Literature

Virgil.

assumed by the king." Such was the aphorism of the man of the world, and in this particular Augustus was a king indeed. The Romans rushed forward in the course he marked out for them. His word dictated the fashions of the day, not in sentiment only, but in many particulars of external conduct. He was anxious to restore the dignity of the Roman citizen, as one of the conquering race which ruled its subjects as much by the prestige of its character as by its arms, and he resented all relaxation from the strait-laced discipline of the ancients, even to the petty matters of their dress and deportment. He marked his sovereign displeasure at the degenerate Romans who indulged in the loose habiliments of Greece. "Are these," he exclaimed, in the language of Virgil," the rulers of the world, the nation of the gown?" And in order to keep up the high distinction of Roman citizenship at a period when provincials from all sides were crowding into it, he reversed, in this single instance, the policy of Caesar, and was very sparing in granting admission to the Roman franchise. He was, indeed, extremely careful in striking a balance between the tendency of the age to a general fusion of castes and privileges and the ancient spirit of exclusion, in which he thought the strength of the republic still really reposed. The policy of Augustus was one, on the whole, of cautious and moderate reaction. He made an effort to stay the process of disintegration, which he found so rife throughout the vital forces of the empire. The lawlessness of his own usurpation did indeed combine with the gross selfishness of his personal character to sap the moral principles of society, and render its ultimate dissolution inevitable; but he made a vigorous effort to stem the tide, and succeeded in giving the Roman world a period of rest in the downward path which it was generally pursuing.

The character of the period, however, as an epoch of of the age. rest for reflection and self-control, was chiefly marked in the literature, which, more than anything else, has contributed to give it the name of the Augustan Age. The religious sentiment which has been described, resting as it did upon a deep sympathy with historical antiquity, coloured by a bold and vigorous imagination, is reflected in the poetry of Virgil, and more particularly in the spirit of his great epic, the Eneid. No doubt, both depth and tenderness of feeling may be traced even in the eclogues of the same master, however slight for the most part their subjects, and however imitative their treatment. The Georgics present us with more serious and dignified characteristics, and though these pieces are directed mainly to the practical treatment of practical operations, they admit of high moral as well as religious colouring. They recall the Roman reader to the moral foundations of the national character, its honest simplicity, its love of nature, its devotion to labour, its conviction that industry is the appointed path to virtue and to honour. But this moral feeling is elevated by a sense of the divine within man and around him. The Roman husbandman, the breed of heroes, is never suffered to forget that there is a God and a Providence, or that the favour of the divine power has always fallen upon the industrious and the virtuous. "Thus it is that Etruria of old, and Rome in later times, waxed illustrious and mighty; thus that the city on the seven hills became the fairest object of creation." The Georgics are undoubtedly animated throughout with a religious sentiment, and bespeak the high religious purpose of their author. But in the Eneid this religious sentiment and purpose are both still more distinctly proclaimed to us. The great epic of Virgil, the national epic of the Roman people, glorifies the divine Providence which founded Rome in the beginning, and carried her through all her triumphs to the consummation of her greatness in the era of Augustus.

It begins with the divine Æneas, and it leads us on to the divine Cæsar. The greatness and the weakness of the hero of the poem equally tend to this one end, the illustration of the Providence which has educed strength out of weakness, and overruled everything to the glory of the Roman people. The moral to be deduced from the story of Æneas is too plain for any Roman to mistake. The divinity which protects Rome is the Lord of heaven and earth and all that is therein. There is no God or Lord like unto Him. Blessed are the Romans who have this Lord for their God. The majesty of the Roman empire, now at the crowning summit of its progress, is the immediate efflux of this sovereign power, and the one is for ever bound up with the other. If such was the doctrine sung by Virgil, surely none could be more grateful to Augustus, the sovereign ruler of an empire so guided and protected.

