Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 1

Post-Augustan Poetry.

by H.E. Butler.

PREFACE

I have attempted in this book to provide something of an introduction to the poetical literature of the post-Augustan age. Although few of the writers dealt with have any claim to be called poets of the first order, and some stand very low in the scale of poetry, as a whole the poets of this period have suffered greater neglect than they deserve.

Their undeniable weaknesses tend in many cases to obscure their real merits, with the result that they are at times either ignored or subjected to unduly sweeping condemnation. I have attempted in these pages to detach and ill.u.s.trate their excellences without in any way pa.s.sing over their defects.

Manilius and Phaedrus have been omitted on the ground that as regards the general character of their writings they belong rather to the Augustan period than to the subsequent age of decadence. Manilius indeed composed a considerable portion of his work during the lifetime of Augustus, while Phaedrus, though somewhat later in date, showed a sobriety of thought and an antique simplicity of style that place him at least a generation away from his contemporaries. The authorities to whose works I am indebted are duly acknowledged in the course of the work. I owe a special debt, however, to those great works of reference, the Histories of Roman Literature by Schanz and Teuffel, to Friedlander's _Sittengeschichte_, and, for the chapters on Lucan and Statius, to Heitland's _Introduction to Haskin's edition of Lucan_ and Legras' _Thebade de Stace_. I wish particularly to express my indebtedness to Professor Gilbert Murray and Mr. Nowell Smith, who read the book in ma.n.u.script and made many valuable suggestions and corrections. I also have to thank Mr. A.S. Owen for much a.s.sistance in the corrections of the proofs.

My thanks are owing to Professor Goldwin Smith for permission to print translations from 'Bay Leaves', and to Mr. A.E. Street and Mr. F.J.

Miller and their publishers, for permission to quote from their translations of Martial (Messrs. Spottiswoode) and Seneca (Chicago University Press) respectively.

H.E. BUTLER.

_November_, 1908.

CHAPTER I

THE DECLINE OF POST-AUGUSTAN POETRY

During the latter years of the princ.i.p.ate of Augustus a remarkable change in literary methods and style begins to make itself felt. The gradual extinction of the great luminaries is followed by a gradual disappearance of originality and of the natural and easy-flowing style whose phrases and felicities adorn, without overloading or obscuring the sense. In their place comes a straining after effect, a love of startling colour, produced now by over-gorgeous or over-minute imagery, now by a surfeit of brilliant epigram, while controlling good sense and observance of due proportion are often absent and imitative preciosity too frequently masquerades as originality. Further, in too many cases there is a complete absence of moral enthusiasm, close observation, and genuine insight.

What were the causes of this change? Was it due mainly to the evil influence of the princ.i.p.ate or to more subtle and deep-rooted causes?

The princ.i.p.ate had been denounced as the _fons et origo mali_.[1] That its influence was for evil can hardly be denied. But it was rather a symptom, an outward and visible sign of a deep-engrained decay, which it accentuated and brought to the surface, but in no way originated. We are told that the princ.i.p.ate 'created around itself the quiet of the graveyard, since all independence was compelled under threat of death to hypocritical silence or subterfuge; servility alone was allowed to speak; the rest submitted to what was inevitable, nay, even endeavoured to accommodate their minds to it as much as possible.' Even if this highly coloured statement were true, the influence of such tyrannical suppression of free thinking and free speaking could only have _directly_ affected certain forms of literature, such as satire, recent history,[2] and political oratory, while even in these branches of literature a wide field was left over which an intending author might safely range. The _direct_ influence on poetry must have been exceedingly small. If we review the great poets of the Augustan and republican periods, we shall find little save certain epigrams of Catullus that could not safely have been produced in post-Augustan times. Moreover, when we turn to what is actually known of the att.i.tude of the early emperors towards literature, the balance does not seriously incline against them. It may be said without hesitation of the four emperors succeeding Augustus that they had a genuine taste and some capacity for literature.

Of two only is it true that their influence was in any way repressive.

The princ.i.p.ate of Tiberius is notorious for the silence of literature; whether the fact is due as much to the character of Tiberius as to the temporary exhaustion of genius following naturally on the brilliance of the Augustan period, is more than doubtful. But Tiberius cannot be acquitted of all blame. The cynical humour with which it pleased him to mark the steady advance of autocracy, the _lentae maxillae_ which Augustus attributed to his adopted son,[3] the icy and ironic cruelty which was--on the most favourable estimate--a not inconsiderable element in his character, no doubt all exercised a chilling influence, not only on politics but on all spontaneous expression of human character.

