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POETRY
another area of Latin literature met its master, and refused future development.
Retrogression was the only solution. For after Ovid, mythological epic
reverted to the Virgilian mode in the works of Valerius and Statius; and after
Lucan, whose innovations served, amongst other things, to diminish the Homeric
and Virgilian affiliations of the genre, there is only Silius — the victim of a poetic
which sought salvation in an unimaginative classicism from the generic changes
threatened a generation ago.
2. PROSE
Apart from Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus' Htstoriae Philippicae, we
have little Augustan historiography: Livy, of course, excepted. Pollio,
Fenestella, and a considerable number of important memoirs and contemporary
histories are known merely by name, or a few scrappy fragments. We do,
however, possess Augustus' record of his own achievements, the Res gestae
Divi Augusti, and some works of a technical nature: the medical part of Celsus'
Encyclopaedia, the De arckitectura of Vitruvius, and an abridgement — albeit
at two removes — of Verrius Flaccus' De verborum significant. Of Augustan
oratory we have almost nothing.
Trogus, a writer of Gallic origin with Sallustian affiliations, set out to rival
Livy in scope, dealing with the history of the Near East in forty-four books:
beginning with the legendary Ninus of Babylon, he takes us through Macedonian
history — hence the title, used by Theopompus and Anaximenes of
Lampsacus for their histories of Philip II — into Roman times, closing his
account with the year 20 B.C. It is not clear which sources he used: Timagenes
has been a favourite candidate, but scholars have also canvassed Herodotus,
Ctesias, Dinon, Ephorus, Timaeus, Phylarchus, Polybius, Clitarchus, Posidonius
and Livy, as well as Theopompus. Justin's abridgement, of uncertain date,
does not give us much of the original. But we do have a speech of Mithridates,
at 34.4—7, quoted in extenso to give an idea of Trogus' style: wordier and
flatter than that of Sallust, but more antithetical and less bland than that of
Livy. Like Caesar, he favoured oratio obliqua in his speeches, censuring the
direct discourse of Livy and Sallust. He also wrote on botany and zoology,
providing material for the elder Pliny.
Pollio's Historiae are a greater loss: not only for their scope — they covered
the period from 60 B.C., perhaps down to Philippi — but also for their style.
Pollio began to write his History around 35 B.C., the year of Sallust's death - he
inherited Sallust's learned freedman, Ateius Philologus — after an important
political career, first as a Caesarian, and then as a supporter of Antony. He had
retired after his consulate of 40 B.C. and triumph of 39, 1 to devote himself to
letters — oratory, poetry and criticism, as well as historiography. He made quite
1 38 B.C. is also a possible date.
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