments of the Roman youth. His studies fitted him for the profession of the advocate, but not so his nature. His one appearance at the bar taught him his utter unfitness for that pursuit, for his natural shyness on that occasion quite overcame him. As Ovid tells us of his own experience, the Muses wooed him irresistibly away from the practical pursuits of the "wordy forum," and claimed him for their own. Nature had marked him for a poet. We are told that he was framed on large and generous lines, tall, with the genuine Italian swarthiness of hue, simple and gentle, almost rustic in appearance, with face so suggestive of the purity of character within that the Neapolitans, among whom he loved most to make his home, called him Parthenias, "the maiden-like one." Even after he had attained fame, his natural shyness was so great that the popular notice which he attracted upon the streets was a torture to him, from which he always took refuge, as Donatus says, "into the nearest house," as from a hostile mob.
The steps which led our poet from obscurity to fame we cannot trace in detail. Local circumstances and his marked poetic ability brought him early under the influence and patronage of Asinius Pollio, soldier, statesman, and littérateur; he was admitted also to the select circle of Mæcenas, to which he himself was privileged later to introduce his friend Horace; and Mæcenas in turn introduced both these poets, so unlike and yet so firmly knit together in the bonds of friendship, to the Emperor Augustus.
Vergil's own works, aside from certain minor poems attributed to him, were three in number: the Eclogues, Georgics, and the Æneid, all composed in the dactylic hexameter. His book of Eclogues was written during the period from 43 to 39 B. C., and consists of ten bucolic or pastoral poems after the style of the Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus. These poems, while somewhat artificial in style, are full of genuine feeling for nature, and contain many valuable references to the poet himself and his contemporaries. The Georgics are, as their name implies, a series of treatises in four books upon farming. The first book is devoted to the tilling of the soil, the second to the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees, the third to the breeding of cattle, and the fourth to the care of bees. The whole shows a minute and first-hand knowledge of the subjects treated which only long and loving personal observation could have given. The composition of this book occupied the seven years from 37 to 30 B. C. The work was done chiefly at Naples, where he seems to have passed the most of the remainder of his life. His third and greatest work was his epic poem in twelve books called the Æneid, because it relates the story of the Trojan prince Æneas and his followers.
This poem, whose merits are so evident to us, and whose faults are so slight in comparison, never in fact received the finishing touches from the author. Having spent eleven years upon the work, Vergil made a journey to Greece, intending to continue his travels to Asia also. But in Athens he met his friend Augustus, who easily persuaded him to return in his train to Italy. It was but coming home to die. Always of frail health, the poet's final sickness seized him on the homeward voyage, and increased so rapidly that he died shortly after landing at Brundisium, B. C. 19. His remains were buried in his beloved Naples, where still is proudly pointed out, upon the side of Posilippo hill, the so-called "tomb of Vergil." A further evidence of the pride which the modern Neapolitans feel in their great adopted fellow-townsman is to be seen in the beautiful memorial shrine of white marble which to-day stands to the poet's (and the city's) honor in the Villa Nazionale, the famous seaside park of Naples.
Vergil, conscious of the incomplete condition of the Æneid, left instructions to Varius and Tucca, his literary executors, to destroy all his unpublished manuscript; but this great loss to the world was prevented by the interference of the emperor, who directed Varius to revise and publish the Æneid, which was accordingly done, probably in the year 17 B. C.
What is the Æneid? The Roman no doubt saw in it a national epic, celebrating the greatness and glory of the Roman race. His heart swelled with renewed pride of citizenship as he read those glorious lines in which world dominion was promised to his race:
But Vergil was not alone an intense patriot. He was also ardently attached to the new imperial administration; and he seems to have set himself the difficult task of knitting together again into harmony with Augustus' rule the different classes of Roman citizens so long rent asunder by factional strife and civil war. He attempts this by reminding his fellow-citizens of their glorious past and tracing the hand of destiny in unbroken manifestation from Æneas to Cæsar and to Cæsar's heir. Thus Jupiter is seen promising to Venus for her Trojan descendants "endless, boundless reign." This glorious reign is to culminate in the great Cæsar, who with his heir Augustus shall inaugurate the Golden Age again.
The Æneid itself may be said in a sense to focus upon Augustus, for in the vision which is granted to Æneas in the underworld of the long line of his mighty descendants, it is Augustus who is singled out for most glowing tribute as the chief glory of the race that is to be:
Such strains as these in the setting of such a poem, embodying all that most delicately and most powerfully stimulated the Roman pride of birth and country, would do much to confer upon the ruling emperor historic and divine sanction.
