The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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Apart from the fable of the origin of the city, the Greek
historiographers had otherwise given themselves little or no concern
as to the Roman commonwealth; so that the presentation of the further
course of the national history must have been chiefly derived from
native sources. But the scanty information that has reached us does
not enable us to discern distinctly what sort of traditions, in
addition to the book of Annals, were at the command of the earliest
chroniclers, and what they may possibly have added of their own.
The anecdotes inserted from Herodotus(61) were probably still foreign
to these earliest annalists, and a direct borrowing of Greek materials
in this section cannot be proved. The more remarkable, therefore, is
the tendency, which is everywhere, even in the case of Cato the enemy
of the Greeks, very distinctly apparent, not only to connect Rome with
Hellas, but to represent the Italian and Greek nations as having been
originally identical. To this tendency we owe the primitive-Italians
or Aborigines who were immigrants from Greece, and the primitive-
Greeks or Pelasgians whose wanderings brought them to Italy.
The Earlier History
The current story led with some measure of connection, though the
connecting thread was but weak and loose through the regal period down
to the institution of the republic; but at that point legend dried up;
and it was not merely difficult but altogether impossible to form a
narrative, in any degree connected and readable, out of the lists of
magistrates and the scanty notices appended to them. The poets felt
this most. Naevius appears for that reason to have passed at once
from the regal period to the war regarding Sicily: Ennius, who in the
third of his eighteen books was still describing the regal period and
in the sixth had already reached the war with Pyrrhus, must have
treated the first two centuries of the republic merely in the most
general outline. How the annalists who wrote in Greek managed the
matter, we do not know. Cato adopted a peculiar course. He felt no
pleasure, as he himself says, "in relating what was set forth on the
tablet in the house of the Pontifex Maximus, how often wheat had been
dear, and when the sun or moon had been eclipsed;" and so he devoted
the second and third books of his historical work to accounts of the
origin of the other Italian communities and of their admission to the
Roman confederacy. He thus got rid of the fetters of chronicle, which
reports events year by year under the heading of the magistrates for
the time being; the statement in particular, that Cato's historical
work narrated events "sectionally," must refer to this feature of his
method. This attention bestowed on the other Italian communities,
which surprises us in a Roman work, had a bearing on the political
position of the author, who leaned throughout on the support of the
municipal Italy in his opposition to the doings of the capital; while
it furnished a sort of substitute for the missing history of Rome
from the expulsion of king Tarquinius down to the Pyrrhic war, by
presenting in its own way the main result of that history--the union
of Italy under the hegemony of Rome.
Contemporary History
Contemporary history, again, was treated in a connected and detailed
manner. Naevius described the first, and Fabius the second, war with
Carthage from their own knowledge; Ennius devoted at least thirteen
out of the eighteen books of his Annals to the epoch from Pyrrhus down
to the Istrian war;(62) Cato narrated in the fourth and fifth books
of his historical work the wars from the first Punic war down to that
with Perseus, and in the two last books, which probably were planned
on a different and ampler scale, he related the events of the last
twenty years of his life. For the Pyrrhic war Ennius may have
employed Timaeus or other Greek authorities; but on the whole
the accounts given were based, partly on personal observation
or communications of eye-witnesses, partly on each other.
Speeches and Letters
Contemporaneously with historical literature, and in some sense as an
appendage to it, arose the literature of speeches and letters. This
in like manner was commenced by Cato; for the Romans possessed nothing
of an earlier age except some funeral orations, most of which probably
were only brought to light at a later period from family archives,
such as that which the veteran Quintus Fabius, the opponent of
Hannibal, delivered when an old man over his son who had died in his
prime. Cato on the other hand committed to writing in his old age
such of the numerous orations which he had delivered during his long
and active public career as were historically important, as a sort of
political memoirs, and published them partly in his historical work,
partly, it would seem, as independent supplements to it. There also
existed a collection of his letters.
History of Other Nations
With non-Roman history the Romans concerned themselves so far, that
a certain knowledge of it was deemed indispensable for the cultivated
Roman; even old Fabius is said to have been familiar not merely with
the Roman, but also with foreign, wars, and it is distinctly testified
that Cato diligently read Thucydides and the Greek historians in
general. But, if we leave out of view the collection of anecdotes and
maxims which Cato compiled for himself as the fruits of this reading,
no trace is discernible of any literary activity in this field.
