Читать книгу The Pageant of English Literature - Sir Edward Parrott - Страница 14

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“The grandeur that was Rome.”—Poe.

The scene changes to Rome in her Golden Age, the age of Augustus, first and most happy of emperors. The Eternal City is even now rising to that glory of temple, basilica, portico, column, trophy, and arch which will ere long make her the wonder of the world. Roman dominion enrings the Midland Sea, and includes the fairest parts of Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa. The riches of a tributary empire, embracing the whole civilized earth, pour into her coffers; she adorns herself with the spoils of plundered nations. At home, Roman citizens are peaceful and contented; for though they live under a military despotism, it is subtly masked and veiled by the forms of republican government. Abroad, Rome is supreme; a hundred millions of people of all races, creed, and colour own fealty to Cæsar.

THE FORUM AT ROME. To List

Roman arms have triumphed in Hellas as elsewhere; but captive Greece has conquered her conquerors. Greek art, Greek sculpture, Greek architecture, and Greek literature hold sway in the Eternal City. Rome subdues, administers, makes roads, aqueducts, fortifications, and harbours, and fashions a majestic scheme of scientific law; but in art and literature she has no creative force. She builds on a solid and practical foundation; but it is her Greek slaves who adorn her works with that beauty which she loves but cannot originate.

Greece has handed on the torch of learning to Rome, but it is Greek fire that burns on the Seven Hills. In poetry, tragedy, comedy, philosophy, and oratory, Greece supplies the models and the inspiration. In satire alone the Romans are original. This form of writing is all their own; it springs from the peculiar constitution of the Roman government and the native spirit of the Roman people. All the greatest and best of Roman literature flourishes in these Augustan days. So fruitful and vigorous is the period in the literary history of Rome that the age has become proverbial of every literary epoch. Augustus himself is a patron of letters, and the foremost writers of the time are the companions of his leisure.

It is the year 10 b.c., and our scene reproduces the street Argiletum, not far from the Golden Milestone, which stands at the foot of the ascent to the Capitol, and is the centre of the known world, the landmark from which all distances in the empire are reckoned. The street Argiletum is the book-selling and book-making quarter of Augustan Rome. Prominent among the publishing establishments is that of the Sosii Brothers, the rendezvous of wits and sages, and of the fashionable folk who affect their company.

In front of the shop is a pillar with the interesting announcement that to-day the Brothers Sosii will offer for sale the Epistle to Augustus by Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the most admired satirist of the age, the darling of polite society, the man of the world who strolls through life as its easy-going but keenly observant critic. He sings of “love, regret, and flowers” with graceful negligence, and pictures the follies and vices of the city as in a kinematograph; yet he wields the lash of his scorn so impartially that even his victims smile under the operation. “I write sermons in sport,” he says, “but sermons by a fellow-sinner.”

Ancient Rome. (From the painting by J. M. W. Turner, R.A.) To List

There is more than a mild flutter of interest in Roman court and literary circles to-day. Horace has a vogue; his well-bred, cultured, worldly verses, full of personalities, ironies, and anecdotes, touched with the keenest wit and irradiated with the most human sympathy, are read and re-read even by those who are indifferent to the great and grave achievements of literature, but an additional interest surrounds to-day's publication. Everybody knows the story. The first man you meet in the Forum will tell you that the “majestic” Augustus has stooped to beseech an Epistle from “this most lovable little bit of a man.” “I am vexed with you,” said Cæsar, a few weeks ago, “vexed that you have never addressed one of your Epistles to me. Are you afraid that to have appeared as my friend will hurt you with posterity?” Such a gentle, self-deprecating remonstrance from the foremost man in all the world is a command that must be obeyed. To-day, if you are in time, you may purchase the volume containing this Epistle, and discover for yourself how Horace has accomplished his difficult and delicate task.

