Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 20

By what crime, O Sleep, most gentle of G.o.ds, or by what error, have I, that am young, deserved--woe's me!--that I alone should lack thy blessing? All cattle and birds and beasts of the wild lie silent; the curved mountain ridges seem as though they slept the sleep of weariness, and wild torrents have hushed their roaring. The waves of the deep have fallen and the seas, reclined on earth's bosom, take their rest. Yet now Phoebe returning gazes for the seventh time on my sleepless weary eyes. For the seventh time the lamps of Oeta and Paphos (i.e. Hesperus and Venus) revisit me, for the seventh time t.i.thonus' bride sweeps over my complaint and all her pity is to touch me with her frosty scourge. How may I find strength to endure? I needs must faint, even had I the thousand eyes which divine Argos kept fixed upon his prey in s.h.i.+fting relays (so only could he wake, nor watched he ever with all his body). But now--woe's me!--another, his arms locked about his love, spurneth thee from him all the long night. Leave him, O Sleep, for me. I bid thee not sweep upon my eyes with all the force of thy fanning pinions. That is the prayer of happier souls than I.

Touch me only with the tip of thy wand--that shall suffice--or lightly pa.s.s over my head with hovering feet.

Here Statius far surpa.s.ses himself. Had all else that he wrote been merely mediocre, this one short poem would have given him a claim on the grateful memory of posterity. The note it strikes is one that has never been heard before in Latin poetry and is never heard again. We have wavered before as to Statius' t.i.tle to the name of true poet; this should turn the balance in his favour. Great he is not for a moment to be called; Lucan, with all his faults, stands high above him; Valerius Flaccus, aided largely by his happier choice of subject, is in some respects his superior; but for finish, dexterity, and fluency, Statius is unique among the post-Augustans. Just as an actor who has acquired a perfect mastery of all the tricks and technique of the stage may sometimes cheat us into believing him to be a great actor, though in reality neither intellect, presence, nor voice qualify him for such high praise, so it is with Statius. His facility and cunning workmans.h.i.+p hold us amazed, and at times the reader is on the verge of yielding up his saner judgement before such charm. But the revulsion of feeling comes inevitably. Statius had not learned the art of concealing his art. The unreality of his work soon makes itself felt, and his skill becomes in time little better than a weariness and a mockery.

CHAPTER X

SILIUS ITALICUS

t.i.tus Catius Silius Italicus[590] is best known to us as the author of the longest and worst of surviving Roman epics. But by a strange irony of fate we have a fuller knowledge of his life and character than is granted us in the case of any other poet of the Silver Age, with the exception of Seneca and Persius. His social position, his personal character, his cultured and artistic tastes, rather than any merit possessed by his verse, have won him a place in the picture-gallery of Pliny the younger.[591] We would gladly sacrifice the whole of the 'obituary notice' transmitted to us by the kindly garrulity of Pliny, for a few more glimpses into the life of Juvenal, or even of Valerius Flaccus, but the picture is interesting and even attractive, and awakens feelings of a less unfriendly nature than are usually entertained for the plodding poetaster who had the misfortune to write the seventeen books of _Punica_.

Silius was born in the year 25 or 26 A.D.[592]; of his family and place of birth we know nothing.[593] He first appears in the unpleasing guise of a 'delator' in the reign of Nero, in the last year of whose princ.i.p.ate he filled the position of consul (68 A.D.).

In the 'year of the four emperors' (69 A.D.) he is found as the friend and counsellor of Vitellius;[594] his conduct, we are told, was wise and courteous. He subsequently won renown by his admirable administration of the province of Asia, and then retired from the public gaze to the seclusion of a life of study.[595] The amiability and virtue which marked the leisure of his later years wiped out the dark stain that had besmirched his youth. 'Men hastened to salute him and to do him honour.

When not engaged in writing, he would pa.s.s the day in learned converse with the friends and acquaintances--no mere fortune-hunters--who continually thronged the chambers where he would lie for long hours upon his couch. His verses, which he would sometimes submit to the judgement of the critics by giving recitations, show diligence rather than genius.