Perhaps connected with the national character of the Æneid is the strong religious motive which animates the whole. Rome was not produced by chance. The poet never lets us lose sight of the fact that all has been predestined for ages past. Æneas from the first is in the hands of heaven, fated indeed to wander, to endure disappointment, suffering, loss that would have tried beyond endurance a man of weaker faith; but fated as well to work out a glorious destiny. And Æneas, like the typical Roman after him, believed in his destiny. He calmly consoles his shipwrecked friends upon the wild shores of Africa in the face of seemingly irreparable disaster:
Comrades! for comrades we are, no strangers to hardships already; hearts that have felt deeper wounds! for these too heaven will find a balm. Why, men, you have even looked on Scylla in her madness, and heard those yells that thrill the rocks; you have even made trial of the crags of the Cyclops. Come, call your spirits back, and banish these doleful fears. Who knows but some day this too will be remembered with pleasure? Through manifold chances, through these many perils of fortune, we are making our way to Latium, where the Fates hold out to us a quiet settlement; there Troy's empire has leave to rise again from its ashes. Bear up, and reserve yourselves for brighter days.
Conington.
The Æneid breathes throughout a tone of reverence for the gods. This is best seen if we contrast Vergil's and Ovid's attitude. The latter poet affects a free and easy familiarity with the deities of tradition, whose deeds, adventures, and escapades are told, often with slight reverence, and much to the detriment of their divine dignity. But in Vergil's poem the reader enters a stately temple filled with an all-pervading reverence for the gods of heaven, who are to be approached by men only in fitting wise, with veiled face and pure hands; whose power is over all and wielded in righteousness. It should be added that the whole sixth book is devoted to an account of the spirit world, where human souls receive their rewards and punishments for the deeds of their life on earth.
Vergil's poems have always been thought to have a decidedly Christian tone, so much so, indeed, that he was revered by the early Christian fathers, who regarded him in the light of a semi-inspired pagan. There is a tradition of the medieval church preserved in a mass sung in honor of St. Paul, in which that saint is said to have stood at the tomb of Vergil and to have exclaimed: "O greatest of poets, what a man I should have made of thee had I but met thee in thy day!"
Vergil's standing with the early church was no doubt much enhanced by his remarkable fourth eclogue, in which he foretells the golden age to be inaugurated by the birth of the infant son of Pollio. There is a remarkable similarity between the poet's description of the happy time of "peace on earth" which the Child shall bring and the language of the Messianic prophecies of Isaiah.
But entirely aside from its national, religious, or other characteristics, and so far as its place in the world's literature is concerned, the Æneid is first of all a story. It has not, indeed, the simple grandeur of the Iliad, upon the model of which it was probably composed. The passing of nearly a millennium of world-life after Homer's time made that impossible; and it is obviously unfair to compare any product of the refined and artificial society of the Augustan with the product of the simple and fresh life of the Homeric age when the world was young. But the Æneid has a grandeur, a grace, a polished beauty all its own; and, compared with the epic product of his own and later ages, Vergil's poem stands colossal—the unapproachable epic of the Roman tongue.
It is the heroic story of the last night of Troy, and the subsequent wanderings of a band of Trojans under Æneas, prince of Troy; their long, vain search for their fate-promised land; their shipwreck upon the shores of Africa; their sojourn in Carthage and the love tragedy of Dido and Æneas; their memorial games in Sicily; Æneas' visit to the underworld, and the struggle of the Trojan exiles against native princes for a foothold in their destined Italy—all a story of heroes and heroic deeds, sketched on broad lines and with a free hand, but worked out with exquisite grace and beauty of detail.
Vergil follows common usage in telling his story in an order not chronological. The introduction reminds us that the struggle of the Trojan exiles is not confined to earth, but has its counterpart in heaven, where Juno cherishes many old grudges against the Trojans, while Venus champions them for the sake of her son Æneas. A recognition of this divine element is all essential to an understanding of the story, for it is through the agency of these rival goddesses that much of the action for better and for worse is wrought out.
The first view of our Trojan band shows them helpless in the grasp of a raging storm, wave-tossed and all but wrecked, they know not where. Through the uproar of the elements we hear the despairing cry of stout-hearted Æneas himself:
But even as he speaks, the mountain waves break and drive his frail ships upon the quicksands near some wild and unknown shore.
In striking contrast to this wild scene is the calm haven to which a portion of the shipwrecked band is guided by the kindly divinities of the sea. The description of this spot, and the rest and refreshment of the weary toilers forms one of the most charming bits of realism in the poem.
After the necessary refreshment of food and sleep, Æneas, with his faithful Achates as sole companion, sets out at early dawn to explore this wild region upon the shores of which they have been cast. As they wander through a deep forest they meet Venus in the disguise of a huntress, and from her they inquire the name of this land.
Æneas now learns that he has been wrecked upon the coast of Africa, not far from the new city which Dido, a Tyrian princess, is building. He learns her tragic story: how her brother had killed her husband Sychæus out of greed for gain, and how she had fled, in consequence, with a band of Tyrian followers. The goddess points out the way to this new city, bids them be of good cheer and follow it, and vanishes from their sight, revealing her true nature to her son as she departs.
They soon reach a height which overlooks the new city of Carthage, and find themselves before a temple of Juno, upon whose architrave are sculptured scenes from the Trojan War. It is early morning, and the city is all a-buzz with toil of its inhabitants who urge on the many busy works. Æneas, homesick for his lost city, and long baffled in his search for his own promised home, cries out in longing as he looks upon this scene:
[F] These quotations are made from Miller and Nelson's Dido, an Epic Tragedy, by permission of Silver, Burdett & Co.
