Of the talents of Cato as an orator something will be said in the next section. His miscellaneous writings, though none of them are historical, may be noticed here. Quintilian [27] attests the many-sidedness of his genius: “M. Cato was at once a first-rate general, a philosopher, an orator, the founder of history, the most thorough master of law and agriculture.” The work on agriculture we have the good fortune to possess; or rather a redaction of it, slightly modernized and incomplete, but nevertheless containing a large amount of really genuine matter. Nothing can be more characteristic than the opening sentences. We give a translation, following as closely as possible the form of the original: “It is at times worth while to gain wealth by commerce, were it not so perilous; or by usury, were it equally honourable. Our ancestors, however, held, and fixed by law, that a thief should be condemned to restore double, a usurer quadruple. We thus see how much worse they thought it for a citizen to be a money-lender than a thief. Again, when they praised a good man, they praised him as a good farmer, or a good husbandman. Men so praised were held to have received the highest praise. For myself, I think well of a merchant as a man of energy and studious of gain; but it is a career, as I have said, that leads to danger and ruin. But farming makes the bravest men, and the sturdiest soldiers, and of all sources of gain is the surest, the most natural, and the least invidious, and those who are busy with it have the fewest bad thoughts.” The sententious and dogmatic style of this preamble cannot fail to strike the reader; but it is surpassed by many of the precepts which follow. Some of these contain pithy maxims of shrewd sense, _e.g._ “Patrem familias vendacem non emacem esse oportet.” “Ita aedifices ne villa fundum quaerat, neve fundus villam.” The Virgilian prescription, “Laudato ingentia rura: exiguam colito,” is said to be drawn from Cato, though it does not exist in our copies. The treatment throughout is methodical. If left by the author in its present form it represents the daily jotting down of thoughts on the subject as they occurred to him.
In two points the writer appears in an unfavourable light–in his love of gain, and in his brutal treatment of his slaves. With him farming is no mere amusement, nor again is it mere labour. It is primarily and throughout a means of making money, and indeed the only strictly honourable one. However, Cato so far relaxed the strictness of this theory that he became “an ardent speculator in slaves, buildings, artificial lakes, and pleasure-grounds, the mercantile spirit being too strong within him to rest satisfied with the modest returns of his estate.” As regarded slaves, the law considered them as chattels, and he followed the law to the letter. If a slave grew old or sick he was to be sold. If the weather hindered work he was to take his sleep then, and work double time afterwards. “In order to prevent combinations among his slaves, their master assiduously sowed enmities and jealousies between them. He bought young slaves in their name, whom they were forced to train and sell for his benefit. When supping with his guests, if any dish was carelessly dressed, he rose from table, and with a leathern thong administered the requisite number of lashes with his own hand.” So pitilessly severe was he, that a slave who had concluded a purchase without his leave, hung himself to avoid his master’s wrath. These incidents, some told by Plutarch, others by Cato himself, show the inhuman side of Roman life, and make it less hard to understand their treatment of vanquished kings and generals. For the other sex Cato had little respect. Women, he says, should be kept at home, and no Chaldaean or soothsayer be allowed to see them. Women are always running after superstition. His directions about the steward’s wife are as follows. They are addressed to the steward:– “Let her fear you. Take care that she is not luxurious. Let her see as little as possible of her neighbours or any other female friends; let her never invite them to your house; let her never go out to supper, nor be fond of taking walks. Let her never offer sacrifice; let her know that the master sacrifices for the whole family; let her he neat herself, and keep the country-house neat.” Several sacrificial details are given in the treatise. We observe that they are all of the rustic order; the master alone is to attend the city ceremonial. Among the different industries recommended, we are struck by the absence of wheat cultivation. The vineyard and the pasture chiefly engage attention, though herbs and green produce are carefully treated. The reason is to be sought in the special nature of the treatise. It is not a general survey of agriculture, but merely a handbook of cultivation for a particular farm, that of Manlius or Mallius, and so probably unfit for wheat crops. Other subjects, as medicine, are touched on. But his prescriptions are confined to the rudest simples, to wholesome and restorative diet, and to incantations. These last have equal value assigned them with rational remedies. Whether Cato trusted them may well be doubted. He probably gave in such cases the popular charm-cure, simply from not having a better method of his own to propose.
Another series of treatises were those addressed to his son, in one of which, that on medicine, he charitably accuses the Greeks of an attempt to kill all barbarians by their treatment, and specially the Romans, whom they stigmatise by the insulting name of _Opici_. [28] “I forbid you, once for all, to have any dealings with physicians.” Owing to their temperate and active life, the Romans had for more than five hundred years existed without a physician within their walls. Cato’s hostility to the profession, therefore, if not justifiable, was at least natural. He subjoins a list of simples by which he kept himself and his wife alive and in health to a green old age. [29] And observing that there are countless signs of death, and none of health, he gives the chief marks by which a man apparently in health may be noted as unsound. In another treatise, on farming, also dedicated to his son, for whom he entertained a warm affection, and over whose education he sedulously watched, he says,–“Buy not what you want, but what you must have; what you don’t want is dear at a farthing, and what you lack borrow from yourself.” Such is the homely wisdom which gained for Cato the proud title of _Sapiens_, by which, says Cicero, [30] he was familiarly known. Other original works, the product of his vast experience, were the treatise on eloquence, of which the pith is the following: “Rem tene: verba sequentur;” “Take care of the sense: the sounds will take care of themselves.” We can well believe that this excellent maxim ruled his own conduct. The art of war formed the subject of another volume; in this, too, he had abundant and faithful experience. An attempt to investigate the principles of jurisprudence, which was carried out more fully by his son, [31] and a short _carmen de moribus_ or essay on conduct, completed the list of his paternal instructions. Why this was styled _carmen_ is not known. Some think it was written in Saturnian verse, others that its concise and oracular formulas suggested the name, since _carmen_ in old Latin is by no means confined to verse. It is from this that the account of the low estimation of poets in the early Republic is taken. Besides these regular treatises we hear of letters, [32] and _apophthegmata_, or pithy sayings, put together like those of Bacon from divers sources. In after times Cato’s own apophthegms were collected for publication, and under the name of _Catonis dicta_, were much admired in the Middle Ages. We see that Cato’s literary labours were encyclopaedic. In this wide and ambitious sphere he was followed by Varro, and still later by Celsus. Literary effort was now becoming general. FULVIUS NOBILIOR, the patron of Ennius and adversary of Cato, published annals after the old plan of a calendar of years. CASSIUS HEMINA and Calpurnius Piso, who were younger contemporaries, continued in the same track, and we hear of other minor historians. Cassius is mentioned more than once as “_antiquissimus auctor_,” a term of compliment as well as chronological reference. [33] Of him Niebuhr says: “He wrote about Alba according to its ancient local chronology, and synchronised the earlier periods of Rome with the history of Greece. He treated of the age before the foundation of Rome, whence we have many statements of his about Siculian towns in Latium. The archaeology of the towns seems to have been his principal object. The fourth book of his work bore the title of _Punicum bellum posterius_, from which we infer that the last war with Carthage had not as yet broken out.”
About this epoch flourished Q. FABIUS MAXIMUS SERVILIANUS, who is known to have written histories. He is supposed to be miscalled by Cicero, [34] Fabius Pictor, for Cicero mentions a work in Latin by the latter author, whereas it is certain that the old Fabius wrote only in Greek. The best authorities now assume that Fabius Maximus, as a clansman and admirer of Pictor, translated his book into Latin to make it more widely known. The new work would thus be indifferently quoted as Fabius Pictor or Fabius Maximus.
L. CALPURNIUS PISO FRUGI CENSORIUS (Cons. 133), well known as the adversary of the Gracchi, an eloquent and active man, and staunch adherent of the high aristocratic party, was also an able writer of history. That his conception of historical writing did not surpass that of his predecessors the annalists, is probable from the title of his work; [35] that he brought to bear on it a very different spirit seems certain from the quotations in Livy and Dionysius. One of the select few, in breadth of views as in position, he espoused the rationalistic opinions advocated by the Scipionic circle, and applied them with more warmth than judgment to the ancient legends. Grote, Niebuhr, and others, have shown how unsatisfactory this treatment is; illusion is lost without truth being found; nevertheless, the man who first honestly applies this method, though he may have ill success, makes an epoch in historical research. Cicero gives him no credit for style; his annals (he says) are written in a barren way. [36] The reader who wishes to read Niebuhr’s interesting judgment on his work and influence is referred to the _Introductory Lectures on Roman History_. In estimating the very different opinions on the ancient authors given in the classic times, we should have regard to the divers standards from time to time set up. Cicero, for instance, has a great fondness for the early poets, but no great love for the prose writers, except the orators, nearly all of whom he loads with praise. Still, making allowance for this slight mental bias, his criticisms are of the utmost possible value. In the Augustan and early imperial times, antiquity was treated with much less reverence. Style was everything, and its deficiency could not be excused. And lastly, under the Antonines (and earlier [37]), disgust at the false taste of the day produced an irrational reaction in favour of the archaic modes of thought and expression, so that Gellius, for instance, extols the simplicity, sweetness, or noble vigour of writings in which we, like Cicero, should see only jejune and rugged immaturity. [38] Pliny speaks of Piso as a weighty author (_gravis auctor_), and Pliny’s penetration was not easily warped by style or want of style. We may conclude, on the whole, that Piso, though often misled by his want of imagination, and occasionally by inaccuracy in regard to figures, [39] brought into Roman history a rational method, not by any means so original or excellent as that of Cato, but more on a level with the capacities of his countrymen, and infinitely more productive of imitation.
The study of Greek rhetoric had by this time been cultivated at Rome, and the difficulty of composition being materially lightened [40] as well as its results made more pleasing, we are not surprised to find a number of authors of a somewhat more pretentious type. VENNONIUS, CLODIUS LICINUS, C. FANNIUS, and GELLIUS are little more than names; all that is known of them will be found in Teuffel’s repertory. They seem to have clung to the title of annalist though they had outgrown the character. There are, however, two names that cannot be quite passed over, those of SEMPRONIUS ASELLIO and CAELIUS ANTIPATER. The former was military tribune at Numantia (133 B.C.), and treated of that campaign at length, in his work. He was killed in 99 B.C. [41] but no event later than the death of Gracchus (121 B.C.) is recorded as from him. He had great contempt for the old annalists, and held their work to be a mere diary so far as form went; he professed to trace the motives and effects of actions, rather, however, with the object of stimulating public spirit than satisfying a legitimate thirst for knowledge. He had also some idea of the value of constitutional history, which may be due to the influence of Polybius, whose trained intelligence and philosophic grasp of events must have produced a great impression among those who knew or read him.
We have now mentioned three historians, each of whom brought his original contribution to the task of narrating events. Cato rose to the idea of Rome as the centre of an Italian State; he held any account of her institutions to be imperfect which did not also trace from their origin those of the kindred nations; Piso conceived the plan of reducing the myths to historical probability, and Asellio that of tracing the moral causes that underlay outward movements. Thus we see a great advance in theory since the time, just a century earlier, when Fabius wrote his annals. We now meet with a new element, that of rhetorical arrangement. No one man is answerable for introducing this. It was in the air of Rome during the seventh century, and few were unaffected by it. Antipater is the first to whom rhetorical ornament is attributed by Cicero, though his attainments were of a humble kind. [42] He was conspicuous for word painting. Scipio’s voyage to Africa was treated by him in an imaginative theatrical fashion, noticed with disapproval by Livy. [43] In other respects he seems to have been trustworthy and to have merited the honour he obtained of being abridged by J. Brutus.
In the time of Sulla we hear of several historians who obtained celebrity. The first is CLAUDIUS QUADRIGARIUS (fl. 100 B.C.). He differs from all his predecessors by selecting as his starting-point the taking of Rome by the Gauls. His reason for so doing does him credit, viz. that there existed no documents for the earlier period. [44] He hurried over the first three centuries, and as was usual among Roman writers, gave a minute account of his own times, inserting documents and speeches. So archaic was his style that his fragments might belong to the age of Cato. For this reason, among others, Gellius [45] (in whom they are found) greatly admires him. Though he outlived Sulla, and therefore chronologically might be considered as belonging to the Ciceronian period, yet the lack of finish in his own and his contemporaries’ style, makes this the proper place to mention them. The _period_, [46] as distinct from the mere stringing together of clauses, was not understood even in oratory until Gracchus, and in history it was to appear still later. Cicero never mentions Claudius, nor VALERIUS ANTIAS (91 B.C.), who is often associated with him. This writer, who has gained through Livy’s page the unenviable notoriety of being the most lying of all annalists, nevertheless obtained much celebrity. The chief cause of his deceptiveness was the fabrication of circumstantial narrative, and the invention of exact numerical accounts. His work extended from the first mythical stories to his own day, and reached to at least seventy-five books. In his first decade Livy would seem to have followed him implicitly. Then turning in his later books to better authorities, such as Polybius, and perceiving the immense discrepancies, he realised how he had been led astray, and in revenge attacked Antias throughout the rest of his work. Still the fact that he is quoted by Livy oftener than any other writer, shows that he was too well-known to be neglected, and perhaps Livy has exaggerated his defects.