Further, we find a few instances of active and cruel repression.

Lampoons against the emperor were punished with death.[4] Cremutius Cordus was driven to suicide for styling 'Brutus and Ca.s.sius the last of all the Romans'.[5] Mamercus Scaurus had the misfortune to write a tragedy on the subject of Atreus in which he advised submission to Atreus in a version of the Euripidean

[Greek: tas t_on turann_on amathias pherein chre_on][6]

He too fell a victim to the Emperor's displeasure, though the chief charges actually brought against him were of adultery with the Princess Livilla and practice of the black art. We hear also of another case in which _obiectum est poetae quod in tragoedia Agamemnonem probris lacessisset_ (Suet. _Tib_. 61). It is worthy of notice that actors also came under Tiberius's displeasure.[7] The mime and the Atellan farce afforded too free an opportunity for improvisation against the emperor.

Even the harmless Phaedrus seems to have incurred the anger of Seja.n.u.s, and to have suffered thereby.[8] Nor do the few instances in which Tiberius appears as a patron of literature fill us with great respect for his taste. He is said to have given one Asellius Sabinus 100,000 sesterces for a dialogue between a mushroom, a finch, an oyster, and a thrush,[9] and to have rewarded a worthless writer,[10] Clutorius Priscus, for a poem composed on the death of Germanicus. On the other hand, he seems to have had a sincere love of literature,[11] though he wrote in a crabbed and affected style. He was a purist in language with a taste for archaism,[12] left a brief autobiography[13] and dabbled in poetry, writing epigrams,[14] a lyric _conquestio de morte Lucii Caesaris_[15] and Greek imitations of Euphorion, Rhia.n.u.s, and Parthenius, the learned poets of Alexandria. His taste was bad: he went even farther than his beloved Alexandrians, awaking the laughter of his contemporaries even in an age when obscure mythological learning was at a premium. The questions which delighted him were--'Who was the mother of Hecuba?' 'What was the name of Achilles when disguised as a girl?'

'What did the sirens sing?'[16] Literature had little to learn from Tiberius, but it should have had something to gain from the fact that he was not blind to its charms: at the worst it cannot have required abnormal skill to avoid incurring a charge of _lese-majeste_.

The reign of the lunatic Caligula is of small importance, thanks to its extreme brevity. For all his madness he had considerable ability; he was ready of speech to a remarkable degree, though his oratory suffered from extravagant ornament[17] and lack of restraint. He had, however, some literary insight: in his description of Seneca's rhetoric as _merae commissiones_, 'prize declamations,' and 'sand without lime' he gave an admirable summary of that writer's chief weaknesses.[18] But he would in all probability have proved a greater danger to literature than Tiberius. It is true that in his desire to compare favourably with his predecessors he allowed the writings of T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus, and Ca.s.sius Severus, which had fallen under the senate's ban in the two preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no means abandoned trials for _lese-majeste_. The rhetorician Carinas Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a _suasoria_ on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an Atellan farce was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a treasonable jest, and Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a brilliant display of oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously meditated the destruction of the works of Homer. Plato had banished Homer from his ideal state.

Why should not Caligula? He was with difficulty restrained from doing the like for Vergil and Livy. The former, he said, was a man of little learning and less wit;[23] the latter was verbose and careless. Even when he attempted to encourage literature, his eccentricity carried him to such extremes that the compet.i.tors shrank in horror from entering the lists. He inst.i.tuted a contest at Lugudunum in which prizes were offered for declamations in Greek and Latin. The prizes were presented to the victors by the vanquished, who were ordered to write panegyrics in honour of their successful rivals, while in cases where the declamations were decided to be unusually poor, the unhappy authors were ordered to obliterate their writings with a sponge or even with their own tongues, under penalty of being caned or ducked in the Rhone.[24]

Literature had some reason to be thankful for his early a.s.sa.s.sination.

