Cæsar, however, took no further notice of these caustic sallies than to assign the prize to Syrus.
POETRY
In poetry, the long period from the death of Lucilius to the appearance of Virgil and Horace—a period of about sixty years—is broken only by two names worthy of mention. But it must be admitted that these names take a place in the first ranks of Roman literature. It is sufficient to mention Lucretius and Catullus.
T. Lucretius Carus was a Roman of good descent, as his name shows. All we know of him is that he was born about 95 B.C., and died by his own hand in the forty-fourth year of his age. But if little is related of his life, his great poem on The Nature of the Universe is known by name at least to all. It is dedicated to C. Memmius Gemellus, a profligate man and an unscrupulous politician, who sided now with the senatorial party, now with Cæsar, and ended his days in exile at Mytilene. But Memmius had a fine sense in literature, as is evinced by his patronage of Lucretius and of Catullus.
The poem of Lucretius seems to have been published about the time when Clodius was lord of misrule in the Roman Forum, that is, about 58 B.C. Memmius took part against the demagogue, and to this the poet probably alludes in the introduction to the first book, where he regrets the necessity which involved his friend in political struggles.
Roman Terra-cotta Statuette of a Comedian
The attempt of Lucretius in his great poem is to show that all creation took place and that all nature is sustained, without the agency of a creating and sustaining God, by the self-operation of the elemental atoms of which all matter is composed and into which all matter may be resolved. The doctrine is the doctrine of Epicurus; but his arguments are in great part borrowed from the early Greek philosophers, who delivered their doctrines in heroic verse of the same majestic kind that extorts admiration from the reader of Lucretius. He professes unbounded reverence for the name of Empedocles; and doubtless if the works of this philosopher, of Anaxagoras, and others were in our hands, we should see, what their fragments indicate, the sources from which Lucretius drew. Mingled with the philosophic argument are passages of noble verse; but here also it may be doubted how far we can believe in his originality. One of the most magnificent passages—the sacrifice of Iphigenia—is taken in every detail from the famous chorus in the Agamemnon of Æschylus. When we see this, and know that the almost universal habit of Latin poets was not to create but to adapt and borrow, we must pause before we give Lucretius credit for originality.
Yet none can rise from the perusal of Lucretius without feeling that he was a true poet. The ingenuity with which he employs Latin, a language unused to philosophical speculation, to express in the trammels of metre the most technical details of natural phenomena, is itself admirable. But more admirable are those majestic outbursts of song with which the philosophical speculations are diversified. The indignant and melancholy passion with which he attacks the superstitious religion of his time cannot but touch us, though we feel that his censure falls not upon superstition only, but upon the sacred form of religion herself. But he was little appreciated at Rome. Cicero speaks of him with that cold praise which is almost worse than censure. Horace never makes mention of his name. Virgil alone showed the true feeling of a poet by his value for Lucretius. He scrupled not to borrow whole lines from his poem; many passages in the Georgics bear witness to the faithful study which he had bestowed on the works of his great predecessor, and in one often-quoted place he confesses his inferiority to the great didactic poet. On the whole, it may be affirmed that Lucretius possessed the greatest genius of all Roman poets.
In striking contrast to the majestic gravity of Lucretius appears the second poet whom we have named. C. or Q. Valerius Catullus (for his first name is variously given) was a native of Verona, or its neighbourhood. He was born about 97 B.C., and is known to have been alive in the consulship of Vatinius (47 B.C.). He was then fifty years of age, and we hear of him no more. His father was a friend of Cæsar, and left his son in the possession of some property. He had a house on the lovely peninsula of Sirmio, at the foot of Lake Benacus, well known from his own description; he had a villa near Tibur, and many of his poems indicate the licentiousness of the life which he led at Rome. He endeavoured to mend his broken fortunes by attending Memmius, the friend of Lucretius, when he went as prætor into Bithynia, but was little satisfied with the result, and bitterly complained of the stinginess of his patron. When he was in Asia, his brother died, and he addressed to Hortalus, son of the orator Hortensius, that beautiful and affecting elegy which alone would entitle him to a foremost place among Roman poets. Fearless of consequences, he libelled Cæsar in language too coarse for modern ears. The great man laughed when he heard the libel, and asked the poet to dinner the same day.
The poems of Catullus range from gross impurity to lofty flights of inspiration. The fine poem called the Atys is the only Latin specimen which we possess of that dithyrambic spirit which Horace repudiated for himself. The elegy to Hortalus is perhaps the most touching piece of poetry that has been left us by the ancients. The imitation of Callimachus is a masterpiece in its way. The little poems on passing events—pièces de circonstance, as the French call them—are the most lively, natural, and graceful products of the Latin muse. To those who agree in this estimate it seems strange that Horace should only notice Catullus in a passing sneer. It is difficult to acquit the judge of jealousy. For Catullus cannot be ranked with the old poets, such as Livius, Ennius, and others, against the extravagant admiration of whom Horace not unjustly protested. His lyric compositions are as finished and perfect as the productions of Horace, who never wrote anything so touching as the elegy to Hortalus, or so full of poetic fire as the Atys.
With Catullus may be mentioned his friend C. Licinius Macer, commonly called Calvus, whom Horace honours by comprehending him in the same condemnation. He was some fifteen years younger, and was probably son of Licinius Macer the historian. He was a good speaker, and a poet (if we believe other authors, rather than Horace) not unworthy to be coupled with Catullus. He died at the early age of thirty-five or thirty-six.
Another poet highly praised by Catullus was C. Helvius Cinna, supposed to be the unlucky man torn to pieces by the rabble after Cæsar’s funeral by mistake for L. Cornelius Cinna.
At the time that the battles of Philippi secured to Italy somewhat of tranquillity, many others began to devote themselves to poetry. Among these were L. Varius Rufus, celebrated by Horace as the epic poet of his time, and the few fragments from his pen which remain do much to justify the praise. He was the intimate friend both of Horace and Virgil.
Furius Bibaculus also may be mentioned here as an epic poet, who attempted to commit to verse the campaign of Cæsar in Gaul. Horace ridicules his pretensions in two well-known passages; but there is reason to think that in the case of Furius also the satirist was influenced by some personal feeling.
But the fame of all other poets was obscured by the brightness which encircled the names of Virgil and Horace. Properly their history belongs to the Augustan or imperial era. But as they both published some of their best works before the battle of Actium, a slight notice of them may be permitted here.
P. Virgilius (or Vergilius) Maro was born at Andes, a village near Mantua, in the famous year 70 B.C., so that he was entering manhood about the time when Lucretius put an end to his own life. From his father he inherited a small estate. After the battle of Philippi, he was among those whose lands were handed over to the soldiery of the victorious triumvirs. But what seemed his ruin brought him into earlier notice than otherwise might have been his lot. He was introduced to Mæcenas by Asinius Pollio, himself a poet, who had been made governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and was reinstated in his property. This happy event, as everyone knows, he celebrates in his first Eclogue. But it appears that when he tried to resume possession he was nearly slain by the rude soldier who had received a grant of the land, and it was some months before he was securely restored. In company with Horace, Varius, and others, he attended Mæcenas in the famous journey to Brundusium (probably in 37 B.C.). He had already (in the year 40 B.C.) written the famous eclogue on the consulship of Pollio, of which we have before spoken; and soon after this he began the Georgics, at the special desire of Mæcenas. They seem to have been published in their complete form soon after the battle of Actium. For the rest of his life, which he closed at Brundusium in the fifty-first year of his age (19 B.C.), he was occupied with his Æneid, which with modest self-depreciation he ordered to be destroyed. But it was revised by his friends Varius and Plotius, and published by order of the emperor, whom he had accompanied in a tour through Greece just before his death.