Soon they discover the pictures on the architrave, and are much moved as well as comforted to know that here, so far from home, their heroic struggles are known and appreciated. And now the strains of music and the stir of an approaching throng is heard, and, themselves unseen, Æneas and Achates behold the beautiful and stately queen Dido entering the temple with her train of maidens and courtiers. The queen takes her seat and proceeds to hold an impromptu court, planning the work of the day, and assigning tasks to her lieutenants.
Again the approach of a more noisy throng is heard, and into the stately temple breaks a group of desperate men whom Æneas at once recognizes to be a part of his own band who had been cast up upon another part of the shore. They are followed by a mob of jeering Carthaginians. Old Ilioneus, one of the Trojans, pleads their cause before the queen in a speech of mingled supplication and reproach, while at the same time he bewails the loss of his beloved prince Æneas.
The queen receives the wanderers with open-handed generosity, disclaims all intentional harshness, bids the Trojans freely share her city and her realm, and expresses the wish that their king himself, Æneas, were before her. These, we may be sure, were glad words to Æneas and his companions. They at once stand forth before the eyes of the astonished throng, joyfully greet their comrades, and Æneas salutes the queen with grateful and courtly speech:
The astonished Dido finds fitting words of welcome for her royal guest, again assures the Trojans that her city is their own, and proclaims a great feast on the ensuing night in honor of the distinguished strangers.
This feast is a scene of royal and barbaric splendor. The Tyrian lords and Trojan princes throng the banquet-hall with its rich tapestries and flashing lights, vessels of massive silver and of gold, while the bright-hued robes of Dido and her train add gladness and color to the scene. Amidst the feasting there was a song by an old minstrel, which he accompanied by the strains of his lyre. The song was upon the ever fascinating theme of natural phenomena, the powers of the air, the earth, the sea—all the dim mysteries of being. We are told that he sang about these things. Let us phrase them for his lyric measures.
Meanwhile the queen, deeply moved with pity first, and now with admiration for her heroic guest, hangs breathless on his words, asks eagerly of the famous war, and at last begs him to tell entire the story of that last sad night of Troy. We listen too while he, whose tears start as he speaks, relates that tragic story. He tells how, at the end of the long struggle, when both warring nations were well-nigh exhausted of their strength, the Greeks at last gained entrance to their Trojan city by the trick of the wooden horse. This huge image, found without their walls, filled all unknown to them with their bravest foes, they draw through their gates, and place upon their very citadel, amid dancing children and the joyous shouts of all the citizens; for they have been assured by the lying Sinon that the Greeks have gone home, and have left this horse as an offering to Minerva for their safe return.
In the deep night watches, when all are drowned in careless slumber and their festal draughts of wine, Æneas dreams that Hector stands before him, begrimed with gory dust and weeping bitterly.
"Ah! fly, goddess-born!" cries he, "and escape from these flames—the walls are in the enemy's hands—Troy is tumbling from its summit—the claims of country and king are satisfied—if Pergamus could be defended by force of hand, it would have been defended by mine, in my day. Your country's worship and her gods are what she intrusts to you now—take them to share your destiny—seek for them a mighty city, which you shall one day build when you have wandered the ocean over."
Conington.
As Æneas springs up from his couch, warned by this vision, his ears are greeted by the confused sound of distant clamor, hoarse cries, and the accustomed noise of battle. The sky is red with flames. Rushing out, he finds that the Greek forces from wooden horse and fleet have filled the city, while the Trojans, taken unawares, are making brave but desultory resistance. Collecting a band of men, he makes stubborn stand again and again; but at last overpowered, his men flee in scattered twos and threes.
Æneas finds himself near Priam's palace. This is beset by swarms of Greeks, who scale the walls and batter at the doors, while desperate defenders on the roof hurl down whatever comes to hand. Æneas gains the roof by a private way, and looking down upon the inner court, he is witness to the darkest tragedy of that night. Old Priam, with Hecuba his wife and helpless daughters, sits cowering upon the steps of the central shrine. A mighty crash and outcry from within tell that the Greeks have gained an entrance at the door. Now out into the peristyle, along the beautiful colonnades of the spacious court, comes Priam's youthful son Polites, hard-pressed by the spear of Pyrrhus, leader of the Greeks. In breathless fascination they watch the race for life until the boy falls slain just at his parent's feet. The aged king, roused by this outrage, stands forth; clad in his time-worn armor, and weak and trembling with age, he chides the Greek:
"Aye," cries he, "for a crime, for an outrage like this, may the gods, if there is any sense of right in heaven to take cognizance of such deeds, give you the full thanks you merit, and pay you your due reward; you, who have made me look with my own eyes on my son's death, and stained a father's presence with the sight of blood. But he whom your lying tongue calls your sire, Achilles, dealt not thus with Priam his foe—he had a cheek that could crimson at a suppliant's rights, a suppliant's honor. Hector's lifeless body he gave back to the tomb, and sent me home to my realms in peace." So said the poor old man, and hurled at him a dart unwarlike, unwounding, which the ringing brass at once shook off, and left hanging helplessly from the end of the shield's boss. Pyrrhus retorts: "You shall take your complaint, then, and carry your news to my father, Pelides. Tell him about my shocking deeds, about his degenerate Neoptolemus, and do not forget. Now die." With these words he dragged him to the very altar, palsied and sliding in a pool of his son's blood, wreathed his left hand in his hair, and with his right flashed forth and sheathed in his side the sword to the hilt. Such was the end of Priam's fortunes, such the fatal lot that fell upon him, with Troy blazing and Pergamus in ruins before his eyes—upon him, once the haughty ruler of those many nations and kingdoms, the sovereign lord of Asia! There he lies on the shore, a gigantic trunk, a head severed from the shoulders, a body without a name.