The lunatic was succeeded by a fool, but a learned fool. Claudius was historian, antiquary, and philologist. He wrote two books on the civil war, forty-one on the princ.i.p.ate of Augustus, a defence of Cicero, eight books of autobiography,[25] an official diary,[26] a treatise on dicing.[27] To this must be added his writings in Greek, twenty books of Etruscan history, eight of Carthaginian,[28] together with a comedy performed and crowned at Naples in honour of the memory of Germanicus.[29] His style, according to Suetonius, was _magis ineptus quam inelegans_.[30] He did more than write: he attempted a reform of spelling, by introducing three new letters into the Latin alphabet. His enthusiasm and industry were exemplary. Such indeed was his activity that a special office,[31] _a studiis_, was established, which was filled for the first time by the influential freedman Polybius. Claudius lacked the saving grace of good sense, but in happier days might have been a useful professor: at any rate his interest in literature was whole-hearted and disinterested. His own writing was too feeble to influence contemporaries for ill and he had the merit of having given literature room to move. Seneca might mock at him after his death,[32]

but he had done good service.

Nero, Claudius' successor, was also a liberal, if embarra.s.sing, patron of literature. His tastes were more purely literary. He had received an elaborate and diversified education. He had even enjoyed the privilege of having Seneca--the head of the literary profession--for his tutor.

These influences were not wholly for the good: Agrippina dissuaded him from the study of philosophy as being unsuited for a future emperor, Seneca from the study of earlier and saner orators that he might himself have a longer lease of Nero's admiration.[33] The result was that a temperament, perhaps falsely styled artistic,[34] was deprived of the solid nutriment required to give it stability. Nero's great ambition was to be supreme in poetry and art as he was supreme in empire. He composed rapidly and with some technical skill,[35] but his work lacked distinction, connexion of thought, and unity of style.[36] Satirical[37]

and erotic[38] epigrams, learned mythological poems on Attis and the Bacchae,[39] all flowed from his pen. But his most famous works were his _Troica_,[40] an epic on the Trojan legend, which he recited before the people in the theatre,[41] and his [Greek: Iion al_osis], which may perhaps have been included in the _Troica_, and is famous as having--so scandal ran--been declaimed over burning Rome.[42] But his ambition soared higher. He contemplated an epic on the whole of Roman history. It was estimated that 400 books would be required. The Stoic Annaeus Cornutus justly remarked that no one would read so many. It was pointed out that the Stoic's master, Chrysippus, had written even more. 'Yes,'

said Cornutus, 'but they were of some use to humanity.' Cornutus was banished, but he saved Rome from the epic. Nero was also prolific in speeches and, proud of his voice, often appeared on the stage. He impersonated Orestes matricida, Canace parturiens, Oedipus blind, and Hercules mad.[43] It is not improbable that the words declaimed or sung in these scenes were composed by Nero himself.[44] For the encouragement of music and poetry he had established quinquennial games known as the Neronia. How far his motives for so doing were interested it is hard to say. But there is no doubt that he had a pa.s.sionate ambition to win the prize at the contest inst.i.tuted by himself. In A.D. 60, on the first occasion of the celebration of these games, the prize was won by Lucan with a poem in praise of Nero.[45] Vacca, in his life of Lucan, states that this lost him Nero's favour, the emperor being jealous of his success. The story is demonstrably false,[46] but that Nero subsequently became jealous of Lucan is undoubted. Till Lucan's fame was a.s.sured, Nero extended his favour to him: then partly through Lucan's extreme vanity and want of tact, partly through Nero's jealousy of Lucan's pre-eminence that favour was wholly withdrawn.[47] Nevertheless, though Nero may have shown jealousy of successful rivals, he seems to have had sufficient respect for literature to refrain from persecution. He did not go out of his way to punish personal attacks on himself. If names were delated to the senate on such a charge, he inclined to mercy. Even the introduction into an Atellan farce of jests on the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina was only punished with exile.[48] Only after the detection of Piso's conspiracy in 65 did his anger vent itself on writers: towards the end of his reign the distinguished authors, Virginius Flavus and the Stoic Musonius Rufus, were both driven into exile. As for the deaths of Seneca and Lucan, the two most distinguished writers of the day, though both perished at Nero's hands, it was their conduct, not their writings, that brought them to destruction. Both were implicated in the Pisonian conspiracy. If, then, Nero's direct influence on literature was for the bad, it was not because he was adverse: it suffered rather from his favour: the extravagant tastes of the princeps and the many eccentricities of his life and character may perhaps find a reflection in some of the more grotesque extravagances of Lucan, such for instance as the absurdly servile dedication of the _Pharsalia_. But even in this direction his influence was probably comparatively small.

In view, then, of what is known of the att.i.tude of the four emperors of the period most critical for Silver Latin literature, the period of its birth, it may be said that, on the worst estimate, their direct influence is not an important factor in the decline.[49] On the other hand, the indirect influence of the princ.i.p.ate was beyond doubt evil.

