The History of Rome, Book IV - Theodor Mommsen
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Secret Worships
But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally still more
popular. As early as Cato's time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had
begun to come into competition with the Etruscan -haruspex- and the
Marsian bird-seer;(16) star-gazing and astrology were soon as much
at home in Italy as in their dreamy native land. In 615 the Roman
-praetor peregrinus- directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate Rome
and Italy within ten days. The same fate at the same time befel
the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes to their sabbath.
In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from
soothsayers and pious impostors of every sort. Some forty years
afterwards (657) it was even found necessary to prohibit human
sacrifices. The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the
Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal
processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy
Egyptian worships began to make their appearance; the former
Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later
Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin
to the Sullan period. Men had become perplexed not merely as to
the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a
fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil war
was still far from being at an end, increased the anxious suspense,
the gloomy perplexity of the multitude. Restlessly the wandering
imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it
fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst
the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh
alarms. A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction--
political, economic, moral, religious--the soil which was adapted
for it, and grew with alarming rapidity; it was as if gigantic
trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence
or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth
worked new wonders and seized like an epidemic on all minds
not thoroughly fortified.
Education
Just as in the sphere of religion, the revolution begun in the
previous epoch was now completed also in the sphere of education
and culture. We have already shown how the fundamental idea of
the Roman system--civil equality--had already during the sixth
century begun to be undermined in this field also. Even in the
time of Pictor and Cato Greek culture was widely diffused in Rome,
and there was a native Roman culture; but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage. Cato's encyclopaedia shows tolerably
what was understood at this period by a Romano-Greek model
training;(16) it was little more than an embodiment of the
knowledge of the old Roman householder, and truly, when compared
with the Hellenic culture of the period, scanty enough. At how
low a stage the average instruction of youth in Rome still stood
at the beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from
the expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prominently
censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as compared
with the intelligent private and public care of his countrymen;
no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could rightly enter
into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay at the root
of this indifference.
Now the case was altered. Just as the naive popular faith was
superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so in education
alongside of the simple popular instruction a special training, an
exclusive -humanitas-, developed itself and eradicated the last
remnants of the old social equality. It will not be superfluous
to cast a glance at the aspect assumed by the new instruction of
the young, both the Greek and the higher Latin.
Greek Instruction
It was a singular circumstance that the same man, who in a
political point of view definitively vanquished the Hellenic
nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the same time the first or
one of the first who fully recognized the Hellenic civilization as--
what it has thenceforth continued to be beyond dispute--the
civilization of the ancient world. He was himself indeed an old
man before it was granted to him, with the Homeric poems in his
mind, to stand before the Zeus of Phidias; but his heart was young
enough to carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the
unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the Hesperides
in his soul; poets and artists had found in the foreigner a more
earnest and cordial devotee than was any of the wise men of the
Greece of those days. He made no epigram on Homer or Phidias,
but he had his children introduced into the realms of intellect.
Without neglecting their national education, so far as there
was such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical
development of his boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises which
were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but by instruction in
the chase, which was among the Greeks developed almost like an art;
and he elevated their Greek instruction in such a way that the
language was no longer merely learned and practised for the sake
of speaking, but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter
of general higher culture was associated with the language and
developed out of it--embracing, first of all, the knowledge of
Greek literature with the mythological and historical information
necessary for understanding it, and then rhetoric and philosophy.
The library of king Perseus was the only portion of the Macedonian
spoil that Paullus took for himself, with the view of presenting it
to his sons. Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his
train and completed the aesthetic training of his children. That
the time was past when men could in this field preserve a merely
repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by
Cato; the better classes had probably now a presentiment that the
noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism
as a whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of
the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode.
There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now
they arrived in troops--and as teachers not merely of the language
but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened
lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom. Greek tutors and
teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were
as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is
a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for
a Greek literary slave of the first rank. As early as 593 there
existed in the capital a number of special establishments for
the practice of Greek declamation. Several distinguished names
already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius
has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of
Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus,
found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and
illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems. It is
true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary
and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance
of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities
in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth
mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still
doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but
there was no further action. The higher instruction in Greek and
in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized
as an essential part of Italian training.
