No More Learning

It is
certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very
early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat
of government, and took little part in the strife of factions,
gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine
verse. The lampoons of the city were doubtless of a higher order;
and their sting was early felt by the nobility. For in the Twelve
Tables, long before the time of the Licinian laws, a severe
punishment was denounced against the citizen who should compose
or recite verses reflecting on another. Satire is, indeed, the
only sort of composition in which the Latin poets, whose works
have come down to us, were not mere imitators of foreign models;
and it is therefore the only sort of composition in which they
have never been rivalled. It was not, like their tragedy, their
comedy, their epic and lyric poetry, a hothouse plant which, in
return for assiduous and skilful culture, gave only scanty and
sickly fruits. It was hardy and full of sap; and in all the
various juices which it yielded might be distinguished the flavor
of the Ausonian soil. "Satire," said Quinctilian, with just
pride, "is all our own. " Satire sprang, in truth, naturally
from the constitution of the Roman government and from the spirit
of the Roman people; and, though at length subjected to metrical
rules derived from Greece, retained to the last an essentially
Roman character. Lucilius was the earliest satirist whose works
were held in esteem under the Caesars. But many years before
Lucilius was born, Naevius had been flung into a dungeon, and
guarded there with circumstances of unusual rigor, on account of
the bitter lines in which he had attacked the great Caecilian
family. The genius and spirit of the Roman satirists survived the
liberty of their country, and were not extinguished by the cruel
despotism of the Julian and Flavian Emperors. The great poet who
told the story of Domitian's turbot was the legitimate successor
of those forgotten minstrels whose songs animated the factions of
the infant Republic.

Those minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear to have
generally taken the popular side. We can hardly be mistaken in
supposing that, at the great crisis of the civil conflict, they
employed themselves in versifying all the most powerful and
virulent speeches of the Tribunes, and in heaping abuse on the
leaders of the aristocracy.
Every personal defect, every domestic
scandal, every tradition dishonorable to a noble house, would be
sought out, brought into notice, and exaggerated. The illustrious
head of the aristocratical party, Marcus Furius Camillus, might
perhaps be, in some measure, protected by his venerable age and
by the memory of his great services to the state. But Appius
Claudius Crassus enjoyed no such immunity. He was descended from
a long line of ancestors distinguished by their haughty demeanor,
and by the inflexibility with which they had withstood all the
demands of the Plebeian order. While the political conduct and
the deportment of the Claudian nobles drew upon them the fiercest
public hatred, they were accused of wanting, if any credit is due
to the early history of Rome, a class of qualities which, in a
military commonwealth, is sufficient to cover a multitude of
offences. The chiefs of the family appear to have been eloquent,
versed in civil business, and learned after the fashion of their
age; but in war they were not distinguished by skill or valor.
Some of them, as if conscious where their weakness lay, had, when
filling the highest magistracies, taken internal administration
as their department of public business, and left the military
command to their colleagues. One of them had been entrusted with
an army, and had failed ignominiously. None of them had been
honored with a triumph. None of them had achieved any martial
exploit, such as those by which Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus,
Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and, above
all, the great Camillus, had extorted the reluctant esteem of the
multitude. During the Licinian conflict, Appius Claudius Crassus
signalized himself by the ability and severity with which he
harangued against the two great agitators. He would naturally,
therefore, be the favorite mark of the Plebeian satirists; nor
would they have been at a loss to find a point on which he was
open to attack.

His grandfather, called, like himself, Appius Claudius, had left
a name as much detested as that Sextus Tarquinius. This elder
Appius had been Consul more than seventy years before the
introduction of the Licinian laws. By availing himself of a
singular crisis in public feeling, he had obtained the consent of
the Commons to the abolition of the Tribuneship, and had been the
chief of that Council of Ten to which the whole direction of the
state had been committed. In a new months his administration had
become universally odious.