134
HlSTOBt ANIJ OKATORY.
was wanting in benevolence, and was a man of a harsh
and embittered nature. Munatius Plancus also was a talented
orator, and A. Hirtius, who properly speaking belongs to the
preceding period, was, as I have already remarked, a particu-
larly elegant writer, although he spent his life in warlike
pursuits. In the history of literature there are men such as
Asinius Pollio, who stand between two distinct generations,
and form a sort of mediators between them (one might call
them provenons6 or φopa)∙, thus Klopstock, Kant and Winckel-
ɪnann gave the character to their period in some respects, and
Kastner, Gellert, Cramer and others, who are now almost for-
gotten in other respects ; then followed the period of Goethe,
to which belonged Voss, and Frederic Leopold Stolberg,— and
between these periods stands Lessing, who exerted no influence
upon those who were older than himself, but paved the way
for a new generation, and gave it its character. I do not, of
course, mean to place Asinius Pollio by the side of Lessing,
but he stands in a similar manner between the periods of
Cicero and Virgil; for we may well call Virgil the repre-
sentative of his age.
In the period which followed that of Cicero, or the so-called
Augustan age, prose writing became very insignificant. With
the exception of Livy and Valerius Messala, in fact, it vanishes
entirely. The cause of this phenomenon is well explained in
the excellent dialogue “ De Oratoribus,” which critics have at
length come to regard as a genuine work of Tacitus. Public
eloquence necessarily ceased, and prose was cultivated and de-
veloped throughout antiquity by public speaking and oratory.
As soon as oratory ceased, therefore, prose became poor. There
was at that time no opportunity for free speaking. The Kostra
and the Curia had become silent, and the orations that were
now delivered were mere λoγot eπιζeικτικol, miserable signs of
the times. The only subject for prose was history, which was
written by Asinius Pollio and Livy. Mcssala, who was much
younger than Asinius Pollio, and a contemporary of Horace,
was the only man who distinguished himself as an orator; but
I believe his personal excellence was greater than his talents.
The brilliant period of the two great poets of that time,
Virgil and Horace, and of many of their contemporaries, falls
Γlιn. Epιst. i. 13
VlEGIL.
135
after the death of Caesar, and in the early part of Augustus’
career. Horace’s poetry is still lyric, but it gradually loses this
character. It is much more carefully copied from the Greeks
and in the time of Caesar; so that the licences and differences
from the Greek form, which we find in the productions of the
preceding period, vanish altogether. The Greek forms were
now adopted as law. Iioman poetry became only an imitation,
and in a great measure a translation of the Greek into Latin ;
with the exception of a few cases, it avoided all ornament de-
rived from archaic forms ; all that was written was in perfect
analogy and harmony with the language spoken by the educated
and refined classes. Virgil, it is true, occasionally uses an an-
cient form, such as olli, aulai, but this occurs only in his Aencid1
and is admitted in Confbimity with a grammatical rule respect-
ing epic poetry, similar to that which had been laid down by
the Alexandrian grammarians for the epic language of the
Greeks.
Virgil was born on the 15th of October, 682, and died on
the 22nd of September, 733. I have often expressed my
opinion respecting Virgil, and have declared that I am as op-
posed to the adoration with which the later Romans venerated
him, as any fair judge can demand. He did not possess the
fertility of genius nor the inventive powers which are required
for his task. His Eclogues are anything but a successful imita-
tion of the idyls of Theocritus; they could not, in fact, be
otherwise than unsuccessful: their object is to create something
which could not prosper in a Roman soil. The shepherds of
Theocritus are characters of ancient Sicilian poetry; I do not
believe that they were taken from Greek poems. Daphnis, for
example, is a Sicilian not a Greek hero. The idyls of Theocri-
tus grew out of popular songs, and hence his poems have a
genuineness, truth, and nationality. Now Virgil, in transplant-
ing that kind of poetry to the plains of Lombardy, peoples that
country with Greek shepherds, with their Greek namesand Greek
peculiarities,—in short, w’ith beings that never could exist
there. His didactic poem on Agriculture is more successful;
it maintains a happy medium, and we cannot well speak of it
otherwise than in terms of praise. His Aeneid, on the other
hand, is a complete failure: it is an unhappy idea from begin-
ning to end; but this must not prevent us from acknowledging
that it contains many exquisite passages. Virgil displays in it