Chapter 90
[Sidenote: MARTIAL.]
He was born at Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis (E. Spain), a town situated on a rocky height overlooking the R. Salo:
_Municipes, Augusta mihi quos Bilbilis acri Monte creat, rapidis quem Salo cingit aquis._
X. ciii. 1-2.
His father gave him a good education, and at the age of twenty-three (63 A.D.) he went to Rome. After living there for thirty-five years, patronised by t.i.tus and Vespasian, he returned to Bilbilis soon after the accession of Trajan (98 A.D.), where he died _circ._ 102 A.D.
At Rome he for a time found powerful friends in his great countrymen of the house of Seneca (Lucan and Seneca were then at the height of their fame), and from 79 to 96 (_temp._ Trajan and Domitian) he received the patronage of the Court, and numbered among his friends Pliny the Younger, Quintilian, Juvenal, Valerius Flaccus, and Silius Italicus. His complaints of his poverty are incessant. It is true that he lived throughout the life of a dependent, but it is probable that Martial was a poor man who contrived to get through a good deal of money, and who mistook for poverty a capacity for spending more than he could get.
2. Works.
+Epigrammata+ in fourteen Books (Books XIII and XIV, _Xenia_ and _Apoph.o.r.eta_, are two collections of inscriptions for presents at the Saturnalia); also a +Liber Spectaculorum+ on the opening of the grand Flavian amphitheatre (the Coliseum) begun by Vespasian and completed by t.i.tus.
3. Style.
'Martial did not create the epigram. What he did was to differentiate the epigram and elaborate it. Adhering always to what he considered the true type of the literary epigram, consisting of i. the _preface_, or description of the occasion of the epigram, rousing the curiosity to know what the poet has to say about it; and, ii. the explanation or commentary of the poet, commonly called the _point_--he employed his vast resources of satire, wit, observation, fancy, and pathos to produce the greatest number of varieties of epigram that the type admits of.... What Martial really stands convicted of on his own showing is of laughing at that which ought to have roused in him shame and indignation, and of making literary capital out of other men's vices.'
--Stephenson. Among his good points are his candour, his love of nature, and the loyalty of his friends.h.i.+ps.
Pliny says of him: _Audio Valerium Martialem decessisse et moleste fero.
Erat h.o.m.o ingeniosus, acutus, acer, et qui plurimum in scribendo et sltis haberet et fellis, nec candoris minus--I hear with regret that V.
Martial is dead. He was a man of talent, acuteness, and spirit: with plenty of wit and gall, and as sincere as he was witty._ --Pliny, _Ep._ iii. 21.
'The greatest epigrammatist of the world, and one of its most disagreeable literary characters.' --Merrill.
CORNELIUS NEPOS, circ. 100-24 B.C.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: NEPOS.]
Nepos was probably born at Ticinium on the R. Padus. He inherited an ample fortune, and was thereby enabled to keep aloof from public life and to devote himself to literature and to writing works of an historical nature. In earlier life he was one of the circle of Catullus, who dedicated a collection of poems to him (Catull. _C._ i.): 'To whom am I to give my dainty, new-born little volume? To you, Cornelius.' He was also a friend and contemporary of Cicero, and after Cicero's death (43
2. Works.
Of his numerous writings on history, chronology, and grammar we possess only a fragment of his +De Viris Ill.u.s.tribus+ (originally in sixteen Books), a collection of Roman and foreign biographies. Of this work there is extant one complete section, +De Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium+, and two lives, those of Atticus and Cato the Younger, from his +De Historicis Latinis+.
3. Style.
Nepos is a most untrustworthy historian, and his work possesses little independent value. But his style is clear, elegant, and lively, and he did much to make Greek learning popular among his fellow-citizens.
PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO, 43 B.C.-18 A.D.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: OVID.]
Ovid's own writings (espec. _Tr._ IV. x.) supply nearly all the information we possess regarding his life. He was born at Sulmo, a town in the cold, moist hills of the Peligni, one of the Sabine clans, situated near Corfinium, and about ninety miles E. of Rome. He was of an ancient equestrian family, and together with his elder brother received a careful education at Rome, and studied also at Athens. He was trained for the Bar, but in spite of his father's remonstrances preferred poetry to public life. 'An easy fortune, a brilliant wit, an inexhaustible memory, and an unfailing social tact soon made him a prominent figure in society; and his genuine love of literature and admiration for genius made him the friend of the whole contemporary world of letters.'