L. CORNELIUS SISENNA, (119-67 B.C.), better known as a statesman and grammarian, treated history with success. His daily converse with political life, and his thoughtful and studious habits, combined to qualify him for this department. He was a conscientious man, and tells how he pursued his work continuously, lest if he wrote by starts and snatches, he might pervert the reader’s mind. His style, however, suffered by this, he became prolix; this apparently is what Fronto means when he says “_scripsit longinque_.” To later writers he was interesting from his fondness for archaisms. Even in the senate he could not drop this affected habit. Alone of all the fathers he said _adsentio_ for _adsentior_, and such phrases as “_vellicatim aut sultuatim scribendo_” show an absurd straining after quaintness.
C. LICINIUS MACER (died 73 B.C.) the father of the poet Calvus, was the latest annalist of Rome. Cicero, who was his enemy, and his judge in the trial which cost him his life, criticises his defects both as orator and historian, with severity. Livy, too, implies that he was not always trustworthy (“Quaesita ea propriae familiae laus leviorem auctorem facit,” [47]) when the fame of his _gens_ was in question, but on many points he quotes him with approval, and shows that he sought for the best materials, _e.g._ he drew from the _lintei libri_, [48] the books of the magistrates, [49] the treaty with Ardea, [50] and where he differed from the general view, he gave his reasons for it.
The extent of his researches is not known, but it seems likely that, alone of Roman historians, he did not touch on the events of his day, the latest speech to which reference is made being the year 196 B.C. As he was an orator, and by no means a great one, being stigmatised as “loquacious” by Cicero, it is probable that his history suffered from a rhetorical colouring.
In reviewing the list of historians of the ante-classical period, we cannot form any high opinion of their merits. Fabius, Cincius, and Cato, who are the first, are also the greatest. The others seem to have gone aside to follow out their own special views, without possessing either accuracy of knowledge or grasp of mind sufficient to unite them with a general comprehensive treatment. The simultaneous appearance of so many writers of moderate ability and not widely divergent views, is a witness to the literary activity of the age, but does not say much for the force of its intellectual creations.
NOTE.–The fragments of the historians have been carefully collected and edited with explanations and lists of authorities by Peter. (_Veterum Historicorum Romanorum Relliquiae_. Lipsiae, 1870.)
APPENDIX.
_On the Annales Pontificum._
(Chiefly from _Les Annales des Pontifes_, Le Clerc.)
The _Annales_, though not literature in the proper sense, were so important, as forming materials for it, that it may be well to give a short account of them. They were called _Pontificum_, _Maximi_, and sometimes _Publici_, to distinguish them from the _Annales_ of other towns, of families, or of historical writers. The term _Annales_, we may note _en passant_, was ordinarily applied to a narrative of facts preceding one’s own time, _Historiae_ being reserved for a contemporary account (Gell. v. 8). But this of course was after its first sense was lost. In the oldest times, the Pontifices, as they were the lawyers, were in like manner the historians of Rome (Cic. de Or. ii. 12). Cicero and Varro repeatedly consulted their records, which Cicero dates from the origin of the city, but Livy only from Aneus Martius (i. 32). Servius, apparently confounding them with the _Fasti_, declares that they put down the events of every day (ad Ac. i. 373); and that they were divided into eighty books. Sempronius Asellio (Gell. v. 18) says they mention _bellum quo initum consule, et quo modo confectum, et quis triumphans introierit_, and Cato ridicules the meagreness of their information. Nevertheless it was considered authentic. Cicero found the eclipse of the year 350 duly registered; Virgil and Ovid drew much of their archaeological lore (_annalibus eruta priscis_, Ov. Fast i. 7.) and Livy his lists of prodigies from them. Besides these marvellous facts, others were doubtless noticed, as new laws, dedication of temples or monuments, establishment of colonies, deaths of great men, erection of statues, &c.; but all with the utmost brevity. _Unam dicendi laudem putant esse brevitatem_ (De Or. ii. 12). Sentences occur in Livy which seem excerpts from them, _e.g._ (ii. 1).–_His consulibus Fidenae obssesae, Crustumina capta, Praeneste ab Latinis ad Romanos descivit_. Varro, in enumerating the gods whose altars were consecrated by Tatius, says (L. L. v. 101), _ut Annales veteres nostri dicunt_, and then names them. Pliny also quotes them expressly, but the word _vetustissimi_ though they make it probable that the Pontifical Annals are meant, do not establish it beyond dispute (Plin. xxxiii. 6, xxxiv. 11).
It is probable, as has been said in this work, that the _Annales Pontificum_ were to a great extent, though not altogether, destroyed in the Gallic invasion. But Rome was not the only city that had Annales. Probably all the chief towns of the Oscan, Sabine, and Umbrian territory had them. Cato speaks of Antemna as older than Rome, no doubt from its records. Varro drew from the archives of Tusculum (L. L. vi. 16), Praeneste had its Pontifical Annals (Cic de Div. ii. 41), and Anagnia its _libri lintei_ (Fronto, Ep. ad Ant. iv. 4). Etruria beyond question possessed an extensive religious literature, with which much history must have been mingled. And it is reasonable to suppose, as Livy implies, that the educated Romans were familiar with it. From this many valuable facts would be preserved. When the Romans captured a city, they brought over its gods with them, and it is possible, its sacred records also, since their respect for what was religious or ancient, was not limited to their own nationality, but extended to most of those peoples with whom they were brought in contact. From all these considerations it is probable that a considerable portion of historic record was preserved after the burning of the city, whether from the Annals themselves, or from portions of them inscribed on bronze erstone, or from those of other states, which was accessible to, and used by Cato, Polybius, Varro, Cicero, and Verrius Flaccus. It is also probable that these records were collected into a work, and that this work, while modernized by its frequent revisions, nevertheless preserved a great deal of original and genuine annalistic chronicle.
The _Annales_ must be distinguished from the _Libri Pontificum_, which seem to have been a manual of the _Jus Pontificale_. Cicero places them between the _Jus Civile_ and the Twelve Tables (De Or. i. 43.) The _Libri Pontificii_ may have been the same, but probably the term, when correctly used, meant the ceremonial ritual for the _Sacerdotes_, _flamines_, &c. This general term included the more special ones of _Libri sacrorum_, _sacerdotum_, _haruspicini_, &c. Some have confounded with the _Annales_ a different sort of record altogether, the _Indigitamenta_, or ancient formulae of prayer or incantation, and the _Axamenta_, to which class the song of the Arval Brothers is referred.
As to the amount of historical matter contained in the Annals, it is impossible to pronounce with confidence. Their falsification through family and patrician pride is well known. But the earliest historians must have possessed sufficient insight to distinguish the obviously fabulous. We cannot suspect Cato of placing implicit faith in mythical accounts. He was no friend to the aristocratic families or their records, and took care to check them by the rival records of other Italian tribes. Sempronius Asellio, in a passage already alluded to (ap. Gell. v. 18), distinguishes the annalistic style as puerile (_fabulas pueris narrare_); the historian, he insists, should go beneath the surface, and understand what he relates. On comparing the early chronicles of Rome with those of St Bertin and St Denys of France, there appears no advantage in a historical point of view to be claimed by the latter; both contain many real events, though both seek to glorify the origin of the nation and its rulers by constant instances of divine or saintly intervention.
CHAPTER X.
THE HISTORY OF ORATORY BEFORE CICERO.
As the spiritual life of a people is reflected in their poetry, so their living voice is heard in their oratory. Oratory is the child of freedom. Under the despotisms of the East it could have no existence; under every despotism it withers. The more truly free a nation is, the greater will its oratory be. In no country was there a grander field for the growth of oratorical genius than in Rome. The two countries that approach nearest to it in this respect are beyond doubt Athens and England. In both eloquence has attained its loftiest height, in the one of popular, in the other of patrician excellence. The eloquence of Demosthenes is popular in the noblest sense. It is addressed to a sovereign people who knew that they were sovereign. Neither to deliberative nor to executive did they for a moment delegate that supreme power which it delighted them to exercise. He that had a measure or a bill to propose had only to persuade them that it was good, and the measure passed, the bill became law. But the audience he addressed, though a popular, was by no means an ordinary one. It was fickle and capricious to a degree exceeding that of all other popular assemblies; it was critical, exacting, intellectual, in a still higher degree. No audience has been more swayed by passion; none has been less swayed by the pretence of it. Always accessible to flattery, Athens counts as her two greatest orators the two men who never stooped to flatter her. The regal tones of Pericles, the prophetic earnestness of Demosthenes, in the response which each met, bear witness to the greatness of those who heard them. Even Cleon owed his greatest triumphs to the plainness with which he inveighed against the people’s faults. Intolerant of inelegance and bombast, the Athenians required not only graceful speech, but speech to the point. Hence Demosthenes is of all ancient orators the most business-like. Of all ancient orators, it has been truly said he would have met with the best hearing from the House of Commons. Nevertheless there is a great difference between Athenian and English eloquence. The former was exclusively popular; the latter, in the strictest sense, is hardly popular at all. The dignified representatives of our lower house need no such appeals to popular passion as the Athenian assembly required; only on questions of patriotism or principle would they be tolerated. Still less does emotion govern the sedate and masculine eloquence of our upper house, or the strict and closely-reasoned pleadings of our courts of law. Its proper field is in the addresses of a popular member to one of the great city constituencies. The best speeches addressed to hereditary legislators or to elected representatives necessarily involve different features from those which characterised orations addressed directly to the entire nation assembled in one place. If oratory has lost in fire, it has gained in argument. In its political sphere, it shows a clearer grasp of the public interest, a more tenacious restriction to practical issues; in its judicial sphere, a more complete abandonment of prejudice and passion, and a subordination, immeasurably greater than at Athens, to the authority of written law.
Let us now compare the general features of Greek and English eloquence with those of Rome. Roman eloquence had this in common with Greek, that it was genuinely popular. In their comitia the people were supreme. The orator who addressed them must be one who by passion could enkindle passion, and guide for his own ends the impulses of a vast multitude. But how different was the multitude! Fickle, impressionable, vain; patriotic too in its way, and not without a rough idea of justice. So far like that of Greece; but here the resemblance ends. The mob of Rome, for in the times of real popular eloquence it had come to that, was rude, fierce, bloodthirsty: where Athens called for grace of speech, Rome demanded vehemence; where Athens looked for glory or freedom, Rome looked for increase of dominion, and the wealth of conquered kingdoms for her spoil. That in spite of their fierce and turbulent audience the great Roman orators attained to such impressive grandeur, is a testimony to the greatness of the senatorial system which reared them. In some respects the eloquence of Rome bears greater resemblance to that of England. For several centuries it was chiefly senatorial. The people intrusted their powers to the Senate, satisfied that it acted for the best; and during this period eloquence was matured. That special quality, so well named by the Romans _gravitas_, which at Athens was never reached, but which has again appeared in England, owed its development to the august discipline of the Senate. Well might Cineas call this body an assembly of kings. Never have patriotism, tradition, order, expediency, been so powerfully represented as there; never have change, passion, or fear had so little place. We can well believe that every effective speech began with the words, so familiar to us, _maiores nostri voluerunt_, and that it ended as it had begun. The aristocratic stamp necessarily impressed on the debates of such an assembly naturally recalls our own House of Lords. But the freedom of personal invective was far wider than modern courtesy would tolerate. And, moreover, the competency of the Senate to decide questions of peace or war threw into its discussions that strong party spirit which is characteristic of our Lower House. Thus the senatorial oratory of Rome united the characteristics of that of both our chambers. It was at once majestic and vehement, patriotic and personal, proud of traditionary prestige, but animated with the consciousness of real power.
In judicial oratory the Romans, like the Greeks, compare unfavourably with us. With more eloquence they had less justice. Nothing sets antiquity in a less prepossessing light than a study of its criminal trials; nothing seems to have been less attainable in these than an impartial sifting of evidence. The point of law is obscured among overwhelming considerations from outside. If a man is clearly innocent, as in the case of Roscius, the enmity of the great makes it a severe labour to obtain an acquittal; if he is as clearly guilty (as Cluentius would seem to have been), a skilful use of party weapons can prevent a conviction. [1] The judices in the public trials (which must be distinguished from civil causes tried in the praetor’s court) were at first taken exclusively from the senators. Gracchus (122 B.C.) transferred this privilege to the Equites; and until the time of Sulla, who once more reinstated the senatorial class (81 B.C.), fierce contests raged between the two orders. Pompey (55 B.C.), following an enactment of Cotta (70 B.C.), threw the office open to the three orders of Senators, Knights, and Tribuni Aerarii, but fixed a high property qualification. Augustus added a fourth _decuria_ from the lower classes, and Caligula a fifth, so that Quintilian could speak of a juryman as ordinarily a man of little intelligence and no legal or general knowledge. [2]
This would be of comparatively small importance if a presiding judge of lofty qualifications guided, as with us, the minds of the jury through the mazes of argument and sophistry, and set the real issue plainly before them. But in Rome no such prerogative rested with the presiding judge, [3] who merely saw that the provisions of the law under which the trial took place were complied with. The judges, or rather jurors, were, in Rome as in Athens, [4] both from their number and their divergent interests, open to influences of prejudice or corruption, only too often unscrupulously employed, from which our system is altogether exempt. In the later republican period it was not, of course, ignorance (the jurors being senators or equites) but bribery or partisanship that disgraced the decisions of the bench. Senator and eques unceasingly accused each other of venality, and each was beyond doubt right in the charge he made. [5] In circumstances like these it is evident that dexterous manipulation or passionate pleading must take the place of legitimate forensic oratory. Magnificent, therefore, as are the efforts of the great speakers in this field, and nobly as they often rise above the corrupt practice of their time, it is impossible to shut our eyes to the iniquities of the procedure, and to help regretting that talent so glorious was so often compelled either to fail or to resort to unworthy methods of success.
