Chapter 12

For the metre of the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid chose the heroic hexameter, but used it in a strikingly new and original way. He makes no attempt, as later poets unsuccessfully did, at reproducing the richness of tone and intricacy of modulation which it had in the hands of Virgil. Ovid's hexameter is a thing of his own. It becomes with him almost a new metre-- light, brilliant, and rapid, but with some monotony of cadence, and without the deep swell that it had, not in Virgil only, but in his predecessors. The swift, equable movement is admirably adapted to the matter of the poem, smoothing over the transitions from story to story, and never allowing a story to pause or flag halfway. Within its limits, the workmanship is faultless. The style neither rises nor sinks with the variation of subject. One might almost say that it was without moral quality. Ovid narrates the treachery of Scylla or the incestuous passion of Myrrha with the same light and secure touch as he applies to the charming idyl of Baucis and Philemon or the love-tale of Pyramus and Thisbe; his interest is in what happened, in the story for the story's sake. So, likewise, in the rhetorical evolution of his thought, and the management of his metre, he writes simply as the artist, with the artistic conscience as his only rule. The rhetorician is as strong in him as it had been in the _Amores;_ but it is under better control, and seldom leads him into excesses of bad taste, nor is it so overmastering as not to allow free play to his better qualities, his kindliness, his good-humour, his ungrudging appreciation of excellence, in his evolution of thought--or his play of fancy, if the expression be preferred--he has an alertness and precision akin to great intellectual qualities; and it is this, perhaps, which has made him a favourite with so many great men of letters. Shakespeare himself, in his earlier work, alike the plays and the poems, writes in the Ovidian manner, and often in what might be direct imitation of Ovid; the motto from the _Amores_ prefixed to the _Venus and Adonis_ is not idly chosen. Still more remarkable, because less superficially evident, is the affinity between Ovid and Milton. At first sight no two poets, perhaps, could seem less alike. But it is known that Ovid was one of Milton's favourite poets; and if one reads the _Metamorphoses_ with an eye kept on _Paradise Lost_, the intellectual resemblance, in the manner of treatment of thought and language, is abundantly evident, as well in the general structure of their rhetoric as in the lapses of taste and obstinate puerilities (_non ignoravit vitia sua sed amavit_ might be said of Milton also), which come from time to time in their maturest work.

The _Metamorphoses_ was regarded by Ovid himself as his masterpiece. In the first impulse of his despair at leaving Rome, he burned his own copy of the still incomplete poem. But other copies were in existence; and though he writes afterwards as though it had been published without his correction and without his consent, we may suspect that it was neither without his knowledge nor against his will; when he speaks of the _manus ultima_ as wanting, it is probably a mere piece of harmless affectation to make himself seem liker the author of the _Aeneid_. The case was different with the _Fasti_, the other long poem which he worked at side by side with the _Metamorphoses_. The twelve books of this work, dealing with the calendar of the twelve months, were also all but complete when he was banished, and the first six, if not actually published, had, at all events, got into private circulation. At Tomi he began a revision of the poem which, apparently, he never completed. The first half of the poem, prefaced by a fresh dedication to Germanicus, was published, or republished, after the death of Augustus, to whom, in its earlier form, it had been inscribed; the second half never reached the public. It cannot be said that Latin poetry would be much poorer had the first six books been suppressed also. The student of metrical forms would, indeed, have lost what is metrically the most dexterous of all Latin poems, and the archaeologist some curious information as to Roman customs; but, for other readers, little would be missed but a few of the exquisitely told stories, like that of Tarquin and Lucretia, or of the Rape of Proserpine, which vary the somewhat tedious chronicle of astronomical changes and national festivals.

The poems of the years of Ovid's exile, the _Tristia_ and the _Letters from Pontus_, are a melancholy record of flagging vitality and failing powers. His adulation of the Emperor and the imperial family passes all bounds; it exhausts what would otherwise seem the inexhaustible copiousness of his vocabulary. The long supplication to Augustus, which stands by itself as book ii. of the _Tristia_, is the most elaborate and skilful of these pieces; but those which may be read with the most pleasure are the letters to his wife, for whom he had a deep affection, and whom he addresses with a pathos that is quite sincere. As hope of recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more; the incorrect language and slovenly versification of some of the _Letters from Pontus_ are in sad contrast to the Ovid of ten years before, and if he went on writing till the end, it was only because writing had long been a second nature to him.

