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The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5) - Theodor Mommsen

T >> Theodor Mommsen >> The History of Rome (Volumes 1 5)


Dance, Music, and Song in Latium


From the defectiveness of our traditional information it is
not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas among the
several groups of nations in Italy; and in particular we are no
longer in a position to speak of the poetry of Italy; we can only
speak of that of Latium. Latin poetry, like that of every other
nation, began in the lyrical form, or, to speak more correctly,
sprang out of those primitive festal rejoicings, in which dance,
music, and song were still inseparably blended. It is remarkable,
however, that in the most ancient religious usages dancing, and
next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than
song. In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of
victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods
and the champions, was assigned to the dancers grave and merry.
The grave dancers were arranged in three groups of men, youths,
and boys, all clad in red tunics with copper belts, with swords
and short lances, the men being moreover furnished with helmets,
and generally in full armed attire. The merry dancers were divided
into two companies--"the sheep" in sheep-skins with a party-coloured
over-garment, and "the goats" naked down to the waist, with a buck's
skin thrown over them. In like manner the "leapers" (-salii-)
were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods,(1)
and dancers (-ludii-, -ludiones-) were indispensable in all public
processions, and particularly at funeral solemnities; so that
dancing became even in ancient times a common trade. But, wherever
the dancers made their appearance, there appeared also the musicians
or--which was in the earliest times the same thing--the pipers.
They too were never wanting at a sacrifice, at a marriage, or at
a funeral; and by the side of the primitive public priesthood of
the "leapers" there was ranged, of equal antiquity although of far
inferior rank, the guild of the "pipers" (-collegium tibicinum-(2)),
whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their
ancient privilege--maintained even in spite of the strictness
of Roman police--of wandering through the streets at their annual
festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine. While dancing thus
presents itself as an honourable function and music as one subordinate
but still necessary, so that public corporations were instituted
for both of them, poetry appears more as a matter incidental and,
in some measure, indifferent, whether it may have come into existence
on its own account or to serve as an accompaniment to the movements
of the dancers.


Religious Chants


The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the
leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest. The
whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (-faunus-, from
-favere-) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had
the gift of listening to him, in rhythmically measured language
(-casmen-, afterwards -carmen-, from -canere-). Of a kindred nature
to these soothsaying songs of inspired men and women (-vates-) were
the incantations properly so called, the formulae for conjuring
away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they
prevented rain and called down lightning or even enticed the seed
from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from
the outset, formulae of mere sounds appear side by side with formulae
of words.(3) More firmly rooted in tradition and equally ancient
were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii
and other priesthoods; the only one of which that has come down to
us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars probably
composed to be sung in alternate parts, deserves a place here.

-Enos, Lases, iuvate!
Ne velue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores!
Satur fu, fere Mars! limen sali! sta! berber!
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos!
Enos, Marmar, iuvato!
Triumpe!-

Which may be thus interpreted:

To the gods:
-Nos, Lares, iuvate!
Ne veluem (= malam luem) ruem (= ruinam), Mamers,
sinas incurrere in plures!
Satur esto, fere Mars!

To the individual brethren:
In limen insili! sta! verbera (limen?)!

To all the brethren:
Semones alterni advocate cunctos!

To the god:
Nos, Mamers, iuvato!

To the individual brethren:
Tripudia!-(4)

The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian
songs, which were regarded even by the philologues of the Augustan
age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related
to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the
Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps
compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and
contents, with the Indian Vedas.


Panegyrics and Lampoons


Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later epoch. We might
infer from the national character of the Italians that satirical
songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their
prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of
police directed against them. But the panegyrical chants became
of more importance. When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier
was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accompanied by a
piper, sang his dirge (-nenia-). In like manner at banquets boys,
who according to the fashion of those days attended their fathers
even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in
praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply
reciting them without accompaniment (-assa voce canere-). The custom
of men singing in succession at banquets was presumably borrowed
from the Greeks, and that not till a later age. We know no further
particulars of these ancestral lays; but it is self-evident that
they must have attempted description and narration and thus have
developed, along with and out of the lyrical element, the features
of epic poetry.