At Rome public speaking prevailed from the first. In every department of life it was necessary for a man to express in clear and vigorous language the views he recommended. Not only the senator or magistrate, but the general on the field of battle had to be a speaker. On his return from the campaign eloquence became to him what strategy had been before. It was the great path to civil honours, and success was not to be won without it. There is little doubt that the Romans struck out a vein of strong native eloquence before the introduction of Greek letters. Readiness of speech is innate in the Italians as in the French, and the other qualities of the Romans contributed to enhance this natural gift. Few remains of this native oratory are left, too few to judge by. We must form our opinion upon that of Cicero, who, basing his judgment on its acknowledged political effects, pronounces strongly in its favour. The measures of Brutus, of Valerius Poplicola, and others, testify to their skill in oratory; [6] and the great honour in which the orator was always held, [7] contrasting with the low position accorded to the poet, must have produced its natural result. But though the practice of oratory was cultivated it was not reduced to an art. Technical treatises were the work of Greeks, and Romans under Greek influence. In the early period the “spoken word” was all-important. Even the writing down of speeches after delivery was rarely, if ever, resorted to. The first known instance occurs so late as the war with Pyrrhus, 280 B.C., when the old censor Appius committed his speech to writing, which Cicero says that he had read. The only exception to this rule seems to have been the funeral orations, which may have been written from the first, but were rarely published owing to the youth of those who delivered them. The aspirant to public honours generally began his career by composing such an oration, though in later times a public accusation was a more favourite _debut_. Besides Appius’s; speech, we hear of one by FABIUS CUNCTATOR, and of another by Metellus, and we learn from Ennius that in the second Punic war (204 B.C.) M. CORNELIUS CETHEGUS obtained the highest renown for his persuasive eloquence.
“Additur orator Cornelius suaviloquenti Ore Cethegus … is dictus popularibus olim … Flos delibatus populi Suadaeque medulla.” [8]
The first name on which we can pronounce with confidence is that of Cato. This great man was the first orator as he was the greatest statesman of his time. Cicero [9] praises him as dignified in commendation, pitiless in sarcasm, pointed in phraseology, subtle in argument. Of the 150 speeches extant in Cicero’s time there was not one that was not stocked with brilliant and pithy sayings; and though perhaps they read better in the shape of extracts, still all the excellences of oratory were found in them as a whole; and yet no one could be found to study them. Perhaps Cicero’s language betrays the warmth of personal admiration, especially as in a later passage of the same dialogue [10] he makes Atticus dissent altogether from his own view. “I highly approve (he says) of the speeches of Cato as compared with those of his own date, for though quite unpolished they imply some original talent … but to speak of him as an orator equal to Lysias would indeed be pardonable irony if we were in jest, but you cannot expect to approve it seriously to me and Brutus.” No doubt Atticus’s judgment is based on too high a standard, for high finish was impossible in the then state of the language. Still Cato wrote probably in a designedly rude style through his horror of Greek affectation. He is reported to have said in his old age (150 B.C.), “_Caussurum illustrium quascunque defendi nunc cum maxime conficio orationes_,” [11] and these written speeches were no doubt improvements on those actually delivered, especially as Valerius Maximus says of his literary labours, [12] “_Cato Graecis literis erudiri concupivit, quam sero inde cognoscimus quod etiam Latinas paene iam senex didicerit._” His eloquence extended to every sort; he was a successful _patronus_ in many private trials; he was a noted and most formidable accuser; in public trials we find him continually defending himself, and always with success; as the advocate or opponent of great political measures in the senate or assembly he was at his greatest. Many titles of deliberative speeches remain, _e.g._ “_de rege Attalo et vectigalibus Asiae_,” “_ut plura aera equestria fierent_,” “_aediles plebis sacrosanctos esse_,” “_de dote_” (an attack upon the luxury of women), and others. His chief characteristics were condensed force, pregnant brevity, strong common sense, galling asperity. His orations were neglected for near a century, but in the Claudian era began to be studied, and were the subjects of commentary until the time of Servius, who speaks of his periods as ill-balanced and unrhythmical (_confragosa_). [13] There is a most caustic fragment preserved in Fronto [14] taken from the speech _de sumptu suo_, recapitulating his benefits to the state, and the ingratitude of those who had profited by them; and another from his speech against Minucius Thermus, who had scourged ten men for some trivial offence [15] which in its sarcasm, its vivid and yet redundant language, recalls the manner of Cicero.
In Cato’s time we hear of SER. FULVIUS and L. COTTA, SCIPIO AFRICANUS and SULPICIUS GALLUS, all of whom were good though not first-rate speakers. A little later LAELIUS and the younger SCIPIO (185-129 B.C.), whose speeches were extant in the time of Cicero [16] and their contemporaries, followed Cato’s example and wrote down what they had delivered. It is not clear whether their motive was literary or political, but more probably the latter, as party feeling was so high at Rome that a powerful speech might do good work afterwards as a pamphlet. [17] From the passages of Scipio Aemilianus which we possess, we gather that he strove to base his style on Greek models. In one we find an elaborate dilemma, with a taunting question repeated after each deduction; in another we find Greek terms contemptuously introduced much as they are centuries after in Juvenal; in another we have a truly patrician epigram. Being asked his opinion about the death of Gracchus, and replying that the act was a righteous one, the people raised a shout of defiance,–_Taceant, inquit, quibus Italia noverca non mater est, quos ego sub corona vendidi_–“Be silent, you to whom Italy is a stepdame not a mother, whom I myself have sold at the hammer of the auctioneer.”
Laelius, surnamed _Sapiens_, or the philosopher (cons. 140), is well known to readers of Cicero as the chief speaker in the exquisite dialogue on friendship, and to readers of Horace as the friend of Scipio and Lucilius. [18] Of his relative excellence as an orator, Cicero speaks with caution. [19] He mentions the popular preference for Laelius, but apparently his own judgment inclines the other way. “It is the manner of men to dislike one man excelling in many things. Now, as Africanus has no rival in martial renown, though Laelius gained credit by his conduct of the war with Viriathus, so as regards genius, learning, eloquence, and wisdom, though both are put in the first rank, yet all men are willing to place Laelius above Scipio.” It is certain that Laelius’s style was much less natural than that of Scipio. He affected an archaic vocabulary and an absence of ornament, which, however, was a habit too congenial at all times to the Roman mind to call down any severe disapproval. What Laelius lacked was force. On one occasion a murder had been committed in the forest of Sila, which the consuls were ordered to investigate. A company of pitch manufacturers were accused, and Laelius undertook their defence. At its conclusion the consuls decided on a second hearing. A few days after Laelius again pleaded, and this time with an elegance and completeness that left nothing to be desired. Still the consuls were dissatisfied. On the accused begging Laelius to make a third speech, he replied: “Out of consideration for you I have done my best. You should now go to Ser. Galba, who can defend you with greater warmth and vehemence than I.” Galba, from respect to Laelius, was unwilling to undertake the case; but, having finally agreed, he spent the short time that was left in getting it by heart, retiring into a vaulted chamber with some highly educated slaves, and remaining at work till after the consuls had taken their seat. Being sent for he at last came out, and, as Rutilius the narrator and eye-witness declared, with such a heightened colour and triumph in his eyes that he looked like one who had already won his cause. Laelius himself was present. The advocate spoke with such force and weight that scarcely an argument passed unapplauded. Not only were the accused released, but they met on all hands with sympathy and compassion. Cicero adds that the slaves who had helped in the consultation came out of it covered with bruises, such was the vigour of body as well as mind that a Roman brought to bear on his case, and on the unfortunate instruments of its preparation. [20]
GALBA (180-136 B.C.?) was a man of violence and bad faith, not for a moment to be compared to Laelius. His infamous cruelty to the Lusitanians, one of the darkest acts in all history, has covered his name with an ineffaceable stain. Cato at eighty-five years of age stood forth as his accuser, but owing to his specious art, and to the disgrace of Rome, he was acquitted. [21] Cicero speaks of him as _peringeniosus sed non satis doctus_, and says that he lacked perseverance to improve his speeches from a literary point of view, being contented with forensic success. Yet he was the first to apply the right sort of treatment to oratorical art; he introduced digressions for ornament, for pathos, for information; but as he never re-wrote his speeches, they remained unfinished, and were soon forgotten–_Hanc igitur ob caussum videtur Laelii mens spirare etiam in scriptis, Galbae autem vis occidisse_.
Laelius had embodied in his speeches many of the precepts of the Stoic philosophy. He had been a friend of the celebrated Panaetius (186-126 B.C.) of Rhodes, to whose lectures he sent his own son-in-law, and apparently others too. Eloquence now began to borrow philosophic conceptions; it was no longer merely practical, but admitted of illustration from various theoretical sources. It became the ambition of cultivated men to fuse enlightened ideas into the substance of their oratory. Instances of this are found in SP. MUMMIUS, AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, C. FANNIUS, and the Augur MUCIUS SCAEVOLA, and perhaps, though it is difficult to say, in Carbo and the two Gracchi. These are the next names that claim our notice.
