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The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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LITERATURE
Rome during this period began to form the literature which has come down to us; but unfortunately, instead of being national and original, it was imitative and borrowed, consisting chiefly of translations from the Greek. In the year after the end of the First Punic War (240), L. Livius Andronicus, an Italian Greek by birth, represented his first play at Rome. His pieces were taken from the Greek; and he also translated the Odyssey out of that language into Latin. Cn. Nævius, a native of Campania, also made plays from the Greek, and he wrote an original poem on the First Punic War, in which he had himself borne arms. These poets used the Latin measures in their verse; but Q. Ennius, from Rudiæ in Calabria, who is usually called the father of Roman poetry, was the first who introduced the Greek metres into the Latin language. His works were numerous tragedies and comedies from the Greek, satires, and his celebrated Annals, or poetic history of Rome, in hexameters, the loss of which (at least of the early books) is much to be lamented. Maccius Plautus, an Umbrian, and Cæcilius Statius, an Insubrian Gaul, composed numerous comedies, freely imitated from the Greek. M. Pacuvius of Brundusium, the nephew of Ennius, made tragedies from the Greek; L. Afranius was regarded as the Menander of Rome; and P. Terentius (Terence), a Carthaginian by birth, gave some beautiful translations (as we may perhaps best term his pieces) of the comedies of Menander and Apollodorus. None of these poets but Plautus and Terence has reached us, except in fragments; the former amuses us with his humour, and gives us occasional views of Roman manners, while we are charmed with the graceful elegance of the latter. It is remarkable that not one of these poets was a Roman. In fact Rome has never produced a poet.
Q. Fabius Pictor, L. Cincius Alimentus, A. Postumius Albinus, M. Porcius Cato, and L. Cassius Hemina wrote histories (the first three in Greek) in a brief, dry, unattractive style. Cincius also wrote on constitutional antiquities, and seems to have been a man of research; and a work of Cato’s on husbandry has come down to us which we could well spare for his Origines, or early history of Italy.e
FOOTNOTES
[64] [Both consular places were opened to the plebeians by the law of the tribune Genucius, passed in 342 B.C.; cf. Mommsenh and Greenidge.i]
[65] [The reduction of the comitia curiata to a mere form belongs to the fifth century B.C.]
[66] [The senators were chiefly men who had held the principal civic offices; and as these offices were monopolised by a narrow circle of wealthy families, the senatorial places must have been practically, though not constitutionally, hereditary.]
[67] [By the Publilian law of 339 B.C. (cf. p. 185) the senatorial control over the centuries was reduced to a formality. But the senate still controlled the magistrates, and the magistrates controlled the assemblies.]
[68] [In fact the tribal assembly came into existence before the comitia centuriata began to grow more popular—the tribal assembly influenced the development of the centuriate assembly in a democratic direction.]
[69] [According to some authorities, however, the comitia centuriata did not come into existence before the end of the regal period.]
[70] [Rarely were laws passed by the tribal assembly under the presidency of a consul.]
[71] [After the passing of the Hortensian Law, 287 B.C., the tribunes were no longer constitutionally bound to gain the consent of the senate to their bills; and occasionally a tribune, as Flaminius in 232 and Claudius in 218, availed himself of his constitutional freedom. Generally, however, the tribunes were ministers of the senate, and more subservient than the consuls.]
[72] When the pound of weight ceased to be the same with the pound of currency, the former was usually designated æs grave.
[73] Munire viam, was their phrase.
CHAPTER XV. THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
It appears that before the time of Scipio’s election to conduct the Numantian War, it had become a prevalent opinion that some measures were necessary to arrest the prevailing social evils. The frightful excesses of the Servile War called attention still more strongly to the subject; and in the year that Scipio achieved the conquest of Numantia a leader appeared who was endowed with courage, firmness, self-confidence, ability, eloquence, and every requisite for political success, except a larger experience and a larger share of patience and self-control.b A. H. Beesley thus vividly paints the crying evils of the Roman state:
“Everywhere Rome was failing in her duties as mistress of the civilised world. Her own internal degeneracy was faithfully reflected in the abnegation of her imperial duties. When in any country the small farmer class is being squeezed off the land; when its labourers are slaves or serfs; when huge tracts are kept waste to minister to pleasure; when the shibboleth of art is on every man’s lips, but ideas of true beauty in very few men’s souls; when the business sharper is the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, ‘corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation; when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the footpad or burglar’—when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.
“A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined. A mob, a moneyed class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other, and hated by the rest of the world; Italians bitterly jealous of Romans, and only in better plight than the provinces beyond the sea; more miserable than either, swarms of slaves beginning to brood revenge as a solace to their sufferings; the land going out of cultivation; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to organised pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, wholesale luxury, and monstrous vice. The hour for reform had surely come. Who was to be the man?”c
Ti. Sempronius Gracchus was son of one of the few Romans in whom public spirit prevailed over the spirit of party. Though personally hostile to the great Scipio, we saw him interfere between him and his foes. After the death of Africanus, the chiefs of the party offered him the hand of Cornelia, the only surviving daughter of the hero; and from this marriage twelve sons and one daughter were born in rapid succession. The eldest, Tiberius, saw the light about 166 B.C., but the father died before his eldest son reached man’s estate, and Cornelia was left a widow with her children. The daughter lived; but of all the twelve sons only two grew up—Tiberius, and Caius who was nine years younger. To the education of these precious relics Cornelia devoted all the energies of her masculine mind. She even refused an offer to share the throne of the king of Egypt. Her dearest task was to watch the opening capacities of her boys. Such was her hope of their greatness that she used to say she would be known not as the daughter of Scipio, but as the mother of the Gracchi.