LATIN: THE SILVER AGE
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Although
Augustus was an authoritarian ruler, he was careful to
preserve republican traditions and exercised his power
with moderation. After his death, old fears of imperial
rule proved justified. The accession of Caligula in A.D.
37 introduced flagrant abuses, cruelty and immorality,
resulting in the Emperor's murder. The decline in the
quality of classical literature during the so-called
Silver Age seems to reflect the political decline.
Freedom of expression tended to be more limited, and
there was more rhetoric, less wit and passion.
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THE SILVER AGE
Nevertheless, the post-Augustan period was
not without its own literary giants. The Spanish-born Lucan
(A.D. 39-65) was the author of the Pharsalia,
generally regarded as the finest epic after the
Aeneid,
before he fell foul of the Emperor Nero and committed
suicide at Nero's command.
Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D 65),
the outstanding dramatic tragedian of the age, narrowly
avoided death under Caligula, later becoming Nero's tutor.
His tragedies are adaptations from the Greek and were highly
influential in the Renaissance, when Greek speakers were few
in comparison with Latin. Writers of prose included Pliny
the Younger (c.62—c.113), the nephew of the Pliny the Elder,
whose massive work,
Historia Naturalis, was published in A.D. 77. The
younger Pliny is chiefly remembered for his Letters, some
written to the Emperor when he was a provincial governor.
They contain a memorable description of the eruption of
Vesuvius (A.D. 79) in which his uncle died while pursuing
his research too assiduously. There were also outstanding
achievements in the fields of satire and history.

Peter Paul
Rubens
The Death of
Seneca
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Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(c. 3 BC – 65 AD) was a Roman Stoic philosopher,
statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist,
of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was
tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was
later forced to commit suicide for complicity in
the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate this last
of the Julio-Claudian emperors; however, he may
have been innocent. His father was Seneca the
Elder and his older brother was Gallio.
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Lucan

Lucan, Latin in
full Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (b. ad 39, Corduba
[now Córdoba], Spain—d. 65, Rome [Italy]), Roman
poet and republican patriot whose historical
epic, the Bellum civile, better known as the
Pharsalia because of its vivid account of that
battle, is remarkable as the single major Latin
epic poem that eschewed the intervention of the
gods.
Lucan was the
nephew of the philosopher-statesman Lucius
Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger). Trained by
the Stoic philosopher Cornutus and later
educated in Athens, Lucan attracted the
favourable attention of the emperor Nero owing
to his early promise as a rhetorician and
orator. Shortly, however, Nero became jealous of
his ability as a poet and halted further public
readings of his poetry. Already disenchanted by
Nero’s tyranny and embittered by the ban on his
recitations, Lucan became one of the leaders in
the conspiracy of Piso (Gaius Calpurnius) to
assassinate Nero. When the conspiracy was
discovered, he was compelled to commit suicide
by opening a vein. According to Tacitus, he died
repeating a passage from one of his poems
describing the death of a wounded soldier.
The Bellum
civile, his only extant poem, is an account of
the war between Julius Caesar and Pompey,
carried down to the arrival of Caesar in Egypt
after the murder of Pompey, when it stops
abruptly in the middle of the 10th book. Lucan
was not a great poet, but he was a great
rhetorician and had remarkable political and
historical insight, though he wrote the poem
while still a young man. The work is naturally
imitative of Virgil, though not as dramatic.
Although the style and vocabulary are usually
commonplace and the metre monotonous, the
rhetoric is often lifted into real poetry by its
energy and flashes of fire and appears at its
best in the magnificent funeral speech of Cato
on Pompey. Scattered through the poem are noble
sayings and telling comments, expressed with
vigour and directness. As the poem proceeds, the
poet’s republicanism becomes more marked, no
doubt because as Nero’s tyranny grew, along with
Lucan’s hatred of him, he looked back with
longing to the old Roman Republic. It has been
said that Cato is the real hero of the epic, and
certainly the best of Lucan’s own Stoicism
appears in the noble courage of his Cato in
continuing the hopeless struggle after Pompey
had failed.
Lucan’s poetry
was popular during the Middle Ages. Christopher
Marlowe translated the first book of the Bellum
civile (1600), and Samuel Johnson praised
Nicholas Rowe’s translation (1718) as “one of
the greatest productions of English poetry.” The
English poets Robert Southey and Percy Bysshe
Shelley in their earlier years preferred him to
Virgil. His work strongly influenced Pierre
Corneille and other French classical dramatists
of the 17th century.
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The Roman Empire was the basis of European civilization; for
over a thousand years after it had fallen, Europeans were
fondly trying to restore it, or something like it. The name
of the Holy (i.e. Christian) Roman Empire reflected the
eagerness of the Ottoman German kings, like Charlemagne
before them, to reclaim the greatness of the past, although,
by most measurements of "civilization", the Roman
achievement was not surpassed until the modern era. Latin
remained the standard language of educated people in Europe
and provided an international cultural bond more powerful
than a common market or a single currency. Thus Latin
literature can be said to have lasted 1,500 years after
Juvenal's death (A.D. 130), although it was no longer
"Roman". later writers being described as "Christian", if
appropriate, or by some other term.
SATIRE
Juvenal
("Satires")
Although there were satirical elements in
some Greek comedy, satire is the one literary genre whose
creation is credited to the Romans, in particular to
Gaius Lucilius, who lived in the 2nd century B.C.
He wrote a series of 'sermons' in verse, commenting
adversely on public figures and social customs. His work is
mostly lost, but he seems to have inspired
Horace's
mockery of public folly and vulgarity in his own lively
Satires.
The greatest satirists, Martial and
Juvenal
, lived in the 1st—2nd
centuries A.D. The Spanish-born Martial was a professional
poet who grew disillusioned with city life and retired to
the country. His
"Satires"
were published towards the end of the 1st century and
consisted of short poems devoted to a single notion,
sometimes obscene, sometimes flattering, often mocking.
Juvenal,
who was much admired by the English satirists of the late
17th—18th century, was his younger contemporary and friend,
but a far more savage writer. His bitter irony, ferocious
invective, and hatred of the rich were directed, so the poet
claimed, at an earlier generation, but it is obvious that
this was mere form. He paints a grim picture of life for the
non-rich in the Rome of the cultured Emperor Hadrian.
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Juvenal
Juvenal ("Satires")
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"DIFFICILE
EST SATURAM NON SCRIBERE
WHAT? Am I to be a listener only all my days? Am I never
to get my word in—I that have been so often bored by the
Theseid of the ranting Cordus? Shall this one have
spouted to me his comedies, and that one his love
ditties, and I be unavenged? Shall I have no revenge on
one who has taken up the whole day with an interminable
Telephus or with an Orestes which, after filling the
margin at the top of the roll and the back as well,
hasn't even yet come to an end? No one knows his own
house so well as I know the groves of Mars, and the cave
of Vulcan near the cliffs of Aeolus. What the winds are
brewing; whose souls Aeacus has on the rack; from what
country another worthy is carrying off that stolen
golden fleece; how big are the ash trees which Monychus
hurls as missiles: these are the themes with which
Fronto's plane trees and marble halls are for ever
ringing until the pillars quiver and quake under the
continual recitations; such is the kind of stuff you may
look for from every poet, greatest or least. Well, I too
have slipped my hand from under the cane; I too have
counselled Sulla to retire from public life and take a
deep sleep; it is a foolish clemency when you jostle
against poets at every corner, to spare paper that will
be wasted anyhow. But if you can give me time, and will
listen quietly to reason, I will tell you why I prefer
to run in the same course over which the great nursling
of Aurunca drove his horses."
Juvenal
Satire
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AUBREY
BEARDSLEY. Illustrations from "The Sixth Satire of Juvenal
", 1896
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Gaius Lucilius

Gaius Lucilius, (b.
c. 180 bc, Suessa Aurunca, Campania [now Sessa Aurunca,
Italy]—d. c. 103, or 102 bc, Neapolis [now Naples]),
effectively the inventor of poetical satire who gave to the
existing, formless Latin satura (meaning “a mixed dish”) the
distinctive character of critical comment that the word
satire still implies.
Lucilius was a Roman citizen
of good family and
education, a friend of
learned Greeks, and well
acquainted with Greek
manners, which afforded him
some targets for his wit; he
was on familiar terms with
the general Scipio
Aemilianus, under whom he
served in Spain at the
capture of Numantia (134–133
bc), and with other great
figures of his time. He
spent the greater part of
his life in Rome, beginning
to write from the wealth of
his experiences only after
middle life.
His works were collected in
a posthumous edition of 30
books. Only about 1,300
lines survive, mostly
written in the hexameters
that were to influence the
development of the later
Roman satirists Horace,
Persius, and Juvenal.
An egoist of ebullient
nature, pungent wit, and
strong opinions, Lucilius
used the satiric form for
self-expression, fearlessly
criticizing public as well
as private conduct and
displaying the originality
of his genius by using
themes of daily life:
politics, social life,
luxury, marriage, business,
and travel.
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Gaius Petronius Arbiter

