No More Learning

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. He did not create the literature which carries his
name. Nevertheless it seems impossible to doubt that it was largely
moulded under his personal influence, and that he has left upon it the
impress of his own masterful and imperial temper. Suetonius in a few
casual paragraphs gives us some insight into his literary tastes and
methods.
He represents him as from his youth up a genuine enthusiast for
literature: 'Eloquentiam studiaque liberalia (i. e. _grammatice_ and
rhetoric) ab aetate prima et cupide et laboriosissime exercuit. ' Even
upon active military service he made a point of reading, composing, and
declaiming daily. He wrote a variety of prose works, and 'poetica
summatim attigit', he dabbled in poetry. There were still extant in
Suetonius' time two volumes of his poetry, the one a collection of
_Epigrammata_, the other--more interesting and significant--a hexameter
poem upon _Sicily_. [6] Moreover Augustus 'nursed in all ways the
literary talent of his time'. He listened 'with charity and
long-suffering' to endless recitations 'not only of poetry and of
history but of orations and of dialogues'. We are somewhat apt, I fancy,
to associate the practice of recitation too exclusively with the
literary circles of the time of Nero, Domitian, and Trajan. Yet it is
quite clear that already in the Augustan age this practice had attained
system and elaboration. From the silence of Cicero in his Letters (the
Epistles of Pliny furnish a notable contrast) we may reasonably infer
that the custom was not known to him. It is no doubt natural in all ages
that poets and orators should inflict their compositions upon their more
intimate friends. No one of us in a literary society is safe even to-day
from this midnight peril. But even of these informal recitations we hear
little until the Augustan age. Catullus' friend Sestius perhaps recited
his orations in this fashion: but the poem[7] admits a different
interpretation. And it is significant that we are nowhere told that
Cicero declaimed to his friends the speeches of the second action
against Verres.