CARBO (164-119 B.C.), the supporter first of the Gracchi, and then of their murderers, was a man of the most worthless character, but a bold speaker, and a successful patron. In his time the _quaestiones perpetuae_ [22] were constituted, and thus he had an immense opportunity of enlarging his forensic experience. He gained the reputation of being the first pleader of his day; he was fluent, witty, and forcible, and was noted for the strength and sweetness of his voice. Tacitus also mentions him with respect in his dialogue _de Oratoribus_. [23]
The two GRACCHI were no less distinguished as orators than as champions of the oppressed. TIBERIUS (169-133 B.C.) served his first campaign with Scipio in Africa, and was present at the fall of Carthage. His personal friendship for the great soldier was cemented by Scipio’s union with his only sister. The father of Gracchus was a man of sterling worth and considerable oratorical gifts; his mother’s virtue, dignity, and wisdom are proverbial. Her literary accomplishments were extremely great; she educated her sons in her own studies, and watched their progress with more than a preceptor’s care. The short and unhappy career of this virtuous but imprudent man is too well known to need allusion here; his eloquence alone will be shortly noticed. It was formed on a careful study of Greek authors. Among his masters was Diophanes of Mitylene, who dwelt at Rome, and paid the penalty of his life for his friendship for his pupil. Tiberius’s character was such as to call for the strongest expressions of reverence even from those who disapproved his political conduct. Cicero speaks of him as _homo sanctissimus_, and Velleius Paterculus says of him, “_vita innocentissimus, ingenio florentissimus, proposito sanctissimus, tantis denique ornatus virtutibus, quantas perfecta et natura et industria mortalis conditio recipit_.” His appearance formed an epoch in eloquence. “The Gracchi employed a far freer and easier mode of speech than any of their predecessors.” [24] This may be accounted for partly through the superiority of their inherited talent and subsequent education, but is due far more to the deep conviction which stirred their heart and kindled their tongue. Cato alone presents the spectacle of a man deeply impressed with a political mission and carrying it into the arena of political conflict, but the inspiration of Gracchus was of a far higher order than that of the harsh censor. It was in its origin moral, depending on the eternal principles of right and wrong, not on the accident of any particular state or party in it. Hence the loftiness of his speech, from which sarcasm and even passion were absent. In estimating the almost ideal character of the enthusiasm which fired him we cannot forget that his mother was the daughter of Scipio, of him who believed himself the special favourite of heaven, and the communicator of divinely sent ideas to the world. Unhappily we have no fragments of the orations of Gracchus; the more brilliant fame of his brother has eclipsed his literary renown, but we may judge of their special features by those of their author’s character, and be sure that while lacking in genius they were temperate, earnest, pure, and classical. In fact the Gracchi may he called the founders of classical Latin. That subdued power whose subtle influence penetrates the mind and vanquishes the judgment is unknown in literature before them. Whenever it appears it marks the rise of a high art, it answers to the _vis temperata_ which Horace so warmly commends. The younger son of Cornelia, C. GRACCHUS (154-121 B.C.), was of a different temper from his brother. He was less of the moralist, more of the artist. His feeling was more intense but less profound. His brother’s loyalty had been to the state alone; his was given partly to the state, partly to the shade of his brother. In nearly every speech, in season and out of season, he denounced his murder. “_Pessimi_ Tiberium meum fratrem, optimum virum, interfecerunt.” Such is the burden of his eloquence. If in Tiberius we see the impressive calmness of reasoned conviction, in Caius we see the splendid impetuosity of chivalrous devotion. And yet Caius was, without doubt, the greater statesman of the two. The measures, into which his brother was as it were forced, were by him well understood and deliberately planned. They amounted to nothing less than a subversion of the existing state. The senate destroyed meant Gracchus sovereign. Under the guise of restoring to the people their supreme power, he paved the way for the long succession of tyrants that followed. His policy mingled patriotism and revenge. The corruption and oppression that everywhere marked the oligarchical rule roused his just indignation; the death of his brother, the death he foresaw in store for himself, stirred him into unholy vengeance. Many of his laws were well directed. The liberal attitude he assumed towards the provinces, his strong desire to satisfy the just claims of the Italians to citizenship, his breaking down the exclusive administration of justice, these are monuments of his far-seeing statesmanship. But his vindictive legislation with regard to Popillius Laenas, and to Octavius (from which, however, his mother’s counsel finally deterred him), and above all his creation of the curse of Rome, a hungry and brutal proletariate, by largesses of corn, present his character as a public man in darker colours. As Mommsen says, “Right and wrong, fortune and misfortune, were so inextricably blended in him that it may well beseem history in this case to reserve her judgment.” [25] The discord of his character is increased by the story that an inward impulse dissuaded him at first from public life, that agreeably to its monitions he served as Quaestor abroad, and pursued for some years a military career; but after a time his brother’s spirit haunted him, and urged him to return to Rome and offer his life upon the altar of the great cause. This was the turning-point of his career. He returned suddenly, and from that day became the enemy of the senate, the avenger of his brother, and the champion of the multitude. His oratory is described as vehement beyond example; so carried away did he become, that he found it necessary to have a slave behind him on the rostra, who, by playing a flute, should recall him to moderation. [26] Cicero, who strongly condemned the man, pays the highest tribute to his genius, saying in the Brutus: “Of the loftiest talent, of the most burning enthusiasm, carefully taught from boyhood, he yields to no man in richness and exuberance of diction.” To which Brutus assents, adding, “Of all our predecessors he is the only one whose works I read.” Cicero replies, “You do right in reading him; Latin literature has lost irreparably by his early death. I know not whether he would not have stood above every other name. His language is noble, his sentiments profound, his whole style grave. His works lack the finishing touch; many are admirably begun, few are thoroughly complete. He of all speakers is the one that should be read by the young, for not only is he fit to sharpen talent, but also to feed and nourish a natural gift.” [27]
One of the great peculiarities of ancient eloquence was the frequent opportunity afforded for self-recommendation or self-praise. That good taste or modesty which shrinks from mentioning its own merits was far less cultivated in antiquity than now. Men accepted the principle not only of acting but of speaking for their own advantage. This gave greater zest to a debate on public questions, and certainly sharpened the orator’s powers. If a man had benefited the state he was not ashamed to blazon it forth; if another in injuring the state had injured him, he did not altogether sacrifice personal invective to patriotic indignation. [28] The frequency of accusations made this “art of self-defence” a necessity–and there can be no doubt the Roman people listened with admiration to one who was at once bold and skilful enough to sound his own praises well. Cicero’s excessive vanity led him to overdo his part, and to nauseate at times even well-disposed hearers. From the fragments of Gracchus’ speeches that remain (unhappily very few) we should gather that in asserting himself he was without a rival. The mixture of simplicity and art removes him at once from Cato’s bald literalism and Cicero’s egotism. It was, however, in impassioned attack that Gracchus rose to his highest tones. The terms _Gracchi impetum_, [29] _tumultuator Gracchus_, [30] among the Latin critics, and similar ones from Plutarch and Dio among the Greeks, attest the main character of his eloquence. His very outward form paralleled the restlessness of his soul. He moved up and down, bared his arm, stamped violently, made fierce gestures of defiance, and acted through real emotion as the trained rhetoricians of a later age strove to act by rules of art. His accusation of Piso is said to have contained more maledictions than charges; and we can believe that a temperament so fervid, when once it gave the reins to passion, lost all self-command. It is possible we might think less highly of Gracchus’s eloquence than did the ancients, if his speeches remained. Their lack of finish and repose may have been unnoticed by critics who could hurl themselves in thought not merely into the feeling but the very place which he occupied; but to moderns, whose sympathy with a state of things so opposite must needs be imperfect, it is possible that their power might not have compensated for the absence of relief. Important fragments from the speech _apud Censores_ (124 B.C.), from that _de legibus a se promulgatis_ (123 B.C.), and from that _de Mithridate_ (123 B.C.), are given and commented on by Wordsworth.
Among the friends and opponents of the Gracchi were many orators whose names are given by Cicero with the minute care of a sympathising historian; but as few, if any, remains of their speeches exist, it can serve no purpose to recount the list. Three celebrated names may be mentioned as filling up the interval between C. Gracchus and M. Antonius. The first of these is AEMILIUS SCAURUS (163-90? B.C.), the haughty chief of the senate, the unscrupulous leader of the oligarchical party. His oratory is described by Cicero [31] as conspicuous for dignity and a natural but irresistible air of command; so that when he spoke for a defendant, he seemed like one who gave his testimony rather than one who pleaded. This want of flexibility unfitted him for success at the bar; accordingly, we do not find that he was much esteemed as a patron; but for summing up the debates at the Senate, or delivering an opinion on a great public question, none could be more impressive. Speeches of his were extant in Cicero’s time; also an autobiography, which, like Caesar’s _Commentaries_, was intended to put his conduct in the most favourable light; these, however, were little read. Scaurus lived to posterity, not in his writings, but in his example of stern constancy to a cause. [32]
A man in many ways resembling him but of purer conduct, was RUTILIUS (158- 78 B.C.), who is said by Cicero to have been a splendid example of many- sided culture. He was a scholar, a philosopher, a jurist of high repute, a historian, and an orator, though the severity of the Stoic sect, to which he adhered, prevented his striving after oratorical excellence. His impeachment for malversation in Asia, and unjust condemnation to banishment, reflect strongly on the formation of the Roman law-courts. His pride, however, was in part the cause of his exile. For had he chosen to employ Antonius or Crassus to defend him, an acquittal would at least have been possible; but conscious of rectitude, he refused any patron, and relied on his own dry and jejune oratory, and such assistance as his young friend Cotta could give. Sulla recalled him from Smyrna, whither he had repaired after his condemnation; but Rutilius refused to return to the city which had unjustly expelled him.
Among the other aristocratic leaders, CATULUS, the “noble colleague” of Marius [33] (cons. 102), must be mentioned. He was not a Stoic, and therefore was free to chose a more ornamental method of speaking than Rutilius. Cicero, with the partiality of a senatorial advocate, gives him very high praise. “He was educated not in the old rough style, but in that of our own day, or something more finished and elegant still. He had a wide acquaintance with literature, the highest courtesy of life and manners as well as of discourse, and a pure stream of genuine Latin eloquence. This is conspicuous in all his works, but most of all, in his autobiography, written to the poet A. Furius, in a style full of soft grace recalling that of Xenophon, but now, unhappily, little, if at all, read. In pleading he was successful but not eminent. When heard alone, he seemed excellent, but when contrasted with a greater rival, his faults at once appeared.” His chief virtue seems to have been the purity of his Latin idiom. He neither copied Greek constructions nor affected archaisms, as Rutilius Scaurus, Cotta, and so many others in his own time, and Sallust, Lucretius, and Varro in a later age. [34] The absence of any recognised standard of classical diction made it more difficult than at first appears for an orator to fix on the right medium between affectation and colloquialism.
The era inaugurated by the Gracchi was in the highest degree favourable to eloquence. The disordered state of the Republic, in which party-spirit had banished patriotism and was itself surrendering to armed violence, called for a style of speaking commensurate with the turbulence of public life. Never in the world’s history has fierce passion found such exponents in so great a sphere. It is not only the vehemence of their language–that may have been paralleled elsewhere–it is the _reality_ of it that impresses us. The words that denounced an enemy were not idly flung into the forum; they fell among those who had the power and the will to act upon them. He who sent them forth must expect them to ruin either his antagonist or himself. Each man chose his side, with the daggers of the other party before his face. His eloquence, like his sword, was a weapon for life and death. Only in the French Revolution have oratory and assassination thus gone hand in hand. Demosthenes could lash the Athenians into enthusiasm so great that in delight at his eloquence they forgot his advice. “I want you,” he said, “not to applaud me, but to march against Philip.” [35] There was no danger of the Roman people forgetting action in applause. They rejoiced to hear the orator, but it was that he might impel them to tumultuous activity; he was caterer not for the satisfaction of their ears, but for the employment of their hands. Thus he paid a heavy price for eminence. Few of Rome’s greatest orators died in their beds. Carbo put an end to his own life; the two Gracchi, Antonius, Drusus, Cicero himself, perished by the assassin’s hand; Crassus was delivered by sudden illness from the same fate. It is not wonderful if with the sword hanging over their heads, Roman orators attain to a vehemence beyond example in other nations. The charm that danger lends to daring is nowhere better shown than in the case of Cicero. Timid by nature, he not only in his speeches hazarded his life, but even when the dagger of Antony was waiting for him, he could not bring himself to flee. With the civil war, however, eloquence was for a time suppressed. Neither argument nor menace could make head against the furious brutality of Marius, or the colder butcheries of Sulla. But the intervening period produced two of the greatest speakers Rome ever saw, both of whom Cicero places at the very summit of their art, between whom he professes himself unable to decide, and about whom he gives the most authentic and copious account. These were the advocates M. ANTONIUS (143-87 B.C.) and M. LICINIUS CRASSUS (140-91 B.C.).
Both of them spoke in the senate and assembly as well as in the courts; and Crassus was perhaps a better political than forensic orator. Nevertheless the criticism of Cicero, from which we gain our chief knowledge, is mainly directed to their forensic qualifications; and it is probable that at the period at which they flourished, the law-courts offered the fullest combination of advantages for bringing out all the merits of a speaker. For the comitia were moved solely by passion or interest; the senate was swayed by party considerations, and was little touched by argument; whereas the courts offered just enough necessity for exact reasoning without at all resisting appeals to popular passion. Of the two kinds of _judicia_ at Rome, the civil cases were little sought after; the public criminal trials being those which the great _patroni_ delighted to undertake. A few words may not be out of place here on the general division of cases, and the jurisdiction of the magistrates, senate, and people, as it is necessary to understand these in order to appreciate the special kind of oratory they developed.
There had been, previously to this period, two praetors in Rome, the _Praetor Urbanus_, who adjudged cases between citizens in accordance with civil law, and the _Praetor Peregrinus_, who presided whenever a foreigner or alien was concerned, and judged according to the principles of natural law. Afterwards six praetors were appointed; and in the time of Antonius they judged not only civil but criminal cases, except those concerning the life of a citizen or the welfare of the state, which the people reserved for themselves. It must be remembered that the supreme judicial power was vested in the sovereign people in their comitia; that they delegated it in public matters to the senate, and in general legal cases to the praetor’s court, but that in every capital charge a final appeal to them remained. The praetors at an early date handed over their authority to other judges, chosen either from the citizens at large, or from the body of _Judices Selecti_, who were renewed every year. These subsidiary judges might consist of a single _arbiter_, of small boards of three, seven, or ten, &c., or of a larger body called the _Centum viri_, chosen from the thirty- five tribes, who sat all the year, the others being only appointed for the special case. But over their decisions the praetor exercised a superior supervision, and he could annul them on appeal. The authorities on which the praetor based his practice were those of the Twelve Tables and the custom-law; but he had besides this a kind of legislative prerogative of his own. For on coming into office he had to issue an edict, called _edictum perpetuum_, [36] specifying the principles he intended to guide him in any new cases that might arise. If these were merely a continuation of those of his predecessor, his edict was called _tralaticium_, or “handed on.” But more often they were of an independent character, the result of his knowledge or his prejudices; and too often he departed widely from them in the course of his year of office. It was not until after the time of Crassus and Antonius that a law was passed enforcing consistency in this respect (67 B.C.). Thus it was inevitable that great looseness should prevail in the application of legal principles, from the great variety of supplementary codes (edicta), and the instability of case-law. Moreover, the praetor was seldom a veteran lawyer, but generally a man of moderate experience and ambitious views, who used the praetorship merely as a stepping-stone to the higher offices of state. Hence it was by no means certain that he would be able to appreciate a complicated technical argument, and as a matter of fact the more popular advocates rarely troubled themselves to advance one.
Praetors also generally presided over capital trials, of which the proper jurisdiction lay with the comitia. In Sulla’s time their number was increased to ten, and each was chairman of the _quaestio_ which sat on one of the ten chief crimes, extortion, peculation, bribery, treason, coining, forgery, assassination or poisoning, and violence. [37] As assessors he had the _quaesitor_ or chief juror, and a certain number of the _Judices Selecti_ of whom some account has been already given. The prosecutor and defendant had the right of objecting to any member of the list. If more than one accuser offered, it was decided which should act at a preliminary trial called _Divinatio_. Owing to the desire to win fame by accusations, this occurrence was not unfrequent.
