Post-Augustan Poetry | Page 9

the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly
structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and
actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting
accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that
'our orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72]
Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the
poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education reacted on one
another.[73]
Further, just as the young poet had to his great detriment been
encouraged to recite at school, so he had to recite if he was to win fame
for his verse in the larger world. Even in a saner society poetry written
primarily for recitation must have run to rhetoric; in a rhetorical age the
result was disastrous. In an enormous proportion of cases the poet of
the Silver Age wrote literally for an audience. Great as were the
facilities for publication the poet primarily made his name, not by the
gradual distribution of his works among a reading public, but by
declaiming before public or private audiences. The practice of
gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the recitations
of a poet is said first to have been instituted by Asinius Pollio, the
patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the poets of the
Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice gradually increased

and became a nuisance to all save the few who had the courage to stand
aloof from these mutual admiration societies. Indiscriminate praise was
lavished on good and bad work alike. Even Pliny the younger, whose
cultivation and literary taste place him high above the average literary
level of his day, approves of the increase of this melancholy harvest of
minor poetry declaimed by uninspired bards.[75] The effect was
lamentable. All the faults of the suasoria and controversia made their
appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had continually to be performing
acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or epigram, now of learning, or again in
the description of blood-curdling horrors, monstrous deaths and
prodigious sorceries. Each work was overloaded with sententiae and
purple patches.[77] So only could the author keep the attention of his
audience. The results were disastrous for literature and not too
satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves, as the following curious
passage from Tacitus (Dial. 9) shows:
Bassus is a genuine poet, and his verse possesses both beauty and
charm: but the only result is that, when after a whole year, working
every day and often well into the night, he has hammered out one book
of poems, he must needs go about requesting people to be good enough
to give him a hearing: and what is more he has to pay for it: for he
borrows a house, constructs an auditorium, hires benches and
distributes programmes. And then--admitting his recitations to be
highly successful--yet all that honour and glory falls within one or two
days, prematurely gathered like grass in the blade or flowers in their
earliest bloom: it has no sure or solid reward, wins no friendship or
following or lasting gratitude, naught save a transient applause, empty
words of praise and a fleeting enthusiasm.
The less fortunate poet had to betake himself to the forum or the public
baths or some temple, there to inflict his tawdry wares upon the ears of
a chance audience.[79] Others more fortunate would be lent a room by
some rich patron.[80] Under Nero and Domitian we get the apotheosis
of recitation. Nero, we have seen, established the Neronia in 60 and
himself competed. Domitian established a quinquennial competition in
honour of Jupiter Capitolinus in 86 and an annual competition held
every Quinquatria Minervae at his palace on the Alban mount.[81]

From that time forward it became the ambition of every poet to be
crowned at these grotesque competitions.
The result of all these co-operating influences will be evident as we
deal with the individual poets. Here we can only give a brief summary
of the general characteristics of this fantastic literature. We have a
striving after originality that ends in eccentricity: writers were steeped
in the great poets of the Augustan age: men of comparatively small
creative imagination, but, thanks to their education, possessed of great
technical skill, they ran into violent extremes to avoid the charge of
imitating the great predecessors whom they could not help but imitate;
hence the obscurity of Persius--the disciple of Horace--and of Statins
and Valerius Flaccus--the followers of Vergil. Hence Lucan's bold
attempt to strike out a new type of epic, an attempt that ended in a wild
orgy of brilliant yet turbid rhetoric. The simple and natural was at a
discount: brilliance of point, bombastic description, gorgeous colour
were preferred to quiet power. Alexandrian learning, already too much
in evidence in the Augustan