Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/749

Rh ROMAN LITERATURE 725 sensibility of the Italian temperament. These influences were certainly much less operative in the first century of the empire. The imitative impulse, which had much of the character of a creative impulse, and had resulted in the appropriation of the forms of poetry suited to the Roman and Italian character and of the metres suited to the genius of the Latin language, no longer stimulated to artistic effort. The great sources of Greek poetry were no longer regarded, as they were by Lucretius and Virgil, as "integri" and "sancti fontes," and approached in a spirit at once of daring adventure and reverential enthusi- asm. 1 We have the testimony of two men of the shrewdest common sense and the most masculine understanding Martial and Juvenal to the stale and lifeless character of the art of the Silver Age, which sought to reproduce in the form of epics, tragedies, and elegies the bright fancies of the Greek mythology. The idea of Rome, owing to the antagonism between the policy of the Government and the sympathies of the class by which literature was favoured and cultivated, could no longer be an inspiring motive, as it had been in the literature of the republic and of the Augustan age. The spirit of Rome appears only as animating the protest of Lucan, the satire of Persius and Juvenal, the sombre picture which Tacitus paints of the annals of the empire. Oratory is no longer an independent voice appealing to sentiments of Roman dignity, but the weapon of the " delatores," wielded for their own advancement and the destruction of that class which, even in their degeneracy, retained most sympathy with the national traditions. Roman history was no longer a record of national glory, stimulating the patriotism and flattering the pride of all Roman citizens, but a personal eulogy or a personal invec- tive, according as servility to a present or hatred of a recent ruler was the motive which animated it. The charm of Italian scenes still remained the same, but the fresh and inspiring feeling of nature as a great power in the world, a great restorative influence on human life, gave place to the mere sensuous gratification derived from the luxurious and artificial beauty of the country villa. The idealizing poetry of passion, which found a genuine voice in Catullus and the elegiac poets, could not prolong itself through the exhausting licence of successive generations. The vigorous vitality which gives interest to the personality of Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid no longer characterizes their successors. The pathos of natural affection is occasionally recognized in Statius and more rarely in Martial, but it has not the depth of tenderness found in Lucretius and Virgil. Human life is altogether shallower, has the same capacity for neither joy nor sorrow. The wealth and luxury of succeeding generations, the monotonous routine of life, the separation of the educated class from the higher work of the world, have produced their enervating and paralysing effect on the mainsprings of poetic and imaginative feeling. New elements, however, appear in the literature of this ai T period. As the result of the severance from the active n s ' interests of life, a new interest is awakened in the inner life of the individual. The extreme immorality of the age not only affords abundant material to the satirist but deepens the consciousness of moral evil in purer and more thoughtful minds. To these causes we attribute the patho- logical observation of Seneca and Tacitus, the new sense of purity in Persius called out by contrast with the im- purity around him, the glowing if somewhat sensational exaggeration of Juvenal, the vivid characterization of Martial. The literature of no time presents so powerfully 1 Contrast with the "juvat integros accedere fontes" and the "sanctos ausus recludere fontes" of the older poets the first line of Persius's prologue " nee foiite labra prolui caballiuo." the contrast between moral good and evil. In this respect it is truly representative of the life of the age. Another new element is the influence of a new race. In the two preceding periods the rapid diffusion of literary culture following the Social War and the first Civil War was seen to awaken into new life the elements of original genius in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul. In the first century of the empire a similar result was produced by the diffusion of that culture in the Latinized districts of Spain. The fervid temperament of a fresh and vigorous race, which received the Latin discipline just as Latium had two or three centuries previously received the Greek discipline, revealed itself in the writings of the Senecas, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial, and others, who in their own time added literary distinction to the Spanish towns from which they came. This new cosmopolitan element introduced into Roman literature draws into greater prominence the characteristics of the last great representatives of the genuine Roman and Italian spirit, Tacitus and Juvenal. On the whole this century shows, in form, language, and substance, the beginning of literary decay. But it is still capable of producing men of original force ; it still maintains the traditions of a happier time ; it is still alive to the value of literary culture, and endeavours by minute attention to style to produce new effects. Though it was not one of the great eras in the annals of literature, yet the century which produced Martial, Juvenal, and Tacitus cannot be pronounced barren in literary originality, nor that which produced Seneca and Quintilian in culture and literary taste. This fourth period is itself subdivided into three divi- sions : (1) that extending from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Nero, 68, the only important part of it being the Neronian age, 54 to 68 ; (2) the Flavian era, from the death of Nero to the death of Domitian, 96 ; (3) the period included in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan and part of the reign of Hadrian. (1) For a generation after the death of Augustus no Period new original literary force appeared. The later poetry of from. the Augustan age had ended in trifling dilettanteism, for, : J; m the continuance of which the atmosphere of the court was no longer favourable. The class by which literature was encouraged had become both enervated and terrorized. The Fables of Phaedrus, the Pierian freedman, a work of no kind of national significance and representative in its morality only of the spirit of cosmopolitan individual- ism, is the chief poetical product of the time. Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus are the most important prose-writers. The traditional culture was still, however, maintained, and the age was rich in grammarians and rhetoricians. The new profession of the " delator " must have given a stimulus to oratory. A high ideal of culture, literary as well as practical, was realized in Germanicus, which seems to have been transmitted to his daughter Agrippina, whose patronage of Seneca had important results in the next generation. The reign of Claudius was a time in which antiquarian learning, grammatical studies, and jurisprudence were cultivated, but no import- ant additions were made to literature. A fresh impulse was given to letters on the accession of Nero, and this was partly due to the theatrical and artistic tastes of the young emperor. Four writers of the Neronian age still possess considerable interest, Seneca, Lucan, Persius, and Petronius. The first three represent the spirit of their age by exhibiting the power of the Stoic philosophy as a moral, political, and religious force ; the last is the most cynical exponent of the depravity of the time. Seneca (d. 65) is less than Persius a pure Stoic, and more of a moralist and pathological observer of man's inner life. He makes the commonplaces of a cosmopolitan philosophy