Chapter II

Vestiges of Early Indigenous Poetry in Rome and Ancient Italy.

The Romans themselves traced the origin of their poetry, as of all their literary culture, to their contact with the mind of Greece.

The first productive literary impulse was communicated to the Roman mind by the Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who, in the year b.c. 240—one year after the end of the First Punic War—brought out, before a Roman audience, a drama translated or imitated from the Greek. From this time Roman poetry advanced along the various channels which the creative energy of Greek genius had formed.

But it has been maintained, in recent times, that this was but the second birth of Roman poetry, and that a golden age of native minstrelsy had preceded this historical development of literature. The most distinguished supporters of this theory were Niebuhr and Macaulay. In the preface to his Lays of Rome, Macaulay says that 'this early literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence, but little reading and writing.' Niebuhr went so far as to assert that the Romans in early times possessed epic poems, 'which in power and brilliance of imagination leave everything produced by the Romans in later times far behind them.' He held that the flourishing period of this native poetry was the fifth century after the foundation of the city. He supposed that the early lays were of plebeian origin, strongly animated by plebeian sentiment, and familiarly known among the mass of the people; that they disappeared after the ascendency of the new literature, chiefly through the influence of Ennius; and that his immediate predecessor, Naevius, was the last of the genuine native minstrels. He professed to find clear traces of these ballads and epic poems in the fine legends of early Roman history. His theory was supported by arguments founded on the testimony of ancient writers, on indications of the early recognition of poetry by the Roman State (as, for instance, the worship of the Camenae), on the poetical character of early Roman story, and on the analogy of other nations.

Although there may be no more ground for believing in a golden age of early Roman poetry than in a golden age of innocence and happiness, yet the question raised by Niebuhr deserves attention, not only on account of the celebrity which it obtained, but also as opening up an inquiry into the nature and value of the rude germs of literature which the Latin soil spontaneously produced. Though there is no substantial evidence of the existence among the Romans of anything corresponding to the modern ballad or the early epic of Greece, yet certain kinds of metrical composition did spring up and flourish among the Italians, previous to and independent of their knowledge of Greek literature. It is worth while to ascertain what these kinds of composition were, as they throw light on some natural tendencies of the race, which ultimately obtained their adequate expression, and helped to impart a native and original character to Latin literature.

It was observed in the former chapter that while the metres of all the great Roman poets were founded on the earlier metres of Greece, there was a native Italian metre, called the Saturnian, which was employed apparently in various kinds of composition, and was quite different in character from the heroic and lyric measures adopted by the cultivated poets of a later age. This metre was used not only in rude extemporaneous effusions, but also in the long poem of Naevius, on the First Punic War. Horace indicates his sense of the roughness and barbarism of the metre, in the lines,

Sic horridus ille

Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus

Ennius speaks contemptuously of the verse of Naevius, as that employed by the old prophetic bards, before any of the gifts of poetry had been received or cultivated—

The irregularity of the metre may be inferred from a saying of an ancient grammarian, that, in the long epic of Naevius he could find no single line to serve as a normal specimen of its structure. From the few Saturnian lines remaining, it may be inferred that the verse had an irregular trochaic movement; and it seems first to have come into use as an accompaniment to the beating of the foot in a primitive rustic dance. The name, connected with Saturnus, the old Land-God of Italy, points to the rustic origin of the metre. It was known also by the name Faunian, derived from another of the Divinities worshipped in the rural districts of Italy. It seems first to have been employed in ritual prayers and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth, and in the grotesque raillery accompanying the merriment and license of the harvest-home. It is of the Saturnian verse that Virgil speaks in the lines of the second Georgic—

Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni

As the long roll of the hexameter and the stately march of the alcaic were expressive of the gravity and majesty of the Roman State, so the ring and flow of the Saturnian verse may be regarded as indicative of the freedom and genial enjoyment of life, characterising the old Italian peasantry.

The most important kinds of compositions produced in this metre, under purely native influences, may be classed as,

1. Hymns or ritual verses.

2. Prophetic verses.

3. Festive and satiric verses, uttered in dialogue or in rude mimetic drama.

4. Short gnomic or didactic verses.

5. Commemorative odes sung or recited at banquets and funerals.

1. The earliest extant specimen of the Latin language is a fragment of the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, a priestly brotherhood, who offered, on every 15th of May, public sacrifices for the fertility of the fields. This fragment is variously written and interpreted, but there can be no doubt that it is the expression of a prayer for protection against pestilence, addressed to the Lares and the god Mars, and that it was uttered with the accompaniment of dancing. The following is the reading of the fragment, as given by Mommsen:—

Enos, Lases, juvate.

Ne veluerve, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores.

Satur fu, fere Mars.

Limen sali.

Sta berber.

Semunis alternis advocapit conctos.

Enos, Marmar, juvato.

From the extreme antiquity of these ceremonial chants it may be inferred that metrical expression among the Romans, as among the Greeks and other ancient nations, owed its origin to a primitive religious worship. But while the early Greek hymns or chants in honour of the Gods soon assumed the forms of pleasant tales of human adventure, or tragic tales of human suffering, the Roman hymns retained their formal and ritual character unchanged among all the changes of creed and language. In the lines just quoted there is no trace of creative fancy, nor any germ of devotional feeling, which might have matured into lyrical or contemplative poetry. They sound like the words of a rude incantation. They are the obscure memorial of a primitive, agricultural people, living in a blind sense of dependence on their gods, and restrained by a superstitious formalism from all activity of thought or fancy. Such compositions cannot be attributed to the inspiration or skill of any early poet, but seem to have been copied from the uncouth and spontaneous shouts of a simple, unsophisticated priesthood, engaged in a rude ceremonial dance. If these hymns stand in any relation to Latin literature, they may perhaps be regarded as springing from the same vein of public sentiment, as called forth the hymn composed by Livius Andronicus during the Second Punic War, and as rude precursors of those composed by Catullus and Horace, and chanted by a chorus of youths and maidens in honour of the protecting Deities of Rome.

2. The verses of the Fauns and Vates spoken of by Ennius, with allusion to the poem of Naevius, in the lines,

suggest no more idea of poetical inspiration than the occasional notices, in Latin authors, of the oracles of the Sibylline books. The language of prophecy naturally assumes a metrical or rhythmical form, partly as an aid to the memory, partly, perhaps, as a means of giving to the words uttered the effect of a more solemn intonation. In Greece, the oracles of the Delphian priestess, and the predictions of soothsayers, collected in books or circulating orally among the people, were expressed in hexameter verse and in the traditional diction of epic poetry; but they were never ranked under any form of poetic art. The verses of the Vates, so far as any inference can be formed as to their nature, appear to have been products and proofs of unimaginative superstition or imposture, rather than of any imaginative inspiration among the early inhabitants of Latium.

3. Another class of metrical compositions, of native origin, but of a totally opposite character, was known by the name of the 'Fescennine verses.' These arose out of a very different class of feelings and circumstances. Horace attributes their origin to the festive meetings and exuberant mirth of the harvest-home among a primitive, strong, and cheerful race of husbandmen. He points out how this rustic raillery gradually assumed the character of fierce lampoons, and had to be restrained by law:—

Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem

Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit;

Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos

Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam

In rabiem coepit verti jocus et per honestas

Ire domos impune minax. Doluere cruento

Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura

Conditione super communi; quin etiam lex

Poenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quemquam

Describi; vertere modum, formidine fustis

These scenic saturae, which, from Livy's notice, appear to have been accompanied with good-humoured hilarity rather than with scurrilous raillery, prepared the way for the reception of the regular drama among the Romans, and will, to some extent, account for its early popularity among them. The later Roman satire long retained traces of a connexion with this primitive and indigenous satura, evinced both by the miscellaneous character of its topics, and by its frequent employment of dramatic dialogue.

Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain funeral poems, called Naeniae, originally chanted by the female relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations.

The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no more than this,—that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of great men—that they were of such length as to admit of several being sung in succession,—and that they fell into disuse some generations before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr. The evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical pieces, and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great banquets and funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of exhibiting the ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their origin to the patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have been animated by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved at all, they were thus more likely to have been preserved by members of the great houses living within the city walls, than by the peasantry living among the outlying hills and country districts. If ever there were any golden age of early Roman poetry, it had passed away long before the time of Ennius and Cato.

The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and had any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult to believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination, pouring itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems, could have been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular poetry, not scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the possession of a great commonwealth—one most tenacious of every national memorial—could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the memory of men—as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the Iliad and the Odyssey—this early poetry could not have perished without leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth of poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force by which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from one generation of poets to another. The language of Homer, by its natural and musical flow, by its accumulated wealth of meaning, by the use of traditional epithets and modes of expression, that penetrate far back into the belief, the feelings, and the life of an earlier time, implies the existence of a long line of poets who preceded him. On the other hand, the diction of the fragments of Ennius, in its strength and in its rudeness, is evidently, in great measure, the creation of his own time and his own mind. He has no true discernment of the characteristic difference between the language of prose and of poetry. The materials of his art had not been smoothed and polished by any long, continuous stream of national melody, but were rough-hewn and adapted by his own energy to the rugged structure of his poem.

While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains, and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language and rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to the presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any time, and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art. This presumption is further strengthened by such indications as there are of the recognition, or rather the non-recognition, of poets or of the poetic character at Rome in early times.

The worship of the Camenae was indeed an old and genuine part of the Roman or Italian religion; but, as was said before, their original function was to predict future events, and to communicate the knowledge of divination; not like that of the Greek Muses, to imagine bright stories of divine and human adventure,—

Even the names by which two of the Camenae were known—Postvorta and Antevorta—suggest the prosaic and practical functions which they were supposed to fulfil. The Romans had no native word equivalent to the Greek word ἀοιδός, denoting the primary and most essential of all poetical gifts, the power to awaken the music of language. The word vates, as was seen, denoted a prophet. The title of scriba was applied to Livius Andronicus; and Naevius, who has by some been regarded as the last of the old race of Roman bards, applies to himself the Greek name of poeta,—

It appears that, on this ground also, there is no reason for believing in the existence of any golden age of Roman poetry before the time of Ennius, or in the theory that the legendary tales of Roman history were created and shaped by native minstrels. To what cause, then, can we attribute their origin? These tales have a strong human interest, and represent marked and original types of antique heroism. They have the elements of true tragic pathos and moral grandeur. They could neither have arisen nor been preserved except among a people endowed with strong capacities of feeling and action. But the strength of the Roman mind consisted more in retentive capacity than in creative energy. Their art and their religion, their family and national customs, aimed at preserving the actual memory of men and of their actions: not like the arts, ceremonies, and customs of the Greeks, which aimed at lifting the mind out of reality into an ideal world. As one of the chief difficulties of the Homeric controversy arises from our ignorance of the power of the memory during an age when poetry and song were in the fullest life, but the use of letters was either unknown, or extremely limited; so there is a parallel difficulty in all attempts to explain the origin of early Roman history, from our ignorance of the power of oral tradition in a time of long established order, but yet unacquainted with any of the forms of literature. The indifference of barbarous tribes to their past history can prove little or nothing as to the tenacity of the national memory among a people far advanced towards civilisation like the Romans after the establishment of their Republican form of government. Nor can the analogy of early Greek traditions be fairly applied to those of Rome, owing to the great difference in the circumstances and the genius of the two nations. Many real impressions of the past might fix themselves indelibly in the grave and solid temperament of the Romans, which would have been lost amid the inexhaustible wealth of fancy that had been lavished upon the Greeks. The strict family life and discipline of the Romans, the continuity of their religious colleges, the unity of a single state as the common centre of all their interests, the slow and steady growth of their institutions, their strong regard for precedent, were all conditions more favourable to the preservation of tradition than the lively social life, the numerous centres of political organisation, and the rapid growth and vicissitudes of the Greek Republics.

The analogy of other nations might suggest the inference that a race which in its maturity produced a genuine poetic literature must, in the early stages of its history, have given some proof of poetic inspiration. It is natural to associate the idea of poetry with youth both in nations and individuals. Yet the evidence of their language, of their religion, and of their customs, leads to the conclusion that the Romans, while prematurely great in action and government, were, in the earlier stages of their national life, little moved by any kind of poetical imagination. The state of religious feeling or belief which gives birth to or co-exists with primitive poetry has left no trace of itself upon the early Roman annals. It is generally found that a fanciful mythology, of a bright, gloomy, or grotesque character, in accordance with the outward circumstances and latent spirit or humour of the particular race among whom it originates, precedes and for a time accompanies the poetry of romantic action. The creative faculty produces strange forms and conditions of supernatural life out of its own mysterious sympathy with Nature, before it learns to invent tales of heroic action and of tragic calamity out of its sympathy with human energy and passion, and its interest in marking the course of destiny, and the vicissitudes of life. The development of the Roman religion betrays the absence, or at least the weaker influence of that imaginative power which shaped the great mythologies of different races out of the primeval worship of nature. The later element introduced into Roman religion was due not to imagination but to reflection. The worship of Fides, Concordia, Pudicitia, and the like, marks a great progress from the early adoration of the sun, the earth, the vault of heaven, and the productive power of nature; but it is a progress in understanding and moral consciousness, not in poetical feeling nor imaginative power. It shows that Roman civilisation advanced without this vivifying influence,—that the mind of the race early reached the maturity of manhood, without passing through the dreams of childhood or the buoyant fancies of youth.

If the pure Roman intellect and discipline had spontaneously produced any kind of literature, it would have been more likely to have taken the form of history or oratory than of national song or ballad. It was from men of the Italian provinces, and not from her own sons, that Rome received her poetry. The men of the most genuinely Roman type and character long resisted all literary progress. The patrons and friends of the early poets were the more liberal members of the aristocracy, in whom the austerity of the national character and narrowness of the national mind had yielded to new ideas and a wider experience. The art of Greece was communicated to 'rude Latium,' through the medium of those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the Greek language and civilisation. With less native strength, but with greater flexibility, these races were more readily moulded by foreign influences; and, leading a life of greater ease and freedom, they were more susceptible to all the impulses of Nature. While they were thus more readily prepared to catch the spirit of Greek culture, they had learned, through long years of war and subsequent dependence, to understand and respect the imperial State in which their own nationality had been merged. It is important to remember that the time in which Roman literature arose was not only that of the first active intercourse between Greeks and Romans, but also that in which a great war, against the most powerful State outside of Italy, had awakened the sense of an Italian nationality, of which Rome was the centre. The great Republic derived her education and literature from the accumulated stores of Greek thought and feeling; but these were made available to her through the willing service of poets who, though born in other parts of Italy, looked to Rome as the head and representative of their common country.