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v THE LATIN EPIC AFTER VIRGIL: OVID TO STATIUS T HE age that followed that of Augustus was preoccupied with its literary status, and usually convinced that it had come down in the world. In Rome itself, the causae corruptae eloquentiae were one of the burning questions of the day, as the works dedicated to them by Tacitus and Quintilian, as well as the remarks of the Elder Seneca or which conclude the De Sublimitate, bear witness. Modern literary historians have been willing to accept this judgment, but the grounds for it are less unanimously agreed. Varying answers have been given to the inherited and assumed problem. One points to the political circumstances that developed as Augustus' carefully constructed fa~ade of government collapsed. Free and soaring eloquence is the natural offshoot of unhampered debate and argument. Curtail the one, and the other withers. I This explanation is presented in altogether too naive a fashion. In the first place, it takes far too narrow a view of the Roman achievement , whether imperial or aesthetic. It is absurd to pretend that everything came to an end with Augustus. The glories of the second century, even those ofConstantine, were still to come. The Colosseum, central to the understanding of the Roman imagination, was yet to be built. In the second place it takes far too narrow a view of literature. There may indeed be grounds for supposing that the absence ofpolitical liberty throttles frankness in the debating chamber. But literature is more than political speeches! The situation in which writers found themselves in post-Augustan Rome did not differ radically from that which had prevailed at the court ofthe Ptolemiesor of many of the Greek tyrants who had been the most lavish patrons ofa poetry still treasured-or even from the situation that had existed in Augustan Rome itself. Ovid paid with years of exile for offending the princeps, and part of his offense, on his own admission, was a I cr. A. Rostagni, Storia della letteratura latina (Turin 1955), 11, pp. 236 fr., and D. A. Russell on 'Longinus', De Sublimitate, 44. 188 Ovid to Statius 189 carmen.2 The success of his Medea however hints that he might have been a better poet if he had known how to bow gracefully to this kind of pressure; and on the other side, it is just as possible that Virgil would never have attained the fullest development of his genius without it. Dissatisfied with this political approach to literature, other scholars have pointed out that in many ways authors have never enjoyed better prospects than under the very emperors who are accused of stifling them. Tiberius, Augustus' immediate successor, was well known for his interest in Hellenistic poets, including the Euphorion at whom Cicero had sneered, and whose poems we miss so sorely. Caligula was the author of one of the most up-to-date criticisms of Livy to have survived, a judgment which shows that the atmosphere of his day was by no means alien to an historian who might wish to break away from the conventions of Hellenistic writing. Claudius was a scholar and antiquarian, steeped in Etruscan lore. Nero, the heir of Augustus, was passionately devoted to all the arts. The Flavians were no less concerned about letters. Vespasian appointed Quintilian to a chair. Interestingly, it was the same parsimonious emperor who built the Colosseum. Domitian rewarded Statius. Both these emperors promoted Tacitus. Hadrian founded the Athenaeum, and has come down to us as the author of an indispensable anthology piece.3 I There is in fact a basic mistake of method in all this debate. The literary historian is not, in the first instance, called upon to express judgment about the "decadence" or otherwise of the post-Augustan period. His task is to understand why Roman writers said the things they did. Here, two comparisons may help. The appreciation of the literature of Periclean Athens would not be greatly advanced by a student who took every gibe in Aristophanes literally, and a Russian scholar has pointed out that, in the age of Alexander the Great, Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle, can find nothing but eccentrics for his Characters.4 To see Athens or Greece only through the 2 Tristia II. 211. Gallus' poems were allegedly removed from the public libraries after his disgrace. In Alexandria, Sotades is said to have been ultimately drowned by one of Ptolemy's admirals. 3 See H. E. Butler, Post-Augustan Poetry (Oxford...

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