Lathrop

the roots of certain trees. L. squamaria, the toothwort, has spikes of bluish flowers streaked with red.

Lathrop, GEORGE PARSONS (1851-98), American author, was born at Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, where his father was U. S. consul, and received his education at private schools in New York and in Dresden, Germany. He studied law at the Columbia law school and in the office of William M. Evarts for a time, but soon began literary work, no doubt influenced in that direction by his marriage to Rose, the second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, in 1871. Mr. Lathrop was assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1875-7, and editor of the Boston Courier, 1877-9. In 1879 he bought Hawthorne's former home, The Wayside,' at Concord, Mass., where he lived for four years, occupied with his literary labors. He then removed to New London, and to New York in 1883, where he passed the remainder of his life. Shortly afterward, Mr. and Mrs. Lathrop became Roman Catholics; and the former was active in the establishment of the Catholic summer school at Plattsburg, N. Y. In 1887 Mr. Lathrop's dramatization of Tennyson's Elaine was produced at the Madison Square Theatre in New York. The following year he read his 'Gettysburg: A Battle Ode' before the Society of the Army of the Potomac, at Gettysburg. He was an ardent promoter of international copyright, which he lived to see in effect in the U. S., and was an officer of the American Copyright League. Mr. Lathrop edited an edition of Hawthorne's works, with a Memoir, 1383. Of his other books, principally fiction, may be mentioned Rose and Rooftree, verse (1875), After-glow (1876), An Echo of Passion (1882), Newport (1884), Would You Kill Him? (1889), Dreams and Days, verse (1892), and an excellent travel-volume, Spanish Vistas (1883).

Lathrop, ROSE HAWTHORNE (1851), American author, second daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was born at Lenox, Mass., much of her childhood being passed abroad. She studied art in Dresden and in London, and was married in the latter city (1871) to George Parsons Lathrop (q.v.). Besides her art work, Mrs. Lathrop contributed many poems, stories, and sketches to the maga zines, and much literary material to children's periodicals. Some of her poems were collected as Along the Shore (1888), and she also published Memories of Hawthorne (1897) and, with Mr. Lathrop, A Story of Courage: Annals of the Georgetown Convent (1894).

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In 1896 Mrs. Lathrop, known as Mother Mary Alphonsa Lathrop, superioress of the Dominican Community of the Third Order, devoted herself entirely to the management of a charitable home in New York.

Lathyrus, a genus of mostly climbing plants belonging to the order Leguminosa. The genus includes many species of value, for their racemose or solitary flowers, with rather large papilionaceous corollas. Among them are the fragrant sweet - pea (L. odoratus); Lord Anson's pea, L. magellanicus, a handsome perennial climber from the Strait of Magellan, bearing purple flowers in summer and autumn; L. grandiflorus, an annual species hearing rose-colored flowers; L. latifolius, the well-known white or purple flowered everlasting pea; and L. rotundifolius, with rose-colored flowers in early summer. Among the American species of lathyrus are L. maritimus, a prostrate shore plant, known as the 'beach pea,' the purple-flowered L. ornatus, a showy vetchling, of the prairies, and the cream-colored vetchling (L. ochroleucus).

Latimer, HUGH (?1485-1555), English reformer. The son of a Leicestershire yeoman, he became a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, in 1510, and subsequently took holy orders. His first step towards revolt is seen in his severe criticism of the lives of English priests and un-preaching prefates;' but the ecclesiastical wrath thus drawn down upon him was counteracted by the favor of the king, Henry VIII., before whom he preached at intervals from 1530 onwards. The emancipation of the country from the Pope's authority in 1534 went far to establish the position of Latimer, who was free to preach the reformed doctrines throughout the land-a work for which the high merit of his sermons shows him to have been especially fitted. He was appointed to the bishopric of Worcester in 1535, but resigned in 1539. In 1546-7 he was imprisoned in the Tower, but enjoyed a few more years of remarkable success as a preacher before Mary's accession in 1553 threw him again into prison. After much suffering, he went with Ridley to the stake at Oxford. Marked above all by vigor and sincerity, the character and work of Latimer place him high among the world's reformers. An edition of his works was issued by the Parker Society (1844-5). See Lives by Gilpin (1755) and Demaus (rev. ed. 1881); also Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

Cell.

