The History of Rome, Book V - Theodor Mommsen
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Historical Composition
Sisenna
The critical writing of history, after the manner in which
the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period
and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never
properly developed in Rome. Even in the field most adapted for it--
the representation of contemporary and of recently past events--
there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts;
in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important
contributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field--
the labours of Antipater and Asellius--were barely even equalled.
The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose
in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars
by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna (praetor in 676). Those who had read it
testify that it far excelled in liveliness and readableness
the old dry chronicles, but was written withal in a style
thoroughly impure and even degenerating into puerility; as indeed
the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible
details,(28) and a number of words newly coined or derived
from the language of conversation. When it is added that the author's
model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him
was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great
oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-
romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate
to recognize in Sisenna's celebrated historical work, not a product
of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay
in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite
with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts
life-like and interesting by means of fictitious details and thereby
makes it insipid and untrue; and it will no longer excite surprise
that we meet with the same Sisenna also as translator of Greek
fashionable romances.(29)
Annals of the City
That the prospect should be still more lamentable in the field
of the general annals of the city and even of the world, was implied
in the nature of the case. The increasing activity of antiquarian
research induced the expectation that the current narrative
would be rectified from documents and other trustworthy sources;
but this hope was not fulfilled. The more and the deeper men
investigated, the more clearly it became apparent what a task it was
to write a critical history of Rome. The difficulties even,
which opposed themselves to investigation and narration, were immense;
but the most dangerous obstacles were not those of a literary kind.
The conventional early history of Rome, as it had now been narrated
and believed for at least ten generations; was most intimately mixed up
with the civil life of the nation; and yet in any thorough
and honest inquiry not only had details to be modified here and there,
but the whole building had to be overturned as much as
the Franconian primitive history of king Pharamund or the British
of king Arthur. An inquirer of conservative views, such as was Varro
for instance, could have no wish to put his hand to such a work;
and if a daring freethinker had undertaken it, an outcry
would have been raised by all good citizens against this worst
of all revolutionaries, who was preparing to deprive the constitutional
party even of their past Thus philological and antiquarian research
deterred from the writing of history rather than conduced towards it.
Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up
the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged,
as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists
in unpretending tabular shape--a work by which the synchronistic
Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which
it was conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture
of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity;
it continued to supply its contributions both in prose and verse
to the great library written by ennui for ennui, while the makers
of the books, in part already freedmen, did not trouble themselves
at all about research properly so called. Such of these writings
as are mentioned to us--not one of them is preserved--seem to have been
not only of a wholly secondary character, but in great part
even pervaded by interested falsification. It is true
that the chronicle of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (about 676?)
was written in an old-fashioned but good style, and studied at least
a commendable brevity in the representation of the fabulous period.
Gaius Licinius Macer (d. as late praetor in 688), father of the poet
Calvus,(30) and a zealous democrat, laid claim more than
any other chronicler to documentary research and criticism,
but his -libri lintei- and other matters peculiar to him are
in the highest degree suspicious, and an interpolation
of the whole annals in the interest of democratic tendencies--
an interpolation of a very extensive kind, and which has passed over
in part to the later annalists--is probably traceable to him.
Valerius Antias
Lastly, Valerius Antias excelled all his predecessors in prolixity
as well as in puerile story-telling. The falsification of numbers
was here systematically carried out down even to contemporary history,
and the primitive history of Rome was elaborated once more
from one form of insipidity to another; for instance the narrative
of the way in which the wise Numa according to the instructions
of the nymph Egeria caught the gods Faunus and Picus; with wine,
and the beautiful conversation thereupon held by the same Numa
with the god Jupiter, cannot be too urgently recommended
to all worshippers of the so-called legendary history of Rome
in order that, if possible, they may believe these things--of course,
in substance. It would have been a marvel if the Greek novel-writers
of this period had allowed such materials, made as if for their use,
to escape them. In fact there were not wanting Greek literati,
who worked up the Roman history into romances; such a composition,
for instance, was the Five Books "Concerning Rome" of the Alexander
Polyhistor already mentioned among the Greek literati living in Rome,(31)
a preposterous mixture of vapid historical tradition and trivial,
principally erotic, fiction. He, it may be presumed,
took the first steps towards filling up the five hundred years,
which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin
of Rome into the chronological connection required by the fables
on either side, with one of those lists of kings without achievements
which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chroniclers;
for, to all appearance, it was he that launched into the world
the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii,
whom the following times accordingly did not neglect to furnish
in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater
definiteness, also a portrait.
Thus from various sides the historical romance of the Greeks
finds its way into Roman historiography; and it is more than probable
that not the least portion of what we are accustomed nowadays
to call tradition of the Roman primitive times proceeds from sources
of the stamp of Amadis of Gaul and the chivalrous romances
of Fouque--an edifying consideration, at least for those who have
a relish for the humour of history and who know how to appreciate
the comical aspect of the piety still cherished in certain circles
of the nineteenth century for king Numa.
Universal History
Nepos
A novelty in the Roman literature of this period is the appearance
of universal history or, to speak more correctly, of Roman
and Greek history conjoined, alongside of the native annals.
Cornelius Nepos from Ticinum (c. 650-c. 725) first supplied
an universal chronicle (published before 700) and a general collection
of biographies--arranged according to certain categories--of Romans
and Greeks distinguished in politics or literature or of men
at any rate who exercised influence on the Roman or Greek history.
These works are of a kindred nature with the universal histories
which the Greeks had for a considerable time been composing;
and these very Greek world-chronicles, such as that of Kastor son-in-law
of the Galatian king Deiotarus, concluded in 698, now began to include
in their range the Roman history which previously they had neglected.
These works certainly attempted, just like Polybius, to substitute
the history of the Mediterranean world for the more local one;
but that which in Polybius was the result of a grand and clear
conception and deep historical feeling was in these chronicles
rather the product of the practical exigencies of school
and self-instruction. These general chronicles, text-books
for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole
literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious
in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging
to artistic historical composition; and Nepos himself in particular
was a pure compiler distinguished neither by spirit nor even merely
by symmetrical plan.
The historiography of this period is certainly remarkable
and in a high degree characteristic, but it is as far from pleasing
as the age itself. The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature
is in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history;
here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter
and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity,
in which Polybius was so far in advance of his age, was now learned
even by Greek and Roman boys at school. But while the Mediterranean
state had found a historian before it had become conscious
of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained,
there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans
any man who was able to give to it adequate expression.
"There is no such thing," says Cicero, "as Roman historical
composition"; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than
the simple truth. The man of research turns away from writing history,
the writer of history turns away from research; historical literature
oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance. All the species
of pure art--epos, drama, lyric poetry, history--are worthless
in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay
of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness
as in its historiography.
Literature Subsidiary to History
Caesar's Report
The minor historical literature of this period displays
on the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten productions,
one treatise of the first rank--the Memoirs of Caesar, or rather
the Military Report of the democratic general to the people
from whom he had received his commission. The finished section,
and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing
the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify
as well as possible before the public the formally unconstitutional
enterprise of Caesar in conquering a great country and constantly
increasing his army for that object without instructions
from the competent authority; it was written and given forth in 703,
when the storm broke out against Caesar in Rome and he was summoned
to dismiss his army and answer for his conduct.(32) The author
of this vindication writes, as he himself says, entirely as an officer
and carefully avoids extending his military report to the hazardous
departments of political organization and administration.
His incidental and partisan treatise cast in the form of a military
report is itself a piece of history like the bulletins of Napoleon,
but it is not, and was not intended to be, a historical work
in the true sense of the word; the objective form which the narrative
assumes is that of the magistrate, not that of the historian.
But in this modest character the work is masterly and finished,
more than any other in all Roman literature. The narrative
is always terse and never scanty, always simple and never careless,
always of transparent vividness and never strained or affected.
The language is completely pure from archaisms and from vulgarisms--
the type of the modern -urbanitas-. In the Books concerning
the Civil War we seem to feel that the author had desired to avoid war
and could not avoid it, and perhaps also that in Caesar's soul,
as in every other, the period of hope was a purer and fresher one
than that of fulfilment; but over the treatise on the Gallic war
there is diffused a bright serenity, a simple charm, which are
no less unique in literature than Caesar is in history.
Correspondence
Of a kindred nature were the letters interchanged between the statesmen
and literati of this period, which were carefully collected
and published in the following epoch; such as the correspondence
of Caesar himself, of Cicero, Calvus and others. They can still less
be numbered among strictly literary performances; but this literature
of correspondence was a rich store-house for historical
as for all other research, and the most faithful mirror of an epoch
in which so much of the worth of past times and so much spirit,
cleverness, and talent were evaporated and dissipated in trifling.
News-Sheet
A journalist literature in the modern sense was never formed in Rome;
literary warfare continued to be confined to the writing
of pamphlets and, along with this, to the custom generally diffused
at that time of annotating the notices destined for the public
in places of resort with the pencil or the pen. On the other hand
subordinate persons were employed to note down the events
of the day and news of the city for the absent men of quality;
and Caesar as early as his first consulship took fitting measures
for the immediate publication of an extract from the transactions
of the senate. From the private journals of those Roman penny-a-liners
and these official current reports there arose a sort of news-sheet
for the capital (-acta diurna-), in which the resume of the business
discussed before the people and in the senate, and births, deaths,
and such like were recorded. This became a not unimportant
source for history, but remained without proper political
as without literary significance.
