The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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-Enni poeta, salve, qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-
National Opposition
As the Hellenico-Roman literature of this period was essentially
marked by a dominant tendency, so was also its antithesis, the
contemporary national authorship. While the former aimed at neither
more nor less than the annihilation of Latin nationality by the
creation of a poetry Latin in language but Hellenic in form and
spirit, the best and purest part of the Latin nation was driven to
reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism
along with Hellenism itself. The Romans in the time of Cato stood
opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars
they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the
main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of
the Christian, community; the nobility of the nation and above all
the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile
power; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman
aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the
apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government.
In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the
vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The
Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum
of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad-
singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73) He and
those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured
on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure
are not unfrequently characterized by the bluntness and narrowness
peculiar to him; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only
confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right,
but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this
field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate
line of mere negative defence. When his younger contemporary, Aulus
Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes
themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even
manufactured Greek verses--when this Albinus in the preface to his
historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he
was by birth a Roman--was not the question quite in place, whether he
had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he
did not understand? Were the trades of the professional translator of
comedies and of the poet celebrating heroes for bread and protection
more honourable, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now?
Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he
took Ennius--who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman
potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself
with praise--along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of his
future achievements? Had he not reason to revile the Greeks, with
whom he had become acquainted in Rome and Athens, as an incorrigibly
wretched pack? This opposition to the culture of the age and the
Hellenism of the day was well warranted; but Cato was by no means
chargeable with an opposition to culture and to Hellenism in general.
On the contrary it is the highest merit of the national party, that
they comprehended very clearly the necessity of creating a Latin
literature and of bringing the stimulating influences of Hellenism
to bear on it; only their intention was, that Latin literature should
not be a mere copy taken from the Greek and intruded on the national
feelings of Rome, but should, while fertilized by Greek influences,
be developed in accordance with Italian nationality. With a genial
instinct, which attests not so much the sagacity of individuals as
the elevation of the epoch, they perceived that in the case of Rome,
owing to the total want of earlier poetical productiveness, history
furnished the only subject-matter for the development of an
intellectual life of their own. Rome was, what Greece was not, a
state; and the mighty consciousness of this truth lay at the root both
of the bold attempt which Naevius made to attain by means of history a
Roman epos and a Roman drama, and of the creation of Latin prose by
Cato. It is true that the endeavour to replace the gods and heroes of
legend by the kings and consuls of Rome resembles the attempt of the
giants to storm heaven by means of mountains piled one above another:
without a world of gods there is no ancient epos and no ancient drama,
and poetry knows no substitutes. With greater moderation and good
sense Cato left poetry proper, as a thing irremediably lost, to the
party opposed to him; although his attempt to create a didactic poetry
in national measure after the model of the earlier Roman productions
--the Appian poem on Morals and the poem on Agriculture--remains
significant and deserving of respect, in point if not of success, at
least of intention. Prose afforded him a more favourable field, and
accordingly he applied the whole varied power and energy peculiar to
him to the creation of a prose literature in his native tongue. This
effort was all the more Roman and all the more deserving of respect,
that the public which he primarily addressed was the family circle,
and that in such an effort he stood almost alone in his time. Thus
arose his "Origines," his remarkable state-speeches, his treatises
on special branches of science. They are certainly pervaded by a
national spirit, and turn on national subjects; but they are far
from anti-Hellenic: in fact they originated essentially under Greek
influence, although in a different sense from that in which the
writings of the opposite party so originated. The idea and even the
title of his chief work were borrowed from the Greek "foundation-
histories" (--ktoeis--). The same is true of his oratorical
authorship; he ridiculed Isocrates, but he tried to learn from
Thucydides and Demosthenes. His encyclopaedia is essentially the
result of his study of Greek literature. Of all the undertakings
of that active and patriotic man none was more fruitful of results
and none more useful to his country than this literary activity,
little esteemed in comparison as it probably was by himself.
He found numerous and worthy successors in oratorical and scientific
authorship; and though his original historical treatise, which of its
kind may be compared with the Greek logography, was not followed by
any Herodotus or Thucydides, yet by and through him the principle
was established that literary occupation in connection with the
useful sciences as well as with history was not merely becoming
but honourable in a Roman.