Latimer Clark's Standard See CELL, VOLTAIC. Latin Empire. See BYZANTINE EMPIRE, Rome.

Latin Language and Literature

Latin Language and Literature. 1. Language.-The Latin language, originally the speech of the inhabitants of Latium, belongs, like the Greek, to the IndoEuropean (Indo-Germanic, Aryan) family of speech. It is classified with the Italic group of languages, other members of which are the Oscan and Umbrian and some minor dialects. This Italic group of languages, in vocabulary, declension, and conjugation, presents many points of resemblance to the Greek, so that formerly it was held that the Greek and Italic languages were separate developments of a previous GræcoItalic group; but further investigations have entirely overthrown this theory. It is now clearly proved that the closest affinities of the Italic group of languages are with the Celtic dialects-viz. Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Manx, Erse, and Gaelic. It is the case not only that the Italic and Celtic groups of languages are closely akin, but also that they are the only two groups of IndoGermanic languages between which any closer connection with each other than with any other members of the family can be shown to exist. The evidences for this proof are that in both the Italic and Celtic groups some members (e.g. Latin and Gaelic) show a cor qu, corresponding to an Indo-Germanic k, when other members (e.g. Oscan and Welsh) show p; that in both groups the passive is formed in the same manner (by the addition of a suffix in to the personal endings of the active); and that again in both groups the imperfect tenses of all verbs and many future indicative tenses are formed from a stem -bhu (e.g. amabam, amabo). These verb forms are absolutely peculiar to the Italic and Celtic groups; in no other IndoGermanic language have they been found to occur.

The Latin language resembles the other Indo-Germanic languages in being synthetic and inflectional-i.e. it expresses differences of case, number, and gender in nouns and adjectives, and of person, tense, mood, and voice in verbs, by various suffixes (rarely assisted by a prefix) which have no meaning apart from the form in which they are found, and not by prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and the like, as in English and most modern languages. The Latin declensions of nouns are usually classed as five in number, though a classification into sixviz. of stems ending respectively in the vowels a, o, i, u, e, and in consonants-would be more scientific. Latin has only two numbers, singular and plural, having lost the original dual (traces of which remain in the forms duo,

Latin Language and Literature

'two,' and ambo, 'both'). It has three genders-masculine, feminine, and neuter. Of the original seven cases (neglecting the vocative) it retains five-nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative; but the forms of the two last cases are always identical in the plural, and often in the singular (in all -o and many -i nouns). The Latin verb has lost the middle voice, and has developed a new passive, as has been said. The verb esse, 'to be,' is used as an auxiliary along with the perfect participle to express all perfect tenses in the passive. In regard to the moods, Latin has again lost one, the optative, retaining the indicative, imperative, subjunctive, infinitive, and participial, though it is more correct to say that its subjunctive exhibits a confusion of the subjunctive and optative forms and uses. The participial mood is also defective: Latin verbs possess in the active only a present and future, and in the passive only a past participle, against the four participles (present, future, aorist, and perfect) possessed by Greek verbs in each voice. The indicative mood possesses six tenses-present, future, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, and future perfect. The perfect shows a confusion of perfect and aorist uses; but in the imperative only a present and future, in the subjunctive only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect, and in the infinitive only present, future, and perfect tenses are found. Thus, with a deficiency alike in tense, mood, voice, and number (there being no dual, as in the noun), a typical Latin verb presents a great poverty of forms as compared with a Greek one; the full conjugation of the latter embraces over 500 distinct forms, that of the former only some 170. Latin, has, however, a new development of its own in the gerund and gerundive, forms of which no certain explanation has been given, but which appear to be originally passive participles possessed of special uses. These gerundival constructions are a marked peculiarity of Latin. It may be added that Latin verbs are usually classified into four conjugations, according as the stem ends in -a, -e, -i, or a consonant. The first three conjugations present few irregularities, but the last includes many irregular verbs, whose varieties are due chiefly to the various methods of forming the perfect stem which prevail in Latin, and also to various formations of the stem of the future participle active and past participle passive. The remaining parts of speech do not call for particular attention.