Of the extraordinary force and fineness of Ovid's natural genius, there never have been two opinions; had he but been capable of controlling it, instead of indulging it, he might have, in Quintilian's opinion, been second to no Roman poet. In his _Medea_, the critic adds, he did show some of this self-control; its loss is the more to be lamented. But the easy good-nature of his own disposition, no less than the whole impulse of the literary fashion then prevalent, was fatal to the continuous exercise of such severe self-education: and the man who was so keen and shrewd in his appreciation of the follies of lovers had all the weakness of a lover for the faults of his own poetry. The delightful story of the three lines which his critical friends urged him to erase proves, if proof were needed, that this weakness was not blindness, and that he was perfectly aware of the vices of his own work. The child of his time, he threw all his brilliant gifts unhesitatingly into the scale of new ideas and new fashions; his "modernity," to use a current term of the present day, is greater than that of any other ancient author of anything like his eminence.

_Prisca iuvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum Gratulor: haec aetas moribus apta meis--_

this is his deliberate attitude throughout his life.

Such a spirit has more than once in the history of the arts marked the point from which their downward course began. _I do not sing the old things, for the new are far better_, the famous Greek musician Timotheus had said four centuries earlier, and the decay of Greek music was dated from that period. But to make any artist, however eminent, responsible for the decadence of art, is to confuse cause with effect; and the note of ignominy affixed by Augustus to the _Art of Love_ was as futile as the action of the Spartan ephor when he cut the strings away from the cithara of Timotheus. The actual achievement of Ovid was to perfect and popularise a poetical form of unusual scope and flexibility; to throw a vivid and lasting life into the world of Graeco-Roman mythology; and, above all, to complete the work of Cicero and Horace in fixing a certain ideal of civilised manners for the Latin Empire and for modern Europe. He was not a poet of the first order; yet few poets of the first order have done a work of such wide importance.

V.

LIVY.

The Ciceronian age represents on the whole the culmination of Latin prose, as the Augustan does the culmination of Latin poetry. In the former field, the purity of the language as it had been used by Caesar and Cicero could hardly be retained in a period of more diffused culture; and the influence of the schools of rhetoric, themselves based on inferior Greek models, became more and more marked. Poetry, too, was for the time more important than prose, and one result was that prose became infected with certain qualities of poetical style. The reign of Augustus includes only one prose writer of the first rank, the historian Titus Livius.

Though not living like Virgil or Horace in the immediate circle of Augustus and under direct court patronage, Livy was in friendly relations with the Emperor and his family, and accepted the new rule with cordiality, if without much enthusiasm. Of his life, which seems to have been wholly spent in literary pursuits, little is known. He was born at Padua in the year of Julius Caesar's first consulship, and had survived Augustus by three years when he died at the age of seventy-five. In earlier life he wrote some philosophical dialogues and treatises on rhetoric which have not been preserved. An allusion in the first book of his history shows that it was written, or at all events published, after the first and before the second closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus, in the years 29 and 25 B.C. For forty years thereafter he continued this colossal task, which, like the _Decline and Fall_, was published in parts from time to time. He lived to bring it down as far as the death of Drusus, the younger son of the Empress Livia, in the year 9 B.C. The division into books, of which there were one hundred and forty- two in the whole work, is his own; these again were arranged in _volumina_, or sections issued as separate volumes, and containing a varying number of books. The division of the work into decads was made by copyists at a much later period, and was no part of the author's own plan. Only one-fourth of the whole history has survived the Middle Ages. This consists of the first, the third, the fourth, and half of the fifth decad, or books i.-x. and xxi.-xlv. of the work; of the rest we only possess brief tables of contents, drawn up in the fourth century, not from the original work but from an abridgment, itself now lost, which was then in use. The scale of the history is very different in the two surviving portions. The first decad carries it from the foundation of the city through the Regal and early Republican periods down to the third Samnite war, a period of four centuries and a half. The twenty-five extant books of the third, fourth, and fifth decads cover a period of fifty years, from the beginning of the second Punic to the conclusion of the third Macedonian war. This half century, it is true, was second in importance to none in Roman history. But the scale of the work had a constant tendency to expand as it approached more modern times, and more abundant documents; and when he reached his own time, nearly a book was occupied with the events of each year.

