CHAPTER XVII

LITERARY INNOVATIONS

Fronto, about 100 to about 175 A. D.—Gellius, born about 125 A. D.—Apuleius, about 125 to about 200 A. D.—Innovations in poetry—The _Pervigilium Veneris_.

[Sidenote: Fronto.] AN important figure in the literature of the second century was Marcus Cornelius Fronto, of Cirta, in Numidia. He was born about 100 A. D., studied under the best teachers, and was distinguished as an orator and teacher even under Hadrian, though his greatest influence was exerted under the Antonines. He became a member of the senate under Hadrian, and his speech against the Christians may have been delivered before that body. In 143 A. D. he was consul, and was to have been proconsul entrusted with the government of Asia, but relinquished that office on account of ill health. He was the teacher of Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus, both of whom were much attached to him, and as was natural under such circumstances, he was greatly honored and became very wealthy. Of his family life we know only that he was married, that his daughter Gratia married Gaius Aufidius Victorinus, and that five daughters were removed by death. The date of his death is unknown, but it was probably shortly after 175 A. D. Parts of Fronto’s correspondence were discovered in 1815, and from his letters, we get an idea of his style and his teaching. The correspondence is with Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Antoninus Pius, and others, and several essays are included, which were probably sent with the letters to Fronto’s correspondents. One of these essays, the _Principia Historiæ_ compares the Parthian campaigns of Verus and Trajan to the advantage of Verus. This essay was intended to serve as an introduction to a history of the deeds of Verus in the Parthian War, but the history was never written. What gives Fronto’s letters their chief interest is his teaching in regard to oratory and style. He considers rhetoric the noblest possible study, and warns Marcus Aurelius against surrendering to the charms of philosophy, but the chief end of the study of rhetoric is to acquire new and striking words and phrases. Fronto apparently despaired of acquiring new ideas or new points of view, and he saw that Latin literature could not go on forever merely imitating the writers of the Golden Age, or even those of the Silver Age. He was too much of a scholar to think of drawing from the living spring of common every-day speech, and therefore hit upon the expedient of reverting to the early writers, such as Ennius, Plautus, Accius, Cato, Sallust, and Gracchus. His language is therefore full of old-fashioned expressions used without the simplicity that belongs to the early times. That such a writer as Fronto was highly respected and exerted a powerful influence upon his contemporaries is a sign of the depth to which Roman literature had sunk.

[Sidenote: Aulus Gellius.] A much younger man than Fronto, but like him, a man of books and an admirer of archaic phraseology, was Aulus Gellius, who was born probably about 125 A. D., studied under various masters at Rome and at Athens, and held some judicial position at Rome. His extant work, entitled _Noctes Atticæ_ (_Attic Nights_), received its title from the fact that it contains the results of the writer’s labors begun at Athens, when he used to read various authors and make extracts from them in the night. These extracts, with a variety of notes and comments, are arranged in twenty books, all of which are preserved except the eighth, of which we have only the table of contents, and the end of the twentieth. The subjects treated are language and literature, law, philosophy and natural history. Gellius quotes no contemporary authors, but introduces them as speakers, for parts of his work have the form of dialogues. There is no order in the arrangement of subjects, but things are put down as Gellius happened to find them in the works he read. No critical faculty is exhibited, nor has Gellius any marked literary skill. He is simply a diligent compiler, whose work is interesting and valuable to us merely because it preserves fragments of earlier works now lost and information about a variety of subjects.

[Sidenote: Changes in Latin.] The Latin of the Golden Age was a more or less artificial language developed by the genius of the great writers from the common language of every-day life. The Latin of the Silver Age was a development from the literary Latin of the Golden Age, not directly from the popular speech. While literary Latin was thus passing through various phases, the popular speech was also developing along its own lines, and by the second century after Christ was very different from the literary Latin of the time as well as from any Latin, whether spoken or written, of the Ciceronian or earlier times. It had already entered upon the course of change which was in the end to lead to the birth of the Romance languages. Fronto, in his desire to infuse new life into the worn-out literary Latin of his day, went back to the writers before Cicero and adopted their words and phrases, at the same time exerting himself to arrange words in unusual order with the intention of giving piquancy to his expression. His precepts and example were followed by others, as, for instance, Gellius, and still more clearly, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as they appear in their letters to their teacher. But Fronto, although he had great influence for a time, could not turn the stream of progress backward. If literary Latin was to develop anything new, it must be by adopting something from the living speech of the people. This course was followed, in a measure, at least, by Apuleius.