Gaius Petronius
Arbiter "Satyricon"
Roman author
original name Titus Petronius Niger
died ad 66
Main
reputed author of the Satyricon, a literary portrait of Roman society of
the 1st century ad.
Life.
The most complete and the most authentic account of Petronius’ life
appears in Tacitus’ Annals, an account that may be supplemented, with
caution, from other sources. It is probable that Petronius’ correct name
was Titus Petronius Niger. From his high position in Roman society, it
may be assumed that he was wealthy; he belonged to a noble family and
was therefore, by Roman standards, a man from whom solid achievements
might have been expected. Tacitus’ account, however, shows that he
belonged to a class of pleasure-seekers attacked by the Stoic
philosopher Seneca, men who “turned night into day”; where others won
reputation by effort, Petronius did so by idleness. On the rare
occasions, however, when he was appointed to official positions, he
showed himself energetic and fully equal to public responsibilities. He
served as governor of the Asian province of Bithynia and later in his
career, probably in ad 62 or 63, held the high office of consul, or
first magistrate of Rome.
After his term as consul, Petronius was received by Nero into his
most intimate circle as his “director of elegance” (arbiter elegantiae),
whose word on all matters of taste was law. It is from this title that
the epithet “Arbiter” was attached to his name. Petronius’ association
with Nero fell within the emperor’s later years, when he had embarked on
a career of reckless extravagance that shocked public opinion almost
more than the actual crimes of which he was guilty. What Petronius
thought of his imperial patron may be indicated by his treatment of the
rich vulgarian Trimalchio in the Satyricon. Trimalchio is a composite
figure, but there are detailed correspondences between him and Nero that
cannot, given the contemporary nature of the work, be accidental and
that strongly suggest that Petronius was sneering at the emperor.
Tacitus records that Nero’s friendship ultimately brought on
Petronius the enmity of the commander of the emperor’s guard, Tigellinus,
who in ad 66 denounced him as having been implicated in a conspiracy of
the previous year to assassinate Nero and place a rival on the imperial
throne. Petronius, though innocent, was arrested at Cumae in southern
Italy; he did not wait for the inevitable sentence but made his own
preparations for death. Slitting his veins and then bandaging them again
in order to delay his death, he passed the remaining hours of his life
conversing with his friends on trivial topics, listening to light music
and poetry, rewarding or punishing his slaves, feasting, and finally
sleeping “so that his death, though forced upon him, should seem
natural.”
The Satyricon.
The Satyricon, or Satyricon liber (“Book of Satyrlike Adventures”), is a
comic, picaresque novel that is related to several ancient literary
genres. In style it ranges between the highly realistic and the
self-consciously literary, and its form is episodic. It relates the
wanderings and escapades of a disreputable trio of adventurers, the
narrator Encolpius (“Embracer”), his friend Ascyltos (“Scot-free”), and
the boy Giton (“Neighbour”). The surviving portions of the Satyricon
(parts of Books XV and XVI) probably represent about one-tenth of the
complete work, which was evidently very long. The loose narrative
framework encloses a number of independent tales, a classic instance
being the famous “Widow of Ephesus” (Satyricon, ch. 111–112). Other
features, however, recall the “Menippean” satire; these features include
the mixture of prose and verse in which the work is composed; and the
digressions in which the author airs his own views on various topics
having no connection with the plot.
The longest and the best episode in the surviving portions of the
Satyricon is the Cena Trimalchionis, or “Banquet of Trimalchio” (ch.
26–78). This is a description of a dinner party given by Trimalchio, an
immensely rich and vulgar freedman (former slave), to a group of friends
and hangers-on. This episode’s length appears disproportionate even to
the presumed original size of the Satyricon, and it has little or no
apparent connection with the plot. The scene is a Greco-Roman town in
Campania, and the guests, mostly freedmen like their host, are drawn
from what corresponded to the petit bourgeois class. Trimalchio is the
quintessence of the parvenu, a figure familiar enough in ancient
satirical literature, but especially so in the 1st century ad, when
freedmen as a class were at their most influential.
Two features distinguish Petronius’ “Banquet” from other ancient
examples: its extraordinary realism and the figure of Trimalchio. It is
obvious that the table talk of the guests in the “Banquet” is based on
the author’s personal observation of provincial societies. The speakers
are beautifully and exactly characterized and their dialogue, quite
apart from the invaluable evidence for colloquial Latin afforded by the
vulgarisms and solecisms in which it abounds, is a humorous masterpiece.
Trimalchio himself, with his vast wealth, his tasteless ostentation, his
affectation of culture, his superstition, and his maudlin lapses into
his natural vulgarity, is more than a typical satirist’s figure. As
depicted by Petronius he is one of the great comic figures of literature
and is fit company for Shakespeare’s Falstaff. The development of
character for its own sake was hardly known in ancient literature: the
emphasis was always on the typical, and the classical rules laid down
that character was secondary to more important considerations such as
plot. Petronius, in his treatment of Trimalchio, transcended this almost
universal limitation in a way that irresistibly recalls Dickens, and
much else in the “Banquet” is Dickensian—its exuberance, its boisterous
humour (rare in ancient literature, where wit predominates), and its
loving profusion of detail.
The rest of the Satyricon is hardly to be compared to the “Banquet.”
Insofar as any moral attitude at all is perceptible in the work as a
whole, it is a trivial and debased brand of hedonism. The aim of the
Satyricon was evidently above all to entertain by portraying certain
aspects of contemporary society, and when considered as such, the book
is of immense value: superficial details of the speech, behaviour,
appearance, and surroundings of the characters are exactly observed and
vividly communicated. The wealth of specific allusions to persons and
events of Nero’s time shows that the work was aimed at a contemporary
audience, and certain features suggest that the audience in fact
consisted of Nero and his courtiers. The realistic descriptions of low
life recall the emperor’s relish for slumming expeditions; and the
combination of literary sophistication with polished obscenity is
consistent with the wish to titillate the jaded palates of a debauched
court.
If Petronius’ book has a message, it is aesthetic rather than moral.
The emphasis throughout the account of Trimalchio’s dinner party is on
the contrast between taste and tastelessness. Stylistically, too, the
Satyricon is what Tacitus’ account of the author would lead one to
expect. The language of the narrative and the educated speakers is pure,
easy, and elegant, and the wit of the best comic passages is brilliant;
but the general impression, even when allowance is made for the
fragmentary state of the text, is that of a book written quickly and
somewhat carelessly by a writer who would not take the necessary trouble
to discipline his astonishing powers of invention. In his book, as in
his life, Petronius achieved fame by indolence.
Edward John Kenney
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Martial