Latin Instruction
Public Readings of Classical Works
But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction.
We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction
raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken
by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman
boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue
by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original:
how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus,
Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly
so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not
disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but
they did not as yet form such an instruction itself. Instruction
in a language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as it
lacks a literature. It was not until there were not merely Latin
schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already
somewhat rounded-off in the works of the classics of the sixth century,
that the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered into
the circle of the elements of higher culture; and the emancipation
from the Greek schoolmasters was now not slow to follow. Stirred up
by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read
the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius,
the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first
to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of
a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after
the precedent of the Homeric grammarians. These literary prelections,
which cultivated -dilettanti- (-litterati-) held gratuitously, were not
formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means
of introducing the youth to the understanding and the discussion of
the classic Latin literature.
Rhetorical Exercises
The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar way.
The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an early age incited
to come forward in public with panegyrics and forensic speeches,
can never have lacked exercises in oratory; but it was only at this
epoch, and in consequence of the new exclusive culture, that there
arose a rhetoric properly so called. Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul
in 617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who technically
handled the language and subject-matter; the two famous advocates
of the Marian age, the masculine and vigorous Marcus Antonius (611-
667) and the polished and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663)
were already complete rhetoricians. The exercises of the young men
in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance, but still
remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially
limited to the personal attendance of the beginner on the master of
the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.
Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin rhetoric
was given first about 650 by Lucius Aelius Praeconinus of Lanuvium,
called the "penman" (-Stilo-), a distinguished Roman knight of
strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with
a select circle of younger men--including Varro and Cicero--and
sometimes also went over outlines of speeches with the authors,
or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends. This was
instruction, but Stilo was not a professional schoolmaster; he
taught literature and rhetoric, just as jurisprudence was taught
at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men,
not of a man hired and holding himself at every one's command.
Course of Literature and Rhetoric
But about his time began also the scholastic higher instruction
in Latin, separated as well from elementary Latin as from Greek
instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid
masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves. That its spirit and method
were throughout borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature
and language, was a matter of course; and the scholars also consisted,
as at these exercises, of youths, and not of boys. This Latin
instruction was soon divided like the Greek into two courses;
in so far as the Latin literature was first the subject of
scientific lectures, and then a technical introduction was given
to the preparation of panegyrics, public, and forensic orations.
The first Roman school of literature was opened about Stilo's time
by Marcus Saevius Nicanor Postumus, the first separate school for
Latin rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus; but ordinarily
instructions in rhetoric were also given in the Latin schools of
literature. This new Latin school-instruction was of the most
comprehensive importance. The introduction to the knowledge of
Latin literature and Latin oratory, such as had formerly been
imparted by connoisseurs and masters of high position, had
preserved a certain independence in relation to the Greeks.
The judges of language and the masters of oratory were doubtless
under the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that of
the Greek school-grammar and school-rhetoric; the latter in particular
was decidedly an object of dread. The pride as well as the sound
common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that
the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt,
intelligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue
could be learned in the school by school-rules. To the solid
practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetoricians, so
totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the
beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture
and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed
shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views
did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally
developed rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue. Accordingly
the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hostility to the
rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were
tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek
rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or
into Latin oratorical instruction. But in the new Latin rhetorical
schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical themes; they accused Ulysses, who
was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's bloody sword,
of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they
charged Orestes with the murder of his mother, or undertook to
defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary
good advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply
with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in Carthage, or to take
flight. It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once
more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts
of words. The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and
parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man,
from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic
orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus. Of course the
Cassandra spoke in vain; declamatory exercises in Latin on the
current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient
in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players and to
stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.
As the aggregate result of this modern Roman education there sprang
up the new idea of "humanity," as it was called, which consisted
partly of a more or less superficial appropriation of the aesthetic
culture of the Hellenes, partly of a privileged Latin culture as
an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek. This new humanity,
as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics
of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and
combined in itself, just like our closely kindred "general
culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive
character. Here too we trace the revolution, which separated
classes and blended nations.