The Latin alphabet was derived

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from that used by the Greek colonists in Italy, and most probably from Cuma in Campania. Some authorities hold that it passed from Cuma to the Latins through the Etruscans, but, on the whole, this is unlikely. The forms of the Latin letters exactly correspond with those used by the Chalcidic Greeks of Cumæ, except in regard to P and G. This origin of the Latin alphabet explains its difference from that used by the Greeks proper, though the signs for the capital letters_are identical in most cases. The original Latin alphabet consisted of twenty letters, A B C D EFH IKLMNOPQRSTVX, C having originally the sound of G, as its continued use as the initial of the name Gaius proves; so too Cn. as the initial of Gnæus. In time C usurped the place of K, which continued to be used only in a few words, such as Kalendæ and Kaso. In 312 B.C. Appius Claudius the censor introduced the new sign G to represent the g sound; it was placed in the alphabet between F and H. I was the sign both of the vowel and of the consonant i, as was V both of the vowel and consonant u; the signs J and U were not introduced till the middle ages. In Cicero's time Y and Z were added to the alphabet in order to transliterate Greek words. Thus the full alphabet consisted of twenty-three fetters, the twenty above_mentioned, and G, Y, and Z. ancient times, at least in careful writing, the capital forms of the letters alone were used, whether in the style called capital or uncial; but as early as the 1st century A.D., and probably earlier, a form of cursive writing in small letters was in use-examples of it may be seen in the graffiti, or wall-writings, at Pompeii-which developed into the small letters as now used.

In

These letters of the Latin alphabet may be divided as follows:Vowels-a, e, i, o, u; consonantsfirst dental stops, t, d; secondly, labial stops, p, b; thirdly, guttural stops, c, k, q, g; fourthly, spirants, f, s, h, and the consonantal and u; fifthly, liquids,

and r; and lastly, nasals, m and n. x is merely the combination of k (or c) and s. y represents the Greek v (sounded like the French u), and z the Greek S. The diphthongs are ai, ei, oi, au, eu, and ou; but by the Augustan period ai, ei, oi, ou had become ae, i, oe, and u. The classical pronunciation of the letters is satisfactorily established; it is as follows: The vowels a, e, i, o, u were pronounced as in Italian, though ě, i, o, u were open sounds, ē, i, o, u close sounds. The pronunciation of the diphthongs ae, oe, au, and eu was that of the

Latin Language and Literature

component vowels pronounced in quick succession. Of the consonants, and d were pronounced as true dentals (i.e. with the tongue touching the teeth,__not the roof of the mouth, as in English); and b corresponded to the English sounds; c and g were always hard (e.g. Cicero was pronounced Kikero, genius with g as in 'get'); q usually occurred before u, being pronounced as in English; f was as in English; h was a weaker sound than the English, tending to disappear, as it has in the Romance languages; s was always the sharp sound, as in 'this,' never as in these;' the consonants i and u were pronounced like the English y and w, though the latter was perhaps a weaker sound, such as is heard in the French oui; and r were as in English, except that r was strongly trilled; at the beginning of a word m and n were sounded as in English, but at the end of a word or syllable were weakly sounded; in such positions mor n is written indifferently in inscriptions, as, for example, conparo or comparo. The weakness of the sound m at the end of the word is illustrated by the fact that in poetry a syllable ending in m is elided just as if it ended in the vowel alone.