The increasing infirmities of age led him to forsake Rome for Campania; not even the accession of a new princeps induced him to quit his retirement. It is not less creditable to Caesar to have permitted than to Silius to have ventured on such a freedom. He was a connoisseur even to the verge of extravagance. He had several country houses in the same district, and often abandoned those which he already possessed, if some new house chanced to catch his fancy. He had a large library, and a fine collection of portraits and statues, and was an enthusiastic admirer of works of art which he was not fortunate enough to possess. He kept Vergil's birthday with greater care than his own, especially when he was at Naples, where he would visit the poet's tomb with all the veneration due to the temple of a G.o.d.' He died[596] in his Neapolitan villa of self-chosen starvation. His health had failed him. He was afflicted by an incurable tumour, and ran to meet death with a fort.i.tude that nothing could shake. 'His life was happy and prosperous to his last hour; his one sorrow was the death of his younger son; the elder (and better) of his sons, who survives him, has had a distinguished career, and has even reached the consulate.' From Epictetus[597] we gather, what we might infer from the manner of his death, that he was a Stoic. From Martial,[598] who addresses him in the interested language of flattery as the leading orator of his day, and as the maker of immortal verse, we learn that he was the proud possessor of the Tusculan villa of Cicero, and that he actually owned the tomb of the poet whom he loved so well.

Silius' life is more interesting than his verse. Like Lucan, he elected to write historical epic, and in his choice of a subject was undoubtedly wiser than his younger contemporary. For instead of selecting a period so dangerously recent as the civil strife in which the republic perished, he went back to the Second Punic War, to a time sufficiently remote to permit of greater freedom of treatment and to enable him to avoid the peril of unduly republican ecstasies. In making this choice he was in all probability influenced by his reverence for Vergil. He, too, would sing of Rome's rise to greatness, would write a truly national epic on the great theme which Vergil so inimitably foreshadowed in the dying words of the Carthaginian queen, would link the most stirring years of Rome's history with the past, just as Vergil had linked the epic of Rome's founder to the greatness of the years that were to come.

Ennius had been before him, but he might well aspire to remodel and develop the rude annalistic work of the earlier poet.[599] The brilliant history of Livy, with its vivid battle-scenes and its sonorous speeches, was a quarry that might provide him with the richest material.

Unhappily, less wise than Lucan, he made the fatal mistake of adopting the principles set forth by Eumolpus, the dissolute poet in the novel of Petronius.[600]

The intrusion of the mythological method into historical epic is disastrous. It is barely tolerable in the pseudo-historical epic of Ta.s.so. In the military narrative of Silius it is monstrous and insufferable. His reverence for Vergil led him to control, or attempt to control, every action of the war by divine intervention.

Juno reappears in her old role as the implacable enemy of Rome. It is she that kindles Hannibal's hatred for Rome, causes the outbreak of the war,[601] and, disguised as the lake-G.o.d Trasimenus, spurs him on to Rome.[602] It is at her instigation that Anna Perenna kindles him to fresh effort by the news that Fabius Cunctator is no longer in command against him,[603] that Somnus moderates his designs after Cannae.[604]

It is Juno that conceals the Carthaginian forces in a cloud at Cannae,[605] and that rescues Hannibal from the fury of Scipio at Zama.[606] Against Juno is arrayed Venus, the protector of the sons of Aeneas. She persuades her husband Vulcan to dry up the Trebia, whose flood threatens the Romans with yet greater disaster than they have already suffered,[607] she unnerves and demoralizes the Punic army by the luxury of Capua.[608] Minerva and Mars play minor parts, the former favouring Carthage, the latter Rome.[609] Nothing is gained by this dreary and superannuated mechanism, while the poem is yet further hampered by the other enc.u.mbrances of epic commonplace.

