No More Learning

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. He was the particular enemy of 'that style which is easier
admired than understood'--_quae mirentur potius homines quam
intellegant_. It looks as though the clearness and good sense which mark
so distinctively the best Augustan literature were developed to some
extent under the direct influence of the Princeps.

The Princeps and his coadjutors may perhaps be not unprofitably regarded
as the heads of a great Educational Department. Beneath them are
numberless _grammatici_ and _rhetores_. The work of these is directed
towards the ideals of the supreme heads of the Department. How far this
direction is due to accident and how far to some not very defined
control it would be impossible to say.
But obviously among the conscious
aims of the schools of many of these _grammatici_ and _rhetores_ was the
ambition of achieving some of the great prizes of the literary world.
The goal of the pupil was government preferment, as we should call it.
And we may perhaps be allowed, if we guard ourselves against the peril
of mistaking a distant analogy for a real similarity of conditions, to
see in the recitations before the Emperor and his ministers, an
inspection, as it were, of schools and universities, an examination for
literary honours and emoluments. And this being so, it is not to no
purpose that the _rhetor_ in this age stands behind the _grammaticus_.
For the final examination, the inspection-by-recitation, is bound to be,
whatever the wishes of any of the parties concerned, an examination in
rhetoric. The theme appointed may be history, it may be philosophy, it
may be poetry. But the performance will be, and must be, rhetoric. The
_Aeneid_ of Vergil may be read and re-read by posterity, and pondered
word by word, line upon line. But it is going to be judged at a single
recitation. For Vergil, it is true, there may be special terms. But this
will be the lot of the many; and the many will develop, to suit it, a
fashion of poetry the influence of which even Vergil himself will hardly
altogether escape. Moreover, there will be, of course, other patrons
than the Princeps, at once less patient and less intelligent.

These effects of recitation we recognize, of course, easily enough in
the case of such a poet as Lucan. But we must go back further. Vergil
is, no doubt, as little like Lucan as he well could be. Yet he did not
sit at the feet of Epidius for nothing: and he did not forget when he
wrote the fourth book of the _Aeneid_ that he would one day read it to
Augustus.