[Sidenote: Apuleius.] Apuleius (the _prænomen_ Lucius is doubtful) was, like Fronto, an African, though he may have been of Roman descent. He was born probably about 125 A. D., at Madaura, on the borders of Numidia and Gætulia. He was educated at Madaura, Carthage, and Athens, travelled extensively, and was for a time in Rome, where he was employed as an advocate. He married Æmilia Pudentilla, a wealthy widow of Oea, in Africa, and was accused by her relatives of having led her into the marriage by means of magic arts. His defense against this charge is the extant book _De Magia_ (_On Magic_), also called the _Apologia_. In its present form the book is a revised and enlarged edition of the speech in court. Apuleius was evidently acquitted, and he became a man of great influence and reputation. He prided himself on his versatility, wrote and spoke both Greek and Latin, and confined himself to no one branch of literature, but was orator, poet, scientist, philosopher, and novelist, without, however, displaying any great originality in any direction. He preferred to call himself a Platonic philosopher, but his chief activity was that of a travelling orator, or sophist, who went from place to place giving public exhibitions of his skill in composing and delivering interesting speeches on all sorts of subjects. He seems to have spent most of his life in Africa, and he held the office of priest of the province (_sacerdos provinciæ_) at Carthage. He was initiated into the mysteries of Isis and seems to have been one of those who sought in the mystic worship of foreign deities the satisfaction of their religious yearnings which the Roman state religion did not give. He seems to have been opposed to Christianity, though he nowhere mentions it directly. His great reputation and the number of works ascribed to him would seem to indicate that he lived to a good age, but the date of his death is unknown.

[Sidenote: Works of Apuleius.] The extant works of Apuleius are the _Metamorphoses_, a novel in eleven books, the _Apologia_, a book on spirits especially the familiar spirit of Socrates, _De Deo Socratis_, two books on the doctrines of Plato, _De Dogmate Platonis_, and a collection of extracts from his speeches entitled _Florida_. The dialogue _Asclepius_, the treatise _On the World_ (_De Mundo_), and the treatise published as the third book on Plato’s teachings, are not by Apuleius. Of these works the most interesting is the novel entitled _Metamorphoses_, in which are narrated the adventures of a certain Lucius of Corinth, who was changed by magic into an ass, and in that form passed through many vicissitudes and saw and heard many strange things, until he was finally restored to human form by the aid of the goddess Isis, to whose service he afterwards devoted himself. This story is derived from a Greek original which appears in abbreviated form among the writings falsely ascribed to Lucian, under the title _Lucius_ or _The Ass_. Apuleius amplified his Greek original by inserting nearly twenty stories that have no connection with the plot. These are usually introduced in an unskillful way, interrupting the narrative and destroying the unity of the work, but they are in themselves the most interesting parts of the whole novel. The longest and most famous among them is the charming story of Cupid and Psyche, beautifully rendered by William Morris in his _Earthly Paradise_. This mystic love tale was derived, like the other tales inserted in the story of Lucius, from a Greek original. It is not an invention of Apuleius, but he inserted it in his novel, and thus preserved it to later times.

