*HISTORY*
OF
*ROMAN LITERATURE,*
FROM
*ITS EARLIEST PERIOD* TO
THE AUGUSTAN AGE.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
BY JOHN DUNLOP, AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF FICTION.
FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION.
VOL. II.
PUBLISHED BY E. LITTELL, CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA. G. & C. CARVILL, BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 1827
James Kay, Jun. Printer, S. E. Corner of Race & Sixth Streets, Philadelphia.
CONTENTS.
[Agriculture] Marcus Porcius Cato Marcus Terentius Varro Nigidius Figulus History Quintus Fabius Pictor Sallust Julius Cæsar Cicero Appendix Livius Andronicus, Nævius Ennius Plautus Terence Lucilius Lucretius Catullus Laberius—Publilius Syrus Cato—Varro Sallust Cæsar Cicero Chronological Table Index Transcriber’s note
*HISTORY*
OF
*ROMAN LITERATURE, &C.*
*HISTORY*
OF
*ROMAN LITERATURE, &c.*
In almost all States, poetical composition has been employed and considerably improved before prose. First, because the imagination expands sooner than reason or judgment; and, secondly, because the early language of nations is best adapted to the purposes of poetry, and to the expression of those feelings and sentiments with which it is conversant.
Thus, in the first ages of Greece, verse was the ordinary written language, and prose was subsequently introduced as an art and invention. In like manner, at Rome, during the early advances of poetry, the progress of which has been detailed in the preceding volume, prose composition continued in a state of neglect and barbarism.
The most ancient prose writer, at least of those whose works have descended to us, was a man of little feeling or imagination, but of sound judgment and inflexible character, who exercised his pen on the subject of Agriculture, which, of all the peaceful arts, was most highly esteemed by his countrymen.
The long winding coast of Greece, abounding in havens, and the innumerable isles with which its seas were studded, rendered the Greeks, from the earliest days, a trafficking, seafaring, piratic people: And many of the productions of their oldest poets, are, in a great measure, addressed to what may be called the maritime taste or feeling which prevailed among their countrymen. This sentiment continued to be cherished as long as the chief literary state in Greece preserved the sovereignty of the seas—compelled its allies to furnish vessels of war, and trusted to its naval armaments for the supremacy it maintained during the brightest ages of Greece. In none either of the Doric or Ionian states, was agriculture of such importance as to exercise much influence on manners or literature. Their territories were so limited, that the inhabitants were never removed to such a distance from the capital as to imbibe the ideas of husbandmen. In Thessaly and Lacedæmon, agriculture was accounted degrading, and its cares were committed to slaves. The vales of Bœotia were fruitful, but were desolated by floods. Farms of any considerable extent could scarcely be laid down on the limited, though lovely isles of the Ægean and Ionian seas. The barren soil and mountains of the centre of Peloponnesus confined the Arcadians to pasturage—an employment bearing some analogy to agriculture, but totally different in its mental effects, leading to a life of indolence, contemplation, and wandering, instead of the industrious, practical, and settled habits of husbandmen. Though the Athenians breathed the purest air beneath the clearest skies, and their long summer was gilded by the brightest beams of Apollo, the soil of Attica was sterile and metallic; while, from the excessive inequalities in its surface, all the operations of agriculture were of the most difficult and hazardous description. The streams were overflowing torrents, which stripped the soil, leaving nothing but a light sand, on which grain would scarcely grow. But it was with the commencement of the Peloponnesian war that the exercise of agriculture terminated in Attica. The country being left unprotected, owing to the injudicious policy of Pericles, was annually ravaged by the Spartans, and the husbandmen were forced to seek refuge within the walls of Athens. In the early part of the age of Pericles, the Athenians possessed ornamented villas in the country; but they always returned to the city in the evening(1). We do not hear that the great men in the early periods of the republic, as Themistocles and Aristides, were farmers; and the heroes of its latter ages, as Iphicrates and Timotheus, chose their retreats in Thrace, the islands of the Archipelago, or coast of Ionia.