Uncritical Treatment of History
These first essays in historical literature were all of them, as
a matter of course, pervaded by an easy, uncritical spirit; neither
authors nor readers readily took offence at inward or outward
inconsistencies. King Tarquinius the Second, although he was already
grown up at the time of his father's death and did not begin to reign
till thirty-nine years afterwards, is nevertheless still a young man
when he ascends the throne. Pythagoras, who came to Italy about a
generation before the expulsion of the kings, is nevertheless set
down by the Roman historians as a friend of the wise Numa. The state-
envoys sent to Syracuse in the year 262 transact business with
Dionysius the elder, who ascended the throne eighty-six years
afterwards (348). This naive uncritical spirit is especially apparent
in the treatment of Roman chronology. Since according to the Roman
reckoning--the outlines of which were probably fixed in the previous
epoch--the foundation of Rome took place 240 years before the
consecration of the Capitoline temple(63) and 360 years before the
burning of the city by the Gauls,(64) and the latter event, which
is mentioned also in Greek historical works, fell according to these
in the year of the Athenian archon Pyrgion 388 B. C. Ol. 98, i, the
building of Rome accordingly fell on Ol. 8, i. This was, according
to the chronology of Eratosthenes which was already recognized as
canonical, the year 436 after the fall of Troy; nevertheless the
common story retained as the founder of Rome the grandson of the
Trojan Aeneas. Cato, who like a good financier checked the
calculation, no doubt drew attention in this instance to the
incongruity; but he does not appear to have proposed any mode of
getting over the difficulty--the list of the Alban kings, which
was afterwards inserted with this view, certainly did not proceed
from him.
The same uncritical spirit, which prevailed in the early history,
prevailed also to a certain extent in the representation of historical
times. The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong
party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement
of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the
calm severity characteristic of him. Mistrust, however, is more
appropriate in such circumstances than reproach. It is somewhat
ridiculous to expect from the Roman contemporaries of Hannibal a
just judgment on their opponents; but no conscious misrepresentation
of the facts, except such as a simple-minded patriotism of itself
involves, has been proved against the fathers of Roman history.
Science
The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of authorship relating
to it, also fall within this epoch. The instruction hitherto given
had been substantially confined to reading and writing and a knowledge
of the law of the land.(65) But a closer contact with the Greeks
gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of a more general culture;
and stimulated the endeavour, if not directly to transplant this
Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to
some extent after its model.
Grammar
First of all, the knowledge of the mother-tongue began to shape itself
into Latin grammar; Greek philology transferred its methods to the
kindred idiom of Italy. The active study of grammar began nearly at
the same time with Roman authorship. About 520 Spurius Carvilius, a
teacher of writing, appears to have regulated the Latin alphabet, and
to have given to the letter -g, which was not previously included in
it,(66) the place of the -z which could be dispensed with--the place
which it still holds in the modern Occidental alphabets. The Roman
school-masters must have been constantly working at the settlement
of orthography; the Latin Muses too never disowned their scholastic
Hippocrene, and at all times applied themselves to orthography side
by side with poetry. Ennius especially--resembling Klopstock in this
respect also--not only practised an etymological play on assonance
quite after the Alexandrian style,(67) but also introduced, in place
of the simple signs for the double consonants that had hitherto been
usual, the more accurate Greek double writing. Of Naevius and
Plautus, it is true, nothing of the kind is known; the popular
poets in Rome must have treated orthography and etymology with
the indifference which is usual with poets.
Rhetoric and Philosophy
The Romans of this epoch still remained strangers to rhetoric and
philosophy. The speech in their case lay too decidedly at the very
heart of public life to be accessible to the handling of the foreign
schoolmaster; the genuine orator Cato poured forth all the vials of
his indignant ridicule over the silly Isocratean fashion of ever
learning, and yet never being able, to speak. The Greek philosophy,
although it acquired a certain influence over the Romans through the
medium of didactic and especially of tragic poetry, was nevertheless
viewed with an apprehension compounded of boorish ignorance and of
instinctive misgiving. Cato bluntly called Socrates a talker and a
revolutionist, who was justly put to death as an offender against the
faith and the laws of his country; and the opinion, which even Romans
addicted to philosophy entertained regarding it, may well be expressed
in the words of Ennius:
-Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis, nam omnino haut placet.
Degustandum ex ea, non in eam ingurgitandum censeo.-
Nevertheless the poem on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which
were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman
quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman -caput
mortuum- of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources
whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably
the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course,
due commendation of the simple ancestral habits), and, in the case of
the book on Oratory, the speeches in Thucydides and more especially
the orations of Demosthenes, all of which Cato zealously studied.
