. Most of the figures shown to us are isolated, though there are a few variously colored groups of men. One from Cicero, De Oratore 3.28 has already been quoted. Three others will be given entire, and then we shall call attention to some of the figures differently portrayed. We find in Tacitus, Dialogus 18.9 the following: sic Catoni comparatus C. Gracchus plenior et uberior, sic Graccho politior et ornatior Crassus, sic utroque distinctior et urbanior et altior Cicero, Cicerone mitior Corvinus et dulcior et in verbis magis elaboratus; and, again, 25.18: adstrictior Calvus, nervosior Asinius, splendidior Caesar, amarior Caelius, gravior Brutus, vehementior et plenior et valentior Cicero. Here are used eighteen adjectives, one-third of which are applied to Cicero, three in each passage. In 10.1.108 it takes three nouns to describe him: mihi videtur effinxisse vim Demosthenis, copiam Platonis, iucunditatem Isocratis. The Dialogus passages are noticeable for their adjectives, just as Quintilian 12.10.11 is for its nouns: hic vim Caesaris, indolem Caeli, subtilitatem Calidi, diligentiam Pollionis, dignitatem Messallae, sanctitatem Calvi, gravitatem Bruti, acumen Sulpici, acerbitatem Cassi reperiemus; in his etiam, quos vidimus, copiam Senecae, vires Africani, maturita tem Afri, iucunditatem Crispi, sonum Trachali, elegantiam Secundi. Of the fifteen terms given, copiam Senecae is the one suggesting the greatest breadth. Most of the others can be arranged in pairs indicating kindred or contrasted qualities: indoles: vires, diligentia; vis, dignitas: gravitas, acumen: subtilitas, acerbitas: maturitas, elegantia: iucunditas, and in addition sonus and sanctitas. But the most ambitious display is to be found in Fronto (page 113, Naber's edition). Fronto begins by mentioning eleven artists and their subjects, and then continues: In poetis autem quis ignorat ut gracilis sit Lucilius, Albucius aridus, sublimis Lucretius, mediocris Pacuvius, inaequalis Accius, Ennius multiformis? Historiam quoque scribsere Sallustius structe, Pictor incondite, Claudius lepide, Antias invenuste, Seisenna longinque, verbis Cato multiiugis, Caelius singulis. Contionatur autem Cato infeste, Gracchus turbulente, Tullius copiose. Iam in iudiciis saevit idem Cato, triumphat Cicero, tumultuatur Gracchus, Calvus rixatur. And then, as if this were not enough, he follows with a double view of six philosophers. Here are mingled adjectives and nouns, adverbs and verbs, and we can only regret that he should have selected men most of whom are not in the other pictures. However, the fact that he uses triumphat and copiose of Cicero indicates that he recognized his supremacy. But, when we compare the three pictures, we find splendidior and vim applied to Caesar, adstrictior, sanctitas and rixatur to Calvus, amarior and indoles to Caelius, nervosior and diligentia to Pollio. The characterizations of Brutus (in the Dialogus gravior, in Quintilian gravitas) agree; those of Messalla are the most unlike. These resemblances as well as the differences suggest an examination to see whether there really is in a literary worker or his work anything that impels the critic to the use of a certain epithet. If the entire mass of Latin criticism had been preserved, we should probably have more divergent views than we now possess. We should probably have more that is an index of personal pique rather than of fair judgment. One illustration of this has been saved in Dialogus 18.23. epistulas ex quibus facile est deprehendere Calvum quidem Ciceroni visum exsanguem et aridum, Brutum autem otiosum atque diiunctum; rursusque Ciceronem a Calvo quidem male audisse tamquam solutum et enervem, a Bruto autem, ut ipsius verbis utar, tamquam fractum atque elumbem. Compare Quintilian 9.4.1; 12.19.14; 11.1.17 ff. While there may be here and there a caricature, there may also be repetitions in the manner of the HamletPolonius incident (Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.2): Hamlet. Do you see yonder cloud that is almost in shape of a camel? Polonius. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed. Hamlet. Or like a weasel. But, however much or little there may be of these two kinds of portrayal, we need only ask whether there is a fairly distinct characterization for different men and for different spheres of work. To answer this we shall examine the first chapter of the tenth book of Quintilian. We shall not follow him at every step, but only far enough to see whether historians and orators, philosophers and poets are presented in different ways. We might expect such terms to be used as will indicate that we have an unemotional portrayal of facts by the philosophers, and emotional by the historians, and showing that the work of the orator is dynamic, that the aim of the poet is serenity. According to Quintilian, the best philosophers have iucunditas and elegantia; thus, e. g. there is in Xenophon illa iucunditas inaffectata. There is found historicus nitor, vis in the best orators, and sublimitas in the poets, though there is acerbitas in the writers of satire. The last is also the characteristic of Cassius Severus, though he was not a satirist. Ancient comedy is et grandis et elegans et venusta, while Terence and Tibullus, as also Lysias, are elegantes, though elegantia is the mark of Caesar and Secundus (12.10.10), and also of Laelius in Cicero, Brutus 89. Gravitas distinguishes Accius, Antimachus and Sophocles, and gravis is applied to Aeschylus, Caesar and Calvus. Iucunditas is seen in Xencphon, Cicero, Livy and Horace. Isocrates and Messalla are nitidi, and there is nitor in Cicero, Cornelius Celsus and Secundus, but it is most noticeable in Theophrastus's loquendi nitor ille divinus. Vis is found in Antimachus, Caesar, Cicero and Demosthenes. As may be seen from this, the writers in the same sphere may seem akin, or one may seem to belong to several spheres, as Cicero, to whom are assigned the characteristics of three Greeks in 10.1.108. It might be judged from the above that characterization is an indefinite exercise, but to show it in definite terms we shall consider the propriety of urbanitas for Caelius, vis for Caesar, lactea ubertas for Livy, and harena sine calce for Seneca. Cicero says (Brutus 170): Externis quasi oratoribus idem quod urbanis tribuo, praeter unum, quod non est eorum urbanitate quadam quasi colorata oratio. Et Brutus Qui est, inquit, iste tandem urbanitatis color? Nescio, inquam; tantum esse quendam scio. A little later (177) Cicero applies the term to C. Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus. But what is its fitness when applied to Caelius by Quintilian in 10.1.115? He ranked as one of the greatest of Rome's orators, and as an adept political plotter and social intriguer; his name, like that of Catullus, is associated with the Palatine Medea -the ill-famed Clodia. He writes to the absent Cicero: pollicitus sum me omnes res urbanas diligentissime tibi perscripturum, and Cicero, Ad Familiares 8, gives evidences of his skill in the collection of news; compare e. g. 8.7.3 Paula Valeria, soror Triari, divortium sine causa, quo die vir e provincia venturus erat, fecit; nuptura est D. Bruto. That he touched the life of his day at every point is shown not only by the accusations of his enemies (Cicero, Pro Caelio 35), but also by the admission of Cicero (ibid 27): qui nullum convivium renuerit, qui in hortis fuerit, qui unguenta sumpserit, qui Baias viserit. We may well imagine that, if polite society at Rome had been called on to decide to whom belonged the palm for urbanity, with one accord all would have pointed at Caelius. If qualis homo, talis oratio is true, the color of the work of Caelius is certainly given by the term urbanitas. More than one critic speaks of the vis of Caesar, and this images the sum total of his activities. It is reflected in the words iacta alea est (Suetonius, Caesar 32), and in veni, vidi, vici. Let us call this characteristic vis. In Caesar as a boy there was many a Marius, and the skilful carelessness with which he threw on his toga marked him as the first of dandies. The prince of spendthrifts, he would have been Rome's greatest orator if he had not been her greatest general. Shakespeare, through Cassius, describes Caesar as the foremost man of all this world, and, since he was a human dynamo, vis would properly characterize him as a man. But is there vis in his writings? Neither in the 770 ablatives absolute in the Gallic War (Heynacher), nor in the 630 instances of secondary sequence, nor in the 500 subject accusatives with the infinitive do we find a reflection of vis. A methodical search calls our attention to many a long sentence, but nowhere anything that equals veni, vidi, vici. We try the results of chance, and, with eyes shut, put our finger on B. G. 7.20, and find the first period in the fourteenth line. Another trial gives us B. C. 1.17.2, a sentence seven lines in length. So far as the Bellum Civile and the Bellum Gallicum are concerned, the application of vis to them is merely an illustration of qualis homo, talis oratio. We must judge the lactea ubertas of Livy, and his mira iucunditas clarissimusque candor from his work alone. This is a treasure-house of great stories, and a portrait gallery of the heroes of more than seven hundred years, and each portrayal is illuminated by the radiance of Livy's religious faith. Asinius Pollio wrote of a certain Patavinitas, professing to find in Livy's style some traces of the place from which he came; but Quintilian saw in that style a radiance, and felt a creamy richness. One sentence will show the richness, and the suggested radiance of the marble Rome of Augustus gleaming from the temple of distant Alba: 1.29.5 voces etiam miserabiles exaudiebantur, mulierum praecipue, cum obsessa ab armatis templa augusta praeterirent ac velut captos relinquerent deos. 