You are naturally desirous of seeing the poet whom even moderns read with delight and affection; but you must wait, for Horace is not given to early rising: the left-handed game of ball in the Campus Martius, the bath, and the light midday meal will detain him for some time yet. To fill up the interval, let us enter the establishment of the Brothers Sosii and look around. The well-filled shelves attract us. Here, carefully stored in metal boxes, are the works of all the great writers of Roman renown. At a very reasonable price you may buy the plays of Plautus and Terence, the rough-hewn satires of Lucilius, the commentaries of Julius Cæsar, the vigorous histories of Sallust, and the orations, essays, and epistles of that prince of Latin letters, Cicero.

But you will probably be more eager to possess yourself of the works of living authors. Well, they are here too. Here are the scrolls that contain the vigorous verses of Catullus and the great epics of Virgil,

“Wielder of the stateliest measure

Ever moulded by the lips of man.”

He is secure on the pinnacle of literary fame, though his “Æneid,” which is to be the national epic of Rome, and remains the richest achievement of Roman poetic genius, has not yet seen the light, and will never be completed. Here, too, are the elegies of Tibullus and Propertius, the legends and fables of Ovid, the histories of Livy, the philosophical writings of Seneca, who dwells in far-off Spain, the Satires, Odes, and the first and second books of Epistles of Horace, together with the works of a host of less renowned authors. All are to be found on the well-filled shelves of the Brothers Sosii.

The brothers are rich men, and the copyists whom they employ are their slaves. For weeks past these men have been busy engrossing Horace's new book, and now you see the finished scrolls ready for sale. Take one of them in your hand. Note the neat handwriting; admire the wonderful ink used for the text and the red-lined columns, and observe the fine sheets of papyrus, stained yellow with cedar-oil to prevent the ravages of moths. The pages have been carefully trimmed and blackened at the edges; the ends of the scrolls have been strengthened with thick strips of bone or wood, finished off at the top in the shape of a knob or a horn. A strip of parchment neatly inscribed in red and attached to the roll indicates the title.

Two of the scrolls you may see and admire, but not handle. They are glorious with purple parchment covers and gilded knobs. One of them is designed for Augustus himself, and Horace will carry it to-day to the palace of the Cæsars, and present it with his own hands for the perusal of the emperor. The other is meant for Mæcenas, his patron. It may be we shall see him before the day is over.

There is a stir in the shop. A little stout man, puffing and blowing with the exertion of walking, and followed by a single slave, now appears. It is the poet himself, and the brothers hasten to welcome him with low bows and repeated salutations. They hand him his new book, and smilingly await his commendation. A thousand copies have been prepared, and to-morrow they will be eagerly canvassed by the cultured and fashionable of the city. By that time some of the copies will have begun their long journey to the confines of the empire, where proconsuls and generals will gloat over them in windy halls or torch-lit tents, and sigh, as they read, for the distant and oft-recalled delights of the dear city by the Tiber.

The poet is interrupted in the examination of his new book by the entrance of a visitor—a middle-aged man of strikingly noble appearance, though somewhat marred by signs of ill-health. Genius, sincerity, and goodness of heart shine in his eyes, and you do not wonder that all men love him. He is renowned through all Italy for the purity of his life, and his soul is well known to be animated by the loftiest spirit of patriotism. It is Virgil, the bosom friend and benefactor of Horace. He has no spark of envy in his composition; the success of his friend is a genuine pleasure to him. Twenty-five years ago he read and admired the verses of Horace, then a clerk in one of the public offices, and praised him to the princely Mæcenas, who speedily endowed him with that modest competency which has enabled him to become the smiling philosopher of Rome.

The two friends—the foremost literary men of the Roman Empire—greet each other with warm regard, and as they converse the noise of shouts is heard in the street. Both smile; it is Mæcenas approaching in his litter, borne on the shoulders of sturdy slaves. Before him and around him is a swarm of needy parasites clearing the way, and endeavouring by their zeal to secure his favouring smile.

As he lolls back, foppishly wearing the white toga with its broad purple stripe, his hair curled and scented, his carefully-tended hand hanging listlessly by his side, he seems nothing more than an idle, effeminate lover of good living and easy pleasures. But make no mistake; he is the adroitest and most subtle diplomatist of his time, acute in foresight, sage in counsel, a pillar of the throne, the confidant and trusted agent of Augustus, to whom he is never weary of preaching the virtues of tact and moderation. He goes down to history, not for these merits, but because he is fortunate enough to smooth the path and secure the peace of mind of two great Roman writers. Right nobly do they repay him. They rear an imperishable monument to his fame in their verses, and hand him down to posterity as the ideal patron of struggling genius.