The names of Virgil and Horace are familiarly united in Ho every review of the age of Augustus; yet no two men can stand more in contrast one with the other in their personal character, in the scope of their writings, and in the influences they respectively exercised upon their contemporaries. Horace, as is well known, had been a republican in his youth; he had espoused the cause of Brutus and Cassius, and, while yet a student in the schools at Athens, had obtained a commission in their army. He fought in person in the battle of Fhilippi, and, as he tells us himself, threw away his shield in his rapid flight from the swords of the Cæsarians. From that time he abjured the losing cause, and obtained, perhaps without seeking it, the advice of the minister Mæcenas, by whom he was taken into favour and introduced to Augustus himself. However agreeable might be his temper and manners, it is not likely that the politic usurper would distinguish a mere upstart with admission to his society without at least tacitly exacting some return. The character of this poet's compositions, both in his lyrics and his satires and epistles, seems pretty clearly to betray the inspiration of the emperor and his astute associates. The most animated and imaginative of his pieces are almost invariably employed in sounding the praises of the Cæsar and his family. When he descends from his highest flights of poetry, he finds congenial matter for his muse in delicate flattery of Maecenas and other magnates of the court. But it will be observed that he seldom, if ever, addresses the haughty nobles of Rome except in a strain of prudential advice, soothing their pride, but lowering their ambition, and directing them to seek contentment and happiness not in objects of public interest, but in the tranquil enjoyment of ease, which he dignifies with the name of philosophy. The poetry of Horace is full of pleasing sentiments, but it contains perhaps no single strain of generous and ennobling enthusiasm. Such feelings it was the policy of Augustus to discourage, and the policy of Augustus is faithfully represented in the utterances of his courtly flatterer. But there was another task imposed upon him, and it is to this that his satires and epistles are more commonly directed, namely, to put out of countenance the offensive self-assertion of the " new men" of the empire, the men whom the fortunes of the civil war had suddenly raised from their native obscurity, and enriched or ennobled, notwithstanding the barrenness of their origin and the vulgarity of their breeding. Augustus wanted, no doubt, to tame the aspiring spirits of his genuine nobles, but he shrank from driving them to desperation by swamping them with an inundation of baseborn inferiors, perhaps their own former clients and freedIt was part of Horace's office, as a gentleman usher at court, to discountenance all such undue pretensions, and shut the door with consummate urbanity upon the most disagreeable or the most importunate of the courtiers. He

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possessed in perfection both the delicate irony and the graceful amenity which are essential to the performance of a task so critical. Doubtless Horace, in his own peculiar line, exercised as great an influence in Roman society as Virgil. The laughing philosopher was no less a power among his contemporaries than the religious devotee. Each of them, in his several way, performed an immense service to the government under which he enjoyed favour and reward; nor can we deny that, considering how necessary the government of Augustus was to the bleeding commonwealth, each in his several way did an invaluable service to his country.

Nor, though we may admit that irony and persiflage were Horace's forte, should we do him justice if we supposed that he had no feelings of genuine tenderness and earnestness. Even Horace had his instinctive sense of religious duty, which peeps out occasionally from under the robe of his pretended philosophy, and shows that he recognised a principle of duty, and felt ill at ease in the consciousness of his own deficiencies. We may recognise in many of his later compositions his growing dissatisfaction with the worldly views of life which he had been wont to recommend, and some efforts at the attainment of higher sources of satisfaction. Both Virgil and Horace were cut off in middle life, but both, we imagine, had already entered into the cloud, and were painfully conscious that the commonwealth they loved had fallen into its decline, and that their own attempts to invigorate or to soothe it were little likely to prove availing. If Virgil deserves our admiration, Horace too is not unworthy of our sympathy; and it is well that we can part in such good temper from the two most perfect artists of the Roman, or perhaps of the ancient, world altogether.

Of Ovid, the third great poet of the Augustan Age, we can hardly think or speak so favourably. Ovid, too, was a genuine representative of his epoch, which occupied, however, the latter part of the career of Augustus, when the character of the age had begun to show manifest signs of deterioration. In the character of this poet, which may be abundantly gathered from his numerous works, there appears no religious feeling and no moral purpose. Nevertheless, his writings reflect, in some important particulars, the social tendencies of the epoch, and afford valuable illustrations of the genius of the Augustan Age. To the historian and archeologist the Fasti presents a store of interesting information; but in this poetical account of the Roman calendar the writer undoubtedly proposed to meet a social want of the time. The work is in fact a rationale of the divine offices, and expounds to the nation the "seasons and the reasons (tempora cum causis)" of the religious services which the emperor recommended to their pious attention. Minute and manifold as were the memorials of their past history, or of their accredited mythology, which the cult of the Roman temples enshrined, we can imagine how much they must have faded away from the recollection of the people generally during the century of confusion from which they had just emerged, and how even the priests and flamens of the national divinities must have stood in need of a learned interpreter of the rites which they mechanically performed. The Fasti is remarkable as a speaking witness to the fact of the ceremonial revival of the Augustan Age.