Conington.
The tide of carnage sucks out of the palace and ebbs away. As Æneas descends from the palace roof, he sees Helen skulking in a neighboring shrine. His heart is hot at sight of her who has been the firebrand of the war, and he resolves to kill her. But Venus flashes before his vision and warns him to hasten to the defense of his own home would he not see his own father lying even as Priam. Conscience-smitten, he hurries thither, divinely shielded from fire and sword. His plan is fixed to take his household and seek a place of safety without the city.
The unexpected resistance of his aged father, who is resolved not to survive his beloved Troy, is at last overcome; and soon, with his sire upon his shoulders, his little son held by the hand, and his household following, Æneas steals out the city gate on the side toward Mount Ida, and makes his way to a preconcerted place of meeting. Here, to his consternation, he discovers that his wife Creüsa is missing, and wildly rushes back to the city in search of her. Regardless of danger to himself, he is calling her name loudly through the desolate streets when her shade appears to him and says:
"Whence this strange pleasure in indulging frantic grief, my darling husband? It is not without heaven's will that these things are happening. That you should carry your Creüsa with you on your journey is forbidden by fate, forbidden by the mighty ruler of heaven above. You have long years of exile, a vast expanse of ocean to traverse—and then you will arrive at the land of Hesperia, where Tiber, Lydia's river, rolls his gentle volumes through rich and cultured plains. There you have a smiling future, a kingdom and a royal bride waiting your coming. Dry your tears for Creüsa, your heart's choice though she be. I am not to see the face of Myrmidons or Dolopes in their haughty homes, or to enter the service of some Grecian matron—I, a Dardan princess, daughter by marriage of Venus the immortal. No, I am kept in this country by heaven's mighty mother. And now farewell, and continue to love your son and mine." Thus having spoken, spite of my tears, spite of the thousand things I longed to say, she left me and vanished into unsubstantial air. Thrice, as I stood, I essayed to fling my arms round her neck—thrice the phantom escaped the hands that caught at it in vain—impalpable as the wind, fleeting as the wings of sleep.
So passed my night, and such was my return to my comrades. Arrived there, I find with wonder their band swelled by a vast multitude of new companions, matrons and warriors both, an army mustered for exile, a crowd of the wretched. From every side they were met, prepared in heart as in fortune to follow me over the sea to any land where I might take them to settle. And now the morning star was rising over Ida's loftiest ridge with the day in its train—Danaan sentinels were blocking up the entry of the gates, and no hope of succor appeared. I retired at last, took up my father, and made for the mountains.
Conington.
Thus simply ends the thrilling story of the Trojan War, told by one who was himself an active participant in those mighty deeds. It passes from turbulent action to pathetic rest like the tired sobbing of a child which has cried itself to sleep.
The banquet-hall of Dido has remained throughout this recital in breathless silence, and now a long sigh of relief from the strained tension of passionate sympathy breathes along the couches.
After an impressive pause, during which no word is spoken, Æneas resumes his story and tells of the seven years of wandering over the sea in search of the land that fate has promised him. With his little fleet of vessels, built at the foot of Ida, he touches first at a point in Thrace, intending to found a city there; but he is warned away by a horrible portent. He touches next at Delos, and implores the sacred oracle for a word of guidance to his destined home. To this prayer the oracle makes answer by a voice wafted from the inner shrine, while the whole place rocks and trembles:
Sons of Dardanus, strong to endure, the land which first gave you birth from your ancestral tree, the same land shall welcome you back, restored to its fruitful bosom; seek for your old mother till you find her. There it is that the house of Æneas shall set up a throne over all nations, they, and their children's children, and those that shall yet come after.
Conington.