Society was corrupt enough and public life sufficiently uninspiring under Augustus. After the first glow of enthusiasm over the restoration of peace and order, and over the vindication of the Roman power on the frontiers of empire had pa.s.sed away, men felt how thinly veiled was their slavery. Liberty was gradually restricted, autocracy cast off its mask: the sense of power that goes with freedom dwindled; little was left to waken man's enthusiasm, and the servility exacted by the emperors became more and more degrading. Unpleasing as are the flatteries addressed to Augustus by Vergil and Horace, they fade into insignificance compared with Lucan's apotheosis of Nero; or to take later and yet more revolting examples, the poems of the Silvae addressed by Statius to Domitian or his favourites. Further, these four emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty set a low standard of private life: they might command flattery, they could hardly exact respect. Two clever lunatics, a learned fool, and a morose cynic are not inspiring.

Nevertheless, however unhealthy its influence may have been--and there has been much exaggeration on this point--it must be remembered that the princ.i.p.ate found ready to its hand a society with all the seeds of decay implanted deep within it. Even a succession of sane and virtuous Caesars might well have failed, with the machinery and material at their disposal, to put new and vigorous life into the aristocracy and people of Rome. Even the encroachments of despotism on popular liberty must be attributed in no small degree to the incapacity of what should have been the ruling cla.s.s at Rome. Despotism was in a sense forced upon the emperors: they were not reluctant, but, had they been so, they would still have had little choice. The primary causes of the decline of literature, as of the decay of life and morals, lie much deeper. The influence of princeps and princ.i.p.ate, though not negligible, is _comparatively_ small.

The really important causes are to be found first in the general decay of Roman character--far-advanced before the coming of Caesarism, secondly in the peculiar nature of Roman literature, and thirdly in the vicious system of Roman education.

It was the first of these factors that produced the lubricity that defiles and the lack of moral earnestness that weakens such a large proportion of the literature of this age. It is not necessary to ill.u.s.trate this point in any detail.[50] The record of Rome, alike in home and foreign politics, during the hundred and twenty years preceding the foundation of the princ.i.p.ate forms one of the most fascinating, but in many respects one of the most profoundly melancholy pages in history.

The poems of Catullus and the speeches of Cicero serve equally to ill.u.s.trate the wholesale corruption alike of public and private morality. The Roman character had broken down before the gradual inroads of an alien luxury and the opening of wide fields of empire to plunder.

It is an age of incredible scandal, of mob law, of _coups d'etat_ and proscriptions, saved only from utter gloom by the illusory light shed from the figures of a few great men and by the never absent sense of freedom and expansion. There still remained a republican liberty of action, an inspiring possibility of reform, an outlet for personal ambition, which facilitated the rise of great leaders and writers. And Rome was now bringing to ripeness fruit sprung from the seed of h.e.l.lenism, a decadent and meretricious h.e.l.lenism, but even in its decay the greatest intellectual force of the world.

Wonderful as was the fruit produced by the graft of h.e.l.lenism, it too contained the seeds of decay. For Rome owed too little to early Greek epic and to the golden literature of Athens, too much to the later age when rhetoric had become a knack, and

the love of letters overdone Had swamped the sacred poets with themselves.[51]

Roman literature came too late: that it reached such heights is a remarkable tribute to the greatness of Roman genius, even in its decline. With the exception of the satires of Lucilius and Horace there was practically no branch of literature that did not owe its inspiration and form to Greek models. Even the primitive national metre had died out. Roman literature--more especially poetry--was therefore bound to be unduly self-conscious and was always in danger of a lack of spontaneity.

That Rome produced great prose writers is not surprising; they had copious and untouched material to deal with, and prose structure was naturally less rapidly and less radically affected by Greek influence.

That she should have produced a Catullus, a Lucretius, a Vergil, a Horace, and--most wonderful of all--an Ovid was an amazing achievement, rendered not the less astonis.h.i.+ng when it is remembered that the stern bent of the practical Roman mind did not in earlier days give high promise of poetry. The marvel is not wholly to be explained by the circ.u.mstances of the age. The new sense of power, the revival of the national spirit under the warming influence of peace and hope, that characterize the brilliant interval between the fall of the republic and the turbid stagnation of the empire, are not enough to account for it.

Their influence would have been in vain had they not found remarkable genius ready for the kindling.

