Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

THE RANGE OF OLD LATIN PROSE
Cicero himself accepted as genuine a speech in which Appius opposed peace
with Pyrrhus {Sen. 16, Brut. 61, cf. p. 62 n. 1), and in the second century A.D. the
jurist Pomponius refers to an alleged work of Appius, De usurpationibus, which,
however, was no longer extant {Dig. 1.2.2.36). Morals, oratory, the law: it is
significant for our appreciation of the Roman attitude to prose that it should
have been works of this kind diat were attributed to the venerable elder statesman.
It is, however, at best doubtful whether any of them were authentic.
In the generation before Cicero the kinds of writing which were either already
flourishing as distinct genres or still acquiring ' their own nature' ranged down
in grandeur from oratory — forensic, judicial, commemorative—through history,
memoirs, letter-writing, to technical treatises on practical subjects such as
fanning, die law, or die calendar. Besides, now that a Hellenizing Latin poetry
had existed for a century and more, diere were the beginnings of a scholarly
literature directed to its mapping and explanation. This was naturally the business
of the poets themselves and of educated freedmen or freedmen's sons like
Accius, Aelius Stilo, Octavius Lampadio, and Lutatius Daphnis (cf. Suet.
Gramm. 1 ff.). All odier kinds of prose writing, however, were developed by
Roman senators, not for art's sake, but as ever more carefully honed weapons
directly or indirectly useful in dieir political lives. M. Porcius Cato the Elder
was the most important of them all. In the preface to his Origines (see p. 149)
he remarked diat the great and famous should give an account not only of dieir
public lives but also of their otium, dieir relaxation (fr. 2 Peter). 1 He wrote
history not to dirill nor to philosophize, but to persuade die reader of die rightness
for the present and die future of certain moral and political values — Cato's
own, of course — as he saw them in die exempla of the past, and so confirm what
he saw as die true Roman identity in the minds of his readers.
Cato reached die consulship in 195 B.C. at die age of thirty-nine, a remarkable
achievement in itself for a nouus homo at this time, but this was only die beginning
of the eventful period in which his long literary career belongs (see
Appendix). As consul he campaigned in Spain; in 191 B.C. he was sent on an
important diplomatic mission to Adiens, where he spoke in Latin dirough an
interpreter, and served widi distinction under M'. Acilius Glabrio (whom he
later prosecuted) at Thermopylae. In 189 B.C. he was an unsuccessful competitor
for the censorship when the liberal and philhellene aristocrats T. Quinctius
Flamininus and Marcellus were successful: Flamininus' brother was also the
victim of a prosecution by the litigious Cato.
Flamininus, some six years younger dian Cato, had fiery ambition in common
widi him, but in most odier respects of background and temperament was very
different. His early career had brought him into close contact widi die Greek
1
We cite the Origines from Peter (1914), the speeches from Malcovati (1955), and the other
fragments from Jordan (i860).
139
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