Martial, Latin in full
Marcus Valerius Martialis
(b. Mar. 1, ad 38–41,
Bilbilis, Hispania
[Spain]—d. c. 103), Roman
poet who brought the Latin
epigram to perfection and
provided in it a picture of
Roman society during the
early empire that is
remarkable both for its
completeness and for its
accurate portrayal of human
foibles.
Life and career
Martial was born in a
Roman colony in Spain along
the Salo River. Proudly
claiming descent from Celts
and Iberians, he was,
nevertheless, a freeborn
Roman citizen, the son of
parents who, though not
wealthy, possessed
sufficient means to ensure
that he received the
traditional literary
education from a grammarian
and rhetorician. In his
early 20s, possibly not
before ad 64, since he makes
no reference to the burning
of Rome that occurred in
that year, Martial made his
way to the capital of the
empire and attached himself
as client (a traditional
relationship between
powerful patron and humbler
man with his way to make) to
the powerful and talented
family of the Senecas, who
were Spaniards like himself.
To their circle belonged
Lucan, the epic poet, and
Calpurnius Piso, chief
conspirator in the
unsuccessful plot against
the emperor Nero in ad 65.
After the latter incident
and its consequences,
Martial had to look around
for other patrons.
Presumably the Senecas had
introduced him to other
influential families, whose
patronage would enable him
to make a living as a poet.
Yet precisely how Martial
lived between ad 65 and 80,
the year in which he
published Liber
Spectaculorum (On the
Spectacles), a small volume
of poems to celebrate the
consecration of the
Colosseum, is not known. It
is possible that he turned
his hand to law, although it
is unlikely that he
practiced in the courts
either successfully or for
long.
When he first came to Rome,
Martial lived in rather
humble circumstances in a
garret on the Quirinal Hill
(one of the seven hills on
which Rome stands). He
gradually earned
recognition, however, and
was able to acquire, in
addition to a town house on
the Quirinal, a small
country estate near Nomentum
(about 12 miles [19 km]
northeast of Rome), which
may have been given to him
by Polla, the widow of
Lucan. In time Martial
gained the notice of the
court and received from
emperors Titus and Domitian
the ius trium liberorum,
which entailed certain
privileges and was
customarily granted to
fathers of three children in
Rome. These privileges
included exemption from
various charges, such as
that of guardianship, and a
prior claim to magistracies.
They were therefore
financially profitable and
accelerated a political
career. Martial was almost
certainly unmarried, yet he
received this marital
distinction. Moreover, as an
additional mark of imperial
favour, he was awarded a
military tribuneship, which
he was permitted to resign
after six months’ service
but which entitled him to
the privileges of an eques
(knight) throughout his
life, even though he lacked
the required property
qualification of an eques.
From each of the patrons
whom Martial, as client,
attended at the morning
levee (a reception held when
arising from bed), he would
regularly receive the “dole”
of “100 wretched farthings.”
Wealthy Romans, who either
hoped to gain favourable
mention or feared to receive
unfavourable, albeit
oblique, mention in his
epigrams, would supplement
the minimum dole by dinner
invitations or by gifts. The
poverty so often pleaded by
the poet is undoubtedly
exaggerated; apparently his
genius for spending kept
pace with his capacity for
earning.
Martial’s first book, On the
Spectacles (ad 80),
contained 33 undistinguished
epigrams celebrating the
shows held in the Colosseum,
an amphitheatre in the city
begun by Vespasian and
completed by Titus in 79;
these poems are scarcely
improved by their gross
adulation of the latter
emperor. In the year 84 or
85 appeared two
undistinguished books
(confusingly numbered XIII
and XIV in the collection)
with Greek titles Xenia and
Apophoreta; these consist
almost entirely of couplets
describing presents given to
guests at the December
festival of the Saturnalia.
In the next 15 or 16 years,
however, appeared the 12
books of epigrams on which
his renown deservedly rests.
In ad 86 Books I and II of
the Epigrams were published,
and between 86 and 98, when
Martial returned to Spain,
new books of the Epigrams
were issued at more or less
yearly intervals. After 34
years in Rome, Martial
returned to Spain, where his
last book (numbered XII) was
published, probably in ad
102. He died not much over a
year later in his early 60s.
The chief friends Martial
made in Rome—Seneca, Piso,
and Lucan—have already been
mentioned. As his fame grew,
he became acquainted with
the literary circles of his
day and met such figures as
the literary critic
Quintilian, the letter
writer Pliny the Younger,
the satirist Juvenal, and
the epic poet Silius
Italicus. Whether he knew
the historian Tacitus and
the poet Valerius Flaccus is
not certain.
Poetry
Martial is virtually the
creator of the modern
epigram, and his myriad
admirers throughout the
centuries, including many of
the world’s great poets,
have paid him the homage of
quotation, translation, and
imitation. He wrote 1,561
epigrams in all. Of these,
1,235 are in elegiac
couplets, each of which
consists of a six-foot line
followed by a five-foot
line. The remainder are in
hendecasyllables (consisting
of lines 11 syllables long)
and other metres. Though
some of the epigrams are
devoted to scenic
descriptions, most are about
people—emperors, public
officials, writers,
philosophers, lawyers,
teachers, doctors, fops,
gladiators, slaves,
undertakers, gourmets,
spongers, senile lovers, and
revolting debauchees.
Martial made frequent use of
the mordant epigram bearing
a “sting” in its tail—i.e.,
a single unexpected word at
the poem’s end that
completes a pun, antithesis,
or an ingenious ambiguity.
Poems of this sort would
later greatly influence the
use of the epigram in the
literature of England,
France, Spain, and Italy.
Martial’s handling of this
type of epigram is
illustrated by I:28, where
the apparent contradiction
of an insult masks an insult
far more subtle: “If you
think Acerra reeks of
yesterday’s wine, you are
mistaken. He invariably
drinks till morning.” Puns,
parodies, Greek quotations,
and clever ambiguities often
enliven Martial’s epigrams.
Martial has been charged
with two gross faults:
adulation and obscenity. He
certainly indulged in a
great deal of nauseating
flattery of the emperor
Domitian, involving, besides
farfetched conceits dragging
his epigrams well below
their usual level, use of
the official title “my Lord
and my God.” Furthermore,
Martial cringed before men
of wealth and influence,
unashamedly whining for
gifts and favours. Yet,
however much one despises
servility, it is hard to see
how a man of letters could
have survived long in Rome
without considerable
compromise. As for the
charge of obscenity, Martial
introduced few themes not
touched on by Catullus and
Horace (two poets of the
last century bc) before him.
Those epigrams that are
obscene constitute perhaps
one-tenth of Martial’s total
output. His references to
homosexuality, “oral
stimulation,” and
masturbation are couched in
a rich setting of wit,
charm, linguistic subtlety,
superb literary
craftsmanship, evocative
description, and deep human
sympathy. Martial’s poetry
is generally redeemed by his
affection toward his friends
and his freedom from both
envy of others and hypocrisy
over his own morals. In his
emphasis on the simple joys
of life—eating, drinking,
and conversing with
friends—and in his famous
recipes for contentment and
the happy life, one is
reminded continually of the
dominant themes of Horace’s
Satires, Epistles, and
Second Epode.
Numerous editions and
English translations have
been published; most are
single volumes of
selections. D.R. Shackleton
Bailey edited the complete
Latin text (M. Valerii
Martialis Epigrammata
[1990]) and also produced a
3-volume translation,
Epigrams (1993).
Herbert Henry Huxley
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Rome, the Savage
City
Silver Age
ad 18–133
After the first flush of enthusiasm for Augustan
ideals of national regeneration, literature paid the
price of political patronage. It became subtly
sterilized; and
Ovid was but
the first of many writers actually suppressed or
inhibited by fear. Only
Tacitus and
Juvenal,
writing under comparatively tolerant emperors,
turned emotions pent up under Domitian’s reign of
terror into the driving force of great literature.
Late Augustans such as
Livy already sensed
that Rome had passed its summit. Yet the title of
Silver Age is not undeserved by a period that
produced, in addition to
Tacitus and
Juvenal, the
two
Seneca, Lucan,
Persius, the two Plinys, Quintilian, Petronius,
Statius, Martial, and, of lesser stature, Manilius,
Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and
Suetonius.
Silius Italicus
in full Tiberius Catius Asconius
Silius Italicus
born c.
ad 26, Patavium [now Padua, Italy]
died 102
Latin epic poet whose 17-book,
12,000-line Punica on the Second Punic
War (218–201 bc) is the longest poem in
Latin literature.
Silius was a distinguished advocate in
his earlier years. He later took to
public service and was a consul in 68,
the year of Nero’s death. His
association with the emperor Nero was a
stain on his reputation that he later
expunged through his successful
governorship of Asia. He then retired
from public life.
As a
man of wealth, Silius was able to
indulge his tastes as a patron of
literature and the arts. He so venerated
Virgil and Cicero that he bought and
restored Virgil’s tomb at Neapolis (now
Naples) and Cicero’s estate at Tusculum.
His clients included Martial, who wrote
several epigrams dedicated to him. The
modern idea that Silius was a Stoic is
based on a story about a man named
Italicus told by the Stoic philosopher
Epictetus. There is no evidence in
Punica for the author’s Stoicism, but
some find evidence for it in the manner
in which he ended his life. Suffering
from an incurable disease, Silius
starved himself to death, according to
Pliny the Younger.
Silius
draws heavily on the historian Livy
(Books 21–30) for his material. He
recounts all six battles of the Second
Punic War, imitating Virgil’s Aeneid in
form and mythology. His Hannibal is
drawn with some dramatic skill, stealing
the place of hero from Scipio, and he
describes at length in the centre of the
poem Hannibal’s victory over two
consular armies at Cannae. The epic has
been harshly judged by critics and has
been scarcely edited since the 18th
century. Though the last three books
show signs—as well they might—of
fatigue, there are at least a half dozen
magnificent pieces of verse, mostly in
dramatic scenes of war. Recent years
have seen more favourable treatment, and
a critical edition of the Latin text was
made by Joseph Delz (1987).
|
|
Suetonius