Architecture
Let us glance, in conclusion, at the state of the arts of
architecture, sculpture, and painting. So far as concerns the former,
the traces of incipient luxury were less observable in public than in
private buildings. It was not till towards the close of this period,
and especially from the time of the censorship of Cato (570), that
the Romans began in the case of the former to have respect to the
convenience as well as to the bare wants of the public; to line with
stone the basins (-lacus-) supplied from the aqueducts, (570); to
erect colonnades (575, 580); and above all to transfer to Rome the
Attic halls for courts and business--the -basilicae- as they were
called. The first of these buildings, somewhat corresponding to our
modern bazaars--the Porcian or silversmiths' hall--was erected by Cato
in 570 alongside of the senate-house; others were soon associated with
it, till gradually along the sides of the Forum the private shops were
replaced by these splendid columnar halls. Everyday life, however,
was more deeply influenced by the revolution in domestic architecture
which must, at latest, be placed in this period. The hall of the
house (-atrium-), court (-cavum aedium-), garden and garden colonnade
(-peristylium-), the record-chamber (-tablinum-), chapel, kitchen,
and bedrooms were by degrees severally provided for; and, as to the
internal fittings, the column began to be applied both in the court
and in the hall for the support of the open roof and also for the
garden colonnades: throughout these arrangements it is probable
that Greek models were copied or at any rate made use of. Yet the
materials used in building remained simple; "our ancestors," says
Varro, "dwelt in houses of brick, and laid merely a moderate
foundation of stone to keep away damp."
Plastic Art and Painting
Of Roman plastic art we scarcely encounter any other trace than,
perhaps, the embossing in wax of the images of ancestors. Painters
and painting are mentioned somewhat more frequently. Manius Valerius
caused the victory which he obtained over the Carthaginians and Hiero
in 491 off Messana(74) to be depicted on the side wall of the senate-
house--the first historical frescoes in Rome, which were followed by
many of similar character, and which were in the domain of the arts of
design what the national epos and the national drama became not much
later in the domain of poetry. We find named as painters, one
Theodotus who, as Naevius scoffingly said,
-Sedens in cella circumtectus tegetibus
Lares ludentis peni pinxit bubulo;-
Marcus Pacuvius of Brundisium, who painted in the temple of Hercules
in the Forum Boarium--the same who, when more advanced in life, made
himself a name as an editor of Greek tragedies; and Marcus Plautius
Lyco, a native of Asia Minor, whose beautiful paintings in the temple
of Juno at Ardea procured for him the freedom of that city.(75) But
these very facts clearly indicate, not only that the exercise of art
in Rome was altogether of subordinate importance and more of a manual
occupation than an art, but also that it fell, probably still more
exclusively than poetry, into the hands of Greeks and half Greeks.
On the other hand there appeared in genteel circles the first
traces of the tastes subsequently displayed by the dilettante and
the collector. They admired the magnificence of the Corinthian and
Athenian temples, and regarded with contempt the old-fashioned terra-
cotta figures on the roofs of those of Rome: even a man like Lucius
Paullus, who shared the feelings of Cato rather than of Scipio, viewed
and judged the Zeus of Phidias with the eye of a connoisseur. The
custom of carrying off the treasures of art from the conquered Greek
cities was first introduced on a large scale by Marcus Marcellus
after the capture of Syracuse (542). The practice met with severe
reprobation from men of the old school of training, and the stern
veteran Quintus Fabius Maximus, for instance, on the capture of
Tarentum (545) gave orders that the statues in the temples should not
be touched, but that the Tarentines should be allowed to retain their
indignant gods. Yet the plundering of temples in this way became of
more and more frequent occurrence. Titus Flamininus in particular
(560) and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (567), two leading champions of
Roman Hellenism, as well as Lucius Paullus (587), were the means of
filling the public buildings of Rome with the masterpieces of the
Greek chisel. Here too the Romans had a dawning consciousness of the
truth that an interest in art as well as an interest in poetry formed
an essential part of Hellenic culture or, in other words, of modern
civilization; but, while the appropriation of Greek poetry was
impossible without some sort of poetical activity, in the case of art
the mere beholding and procuring of its productions seemed to suffice,
and therefore, while a native literature was formed in an artificial
way in Rome, no attempt even was made to develop a native art.
Notes for Chapter XIV
1. A distinct set of Greek expressions, such as -stratioticus-,
-machaera-, -nauclerus-, -trapezita-, -danista-, -drapeta-, -
oenopolium-, -bolus-, -malacus-, -morus-, -graphicus-, -logus-,
- apologus-, -techna-, -schema-, forms quite a special feature in
the language of Plautus. Translations are seldom attached, and that
only in the case of words not embraced in the circle of ideas to which
those which we have cited belong; for instance, in the -Truculentus-
--in a verse, however, that is perhaps a later addition (i. 1, 60)
--we find the explanation: --phronesis-- -est sapientia-. Fragments
of Greek also are common, as in the -Casina-, (iii. 6, 9):
--Pragmata moi parecheis-- -- -Dabo- --mega kakon--, -ut opinor-.
