Chapter V
Reading edition
Early Roman Tragedy—M. Pacuvius, b.c. 219-129; L. Accius, b.c. 170-about b.c. 90.
The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained till about the beginning of the first century b.c., first by his nephew M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the drama during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the early writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the Roman stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been mentioned were not only performed during the lifetime of their authors, but, as appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they held their place on the stage with much popular applause, and were read and admired as literary works till the last days of the Republic. This popularity implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the time in which it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening new interests and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with literature. Yet, on the other hand, the want of permanence, and the want of any power of development in the Roman drama, would indicate that it was less adapted to the genius of the nation than either the epic or the satiric poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of Pacuvius and Accius had been as true an expression of the national mind as either the epic poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius, it might have been expected that it would have flourished in greater perfection in the eras of finer literary accomplishment. The efforts of Naevius and Ennius were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and the spirit and manner of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; but Roman tragedy, notwithstanding the attempt to give it a new and higher artistic development in the Augustan age, dwindled away till it became a mere literary exercise of educated men, and remains only in the artificial and rhetorical compositions attributed to the philosopher Seneca.
From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is more difficult to discern its original features and character than those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further difficulty arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments. Isolated passages in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the conduct of the action, or the force and consistency with which the leading characters are conceived. There is, moreover, very slight direct evidence bearing on the dramatic genius of the early tragic poets. Roman critics seem to have paid little attention to, or had little perception of this kind of excellence. They quote with admiration the fervid sentiment and morality—'the rugged maxims hewn from life'—expressed on the Roman stage; but they have not preserved the memory of any great typical character, or of any dramatic plot creatively conceived or powerfully sustained.
The Roman drama was confessedly a reproduction or adaptation of the drama of Athens. The titles of the great majority of Roman tragedies indicate that they were translated or copied from Greek originals, or were at least founded on the legends of Greek poetry and mythology. The Medea of Ennius and the Antiope of Pacuvius are known, on the authority of Cicero, to have been directly translated from Euripides. Other dramas were more or less close adaptations from his works, or from those of the other Attic tragedians. All of the Roman tragic poets indeed produced one or more plays founded on Roman history or legend: but, with the exception of the Brutus of Accius, none of these seem to have been permanently popular. This failure to establish a national drama seems to imply a want of dramatic invention in the conduct of a plot and the exhibition of character on the part of the poets. As their own history was of supreme interest to the Romans at all times, it is difficult on any other supposition to explain the failure of the 'fabula praetextata' in gaining the public ear. There is, however, distinct evidence that in their adaptations from the Greek the Roman poets in some cases departed considerably from their originals. Something of a Roman stamp was perhaps unconsciously impressed on the Greek personages who were represented. Many of the extant fragments seem to breathe the spirit of Rome more than of Athens. They are expressed not with the subtlety and reflective genius of Greece, but in the plain and straightforward tones of the Roman Republic. The long-continued popularity of Roman tragedy implies also that it was something more than an inartistic copy of the masterpieces of Athenian genius. Mere imitations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides might possibly have obtained some favour with a few men of literary education, but could never have been listened to with applause, for more than a century and a half, by miscellaneous audiences.
The following questions suggest themselves as of most interest in connexion with the general character of early Roman tragedy:—How far may it have reproduced not the materials and form only, but the spirit and ideas of the Greek drama? What was its bearing on the actual circumstances of Roman life, and what were the grounds of the favour with which it was received? What cause can be assigned for the cessation of this favour with the fall of the Republic?
The materials or substance of Roman tragedy were almost entirely Greek. The stories and characters represented were, save in the few exceptional cases referred to above, directly derived from the Greek tragedians or from Homer and the cyclic poets. In point of form also and some of the metres employed, Roman tragedy endeavoured to imitate the models on which it was founded, with probably as little perception of the requirements of dramatic art as of refinement in expression and harmony in rhythm. But while generally conforming to their models, the early Roman poets departed in some important respects from their practice. Thus they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, assigning to it merely a subsidiary part in the dialogue. Although some simple lyrical metre, accompanied with music, continued to be employed in the more rapid and impassioned parts of the dialogue, there was no scope, on the Roman stage, for the great lyrical poetry of the Greek drama, and for the nobler functions of the chorus. On the other hand, there seems to have been more opportunity both for action and for oratorical declamation. The acting of a Roman play must have been more like that on a modern stage than the stately movement and the statuesque repose of the Greek theatre. Again, in imitating the iambic and trochaic metres of the Greek drama, the Roman poets were quite indifferent to the laws by which their finer harmony is produced. Any of the feet admissible in an iambic line might occupy any place in the line, with the exception of the last. There is thus little metrical harmony in the fragments of Roman tragedy; but, on the other hand, it may be remarked that the order of the words in these fragments appears more natural and direct than in the more elaborate metres of the later Roman poets.
