From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68 (49 page)

Astrology was the theme of a poem by M. Manilius, who lived under Augustus and Nero; though not great poetry, it is composed in hexameters with considerable ease, but the subject, though popular, was treated in too technical a manner to secure many readers. Phaedrus, a freedman from Macedonia who incurred the hostility of Sejanus, wrote fables, beast-tales based on Aesop, in iambic senarii and in a simple style which contrasts pleasantly with the contemporary rhetoric. A later prose paraphrase, though not the original poems, had considerable influence in the Middle Ages.

Much light is thrown on the rhetorical schools by the writings of L. Annaeus Seneca, the elder or Rhetor as he is called to distinguish him from his son, the Philosopher. He came to Rome from Corduba in Spain, made a good deal of money, but did not hold public office in Rome; he died between A.D. 37 and 41. He and his wife Helvia had three distinguished sons: the elder, Annaeus Novatus, became by adoption L. Iunius Gallio, the proconsul of Achaea (
c.
A.D. 52) who dismissed the Jews’ case against St. Paul; the second was the philospoher, Nero’s minister; the third, M. Annaeus Mela, was an
eques
and the father of Lucan. In his old age Seneca recorded his memories of rhetoricians that he had known: of these works five books of
controversiae
and one of
suasoriae
survive. They are full of interest and reveal their author as an old-fashioned Roman who admired tradition and Cicero.

The younger Seneca was born at Corduba, but was brought up as a child in Rome by an aunt. There he studied rhetoric and started upon an official career. In A.D. 41, when he was about forty-five, Messalina secured his banishment to Corsica on a charge of adultery with Gaius’ sister, Julia Livilla. He was recalled in 49 through the influence of Agrippina who made him tutor to her son Nero. His subsequent rise to power until his fall in 62 and
death in 65 have already been recounted. He was one of the most important writers of his day, both in prose and verse. Ten books survive of what are miscalled
Dialogi
; they are not dialogues but ethical essays, on subjects such as anger, the constancy of the Stoic sage, and tranquillity of mind. Three of them are ‘
consolationes
’ to the bereaved: that to Claudius’ freedman Polybius on the loss of his brother, written during Seneca’s exile, is full of flattery of both Polybius and the emperor; that addressed to his mother Helvia is more pleasant in tone. He presented to Nero, early in his reign, a treatise
De Clementia
, recommending this quality to the autocrat (Shakespeare may have had it in mind when composing Portia’s great speech on the quality of mercy); he also wrote
De Beneficiis
in seven books. His eight books on physical science, the
Naturales Quaestiones
, achieved great popularity. This work was addressed to C. Lucilius, who held various equestrian procuratorships. So also were the
Epistulae Morales
, of which 124 survive; they give philosophical and ethical advice to his friend. Some of these essays were probably real letters, but they were prepared for publication and they abound in
sententiae
. Lastly the
Apocolocyntosis
, almost certainly by Seneca, written as a Menippean satire in prose and verse, is an amusing but bitter skit on the deification of Claudius; it redounds to Seneca’s credit as a writer but not as a man, since he owed his recall from banishment and much else to the emperor whom he mocked. Seneca also wrote nine tragedies on Greek mythological subjects, designed to be read or recited rather than acted. They are often forceful and rhetorical, sensational, melodramatic and violent. They had an influence on Elizabethan tragedy in England out of all proportion to their merits. A tenth tragedy, the
Octavia
, is probably not by Seneca, but was written soon after Nero’s death, and it is interesting as the only surviving example of a historical drama (
praetexta
) and as a fine criticism of Nero’s tyranny; the subject is Octavia’s helplessness after her divorce from Nero in 62, and the characters include Seneca and Agrippina’s ghost.

