Post-Augustan Poetry | Page 4

few instances in
which Tiberius appears as a patron of literature fill us with great respect
for his taste. He is said to have given one Asellius Sabinus 100,000
sesterces for a dialogue between a mushroom, a finch, an oyster, and a
thrush,[9] and to have rewarded a worthless writer,[10] Clutorius
Priscus, for a poem composed on the death of Germanicus. On the
other hand, he seems to have had a sincere love of literature,[11]
though he wrote in a crabbed and affected style. He was a purist in
language with a taste for archaism,[12] left a brief autobiography[13]
and dabbled in poetry, writing epigrams,[14] a lyric _conquestio de
morte Lucii Caesaris_[15] and Greek imitations of Euphorion, Rhianus,
and Parthenius, the learned poets of Alexandria. His taste was bad: he
went even farther than his beloved Alexandrians, awaking the laughter
of his contemporaries even in an age when obscure mythological
learning was at a premium. The questions which delighted him
were--'Who was the mother of Hecuba?' 'What was the name of
Achilles when disguised as a girl?' 'What did the sirens sing?'[16]
Literature had little to learn from Tiberius, but it should have had
something to gain from the fact that he was not blind to its charms: at
the worst it cannot have required abnormal skill to avoid incurring a
charge of _lèse-majesté_.
The reign of the lunatic Caligula is of small importance, thanks to its
extreme brevity. For all his madness he had considerable ability; he
was ready of speech to a remarkable degree, though his oratory
suffered from extravagant ornament[17] and lack of restraint. He had,
however, some literary insight: in his description of Seneca's rhetoric as
_merae commissiones_, 'prize declamations,' and 'sand without lime' he
gave an admirable summary of that writer's chief weaknesses.[18] But
he would in all probability have proved a greater danger to literature
than Tiberius. It is true that in his desire to compare favourably with his

predecessors he allowed the writings of T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus,
and Cassius Severus, which had fallen under the senate's ban in the two
preceding reigns, to be freely circulated once more.[19] But he by no
means abandoned trials for _lèse-majesté_. The rhetorician Carinas
Secundus was banished on account of an imprudent phrase in a
suasoria on the hackneyed theme of tyrannicide.[20] A writer of an
Atellan farce was burned to death in the amphitheatre[21] for a
treasonable jest, and Seneca narrowly escaped death for having made a
brilliant display of oratory in the senate.[22] He also seriously
meditated the destruction of the works of Homer. Plato had banished
Homer from his ideal state. Why should not Caligula? He was with
difficulty restrained from doing the like for Vergil and Livy. The
former, he said, was a man of little learning and less wit;[23] the latter
was verbose and careless. Even when he attempted to encourage
literature, his eccentricity carried him to such extremes that the
competitors shrank in horror from entering the lists. He instituted a
contest at Lugudunum in which prizes were offered for declamations in
Greek and Latin. The prizes were presented to the victors by the
vanquished, who were ordered to write panegyrics in honour of their
successful rivals, while in cases where the declamations were decided
to be unusually poor, the unhappy authors were ordered to obliterate
their writings with a sponge or even with their own tongues, under
penalty of being caned or ducked in the Rhone.[24]
Literature had some reason to be thankful for his early assassination.
The lunatic was succeeded by a fool, but a learned fool. Claudius was
historian, antiquary, and philologist. He wrote two books on the civil
war, forty-one on the principate of Augustus, a defence of Cicero, eight
books of autobiography,[25] an official diary,[26] a treatise on
dicing.[27] To this must be added his writings in Greek, twenty books
of Etruscan history, eight of Carthaginian,[28] together with a comedy
performed and crowned at Naples in honour of the memory of

Germanicus.[29] His style, according to Suetonius, was _magis ineptus
quam inelegans_.[30] He did more than write: he attempted a reform of
spelling, by introducing three new letters into the Latin alphabet. His
enthusiasm and industry were exemplary. Such indeed was his activity
that a special office,[31] a studiis, was established, which was filled for

the first time by the influential freedman Polybius. Claudius lacked the
saving grace of good sense, but in happier days might have been a
useful professor: at any rate his interest in literature was whole-hearted
and disinterested. His own writing was too feeble to influence
contemporaries for ill and he had the merit of having given literature
room to move. Seneca might mock at him after his death,[32] but he
had done good service.
Nero, Claudius' successor, was also a liberal, if embarrassing,