Part 17 (1/2)
The absorbing interest of the war between Caesar and Pompey compelled all cla.s.ses to share its troubles; even the poets did not escape. They were now very numerous. Already the vain desire to write had become universal among the _jeunesse_ of the capital. The seductive methods by which Alexandrinism had made it equally easy to enshrine in verse his morning reading or his evening's amour, proved too great an attraction for the young Roman votary of the muses. Rome already teemed with the cla.s.s so pitilessly satirized by Horace and Juvenal, the
”Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae.”
The first name of any celebrity is that of VARRO ATACINUS, a native of Gallia Narbonensis. He was a varied and prolific writer, who cultivated with some success at least three domains of poetry. In his younger days he wrote satires, but without any apt.i.tude for the work. [98] These he deserted for the epos, in which he gained some credit by his poem on the Sequanian War. This was a national epic after the manner of Ennius, but from the silence of later poets we may conjecture that it did not retain its popularity. At the age of thirty-five he began to study with diligence the Alexandrine models, and gained much credit by his translation of the _Argonautica_ of Apollonius. Ovid often mentions this poem with admiration; he calls Varro the poet of the sail-tossing sea, says no age will be ignorant of his fame, and even thinks the ocean G.o.ds may have helped him to compose his song. [99] Quintilian with better judgment [100]
notes his deficiency both in originality and copiousness, but allows him the merit of a careful translator. We gather from a pa.s.sage of Ovid [101]
that he wrote love poems, and from other sources that he translated Greek works on topography and meteorology, both strictly copied from the Alexandrines.
Besides Varro, we hear of TICIDAS, of MEMMIUS the friend of Lucretius, of C. HELVIUS CINNA, and C. LICINIUS CALVUS, as writers of erotic poetry. The last two were also eminent in other branches. Cinna (50 B.C.), who is mentioned by Virgil as a poet superior to himself, [102] gained renown by his _Smyrna_, an epic based on the unnatural love of Myrrha for her father Cinyras, [103] on which revolting subject he bestowed nine years [104] of elaboration, tricking it out with every arid device that pedantry's long list could supply. Its learning, however, prevented it from being neglected. Until the _Aeneid_ appeared, it was considered the fullest repository of choice mythological lore. It was perhaps the nearest approach ever made in Rome to an original Alexandrine poem. Calvus (82-47 B.C.), who is generally coupled with Catullus, was a distinguished orator as well as poet. Cicero pays him the compliment of honourable mention in the _Brutus_, [105] praising his parts and lamenting his early death. He thinks his success would have been greater had he forgotten himself more.
This egotism was probably not wanting to his poetry, but much may be excused him on account of his youth. It is difficult to form an opinion of his style; the epithets, _gravis, vehemens, exilis_ (which apply rather to his oratory than to his poetry), seem contradictory; the last strikes us as the most discriminating. Besides short elegies like those of Catullus, he wrote an epic called _Io_, as well as lampoons against Pompey and other leading men. We possess none of his fragments.
From Calvus we pa.s.s to CATULLUS. This great poet was born at Verona (87 B.C.), and died, according to Jerome, in his thirty-first year; but this is generally held to be an error, and Prof. Ellis fixes his death in 54 B.C. In either case he was a young man when he died, and this is an important consideration in criticising his poems. He came as a youth to Rome, where he mixed freely in the best society, and where he continued to reside, except when his health or fortunes made a change desirable. [106]
At such times he resorted either to Sirmio, a picturesque spot on the Lago di Garda, [107] where he had a villa, or else to his Tiburtine estate, which, he tells us, he mortgaged to meet certain pecuniary embarra.s.sments.
[108] Among his friends were Nepos, who first acknowledged his genius, [109] to whom the grateful poet dedicated his book; Cicero, whose eloquence he warmly admired; [110] Pollio, Cornificius, Cinna, and Calvus, besides many others less known to fame. Like all warm natures, he was a good hater. Caesar and his friend Mamurra felt his satire; [111] and though he was afterwards reconciled to Caesar, the reconciliation did not go beyond a cold indifference. [112] To Mamurra he was implacably hostile, but satirised him under the fict.i.tious name of Mentula to avoid offending Caesar. His life was that of a thorough man of pleasure, who was also a man of letters. Indifferent to politics, he formed friends.h.i.+ps and enmities for personal reasons alone. Two events in his life are important for us, since they affected his genius--his love for Lesbia, and his brother's death. The former was the master-pa.s.sion of his life. It began in the fresh devotion of a first love; it survived the cruel shocks of infidelity and indifference; and, though no longer as before united with respect, it endured unextinguished to the end, burning with the pa.s.sion of despair.