The generally immoral tendency of a great part of Ovid's poetry is well known; and it speaks all the worse for the character of the age that the writer could declare, and probably not without justice, that his personal conduct was purer than the sentiments with which he sought to please the public. The deterioration of sentiment between Virgil and Ovid is marked in the tone with which they speak in the higher flights of their respective poetry. The writer

of the Eneid fully maintains the pure standard of thought and expression which he received as a tradition from Homer, and which had been respected by the epic poets generally; but Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, an heroic, if not an epic, composition, allows himself to descend far below this exalted level, and is not only licentious in his language, but seems to choose, and of set purpose, the most licentious of the stories which his varied subject offers. Again, though Horace adopts the lighter tone and looser phraseology of the lyric poets of Greece, there is at least nothing meretricious in his style; he was not a corrupter of youth himself, nor were the models such which he proposed for adaptation. But Ovid descends to the imitation of a more wanton kind of poetry. He, too, seeks his models for the most part from among the Greeks, but they are the Greeks of a more degenerate age-the Greeks of the court of Alexandria, who pandered to the vicious tastes of a corrupt and degraded society. But, imitator as he doubtless was, Ovid had a strong personal individuality, and all his poetry is marked with the genuine sentiment of his age and country. Perhaps we trace more of the real man in his Tristia and Ex Ponto, in which he is thrown entirely on his own resources, though in the depth of his affliction and the decline of his powers, than in the abler and more interesting works in which he owed we know not how much to the Greeks before him.

We have, besides these, the remains of other poets, such as Tibullus and Propertius, who also hold up the mirror to their times, and assist us in scanning its character on all sides. But it will be well to pass them over in this brief sketch, and bring our review of the literature of the Augustan Age to a close with a notice of the great historian Livy. The consummate excellence in form and Livy. style of the work to which we refer bears witness to the intellectual accomplishments of the epoch. No doubt the Romans did much at a later period to improve their method of teaching, and to extend their acquaintance with the highest models of literary excellence. An age succeeded in which Rome was formed into an academy, like that of Athens or Alexandria, when all the arts and sciences of the time were taught or practised under the direct instruction of approved professors. Great were the merits of the historical literature of Rome at a later age, and illustrious are some of the men who distinguished themselves in its exercise. But, on the whole, a reasonable criticism will award to Livy the palm of merit at least in the two particulars just specified,-a palm which he may well contest even with the masters of the art in Greece. The form of Livy's history partakes in exquisite proportion of the descriptive, the narrative, and the dramatic; it is replete with personal characteristics, which bring us into direct acquaintance with the individuals of whom it treats; it abounds, moreover, in matter of antiquarian interest, which we who read it at a distance of nineteen centuries feel to be specially valuable, and which did not fail to attract the sympathy even of the writer's own contemporaries. The Romans in the time of Augustus were just beginning to be keenly self-conscious. They felt that they had attained to such a position in the world's history as no people before them had acquired. They were led by all the traditions of their youth to attribute their splendid success to the examples of national virtue paraded before them. were sensible of the deep debt they owed to their ancestors, and they wanted to know who their ancestors were; they wanted to trace the features of their own character in the lineaments of the great men who had gone before them. Of these ancient heroes of the commonwealth they had hitherto imbibed a faint and vague conception from songs and poems and family or national traditions. The legends connected with their ritual and their laws and