The Latin accent differed from the Greek in being a stress accent like that of English or modern Italian. In classical times the rule of the accentuation of words was very simple-viz. that in all words it fell on the penultimate syllable of a word of two or more syllables if that syllable was long, but if it was short, on the antepenultimate if the word contained three or more syllablese.g. ama'bo, but ama'bitis. There are traces, however, of an earlier system of accentuation in Latin, according to which the first syllable of each word bore a strong stress accent. Thus, in most verbs compounded with prepositions, the vowel of the verb stem is weakened in the compound-e.g. facio, but inficio; ago, but adigo, etc. In later compounds, such as calefacio, the vowel is not changed. In the last stages of the Latin language the stress accent seems to have become even stronger, which accounts for the fact that in some Romance languages words have frequently lost syllables which preceded or followed that which bore the accent-e.g. Fr. frère from frater, chant from cantus, aimons from amamus, etc.

Regarded from the point of view of its sound, the Latin language was less euphonious and heavier than the Greek-its words possess a greater number of consonants in proportion to vowels; and while Greek words can only

Latin Language and Literature

end in the consonants », p. s, and, or vowels, Latin words end freely in l, m, n, r, s, and t, and occasionally also in b, c, and d. The proportion of long to short vowels is also greater than in Greek, and the variety of vowel sound (including diphthongs) is smaller. As a result, the Latin language loses something in elegance, variety, and lightness; but it gains, if not proportionately, in weight and dignity. Latin poetry, written in metres borrowed from Greek poets, moves with a certain lack of freedom; but as manipulated by its great est masters, such as Horace and Virgil, it attains a majesty and solemnity unsurpassed by the poetry of any language.

The Latin vocabulary again, as compared with the Greek, is deficient. Roman writers themselves were well aware of this deficiency, like Lucretius, who complains of the patrii sermonis egestas, 'the poverty of our native speech.' This deficiency is due partly to the positive lack, first, of certain forms, such as the dual number in nouns, the optative mood in verbs, the aorist tense, and several participial tenses, which seriously diminish the shades of expression possible to the language; partly also to the absence of many words denoting abstract ideas - thus practically all terms of philosophy, science, grammar, and literary criticism had to be adopted from the Greek; but chiefly, perhaps, owing to the inability of the language for forming compounds. In Latin, compounds of verb and preposition are frequent but compounds oft wo noun stems, or of a noun and verb stem, are rare; certainly they cannot be formed at will, as in Greek.

In

terms of law, administration, and warfare-the true spheres of Roman genius-the language is rich and abundant. Generally it may be said that the vocabulary suited the needs of practical life of the farm, the law court, the assembly, and the camp-and was less adapted to the requirements of the poet, the philosopher, the scientist, and the critic. The best testimony to the usefulness of the vocabulary is its wide adoption by modern languages, such as our own and the German, which are not directly derived from it. As already suggested, Latin increased its vocabulary largely by borrowing from Greek, and also to a less extent by borrowing from other Italic dialects and from Celtic.

The highest qualities of Latin are perhaps to be found in its methods of expression and construction, which again illustrate its practical character. Particularly to be observed are its preference of concrete to abstract

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expression, its logical arrangement of clauses, and the precision with which it subordinates the subsidiary ideas to the chief thought in the sentence. It may not be capable of expressing delicate shades of meaning, but it certainly does not leave its meaning in doubt. Hence the great value of its study as an instrument of education. the construing of a complex sentence requires as careful and strict an application of rules as the working out of a mathematical problem. In this connection it may be remarked that one of its chief difficulties to the learner is its

gradually working up. to the main point: the normal rule in each clause is that the most important word, the verb, comes fast, and in each sentence the subordinate clauses lead up to the principal thought. Yet, once this difficulty is mastered, the precision of the arrangement makes the meaning easily intelligible. Constructions are almost invariable: the same ideas are expressed, with few exceptions, in the same way. The two main defects of the language, as regards construction, are its lack of articles, either definite or indefinite-e.g. homo means 'the man,' or 'a man,' according to the context, which sometimes causes ambiguity; and its lack of a past participle active, which necessitates the use of the cumbrous ablative absolute' construction (which also is ambiguous, as his dictis abiit may mean 'having said this he went away,' or when some one else had said this he went away'), or other circumlocutions. But, on the whole, in virtue of its above-mentioned qualities of logical precision and concreteness, of its terseness-a page of English usually translates into three-quarters of a page of Latin-its directness and dignity, Latin must be ranked as one of the noblest forms of human speech.

