dear to him. Yet after all, city or country was but matter of circumstance; outward rest was not inner calm : Patriæ quis exsul se quoque fugit?' 2 I set store on what Laudo manentem, says Horace ;' abides; and what abides, that depends on Fortune, on anything without the man? Then, no turn of her wheel shall disturb,-yet neither can any chance of hers bring calm; not by change of scene shall man allay his restlessness : Cælum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt.❜ No; what you seek is here; look within and you may find peace. So for himself, as he nears the end of life, Horace feels that it is time to give up toys, abandon verses. Now, as his greater friend Virgil thought to do on completing the Eneid, it is time to turn to philosophy, and from her learn life's true numbers, and how to profit by old age; that also has its good to teachabove all the quiet mind which undisturbed shall see life passing away. Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti; 5 says Horace quietly. He at least has found himself. "I, whether sailing on a great ship or a small, shall sail one and the same. Horace never shut his eyes to the sweetness of pleasant paths. A temperate Epicurean had he been, and to the last did not abandon the full recognition of such good as might lie in life's joys; only in later years he took his pleasures gratefully as from God: Tu quamcumque deus tibi fortunaverit horam These lines are the fine essence of Epicureanism and Stoicism tempered together. In them a heart spoke responsive to all the finer sympathies of pagan life. But Horace knew the littleness of pleasure as life went on, and felt the utter sadness of pleasure, if taken as an end of living. Instead of turning bitterly from what was not a full and worthy end of life, he subordinated it to its proper place, and advocated virtuous living as a higher aim. The outer act, in its doing and results, would afford satisfaction to the doer if it sprang from love of right conduct, while within, even in the pure mind which cherished right, lay the man's immovable peace. Persius and Juvenal. The aspirations of Virgil, the approvals of Horace, the respect of both for the past, represented veritable ideals of the Empire. These, with the Stoicism of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, stood for what was recognized as good. The writings of all the great Latin authors of the time are proofs of this. Poets, historians, rhetoricians, if they lack the heart or the serious moral purpose to set forth these ideals, constantly disapprove their opposites, and that whether this disapproval be light like that of Petronius, or earnest like that of Persius, proud and self-controlled like that of Tacitus, or bitter, fierce, undiscriminating, and exaggerated as in the satires of Juvenal. A man inculcates morality by encomiums on virtue or by invectives against vice. The latter is the way of satirists like Persius or Juvenal. Persius was a high-minded youth, a Stoic poet and admirer of Horace. He wrote his six satires during the first years of Nero's reign, and died at twenty-eight. Young as he was, he had a sense of life's emptiness-O quantum est in rebus inane!'-as he wrote satires in turbida Roma.' His lip curls at man's vanity—“ It is nothing that you know a thing, unless some one else knows that you know it! Sham he despises : Ad populum phaleras! " Off with thy 1 Sat., i, i. VOL. II.-4 2i, 5. 3i, 26. trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see your skin. Like Horace, he has a sharp word for those who see only others' faults,' and with Horace he bids men find their store of good within: "Reject what is not thee, live from thyself."' He mocks those who would put off serious thought till the morrow,'-none but the wise is free. Persius believes that the gods reward and punish, and he has a high spiritual idea of the right way to worship them: they do not care for flesh like gluttons, the true offering is a pure mind careful of duties to God and man.' He prizes virtue, can think of no greater punishment for tyrants than that they should see her as she is, and know they have lost her forever." So Persius has thoughts of virtue's worth and beauty. Juvenal's mind is taken up with the foulness of vice. Like other Romans, he looks upon the past as virtue's golden time, and sees the widespread evil of the present flourish because, with the circumstances of Rome's past, her virtues have departed: "In olden days their lowly fortunes kept the Latin women chaste, and their daily tasks, and their husbands standing guard against Hannibal. Now we suffer the evils of a long peace; luxury more cruel than war has fastened on us, and avenges a conquered world. No crime is lacking, nor deed of lust, since Roman poverty ceased. Filthy money brought foreign customs, and softening riches have broken down the times through foul excess. These lines represent Juvenal's strongest opinion, and the one perhaps least dependent on his warped temper. It was as hard for him as for Dean Swift to see good in the world about him. That world was mostly sham and worthlessness; whatever human quality Juvenal thought worthy, he also thought of as unrewarded: Probitas laudatur et alget." He could not quite bring himself to see in virtue a sufficient end, yet he seems to have thought no evil man happy,' and that he whose life deserved death was as good as dead.' He can recognize the high worth of heroism,' and strongly feels the value of an upright example set by father to son: Maxima debetur puero reverentia.* His ethics lay entire stress upon intent: he who meditates a crime incurs the guilt of the deed.' Juvenal had his thoughts of God. To be sure, he says that not even boys believe the old stories of the Stygian whirlpool over which many thousands pass in a single boat. But he speaks seriously of prayer." Men often ask for what is bad for them, and are ruined by the gods granting their requests. If you are wise you will leave it to the gods to grant what is best: yet if indeed one must ask for something, let it be for a mens sana in corpore sano." This is a religious advance over Horace who would himself furnish his own equal mind. 8 Juvenal expressed the more merciful tendencies of the time: Vengeance is a joy for petty souls; if you become governor of a province, be moderate and have mercy on the poor allies.' He himself can feel pity for the poor wretch whose "whole nothing some fire has consumed." Finally, he is a poet in full accord with the growing recognition of the human heart: "Nature gave tenderest hearts to men, she who gave them tears, the best part of us. She bids us weep at human sorrow. What man, worthy of Ceres's mystic torch, deems others sorrows not his own? 11 Despite the immorality of the times, in which the women shared, and despite descriptions of unspeakable Love at feminine depravity in Juvenal,' there had come with the Empire finer conceptions of love between men and women than had previously existed. It was part of the growing refinement of sentiment. In their lives, Tibullus and Propertius were perhaps no better than Catullus; yet in their poems may be found higher thoughts of love. Propertius was madly devoted to an inconstant mistress, but never reviled her as Catullus did his Lesbia: Quod si forte aliqua nobis mutabere culpa, Vestibulum jaceam mortuus ante tuum : * 2 Catullus could not have thought just this. Tibullus has still finer thoughts.' He sings much of love chaste and tender, a pure absorbing love between a youth and maid, which looks toward marriage: Tu mihi curarum requies, tu nocte vel atra Thou art my ease from cares, a gleam in the black night, an ample multitude for me in places lone." No such sweet thought of love as this had been expressed before. The more humane temper of the second century of the Empire appeared in a very unpoetical person, the younger Pliny, a man representing many of the not Pliny. unkindly foibles of his time. He was amiable, affectionate, somewhat vain, but most indulgent to like vanities in his friends: "Be gentle to the faults of 1 As an offset to which may be set many epitaphs of the Empire speaking of virtuous wives; and descriptions of lovely feminine character in Pliny: Epist., v, 16; vii, 19. Pliny dearly loved his own wife too, Epist., vii, 5; and Marcus Aurelius' reverence for his own mother testifies to much. 2 Propertius, iii, vi, 31. See Tibullus, iii, iii, 23; cf. ib., iii, 1. Tib., iv, xiii, 11. See also Propertius, v, xi, for a touching address of a virtuous wife in her grave to her husband. |