Founded as it was, at least for the earlier periods, upon the works of preceding annalists, the history of Livy adopted from them the arrangement by years marked by successive consulates, which was familiar to all his readers. He even speaks of his own work as _annales_, though its formal title seems to have been _Histori'_ (or _Libri Historiarum_) _ab Urbe Condita_. There is no reason to suppose that he intended to conclude it at any fixed point In a preface to one of the later volumes, he observed with justifiable pride that he had already satisfied the desire of fame, and only went on writing because the task of composition had become a fixed habit, which he could not discontinue without uneasiness. His fame even in his lifetime was unbounded. He seems to have made no enemies. The acrid criticism of Asinius Pollio, a purist by profession, on certain provincialities of his style, was an insignificant exception to the general chorus of praise. In treading the delicate ground of the Civil wars his attitude towards the Republican party led Augustus to tax him half jestingly as a Pompeian; yet Livy lost no favour either with him or with his more jealous successor. The younger Pliny relates how a citizen of Cadiz was so fired by his fame that he travelled the whole way to Rome merely to see him, and as soon as he had seen him returned home, as though Rome had no other spectacles to offer.

Roman history had hitherto been divided between the annalists and the writers of personal and contemporary memoirs. Sallust was almost the only example of the definite historical treatment of a single epoch or episode of the past. As a rule each annalist set himself the same task, of compiling, from the work of his predecessors, and such additional information as he found accessible to him, a general history of the Roman people from its beginnings, carried down as far towards his own day as he found time or patience to continue it. Each successive annalist tried to improve upon previous writers, either in elegance of style or in copiousness of matter, and so far as he succeeded in the double task his work replaced those already written. It was not considered unfair to transcribe whole passages from former annalists, or even to copy their works with additions and improvements, and bring them out as new and original histories. The idea of literary property seems, in truth, to be very much a creation of positive law. When no copyright existed, and when the circulation of any book was confined within very small limits by the cost and labour of transcription, the vaguest ideas prevailed, not at Rome alone, on what we should now regard as the elementary morality of plagiarism. Virgil himself transferred whole lines and passages, not merely from earlier, but even from contemporary poets; and in prose writing, one annalist cut up and reshaped the work of another with as little hesitation as a mediaeval romance-writer.

In this matter Livy allowed himself full liberty; and his work absorbed, and in a great measure blotted out, those of his predecessors. In his general preface he speaks of the two motives which animate new historians, as the hope that they will throw further light on events, or the belief that their own art will excel that of a ruder age. The former he hardly professes to do, at least as regards times anterior to his own; his hope is that by his pen the great story of the Republic will be told more impressively, more vividly, in a manner more stimulating to the reader and more worthy of the subject, than had hitherto been done. This purpose at least he amply and nobly carried out; nor can it be said to be a low ideal of the function of history. So far, however, as the office of the historian is to investigate facts, to get at the exact truth of what physically happened, or to appreciate the varying degrees of probability with which that truth can be attained, Livy falls far short of any respectable ideal. His romantic temper and the ethical bent of his mind alike indisposed him to set any very great value on facts as such. His history bears little trace of any independent investigation. Sources for history lay round him in immense profusion. The enormous collections made by Varro in every field of antiquarian research were at his hand, but he does not seem to have used them, still less to have undertaken any similar labour on his own account. While he never wilfully distorts the truth, he takes comparatively little pains to disengage it from fables and inaccuracies. In his account of a battle in Greece he finds that Valerius Antias puts the number of the enemy killed as inside ten thousand, while Claudius Quadrigarius says forty thousand. The discrepancy does not ruffle him, nor even seem to him very important; he contents himself with an expression of mild surprise that Valerius for once allows himself to be outstripped in exaggerating numbers. Yet where Valerius is his only authority or is not contradicted by others, he accepts his statements, figures and all, without uneasiness. This instance is typical of his method as a critical--or rather an uncritical --historian. When his authorities do not disagree, he accepts what they say without much question. When they do disagree, he has several courses open to him, and takes one or another according to his fancy at the moment. Sometimes he counts heads and follows the majority of his authors; sometimes he adopts the account of the earliest; often he tries to combine or mediate between discordant stories; when this is not easy, he chooses the account which is most superficially probable or most dramatically impressive. He even bases a choice on the ground that the story he adopts shows Roman statesmanship or virtue in a more favourable light, though he finds some of the inventions of Roman vanity too much for him to swallow. Throughout he tends to let his own preferences decide whether or not a story is true. _In rebus tam antiquis si quae similia veri sint pro veris accipiantur_ is the easy canon which he lays down for early and uncertain events. Even when original documents of great value were extant, he refrains from citing them if they do not satisfy his taste. During the second Punic war a hymn to Juno had been written by Livius Andronicus for a propitiatory festival. It was one of the most celebrated documents of early Latin; but he refuses to insert it, on the ground that to the taste of his own day it seemed rude and harsh. Yet as a historian, and not a collector of materials for history, he may plead the privilege of the artist. The modern compromise by which documents are cited in notes without being inserted in the text of histories had not then been invented; and notes, even when as in the case of Gibbon's they have a substantive value as literature, are an adjunct to the history itself, rather than any essential part of it. A more serious charge is, that when he had trustworthy authorities to follow, he did not appreciate their value. In his account of the Macedonian wars, he often follows Polybius all but word for word, but apparently without realising the Greek historian's admirable accuracy and judgment. Such appreciation only comes of knowledge; and Livy lacked the vast learning and the keen critical insight of Gibbon, to whom in many respects he has a strong affinity. His imperfect knowledge of the military art and of Roman law often confuses his narrative of campaigns and constitutional struggles, and gives too much reason to the charge of negligence brought against him by that clever and impudent critic, the Emperor Caligula.

