The Oxford Book of Latin Verse

s. In one of these fragments the Salii placate Leucesius, the god of lightning. In another the Arval Brethren placate Mars or Marmar, the god of pestilence and blight (lues rues). The gods are

y wild dances-the Salii are, etymologically, 'the Dancing men'-and by the clashing of shields. They are cast in a metre not unsuited to the dance by which they are accompanied. This is the famous Saturnian metre, which remained the metre of all Latin poetry until the coming of the Greeks. Each verse falls into two halves corresponding to the forward swing and the recoil of the dance. Each half-verse exhibits three rhythmical beats answering to

st-home and with marriage ceremonial-the so-called Fescennine poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the priests. It is a charm against fascinum, 'the evil eye': and hence the name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine poetry was obscene

preserved references to it in Cato and Varro. This was the Song in Praise of Famous Men which was sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully selected boys (pueri modesti), and no doubt its purpose was to propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers disappear, and the Song is sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us: even of epi

, that they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius-and the patriotic nobles whose ideals he represented-saved Rome. It is significant that in his translation of the Odyssey he employs the old Saturnian measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in which he alludes scornfully to the Punica of Naevius as written 'in verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is, of the ol

the latter half of the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece. The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy-the period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry. The Roman influence is

in the Italian municipia new blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry failed-or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it was not before-imitative; that is to say it now for the first time reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying, there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer-save Vergil himself. But the post-Vergilian po

ian we must allow for a considerable intermixture of races: and we must remember that large tracts at least of Northern Italy, notably Transpadane Gaul and Umbria, have been penetrated by Celtic influence. No one can study Roman poetry at all deeply or sympathetically without feeling how un-Roman much of it really is: and again-despite its Hellenic forms and its constant study of Hellenism-how un-Greek. It is not Greek and not Rom

the Annals. Even in the Annals, however, there is a great deal that is neither Greek nor Roman. There is an Italian vividness. The coloured phraseology is Itali

obuoluta sangui

t, ciues, ferte op

i magno cl

xitium exa

fera uel

mplebit ma

man. They are preserved to us in a passage of Cicero's treatise De Diuinatione: and in the same passage Cicero applies to another fragment of Ennius notable epithets. He speaks of it as poema tenerum et mor

atque

runt gaudentes

hen he speaks of the 'note of brooding pity' which pierces the 'immature and tremulous cadences' of Vergil's earliest period. This molle ingenium, that here quivers beneath the half-divined 'pain-of-the-world', is the same temperament as that which in Catullus gives to the pain of the individual immortally poignant expression. It is the same temperament, again, which created Dido. Macrobius tells us that Vergil's Dido is just the Medea of Apollonius over again. And some debt Vergil no doubt has to Apollonius. To the Attic drama his debt is far deeper; and he no doubt intended to invest the story of Dido with the same kind of interest as that which attaches to, say, the Phaedra of Euripides. Yet observe. Vergil has not hardness enough. He has not the unbending ri

en descends into hell. But I will take from Catullus in a different mood

m tremul

empus

mnibus

Greek nor Roman. It is the unelaborate magic of the Celtic temperament. Keats, I have often thought, wou

Beauty, Beauty

e hand is eve

ing

ns upon by a luck of temperament Keats puts mo

ortalus. Think not, says Catullus, tha

onsi furtiuo

asto uirgin

litae molli sub

atris prosili

ono praeceps a

risti consci

oor lass, in the soft folds of her robe and forgot it. And when her mother came towards her out it f

isite sensibility, its supreme delicacy and tenderness, it be

the element of 'facetum' in Vergil, perhaps 'glow' or 'fire' will serve us better than 'wit'. Facetus, facetiae, infacetus, infacetiae are favourite words with Catullus. With lepidus, illepidus, uenustus, inuenustus they are his usual terms of literary praise and dispraise. These words hit, of course, often very superficial effects. Yet with Catullus and his friends they stand for a literary ideal deeper than the contexts in which they occur: and an ideal which, while it no doubt derives from the enthusiasm of Alexandrian study, yet assumes a distinctively Itali

uence of Attic Comedy comes to Lucilius (and to Horace and to Juvenal and to Persius) by way of the Alexandrian satirists. From the Alexandrians come many of the stock themes of Roman Satire, many of its stock characters, much of its moral sentiment. The captator, the μεμψ?μοιρο?, the auarus are not the creation of Horace and Juvenal. The seventh satire of Juvenal is not the first 'Plaint of the Impoverished Schoolmaster' in literature. Nor is Horace Sat. II. viii the earliest 'Dinner with a Nouveau-Riche'. In all this, and in much else in Roman Satire, we must recognize Alexandrian influence. Yet even so we can distinguish clearly-much more clearly, indeed, than in other departments of Latin poetry-the Roman and the primitive Italian elements. 'Ecquid is homo habet aceti in pectore?' asks Pseudolus in Pla

self as for a Transpadane school. The lampoons of his compatriot Furius Bibaculus were as famous as his own. Vergil himself-if, as seems likely, the Catalepton be a genuine work of Vergil-did not escape the Transpadane fashion. In fact the Italian aptitude for invective seems in North Italy, allied with the study of Archilochus, to have created a new type in Latin literature-a type which Horace essays not very s

up the eleventh

uat ualeatq

omplexa tene

uere sed id

rum

ash with a vengeance. Yet the very

pectet, ut a

ulpa cecidit

, praetereu

s ara

verse effect to th

ia nostra,

a, quam Ca

atque suos am

the scarce-concealed agony of longing. Yet this five

obscenity of wrath dissolving in the tenderness of unbidden te

appear in literary analysis. The Italian spirit worked always under the spell of Rome, and not under any merely external compulsion. And the spell of Rome is over the whole of Roman poetry. The Italians were only a nation through Rome: and a great poetry must have behind it a great life: it must express a great people, their deeds and their ideals. Roman poetry does, beyond almost any other poetry, bear the impress of a great nation. And after all the language of this poetry is the language of the Romans. It is said of it, of course, that it is an unpoetical language. And it is true that it has not the dance and brightness of Greek: that it is wanting in fineness and subtlety: that it is defective in voc