A picture, in every point of view the reverse of this, is presented to us by the Agreste Latium. The ancient Italian mode of life was almost entirely agricultural and rural; and with exception, perhaps, of the Etruscans, none of the Italian states were in any degree maritime or commercial. Italy was well adapted for every species of agriculture, and was most justly termed by her greatest poet, magna parens frugum. Dionysius of Halicarnassus(2), Strabo(3), and Pliny(4), talk with enthusiasm of its fertile soil and benignant climate. Where the ground was most depressed and marshy, the meadows were stretched out for the pasturage of cattle. In the level country, the rich arable lands, such as the Campanian and Capuan plains, extended in vast tracts, and produced a profusion of fruits of every species, while on the acclivities, where the skirts of the mountains began to break into little hills and sloping fields, the olive and vine basked on soils famed for Messapian oil, and for wines of which the very names cheer and revive us. The mountains themselves produced marble and timber, and poured from their sides many a delightful stream, which watered the fields, gladdened the pastures, and moistened the meads to the very brink of the shore. Well then might Virgil exclaim, in a burst of patriotism and poetry which has never been surpassed,—
“Sed neque Medorum sylvæ, ditissima terra, Nec pulcher Ganges, atque auro turbidus Hermus, Laudibus Italiæ certent; non Bactra, neque Indi, Totaque thuriferis Panchaia pinguis arenis. Hic ver assiduum, atque alienis mensibus æstas; Bis gravidæ pecudes, bis pomis utilis arbor. * * * * Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus(5)!”
One would not suppose that agricultural care was very consistent, at least in a small state, with frequent warfare. But in no period of their republic did the Romans neglect the advantages which the land they inhabited presented for husbandry. Romulus, who had received a rustic education, and had spent his youth in hunting, had no attachment to any peaceful arts, except to rural labours; and this feeling pervaded his legislation. His Sabine successor, Numa Pompilius, who well understood and discharged the duties of sovereignty, divided the whole territory of Rome into different cantons. An exact account was rendered to him of the manner in which these were cultivated; and he occasionally went in person to survey them, in order to encourage those farmers whose lands were well tilled, and to reproach others with their want of industry(6). By the institution, too, of various religious festivals, connected with agriculture, it came to be regarded with a sort of sacred reverence. Ancus Martius, who trod in the steps of Numa, recommended to his people the assiduous cultivation of their lands. After the expulsion of the kings, an Agrarian law, by which only seven acres were allotted to each citizen, was promulgated, and for some time rigidly enforced. Exactness and economy in the various occupations of agriculture were the natural consequences of such regulations. Each Roman having only a small portion of land assigned to him, and the support of his family depending entirely on the produce which it yielded, its culture necessarily engaged his whole attention.
In these early ages of the Roman commonwealth, when the greatest men possessed but a few acres, the lands were laboured by the proprietors themselves. The introduction of commerce, and the consequent acquisition of wealth, had not yet enabled individuals to purchase the estates of their fellow-citizens, and to obtain a revenue from the rent of land rather than from its cultivation.
The patricians, who, in the city, were so distinct from the plebeian orders, were thus confounded with them in the country, in the common avocations of husbandry. After having presided over the civil affairs of the republic, or commanded its armies, the most distinguished citizens returned, without repining, to till the lands of their forefathers. Cincinnatus, who was found at labour in his fields by those who came to announce his election to the dictatorship, was not a singular example of the same hand which held the plough guiding also the helm of the state, and erecting the standard of its legions. So late as the time of the first Carthaginian war, Regulus, in the midst of his victorious career in Africa, asked leave from the senate to return to Italy, in order to cultivate his farm of seven acres, which had been neglected during his absence(7). Many illustrious names among the Romans originated in agricultural employments, or some circumstances of rustic skill and labour, by which the founders of families were distinguished. The Fabii and Lentuli were supposed to have been celebrated for the culture of pulses, and the Asinii and Vitellii for the art of rearing animals. In the time of the elder Cato, though the manual operations were performed for the most part by servants, the great men resided chiefly on their farms(8); and they continued to apply to the study and practice of agriculture long after they had carried the victorious arms of their country beyond the confines of Italy. They did not, indeed, follow agriculture as their sole avocation; but they prosecuted it during the intervals of peace, and in the vacations of the Forum. The art being thus exercised by men of high capacity, received the benefit of all the discoveries, inventions, or experiments suggested by talents and force of intellect. The Roman warriors tilled their fields with the same intelligence as they pitched their camps, and sowed corn with the same care with which they drew up their armies for battle. Hence, as a modern Latin poet observes, dilating on the expression of Pliny, the earth yielded such an exuberant return, that she seemed as it were to delight in being ploughed with a share adorned with laurels, and by a ploughman who had earned a triumph:—