When the day of the trial arrived the prosecutor first spoke, explaining the case and bringing in the evidence. This consisted of the testimony of free citizens voluntarily given; of slaves, wrung from them by torture; and of written documents. The best advocates, as for instance Cicero in his _Milo_, were not disposed, any more than we should be, to attach much weight to evidence obtained by the rack; but in estimating the other two sources they differed from us. We should give the preference to written documents; the Romans esteemed more highly the declarations of citizens. These offered a grander field for the display of ingenuity and misrepresentation; it is, therefore, in handling these that the celebrated advocates put forth all their skill. The examination of evidence over, the prosecutor put forth his case in a long and elaborate speech; and the accused was then allowed to defend himself. Both were, as a rule, limited in point of time, and sometimes to a period which to us would seem quite inconsistent with justice to the case. Instead of the strict probity and perfect independence which we associate with the highest ministers of the law, the Roman judices were often canvassed, bribed, or intimidated. So flagitious had the practice become, that Cicero mentions a whole bench having been induced by indulgences of the most abominable kind to acquit Clodius, though manifestly guilty. We know also that Pompey and Antony resorted to the practice of packing the forum with hired troops and assassins; and we learn from Cicero that it was the usual plan for provincial governors to extort enough not only to satisfy their own rapacity, but to buy their impunity from the judges. [38]
Under circumstances like these we cannot wonder if strict law was little attended to, and the moral principles that underlay it still less. The chief object was to inflame the prejudices or anger of the jurors; or, still more, to excite their compassion, to serve one’s party, or to acquire favour with the leading citizen. For example, it was a rule that men of the same political views should appear on the same side. Cicero and Hortensius, though often opposed, still retained friendly feelings for each other; but when Cicero went over to the senatorial party, the last bar to free intercourse with his rival was removed, since henceforward they were always retained together.
With regard to moving the pity of the judges, many instances of its success are related both in Greece and Rome. The best are those of Galba and Piso, both notorious culprits, but both acquitted; the one for bringing forward his young children, the other for prostrating himself in a shower of rain to kiss the judges’ feet and rising up with a countenance bedaubed with mud! Facts like these, and they are innumerable, compel us to believe that the reverence for justice as a sacred thing, so inbred in Christian civilization, was foreign to the people of Rome. It is a gloomy spectacle to see a mighty nation deliberately giving the rein to passion and excitement heedless of the miscarriage of justice. The celebrated law, re-enacted by Gracchus, “That no citizen should be condemned to death without the consent of the people,” banished justice from the sphere of reason to that of emotion or caprice. As progress widens emotion necessarily contracts its sphere; the pure light of reason raises her beacon on high. When Antonius, the most successful of advocates, declared that his success was due not to legal knowledge, of which he was destitute, but to his making the judges pleased, first with themselves and then with himself, we may appreciate his honesty; but we gladly acknowledge a state of things as past and gone in which he could wind up an accusation [39] with these words, “If it ever was excusable for the Roman people to give the reins to their just excitement, as without doubt it often has been, there has no case existed in which it was more excusable than now.”
Cicero regards the advent of these two men, M. Antonius and Crassus, as analogous to that of Demosthenes and Hyperides at Athens. They first raised Latin eloquence to a height that rivalled that of Greece. But though their merits were so evenly balanced that it was impossible to decide between them, their excellencies were by no means the same. It is evident that Cicero preferred Crassus, for he assigns him the chief place in his dialogue _de Oratore_, and makes him the vehicle of his own views. Moreover, he was a man of much more varied knowledge than Antonius. An opinion prevailed in Cicero’s day that neither of them was familiar with Greek literature. This, however, was a mistake. Both were well read in it. But Antonius desired to be thought ignorant of it; hence he never brought it forward in his speeches. Crassus did not disdain the reputation of a proficient, but he wished to be regarded as despising it. These relics of old Roman narrowness, assumed whether from conviction or, more probably, to please the people, are remarkable at an epoch so comparatively cultured. They show, if proof were wanted, how completely the appearance of Cicero marks a new period in literature, for he is as anxious to popularise his knowledge of Greek letters as his predecessors had been to hide theirs. The advantages of Antony were chiefly native and personal; those of Crassus acquired and artificial. Antony had a ready wit, an impetuous flow of words, not always the best, but good enough for the purpose, a presence of mind and fertility of invention that nothing could quench, a noble person, a wonderful memory, and a sonorous voice the very defects of which he turned to his advantage; he never refused a case; he seized the bearings of each with facility, and espoused it with zeal; he knew from long practice all the arts of persuasion, and was an adept in the use of them; in a word, he was thoroughly and genuinely popular.
Crassus was grave and dignified, excellent in interpretation, definition, and equitable construction, so learned in law as to be called the best lawyer among the orators; [40] and yet with all this grace and erudition, he joined a sparkling humour which was always lively, never commonplace, and whose brilliant sallies no misfortune could check. His first speech was an accusation of the renegade democrat Carbo; his last, which was also his best, was an assertion of the privileges of his order against the over-bearing insolence of the consul Philippus. The consul, stung to fury by the sarcasm of the speaker, bade his lictor seize his pledges as a senator. This insult roused Crassus to a supreme effort. His words are preserved by Cicero [41]–“an tu, quum omnem auctoritatem universi ordinis pro pignore putaris, eamque in conspectu populi Romani concideris, me his existimas pignoribus posse terreri? Non tibi illa sunt caedenda, si Crassum vis coercere; haec tibi est incidenda lingua; qua vel evulsa, spiritu ipso libidinem tuam libertas mea refutabit.” This noble retort, spoken amid bodily pain and weakness, brought on a fever which within a week brought him to the grave (91 B.C.), as Cicero says, by no means prematurely, for he was thus preserved from the horrors that followed. Antonius lived for some years longer. It was under the tyrannical rule of Marius and Cinna that he met his end. Having found, through the indiscretion of a slave, that he was in hiding, they sent hired assassins to murder him. The men entered the chamber where the great orator lay, and prepared to do their bloody work, but he addressed them in terms of such pathetic eloquence that they turned back, melted with pity, and declared they could not kill Antonius. Their leader then came in, and, less accessible to emotion than his men, cut off Antonius’ head and carried it to Marius. It was nailed to the rostra, “exposed,” says Cicero, “to the gaze of those citizens whose interests he had so often defended.”
After the death of these two great leaders, there appear two inferior men who faintly reflect their special excellences. These are C. AURELIUS COTTA (consul 75 B.C.) an imitator of Antonius, though without any of his fire, and P. SULPICIUS RUFUS (fl. 121-88 B.C.) a bold and vigorous speaker, who tried, without success, to reproduce the high-bred wit of Crassus. He was, according to Cicero, [42] the most _tragic_ of orators. His personal gifts were remarkable, his presence commanding, his voice rich and varied. His fault was want of application. The ease with which he spoke made him dislike the labour of preparation, and shun altogether that of written composition. Cotta was exactly the opposite of Sulpicius. His weak health, a rare thing among the Romans of his day, compelled him to practise a soft sedate method of speech, persuasive rather than commanding. In this he was excellent, but that his popularity was due chiefly to want of competitors is shown by the suddenness of his eclipse on the first appearance of Hortensius. The gentle courteous character of Cotta is well brought out in Cicero’s dialogue on oratory, where his remarks are contrasted with the mature but distinct views of Crassus and Antonius, with the conservative grace of Catulus, and the masculine but less dignified elegance of Caesar.
Another speaker of this epoch is CARRO, son of the Carbo already mentioned, an adherent of the senatorial party, and opponent of the celebrated Livius Drusus. On the death of Drusus he delivered an oration in the assembly, the concluding words of which are preserved by Cicero, as an instance of the effectiveness of the trochaic rhythm. They were received with a storm of applause, as indeed their elevation justly merits. [43] “_O Marce Druse, patrem appello; tu dicere solebas sacram esse rempublicam; quicunque eam violavissent, ab omnibus esse ei poenas persolatas. Patris dictum sapiens temeritas filii comprobavit._” In this grand sentence sounds the very voice of Rome; the stern patriotism, the reverence for the words of a father, the communion of the living with their dead ancestors. We cannot wonder at the fondness with which Cicero lingers over these ancient orators; while fully acknowledging his own superiority, how he draws out their beauties, each from its crude environment; how he shows them to be deficient indeed in cultivation and learning, but to ring true to the old tradition of the state, and for that very reason to speak with a power, a persuasiveness, and a charm, which all the rules of polished art could never hope to attain.
In the concluding passage of the _De Oratore_ Catulus says he wishes HORTENSIUS (114-50 B.C.) could have taken part in the debate, as he gave promise of excelling in all the qualifications that had been specified. Crassus replies–“He not only gives promise of being, but is already one of the first of orators. I thought so when I heard him defend the cause of the Africans during the year of my consulship, and I thought so still more strongly when, but a short while ago, he spoke on behalf of the king of Bithynia.” This is supposed to have been said in 91 B.C., the year of Crassus’s death, four years after the first appearance of Hortensius. This brilliant orator, who at the age of nineteen spoke before Crassus and Scaevola and gained their unqualified approval, and who, after the death of Antonius, rose at once into the position of leader of the Roman bar, was as remarkable for his natural as for his acquired endowments. Eight years senior to Cicero, “prince of the courts” [44] when Cicero began public life, for some time his rival and antagonist, but afterwards his illustrious though admittedly inferior coadjutor, and towards the close of both of their lives, his intimate and valued friend; Hortensius is one of the few men in whom success did not banish enjoyment, and displacement by a rival did not turn to bitterness. Without presenting the highest virtue, his career of forty-four years is nevertheless a pleasant and instructive one. It showed consistency, independence, and honour; he never changed sides, he never flattered the great, he never acquired wealth unjustly. In these points he may be contrasted with Cicero. But on the other hand, he was inactive, luxurious, and effeminate; not like Cicero, fighting to the last, but retiring from public life as soon as he saw the domination of Pompey or Caesar to be inevitable; not even in his professional labours showing a strong ambition, but yielding with epicurean indolence the palm of superiority to his young rival; still less in his home life and leisure moments pursuing like Cicero his self-culture to develop his own nature and enrich the minds and literature of his countrymen, but regaling himself at luxurious banquets in sumptuous villas, decked with everything that could delight the eye or charm the fancy; preserving herds of deer, wild swine, game of all sorts for field and feast; stocking vast lakes with rare and delicate fish, to which this brilliant epicure was so attached that on the death of a favourite lamprey he shed tears; buying the costliest of pictures, statues, and embossed works; and furnishing a cellar which yielded to his unworthy heir 10,000 casks of choice Chian wine. When we read the pursuits in which Hortensius spent his time, we cannot wonder that he was soon overshadowed; the stuff of the Roman was lacking in him, and great as were his talents, even they, as Cicero justly remarks, were not calculated to insure a mature or lasting fame. They lay in the lower sphere of genius rather than the higher; in a bright expression, a deportment graceful to such a point that the greatest actors studied from him as he spoke; in a voice clear, mellow, and persuasive; in a memory so prodigious that once after being present at an auction and challenged to repeat the list of sale, he recited the entire catalogue without hesitation, like the sailor the points of his compass, backwards. As a consequence he was never at a loss. Everything suggested itself at the right moment, giving him no anxiety that might spoil the ease of his manner and his matchless confidence; and if to all this we add a copiousness of expression and rich splendour of language exceeding all that had ever been heard in Rome, the encomiums so freely lavished on him by Cicero both in speeches and treatises, hardly seem exaggerated.
There are few things pleasanter in the history of literature than the friendship of these two great men, untinctured, at least on Hortensius’s part, by any drop of jealousy; and on Cicero’s, though now and then overcast by unworthy suspicions, yet asserted afterwards with a warm generosity and manly confession of his weakness which left nothing to be desired. Though there were but eight years between them, Hortensius must be held to belong to the older period, since Cicero’s advent constitutes an era.
The chief events in the life of Hortensius are as follows. He served two campaigns in the Social War (91 B.C.), but soon after gave up military life, and took no part in the civil struggles that followed. His ascendancy in the courts dates from 83 B.C. and continued till 70 B.C. when Cicero dethroned him by the prosecution of Verres. Hortensius was consul the following year, and afterwards we find him appearing as advocate on the senatorial side against the self-styled champions of the people, whose cause at that time Cicero espoused (_e.g._ in the Gabinian and Manilian laws). When Cicero, after his consulship (63 B.C.), went over to the aristocratic party, he and Hortensius appeared regularly on the same side, Hortensius conceding to him the privilege of speaking last, thus confessing his own inferiority. The party character of great criminal trials has already been alluded to, and is an important element in the consideration of them. A master of eloquence speaking for a senatorial defendant before a jury of equites, might hope, but hardly expect, an acquittal; and a senatorial orator, pleading before jurymen of his own order needed not to exercise the highest art in order to secure a favourable hearing. It has been suggested [45] that his fame is in part due to the circumstance, fortunate for him, that he had to address the courts as reorganised by Sulla. The coalition of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus (60 B.C.), sometimes called the _first Triumvirate_, showed plainly that the state was near collapse; and Hortensius, despairing of its restitution, retired from public life, confining himself to the duties of an advocate, and more and more addicting himself to refined pleasures. The only blot on his character is his unscrupulousness in dealing with the judges. Cicero accuses him [46] of bribing them on one occasion, and the fact that he was not contradicted, though his rival was present, makes the accusation more than probable. The fame of Hortensius waned not only through Cicero’s superior lustre, but also because of his own lack of sustained effort. The peculiar style of his oratory is from this point of view so ably criticised by Cicero that, having no remains of Hortensius to judge by, we translate some of his remarks. [47]
“If we inquire why Hortensius obtained more celebrity in his youth than in his mature age, we shall find there are two good reasons. First because his style of oratory was the Asiatic, which is more becoming to youth than to age. Of this style there are two divisions; the one sententious and witty, the sentiments neatly turned and graceful rather than grave or sedate: an example of this in history is Timaeus; in oratory during my own boyhood there was Hierocles of Alabanda, and still more his brother Menecles, both whose speeches are, considering their style, worthy of the highest praise. The other division does not aim at a frequent use of pithy sentiment, but at rapidity and rush of expression; this now prevails throughout Asia, and is characterised not only by a stream of eloquence but by a graceful and ornate vocabulary: Aeschylus of Cnidos, and my own contemporary Aeschines the Milesian, are examples of it. They possess a fine flow of speech, but they lack precision and grace of sentiment. Both these classes of oratory suit young men well, but in older persons they show a want of dignity. Hence Hortensius, who excelled in both, obtained as a young man the most tumultuous applause. For he possessed that strong leaning for polished and condensed maxims which Menecles displayed; as with whom, so with Hortensius, some of these maxims were more remarkable for sweetness and grace than for aptness and indispensable use; and so his speech, though highly strung and impassioned without losing finish or smoothness, was nevertheless not approved by the older critics. I have seen Philippus hide a smile, or at other times look angry or annoyed; but the youths were lost in admiration, and the multitude was deeply moved. At that time he was in popular estimation almost perfect, and held the first place without dispute. For though his oratory lacked authority, it was thought suitable to his age; but when his position as a consular and a senator demanded a weightier style, he still adhered to the same; and having given up his former unremitting study and practice, retained only the neat concise sentiments, but lost the rich adornment with which in old times he had been wont to clothe his thoughts.”
