Part 25 (2/2)

[146] Suetonius (”Lives of the Twelve Caesars,” Nero, ch. lvii.) relates, that the king of the Parthians, when he sent amba.s.sadors to the Senate to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that due honor should be paid to the memory of Nero. The historian continues, ”When, twenty years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some person of obscure birth gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him so favorable a reception from the Parthians that he was very zealously supported, and it was with much difficulty that they were persuaded to give him up.”--ED.

[147] Italy was not included among the provinces.

[148] A few provinces, the less important, remained to the Senate, but the emperor was almost always master in these as well.

[149] The jurisconsult Gaius says, ”On provincial soil we can have possession only; the emperor owns the property.”

[150] ”Great personages,” says Epictetus, ”cannot root themselves like plants; they must be much on the move in obedience to the commands of the emperor.”

[151] A client's task was a hard one; the poet Martial, who had served thus, groans about it. He had to rise before day, put on his toga which was an inconvenient and c.u.mbersome garment, and wait a long time in the ante-room.

[152] Caesar gave also a combat between two troops, each composed of 500 archers, 300 knights (30 knights according to Suetonius; Julius, ch.

39), and 20 elephants.

[153] In an official discourse an orator thanks the emperor Constantine who had given to the amphitheatre an entire army of barbarian captives, ”to bring about the destruction of these men for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the people. What triumph,” he cried, ”could have been more glorious?”

[154] St. Augustine in his ”Confessions” describes the irresistible attraction of these sanguinary spectacles.

[155] A Phrygian relates in an inscription that he had made seventy-two voyages from Asia to Italy.

[156] There were some sceptical writers, like Lucian, but they were isolated.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ARTS AND SCIENCES IN ROME

LETTERS

=Imitation of the Greeks.=--The Romans were not artists naturally.

They became so very late and by imitating the Greeks. From Greece they took their models of tragedy, comedy, the epic, the ode, the didactic poem, pastoral poetry, and history. Some writers limited themselves to the free translation of a Greek original (as Horace in his Odes). All borrowed from the Greeks at least their ideas and their forms. But they carried into this work of adaptation their qualities of patience and vigor, and many came to a true originality.

=The Age of Augustus.=--There is common agreement in regarding the fifty years of the government of Augustus as the most brilliant period in Latin literature. It is the time of Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, and Livy. The emperor, or rather his friend Maecenas, personally patronized some of these poets, especially Horace and Vergil, who sang the glory of Augustus and of his time. But this Augustan Age was preceded and followed by two centuries that perhaps equalled it. It was in the preceding century,[157] the first before Christ, that the most original Roman poet[158] appeared, Caesar the most elegant prose-writer, and Cicero the greatest orator. It was in the following age that Seneca, Lucan, Tacitus, Pliny, and Juvenal wrote. Between Lucretius and Tacitus there were for three centuries many great writers in Rome. One might also add another century by recurring to the time of Plautus, the second century before Christ.

Of these great authors a few had their origin in Roman families; but the majority of them were Italians. Many came from the provinces, Vergil from Mantua, Livy from Padua (in Cisalpine Gaul), while Seneca was a Spaniard.

=Orators and Rhetors.=--The true national art at Rome was eloquence.

Like the Italians of our day, the Romans loved to speak in public. In the forum where they held the a.s.semblies of the people was the rostrum, the platform for addressing the people, so named from the prows of captured s.h.i.+ps that ornamented it like trophies of war.

Thither the orators came in the last epoch of the republic to declaim and to gesticulate before a tumultuous crowd.

The tribunals, often composed of a hundred judges, furnished another occasion for eloquent advocates. The Roman law permitted the accused to have an advocate speak in his place.

There were orators in Rome from the second century. Here, as in Athens, the older orators, such as Cato and the Gracchi, spoke simply, too simply for the taste of Cicero. Those who followed them in the first century learned in the schools of the Greek rhetors the long oratorical periods and pompous style. The greatest of all was Cicero, the only one whose works have come down to us in anything but fragments; and yet we have his speeches as they were left by him and not as they were delivered.[159]

With the fall of the republic the a.s.semblies and the great political trials ceased. Eloquence perished for the want of matter, and the Roman writers remarked this with bitterness.[160] Then the rhetors commenced to multiply, who taught the art of speaking well.[161] Some of these teachers had their pupils compose as exercises pleas on imaginary rhetorical subjects. The rhetor Seneca has left us many of these oratorical themes; they discuss stolen children, brigands, and romantic adventures.

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