The _Thebais_ of Statius is full of episodes that only find a place because Vergil had borrowed similar episodes from Homer. But the _Thebais_ is a professedly mythological epic, and Statius commands a light touch and brilliant colours. The reader merely groans when the heavy-handed Silius introduces his wondrously engraven s.h.i.+eld,[610] his funeral games,[611] his Amazon,[612] his dismal catalogues,[613] his Nekuia.[614] In the latter episode, he even introduces the Vergilian Sibyl of c.u.mae; it is a redeeming feature that Scipio does not make a 'personally conducted tour' through the nether world; such a direct challenge to the Sixth Aeneid was perhaps impossible for so true a lover of Vergil as Silius. The Homeric method of necromancy is wisely preferred, and the Sibyl reveals the past and future of Rome as the spirits pa.s.s before them. But there are no illuminating flashes of imagination; the best feature of the episode is an uninspired and frigid appropriateness. Nothing serves better than the failure of Silius to show at once the daring and the genius of Vergil, when he ransacked the wealth of Homer and

from a greater Greek Borrowed as beautifully as the moon The fire o' the sun.

Apart from these unintelligent plagiarisms and vexatious absurdities, the actual form and composition of the work show some skill. The poet pa.s.ses from scene to scene, from battle to battle, with ease and a.s.surance in the earlier books. It is only with the widening of the area of conflict that the work loses its connexion. The earlier and less important exploits of the elder Scipios were wisely dismissed in a few words.[615] The poet avoided the mistake of undue scrupulosity in respect of chronology and makes no attempt to pose as a scientific military historian. But it is a serious defect that he should fail to show the significance of the successful 'peninsular campaign' of the younger Scipio. Here, as in the descriptions of the siege of Syracuse, the reader is haunted by the feeling that these great events are regarded as merely episodic. Even the thrilling march of Hasdrubal, ending in the dramatic catastrophe of the Metaurus, is hardly given its full weight. There is more true historical and dramatic appreciation in Horace's

Karthagini iam non ego nuntios mittam superbos: occidit, occidit spes omnis et fortuna nostri nominis Hasdrubale interempto

than in all the ill-proportioned verbiage of Silius. The task of setting forth the course of a conflict that flamed all over the Western Mediterranean world was not easy, and Silius' failure was proportionately great. Nay--if it be not merely the hallucination of a weary reader--he seems to have tired of his task. The first twelve books take us no further than Hannibal's appearance before the walls of Rome, and the war is summarily brought to a close in the last five books, although these, it should be noted, are by no means free from irrelevant matter. The last three books above all are jejune and perfunctory, and it has been suggested that they lack the final revision that the rest of the work had received. Be this as it may, the result of the inadequate treatment of the close of the war is that the reader lays down the poem with no feeling of the greatness of Rome's triumph.

Yet even with these faults of composition, a genuine poet might have wrought a great work from the rough ore of history. The scene is thronged with figures as remarkable and inspiring as history affords.

There is the fierce irresistible Hannibal, the sagacious Fabius, the elder Scipios, tragic victims of disaster, the younger Scipio, glorious with the light of victory as the clouds of defeat are rolled away, Hasdrubal hurled to ruin at the supreme crisis of the war, Marcellus the victorious, beleaguered[616] and beleaguerer, the ill-starred Paulus, the Senate of Rome that thanked the fugitive Varro because he had not despaired of the republic,[617] and above all the gigantic figure of Rome herself, unshaken, indomitable, triumphant. These are no dry bones that the breath of the poet alone should make them live. They breathe immortal in the prose of Livy, in the verse of Silius they are vain 'shadows of men foredone'. The Hannibal of Silius is not the dazzling villain of Livy, the incarnation of military daring and 'Punic faith'.

Mistaken patriotism does not lead Silius to blacken the character of Rome's great antagonist; he strives to do him justice; he is as true a patriot, as chivalrous[618] a warrior, as any of the Roman leaders. But he does not live; he is merely the stock warrior of epic, and his exploits fail to compel belief.