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institutions assumed the existence of those heroes, and the reality of the deeds imputed to them; but the men and their deeds were for the most part wrapped in obscurity, or presented under dubious colours. The voice of Livy's contemporaries muttered around him that of all their compatriots he should be held most in honour among them, who should bring these traditions of the past into the light of day, and make them pass among a generation, willing so to accept them, as genuine and accredited history. The history of Livy was the true product of the age, inasmuch as it answered to the call of the age. It presented Roman history to the Romans much as Shakespeare's dramas presented English history to the English; the history in both cases was just what the people wished to believe, and from thenceforth they so accepted and believed it. As regards the style of Livy's composition, it is enough to say that it is generally regarded as the most perfect specimen of the Latin prose writing that we possess, and we may be pretty confident that if anything better had been written, posterity would not have suffered it to perish. It holds the middle place between the oratorical exuberance of Cicero and the philosophic sententiousness of Tacitus. While sentence follows sentence throughout in logical sequence, so that the thread of meaning and argument is never lost under a mass of verbiage, yet we are beguiled in our lengthened study by the repeated recurrence of passages of highly-imaginative colouring; we feel that if the historian sometimes deviates into poetry, he never misleads us with a show of empty rhetoric. The Roman people, as represented by Livy, retained the genuine strength and bluntness of their character. The teaching of their Greek instructors had had as yet little effect in seducing them into the conceits and affectations of the more frivolous people they had conquered. The history of Livy remains the noblest monument of the Romanus honos, the national dignity, which his countrymen so proudly contrasted with the Graia licentia, which was gradually enervating and degrading them. The spirit of the Augustan Age is set forth, perhaps at its best and brightest, in the illustrious history of Livy.

It is probable that Livy, who had been a republican in his heart, lived for the most part the retired life of a student, though he is said to have been employed in the education of some of the princes of the imperial family. He reflects the character of the earlier generation, among whom he was born, rather than of the later, in which he died, at an advanced age, in the fourth year of Tiberius. All the great poets above mentioned met an early death about the middle of the principate of Augustus, except Ovid, who survived to the eighth year of his successor. Accordingly, it is in Ovid, as might be expected, that we trace the first marks of degeneracy from the high standard of the Augustan literature-the Golden Age of Latin composition. The decline of Rome, both in intellect and morals, was becoming rapidly apparent. The splendid promise of the Augustan Age was quickly exhausted. The spirit of freedom evaporated under the influences of the time, and the spurious appearances which the emperor kept up had no power to impart real vigour to the national constitution. Just in the same manner it is abundantly clear that the fame of the age of Louis XIV. in France is founded on the excellence of the men who were actually born and bred in an earlier epoch and under a healthier régime. Neither the age of Augustus nor that of Louis produced the men who have rendered it illustrious But the decline of Rome was becoming marked before the death of Augustus in other respects also. Although internal dissensions had been appeased, and private ambition quelled, the external relations of the empire were insecure, and caused vivid apprehensions. The frontiers