'And mournful cries, especially of the women, kept coming to the ear when they were passing by the august temples blockaded by armed men and were leaving, if we may call them so, their captive gods'. Here we find color of tense, of adjective, and of particle, and the contrasted sorrow, exultation or humiliation of women, men and gods. " One of the greatest figures in Roman literary history is the philosopher Seneca; he was fine picking for the critics. Quintilian admitted the wide range of his work in 12.10.11 copiam Senecae; and mentions the items in 10.1.129 nam et orationes eius et poemata et epistolae et dialogi feruntur. But his manner is defective: sed in eloquendo corrupta pleraque atque eo perniciosissima, quod abundabat dulcibus vitiis. Gellius quotes from Seneca in 12.2, but only to condemn, and adds in § II: sed iam verborum Senecae piget; haec tamen inepti et insubidi hominis ioca non praeteribo. But there is no other criticism which reveals so much about the critic as that of Fronto. Seneca, Epistles 87.10, writes: ita non omnibus obesis mannis et asturconibus et tolutariis praeferres unicum illum ecum ab ipso Catone defrictum. Fronto had evidently read this, and from it he obtained a figure for his criticism (155-156, Naber): eloquentiam Senecae, mollibus et febriculosis prunuleis insitam, subvertendam censeo radicitus, immo vero Plautino trato verbo, exradicitus. Neque ignoro copiosum sententiis et redundantem hominem esse: verum sententias eius tolutares video nusquam quadripido concito cursu tenere, nusquam pugnare, neque maiestatem studere, ut Laberius, dictabolaria immo dicteria potius eum quam dicta continere. But he goes even beneath this (page 157): at enim sunt quaedam in libris eius scite dicta, graviter quoque nonnulla. Etiam lamminae interdum argentiolae cloacis inveniuntur. Passing by the jewels in the sewer, we may note that the words prunuleis, tolutares and dictobolaria would have made Quintilian gasp and stare. Macrobius (Saturnalia 2.1.14) tells us of dicta and dicteria, but dictabolaria, 'wordslinging', we have from Fronto. But to get the real measure of the style of Seneca we must go back to the madman Caligula. Suetonius gives us two specimens of the wonderful critical sense of the Emperor. One of these characterizes his grandmother Livia as Ulixes stolatus (Caligula, 23); the other characterizes the style of Seneca as commissiones meras, and harena sine calce (Caligula, 53). The unconnected character of the sentences of Seneca was present to the mind of Macaulay also; they seemed to him a succession of mottoes. So we may put aside Fronto, Gellius, and even Quintilian, and take Caligula, in this respect, as the best painter of them all. But there is the suggestion for another good characterization in the words of Seneca himself, Epp. 100.7: lege Ciceronem: compositio eius una est Pollionis Asini salebrosa et exsiliens et, ubi minime expectes, relictura. Quintilian (11.2.46) has salebrosa oratio, but does not apply it to any writer. Had Pollio had a chance to pass judgment on Seneca, he might have called attention to traces of Cordubensitas; see Cicero, Pro Archia 26 Cordubae natis poetis, pingue quiddam sonantibus. On the other hand Fronto might have used salebrosa rather than any adjective that he did, for, making the transfer from walk to wall, it best expresses the unevenness of the surface where the stones have been laid without mortar. at contra Two of these characterizations show that the critics thought that there was a definite reflection of the worker in his work, and this is also shown by what Quintilian (10.1.114) writes of Caesar: tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse, quo bellavit, appareat. The other two show that, not knowing the worker, we may discover the fundamental tone of the work and set it forth in verbal terms. Though the exact color or the content of these can not be mathematically determined, yet for literature the attainment of them is akin to the nationalizing of all the states, for they are the expression of the e pluribus The Defeat of Varus and the German Frontier Policy of Augustus. By William A. Oldfather and H. V. Canter. University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Volume IV, No. 2, June, 1915 (University of Illinois Bulletin, Volume XII, No. 42). Pp. vi+ 118. 