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

INTRODUCTORY
All these factors, and no doubt many others which we cannot so clearly
discern, led in late antiquity to an effacement of the traditional distinctions
between literary genres. Panegyric — and its opposite, invective — are composed
in the metre and language of epic poetry. Didactic poems are written in elegiac
couplets. The tale of the Trojan war is retold in flat, uniform prose. The letter
is used for public polemic. The principles of Christian dogma are set forth in
Horatian lyrics. Satire as such is no longer written. But the satirical manner
colours many other kinds of writing, such as Arnobius' refutations of pagan
doctrines, Claudian's political lampoons, many of Jerome's letters on moral
and theological themes. New genres begin to emerge, as writers seek an appropriate
literary form for new kinds of content. An example is the kind of
autobiography in which the writer reveals something of his inner life. Augustine
writes his in highly rhetorical prose. Paulinus of Nola chooses traditional
hexameter verse, but without all the apparatus of classical allusion which
traditionally belonged to it. In a period in which traditional rules no longer
held there was naturally much formless, rambling writing, both in prose and
in verse. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the chief characteristic of
late Latin literature is decadence. The period saw the development of new
literary forms and new techniques. Among the most important of these,
judged by its consequences, is the sustained allegory, first developed by
Prudentius in verse and by Martianus Capella in prose. Augustine was in many
respects a most unclassical writer. But that he wrote powerfully and compellingly
cannot be denied. Claudian uses the metre and language of epic
poetry for strange purposes. But he uses them strikingly and effectively. The
literature of late antiquity combined tradition and innovation, and often in a
truly creative fashion.
Finally, the gradual, non-revolutionary character of the changes in life and
literature must be emphasized. Two hundred years is a long time. It would
be a great mistake to suppose that late antique man was as aware that he was
living in an epoch of radical and irreversible change as we are today. Nothing
was sudden. The old persisted along with the new. Much continued apparently
unchanged. Among the literate the sense of continuity was sustained by a
highly traditional system of education based on the detailed study of a small
number of classical texts. No one, not even the most innovatory of new men
in power, thought for a moment of changing this system. Constantine confirmed
the privileges of professors. More than two centuries later, after Italy had been
devastated by twenty years of war, Justinian restored the emoluments and
privileges of teachers of rhetoric. Everything conspired to create the illusion
of immutability, and innovators could only conceive of their own measures
as acts of restoration. From none of the epitomizing historians of late antiquity
would the casual reader gain the impression that the fourth century was in any
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