Chapter XI.

       Literature of the Augustan Age

       Table of Contents

      SECT. I. — LATIN POETRY

      Latin literature was affected seriously, and in many ways, by the fall of the Republic and the foundation of the Empire. The Augustan age itself was brilliant, but after the Augustan age literature rapidly declined. The most conspicuous figures in the world of letters under Augustus had outlived their youth under the Republic; some of them had served on the losing side. But these soon became reconciled to the new order of things. The Emperor drew men to himself by virtue of the peace and security which he had established (cunctos dulcedine otii pettexit); and it was his special object to patronize men of literary talent and engage their services for the support of his policy. His efforts were successful; he won not only flattery, but sympathy for the new age which he had inaugurated; he enlisted in his cause, not only timeservers, but the finest spirits of the day. Although the Augustan literature is certainly marked by a vein of flattery to the court, and by a lack of republican independence, yet we cannot but recognize a genuine enthusiasm for the new age, for the peace which it had brought after the long civil wars, and for the greatness of the Roman Empire. And, from a literary point of view, the Augustan age ranks among the most brilliant in the history of the world; below the Periclean, perhaps below the Elizabethan, but certainly far above that of Louis XIV. It is true that the cessation of the political life of the Republic necessarily meant the decline of oratory; it is true that historians could no longer treat contemporary events with free and independent criticism. It is true likewise that the severe style of old Latin prose begins to degenerate, and that poetry lays aside its popular elements and becomes more strictly artificial. In fact the poets deprecate popularity and despise the public. Horace’s cry “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo” is characteristic of the age. But for literary excellence and for the perfection of art the best of the Augustan writers had a clear judgment and a delicate taste. The tendencies of the new age inevitably led to a decline; but, as an ample compensation, we have Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Livy.

      Augustus, as we have said, concerned himself with the promotion of literary activity, and the patronage of men of letters. “He fostered in all ways the talents of his age”. He founded two libraries, one in the portico of Octavia, the other at the temple of Apollo on the Palatine. He was an author himself both in prose and verse. He wrote “Exhortations to Philosophy”; and a poem in hexameters, entitled “Sicilia”. The Monumentum Ancyranum and the Breviarium totius imperii have been mentioned elsewhere.

      The two chief ministers of Augustus were authors likewise. AGRIPPA wrote memoirs of his own life, and edited an Atlas of the world. MAECENAS composed occasional poems of a light nature, and also wrote some prose works. Butth is more famous as a patron of poets than as a poet himself. His literary circle included Horace, Virgil, Varius, Tucca. Domitius Marsus, besides many lesser names. The orator M. VALERIUS MESSALLA (64 B.C.-9 DC), also drew round him a group of men of letters, among whom the most distinguished were the poets Tibullus, Valgius Rufus, Aemilius Macer, and perhaps Ovid. This circle seems to have held quite aloof from politics. Messalla’s own literary work chiefly consisted in translations from the Greek, both prose and verse.

      C. ASINIUS POLLIO (75 B.C.-5 A.D.) held a unique position. Having been on the side of Antonius, he withdrew after Actium from political life, and holding himself aloof from the court, devoted himself to literature, with a certain independence and perhaps antagonism to the spirit of the age. He was very learned and a very severe critic. He wrote tragedies, which are praised by Virgil; and a history of the civil wars (Historiae) reaching from 60 to about 42 B.C.. He was a friend of both Virgil and Horace.

      PUBLIUS VERGILLUS MARO was born in 70 B.C. at Andes, near Mantua. His rustic features bore testimony to his humble origin : his father was an artisan. He went to school at Cremona; afterwards he studied at Medolanum, and finally at Rome, where Octavius, afterwards to be Caesar and Augustus, was his fellow-student in rhetoric. He studied philosophy under the Epicurean Siro. After his return home, he and his family experienced the calamities of the civil war. Octavius Musa, who was appointed to carry out the distribution of land to veteran soldiers in the district of Cremona, transgressed the limits of that district and encroached upon the neighboring territory of Mantua (41 B.C.). Virgil’s father was among the sufferers; but Asinius Pollio, who was then legatus in Gallia Transpadana, and the poet Cornelius Gallus, interested themselves in his behalf. At their suggestion, Virgil betook himself to Rome, and obtained from Caesar the restitution of his father’s farm. The first Eclogue is an expression of gratitude to Caesar for this protection. But Virgil and his father were not permitted to remain long in possession of their recovered homestead. The same injustice was repeated a year or two later, and the poet was even in danger of his life. Again he went to Rome, and the influence of Maecenas, to whom he had probably become known by the publication of some of his Bucolics, secured him, not restitution but compensation, perhaps by a farm in Campania, where he spent much of his later life.

      Virgil’s first work, the Bucolics, consisting of ten “eclogue”, or idylls, was composed in the years 41-39B.C.. Inspired by Theocritus, they are written in the same metre, and are in great part imitations from his idylls. But most of them contain references to contemporary persons and events, especially to the hardships in Transpadane Gaul from which Virgil himself had suffered so sorely. Caesar, Cornelius Gallus, Alfenus Varus (the successor of Pollio as legatus), and above all, Pollio himself, have their places in the woods of Tityrus. The fourth Eclogue, written for the year of Pollio’s consulship (40 B.C.), treats a theme which hardly belongs to bucolic poetry. Virgil feels that he has to make his woods “worthy of a consul”.

      Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae,

      He salutes the return of the “Saturnian kingdoms” and the golden age. The salutation was premature by ten years; and when peace at length came to the Roman world, Pollio, instead of being its inaugurator, was rather an opponent. But it is interesting to observe, that the idea of some great change for the better was in the air.

      The Bucolics were written in the north of Italy (not yet “Italy” at that time); his next work was written in the south, chiefly at Naples. It was Maecenas who suggested the subject of the Georgics, a didactic poem in hexameters, dealing with the various parts of a farmer’s work. The first Book treats of agriculture, the second of the plantation of trees, the third of the care of livestock, the fourth of bees. No subject was more congenial to Virgil’s Muse—his “rustic Muse”, as he says himself; and from some points of view the Georgics may be regarded as his masterpiece. He has