THE EMPEROR COMES! (From the picture by Sir Alma Tadema, R.A., O.M. By permission of the Berlin Photo Co.) To List

The great historian Gibbon, in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” opens his book with the reign of Augustus. Brilliant as it was, its glory was suffused with the autumnal tint of approaching decay. Already the barbarians of Gaul had inflicted a severe defeat upon the armies of Augustus, and four years after Horace's epistle appeared, the Goths annihilated his ambushed legions. The men of the North were gaining strength and unity even then, and Rome was ultimately to go down in blood and anguish before them.

The military despotism which Augustus established was the undoing of the empire. The army made and unmade emperors; it conquered and bestowed the imperium on whomsoever it would, on plain, blunt soldier, gentle moralist, madman, and monster alike. The emperors and the army between them governed Rome largely by fear and favour, by the sword and a bounteous provision of bread and circuses. The fierce strength and courage, the passion for life and possession which had made Romans the conquerors of the world, was sapped away in an atmosphere of luxury and corruption; and as time went on the army which had made and unmade emperors became a horde of mercenaries fighting for wages and plunder, and careless of the fate of Rome.

With the reign of Diocletian, two hundred and seventy years after the death of Augustus, Rome ceased to be the seat of empire; and at length, in the days of Constantine, the government was removed to New Rome, Byzantium. Some thirty years later the empire was rent in twain, and rival monarchs ruled East and West. Upon the devoted Western Empire the barbarians swooped down like wolves on the fold, and finally took possession of Italy. Five hundred years after the death of Augustus, Rome perished as a world-empire, her universal sceptre was snatched away, and she became “her own sad sepulchre.”

But if the reign of Augustus contained the seeds of Rome's decay as a political power, so also did it contain the germ of its more blessed revival as a spiritual force. In the reign of Augustus, Christ was born, and slowly and almost imperceptibly, at first amongst slaves and outcasts, Christianity grew like an interlacing vine, sweet and wholesome in its early fruits. Persecution gave it strength; the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, and three hundred years after the death of Augustus a Roman emperor placed the cross upon his banner and embraced the formerly despised creed.

Twenty-six years later he built the first basilica of St. Peter on the site of the circus in which thousands of Christians had received their crown of martyrdom. Rome became the metropolis of Christianity, the Bishop of Rome became the head of the Christian Church, and so he remains to two hundred and fifty millions of the children of men to this day.

What was the legacy of Rome to the modern world? Her impress upon succeeding ages was broad and deep, and can never be effaced. The incomparable roads which her engineers drove through the empire have wellnigh disappeared, though here and there a farmer's wain still rumbles over the stones which legionaries trod. Her aqueducts, bridges, walls, and amphitheatres are ruins, but the practical and constructive genius which they embody has given principles to the modern sciences of civil engineering and architecture. The Roman art of war persisted through the Middle Ages, and the spirit of Roman imperialism still survives. Far more important, however, was the scientific system of law which Rome elaborated and extended to the confines of her empire. In a greater or less degree it is embedded in every civil code of modern times, and there is no student of law in any part of the world who does not give close attention to Roman law as the basis of his professional studies.

It is, however, the Latin language which is the greatest legacy of Rome to the modern world. Less elegant, less pliable and poorer in vocabulary than Greek, it, nevertheless, is a language of weight and dignity, and was admirably suited to the needs of law, administration, and warfare—the true spheres of Roman genius. Wherever the Roman went he carried his speech with him, and even when Latin ceased to be the tongue of Italy it continued as the international language of scholars. Until the seventeenth century it was also the language of states in their communications with each other.

Latin is the mother of the Romance languages spoken in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Rumania to-day. Teutonic languages, such as our own, have adopted innumerable words either directly or indirectly from Latin, and every liberal scheme of education includes an adequate knowledge of the old Roman tongue.