Latin can hardly be said to have possessed any dialects, or, if it had, they have left scarcely any traces. It was, of course, originally the speech of a small nation, the Latins; the aggrandizement of Rome caused it to spread over Western Europe, and to some extent toward the East, but the varieties so produced in it can scarcely be ranked as dialects. It is, however, clear that in many respects the language of the populace differed from the literary Latin which has come down to us in books. This is proved by the fact that many common words in the Romance languages are derived, not from their equivalents in classical Latin, but either from words used in slightly different or special

Latin Language and Literature

senses in classical Latin, or from words not found at all in the best writers: thus in French jeu (focus), cheval (caballus), maison (mansio), aller (adnare), correspond to the classical ignis, equus, domus, and ire respectively; and battre, arriver, coucher, épée, and many other similar words, find their derivation in forms not used at all in good Latin. Many verb forms also such as recevoir, pouvoir, savoir, and the like-show by their form that they are derived from incorrect variations of the true language, which no doubt were current in classical speech.

The purest Latinity is generally held to be that of the first century B.C., represented by writers such as Cicero, Cæsar, Sallust, and Livy in prose; Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid in poetry. The Latin of the first century A.D.-the period often called the Silver Ageshows a degeneration in the admission of foreign, chiefly Greek, idioms and words; and this degeneration increases with the successive centuries. The barbarian invasions did much to corrupt the vocabulary; yet it was not until long after the fall of the Western empire, in 476 A.D., that Latin ceased to be the speech of Italy, and yielded to its descendant Italian. For many centuries longer Latin continued to be the common language of scholars, and, until the 17th century, of diplomatists.

The discussion of the Latin language cannot be concluded without the mention of its importance as the mother of the Romance languages. Its relation to them is particularly interesting, as it corresponds with that of the original Indo-Germanic languages to the various IndoGermanic tongues, such as Latin itself, Greek, Aryan, Celtic, Teutonic, and the rest; and thus it illustrates the development of their languages from the parent speech. It has been pointed out in a preceding paragraph that the Romance languages descend from the language of the common people, the soldiers and traders who settled in the provinces, and not from the literary language. These Romance languages cover fairly accurately the area of the Western empire of Rome; in the Eastern empire Latin failed to displace Greek. From Britain the Anglo-Saxon invasion expelled the Latin speech, if it had taken root there, as the Saracenic invasions expelled it from Africa. Apart from this some form of Roman speech still marks the ancient limits of Roman rule. These languages are the Italian, French, Provençal, Spanish, Portuguese, Wallachian, and RhætoRomanic. For the study of any

Latin Language and Literature

one of them, and still more for the comparison of any two or more, a knowledge of Latin is indispensable. However, the acquisition of that knowledge is sufficiently demanded by the greatness of the Latin literature, to which we now proceed.

Bibliography.-Philology: Brugmann's Comparative Grammar (1888-95), Brugmann and Stolz's Griechische und Lateinische Grammatik (1890), Delbrück's Vergleichende Syntax der indogermanischen Sprachen (1892) Lindsay's Latin Language (1894), Giles's Manual of Comparative Philology (1895), King and Cookson's Sounds and Inflexions of Greek and Latin (1888), Mommsen's Unteritalische Dialekte (1850), and Conway's Italic Dialects (1897). Grammar: Roby (1887), Gildersleeve (1894), Zumpt (1874), Madvig (1889), Kühner (1879), Draeger (1878), Stolz (1895) Pronunciation: Arnold and Conway (1895), Seelman (1885), and works referred to under PHILOLOGY. Lexicography: Forcellini (1858-79), Lewis and Short (1879), White and Riddle (1869); and Du Cange (1678), for Middle and Low Latin.

