Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/61

Rh LUCILIUS 47 poetical career by ridiculing and parodying the conventional language of epic and tragic poetry, and to have used in his own writings the language commonly employed in the social intercourse of educated men. Even his frequent use of Greek words, phrases, and quotations, reprehended by Horace, was probably taken from the actual practice of men, powerfully stimulated by the new learning, who found their own speech as yet inadequate to give free expression to the new ideas and impressions which they derived from their first contact with Greek philosophy, rhetoric, and poetry. Further, he not only created a style of his own, but, instead of taking the substance of his writings from Greek poetry, or from a remote past, he treated of the familiar matters of daily life, of the personal interests and peculiarities of himself or his contemporaries, of the politics, the wars, the government of the provinces, the administration of justice, the fashions and tastes, the eating and drinking, the money-making and money-spend ing, the scandals and vices, the airs and affectations, which made up the public and private life of Rome in the- last quarter of the second century before our era. This he did in a singularly frank, independent, and courageous spirit, with no private ambition to serve, or party cause to advance, but with an honest desire to expose the iniquity or incom petence of the governing body, the sordid aims of the middle class, and the corruption and venality of the city mob. There was nothing of stoical austerity or of rhetorical indignation in the tone in which he treated the vices and follies of his time. His character and tastes were much more akin to those of Horace than of either Persius or Juvenal. But he was what Horace was not, a thoroughly good hater ; and he lived at a time when the utmost freedom of speech and the most unrestrained indulgence of public and private animosity were the characteristics of men who took a prominent part in affairs. Although Lucilius took no active part in the public life of his time, he regarded it in the spirit, not of a recluse or a mere student of books, but of a man of the world and of society, as well as a man of letters. His ideal of public virtue and private worth had been formed by intimate association with the greatest and best of the soldiers and statesmen of an older gener ation. The dates assigned by Jerome for his birth and death are 148 and 103 or 102 B.C. But it is impossible to reconcile the first of these dates with other facts recorded of him. We learn from Velleius that he served under Scipio at the siege of Numantia in the year 134 B.C. We learn from Horace that he lived on the most intimate terms of friendship with Scipio and Laelius, and that he celebrated the exploits and virtues of the former in his satires. Fragments of those books of his satires which seem to have been first given to the world (books xxvi ; -xxix.) clearly indicate that they were written in tho lifetime of Scipio. Some of these bring the poet before us as either corresponding with, or engaged in controversial conversation with, his great friend. One line &quot; Fercrcpa pugnam Topilli, facta Cornell cane&quot; in which the defeat of M. Popillius Lsenas, in 138 B.C., is contrasted with the subsequent success of Scipio, bears the stamp of having been written while the news of the capture of Numantia was still fresh. It is in the highest degree improbable that Lucilius served in the army at the age of fourteen ; it is still more unlikely that he could have boen admitted into the familiar intimacy of Scipio and Lrelius at that age. It seems a moral impossibility that between the age of fifteen and nineteen i.e., between 133 B.C. and 129 B.C., the year of Scipio s death he could have come before the world as the author of an entirely new kind of composition, and one which, to be at all successful, demands especially maturity of judgment and experience. It may further be said that the well-known words of Horace, in which he characterizes the vivid portraiture of his life, character, and thoughts, which Lucilius bequeathed to the world, &quot; quo fit ut omnis Votiva patcat veluti descripta tabella Vita scnis,&quot; 1 lose much of their force unless senis is to be taken in its ordinary sense, which it cannot be if Lucilius died at the age of forty-six. Two explanations have been given of the error. One is that, from a similarity in the names of the consuls for the years 180 and 148 B.C., Jerome had con fused the one year with the other, and thus that the date of the birth of Lucilius must be thrown back thirty-two years. He would thus have been nearly fifty when he served at Numantia, and when he first began to write satire. But the terms which Horace applies to the intimacy of Lucilius and Scipio, such as &quot;discincti ludere,&quot; indicate the relations of an older to a much younger man ; and the verve and tone of his satires are those of a man not so far advanced in years as he would have been if born in the year 180 B.C. A simpler explanation of the error is sup ported by Mr Munro, in the Journal of Philology, No/xvL He supposes that Jerome must have written the words &quot; anno xlvi &quot; for &quot; anno Ixiv &quot; or &quot; Ixvi &quot; ; which would make the birth of Lucilius eighteen or twenty years earlier than that usually assigned. Lucilius would thus have been about thirty-three or thirty-five years of age when lie served at Numantia, and two or three years older when he gave his first satires to the world. As he lived for about thirty years longer, and as he seems to have con tinued the composition of his satires during most of what remained of his life, and as it was his practice to commit to them all his private thoughts, the words of Horace would naturally and truthfully describe the record of his observation and experience between the age of thirty-five and his death. His birthplace was Suessa Aurunca in Campania, from which circumstance Juvenal describes him as &quot;magnus Auruncse alumnus.&quot; He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact indicated by Horace s notice of himself as &quot;infra Lucili censum.&quot; He was granduncle to Pompey, on the mother s side. Though not himself belonging to any of the great senatorian families, he was in a position to associate with them on equal terms, and to criticize them with independence. And this circum stance contributed to the boldness, originality, and thoroughly national character of his literary work. Had he been a &quot;semi-Grrecus,&quot; like Ennius and Pacuvius, or of humble origin, like Plautus, Terence, or Accius, he would scarcely have ventured, at a time when the senatorian power was strongly in the ascendant, to revive the role which had proved disastrous to Nsevius ; nor would he have had the intimate knowledge of the political and social life of his day which fitted him to be its painter. Another* circumstance determining the bent of his mind to satire was the character of the time in which he began the work of his life. The origin of Roman political and social satire is to be traced to the same disturbing and disorganiz ing forces which led to the revolutionary projects and legislation of the Gracchi. The remains of Lucilius extend to about eleven hundred lines. But much the largest number of his fragments are unconnected lines, preserved by late grammarians, as illustrative of peculiar verbal usages. lie was, for his time, a voluminous as well as a very discursive writer. He left behind him thirty books of satires, and there is reason to believe that each book, like the books of Horace and Juvenal, was composed of different pieces. The order in which they were known to the grammarians was not that in which they were written. The earliest in order of composition were probably 1 &quot;And so it happens that the whole life of the old man stands clearly before us, as if it were represented on a votive picture.&quot;