History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Volume I Part 18

In the same way, laws were called _Leges Saturae_, when they consisted of several heads and t.i.tles: and Verrius Flaccus calls a dish, which I suppose was a sort of _olla podrida_-Satura:-"Satura cibi genus ex variis rebus conditum." Dacier, however, though he agrees with Casaubon as to the Latin origin of satire, derives the term from Saturn; as he believes that it was at festivals in honour of that ancient G.o.d of Italy that those rustic impromptus, which gave rise to satire, were first recited.

Flogel, in his German _History of Comic Literature_, attempts to show, at considerable length, that Casaubon has attributed too much to the derivation of the word satire; since, though the term may be of Latin origin, it does not follow that the thing was unknown to the Greeks,-and that he also relies too much on the argument, that the satiric plays of the Greeks were quite different from the satire of the Romans, which may be true; while, at the same time, there are other sorts of Greek compositions, as the lyric satires of Archilochus and the _Silli_, which have a much nearer resemblance to the Latin didactic satire than any satirical drama.

In fact, the whole question seems to depend on what const.i.tutes a sufficient alteration or variety from former compositions, to give a claim to invention. Now it certainly cannot be pretended, so far as we know, that _any_ satiric productions of the Greeks had much resemblance to those of the Romans. The Greek satires, which are improperly so termed, were divided into what were called tragic and comic. The former were dramatic compositions, which had their commencement, like the regular tragedy, in rustic festivals to the honour of Bacchus; and in which, characters representing Satyrs, the supposed companions of that G.o.d, were introduced, imitating the coa.r.s.e songs and fantastic dances of rural deities. In their rude origin, it is probable that only one actor, equipped as a Satyr, danced or sung. Soon, however, a chorus appeared, consisting of the bearded and beardless Satyrs, Silenus, and Pappo Silenus; and Histrions, representing heroic characters, were afterwards introduced. The satiric drama began to flourish when the regular tragedy had become too refined to admit of a chorus, or accompaniment of Satyrs, but while these were still remembered with a sort of fondness, which rendered it natural to recur to the most ancient shape of the drama. In this state of the progress of the Greek stage, the satire was performed separately from the tragedy; and out of respect to the original form of tragedy, was often exhibited as a continuation or parody of the tragic _trilogy_, or three serious plays,-thus completing what was called the _tetralogia_. The scene of these satires was laid in the country, amid woods, caves, and mountains, or other such places as Satyrs were supposed to inhabit; and the subjects chosen were those in which Satyrs might naturally be feigned to have had a share or interest. High mythological stories and fabulous heroes were introduced, as appears from the names preserved by Casaubon, who mentions the _Hercules_ of Astydamas, the _Alcmaeon_ and _Vulcan_ of Achaeus,-each of which is denominated sat??????. These heroic characters, however, were generally parodied, and rendered fantastic, by the gross railleries of Silenus and the Fauns. The _Cyclops_ of Euripides, which turns on the story of Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, is the only example entirely extant of this species of composition. Some fragments, however, remain of the _Lytiersa_ of Sositheus, an author who flourished about the 130th Olympiad, which was subsequent to the introduction of the new Greek comedy. Lytiersa, who gives name to this dramatic satire, lived in Phrygia. He used to receive many guests, who flocked to his residence from all quarters. After entertaining them at sumptuous banquets, he compelled them to go out with him to his fields, to reap his crop or cut his hay; and when they had performed this labour, he mowed off their heads, with a scythe. The style of entertainment, it seems, did not prevent his house from being a place of fas.h.i.+onable resort. Hercules, however, put an end to this mode of wis.h.i.+ng a good afternoon, by strangling the hospitable landlord, and throwing his body into the Maeander. It is evident, from the subject of this play, and of the _Cyclops_, that the tragic satires were a sort of fee-fa-fum performance, like our after-pieces founded on the stories of _Blue Beard_ and _Jack the Giant Killer_. They were generally short and simple in their plan: They contained no satire or ridicule against the fellow-citizens of the author, or any private individuals whatever; but there was a good deal of jeering by the characters at each other, and much buffoonery, revelling, and indecency, among the satiric persons of the chorus.

