Part 8 (2/2)

SELLAR, _Roman Poets of the Republic_, pp 153-220

TYRRELL, _Latin Poetry_, pp 43-58

MOULTON, _The Ancient Classical Drama_, pp 377-423

PART II

SATIRE

Satire has always shone a the rest, And is the boldest way, if not the best, To tell h at their vain deeds and vainer thoughts

1 INTRODUCTION AND EARLY SATIRE

What prophecy was to the ancient Hebrews, the drama to the Greeks, the purpose-novel and the newspaper editorial to our own day, satire was to the Roman of the republic and the early empire--the moral mentor of contemporary society This conception of the prophet as the preacher of his day is often obscured by the conception of him as one who could reveal the future; but a closer study of the life and tiious leaders shows them to have been ave all their energies to the task of raising the standard of the religious and social thought of their own day The function of Greek tragedy was ever religious It had its very origin in the worshi+p of the Gods; and the presence of the altar as the center of the strophic movements of the chorus was a constant rehest probleious athest sentih the play Greek comedy, especially of the old and middle type, also served a distinct moral purpose in society It did not, indeed, sound the saedy; but it was the lash which was mercilessly applied, at first with bolder license to individual sinners in high places, and afterward in a eneral In either case, the powerful stiation must have had a real effect upon the manners and morals of the ancient Greeks

When we turn to our own time, we find the literary preacher at the novelist's desk or in the editor's chair The influence of the purpose-novel and the editorial can hardly be overesti our own, a very direct influence upon the public social life of his day ielded by the pen of dickens His eyes were open to abuses of every kind--in educational, charitable, legal, and criminal institutions; and he used every weapon known to literary art to right these wrongs In this task he was ably assisted by sley, and others And there can be little doubt that the ienerous measure to the work of these novelist preachers The editor's function is still more intimately and constantly to hold theits faults And to-day there is probably nodirectly upon the opinions and conduct of men than the daily editorial

Now, the literary weapon of the Roman moralist was satire It flourished in all periods of Ro itself being of Latin origin In other fields of literature there is a large iedy was at first but little more than a translation of the Greek plays, and the sail, and the rest rote of agriculture, had a Greek prototype in Hesiod, who in his _Works and Days_ had treated of the same theme; Lucretius was the professed disciple and imitator of Epicurus; Cicero, in oratory, had ever before his eyes his Deil had his Homer in epic and his Theocritus in pastoral; Horace, in his lyrics, is Greek through and through, both in form and spirit, for Pindar and Anacreon, Sappho, Alcaeus, Archilochus, and the whole tuneful line are forever echoing through his verse Ovid, in his greatest work, only succeeded in setting Greek h he told those fascinating stories as they had never been told before; while the historians, the rhetoricians, the philosophers--all had their Greek originals and models

But in the field of satire the Romans struck out a new literary path for themselves Even here we are bound to admit that the spirit is Greek, the spirit of the old coovernment, of society, of individuals But still satire, as a for with Lucilius, the father of satire in theline of satirists who followed his lead sufficiently attests the strong hold which this particular forained upon the Roman mind

We have said that Lucilius was the father of satire in the ether with many of the features of his satire and that of his successors, reaches far back of hi since vanished, of which we can gain only the faintest hints These hints as to the character of that ancient forerunner of the Lucilian satire corammarians as to the derivation of the word _satura_ (satire), and the remote reflections and imitations of the old _satura_ in later works

These far-off ienuine satire of the earliest tiled with prose, introducing words and phrases of other languages, and treating of a great variety of subjects This literary in in the farm or vineyard, where, in celebration of the ”harvest hoht out, perhaps accompanied by some kind of musical recitation, and of course loaded with the rude wit of the time

Such, then, we may suppose, was the character of the rude satire of ancient Italy But alas for any real personal knowledge which we s, are vanished with the si race which produced thereen upon the sunny slopes, the vineyards still cling to every hillside and nestle in every valley; but the ancient peasantry who once called this land their home, whose siiven us material for precious voluone, and left scarcely a trace of their rude, unlettered literature

The first tangible literary link that binds us to the old Roman satire is found in the poet Ennius, who flourished about two hundred years before Christ The story of his life is outlined elsewhere in this book

His satires seem to have been a sort of literary s as could not conveniently be classified elsewhere

The h there is good ground for believing that there were six books of these No adequate judgment can therefore be formed as to their character It can with safety be said, however, that they were in a sense the connecting link between the early satire and the literary satire of the modern type As has been said above, they were a literary miscellany or medley, and as such contain sohly probable that they contained attacks upon the vices and follies of the time, in which respect they looked forward to a more complete development of the _Epichar to the philosophy of Ennius:

And that is he e call Jove, whom Grecians call The atmosphere: who in one person is the wind and clouds, then rain, And after, freezing hail; and once again, thin air

For this, those things are Jove considered which I name to you, Since by these eles else exist

There was a satire by Ennius, as Quintilian tells us, containing a dialogue between Life and Death; but of this we have not a res The following is the moral which he deduces from the story of the lark and the farmers--a moral which Aulus Gellius assures us that it would be worth our while to take well to heart It may be freely translated as follows:

Now list to this warning, give diligent heed, Whether seeking for pleasure or pelf: Don't wait for your neighbors to help in your need, But just go and do it yourself!

Surely Miles Standish ained from his Ennius, as well as from his Caesar, that famous motto: