book 10, a satire on literary criticism, which was also imitated by Horace in the Ars Poetica. See infra, p. 463. 75 On the origin of this distinction in the commonplaces of the Stoics and Cynics, cf. my paper on Lucilius and Persius, vol. cit., p. 125, n. 4. In fragment 611 I accept Cichorius' emendations of veri and praedicere which are paleographically easy and give a reading well suited to the tone of these eisagogic fragments. 76 With this phrase compare in Epp. 2, 2, 122, where the same topic is discussed, luxuriantia compescet. So Cicero, de oratore 2, 33, 96: interdum in summa ubertate inest luxuries quaedam quae stilo depascenda est. Cf. also orator 81. 77 Op. cit., pp. 119 ff. 78 Op. cit., p. 119, n. 1. 79 Op. cit., p. 111 ff. Compare Livy's praefatio 5. 80 The last line of the passage closely resembles in tone frags. 611 and 953. 81 Notice with Cichorius the close imitation: quae conductae, Lucilius; qui conducti, Horace; flent in funere, Lucilius; Plorant in funere, Horace; multo magis, Lucilius; prope plura, Horace; capillos scindunt et clamant, Lucilius; dicunt et faciunt, Horace. 82 See Norden, op. cit., p. 500, note 1. 83 See Radermacher, Rh. Mus. 54, pp. 284 ff. and 57, p. 314, who proves its Stoic origin. So Strabo 1, 17 according to Stoic sources: obx olov Te ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ποιητὴν μὴ πρότερον γενηθέντα ἄνδρα ἀγαθόν. 84 See supra, p. 113. 85 Or should we rather regard the line as a humorous recognition by Lucilius of the informal character of his own sermones and so parallel to Horace's humorous turn on himself in 303. Non alius faceret meliora poemata; verum nil tanti est. 86 In my original treatment of these passages, cf. my article, Lucilius and Persius, vol. cit., pp. 121 and 124, I considered the reference was to iunctura. I now prefer to interpret them as referring to the subjective aspects of ordo. 87 Op. cit., p. 171. Cf. Pseudo-Acro on line 238, who seems to be conscious of such a scene in Lucilius, if we accept the MS. reading. 88 Perhaps both were influenced by the didaσxaλuá of Accius, book 2. 89 Probably derived from the teachings of Panaetius. In sat. 2, 1, 75, Horace also alludes to this famous commonplace. Cf. supra, p. 73, and pp. 377-378. 90 Cf. Marx, comment, ad loc., for the rhetorical testimonia on this commonplace. Cf. supra, pp. 289 ff. for a fuller discussion. 91 After careful examination I find myself unable to agree with Tyrrel's view, op. cit. passim, that there are considerable traces of the influence of Lucilius in the odes and epodes. We have no right to attribute to Lucilius on the general ground of coarseness of expression such a phrase as olentis uxores mariti in odes 1, 17, 7. On the other hand the comparison of the thirst attendant upon dropsy with avarice is clearly a recollection of Lucilius fragment 764. See supra, pp. 200 ff. We have allusion to Lucilius in the following passages in Porphyrio's commentary on the odes 1, 7, 1=1291; 1, 22 in which canto Lalagen is explained by Collyra the title to the sixteenth book of Lucilius; 1, 27, 1-2 in which Lucilius' lines 1267: Podicis Hortensi est ad eam rem nata palaestra is quoted in support of the perfectly natural turn of nata in the sense of facta; and 2, 21, 7-8, where on descende promere Porphyrio cites for the infinitive of purpose Lucilius 222, da bibere. It is obvious that these are parallels cited only for exegetical purposes. Nor can I feel that we have any clearer evidence for Lucilian influence on the epodes, and this in spite of Lucilius' familiarity with Archilochus, frag. 698. The tenth epode which Tyrrel regards as Lucilian and compares explicitly with the Lucilian line 870 ff.: - nec ventorum flamina flando suda iter secundent. is to be regarded rather as influenced by an Ennean tragedy, perhaps the Thyestes, than as a propempticon, such as we have in this epode and in Horace's odes 1, 3, the ode to Virgil's ship. CHAPTER VII CONCLUSION The central thesis of this book has been so fully set forth in the preface, the three introductory chapters, and the analysis of Horace's aesthetic creed in the Ars Poetica, that little further need be said by way of summary upon these points. Just as this study was going to press, however, Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism appeared. In this work Babbitt subjects to a searching analysis the whole modern philosophical and literary movement which is best typified by the name of Rousseau. The work thus lays down the fundamental principles, ethical, psychological, and aesthetic upon which the classical, the neoclassical, and the romantic interpretation of life and literature rest. Every student of the Greek and Roman classics owes Professor Babbitt a profound debt of gratitude for his penetrating interpretation of the real meaning and value of the classical spirit for our modern world. The conclusions of my own study in the Classical Theory of Imitation, as illustrated by the literary and aesthetic theories of Lucilius and Horace, and the nature of the imitative discipleship which binds Horace to his great predecessor