Speeches
Decline of Political Oratory
To subsidiary historical literature belongs of right also
the composition of orations. The speech, whether written down or not,
is in its nature ephemeral and does not belong to literature;
but it may, like the report and the letter, and indeed still
more readily than these, come to be included, through the significance
of the moment and the power of the mind from which it springs,
among the permanent treasures of the national literature.
Thus in Rome the records of orations of a political tenor delivered
before the burgesses or the jurymen had for long played a great part
in public life; and not only so, but the speeches of Gaius Gracchus
in particular were justly reckoned among the classical Roman writings.
But in this epoch a singular change occurred on all hands.
The composition of political speeches was on the decline like political
speaking itself. The political speech in Rome, as generally
in the ancient polities, reached its culminating point in the discussions
before the burgesses; here the orator was not fettered, as in the senate,
by collegiate considerations and burdensome forms, nor,
as in the judicial addresses, by the interests--in themselves foreign
to politics--of the accusation and defence; here alone his heart
swelled proudly before the whole great and mighty Roman people
hanging on his lips. But all this was now gone. Not as though
there was any lack of orators or of the publishing of speeches
delivered before the burgesses; on the contrary political
authorship only now waxed copious, and it began to become
a standing complaint at table that the host incommoded his guests
by reading before them his latest orations. Publius Clodius
had his speeches to the people issued as pamphlets,
just like Gaius Gracchus; but two men may do the same thing
without producing the same effect. The more important leaders
even of the opposition, especially Caesar himself, did not often address
the burgesses, and no longer published the speeches which they delivered;
indeed they partly sought for their political fugitive writings
another form than the traditional one of -contiones-, in which respect
more especially the writings praising and censuring Cato(33)
are remarkable. This is easily explained. Gaius Gracchus
had addressed the burgesses; now men addressed the populace;
and as the audience, so was the speech. No wonder that the reputable
political author shunned a dress which implied that he had directed
his words to the crowd assembled in the market-place of the capital.
Rise of A Literature of Pleadings
Cicero
While the composition of orations thus declined from its former
literary and political value in the same way as all branches
of literature which were the natural growth of the national life,
there began at the same time a singular, non-political, literature
of pleadings. Hitherto the Romans had known nothing of the idea
that the address of an advocate as such was destined not only
for the judges and the parties, but also for the literary edification
of contemporaries and posterity; no advocate had written down
and published his pleadings, unless they were possibly at the same time
political orations and in so far were fitted to be circulated
as party writings, and this had not occurred very frequently.
Even Quintus Hortensius (640-704), the most celebrated Roman advocate
in the first years of this period, published but few speeches
and these apparently only such as were wholly or half political.
It was his successor in the leadership of the Roman bar,
Marcus Tullius Cicero (648-711) who was from the outset quite as much
author as forensic orator; he published his pleadings regularly,
even when they were not at all or but remotely connected
with politics. This was a token, not of progress, but of an unnatural
and degenerate state of things. Even in Athens the appearance
of non-political pleadings among the forms of literature was a sign
of debility; and it was doubly so in Rome, which did not,
like Athens, by a sort of necessity produce this malformation
from the exaggerated pursuit of rhetoric, but borrowed it
from abroad arbitrarily and in antagonism to the better traditions
of the nation. Yet this new species of literature came rapidly
into vogue, partly because it had various points of contact
and coincidence with the earlier authorship of political orations,
partly because the unpoetic, dogmatical, rhetorizing temperament
of the Romans offered a favourable soil for the new seed, as indeed
at the present day the speeches of advocates and even a sort
of literature of law-proceedings are of some importance in Italy.
His Character
Thus oratorical authorship emancipated from politics
was naturalized in the Roman literary world by Cicero.
We have already had occasion several times to mention
this many-sided man. As a statesman without insight, idea,
or purpose, he figured successively as democrat, as aristocrat,
and as a tool of the monarchs, and was never more than
a short-sighted egotist. Where he exhibited the semblance of action,
the questions to which his action applied had, as a rule,
just reached their solution; thus he came forward in the trial
of Verres against the senatorial courts when they were already
set aside; thus he was silent at the discussion on the Gabinian,
and acted as a champion of the Manilian, law; thus he thundered
against Catilina when his departure was already settled,
and so forth. He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks,
and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din;
no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him,
and the execution of the Catilinarians in particular was far more
due to his acquiescence than to his instigation. In a literary
point of view we have already noticed that he was the creator
of the modern Latin prose;(34) his importance rests on his mastery
of style, and it is only as a stylist that he shows confidence
in himself. In the character of an author, on the other hand,
he stands quite as low as in that of a statesman. He essayed
the most varied tasks, sang the great deeds of Marius
and his own petty achievements in endless hexameters,
beat Demosthenes off the field with his speeches, and Plato
with his philosophic dialogues; and time alone was wanting for him
to vanquish also Thucydides. He was in fact so thoroughly a dabbler,
that it was pretty much a matter of indifference to what work
he applied his hand. By nature a journalist in the worst
sense of that term--abounding, as he himself says, in words,
poor beyond all conception in ideas--there was no department
in which he could not with the help of a few books have rapidly got up
by translation or compilation a readable essay. His correspondence
mirrors most faithfully his character. People are in the habit
of calling it interesting and clever; and it is so, as long as
it reflects the urban or villa life of the world of quality;
but where the writer is thrown on his own resources, as in exile,
in Cilicia, and after the battle of Pharsalus, it is stale
and emptyas was ever the soul of a feuilletonist banished from his
familiar circles. It is scarcely needful to add that such a statesman
and such a -litterateur- could not, as a man, exhibit aught else
than a thinly varnished superficiality and heart-lessness.