But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase through which the human mind has once passed;—a phase in which the vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest era of ancient civilisation. The Athenian dramatists, like the great dramatists of other times, imparted a new and living interest to ancient legends; but this was but one part, perhaps not the most important part, of their functions. They represented before the people the destiny and sufferings of national heroes and demigods, sanctified by long association in the feelings of many generations, still honoured by a vital worship, and appealed to as a present help in danger. Thus a highly idealised and profoundly religious character was imparted to the tragic representation of human passion and destiny on the Athenian stage. This view of life, represented and contemplated with solemnity of feeling in the age of Pericles, would have been altogether unmeaning to a Roman of the age of Ennius. Such a one would understand the natural heroism of a strong will, but not the new force and elevation imparted to the will by reliance on the hidden powers and laws overruling human affairs. He might be moved to sympathy with the sufferers or actors on the scene; but he would be altogether insensible to the higher consolation which overcomes the natural sorrow for the mere earthly catastrophe in a great dramatic action. The inward strength and dignity of a Roman senator might enable him to appreciate the magnanimity and kingly nature of Oedipus; but the deeper interest of the great dramas founded on the fortunes of the Theban king, especially the interest arising from his trust in final righteousness, his sense of communion with higher powers, from the thought of his elevation out of the lowest earthly state into perpetual sanctity and honour, was widely remote from the tangible objects of a Roman's desire, and the direct motives of his conduct. Or perhaps a Roman would have a fellow-feeling with the proud and soldierly bearing of Ajax; but he would be blind to the inward lesson of self-knowledge and self-mastery, which Sophocles represents as forced upon the spirit of the Greek hero through the stern visitation of Athene. Equally remote from the ordinary experience and emotions of a Roman would be the feeling of awe, gloom, and mystery, diffused through the great thoughts and imaginations of Aeschylus. Both in Aeschylus and in Sophocles the light and the gloom cast over the human story are not of this world. But in the fragments of the Roman tragedians, though there is often found the expression of magnanimous and independent sentiment, and of a very dignified and manly morality, there is little trace of any sense of the relation of the individual to a Divine power; and there are some indications not only of a scorn for common superstition, but also of disbelief in the foundations of personal religion. The thought of the insecurity of life, of the vicissitudes of human affairs, and of the impotence of man to control his fate, which forced the Greek poets and historians of the fifth century b.c. into deeper speculations on the question of Divine Providence, was utterly alien to the natural temperament of Rome, and to the confidence inspired by uniform success during the long period succeeding the Second Punic War.
The contemplative and religious thought of Greek tragedy was thus as remote from the practical spirit of the Romans as the political license and the personal humours of the old Athenian comedy were from the earnestness of public life and the dignity of government in the great aristocratic Republic. And thus it happened that, as the comic poets of Rome reproduced the new comedy of Athens, which portrayed the passions of private not of political life, and the manners rather of a cosmopolitan than of a purely Greek civilisation, so the tragic poets found the art of Euripides and of his less illustrious successors more easy to imitate than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The interest of tragedy, as treated by Euripides, turns upon the catastrophes produced by human passion: the religious meaning has, in a great measure, passed out of it; the characters have dwindled from their heroic stature to the proportions of ordinary life; his thought is the result of the analysis of motives, and the study of familiar experience. He has more affinity with the ordinary thoughts and moods of men than either of the older poets. The older and the later Greek writers have a nearer relation to the spirit of other eras of the world's history than those who represent Athenian civilisation in its maturity. It requires a longer familiarity with the mind and heart of antiquity to realise and enjoy the full meaning of Sophocles, Thucydides, or Aristophanes, than of Homer, Euripides, or Theocritus. Homer is indeed one of the truest, if not the truest, representative of the genius of Greece,—the representative also of the ancient world in the same sense as Shakspeare is of the modern world,—but he is, at the same time, directly intelligible and interesting to all countries and times from his being the most natural and powerful exponent of the elementary feelings and forces of human nature. The later poets, on the other hand, such as Euripides and the writers of the new comedy, were not indeed more truly human, but were less distinctively Greek than their immediate predecessors. They had advanced beyond them in the analytic knowledge of human nature; but, with the decay of religious belief and political feeling, they had lost much of the genius and sentiment by which the old Athenian life was characterised. Both their gain and their loss bring them more into harmony with later modes of thought and feeling. Thus it happened that, while the influence of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Thucydides and Aristophanes, is scarcely perceptible in Roman literature, Homer and the early lyrical poets who flourished before Greek civilisation exhibited its most special type, and Euripides who, though a contemporary of Sophocles and Aristophanes, yet belonged in spirit and tone to a younger generation, the writers of the new comedy, and the Alexandrine poets who flourished when the purely Greek ideas and character were being merged in a cosmopolitan civilisation, exercised a direct influence on Roman taste and opinion in every age of their literature. The early tragic poets of Rome could not rival or imitate the dramatic art, the pathetic power, the clear and fluent style, the active and subtle analysis of Euripides; but they could approach nearer to him than to any of his predecessors, by treating the myths and personages of the heroic time apart from the sacred associations and ideal majesty of earlier art, and as a vehicle for inculcating the lessons and the experience of familiar life.
