The history of Rome. Book V

Italy had hitherto been in the main disinclined towards Alexandrinism. Its season of comparative brilliance was the period shortly before and after the first Punic war; yet Naevius, E

We find in this respect even a direct co

But it was by no means simply such accidental occasions which called into existence the Roman Alexandrinism; it was on the contrary a product - perhaps not pleasing, but thoroughly inevitable - of the political and national development of Rome. On the one hand, as Hellas resolved itself into Hellenism, so now Latium resolved itself into Romanism; the national development of Italy outgrew itself, and was merged in Caesar's Mediterranean empire, just as the Hellenic development in the eastern empire of Alexander.

On the other hand, as the new empire rested on the fact that the mighty streams of Greek and Latin nationality, after having flowed in parallel cha

The ruin of the Italian nationality, accomplished in the creation of Caesar, nipped the promise of literature. Every one who has any sense of the close affinity between art and nationality will always turn back from Cicero and Horace to Cato and Lucretius; and nothing but the schoolmaster's view of history and of literature - which has acquired, it is true, in this department the sanction of prescription - could have called the epoch of art begi

Nowhere was the prospect more lamentable than in dramatic literature. Tragedy and comedy had already before the present epoch become inwardly extinct in the Roman national literature. New pieces were no longer performed. That the public still in the Sullan age expected to see such, appears from the reproductions - belonging to this epoch - of Plautine comedies with the titles and names of the persons altered, with reference to which the managers well added that it was better to see a good old piece than a bad new one. From this the step was not great to that entire surrender of the stage to the dead poets, which we find in the Ciceronian age, and to which Alexandrinism made no opposition. Its productiveness in this department was worse than none. Real dramatic composition the Alexandrian literature never knew; nothing but the spurious drama, which was written primarily for reading and not for exhibition, could be introduced by it into Italy, and soon accordingly these dramatic iambics began to be quite as prevalent in Rome as in Alexandria, and the writing of tragedy in particular began to figure among the regular diseases of adolescence. We may form a pretty accurate idea of the quality of these productions from the fact that Quintus Cicero, in order homoeopathically to beguile the weariness of winter quarters in Gaul, composed four tragedies in sixteen days.

In the "picture of life" or mime alone the last still vigorous product of the national literature, the Atellan farce, became engrafted with the ethological offshoots of Greek comedy, which Alexandrinism cultivated with greater poetical vigour and better success than any other branch of poetry. The mime originated out of the dances in character to the flute, which had long been usual, and which were performed sometimes on other occasions, e. g. for the entertainment of the guests during di

It was not difficult to form out of these dances - in which the aid of speech had doubtless long since been occasionally employed - by means of the introduction of a more organized plot and a regular dialogue little comedies, which were yet essentially distinguished from the earlier comedy and even from the farce by the facts, that the dance and the lasciviousness inseparable from such dancing continued in this case to play a chief part, and that the mime, as belonging properly not to the boards but to the pit, threw aside all ideal scenic effects, such as masks for the face and theatrical buskins, and - what was specially important - admitted of the female characters being represented by women. This new mime, which first seems to have come on the stage of the capital about 672, soon swallowed up the national harlequinade, with which it indeed in the most essential respects coincided, and was employed as the usual interlude and especially as afterpiece along with the other dramatic performances[9]. The plot was of course still more indifferent, loose, and absurd than in the harlequinade; if it was only sufficiently chequered, the public did not ask why it laughed, and did not remonstrate with the poet, who instead of untying the knot cut it to pieces. The subjects were chiefly of an amorous nature, mostly of the licentious sort; for example, poet and public without exception took part against the husband, and poetical justice consisted in the derision of good morals.