Must we still describe the orator? The great author is also a great man;
and in the great orator more especially conviction or passion
flows forth with a clearer and more impetuous stream from the depths
of the breast than in the scantily-gifted many who merely count
and are nothing. Cicero had no conviction and no passion;
he was nothing but an advocate, and not a good one. He understood
how to set forth his narrative of the case with piquancy of anecdote,
to excite, if not the feeling, at any rate the sentimentality
of his hearers, and to enliven the dry business of legal pleading
by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort;
his better orations, though they are far from coming up to the free
gracefulness and the sure point of the most excellent compositions
of this sort, for instance the Memoirs of Beaumarchais, yet form
easy and agreeable reading. But while the very advantages
just indicated will appear to the serious judge as advantages
of very dubious value, the absolute want of political discernment
in the orations on constitutional questions and of juristic deduction
in the forensic addresses, the egotism forgetful of its duty
and constantly losing sight of the cause while thinking
of the advocate, the dreadful barrenness of thought in the Ciceronian
orations must revolt every reader of feeling and judgment.
Ciceronianism
If there is anything wonderful in the case, it is in truth
not the orations, but the admiration which they excited. As to Cicero
every unbiassed person will soon make up his mind: Ciceronianism
is a problem, which in fact cannot be properly solved, but can only
be resolved into that greater mystery of human nature--language
and the effect of language on the mind. Inasmuch as the noble Latin
language, just before it perished as a national idiom, was once more
as it were comprehensively grasped by that dexterous stylist
and deposited in his copious writings, something of the power
which language exercises, and of the piety which it awakens,
was transferred to the unworthy vessel. The Romans possessed
no great Latin prose-writer; for Caesar was, like Napoleon,
only incidentally an author. Was it to be wondered at that,
in the absence of such an one, they should at least honour the genius
of the language in the great stylist? And that, like Cicero himself,
Cicero's readers also should accustom themselves to ask not what,
but how he had written? Custom and the schoolmaster then completed
what the power of language had begun.
Opposition to Ciceronianism
Calvus and His Associates
Cicero's contemporaries however were, as may readily be conceived,
far less involved in this strange idolatry than many of their successors.
The Ciceronian manner ruled no doubt throughout a generation
the Roman advocate-world, just as the far worse manner of Hortensius
had done; but the most considerable men, such as Caesar,
kept themselves always aloof from it, and among the younger
generation there arose in all men of fresh and living talent
the most decided opposition to that hybrid and feeble rhetoric.
They found Cicero's language deficient in precision and chasteness,
his jests deficient in liveliness, his arrangement deficient
in clearness and articulate division, and above all his whole eloquence
wanting in the fire which makes the orator. Instead of the Rhodian
eclectics men began to recur to the genuine Attic orators
especially to Lysias and Demosthenes, and sought to naturalize
a more vigorous and masculine eloquence in Rome. Representatives
of this tendency were, the solemn but stiff Marcus Junius Brutus
(669-712); the two political partisans Marcus Caelius Rufus
(672-706;(35)) and Gaius Scribonius Curio (d. 705(36);)--
both as orators full of spirit and life; Calvus well known
also as a poet (672-706), the literary coryphaeus of this younger
group of orators; and the earnest and conscientious Gaius Asinius Pollio
(678-757). Undeniably there was more taste and more spirit
in this younger oratorical literature than in the Hortensian
and Ciceronian put together; but we are not able to judge how far,
amidst the storms of the revolution which rapidly swept away the whole
of this richly-gifted group with the single exception of Pollio,
those better germs attained development. The time allotted to them
was but too brief. The new monarchy began by making war on freedom
of speech, and soon wholly suppressed the political oration.
Thenceforth the subordinate species of the pure advocate-pleading
was doubtless still retained in literature; but the higher art
and literature of oratory, which thoroughly depend on political
excitement, perished with the latter of necessity and for ever.