Seneca’s moral writings had great influence and gained the respect of later Christian writers; so much so that before A.D. 400 a forged correspondence between him and St. Paul had been composed. This was natural enough in view of his broad humanitarian outlook. He was a Stoic and shared the Stoic cosmopolitan view of life, but in many ways he was in advance of his contemporaries. He denounced the false values established by wealth, the cruelty of the Games, the stupidity of much in the official religion; he showed compassion for slaves; he believed that the spirit of God dwelt in every man; and on occasion he rebuked the tyranny of princes. But between Seneca’s teaching and his life there seems such discrepancy that to some he appears as unduly morally complacent and to others as a loathsome hypocrite. How could the millionaire who flattered Polybius, showed such spite to the dead Claudius and drafted Nero’s justification for the murder of
his mother, at the same time preach virtue and the simple life? The explanation is hardly to be found in his ill-health or even neurosis, but rather perhaps in his circumstances which proved too strong. He reluctantly accepted the principate since Republican
libertas
could not be restored, and as Nero’s tutor he hoped to turn the young prince to true virtue: in the
De Clementia
he urged the ruler voluntarily to limit his autocratic powers. But as Nero became more wilful, Seneca’s influence over him waned and he weakly condoned one excess after another, perhaps still hoping to prevent worse; ultimately he was defeated and retired, and like Cicero in retirement, he devoted himself to philosophic writing, the
Moral Epistles
, seeking inner freedom of spirit and the virtue that led to it. Whether like Cicero he also emerged from retirement in order to strike a blow for freedom cannot be determined, since his complicity in Piso’s conspiracy is uncertain; at any rate he suffered from Nero’s suspicion and faced his enforced suicide with tranquillity and courage.
⁷

Seneca’s nephew M. Annaeus Lucanus, born at corduba (A.D. 39), was brought as an infant to Rome where he received a normal rhetorical and philosophical training, studying under the Stoic Cornutus, a freedman of Seneca. After further studies at Athens, he gained Nero’s favour and held the quaestorship. In 62 or 63 he published three books of his epic on the Civil War, but, whether or not from artistic jealousy, he lost Nero’s support and then joined Piso’s conspiracy and was compelled to commit suicide; the allegation that he sought pardon by revealing the names of other conspirators, including his own mother, may or may not be true. The unfinished poem in ten books, the
Bellum Civile
(or
Pharsalia
), deals with the struggle between Pompey and Caesar, culminating in the battle of Pharsalus where the Republic and freedom of speech perished: ‘To us, born after that battle, Fortune gave a master; she should have given us also the chance to fight for freedom.’ Pompey and Cato, the Republican Stoic, were the heroes, and Caesar, or what he stood for, the arch-enemy. If his Republican feelings were sincere, Lucan, like Seneca, must have felt that acquiescence in the Principate was the only way to preserve any internal freedom of spirit; then when Nero’s tyranny increased, he attempted to overthrow him. The poem itself contains some magnificent rhetoric: whether it is great poetry must depend on the definition of what poetry is. Though it has many faults (exaggerations, paradoxes, unduly horrible details of wounds and battles), it must be remembered that Lucan was still a young man; at times it rises to real eloquence and nobility, and many of its great lines, as ‘victrix causa deis placuit sed victa Catoni’ or ‘nihil actum credens cum quid superesset agendum’, still ring down the centuries and stir the imagination.
^7a

Another poet to come under the influence of Cornutus was Aulus Persius Flaccus, a rich but modest young man from Etruria. Persius knew Lucan and members of the Stoic ‘opposition’ to the Principate: he died young
(A.D. 34–62), but not before writing six satires, obscure and difficult in style, but earnest in thought; these Stoic sermons are critical of contemporary conditions without direct reference to Nero himself. A very different member of the court circle was C. Petronius who had been governor of Bithynia and became Nero’s
arbiter elegantiae
, a kind of Master of the Revels, until he incurred Tigellinus’ enmity and was forced to commit suicide on suspicion of complicity in Piso’s plot; when dying he sent to Nero not a flattering will and a large legacy but a detailed denunciation of all the emperor’s vices. He is almost certainly the author of a novel called
Saturae
(popularly the
Satyricon
) in ‘Menippean’ form, prose interspersed with verse. Only parts of books 15 and 16 survive, which recount the adventures of three disreputable freedmen, including their visit to Trimalchio’s banquet. This racy work throws a lurid light on low life in south Italy and on economic and social conditions; it is also a most valuable source of everyday Latin as spoken in the street or gutter as contrasted with literary language in which most of the extant literature is written. A writer more appreciative of the Neronian age was the poet Calpurnius Siculus, who wrote
Bucolics
in the tradition of Theocritus and Virgil. He foretells the advent of a Golden Age with young Nero’s accession: it is not known whether he lived long enough to change his mind. He is not very probably the author of an anonymous
Laus Pisonis
, a panegyric on a Piso, probably the Neronian conspirator.
^7b

