Harold North Fowler

“ It is not to be wondered at that throughout the Middle Ages Virgil was regarded as the impersonation of all that was great in poetry; nor is it strange that the poet whose verses breathe such an indescribable, sweet sadness, who sings in lofty, inspired language of that Roman greatness which was ever present to the mediæval [Pg 113] imagination, who describes the dwellings of the dead, and who was even believed to have foretold the coming of the Messiah, should have become in mediæval legends the possessor of all wisdom and all magic power. ”

“ Juvenal is the harshest and most violent of the four great Roman satirists. The Satires. Lucilius was outspoken and sometimes bitter, but aimed to correct while he rebuked the follies of his time; Horace soon lost all bitterness and expressed good-humored raillery; Persius derived his themes from books and preached Stoic doctrines; but Juvenal attacks Roman society in fierce and biting verses, shrinking from no gruesome or indecent detail, showing no humor save of the grimmest and harshest sort, and with no hope of correcting the evils he depicts. ”

“ Horace is not one of those who believe that perfect poetry comes purely by inspiration, without labor. He writes no word without being sure that it is the best word in its place. His metres are adapted to the thought he wishes to express, and the perfection of the metre makes even simple or common thoughts beautiful. The odes are not the ardent outpourings of a passionate spirit, as are some of the poems of Catullus, but they are the carefully elaborated expressions of the thoughts and sentiments of a gentle, kindly, thoughtful, but gay and humorous man of the world. ”

“ Three ancient peoples have impressed themselves strongly upon the nations of Europe and America—the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the Romans. To the first we owe the foundations of our religion, to the second the beginnings of all arts and sciences, to the Romans we are indebted for the adaptation of the arts and sciences, of philosophy, and even of religion to civilized life. Our debt to the Romans. The names of our months are Roman, and our calendar is, with slight necessary changes, that established by Julius Cæsar. ”

“ It is at once evident that poetry made little progress, while prose writing of all kinds advanced with rapid strides. Great progress of prose. It is only natural, therefore, that the age of Cicero should be the most brilliant period of Latin prose, and that the highest general development of poetry should be reserved for the Augustan age. Yet, even the Augustan age can only equal, not surpass, the immortal poems of two of Cicero’s contemporaries, Lucretius and Catullus. ”

“ Ovid’s one defect as a poet is his lack of character. No other Roman wrote more polished verse, no other employed the Latin language more effectively for his purposes; but the want of moral earnestness and power makes Ovid, with all his genius, the least among the great Roman poets. His weakness is most noticeable in his earlier and later works, and the Metamorphoses and the Fasti are therefore the most admirable of his poems. Ovid was read throughout the Middle Ages, and the mythological allusions in writings of the Renaissance period and modern times are, for the most part, traceable to him. ”

“ The odes of Horace, which are the best known and the most popular of his poems, are imitations of the poetry of the Greek lyrists, Alcæus, Sappho, Anacreon, and their followers, but the Greek originals are for the most part lost, so that Horace can not suffer by comparison with them. Moreover, modern taste is less pleased with epic than with lyric verse, and the delicate, highly finished, and charming odes of Horace appeal strongly to the cultivated modern reader. In his satires and epistles, too, Horace, whatever his indebtedness to Lucilius and others, displays undoubted originality. ”

“ The oration On the Manilian Law is not merely a panegyric of Pompey and an argument for giving him new and greater powers, but at the same time a hymn of praise to the glory of the Roman republic and the virtues of the men of old:
Our ancestors often engaged in wars because our merchants or ship-owners had been somewhat unjustly treated; what, pray, should be your feelings when so many thousands of Roman citizens have been slaughtered by one edict and at one time? Because our envoys had been too haughtily addressed it pleased your fathers that Corinth, the light of all Greece, be blotted out ”

“ Importance of Roman literature. Roman literature, while it lacks the brilliant originality and the delicate beauty which characterize the works of the great Greek writers, is still one of the great literatures of the world, and it possesses an importance for us which is even greater than its intrinsic merits (great as they are) would naturally give it. ”