The _Asiatic_ style to which Cicero here alludes, was affected, as its name implies, by the rhetoricians of Asia Minor, and is generally distinguished from the _Attic_ by its greater profusion of verbal ornament, its more liberal use of tropes, antithesis, figures, &c. and, generally, by its inanity of thought. Rhodes, which had been so well able to appreciate the eloquence of Aeschines and Demosthenes, first opened a crusade against this false taste, and Cicero (who himself studied at Rhodes as well as Athens) brought about a similar return to purer models at Rome. The Asiatic style represents a permanent type of oratorical effort, the desire to use word-painting instead of life-painting, turgidity instead of vigour, allusiveness instead of directness, point instead of wit, frigid inflation instead of real passion. It borrows poetical effects, and heightens the colour without deepening the shade. In Greece Aeschines shows some traces of an Asiatic tendency as contrasted with the soberer self-restraint of Demosthenes. In Rome Hortensius, as contrasted with Cicero, and even Cicero himself, according to some critics, as contrasted with Brutus and Calvus,–though this charge is hardly well-founded,–in France Bossuet, in England Burke, have leaned towards the same fault.
We have now traced the history of Roman Oratory to the time of Cicero, and we have seen that it produces names of real eminence, not merely in the history of Rome, but in that of humanity. The loss to us of the speeches of such orators as Cato, Gracchus, Antonius, and Crassus is incalculable; did we possess them we should be able form a truer estimate of Roman genius than if we possessed the entire works of Ennius, Pacuvius, or Attius. For the great men who wielded this tremendous weapon were all burgesses of Rome, they had all the good and all the bad qualities which that name suggests, many of them in an extraordinary degree. They are all the precursors, models, or rivals of Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators; and in them the true structure of the language as well as the mind of Rome would have been fully, though unconsciously, revealed. If the literature of a country be taken as the expression in the field of thought of the national character as pourtrayed in action, this group of orators would be considered the most genuine representative of Roman literature. The permanent contributions to human thought would indeed have been few: neither in eloquence nor in any other domain did Rome prove herself creative, but in eloquence she at least showed herself beyond expression masculine and vigorous. The supreme interest of her history, the massive characters of the men that wrought it, would here have shown themselves in the working; men whose natures are a riddle to us, would have stood out, judged by their own testimony, clear as statues; and we should not have had so often to pin our faith on the biassed views of party, or the uncritical panegyrics of school-bred professors or courtly rhetoricians. The next period shows us the culmination, the short bloom, and the sudden fall of national eloquence, when with the death of Cicero the “Latin tongue was silent,” [48] and as he himself says, _clamatores_ not _oratores_ were left to succeed him.
CHAPTER XI.
OTHER KINDS OF PROSE LITERATURE, GRAMMAR, RHETORIC, AND PHILOSOPHY (147-63 B.C.).
Great literary activity of all kinds was, after the third Punic war, liable to continual interruption from political struggles or revolutions. But between each two periods of disturbance there was generally an interval in which philosophy, law, and rhetoric were carefully studied. As, however, no work of this period has come down to us except the treatise to Herennius, our notice of it will be proportionately general and brief. We shall touch on the principal studies in order. First in time as in importance comes Law, the earliest great representative of which is P. MUCIUS SCAEVOLA, consul in 133 B.C. but better known as Pontifex Maximus. In this latter office, which he held for several years, Mucius did good service to literature. He united a high technical training with a liberal mind, and superintended the publication of the _Annales Pontificum_ from the earliest period to his own date. This was a great boon to historians. He gave another to jurists. His _responsa_ were celebrated for their insight into the principles of Law, and for the minute knowledge they displayed. He was conscientious enough to study the law of every case before he undertook to plead it, a practice which, however commendable, was rare even with advocates of the highest fame, as, for example, M. Antonius.
The jurisconsult of this period used to offer his services without payment to any who chose to consult him. At first he appeared in the forum, but as his fame and the number of applicants increased, he remained at home and received all day. His replies were always oral, but when written down were considered as authoritative, and often quoted by the orators. In return for this laborious occupation, he expected the support of his clients in his candidature for the offices of state. An anecdote is preserved of C. Figulus, a jurisconsult, who, not having been successful for the consulship, addressed his _consultores_ thus, “You know how to _consult_ me, but not (it seems) how to make me _consul_.” [1] In addition to the parties in a suit, advocates in other causes often came to a great jurisconsult to be _coached_ in the law of their case. For instance, Antonius, who, though a ready speaker, had no knowledge of jurisprudence, often went to Scaevola for this purpose. Moreover there were always one or two regular pupils who accompanied the jurisconsult, attended carefully to his words, and committed them assiduously to memory or writing. Cicero himself did this for the younger Scaevola, and thus laid the foundation of that clear grasp on the civil law which was so great a help to him in his more difficult speeches. It was not necessary that the pupil should himself intend to become a _consultus_; it was enough that he desired to acquire the knowledge for public purposes, although, of course, it required great interest to procure for a young man so high a privilege. Cicero was introduced to Scaevola by the orator Crassus. The family of the Mucii, as noticed by Cicero, were traditionally distinguished by their legal knowledge, as that of the Appii Claudii were by eloquence. The Augur Q. MUCIUS SCAEVOLA who comes midway between Publius and his son Quintus was somewhat less celebrated than either, but he was nevertheless a man of eminence. He died probably in 87 B.C., and Cicero mentions that it was in consequence of this event that he himself became a pupil of his nephew. [2]
The great importance of Religious Law must not be forgotten in estimating the acquirements of these men. Though to us the _Jus Augurale_ and _Jus Pontificium_ are of small interest compared with the _Jus Civile_; yet to the Romans of 120 B.C., and especially to an old and strictly aristocratic family, they had all the attraction of exclusiveness and immemorial authority. In all countries religious law exercises at first a sway far in excess of its proper province, and Rome was no exception to the rule. The publication of civil law is an era in civilization. Just as the chancellorship and primacy of England were often in the hands of one person and that an ecclesiastic, so in Rome the pontifices had at first the making of almost all law. What a canonist was to Mediaeval Europe, a pontifex was to senatorial Rome. In the time of which we are now speaking (133-63 B.C.), the secular law had fully asserted its supremacy on its own ground, and it was the dignity and influence, not the power of the post, that made the pontificate so great an object of ambition, and so inaccessible to upstart candidates. Even for Cicero to obtain a seat in the college of augurs was no easy task, although he had already won his way to the consulship and been hailed as the saviour of his country.
The younger Scaevola (Q. MUCIUS SCAEVOLA), who had been his father’s pupil, [3] and was the most eloquent of the three, was born about 135 B.C., was consul 95 with Licinius Crassus for his colleague, and afterwards Pontifex Maximus. He was an accomplished Greek scholar, a man of commanding eloquence, deeply versed in the Stoic philosophy, and of the highest nobility of character. As Long well says, “He is one of those illustrious men whose fame is not preserved by his writings, but in the more enduring monument of the memory of all nations to whom the language of Rome is known.” His chief work, which was long extant, and is highly praised by Cicero, was a digest of the civil law. Rudorff says of it, [4] “For the first time we meet here with a comprehensive, uniform, and methodical system, in the place of the old interpretation of laws and casuistry, of legal opinions and prejudices.” Immediately on its publication it acquired great authority, and was commented upon within a few years of the death of its author. It is quoted in the Digest, and is the earliest work to which reference is there made. [5] He was especially clear in definitions and distinctions, [6] and the grace with which he invested a dry subject made him deservedly popular. Though so profound a lawyer, he was quite free from the offensive stamp of the mere professional man. His urbanity, unstained integrity, and high position, fitted him to exercise a widespread influence. He had among his hearers Cicero, as we have already seen, and among jurists proper, Aquillius Gallus, Balbus Lucilius, and others, who all attained to eminence. His virtue was such that his name became proverbial for probity as for legal eminence. In Horace he is coupled with Gracchus as the ideal of a lawyer, as the other of an orator.
“Gracchus ut hic illi foret, huic ut Mucius ille.” [7]
The great oratorical activity of this age produced a corresponding interest in the theory of eloquence. We have seen that many of the orators received lessons from Greek rhetoricians. We have seen also the deep attraction which rhetoric possessed over the Roman mind. It was, so to speak, the form of thought in which their intellectual creations were almost all cast. Such a maxim as that attributed to Scaevola, _Fiat iustitia: ruat caelum_, is not legal but rhetorical. The plays of Attius owed much of their success to the ability with which statement was pitted against counter-statement, plea against plea. The philosophic works of Cicero are coloured with rhetoric. Cases are advanced, refuted, or summed up, with a view to presentability (_veri simile_), not abstract truth. The history of Livy, the epic of Virgil, are eminently rhetorical. A Roman when not fighting was pleading. It was, then, important that he should he well grounded in the art. Greek rhetoricians, in spite of Cato’s opposition, had been steadily making way, and increasing the number of their pupils; but it was not until about 93 B.C. that PLOTIUS GALLUS taught the principles of Rhetoric in Latin. Quintilian says, [8] “_Latinos dicendi praeceptores extremis L. Crassi temporibus coepisse Cicero auctor est: quorum insignis maxime Plotius fuit._” He was the first of that long list of writers who expended wit, learning, and industry, in giving precepts of a mechanical character to produce what is unproduceable, namely, a successful style of speaking. Their treatises are interesting, for they show on the one hand the severe technical application which the Romans were always willing to bestow in order to imitate the Greeks; and on the other, the complex demands of Latin rhetoric as contrasted with the simpler and more natural style of modern times.
The most important work on the subject is the treatise dedicated to Herennius (80 B.C.), written probably in the time of Sulla, and for a long time reckoned among Cicero’s works. The reason for this confusion is twofold. First, the anonymous character of the work; and, secondly, the frequent imitations of it by Cicero in his _De Inventione_, an incomplete essay written when he was a young man. Who the author was is not agreed; the balance of probability is in favour of CORNIFICIUS. Kayser [9] points out several coincidences between Cornificius’s views, as quoted by Quintilian, and the rhetorical treatise to Herennius. The author, whoever he may be, was an accomplished man, and, while a warm admirer of Greek eloquence, by no means disposed to concede the inferiority of his own countrymen. His criticism upon the _inanitas_ [10] of the Greek manuals is thoroughly just. They were simply guides to an elegant accomplishment, and had no bearing on real life. It was quite different with the Roman manuals. These were intended to fit the reader for forensic contests, and, we cannot doubt, did materially help towards this result. It was only in the imperial epoch that empty ingenuity took the place of activity, and rhetoric sunk to the level of that of Greece. There is nothing calling for special remark in the contents of the book, though all is good. The chief points of interest in this subject will be discussed in a later chapter. The style is pure and copious, the Latin that finished idiom which is the finest vehicle for Roman thought, that spoken by the highest circles at the best period of the language.
The science of Grammar was now exciting much attention. The Stoic writers had formulated its main principles, and had assigned it a place in their system of general philosophy. It remained for the Roman students to apply the Greek treatment to their own language. Apparently, the earliest labours were of a desultory kind. The poet Lucilius treated many points of orthography, pronunciation, and the like; and he criticised inaccuracies of syntax or metre in the poets who had gone before him. A little later we find the same mine further worked. Quintilian observes that grammar began at Rome by the exegesis of classical authors. Octavius Lampadio led the van with a critical commentary on the _Punica_ of Naevius, and Q. Vargunteius soon after performed the same office for the annals of Ennius. The first scientific grammarian, was AELIUS STILO, a Roman knight (144-70 B.C.). His name was L. Aelius Praeconinus; he received the additional cognomen _Stilo_ from the facility with which he used his pen, especially in writing speeches for others to deliver. At the same time he was no orator, and Cicero implies that better men often used his compositions through mere laziness, and allowed them to pass as their own. [11] Cicero mentions in more than one place that he himself had been an admiring pupil of Aelius. And Lucilius addressed some of his satires to him, probably those on grammar,
“Has res ad te scriptas Luci misimus Aeli;”
so that he is a bond of connection between the two epochs. His learning was profound and varied. He dedicated his investigations to Varro, who speaks warmly of him, but mentions that his etymologies are often incorrect. He appears to have bestowed special care on Plautus, in which department he was followed by Varro, some of the results of whose criticism have been already given.
