The end of the century gives us Claudian, and a reaction against this triviality. 'Paganus peruicacissimus,' as Orosius calls him, Claudian presents the problem of a poet whose poetry treats with real power the circumstances of an age from which the poet himself is as detached as can be. Claudian's real world is a world which was never to be again, a world of great princes and exalted virtues, a world animated by a religion in which Rome herself, strong and serene, is the principal deity. Accident has thrown him into the midst of a political nightmare dominated by intriguing viziers and delivered to a superstition which made men at once weak and cruel. Yet this world, so unreal to him, he presents in a rhetorical colouring extraordinarily effective. Had he possessed a truer instinct for things as they are he might have been the greatest of the Roman satirists. He has a real mastery of the art of invective. But, while he is great where he condemns, where he blesses he is mostly contemptible. He has too many of the arts of the cringing Alexandrian. And they availed him nothing. Over every page may be heard the steady tramp of the feet of the barbarian invader.
After Claudian we pass into the final darkness. The gloom is illuminated for a brief moment by the Gaul Rutilius. But Rutilius has really outlived Roman poetry and Rome itself. Nothing that he admires is any longer real save in his admiration of it. The things that he condemns most bitterly are the things which were destined to dominate the world for ten centuries. Christianity is 'a worse poison than witchcraft'. The monastic spirit is the 'fool-fury of a brain unhinged'. The monasteries are 'slave-dungeons'.
It was these 'slave-dungeons' which were to keep safe through the long night of the Middle Ages all that Rutilius held dear. It was these 'slave-dungeons' which were to afford a last miserable refuge to the works of that long line of poets of whom Rutilius is the late and forlorn descendant. Much indeed was to perish even within the fastnesses of these 'slave-dungeons': for the monasteries were not always secure from the shock of war, nor the precious memorials which they housed from the fury of fanaticism. Yet much was to survive and to emerge one day from the darkness and to renew the face of the world. Rutilius wrote his poem in 416 A.D. If he could have looked forward exactly a thousand years he would have beheld Poggio and the great Discoverers of the Italian Renaissance ransacking the 'slave-dungeons' of Italy, France, and Germany, and rejoicing over each recovered fragment of antiquity with a pure joy not unlike that which heavenly minds are said to feel over the salvation of souls. These men were, indeed, kindling into life again the soul of Europe. They were assisting at a New Birth. In this process of regeneration the deepest force was a Latin force, and of this Latin force the most impelling part was Latin poetry. We are apt to-day, perhaps, in our zeal of Hellenism, to forget, or to disparage, the part which Latin poetry has sustained in moulding the literatures of modern Europe. But if the test of great poetry is the length and breadth of its influence in the world, then Roman poetry has nothing to fear from the vagaries of modern fashion. For no other poetry has so deeply and so continuously influenced the thought and feeling of mankind. Its sway has been wider than that of Rome itself: and the Genius that broods over the Capitoline Hill might with some show of justice still claim, as his gaze sweeps over the immense field of modern poetry, that he beholds nothing which does not owe allegiance to Rome:
Iupiter arce sua totum cum spectat in orbem,
nil nisi Romanum quod tueatur habet.
715-673 B.C.
1. Fragments of the Saliar Hymns
i
DIVOM templa cante,
diuom deo supplicate.
ii
QVOME tonas, Leucesie,
prae tet tremonti.
quor libet, Curis,
decstumum tonare?
iii
CONSE, ulod oriese:
omnia tuere,
adi, Patulci, coi isse:
Sancus Ianes Cerus es.
Duonus Ianus ueuet
po melios, eu, recum.
2. Against Plague upon the Harvest
Incertae Aetatis.
ENOS, Lases, iuuate,
enos, Lases, iuuate,
enos, Lases, iuuate.
neue lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleoris,
neue lue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleoris,
neue lue rue, Marmar, sers incurrere in pleoris.
satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber,
satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber,
satur fu, fere Mars: limen sali: sta berber,
semunis alternei aduocapit conctos,
semunis alternei aduocapit conctos,
semunis alternei aduocapit conctos.
enos, Marmor, iuuato,
enos, Marmor, iuuato,
enos, Marmor, iuuato.
triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe.
3. Charms
i. Against the Gout
Incertae Aetatis.
EGO tui memini,
medere meis pedibus:
terra pestem teneto,
salus hic maneto
in meis pedibus.
ii. At the Meditrinalia
NOVOM uetus uinum bibo,