Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/891

LATIN LITERATURE. 807 LATIN LITERATURE. made and rites to be performed, household re- ceipts and housekeeping, simple medicines, and legal forms for leases and sales. Vergil's debt to Cato in the writing of his Georgks can well be imagined. A sketch of the development of Roman litera- ture would not be complete without a brief notice of M. Pacuvius of Brundisium ( li.c. 220- 132), though all liis works are lost. He was a nephew of Jinnius, who brought him to Rome and set him on the road to success as a writer of tragedies. The judgment of posterity placed the nephew above the uncle. Comedy, in this inter- mediate period between Plautus and Terence, was represented by Statius Ca;cilius (c.219-l(iG B.C. ) , an Insubriaii Gaul who was probably car- ried to Rome among the prisoners of war from that region. His comedies were transcriptions from the Greek, less free than those of Plautus, but more original than those of Terence. At this period Fabius Pictor. the annalist, finds a follower in L. Cincius Alimentus ( prietor in B.C. 210), an officer in the war with Hannibal, but he too wrote his annals in Greek. In the second century B.C.. however, there were a num- t)er of Latin annalists, whose works, now lost, served more or less as source-books for the later historians. Such were L. Cassius Hemina, L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, L. Caelius Antipater, and Q. Claudius Quadrigarius. After considering so many authors that are hardly more than names to us, it is refreshing to meet again one of whom we can form a judg- ment from his actual works. This is P. Teren- tius Afer (c.185-159 B.C.). commonly known as Terence. Xot only was Terence not a Rtmian ; he was not even a native of Italy, but of the race of Rome's great enemies, the Carthaginians. Born after the end of the Second Punic War (B.C. 218-201), he was brought to Rome as a slave boy, and came into the possession of the wealthy and cultivated senator P. (?) Terentius Lueanus. who, recognizing his ability, gave him education and freedom. There was at this time a little coterie of litterateurs headed by Scipio Africanus and Gains L.tHus. men of the highest rank and the most aristocratic bias, in literature as in politics. The brilliant young Cartliaginian was admitted to their society and friendship: his plays were read before them and there subjected to criticism and suggestions before being given to the world. A new element was thus intro- duced into the nascent Latin literature. In Plautus and Ennius the Greek models are worked over and adapted to the Roman reading public, with a freedom from restriction ami a breadth of genius which promises for the Latin literature a great future development almost independent of its Greek origins, or. at least, with wholly na- tional tendencies drawn from the inner life of the Romans themselves. To the Scipios. however, and to Terence, guided by their tendencies, litera- ture was the prerogative of the cultivated no- bility, and was dependent upon study and learn- ing. The Greek masterpieces were no longer re- garded merely as a source of inspiration, but as an end in themselves; a standard by which Latin productions were to be judged alike artistically and metrically. This did not. indeed, hinder the growth of Roman gcniis. but gave it a new direction. What it gained in grandeur and pre- cision it lost in spontaneity. The same is true of the Latin language itself, which at the hands of a succession of writers culminating in Cicero became that magnificent but restricted and arti- ficial vehicle of thought which we call classical Latin. The six plays of Terence, all derived from Greek plays of Menander and his contemporaries, are faultless in their diction and full of dramatic merit. One decidedly misses, none the less, the sprightly, virile, thoroughly Italian genius of a Plautus. All Terence's plays were prepared for representation at the Megalensian festival in honor of Muyna Mater under the stage-manage- ment of Ambivius Turpio. Their titles are: (1) Andria, 'The Maid of Andros,' first performed in B.C. 16(5; (2) Eunuchus; (3) Heauton Timo- rume7ws,'The Self-Tormentor,' containing the oft- quoted line : Homo sum : human! nil a me alienum puto ; (4) Phormio; (5) Eecyra, 'The Jlother-in-law,' the least important of all; (0) Adclphcc, 'The Brothers.' These are the sum of Terence's pub- lished work, and all are preserved. Their author died young, perhaps of a fever contracted in the course of an extended tour in Greece (B.C. 159). Another member of the Seipionic circle, a man who played a great role in the literature of the day, and the loss of whose works is a calamity to us, is Gaius Lucilius (B.C. 180-103), a native of Suessa Aunmca. in Campania, who so defined the scope and application of the satura as to deserve the name of 'Father of Roman Satire.' To him was due the popularizing of a kind of poetic miscellany of reflection, criticism, and de- scription, now serious, now pungent, now witty, that was singularly adapted to the genius and habits of the Romans. The particular direction which Lucilius gave to satire was that of a sys- tematic criticism of literature and life, which often took the form of parody. Nothing escaped his trenchant pen; politics, morals, society, all things sacred and profane received from him their share of attention. Even his own life and personality were laid bare to his readers. The later satirists, and especially Horace, while frankly criticising his careless style, willingly admit their debt to Lucilius. Horace, indeed, often follows him closely, as in the satire describ- ing his journey to Brundisium in the company of M.Tcenas and his party, which is merely a ecpy of Lucilius's account of his own trip to the Straits of Messina. The satires were published in thirty books. The predominant metre was the hexameter. In this he differed from his prede- cessor Ennius. whose .SVi/uro" mingled trochaics, hexameters, and iambics indifferently, and from Varro (see below), whose 'Menippean Satires' were written in both prose and verse. To this period belongs the last of the great Latin tragic poets. Lucius .ttius (B.C. 170-94), of Pisaurum. the modern Pi'saro. As a young man (B.C. 140). he was already putting tragedies on the stage when the aged Pacuvius was still writing. Attius, too, lived to be an old man, and the young Cicero liked to listen to his reminiscences. Of his many tragedies only some titles and a few fragments survive. His style is marked by siich old-fashioned ornament as assonance, alliteration, plays upon words, and archaic forms, which connect him more closely with the age of Ennius than with the literary period immediately following hin. With Attius the old character-drama came to an end.