Yet, in spite of all his inaccuracies of detail, and in spite of the graver defect of insufficient historical perspective, which makes him colour the whole political development of the Roman state with the ideas of his own time, the history of Rome as narrated by Livy is essentially true and vital, because based on a large insight into the permanent qualities of human nature. The spirit in which he writes history is well illustrated by the speeches. These, in a way, set the tone of the whole work. He does not affect in them to reproduce the substance of words actually spoken, or even to imitate the tone of the time in which the speech is laid. He uses them as a vivid and dramatic method of portraying character and motive. The method, in its brilliance and its truth to permanent facts, is like that of Shakespeare's _Coriolanus_. Such truth, according to the celebrated aphorism in Aristotle's _Poetics_, is the truth of poetry rather than of history: and the history of Livy, in this, as in his opulent and coloured diction, has some affinity to poetry. Yet, when such insight into motive and such vivid creative imagination are based on really large knowledge and perfect sincerity, a higher historical truth may be reached than by the most laborious accumulation of documents and sifting of evidence.

Livy's humane and romantic temper prevented him from being a political partisan, even if political partisanship had been consistent with the view he took of his own art. In common with most educated Romans of his time, he idealised the earlier Republic, and spoke of his own age as fatally degenerate. But this is a tendency common to writers of all periods. He frequently pauses to deplore the loss of the ancient qualities by which Rome had grown great--simplicity, equity, piety, orderliness. In his remarkable preface he speaks of himself as turning to historical study in order to withdraw his mind from the evils of his own age, and the spectacle of an empire tottering to the fall under the weight of its own greatness and the vices of its citizens. "Into no State," he continues, "were greed and luxury so long in entering; in these late days avarice has grown with wealth, and the frantic pursuit of pleasure leads fast towards a collapse of the whole social fabric; in our ever-accelerating downward course we have already reached a point where our vices and their remedies are alike intolerable." But his idealisation of earlier ages was that of the romantic student rather than the reactionary politician. He is always on the side of order, moderation, conciliation; there was nothing politically dangerous to the imperial government in his mild republicanism. He shrinks instinctively from violence wherever he meets it, whether on the side of the populace or of the governing class; he cannot conceive why people should not be reasonable, and live in peace under a moderate and settled government. This was the temper which was welcome at court, even in men of Pompeian sympathies.

So, too, Livy's attitude towards the established religion and towards the beliefs of former times has the same sentimental tinge. The moral reform attempted by Augustus had gone hand in hand with an elaborate revival and amplification of religious ceremony. Outward conformity at least was required of all citizens. _Expedit esse deos, et ut expedit esse putemus;_ "the existence of the gods is a matter of public policy, and we must believe it accordingly," Ovid had said, in the most daring and cynical of his poems. The old associations, the antiquarian charm, that lingered round this faded ancestral belief, appealed strongly to the romantic patriotism of the historian. His own religion was a sort of mild fatalism; he pauses now and then to draw rather commonplace reflections on the blindness of men destined to misfortune, or the helplessness of human wisdom and foresight against destiny. But at the same time he gravely chronicles miracles and portents, not so much from any belief in their truth as because they are part of the story. The fact that they had ceased to be regarded seriously in his own time, and were accordingly in a great measure ceasing to happen, he laments as one among many declensions from older and purer fashions.