The Historians' History of the World 06

Ovid was a talented poet, to whom verses and thoughts came rapidly and without difficulty, but he was entirely wanting in depth of feeling. Even the poems, which came most from his heart, those laments which he sang in his banishment at inhospitable Tomi, scarcely arouse true sympathy, for the intrinsic unreality from which the poetry of Ovid suffers even here forces itself upon the reader. He recognised the conditions of the new monarchy unreservedly, and no poet is so well qualified as he to give us a picture of the views and manner of thought of the circle which surrounded the imperial house. Sensuality and pleasure are the scarlet threads which run through the Ovidian poems, and the pain which tortures him in banishment is entirely the effect of being shut out from the luxurious way of life which prevailed in those circles whose conversations and intrigues were the very life of his poetry.

The satire also, that most characteristic production of the national spirit of Rome, was now cultivated in a fashion partly original by Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus, born on the 8th of December, 65 B.C., died on the 27th of November, 6 B.C.). Deep feeling or an effective comprehension of the times, its weaknesses and duties, would be sought for in vain, for the salons of the Augustan period no longer possessed these qualities, and it is a picture of the conversations of the salons that has been bequeathed to us in the Horatian satires. Some gossip of a higher or lower order, for the most part in a seemly though piquant form which seldom becomes real malice, forms the subject-matter of all the poems which have come down to us. The poet rises to a higher level in the didactic epistles, of which those of the second book, with their exhortations to the study of Greek models and their tasteful and striking æsthetic reflections, belong to the chief productions of the time; and in ripeness and clearness of judgment, careful polish and clear arrangement, they leave all others far behind them. Greatly inferior to the satires are the partly satirical Epodes

, in which the personal element is too prominent, and in which the poet betrays great want of self-restraint and taste.

After Horace, the satire, such as he conceived it, found no imitator; the period which followed brought with it too many conflicts to allow mildness and tolerance to find a place. The preaching of morals is carried into the domain of poetry; A. Persius Flaccus, the only representative of this class of writing, gives us a very poor idea of the age if it really regarded him as a satirist; but we are scarcely justified in drawing this conclusion, since at the most he met with approbation only from the ranks of the opposition. It is the same taste, which Lucan represents, transferred to the satire; the arrogance and self-sufficiency of an adept belonging to a circle of noble stoics, who had scarcely got beyond the scholar’s bench, hollow pathos, rhetorical ornamentation, versified expoundings of the stoic popular morality. Persius lacked practically all the attributes of a poet. A mediocre performance which might be reckoned as a satire was the Translation into the Society of Gourds of the deified Claudius

(Divi Claudius Apokolokyntosis), a petty, revengeful pamphlet against the unfortunate prince, prepared moreover after his death. The dazzling wit with which the poet strikes at gods and men might have elicited approval in his own day; but the reader’s uppermost feeling will always be that this satire sprang from miserable cowardice and perfidious flattery.