Fabius, the least romantic, though not the least interesting figure in the war, stands forth more clearly. The prosaic Silius is naturally most successful with his most prosaic hero. The younger Scipio is the embodiment of _pietas_, an historical Aeneas, without his prototype's most distressing weaknesses, but with all his dullness, and lacking the halo of legend and the splendour of the founder of the race to glorify him. Paulus has the merit of true courage, and his consciousness of his colleague's folly invests him with a certain pathos. He makes the best death of any Silian warrior, and deserves the eulogy pa.s.sed on him by Hannibal. The rest are lay-figures, with even less individuality and life. Silius failed to depict character. He fails, too, to show any true sense of the political greatness of Rome. The genius of Rome and the genius of Carthage are never confronted or contrasted; the greatness of Rome in defeat, the scenes of Rome agonizing in the grip of unexpected disaster, are never brought home to the reader with the least degree of vividness. The great battles are described at tedious length[619] and rendered ridiculous by the lavish introduction of Homeric single combats. If Silius is rarely bombastic or rendered absurd by the grossness of his exaggeration, he yet fails to see what Lucan saw plainly--that for the author of a military historical epic, it is the issues of the war, big with the fate of generations to come, the temper of the combatants, the character of the chief actors, that are the really interesting elements. Almost alone of Silver Latin poets he shows no real gifts of rhetoric and epigram, no virtuosity of diction, no brilliance of description. We lack the declamation of Lucan, the apostrophes on the issues of the war, the vivid character-sketches of the generals, the political enthusiasm, the thunder of the oratory of general and statesman. The battle-speeches of Livy, whose glow and vigour half atone for their theatricality, have been made use of by Silius, but find only a feeble echo in his lifeless verse. Nothing stands out sharply defined; the epic lacks impetus and has no salient points; outlines are blurred in an unpoetic haze. The history of Tacitus has been described as history 'seen by lightning flashes'. Such should be the history of historical epic. In its stead Silius presents us with a confused welter of archaistic battle, learned allusion, and epic commonplace.

'Aequalis liber est, Cretice, qui malus est,' cries Martial[620] to a friend. The epigram would apply to the __Punica_. There is scarcely a pa.s.sage in the whole work that reveals genuine poetic imagination.

Silius is free from many of the faults of his contemporaries, the faults that spring from aspirations towards originality. He is content to be an imitator. In his style, as in his composition, Vergil is an obsession.

But the echoes are m.u.f.fled or unmusical. Gifted with ease and fluency and--for his age--comparative lucidity of diction, Silius has no true ear for music, nor true eye for beauty. His verse moves naturally but heavily. He is the most spondaic poet[621] of his age, and the spondaic rhythm is not alleviated by artistic variety of pause or judicious use of elision. Lucan is heavy, but he hits hard and is weighty in the best sense. Silius rolls on lumbering and unperturbed, never rising or falling. He has all the faults of Ovid, and, in spite of his laboured imitation, none of the merits of Vergil. Nothing can kindle him. The most heroic and the most tragic of all the stories of the struggle for the empire of the western world is that of Regulus, the famous captive of Carthage in the first Punic War.[622] The episode is skilfully and naturally introduced. The story is told by an aged veteran of the first Punic War to a descendant of Regulus, who has fled wounded from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the n.o.blest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply and severely; there is nothing to offend the taste, but there is equally nothing to move the heart; the description is merely dull; it lacks the fire of life and the finer imagination. Here, again, we turn for relief to Horace with his brief but incomparable

atqui sciebat quae sibi barbarus tortor pararet, non aliter tamen dimovit obstantes propinquos et populum reditus morantem quam si clientum longa negotia diiudicata lite relinqueret, tendens Venefranos in agros aut Lacedaemonium Tarentum (iii. 5. 49).

Take the corresponding pa.s.sage in Silius. Regulus concludes his speech to the Senate as follows (vi. 485):

exposc.u.n.t Libyes n.o.bisque dedere haec referenda, pari libeat si pendere bellum foedere et ex aequo geminas conscribere leges.

sed mihi sit Stygios ante intravisse penates talia quam videam ferientes pacta Latinos, haec fatus Tyriae sese iam reddidit irae, nec monitus spernente graves fidosque senatu Poenorum dimissa cohors. quae maesta repulsa ac minitans capto patrias properabat ad oras.

prosequitur volgus, patres, ac planctibus ingens personat et luctu campus. revocare libebat interdum et iusto raptum retinere dolore.

'The Libyans ask whether you will cease from war on equal terms and draw up a treaty wherein each side keeps its own.

They bid me bring back your reply. But may I sooner enter the gates of h.e.l.l than see the Latins make such a compact!' He spake, and yielded himself back once more to the mercies of the Tyrian's hate: the Senate spurned not his words of weight, his loyal warning. The Punic emba.s.sy was dismissed. Cast down at their rebuff, and threatening their captive, they hastened homeward to their native sh.o.r.es. The people, the fathers, follow them: the whole vast plain resounds with weeping and beating of b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and ever and again they strove to recall the hero and with just grief to retain him as he was s.n.a.t.c.hed away from them.

