Part 15 (2/2)
CHAPTER VIII
VALERIUS FLACCUS
The political tendency towards retrenchment and reform that marks the reign of Vespasian finds its literary parallel in a reaction against the rhetoric of display that culminated in Seneca and Lucan. This movement is most strongly marked in the prose of Quintilian and the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus, but finds a faint echo in the world of poets as well. The three epic poets of the period--Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus--though they, too, have suffered much from their rhetorical training, are all clear followers of Vergil. They, like their predecessors, find it hard to say things naturally, but they do not to the same extent go out of their way with the deliberate intention of saying things unnaturally.[472] We may condemn them as phrase-makers, though many a modern poet of greater reputation is equally open to the charge. But their phrase-making has not the flamboyant quality of the Neronian age. If it is no less wearisome, it is certainly less offensive. They do not lack invention; their mere technical skill is remarkable; they fail because they lack the supreme gifts of insight and imagination.
Valerius Flaccus chose a wiser course than Lucan and Silius Italicus. He turned not to history, but to legend, for his theme; and the story of the Argonauts, on which his choice lighted, possessed one inestimable advantage. Well-worn and hackneyed as it was, it possessed the secret of eternal youth. 'Age could not wither it nor custom stale its infinite variety.' The poorest of imitative poetasters could never have made it wholly dull, and Valerius Flaccus was more than a mere poetaster.
Of his life and position little is known. His name is given by the MSS.
as Gaius Valerius Flaccus Setinus Balbus.[473] The name Setinus suggests that he may have been a native of Setia. As there were three Setias, one in Italy and two in Spain, this clue gives us small help. It has been suggested[474] that the peculiarities of his diction are due to his being of Spanish origin. But we have no evidence as to the nature of Spanish Latin, while the authors of known Spanish birth, who found fame in the Silver Age--Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, Columella--show no traces of their provenance. No more helpful is the view that he is one Flaccus of Patavium, the poet-friend to whom two of Martial's epigrams are addressed.[475] For Martial's acquaintance was poor and is exhorted to abandon poetry as unlucrative, whereas Valerius Flaccus had some social standing and, not improbably, some wealth. From the opening of the _Argonautica_ we learn that he held the post of _quindecimvir sacris faciundis_.[476] But there our knowledge of the poet ends, save for one solitary allusion in Quintilian, the sole reference to Valerius in any ancient writer. In his survey of Latin literature[477] he says _multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus_. The work of Quintilian having been published between the years 93 and 95 A.D., the death of Valerius Flaccus may be placed about 90 A.D.
The poem seems to have been commenced shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. At the opening of the first book[478] Valerius addresses Vespasian in the conventional language of courtly flattery with appropriate reference to his voyages in northern seas during his service in Britain, a reference doubly suitable in a poem which is largely nautical and geographical. He excuses himself from taking the obvious subject of the Jewish war on the ground that that theme is reserved for the inspired pen of Domitian. It is for him to describe t.i.tus, his brother, dark with the dust of war, launching the fires of doom and dealing destruction from tower to tower along the ramparts of Jerusalem.[479] The progress of the work was slow. By the time the third book is reached we find references to the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D.,[480] while in the two concluding books there seem to be allusions to Roman campaigns in the Danube lands, perhaps those undertaken by Domitian in 89 A.D.[481] At line 468 of the eighth book the poem breaks off suddenly. It is possible that this is due to the ravages of time or to the circ.u.mstances of the copyist of our archetype, but consideration of internal evidence points strongly to the conclusion that Valerius died with his work uncompleted.
Not only do the words of Quintilian (l.c.) suggest a poet who left a great work unfinished, but the poem itself is full of harshnesses and inconsistencies of a kind which so slow and careful a craftsman would a.s.suredly have removed had the poem been completed and received its final revision.[482] These blemishes leave us little room for doubt. The poem that has come down to us is a fragment lacking the _limae labor_.
Like the _Thebais_ of Statius and the _Aeneid_ itself, the work was probably planned to fill twelve books. The poem breaks off with the marriage of Medea and Jason on the Isle of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, where they are overtaken by Medea's brother Absyrtus, who has come in anger to reclaim his sister and take vengeance on the stranger who has beguiled her. It is clear that the Argonauts[483] were, as in Apollonius Rhodius, to escape up the Danube and reach another sea. In Apollonius they descended from the head waters of the Danube by some mythical river to the Adriatic; it is in the Adriatic that Absyrtus is encountered and slain; it is in Phaeacia that Jason and Medea are married. In Valerius both these incidents take place in the Isle of Peuce, at the Danube's mouth. The inference is that Valerius contemplated a different scheme for his conclusion. It has been pointed out[484] that a mere 'reproduction of Apollonius' episodes could not have occupied four books'; and it is suggested that Valerius definitely brought his heroes into relation to the various Italian places[485]
connected with the Argonautic legend, while he may even, as a compliment to Vespasian,[486] have brought them back 'by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul'. This ingenious conjectural reconstruction has some probability, slight as is the evidence on which it rests. Valerius was almost bound to give his epic a Roman tinge. More convincing, however, is the suggestion of the same critic[487] that the poem was designed to exceed the scope of the epic of Apollonius and to have included the death of Pelias, the malignant and usurping uncle, who, to get rid of Jason, compels him to the search of the golden fleece. To the retribution that came upon him there are two clear references[488] and only the design to describe it could justify the introduction of the suicide of Jason's parents at the outset of the first book, a suicide to which they are driven to avoid death at the hands of Pelias.