So it is "Ho, for the mother-land!" But where is that? Whence sprang the Trojans? Here old Anchises, father of Æneas, rich in the lore of old tradition, says:
Listen, lords of Troy, and learn where your hopes are. Crete lies in the midst of the deep, the island of mighty Jove. There is Mount Ida, and there the cradle of our race. It has a hundred peopled cities, a realm of richest plenty. Thence it was that our first father, Teucer, if I rightly recall what I have heard, came in the beginning to the Rhoetean coast, and fixed on the site of empire. Ilion and the towers of Pergamus had not yet been reared; the people dwelt low in the valley. Hence came our mighty mother, the dweller on Mount Cybele, and the symbols of the Corybants, and the forest of Ida: hence the inviolate mystery of her worship, and the lions harnessed to the car of their queen. Come, then, and let us follow where the ordinance of heaven points the way; let us propitiate the winds, and make for the realm of Gnossus—the voyage is no long one—let but Jupiter go with us, and the third day will land our fleet on the Cretan shore.
Conington.
They quickly reach the Cretan shore, joyfully lay out their new city, and begin again the sweet, simple life in home and field which had been theirs before Paris brought the curse on Troy. But alas for their bright hopes! A blighting pestilence falls on man and beast, on tree and shrub; the very ground is accursed. It is the harsh warning of fate that they must not settle here. But where? To Æneas, as he tosses in sleepless anxiety through the night, there appear in the white moonlight the images of his country's gods, who give him the needed counsel:
We, the followers of you and your fortune since the Dardan land sank in flame—we, the comrades of the fleet which you have been guiding over the swollen main—we it is that will raise to the stars the posterity that shall come after you, and crown your city with imperial sway. Be it yours to build mighty walls for mighty dwellers, and not abandon the task of flight for its tedious length. Change your settlement; it is not this coast that the Delian god moved you to accept—not in Crete that Apollo bade you sit down. No, there is a place—the Greeks call it Hesperia—a land old in story, strong in arms and in the fruitfulness of its soil—the Oenotrians were its settlers. Now report says that later generations have called the nation Italian, from the name of their leader. That is our true home: thence sprung Dardanus and father Iasius, the first founder of our line. Quick! rise, and tell the glad tale, which brooks no question, to your aged sire; tell him that he is to look for Corythus and the country of Ausonia. Jupiter bars you from the fields of Dicte.
Conington.
Again on board, they sail for many stormy days until they reach the islands of the Strophades. Here dwell the Harpies, loathsome human birds, whose touch is defilement and whose speech is bitter with railing. Yet even here Æneas finds a prophecy of his destiny. Offended by the onslaught of the Trojans, Celæno, one of the Harpy band, thus reviles and prophesies:
What, is it war for the oxen you have slain and the bullocks you have felled, true sons of Laomedon? Is it war that you are going to make on us, to expel us, blameless Harpies, from our ancestral realm? Take, then, into your minds these my words, and print them there. The prophecy which the Almighty Sire imparted to Phoebus, Phoebus Apollo to me, I, the chief of the Furies, make known to you. For Italy, I know, you are crowding all sail: well, the winds shall be at your call as you go to Italy, and you shall be free to enter its harbors; but you shall not build walls around your fated city, before fell hunger and your murderous wrong against us drive you to gnaw and eat up your very tables.
Conington.
Hastily Æneas leaves this place with an earnest prayer that this dire threat may be averted. Past green Zacynthos, Dulichium, and craggy Neritos they go, past Ithaca, cursing it for crafty Ulysses' sake, and reach the rocky shores of Actium; then on past the Phæacian land to Buthrotum in Epirus, on the western shore of Greece. He is astounded and delighted to find that the strange fortunes of war have set Helenus, son of Priam, here as king, with Andromache, wife of the lamented Hector, as his queen. We may be sure that the meeting was sweet and bitter too for all the exiles.
They pass many days in hospitable intercourse, recalling the vanished life of their old Phrygian home, and recounting the checkered experiences of their recent years. And now, one bright morning, the breezes call loudly to the sails, and Æneas would pursue his way. He knows by now that Italy is the object of his quest, but how he may reach the destined spot in that vast stretch of coast, and what wanderings still await him, he does not know. But Helenus, his host, is famed as a diviner of hidden things, and to him Æneas appeals.
Helenus first warns his friend that he must shun that part of Italy which seems so near at hand, for on this eastern shore the Greeks have many cities; but he must sail far around, until he reach the farthest shore. Above all, let him not try to speed his course through the straits of Sicily, for here the dread monsters Scylla and Charybdis keep the way. They shall at last come to "Cumæ on the western shore, and the haunted lake, and the woods that rustle over Avernus," and there shall they learn further of their fates from the inspired prophetess of Apollo's shrine. Their final resting-place, where heaven shall permit them to found their city and end their wanderings, by this strange token they shall know—a huge white sow with thirty young, lying at ease beneath a spreading oak. "Such," says Helenus, "are the counsels which it is given you to receive from my lips. Go on your way, and by your actions lift to heaven the greatness of Troy."
With exchange of gifts, tokens of mutual love, sad at parting, but with high thoughts of glorious destiny, the royal pair speed their guests on their way. One reach to the northward, a night on the sandy shore, an early embarkation in the misty dusk of the morning, and Æneas turns his prows once more to the unknown west.