75 cents. In 1909, which was the nineteen-hundredth anniversary of the battle in the Teutoberg Forest, there was in Germany "an extraordinary outburst of celebrations, addresses, memorials, and monographs giving expression to what was universally regarded as the first and not the least glorious chapter of German achievement, the 'deed of Arminius'". Professor Oldfather says in the Preface to the work under review, and in a paper in The Classical Journal 11.226-236, that he has cherished "misgivings as to the historical justification of this view of the defeat of Varus". The results both of much thought and of much labor are now set forth in the article under review. The study before us challenges a well-nigh universal historical verdict, namely, that the defeat of Varus by Arminius in the year 9 A. D. was a turning point of world history. With that are bound up several other considerations of Roman policy and the status of Germany which will appear as the review proceeds. The authors have devoted four chapters to their study. In the first chapter a general view of the question is taken, in the second the Sources are set forth, in the third there is a criticism of the Accepted View, and in the fourth and last chapter the New Interpretation of the authors is offered. The German and English writers on Roman history practically all agree that the Emperor Augustus intended to subjugate Germany as far as the Elbe river, and that this intention was frustrated by the defeat of Varus and the annihilation of his three legions. Different historians have different reasons for crediting such an intention of expansion to Augustus, but the perfervid enthusiasm displayed by German and English writers alike over the saving of the fine independence of the Germans seems to savor of patriotic extravagance, and to hark back to that time a few years ago when Teutonico-Anglo-Saxonic victories were well deserved at the expense of the effete Romans and mollycoddle Gauls! The Roman victory at Alesia, although it made Vercingetorix the national hero of France, stopped forever Celtic national civilization; the Roman defeat in the Teutoburg Forest saved Germanic national civilization. So wrote our authorities. Under patriotic circumstances that sounds fine enough. But, in fact, Professors Oldfather and Canter do not need to use any argument here at all. They simply suggest that this so-called liberation-in point of fact a divorce from the civilizing contact with Rome left the Germans without any literature, monuments, or culture, "until they again came into relations with that great transmitter of civilization, Rome, in the person of Rome's new representative, Charlemagne". There are but four ancient accounts of the battle in the Teutoburg forest: Cassius Dio 56. 18-23; Florus 2. 30. 21-39; Velleius 2. 117-120; Tacitus, Annales 1. 60-62. Dio and Florus both wrote in the second century A. D., both were rhetoricians, and, although Dio is much more to be trusted than Florus, still both were quite unwilling to let historical truth stand in the way of a rhetorical antithesis. Velleius should be the best source for the history of the time, because he is the only contemporary writer who mentions the Varus episode. But Velleius is so openly a panegyrist of the Emperor Tiberius that nearly everything he says is a mixture of bias, animus, and flattery. Varus was in command in Germany just before Tiberius's second command there. So Varus is blamed that Tiberius may be exalted. Three of the four sources therefore are quite unreliable. Tacitus is not much better. Living in an age of imperial expansion, he had contempt for Augustus's foreign policy; living in an age of gilded aristocratic vice, he had a social moral to point in the simple virtue of the German barbarians; and, besides, Tacitus had the rhetorical taint of his age. But, quite apart from the general suspicion under which all four authorities fall, there is the added difficulty that there is almost no agreement among them as to the policy of Augustus, the feeling of the Germans, or the details of the battle. Chapter III, Criticism of the Accepted View, is the backbone of the book. It is a straight stiff piece of argument. To attack a verdict rendered by Mommsen, Gardthausen, Arnold, and the rest of the earlier historians of Rome, especially when supported in minor points by Meyer, Koepp, or Ferrero, is not unlikely to be a thankless task. If, however, ancient historians are proved to have been biased, and to be untrustworthy, and if modern historians have sheeplike followed the lead of the over-patriotic interpretation of a Teutonic victory over the Romans, then it is indeed well to make a critical study of such a matter, and by piling up facts to overturn a pseudo-historical Juggernaut. and Germanicus; (3) the Roman power was so much greater than that of Germany that Augustus could easily have conquered the country if he had wished; (4) a conquest of Germany was contrary to Augustus's character; further, such a conquest, if begun, he would have carried out; (5) Rome had at this time a welldefined peace-policy; (6) Rome was not likely to stop a thing because of a single setback; (7) if a conquest was intended, the means taken are almost unexplainable; (8) there was no provincia to abandon, under any circumstances; (9) if there was any change of policy, it was under Tiberius. The student of history must feel the weight of these objections, and be not only "sceptical about the significance of Varus' defeat, but strongly convinced that it played no such part in the determination of Augustus' Germanic policy as is generally supposed". In Chapter IV the authors offer their New Interpretation. The argument first takes up the Roman operations in Germany and shows that they were not directed towards permanent conquest. There is therefore nothing left but a matter of demonstration. Analogies and parallels, both in ancient history and in the policy of Augustus, are brought in sufficient number to strengthen the argument that the policy The examination of the authorities shows that there pursued by Augustus in Germany was that of making are four fairly distinct sets of opinions: (1) Augustus changed his peace policy suddenly simply out of desire of conquest. Professors Oldfather and Canter show that this has no basis in fact. (2) Augustus decided to conquer Germany and make a province of it, in order to protect Gaul and Italy. It is shown that such a policy would have been stupid, for each new onward push made necessary another one. (3) Augustus changed his peace policy to please his stepsons Tiberius and Drusus, and to give Gaius and Lucius Caesar, his grandsons, an opportunity to make a military reputation. For such an assumption there is no evidence, nor does it at all tally with the lifelong policy of Augustus. (4) Augustus had to go to war to pacify his own countrymen who pined for conquest. This is shown to be absolutely false. These four sets of opinions have two assumptions in common: (a) "that the conquest of Germany was the only means at Augustus' disposal for protecting Gaul; (b) that his conflicts on German soil could have had no other purpose than Germany's subjugation". These assumptions are answered in the new interpretation offered in Chapter IV. The authorities are next examined in regard to the statement so universally made that Germany was made a province by Augustus. It is shown without doubt that such was never the case. At the end of Chapter III the authors have made a brief summary of their objections to the belief that Augustus intended to conquer Germany: (I) Varus was defeated with a small army in a minor battle; (2) the defeat was completely avenged by Tiberius out of the district between the Rhine and the Elbe, perhaps farther, a buffer state. The reviewer believes that Professors Oldfather and Canter have proved their point. The evidence is convincing; in some cases it is overwhelming. The argument is well sustained, and there seems to be no good reason why the buffer state policy may not be accepted, and there is the best of reasons for accepting the authors' contentions that the defeat of Varus was not a matter of vital importance, and that Germany was not a province. The reviewer is not quite satisfied that sufficient reasons have been adduced to explain the enthusiasm shown by the ancient Roman writers for the victory of Arminius. But that may not perhaps fairly be considered part of the field of investigation chosen by the authors of the paper. The Defeat of Varus and the German Frontier Policy of Augustus is a scholarly and valuable piece of work. THE TURRIS AMBULATORIA AND THE PERAMBULATING 'TANK' The Philadelphia Record of September 24, 1916, had a full page article on the so-called 'tanks' or armored caterpillar war-cars, which had just been brought into use by the British in Northern France. As prototypes of this modern engine, it pictured, among others, the turris ambulatoria of the Romans, giving an excellent illustration of it. The principle of the tank is the same as that of the turris; but the ancient wall has now become a trench, and the wall tower is replaced by a low structure with caterpillar wheels. Entered as second-class matter November 18, 1907, at the Post Office, New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 1, 1879 VOL. X NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 20, 1916 AN ANCIENT CASE OF 'FRIGHTFULNESS' 'Frightfulness' in warfare, or a violation of international law which outrages the feelings