Who Lesbia was, has been the subject of much discussion. There can be little doubt that Apuleius's information is correct, and that her real name was Clodia. If so, it is most natural to suppose her the same with that abandoned woman, the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher, whom Cicero brands with infamy in his speech for Caelius. Unwillingness to a.s.sociate the graceful verse of Catullus with a theme so unworthy has perhaps led the critics to question without reason the ident.i.ty. But the portrait drawn by the poet when at length his eyes were opened, answers but too truly to that of the orator. Few things in all literature are sadder than the spectacle of this trusting and generous spirit withered by the unkindness, as it had been soiled by the favours, of this evil beauty. [113] The life which began in rapturous devotion ends in hopeless gloom. The poet whose every nerve was strung to the delights of an unselfish though guilty pa.s.sion, now that the spell is broken, finds life a burden, and confronts with relief the thought of death which, as he antic.i.p.ated, soon came to end his sorrows.
The affection of Catullus for his only brother, lost to him by an early death, forms the counterpoise to his love for Lesbia. Where this brings remorse, the other brings a soothing melancholy; the memory of this sacred sorrow struggles to cast out the hara.s.sing regrets that torment his soul.
[114] Nothing can surpa.s.s the simple pathos with which he alludes to this event. It is the subject of one short elegy, [115] and enters largely into another. When travelling with the pro-praetor Memmius into Bithynia, he visited his brother's tomb at Rhoeteum in the Troad. It was on his return from this journey, undertaken, but without success, in the hope of bettering his fortune, that he wrote the little poem to Sirmio, [116]
which dwells on the a.s.sociations of home with a sweetness perhaps unequalled in ancient poetry. [117]
In this, and indeed in all his shorter pieces, his character is unmistakably revealed. No writer, ancient or modern, is more frank than he. He neither hides his own faults, nor desires his friends to hide theirs from him; [118] his verses are the honest spontaneous expression of his every-day life. In them we see a youth, ardent, unaffected, impulsive, generous, courteous, and outspoken, but indifferent to the serious interests of life; recklessly self-indulgent, plunging into the grossest sensuality, and that with so little sense of guilt as to appeal to Heaven as witness of the purity of his life: [119] we see a poet, full of delicate fooling and of love for the beautiful, with a strong lyrical impulse fresh as that of Greece, and an appreciation of Greek feeling that makes him revive the very inspiration of Greek genius; [120] with a chaste simplicity of style that faithfully reflects every mood, and with an amount of learning which, if inconsiderable as compared with that of the Augustan poets, much exceeded that of his chief predecessors, and secured for him the honourable epithet of the learned (_doctus_). [121]
The poems of Catullus fall naturally into three divisions, doubtless made by the poet himself. These are the short lyrical pieces in various metres, containing the best known of those to Lesbia, besides others to his most intimate friends; then come the longer poems, mostly in heroic or elegiac metre, representing the higher flights of his genius; and lastly, the epigrams on divers subjects, all in the elegiac metre, of which both the list and the text are imperfect. In all we meet with the same careless grace and simplicity both of thought and diction, but all do not show the same artistic skill. The judgment that led Catullus to place his lyric poems in the foreground was right. They are the best known, the best finished, and the most popular of all his compositions; the four to Lesbia, the one to Sirmio, and that on Acme and Septimus, are perhaps the most perfect lyrics in the Latin language; and others are scarcely inferior to them in elegance. The hendecasyllabic rhythm, in which the greater part are written, is the one best suited to display the poet's special gifts. Of this metre he is the first and only master. Horace does not employ it; and neither Martial nor Statius avoids monotony in the use of it. The freedom of cadence, the varied caesura, and the licences in the first foot, [122] give the charm of irregular beauty, so sweet in itself and so rare in Latin poetry; and the rhythm lends itself with equal ease to playful humour, fierce satire, and tender affection. Other measures, used with more or