QUAESTIO I. CATULLUS IN RELATION TO GREEK LITERATURE. 6 Saepe tibi studiose animo venante requirens IF the web of history could be unravelled, and we might speculate afresh on what is past, nothing would appear so certain as this: that Rome, but for her contact with Greece, instead of producing a literature whose influence has pervaded and ruled the later world of letters with almost sovereign authority, would have had no literature whatsoever worthy of the name. Whatever native inspiration the Italians possessed, they wanted the proper forms of expression. Greek genius had created these forms for itself: the Roman borrowed them, and used them, in his own way, to supply his need. Roman poetry is far from a lifeless imitation of Greek poetry; but the Roman poet could not work without a model. At first wrong models were chosen. The earlier and greater Greek literature rather defied than assisted Latin literary effort. It was too spontaneous for conscious endeavour to learn from it; its Hellenic characters were too deeply stamped to be effaced or changed in order to suit Roman purposes. As long therefore as only the earlier Greek epic and drama were studied by the first Latin poets, so long-men of genius though they were they failed. But the last generation of the Republic turned for instruction to the school of Alexandria. There, by royal command, a cosmopolitan university of letters had arisen, whose members had specially devoted themselves to the critical examination of the modes of literary composition, and had provided a series of 'studies' in almost every literary form. Alexandrine poetry was not written by men of the highest order of genius: it was artificial, unreal, often spoilt by over-precision and pedantry. Its power, though indeed it has left much which the world will not willingly let die, lies in execution rather than creation. But the Roman poets seized the forms which the Alexandrines taught them, made them their own, and breathed into them the freshness of a newer life. More than this, they were enabled by Alexandria to reach and reap with profit the older literature of Greece. Thus Roman literature, in its best originality, became possible; but the debt of Rome to Alexandria is ever shown by a constant searching after the right model, discernible in all Latin poetry from its beginning to its close. This debt was freely confessed by Propertius, Ovid, Virgil; but by none so frankly as by the most original. of Roman poets, Catullus. He had learned enough from the Alexandrine poets to respect them as masters of style. How much he depended on them for guidance (far greater poet as he was than they) is curiously illustrated by the lines (CXVI. 1-2) prefixed to these remarks. There, wishing to find a means of winning over Gellius and appeasing his hostility, he does not send him a poem written from his own heart and appealing to the heart of his enemy, but tries to find poems of Callimachus (for translation or imitation) that will serve the same end. In LXV., also, he seems to imply that he does not care to compose without his books. But Catullus is no mere disciple of Alexandria. He is a student also of the grand classical writers of Greece, and rises nearer to their elevation than any Alexandrine had done. Still further, throughout all his employment of acquired culture, he is a great original poet. ''In what then, we may ask, is Catullus a follower 1I venture to borrow these eloquent words from the Commentary of Professor Ellis, of whose work on Catullus it may truly be said, κτῆμα ἐς ἀεὶ μᾶλλον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται, and I take this opportunity of acknowledging my obligations to him. Most of the views expressed in this volume were formed before the appearance of his valuable commentary: where I have borrowed from him I have religiously stated my debt, where I have found myself in accordance with him I have felt both pleasure and confirmation, where I have differed from him I have done so with diffidence. In the following tables I have obtained a certain number of parallelisms, which I had not before known, from his notes. of the Alexandrine poets? Not in their pedantry, for he is without a trace of it; nor in their obscurity, for he is rarely obscure; nor in their scrupulous choice of the least obvious expression, for all he says is simple and straightforward, . . . nor in their cosmopolitan Hellenism which has ceased to think of individual autonomy and cares only to influence the world, for he can never forget that he is an Italian, a Veronese, above all a Roman citizen; nor in their flattery of the great, for he is never happier than when he is scoffing at worthless nobles or reviling Caesar: nor even in the tone of their love poetry, for, with some unimportant exceptions, he expresses not a Theocritean sentimentalism, which feeds on the thought of a beloved object, and half contents itself with the shadow when the reality is away; but rather a full feeling of the enjoyment of life, the sensuous even coarse delights of a love present and palpable, the melancholy which attends the thought of death as ending them, and the various episodes of a lover's life, its quarrels, reproaches, and reconciliation, or despair. So far as these love-poems are Greek at all, they are like the early Greek lyrics, not the latest compositions of Alexandria; and we are left to the conclusion that Catullus is, except in the elegies, and to some extent in the "Peleus and Thetis," less indebted to Alexandrine models than is generally supposed: amongst his personal friends Cinna, in the succeeding generation, Virgil and Propertius, show far clearer proofs of direct and conscious imitation.' We do not know how much Catullus modelled upon originals now lost; but parallelisms-which do not seem accidental-between him and extant Alexandrine writers (A), and between Catullus and the older Greek writers (B), are shown in the following tables. 1 Probably oftener than we know from the remains of Philetas. |