but is even more apparent in those which are confessedly derived from Greek originals. This imperfection in its general application to the whole series of the earlier Latin tragedies, will form the subject of future remarks. It is only noticed here for the sake of calling attention to the dexterity with which Horace insinuates a compliment to the other productions of the tragic muse of Rome, by applying his censure only to particular classes of the drama. The praise, however, which he endeavours to convey in these lines, courtly as it is-and it must be remembered that Augustus himself was a candidate for the honours of tragic composition, though his labours never reached beyond the jurisdiction of his sponge*involves a great deal more of blame than of real approval, and shows us that if the historical tragedy of Rome (Fabula prætextata) was possessed of little merit, the derivative, translated, or Greek tragedy of Rome was not very much better; and that if the Romans failed when they deserted the constant support of their Greek models, their success was only moderate even when they most rigidly adhered to them. The direct evidences of dramatic incompetency supplied by the surviving fragments of the Latin tragedy, and the indirect testimony to the like effect afforded by the anxious and ingenious compliments of Horace, are deepened and extended by the consideration that some of the earliest writers of Roman tragedy were not native but foreign authors and not even freemen, but slaves from Magna Græcia, or of libertine parentage. Indeed, of the five earliest and the five principal Latin tragedians, all except Nævius, whose origin is uncertain, though he must have been a Roman citizen, come under one or other of these categories, and some of them under more than one, being either Greeks, or slaves, or sons of freedmen, or Greeks and slaves, or Greeks and sons of freedmen. Nothing of this sort can be safely imputed to Nævius, whose temper, tendencies, and tastes were peculiarly Roman, and whose inclinations associated him with the antiquated and retrograde school of the elder Cato, though himself the earliest and very nearly the ablest poet of the pure Roman race. His intense and obsolete nationality was with him a source of characteristic pride, though it may not have been any great merit. When we compare the fragments of his own writings and those of Livius Andronicus with the gradually more and more Hellenized and refined expressions of his successors, we can feel and appreciate both the justice and the morose point of the boast contained in the quaint Sueton. Octav. c. lxxv. "Nam tragediam, magus impetu exorsus, non succedente stilo, abolevit: 'quærentibusque amicis quidnam Ajax ageret, respondit; Ajacem suum in spongiam incubuisse.” FOURTH SERIES, VOL. VIII.-6 epitaph which he composed for his tomb, in his own cherished Saturnian measure. Mortales immortales flere si foret fas, Nævius is certainly an anomaly in the literature of Rome, and especially in the history of Latin tragedy. He had no legitimate precursor, and he left no successor or imitator of his literary tastes and appetences. We do not mean to say that he had not his own school of admirers, for this would be contrary to testimony; but no later poet of Rome belonged distinctly to the same type. Lucilius and Laberius were the nearest approximations to it, but they differed from him in more points than those in which they resembled him. The incongruity of his position in the historical development of the Latin tragedy, inclines us concede much weight to the doubts of Welcker, who regards it as dubious whether he was a tragic poet. Ribbeck treats with supercilious irony this imputation of Welcker's, and proceeds confidently to expand the brief fragments into orderly tragedies, illustrated by references to and comparisons with their supposed Greek originals.† The titles of the dramas of Nævius are on the side of Ribbeck; they assuredly portend tragic purposes. The fragments have no very tragic significance, but might have been inserted for the most part indifferently in tragedy, comedy, farce, or satire. Historical presumptions and other probabilities appear to favour the view of Welcker. Whatever conclusion we adopt, it is founded on conjectural premises alone; though the general current of belief has received Nævius as a tragic author, and as such it is safest to accept him, though his admission into the tragic choir occasions many troublesome anomalies. If the name of Nævius were withdrawn from the list of early Roman tragedians, the foreign and servile origin of the Latin tragedy would be completely established. Livius Andronicus, the most ancient poet of Rome, and the creator of its tragic drama,‡ was a native of Magna Græcia, taken captive by the Romans, and became the slave of M. Livius Salinator, from whom he received his first name on his emancipation. His first play-it is unknown whether it was a comedy or a tragedy-was exhibited at Rome, A. C. 240. This A. Gellius Noctes Atticæ. I., c. xxiv. † Reliqu. Trag. Lat., p. 245. A. Gellius. Noct. Att. XVII. c. xxi, 42. "Coss Claudio Centone et ill Sompronio Tuditano primus omnium L. Livius poeta fabulas docere Romæ cæpit." date accordingly indicates the commencement both of Latin tragedy and Latin literature; and the most ancient author of the one as of the other was a Messapian Greek and a slave. It was perfectly natural that he should have restricted himself to the translation of Greek originals; but what would have been remarkable, if the Romans had enjoyed any natural vocation for literature was, that the example so given should have been so long and so rigidly followed, and with rare and but partially successful deviations from the prescribed fashion. Nævius is the second tragedian in point of time, and the second whose remains are gathered into the mausoleum of dead bones. Of him enough has been already said. It is only necessary to add that the year A. C. 235 has been assigned, on very loose data, as the date of his first dramatic exhibition. The celebrated name of Q. Ennius appears next in the series and in the chronological succession of these poets. With him commenced a bolder flight of Latin poetry, and those marked improvements in the constitution of the Latin tongue and versification which moved the bile of Nævius. The spiteful epitaph of that splenetic Roman may, indeed, be regarded as especially directed. against the linguistic innovations of his more illustrious and more fortunate rival. Ennius, like Livius Andronicus, was a foreignera Greek from Rudiæ, in the neighbourhood of Brundisium. Thus the adjoining