in full
Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
born ad
69, probably Rome [Italy]
died after 122
Roman
biographer and antiquarian whose
writings include De viris illustribus
(“Concerning Illustrious Men”), a
collection of short biographies of
celebrated Roman literary figures, and
De vita Caesarum (Lives of the Caesars).
The latter book, seasoned with bits of
gossip and scandal relating to the lives
of the first 11 emperors, secured him
lasting fame.
Suetonius’ family was of the knightly
class, or equites. A friend and protégé
of the government official and letter
writer Pliny the Younger, he seems to
have studied and then abandoned the law
as a career. After Pliny’s death
Suetonius found another patron,
Septicius Clarus, to whom he later
dedicated De vita Caesarum. Upon the
accession of Emperor Hadrian (117), he
entered the imperial service, holding,
probably simultaneously, the posts of
controller of the Roman libraries,
keeper of the archives, and adviser to
the emperor on cultural matters.
Probably around 121 he was promoted to
secretary of the imperial
correspondence, but in 122 or somewhat
later he was dismissed for the neglect
of court formality, after which he
presumably devoted himself to literary
pursuits.
Most of
Suetonius’ writings were antiquarian,
dealing with such subjects as Greek
pastimes, the history of Roman
spectacles and shows, oaths and
imprecations and their origins,
terminology of clothing, well-known
courtesans, physical defects, and the
growth of the civil service. An
encyclopaedia called Prata (“Meadows”),
a work like the Natural History of Pliny
the Elder, was attributed to him and
often quoted in late antiquity.
Suetonius’ De viris illustribus is
divided into short books on Roman poets,
orators, historians, grammarians and
rhetoricians, and perhaps philosophers.
Very nearly all that is known about the
lives of Rome’s eminent authors stems
ultimately from this work, which
survives only in the whole of one
section and in the preface and five
lives from another section. The lives of
Horace, Lucan, Terence, and Virgil, for
example, are known from writers who
derived their facts from Suetonius.
De vita
Caesarum, which treats Julius Caesar and
the emperors up to Domitian, is largely
responsible for that vivid picture of
Roman society and its leaders, morally
and politically decadent, that dominated
historical thought until modified in
modern times by the discovery of
nonliterary evidence. The biographies
are organized not chronologically but by
topics: the emperor’s family background,
career before accession, public actions,
private life, appearance, personality,
and death. Though free with scandalous
gossip, they are largely silent on the
growth, administration, and defense of
the empire. Suetonius is free from the
bias of the senatorial class that
distorts much Roman historical writing.
His sketches of the habits and
appearance of the emperors are
invaluable, but, like Plutarch, he used
“characteristic anecdote” without
exhaustive inquiry into its
authenticity.
De vita
Caesarum is still exciting reading.
Suetonius wrote with firmness and
brevity. He loved the mot juste, and his
use of vocabulary enhanced his pictorial
vividness. Above all he was unrhetorical,
unpretentious, and capable of molding
complex events into lucid expression.
|

Later writers
Apuleius
"The Golden Asse"
PART I,
PART II,
PART III,
PART IV
illustrations by Jean de Bosschere and Martin Van
Maele (Rene Gocking)
The decentralization of the empire under Hadrian and
the Antonines weakened the Roman pride and passion
for liberty. Romans began again to write in Greek as
well as Latin. The “new sophistic” movement in
Greece affected the “novel poets” such as Florus. An
effete culture devoted itself to philology,
archaism, and preciosity. After
Juvenal, 250
years elapsed before Ausonius of Bordeaux (4th
century ad) and the last of the true classics,
Claudian (flourished about 400), appeared. The
anonymous Pervigilium Veneris (“Vigil of Venus”), of
uncertain date, presages the Middle Ages in its
vitality and touch of stressed metre. Ausonius,
though in the pagan literary tradition, was a
Christian and contemporary with a truly original
Christian poet, the Spaniard Prudentius.
Henceforward, Christian literature overlaps pagan
and generally surpasses it.
In prose these
centuries have somewhat more to boast, though the
greatest work by a Roman was written in Greek, the
Meditations of the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Elocutio
novella, a blend of archaisms and colloquial speech,
is seen to best advantage in
Apuleius
"The Golden Asse"
(born about 125).
Other writers of note were Aulus Gellius and
Macrobius. The 4th century ad was the age of the
grammarians and commentators, but in prose some of
the most interesting work is again Christian.

The genres
Comedy
Roman comedy was based on the New Comedy fashionable
in Greece, whose classic representative was
Menander. But whereas this was imitation of life to
the Greeks, to the Romans it was escape to fantasy
and literary convention. Livius’ successor,
Naevius, who developed this “drama in Greek
cloak” (fabula palliata), may have been the first to
introduce recitative and song, thereby increasing
its unreality. But he slipped in details of Roman
life and outspoken criticisms of powerful men. His
imprisonment warned comedy off topical references,
but the Roman audience became alert in applying
ancient lines to modern situations and in
demonstrating their feelings by appropriate clamour.
Unlike his
predecessors,
Plautus specialized, writing
only comedy involving high spirits, oaths,
linguistic play, slapstick humour, music, and
skillful adaptation of rhythm to subject matter.
Some of his plays can be thought of almost as comic
opera. Part of the humour consisted in the sudden
intrusion of Roman things into this conventional
Greek world. “The Plautine in Plautus” consists in
pervasive qualities rather than supposed innovations
of plot or technique.
As Greek influence
on Roman culture increased, Roman drama became more
dependent on Greek models.
Terence’s comedy was very different from
Plautus’. Singing almost disappeared from his
plays, and recitative was less prominent. From
Menander he learned to exhibit refinements of
psychology and to construct ingenious plots; but he
lacked comic force. His pride was refined
language—the avoidance of vulgarity, obscurity, or
slang. His characters were less differentiated in
speech than those of
Plautus, but they talk with an elegant charm.
The society
Terence portrayed was more
sensitive than that of Plautine comedy; lovers
tended to be loyal and sons obedient. His historical
significance has been enhanced by the loss of nearly
all of Menander’s work.
Though often
revived, plays modeled on Greek drama were rarely
written after
Terence. The Ciceronian was the
great age of acting, and in 55 bc Pompey gave Rome a
permanent theatre. Plays having an Italian setting
came into vogue, their framework being Greek New
Comedy but their subject Roman society. A native
form of farce was also revived. Under Julius Caesar,
this yielded in popularity to verse mime of Greek
origin that was realistic, often obscene, and full
of quotable apothegms. Finally, when mime gave rise
to the dumb show of the pantomimus with choral
accompaniment and when exotic spectacles had become
the rage, Roman comedy faded out.

Ancient theater masks

Roman Tragedy. Fresco
Tragedy
Livius introduced both Greek tragedy (fabula
crepidata, “buskined”) and comedy to Latin. He was
followed by Naevius and Ennius, who loved
Euripides.
Pacuvius, probably a greater tragedian, liked
Sophocles
and heightened tragic diction even more than Ennius.
His successor, Accius, was more rhetorical and
impetuous. The fragments of these poets betoken
grandeur in “the high Roman fashion,” but they also
have a certain ruggedness. They did not always deal
in Greek mythology: occasionally they exploited
Roman legend or even recent history. The Roman
chorus, unlike the Greek, performed on stage and was
inextricably involved in the action.
Classical tragedy
was seldom composed after Accius, though its plays
were constantly revived. Writing plays, once a
function of slaves and freedmen, became a pastime of
aristocratic dilettantes. Such writers had commonly
no thought of production: post-Augustan drama was
for reading. The extant tragedies of the younger
Seneca probably
were not written for public performance. They are
melodramas of horror and violence, marked by
sensational pseudo-realism and rhetorical
cleverness. Characterization is crude, and
philosophical moralizing obtrusive. Yet
Seneca was a
model for 16th- and early 17th-century tragedy,
especially in France, and influenced English revenge
tragedy.