Criticism is needless. One pa.s.sage is in the grand style, the other is not; one is mere verse-making, the other the purest poetry. Silius has nothing of _curiosa felicitas_ or even of the more common gift of vague sensuous charm. Even on such hackneyed themes as the choice of Hercules, with Scipio playing the part of Hercules, he fails to rise to the conventional prettiness of which even a Calpurnius Siculus would have been capable. Virtue and pleasure are rendered equally unattractive, and we pity Scipio for having to make the choice. With the other poets of the age it is easy to select pa.s.sages to ill.u.s.trate their characteristic merits and defects. But from the dull monotony of Silius it is hard to choose. He does not read well even in selections. Apart from the general absurdity of the conception of the poem he is rarely grotesque. His taste is chastened by his love of Vergil, and the absence of genuine rhetorical power saves him from dangerous exuberance. The tricks of rhetoric are there, but the edge of his wit is dull, and he has no speed nor energy. For similar reasons he never attains sublimity. There are faint traces of the _Romana gravitas_ in lines such as

iamque tibi veniet tempus quo maxima rerum n.o.bilior sit Roma mails (iii. 584).

And the time shall come when Rome, the greatest thing in all the world, shall be yet more enn.o.bled by her woes.

The idea that the trials of Rome shall be as a 'refiner's fire' has a certain grandeur, but the expression of the idea is commonplace. The same is true of the elaboration of the Vergilian _parcere subiectis_, where the poet describes Marcellus' clemency to the vanquished Syracusans, and makes brief allusion to the unhappy death of Archimedes (xiv. 673):

sic parcere victis pro praeda fuit et sese contenta nec ullo sanguine pollutis plausit Victoria pennis.

tu quoque ductoris lacrimas, memorande, tulisti, defensor patriae, meditantem in pulvere formas nec turbatum animi tanta feriente ruina.

So mercy toward the conquered took the place of rapine, and Victory was content with herself and clapped her wings unstained by any blood. Thou, too, immortal sage, defender of thy country, didst win the meed of the conqueror's tears, thou whom ruin smote down, all unmoved, as thou broodedst o'er figures traced in the dust.

To find Silius at his best--not a very exalted best--we must turn to the pa.s.sage where he depicts the feelings of Hannibal on finding the body of Paulus on the field of Cannae (x. 513):

quae postquam aspexit, geminatus gaudia ductor Sidonius 'Fuge, Varro,' inquit 'fuge, Varro, superstes, dum iaceat Paulus. patribus Fabioque sedenti et populo consul totas edissere Cannas.

concedam hanc iterum, si lucis tanta cupido est, concedam tibi, Varro, fugam. at, cui fortia et hoste me digna haud parvo caluerunt corda vigore, funere supremo et tumuli decoretur honore.

quantus, Paule, iaces! qui tot mihi milibus unus maior laet.i.tiae causa est. c.u.m fata vocabunt, tale precor n.o.bis salva Karthagine letum.'

'i decus Ausoniae, quo fas est ire superbas (572) virtute et factis animas. tibi gloria leto iam parta insigni. nostros Fortuna labores versat adhuc casusque iubet nescire futuros.'

haec Libys, atque repens crepitantibus undique flammis aetherias anima exultans evasit in auras.

When this he saw, the Sidonian chief was filled with double joy and cried, 'Fly, Varro, fly and survive defeat; enough that Paulus lieth low! Go, consul, tell all the tale of Cannae to the fathers, to laggard Fabius, to the people. If so thou long'st to live, I will grant thee, Varro, to flee once more as thou fleest to-day. But let him, whose heart was bold and worthy to be my foe, and all aflame with mighty valour, be honoured with the last rites of burial and all the honour of the tomb. How great, Paulus, art thou in the death! Thy fall alone gives greater cause for joy than the fall of so many thousands. Such, when the fates shall summon me, such I pray be my fate, so Carthage stand unshaken.' ... 'Go, Ausonia's glory, where the souls of those whom valour and n.o.ble deeds make proud may go. _Thou_ hast won great glory by thy death.

