No More Learning

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. Those speeches were not delivered in court. They were
published after the flight of Verres. If custom had tolerated it we may
be sure that Cicero would not have been slow to turn his friends into a
jury.

The formal recitation, recitation as a 'function', would seem to be the
creation of the Principate. It was the product in part, no doubt, of the
Hellenizing movement which dominated all departments of literary
fashion. But we may plausibly place its origin not so much in the vanity
of authors seeking applause, or in that absence of literary vanity which
courts a frank criticism, as in the relations of the wealthy patron and
his poor but ambitious client. The patron, in fact, did not subscribe
for what he had not read--or heard. The endless recitations to which
Augustus listened were hardly those merely of his personal friends. He
listened, as Suetonius says, 'benigne et patienter'. But it was the
'benignity and patience' not of a personal friend but of a government
official--of a government official dispensing patronage. Suetonius
allows us to divine something of the tastes of this all-powerful
official.