Book 3 — CHAPTER XI. A. CORNELIUS CELSUS—HIS MERITS—CICERO MEDICORUM—SCRIBONIUS LARGUS DESIGNATIANUS—POMPONIUS MELA—L. JUNIUS MODERATUS COLUMELLA—S. JULIUS FRONTINUS—DECLINE OF TASTE IN THE SILVER AGE—FOREIGN INFLUENCE ON ROMAN LITERATURE—CONCLUSION.
Reading edition
Such were the principal writers who adorned and illustrated the literature of the silver age: it remains only to speak briefly of those whose works, although of minor interest, must not be passed over without notice.
Aurelius Cornelius Celsus.
Celsus was the author of many works on various subjects, of which one, in eight books, on Medicine, is now extant. The place of his birth and the age at which he flourished are unknown, but he probably lived in the reign of Tiberius. He was a man of comprehensive, almost encyclopædic knowledge, and wrote on philosophy, rhetoric, agriculture, and even strategy. It has been doubted whether he ever practised medicine, or was only theoretically acquainted with the subject; but the independence of his views, the practical as well as the scientific nature of his instructions, are inconsistent with any hypothesis except that he had himself patiently watched the phenomena of morbid action and experimented upon its treatment. Above all, his knowledge of surgery, and his clear exposition of surgical operations, necessarily imply that practical experience and reality of knowledge which never could have been acquired from books.
If we compare the masterly handling of the subject by Celsus with the history of medicine by Pliny,[1368] it is easy to distinguish the man of practical and experimental science from the 509collector and transcriber of others’ views. His manual of medicine embraces the following subjects: Diet,[1369] Pathology,[1370] Therapeutics,[1371] Surgery;[1372] and without entering into its peculiar merits, a task which could only be performed satisfactorily by a professional writer, the highest testimony is borne to its merits by the fact of its being used as a text-book even in the present advanced state of medical science.
The study of medicine has a tendency to predispose the mind for general scientific investigations in other departments not immediately connected with it. Hence the medical profession has numbered amongst its members many men of general scientific attainments; and Celsus was an example of this versatility. The taste of the age in which he lived turned his attention also to polite literature; and to this may be ascribed the Augustan purity of his style, which gained for him the appellation of “Cicero Medicorum.”
Scribonius Largus Designatianus.
The “Cicero of physicians” was followed by Scribonius, an obsequious court physician, in the reign of Claudius. He was the author of several works, one of which, a large collection of prescriptions, is extant. In the language of impious flattery, he calls the imbecile emperor a god. He is said to have accompanied him in his expedition to Britain.
Pomponius Mela.
Pomponius Mela may be considered as the representative of the Roman geographers. He was a native of Tingentera, a town in Spain, and lived in the reign of Claudius. His treatise is entitled, “De Situ Orbis, Libri iii.” It is systematic and learned. The stores of information derived from the Greek geographers are interspersed with entertaining myths and lively descriptions. The knowledge, however, contained in it is all taken from books: it is an epitome of former treatises, and is not enriched by the discoveries of more recent travellers. The simplicity of the style, and the almost Augustan purity of the 510Latinity, prevent even so bare a skeleton and list of facts from being dry and uninteresting.
L. Junius Moderatus Columella.
The didactic work of Columella gives, in smooth and fluent, though somewhat too diffuse, a style, the fullest and completest information on practical agriculture amongst the Romans, in the first century of the Christian era. Pliny is the only classical author who mentions him; but he refers to him as a competent authority. Columella himself informs us that he was born at Gades (Cadiz,[1373]) and resided at Rome,[1374] but had travelled in Syria and Cilicia.[1375] It is generally supposed that he died and was buried at Tarentum.
His work, “De Re Rusticâ,” is divided into twelve books. It treats of all subjects connected with the choice and management of a farm,[1376] the arrangement of farm buildings,[1377] the propagation and rearing of stock,[1378] the cultivation of fruit trees,[1379] and household economy.[1380] A calendar is attached to the eleventh book, pointing out the cosmical risings and settings of the constellations, which marked the successive seasons for various labours and other practical points of rustic astronomy. The tenth book, the subject of which is horticulture, is in hexameters. It never rises quite to the height of poetry: it is rather metrical prose, characterized, like the rest of his work, by fluency, and also expressed in correct versification. The reason which he gives for this variation from his plan is, that it is intended as supplementary to the Georgics of Virgil, and that in so doing he is following the great poet’s own recommendations. In his preface to his friend Silvinus he thus expresses his intention:—“Postulatio tua pervicit ut poeticis numeris explerem Georgici carminis omissas partes, quas tamen et ipse Virgilius significaverat posteris se memorandas relinquere.”