And now the stars were fled, and Aurora was just reddening in the sky, when in the distance we see the dim hills and low plains of Italy. "Italy!" Achates was the first to cry. Italy, our crews welcome with a shout of rapture. Then, my father Anchises wreathed a mighty bowl with a garland, and filled it with wine, and called on the gods, standing upon the tall stern: "Ye powers that rule sea and land and weather, waft us a fair wind and a smooth passage, and breathe auspiciously!"
Conington.
They make a hasty landing on this nearest shore, pay solemn tribute to Juno as Helenus had bidden them, and speeding across the great curving bay of Tarentum, hug fast the shores of southern Italy. Barely escaping the dangerous straits of Sicily, they pass the night upon the shore near Ætna, whose awful rumblings, whirlwinds of glowing ashes, and belched up avalanches of molten stone, appall their hearts. This night of dread ends in a morning of horror, for there, upon the mountainside, they see the Cyclopean monsters whom Ulysses and his band had so narrowly escaped. Hastily they push away from this dread coast, and sail clear around to western Sicily, where Æneas' aged father dies, and is buried in the friendly realm of King Acestes.
From here one more short course would have brought them to their journey's end; but Juno's implacable hate had stirred the winds against them, and by that dark storm they had been driven far away and wrecked on the coast of Africa.
Thus father Æneas, alone, amid the hush of all around, was recounting heaven's destined dealings, and telling of his voyages; and now at length he was silent, made an end, and took his rest.
Conington.
Ages after this, Othello the Moor won the love of Desdemona by tales of valor and of suffering:
By these same means, unwittingly has Æneas stirred the love in Dido's heart. She goes to her bed, but not to sleep. All night she tosses restlessly, picturing the hero's face and recalling his words; and in the morning, sick of soul, she pours her tears and cares into her sister Anna's bosom.
Anna advises her sister to yield to this new love, and argues that policy as well as inclination is on her side. Such a union as this would strengthen her against her brother, and exalt the sway of Carthage to unhoped for glory.
Thus advised, Dido gives herself up to passion's sway. Her city is forgotten, her queenly ambition gone. In hospitality, in feasting, and the dalliance of love the days go by. And seemingly Æneas, too, has forgotten his glorious destiny, his promised land of Italy, and is sunk in a languorous dream of present bliss.
But the fates of future Rome must not be thwarted. He is rudely awakened from his dream by Mercury, who at the command of Jove suddenly appears before him as he is engaged in urging on the walls and towers of Carthage.
Æneas is overwhelmed with astonishment and remorse. At once all his old ambitions regain their sway, and his mind is bent upon instant departure. He cries aloud:
But Dido has seen the hurrying Trojan mariners, and with her natural perceptions sharpened by suspicious fear, at once divines the meaning of this sudden stir. Maddened with the pangs of blighted love, she seeks Æneas and pours out her hot indignation mingled with pitiful pleadings.
Æneas is seemingly unmoved by this appeal. With the warnings of Jupiter still sounding in his ears, he dares not let his love answer a word to Dido's pleadings. And so he coldly answers her that he is but following the bidding of his fate, which is leading him to Italy, even as hers had led her to this land of Africa.
Dido has stood during this reply with averted face and scornful look, and now turns upon him in a passion of grief and rage. No pleadings now, but scornful denunciation and curses.
She works herself up to a frenzy, and as she finishes she turns to leave him with queenly scorn, staggers, and falls. The servants carry her from the scene, leaving Æneas in agony of soul, struggling between love and duty. Meanwhile the Trojan preparations go on with feverish haste. The ships are launched, hurried final preparations made, and all is now ready for departure. Dido sends her sister to Æneas with one last appeal, but all in vain. No tears or prayers can move him now.
The queen resolves on death. She has a huge pyre built within her palace court under the pretense of magic rites which shall free her from her unhappy love. The Trojans spend the night sleeping on their oars; the queen, in sleepless torment. As the dawn begins to brighten, the sailors are heard singing in the distance as they joyfully hoist their sails. Dido rushes to her window and beholds the fleet just putting out from shore. She cries aloud in impotent frenzy.
With this prophetic curse, to be fulfilled centuries hence, on the bloody fields of the Trebia, Trasumenus, and of Cannæ, she snatches up Æneas' sword, rushes out of the room, and mounts the pyre which she has prepared. Here have been placed all the objects which her Trojan lover has left behind. Passionately kissing these and pressing them to her breast, she utters her last words.
So saying, she falls upon the sword and perishes. The report of the queen's tragic death
runs wild through the convulsed city. With wailing and groaning, and screams of women, the palace rings; the sky resounds with mighty cries and beating of breasts—even as if the foe were to burst the gates and topple down Carthage or ancient Tyre, and the infuriate flame were leaping from roof to roof among the dwellings of men and gods.
Conington.
With the southern sky murky with the smoke and lurid with the glare of Dido's funeral pyre, Æneas sails away with sad forebodings, and comes again to Sicily. By chance this return to Sicily has fallen upon the anniversary of Anchises' death. Æneas therefore determines to hold a solemn festival in honor of his father, which he celebrates with the accustomed funeral games.