Chapter XIII
Literature and Art
Literary Reaction
The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of
view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we do not find in
the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of
the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively
authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest
sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the
soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and
historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of
the Punic wars. Much is only artificially transplanted, there
are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art
and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance
betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence
and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that
age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate
the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks.
It is otherwise in the epoch before us. The morning mists fell;
what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into the
difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own
talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work,
could not be carried farther now, when on the one hand the dull
sultriness of the approaching revolutionary storm began to fill
the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent
were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and
art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation.
The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible minds.
The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh called forth a literary
reaction, which destroyed the germs of promise contained in those
simple imitative attempts by the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted
up the wheat and the tares of the older type of literature together.
Scipionic Circle
This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the circle
which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and whose most prominent
members among the Roman world of quality were, in addition to
Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius
(consul in 614) and Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius
Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius,
and the philosopher Panaetius. Those who were familiar with the
Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly
impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad
translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had
furnished and Pacuvius continued to furnish. While patriotic
considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the
native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed
shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions
of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of
Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius--all those poets "who appeared to have a
licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically"--are found in
the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written
at the close of this period. People shrugged their shoulders at
the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate
attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded
somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his
youth; despairing of the transplantation of the marvellous tree,
they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose
substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves
in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign
masterpieces. The productiveness of this epoch displayed itself
chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the
poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences. The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art
and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of
persons of culture became separated from the body of the people,
was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society
and the vulgar Latin of the common people. The prologues of
Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language
forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this
circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among
the Romans now falls decidedly into the shade. In so far certainly
there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far
less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly
pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a
linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio
the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin. In like manner
literary activity gradually rises in public opinion from a trade
to an art. At the beginning of this period the preparation of
theatrical pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative
poems, was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of quality;
Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces; the writing of dramas
was entirely a trade, and not one of golden produce. About the time
of Sulla the state of matters had entirely changed. The remuneration
given to actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic
poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount of which
removed the stigma. By this means composing for the stage was raised
into a liberal art; and we accordingly find men of the highest
aristocratic circles, such as Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664, 667),
engaged in writing for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman
"poet's club" by the side of the ancestorless Accius. Art gains in
sympathy and honour; but the enthusiasm has departed in life and in
literature. The fearless self-confidence, which makes the poet a poet,
and which is very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found
in none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that fought with
Hannibal are correct, but feeble.
Tragedy
Pacuvius
Let us first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and the stage
itself. Tragedy has now for the first time her specialists; the
tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those of the preceding,
cultivate comedy and epos side by side. The appreciation of this
branch of art among the writing and reading circles was evidently
on the increase, but tragic poetry itself hardly improved. We now
meet with the national tragedy (-praetexta-), the creation of
Naevius, only in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately--
an after-growth of the Ennian epoch. Among the probably numerous
poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone acquired a
considerable name. Marcus Pacuvius from Brundisium (535-c. 625)
who in his earlier years earned his livelihood in Rome by painting
and only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as
respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than
the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within
the latter. He composed on the whole after the manner of his
countryman, uncle, and master Ennius. Polishing more carefully and
aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded
by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic
poetry and of rich style: in the fragments, however, that have
reached us proofs are not wanting to justify the censure of the
poet's language by Cicero and the censure of his taste by Lucilius;
his language appears more rugged than that of his predecessor, his
style of composition pompous and punctilious.(1) There are traces
that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy than to
religion; but he did not at any rate, like the latter, prefer
dramas chiming in with neological views and preaching sensuous
passion or modern enlightenment, and drew without distinction from
Sophocles or from Euripides--of that poetry with a decided special
aim, which almost stamps Ennius with genius, there can have been
no vein in the younger poet.
Accius
More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy were furnished
by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius Accius, son of a freedman
of Pisaurum (584-after 651), with the exception of Pacuvius the
only notable tragic poet of the seventh century. An active author
also in the field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless
laboured to introduce instead of the crude manner of his
predecessors greater purity of language and style into Latin
tragedy; yet even his inequality and incorrectness were
emphatically censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.