| of the Rhine and Danube were constantly harassed by the indomitable spirit of the barbarians beyond them. On the Danube the Roman arms seem to have been crowned with a sufficient measure of success, but on the Rhine the great disaster of Varus, and the loss of three legions, left a deep impression of gloom upon the feelings of the age. Augustus himself suffered a succession of disappointments in the premature death of his nearest kindred, and in the loss of his trustiest advisers. Though he maintained to the last an outward serenity almost touching, he appears to have been painfully conscious of the substantial failure of the great pacification he had accomplished, and to have augured nothing but evil from the character of the stepson, to whom, at the last moment, he was content to leave his inheritance. A general foreboding of evil was creeping over the minds of his people. The age of Augustus, which lasted nearly fifty years, was indeed a long day even in the life of a nation, but its sun was manifestly hastening to its setting, and the night was coming, slowly, gradually, but surely. (C. M.) AUGUSTUS II. (also, and more accurately, designated FREDERICK AUGUSTUS I.), Elector of Saxony and King of Foland, second son of John George III. of Saxony, was born at Dresden, 12th May 1670. His personal beauty was remarkable, and from his great physical strength he received the surname of The Strong, by which he is commonly distinguished. He was very carefully educated, and spent several years travelling in Europe, visiting most of the courts, and taking part in some campaigns against the French. In 1694 he succeeded his elder brother as elector of Saxony, and shortly after, having entered into alliance with Austria, was appointed to the chief command of the imperial forces against the Turks. In 1697, after having suffered a defeat at Olasch, he resigned this office, and proceeding to Vienna, entered into negotiations with regard to the throne of Poland, left vacant by the death of John Sobieski in 1696. As a preliminary step in his candidature, Augustus renounced the Protestant faith, and proclaimed himself a Catholic. Among his rivals the most formidable was the French prince of Conti. Both expended enormous sums in buying over the Polish nobles, and both claimed to be elected at the general diet. Conti, however, was not on the spot, and Augustus, marching into Poland with his Saxon forces, gained possession of the kingdom. Scarcely was he settled on the throne, when he entered into alliance with Russia and Denmark against the young king of Sweden, and with his Saxon troops (for the Poles would not unite with him) invaded Livonia. In the campaigns which followed (1700-1704), he was completely worsted by the extraordinary military genius of his opponent, the celebrated Charles XII. of Sweden; he was driven from Poland, and Stanislaus Leszczinski was crowned in his place. The Swedes, following up their victories, invaded Saxony, and in 1706, at Altranstädt, Augustus was compelled to make peace, to repay the expenses of the Swedish army, to acknowledge Stanislaus as king of Poland, and to congratulate him on his accession. After these reverses he spent some time as a volunteer in the Netherlands, but the defeat of Charles at Pultowa (1709) again raised his hopes. He at once declared the Altranstädt treaty null and void, and having received promises of assistance from Russia, entered Poland, drove out Stanislaus, and was a second time proclaimed king. During the following years he continued to carry on the war with Sweden, while at the same time his kingdom was distracted by the jealousy with which the Poles regarded the Saxon troops, who were compelled to leave Poland in 1717. In 1718 Charles XII. was killed at Fredericshall, and from that time the reign of Augustus was marked by no important event. His court became celebrated as the

Edmund's in Suffolk, and educated at the university of Oxford. He entered the order of Benedictine monks, but was shortly afterwards appointed tutor to the prince of Wales. On the accession of his pupil to the throne as Edward III., he was promoted to various offices of dignity, and was finally made bishop of Durham, as well as lord high-chancellor and treasurer of England. He was several times engaged in embassies on the Continent, and became acquainted with many of the most eminent men of the time, particularly with the poet Petrarch. A portion of his correspondence with the latter has been preserved. At Oxford he founded a library for the use of the students, which he furnished with the best collection of books then in England, and appointed five keepers, to whom he granted yearly salaries. He died at his manor of Auckland, 24th April 1345, and was buried in the cathedral church of Durham. His works are (1.) Philobiblon, containing directions for the management of his library at Oxford, and an elaborate eulogy of learning, written in very bad Latin,-first printed at Cologne 1473, then at Spires, 1483, and finally at Oxford, 1599; (2.) Epistolæ Familiarium, some of which are addressed to Petrarch; (3.) Orationes ad Principes, mentioned by Bale and Pits. AURAY, a small town of France, situated on the slope of a hill near the mouth of the river of the same name, in the department of Morbihan, 10 miles W. of Vannes. Its port is greatly frequented by coasting vessels; and it carries on a considerable industry in stocking-weaving, silk-spinning, tanning, shipbuilding, &c. The principal buildings are the church of St Esprit (13th century), which is now transformed into a college, the church of St Gildas, the town-house (17th century), and the Chartreuse, which marks the site of the battle of 1364, in which Charles of Blois was defeated by John de Montfort. In the neighbourhood is the church of Sainte Anne d'Auray, one of the principal places of pilgrimage in Brittany. Population, 4542. (See Palliser's Brittany and its Byeways, 1869.)