For _us_, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the exulting spirit soared skyward through the air.

The picture of the soul of Paulus soaring heavenward from the funeral pyre, exultant at the honour paid him by his great foe, is the nearest approach to pure poetic imagination in the whole weary length of the _Punica_.[623] But the pedestrian muse of Silius is more at home in the ingenious description of the manoeuvres and counter-manoeuvres of Fabius and Hannibal in the seventh book; the similes with which the pa.s.sage closes are hackneyed, but their application is both new and clever:

(vii. 91) iam Fabius tacito procedens agmine et arte bellandi lento similis, praecluserat omnes fortunaeque hostique vias. discedere signis haud licitum summumquc decus, quo tollis ad astra imperil, Romane, caput, parere docebat * * * * *

(123) ca.s.sarum sedet irarum spectator et alti celsus colle iugi domat exultantia corda infractasque minas dilato Marte fatigat sollers cunctandi Fabius, ceu nocte sub atra munitis pastor stabulis per ovilia clausum impavidus somni servat pecus: effera saevit atque impasta truces ululatus turba luporum exercet morsuque quat.i.t restantia claustra.

inritus incepti movet inde atque Apula tardo arva Libys pa.s.su legit ac nunc valle residit conditus occulta, si praecipitare sequentem atque inopinata detur circ.u.mdare fraude; nunc nocturna parat caecae celantibus umbris furta viae retroque abitum fictosque timores adsimulat, tum castra citus deserta relicta ostentat praeda atque invitat prodigus hostem: qualis Maeonia pa.s.sim Maeandrus in ora, c.u.m sibi gurgitibus flexis revolutus oberrat.

nulla vacant incepta dolis: simul omnia versat miscetque exacuens varia ad conamina mentem, sicut aquae splendor radiatus lampade solis dissultat per tecta vaga sub imagine vibrans luminis et tremula laquearia verberat umbra.

Now Fabius advanced, leading his host in silence and--such was his cunning--like to a laggard in war; so closed he all the paths whereby fortune or the foe might fall on him. No soldier might quit the standards, and he taught that the height of glory, even that glory, Roman, that raises thine imperial head to the stars, was obedience.... Fabius sits high on the mountain slopes watching the foeman's rage and tames his impetuous ardour, humbles his threats, and, with skilful delay, postpones the day of battle and wears out his patience: as when through the darkness of the night a shepherd, fearless and sleepless in his well-guarded byre, keeps his flock penned within the fold: without, the wolf-pack, fierce and famished, howls fiercely, and with its teeth shakes the gates that bar its entrance. Baffled in his enterprise, the Libyan departs thence and slowly marches across the Apulian fields and pitches his camp deep in a hidden vale, if perchance he may hurl the Roman to ruin as he follows in his track and surround him by hidden guile. Now he prepares a midnight ambush in some dark pa.s.s beneath the shelter of the gloom, and falsely feigns retreat and fear; then, swiftly leaving his camp and booty, he displays them to the foe, and lavishly invites a raid. Even as on Maeonian sh.o.r.es Maeander with winding channel turns upon himself and wanders far and wide, now here, now there. Naught he attempts, but has some guile in it. He weighs every scheme, sharpens his mind for divers exploits, and blends contrivance with contrivance, even as the gleam of water lit by the sun's torch dances through a house quivering, and the reflected beam goes wandering and lashes the roof with tremulous reflection.

There is in this pa.s.sage nothing approaching real excellence, but its dexterity may reasonably command some respect. It is dexterity of which Silius has little to show. He is well-read in history and its b.a.s.t.a.r.d sister mythology. At his best he can string together his incidents with some skill, and he makes use of his learning in the accepted fas.h.i.+on of his day.[624] The poem is deluged with proper names and learned aetiology, though he has no conception of that magical use of proper names and legendary allusions which is the secret of the masters of literary epic.[625]

But the absence of any true poetic genius makes him the most tedious of Latin authors, and his unenviable reputation is well deserved. For the poetry of the struggle with Carthage for the

plumed troops and the big wars That make ambition virtue,