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Lucilius, Bron BC 148. Dire BC 102

CRITICISM OF HORACE.

141

lived to the age of forty-six years. At fourteen, he served under Scipio at the siege of Numantia. He was the maternal greatuncle of Pompey, and numbered amongst his friends and patrons, Africanus and Lælius. His Satires were comprised in thirty books, of which the first twenty and the thirtieth were written in hexameters, the rest in iambics or trochaics. Numerous fragments are still extant, some of considerable length. The Satires were probably arranged according to their subject-matter; for those in the first book are on topics connected with religion, whilst those in the ninth treat of literary and grammatical criticism. His versification is careless and unrefined; very inferior in this respect to that of his predecessors. He sets at defiance the laws of prosody, and almost returns to the usage of that period in which the ear was the only judge.

The prejudices of Horace3 against the ancient Roman literature render him an unsafe guide in criticism. Even in his own time his attacks were considered by some indefensible; but his strictures on the style of Lucilius are not undeserved; it was unmusical, affected, and incorrect. His sentences are frequently illarranged, and therefore deficient in perspicuity. His mixture of Greek and Latin expressions, without that skill and art with which Horace considered it allowable to enrich the vernacular language, is itself offensive to good taste, and is rendered still more disagreeable by unnecessary diminutives and forced alliteration. On these grounds, and on these alone, he merits the contemptuous criticism of Horace.

His real defect was want of facility; and it is not improbable that, if prose had been considered a legitimate vehicle, he would have preferred pouring forth in that unrestricted form his indig nant eloquence, rather than that, as Horace says, every verse should have cost him many scratchings of the head, and biting his nails to the quick. Whilst the criticism of Horace errs on the side of severity, that of Cicero is somewhat too partial: firstly, because he himself was deficient in poetical facility; secondly, because in his time there were no models of perfection wherewith to compare the works of Lucilius. The judgment of Quintilians is moderate; and although the taste for poetry was then corrupted by a love of quaintness and rhetorical affectation, the praise is well merited which he bestows on the frank honesty and biting wit of the Satires of Lucilius. As he took the writers

In defence of the chronology of Lucilius' life, see Smith's Dictionary of Biography, s. v. Lucilius. 3 See Sat. I. iv. ; I. x. ; I. i. 29, &c.

2 Vell. Paterc. ii. 9.

De Orat. ii. 6; De Fin. i. 3.

5 Inst. Or. x. i.

of old Attic comedy for his models, it cannot be a matter of surprise that he occasionally added force to his attacks on vice by coarseness and personality. Like them, if Lucilius found any one who deserved rebuke for his crimes, he did not trouble himself to make general remarks, and to attack vice in the abstract, but to illustrate his principles by living examples.

The education of Lucilius had probably been desultory, and his course of study not sufficiently strict to give the rich young Roman knight the accurate training, the critical knowledge, necessary to make him a poet as well as a satirist. It had given him learning and erudition, it had furnished him with the wealth of two languages, both of which he used whenever he thought they supplied him with a two-edged weapon, but it had not sufficiently cultivated his ear and refined his taste. On the other hand, his Satires must have possessed nobler qualities than those of style. He was evidently a man of high moral principle, though stern and stoical, devotedly attached to the cause of virtue, a relentless enemy of vice and profligacy, a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty. He must have felt, with Juvenal, “difficile est satiram non scribere." He was under an obligation which he could not avoid. What cared he for correct tetrameters, or heroics, or senarii, so that he could crush effeminacy, and gluttony, and self-indulgence, and restore the standard of ancient morals, to which he looked back with admiration?

This chivalrous devotion inspired him with eloquence, and gave a dignity to his rude verses, although it did not invest them with the graces and charms of poetry. Nor is it only when he declares open war against corruption that he must have made his adversaries tremble, or his victims, conscience stricken, writhe beneath his knife. His encomiums upon virtue form as striking pictures; but in both it is the masterly outline of the drawing which amazes and instructs, not the mere accessory of the coloring. See, for example, the following noble passage, with its unselfish conclusion, preserved by Lactantius:-1

Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum

Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu' potesse.
Virtus est homini scire id quod quæque habeat res.
Virtus, scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,
Quæ bona, quæ mala item quid inutile turpe inhonestum.

Virtus, quærendæ finem rei scire modumque;

Virtus, divitiis pretium persolvere posse.

Virtus, id dare quod reipsa debetur honori,

Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum;

Inst. Div. vi. 5.

LEVIUS.

Contra, defensorem hominum morumque bonorum;
Magnificare hos, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
Commoda præterea patriai prima putare,

Deinde parentum, tertia jam postremaque nostra.

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Had they been extant, we should have found useful information and instruction in his faithful pictures of Roman life and manners in their state of moral transition-amusement in such pieces as his journal of a progress from Rome to Capua, from which Horace borrowed the idea of his journey to Brundisium, whilst in his love poems, addressed to his mistress, Collyra, we should have traced the tender sympathies of human nature, which the sternness of stoicism was unable to overcome.

Besides satire, Lucilius is said to have attempted lyric poetry; if this be the case, it is by no means surprising that no specimens have stood the test of time, for he possessed none of the qualifications of a lyric poet.