“ The subjects of the odes are so various as to touch upon almost every circumstance of human life and every mood of human feeling. Friendship, love, the gods, patriotism, conviviality, the pleasures of country life, events of the day, and philosophical thoughts, all find their place. In tone the odes are grave and gay, lively and serene, sometimes fantastic, more often thoughtful or at least reasonable. More than once the thought that life is short and we should pluck its blossoms ere they fade occurs in one form or another. The workmanship of the odes is wonderful in its perfection. ”

“ The love poems are in great part addressed to Corinna, who seems to be a mere figment of the poet’s imagination, not, like the Lesbia of Catullus, the Delia of Tibullus, and the Cynthia of Propertius, a real person under a fictitious name. Ovid’s love poems are not expressions of his own feelings for any individual, but the means by which he exhibits his astonishing facility in versification and his lively imagination. From beginning to end the poems show an utter lack of serious purpose. All the vicissitudes of a long love affair are treated with equal lightness and grace. ”

“ You have sent to the army, adding, as it were, fuel to the fire, a youth who burns with the desire of ruling, and who sees only one way to his end, if he lives girt with arms and legions, sowing from wars the seed of wars. You have therefore nourished this fire with which you are now burning. Your armies are now surrounding Saguntum, which the treaty forbids them to approach; presently the Roman legions will surround Carthage under the leadership of those same gods by whom in the last war the broken treaties were avenged. ”

“ The most important work of Ennius is his great epic in eighteen books, the Annales, in which he told the legendary and actual history of the Romans from the arrival of Æneas in Italy to his own time. In this work, as in his tragedies, he may be said to have followed in the way pointed out by Nævius, but the Annales mark an immense advance beyond the Bellum Punicum of Nævius. The monotonous and unpolished Saturnian metre could not, even in the most skillful hands, attain the dignity or the melodious cadences appropriate to great epic poems. ”

“ He was too much of a scholar to think of drawing from the living spring of common every-day speech, and therefore hit upon the expedient of reverting to the early writers, such as Ennius, Plautus, Accius, Cato, Sallust, and Gracchus. His language is therefore full of old-fashioned expressions used without the simplicity that belongs to the early times. That such a writer as Fronto was highly respected and exerted a powerful influence upon his contemporaries is a sign of the depth to which Roman literature had sunk. ”

“ The laws of continental Europe and, though to a less degree, of England and the United States, are based upon Roman law as finally established under Justinian. The so-called Gothic [Pg 284] architecture, which arose in France in the Middle Ages and which is still the prevailing style of our churches, can be traced back step by step to Roman buildings, and though Roman architecture was dependent upon that of Greece, it was through Rome that western Europe learned to use the column, the arch, and the vault. The beautiful architecture of the Renaissance is a conscious imitation of that of Rome. ”

“ In some respects it is far inferior to the Homeric poems. It lacks their simplicity, their rapidity of movement, and their fresh joyousness; it can not be compared with them in narrative power or brilliancy of imagery. In these qualities Homer is unapproachable. But as a national epic, as the expression in prophetic form of the national greatness and of the poet’s deep-seated passion for his country’s glory the Æneid had no prototype, as it has had no successor. Virgil is not Homer ”

“ The Art of Love is one of the most immoral poems in existence. The Art of Love. The first book gives instruction to young men to aid them in finding and seducing desirable mistresses, the second tells them how to keep the girls’ affection, and the third instructs girls in the art of gaining lovers. The love of which Ovid writes is mere sensual passion, not the union of souls, and his three books of systematic instruction in the arts of seduction would be utterly tedious were they not enlivened by some striking descriptive passages and myths, as well as by sententious lines of worldly wisdom. ”

“ The Roman people had spread its power over the whole civilized world, and the peace and order established by Augustus made it natural that men should wish to read the history of the long struggles of the republic that led up to the present peace of the empire. Livy’s history, therefore, appealed directly to a large circle of readers. But in extending its power over the world, the Roman people had come in contact with various nations, and it was natural that the history of those nations should be of interest to the Romans. ”

“ Men of distinction spent at least a great part of their time in the smaller towns of Italy, and the leaders of thought and creators of literature no longer found it necessary to take up their residence at Rome. Then too, the progress of Christianity brought with it a new literature which was not national, but Christian. These causes, with others less obvious, but perhaps no less potent, led to the rapid decay of the national literature. It is our task from this point to trace the progress of this decay, and at the same time to record the rise of Christian literature in the Latin language. ”

“ Only a small part of the great bulk of Roman literature is preserved to us, but that part includes the greatest works of the best period. Those are worthy subjects of study for their beauty of form, their clearness of thought, their power, their vigor, and their ethical qualities. The productions of the imperial period are inferior in quality to those of the republican and the Augustan times, though their quantity is proportionate to the duration of the empire ”

“ There is no indication that Tacitus was ever in Germany himself. As a literary production the Germania is far inferior to the Agricola, though written at about the same time. In the Agricola Tacitus expresses his own feelings for his father-in-law, whom he evidently loved and respected, while in the Germania there is little room for feeling of any sort, and none for emotion. Yet, with all the difference in literary merit, the two works show the style of Tacitus at the same stage. ”

“ Amor transfixes the poet’s heart with his arrows, plants his foot upon the poet’s neck, makes him his slave. The poet sings of the beauty of his mistress, designating her by a fictitious name, but one which has the same length of syllables as the real name of the woman to whom the poems are addressed. The poet is usually poor, but offers his songs as the most valuable of offerings, and is filled with indignation if his mistress seems to care for wealth or jewels. No adornments are necessary for the beautiful woman, and love of wealth is disgraceful. ”

“ I know that in his case my influence has little weight on account of my enmity to his father; but I have been glad that Hamilcar is dead, because if he were living we should already be at war with the Romans, and I hate and detest this youth as the fury and fire-brand of this war, as one who ought not only to be given up as an expiation for the broken treaty, but if no one demanded him, should be carried away to the uttermost shores of sea and land, removed to such a distance that his name and fame could not reach to us nor he disturb the condition of our quiet state. ”

“ It is not easy for the modern reader to enjoy Juvenal. His satires are full of allusions to unknown persons and things at Rome; they abound also in mythological references and literary reminiscences, and finally the savage tone of the earlier books is disagreeable. Yet the power of invective, the clearness and vividness of description, the variety of diction, and the beauty of versification have combined to make Juvenal a much read author. ”

“ The elegies of Tibullus are less learned than those of his contemporaries. They contain many mythological allusions, but these are simply expressed and do not form too large a part of the poems. The sentiments expressed are not virile or powerful, but gentle and pensive. Tibullus loves the life of the country and hates war; he feels deeply the woes that oppress the lover; the thought of death weighs upon him; but love is ever in his heart. His poems are masterpieces of expression and versification, though they lack the fire of passionate emotion. ”

“ In the first place, Roman literature has preserved to us, in Latin translations and adaptations, many important remains of Greek literature which would otherwise have been lost, and in the second place, the political power of the Romans, embracing nearly the whole known world, made the Latin language the most widely spread of all languages, and thus caused Latin literature to be read in all lands and to influence the literary development of all the peoples of Europe. ”

“ It is hard to fix a date for the beginning of the Middle Ages, and even harder to assign a definite time for the end of classical Roman literature. The first great independent and original Christian writings in Latin—those of Tertullian—may be regarded as the beginning of mediæval literature; but classical Latinity was by no means yet dead. In fact, in the fourth century, after Constantine had recognized Christianity as a state religion on an equal footing with the ancient belief, there was a revival of literature. ”

“ He seldom speaks unkindly of any one; and when he utters a sharp criticism, he almost always avoids mentioning the name of the person criticized. The love of nature was fashionable at Rome, and Pliny may be only following the fashion when he writes of natural scenery, but it is quite as probable that he really felt its charms. He had a great admiration for Cicero, and it was doubtless owing, in part, at least, to this admiration that Pliny, like Cicero, published his letters. ”

“ Ovid was not a careful student of astronomy, and the astronomical parts of his work contain some serious mistakes; but they are interesting on account of their clear descriptions, their variety of expression, and the myths connected with the stars which are introduced. The days that mark important events in Roman history are treated with especial fulness, and the poet takes every opportunity for the expression of patriotic sentiments, and for the praise of Augustus and the Julian family. The descriptions of festivals are lively and beautiful pictures of Roman life. ”