The Masked Farce


Other elements of poetry were called into action in the primitive
popular carnival, the comic dance or -satura-,(5) which beyond
doubt reached back to a period anterior to the separation of the
stocks. On such occasions song would never be wanting; and the
circumstances under which such pastimes were exhibited, chiefly
at public festivals and marriages, as well as the mainly practical
shape which they certainly assumed, naturally suggested that several
dancers, or sets of dancers, should take up reciprocal parts;
so that the singing thus came to be associated with a species of
acting, which of course was chiefly of a comical and often of a
licentious character. In this way there arose not merely alternative
chants, such as afterwards went by the name of Fescennine songs, but
also the elements of a popular comedy--which were in this instance
planted in a soil admirably adapted for their growth, as an acute
sense of the outward and the comic, and a delight in gesticulation
and masquerade have ever been leading traits of Italian character.

No remains have been preserved of these -incunabula- of the Roman
epos and drama. That the ancestral lays were traditional is
self-evident, and is abundantly demonstrated by the fact that they
were regularly recited by children; but even in the time of Cato
the Elder they had completely passed into oblivion. The comedies
again, if it be allowable so to name them, were at this period and
long afterwards altogether improvised. Consequently nothing of
this popular poetry and popular melody could be handed down but
the measure, the accompaniment of music and choral dancing, and
perhaps the masks.


Metre


Whether what we call metre existed in the earlier times is doubtful;
the litany of the Arval Brethren scarcely accommodates itself to
an outwardly fixed metrical system, and presents to us rather the
appearance of an animated recitation. On the other hand we find in
subsequent times a very ancient rhythm, the so-called Saturnian(6)
or Faunian metre, which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be
conjectured to have arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin
popular poetry. The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a
far later age, may give an idea of it:--


Quod re sua difeidens--aspere afleicta

Parens timens heic vovit--voto hoc soluto
___
Decuma facta poloucta--leibereis lubentis
____ _____
Donu danunt__hercolei--maxsume--mereto
_____
Semol te orant se voti--crebro con__demnes.

__--'__--'__--'__^/ __--'__--'__--'_^


That which, misfortune dreading--sharply to afflict him, An anxious
parent vowed here,--when his wish was granted, A sacred tenth for
banquet--gladly give his children to Hercules a tribute--most of
all deserving; And now they thee beseech, that--often thou wouldst
hear them.

Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly
sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in
such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly
marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took
up the verse at this point. The Saturnian measure is, like every
other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity;
but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly
elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the
greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the
same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and
trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted
to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the
higher poetry.


Melody


The fundamental elements of the national music and choral dancing
in Latium, which must likewise have been established during this
period, are buried for us in oblivion; except that the Latin pipe
is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided
with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out
of the light thighbone of some animal.


Masks


Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters
of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called:
Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and
the wise Dossennus--masks which have been cleverly and strikingly
compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in
the Italian comedy of Pulcinello--already belonged to the earliest
Latin popular art. That they did so cannot of course be strictly
proved; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case
of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek
drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first
establishment, as, moreover, those Atellane masks were of decidedly
Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as
the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart
from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper
position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with
the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting
those rudiments themselves.


Earliest Hellenic Influences


If our information respecting the earliest indigenous culture and
art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our
knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses
imparted in this respect to the Romans from without. In a certain
sense we may include under this head their becoming acquainted with
foreign languages, particularly the Greek. To this latter language, of
course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their
enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles;(7) but an acquaintance
with it must have been not at all uncommon in the case of merchants.
The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing,
closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek.(8) The
culture of the ancient world, however, was not based either
on the knowledge of foreign languages or on elementary technical
accomplishments. An influence more important than any thus imparted
was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the
fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the
Hellenes. For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phoenicians
or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised an influence on
the Italians. We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus of
the fine arts which can be referred to Carthage or Caere, and the
Phoenician and Etruscan forms of civilization may be in general
perhaps classed with those that are hybrid, and for that reason
not further productive.(9) But the influence of Greece did not
fail to bear fruit. The Greek seven-stringed lyre, the "strings"
(-fides-, from --sphidei--, gut; also -barbitus-, --barbitos--),
was not like the pipe indigenous in Latium, and was always regarded
there as an instrument of foreign origin; but the early period at
which it gained a footing is demonstrated partly by the barbarous
mutilation of its Greek name, partly by its being employed even in
ritual.(10) That some of the legendary stores of the Greeks during
this period found their way into Latium, is shown by the ready
reception of Greek works of sculpture with their representations
based so thoroughly upon the poetical treasures of the nation; and
the old Latin barbarous conversions of Persephone into Prosepna,
Bellerophontes into Melerpanta, Kyklops into Cocles, Laomedon into
Alumentus, Ganymedes into Catamitus, Neilos into Melus, Semele into
Stimula, enable us to perceive at how remote a period such stories
had been heard and repeated by the Latins. Lastly and especially,
the Roman chief festival or festival of the city (-ludi maximi-,
-Romani-) must in all probability have owed, if not its origin,
at any rate its later arrangements to Greek influence. It was an
extraordinary thanksgiving festival celebrated in honour of the
Capitoline Jupiter and the gods dwelling along with him, ordinarily
in pursuance of a vow made by the general before battle, and
therefore usually observed on the return home of the burgess-force
in autumn. A festal procession proceeded toward the Circus staked
off between the Palatine and Aventine, and furnished with an arena
and places for spectators; in front the whole boys of Rome, arranged
according to the divisions of the burgess-force, on horseback and
on foot; then the champions and the groups of dancers which we have
described above, each with their own music; thereafter the servants
of the gods with vessels of frankincense and other sacred utensils;
lastly the biers with the images of the gods themselves. The
spectacle itself was the counterpart of war as it was waged in
primitive times, a contest on chariots, on horseback, and on foot.
First there ran the war-chariots, each of which carried in Homeric
fashion a charioteer and a combatant; then the combatants who had
leaped off; then the horsemen, each of whom appeared after the Roman
style of fighting with a horse which he rode and another led by the
hand (-desultor-); lastly, the champions on foot, naked to the girdle
round their loins, measured their powers in racing, wrestling, and
boxing. In each species of contest there was but one competition,
and that between not more than two competitors. A chaplet rewarded
the victor, and the honour in which the simple branch which formed
the wreath was held is shown by the law permitting it to be laid
on the bier of the victor when he died. The festival thus lasted
only one day, and the competitions probably still left sufficient
time on that day for the carnival proper, at which the groups of
dancers may have displayed their art and above all exhibited their
farces; and doubtless other representations also, such as competitions
in juvenile horsemanship, found a place.(11) The honours won in
real war also played their part in this festival; the brave warrior
exhibited on this day the equipments of the antagonist whom he had
slain, and was decorated with a chaplet by the grateful community
just as was the victor in the competition.

Such was the nature of the Roman festival of victory or city-festival;
and the other public festivities of Rome may be conceived to
have been of a similar character, although less ample in point of
resources. At the celebration of a public funeral dancers regularly
bore a part, and along with them, if there was to be any further
exhibition, horse-racers; in that case the burgesses were specially
invited beforehand to the funeral by the public crier.

But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners
and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the
Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental
idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike
sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the
Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from
the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing
the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which
in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet,
and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the
charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing
the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with
the general national festival. This agreement cannot have been
accidental, but must have been either a remnant of the primitive
connection between the peoples, or a result of the earliest
international intercourse; and the probabilities preponderate in
favour of the latter hypothesis. The city-festival, in the form
in which we are acquainted with it, was not one of the oldest
institutions of Rome, for the Circus itself was only laid out in the
later regal period;(12) and just as the reform of the constitution
then took place under Greek influence,(13) the city-festival may
have been at the same time so far transformed as to combine Greek
races with, and eventually to a certain extent to substitute them
for, an older mode of amusement--the "leap" (-triumpus-,(14)), and
possibly swinging, which was a primitive Italian custom and long
continued in use at the festival on the Alban mount. Moreover,
while there is some trace of the use of the war-chariot in actual
warfare in Hellas, no such trace exists in Latium. Lastly, the
Greek term --stadion-- (Doric --spadion--) was at a very early period
transferred to the Latin language, retaining its signification,
as -spatium-; and there exists even an express statement that the
Romans derived their horse and chariot races from the people of
Thurii, although, it is true, another account derives them from
Etruria. It thus appears that, in addition to the impulses imparted
by the Hellenes in music and poetry, the Romans were indebted to
them for the fruitful idea of gymnastic competitions.


Character of Poetry and of Education in Latium


Thus there not only existed in Latium the same fundamental elements
out of which Hellenic culture and art grew, but Hellenic culture
and art themselves exercised a powerful influence over Latium in
very early times. Not only did the Latins possess the elements
of gymnastic training, in so far as the Roman boy learned like
every farmer's son to manage horses and waggon and to handle the
hunting-spear, and as in Rome every burgess was at the same time
a soldier; but the art of dancing was from the first an object
of public care, and a powerful impulse was further given to such
culture at an early period by the introduction of the Hellenic
games. The lyrical poetry and tragedy of Hellas grew out of songs
similar to the festal lays of Rome; the ancestral lay contained the
germs of epos, the masked farce the germs of comedy; and in this
field also Grecian influences were not wanting.

In such circumstances it is the more remarkable that these germs
either did not spring up at all, or were soon arrested in their
growth. The bodily training of the Latin youth continued to be
solid and substantial, but far removed from the idea of artistic
culture for the body, such as was the aim of Hellenic gymnastics.
The public games of the Hellenes when introduced into Italy, changed
not so much their formal rules as their essential character. While
they were intended to be competitions of burgesses and beyond doubt
were so at first in Rome, they became contests of professional
riders and professional boxers, and, while the proof of free and
Hellenic descent formed the first condition for participating in
the Greek festal games, those of Rome soon passed into the hands
of freedmen and foreigners and even of persons not free at all.
Consequently the circle of fellow-competitors became converted into
a public of spectators, and the chaplet of the victorious champion,
which has been with justice called the badge of Hellas, was afterwards
hardly ever mentioned in Latium.

A similar fate befel poetry and her sisters. The Greeks and Germans
alone possess a fountain of song that wells up spontaneously; from
the golden vase of the Muses only a few drops have fallen on the
green soil of Italy. There was no formation of legend in the strict
sense there. The Italian gods were abstractions and remained such;
they never became elevated into or, as some may prefer to say,
obscured under, a true personal shape. In like manner men, even the
greatest and noblest, remained in the view of the Italian without
exception mortal, and were not, as in the longing recollection
and affectionately cherished tradition of Greece, elevated in the
conception of the multitude into god-like heroes. But above all
no development of national poetry took place in Latium. It is
the deepest and noblest effect of the fine arts and above all of
poetry, that they break down the barriers of civil communities and
create out of tribes a nation and out of the nations a world. As
in the present day by means of our cosmopolitan literature the
distinctions of civilized nations are done away, so Greek poetic
art transformed the narrow and egoistic sense of tribal relationship
into the consciousness of Hellenic nationality, and this again
into the consciousness of a common humanity. But in Latium nothing
similar occurred. There might be poets in Alba and in Rome, but there
arose no Latin epos, nor even--what were still more conceivable--a
catechism for the Latin farmer of a kind similar to the "Works and
Days" of Hesiod. The Latin federal festival might well have become
a national festival of the fine arts, like the Olympian and Isthmian
games of the Greeks. A cycle of legends might well have gathered
around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of
Ilion, and every community and every noble clan of Latium might
have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own
origin. But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained
without national poetry or art.

The inference which of necessity follows from these facts, that the
development of the fine arts in Latium was rather a shrivelling up
than an expanding into bloom, is confirmed in a manner even now not
to be mistaken by tradition. The beginnings of poetry everywhere,
perhaps, belong rather to women than to men; the spell of incantation
and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former,
and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae
and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived
as feminine. But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved
the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses.
In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin
language had no designation for the poet.(15) The power of song
emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly
arrested in its growth. The exercise of the fine arts was there
early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated
or unincorporated tradesmen. We have already mentioned that funeral
chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys; the religious
litanies also were chiefly executed by children. The musicians formed
an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (-praeficae-)
unincorporated, trades. While dancing, music, and singing remained
constantly in Greece--as they were originally also in Latium--reputable
employments redounding to the honour of the burgess and of the
community to which he belonged, in Latium the better portion of the
burgesses drew more and more aloof from these vain arts, and that
the more decidedly, in proportion as art came to be more publicly
exhibited and more thoroughly penetrated by the quickening impulses
derived from other lands. The use of the native pipe was sanctioned,
but the lyre remained despised; and while the national amusement of
masks was allowed, the foreign amusements of the -palaestra- were
not only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful. While
the fine arts in Greece became more and more the common property of
the Hellenes individually and collectively and thereby became the
means of developing a universal culture, they gradually disappeared
in Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people; and, as
they degenerated into utterly insignificant handicrafts, the idea
of a general national culture to be communicated to youth never
suggested itself at all. The education of youth remained entirely
confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity. The boy
never left his father's side, and accompanied him not only to the
field with the plough and the sickle, but also to the house of
a friend or to the council-hall, when his father was invited as a
guest or summoned to the senate. This domestic education was well
adapted to preserve man wholly for the household and wholly for
the state. The permanent intercommunion of life between father
and son, and the mutual reverence felt by adolescence for ripened
manhood and by the mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the
root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political traditions,
of the closeness of the family bond, and in general of the grave
earnestness (-gravitas-) and character of moral worth in Roman life.
This mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions
of homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are as simple as
they are profound. But amidst the admiration which it awakens we
may not overlook the fact that it could only be carried out, and
was only carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture
and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous
gifts of the Muses.