Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/750

Rh 726 ROMAN LITERATUE interesting by his abundant illustration drawn from the private and social life of his contemporaries. He has knowledge of the world, the suppleness of a courtier, Spanish vivacity, and the " ingenium amoenum " attributed to him by Tacitus, the fruit of which is sometimes seen in the "honeyed phrases" mentioned by Petronius, pure aspirations combined with inconsistency of purpose, the inconsistency of one who tries to make the best of two worlds, the ideal inner life and the successful real life in the atmosphere of a most corrupt court. The Pharsalia of Lucan (39-65), with Cato as its hero, is essentially a Stoical manifesto of the opposition. It is written with the force and fervour of extreme youth and with the literary ambition of a race as yet new to the discipline of intellectual culture, and is endowed with a rhetorical rather than a poetical imagination. The Satires of Persius (34-62) are the purest product of Stoicism, a Stoicism that had found in a living contemporary, Thrasea, a more rational and practical hero than Cato. But no important writer of antiquity has less literary charm than Persius. He either would not or could not say anything simply and naturally. In avoiding the literary conceits and fopperies which he satirizes he has recourse to the most unnatural contortions of expression. Of the works of the time that which from a human point of view is perhaps the most detestable in ancient literature has the most genuine literary quality, the fragment of the prose novel of Petronius. It is most sincere in its repre- sentation, least artificial in diction, most penetrating in its satire, most just in its criticism of art and style. (2) A greater sobriety of tone was introduced both into life and literature with the accession of Vespasian. The time was, however, characterized rather by good sense and industry than by original genius. Under Vespasian Pliny the elder is the most important prose-writer, and Valerius Flaccus, author of the Aryonautica, the most important Lge of among the writers of poetry. The reign of Domitian, )omi- although it silenced the more independent spirits of the ian * time, Tacitus and Juvenal, witnessed more important con- tributions to Roman literature than any age since the Augustan, among them the Institutes of Quintilian, the Punic War of Silius Italicus, the epics and the Silvx of Statius, and the Epigrams of Martial. Quintilian (c. 35- 95) is brought forward by Juvenal as a unique instance of a thoroughly successful man of letters, of one not be- longing by birth to the rich or official class who had risen to wealth and honours through literature. He was well adapted to his time by his good sense and sobriety of judg- ment. His criticism is just and true rather than subtle or ingenious, and thus stands the test of the judgment of after-times. The poem of Silius (25-101) is a proof of the industry and literary ambition of members of the rich official class. Of the epic poets of the Silver Age Statius (c. 45-96) shows the greatest technical skill and the richest pictorial fancy in the execution of detail ; but his epics have no true inspiring motive, and, although the recitation of the Tliebaid could attract and charm an audience in the days of Juvenal, it really belongs to the class of poems so unsparingly condemned both by him and Martial. In the Silvse, though many of them have little root in the deeper feelings of human nature, we find occasionally more than in any poetry after the Augustan age something of the purer charm and pathos of life. But it is not in the artificial poetry of the Silvse, nor in the epics and tragedies of the time, nor in the cultivated criticism of Quintilian that the age of Domitian lives for us. It is in the Epi- grams of Martial (c. 41-102) that we have a true image of the average sensual frivolous life of Rome at the end of the 1st century, seen through a medium of wit and humour, but undistorted by the exaggeration which moral indignation and the love of effect add to the representation of Juvenal. Martial represents his age in his as Horace does his in his Satires and 0<l<-*, with more variety and incisive force in his sketches, though with much less poetic charm and serious meaning. "Wo know the daily life, the familiar personages, the outward aspect of Rome in the age of Domitian better than at any other period of Roman history, and that knowledge we owes to Martial. Though a less estimable character than some of them, he is a better writer than any of his contemporaries because he did not withdraw into a world of literary in- terests, but lived and wrote in the central whirl of city life. He tells us the truth of his time without the wish either to protest against or to extenuate its vices. (3) But it was under Nerva and Trajan that the greatest Period and most truly representative works of the empire were ofNerv written, those which at once present the most impressive Tn |J aD > spectacle to the imagination and have made its meaning g^^ sink most deeply into the heart and conscience of the world. The Annals and Histories of Tacitus (54-119), with the supplementary Life of Agricola and the treatise On the Manners of the Germans, and the Satires of Juvenal (c. 47-130) have summed up for all after-times the moral experience of the Roman world from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Domitian. The powerful feel- ings under which they both wrote, the generous scorn and generous pathos of the historian acting on extraordinary gifts of imaginative insight and imaginative characteriza- tion, and the fierce indignation of the satirist finding its vent in exaggerating realism, have undoubtedly disturbed the completeness and exactness of the impressions which they received and have perpetuated ; nevertheless their works are the last powerful voices of Rome, the last voices expressive of the freedom and manly virtue of the ancient world. In them alone among the writers of the empire the spirit of the Roman republic seems to revive. The Letters of Pliny (61-c. 115), though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their re- presentation, and to show that life even in the higher circles of Roman society had still sources of pure enjoy- ment and wellbeing. With the death of Juvenal, the most important part of whose activity falls in the reign of Trajan, Roman literature as an original and national expression of the experience, character, and sentiment of the Roman state and empire, and as one of the great literatures of the world, may be considered as closed. There still continued to be much industry and activity in gathering up the memorials of the past and in explaining and illustrating the works of genius of the ages of literary creation. A kind of archaic revival took place in the reign of Hadrian, which showed itself both in affectation of style and in a renewed interest in the older literature. The most important works of the age succeeding that of Juvenal are the Biographies of Suetonius (c. 75-160), which did much to preserve a know- ledge of both political and literary history. The Nodes Atticas of Aulus Gellius, written in the latter part of the 2d century, have preserved many anecdotes, some of them of doubtful authenticity, concerning the older writers. The persistence of critical and grammatical studies and of in- terest in the literature of the past resulted in the 4th and 5th centuries in the works of Donatus and Servius and in the Saturnalia of Macrobius. The works of the great Latin grammarians are also to be connected with the scholarly study of antiquity which superseded to a great extent the attempt to produce works of new creation. The writer of most original genius among the successors of Juvenal and Tacitus is probably Apuleius, and his most