Besides these and other passages in Cicero, the fragments themselves of Roman tragedy testify to its moral and didactic tone, and its occasional appeal to national and political feeling.
The testimony of later writers points to the conclusion that the early Roman tragedy, like Roman oratory, was characterised both by great moral weight and dignity, and also by fervid and impassioned feeling. The latter quality is suggested by the line of Horace,
Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet;
These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that the early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality, and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic. For more than a century new tragedies were written and represented at the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre, but merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to dramatic art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a gorgeous spectacle superseded that afforded by the works of the older dramatists; and dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in popular favour which had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the accomplished Roscius.' The composition of tragedy passed from the hands of popular poets, and became a kind of literary and rhetorical exercise of accomplished men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed four tragedies in sixteen days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and Horace eulogise the dramatic talent of their friend and patron Asinius Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica' implies that the composition of tragedy was the most fashionable form of literary pursuit among the young aspirants to poetic honour at that time, and the Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed a great literary reputation. These were, however, futile attempts to impart artificial life to a withered branch. Though praised by literary critics, they obtained no general favour. Of all forms of poetry the drama is most dependent on popular sympathy and intelligence. With the loss of contact with public feeling the Roman drama lost its vital power. One cause of the change in public taste was the passion for more frivolous and coarser excitement, such as was afforded by the mimes and by gladiatorial combats and shows of wild beasts to a soldiery brutalised by constant wars, and to the civic masses degraded by idleness and by intermixture from all quarters of the world. Other causes may have acted on the poets themselves, such as the exhaustion of the mine of ancient stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the truer sense, acquired through culture, of the bent of Roman genius. But another cause was the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and the people, arising from the decay and final extinction of political life. In ancient, as occasionally also in modern times, the contests and interests of politics were the means of affording the highest intellectual stimulus of which they were capable to the large classes on whom literary influences act only indirectly. So long as the old republican sense of citizenship remained, there was a bond of common feelings, ideas, and sympathies between the body of the people and some of the foremost and most highly educated men in Rome. There was an immediate sympathy between the political orator and his audiences within the Senate or in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy, more remote, but still active, between the poet of the Republic, who had the strong feelings of a Roman citizen, and the great body of his countrymen. With the overthrow of free government, this bond of union between the educated and the uneducated classes was destroyed. The former became more refined and fastidious, but lost something in breadth and genuine strength by the want of any popular contact. The latter became more debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works were more and more addressed to a small circle of men of rank and education, sharing the same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus became more finished as works of art, but had less direct bearing on the passions and great public interests of their time.
Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti.
Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'—'Epigramma Pacuvii verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.'
Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat,
Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas,
Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
With its quiet and modest simplicity of tone this inscription is still significant of that dignified self-consciousness which characterised all the early Roman poets, though the feeling may have been displayed with more prominence by Naevius and Plautus, by Ennius, Accius, and Lucilius, than by Pacuvius.
Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus.
Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.
The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them, however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty.
A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in the Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful attraction for many of the Roman poets:—
Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet
Terram
Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret,
Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera:
Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat,
Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater,
The following fragment illustrates the dawning interest in ethical speculation, which became much more active in the age of Cicero, under the influence of Greek studies:—
Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi
Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili:
Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta, instabilisque sit:
Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet:
Brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.
Sunt autem alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negant
Esse ullam, sed temeritate res regi omnis autumant.
Id magis veri simile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet:
These lines again from the Chryses show that Pacuvius, like Ennius, exposed and ridiculed the superstition of his time—
Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo,
and this is to the same effect—
Nam si qui, quae eventura sunt, provideant, aequiparent Jovi.
This tendency to physical and ethical speculation may be the reason for which Horace applies to Pacuvius the epithet 'doctus.'
The fragments of Pacuvius show not only the cast of understanding, but also the grave and dignified tone of morality, which was found to be one of the most Roman characteristics of Ennius. They indicate also a similar humanity of feeling. The moral nobleness of the situation, in which Pylades and Orestes contend which should sacrifice himself for the other, has already been noticed: 'stantes plaudebant in re ficta.' Again, in the Tusculan Disputations (ii. 21), Cicero commends Pacuvius for deviating from Sophocles, who had represented Ulysses, in the Niptra, as utterly overcome by the power of his wound; while, in Pacuvius, those who are supporting him, 'personae gravitatem intuentes,' address this reproof to him, 'leviter gementi':—
Tu quoque Ulysses, quanquam graviter
Cernimus ictum, nimis paene animo es
Molli, qui consuetu's in armis
The strong tones of Roman fortitude are heard in this grave rebuke; and the lines in which Ulysses, at the point of death, reproves the lamentations of those around him, have the unstudied directness that may be supposed to have characterised the serious speech of the time:—
Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet:
The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it deserving of being written in front of every temple':—
Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia.
There are other fragments the significance of which is political rather than ethical, as for instance the following:—
Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere.
A passage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The prominent words of the passage were,—
Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi,
Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem
Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis
The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age; but one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several passages in Ennius, show the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible aspects of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the Greek army after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in this style:—
Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam
Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occaecat nigror,
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit,
Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit,
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines,
There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines, exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'—
Armamentum stridor, flictus navium,
Virgil must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the line—
Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum.
The effect of alliteration and assonance may be illustrated by a passage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised Ulysses:—
Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem
Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam,
Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the title of which was 'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the principal character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae, whom Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words—
Animaeque magnae Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno,
Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce on a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius. His remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general features of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to determine from internal evidence alone whether any particular passage came from the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points that are known in his life are his provincial origin, and his relationship to Ennius; the fact of his supporting himself, first by painting, afterwards by the payment he received from the Aediles for his plays; his friendship with Laelius, the centre of the literary circle in Rome during the latter part of the second century b.c.; his intimacy with his younger rival Accius; the facts also that, like Sophocles, he preserved his poetical power unabated till a great age, and that, like Shakspeare, he retired to spend his last years in his native district. The language of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly and modest temper, and of the calm and serious spirit of age; while that of many of his dramatic fragments bears evidence of his moral strength and worth, and to the manly fervour as well as the gentle humanity of his temperament.
Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C. Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets' Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference, thus asserting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival.
He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The titles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50 in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan cycle of events; and, in his representation of character and action, to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies of the Romans. Two of his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged to the class of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of Ennius in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books. He was the author also of what seem to have been works on grammar and literary criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres, and known by the names Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The subjects of these last works, as well as those of some of the satires of Lucilius, and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius Sedigitus, written in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the attention which was given about this time by Roman authors to the principles of composition. The literary and grammatical studies of the time of Accius must have prepared the way for the rapid development of style which characterised the first half of the first century b.c. In some of the fragments of Accius distinctions in the meaning of words—e.g. of 'pertinacia' and 'pervicacia'—are prominently brought out. We note also in his remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great access of formative energy in the language, especially in abstract words in -tas and -tudo, many of which afterwards dropped out of use. The antagonism manifested by Lucilius to Accius seems in a great measure to have arisen from his claims to a kind of literary dictatorship in questions of criticism and style.
Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem, Fortunam ex aliis,
though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to Virgil in the line of Accius—
Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.
The address of Latinus to Turnus—
O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus,
is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic poet—
Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo, Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere.
The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius. The following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which may be recognised in many other fragments of Accius:—
Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro
Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo,
Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia
He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that most powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of compassion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,—
Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine
and—
Nam huius demum miseret, cuius nobilitas miserias
He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity, and direct force of understanding:—
Scin' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem,
Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes
Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum,
The following, again, like similar passages already quoted from Ennius and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superstition which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:—
Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant
Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange vision—
Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt
Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two passages may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet—force of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the first appearance of the Argo—
Tanta moles labitur
Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu:
Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat:
There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in this fragment—
Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer
There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the Oenomaus—
Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating the common aspects of Nature. Several other short fragments betray the existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility, as, for instance, the following:—
Saxum id facit angustitatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans
The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining after effect, as in this fragment:—
Hac ubi curvo litore latratu Unda sub undis labunda sonit.
The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without naming the author, are probably from Accius:—
Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere, Vites laetificae pampinis pubescere, Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere, Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia, Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.
We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in Plautus, as in the following:—
Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser. Pro se quisque cum corona clarum cohonestat caput. Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe.
'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi,' etc.