provinces of Messapia and Calabria gave birth to the founder and to the perfecter of Latin tragedy. The birth of Ennius took place in the year succeeding the first representation of a Latin drama by Livius Andronicus. His old age, and his military, perhaps even more than his literary, services to the republic, were honoured by the then rare gift of Roman citizenship; and after having lived through the full term of the life of man-threescore and ten years he died in the humble habitation on the Aventine which he had long occupied. He The labours of Ennius were most varied and extensive. wrote on a diversity of subjects, and translated abundantly from the Greeks. His principal compositions were in verse, but he cultivated prose also, and was probably one of the very earliest authors, if not the earliest, in this department. He softened, polished, and harmonized the language in various modes, and enriched it with unfamiliar metres, and especially with the heroic hexameter, which was afterward refined into such perfection by Lucretius and Virgil as to become the national verse of Rome. The contemporary and posthumous celebrity of Ennius rested chiefly on his Annals, which treated the history of the Romans in this metre, and invited, by the national popularity of the subject, the admiration which was long bestowed upon his talents. In the selection of this topic for poetic treatment he had been preceded by his contemporary and rival, En. Nævius; but the rugged old Saturnian metre of the latter was obliged to yield to the sonorous fulness and rich majesty of the hexameter verse. Ennius and Nævius probably never met; the latter had been banished from Rome for his pasquinades on the Metelli and the aristocracy before the former was brought to Rome; but this did not prevent the indulgence of mutual jealousies. Nineteen or twenty years before the arrival of Ennius in Rome, his nephew, M. Pacuvius, the greatest or nearly the greatest of the early tragedians, was born at Brundisium. Consequently he was a Greek, or at least of Greek descent on the mother's side. Like Euripides, whom he imitated so closely in some of his plays, that he is called on this account, in one place by Ribbeck, “libertus quasi Euripidis," Pacuvius was a professional painter as well as a poet. Notwithstanding, however, this close adherence occasionally to his Greek models, Pacuvius seems to have, at times, displayed a more vigorous originality than was customary with the Roman tragedians. His long life, which was extended to ninety years, enabled him to cultivate the friendship and foster the talents of his successor Attius, and thus exhibit in his closing years the same pleasing spectacle of literary emulation without jealousy, which he had displayed in the outset of his career by his association with his uncle, Ennius. In A. C. 140, Pacuvius, then eighty years old, and Attius at the age of thirty-eight, represented tragedies together at the same celebration.† He was With Attius the list of the older tragedians of celebrity, of whose works specimens remain, is concluded. He was half a century younger than Pacuvius, having been born in A. C. 170. the son of a freedman, and, like his two immediate predecessors, lived to a very advanced age. He divided with Pacuvius the honour of being considered the most illustrious of the earlier dramatists. They are both mentioned with high and almost equal commendation by Velleius, Paterculus, and Quintilian, who, however, justly note the absence of grace and literary polish from their compositions, as from all the productions of that age. This passing biographical notice of the ancient chiefs of Roman tragedy, besides illustrating other topics which may be briefly resumed hereafter, explains the original character of that drama by Trag. Lat. Reliqu., p. 281. Quæstionum Scenicarum Mantissa. "Accius iisdem Edilibus ait se et Pacuvium docuisse fabulam, quum ille octaginta, ipse triginta annos natus esset." Cic. Brut., c. lxiv., § 229. establishing the fact that nearly all the principal poets of those times were either of Greek or of servile origin. Under these circumstances the close and even servile imitation of the Greek exemplars was a natural procedure, and one which became too habitual to be readily or extensively abandoned at a later period. "Non possum ferre Quirites 170 Græcam urbim; quamvis quota portio laudis Achæa." We have hazarded the license of transmuting one expression in this quotation to render it peculiarly appropriate; for the censure of Juvenal on the manners of his metropolitan contemporaries becomes by this slight alteration applicable to the general current of the literary culture of Rome. This Greek impress was never lost by the Latin tragedy. With the progress of time, the increasing favour for the art, the purer taste and the larger cultivation of the Romans, the style, and perhaps the composition of the drama were improved, chastened, and refined. As the Latin language lost gradually its primitive harshness and angularity, tragedy participated in the benefits of the change, and divested itself of much of its former ruggedness. Nay, the greater tragedians, Ennius, Pacuvius, and Attius were mainly instrumental in effecting this refinement; and the elegancies dictated by the requirements of their verse passed, in process of time, into general use among the educated, and laid the foundations of the classic Latinity of the Ciceronian and Augustan age. The illustration of this gradual amelioration of the Latin tongue in its forms, grammatical inflexions, syntactical development, and rhythmical construction, is one of the chief advantages to be derived from such a gathering of broken meats as the present. Indeed, it is impossible to trace with any confidence the progress of the Latin language from the unintelligible and discordant sounds of the Arvalian song, and the other relics of a later but still uncouth period, to the precise elegance and harmonious utterance of Cicero and Virgil, Horace and Livy, without a careful study of the intermediate literature. The fusion of the Oscan, Pelasgic, and other elements which entered into the composition of the Latin, remains a philosophical mystery in the absence of any suitable materials to furnish the data for investigation. But the transition from the rude speech of the old patrician ages to the artificial graces of the declining republic and dawning empire may still be examined, by the aid especially of this or a similar collection of archæological curiosities. The frag• Juvenal. Sat. III., vv. 60–61. The reading of the original text is "fæcis "in the place of laudis. |