While these games are in progress, by the machinations of Juno, the Trojan women, weary of their long wanderings, attempt to burn the fleet. But the vessels are saved, with the loss of four, by the miraculous intervention of Jupiter. Æneas thereupon is advised by Nautes, a Trojan prince, to build a town here in Sicily, and to leave behind all those who have grown weak or out of sympathy with his great enterprise.
This advice is ratified by the shade of Anchises, who gives Æneas further direction for his way.
Moved by this vision, Æneas builds a town for the dispirited members of his band; and consigning these to King Acestes, sets his face once more toward Italy. This time, by Venus' aid, he reaches the Italian port of Cumæ, with no misadventure except the loss of his faithful pilot, Palinurus.
Once more on land, the Trojans joyfully scour the woods, seek out fresh springs of water, and collect fuel for their fires. Æneas, however, turns his steps to the temple of Apollo upon a neighboring height, and prays the guidance of the god upon his further way. But most of all it is upon the hero's heart to visit his father in the underworld according to the mandate of his father's shade in Sicily. At the advice of the Sibyl who presides over the temple of Apollo, Æneas performs the necessary rites preliminary to this journey, and entering the dread cave near Lake Avernus, they take their gloomy way below.
They reach at last the gates of Hades, where hover the dreadful shapes of Cares, Disease and Death, Want, Famine, Toil and Strife. Through these they fare, and stand upon the sedgy bank of the river of death. They see approaching them across the stream the old boatman Charon, who in his frail skiff ferries souls across the water.
The unsubstantial shades throng down to Charon's boat, where some are accepted for passage, and some rejected. Æneas in wonder turns to his guide for an explanation of this. She replies:
Æneas and his guide now present themselves for passage, but the old boatman refuses his boat to mortal bodies, until he is appeased by the Sibyl. Grim Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the farther bank of the stream and blocks their onward way, is next appeased. And on they go, past where the cries of wailing infants fill their ears; where Minos sits in judgment on the shades and assigns to each his place of punishment; past the abode of suicides, who rushed so rashly out of life, but now sigh vainly for the life which they threw away; past the Mourning Fields, dark groves where wander those who died of love. Here Æneas meets the shade of Dido, and learns what he had only feared before. With tears of love and pity he approaches and addresses her; but she, in indignant silence, turns away.
They reach the fields where souls of slain warriors dwell, still handling their shadowy arms and ghostly chariots. With empty, voiceless shouts the Trojan dead greet their hero, in wonder that he comes still living among them, while the Grecian shades flee gibbering away.
Still on the Sibyl leads her charge, and pausing before the horrid gates of Tartarus, the abode of lost souls, they listen to the dreadful sounds within, "the groans of ghosts, the pains of sounding lashes and of dragging chains." Standing before the gates, Æneas is told of the suffering which these must undergo whose souls, by reason of impious lives on earth, are past all reach of cure. What are the crimes that brought them here? What does Vergil regard as unpardonable sins?
As they turn away from this dread place, a tortured voice sounds after them:
Learn righteousness, and dread th' avenging deities.
Far off from here they reach the abode of the blessed—the Elysian Fields,
Seeking Anchises among these happy shades, the two are directed to a remote valley, where, beside the waters of Oblivion, old Anchises is passing in review the long train of his posterity, marshaled in the order of their birth into the world. When Anchises sees his son approaching, he cries out joyfully to him:
And are you come at last? Has love fulfilled a father's hopes and surmounted the perils of the way? Is it mine to look on your face, my son, and listen and reply as we talked of old? Yes; I was even thinking so in my own mind. I was reckoning that it would be, counting over the days. Nor has my longing played me false. Oh, the lands and the mighty seas from which you have come to my presence! the dangers, my son, that have tossed and smitten you! Oh, how I have feared lest you should come to harm in that realm of Libya!
Conington.
Then follows a revelation of the mysteries of transmigration of souls, the nature of soul essence, its purgation after years of contact with its old body, and its ages of preparation for another mortal habitation.
Anchises now calls his son's attention to his own posterity, standing in majestic review before him—noble shades, some of whom are destined to go to the upper world at once, and some to wait long centuries in the land of preëxistent souls. The mighty host of Roman worthies are marshaled here, who, as yet unknown, are to make the name of Rome known and feared or honored to the farthest bounds of earth. Here stalk the shadowy forms of kings, consuls, generals, and statesmen, who on earth shall be Romulus, Numa, and Tarquin; Brutus, Decius, Camillus, Cato, and the Gracchi; the Scipios, the Fabii; Cæsar and Pompey, and he whose brow shall be first to wear the imperial crown as ruler of the world—Augustus Cæsar.
And now Æneas, fortified for any hardships upon earth by these glorious visions of his posterity, turns his face back to the upper world.
There are two gates of Sleep: the one, as story tells, of horn, supplying a ready exit for true spirits; the other gleaming with the polish of dazzling ivory, but through it the powers below send false dreams to the world above. Thither Anchises, talking thus, conducts his son and the Sibyl, and dismisses them by the gate of ivory. Æneas traces his way to the fleet, and returns to his comrades; then sails along the shore for Caieta's haven. The anchor is cast from the prow; the keels are ranged on the beach.