Greek puns likewise occur, as in the -Bacchides- (240):
-opus est chryso Chrysalo-.
Ennius in the same way takes for granted that the etymological meaning
of Alexandros and Andromache is known to the spectators (Varro, de L.
L. vii. 82). Most characteristic of all are the half-Greek
formations, such as -ferritribax-, -plagipatida-, -pugilice-,
or in the -Miles Gloriosus- (213):
-Fuge! euscheme hercle astitit sic dulice et comoedice!-
2. III. VIII. Greece Free
3. One of these epigrams composed in the name of Flamininus runs thus:
--Zenos io kraipnaisi gegathotes ipposunaisi
Kouroi, io Spartas Tundaridai basileis,
Aineadas Titos ummin upertatos opase doron
Ellenon teuxas paisin eleutherian.--
4. Such, e. g, was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned
money en bis master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch,
Cato Mai. 20).
5. II. IX. Ballad-Singers
6. The later rule, by which the freedman necessarily bore the
-praenomen- of his patron, was not yet applied in republican Rome.
7. II. VII. Capture of Tarentum
8. III. VI. Battle of Sena
9. One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line--
-Quem ego nefrendem alui Iacteam immulgens opem.-
The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):
--oud ara Kirken
ex Aideo elthontes elethomen, alla mal oka
elth entunamene ama d amphipoloi pheron aute
siton kai krea polla kai aithopa oinon eruthron.--
are thus interpreted:
-Topper citi ad aedis--venimus Circae
Simul duona coram(?)--portant ad navis,
Milia dlia in isdem--inserinuntur.-
The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the
thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to
Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe. Another still more ridiculous
mistake is the translation of --aidoioisin edoka-- (Odyss. xv. 373)
by -lusi- (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller). Such traits are
not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize
in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest
Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive
that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have
been properly his mother-tongue.
10. Such a building was, no doubt, constructed for the Apollinarian
games in the Flaminian circus in 575 (Liv. xl. 51; Becker, Top. p.
605); but it was probably soon afterwards pulled down again (Tertull.
de Spect. 10).
11. In 599 there were still no seats in the theatre (Ritschl, Parerg.
i. p. xviii. xx. 214; comp. Ribbeck, Trag. p. 285); but, as not only
the authors of the Plautine prologues, but Plautus himself on
various occasions, make allusions to a sitting audience (Mil. Glor.
82, 83; Aulul. iv. 9, 6; Triicul. ap. fin.; Epid. ap. fin.), most
of the spectators must have brought stools with them or have seated
themselves on the ground.
12. III. XI. Separation of Orders in the Theatre
13. Women and children appear to have been at all times admitted to
the Roman theatre (Val. Max. vi. 3, 12; Plutarch., Quaest. Rom. 14;
Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 24; Vitruv. v. 3, i; Suetonius, Aug.
44,&c.); but slaves were -de jure- excluded (Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12,
26; Ritschl. Parerg. i. p. xix. 223), and the same must doubtless have
been the case with foreigners, excepting of course the guests of the
community, who took their places among or by the side of the senators
(Varro, v. 155; Justin, xliii. 5. 10; Sueton. Aug. 44).
14. III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy
15. II. IX. Censure of Art
16. It is not necessary to infer from the prologues of Plautus (Cas.
17; Amph. 65) that there was a distribution of prizes (Ritschl,
Parerg. i. 229); even the passage Trin. 706, may very well belong to
the Greek original, not to the translator; and the total silence of
the -didascaliae- and prologues, as well as of all tradition, on
the point of prize tribunals and prizes is decisive.
17. The scanty use made of what is called the middle Attic comedy does
not require notice in a historical point of view, since it was nothing
but the Menandrian comedy in a less developed form. There is no trace
of any employment of the older comedy. The Roman tragi-comedy--after
the type of the -Amphitruo- of Plautus--was no doubt styled by the
Roman literary historians -fabula Rhinthonica-; but the newer Attic
comedians also composed such parodies, and it is difficult to see why
the Ionians should have resorted for their translations to Rhinthon
and the older writers rather than to those who were nearer to their
own times.
18. III. VI In Italy
19. Bacch. 24; Trin. 609; True. iii. 2, 23. Naevius also, who in
fact was generally less scrupulous, ridicules the Praenestines and
Lanuvini (Com. 21, Ribb.). There are indications more than once of a
certain variance between the Praenestines and Romans (Liv. xxiii. 20,
xlii. i); and the executions in the time of Pyrrhus (ii. 18) as well
as the catastrophe in that of Sulla, were certainly connected with
this variance. --Innocent jokes, such as Capt. 160, 881, of course
passed uncensured. --The compliment paid to Massilia in Cas. v. 4., i,
deserves notice.