--Mackail. Up to his fiftieth year fortune smiled steadily upon Ovid: his works were universally popular, and he enjoyed the favour and patronage of the Emperor himself. But towards the end of 8 A.D. an imperial edict ordered him to leave Rome on a named day and take up his residence at the small barbarous town of Tomi, on the Black Sea, at the extreme outposts of civilisation. Augustus proved deaf to all entreaties to recall him, Tiberius remained alike inexorable, and Ovid died of a broken heart at the ago of sixty, in the tenth year of his banishment.
2. Works.
(1) +Amores+, in three Books, poems in elegiac verse, nearly all on Corinna, who was probably no real person, but only a name around which Ovid grouped his own fancies, and wrote as the poet of a fas.h.i.+onable, pleasure-loving society. The _Mors Psittaci_ is pleasing and the _Mors Tibulli_ is a n.o.ble tribute to a brother poet.
(2) +Heroides+, twenty letters in elegiac verse, feigned to have been written by ladies or chiefs of the heroic age to the absent objects of their love (15-20 are in pairs, e.g. Paris to Helen and Helen to Paris, and are probably spurious). 'The Letters 1-14 are thoroughly modern: they express the feelings and speak the language of refined women in a refined age, and all exhibit an artificiality both in the substance and the manner of their pleading.' --Sellar.
(3) +Ars Amatoria+, in elegiac verse in three Books. This is an ironical form of didactic poetry in which Ovid teaches the art of lying quite as much as the art of loving.
(4) +Remedia Amoris+, in elegiac verse, while professing to be a recantation of the _Ars Amatoria_, shows, if possible, a worse taste.
(5) +Metamorphoses+, in hexameter verse in fifteen Books, containing versions of legends on transformations (_mutatae formae_) from Chaos down to Caesar's transformation into a star. In some respects this is his greatest poem: Ovid himself makes for it as strong a claim to immortality as Horace does for his Odes:
_Quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris, Ore legar populi perque omnia saecula fama, Siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam._
_Met._ XV. 877-end.
'The attractiveness of this work lies in its descriptions; but the attempt to divest it of the character of a dictionary of mythology by interweaving stories, after the fas.h.i.+on of the _Arabian Nights_, is only partially successful.' --Tyrrell.
(6) +Fasti+, in elegiac verse in six Books, a poetical calendar of the Roman year. Each month has a Book allotted to it, and Ovid probably sketched out Books vii-xii, but his exile made it impossible for him to complete the work. It contains much valuable information on Roman customs and some exquisitely told stories (_e.g._ the Rape of Proserpine), but leaves the impression of being an effort to produce on the reader the effect of a patriotism which the writer did not feel.
(7) +Poems Written in Exile.+
(i) +Tristia+, in elegiac verse in five Books: letters to Augustus, to Ovid's wife (for whom he had a deep affection) and to friends, praying for pardon or for a place of exile nearer Rome.
(ii) +Epistulae ex Ponto+: similar to the _Tristia_.
'These poems are a melancholy record of flagging vitality and failing powers.' --Mackail.
3. Style.
The real importance of Ovid in literature and his gift to posterity lay in the new and vivid life which he imparted to the fables of Greek mythology. 'No other cla.s.sical poet has furnished more ideas than Ovid to the Italian poets and painters of the Renaissance, and to our own poets--from Chaucer to Pope, who, like Ovid,
'"Lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."'
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS, 34-62 A.D.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: PERSIUS.]
He was born at Volaterrae in Etruria, and was the son of a Roman knight of wealth and rank. At twelve years of age Persius was removed to Rome, where he placed himself under the guidance of the Stoic Cornutus, who remained his close friend to the end of his short life. Persius (_Sat._ v.) touchingly describes his residence with Cornutus, and the influence of this beloved teacher in moulding his character:
_Pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice, Ostendisse iuvat:_
'_My delight is to show you, Cornutus, how large a share of my inmost being is yours, my beloved friend._'--C.