AURELIANUS, CALIUS, a celebrated Latin physician, born probably at Sicca in Numidia, but regarding whose life scarcely anything is known. The very date at which he flourished is quite uncertain. In his books he refers frequently to Soranus, and does not mention Galen, from which it has been inferred that he lived at a period intermediate between these two writers, i.e., during the 2d century A.D. But if the writings under his name are, as seems at least probable, translations or paraphrases from Soranus, the absence of any reference to Galen can easily be understood. Again, Galen does not mention Aurelianus, though he notices many minor physicians; from which fact, together with the corrupt Latin style of his extant works, it has been supposed by several authorities that the more correct date is the 5th century A.D. The writings of Aurelianus, which are composed from the point of view of the methodical school, and show considerable practical skill in the diagnosis of ordinary and even of exceptional diseases, consist of the following:-(1.) A treatise, in three books, on acute diseases (Acutarum or Celerum Passionum), Paris, 1533 and 1826. (2.) A treatise, in five books, on chronic diseases (Tardarum or Chronicarum Passionum), Basle, 1529. Both these treatises were published together in 1566, and frequently since. (3.) Fragments of a comprehensive treatise on medical science in the form of a dialogue (Medicinales Responsiones), referred to in the preface to the work on acute diseases, have been discovered and published by Val. Rose in his Anecdota Græca et GræcoLatina, vol. ii. 1871.

AURELIUS ANTONINUS, MARCUS, the noblest of pagans, the crown and flower of Stoicism, was born at Rome 121 A.D., the date of his birth being variously stated as the

21st and the 26th April. His original name was Marcus Annius Verus. His father, Annius Verus, died while he was prætor; his mother, who survived her husband, was Domitia Calvilla or Lucilla. By both his parents he was of noble blood, his mother being a lady of consular rank, and his father claiming descent from Numa Pompilius. Marcus was an infant when his father died, and was thereupon adopted by his grandfather. The latter spared no pains upon his education, and the moral training which he received, both from his grandfather and from his mother, and to which he alludes in the most grateful and graceful terms in his Meditations, must have been all but perfect. The noble qualities of the child attracted the attention of the Emperor Hadrian, who, playing upon the name Verus, said that it should be changed to Verissimus. When Marcus reached the age of seventeen, Hadrian adopted, as his successor, Titus Antoninus Pius (who had married Annia Galeria Faustina, the sister of Annius Verus, and was consequently the uncle of Marcus), on condition that he in turn adopted both his nephew and Lucius Ceionius Commodus, the son of Elius Caesar, whom Hadrian, being childless, had originally intended as his successor, but who had died before him. It is generally believed that, had Marcus been old enough, Hadrian would have adopted him directly.

After the death of Hadrian, and the accession of Antoninus Pius to the throne, it became at once apparent that a distinguished future was in store for Marcus. He had been, at the age of fifteen, betrothed to the sister of Commodus; the engagement was broken off by the new emperor, and he was instead betrothed to Faustina, the daughter of the latter. In 139 A.D. the title of Cæsar was conferred upon him, and he dropped the name of Verus. The full name he then bore was Marcus Ælius Aurelius Antoninus, Ælius coming from Hadrian's family, and Aurelius being the original name of Antoninus Pius. He is generally known as Marcus Aurelius or Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. In 140 A.D. he was made consul, and entered fully upon public life.

The education of Aurelius in his youth was so minute, and has been so detailed by himself, that it ought not to be passed over without notice. Professor Long says, with perfect truth, apparently, of the trainers and the trained, "Such a body of teachers, distinguished by their acquirements and their character, will hardly be collected again, and as to the pupil we have not had one like him since." We have already alluded to the care bestowed upon him in youth by his mother and grandfather; a better guardian than that thoroughly good man and prudent ruler, Antoninus Pius, could not be conceived. Marcus himself says, "To the gods I am indebted for having good grandfathers, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly everything good." He never attended any of the Roman public schools, and this he makes a matter for self-congratulation. He was trained by tutors, in whom, particularly in Rusticus, he appears to have been very fortunate, and to whom he showed gratitude when he reached the throne by raising them to the highest dignities of the state. Like most of the young Romans of the day, he began his studies with rhetoric and poetry, his teachers being Herodes Atticus and M. Cornelius Fronto. But, at the early age of eleven, he entered upon another course of study, in which he may be said to have continued more or less till the end of his life. He became acquainted with Diognetus the Stoic, was fascinated by the philosophy he taught, assumed the dress of his sect, and ultimately abandoned rhetoric and poetry for philosophy and law, having among his teachers of the one Sextus of Charonea, and of the other L. Volusianus Marcianus, a distinguished jurist. He went thoroughly and heartily into the practice as well as the