Of the spirit of these manuals we may form some idea from the golden
oratorical rule, oftener quoted than followed by posterity, "to think
of the matter and leave the words to follow from it."(68)
Medicine
Similar manuals of a general elementary character were composed by
Cato on the Art of Healing, the Science of War, Agriculture, and
Jurisprudence--all of which studies were likewise more or less under
Greek influence. Physics and mathematics were not much studied in
Rome; but the applied sciences connected with them received a certain
measure of attention. This was most of all true of medicine. In 535
the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Archagathus, settled in
Rome and there acquired such repute by his surgical operations, that a
residence was assigned to him on the part of the state and he received
the freedom of the city; and thereafter his colleagues flocked in
crowds to Italy. Cato no doubt not only reviled the foreign medical
practitioners with a zeal worthy of a better cause, but attempted,
by means of his medical manual compiled from his own experience and
probably in part also from the medical literature of the Greeks, to
revive the good old fashion under which the father of the family was
at the same time the family physician. The physicians and the public
gave themselves, as was reasonable, but little concern about his
obstinate invectives: at any rate the profession, one of the most
lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands
of the foreigners, and for centuries there were none but Greek
physicians in Rome.
Mathematics
Hitherto the measurement of time had been treated in Rome with
barbarous indifference, but matters were now at least in some degree
improved. With the erection of the first sundial in the Roman Forum
in 491 the Greek hour (--ora--, -hora-) began to come into use at
Rome: it happened, however, that the Romans erected a sundial which
had been prepared for Catana situated four degrees farther to the
south, and were guided by this for a whole century. Towards the end
of this epoch we find several persons of quality taking an interest
in mathematical studies. Manius Acilius Glabrio (consul in 563)
attempted to check the confusion of the calendar by a law, which
allowed the pontifical college to insert or omit intercalary months at
discretion: if the measure failed in its object and in fact aggravated
the evil, the failure was probably owing more to the unscrupulousness
than to the want of intelligence of the Roman theologians. Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior (consul in 565), a man of Greek culture, endeavoured
at least to make the Roman calendar more generally known. Gaius
Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588), who not only predicted the eclipse
of the moon in 586 but also calculated the distance of the moon
from the earth, and who appears to have come forward even as an
astronomical writer, was regarded on this account by his
contemporaries as a prodigy of diligence and acuteness.
Agriculture and the Art of War
Agriculture and the art of war were, of course, primarily regulated
by the standard of traditional and personal experience, as is very
distinctly apparent in that one of the two treatises of Cato on
Agriculture which has reached our time. But the results of Graeco-
Latin, and even of Phoenician, culture were brought to bear on these
subordinate fields just as on the higher provinces of intellectual
activity, and for that reason the foreign literature relating to
them cannot but have attracted some measure of attention.
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was only in a subordinate degree
affected by foreign elements. The activity of the jurists of this
period was still mainly devoted to the answering of parties consulting
them and to the instruction of younger listeners; but this oral
instruction contributed to form a traditional groundwork of rules,
and literary activity was not wholly wanting. A work of greater
importance for jurisprudence than the short sketch of Cato was the
treatise published by Sextus Aelius Paetus, surnamed the "subtle"
(-catus-), who was the first practical jurist of his time, and, in
consequence of his exertions for the public benefit in this respect,
rose to the consulship (556) and to the censorship (560). His
treatise --the "-Tripartita-" as it was called--was a work on the
Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an
explanation--chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible
expressions--and the corresponding formula of action. While this
process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek
grammatical studies, the portion treating of the formulae of action,
on the contrary, was based on the older collection of Appius(69)
and on the whole system of procedure developed by national usage
and precedent.
Cato's Encyclopaedia
The state of science generally at this epoch is very distinctly
exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed by Cato for his
son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in
short maxims what a "fit man" (-vir bonus-) ought to be as orator,
physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist. A distinction was not yet
drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science;
but so much of science generally as seemed necessary or useful was
required of every true Roman. The work did not include Latin grammar,
which consequently cannot as yet have attained that formal development
which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and
it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical
sciences. Throughout it was the directly practical element in science
which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and
simplicity as possible. The Greek literature was doubtless made use
of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled
from the mass of chaff and rubbish: it was one of Cato's commonplaces,
that "Greek books must be looked into, but not thoroughly studied."
Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which,
while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek
acuteness and depth, but through that very peculiarity moulded the
attitude of the Romans towards the Greek sciences for all ages.
Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature
Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into Rome along with
the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of
the age of Cicero:
-Poenico bello secundo Musa pennato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram.-
In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there
must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement
Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with
Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with
Greek comedy. The question accordingly presents itself, whether,
contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like
the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and
Volturnus. But all information on the point is lost, and history
can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.
