The History of Rome. Book III
Page 63
18. III. VI In Italy.
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19. Bacch. 24; Trin. 609; True. iii. 2, 23. Naevius also, who in fact was generally less scrupulous, ridicules the Praenestines and Lanuvini (Com. 21, Ribb.). There are indications more than once of a certain variance between the Praenestines and Romans (Liv. xxiii. 20, xlii. i); and the executions in the time of Pyrrhus (ii. 18) as well as the catastrophe in that of Sulla, were certainly connected with this variance. - Innocent jokes, such as Capt. 160, 881, of course passed uncensured. - The compliment paid to Massilia in Cas. v. 4., i, deserves notice.
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20. Thus the prologue of the Cistellaria concludes with the following words, which may have a place here as the only contemporary mention of the Hannibalic war in the literature that has come down to us:
Haec res sic gesta est. Bene valete, et vincite
Virtute vera, quod fecistis antidhac;
Servate vostros socios, veteres et novos;
Augete auxilia vostris iustis legibus;
Perdite perduelles: parite laudem et lauream
Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.
The fourth line (augete auxilia vostris iustis Iegibus) has reference to the supplementary payments imposed on the negligent Latin colonies in 550 (Liv. xxix. 15; see ii. 350).
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21. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements.
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22. For this reason we can hardly be too cautious in assuming allusions on the part of Plautus to the events of the times. Recent investigation has set aside many instances of mistaken acuteness of this sort; but might not even the reference to the Bacchanalia, which is found in Cas. v. 4, 11 (Ritschl, Parerg. 1. 192), have been expected to incur censure? We might even reverse the case and infer from the notices of the festival of Bacchus in the Casina, and some other pieces (Amph. 703; Aul. iii. i, 3; Bacch. 53, 371; Mil. Glor. 1016; and especially Men. 836), that these were written at a time when it was not yet dangerous to speak of the Bacchanalia.
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23. The remarkable passage in the Tarentilla can have no other meaning:
Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere:
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus!
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24. The ideas of the modern Hellas on the point of slavery are illustrated by the passage in Euripides (Ion, 854; comp. Helena, 728):
En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei,
Tounoma ta d' alla panta ton eleutheron
Oudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.
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25. For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in the Stichus of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question - whether it is better to marry a virgin or a widow - is inserted, merely in order that it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women. But that is a trifle compared with the following specimen. In Menander's Plocium a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:
Echo d' epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soi
Tout'; eit' ap' ouchi; kurian tes oikias
Kai ton agron kai panton ant' ekeines
Echoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotaton
Apasi d' argalea 'stin, ouk emoi mono,
Tio polu mallon thugatri.--pragm' amachon legeis'
Eu oida
In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:
Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est? - Ua! rogas? -
Qui tandem? - Taedet rientionis, quae mihi
Ubi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo savium
Dat jejuna anima. - Nil peccat de savio:
Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.
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26. Even when the Romans built stone theatres, these had not the sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).
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27. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements.
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28. The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused. Seeing that he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than 495. Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell. xii. 21. 45). That he had died as early as 550, as is usually stated, was doubted by Varro (ap. Cic. Brut. 15, 60), and certainly with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy. The sarcastic verses on Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of Zama. We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10), ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than Plautus. His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph. The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of explanation. At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in the army.
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29. Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from Naevius' tragedy of Lycurgus:
Vos, qui regalis cordons custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita;
Or the famous words, which in the Hector Profisciscens Hector addresses to Priam:
Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato viro;
and the charming verse from the Tarentilla:
Alii adnutat, alii adnictat; alium amat, alium tenet.
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30. III. XIV. Political Neutrality.
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31. III. XIV. Political Neutrality.
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32. This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author, properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a similar uncertainty as to his literary property. In this respect, as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.
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33. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls.
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34. III. XIV. Roman Barbarism.
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35. Togatus denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language, the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also to the Roman burgess. Thus especially formula togatorum (Corp. Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions. The designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as Gallia togata, which first occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the ordinary usus loquendi, describes this region presumably according to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights. Virgil appears likewise in the gens togata, which he mentions along with the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation. According to this view we shall have to recognize in the fabula togatathe comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the fabula palliata had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of Rome. That in reality the togata could only have its plot laid in the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their scene - Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium, - demonstrably had Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war. By the extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost thi
s Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which de jure took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off for the dramatists of the capital, and so the fabula togata seems in fact to have disappeared. But the de jure suppressed communities of Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii. 148), and so far the fabula Atellana was in some measure the continuation of the -togata-.