Epic and
epyllion
Livius’ pioneering Odyssey was, to judge from
the fragments, primitive, as was the Bellum Punicum
of Naevius, important for Virgil because it began
with the legendary origins of Carthage in Phoenicia
and Rome in Troy. But Ennius’ Annales
soon followed. This compound of legendary origins
and history was in Latin, in a transplanted metre,
and by a poet who had imagination and a realization
of the emergent greatness of Rome. In form his work
must have been ill-balanced; he almost ignored the
First Punic War in consideration of Naevius and
became more detailed as he added books about his own
times. But his great merit shines out from the
fragments—nobility of ethos matched with nobility of
language. On receptive spirits, such as Cicero,
Lucretius, and Virgil, his influence was profound.
Little is known of
the “strong epic” for which
Virgil’s friend
Varius is renowned, but
Virgil’s
Aeneid was
certainly something new. Recent history would have
been too particularized a theme. Instead,
Virgil
developed Naevius’ version of Aeneas’ pilgrimage
from Troy to found Rome. The poem is in part an
Odyssey of travel (with an interlude of love)
followed by an Iliad of conquest, and in part a
symbolic epic of contemporary Roman relevance.
Aeneas has Homeric traits but also qualities that
look forward to the character of the Roman hero of
the future. His fault was to have lingered at
Carthage. The command to leave the Carthaginian
queen Dido shakes him ruthlessly out of the last
great temptation to seek individual happiness. But
it is only the vision of Rome’s future greatness,
seen when he visits Elysium, that kindles obedient
acceptance into imaginative enthusiasm. It was just
such a sacrifice of the individual that the Augustan
ideal demanded. The second half of the poem
represents the fusing in the crucible of war of the
civilized graces of Troy with the manly virtues of
Italy. The tempering of Roman culture by Italian
hardiness was another part of the Augustan ideal. So
was a revival of interest in ancient customs and
religious observances, which
Virgil could
appropriately indulge. The verse throughout is
superbly varied, musical, and rhetorical in the best
sense.
With his Hecale,
Callimachus had inaugurated the short, carefully
composed hexameter narrative (called epyllion by
modern scholars) to replace grand epic. The Hecale
had started a convention of insetting an independent
story.
Catullus inset the story of Ariadne on
Naxos into that of the marriage of Peleus and
Thetis, and the poem has a mannered, lyrical beauty.
But the story of Aristaeus at the end of Virgil’s
Georgics, with that of Orpheus and Eurydice inset,
shows what heights epyllion could attain.
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
is a nexus of some 50 epyllia with shorter episodes.
He created a convincing imaginative world with a
magical logic of its own. His continuous poem,
meandering from the creation of the world to the
apotheosis of Julius Caesar, is a great Baroque
conception, executed in swift, clear hexameters. Its
frequent irony and humour are striking. Thereafter
epics proliferated. Statius’ Thebaid and inchoate
Achilleid and Valerius’ Argonautica are justly less
read now than they were. Lucan’s unfinished
Pharsalia has a more interesting subject, namely the
struggle between Caesar and Pompey, whom he favours.
He left out the gods. His brilliant rhetoric comes
close to making the poem a success, but it is too
strained and monochromatic.
Ennius

born
239 bc, Rudiae, southern Italy
died 169 bc
epic
poet, dramatist, and satirist, the most
influential of the early Latin poets,
rightly called the founder of Roman
literature. His epic Annales, a
narrative poem telling the story of Rome
from the wanderings of Aeneas to the
poet’s own day, was the national epic
until it was eclipsed by Virgil’s Aeneid.
Because
of the place of his birth, Ennius was at
home in three languages and had, as he
put it, “three hearts”: Oscan, his
native tongue; Greek, in which he was
educated; and Latin, the language of the
army with which he served in the Second
Punic War. The elder Cato took him to
Rome (204), where he earned a meagre
living as a teacher and by adapting
Greek plays, but he was on familiar
terms with many of the leading men in
Rome, among them the elder Scipio. His
patron was Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, whom
he accompanied on his campaign in
Aetolia and whose son Quintus obtained
Roman citizenship for Ennius (184 bc).
Nothing else of significance is known
about his life.
Only
600 lines survive of Ennius’s greatest
work, his epic on Roman history, Annales.
The poet introduced himself as a
reincarnated Homer, addressed the Greek
Muses, and composed in dactylic
hexameter the metre of Homer. Ennius
varied his accounts of military
campaigns with autobiography, literary
and grammatic erudition, and
philosophical speculation.
Ennius
excelled in tragedy. Titles survive of
20 tragedies adapted from the Greek,
mostly Euripides (e.g., Iphigenia at
Aulis, Medea, Telephus, and Thyestes).
About 420 lines remain, indicating
remarkable freedom from the originals,
great skill in adapting the native Latin
metres to the Greek framework,
heightening the rhetorical element and
the pathetic appeal (a feature of
Euripides that he greatly admired)
through skillful use of alliteration and
assonance. His plays on Roman themes
were Sabinae (“Sabine Women”) and, if
they really were plays, Ambracia (on the
capture of that city in Aetolia by
Fulvius) and Scipio.
In the
Saturae (Satires) Ennius developed the
only literary genre that Rome could call
its own. Four books in a variety of
metres on diverse subjects, they were
mostly concerned with practical wisdom,
often driving home a lesson with the
help of a fable. More philosophical was
a work on the theological and physical
theories of Epicharmus, the Sicilian
poet and philosopher. Euhemerus, based
on the ideas of Euhemerus of Messene,
argued that the Olympian gods were
originally great men honoured after
death in human memory. Some epigrams, on
himself and Scipio Africanus, are the
first Latin elegiac couplets.
Ennius,
who is credited also with the
introduction of the double spelling of
long consonants and the invention of
Latin shorthand, was a man of wide
interests and was conversant with the
intellectual and literary movements of
the Hellenistic world. He created and
did not fall far short of perfecting a
mode of poetic expression that reached
its greatest beauty in Virgil and was to
remain preeminent in Latin literature.
Cicero
and others admired the work of Ennius
throughout the republican period.
Critical remarks appeared in Horace,
becoming more severe in Seneca and
Martial. The Neronian epic poet Lucan
studied Ennius, and he was still read in
the 2nd century ad; by the 5th century
ad, copies of Ennius were rare.
|
Didactic poetry
Ennius essayed didactic poetry in his Epicharmus,
a work on the nature of the physical universe.
Lucretius’ De
rerum natura is an account of
Epicurus’
atomic theory of matter, its aim being to free men
from superstition and the fear of death. Its
combination of moral urgency, intellectual force,
and precise observation of the physical world makes
it one of the summits of classical literature.
This poem
profoundly affected
Virgil, but his
poetic reaction was delayed for some 17 years; and
the Georgics, though deeply influenced by
Lucretius, were
not truly didactic. Country-bred though he was,
Virgil wrote
for literary readers like himself, selecting
whatever would contribute picturesque detail to his
impressionistic picture of rural life. The Georgics
portrayed the recently united land of Italy and
taught that the idle Golden Age of the fourth
Eclogue was a mirage: relentless work, introduced by
a paternal Jupiter to sharpen men’s wits, creates
“the glory of the divine countryside.” The
compensation is the infinite variety of civilized
life. Insofar as it had a political intention, it
encouraged revival of an agriculture devastated in
wars, of the old Italian virtues, and of the idea of
Rome’s extending its works over Italy and civilizing
the world.
Ovid’s Ars amatoria was comedy or
satire in the burlesque guise of didactic, an
amusing commentary on the psychology of love. The
Fasti was didactic in popularizing the new calendar;
but its object was clearly to entertain.
Satire
Satura meant a medley. The word was
applied to variety performances introduced,
according to Livy, by the Etruscans. Literary satire
begins with
Ennius, but it was Lucilius who
established the genre. After experimenting, he
settled on hexameters, thus making them its
recognized vehicle. A tendency to break into
dialogue may be a vestige of a dramatic element in
nonliterary satura.
Lucilius used this medium for
self-expression, fearlessly criticizing public as
well as private conduct. He owed much to the
Cynic-Stoic “diatribes” (racy sermons in prose or
verse) of Greeks such as Bion; but in extant
Hellenistic literature he is most clearly presaged
by the fragments of Callimachus’ iambs. “Menippean”
satire, which descended from the Greek prototype of
Menippus of Gadara and mingled prose and verse, was
introduced to Rome by Varro.
Horace saw that
satire was still awaiting improvement: Lucilius
had been an uncouth versifier. Satires I, 1–3 are
essays in the Lucilian manner. But
Horace’s nature
was to laugh, not to flay, and his incidental butts
were either insignificant or dead. He came to
appreciate that the real point about Lucilius
was not his denunciations but his self-revelation.
This encouraged him to talk about himself. In
Satires II he developed in parts the satire of moral
diatribe presaging
Juvenal. His
successor Persius blended Lucilius,
Horace,
diatribe, and mime into pungent sermons in verse.
The great declaimer was
Juvenal, who
fixed the idea of satire for posterity. Gone was the
personal approach of Lucilius and
Horace. His
anger may at times have been cultivated for effect,
but his epigrammatic power and brilliant eye for
detail make him a great poet.
The younger
Seneca’s
Apocolocyntosis was a medley of prose and verse, but
its pitiless skit on the deification of the emperor
Claudius was Lucilian satire. The Satyricon of
Petronius is also Menippean inasmuch as it contains
varied digressions and occasional verse;
essentially, however, it comes under fiction.
With Lucilian
satire may be classed the fables of Augustus’
freedman Phaedrus, the Roman Aesop, whose beast
fables include contemporary allusions.
Iambic, lyric, and epigram
The short poems of Catullus were called by
himself nugae (“trifles”). They vary remarkably in
mood and intention, and he uses iambic metre
normally associated with invective not only for his
abuse of Caesar and Pompey but also for his tender
homecoming to Sirmio.
Catullus alone used the
hendecasyllable, the metre of skits and lampoons, as
a medium for love poetry.
Horace was a
pioneer. In his Epodes he used iambic verse to
express devotion to Maecenas and for brutal
invective in the manner of the Greek poet
Archilochus. But his primary aim was to create
literature, whereas his models had been venting
their feelings. In the Odes he adapted other Greek
metres and claimed immortality for introducing early
Greek lyric to Latin. The Odes rarely show the
passion now associated with lyric but are marked by
elegance, dignity, and studied perfectionism.
Martial went back
to
Catullus for his metres and his often obscene
wit. He fixed the notion of epigram for posterity by
making it characteristically pointed.
Elegy
The elegiac couplet of hexameter and pentameter
(verse line of five feet) was taken over by
Catullus, who broke with tradition by filling
elegy with personal emotion. One of his most intense
poems in this metre, about Lesbia, extends to 26
lines; another is a long poem of involved design in
which the fabled love of Laodameia for Protesilaus
is incidentally used as a paradigm. These two poems
make him the inventor of the “subjective” love elegy
dealing with the poet’s own passion. Gallus, whose
work is lost, established the genre;
Tibullus and
Propertius smoothed out the metre.
Propertius’
first book is still Catullan in that it seems
genuinely inspired by his passion for Cynthia: the
involvement of
Tibullus is less certain. Later,
Propertius grew more interested in manipulating
literary conventions.
Tibullus’ elegy is
constructed of sections of placid couplets with
subtle transitions. These two poets established the
convention of the “soft poet,” valiant only in the
campaigns of love, immortalized through them and the
Muses. Propertius was at first impervious to
Augustan ideals, glorying in his abject slavery to
love and his naughtiness (nequitia), though later he
became acclimatized to Maecenas’ circle.
Tibullus, a
lover of peace, country life, and old religious
customs, had grace and quiet humour.
Propertius,
too, could be charming, but he was far more. He
often wrote impetuously, straining language and
associative sequence with passion or irony or sombre
imagination.
Ovid’s aim was not to unburden his
soul but to entertain. In the Amores he is
outrageous and amusing in the role adopted from
Propertius, his Corinna being probably a fiction.
Elegy became his characteristic medium. He carried
the couplet of his predecessors to its logical
extreme, characterized by parallelism, regular flow
and ebb, and a neat wit.