Hellenizing Literature
The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an
opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to
the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of
Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental
life of Italy in that sixth century--full of the din of arms and
pregnant for the future--during which its distinctively Italian phase
closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient
civilization. In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which
everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and
characterized the age of transition. No one of unprejudiced mind,
and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand years,
can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman
literature. Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles
a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange-trees;
both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them
as parallel. This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue
of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman
literature in a foreign tongue; to a very great extent the former was
not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks,
Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only
acquired by study. Among those who in this age came before the public
as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been
persons of rank; and not only so, but none can be shown to have
been natives of Latium proper. The very name given to the poet was
foreign; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a -poeta-(70). But
not only was this poetry foreign; it was also liable to all those
defects which are found to occur where schoolmasters become authors
and the great multitude forms the public. We have shown how comedy
was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact
sank into vulgar coarseness; we have further shown that two of the
most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first
instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the
Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national
literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and
literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand
in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen. In
fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature
of the sixth century--that poetry followed out professionally and
destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation
of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of
translations, that changeling of epos--we are tempted to reckon
it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.
But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very
partial sense. We must first of all consider that this artificial
literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any
national poetic art, but could never attain any such art. In
antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life,
creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period
when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth:
without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets
we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the
primitive stories of human gods and divine men. This basis of ancient
poetry was totally wanting in Latium: where the world of gods remained
shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry
could not voluntarily ripen. To this falls to be added a second
and more important consideration.
The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of
Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible
to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher
and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of
Hellenism. The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a
revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable
for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations; and this
primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of
the Romano-Hellenistic literature. Not a single new and genuine work
of art issued from its workshop, but it extended the intellectual
horizon of Hellas over Italy. Viewed even in its mere outward aspect,
Greek poetry presumes in the hearer a certain amount of positive
acquired knowledge. That self-contained completeness, which is one
of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for
instance, was foreign to ancient poetry; a person unacquainted with
the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and
often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy.
If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the
comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of
Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current
of the other myths,(71) this knowledge must have found its way to the
public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus
have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the
Hellenic poetry. But still deeper was the effect--on which the most
ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis--produced
by the naturalization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek
metres in Latium. If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror
by art," the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from
the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language,
so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius
flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the
jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms
fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the
key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical
feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the
living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses
awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain.
Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes
spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature
in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to
germinate; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little
susceptible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture. Nor let
it be said, that, by virtue of the widely diffused acquaintance with
the Greek language, its literature would have sufficed for the
susceptible Roman public. The mysterious charm which language
exercises over man, and which poetical language and rhythm only
enhance, attaches not to any tongue learned accidentally, but only
to the mother-tongue. From this point of view, we shall form a juster
judgment of the Hellenistic literature, and particularly of the
poetry, of the Romans of this period. If it tended to transplant
the radicalism of Euripides to Rome, to resolve the gods either into
deceased men or into mental conceptions, to place a denationalized
Latium by the side of a denationalized Hellas, and to reduce all
purely and distinctly developed national peculiarities to the
problematic notion of general civilization, every one is at liberty to
find this tendency pleasing or disagreeable, but none can doubt its
historical necessity. From this point of view the very defectiveness
of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and
so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a
disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the
comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry
lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and
metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the
hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was chiefly translation or
imitation; but, if the primary object of poetry was simply to form
a bridge from Latium to Hellas, Livius and Ennius had certainly a
vocation to the poetical pontificate in Rome, and a translated
literature was the simplest means to the end. It was still less
seemly that Roman poetry preferred to lay its hands on the most worn-
out and trivial originals; but in this view it was appropriate. No
one will desire to place the poetry of Euripides on a level with that
of Homer; but, historically viewed, Euripides and Menander were quite
as much the oracles of cosmopolitan Hellenism as the Iliad and
Odyssey were the oracles of national Hellenism, and in so far
the representatives of the new school had good reason for
introducing their audience especially to this cycle of literature.
The instinctive consciousness also of their limited poetical powers
may partly have induced the Roman composers to keep mainly by
Euripides and Menander and to leave Sophocles and even Aristophanes
untouched; for, while poetry is essentially national and difficult to
transplant, intellect and wit, on which the poetry of Euripides as
well as of Menander is based, are in their very nature cosmopolitan.
Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that
the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the
Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but
sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although
not exactly in its richest or purest fields. On the whole, however
innumerable may be the false accommodations and sins against the rules
of art which we can point out in them, these were just the offences
which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous
efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism; and they are, in a
historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some
measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism.
We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new
gospel; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what,
as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to
the Roman poets of the sixth century. A fresh and strong sense of the
power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to transplant
the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of
the sixth century, and coincided in a peculiar manner with the
thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age. The later refined
Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period
with some degree of contempt; it should rather perhaps have looked
up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more
intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine
poetical art, than their more cultivated successors. In the bold
emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional
pride of the poets of this age there is, more than in any other epoch
of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are
under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to
it the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates
its praise: