Part 14 (2/2)

can only have been written under the Julian Dynasty.

The work is clearly post-Ovidian and must therefore be attributed to the princ.i.p.ates of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, or Nero. Further evidence of date is entirely wanting. No meaning can be attached to the heading Pindarus found in certain MSS.[400] There is, however, an interesting though scarcely more fruitful problem presented by the possible existence of two acrostics in the course of the poem.[401] The initial letters of the first nine lines spell the name 'Italices', while the last eight lines yield the word 'scqipsit'. Baehrens, by a not very probable alteration in the eighth line, procures the name 'Italicus', while a slighter and more natural change yields 'scripsit' at the close.[402] Further, a late MS. gives Bebius Italicus as the name of the author.[403] On these grounds the poem has been attributed to Silius Italicus. But Martial makes no reference to the existence of this work in any of his references to Silius, and indeed suggests that Silius only took to writing poetry after his withdrawal from public life.[404] This would make the poem post-Neronian, which, as we have seen, is most improbable. Further, the style of the verse is very different from that of the _Punica_. When, over and above these considerations, it is remembered that the acrostics can only be produced by emendation of the text, the critic has no course open to him but to abandon the attribution to Silius and to give up the problem of the acrostics as an unprofitable curiosity of literature.

IV

LOST MINOR POETS

In addition to the poets of whom we have already treated as writing under the Julian Dynasty there must have been many others of whom chance or their own insignificance has deprived us. But few names have survived,[405] and only two of these lost poets merit mention here, the erotic poet Lentulus Gaetulicus and the lyric writer Caesius Ba.s.sus.

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus was consul in 26 A.D.,[406] and for ten years was legatus in Upper Germany, where his combination of firmness and clemency won him great popularity.[407] He conspired against Caligula while holding this command, and was put to death.[408]

Pliny the younger speaks of him as the writer of sportive and lascivious erotic verse, and Martial writes of him in very similar terms.[409] His mistress was named Caesennia, and was herself a poetess.[410] It is possible that the poems in the Greek Anthology under the t.i.tle [Greek: Gaitoulikou][411] may be from his pen, but the only fragment of his Latin poems which survives is from a work in hexameters, and describes the geographical situation of Britain.[412]

More important is the lyric poet Caesius Ba.s.sus,[413] whose loss is the more to be regretted because of the very scanty remains of Roman lyric verse that have survived to modern times. Statius attempted with but indifferent success to imitate the Sapphics and Alcaics of Horace, while the plays of Seneca provide a considerable quant.i.ty of lyric choruses of varying degrees of merit. But of lyric writers pure and simple there is scarcely a trace. That they existed we know from Quintilian. If we may trust him, certain of his contemporaries[414] attained to considerable distinction in this branch of poetry--that is to say, they surpa.s.sed all Roman lyric poets subsequent to Horace. But when all is said, it is scarcely possible to go beyond Quintilian's emphatic statement, that of Roman lyricists Horace alone repays reading. If any other name deserves mention it is that of Caesius Ba.s.sus, but he is inferior to Quintilian's own contemporaries. Caesius Ba.s.sus is best known to us as the editor of the satires of Persius. The sixth satire is actually addressed to him:

admovit iam bruma foco te, Ba.s.se, Sabino?

iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae?

mire opifex numeris veterum primordia voc.u.m atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senex.[415]

Has winter made you move yet to your Sabine fireside, dear Ba.s.sus? Are your lyre and its strings and the austere quill that runs over them yet in force? Marvellous artist as you are at setting to music the primitive antiquities of our language, the manly utterance of the Latian harp, and then showing yourself excellent in your old age at wakening young loves and frolicking over the chords with a virtuous touch.

CONINGTON.

The only information yielded by this pa.s.sage is that Ba.s.sus had a Sabine villa, that he was already advanced in years, that he affected 'the simple and manly versification of antiquity', and that he dealt also with erotic themes. But few other facts are known to us. He wrote a treatise on metre--a portion of which has been preserved to the present day,[416] and he perished at his Campanian villa in 79 A.D., during the great eruption of Vesuvius.[417] The fragments of verse enshrined in his metrical treatise suggest that he wrote in a large variety of metres,[418] but they may be no more than examples invented solely to ill.u.s.trate metres unfamiliar in Latin. The one quotation that is explicitly made from his lyrical poems is, curiously enough, a hexameter line. As to his literary merits or defects, it is now impossible even to guess.

