No More Learning

But Suetonius tells us that the name denoted
properly an 'interpres poetarum': and we may infer that in the early
period instruction in rhetoric was only a very casual adjunct of the
functions of the _litterator_. At what precise date the office of the
_litterator_ became bifurcated into the two distinct professions of
_grammaticus_ and _rhetor_ we cannot say. It seems likely that the
undivided office was retained in the smaller Italian towns after it had
disappeared from the educational system of Rome. The author of
_Catelepton V_, who may very well be Vergil, appears to have frequented
a school where poetry and rhetoric were taught in conjunction. Valerius
Cato and Sulla, the former certainly, the latter probably, a
Transpadane, were known as _litteratores_. But the _litterator_
gradually everywhere gave place to the _grammaticus_: and behind the
_grammaticus_, like Care behind the horseman, sits spectrally the
_rhetor_.

(2) The introduction of the _rhetor_ synchronizes with the transition
from the private patron to the patron-as-government-official. And by an
odd accident both changes worked in one and the same direction. That the
system of literary patronage was in many of its effects injurious to the
Augustan literature is a thesis which was once generally allowed. But it
was a thesis which could easily take exaggerated expression. And against
the view which it presents there has recently been a not unnatural
reaction. A moderate representative of this reaction is the late
Professor Nettleship. 'The intimacy', says Nettleship[5], 'which grew
up between Octavianus and some of the great writers of his time did not
imply more than the relation which . . .
often existed between a poor poet
and his powerful friend. For as the men of nobler character among the
Roman aristocracy were mostly ambitious of achieving literary success
themselves, and were sometimes really successful in achieving it: as
they had formed a high ideal of individual culture . . . aiming at
excellence in literature and philosophy as well as in politics and the
art of war, so they looked with a kindly eye on the men of talent and
genius who with less wealth and social resources than their own were
engaged in the great work of improving the national literature. '

There is much here which is truly and tellingly said. We ought never to
forget that the system of patronage sprang from a very lofty notion of
patriotism and of the national welfare. It implies a clear and fine
recognition among the great men of affairs of the principle that a
nation's greatness is not to be measured, and cannot be sustained, by
purely material achievements. It is true, again, that the system of
patronage did not originate with Augustus or the Augustans. Augustus was
a patron of letters just as Scipio had been--because he possessed power
and taste and a wide sense of patriotic obligation. So much is true, or
fairly true. But if it is meant, as I think it is, that the literary
patronage of the Princeps was the same in kind as, and different only in
degree from, that exercised by the great men of the Republican
period--if that is meant, then we have gone beyond what is either true
or plausible.

I am not concerned here, let me say, with the _moral_ effects of
literary patronage. I am concerned only with its literary effects. Nor
will I charge these to Augustus alone. He was but one patron--however
powerful--among many.