The scope of the unwritten books is, however, of little importance in comparison with the execution of the existing portion of the poem. The Argonaut Saga has its weaknesses as a theme for epic. It is too episodic, it lacks unity and proportion. Save for the struggle in Colchis and the loves of Jason and Medea, there is little deep human interest. These defects, however, find their compensation in the variety and brilliance of colour, and, in a word, the romance that is inseparable from the story. The scene is ever changing, each day brings a new marvel, a new terror. Picturesqueness atones for lack of epic grandeur. For that reason the theme was well suited to the Silver Age, when picturesqueness and rich invention of detail predominated at the expense of poetic dignity and kindling imagination. In many ways Valerius does justice to his subject, in spite of the initial difficulty with which he was confronted. Apollonius Rhodius had made the story his own; Varro of Atax had translated Apollonius: both in its Greek and Latin forms the story was familiar to Roman readers. It was hard to be original.
Much as Valerius owes to his greater predecessor, he yet succeeds in showing no little originality in his portrayal of character and incident, and in a few cases in his treatment of plot.[489] In one particular indeed he has markedly improved on his model; he has made Jason, the hero of his epic, a real hero; conventional he may be, but he still is a leader of men. In Apollonius, on the other hand, he plays a curiously inconspicuous part; he is, in fact, the weakest feature of the poem; he is in despair from the outset, and at no point shows genuine heroic qualities; he is at best a peerless wooer and no more. Here, however, he is exalted by the two great battles of Cyzicus and Colchis; it is in part his prowess in the latter battle that wins Medea's heart.
In this connexion we may also notice a marked divergence from Apollonius as regards the plot. Aeetes has promised Jason the fleece if he will aid him against his brother Perses, who is in revolt against him with a host of Scythians at his back. Jason aids him, does prodigies of valour, and wins a glorious victory. Aeetes refuses the reward. This act of treachery justifies Jason in having recourse to Medea's magic arts and in employing her to avenge him on her father. In Apollonius we find a very different story. The sons of Phrixus, who, to escape the wrath of Aeetes, have thrown in their lot with the Argonauts, urge Jason to approach Medea; they themselves work upon the feelings of their mother, Chalciope, till she seeks her sister Medea--already in love with Jason and only too ready to be persuaded--and induces her to save her nephews, whose fate is bound up with that of the strangers. This incident is wholly absent from Valerius Flaccus, with the result that the loves of Jason and Medea a.s.sume a somewhat different character. Jason's conduct becomes more natural and dignified. Medea, on the other hand, is shown in a less favourable light. In the Greek poet she has for excuse the desire to save her sister from the loss of her sons, which gives her half a right to love Jason. In the Latin epic she is without excuse, unless, indeed, the hackneyed supernatural machinery,[490] put in motion to win her for Jason, can be called an excuse. This crude employment of the supernatural leaves Valerius small room for the subtle psychological a.n.a.lysis wherein the Greek excels, and this, coupled with the love of the Silver Age for art magic, tends to make Medea--as in Seneca--a sorceress first, a woman after. In Apollonius she is barbaric, unsophisticated, a child of nature; in Valerius she is a figure of the stage, not without beauty and pathos, but essentially melodramatic.
But Apollonius had concentrated all his powers upon Medea, and dwarfs all his other characters, Jason not excepted. It is Medea alone that holds our interests. The little company of heroes embarked on unsailed seas and beset with strange peril are scarcely more than a string of names, that drop in and out, as though the work were a s.h.i.+p's log rather than an epic. In Valerius, though he attempts no detailed portraiture, they are men who can at least fight and die. He has, in a word, a better general conception as to how the story should be told; he is less perfunctory, and strives to fill in his canvas more evenly, whereas Apollonius, although by no means concise, leaves much of his canvas covered by sketches of the slightest and most insignificant character.
