Theodor Mommsen - The history of Rome

The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral, species of historical literature - memoirs, letters, and speeches - were strongly represented also, at least as respects quantity. The first statesmen of Rome already recorded in person their experiences: such as Marcus Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus (consul in 649), Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the regent Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been of importance for literature otherwise than by the substance of their contents. The collection of letters of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the classical purity of the language and the high spirit of the writer, partly as the first correspondence published in Rome, and as the first literary production of a Roman lady. The literature of speeches preserved at this period the stamp impressed on it by Cato; advocates' pleadings were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such speeches as were published were political pamphlets. During the revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in literature from the important position of their authors or from their own weight. Such were the political speeches of Gaius Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the time - his description of the senatorial juryman has been given already [31]- the national comedy borrowed various points; such above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny of that lofty nature.

In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue, and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place were distinctly specified. But the later men of science, such as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences of general culture and in the special professional sciences. The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form. We have already spoken [32]in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture, grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional sciences properly so called.

In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in close association with the philological treatment - long ago placed on a sure basis - of Greek literature. It was already mentioned that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found their diaskeuastae and revisers of their text [33]; it was also noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with the regulation of orthography and of grammar. At the same period we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors" and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates", can hardly have been better than their chronicles. Of more interest were the treatise on the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable for political objects [34], and the metrically composed Didascaliae of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the Latin drama. But those early attempts at a scientific treatment of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer-Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.

The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650 [35]. He first went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables. He devoted his special attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine. He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings and to ascertain in each case the "inventor", and at the same time brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his research. The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical, and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into things to his disciple Varro.

The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might be expected, of a more subordinate kind. There was nothing here to be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the need for them, partly on account of vanity and money. Such a manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion then prevailing [36]taught simultaneously Latin literature and Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.

Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics - that "loquacious science of inability to speak" - whose finished master, for sheer fear of expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to pronounce his own name. The Greek school-terminology is throughout and intentionally avoided. Very earnestly the author points out the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice in the Roman advocate-world. It deserves attention, that the opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric [37], continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity and a greater usefulness.