The History of Rome: Rise and Fall of the Empire. John Bagnell Bury
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a poet can undertake, to write true poetry in a didactic form. Rare artistic instinct and genuine love of his subject were happily joined to produce this unique poem, in which Virgil seems to be more truly himself than either in the Bucolics or the Aeneid. The composition and revision of this work occupied the years from 37 to 30 B.C. when it was read aloud to Caesar on his return from Actium. It is interesting to note that the latter part of the fourth Book was originally devoted to the praises of the poet’s friend Cornelius Gallus, but that after his execution (27 B.C.) this passage was cut out by the wish of the Emperor and replaced by the story of Orpheus.
In the Georgics, Virgil promises that he will soon gird himself to a greater task, and sing the deeds of Caesar. But his poem took the form of an epic, in which, not Caesar, but Aeneas, the founder of the Julian gens, was the hero. The work was begun about 29 B.C., and occupied the remaining ten years of the poet’s life. He died at Brundusium in 19 B.C., leaving the Aeneid unfinished. His wishes were that the manuscript should be burnt, but Augustus, that such a great work should not perish, committed its publication to Varius and Tucca, friends of Virgil, on the condition that they should make no alterations. Though Augustus was not the hero, there were opportunities, in a poem dealing with the origin of “the Latin race and the Alban fathers and the walls of lofty Rome”, to look forward over the ages of Roman history and celebrate the glories of him who was to “found a golden age”. The Aeneid hay suffered from the premature death of its creator; it was neither finished nor revised. Yet it would hardly be an injustice to Virgil to say that its excellence and charm lie in particular episodes, in delicate and subtle details of language and rhythm, and not in the poem regarded as a whole. But it must always stand beside the Iliad and Odyssey, as the third great epic of antiquity. The Roman dignity and magnitude of the subject, and the wonderful power of the narratives in the second, fourth, and sixth Books, have exalted the Aeneid far above the Georgics in the estimation of posterity; yet it might be argued that Virgil had more in common with Wordsworth than with Milton or with his worshipper Dante. The note of Virgil is “natural piety”; perhaps he cannot be described better than by the happy expression which his friend Horace applied to him, anima Candida.
Virgil was buried close to Naples on the road to Puteoli, and the inscription on his tomb, said to have been dictated by himself before his death, ran thus:
Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc
Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.
In connection with Virgil, it is natural to mention his elder contemporary and friend, L. VARIUS RUFUS (B.C. 74-14), celebrated for his epics on Caesar and Octavian, and more celebrated for his tragedy the Thyestes. Another poet of about the same age was AEMILIUS MACER of Verona, also a friend of Virgil, and disguised in the Bucolics under the name of Mopsus. He wrote poems on natural history (Ornithogonia and Theriaca), but they have been less lucky than his models, the Greek poems of Nicander, which survive to the present day. The unfortunate CORNELIUS GALLUS (69 B.C.-27) must also be mentioned here, though his name has its place rather in the age of Catullus and Cinna. It was he who transplanted the erotic elegy of the Alexandrine Greeks to Roman soil, and founded “the school of Euphorion”, to which Catullus and Cinna belonged. He translated Euphorion into Latin; and wrote four Books of original elegies on his own mistress Cytheris under the name of Lycoris. His death has been already noticed.
The great lyric, like the great epic, poet of Rome was of humble birth. Q. HORATIUS FLACCUS was the son of a freedman, and was born at Venusia, on the borders of Apulia and Lucania, in 65 B.C.. After the death of Julius Caesar (44 B.C.) he joined the cause of Brutus and served under him in Asia and Macedonia, until the Battle of Philippi (42 B.C.). On that occasion he took part in the general flight, as he tells us himself, and afterwards, returning to Rome, obtained a post as a quaestor’s secretary. During the next ten years he wrote his Satires and Epodes, which brought him fame, and secured him the friendship of Virgil and Varius, who introduced him to Maecenas. In 37 B.C. we find him accompanying Maecenas on the journey to Brundusium (Brindisi), of which has left us a pleasant description. The intimacy with Maecenas ripened; the Epicurean views of life which both held were a bond between the poet and his patron. Horace had a taste for country life, and in 33 B.C. Maecenas bestowed upon him a farm in the Sabine territory, which he preferred to “royal Rome” Independence was one of the chief characteristics of Horace, and he felt more independent in the country than in the immediate neighborhood of the court.
The first Book of the Satires appeared about 35 B.C. : the second Book about five years later. In this style of composition the predecessor of Horace was Lucilius; but while Lucilius criticized persons and politics freely, Horace prudently confined himself to generalities on society and literature, owing to the altered circumstances of the time. Lucilius had imitated the Greek writers of Old Comedy, such as Cratinus and Aristophanes; and Horace stood in somewhat the same relation to his predecessor as the New Comedy stood to the Old. Prom these “Talks” (sermones, as Horace calls them himself), written, like those of Lucilius, in hexameter verse and in colloquial style, we learn much about the personality of Horace and about his friends. In the Epodes, which were published about the same time as the second Book of the Satires, Horace imitated Archilochus and attacked persons in coarse language. All these poems (except the last) are written in couplets consisting of a longer and a shorter line, generally an iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter. They are the least interesting work of Horace, but they were a good exercise in handling metres and in the imitation of Greek models, and they led to the Odes.
The greatest “monument” of poetry that Horace has bequeathed to posterity is the collection of lyrical poems in four Books known us the Odes. The first three Books were published in 24 B.C., the fourth eleven years later. In lyric composition he does not claim originality, he only “adapted Aeolian song to Italian measures”; but he claims priority; he was the first (except Catullus) to make the attempt :—
Princeps Aeolium carmen A.D. Italos
Deduxisse modos.
For this he bids the Muse crown him with Delphic laurel. But though the Greek lyric poets, especially Sappho and Alcaeus, were his models, it was an original idea on the part of Horace to turn away from the Alexandrine poets who were then in vogue, and go back to the older singers. It required true genius and wonderful artistic instinct to tune the borrowed lyre to the accents of another tongue. Horace was supremely successful. In the Odes his poetic judgment is, with few exceptions, faultless; the happiest word comes almost inevitably; his felicity (curiosa felicitas) was praised by Roman critics. Some of these poems are probably tree translations from the Greek, but many refer to contemporary people and events, some deal with Roman history, and the victories won under the auspices of Augustus. The fourth Book of the Odes is said to have been published at the instance of the Emperor.
But in the interval between his earlier and later lyre works, Horace wrote Epistles. The first Book appeared about 20 B.C.. After the strict technical constraints to which he had subjected himself in the Odes, it was a relaxation for the poet to expand himself in the easy and familiar style of the Sermones. But the urbane Epistles, though written in the same colloquial language, are very different from the Satires; they are more mature, less polemical, and they have a charm of serenity which is wanting in the earlier work. It might be said, that if the genius of Virgil found its truest expression in the Georgics, so that of Horace was best expressed in his Epistles; and in this form of composition he has never been equaled. The second Book of the Epistles, written in the later years of his life, includes a Treatise on Poetry, the Ars Poetica, in the form of a letter to his friends the Pisos.
Horace died in 8 B.C., surviving by a few months his benefactor Maecenas, beside whom he was buried. Though he had at first stood aloof, he became reconciled, as time went on, to the Empire, was on good terms with Augustus, and did what was required of him as an Augustan poet. And independent though Horace was, he had a decided weakness for friendships with great people. The influence of Maecenas probably did much to stimulate his poetic activity; for Horace was by no means one of those who cannot help singing. He was not “inspired”; his poetry is marked by lucidity and judgment.
Many poets, whose works have not survived, but famous in their own day, are mentioned by Horace. His friend VALGIUS, who wrote Epigrams and Elegies, was actually compared to Homer. ARISTIUS FUSCUS and FUNDANUS composed