Cicero Denounces Catiline
Cesare Maccari
Other language
and literary art forms
Rhetoric and oratory
Speaking in the forum and law courts was the essence
of a public career at Rome and hence of educational
practice. After the 2nd century bc, Greek art
affected Latin oratory. The dominant style in
Cicero’s time
was the “Asiatic”—emotional, rhythmical, and ornate.
Cicero, Asiatic
at first, early learned to tone down his style.
Criticized later by the revivers of plain style, he
insisted that style should vary with subject. But in
public speaking he held that crowds were swayed less
by argument than emotion. He was the acknowledged
master speaker from 70 bc until his death (43 bc).
He expounded the history of Roman oratory in the
Brutus and his own methods in the De oratore.
The establishment
of monarchy robbed eloquence of its public
importance, but rhetoric remained the crown of
education. Insofar as this taught boys to marshal
material clearly and to express themselves cogently,
it performed the function of the modern essay; but
insofar as the temptations of applause made it
strained and affected, it did harm.
In the De oratore,
Cicero had
pleaded that an orator’s training should be in all
liberal arts. Education without rhetoric was
inconceivable; but what
Cicero was
proposing was to graft onto it a complete system of
higher education. Quintilian, in his Institutio
oratoria, went back to
Cicero for
inspiration as well as style. Much of that work is
conventional, but the first and last books in
particular show admirable common sense and humanity;
and his work greatly influenced Renaissance
education.
History
Quintus Fabius Pictor wrote his pioneering
history of Rome during the Second Punic War, using
public and private records and writing in Greek. His
immediate successors followed suit. Latin historical
writing began with Cato’s Origines. After him there
were as many historiasters, or worthless historians,
as the poetasters disdained by
Cicero. The
first great exception is Caesar’s Commentaries, a
political apologia in the guise of unvarnished
narrative. The style is dignified, terse, clear, and
unrhetorical.
Sallust took
Thucydides as his model. He interpreted, using
speeches, and ascribed motives. In his extant
monographs Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Jugurthinum,
he displays a sardonic moralism, using history to
emphasize the decadence of the dominant caste. The
revolution in style he inaugurated gives him
importance.
Livy began
his 40 years’ task as Augustus came to power. His
work consummated the annalistic tradition. If in
historical method he fell short of modern standards,
he had the literary virtues of a historian. He could
vividly describe past events and interpret the
participants’ views in eloquent speeches. He
inherited from
Cicero his
literary conception of history, his copiousness, and
his principle of accommodating style to subject.
Indeed, he was perhaps the greatest of Latin
stylists. His earlier books, where his imagination
has freer play, are the most readable. In the later
books, the more historical the times become, the
more disturbing are his uncritical methods and his
patriotic bias. Livy’s work now is judged mainly as
literature.
Tacitus, on the
other hand, stands higher now than in antiquity.
Though his anti-imperial bias in attributing motives
is plain, his facts can rarely be impugned; and his
evocation of the terrors of tyranny is
unforgettable. He is read for his penetrating
characterizations, his drama, his ironical epigrams,
and his unpredictability. His is an extreme
development of the Sallustian style, coloured with
archaic and poetic words, with a careful avoidance
of the commonplace.
Suetonian biography
apart, historiography thereafter degenerated into
handbooks and epitomes until Ammianus Marcellinus
appeared. He was refreshingly detached, rather
ornate in style, but capable of vivid narrative and
description. He continued
Tacitus’ account
from Domitian’s death to ad 378, more than half his
work dealing with his own times.
Biography and letters
The idea of comparing Romans with foreigners was
taken up by Cornelius Nepos, a friend of
Cicero and
Catullus. Of his De viris illustribus all that
survive are 24 hack pieces about worthies long dead
and one of real merit about his friend Atticus. The
very fact that Atticus and Tiro decided to publish
nearly 1,000 of Cicero’s letters is evidence of
public interest in people. Admiration of these
fascinating letters gave rise to letter writing as a
literary genre. The younger Pliny’s letters,
anticipating publication, convey a possibly
rose-tinted picture of civilized life. They are
nothing to his spontaneous correspondence with
Trajan, where one learns of routine problems, for
instance with Christians confronting a provincial
governor in Bithynia. The letter as a verse form,
beginning with striking examples by
Catullus,
was established by
Horace, whose
Epistles carry still further the humane refinement
of his gentler satires.
Suetonius’
lives of the Caesars and of poets contain much
valuable information, especially since he had access
to the imperial archives. His method was to cite in
categories whatever he found, favourable or hostile,
and to leave this raw material to the judgment of
the reader. The Historia Augusta, covering the
emperors from 117 to 284, is a collection of lives
in the Suetonian tradition.
Tacitus’ Agricola was an admiring, but not
necessarily overcoloured, biographical study.
Some of the most
valuable autobiography was incidental, such as
Cicero’s
account of his oratorical career in the Brutus.
Horace’s
largely autobiographical Epistles I was sealed with
a miniature self-portrait.
Ovid, in exile and afraid of fading
from Rome’s memory, gave an invaluable account of
his life in Tristia IV.
Philosophical and learned writings
The practical Roman mind produced no original
philosopher. Apart from
Lucretius the
only name that demands consideration is
Cicero’s. He
was trained at Athens in the eclectic New Academy,
and eclectic he apparently remained, seeking a
philosophy to fit his own constitution rather than a
logical system valid for all. He used the dialogue
form, avowedly in order to make people think for
themselves instead of following authority.
Essentially, he was a philosophical journalist,
composing works that became one of the means by
which Greek thought was absorbed into early
Christian thinking. The De officiis is a treatise on
ethics. The dialogues do not follow the Platonic, or
dialectic, pattern but the Aristotelian, in which
speakers expounded already formed opinions at
greater length.
Nor were the Romans
any more original in science. Instead, they produced
encyclopaedists such as Varro and Celsus. Pliny’s
Natural History is a fascinating ragbag, especially
valuable for art history, though it shows to what
extent Hellenistic achievement in science had become
confused or lost.
Literary criticism
Cicero’s Brutus and the 10th book of
Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria provide examples of
general criticism.
Cicero stressed
the importance of a well-stocked mind and native wit
against mere handbook technique. By
Horace’s day,
however, it had become more timely to insist on the
equal importance of art. Some of Horace’s best
criticism is in the Satires (I, 4 and 10; II, 1), in
the epistle to Florus (II, 2), and in the epistle to
Augustus (II, 1), a vindication of the Augustans
against archaists. But it was his epistle to Piso
and his sons (later called Ars poetica) that was so
influential throughout Europe in the 18th century.
It supported, among acceptable if trite theses, the
dubious one that poetry is necessarily best when it
mingles the useful (particularly moral) with the
pleasing. Much of the work concerned itself with
drama. The Romans were better at discussing literary
trends than fundamental principles—there is much
good sense about this in Quintilian, and
Tacitus’
Dialogus is an acute discussion of the decline of
oratory.
Fiction
Republican and early imperial Rome knew no Latin
fiction beyond such things as Sisenna’s translation
of Aristides’ Milesian Tales. But two considerable
works have survived from imperial times. Of
Petronius’ Satyricon, a rambling picaresque novel,
one long extract and some fragments remain. The
disreputable characters have varied adventures and
talk lively colloquial Latin. The description of the
vulgar parvenu Trimalchio’s banquet is justly
famous. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) has
a hero who has accidentally been changed into an
ass. After strange adventures he is restored to
human shape by the goddess Isis. Many passages,
notably the story of Cupid and Psyche, have a beauty
that culminates in the apparition of Isis and the
initiation of the hero into her mysteries.
Lancelot
Patrick Wilkinson
Richard H.A. Jenkyns