[Sidenote: The style of Apuleius.] The style of Apuleius is not the same in his different works. Everywhere, to be sure, he aims at striking effect by means of unusual words arranged in peculiar order, and of sentences curiously broken up into short rhythmical members, very different in effect from the dignified, sonorous periods of Cicero and other classical writers. But in the _Metamorphoses_ he adopts many expressions from the common speech of the people, whereas in his oratorical and philosophical works he reverts, like Fronto, to the early writers. Apuleius and Fronto, both Africans, are the chief representatives of the _elocutio novella_, the new rhetoric, which broke with the continuous tradition of classical Latin and tried to infuse new life into Latin literature. Neither Fronto nor Apuleius was a man of great inventive genius. Both imitated the Greek sophists of their time, such as Maximus of Tyre and Ælius Aristides, not only in the subject matter of their discourses, but to some extent in their style; yet the fact that they wrote and spoke in Latin and tried to influence the course of Latin literature gives them an importance not possessed by any of the later Greek sophists except Dio Chrysostom and Lucian. Apuleius was apparently more gifted by nature than Fronto, and his works show a surprising ability in the use of language, which makes up in a measure for the lack of originality in thought. Of his extant works the _Metamorphoses_ is the most important. It not only shows the qualities of the _elocutio novella_ more completely than any other work, but it gives a picture of the life of the times, with its superstitions, loose morals, robberies, friendships, hospitalities, and social amenities. Moreover, it has preserved to us many interesting tales, among them the story of Cupid and Psyche. Owing probably to the supernatural elements in the _Metamorphoses_ and to the fact that he had been accused of magical arts, Apuleius came soon after his death to be regarded as a mighty sorcerer, and as a sorcerer he was associated with Virgil in mediæval times.

[Sidenote: Innovations in poetry.] While Fronto, Apuleius, and others were practising the _elocutio novella_ in prose, attempts were made to introduce innovations in poetry. Terentianus Maurus, who wrote in verse a handbook on letters, syllables, and metres toward the end of the second century, mentions _poetæ novelli_, and Diomedes, a grammarian of the latter part of the fourth century, speaks of _poetæ neoterici_, to whom he ascribes a variety of innovations. The names of several of these poets are mentioned, but too little is known of them to awaken any interest in their personalities. Their innovations seem to have consisted largely of verbal juggling, a remarkable example of which is seen in these lines:

_Nereides freta sic verrentes caerula tranant, Flamine confidens ut Notus Icarium. Icarium Notus ut confidens flamine, tranant Caerula verrentes sic freta Nereides._

Here lines three and four are lines one and two read backward. Other examples are less elaborate, but show the same spirit, the same foolish playing with words. From such things as this no new life could be infused into poetry, and most of the verses preserved to us from the second and even the third centuries after Christ are little more than feeble echoes of the distant music of Virgil. Nevertheless there are already indications of the new mediæval spirit, which was not to find its full development until the days of the minnesinger and the troubadours. [Sidenote: The Pervigilium Veneris.] Whether the _Pervigilium Veneris_ (_Night-watch of Venus_) belongs to the second century or the third is not certain. At any rate it is the most striking early example of the romantic sentiment peculiar to mediæval and modern times. The poem is written for the spring festival of Venus Genetrix, whose worship was revived and encouraged by Hadrian. It is therefore probable that it belongs to the second century. It consists of ninety-three trochaic septenarii (the rhythm of Tennyson’s _Locksley Hall_), a verse freely used by the early Latin poets, but hardly to be found in the first century after Christ. At irregular intervals the refrain:

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet_,[130]

is repeated. In the beginning of the poem,

_Ver novum; ver iam canorum; vere natus est Iovis; Vere concordant amores; vere nubunt alites_,[131]

may well have suggested to Tennyson the lines:

In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast; In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest; In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove; In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

At the end of the poem the lines:

_Illa cantat, nos tacemus. Quando ver venit meum? Quando fiam ut chelidon et tacere desinam? Perdidi Musam tacendo nec me Apollo respicit_,[132]

sound like the wail of the old literature, which no spring was to awaken to new song. Indeed, the _Pervigilium Veneris_ is almost as much mediæval as classical. Its quantitative rhythm coincides with the natural accent of the words, it is full of assonances that suggest both alliteration and rhyme, its spirit is almost modern in its sentiment; and even in its grammatical structure, especially in the use of the preposition _de_, it points forward to the great changes to come.

In prose and verse alike, the second century after Christ was a period of innovations. The new methods of Fronto and Apuleius did not hold their own for any great length of time, but they serve as symptoms of the decay of Latin speech, and may even have hastened that decay by turning men away from the continued imitation of the classic writers. The history of classical Roman literature may be said to end with Suetonius. But something of the old spirit survived even into the period of the Middle Ages and affected strongly the literature of the Christian church. For this reason it is well to give a brief sketch of early Christian literature in Latin, and of the surviving remnants of pagan literary activity in the third and fourth centuries.