2. Literature.-The Latin literature, or the literature of ancient Rome-for though the language cannot be called Roman, being shared by the other Latin communities, the literature did not arise until they were merged in the Roman state-possesses a history which covers some seven or more centuries. Its beginning may be dated with almost absolute exactness at 240 B.C., the year in which the first Latin play was exhibited at Rome. Various dates may be assigned for its close, such as 404 A.D., the year of Claudian's death; 476 A.D., the date of the abdication of Romulus Augustulus, the last of the Western emperors; or 524 A.D., the year in which Boëthius perished. Adopting the last date, so as to include in the present survey his interesting and important work, we assign a duration of over seven and a half centuries to the life of Latin literature. Impossible as it is to draw a rigid line of demarcation between different epochs, we may venture to subdivide the history of Latin literature into three main periods(1) The Republican Age, from 240 to 27 B.C.; (2) the Augustan Age, from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D., or perhaps rather later; and (3) the Age of the Empire, from, say, 25 to 524 A.D. Yet not all the writers included within these chronological limits can be ranked as classical; narrower limits must be assigned to that part of the literature which merits such a description; and Plautus (fl. 200 B.C.) and Suetonius (fl. 120 A.D.) may be re

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garded as the first and the last of the great classical authors. Within that period of three cen turies all the masterpieces which I claim the attention of the world were produced.

(1.) The Republican Age (240 to 27 B.C.). Latin literature, more perhaps than that of any other nation, was essentially imitative and artificial; no doubt in early days rude hymns and ballads were produced, but nothing approaching the rank of literature existed until Greek influence began to make itself felt. It did so by 250 B.C. or so, and for most of the next century Latin literature consisted almost entirely of translations from the Greek. Three names deserve special mention as the founders of the literature-those of Livius Andronicus, Nævius, and Ennius. Of the three it is to be noted that Nævius alone was a native Latin. Andronicus (c. 284-204 B.C.) was a Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum, who took his name, Lucius Livius, from that of the Roman family to which he had belonged when a slave. He was occupied at Rome as a tutor to wealthy families. He translated Greek plays into Latin, the first of which appeared about 240 B.C.; and also translated the Odyssey, and, it is to be remarked, into the native Saturnian verse. Rude as this performance no doubt was, it was important as naturalizing in Rome one of the greatest works of Greek genius; it was still used as a school book in the time of Horace. Only a few fragments of it survive. Gaius Nævius (c. 264-194 B.C.) was a figure of greater distinction. He also translated Greek plays, but went further in writing original plays on Roman subjects, and in composing an epic-still in the Saturnian metre-on the Punic wars. Too few fragments survive to en-. able a judgment of the work to be formed; however, it retained its popularity in the August an age, and is said by the Virgilian commentators, Macrobius and Servius, to have been conveyed in large portions by Virgil ínto his Eneid. A masculine strength and dignity mark the few extant fragments. Quintus Ennius (239169 B.C.) was a native of Calabria; he served in the second Punic War, but only obtained Roman citizenship about 180 B.C.; he was patronized by the great Scipio Africanus. He was the first regular literary man of the Western world-writing on grammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, and even on shorthand, in addition to his more ambitious works in tragic and epic poetry. The titles of more than twenty of his tragedies and many fragments are known, the latter remarkable for

Latin Language and Literature

beauty of phrase and a certain grand dignity of style. Even more important was his epic, the Annales, a history of Rome in eighteen books, from the landing of Eneas to his own day. In it he used the Greek hexameter measure with such success as to make it for all time the chief Roman metre. If for nothing else, for this his poem deserves fame; but for centuries it retained its hold on Roman readers, even after Virgil's day, though, as compared with the beauty of the latter's poems, Ennius could only show an archaic dignity. The fragments of the poems, several hundreds in number, are marked by their rugged but powerful versification, and the breadth and wisdom of their thought. Nævius and Ennius were followed by two more tragic poets, Marcus Pacuvius (220-132 B.C.) and Lucius Accius (170-c. 90 B.C.), of whom less is known, though Cicero placed the former, and general opinion the latter, at the head of Roman tragedy, which declined after their time.

con

Comedy at Rome was temporary with tragedy. Andronicus, Nævius, and Ennius wrote comedies as well as tragedies, but they were excelled in this department by Plautus, Cæcilius, and Terence. Titus Maccius Plautus (254-184 B.C.) wrote perhaps some forty-five plays, of which twenty are extant. All are adaptations, not to say translations, from the Greek, as indeed were also all the works of Cæcilius and Terence. His plays represent every variety of comedy, from the tragédie bouffe to the farce. His best works are perhaps the Amphitryo, the Trinummus, the Aulularia, and the Rudens-a comedy with an unusually romantic setting. Many of his plays are coarse, but they possess an inexhaustible fund of animal spirits, wit, and humor. The language is vigorous and pure, and the influence of Plautus on modern comedy is unmistakable. Of Cæcilius (fl. 180 B.C.) little is known; only fragments of his work survive. Terence-in full Publius Terentius Afer (185-159 B.C.) differed from Plautus in preserving not only the Greek setting but also the Greek spirit and tone in his plays. The comedy of Plautus is Roman in all but origin; that of Terence Greek in all but language, hence his plays were never popular at Rome. They lack vigor and humor; their excellences those of polish, elegance, character-drawing, and pure diction. Julius Cæsar's criticism of Terence as a 'halved Menander' cannot be improved. All the six plays which he wrote are extant. There were other Roman comedians, such as Titinius (fl. 170 B.C.)

are

Latin Language and Literature

and Afranius (fl. 90 B.C.), who wrote thoroughly Roman comedies, not adapted from Greek models; but none of their works survive, and nothing of them except their names is known. After Terence comedy decayed at Rome. Its place was taken partly by the mimes or farces, which do not belong to literature; partly by the satire which was being developed; and largely, too, by gladiatorial shows, which appealed more forcibly to Roman

taste.

At Rome, as everywhere else, poetical literature was earlier in date than prose; and at Rome, too, the usual rule obtained that the earliest form of prose writing was devoted to historical records. But Rome's earliest chroniclers, Quintus Fabius Pictor (fl. 215 B.C.) and Lucius Cincius Alimentus (fl. 210 B.C.)-the former the author of a history of Rome from the earliest times to his own; the latter of a contemporary historywrote their works in Greek. Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 B.C.) was the founder of Latin prose literature. His works included more than 150 speeches; the Origines, a work of discursive history, intermixed with geography, politics, and personal reminiscences; and the De Re Rustica, on farming; but only the last is extant. It shows not attempt at style, but much practical sagacity and a dry humor. Historians of the same period (c. 140 B.C.) are Cassius Hemina, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, and Lucius Coelius Antipater. The works of all of them are lost. About the same period treatises on jurisprudence began to be composed. But the most important literary figure of the second half of the 2nd century B.C. was Gaius Lucilius (180-103 B.C.), the founder of the Roman satura a term the original meaning of which was not satire, but a medley,' i.e. a composition of miscellaneous contents, and which was first applied to a rude kind of drama lacking a plot, afterwards to sketches of social life and character, and finally developing into that criticism of popular manners and habits, and even of individuals, which is denoted by the word satire in its modern sense. Lucilius called his satires Sermones (Talks'), a title afterward adopted by Horace; they consisted of thirty books, describIng the life of his time, his travels and adventures, discussing also the literary and grammatical controversies of the day, and really giving the poet's own autobiography. They were written in hexameters of careless construction; Lucilius cared more for speed than for polish. Altogether his work was lacking in finish, and occasionally coarse in its