After the death of Lucilius, satire languished. Varro Atacinus attempted it and failed. Half a century subsequently, it assumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put forth its original vigor in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.

LEVIUS.

This literary period was entirely destitute of lyric poetry, unless Niebuhr is correct in supposing that Lævius flourished contemporaneously with Lucilius. Nothing is known of his history, and such uncertainty prevails respecting him that his name is constantly confounded with those of Livius and Nævius. It is not improbable that some passages attributed to them, which appear to belong to a later literary age, are, in reality, the work of Lævius-for example, the hexameters which are found in the Latin Odyssey of Livius. He translated the Cyprian poems, and wrote some fugitive amatory pieces entitled Erotopagnia They seem to have possessed neither the graceful simplicity nor the tender warmth which are essential to lyric poetry, although they perhaps attained as great elegance of expression as the state of the language then admitted. Short fragments are preserved by Apuleius and in the Noctes Attica of A. Gellius.3

Hor. Sat. I. x. 46.

2 Nieb. Lect. lxxxviii.

3 Lib. ii. 24; xix. 9.

CHAPTER XI.

PROSE LITERATURE-PROSE SUITABLE TO ROMAN GENIUS-HISTORY, JURISPRUDENCE, AND ORATORY-PREVALENCE OF GREEK-Q. FABIUS PICTOR-L. CINCIUS ALIMENTUS—C. ACILIUS GLABRIO-VALUE OF THE ANNALISTS-IMPORTANT LITERARY PERIOD, DURING WHICH CATO CENSORIUS FLOURISHED-SKETCH OF HIS LIFE-HIS CHARACTER, GENIUS, AND STYLE.

PROSE was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation they had little or no ideality or imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, no acute perception of the sympathy and relation existing between man and the external world. In the Greek mind a love of country and a love of nature held a divided empire-they were poets as well as patriots. Roman patriotism had indeed its dark side -an unbounded lust of dominion, an unscrupulous ambition to extend the power and glory of the republic; but, nevertheless, it prompted a zealous devotion to whatever would promote national independence and social advancement. Statesmanship, therefore, and the subjects akin to it, constituted the favorite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman, who sought a distinguished career of public usefulness; and, therefore, that literature which tended to advance the science of social life had a charm for him which no other literature possessed.

The branches of knowledge which would engage his attention were History, Jurisprudence, and Oratory. They would be studied with a view to utility, and in a practical spirit they would require a scientific and not an artistic treatment; and, therefore, their natural language would be prose and not poetry. As matter was more valued than manner by this utilitarian people, it was long before it was thought necessary to embellish prose literature with the graces of composition. The earliest orators spoke with a rude and vigorous eloquence which is always captivating: they wrote but little; their style was stiff and dry, and very inferior to their speaking. Cato's prose was less rugged than that of his contemporaries or even his immediate successors. Sisenna was the first historian to whom gracefulness and polish have been attributed; and C. Gracchus is spoken of as a single

HISTORY AND JURISPRUDENCE.

145

exception to the orators of his age, on account of the rhythmical modulation of his prose sentences-a quality which he probably owed not more to a delicate ear than to the softening influence of a mother's education. Even the prose of that celebrated model of refinement and good taste, C. Lælius, was harsh and unmusical.1

Besides the influence which the practical character of the Roman mind exercised upon prose writing, it must not be forgotten that Roman literature was imitative: its end and object, therefore, were not invention, but erudition; it depended for its existence on learning, and was almost synonymous with it. This principle gave a decidedly historical bias to the Roman intellect: an historical taste pervades a great portion of the national literature. There is a manifest tendency to study subjects in an historical point of view. It will be seen hereafter that it is not like the Greek, original and inventive, but erudite and eclectic. The historic principle is the great characteristic feature of the Roman mind; consequently, in this branch of literature, the Romans attained the highest reputation, and may fairly stand forth as competitors with their Greek instructors. Not that they ever entirely equalled them; for though they were practical, vigorous, and just thinkers, they never attained that comprehensive and philosophical spirit which distinguished the Greek historians.

The work of an historian was, in the earliest times, recognized as not unworthy of a Roman. It was not like the other branches of literature, in which the example was first set by slaves and freedmen. Those who first devoted themselves to the pursuit were also eminent in the public service of their country. Fabius Pictor was of an illustrious patrician family. Cincius Alimentus, Fulvius Nobilior, and others, were of free and honorable birth. Such were Roman historians until the time of Sulla; for L. Otacilius Pilitus, who flourished at that period, was the first freedman who began to write history.23

Again, the science of jurisprudence formed an indispensable part of statesmanship. It was a study which recommended itself by its practical nature: it could not be stigmatized even by the busiest as an idle and frivolous pursuit, whilst the constitutional relation which subsisted between patron and client rendered the knowledge of its principles, to a certain extent, absolutely necessary. Protection from wrong was the greatest boon which the

See Nieb. Lect. lxxix. and Schol. in Cic. Orell. ii. p. 283.

2 Suet. de Clar. Rhet. iii.

a The fragments of the ancient Roman historians have been collected by Augustus Krause, and published at Berlin in 1833.

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