The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

XXVI LIFE OP HORACE.
captives slaughtering caoh other for her amusement. Rome fhts
wanted the three great sources of poetic inspiration—an heroic period
of history, religion, and soenio representation. She had never, at
least there appears no vestige of their existence, a caste or order of
bards ; her sacerdotal offices, attached to her civil magistracies, disdained
the aid of high-wrought music, or mythic and harmonious
hymns. Foreign kings and heroes walked her stage,' and even her
comedy represented, in general, the manners of Athens or of Asia
Minor rather than those of Italy.
Still, however, in those less poetic departments of poetry, if we
may so speak, which the Greeks had cultivated oldy in the later and
less creative periods of their literature, the Romans seized the unoccupied
ground, and asserted a distinct superiority. Wherever poetry
would not disdain to become an art—wherever lofty sentiment, majestic,
if elaborate verse, unrivalled vigor in condensing and expressing
moral truth, dignity, strength, solidity, as it were, of thought
and language, not without wonderful richness and variety, could
compensate "for the chastened fertility of invention, the life and dis-
tinctness of conception, and the pure and translucent language, in
which the Greek stands alone—there the Latin Surpasses all poetry
In what is commonly called didactic poetry, whether it would convey
in verse philosophical opinions, the principles of art, descriptions
of scenery, or observations on life and manners, the Latin poets are
of unrivalled excellence. The poem of Lucretius, the Georgios of
Virgil, the Satires and Epistles of Horace, and the works of Juvenal,
were, no doubt, as much superior even to the poem of Empedocles
(of which, nevertheless, there are some very fine fragments), or to
any other Greek poems to which they can fairly be compared, as
the Latin tragedians were inferior to .^schylus and •Sophocles, or
Terence to Menander.
Ennius, in all points, if he did not commence, completed the denaturalization
of Roman poetry. He was in every respect a Greek
1. Nine names of Tragcedi^ FreetextatEe, tragedies on RomEUi. Bubjccrs, have
Burrived, .more than one of which is doubtful ; four only claim to be of the carlie^age.
I. The Paulus of racuvius, which Neukirch (•* Do Fabula Togata") and
Welcker (" Griecbische Tragcedie," p. 1384) suppose to have represented, not
Paulus .^milius Macejlonicus. but bis father, L. iBmillus Paulus, who, alter the
Iwittle of CannED, refused to survive the defeat, (iic, X3di., 49.) Yet, noble as
was the conduct of Paulus, the battle of Canns would have been a strange subject
for Roman tragedy. 11. The Brutus of Accius (Oio., Ep. ad Att,, xvi, 2 and 5).
Caflsius Farmenais wrote also a Brutus ( fTelckeVj p. 1403). See the dream of Brutus
in Cic, De Divinat, L, 22, and Bothe (Scenic. Lat Fragm., i., 191). From this frag
racnt Niebubr (Rom. Hist, voL i., note 1078) rather boldly concludes that these
were not imitations of the Greek drama, but historical tragedies, >like those of
•ihakspeare. HI. The .^neades, or Decius of Accins. IV. The Marcellus of Acciuft
s Soubtful. V. The Iter ad Lentulum, by Balbua, acted at Gades, represented »
passage in the author's own life, (Cu:., Ep. ad Fam., x., 32.) The later prtetex-
tatiB were, VI The Cato ; and, VH. The Domitius Nero of Matemus, in the reign
of Vespasian. Vlll. The Vescio of Persius ; and, IX. The Octavia, in the worki
of Seneca, probably at the time of Tnyan.
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