Earliest known attempts at journalism, 59 B.C. The Acta of the senate and of the people, the first publications. The latter, a daily (diurna, whence journal), had an extensive circulation throughout the Roman territories. Stenography practised at this time by the Romans, and subsequently taught in their schools. Cicero said to have been the inventor of their system of short-hand. Sympathetic ink in use for writing love-letters and secret correspondence. For this purpose Ovid recommends milk, which may be made visible by dusting powdered charcoal on the letters. To keep mice from gnawing their papyrus and parchment rolls, some Roman writers mixed wormwood with their inks. CHAPTER IV. AGE OF DECLINE. Silver Age of Roman Letters.-With the death of Augustus and the accession of his step-son Tiberius, despotism in its worst form was established at Rome, and, as in Greece, a decline of letters immediately followed. Symptoms of literary decay had already shown themselves in the reign of the first emperor, although he took care to conceal his assumption of absolute power under the mask of republican forms, and was known to all as a patron of learning. Tiberius, on the contrary, openly declared himself the enemy of freedom, both political and intellectual; and when, in 37 A.D., his attendants, no longer able to endure his rule of blood, smothered the monster with pillows, Latin literature was at its lowest ebb. A brief renaissance, however, succeeded; so that the imperial fiend Nero was able to number among his victims an epic poet, Lucan, and a philosopher and dramatist of no common stamp, Seneca. Under the Cæsars, genius was hopelessly fettered; a chance word might condemn its author to the headsman; the poet, the historian, the orator, must needs suppress his sentiments or forfeit his self-respect by flattering the reigning despot. PERIOD OF DECLINE. 389 A brighter day dawned with the mild rule of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines (96–180 A.D.). During this golden age of the Roman empire, poetry for a time recovered its vitality, and through the stinging satires of Juvenal denounced the abuses that had prevailed in the days of Nero and Domitian; while in the histories of Tacitus, prose indignantly broke its enforced silence, and held up to public detestation the despots of the past. But this revival was shortlived. Latin literature rapidly degenerated, for Latin genius was no more. In the later centuries of the empire, science and jurisprudence alone flourished on the soil where poetry had now ceased to bloom. ERA OF THE CÆSARS (14-96 A.D.). In the reign of Tiberius, we meet with the names of Velleius Paterculus, the court historian; Celsus, the scientist ; and Phædrus. Velleius Paterculus is memorable for his epitome of Roman history, a work in other respects meritorious, but marred by its author's servile praise of Tiberius. Yet we must remember that Velleius was not permitted to see the worst phase of this emperor's tyranny. When the treachery of the prime minister Seja'nus was exposed, the historian, though not implicated with him, was one of the first to be put to death. He was thus prevented from witnessing the murders. of hundreds of other innocent persons-atrocities that might have altered his estimate of his ungrateful master. Valerius Maximus, his contemporary and fellow-flatterer, prepared a cyclopædia of anecdotes gleaned from the history of Rome and foreign countries, entitled "Remarkable Deeds. and Sayings." It was designed for the use of persons who had not the time or inclination to make original investigations, and, though written in an artificial style, contains much that is interesting. Celsus was the author of a scientific encyclopædia, whose twenty books were devoted to farming, medicine, rhetoric, jurisprudence, and military tactics. The eight books on medicine still survive, constituting the great Roman authority on that subject. Before his day the art of medicine and surgery had been almost entirely confined to Greek physicians; but Celsus dignified it as a calling worthy of Romans, not only practising with success among his countrymen, but committing to writing the results of his experience. He was the first ancient author who recommended the tying of blood-vessels for the purpose of checking hemorrhage. Phædrus, the only noteworthy poet of Tiberius's reign, is known to us by his fables. Of his life, we have few facts. He is supposed to have been brought from Thrace to Rome, as a captive; and to have lived there as the slave of Augustus, who, recognizing his latent talent, gave him an education and finally his freedom. In the sunshine of his patron's smiles, Phædrus led a happy life; but on the death of Augustus he was exposed to the persecutions of Sejanus, who virtually controlled the state under the succeeding emperor, and who affected to see in the poet's fables masked attacks upon his own vicious career. Phædrus, however, outlived all his enemies, and died at a good old age. The fables of Phædrus, preserved in a single manuscript, were discovered in an abbey at Rheims (1561), and, after narrowly escaping destruction at the hands of some French fanatics, were published to the world. In the main translated or imitated from Æsop, whom their author thus made known to the Romans, they commend themselves for their conciseness and simplicity, as well as for the moral lessons. they convey. His "pleasant tales" may be judged of by the following specimens:— FABLES OF PHÆDRUS. THE FOX AND THE GOAT. "A crafty knave will make escape, I thought I never should have done. And by his horns the height she scales, 391 THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY. "As on his head she chanced to sit, You who would strike an insect dead What by this moral tale is meant Severity is surely due."-CHRISTOPHER SMART. The three great ornaments of Nero's reign (54-68 A.D.) were Persius the satirist, Seneca, and his nephew Lucan. Persius.-Born at the Etruscan town of Volaterræ (34 A.D.), Persius was brought to Rome by his mother at the age of twelve, and there educated. In the Stoic, Cornu'tus, he found his ideal preceptor, and to this "best of friends" the poet pays a beautiful tribute in the following verses, among the finest he ever wrote : "When first I laid the purple* by, and free, And the white boss, displayed with conscious pride, I fled to you, Cornutus, pleased to rest One time of study and of rest we knew; One frugal board where, every care resigned, An hour of blameless mirth relaxed the mind."-GIFFORD. All Death overtook our poet in his 28th year (62 A.D.). we have of his writings is six satires-only 650 hexameter lines. After his death these were published, and elicited unbounded admiration. Other works of his were torn up by his mother, who deemed them unworthy of his genius. Persius bequeathed to Cornutus his library of 700 manuscripts. The satires of Persius were written in the interest of morality, and what gave them weight was that all knew their author * An allusion to the change from the purple-bordered toga of the youth, to the toga virilis, or manly robe. |