less success, are the iambic scazon, [123] the chorianibic, the glyconic, and the sapphic, all probably introduced from the Greek by Catullus. Of these the sapphic is the least perfected. If the eleventh and fifty-first odes be compared with the sapphic odes of Horace, the great metrical superiority of the latter will at once appear. Catullus copies the Greek rhythm in its details without asking whether these are in accordance with the genius of the Latin language. Horace, by adopting stricter rules, produces a much more harmonious effect. The same is true of Catullus's treatment of the elegiac, as compared with that of Propertius or Ovid. The Greek elegiac does not require any stop at the end of the couplet, nor does it affect any special ending; words of seven syllables or less are used by it indifferently. The trisyllabic ending, which is all but unknown to Ovid, occurs continually in Catullus; even the monosyllabic, which is altogether avoided by succeeding poets, occurs once. [124] Another licence, still more alien from Roman usage, is the retention of a short or unelided syllable at the end of the first penthemimer. [125] Catullus's elegiac belongs to the cla.s.s of half-adapted importations, beautiful in its way, but rather because it recalls the exquisite cadences of the Greek than as being in itself a finished artistic product.
The six long poems are of unequal merit. The modern reader will not find much to interest him in the _Coma Berenices_, abounding as it does in mythological allusions. [126] The poem to Mallius or Allius, [127] written at Verona, is partly mythological, partly personal, and though somewhat desultory, contains many fine pa.s.sages. Catullus pleads his want of books as an excuse for a poor poem, implying that a full library was his usual resort for composition. This poem was written shortly after his brother's death, which throws a vein of melancholy into the thought. In it, and still more happily in his two _Epithalamia_, [128] he paints with deep feeling the joys of wedded love. The former of these, which celebrates the marriage of Manlius Torquatus, is the loveliest product of his genius. It is marred by a few gross allusions, but they are not enough to interfere with its general effect. It rings throughout with joyous exultation, and on the whole is innocent as well as full of warm feeling. It is all movement; the scene opens before us; the marriage G.o.d wreathed with flowers and holding the _flammeum_, or nuptial veil, leads the dance; then the doors open, and amid waving torches the bride, blus.h.i.+ng like the purple hyacinth, enters with downcast mien, her friends comforting her; the bridegroom stands by and throws nuts to the a.s.sembled guests; light railleries are banded to and fro; meanwhile the bride is lifted over the threshold, and sinks on the nuptial couch, _alba parthenice velut, luteumve papaver_. The different sketches of _Auruneuleia_ as the loving bride, the chaste matron, and the aged grandame nodding kindly to everybody, please from their unadorned simplicity as well as from their innate beauty.
The second of these _Epithalamia_ is, if not translated, certainly modelled from the Greek, and in its imagery reminds us of Sappho. It is less ardent and more studied than the first, and though its tone is far less elevated, it gains a special charm from its calm, almost statuesque language. [129] The _Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis_ is a miniature epic, [130] such as were often written by the Alexandrian poets. Short as it is, it contains two plots, one within the other. The story of Peleus's marriage is made the occasion for describing the scene embroidered on the coverlet or cus.h.i.+on of the marriage bed. This contains the loves of Theseus and Ariadne, the Minotaur, the Labyrinth, the return of Theseus, his desertion of Ariadne, and her reception into the stars by Iacchus. The poem is unequal in execution; the finest pa.s.sages are the lament of Ariadne, which Virgil has imitated in that of Dido, and the song of the Fates, which gives the first instances of those refrains taken from the Greek pastoral, which please so much in the Eclogues, and in Tennyson's _May Queen._ The _Atys_ or _Attis_ stands alone among the poet's works.
Its subject is the self-mutilation of a n.o.ble youth out of zeal for Cybele's wors.h.i.+p, and is probably a study from the Greek, though of what period it would be hard to say. A theme so unnatural would have found little favour with the Attic poets; the subject is more likely to have been approached by the Alexandrian writers, whom Catullus often copies.