20. Thus the prologue of the -Cistellaria- concludes with the
following words, which may have a place here as the only contemporary
mention of the Hannibalic war in the literature that has come down
to us:--
-Haec res sic gesta est. Bene valete, et vincite
Virtute vera, quod fecistis antidhac;
Servate vostros socios, veteres et novos;
Augete auxilia vostris iustis legibus;
Perdite perduelles: parite laudem et lauream
Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.-
The fourth line (-augete auxilia vostris iustis Iegibus-) has
reference to the supplementary payments imposed on the negligent
Latin colonies in 550 (Liv. xxix. 15; see ii. 350).
21. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements
22. For this reason we can hardly be too cautious in assuming
allusions on the part of Plautus to the events of the times. Recent
investigation has set aside many instances of mistaken acuteness of
this sort; but might not even the reference to the Bacchanalia,
which is found in Cas. v. 4, 11 (Ritschl, Parerg. 1. 192), have been
expected to incur censure? We might even reverse the case and infer
from the notices of the festival of Bacchus in the -Casina-, and some
other pieces (Amph. 703; Aul. iii. i, 3; Bacch. 53, 371; Mil. Glor.
1016; and especially Men. 836), that these were written at a time
when it was not yet dangerous to speak of the Bacchanalia.
23. The remarkable passage in the -Tarentilla- can have no
other meaning:--
-Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere:
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus!-
24. The ideas of the modern Hellas on the point of slavery are
illustrated by the passage in Euripides (Ion, 854; comp. Helena,
728):--
--En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei,
Tounoma ta d' alla panta ton eleutheron
Oudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.--
25. For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in
the -Stichus- of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into
the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question--whether it is
better to marry a virgin or a widow--is inserted, merely in order that
it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the
interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women. But that
is a trifle compared with the following specimen. In Menander's
-Plocium- a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:--
--Echo d' epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soi
Tout'; eit' ap' ouchi; kurian tes oikias
Kai ton agron kai panton ant' ekeines
Echoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotaton
Apasi d' argalea 'stin, ouk emoi mono,
Tio polu mallon thugatri.--pragm' amachon legeis'
Eu oida--
In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in
its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:--
-Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est?--Ua! rogas?--
Qui tandem?--Taedet rientionis, quae mihi
Ubi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo savium
Dat jejuna anima.--Nil peccat de savio:
Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.-
26. Even when the Romans built stone theatres, these had not the
sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts
of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).
27. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements
28. The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused. Seeing that
he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than
495. Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell.
xii. 21. 45). That he had died as early as 550, as is usually
stated, was doubted by Varro (ap. Cic. Brut. 15, 60), and certainly
with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the
Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy. The sarcastic verses on
Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of
Zama. We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a
contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10),
ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than
Plautus. His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin
nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph.
The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess
of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact
that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy
of explanation. At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in
the army.
29. Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from
Naevius' tragedy of -Lycurgus- :--
-Vos, qui regalis cordons custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita-;
Or the famous words, which in the -Hector Profisciscens- Hector
addresses to Priam:
-Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato viro;-
and the charming verse from the -Tarentilla-; --
-Alii adnutat, alii adnictat; alium amat, alium tenet.-
30. III. XIV. Political Neutrality
31. III. XIV. Political Neutrality
32. This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients
could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or
spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author,
properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a
similar uncertainty as to his literary property. In this respect,
as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable
analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.
33. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted
to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls
34. III. XIV. Roman Barbarism
35 -Togatus- denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language,
the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also
to the Roman burgess. Thus especially -formula togatorum- (Corp.
Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound
to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions. The
designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as -Gallia togata-, which first
occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the
ordinary -usus loquendi-, describes this region presumably according
to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the
great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights. Virgil
appears likewise in the -gens togata-, which he mentions along with
the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation.
According to this view we shall have to recognize in the -fabula
togata-the comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the -fabula
palliata- had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of
action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is
wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of
Rome. That in reality the -togata- could only have its plot laid in
the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns
in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their
scene--Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium,--demonstrably had
Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war. By the
extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost
this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which
-de jure- took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off
for the dramatists of the capital, and so the -fabula togata- seems in
fact to have disappeared. But the -de jure- suppressed communities of
Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii.
148), and so far the -fabula Atellana- was in some measure the
continuation of the -togata-.