Latin Literature

In its beginning the literature of Rome was a foreign literature. As Rome established itself as the capital of the world, ambitious writers flocked to it from all parts of the world, just as in the eighteenth century they flocked to Paris, but for a very long time Greek remained the literary language. Long after the Roman armies had occupied the whole of the Grecian Peninsula, the cultured Roman read Greek books, bought from Alexandrian copyists. The only parallel to the recognition of Greek as the sole worthy literary language occurred in the eighteenth century when French held much the same position on the continent of Europe, and when Frederick the Great of Prussia amused himself by writing French verse. When a Latin literature began to be produced it was entirely based on Greek models. The Greek plays were translated into Latin, Homer was translated into Latin, and the original Latin work was inevitably imitative. In this connection it is interesting to note that many of the more conspicuous Latin authors, who flourished before the first century B.C., that is to say before the beginning of the Golden Age of Latin literature, were foreigners and not Romans by birth. The classic period of Latin literature barely lasted a hundred years. Between the year 100 B.C. and the birth of Christ, Cicero, Lucretius, Cæsar, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Livy all lived and wrote and died.

In his interesting work on the Fascination of Books, Mr. Joseph Shaylor says:

The Roman libraries and bookshops were the resort of the fashionable as well as of the learned society of this period. At these shops, literary and critical friends met and discussed each new book as it appeared from the copyist. These shops were located in the most frequented places. The titles of new and standard books were exhibited outside the shops as an advertisement. Announcements of works in preparation were made in the same way. The outside

THE VIRGIN AND CHILD ATTENDED BY ANGELS, FROM A COPY OF THE "OFFICES OF THE VIRGIN" This is a wonderful example of an illuminated MS., the work of the monks in the later Middle Ages. The beautiful illuminated ornamentations of borders and letters remain things of beauty and delight to this day.

"APOLLO AND DAPHNE," BY BERNINI

The story of Apollo and Daphne is told by Ovid, the Roman poet, and touched on by Prior, Shelley, and other moderns. Apollo, the sun-god, fell in love with Daphne, the dew, the daughter of the god of the river. The god pursued her and she fled to her father for refuge. As her feet touched the water's edge, she found herself rooted to the ground, her father having heard her supplications and changed her into a laurel-tree. So the dew, when the sun kisses it, vanishes and leaves nothing but verdure in the place where it has been.

box from which cheap books might be collected was also a feature in trade. Many of these old-time customs have their counterpart in the publishing and book-selling of today. We read of Cicero desiring to pay for a copy of one of his books which he wished sent to a friend, so that it should not be entered on the register of complimentary copies, and also giving instructions as to the “remainder” of a particular book consisting of a considerable number of copies of which he wished to dispose at a cheap rate.

We are told that the most frequent fate of unsuccessful poetry was to be used for the wrapping up of fish and other goods, while large supplies of surplus stock found their way from the booksellers to the fires of public baths, a very right way of disposing of them, and a method which modern publishers might often adopt with advantage. Other ancient customs have still their modern significance, such as buying all rights in a MS. A royalty system also existed, and authors were frequently paid in part for their labours by receiving copies of their published book, although by many it was considered degrading to ask for payment for literary work, a form of pride which is not common to-day. As no copyright law was then in existence, books were copied and re-copied immediately upon publication.1

Professional writers in ancient Rome depended for their livelihood on the patronage of the wealthy lover of letters, and it is worth noting that what was true in Rome before the birth of Christ remained true of the whole of Europe until the end of the eighteenth century. Horace and Virgil depended on the bounty of Maecenas, an enlightened millionaire who regarded the poet as the most useful of all the servants of the State. Centuries afterwards Molière and La Fontaine depended on the bounty of Louis XIV, and English men of letters in the eighteenth century had either to find a patron or to starve.

Shaylor credits this passage to Putnam's Authors and their Public in Ancient

Times.

In the third century A.D. books began to change their form. Instead of being continuous rolls, the pages were folded and stitched and bound together in wooden boards, which were generally ornamented. During the Dark Ages, when few new books were written, it was in the monasteries that books found their only safe lodgment and willing hands to copy them. In most monasteries there was a room called the scriptorium where the work of transcribing was carried on.1 Occasionally some comparatively enlightened layman appreciated the work of these literary monks. The great Charlemagne, for example, granted the rights of hunting to certain monasteries in order that the monks might provide themselves with material for the covers of their books from the skin of the deer. Although in these ten centuries there was little original authorship, there was splendid artistic expression in the ornamentation of manuscripts. The monkish illuminated borders and letters remain things of beauty and delight.

Probably the oldest illuminated manuscript is the Virgil, with its fifty miniatures on its seventy-six pages of vellum, in the Vatican. Ornamentation and illustration were practised in the first centuries after Christ in Alexandria, and it is probable that Byzantine illumination began there. There were many kinds of illumination in the Middle Ages. The art was patronised by Alfred the Great, and was practised at Winchester and elsewhere in England. Its chief development was in Burgundy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Happily, many examples of these beautiful monkish MSS., with their delicately ornamented borders and fine initial letters, have been preserved. The monastery scribes wrote with quill pens. In his

1 The Scriptorium was instituted in the Benedictine Monastery at Monte Cassino by Cassiodorus about 487.