The Comic Satire began later than the Tragic, subsisted for some time along with it, and finally survived it. In Greece it was chiefly popular after the time of Alexander, and it also flourished in the court of the Egyptian Ptolemies. It was quite different from the Tragic Satire; the action being laid in cities, or at least not always amid rustic scenes.

Private individuals were often satirized in it, and not unfrequently the tyrants or rulers of the state. When a mythic story was adopted, the affairs of domestic life were conjoined with the action, and it never was of the same enormous or b.l.o.o.d.y nature as the fables employed in the tragic satire, but such subjects were usually chosen as that of Amphitryon, Apollo feeding the flocks of Admetus, &c. Satyrs were not essential characters, and when they were introduced, private individuals were generally intended to be ridiculed, under the form of these rustic divinities. Gluttony, to judge from some fragments preserved by Athenaeus, was one of the chief topics of banter and merriment. Timocles, who lived about the 114th Olympiad, was the chief author of comic satires.

Lycophron, better known by his _Ca.s.sandra_, also wrote one called _Menedemus_, in which the founder of the Eretric school of philosophy was exposed to ridicule, under the character of Silenus, and his pupils under the masks of Satyrs.

Besides their dramatic satires, the Greeks had another species of poem called _Silli_, which were patched up like the _Cento Nuptialis_ of Ausonius from the verses of serious writers, and by such means turned to a different sense from what their original author intended. Thus, in the _Silli_ attributed to Timon, a sceptic philosopher and disciple of Pyrrho, who lived in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the lines are copied from Homer and the tragic poets, but they are satirically applied to certain customs and systems of philosophy, which it was his object to ridicule.

Some specimens of the _Silli_ may be found in Diogenes Laertius; but the longest now extant is a pa.s.sage preserved in Dio Chrysostom, exposing the mad attachment of the inhabitants of Alexandria to chariot races. To these _Silli_ may be added the lyric or iambic satires directed against individuals, like those of Archilochus against Lycambes.

The Roman didactic satire had no great resemblance to any of these sorts of Greek satire. It referred, as every one knows, to the daily occurrences of life,-to the ordinary follies and vices of mankind. With the Greek tragic satire it had scarce any a.n.a.logy whatever; for it was not in dialogue, and contained no allusion to the mythological Satyrs who formed the chorus of the Greek dramas. To the comic satire it had more affinity; and those writers who have maintained the Greek origin of Roman satire have done little justice to their argument by not attending to the distinction between these two sorts of dramatic satire, and treating the whole question as if it depended on the resemblance to the tragic satire.

In the comic satire, as we have seen, Satyrs were not always nor necessarily introduced. The subject was taken from ordinary life; and domestic vice or absurdity was stigmatized and ridiculed, as it was in the Roman satire, particularly during its earliest ages. Still, however, there was no incident or plot evolved in a Roman satire; nor was it written in dialogue, except occasionally, for the sake of more lively sarcasm on life and manners.

But though the Roman satire took a different direction, it had something of the same origin as the satiric drama of the Greeks. As the Grecian holidays were celebrated with oblations to Bacchus and Ceres, to whose bounty they owed their wine and corn, in like manner the ancient Italians propitiated their agricultural or rustic deities with appropriate offerings,

"Tellurem porco-Sylvanum lacte piabant(394);"

but as they knew nothing of the Silenus, or Satyrs of the Greeks, a chorus of peasants, fantastically disguised in masks cut out from the barks of trees, danced or sung to a certain kind of verse, which they called Saturnian:-

"Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni Versibus incomtis ludunt, risuque soluto; Oraque corticibus sumunt horrenda cavatis: Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina laeta, tibique Oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu(395)."

These festivals had usually the double purpose of wors.h.i.+p and recreation; and accordingly the verses often digressed from the praises of Bacchus to mutual taunts and railleries, like those in Virgil's third eclogue, on the various defects and vices of the speakers.