confirm and supplement Babbitt's conclusions in all essential points. It will be profitable therefore to outline the salient theses of Babbitt's book and to point out certain anticipations of these theories in ancient literary criticism. I shall then proceed with a concrete demonstration of the essential harmony of the Classical Theory of Imitation as realized in the aesthetic theory and creative practice of the satirists, Lucilius and Horace, with Babbitt's analysis of classicism. Next I shall consider in some detail the part played by decorum, the feeling for restraint, proportionateness, and centrality in the evolution and perfection of what at first sight seems so free and spontaneous a genre as Latin satire. Finally, I shall endeavor to show that willing submission to these fundamental tenets of classicism in no manner hampers the true genius, but rather that from his ad herence to these humanizing principles there evolves the literary masterpiece. In his preface Babbitt quotes as the key to his argument the lines of Emerson: There are two laws discrete Not reconciled,— Law for man, and law for thing; The last builds town and fleet And doth the man unking. In essence Babbitt's book on the negative side is, as he says, in his preface, a protest against the undue emphasis on the "law for thing," which finds its expression in literature in the emotional naturalism of Rousseau and the romanticists. On its positive side his argument aims to reassert the "law for man" and the supreme value for modern democratic society of the special discipline on which that law rests against the prevalent forms of naturalistic excess in life and letters. In short, Babbitt seeks to reconcile literature and the man of letters with life once more by reasserting that the task of literature is to interpret the experience of the individual in terms of the common experience of the race, not as something unique and eccentric. Or to quote his own words: Life does not give here an element of oneness and there an element of change. It gives a oneness that is always changing. Now Roman satire is just such an interpretation of life as Juvenal realized, when he said (Sat. 1, 85 f.): Quidquid agunt homines votum timor ira voluptas In these lines the oneness is the struggle of man, the outward expression of his seething emotions, against the ever-changing stream of life down which he is swept. In fact, to an unusual degree Latin satire from Lucilius to Juvenal displays in its ethical and aesthetic aspects this quality of a oneness which is ever-changing, a fact which has not escaped my thoughtful readers. In this life is a oneness that is always changing, that is an element that is permanent and real, inextricably blended with something ever vanishing or transforming itself. Hence the interpretation of life requires the inextricable union within man of the discriminating faculty which we usually call reason or judgment with that of the imagination which gives intuitive penetration into the veil of illusion. The dream of life may, therefore, best be managed-and the classicist emphatically holds that it requires management-through the right use of illusion by the imagination. We thus gain access to a higher reality, to an interpretation of man and life resting on the observed facts of human experience as tested by the laws of reason and probability, but employing intuitive insight, if I may be permitted the pleonasm, to picture man and his works sub specie aeternitatis. Such a oneness within the soul of man may alone lay hold of the oneness in the universe. Such a working partnership between the reason and the imagination is alone capable of erecting a sound model for imitation in the sphere of human conduct and in the sphere of literature which mirrors human life. The romantic creed is, of course, a reaction from the reason, logic, and good sense of the eighteenth century just as this neo-classical reason was itself a recoil from the intellectual romanticism with its elaborate system of conceits and preciosities of the seventeenth century, and the cult of the romantic deed that had flourished in the mediaeval romances. For the transforming, contemporizing, and progressive imitation of the true classicist, the type of imitation I have illustrated in Chapters IV, V, and VI of this book, the neo-classicist substituted a tame, servile, and external type of imitation such as Horace himself has protested against in the nineteenth epistle of the first book, and has carefully differentiated from his own standard of free imitation in the well-known lines: O imitatores servum pecus ut mihi saepe bilem saepe meum vestri movere tumultus. For a true standard of appropriateness or decorum, shifting with the nature of the genre, such as that set forth by Horace in the Ars Poetica, the neo-classicist substituted the oppressive external standards of an artificial etiquette. Romanticism, therefore, is a revolt from the domination of the feelings by the reason, from a false theory of imitation, and a perverted sense of decorum. The romanticist is first and foremost an impas |