Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/894

* LATIN LITERATURE. 810 LATIN LITERATURE. century. Tlie name of Lucretius is among tiie must noted of this epoch; yet though a member of one of Konie's noblest families and a unique poetic and philosophic genius, we know but little of his personal history. T. Lucretius Carus (c.99- 55 B.C.) was the author of a profound didactic pcKMii. De Rcriim yaliira. in six books, which is most fortunately preserved, and forms our best authority on the philosophic system of the Epi- cureans. Lucretius himself explains his purpose in writing it; namely, to free the mind from the fear of the gods and of death, and to combat the many forms of prevalent superstition, by a ra- tional contemplation of nature. As poetry, the woik is of a very high order, though varying in quality, for Lucretius died before it was per- fected. Cornelius Xcpos (c.0!)-24 B.C.) was, like his friend Atticus, a man of letters who took no part in the political turmoils of the time. While he wrote several works of a varied character, he is known to us only by the surviving portion of his extensive biographical work Dc 'iris Illtis- iribiis, in which separate sections (or 'books') were devoted to lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans, grouped according to profession, etc. In the literary life of Rome at this time there was a group of poets Ixmnd together by friend- ship and by a community of tastes and studies, ami all thoroughly steeped in the (Jreck poetry of the Alexandrian School. (See (Jkkkk Liter.v- TlRE. ) The greatest of these — and indeed one of the greatest in all I^atin literature — was C. Valerius Catullus (87-C.54 B.C.), a native of Ve- rona, where his father lived, and often enter- tained .Julius Osar at his house. As a young man he came to Rome, and being of good family, gifted, and of independent means, quickly gained access to the most fashionable society of the capital. Here he formed the acquaintance of the most prominent persons of the time. A man of strong emotional instincts, of violent love and hate, his poems are pervaded with his own per- sonality. In love, friendship and politics he shows himself full of zeal and enthusiasm or governed bj- the most venomous dislikes. He whs the last great jmet of the free Republic, and certainly luie of the greatest lyric geniuses that the world has produced. Besides his shorter lyrics, Catullus wrote also longer poems of quite another character, a "Song to Diana;" two cpiDwInmin, or marriage-songs, one nn-thological in character, treating of the Marriage of Pclciis ntui Thetifi, the other in honor of the actual marriage of Manlius and Vinia ; a wild study of the Phrygian Atys myth in the galliambic metre: a translation of Callimachus's Coma llrre>iicr.i : and others. The poems in which he sings of his S(urow for the death of his brother, whose tomb he visited in the Troad. of his un- happy journey in Asia Minor, ami of his joyous return to his beloved Sirmio, with the eulogy of his yacht. Pliasclus. are full of subtle charm. The first Roman to treat historical writing as an art, and thus to distinguish it from personal memoirs and annals, was C. Sallustius Crispus, generally called Sallust in English (B.C. 86-34). He had played an active part in public life, and thus brought to his work the experience of a man wlio had helped to make history, as well as to write it. .fter a somewhat checkered career he settled do^m into private life on his large estate just outside the walls of Rome, to enjoy the wealth he had acquired while proconsul in Africa and to devote himself to literary pur- suits. He took Thueydides as his model, and followed him closely both in arrangement and style. His works were: (1) Bellum Calilinw, an essay on the famous conspiracy of Catiline in B.C. t)3 ; (2) Ihllum liigurthinum, an essay on the war with .hignrlha. King of Numidia, who was conquered by Marius; (3) llistoriw, in five books, an account of events from B.C. 78 to B.C. 07. The last is preserved only in fragments. B. The Ai(lst.x Period (b.c. 43-a.d. 14). The overthrow of .Antxmius at the battle of Actium (B.C. 31) and the gradual establish- ment of the Empire mark a new order of things in Roman literature. The impulse communi- cated to poetry in the last days of the Re- l)ublie was carried, it is true, without inter- ruption into the .succeeding age. The poems of Catullus are separated by only a few years from the Eclogues of Vergil, but a very dillerent spirit pervades them. The frankness and fear- lessness of the earlier poet, which are in har- mony with the ]iolitical activity and freedom of the time in which he wrote, have given place in the later one to a guarded restraint which .seeks the approval of a patron or a monarch. In fact, the position of the aristocratic class to which literature had for generations owed its support and encouragement was now changed. Xo longer free to share in the conduct of national alTairs, this class found its chief interests in the affairs of 'society' life, and expended its energies amid the enervating influences of the Court. The state of things had its immediate effect upon litera- ture. Oratory lost its most stirring themes and degenerated into mere declamation: history, fear- ing to deal unreservedly with tlie present, fell back upon an artistic elaboration of the past; while poetry, though still on the upward path, tended to become disproportionately erotic. This period unfolds a list of brilliant writers whose works are conspicuous above those of other pe- riods for their beauty of finish and artistic skill, and for a breadth of .sympathy which brings them into genuine touch with human life the world over. It saw the jwrfection of the Latin hexam- eter verse in the national ei)ic of Vergil, of lyric poetry at the hands of Horace, and of elegiac verse in the works of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. In the domain of prose, Livy did for the story of Rome what Vergil did in verse for the myth of its origin. P. Vergilius ilaro (n.c. 7019) is the name that is most closely linked with the new order of things that vishers in the Empire. Born at a small town near Mantua, in Northern Italy, he founil himself, when still a young man, deprived of his inherited estate, which, like all the good land of that region, was confiscated after the death of Ca-sar and given to the veterans of Octavianus. But Vergil had induential friends, who secured for him a restitution of his prop- erty; and his gratitude toward the future Em- peror was boundless. At this time he began writing his bucolic poems, Erlofiuex. modeled upon the Greek poems of Theocritus ; and in the first of these, the shepherd Tityrus expresses the thought of Vergil himself when he says: Deiis vohin haec otui fecit, 'It is a god who has secured us these comforts.' This admiration for Octa- vianus, born of gratitude, increased with time and personal acquaintance, and made of Vergil a