Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/748

Rh 724 ROMAN LITERATURE feeling, yet he alone among the elegiac poets is able to embody it in dramatic form, and by his vivid gifts of fancy to create a literature of romantic passion and adventure adapted to amuse and fascinate the idle and luxurious society of which the elder Julia was the centre. The power of continuous narrative is best seen in the Kfetamorphoses, written in hexameters, to which he has imparted a rapidity and fluidity of movement more suited to romantic and pic- turesque narrative than the weighty self -restrained verse of Virgil. In his Fasti he treats a subject of national interest; it is not, however, through the strength of Roman sentiment but through the power of vividly conceiving and narrating stories of strong human interest that the poem lives. In his latest works the Tristia and Ex Ponto he imparts the interest of personal confessions to the record of a unique experience. Latin poetry is more rich in the expression of personal feeling than of dramatic imagination. In Ovid we have both. We know him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weak- ness of his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero. As Virgil marks the point of maturest excellence in poetic diction and rhythm, Ovid marks that of the greatest facility. The Augustan age was one of those great eras in the world, like the era succeeding the Persian War in Greece, the Elizabethan age in England, and the beginning of the present century in Europe, in which what seems a new spring of national and individual life calls out an idealizing retrospect of the past. As the present seems full of new life, the past seems rich in glory and the future in hope. The past of Rome had always a peculiar fascination for Roman writers. Virgil in a supreme degree, and Horace, Propertius, and Ovid in a less degree, had expressed in their poetry the romance of the past. But it was in the great historical work of Livy (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) that the record of the national life, coloured by idealizing retro- spect, received its most systematic exposition. The con- ception of his work must have nearly coincided in point of time with the impulses in which the JEneid and the national Odes of Horace had their origin. Its execution was the work of a life prolonged through the languor and dissolution following so soon upon the promise of the new era, during which time the past became glorified by con- trast with the disheartening aspect of the present. The value of the work consists not in any power of critical in- vestigation or weighing of historical evidence but in the intense sympathy of the writer with the national ideal, and the vivid imagination with which under the influence of this sympathy he gives life to the events and personages, the wars and political struggles, of times remote from his own. Although he has no accurate conception of the con- stitutional history of the state, yet nowhere else in ancient history do we find the patrician and plebeian forces in a .state by which that history is worked out so vividly and dramatically embodied. He makes us feel more than any one the majesty of the Roman state, of its great magis- tracies, and of the august council by which its policy was guided. And, while he makes the words " senatus popu- lusque Romanus " full of significance for all times, no one realizes with more enthusiasm all that is implied in the words "imperium Romanum," and the great military quali- ties of head and heart by which that empire was acquired and maintained. While the general conception of his work is thus animated by national enthusiasm, the details are filled up with all the resources of a vivid imagination and of literary art. The vast scale on which the work was conceived and the thoroughness of artistic execution with which the details are finished are characteristically Roman. The prose style of Rome, as a vehicle for the continuous narration of events coloured by a rich and picturesque imagination and vivified by dignified emotion, attained its perfection in him. Fourth Pernod: from 17 to about 130 A.D. For more than a century after the death of Augustus Charac Roman literature continues to flow in the old channels, teristic Rome continues the centre of the literary movement. The. f p characteristics of the great writers are essentially national, not provincial nor cosmopolitan. In prose the old forms oratory, history, the epistle, treatises or dialogues on ethical and literary questions continue to be cultivated. Scientific and practical subjects, such as natural history, architecture, medicine, agriculture, are treated in more elaborate literary style. The old Roman satura is devel- oped into something like the modern prose novel. In the various provinces of poetry, while there is little novelty or inspiration, there is abundance of industry and ambitious effort. The national love of works of large compass shows itself in the production of long epic poems, both of the historic and of the imitative Alexandrian type. Out of many others four of these have been preserved, two at least of which the world might have allowed to perish without sensible diminution to its literary wealth. The imitative and rhetorical tastes of Rome showed themselves in the composition of exotic tragedies, as remote in spirit and character from Greek as from Roman life, of which the only extant specimens are those attributed to the younger Seneca. The composition of didactic, lyrical, and elegiac poetry also was the accomplishment and pastime of an educated dilettante class. The only extant specimens of any interest are some of the Silvx of Statius. The only voice with which the poet of this age can express himself with force and sincerity is that of satire and satiric epi- gram. Ovid was the last of the true poets of Rome who combined idealizing power of imagination with artistic originality. After him we find only imitative echoes of the old music created by Virgil and others, as in Statius, or powerful declamation, as in Lucan and Juvenal. There is a deterioration in the diction as well as in the music of poetry. The elaborate literary culture of the Augustan age has done something to impair the native force of the Latin idiom. The language of literature, in the most elaborate kind of prose as well as poetry, loses all ring of popular speech. The old oratorical tastes and aptitudes find their outlet in public recitations and the practice of declamation. Forced and distorted expression, exagger- ated emphasis, point and antithesis, an affected prettiness, "melliti verborum globuli," were studied with the view of gaining the applause of audiences who thronged the lecture and recitation rooms in search of temporary excite- ment. Education was more widely diffused, but was less thorough, less leisurely in its method, less than before de- rived from the purer sources of culture. The precocious immaturity of Lucan's career affords a marked contrast to the long preparation of Virgil and Horace for their high office. Although there are some works of the Silver Age of considerable and one at least of supreme interest, from the insight they afford into the experience of a century of organized despotism and its effect on the spiritual life of the ancient world, it cannot be doubted that the steady literary decline which characterized the last centuries of paganism begins with the death of Ovid and Livy. Jl the world had not altogether ceased to produce men of genius, the conditions under which their genius could unfold itself were no longer the same. The influences which hail inspired the republican and Augustan literature were the artistic impulse derived from a familiarity with the great works of Greek genius, becoming more intimate with every new generation, the spell of Rome over the imagination of the kindred Italian races, the charm of Italy, and the vivid