Medieval Latin
literature
From about 500 to 1500 Latin was the principal
language of the church, as well as of
administration, theology, philosophy, science,
history, biography, and belles lettres, and medieval
Latin literature is therefore remarkably rich. Two
themes dominate the linguistic and literary
development of medieval Latin: its close and
creative adaptation of the classical heritage from
which it emerged and its changing relationship with
the medieval vernacular languages. Within these two
broad themes a number of subsidiary yet significant
strains can be distinguished: the emergence of
national characteristics in the Latin literature
produced in different parts of Europe; the
refinement of the polarity between popular and
learned Latin by the clergy’s use of a colloquialism
intelligible to its audience as a lingua franca; and
the effect of certain periods of special vigour and
artistic self-awareness, such as the Carolingian
revival of the 8th and 9th centuries and the new
impulse given to learned and vernacular literature
in the 12th.
The 3rd to the 5th
century: the rise of Christian Latin literature
The early history of medieval Latin literature is in
part the story of the reception of the classical
past by the Christians, to whom it represented
secular culture. Old forms and genres were
continuously renewed over the millennium following
the entrance of Christians to the circle of literary
production, dated for convenience to the conversion
of Constantine to Christianity (about ad 313). For
example, the Latin epic persisted in recognizable
form throughout the period, and its authors remained
in continuous contact with the great classical
exponents Lucan, Statius, and, above all, Virgil.
From the 4th century, the degree of scholarly
interpretation applied to these epic poets,
especially Virgil, was intensified. Virgilian
technique was imitated by many poets, among them the
4th-century Spaniard Juvencus, who versified a
portion of the Bible, and the author of the epic
poem Waltharius (probably 9th century), written in
hexameters.
Even before the
conversion of Constantine, Christians were
developing new forms of literature, which persisted
throughout the ensuing centuries. The production of
hagiographical texts (lives of the saints) was
widespread in the Middle Ages. The first Acts of the
Martyrs in Latin were written during the 3rd
century, and the flowering of the form after the end
of the period of persecution of Christians shows the
powerful appeal that it exercised at all levels of
society. The Passio Sanctarum Perpetuae et
Felicitatis (The Passion of SS. Perpetua and
Felicity), written in a style that owes little to
classical precedent, is a distinctive early example
of the genre.
The 3rd and 4th
centuries were above all an age of translation.
Among the Greek patristic writings diffused to a
wider audience in the West in Latin versions, the
lives of the Desert Fathers occupied an important
place. The Latin translation by Evagrius, bishop of
Antioch, of Athanasius’ Life of Saint Antony enjoyed
the widest transmission, and its influence is as
marked by contrast in the early Latin Lives of the
Saints as it is by imitation. Sulpicius Severus’
biography of St. Martin, an original Latin work,
greatly influenced hagiography over many centuries.
(A further, equally influential example of the genre
was the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great, written
in about 593.)
The most important
work of translation appeared at the end of the 4th
century: the Vulgate, completed by the monastic
leader Jerome, replaced sporadic earlier attempts to
render the Bible into Latin. The idiom and style of
the Bible’s original languages were apparent through
the veil of Jerome’s Latin, however, and provided a
counterweight to the classical styles that continued
to be taught and practiced through the schools in
the West. Exegesis of the text occupied many of the
greatest minds of the Middle Ages for the largest
part of their careers, and the literary work of many
major authors, from Augustine and Gregory to Bede,
reflects their individual understanding of
Scripture.
The early
Christian liturgy also gave birth to new forms of
literature. From the ancient practice of
psalmody in the churches derives the hymn. Ambrose,
bishop of Milan in the second half of the 4th
century, wrote the earliest prosaic hymns, which
incorporated nonliturgical texts into the mass to be
sung by the congregation. These were rapidly
imitated, notably by the Spanish poet Prudentius at
the end of the century, and remained in continuous
use in churches and monasteries for more than a
millennium.
A major problem of
Christian thinkers in these centuries was the
integration of the history of the pagan empire with
the history of salvation. Synthesis and epitome of
biblical and classical history appeared in the
Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII (7 Books of
Histories Against the Pagans) of Orosius and the
briefer Chronica (c. 402–404) of Sulpicius Severus.
On a larger scale, Augustine’s De civitate Dei (The
City of God) offered a comprehensive view of past
history, the present, and the world to come in the
light of scriptural revelation. His spiritual
autobiography, the Confessiones (Confessions), was
an exploration of the philosophical and emotional
development of an individual soul. The distinctive
originality of this work owed little to classical
autobiography and was unmatched by later imitations.
The Gallic
schools of the 5th century gave rise to a literary
culture unique in this period.
Versification of the Bible developed a new
degree of exegetical and stylistic refinement, while
the letters of Paulinus of Nola and Sidonius
Apollinaris, bishop of Auvergne, display a picture
of cultivated aristocratic and ecclesiastical
society. Both men were also admired as poets,
Sidonius in particular as an encomiast. On the
secular side, at the beginning of the century in
Rome the Egyptian poet Claudian produced the most
elaborate examples of imperial verse panegyric to a
succession of dignitaries. His Raptus Proserpinae
(c. 400; The Rape of Proserpine) is one of the last
examples of an extended narrative in verse that
dwells wholly in the world of pagan mythology.
The 6th to the 8th
century
Gaul’s literary history is interrupted by the
Frankish invasions, though there are signs that
abbots and bishops began to perceive the benefit of
using literature to promote the cults of local
saints. Two figures of note are Gregory of Tours and
Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers. In
addition to a vast corpus of hagiography, Gregory
produced the monumental Historia Francorum (605–664;
History of the Franks), the most extensive history
of a barbarian people that had yet been written. He
set the arrival of the Franks in Gaul, and their
recent past, in the perspective of universal
history.
An element of local
patriotism is also discernible in his writings.
Gregory was one of the many patrons who inspired the
poet Fortunatus, whose astute and pliable talent
achieved distinction in both secular panegyric and
hymnody. His hagiography, in verse and in prose,
also is prominent. His style exercised a powerful
appeal upon the poets of the Carolingian
renaissance.
Three figures of
encyclopaedic learning dominate the literature of
the 6th and 7th centuries. In the course of his
long retirement from a career in public service
under the Ostrogothic kings in Italy, Cassiodorus
combined zealous preservation of the literature of
the classical past with an enormously influential
educational plan. His late 6th-century compendium of
sacred and secular learning, Institutiones divinarum
et humanarum lectionum (An Introduction to Divine
and Human Readings), was among the shaping
influences upon monastic culture. The Roman
Boethius, a Neoplatonist philosopher, wrote on
arithmetic and music, but his most popular and
influential work was De consolatione philosophiae
(1882–91; The Consolation of Philosophy), written in
about 524, when Boethius was imprisoned under
sentence of execution. The Spaniard Isidore produced
a series of encyclopaedic compilations that were
used as repositories of diverse learning by later
centuries. It was midway through the 6th century
that the last major Latin work was produced in the
Eastern Empire: the epic Iohannis of the African
poet Corippus.
The conversion
of the Saxons began to bear literary fruit during
the 7th and early 8th centuries. In an elaborate
and allusive style, Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne,
wrote, first in prose and later in verse, a treatise
on sainthood called De Virginitate. In the kingdom
of Northumbria, particularly open to influence of
Irish monastic learning, St. Bede the Venerable
devoted his life to scholarship. The culmination of
his work is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis
Anglorum (The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History of England), completed in 731. Synthesized
from a variety of sources, literary and nonliterary,
the work charts the involvement of God with the
English people and the relation of the English
church to the Christian world centred on Rome.
The Carolingian
renaissance
The revival of letters, accompanied by wide-scale
copying of classical texts, to which the reign of
Charlemagne (768–814) gave fresh impetus, produced
some of the most brilliant literary achievements of
the Latin Middle Ages. An international elite of
scholars, among whom the most distinguished were the
Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, the Visigoth Theodulf of Orléans,
and the Italians Paulinus of Aquileia and Paul the
Deacon, produced a body of lyric, epic, and didactic
poetry (both sacred and secular, both religious and
political) unmatched in the earlier period. The
revival of epic, and the secularization of the
sacred hero, occurred in the extant third book of a
lost and larger Virgilian epic, anonymously
transmitted but known by the title Karolus Magnus et
Leo Papa (“Charlemagne and Pope Leo”). Its example
was followed in the next generation by Ermoldus
Nigellus, writing about the deeds of Louis the
Pious, and the tradition of earlier Carolingian
authors is extended by two major political poets,
Walafrid Strabo and Sedulius Scottus (also the
author of an uproarious mock epyllion). In prose the
major achievements lie in the fields of biography,
with Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni (c. 830; Life of
Charlemagne); of religious controversy, with
Theodulf’s Libri Carolini (defenses written at
Charlemagne’s request); and of theology, with John
Scotus Erigena’s metaphysical masterpiece, the
Periphyseon.

