The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (3 page)

Roman literature seems now to be well launched. The Romans have learned to write from the Greeks, but they have learned well; they have developed their own themes, characters, even their own form; everything is going swimmingly. Then, suddenly, there is a gap of half a century when nothing of importance appears. Roman literature began when the frontiers, where the wars were always going on, were pushed out far enough so that the fighting was not on Rome’s doorstep. Roman literature paused when fighting broke out in Italy again, the civil wars which did not really stop until the overthrow of the Republic, although the Age of Cicero marks a period of apparent peace, when the war, as has been said of diplomacy, was carried on by other means. The expansion of Rome meant, of course, that the Republic must sooner or later come to an end. Just as an amoeba is bound to split in two when its area needs more food than its perimeter can supply, the Republic was bound to break down when it tried to administer a state the size of Italy by the methods of the town meeting. Even if they had thought of representative government, that would hardly have helped unless they had also been able to invent some form of rapid transport. But the end of the Republic was quicker and more bitter because of the strife between the Haves and Have-Nots. The spoils of Empire were changing Rome from a landed to a money economy. The great proprietors, enriched by the wars, were working their vast estates like factories, with slave labor; to do this they turned off their free tenants and bought up their poor neighbors by fair means or foul. The city of Rome, the only place where it was possible to cast a vote, became full of landless men; men with legitimate grievances to place before the legislators, but men who were peculiarly liable to be misled by the promises of any man whose platform was cheap bread, and let the Italians pay the taxes.

The old general Marius, who had covered himself with glory in the wars against the kingdom of Numidia, became involved in the intrigues of two demagogues, turned against them, and went into retirement for a while, until he thought he saw a chance to regain his lost prestige by getting the command of the war in the East against Mithridates, the command that had been given to the younger general Sulla. He succeeded in getting the popular assembly to vote him in. Sulla, however, was the actual commander of the army. He marched it on Rome; Marius fled; and with Sulla and his army at the doorstep the popular assembly reversed its decree and confirmed Sulla in his command. Sulla went off to fight his war. As soon as he was at a safe distance Marius returned, at the head of his anti-Senatorial or popular party, and murdered the leading men of the Senate and the governing class, a blood bath from which the Senatorial order never recovered. By the time Sulla returned victorious, Marius was dead, but Sulla had his revenge upon everybody else. He had already shown for the first time that the man who commanded the army could put himself in command of Rome. Now he taught another lesson to those who came after him; he had himself appointed dictator without conditions.

The office of dictator was fundamental in the Roman constitution. That constitution, like the American, originated in opposition to kingship and was a system of checks and balances; but the checks were so effective that sometimes it was impossible to get anything done at all. At the head of the Republic, for instance, were two consuls, each with a right to veto the other. Considering this and other veto powers, the Romans found that in time of emergency it was necessary to vest extraordinary powers in one man. He was appointed dictator, or virtual autocrat, but was still subject to certain limitations; he could not touch the treasury, he was accountable at the end of his term, and none of the early dictators kept his office for more than six months. Sulla had the title granted to himself without restrictions, a precedent for the legal fictions by which the Republic was transformed into an empire.

This was the background of the Rome of Julius Caesar and Cicero—Cicero, a conservative by inclination and connections, and Caesar, the ambitious young politician, nephew by marriage of Marius. Sulla was dead, after putting through some conservative reforms, but the struggle went on and broke out into violence in such affairs as the conspiracy of Catiline. Catiline was a ruined noble, ruined, like so many nobles before and since, partly by his own dissipation, partly by the change from a land economy and from a rural to an urban culture. In the early days of the Republic, land-owners had been content to live on their holdings; when they wished to live in the city, they borrowed on their lands, and the interest on the mortgages soon outran the income from the estates. Catiline and a group of others first tried to push through a law containing the simple and revolutionary measure of an arbitrary reduction of all debts; and when he failed in this, gathered a private army and plotted to murder the leading members of the government, and increase the confusion by firing their houses. Cicero got wind of the conspiracy, denounced it, and secured passage of the emergency decrees: “Let the Consuls see to it that the Republic take no harm”—the last legitimate use of the old. limited dictatorship; and after the arrest of the conspirators Cicero himself was guilty of an unconstitutional act in having them strangled without giving them the right to appeal against the death penalty to the assembly of the people.

The conspiracy of Catiline was followed by others, by riots and the use of private armies of gangsters on one side and the other. The situation had become desperate through the failure of the executive, and the only hope seemed to be to invest one man with full power to make the laws and see that they were obeyed—then, perhaps, they could go back to constitutional government. For this position there were two obvious candidates, the two successful generals Pompey and Julius Cæsar. Pompey was backed by the Senate and the old land-owning class; Cæsar by the opposition. When their rivalry led to a civil war in which Pompey was defeated, Cæsar was the only man in Rome. He consolidated his position by following the example of Sulla: he was Dictator, Pontifex Maximus or Supreme Head of the Church, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and, like Pooh-Bah, several minor officials as well. Of all these, the most important was commander-in-chief; witness the fact that the Latin word for it,
imperator,
gave us the title “emperor.” Cæsar was killed by a group of conspirators who hoped to restore the Republic; but it was too late for that.

The great prose writers of this time were two of the great actors in it, Caesar and Cicero. There were also two poets, who, like most great poets, are not of an age but for all time, Lucretius and Catullus. Lucretius’ work is that unique epic of thought,
On the Nature of Things.
It is very different from the brilliant speculations and myths of the Greeks. Zeno of Elea, for instance, maintained that if Achilles, the swiftest of mortals, tried to overtake a tortoise, he could never catch it, since before he could go the whole distance he must go half, and there would always be half of some distance remaining; this and a series of other paradoxes had a serious purpose, to show that the very natures of time, space, and motion were self-contradictory. Plato explains love by saying that we are all made double and split apart, and one wonders how far to believe him. The Roman Lucretius looks straight at the world and tries to see how it is made. In his own way he is no less astonishing than Plato. The atomic theory, organic evolution and the Mendelian principle, the origin of kingship with a foreshadowing of Rousseau, a theory of dreams—they are all here. And here is the triumphant, rapturous denial of immortality, stated with such eloquence that while one reads, at least, it really seems what it seemed to Lucretius, good news.

Catullus was the most brilliant of a circle of brilliant young men who cultivated Greek literature and wrote imitations of it. Through the body of his verse it is possible to know him as one knows few men in history. He shares with us the rapture of first love, the anguish of disillusionment, the pang of bereavement, even his friendships and his quarrels. Catullus, Lucretius, and the philosophic writings of Cicero remind us of what is so hard to remember in reading history—that even in periods of the greatest crisis men still ponder abstract themes, they still fall in love.

(Titus Maccius Plautus, 254? B.C.-184 B.C.)

SCENE:
A street in Thebes in front of the house of Amphitryon.

MERCURY
(disguised as Sosia):
As you in all your mer
chandisings wish,
Whether you buy or sell, that I should help
And render aid in everything you do,
And see that all your businesses and plans
Should turn out well, whether they be at home
Or else abroad, and bless you with a rich
And full reward in all you are engaged,
Or will engage in, still to you and yours
Bring tidings of success, and still report
Of all that may be for your common good;
For you already know the gods have given
And granted me a preference as to news
And trade; and, as you wish, I still should try
To bless, and bring to you perpetual gain;
Listen in silence to this comedy,
As fair, impartial arbiters should do.
Now I will tell at whose command I come,
And wherefore, and will give my name as well.
Jove is my master; Mercury my name;
He sent me here as his ambassador;
Although he knew his word would be for you
As good as a command, and that you fear
And reverence his name, as well you should;
But still he bid me now to come to you,
Entreatingly, with kind and gentle words.
For sure this Jove as much as any one
Of you, dreads ill mischance; born as he is
Like you of mortal mother, mortal sire,
‘Tis nothing strange, if he fears for himself.
And I too, I who am the son of Jove
Infected am with this same dread of ill.
Therefore with kindly feeling ’tis I come
And bring the same to you; from you I ask
But what is just and feasible; as one
Who justice does, justice he asks from you.
To ask unfairness from the fair were wrong;
And to ask fair play from the unfair were but
To lose one’s time; they know not what is right
Nor try to do it. Now attend to me.
You ought to wish the same as we; for we,
I and my father, have deserved well
Of you and of your State. Why needs recall
How I in plays have seen the other gods,
Neptune and Virtue, Victory and Mars,
Aye, and Bellona, tell the good that they
Have done to you, while of that very good
My sire, who reigns in Heaven, was architect.
But sure, it never was my father’s way
To throw the good he’s done in people’s teeth;
He thinks you’re grateful for his services;
And ne‘er regrets what he has done for you.
Now first I’ll tell you what I come to say;
And then explain the plot, which underlies
This tragedy; but why contract your brows,
When I say tragedy? For I’m a god
And soon can change it; if you like I’ll make
These selfsame verses be a comedy.
Shall I or not? But sure I am a fool,
Being a god, and yet not knowing what you wish.
Ah, yes! I know your mind; and I will make it
A tragicomedy; for it is not right
To make a play where kings and gods do speak
All comedy. But since a slave takes part
I’ll make it for you tragicomedy.
Now Jupiter desires I ask of you
That the detectives look the seats all through,
And if they find there men who are suborned
To clap the actors, that they take their cloaks
To be security to meet the charge.
And so those actors who have sought to arrange,
Whether by letter written, or themselves,
Or intermediaries, to have the palm,
Or that the magistrates should act unfairly,
Then Jove has granted that the law apply
The same as if they had conspired to get
An office for themselves, or some one else.
You victors, he has said, must fairly win,
And not by canvassing and treachery.
Why should not that be law to actors too
As is to greatest men? By merit we
Should seek to win, and not by hired applause.
Virtue’s its own reward to well-doers,
If those who are in power act fairly by them.
And he has further given a command,
That there shall be detectives, who shall see
If any actor has arranged for men
To applaud himself, or to prevent some other
Receiving his applause, that they shall flay
His dress and hide in pieces with a scourge.
I would not ye should wonder that Jove cares
For the actor’s welfare; he’ll be one himself.
Why be amazed, as though ’twere something new
For Jove to turn an actor? Even last year
When the actors did invoke him on the stage
He came and helped them out; in tragedy
He certainly appears. And so today
He’ll act in this and I will do the same.
And now attend: I will relate the plot.
This city’s Thebes; and in that house there dwells
Amphitryon, of Argive blood, and born
At Argos; he is wedded to a wife,
Alcmena, daughter of Electryon.
He was the leader of the army when
The Thebans and the Teloboans fought.
But ere he joined the army in the field,
He left Alcmena pregnant; now you know,
I think, by this time that my father is
In these same matters somewhat free, and when
The fancy takes him, loves with all his strength;
Thus he began to love Alcmena, and
Borrowed her, as it were, all unbeknown,
And left her pregnant too. So, as you see,
Alcmena has a double progeny.
My father now is in the house with her;
And for that reason this night has been made
Longer than usual, that he may take
His pleasure with her as he will. And then
He has disguised himself, so that he’s like
Amphitryon. And do not wonder at
This dress of mine, and that I’ve come today
In likeness of a slave; believe me ‘tis
A novel rendering of an ancient theme;
And therefore I come dressed in novel garb.
My father is within, in likeness of
Amphitryon; all the servants think ’tis he;
So clever is he to transform himself,
Just as he chooses. I have taken the form
Of Sosia, who went with him to the war.
In this way I can serve my father; and
The servants do not ask me who I am,
When thus they see me passing to and fro.
For when they think I am their fellow-slave
No one will ask my name, or why I came.
My father now within enjoys himself
Just as he will, with her he loveth most;
He tells her what has happened at the war;
She thinks it is her husband. So he tells
What forces of the foe he’s put to rout,
What costly gifts he has received from them.
The things thus given to Amphitryon
We carried off; an easy task for him
Who can do as he likes. But now today
Amphitryon will return, and he whose form
I’ve taken as a slave; and that you may
Distinguish ‘tween us I will wear a plume
Upon my hat; while with the same intent
My father wears a tassel under his;
Amphitryon will not have one, but these marks
No one will see, but only you alone.
But see, here’s Sosia, Amphitryon’s slave,
Fresh from the port, his lantern in his hand.
I’ll keep him from the house—and see, he’s there.
’Twill be worth while, I think, to the spectators here
As actors to see Jove and Mercury appear.