Such rude lines, originally sung or recited in the Tuscan and Latian villages, at nuptials or religious festivals, were first introduced at Rome by _Histrions_, who, as already mentioned, were summoned from Etruria, in order to allay the pestilence which was depopulating the city.

These Histrions being mounted on a stage, like our mountebanks, performed a sort of _ballet_, by dancing and gesticulating to the sound of musical instruments. The Roman youth thus learned to imitate their gestures and music, which they accompanied with railing verses delivered in extemporary dialogue.

The jeering, however, which had been at first confined to inoffensive raillery, at length exceeded the bounds of moderation, and the peace of private families was invaded by the unrestrained license of personal invective:-

"Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam In rabiem cpit verti jocus; et per honestas Ire domos impune minax; doluere cruento Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura Conditione super communi(396)." --

This exposure of private individuals, which alarmed even those who had been spared, was restrained by a salutary law of the Decemvirs.-"Si quis occenta.s.sit malum carmen, sive condidisit, quod infamiam faxit flagitiumve alteri, fuste ferito."

Ennius, perceiving how much the Romans had been delighted with the rude satires poured forth in extemporary dialogue, thought it might be worth his pains to compose satires not to be recited but read. He preserved in them, however, the groundwork of the ancient pleasantry, and the venom of the ancient raillery, on individuals, as well as on general vices. His satires related to various subjects, and were written in different sorts of verses-hexameters being mingled with iambic and trochaic lines, as fancy dictated.

The satires of Ennius, which have already been more particularly mentioned, were imitated by Pacuvius, and from his time the word _satire_ came to be applied at Rome only to poems containing either a playful or indignant censure on manners. This sort of composition was chiefly indebted for its improvement to

LUCILIUS,

A Roman knight, who was born in the year 605, at Suessa, a town in the Auruncian territory. He was descended of a good family, and was the maternal granduncle of Pompey the Great. In early youth he served at the siege of Numantia, in the same camp with Marius and Jugurtha, under the younger Scipio Africa.n.u.s(397), whose friends.h.i.+p and protection he had the good fortune to acquire. On his return to Rome from his Spanish campaign, he dwelt in a house which had been built at the public expense, and had been inhabited by Seleucus Philopater, Prince of Syria, whilst he resided in his youth as an hostage at Rome(398). Lucilius continued to live on terms of the closest intimacy with the brave Scipio and wise Laelius,

"Quin ubi se a vulgo et scena in secreta remorant Virtus Scipiadae et mitis sapientia Laeli, Nugari c.u.m illo et discincti ludere, donec Decoqueretur olus, soliti(399)." --

These powerful protectors enabled him to satirize the vicious without restraint or fear of punishment. In his writings he drew a genuine picture of himself, acknowledged his faults, made a frank confession of his inclinations, gave an account of his adventures, and, in short, exhibited a true and spirited representation of his whole life. Fresh from business or pleasure, he seized his pen while his fancy was yet warm, and his pa.s.sions still awake,-while elated with success or depressed by disappointment. All these feelings, and the incidents which occasioned them, he faithfully related, and made his remarks on them with the utmost freedom:-

"Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris; neque si male gesserat, usquam Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis(400)." --

Unfortunately, however, the writings of Lucilius are so mutilated, that few particulars of his life and manners can be gleaned from them. Little farther is known concerning him, than that he died at Naples, but at what age has been much disputed. Eusebius and most other writers have fixed it at 45, which, as he was born in 605, would be in the 651st year of the city. But M. Dacier and Bayle(401) a.s.sert that he must have been much older, at the time of his death, as he speaks in his satires of the Licinian law against exorbitant expenditure at entertainments, which was not promulgated till 657, or 658.

