by the motion of the universe, a perfect and symmetrical form without beginning or end, resembling that of the gods. Hence it is that all the stars are not visible from all parts of the earth. Being spherical, the earth has two poles, north and south. These are visited alternately by the sun, so that it is day with one part of mankind while it is night with another. And this fourfold universe is governed by one divine intelligence. Proceeding to details, he speaks of the zodiacal signs in their order, contenting himself with enumerating and briefly discriminating them. Then follows a long muster-roll of the northern constellations, extending over nearly a hundred lines. Seventy lines carry us through a similar review of the southern hemisphere and a much briefer paragraph speaks of certain signs which, though completely invisible, are concluded to exist from analogy. Such is the host of heaven, a mere mixed multitude to look at, yet governed by unerring laws. 'Quid tam confusum specie, quid tam vice certum est?' This regularity is, in fact, the surest witness to the existence of a supreme intelligence. When Troy was taken by the Greeks, Arctos and Orion were opposed to each other as they are now. Ages have rolled on, retribution has come upon Greece, yet the face of heaven is the same, unchanging, and therefore divine. Forty lines are given to the Arctic and Antarctic circles, the Tropics, and the Equator: thirty to the Colures: thirty more to the Meridian and the Horizon. The Zodiac and Galaxy follow, the latter suggesting a number of inquiries, mythological and philosophical, culminating in a theory that it is inhabited by the souls of the heroes, the chief of whom are enumerated at a somewhat tedious length. The planets are despatched in four lines: the comets receive a longer commemoration, which closes with a passage evidently modelled on the conclusion of the First Georgic, about their effects on mankind and on the empires of the world. Comets, we are told, portend plagues, like that of Athens, when medicine gave way, funeral fires failed, and a great nation perished, scarcely leaving an heir behind it; disasters, as when Germany turned on Varus and shed the blood of three Roman legions; civil wars, like the battle of Philippi, waged on ground yet heaving with newly-buried corpses. A brief prayer to the gods that these struggles may be the last that Rome is destined to undergo terminates the book.1 1 In taking leave of Manilius, I will venture to suggest an emendation of his text. The passage is in Book 1, v. 245, 'Nos in nocte sumus, somnosque in membra locamus.' Scaliger reads 'somno sic,' Stöber 'somno qui.' I should prefer 'vocamus.' The words are confused Lucr. v 12, where 'vocavit' of the MSS. has been corrected by the editors into 'locavit.' Of the Cynegetica of Grattius a much shorter notice will suffice. The sole notice of the author or his work to be found among ancient writers is comprised in a pentameter of Ovid (Ex Ponto IV xvi 34), occurring at the end of a list of contemporary poets; a fact which may reconcile the silence of antiquity about Manilius with the intrinsic probability that the Astronomica belong to the Augustan age. All that we know of the history of the poet is confined to his name.' The extant evidence for the text of the Cynegetica is two MSS., one very imperfect, the other less so, but parts as evidently corrupt. A corrupt or imperfect text, however, will not account for the harshnesses and obscurities with which the poem is disfigured. These must in the main be imputed to the writer, who, having none but common thoughts to express, is nevertheless not content to express them in common language. The poem consists of a single book of 540 lines. Its opening is not unpromising. The subject is proposed modestly enough, 'the gift of heaven, the arts that bring the huntsman success,' and Diana is invoked as the natural patroness of the subject, the goddess who, with the other silvan powers, came to the help of primeval man in his unequal struggle with the brutes, and taught him to remedy by art the defects of his natural condition. The poet then proceeds at once to describe the construction of a net, and to speak of the best localities for getting the materials. Then follows a digression which reads like a piece of the exordium violently separated from its context, about the calamitous fate of the old mythological race who ventured unassisted to combat with wild beasts. Returning to details, he speaks of the plumage required for the formido, of nooses and springes, and takes occasion to extol one Dercylos the Arcadian, a name unknown to mythographers, as having earned by his piety the honour of being the inventor not only of the springe, but of the hunting-spear. After a discussion about the best shafts for hunting-spears, he launches into a bolder strain, and enlarges for 350 lines on the various breeds of dogs, especially the metagon, a cross between the Spartan and Cretan, introduced by Hagnon, another unknown worthy, on the care which the metagon requires when young, and on the diseases and injuries incident to dogs, and their remedies, ending with a description of a solemn ceremonial in Sicily, where dis 1 In v. 40, 'At contra nostris inbellia lina Faliscis,' 'nostris' may be meant to contrast by anticipation with Spain and Egypt, mentioned in the following lines, in which case it need only mean 'Italian :' but it seems at least as likely that it is intended to discriminate Falerii from Cumae and Etruria, which have just been spoken of. [The