But these tame and pedantic versifiers could have given no precedent for the wild inspiration of this strange poem, which clothes in the music of finished art bursts of savage emotion. The metre is galliambic, a rhythm proper to the hymns of Cybele, but of which no primitive Greek example remains. The poem cannot be perused with pleasure, but must excite astonishment at the power it displays. The language is tinged with archaisms, especially compounds like _hederigera, silvicultrix_. In general Catullus writes in the plain unaffected language of daily life.
His effects are produced by the freshness rather than the choiceness of his terms, and by his truth to nature and good taste. His construction of sentences, like that of Lucretius, becomes at times prosaic, from the effort to avoid all ambiguity. If the first forty lines of his _Epistle to Mallius_ [131] be studied and compared with any of Ovid's _Epistles from Pontus_, the great difference in this respect will at once be seen. Later writers leave most of the particles of transition to be supplied by the reader's intelligence: Catullus, like Sophocles, indicates the sequence of thought. Nevertheless poetry lost more than it gained by the want of grammatical connection between successive pa.s.sages, which, while it adds point, detracts from clearness, and makes the interpretation, for example, of Persius and Juvenal very much less satisfactory than that of Lucretius or Horace.
The genius of Catullus met with early recognition. Cornelius Nepos, in his life of Atticus (ch. xii.), couples him with Lucretius as the first poet of the age (_nostra aetas_), and his popularity, though obscured during the Augustan period, soon revived, and remained undiminished until the close of Latin literature. During the Middle Ages Catullus was nearly being lost to us; he is preserved in but one ma.n.u.script discovered in the fourteenth century. [132]
Catullus is the last of the Republican poets. Separated by but a few years from the _Eclogues_ of Virgil, a totally different spirit pervades the works of the two writers; while Catullus is free, unblus.h.i.+ng, and fearless, owing allegiance to no man, Virgil is already guarded, restrained, and diffident of himself, trusting to Pollio or Augustus to perfect his muse, and guide it to its proper sphere. In point of language the two periods show no break: in point of feeling they are altogether different. A few survived from the one into the other, but as a rule they relapsed into silence, or indulged merely in declamation. We feel that Catullus was fortunate in dying before the battle of Aetium; had he lived into the Augustan age, it is difficult to see how he could have found a place there. He is a fitting close to this pa.s.sionate and stormy period, a youth in whom all its qualities for good and evil have their fullest embodiment.
APPENDIX.
NOTE I.--_On the Use of Alliteration in Latin Poetry._
It is impossible to read the earlier Latin poets, or even Virgil, without seeing that they abound in repet.i.tions of the same letter or sound, either intentionally introduced or unconsciously presenting themselves owing to constant habit. Alliteration and a.s.sonance are the natural ornaments of poetry in a rude age. In Anglo-Saxon literature alliteration is one of the chief ways of distinguis.h.i.+ng poetry from prose. But when a strict prosody is formed, it is no longer needed. Thus in almost all civilised poetry, it has been discarded, except as an occasional and appropriate ornament for a special purpose. Greek poetry gives few instances. The art of Homer has long pa.s.sed the stage at which such an aid to effect is sought for. The cadence of the Greek hexameter would be marred by so inartistic a device.
The dramatists resort to it now and then, _e.g._ Oedipus, in his blind rage, thus taunts Tiresias:
_tuphlos ta t' ota ton te noun ta t' ommat' ei._
But here the alliteration is as true to nature as it is artistically effective. For it is known that violent emotion irresistibly compels us to heap together similar sounds. Several subtle and probably unconscious instances of it are given by Peile from the Idyllic poets; but as a rule it is true of Greek as it is of English, French, and Italian poetry, that when metre, caesura, or rhyme, hold sway, alliteration plays an altogether subordinate part. It is otherwise in Latin poetry. Here, owing to the fondness for all that is old, alliteration is retained in what is correspondingly a much later period of growth. After Virgil, indeed, it almost disappears, but as used by him it is such an instrument for effect, that perhaps the discontinuance of it was a loss rather than a gain. It is employed in Latin poetry for various purposes. Plautus makes it subservient to comic effect (Capt. 903, quoted by Munro.).