In the Greek poem, though half the work is consumed in describing the voyage to Colchis, the first two books contain scarcely anything of real poetic interest, if we except the story of Phineus and the Harpies, a few splendid similes, and two or three descriptive pa.s.sages, as brief as they are brilliant. In Valerius, on the contrary, there is abundance of stirring scenes and rich descriptive pa.s.sages before the Argonauts reach their goal. His superiority is particularly noticeable at the outset of the poem. Apollonius plunges _in medias res_ and fails to give an adequate account of the preliminaries of the expedition. He has no better method of introducing us to his heroes than by giving us a dreary catalogue of their names. Valerius, too, has his catalogue, but later; we are not choked with indigestible and unpalatable fare at the very opening of the feast. And though both authors take five hundred lines to get their heroes under way, Valerius tells us far more and in far better language; Apollonius does not find his stride till the second book, and forgets that it is necessary to interest the reader in his characters from the very beginning.
But though in these respects Valerius has improved on his predecessor, and though his work lacks the arid wastes of his model, he is yet an author of an inferior cla.s.s, and comes ill out of the comparison. For he has little of the rich, almost oriental, colouring of Apollonius at his best, lacks his fire and pa.s.sion, and fails to cast the same glamour of romance about his subject. While the Dido and Aeneas of Vergil are in some respects but a pale reflection of the Medea and Jason of Apollonius, the loves of Jason and Medea in Valerius are fainter still.
His heroine is not the tragic figure that stands out in lines of fire from the pages of Apollonius. His lovers' speeches have a certain beauty and tenderness of their own, but they lack the haunting melody and the resistless pa.s.sion that make the Rhodian's lines immortal. And while to a great extent he lacks the peculiar merits of the Greek,[491] he possesses his most serious blemish, the blemish that is so salient a characteristic of both Alexandrian and Silver Latin literature, the pa.s.sion for obscure learning. A good example is the huge, though most ingenious, catalogue of the tribes of Scythia at the opening of the sixth book, with its detailed inventory of strange names and customs, and its minute descriptions of barbaric armour. His love of learning lands him, moreover, in strange anachronisms. We are told that the Colchians are descended from Sesostris;[492] the town of Arsinoe is spoken of as already in existence; Egypt is already connected with the house of Lagus.[493]
In addition, Valerius possesses many of the faults from which Apollonius is free, but with which the post-Augustan age abounds. The dangerous influence of Seneca has, it is true, decayed; we are no longer flooded with epigram or declamatory rhetoric. Rhetoric there is, and rhetoric that is not always effective;[494] but it is rather a perversion of the rhetoric of Vergil than the descendant of the brilliant rant of Lucan and Seneca. From the gross lack of taste and humour that characterizes so many of his contemporaries he is comparatively free, though his description of the historic 'crab' caught by Hercules reaches the utmost limit of absurdity:
laetus et ipse Alcides: Quisnam hos vocat in certamina fluctus?
dixit, et, intortis adsurgens arduus undis, percussit subito deceptum fragmine pectus, atque in terga ruens Talaum fortemque Eribotem et longe tantae securum Amphiona molis obruit, inque tuo posuit caput, Iphite, transtro. (iii. 474-80.)
Alcides gladdened in his heart and cried: 'Who challenges these waves to combat?' and as he rose against those buffeting waves, sudden with broken oar he smote his baffled breast, and, falling headlong back, o'erthrows Talaus and brave Eribotes and far-off Amphion, that never feared so vast a bulk should fall on him, and laid his head against thy thwart, O Iphitus.
This unheroic episode is a relic of the comic traditions a.s.sociated with Hercules, traditions which obtrude themselves from time to time in serious and even tragic surroundings.[495] Apollonius describes the same incident[496] with the quiet humour that so strangely tinges the works of the pedants of Alexandria. Valerius, on the other hand, has lost touch with the broad comedy of these traditions, and his attempt to be humorous only succeeds in making him ridiculous.[497]
His worst fault, however, lies in his obscurity and preciosity of diction. The error lies not so much in veiling simple facts under an epigram, as in a vain attempt to imitate the 'golden phrases' of Vergil.
The strange conglomeration of words with which Valerius so often vexes his readers resembles the 'chosen coin of fancy' only as the formless designs of the coinage of Cun.o.belin resemble the exquisite staters of Macedon from which they trace their descent. It requires more than a casual glance to tell that (i. 411)
it quem fama genus non est decepta Lyaei Phlias inmissus patrios de vertice crines
means that Phlias was 'truly reported the son of Bacchus with streaming locks like to his sire's'; or that (vi. 553)
Argus utrumque ab equis ingenti porrigit arvo
signifies no more than that the victims of Argus covered a large s.p.a.ce of ground when they fell.[498] How miserable is such a phrase compared with the [Greek: keito megas megal_osti] of Homer! And though there is less serious obscurity, nothing can be more awkward than the not infrequent inversion of the natural order of words that we find in phrases such as _nec pereat quo scire malo_ (vii. 7).[499]
<script>