spelling of the name, 'Grattius,' not 'Gratius,' is testified to by the MSS. of the poem, and by various inscriptions in which 'Grattii' are mentioned. The poem has been edited by Haupt (Leipzig, 1838), and by Bährens in his Poet. Lat. Min. vol. i.] eased animals and their keepers are anointed with oil from a natural spring in a cavern sacred to Vulcan, and a companion picture of a yearly lustration of hounds and hunting implements in the grove of the Arician Diana. The remainder of the poem, only 40 lines, is occupied with an enumeration of the best breeds of horses, the preference being apparently given to the Italian,' in a passage which in its completed form may have been intended, as Wernsdorf thinks, as the actual conclusion of the work, though both symmetry of composition and the claims of the subject might certainly have pleaded for a more extended treatment. The following passage, on the early training of the metagon, will, I think, give a fair notion of Grattius, both in his strength and in his weakness. The early part contains nice observation, pleasingly expressed, though the language sometimes fails in perspicuity; the latter shows how easily he can fall into tasteless common-place. The sense however of the lines in which the Italian breed is mentioned, the last three of the poem, is very doubtful, as several words have been obliterated. * Burmann conjectures 'Ubera tota tenens, ac tergo liber aperto.' Gronovius changes 'a' (which seems to be merely a correction of the MS. reading 'ea') into 'stat;' he is followed by Haupt. The sense is that this promising whelp monopolizes his mother's teat, and will not let any of his brothers get on his back, except in cold weather, when he is more tolerant. 3 If the text is right, 'pignoribus' must have the sense of 'indiciis.' 'You will not find the tokens mentioned in my poem delusive, any more than I do.' But Burmann is probably right in reading 'Haec de pignoribus (nec te mea carmina fallent): Protinus,' etc., the young pignora' being distinguished from the mother. 4 For these words, which of course give no sense, Johnson, an English editor of Grattius and Nemesianus (London, 1699), ingeniously suggests 'suo nutrit,' or 'saturat,' 'de lacte minores.' Lachmann, whom Haupt follows, changes 'delacta' into 'devincta,' the MS. reading in the next line being not ‘ac' but ‘ad.' ac longam praestabit opem. tum denique, fetae scilicet, ad summam ne quid restaret habendum, prospicies, quae sit ratio et quo fine regenda.' The Cynegetica of Nemesianus 2 may be conveniently treated in connexion with Grattius' poem, though the interval of time between their respective dates is considerable. The younger poet must, I think, be allowed to rank higher than the elder in command of poetical imagery and poetical language: his work however is still more fragmentary, being evidently only a part of what was originally intended, though there are not the same marks of actual imperfection, and the number of suspected readings seems to be smaller in proportion. The thousand ways of hunting, the exhilarating toil, and the rapid evolutions of peaceful rural strife, are Nemesianus' subject; a wholly new and untried one, as he tells us, in apparent ignorance of the labours of his predecessor. This boasted novelty he proceeds to enforce in the rhetorical spirit of the passages which I quoted from Manilius, enumerating at great length by way of contrast the various subjects which other poets have treated to exhaustion. He then states his own intentions more at large, and promises, like Virgil, at no distant day to sing of the exploits of his ''Est' is generally understood i. q. 'edit.' In the next line Barth conjectures 'Tollat. . . obstet,' reason being called upon to rise and put down luxury. Wernsdorf, after Johnson, changes obstat' into 'abstat,' supposing the sense to be that when vice enters, reason retires. Lachmann reads 'humanos non res magis altera sensus Tollit': sed ratio vitiis adeuntibus obstat,' which Haupt adopts. 2 For Nemesianus see p. 132. imperial patrons, the two sons of Carus. Diana is then invoked, and invited to accoutre herself for the chase, with painted quiver, golden arrows, purple buskins, gold-embroidered scarf, jewelled belt, and wreath for the hair; a somewhat unseasonable inventory, imitated perhaps from the wardrobe of a Homeric goddess, but as frigid in an invocation as it is appropriate in an antique epic narrative. After this introduction of 100 lines we come to the poem itself, which takes up only 220 more. Nearly 140 of these are given to dogs, the chief stress being laid on the subject of training. I will quote a few, which go over part of the ground traversed in the passage cited from Grattius. 'Fecundos aperit partus matura gravedo continuo, largaque vides strepere omnia prole : circuitu, signetque habilem vapor igneus orbem : turba: dabit mater partus examine honestos, iudicio natos servans trepidoque periclo. nam postquam conclusa videt sua germina flammis, vincla, rapit rictu primum portatque cubili, mox alium, mox deinde alium: sic conscia mater The rest of the poem is occupied partly with horses, the points of a good horse and the training which he requires being described in the manner, though not quite with the felicity, of the Third Georgic, partly with hunting implements; after which we are dismissed to the chase rather abruptly: 'His ita dispositis hiemis sub tempus aquosae incipe velocis catulos inmittere pratis, incipe cornipedes latos agitare per agros : nocturnis calcata feris vestigia servant.' |