511
Sextus Julius Frontinus.
Sex. Jul. Frontinus deserves a place amongst Roman classical writers as the author of two works, both of which are still extant. The first, entitled, “Stratagematicon, Libri iv.,” was a treatise on military tactics. The form in which he has enunciated his doctrines is that of precepts and anecdotes of celebrated military commanders. In this way the necessary preparations for a battle, the stratagems resorted to in fighting, the rules for conducting sieges, and the means of maintaining discipline in an army, are explained and illustrated in a straight-forward and soldier-like style.
As the object which he had in view in adducing his anecdotes is scientific illustration rather than historic truth, he is not very particular as to the sources from which his examples are derived. It is interesting, however, to the antiquarian, if not of practical utility to the tactician, as displaying the theory and practice of ancient warfare. This subject had in early times been treated of by Cato and Cincius, and afterwards by Hyginus in a treatise on Field Fortification (de Castrametatione,) and also in the epitome of Vegetius.
His other work, which has descended to modern times in a perfect state, is a descriptive architectural treatise, in two books, on those wonderful monuments of Roman art, the aqueducts. But besides these, fragments remain of other works, which assign Frontinus an important place in the estimation of the student of Roman history. These are treatises on surveying, and the laws and customs relating to landed property. They were partly of a scientific, partly of a jurisprudential character, and are to be found amongst the works of the Agri-mensores, or Rei Agrariæ Scriptores. The difficulty and obscurity of everything connected with Roman agrarian institutions is well known; and every fragment relating to them is valuable, because of the probability of its throwing light upon so important a subject. Niebuhr[1381] saw their value, and pronounced that “the fragments of Frontinus were the only work amongst the Agri-mensores which can be counted a part of classical literature, or which was composed 512with any legal knowledge.” These fragments, therefore, may be taken as a favourable specimen of this class of writers, amongst whom were Siculus Flaccus, Argenius Urbicus, and Hyginus (Grammaticus.)
Of the life of Frontinus himself very few facts are known. He was city prætor in the reign of Vespasian,[1382] and succeeded Cerealis as governor of Britain. He made a successful campaign against the Silures[1383] (S. Wales,) and was succeeded by Agricola, A. D. 78. He was subsequently curator aquarum,[1384] an office which probably suggested the composition of his practical manual on aqueducts. He also had a seat in the college of augurs, in which, after his death,[1385] he was succeeded by the younger Pliny.
With this third epoch a history of Roman classical literature comes to a close. In the silver age taste had gradually but surely declined; and although the Roman language and literature shone forth for a time with classic radiance in the writings of Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian, Tacitus, and the Plinies, nothing could arrest its fall. In vain emperors endeavoured to encourage learning by pecuniary rewards and salaried professorships: it languished together with the death of constitutional freedom, the extinction of patriotism, and the decay of the national spirit. Poetry had become declamation. History had degenerated either into fulsome panegyric, or the fleshless skeletons of epitomes; and at length Romans seemed to disdain the use of their native tongue—that tongue which laborious pains had brought to such a height of polish and perfection, and wrote in Greek, as they had in the infancy of the national literature, when Latin was too rude and imperfect to imbody the ideas which they had derived from their Greek instructors.
The Emperor Hadrian resided long at Athens, and became imbued with a taste and admiration for Greek; and thus the literature of Rome became Hellenized. From this epoch the term Classical can no longer be applied to it, for it did not retain its purity. To Greek influence succeeded the still more corrupting one of foreign nations. Even with the death of Nerva the 513uninterrupted succession of emperors of Roman or Italian birth ceased. Trajan himself was a Spaniard; and after him not only barbarians of every European race, but even Orientals and Africans were invested with the imperial purple. The empire also over which they ruled was an unwieldy mass of heterogeneous materials. The literary influence of the capital was not felt in the distant portions of the Roman dominions. Schools were established in the very heart of nations just emerging from barbarism—at Burdegala (Bourdeaux,) Lugdunum (Lyons,) and Augusta Trevirorum (Treves;) and, although the blessings of civilization and intellectual culture were thus distributed far and wide, still literary taste, as it filtered through the minds of foreigners, became corrupted, and the language of the imperial city, exposed to the infectious contact of barbarous idioms, lost its purity.[1386]
The Latin authors of this period were numerous, and many of them were Christians; but few had taste to appreciate and imitate the literature of the Augustan age. The brightest stars which illuminated the darkness were A. Gellius, L. Apuleius, T. Petronius Arbiter, the learned author of the Saturnalia; the Christian ethical philosopher, L. Cœlius Lactantius; and that poet, in whom the graceful imagination of classical antiquity seems to have revived, the flattering and courtly Claudian.
515