Satire, more than any other species of poetry, is the offspring of the time in which it has its birth, and which furnishes it with the aliment whereon it feeds. The period at which Lucilius appeared was favourable to satiric composition. There was a struggle existing between the old and new manners, and the freedom of speaking and writing, though restrained, had not yet been totally checked by law. Lucilius lived amidst a people on whom luxury and corruption were advancing with fearful rapidity, but among whom some virtuous citizens were still anxious to stem the tide which threatened to overwhelm their countrymen. The satires of Lucilius were adapted to please these staunch "_laudatores temporis acti_," who stood up for ancient manners and discipline. The freedom with which he attacked the vices of his contemporaries, without sparing individuals,-the strength of colouring with which his pictures were charged,-the weight and asperity of the reproaches with which he loaded those who had exposed themselves to his ridicule or indignation,-had nothing revolting in an age when no consideration compelled to those forbearances necessary under different forms of society or government(402). By the time, too, in which Lucilius began to write, the Romans, though yet far from the polish of the Augustan age, had become familiar with the delicate and cutting irony of the Greek comedies of which the more ancient Roman satirists had no conception.

Lucilius chiefly applied himself to the imitation of these dramatic productions, and caught, it is said, much of their fire and spirit:

"Eupolis, atque Cratinus, Aristophanesque, poetae, Atque alii, quorum comdia prisca virorum est, Si quis erat dignus describi, quod malus, aut fur, Quod mchus foret, aut sicarius, aut alioqui Famosus, multa c.u.m libertate notabant.

Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus, Mutatis tantum pedibus numerisque(403)." --

The Roman language, likewise, had grown more refined in the age of Lucilius, and was thus more capable of receiving the Grecian beauties of style. Nor did Lucilius, like his predecessors, mix iambic with trochaic verses. Twenty books of his satires, from the commencement, were in hexameter verse, and the rest, with exception of the thirtieth, in iambics or trochaics. His object, too, seems to have been bolder and more extensive than that of his precursors, and was not so much to excite laughter or ridicule, as to correct and chastise vice. Lucilius thus bestowed on satiric composition such additional grace and regularity, that he is declared by Horace to have been the first among the Romans who wrote satire in verse:-

"Primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem."

But although Lucilius may have greatly improved this sort of writing, it does not follow that his satires are to be considered as altogether of a different species from those of Ennius-a light in which they have been regarded by Casaubon and Ruperti; "for," as Dryden has remarked, "it would thence follow, that the satires of Horace are wholly different from those of Lucilius, because Horace has no less surpa.s.sed Lucilius in the elegance of his writing, than Lucilius surpa.s.sed Ennius in the turn and ornament of his."

The satires of Lucilius extended to not fewer than thirty books; but whether they were so divided by the poet himself, or by some grammarian who lived shortly after him, seems uncertain: He was a voluminous author, and has been satirized by Horace for his hurried copiousness and facility:-

"Nam fuit hoc vitiosus: In hora saepe ducentos, Ut magnum, versus dictabat, stans pede in uno: Garrulus, atque piger scribendi ferre laborem; Scribendi recte: nam ut multum, nil moror(404)."

Of the thirty books there are only fragments extant; but these are so numerous, that though they do not capacitate us to catch the full spirit of the poet, we perceive something of his manner. His merits, too, have been so much canva.s.sed by ancient writers, who judged of them while his works were yet entire, that their discussions in some measure enable us to appreciate his poetical claims. It would appear that he had great vivacity and humour, uncommon command of language, intimate knowledge of life and manners, and considerable acquaintance with the Grecian masters. Virtue appeared in his draughts in native dignity, and he exhibited his distinguished friends, Scipio and Laelius, in the most amiable light. At the same time it was impossible to portray anything more powerful than the sketches of his vicious characters. His rogue, glutton, and courtezan, are drawn in strong, not to say coa.r.s.e colours. He had, however, much of the old Roman humour, that celebrated but undefined _urbanitas_, which indeed he possessed in so eminent a degree, that Pliny says it began with Lucilius in composition(405), while Cicero declares that he carried it to the highest perfection(406), and that it almost expired with him(407). But the chief characteristic of Lucilius was his vehement and cutting satire.