The whole field of literature had been so thoroughly covered by the great writers of h.e.l.las, that it was hard for the imitative Roman to be original. As far as epic poetry was concerned, Rome had poor material with which to deal: neither her mythology--the most prosaic and business-like of all mythologies--nor her history seemed to give any real scope for the epic writer. The Greek mythology was ready to hand, but it was hard for a Roman to treat it with high enthusiasm, and still harder to handle it with freshness and individuality. The purely historical epic is from its very nature doomed to failure. Treated with accuracy it becomes prosy, treated with fancy it becomes ridiculous.

Vergil saw the one possible avenue to epic greatness. He went back into the legendary past where imagination could have free play, linked together the great heroic sagas of Greece with the scanty materials presented by the prehistoric legends of Rome, and kindled the whole work to life by his rich historical imagination and his sense of the grandeur of the Rome that was to be. His unerring choice of subject and his brilliant execution seemed to close to his successors all paths to epic fame. They had but well-worn and inferior themes wherefrom to choose, and the supremacy of Vergil's genius dominated their minds, becoming an obsession and a clog rather than an a.s.sistance to such poetic genius as they possessed. The same is true of Horace. As complete a master in lyric verse as Vergil in heroic, he left the after-comer no possibility of advance. As for Ovid, there could be only one Ovid: the cleverest and most heartless of poets, he at once challenged and defied imitation.

Satire alone was left with real chance of success: while the human race exists, there will always be fresh material for satire, and the imperial age was destined to give it peculiar force and scope. Further, satire and its nearest kin, the epigram, were the only forms of literature that were not seriously impaired by the artificial system of education that had struck root in Rome.

Otherwise the tendency to artificiality on the one hand and inadequacy of thought on the other, to which the conditions of its birth and growth exposed Roman literature, were aggravated to an almost incredible extent by the absurd system of education to which the unformed mind of the young Roman was subjected. It will be seen that what Greece gave with the right hand she took away with the left.

There were three stages in Roman education, the elementary, the literary, the rhetorical. The first, in which the _litterator_ taught the three R's, does not concern us here. In the second stage the _grammaticus_ gave instruction in Greek and Latin literature, together with the elements of grammar and style. The profound influence of Greece is shown by Quintilian's recommendation[52] that a boy should start on Greek literature, and by the fact that boys began with Homer.[53] Greek authors, particularly studied, were Aesop, Hesiod, the tragedians, and Menander.[54] Among Roman authors Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Afranius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence were much read, though there was a reaction against these early authors under the empire, and they were partly replaced by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.[55] These authors were made vehicles for the teaching of grammar and of style. The latter point alone concerns us here. The Roman boy was taught to read aloud intelligently and artistically with the proper modulation of the voice.

For this purpose he was carefully taught the laws of metre, with special reference to the peculiarities of particular poets. After the reading aloud (_lectio_) came the _enarratio_ or explanation of the text. The educational value of this was doubtless considerable, though it was impaired by the importance a.s.signed to obscure mythological knowledge and unscientific archaeology.[56] The pupil would be further instructed by exercises in paraphrase and by the treatment in simple essay form of themes (_sententiae_). 'Great store was set both in speaking and writing on a command of an abundance of general truths or commonplaces, and even at school boys were trained to commit them to memory, to expand them, and ill.u.s.trate them from history.'[57] Finally they were taught to write verse. Such at least is a legitimate inference from the extraordinary precocity shown by many Roman authors.[58] This literary training contained much that was of great value, but it also had grave disadvantages. There seems in the first place to have been too much 'spoon-feeding', and too little genuine brain exercise for the pupil.[59] Secondly, the fact that at this stage boys were nurtured almost entirely on poetry requires serious consideration. The quality of the food supplied to the mind, though pre-eminently palatable, must have tended to be somewhat thin. The elaborate instruction in mythological erudition was devoid of religious value; and indeed of any value, save the training of a purely mechanical memory. Attention was called too much to the form, too little to the substance. Style has its value, but it is after all only a secondary consideration in education. The effect upon literature of this poetical training was twofold. It caused an undue demand for poetical colour in prose, and produced a horrible precocity and _cacoethes scribendi_[60] in verse, together with an abnormal tendency to imitation of the great writers of previous generations.[61]

But the rhetorical training which succeeded was responsible for far worse evils. The importance of rhetoric in ancient education is easily explained. The Greek or Roman gentleman was destined to play a part in the public life of the city state. For this purpose the art of speaking was of enormous value alike in politics and in the law courts. Hence the universal predominance of rhetoric in higher education both in Rome and Greece.[62] The main instrument of instruction was the writing of themes for declamation. These exercises were divided into _suasoriae_-- deliberative speeches in which some course of action was discussed-- and _controversiae_--where some proposition was maintained or denied.

