Charles Merivale

“ If Virgil deserves our admiration, Horace too is not unworthy of our sympathy ; and it is well that we can part in such good temper from the two most perfect artists of the Roman, or perhaps of the ancient, world altogether.
Of Ovid, the third great poet of the Augustan Age, we can hardly think or speak so favourably. Ovid, too, was a genuine representative of his epoch, which occupied, however, the latter part of the career of Augustus, when the character of the age had begun to show manifest signs of deterioration. ”

“ Minute and manifold as were the memorials of their past history, or of their accredited mythology, which the cult of the Roman temples enshrined, we can imagine how much they must have faded away from the recollection of the people generally during the century of confusion from which they had just emerged, and how even the priests and flamens of the national divinities must have stood in need of a learned interpreter of the rites which they mechanically performed. ”

“ JEneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one ia for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected. ”

“ There can be no doubt that the conscience of the nation was awakened to a sense of the divine retribution under which they had suffered, but which had been at last averted under the blessed influence of the ruler whom they had at last chosen. ”

“ Great were the merits of the historical literature of Rome at a later age, and illustrious are some of the men who distinguished themselves in its exercise. But, on the whole, a reasonable criticism will award to Livy the palm of merit at least in the two par ticulars just specified, a palm which he may well contest even with the masters of the art in Greece. The form of Livy s history partakes in exquisite proportion of the descriptive, the narrative, and the dramatic ; it is replete with personal characteristics, which bring us into direct acquaintance with the individuals of whom it treats ”

“ Doubtless Horace, in his own peculiar line, exercised as great an influence in Roman society as Virgil. The laughing philosopher was no less a power among his contemporaries than the religious devotee. ”

“ But, imitator as he doubtless was, Ovid had a strong personal individuality, and all his poetry is marked with the genuine sentiment of his age and country. Perhaps we trace more of the real man in his Tristia and Ex Ponto, in which he is thrown entirely on his own resources, though in the depth of his affliction and the decline of his powers, than in the abler and more interesting works in which he owed we know not how much to the Greeks before him. ”

“ An age succeeded in which Rome was formed into an academy, like that of Athens or Alexandria, when all the arts and sciences of the time were taught or practised under the direct instruction of approved professors. ”

“ The names of Virgil and Horace are familiarly united in every review of the age of Augustus ; yet no two men can stand more in contrast one with the other in their per sonal character, in the scope of their writings, and in the influences they respectively exercised upon their contem poraries. ”

“ Just in the same manner it is abundantly clear that the fame of the age of Louis XIV. in France is founded on the excellence of the men who were actually born and bred in an earlier epoch and under a healthier regime. Neither the age of Augustus nor that of Louis produced the men who have rendered it illustrious, But the decline of Rome was becoming marked before the death of Augustus in other respects also. Although internal dissensions had been appeased, and private ambi tion quelled, the external relations of the empire were insecure, and caused vivid apprehensions. ”

“ At first, excited by fears for his own personal safety, and urged by the examples of party leaders around him, and of others who had gone before him, he plunged into a career of wholesale bloodshed, and cut off without scruple every public man from whose principles or whose passions he might have cause of apprehension. ”

“ While sentence follows sentence throughout in logical sequence, so that the thread of meaning and argument is never lost under a mass of verbiage, yet we are beguiled in our lengthened study by the repeated recurrence of passages of highly-imaginative colouring ; we feel that if the histo rian sometimes deviates into poetry, he never misleads us with a show of empty rhetoric. The Roman people, as represented by Livy, retained the genuine strength and bluntness of their character. ”

“ The word itself was derived from the holy auguries ; it was connected in meaning with the abstract term authority, and with all that increases and flourishes upon earth. The use of this glorious title could not fail to smooth the way to the general acceptance of the divine character of the mortal who was deemed worthy to bear it. The senate had just decreed the divinity of the defunct Caesar ; the courtiers were beginning now to insinuate that his successor, while yet alive, enjoyed an effluence from deity ”

“ The Georgics are undoubtedly animated throughout with a religious sentiment, and bespeak the high religious purpose of their author. But in the ^Eneid this religious sentiment and purpose are both still more distinctly proclaimed to us. The great epic of Virgil, the national epic of the Roman people, glorifies the divine Providence which founded Rome in the beginning, and carried her through all her triumphs to the consummation of her greatness in the era of Augustus. ”

“ The irregularities of the epoch which he hoped now to close had filled its benches with personages who degraded the order in the eyes of genuine citizens. The nobles and good citizens generally hailed this revision with deep satisfaction. It accorded with the national taste as well as with historical traditions. ”

“ The conqueror s first object was to protect himself by force of arms, his next to soothe the passions of the class from whose resentment he had most cause of fear, and after that to raise up another class in direct sympathy with himself to balance the power which the first must necessarily retain in a well-ordered government. ”

“ Thereupon Octavianus and Antonius, taking Lepidus into union with them, met on the river Rhenus near Bononia, and proclaimed themselves a triumvirate for the reconstitution of the commonwealth. They divided the western provinces among them, the east being held for the republic by M. Brutus and Cassius. They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, entered Rome together, and caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand knights. They further con fiscated the territories of many cities throughout Italy, and divided them among their soldiers. ”

“ If they gained victories, the honours of the triumph were reserved for the imperator " under whose auspices" they were reputed to have served. It followed that all the provinces on the frontiers, or in which armies were maintained, were placed under the emperor s direct authority, while it was only the central and peaceful por tions of the empire that were handed over to the govern ment of the senate. The imperial provinces were adminis tered by the legati Caesaris, the senatorial by proconsuls. ”