Macrobius calls him "Acer et violentus poeta(408);" and the well-known lines of Juvenal, who relates how he made the guilty tremble by his pen, as much as if he had pursued them sword in hand, have fixed his character as a determined and inexorable persecutor of vice. His Latin is admitted on all hands to have been sufficiently pure(409); but his versification was rugged and prosaic. Horace, while he allows that he was more polished that his predecessors, calls his muse "pedestris," talks repeatedly of the looseness of his measure, "Incomposito pede currere versus," and compares his whole poetry to a muddy and troubled stream:-

"c.u.m flueret lutulentus erat quod tollere velles."

Quintilian does not entirely coincide with this opinion of Horace; for, while blaming those who considered him as the greatest of poets, which some persons still did in the age of Domitian, he says, "Ego quantum ab illis, tantum ab Horatio dissentio, qui Lucilium fluere lutulentum, et esse aliquid quod tollere possis, putat(410)." The author of the books _Rhetoricorum_, addressed to Herennius, and which were at one time attributed to Cicero, mentions, as a singular awkwardness in the construction of his lines, the disjunction of words, which, according to proper and natural arrangement, ought to have been placed together, as-

"Has res ad te scriptas _Luci_ misimus _aeli_."

Nay, what is still worse, it would appear from Ausonius, that he had sometimes barbarously separated the syllables of a word-

"Villa _Lucani_-mox potieris _aco_.

Rescisso discas componere nomine versum; Lucili vatis sic imitator eris(411)."

As to the learning of Lucilius, the opinions of antiquity were different; and even those of the same author appear somewhat contradictory on this point. Quintilian says, that there is "Eruditio in eo mira." Cicero, in his treatise _De Finibus_, calls his learning _mediocris_; though, afterwards, in the person of Cra.s.sus, in his treatise _De Oratore_, he twice terms him _Doctus_(412). Dacier suspects that Quintilian was led to consider Lucilius as learned, from the pedantic intermixture of Greek words in his compositions-a practice which seems to have excited the applause of his contemporaries, and also of his numerous admirers in the Augustan age, for which they have been severely ridiculed by Horace, who always warmly opposed himself to the excessive partiality entertained for Lucilius during that golden period of literature-

"At magnum fecit, quod verbis Graeca Latinis Miscuit:-O seri studiorum!"

It is not unlikely that there may have been something of political spleen in the admiration expressed for Lucilius during the age of Augustus, and something of courtly complaisance in the attempts of Horace to counteract it. Augustus had extended the law of the 12 tables respecting libels; and the people, who found themselves thus abridged of the liberty of satirizing the Great by name, might not improbably seek to avenge themselves by an overstrained attachment to the works of a poet, who, living as they would insinuate, in better times, practised, without fear, what he enjoyed without restraint(413).

Some motive of this sort doubtless weighed with the Romans in the age of Augustus, since much of the satire of Lucilius must have been unintelligible, or at least uninteresting to them. Great part of his compositions appears to have been rather a series of libels than legitimate satire, being occupied with virulent attacks on contemporary citizens of Rome-

-- "Secuit Lucilius urbem, Te Mute, te Lupe, et genuinum fregit in illos(414)."

Douza, who has collected and edited all that remains of the satires of Lucilius, mentions the names of not fewer than sixteen individuals, who are attacked by name in the course even of these fragments, among whom are Quintus Opimius, the conqueror of Liguria, Caecilius Metellus, whose victories acquired him the sirname of Macedonia.n.u.s, and Cornelius Lupus, at that time _Princeps Senatus_. Lucilius was equally severe on contemporary and preceding authors; Ennius, Pacuvius, and Attius, having been alternately satirized by him(415). In all this he indulged with impunity(416); but he did not escape so well from a player, whom he had ventured to censure, and who took his revenge by exposing Lucilius on the stage. The poet prosecuted the actor, and the cause was carried on with much warmth on both sides before the Praetor, who finally acquitted the player(417).

The confidence of Lucilius in his powerful patrons, Scipio and Laelius, inspired this freedom; and it appears, in fact, to have so completely relieved him from all fear or restraint, that he boldly exclaims-