Conington.
The Trojans sail up the coast, touch once more upon the land, skirt wide past Circe's realm of dreadful magic, and then they come to where a wide-mouthed river pours out into the sea.
The sea was just reddening in the dawn, and Aurora was shining down from heaven's height in saffron robe and rosy car, when all at once the winds were laid, and every breath sank in sudden sleep, and the oars pull slowly against the smooth unmoving wave. In the same moment Æneas, looking out from the sea, beholds a mighty forest. Among the trees Tiber, that beauteous river, with his gulfy rapids and the burden of his yellow sand, breaks into the main. Around and above, birds of all plumes, the constant tenants of bank and stream, were filling the air with their notes and flying among the woods. He bids his comrades turn aside and set their prows landward, and enters with joy the river's shadowed bed.
Conington.
Up this great stream they sail, and reach at last the spot which Fate has held in store for them. When that Italy which has so long eluded the grasp of the hero is actually reached, and he stands upon the fated ground to which prophecy and the visions of his eager fancy have long been pointing him, the poem is complete; and all that follows is another poem, actuated by another spirit. To this point Fate has led him, through the smoke of his burning city, through storms and shipwreck, and the unceasing opposition of adverse powers, and here she has finally rewarded his piety and unswerving faith in his destiny. The first six books of the Æneid present the hero as the all-enduring one, the last as the warrior king. The first six books are the story of hope and anticipation; the last, of attainment and realization.
The incidents of the last six books which constitute the second part of the Æneid may be briefly told. King Latinus, who ruled over Latium, received the Trojan prince with kindness and promised him Lavinia for his wife, the king's only daughter and heiress of his crown. But Juno's spite still pursued the Trojans, and through her machinations the Latins and their allies were aroused against these foreigners. Especially was Italian Turnus roused, a mighty prince of the Rutuli, for he had long been suitor for Lavinia, and had won the favor of the Queen Amata to his cause.
And now all Italy is ablaze with sudden war. Against his allied foes Æneas secures the aid of the Greek Evander with his Arcadians, and of the Etruscan tribes. The plains of Troy are transferred to Italy. Again are heard the clashing of arms, the trumpet's blare, the snorting of horses, the heavy tread of marching feet, hoarse challenges to conflict, the hollow groans of the wounded and dying; the air is lit with the gleam of torches; the ground is red with streams of blood. Juno and Venus are active throughout, as of old in the Homeric story, each in the interest of her own favorite.
But Juno's implacable hate is no match for destiny. Æneas must triumph, for the fates have spoken it. The interest of the whole conflict centers in the rival heroes; and when these two, after endless slaughter, on both sides, of lesser men, meet at last in single conflict, there is no doubt, even in the Italian's own heart, that he is foredoomed. And when he falls, wounded by Æneas' spear and slain by his sword, the poem ends abruptly, for the story can contain no more.
With these words, fierce as flame, he plunged the steel into the breast that lay before him. That other's frame grows chill and motionless, and the soul, resenting its lot, flies groaningly to the shades.
Conington.
Roman Epic Poetry, as illustrated by Nævius (269-199 B. C.), "the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet," Bellum Punicum; Ennius (239-169 B. C.), "the father of Roman literature," the Annals; Vergil (70-19 B. C.), greatest of Roman poets, the Æneid.
1. What is known of the life of Nævius? 2. What is the nature of his Bellum Punicum? 3. What did Vergil owe to this poem? 4. Quote the epitaph of Nævius. 5. What is the significance of it? 6. What were the chief events in the life of Ennius? 7. What interesting bit of self-portraiture appears in his Annals? 8. Why does he deserve the title of "the father of Roman literature"? 9. What is the nature of the Annals? 10. Why is the loss of the great body of this work so much to be regretted? 11. What progress did Latin literature make between the time of Ennius and that of Vergil? 12. How was Vergil fitted for his career both by nature and training? 13. Into what select circle was he privileged to enter? 14. What was the nature of the Eclogues? 15. What of the Georgics? 16. Why did the Æneid never receive its finishing touches? 17. How was the poem saved from destruction? 18. What was Vergil's probable purpose in writing the Æneid? 19. Quote the lines which promise world dominion to the Romans. 20. What religious motive seems to guide Æneas? 21. How does Vergil's treatment of the gods compare with that of Ovid? 22. What in brief is the story of the Æneid? 23. What characteristic passages in the poem deal with the mystery of nature? 24. From what different sources does Æneas throughout the poem receive guidance as to his future home? 25. On what occasions do the gods interfere to influence the progress of events? 26. What characteristic customs of the times are portrayed in the poem? 27. What picture of life after death does the poem present? 28. What crimes does Vergil represent as unpardonable sins? 29. How does Vergil glorify Æneas in his descendants? 30. How many books of the poem are devoted to the wanderings of Æneas? 31. What in brief is the story of the remaining books?
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