A general history of Rome down to A.D. 30 in two books was written by a retired officer, Velleius Paterculus who had served under Tiberius for eight years on the northern front; the second book expands in scope for the period of Velleius’ own lifetime. It is a useful source for the northern campaigns of A.D. 4–12 and it is interesting in being, unlike most of the sources, favourable and even enthusiastic towards Tiberius and also Sejanus. Though not a critical historian, Velleius shows interest in personalities. Another Tiberian, Valerius Maximus, produced nine books of noteworthy doings and sayings, as a useful source-book for rhetoricians. He flattered Tiberius, to whom he dedicated the work, but denounced Sejanus, presumably after his fall from power. The style is bad and Valerius is quite uncritical, but his work contains some useful scraps of information and it was much read in the Middle Ages. Curtius Rufus, writing under Claudius, avoided a Roman theme and composed a history of Alexander the Great, which followed the more romantic and less accurate tradition about him and thus helped to hand on the ‘Alexander legend’ to the Middle Ages.

The
History
by Cremutius Cordus has already been mentioned (p. 295). Other lost historical works, which had important influence on the formation of the tradition and were used by Tacitus, include the
History
of Aufidius Bassus, which began about 44 B.C. and continued to A.D. 31, 37 or even 50; Bassus, who lived into Nero’s reign, also wrote on the German War (probably
A.D. 4–16).
⁸
Cluvius Rufus, consul before A.D. 41, enjoyed Nero’s favour and later took part in the Civil Wars of 68–70. His
History
perhaps began with Gaius and ended in 70; in it he showed a moderate attitude to the Principate. The elder Pliny (C. Plinius Secundus: A.D. 23/4–79), who came to Rome from Comum, served as a cavalry officer in Germany (45–57) and as a pleader in Rome; later under Vespasian with whom he was friendly he held various procuratorships. His great interest was reading and writing (p. 302) and his historical works included a
History
of his own times in thirty-one books from the point where Aufidius Bassus left off down to 70. Corbulo wrote an account of his eastern campaigns and Suetonius Paulinus one on his fighting in Mauretania. Thrasea Paetus, Nero’s victim, wrote a
Life
of Cato Uticensis, whose Stoic and Republican ideals he admired. Thus it will be seen that the extant tradition for this period is but a fragment of all the work that was one written about it.

The more technical writers may now be mentioned. A. Cornelius Celsus, writing under Tiberius, composed an encyclopaedia of wide range; only the books on medicine survive, which include a valuable history of medicine before his time. The eight books show good sense and had considerable influence in the Renaissance. Scribonius Largus, a Roman doctor, went with Claudius on the expedition to Britain and dedicated to his patron Callistus his work on Prescriptions (
Compositiones
).
⁹
Agriculture is represented by an authoritative work in twelve books by L. Iunius Columella, a Spaniard from Gades who settled in Rome and wrote in a clear style under Nero. This practical handbook covered the main topics
De Re Rustica
. A similarly useful and comprehensive work on architecture and engineering had been written by Vitruvius Pollio under Augustus. The two most important contributions to geography at this time came from M. Agrippa, the friend of Augustus, and Pomponius Mela, who wrote under Gaius or Claudius. The former, who set up in Rome a large map of the Roman Empire, wrote a geographical commentary on it, using the results of Greek knowledge; the Roman road-system would supply the skeleton for map and description. Mela’s work was a popular survey, not based on personal research.

The tradition of scholarship (see p. 121) was continued by C. Iulius Hyginus, whom Augustus appointed librarian of the Palatine Library, and by Verrius Flaccus, whose important work
De significatu verborum
, has survived only in an incomplete epitome by Festus (late second century); he set up in his native Praeneste a stone calendar with explanations of the festivals (the so-called Fasti Praenestini). Q. Asconius Pedianus, in Nero’s reign, wrote a commentary on Cicero’ speeches, of which a fragment survives. Pliny the elder, whose historical work has been mentioned, wrote 102 volumes but only 37 survive, those of his
Naturalis Historia
, based more on reading than on scientific observation (though he was to lose his life by approaching too close
to Vesuvius to investigate the eruption in 79): he said that its composition had involved reading 2000 books. This survey of the natural world, though not profound, contains much valuable information; for instance, the books on minerals explain how they were used in the arts and therefore give a valuable history of painting and sculpture.