The impulse given by Stilo was rapidly extended. Grammar became a favourite study with the Romans, as indeed it was one for which they were eminently fitted. The perfection to which they carried the analysis of sentences and the practical rules for correct speech as well as the systematization of the accidence, has made their grammars a model for all modern school-works. It is only recently that a deeper scientific knowledge has reorganised the entire treatment, and substituted for superficial analogy the true basis of a common structure, not only between Greek and Latin, but among all the languages of the Indo-European class. Nevertheless, the Roman grammarians deserve great praise for their elaborate results in the sphere of correct writing. No defects of syntax perplex the reader of the classical authors. Imperfect and unpliable the language is, but never inexact. And though the meaning is often hard to settle, this is owing rather to the inadequacy of the material than the carelessness of the writer.
Side by side with rhetoric and grammar, Philosophy made its appearance at Rome. There was no importation from Greece to which a more determined resistance was made from the first by the national party. In the consulship of Strabo and Messala (162 B.C.) a decree was passed banishing philosophers and rhetoricians from Rome. Seven years later took place the embassy of the three leaders of the most celebrated schools of thought, Diogenes the Stoic, Critolaus the Peripatetic, and Carneades the New Academician. The subtilty and eloquence of these disputants rekindled the interest in philosophy which had been smothered, not quenched, by the vigorous measures of the senate. There were two reasons why an interest in these studies was dreaded. First, they tended to spread disbelief in the state religion, by which the ascendency of the oligarchy was in great measure maintained; secondly, they distracted men’s minds, and diverted them from that exclusive devotion to public life which the old _regime_ demanded. Nevertheless, some of the greatest nobles ardently espoused the cause of free thought. After the war with Perseus, and the detention of the Achaean hostages in Rome, many learned Greeks well versed in philosophical inquiries were brought into contact with their conquerors in a manner well calculated to promote mutual confidence. The most eminent of these was Polybius, who lived for years on terms of intimacy with Scipio and Laelius, and imparted to them his own wide views and varied knowledge. From them may be dated the real study of Philosophy at Rome. They both attained the highest renown in their lifetime and after their death for their philosophical eminence, [12] but apparently they left no philosophical writings. The spirit, however, in which they approached philosophy is eminently characteristic of their nation, and determined the lines in which philosophic activity afterwards moved.
In no department of thought is the difference between the Greek and Roman mind more clearly seen; in none was the form more completely borrowed, and the spirit more completely missed. The object of Greek philosophy had been the attainment of absolute truth. The long line of thinkers from Thales to Aristotle had approached philosophy in the belief that they could by it be enabled to understand the cause of all that is. This lofty anticipation pervades all their theories, and by its fruitful influence engenders that wondrous grasp and fertility of thought [13] which gives their speculations an undying value. It is true that in the later systems this consciousness is less strongly present. It struggles to maintain itself in stoicism and epicureanism against the rising claims of human happiness to be considered as the goal of philosophy. In the New Academy (which in the third century before Christ was converted to scepticism) and in the sceptical school, we see the first confession of incapacity to discover truth. Instead of certainties they offer probabilities sufficient to guide us through life; the only axiom which they assert as incontrovertible being the fact that we know nothing. Thus instead of proposing as the highest activity of man a life of speculative thought, they came to consider inactivity and impassibility [13] the chief attainable good. Their method of proof was a dialectic which strove to show the inconsistency or uncertainty of their opponent’s positions, but which did not and could not arrive at any constructive result. Philosophy (to use an ancient phrase) had fallen from the sphere of _knowledge_ to that of _opinion_. [15]
Of these _opinions_ there were three which from their definiteness were well calculated to lay hold on the Roman mind. The first was that of the Stoics, that virtue is the only good; the second that of the Epicureans, that pleasure is the end of man; the third that of the Academy, that nothing can be known. [16] These were by no means the only, far less the exclusive characteristics of each school; for in many ways they all strongly resembled each other, particularly stoicism and the New Academy; and in their definition of what should be the practical result of their principles all were substantially agreed. [17]
But what to the Greeks was a speculative principle to be drawn out by argument to its logical conclusions, to the Romans was a practical maxim to be realized in life. The Romans did not understand the love of abstract truth, or the charm of abstract reasoning employed for its own sake without any ulterior end. To profess the doctrines of stoicism, and live a life of self-indulgence, was to be false to one’s convictions; to embrace Epicurus’s system without making it subservient to enjoyment, was equally foreign to a consistent character. In Athens the daily life of an Epicurean and a Stoic would not present any marked difference; in discussion they would be widely divergent, but the contrast ended there. In Rome, on the contrary, it was the mode of life which made the chief distinction. Men who laboured for the state as jurists or senators, who were grave and studious, generally, if not always, adopted the tenets of Zeno; if they were orators, they naturally turned rather to the Academy, which offered that balancing of opinions so congenial to the tone of mind of an advocate. Among public men of the highest character, very few espoused Epicurus’s doctrines.
The mere assertion that pleasure was the _summum bonum_ for man was so repugnant to the old Roman views that it could hardly have been made the basis of a self-sacrificing political activity. Accordingly we find in the period before Cicero only men of the second rank representing epicurean views. AMAFINIUS is stated to have been the first who popularised them. [18] He wrote some years before Cicero, and from his lucid and simple treatment immediately obtained a wide circulation for his books. The multitude (says Cicero), hurried to adopt his precepts, [19] finding them easy to understand, and in harmony with their own inclinations. The second writer of mark seems to have been RABIRIUS. He also wrote on the physical theory of Epicurus in a superficial way. He neither divided his subject methodically, nor attempted exact definitions, and all his arguments were drawn from the world of visible things. In fact, his system seems to have been a crude and ordinary materialism, such as the vulgar are in all ages prone to, and beyond which their minds cannot go. The refined Catulus was also an adherent of epicureanism, though he also attached himself to the Academy. Among Greeks resident at Rome the best known teachers were Phaedrus and Zeno; a book by the former on the gods was largely used by Cicero in the first book of his _De Natura Deorum_. A little later Philodemus of Gadara, parts of whose writings are still extant, seems to have risen to the first place. In the time of Cicero this system obtained more disciples among the foremost men. Both statesmen and poets cultivated it, and gained it a legitimate place among the genuine philosophical creeds. [20]
Stoicism was far more congenial to the national character, and many great men professed it. Besides Laelius, who was a disciple of Diodes and Panactius, we have the names of Rutilius Rufus, Aelius Stilo, Balbus, and Scaevola. But during the tumultuous activity of these years it was not possible for men to cultivate philosophy with deep appreciation. Political struggles occupied their minds, and it was in their moments of relaxation only that the questions agitated by stoicism would he discussed. We must remember that as yet stoicism was one of several competing systems. Peripateticism and the Academy, as has been said, attracted the more sceptical or argumentative minds, for their dialectics were far superior to those of stoicism; it was in its moral grandeur that stoicism towered not only above these but above all other systems that have been invented, and the time for the full recognition of this moral grandeur had not yet come. At present men were occupied in discussing its logical quibbles and paradoxes, and in balancing its claims to cogency against those of its rivals. It was not until the significance of its central doctrine was tried to the uttermost by the dark tyranny of the Empire, that stoicism stood erect and alone as the sole representative of all that was good and great. Still, the fact that its chief professors were men of weight in the state, lent it a certain authority, and Cicero, among the few definite doctrines that he accepts, numbers that of stoicism that virtue is sufficient for happiness.
We shall close this chapter with one or two remarks on the relation of philosophy to the state religion. It must be observed that the formal and unpliable nature of the Roman cult made it quite unable to meet the requirements of advancing enlightenment. It was a superstition, not a religion; it admitted neither of allegoric interpretation nor of poetical idealisation. Hence there was no alternative but to believe or disbelieve it. There can be no doubt that all educated Romans did the latter. The whole machinery of ritual and ceremonies was used for purely political ends; it was no great step to regard it as having a purely political basis. To men with so slight a hold as this on the popular creed, the religion and philosophy of Greece were suddenly revealed. It was a spiritual no less than an intellectual revolution. Their views on the question of the unseen were profoundly changed. The simple but manly piety of the family religion, the regular ceremonial of the state, were confronted with the splendid hierarchy of the Greek Pantheon and the subtle questionings of Greek intellect. It is no wonder that Roman conviction was, so to speak, taken by storm. The popular faith received a shock from which it never rallied. Augustus and others restored the ancient ritual, but no edict could restore the lost belief. So deep had the poison penetrated that no sound place was left. With superstition they cast off all religion. For poetical or imaginative purposes the Greek deities under their Latin dress might suffice, but for a guide of life they were utterly powerless. The nobler minds therefore naturally turned to philosophy, and here they found, if not certainty, at least a reasonable explanation of the problems they encountered. Is the world governed by law? If so, is that law a moral one? If not, is the ruler chance? What is the origin of the gods? of man? of the soul? Questions like these could neither be resolved by the Roman nor by the Helleno-Roman systems of religion, but they were met and in a way answered by Greek philosophy. Hence it became usual for every thinking Roman to attach himself to the tenets of some sect, which ever best suited his own comprehension or prejudices. But this adhesion did not involve a rigid or exclusive devotion. Many were Eclectics, that is, adopted from various systems such elements as seemed to them most reasonable. For instance, Cicero was a Stoic more than anything else in his ethical theory, a New Academician in his logic, and in other respects a Platonist. But even he varied greatly at different times. There was, however, no combination among professors of the same sect with a view to practical work or dissemination of doctrines. Had such been attempted, it would at once have been put down by the state. But it never was. Philosophical beliefs of whatever kind did not in the least interfere with conformity to the state religion. One Scaevola was Pontifex Maximus, another was Augur; Cicero himself was Augur, so was Caesar. The two things were kept quite distinct. Philosophy did not influence political action in any way. It was simply a refuge for the mind, such as all thinking men must have, and which if not supplied by a true creed, will inevitably be sought in a false or imperfect one. And the noble doctrines professed by the great Greek schools were certainly far more worthy of the adhesion of such men as Scaevola and Laelius, than the worn-out cult which the popular ceremonial embodied.
BOOK II.
THE GOLDEN AGE.
FROM THE CONSULSHIP OF CICERO TO THE DEATH OF AUGUSTUS (63 B.C.-14 A.D.).
PART I.
THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD.
CHAPTER I.
VARRO.
The period embraced by the present book contains the culmination of all kinds of literature, the drama alone excepted. It falls naturally into two divisions, each marked by special and clearly-defined characteristics. The first begins with the recognition of Cicero as the chief man of letters at Rome, and ends with the battle of Philippi, a year after his death. It extends over a period of two and twenty years (about 63-42 B.C.), though many of Cicero’s orations are anterior, and some of Varro’s works posterior, to the extreme dates. In this period Latin prose writing attained its perfection. The storms which shook and finally overthrew the Republic turned the attention of all minds to political questions. Oratory and history were the prevailing forms of intellectual activity. It was not until the close of the period that philosophy was treated by Cicero during his compulsory absence from public life; and poetry rose once more into prominence in the works of Lucretius and Catullus. The chief characteristics of the literature of this period are freedom and vigour. In every author the bold spirit of the Republic breathes forth; and in the greatest is happily combined with an extensive and elegant scholarship, equally removed from pedantry and dullness.
The second division (42 B.C.-14 A.D.) begins shortly after the battle of Philippi, with the earliest poems of Varius and Virgil, and closes with the death of Augustus. It is pre-eminently an era of poets, Livy alone being a prose writer of the first rank, and is marked by all the characteristics of an imperial age. The transition from the last poems of Catullus to the first of Virgil is complete. Nevertheless, many republican authors lived on into this period, as Varro, Pollio, and Bibaculus. But their character and genius belong to the Republic, and, with the exception of Pollio, they will be noticed under the republican writers. The entire period represents the full maturity and perfection of the Latin language, and the epithet _classical_ is by many restricted to the authors who wrote in it. It is best, however, not to narrow unnecessarily the sphere of classicality; to exclude Terence on the one hand or Tacitus and Pliny on the other, would savour of artificial restriction rather than that of a natural classification.