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36. Respecting Titinius there is an utter want of literary information; except that, to judge from a fragment of Varro, he seems to have been older than Terence (558-595, Ritschl, Parerg. i. 194) for more indeed, cannot he inferred from that passage, and though, of the two groups there compared the second (Trabea, Atilius, Caecilius) is on the whole older than the first (Titinius, Terentius, Atta), it does not exactly follow that the oldest of the junior group is to be deemed younger than the youngest of the elder.
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37. II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy.
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38. Of the fifteen comedies of Titinius, with which we are acquainted, six are named after male characters (baratus? coecus, fullones, Hortensius, Quintus, varusand nine after female (Gemina, iurisperita, prilia? privigna, psaltria or Ferentinatis, Setina, tibicina, Veliterna, Ulubrana?), two of which, the iurisperita and the tibicina, are evidently parodies of men's occupations. The feminine world preponderates also in the fragments.
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39. III. XIV. Livius Andronicus.
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40. III. XIV. Audience.
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41. We subjoin, for comparison, the opening lines of the Medea in the original of Euripides and in the version of Ennius:
Eith' ophel' 'Apgous me diaptasthai skaphos
Kolchon es aian kuaneas sumplegadas
Med' en napaisi Pelion pesein pote
Tmetheisa peuke, med' epetmosai cheras
Andron arioton, oi to pagchruson deros
Pelia metelthon ou gar an despoin
Medeia purgous ges epleus Iolkias
'Eroti thumon ekplageis' 'Iasonos. -
-Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa accidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum.
Nam nunquam era errans mea domo efferret pedem
Medea, animo aegra, amort saevo saucia.
The variations of the translation from the original are instructive - not only its tautologies and periphrases, but also the omission or explanation of the less familiar mythological names, e. g. the Symplegades, the Iolcian land, the Argo. But the instances in which Ennius has really misunderstood the original are rare.
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42. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
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43. Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,
quocum bene saepe libenter
Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassus diei
Partem fuisset de summis rebus regundis
Consilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
Cui res audacter magnas parvasque iocumque
Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque,
Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
Ut faceret facinus lenis aut malus, doctus fidelis
Suavis homo facundus suo contentus beatus
Scitus secunda loquens in tempore commodus verbum
Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem,
Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque,
Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.
In the line before the last we should probably read multarum leges divumque hominumque.
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44. Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,
Os olig' alethe, polla de pseuon legei
Tuchon, otan de me, tuche oioichetai
This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe against the casters of horoscopes:
-Astrologorum signa in caelo quaesit, observat,
Iovis
Cum capra aut nepa aut exoritur lumen aliquod beluae.
Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.
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45. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.
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46. In the Telephus we find him saying
Palam mutire plebeio piaculum est.
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47. III. XIII. Luxury.
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48. The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the Phoenix of Euripides:
Sed virum virtute vera vivere animatum addecet,
Fortiterque innoxium vocare adversum adversarios.
Ea libertas est, qui pectus purum et firmum gestitat:
Aliae res obnoxiosae nocte in obscura latent.
In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:
mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio,
Et Neptunus saevus undis asperis pausam dedit.
Sol equis iter repressit ungulis volantibus;
Constitere amnes perennes, arbores vento vacant.
This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet worked up his original poems. It is simply an expansion of the words which occur in the tragedy Hectoris Lustra (the original of which was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat between Hephaestus and the Scamander:
Constitit credo Scamander, arbores vento vacant,
and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).
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49. Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:
stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,
and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).
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50. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.
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51. III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians.
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52. Besides Cato, we find the names of two "consulars and poets" belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4) - Quintus Labeo, consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581. But it remains uncertain whether they published their poems. Even in the case of Cato this may be doubted.
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53. II. IX. Roman Historical Composition.
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54. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.
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55. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.
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56. The following fragments will give some idea of its tone. Of Dido he says:
Blande et docte percontat - Aeneas quo pacto
Troiam urbem liquerit.
Again of Amulius:
Manusque susum ad caelum - sustulit suas rex
Amulius; gratulatur - divis.
Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:
Sin illos deserant for - tissumos virorum
Magnum stuprum populo - fieri per gentis.
With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:
Transit Melitam Romanus - insuiam integram
Urit populatur vastat - rem hostium concinnat.
Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:
Id quoque paciscunt moenia - sint Lutatium quae
Reconcilient; capti
vos - plurimos idem
Sicilienses paciscit - obsides ut reddant.