CHAPTER VII

THE EMPERORS FROM VESPASIAN TO TRAJAN AND MINOR POETS

I

THE EMPERORS AND POETS WHOSE WORKS ARE LOST

After the death of Nero and the close of the Civil War a happier era, both for literature and the world at large, was inaugurated by the accession of Vespasian in 69 A.D. A man of low birth and of little culture, he yet had a true appreciation of art and literature. Of his own writing we know nothing save that he left behind him memoirs.[419]

But we have abundant evidence that he showed himself a liberal patron of the arts. He gave rich rewards to poets and sculptors,[420] effected all that was possible to repair the great loss of works of art occasioned by the burning of the Capitol,[421] and did what he could for the stage, perhaps even attempting to revive the legitimate drama.[422] Above all, he set aside a large sum annually for the support of Greek and Latin professors of rhetoric,[423] the first instance in the history of Rome of State endowment of education. Against this we must set his expulsion from Italy of philosophers and astrologers, an intemperate and presumably ineffective act, prompted by reasons of State and probably without any appreciable influence on literature.[424] His sons, however, had received all the advantages of the highest education. Of t.i.tus'

(79-81 A.D.) achievements in literature we have no information save that he aspired to be both orator and poet. The language used in praise of his efforts by Pliny the elder, our one authority on this point, is so extravagant as to be virtually meaningless.[425] Of the literary exploits of his brother Domitian (81-96 A.D.) there is more to be said.

It pleased him to lay claim to distinction both in prose and verse.[426]

His only prose work of which any record remains was a treatise on the care of the hair;[427] his own baldness rankled in his mind and turned the _calvus Nero_ of Juvenal into a hair specialist. As to his poems it is almost doubtful if he ever wrote any. He professed an enthusiasm for poetry, an art which, according to Suetonius, he had neglected in his youth and despised when he came to the throne. But Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Martial[428] all load him with praise of various degrees of fulsomeness, though, reading between the lines of Quintilian, it is easy to see that Domitian's output must have been exceedingly small. The evidence of these three authors goes to show that he had contemplated, perhaps even begun, an epic on the achievements of his brother t.i.tus in the Judaic War. Whether these _caelestia carmina belli_, as Martial calls them, ever existed, save in the imagination of courtiers and servile poets, there is nothing to show. If they did exist there seems no reason to regret their loss.

Domitian's chief service to literature, if indeed it was a true service, was the establishment of the Agon Capitolinus in 86, a quinquennial festival at which prizes were awarded not only for athletics and chariot-racing, but for declamations in verse and prose,[429] and the inst.i.tution of a similar, though annual, contest at his own palace on the Alban Mount, which took place as often as the great festival of Minerva, known as the Quinquatria, came round.[430] But his interest in literature was only superficial; he had no originality and read nothing save the memoirs and edicts of Tiberius.[431] His capricious cruelty extended itself to artists and authors;[432] twice (in 89 and 93 A.D.), following his father's example, he banished philosophers and astrologers from Rome;[433] the crime of having written laudatory biographies of the Stoics Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus brought Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio to their deaths.[434] But Domitian's tyranny had little effect on _belles-lettres_, however adverse it may have been to free-spoken philosophy, rhetoric, or history. Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Statius, and Martial, all wrote during his reign, and the works of the last-named poet and Quintilian give ample evidence of widespread literary activity. The minor poet replenished the earth, and the prizes for literature awarded at the Agon Capitolinus and the festival of the Alban Mount must have been a real stimulus to writing, even though the type of literature produced by such a stimulus may have been scarcely worth producing. The worst feature of the poetry of the time is the almost incredibly fulsome flattery to which the tyranny of Domitian gave rise. As a compensation we have in the two succeeding reigns the biting satire of Juvenal and Tacitus, rendered all the keener by its long suppression under the last of the Flavian dynasty.

But, however impossible it may have been to write really effective satire during the Flavian dynasty, of poets there was no lack. It was, moreover, under the Flavians that there sprang up that reaction towards a saner style to which we have already referred as finding its expression in the Ciceronianism of Quintilian, and to a lesser degree in the Vergilianism of Valerius, Statius, and Silius. Of lesser luminaries there were enough and to spare. Serra.n.u.s and Saleius Ba.s.sus are both warmly commended by Quintilian for their achievements in Epic. The former died young, before his powers had ripened to maturity, but showed great soundness of style and high promise.[435] Of Saleius Quintilian[436] says, 'He had a vigorous and poetic genius, but it was not mellowed by age.' That is to say, he died young, like Serra.n.u.s. In the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus he is spoken of as the best of men and the most finished of poets. He won Vespasian's favour and received a gift from him of five hundred thousand sesterces. His poems brought him no material profit; both Tacitus and Juvenal emphasize this point:

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