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outspokenness. Yet he has the credit of having invented the one original department of Latin literature which has been imitated by such modern writersnot to mention the professed satirists -as Montaigne and Pepys. Only fragments of his works are extant. Nor has any of the other literature of the same period survived, though names of historians are known, and also of orators, such as Scipio and Younger, Lælius, the Gracchi, M. Antonius, and Licinius Crassus, who prepared Roman oratory for its full development in Cicero, who now demands attention. Marcus Tullius Cicero (107-43 B.C.) is in many ways the chief figure in Roman literature; whatever views are taken of his statesmanship, his literary importance, both in his own times and to the modern world, cannot be denied. His excellence is not confined to a single department. Of his speeches, of which the Verrine, Catilinarian, and Philippic orations are perhaps the chief; his treatises on literature, such as the De Oratore, the Brutus, and the De Optimo Genere Oratorum; his philosophical works, like the De Finibus, the De Amicitia, and the De Officiis; and his Letters-any one of these forms of literary production would have sufficed to give lasting renown to any orator, critic, philosopher, or letter-writer undistinguished in any other branch of composition. His letters possess an undying charm, both from the vividness of their style and the complete revelation which they give of their writer's character. They make the age of Cicero better known to us than perhaps any period before the 17th century. It should not be omitted that Cicero made several attempts in poetry: he translated the Phanomena of Aratus, and also wrote a poem on his own consulship, as to which Juvenal's criticism, that he need not have feared the sword of Antony if he had written all his works in the same style, may be accepted. Yet his experiments in poetry assisted one of the greatest of Roman poets-viz. Lucretius, who clearly studied and imitated them. Titus Lucretius (97-53 B.C.) is practically unknown except by his great poem, De Natura Rerum; there is a story that he died by his own hand, after having been made insane by a love potion given him by his own wife, and leaving some books composed in his sane intervals, which Cicero corrected. Of this legend it can only be said that no evidence can be obtained to confirm it. Of his poem-the subject of which is the Epicurean philosophy-it can safely be said

Latin Language and Literature

that while at its worst it is not poetry at all, but philosophical arguments-and that uninteresting forced into metre, at its best it reaches a height of majesty unequalled by any Roman poet, and by few poets of any nation. Younger contemporaries of his were Cinna, Calvus, and Catullus, who represent a totally different school of poetry. Of these, Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-54 B.C.) alone calls for notice, as neither of the others is represented by any extant works, though Calvus at least was ranked with him by good judges. Catullus's fame rests chiefly on those of his poem: which celebrate his love for Lesbia-poems which, for their direct expression of feeling, have never been surpassed. He also wrote poems on his travels, satirical verses, elegiacs on various subjects, an epithalamium of great beauty, the Atys, and an idyll in hexameters on the marriage of Peleus and Thetis. His lyrics are his real achievement in poetry, and in them it is his directness and simplicity of utterance that constitute his strength. His work, which always breathes Roman dignity and force, ends an era in Roman poetry, for a new one to begin some fifteen years after his death with the works of Virgil.

Cæsar (102-44 B.C.) is the chief representative, after Cicero, of the Latin prose of the republic, though his extant work is limited to his Commentaries on the Gallic and the civil wars. But his speeches and letters were held to be unexcelled even in that age; he also wrote on grammar, on astronomy, and two attacks on Cato. His Commentaries are distinguished, by the brevity and brilliance of their style, and by the skill with which Cæsar, though never stooping to self-laudation, makes them the justification and the monument of his achievements. As a model of pure Latinity, Cæsar ranks with Cicero alone. Other historians of the period were Q. Sallustius Crispus (86-34 B.C.), who wrote two extant monographs on the Jugurthine war, and on the conspiracy of Catiline, and also five books of histories on the period from 7970 B.C., of which only fragments remain he closely imitated Thucydides, and based his history on careful researches, but is scarcely a writer of the first rank; and Cornelius Nepos (9924 B.C.), whose only extant work is a collection of Greek and Roman biographies, whose title to survival has been their suitability for the use of beginners in Latin. The one remaining figure of the republican period is M. Terentius Varro (11627 B.C.), whose career began be