The 9th to the
11th century
From the later 9th century on, the liturgy gave rise
to two new literary forms: the sequence and the
liturgical drama. Notker Balbulus, monk of St. Gall,
was not the first to compose sequences, but his
Liber hymnorum (“Book of Hymns”), begun about 860,
is an integrated collection of texts that spans the
whole of the church year in an ordered cycle.
Performed between the biblical readings in the mass,
each sequence is a free meditation upon scriptural
themes, often drawing upon and synthesizing
disparate texts. Among later exponents of the genre,
Adam of St. Victor was the most distinguished,
though the mystical sequences of Hildegard of Bingen
exercise a potent appeal. During the same period the
enormous expansion of the cult of the Virgin left a
notable mark upon hymnody, the early 11th century
seeing the composition of Marian hymns, including
such ubiquitous texts as “Salve Regina” (“Hail,
Queen”) and “Alma Redemptoris Mater” (“Sweet Mother
of the Redeemer”).
Notker’s sequences
are alive with dramatic possibility, and at St. Gall
the practice of troping, or embellishing, liturgical
texts also took dramatic form. The Quem quaeritis
trope from St. Martial, an abbey at Limoges, was one
of the earliest such pieces to demand dramatic
performance. From this beginning developed the long
tradition of liturgical drama, which, like the
sequence, is centred upon the major feasts of the
church year.
Two narrative
works stand out in this period.
The Waltharius epic is set in the years of the
invasions of Attila the Hun. The sophistication of
its narrative technique contrasts with its Germanic
subject matter. The Ruodlieb, a romance written
perhaps in about 1050 in a language heavily
influenced by vernacular usage, reveals a comparable
narrative subtlety. Even in its fragmentary state,
the variety and vigour of its episodes are apparent.
The ease with which
religious forms such as the sequence are adapted for
secular use is nowhere seen better than in the
11th-century compilation known as the Cambridge
Songs. The blend of humorous contes, hymnody, and
lyric testifies to a diverse taste in the unknown
anthologist. Other lyric collections from the next
century, such as the Ripoll and Arundel lyrics, may
draw upon work of earlier provenance. To the chance
survival of individual compilations such as these
derives the bulk of knowledge of the secular lyric,
which is one of the chief distinctions of the 12th
and 13th centuries.
The 12th to
the 14th century
The Carmina Burana (“Songs from Bavaria”),
the largest and greatest collection of secular
lyrics, comes from the Benediktbeuern, a Benedictine
monastery in Bavaria. It was put together in the
13th century, though most of the songs are much
older, and contains work by many of the finest poets
of the age. The contents are divided by subject into
moral and satirical verse, love poetry, drinking
songs, and liturgical dramas. Walter of Châtillon
and Philip the Chancellor are conspicuous among the
authors of the satires, the force of their works
deriving from learned and allusive use of Scripture.
Peter of Blois is found in the section of satirical
verse and the section of love poetry. His verse
forms achieve a new degree of delicacy and
sophistication, and his erotic poetry owes much to a
close study of classical poets, particularly
Ovid.
Yet many of the forms in evidence, the pastourelle
(a love debate between a knight and a shepherdess)
for example, have no classical antecedent. In the
complexity of its argument and profusion of imagery,
a poem such as “Dum Diane vitrea” (“While Shining
Diane”) far exceeds the imagination of any classical
author. Among the drinking songs in the third
section are works of the anonymous German “Archpoet”
and of Hugh Primas of Orléans, a slightly earlier
figure. Under the cover of a pointedly low-life
persona, these poets, both prominent men in court
society, practiced a robust form of satire in which
much of the humour is deflected upon themselves.
Grander forms of poetry are not neglected: Walter of
Châtillon’s foray into epic, the Alexandreis
(written c. 1180), is one of the most distinguished
products of the medieval fascination with the
legends of Alexander the Great, and it exercised an
immense influence on subsequent vernacular
literature.
The 12th century
was an age of philosophical development, above all
in the cathedral schools (as at Chartres) and new
universities (as at Paris). Scholars such as Alain
of Lille (Alanus de Insulis) and
John
of Salisbury
returned to philosophical problems that had been
posed in the days of Boethius. With
Roger Bacon,
Duns Scotus, and Robert Grosseteste, the first
chancellor of Oxford University, a significant
English contribution is discernible.
Peter Abelard
trained at Paris, where he taught
John
of Salisbury.
Of Abelard’s philosophical works, Sic et non
(completed c. 1136; “Yes and No”) is the most
notable, probing critically the vast bulk of
received authority. In three of his most original
literary works, the relationship with Héloďse is a
prominent feature. The Hymnarius Paraclitensis is a
collection of hymns for Héloďse’s convent, where the
reading of Scripture is complex and shows the
imprint of novel theological thought. The six
planctus (“laments”) are meditations on guilt and
suffering, set in the mouths of biblical personages,
while the correspondence between Abelard and Héloďse
reflects themes found in both verse collections.
AbelardAbelard’s autobiographical work, the Historia
calamitatum (written c. 1136; The Story of Abelard’s
Adversities), recounts the story of his tragic love
affair and its theological consequences.
Liturgical and
cultic innovation left its mark upon Latin
literature during the 13th and 14th centuries. John
of Garland’s compilation of hymns to the Virgin is a
late testimony to the force of Marian inspiration.
From the early 13th century derive two of the latest
sequences to feature in the liturgy in all
countries, the “Dies irae” (“The Day of Wrath”) and
the “Stabat Mater” (“The Mother Stands”). The cults
of the Holy Cross and of the Passion are the impetus
to the poetry of two Franciscans, the Italian St.
Bonaventura and John Pecham in England. Pecham’s
Philomena praevia is an extended lyrical meditation
that blends the story of the Redemption with the
liturgical course of a single day.
The theology of the
13th century is dominated in bulk and stature by the
writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. The culmination of a
career centred upon Paris and Rome is the Summa
theologiae (written between 1265 and 1272), a
systematic exposition of the essentials of faith,
grounded in Aristotelian principles. The translation
of
Aristotle into Latin continued throughout the
century. Aquinas’ liturgical works also remained
prevalent.
Peter Godman
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