The first writer that comes before us is M. TERENTIUS VARRO, 116-28 B.C. He is at once the earliest and the latest of the series. His birth took place ten years before that of Cicero, and his death fifteen years after Cicero’s murder, in the third year of the reign of Augustus. His long life was devoted almost entirely to study, and he became known even in his lifetime as the most learned of the Romans. This did not, however, prevent him from offering his services to the state when the state required them. He served more than once under Pompey, acquitting himself with distinction, so that in the civil war the important post of legatus was intrusted to him in company with Petreius and Afranius in Spain. But Varro felt from the first his inability to cope with his adversary. Caesar speaks of him as acting coolly in Pompey’s interest until the successes of Afranius at Ilerda roused him to more vigorous measures; but the triumph of the Pompeians was shortlived; and when Caesar convened the delegates at Corduba, Varro found himself shut out from all the fortified towns, and in danger of being deserted by his army. [1] He therefore surrendered at discretion, returned to Italy, and took no more part in public affairs. We hear of him occasionally in Cicero’s letters as studying in his country seats at Tusculum, Cumae, or Casinum, indifferent to politics, and preparing those great works of antiquarian research which have immortalised his name. Caesar’s victorious return brought him out of his retreat. He was placed over the library which Caesar built for public use, an appointment equally complimentary to Varro and honourable to Caesar. Antony, however, incapable of the generosity of his chief, placed Varro’s name on the list of the proscribed, at a time when the old man was over seventy years of age, and had long ceased to have any weight in politics. Nothing more clearly shows the abominable motives that swayed the triumvirs than this attempt to murder an aged and peaceful citizen for the sake of possessing his wealth. For Varro had the good or bad fortune to be extremely rich. His Casine villa, alluded to by Cicero, and partly described by himself, was sumptuously decorated, and his other estates were large and productive. The Casine villa was made the scene of Antony’s revelry; he and his fellow-rioters plundered the rooms, emptied the cellar, burned the library, and carried on every kind of debauchery and excess. Few passages in all eloquence are more telling than that in which Cicero with terrible power contrasts the conduct of the two successive occupants. [2] Varro, through the zeal of his friends, managed to escape Antony’s fury, and for a time lay concealed in the villa of Galenas, at which Antony was a frequent visitor, little suspecting that his enemy was within his grasp. An edict was soon issued, however, exempting the old man from the effect of the proscription, so that he was enabled to live in peace at Rome until his death. But deprived of his wealth (which Augustus afterwards restored), deprived of his friends, and above all, deprived of his library, he must have felt a deep shadow cast over his declining years. Nevertheless, he remained cheerful, and to all appearance contented, and charmed those who knew him by the vigour of his conversation and his varied antiquarian lore. He is never mentioned by any of the Augustan writers.
Varro belongs to the genuine type of old Roman, improved but not altered by Greek learning, with his heart fixed in the past, deeply conservative of everything national, and even in his style of speech protesting against the innovations of the day. If we reflect that when Varro wrote his treatise on husbandry, Virgil was at work on the _Georgics_, and then compare the diction of the two, it seems almost incredible that they should have been contemporaries. In all literature there is probably no such instance of rock-like impenetrability to fashion; for him Alexandria might never have existed. He recalls the age of Cato rather than that of Cicero. His versatility was as great as his industry. There was scarcely any department of prose or poetry, provided it was national, in which he did not excel. His early life well fitted him for severe application. Born at Reate, in the Sabine territory, which was the nurse of all manly virtues, [3] Varro, as he himself tells us, had to rough it as a boy; he went barefoot over the mountain side, rode without saddle or bridle, and wore but a single tunic. [4] Bold, frank, and sarcastic, he had all the qualities of the old-fashioned country gentleman. At Rome he became intimate with Aelius Stilo, whose opinion of his pupil is shown by the inscription of his grammatical treatise to him. Stilo’s mantle descended on Varro, but with sevenfold virtue. Not only grammar, by which term we must understand philology and etymology as well as syntax, but antiquities secular and religious, and almost all the liberal arts, were passed under review by his encyclopaedic mind.
At the same time lighter themes had strong attraction for him. He possessed in a high degree that racy and caustic wit which was a special Italian product, and had been conspicuous in Cato and Lucilius. But while Cato studied to be oracular, and Lucilius to be critical, Varro seems to have indulged his vein without any special object. Though by no means a born poet, he had the faculty of writing terse and elegant verse when he chose, and in his younger days composed a long list of metrical works. There were among them _Pseudotragoediae_, which Teuffel thinks were the same as the _Hilarotragoediae_, or _Rhinthonicae_, so called from their inventor Rhinthon; though others class them with the _Komodotragodiai_, of which Plautus’s _Amphitruo_ is the best known instance. However this may be, they were mock-heroic compositions in which the subjects consecrated by tragic usage were travestied or burlesqued. It is probable that they were mere literary exercises designed to beguile leisure or to facilitate the labour of composition, like the closet tragedies composed by Cicero and his brother Quintus; and Varro certainly owed none of his fame to them. Other poems of his are referred to by Cicero, and perhaps by Quintilian; [5] but in the absence of definite allusions we can hardly characterize them. There was one class of semi-poetical composition which Varro made peculiarly his own, the _Satura Menippea_, a medley of prose and verse, treating of all kinds of subjects just as they came to hand in the plebeian style, often with much grossness, but with sparkling point. Of these _Saturae_ he wrote no less than 150 books, of which fragments have been preserved amounting to near 600 lines. Menippus of Gadara, the originator of this style of composition, lived about 280 B.C.; he interspersed jocular and commonplace topics with moral maxims and philosophical doctrines, and may have added contemporary pictures, though this is uncertain.
Varro followed him; we find him in the _Academicae Quaestiones_ of Cicero, [6] saying that he adopted this method in the hope of enticing the unlearned to read something that might profit them. In these _saturae_ topics were handled with the greatest freedom. They were not satires in the modern sense. They are rather to be considered as lineal descendants of the old _saturae_ which existed before any regular literature. They nevertheless embodied with unmistakable clearness Varro’s sentiments with regard to the prevailing luxury, and combined his thorough knowledge of all that best befitted a Roman to know with a racy freshness which we miss in his later works. The titles of many are preserved, and give some index to the character of the contents. We have some in Greek, _e.g._ Marco_polis_ or _peri archaes_, a sort of Varro’s Republic, after the manner of Plato; _Hippokyon_, _Kynoppaetor_, and others, satirizing the cynic philosophy. Some both in Greek and Latin, as _Columnae Herculis, peri doxaes_; _est modus matulae, peri methaes_; others in Latin only, as _Marcipor_ the slave of Marcus (_i.e._ Varro himself). Many are in the shape of proverbs, e.g. _Longe fugit qui suos fugit_, _gnothi seauton_, _nescis quid vesper serus vehat_. Only two fragments are of any length; one from the _Marcipor_, in graceful iambic verse, [7] the other in prose from the _nescis quid vesper_. [8] It consists of directions for a convivial meeting: “Nam multos convivas esse non convenit, quod _turba_ plerumque est _turbulenta_; et Romae quidem constat: sed et Athenis; nusquam enim plures cubabant. [9] Ipsum deinde convivium constat ex rebus quatuor, et tum denique omnibus suis numeris absolutum est; si belli homuculi collecti sunt, si lectus locus, si tempus lectum, si apparatus non neglectus. Nec loquaces autem convivas nec mutos legere oportet; quia eloquentia in foro et apud subsellia; silentium vero non in convivio sed in cubiculo esse debet. Quod profecto eveniet, si de id genus rebus ad communem vitae usum pertinentibus confabulemur, de quibus in foro atque in negotiis agendis loqui non est otium. Dominum autem convivii esse oportet non tam _tautum_ quam _sine sordibus_. Et in convivio legi non omnia debent, sed ea potissimum quae simul sunt _biophelae_, [10] et delectent potius, ut id quoque videatur non superfuisse. Bellaria ea maxime sunt _mellita_, quae _mellita_ non sunt, _pemmasin_ entra et _pepsei_ societas infida.” In this piece we see the fondness for punning, which even in his eightieth year had not left him. The last pun is not at first obvious; the meaning is that the nicest sweetmeats are those which are not too sweet, for made dishes are hostile to digestion; or, as we may say, paraphrasing his diction, “Delicacies are conducive to delicacy.” It was from this _satura_ the celebrated rule was taken that guests should be neither fewer than the graces, nor more than the muses. The whole subject of the Menippean satires is brilliantly treated in Mommsen’s _History of Rome_, and Riese’s edition of the satires, to both which, if he desire further information, we refer the reader. [11]
The genius of Varro, however, more and more inclined him to prose. The next series of works that issued from his pen were probably those known as _Logistorici_ (about 56-50 B.C.). The model for these was furnished by Heraclides Ponticus, a friend and pupil of Plato, and after his death, of Aristotle. He was a voluminous and encyclopaedic writer, but too indolent to apply the vigorous method of his master. Hence his works, being discursive and easily understood, were well fitted for the comprehension of the Romans. Varro’s histories were short, mostly taken from his own or his friends’ experience, and centred round some principle of ethics or economics. _Catus de liberis educandis_, _Marius de Fortuna_, &c. are titles which remind us of Cicero’s _Laelius de Amicitia_ and _Cato Major de Senectute_, of which it is extremely probable they were the suggesting causes.
Varro in his _saturae_ is very severe upon philosophers. He had almost as great a contempt for them as his archetype Cato. And yet Varro was deeply read in the philosophy of Greece. He did not yield to Cicero in admiration of her illustrious thinkers. It is probable that with his keen appreciation of the Roman character he saw that it was unfitted for speculative thought; that in most cases its cultivation would only bring forth pedants or hypocrites. When asked by Cicero why he had not written a great philosophical work, he replied that those who had a real interest in the study would go direct to the fountain head, those who had not would be none the better for reading a Latin compendium. Hence he preferred to turn his labours into a more productive channel, and to instruct the people in their own antiquities, which had never been adequately studied, and, now that Stilo was dead, seemed likely to pass into oblivion. [12] His researches occupied three main fields, that of law and religion, that of civil history and biography, and that of philology.
Of these the first was the one for which he was most highly qualified, and in which he gained his highest renown. His crowning work in this department was the _Antiquities Divine and Human_, in 41 books. [13] This was the greatest monument of Roman learning, the reference book for all subsequent writers. It is quoted continually by Pliny, Gellius, and Priscian; and, what is more interesting to us, by St Augustine in the fifth and seventh books of his _Civitas Dei_, as the one authoritative work on the subject of the national religion. [14] He thus describes the plan of the work. It consisted of 41 books; 25 of human antiquities, 16 of divine. In the human part, 6 books were given to each of the four divisions; viz. of Agents, of Places, of Times, of Things. [15] To these 24 one prefatory chapter was prefixed of a general character, thus completing the number. In the divine part a similar method was followed. Three books were allotted to each of the five divisions of the subject, viz. the Men who sacrifice, the Places, and Times of worship, [16] the Rites performed, and finally the Divine Beings themselves. To these was prefixed a book treating the subject comprehensively, and of a prefatory nature. The five triads were thus subdivided: the first into a book on _Pontifices_, one on Augurs, one on _Quindecimviri Sacrorum_; the second into books on shrines, temples, and sacred spots, respectively; the third into those on festivals and holidays, the games of the circus, and theatrical spectacles; the fourth treats of consecrations, private rites, and public sacrifices, while the fifth has one treatise on gods that certainly exist, one on gods that are doubtful, and one on the chief and select deities.
We have given the particulars of this division to show the almost pedantic love of system that Varro indulged. Nearly all his books were parcelled out on a similar methodical plan. He had no idea of following the natural divisions of a subject, but always imposed on his subject artificial categories drawn from his own prepossessions. [17] The remark has been made that of all Romans Varro was the most unphilosophical. Certainly if a true classification be the basis of a truly scientific treatment, Varro can lay no claim to it. His erudition, though, profound, is cumbrous. He never seems to move easily in it. His illustrations are far-fetched, often inopportune. What, for instance, can be more out of place than to bring to a close a discussion on farming by the sudden announcement of a hideous murder? [18] His style is as uncouth as his arrangement is unnatural. It abounds in constructions which cannot be justified by strict rules of syntax, _e.g._ “_hi qui pueros in ludum mittunt, idem barbatos … non docebimus?_” [19] “When we send our children to school to learn to speak correctly, shall we not also correct bearded men, when they make mistakes?” Slipshod constructions like this occur throughout the treatise on the Latin tongue, though, it is true, they are almost entirely absent from that on husbandry, which is a much more finished work. Obscurity in explaining what the author means, or in describing what he has seen, is so frequent an accompaniment of vast erudition that it need excite little surprise. And yet how different it is from the matchless clearness of Cicero or Caesar! In the treatise on husbandry, Varro is at great pains to describe a magnificent aviary in his villa at Casinum, but his auditors must have been clear-headed indeed if they could follow his description. [20] And in the _De Lingua Latina_, wishing to show how the elephant was called _Luca bos_ from having been first seen in Lucania with the armies of Pyrrhus, and from the ox being the largest quadruped with which the Italians were then acquainted, he gives us the following involved note– _In Virgilii commentario erat: Ab Lucanis Lucas; ab eo quod nostri, quom maximam quadrupedem, quam ipsi haberent, vocarent bovem, et in Lucanis Pyrrhi bello primum vidissent apud hostes elephantos, Lucanum bovem quod putabant Lucam bovem appellassent_.
In fact Varro was no stylist. He was a master of facts, as Cicero of words. _Studiosum rerum_, says Augustine, _tantum docet, quantum studiosum verborum Cicero delectat_. Hence Cicero, with all his proneness to exaggerate the excellences of his friends, never speaks of him as eloquent. He calls him _omnium facile acutissimus, et sine ulla dubitatione doctissimus_. [21] The qualities that shone out conspicuously in his works were, besides learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured way; the spirit of the Menippean satires remained, though the form was changed to one more befitting the grave old teacher of wisdom. The fragments of his works as well as the notices of his friends present him to us the very picture of a healthy-minded and healthy-bodied man.