Pupils began with _suasoriae_ and went on to _controversiae_. Regarded as a mental gymnastic, these themes may have possessed some value. But they were hackneyed and absurdly remote from real life, as can be judged from the examples collected by the elder Seneca. Typical subjects of the _suasoria_ are--'Agamemnon deliberates whether to slay Iphigenia';[63]

'Cicero deliberates whether to burn his writings, Antony having promised to spare him on that condition';[64] 'Three hundred Spartans sent against Xerxes after the flight of troops sent from the rest of Greece deliberate whether to stand or fly.'[65]

The _controversia_ requires further explanation. A general law is stated, e.g. _incesta saxo deiciatur_. A special case follows, e.g.

_incesti d.a.m.nata antequam deiceretur invocavit Vestam: deiecta vixit_.

The special case had to be brought under the general rule; _repet.i.tur ad poenam_.[66] Other examples are equally absurd:[67] one and all are ridiculously remote from real life. It was bad enough that boys' time should be wasted thus, but the evil was further emphasized by the practice of recitation. These exercises, duly corrected and elaborated, were often recited by their youthful authors to an audience of complaisant friends and relations. Of such training there could be but one possible result. 'Less and less attention was paid to the substance of the speech, more and more to the language; justness and appropriateness of thought came to be less esteemed than brilliance and novelty of expression.'[68]

These formal defects of education were accompanied by a widespread neglect of the true educational spirit. The development on healthy lines of the _morale_, and intellect of the young became in too many instances a matter of indifference. Throughout the great work of Quintilian we have continued evidence of the lack of moral and intellectual enthusiasm that characterized the schools of his day. Even more pa.s.sionate are the denunciations levelled against contemporary education by Messala in the _Dialogus_ of Tacitus.[69] Parents neglect their children from their earliest years: they place them in the charge of foreign slaves, often of the most degraded character; or if they do pay any personal attention to their upbringing, it is to teach them not honesty, purity, and respect for themselves and their elders, but pertness, luxurious habits, and neglect alike of themselves and of others. The schools moreover, apart from their faulty methods and ideals of instruction, encourage other faults. The boys' interests lie not in their work, but in the theatres, the gladiatorial games, the races in the circus--those ancient equivalents of twentieth-century athleticism. Their minds are utterly absorbed by these pursuits, and there is little room left for n.o.bler studies. 'How few boys will talk of anything else at home? What topic of conversation is so frequent in the lecture-room; what other subject so frequently on the lips of the masters, who collect pupils not by the thoroughness of their teaching or by giving proof of their powers of instruction, but by interested visits and all the tricks of toadyism?'[70] Messala goes on[71] to denounce the unreality of the exercises in the schools, whose deleterious effect is aggravated by the low standard exacted. 'Boys and young men are the speakers, boys and young men the audience, and their efforts are received with undiscriminating praise.'

The same faults that were generated in the schools were intensified in after-life. In the law courts the same smart epigrams, the same meretricious style were required. No true method had been taught, with the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that 'our orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72]

Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education reacted on one another.[73]

Further, just as the young poet had to his great detriment been encouraged to recite at school, so he had to recite if he was to win fame for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry written primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a rhetorical age the result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of cases the poet of the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great as were the facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name, not by the gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but by declaiming before public or private audiences. The practice of gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the recitations of a poet is said first to have been inst.i.tuted by Asinius Pollio, the patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the poets of the Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice gradually increased and became a nuisance to all save the few who had the courage to stand aloof from these mutual admiration societies.

Indiscriminate praise was lavished on good and bad work alike. Even Pliny the younger, whose cultivation and literary taste place him high above the average literary level of his day, approves of the increase of this melancholy harvest of minor poetry declaimed by uninspired bards.[75] The effect was lamentable. All the faults of the _suasoria_ and _controversia_ made their appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had continually to be performing acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or epigram, now of learning, or again in the description of blood-curdling horrors, monstrous deaths and prodigious sorceries. Each work was overloaded with _sententiae_ and purple patches.[77] So only could the author keep the attention of his audience. The results were disastrous for literature and not too satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves, as the following curious pa.s.sage from Tacitus (_Dial._ 9) shows: