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Ebook has 887 lines and 110621 words, and 18 pages

So death to us is naught, concerns us not, When the soul's nature is as mortal known.

Book iv shows how the impressions made upon our senses are caused by minute images detached from the objects about us. We see, for instance, because minute images of the object seen strike our eyes. Dreams and love are also treated in this book. In Book v the origin of the earth, sun, moon, and stars is described, the beginning of life is explained, and the progress of civilization, from the time when men were savages, is depicted. Some passages in this book anticipate in a measure the modern doctrine of the survival of the fittest. Since our world was not created, but came into being naturally by the combinations of atoms, it will also come to an end at some time by the separation of the atoms. In Book vi various striking phenomena are treated, such as thunder, lightning, earthquakes, tempests, and volcanoes. The book ends with a description of the plague at Athens, derived from the account of Thucydides.

Since the main purpose of the poem is to free men from religion and the fear of death by showing that all things, including the soul, came into being and are to pass away without any action of the gods, ethical doctrines are not systematically treated. Lucretius accepts, however, the Epicurean dogma that pleasure is the chief good, "the guide of life," but the pleasure he has in mind is not the common physical pleasure, but the calm repose of the philosopher:

Oh wretched minds of men, oh blinded hearts! Within what shades of life and dangers great Is passed whate'er of age we have! Dost thou Not see that nature makes demand for naught Save this, that pain be absent from our frame, That she, removed from care at once and fear, May have her pleasure in the joys of mind?

Again, in the splendid praise of Epicurus, which opens the fifth book, he says that we may live without grain or wine,

But well one can not live without pure heart.

The only Greek philosophers, besides Epicurus, of whom Lucretius speaks in terms of praise are Democritus, from whom Epicurus borrowed the atomic theory, and Empedocles. Perhaps Lucretius imitates in his work the poem of Empedocles, which bore the same title. At any rate, Empedocles was a man of exalted modes of thought and dignified, poetic expression, qualities which would naturally awaken admiration in the mind of Lucretius. That Lucretius was well acquainted with the great works of Greek literature and with the writings of Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, and Accius, is evident from direct references to them, or imitations of them. But he was not merely a student of books. His power of observation and his love of nature are shown in many passages, as where he describes the raging winds and rivers, the life and motion of an army, the striking features of the island of Sicily, the echo in the mountains, or pleasant repose under a shady tree on the grass by the river side.

The poem opens with an invocation to Venus, which is justly famous. The first lines are:

Goddess from whom descends the race of Rome, Venus, of earth and heaven supreme delight, Hail, thou that all beneath the starry dome-- Lands rich with grain and seas with navies white-- Blessest and cherishest! Where thou dost come Enamelled earth decks her with posies bright To meet thy advent; clouds and tempests flee, And joyous light smiles over land and sea.

Another famous passage is the beginning of Book ii, which has been translated into English hexameters as follows:

Sweet, when the great sea's water is stirred to its depth by the storm winds, Standing ashore to descry one afar off mightily struggling; Not that a neighbor's sorrow to you yields dulcet enjoyment; But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from. Sweet 'tis too to behold, on a broad plain mustering war-hosts Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger; Yet still happier this: To possess, impregnably guarded, Those calm heights of the sages which have for an origin Wisdom; Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way Wander amid Life's paths, poor stragglers seeking a highway; Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon; Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'neath the sun and the starlight, Up as they toil on the surface whereon rest Riches and Empire.

Lucretius was perfectly aware that his subject was not an easy one to treat in verse, but was confident of his own power. His work shows that his confidence was justified. Yet even he could not, in explaining the details of the philosophy of Epicurus, move always in the upper realms of poetry. The result is that the poem is uneven. In parts it rises to heights hardly attained by any other Latin author, but in other parts long passages are dull and monotonous. Yet even in these parts the verses have a serious, dignified music, the language is carefully chosen, and the subject is treated with consistency, clearness, and vigor. In the more animated portions of his work, Lucretius speaks almost like an inspired prophet. His thought hurries his lines along with increasing impetus, until their flow seems almost irresistible. Strength, rapidity, and power are the most striking features of his style. Minor elements are frequent assonances of various kinds, such as alliteration, repetition, the use of two or more words from one root, and the like, elaborate similes, and occasionally the form of direct address. With all these, the style is characterized by an austere dignity.

In his discussion of the development of the universe, and especially in the part dealing with living creatures, man, and the progress of civilization, Lucretius expresses conclusions not unlike some of those reached in our own day by modern science. But his processes are not scientific. He reasons, to be sure, from concrete facts to theories and from theories again to concrete facts, but the method of his reasoning is unlike that of modern science. Lucretius, like other philosophers of ancient times, having once accepted a theory which explains certain phenomena, makes his theory the rule by which all phenomena are to be measured and in accordance with which they are to be understood. It is interesting to note that Lucretius, following Democritus and Epicurus, anticipates to a certain extent the modern atomic theory, the theories of the evolution of species, of the survival of the fittest, and of the continual progress of mankind from a condition of savagery to civilization, but his conclusions are reached, not by the patient toil of modern scientific research, but by abstract theorizing, to which his poetic imagination gives vividness and almost convincing power.

The greatness of Lucretius as a poet has always been recognized by critical readers; but he has never been a popular author. His subject is too abstruse and his style too austere and dignified to appeal to the taste of the masses, which probably accounts for the fact that his poem has come down to us through only one copy, from which all the existing manuscripts are derived.

CATULLUS--MINOR POETS

Catullus, about 84-54 B. C.--His life--The book of poems--The longer poems--The shorter poems--Minor poets--Gnaeus Matius--Laevius--Sueius--Gaius Licinius Calvus, 87-47 B. C.--Gaius Helvius Cinna--Varro Atacinus, 82 to after 37 B. C.--Publius Valerius Cato--Marcus Furius Bibaculus--Gaius Memmius, propraetor in 57 B. C.--Ticidas--Quintus Cornificius--Cornelius Nepos--Marcus Tullius Cicero--Quintus Cicero.

About 61 B. C. began his passionate love for the brilliant but dissolute woman whom he has immortalized in his poems under the name of Lesbia. Her real name was Clodia, and when he met her she was the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer. For a time she seemed at least to return the love of her young adorer, but almost immediately after her husband's death, which took place in 59 B. C., she is reproached by Catullus for faithlessness. In the spring of 57 B. C., Catullus went to Bithynia as a member of the staff of the propraetor C. Memmius, and by this time his connection with Clodia seems to have been at an end. In the spring of 56 B. C., Catullus returned to Rome, after visiting the tomb of his brother, who had died in the Troad. From this time on his poems are still in part poems of love, but they lack the passionate fire of the lines addressed to Lesbia. Most of the poems belonging to the last years of his life, when they contain personal allusions, are inspired rather by the political events of the time than by love.

The poems of Catullus, as they have been handed down to us, form a small book of 2,280 lines. They are not arranged chronologically, but rather according to contents and style. The first sixty are short poems in various lyric metres, and have to do with the poet's love, with his friends and enemies, and with the experiences of his life. These are followed by seven longer poems in imitation of Alexandrian originals, and the rest of the collection consists of short pieces, all in elegiac verse. This arrangement is doubtless due to some editor, not to Catullus himself, but gives the book a certain artistic unity which would be lacking if the poems were arranged in chronological order. A few quotations from Catullus which can not be identified with passages in the extant poems are found in the works of other writers, but they are so few as to indicate that nearly all he ever wrote is contained in the existing book.

In the longer poems Catullus shows himself a consummate master of language and versification and a skillful imitator of the Alexandrian poetry most popular among the younger literary men of his time. The first epithalamium, or wedding song, composed for the marriage of Manlius Torquatus and Vinia Arunculeia, is written in lyric metre of short lines. It is supposed to be sung as the bride is escorted to her new home, the first part by a chorus of maidens, the second by youths. Such songs were traditional among the Greeks as well as among the Romans, and there is little originality in the subject or its general treatment, but the brilliant versification and the charming tender passages it contains make this the most attractive of all the longer poems of Catullus. The second epithalamium, in hexameter verse, was apparently composed for no special occasion. A chorus of youths and a chorus of maidens sing responses, calling upon Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, and describing by allusion the passage of the bride from maidenhood to wifehood. So the maidens compare her to a flower that has grown in a secluded garden, and the youths compare her to a vine that twines about an elm.

Oh, is thy voice forever hushed and still? Oh, brother, dearer far than life, shall I Behold thee never? But in sooth I will Forever love thee, as in days gone by: And ever through my songs shall ring a cry Sad with thy death, sad as in thickest shade Of intertangled boughs the melody, Which by the woful Daulian bird is made, Sobbing for Itys dead her wail through all the glade.

The seven poems just described contain many beautiful passages, but they show us Catullus chiefly as the learned, skillful, and successful imitator of Alexandrian Greek models. His real genius appears in the shorter poems, which deal with the feelings of his own heart. In these also he is an imitator, so far as his metres are concerned, but the feelings are his own, and he expresses them in words that burn. No translation can do justice to the sharp, quick strokes of his invectives or to the passionate outpourings of his love. One of his favorite metres is the "hendecasyllable" or eleven syllable verse, which, by its quick movement, helps to create an impression of great swiftness of thought and flashing outbursts of emotion. At the same time, the numerous diminutive suffixes employed give a light and graceful, almost playful, tone to the verse. Some of the lines directed against those whom Catullus hated or despised, are scurrilous and indecent; but that is the fault of the age rather than of the poet himself. In general the thoughts and emotions expressed range from passionate love to violent invective, while through many of the poems there runs a vein of half satirical playfulness. Some of the qualities of Catullus' poetry may be made clear by translations of a few of the short poems. The first shows at once his passionate love for Lesbia, and something of his half-satirical humor:

My Lesbia, let us live and love, Nor let us count it worth above A single farthing if the old And carping greybeards choose to scold. The suns that set and fade away May rise again another day. When once has set our little light We needs must sleep one endless night. A thousand kisses give me, then A hundred, then a thousand, when I bid you give a hundred more; When many thousands o'er and o'er We've kissed, we'll mix them, so that we Shall lose the count, and none shall be Aroused to evil envious hate Through knowing that the sum's so great.

A well-known and especially attractive poem is the playful lament for the sparrow:

Let mourning fill the realms of Love; Wail, men below and Powers above! The joy of my beloved has fled, The Sparrow of her heart is dead-- The Sparrow that she used to prize As dearly as her own bright eyes. As knows a girl her mother well, So knew the pretty bird my belle, And ever hopping, chirping round, Far from her lap was never found. Now wings it to that gloomy bourne From which no travellers return. Accurs'd be thou, infernal lair! Devourer dark of all things fair, The rarest bird to thee is gone; Take thou once more my malison. How swollen and red with weeping, see, My fair one's eyes, and all through thee.

Like most educated Romans, Catullus had a great love for the country. His joy in returning to his country seat on the peninsula of Sirmio forms the subject of a charming little poem:

Gem of all isthmuses and isles that lie, Fresh or salt water's children, in clear lake Or ampler ocean; with what joy do I Approach thee, Sirmio! Oh! am I awake, Or dream that once again mine eye beholds Thee, and has looked its last on Thracian wolds? Sweetest of sweets to me that pastime seems, When the mind drops her burden, when--the pain Of travel past--our own cot we regain, And nestle on the pillow of our dreams! 'Tis this one thought that cheers us as we roam. Hail, O fair Sirmio! Joy, thy lord is here! Joy too, ye waters of the Golden Mere! And ring out, all ye laughter-peals of home!

The names of these lesser poets are of little importance to us, but it is worth while to mention them to call attention to the fact that poetry was cultivated by many of the younger men in the Ciceronian period. Through their efforts the various styles and metres of the Greek poets, especially those of the Alexandrian period, were made familiar to the Romans, and thus the way was prepared for Horace, Virgil, and Ovid in the Augustan age.

CICERO

Cicero, 106-43 B. C.--His importance--His life--Periods of his literary activity--His works--The orations--Philosophical works--Letters--His character.

Marcus Tullius Cicero, orator, statesman and philosopher, is the great commanding figure of the literary period which is designated by his name. With him Latin prose reaches a height never before attained and never afterward surpassed. The cooler and more critical judgment of our northern natures and later age may find his eloquence too exuberant, and our scholars, trained in the study of the Greek philosophers, may deny him the title of an original thinker, but no one can fail to appreciate the power of his utterance, the clearness of his exposition, or the lucid elegance of his diction. He found the Latin language the chief dialect of Italy, the speech of a great and mighty city; he made it the language of the world for centuries.

To write the life of Cicero in all the known details would be to write the history of Rome during the entire period of his manhood. The historian of literature must content himself with a mere sketch. Cicero was born at Arpinum, a small town in the hills of eastern Latium, on the third of January, 106 B. C. The town was also the birthplace of Marius, whose fame no doubt fired the imagination of the young Cicero and helped to rouse his ambition. His father determined to give him the best possible education and sent him to Rome, where he knew the two great orators, M. Antonius and L. Crassus, and also the aged M. Accius and the Greek poet Archias. Since legal knowledge was a necessary part of an orator's education, he studied with the jurist Q. Scaevola , and the Augur of the same name. He also paid attention to philosophy, studying with the Epicurean Phaedrus, the Academic philosopher Philo, who was a pupil of Clitomachus, and the Stoic Diodotus. His teacher of rhetoric was Molo, of Rhodes, and he also received instruction from the rhetorician M. Antonius Gnipho and the actors Roscius and AEsopus. He acquired a great reputation as an advocate by several speeches, especially by his defense of Quinctius and Roscius of Ameria ; but his health failed, and at the same time he wished to perfect his education. He therefore left Rome and spent two years in Greece and Asia. At Athens he studied under the Academic Antiochus, the Epicurean Zeno, his old teacher Phaedrus, and the instructor in oratory, Demetrius. In Asia he became acquainted with the florid Asian style of eloquence, and at Rhodes he studied again under his former teacher Molo, who exerted himself to chasten the exuberance of his style, which had been encouraged by the Asiatic orators. At Rhodes he also became acquainted with the famous Stoic Posidonius.

In 60 B. C. the first triumvirate was formed. The triumvirs found the influence of Cicero unfavorable to their plans, and encouraged his enemy, P. Clodius Pulcher, who had been adopted into a plebeian family and been elected tribune of the people, to propose a bill that any one who had put a Roman citizen to death without due process of law be banished. Cicero, finding that he could not defend himself with success, withdrew from Rome, and his banishment was decreed. He remained in exile from April, 58 B. C., until August, 57 B. C., when he was recalled and received with great honors.

Cicero's oratorical and literary activity falls naturally into four chronological divisions: his earlier years, to the beginning of his career as a political orator ; the period of his greatest power, lasting until just before his banishment ; from his return from banishment until his departure for Cilicia ; and from his return from Cilicia until his death .

Wherefore, if one wishes to define and embrace the proper power of an orator in all its extent, that man will be, in my opinion, an orator worthy of this great name, who can speak wisely, in an orderly and polished manner, from memory, and even with some dignity of action, upon whatever subject arises that needs to be set forth in speech.

And again:

I assert that by the moderation and wisdom of the perfect orator not only his own dignity, but the welfare of very many persons and of the entire commonwealth is preserved.

In short, the orator should be, in Cicero's opinion, not only a great and practised speaker, but a man of varied learning, and at the same time a man of the highest character. This was the ideal he set before himself and strove throughout his life to attain. Certainly it was no low ideal, nor was the man who strove to attain it a character to be despised.

Cicero's oratorical style is always careful and finished, but is far from that monotonous smoothness which study often gives to the speech of those who are not by nature gifted orators. In the narrative parts of his speeches he is clear, straightforward, and lucid; in his arguments he is logical, incisive, and full of force; in his appeals to the feelings of his hearers he is vivid, quick and powerful, sometimes, according to the demands of the occasion, violent or pathetic. The elaborate periodic structure of his sentences is varied by many short questions or exclamations, and the habitual dignity of his utterance is softened and enlivened by frequent touches of wit, humor, and irony. So in his defence of Quintus Ligarius, who had served in the senatorial army in Africa, although he knew that Caesar, before whom the case was argued, was perfectly acquainted with the facts, he began his speech as follows:

A new charge, Gaius Caesar, and one never heard of before this day, my relative, Quintus Tubero, has brought before you: that Quintus Ligarius was in Africa; and Gaius Pansa, a man of excellent character, trusting, perhaps, in his friendship with you, has dared to confess that it is true. Therefore I know not where to turn. For I had come prepared, since you could not know it by yourself, and could not have heard it from any one else, to take advantage of your ignorance for the salvation of the unfortunate man.

After this ironical introduction, which serves to make his opponents seem ridiculous, Cicero appeals to Caesar's well-known clemency before proceeding to his argument.

Our ancestors often engaged in wars because our merchants or ship-owners had been somewhat unjustly treated; what, pray, should be your feelings when so many thousands of Roman citizens have been slaughtered by one edict and at one time? Because our envoys had been too haughtily addressed it pleased your fathers that Corinth, the light of all Greece, be blotted out; will you let that king go unpunished who has slain an ex-consul and envoy of the Roman people, after subjecting him to imprisonment, and scourging, and all kinds of torture? They did not endure it when the liberty of Roman citizens was curtailed; will you be negligent when their lives have been taken? They followed up the verbal violation of the right of embassies; will you desert the cause of an ambassador slain with all torments? Be on your guard, lest, just as it was most honorable for them to hand down to you so great and glorious an empire, so it be most disgraceful for you to fail to guard and preserve what you have received.

Here the orator's effort is to arouse his hearers to maintain the dignity and glory of the republic, whose greatness is brought home to their minds by the references to the deeds of their ancestors. This passage is also a good example of the effective use of repeated contrasts.

