The history of Roman Classical Literature, although it comprehends the names of many illustrious writers and many voluminous works, is, chronologically speaking, contained within narrow limits. Dating from its earliest infancy, until the epoch when it ceased to deserve the title of classical, its existence occupies a period of less than four centuries.

The imperial city had been founded for upwards of five hundred years without exhibiting more than those rudest germs of literary taste which are common to the most uncivilized nations, without producing a single author either in poetry or prose.

The Roman mind, naturally vigorous and active, was still uncultivated, when, about two centuries and a half before the Christian era,^[1] conquest made the inhabitants of the capital acquainted, for the first time, with Greek science, art, and literature; and the last rays of classic taste and learning ceased to illumine the Roman world before the accession of the Antonines.^[2]

Such a history, however, must be introduced by a reference to times of much higher antiquity. The language itself must be examined historically, that is, its progress and its formation from its primitive elements, must be traced with reference to the influences exercised upon it from without by the natives who spoke the dialects out of which it was composed; and the earliest indications of a taste for poetry, and a desire to cultivate the intellectual powers, must be marked and followed out in their successive stages of development. In this investigation, it will be seen how great the difficulties were with which literary men had to struggle under the Republic—difficulties principally arising from the physical activity of the people, and the practical character of the Roman mind, which led the majority to undervalue and despise devotion to sedentary and contemplative pursuits.

The Roman, in the olden times, had a high and self-denying sense of duty—he was ambitious, but his ambition was for the glory, not of himself, but his country; he thus lived for conquest: his motive, however, was not self-aggrandizement but the extension of the domination of Rome. When the state came to be merged in the individual, generals and statesmen sought to heap up wealth and to acquire power; but it was not so in the Republican times. Owing to these characteristic features, the Roman citizen conceived it to be his duty to devote his energies to the public service: he concentrated all his powers, mental and bodily, upon war and politics; he despised all other occupations and sources of fame; for he was conscious that his country owed her position amongst nations to her military prowess, and her liberties at home to the wise administration of her constitution.

Hence it will be seen, that there never was a period in which literature did not require to be fostered and protected by the patronage of the wealthy and powerful. Even tragedy never captivated the feelings or acquired an influence over the minds of the people at large as it did in Greece; it degenerated into mere recitations in a dramatic form, addressed like any other poetry to a coterie. Comedy formed the only exception to this rule. It was the only species of literature which the masses thoroughly enjoyed. Learning was a sickly plant: patronage was the artificial heat which brought it to maturity. Accius was patronized by D. Brutus; Ennius by Lucilius and the Scipios; Terence by Africanus and LÆlius; Lucretius by the Memmii; Tibullus by Messala; Propertius by Ælius Gallus; Virgil and his friends by Augustus, MÆcenas, and Pollio; Martial and Quintilian by Domitian.

As the conquest of Magna GrÆcia, Sicily, and, finally, of Greece itself, first directed to the pursuit of intellectual cultivation a people whose national literature, even if it deserved to be so called, was of the rudest and most meager description, Roman literature was, as might be expected, the offspring of the Greek, and its beauties a reflexion of the Greek mind; and although some portions were more original than others, as being more congenial to the national character—such, for example, as satire, oratory, and history—it was, upon the whole, never anything more than an imitation. It had, therefore, all the faults of an imitation. As in painting, those that study the old masters, and neglect nature, are nothing more than copyists, however high the finish and elaborate the polish of their works may be; so in the literature of Rome, we are delighted with the execution, and charmed with the genius, wit, and ingenuity, but we seek in vain for the enthusiasm and inspiration which breathes in every part of the original.

One faculty of the greatest importance to literary eminence was possessed by the Romans in the highest perfection, because it may be acquired as well as innate, and is always improved and polished by education: that faculty is taste—the ability, as Addison defines it, to discern the beauties of an author with pleasure, and his imperfections with dislike.

Of the three periods into which this history is divided, the first may be considered as dramatic. Eloquence, indeed, made rapid strides, and C. Gracchus may be considered as the father of Latin prose; but the language was not sufficiently smoothed and polished; the sentiments of the orator were far superior to the diction in which they were conveyed. Jurisprudence also was studied with thoughtfulness and accuracy; history, however, was nothing more than annals, and epic poetry rugged and monotonous. But the acting tragedy of the Romans is almost exclusively confined to this period; and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were then written, which have survived to command the admiration of modern times. Although, at this epoch, the language was elaborately polished and embellished with the utmost variety of graceful forms and expressions, it was simple and unconstrained: it flowed easily and naturally, and was therefore full and copious; brevity and epigrammatic terseness are acquired qualities, and the result of art, although that art may be skilfully concealed.

The second period consists of two subdivisions, of which the first was the era of prose, and, consequently, the period at which the language attained its greatest perfection; for the structure, power, and genius of a language must be judged of by its prose, and not by its poetry. Cicero is the representative of this era as an orator and philosopher—CÆsar and Sallust as historians. The second subdivision, or the Augustan age, is the era of poetry, for in it poetry arrived at the same eminence which prose had attained in the preceding generation. But the age of Cicero and that of Augustus can only be made subdivisions of one great period; they are not separated from each other by a strong line of demarkation; they are blended together, and gradually melt into one another. In the former, Lucretius and Catullus were the harbingers of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid; and, in the latter, the sun of Cicero, CÆsar, and Sallust, seems to set in the sweet narrative of Livy.

The last period is rhetorical: it has been called “the silver age.” It produced Rome’s only fabulist, PhÆdrus; the greatest satirist, Juvenal; the wittiest epigrammatist, Martial; the most philosophical historian, Tacitus; the most judicious critic, Quintilian; and a letter-writer, scarcely inferior to Cicero himself, the younger Pliny; and yet, notwithstanding these illustrious names, this is the period of the decline. These great names shed a lustre over their generation; but they did not influence their taste or arrest the approaching decay of the national genius: causes were at work which were rapidly producing this effect, and they were beyond their control. A new and false standard of taste was now set up, which was inconsistent with original genius and independent thought. Rome was persuaded, to accept a declamatory rhetoric as a substitute for that fervid eloquence in which she had delighted, and which was now deprived of its use, and was driven from the Forum to the lecture-room. This taste infected every species of composition. Seneca abused his fine talents to teach men to admire nothing so much as glitter, novelty, and affectation; and, at length, all became constrained, hollow, and artificial. With the national liberty, the national intellect lapsed into a state of inactivity: a period of intellectual darkness succeeded, the influence which the capital had lost was taken up by the provinces, and thus the way was paved for the inroad of barbarism.

Such is the outline of this work; and if the reader finds some features, which he considers of great importance, rapidly touched upon, the extent of the subject, and the wish to compress it within a moderate compass, must be offered as the author’s apology. In conclusion, the author acknowledges his deep obligations to those historians and biographers whose works he has consulted during the composition of this history. He feels that it would have been presumptuous to offer such a work to the public without having profited by the laborious investigations of Wolf, Bayle, Hermann, Grotefend, Bernhardy, BÄhr, Schlegel, Lachmann, Dunlop, MatthiÆ, Schoell, Krause, Ritter, Nisard, Pierron, Niebuhr, Milman, Arnold, Merivale, Donaldson, Smith, and the authors of the “Biographie Universelle.”