The Roman saw in himself the last
guardian
of the ideals of
Western civilization.
Western civilization.
Oxford Book of Latin Verse
'
These are not mere words: and this was not, in the Roman, an idle faith.
It was a practical faith; that is to say, he acted upon it. Upon this
faith was based, at any rate in the early period of Roman history, the
whole of the Roman system of education. The principal business of the
Roman schoolmaster was to take the great poets and interpret them 'by
reading and comment'. Education was practically synonymous with the
study of the poets. The poets made a man brave, the poets made a man
eloquent, the poets made him--if anything could make him--poetical. It
is hardly possible to over-estimate the obscure benefit to the national
life of a discipline in which the thought and language of the best
poetry were the earliest formative influences.
The second of the two conditions which favoured literary creation in
Rome was a social system which afforded to a great and influential class
the leisure for literary studies and the power to forward them. These
two conditions are, roughly, synchronous in their development. Both take
rise in the period of the Punic Wars. The Punic Wars not only quickened
but they deepened and purified Roman patriotism. They put the history of
the world in a new light to the educated Roman. The antagonism of Greek
and Roman dropped away. The wars with Pyrrhus were forgotten. The issue
was now no longer as between Greece and Rome, but as between East and
West.
The Roman saw in himself the last guardian of the ideals of
Western civilization. He must hand on the torch of Hellenic culture.
Hence, while in other countries Literature _happens_, as the sun and the
air happen--as a part of the working of obscure natural forces--in Rome
it is from the beginning a premeditated self-conscious organization.
This organization has two instruments--the school of the _grammaticus_
and the house of the great noble. Here stands Philocomus, here Scipio.
In the period of the Punic Wars this organization is only rudimentary.
By no means casual, it is none the less as yet uninfected by
officialism. The transition from the age of Scipio to the age of
Augustus introduced two almost insensible modifications:
(1) In the earlier period the functions of the _grammaticus_ and the
_rhetor_ were undifferentiated. The _grammaticus_, as he was known
later, was called then _litteratus_ or _litterator_. He taught both
poetry and rhetoric. 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_.
These are not mere words: and this was not, in the Roman, an idle faith.
It was a practical faith; that is to say, he acted upon it. Upon this
faith was based, at any rate in the early period of Roman history, the
whole of the Roman system of education. The principal business of the
Roman schoolmaster was to take the great poets and interpret them 'by
reading and comment'. Education was practically synonymous with the
study of the poets. The poets made a man brave, the poets made a man
eloquent, the poets made him--if anything could make him--poetical. It
is hardly possible to over-estimate the obscure benefit to the national
life of a discipline in which the thought and language of the best
poetry were the earliest formative influences.
The second of the two conditions which favoured literary creation in
Rome was a social system which afforded to a great and influential class
the leisure for literary studies and the power to forward them. These
two conditions are, roughly, synchronous in their development. Both take
rise in the period of the Punic Wars. The Punic Wars not only quickened
but they deepened and purified Roman patriotism. They put the history of
the world in a new light to the educated Roman. The antagonism of Greek
and Roman dropped away. The wars with Pyrrhus were forgotten. The issue
was now no longer as between Greece and Rome, but as between East and
West.
The Roman saw in himself the last guardian of the ideals of
Western civilization. He must hand on the torch of Hellenic culture.
Hence, while in other countries Literature _happens_, as the sun and the
air happen--as a part of the working of obscure natural forces--in Rome
it is from the beginning a premeditated self-conscious organization.
This organization has two instruments--the school of the _grammaticus_
and the house of the great noble. Here stands Philocomus, here Scipio.
In the period of the Punic Wars this organization is only rudimentary.
By no means casual, it is none the less as yet uninfected by
officialism. The transition from the age of Scipio to the age of
Augustus introduced two almost insensible modifications:
(1) In the earlier period the functions of the _grammaticus_ and the
_rhetor_ were undifferentiated. The _grammaticus_, as he was known
later, was called then _litteratus_ or _litterator_. He taught both
poetry and rhetoric. 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_.
