Chapter 95
'The old criticism, tracing the characteristics of the style of Tacitus to poetic colouring (almost wholly Vergilian) and to the study of brevity and of variety, is well founded. They may be explained by the fact that he was the most finished pleader of an age which required above all that its orators should be terse, brilliant, and striking, and by his own painful consciousness of the dull monotony and repulsive sadness of great part of his subject, which needed the help of every sort of variety to stimulate the flagging interest of the reader.'
--Furneaux.
His aim as an historian is best given in his own words: 'I hold it the chief office of history to rescue virtue from oblivion, and to hold out the reprobation of posterity as a terror to evil words and deeds'
(_Ann._ iii. 65).
The greatest of Roman historians.
PUBLIUS TERENTIUS AFER, circ. 185-159 B.C.
1. Life
[Sidenote: TERENCE.]
Terence was born probably at Carthage, reached Rome as a slave-boy, and pa.s.sed there into the possession of a rich and educated Senator, P.
Terentius Luca.n.u.s, by whom he was educated and manumitted, taking from him the name of Publius Terentius the African. 'A small literary circle of the Roman aristocracy admitted young Terence to their intimate companions.h.i.+p; and soon he was widely known as making a third in the friends.h.i.+p of Gaius Laelius with the first citizen of the Republic, the younger Scipio Africa.n.u.s. Six plays had been subjected to the criticism of this informal academy of letters and produced on the stage, when Terence undertook a prolonged visit to Greece for the purpose of further study. He died of fever in the next year, 159 B.C., at the early age of twenty-six.' --Mackail.
2. Works.
+Comedies.+--All the six plays written and exhibited at Rome by Terence are extant. They are the _Andria_ (exhibited 166 B.C., when the poet was only eighteen years of age), the _Heauton Timoroumenos_, _Eunuchus_, _Phormio_, _Hecyra_, _Adelphoe_.
'With Terence Roman literature takes a new departure. The Scipionic circle believed that the best way to create a national Latin literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and substance, from the works of Greek genius. The task which awaited Terence was the complete h.e.l.lenising of Roman comedy: accordingly his aim was to give a true picture of Greek life and manners in the purest Latin style. He was not a popular poet, in the sense in which Plautus was popular: he has none of the purely Roman characteristics of Plautus in sentiment, allusion, or style; none of his extravagance, and none of his vigour and originality.' --Sellar. Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, as Caesar styles him, a _dimidiatus Menander (halved Menander)_:
_Tu quoque, tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander, Poneris, et merito, puri sermonis amator._
A Roman only in language, but as _puri sermonis amator_ worthy to be ranked by the side of Caesar himself and
ALBIUS TIBULLUS, circ. 54-19 B.C.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: TIBULLUS.]
Tibullus was a Roman _eques_, and was probably born at Pedum, a Latin town just at the foot of the Apennines, and a few miles north of Praeneste, where his father possessed an ample estate. Much of his inherited property was lost; and it is possible that, like Vergil, Horace, and Propertius, he was a victim to the confiscations of the Triumvirs in 42 B.C. He, however, retained or recovered enough to afford him a modest competence. In 31-30 B.C. he served on the staff of his life-long friend and patron M. Valerius Messalla, the eminent general and statesman, not less distinguished in literature than in politics.
The rest of his short life the poet spent on his ancestral farm at Pedum, amid the country scenes and employments congenial to his nature and habits.
2. Works.
+Elegies+, in four Books (or three, Postgate). Tibullus published in his lifetime two Books of elegiac poems: after his death a third volume was published, containing a few of his own poems, together with poems by other members of the literary circle of Messalla. Books I and II consist mainly of poems addressed to Delia and to Nemesis (cf. Ov. _Am._ III.
ix. 31-32):
_Sic Nemesis longum, sic Delia nomen habebunt; Altera cura recens, altera primus amor._
And to Messalla, e.g. _El._ I. vii. 55-6:
_At tibi succrescat proles, quae facta parentis Augeat et circa stet veneranda senem._
3. Style.
'Tibullus is pre-eminently Roman in his genius and poetry. He is the natural poet of warm, tender, and simple feeling. Neither Greek mythology nor Alexandrine learning had any attractions for his purely Italian genius. His language may be limited in range and variety, but it is terse, clear, simple, and popular. His constructions are plain and direct.' --North Pinder.
'To Tibullus belongs the distinction of having given artistic perfection to the Roman elegy.' --Sellar.
_Elegia quoque Graecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus._
'_In elegy also we rival the Greeks, of which Tibullus appears to me the purest and finest representative._' --Quint. _Inst. Or._ X. i. 93.
'Tibullus might be succinctly and perhaps not unjustly described as a Vergil without the genius.' --Mackail.
'Tibullus and Vergil are alike in their human affection and their piety, in their capacity of tender and self-forgetful love, in their delight in the labours of the field and their sympathy with the herdsman and the objects of his care.' --Sellar.
_Quid voveat dulci nutricula maius alumno, Qui sapere et fari possit quae sentiat, et cui Gratia, fama valetudo contingat abunde, Et mundus victus, non deficiente crumena!_
Horace to Tibullus, _Epist._ I. iv. 8-11.
_Si tamen e n.o.bis aliquid nisi nomen et umbra Restat, in Elysia valle Tibullus erit._.....
_Ossa quieta, precor, tuta requiescite in urna, Et sit humus cineri non onerosa tuo._
Ovid, _Am._ III. ix. 59-60, 67-8.
C. VALERIUS FLACCUS, fl. 70 A.D.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: VALERIUS FLACCUS.]
He lived in the reign of Vespasian (70-78 A.D.), to whom he dedicated his poem, in which he refers to Vespasian's exploits in Britain and to the capture of Jerusalem by t.i.tus, 70 A.D. There are also references to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Quintilian is the only Roman writer who mentions him (X. i. 90): _Multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus_, which shows that he must have died _circ._ 90 A.D.
2. Works.
+The Argonautica+, an Hexameter poem in eight Books, apparently unfinished. The poem is in part a translation, in part a free imitation of the Alexandrine epic of Apollonius Rhodius (222-181 B.C.) 'His descriptive power, particularly shown in touches of natural scenery, his pure diction and correct style have inclined some critics to set Valerius Flaccus above his Greek model.' --North Pinder. The rhetorical treatment of the subject, so characteristic of the period of the decline, is, however, too prominent throughout his work. Both his rhythm and language are closely modelled on Vergil.
VALERIUS MAXIMUS, fl. 26 A.D.
1. Life.
[Sidenote: VALERIUS MAXIMUS.]
All that we know of him is that he visited Asia in company with s.e.xtus Pompeius (the friend of Ovid and of Germanicus), _circ._ 27-30 A.D.
2. Works.
+Facta et Dicta Memorabilia+, in nine Books. Each Book is divided into chapters on separate subjects (e.g. _De Severitate_, _De Verecundia_, _De Constantia_), under each of which he gives ill.u.s.trations from Roman history and from the history of other nations, in order to show the native superiority (as he thinks) of Romans to foreigners, and especially to Greeks. As an historian he is most untrustworthy, but there are many gaps in Roman history (e.g. owing to the lost books of Livy) which he helps to supply. His style shows all the faults of his age and rhetorical training; his work was probably intended to be a commonplace-book for students and teachers of rhetoric.