Post-Augustan Poetry | Page 4

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 _l��se-majest��_.
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 _l��se-majest��_. 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, patron of literature. His tastes were more purely literary. He had received an elaborate and diversified education. He had even enjoyed the privilege of having Seneca--the head of the literary profession--for his tutor. These influences were not wholly for the good: Agrippina dissuaded him from the study of philosophy as being unsuited for a future emperor, Seneca from the study of earlier and saner orators that he might himself have a longer lease of Nero's admiration.[33] The result was that