These studies nourish youth, delight old age, adorn prosperity, furnish a refuge and solace in adversity, gladden us at home, are no hindrance abroad, spend the nights with us, are with us in our foreign travels, and at our country seats.

In this oration Cicero appears as the man of letters whose literary interest was not bounded by the career of the politician or the orator, and who, in spite of political successes and disappointments, was to achieve greater fame as an author than any other writer of Latin prose.

Few passages are more striking or characteristic in the orations of Cicero than those in which he turns to address directly either the opposing party in the case or his advocate. In these passages, which vary in length from a brief exclamation to an elaborate invective, the stinging words shoot forth with quick and passionate directness. One of the longer passages of this kind, in which additional force is lent to the words by the suggestion that they are uttered by the culprit's own father, is the following:

These few examples, perhaps not the most striking to be found in the great body of his orations, may give some idea of the variety of Cicero's oratory. In his youth the Roman orators were divided into two parties on the question of style; the elder men, chief among whom was Hortensius, favored the Asian style, with its wealth of rhetorical adornment, while the younger men, the Atticists, as they called themselves, aimed at extreme simplicity, taking Lysias as their model. Cicero perceived that a middle course was best. His natural tendency was toward exuberance, but he tempered it by careful study. He does not avoid rhetorical adornment, but he seldom uses it to excess. Like Demosthenes, whom he regarded as the greatest of the Greek orators, he varies his style to suit the occasion, and, like him, he stands forth as the greatest orator of his nation.

In his philosophical writings Cicero's purpose was to be useful to his fellow citizens by making them acquainted with the results of Greek speculative thought. As he himself says:

As I sought and pondered much and long by what means I could be of use to as many men as possible, that I might never cease to care for the welfare of the republic, nothing greater occurred to me than if I should make accessible to my fellow citizens the paths of the noblest learning.

With this end in view he wrote his treatises, for the most part in the dialogue form, after the manner of Plato, in which he set forth the doctrines of the Greek philosophers on the most important subjects, such as the chief end of life, the means of attaining happiness, duty, the nature of the gods, and the like, laying the chief stress upon what he believed to be true and correct. He lays no claim to great originality of thought, but only to independence of judgment. In general, he regards himself as a disciple of the Academic school, which did not claim to establish absolute truth, but to show what was most probable. He uses, however, the works of Stoic and even of Epicurean philosophers, whenever they express views in accordance with his own, as well as when he wishes to refute their teachings. He is not entirely consistent in all his writings, but his high moral sense, his belief in the divine government of the world, and his hope of immortality are the foundations of his philosophy. His style in these writings is, as befits his subject, dignified and serene, but enlivened by the occasional interruptions incident to the dialogue form.

To the professional student of ancient philosophy these treatises are of great importance chiefly because of the information they contain concerning the writings and doctrines of Greek philosophers whose works have been lost; to the student of literature they offer admirable examples of learned works in popular form, with all the charm of exquisite literary workmanship; and their influence upon later ages was so great that no one who is interested in the progress of human thought can disregard them. St. Augustine, and many other writers of the early Christian Church, acknowledge their indebtedness to them; they are the foundation of the speculative thought of the middle ages; and it is in great measure due to their influence that the Latin language has remained, almost to our own day, the great medium for the expression of philosophical and scientific speculation. Cicero made "the paths of the noblest learning" accessible not only to his Roman fellow citizens, but to countless generations of men of all lands. His noble purpose was accomplished more grandly than he ever hoped or dreamed. Let those who will, accuse him of shallowness and superficiality; mankind owes him an immeasurable debt of gratitude.

Cicero's orations have served as models for many generations of orators, his rhetorical treatises may be regarded as the foundation of nearly all later theories of style, his philosophical works exerted an influence which permeated the thought of centuries. It remains to speak of his letters. These are in some respects the most interesting of his writings, because they show the feelings of the man as he disclosed them to his intimate friends, they make us acquainted with the personal relations between the prominent Romans of the time, and shed many rays of light upon the dark pages of contemporary history. The first of the extant letters is dated in 68 B. C., the last July 28, 43 B. C. The collection was made by Cicero's friends, and edited probably by his freedman, Tiro, and his publisher and most intimate friend, Atticus. They fall into four groups; sixteen books addressed to various persons , three books to Cicero's brother Quintus , sixteen books to Atticus , and two books to Brutus . There were originally nine books of letters to Brutus, but only the eighth and the ninth are preserved.

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