Earliest Literature

views updated

Earliest Literature

FRAGMENTS OF THE EARLIEST EXTANT WRITTEN LATIN: THE TWELVE TABLES

The traditional date of these laws is 450 B.C.E. Legend has it that, when they were being drafted, an embassy was sent to Athens to study the laws of Solon. The Romans’laws were posted on wooden tables (and apparently, later, on bronze tablets) in the forum. Later Romans looked to these laws as foundational of Roman culture. The following fragment concerns ceremonial laws associated with rituals for the dead.

[One] must not bury or cremate a dead man within the city … [one] must not do more than this; [one] must not smooth the pyre with an axe … three shawls, one small purple tunic, ten oboe-players … Women must not tear their cheeks nor raise a lament because of a funeral. One must not gather the bones of a dead man in order to hold a funeral subsequently. (Anointing by slaves is abolished, and so are all) wakes… no expensive sprinkling, no long garlands, no incense-boxes. . . When a man wins a wreath, either personally or through a chattel, or as a mark of courage one (is given) to him ... [one] must not add gold. But if [one] buries or cremates with gold a man with gold dental work, let that be without detriment.

Sources: Gian Biagio Conte, Latin Literature: A History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987).

Edward Courtney, Archaic Latin Prose (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999).

Beginnings. As in most literatures, Roman creative writing began with patterned speech, or poetry. The earliest figure on record is Lucius Livius Andronicus, who translated Homer’s Odyssey into the native Italian Saturnian meter. The principle underlying this verse-form is still disputed, but it apparently relied to some extent on alliteration. Livius Andronicus also wrote tragedies and comedies influenced by contemporary Greek models. One main thread of Latin literature emerges at its beginning, namely the encounter with Greece. Whether it is translated, adapted, used as inspiration or simply rejected, Greek literature provides a constant background for Latin literature even when a writer’s primary models are Vergil’s epic or Horace’s satire. Livius Andronicus’s younger contemporary Gnaeus Naevius (circa 265-190 B.C.E.), for instance, followed his precursor’s lead, writing drama and an historical epic on the first Punic War, but his drama was set in Rome, not Greece. Furthermore, Greek culture found a vociferous opponent in the elder Cato (Marcus Porcius Cato), who described Rome’s Origins in seven books, by theme rather than chronologically. In spite of his rejection of Greek culture, this historical work could not help but follow some Greek precedents, such as the inclusion of speeches. His curious blend of Roman lore and Greek “science” is most evident in his work On Agriculture.

HYMN OF THE ARVAL BRETHREN

The fratres arvales or “Arval Brethren” (from arvum, “ploughed field”) were a college of twelve priests in charge of the spring festival of Dea Dia, a goddess apparently connected with the fertility of the harvest. The Carmen arvale, though known from an inscription of the early third century C.E., appears to date from 400 B.C.E. or earlier. The Arval Brethren chanted this hymn, it seems, to ensure the purification and fertility of the fields. The text of the hymn, which is so old in form that parts of it are difficult to recognize as Latin, continues to puzzle even the experts; nonetheless a tentative translation is provided here.

Help us, Lares! Help us, Lares! Help us, Lares!

Mars, do not let plague and ruin overrun the people!

Fierce Mars, be satisfied! Jump over the threshold!

Each of you in turn, invoke all the Semones!

O Mars, help us! O Mars, help us! O Mars, help us!

Triumpe, Triumpe, Triumpe, Triumpe, Triumpe!

*Translation by Denis Bullock

It is possible that parts of the inscription are not part of the actual prayer, but instead stage-directions (so to speak) for the Arval Brethren as they performed the ceremony. The trebling of each formula has a quasi-magical significance in the prayer, as does the assonance in the Latin words for “plague and ruin” (lue rue). The gods invoked in this carmen are the Lases (i.e. Lares, protective gods); Mars (or Marmar or Marmor; after Jupiter the most important Italian god; in the earliest period he may have had a chthonic connection with the wild land); and the Semones (perhaps related to semino, “sow, plant”? — apparently the gods who protected seeds in the earth). The last word of the song is still not entirely understood; its origin was already mysterious to Varro in the first century B.C.E. It may be connected with the Greek thriambos (a hymn to the god Dionysus), and, like that word in Greek ritual, it may function here as the epithet of some god (Dionysus was himself a vegetation-god in Greece). Why it is chanted five times, when everything else is chanted thrice, is also still a mystery.

Sources: Edward Courtney, Musa lapidaria (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).

Robert Turcan, Gods of Ancient Rome (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

Father of Latin Poetry. The mainspring of Latin poetry, however, was the dramatist and epic poet Quintus Ennius, whose historical epic Annales set the standard for a long time to come. He chose the Greek dactylic hexameter, which became the standard rhythm for long narrative poems. In an early fragment Ennius presents himself as a reincarnation of Homer. This claim tells a great deal about his aims and methods. He wanted to provide a great narrative poem that would define the way in which Rome would think of itself. In this he achieved some success, until Vergil wrote the definitive poem about Rome’s understanding of itself, the Aeneid.