of humanity, is no new thing. Standards of civilization have changed, but always there have been some rules of the game of war which no state could violate without forfeiting the respect of the world. In ancient Greece one of the most important of these rules required that burial be granted to the dead bodies of the enemy. Our point of view is different: we look with far more equanimity upon the corpses that are suffered to lie exposed between the hostile trenches of Europe than upon the premeditated slaughter of innocent civilians. But the Greeks of the fifth century B.C., however their occasional brutality towards the living may shock our sensibilities, were characterized by a peculiar respect for the dead body. When it was suggested to Pausanias after the battle of Plataea that the body of the Persian general Mardonios should be crucified in retaliation for similar treatment of the corpse of Leonidas at Thermopylae, he replied: 'Barbarians may do such a thing, but not Greeks' (Herodotus 9.70). Failure to bury the dead was held to be a monstrous crime. The Athenians executed their victorious generals for not recovering the bodies of the men lost in the sea-fight near Arginusae, although a violent storm had made this impossible. The enemy's dead had an equal right to burial. Isocrates (Panathenaic Oration 169 f.) calls this right the universal law of all Hellas. So we are justified in taking the refusal to allow the burial of the dead enemy as an exact parallel to the 'Frightfulness' of the present war. It may be interesting, therefore, to notice the way in which the ancient Athenians, the most advanced of all the Greeks, reacted to a famous case of this particular infringement of the rules of war. The most popular medium of literary expression during the greater part of the fifth century was tragedy. But this suffered from its limitation to themes taken from the national legend and myth. However, as the tragic poets were not hampered by convention in their treatment of the mythical themes, almost any timely topic could be discussed, just as the most modern of homilies are frequently based on episodes from the heroic legends of the ancient Hebrews. In one of the most famous myths of the Theban cycle occurred the refusal, on grounds of policy of state, to allow the burial of the dead enemy, and each of the three tragic No. 7 poets made this refusal the theme of a tragedyAeschylus in The Eleusinians, Sophocles in the Antigone, and Euripides in The Suppliant Women. The play of Aeschylus has not come down to us, and we cannot know either its point of view or its effect upon the audience, but we are expressly told that the reputation which Sophocles gained by the success of the Antigone led to his election as Athenian general, and that The Suppliant Women was a 'eulogy of Athens'. Hence we have a right to regard the position taken by the poets in these two dramas as interpreting the feelings of the people of Athens. In the Antigone Polynices, an exiled prince of Thebes, has fallen at the head of a hostile army in the attempt to conquer his native land. The new ruler Creon forbids anyone to bury his body under penalty of death, but the royal edict is defied by Antigone, sister of Polynices, who is caught in the act of performing the funeral rights over her brother's corpse, and is immured alive. Then Haemon, Creon's son, who is betrothed to Antigone, and has protested to his father against her execution, breaks into her living tomb, and, finding that she has taken her own life, stabs himself upon her body. The leading motif of this drama is undoubtedly the conflict between the claims of divine and human law, but the political aspect of the question is emphasized, and it was probably the poet's handling of the latter which led to his election as general: Sophocles was no strategist, and his duties proved to be political and diplomatic rather than military The Creon of the Antigone stands for the type of government which democratic Athens detested, the strongly centralized rule of an absolute monarch. The poet takes pains to show that the people of Thebes unanimously abhor their ruler's act of Schrecklichkeit. The chorus of Theban Elders receives the edict coldly and with evident, though not openly expressed, disapproval. When it is announced that the body has been mysteriously buried in spite of the guard set to prevent this, the Elders suggest the possibility of divine intervention, clearly implying that the edict was unjustifiable. Likewise Antigone in her famous defence makes clear the weakness of a monarch's command when it conflicts with the laws of God (which of course implies a consensus of opinion among all the people. See 446 ff.)1: I use Jebb's translation here and below. |