The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature 0195002067

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THE CLASS ICAL

TRADITION ,

I

Greek & Roman Influences on Western Literature CILBERT IIICIIET

THE

CLASSICAL TRADITION

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Born in Glasgow and educated at St. John's College, Oxford University, Gilbert Highet was said to embody "the best of the Scottish and Oxford traditions" in classical learning, which he imparted to generations of Columbia College students. Although he was not at Columbia when Humanities A was created, once he arrived Highet became an enthusiastic supporter of the course and of general education. He was the author of several books on classical literature, including The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature (1949). Highet won a reputation as a skilled popularizer of intellectual and academic topics, hosting his own radio program and serving as a judge for the Book-of-the-Month Club. Highet taught as a Fellow at his alma mater for six years before accepting a position as professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia in 1938. Highet's commitment to classical learning found a home in Humanities A, where he became "one of the most energetic of teachers and colleagues ," untroubled by the objections of some classicists to the rapid pace of the course or its reliance on translations. Except for a brief interruption from 1943 to 1946, when he served in the British Army (rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel), Highet spent the rest of his professional career at Columbia. He was named Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature in 1950, and he served as department chairman in the 1960s.

H elen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.

THE

CLASSICAL TRADITION GREEK AND ROMAN INFLUENCES ON WESTERN LITERATURE BY

GILBERT HIGHET

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York

Oxford

Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Beirut

and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Mexico City

Nicosia

Copyright 1949 by Oxford University Press, Ine.; renewed 1976 by Gilbert Highet First published in 1949 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1957 Reissued in paperback, 1985, by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 Oxford is the registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Highet, Gilbert, 1906-1978. The classical tradition. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Literature, Comparative-Classical and modern. 2. Literature, Comparative-Modern and classical. PN883.H5 1985 809 85-15477 ISBN 0-19-500206-7 (pbk.)

Printing (last digit): 9 8 7 6 Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE book is an outline of the chief ways in which Greek and Latin influence has moulded the literatures of western Europe T and America. HIS

The Greeks invented nearly all the literary patterns which we use: tragedy and comedy, epic and romance, and many more. In the course of their two thousand years of writing they worked out innumerable themes-some as light as 'Drink to me only with thine eyes', others as powerful as a brave man's journey through hell. These themes and patterns they passed on to the Romans, who developed them and added much of their own. When the Roman empire fell civilization was nearly ruined. Literature and the arts became refugees, hiding in outlying areas or under the protection of the church. Few Europeans could read during the Dark Ages. Fewer still could write books. But those who could read and write did so with the help of the international Latin language, by blending Christian material with Greek and Roman thoughts. New languages formed themselves, slowly, slowly. The first which has left a large and mature literature of its own is AngloSaxon, or Old English. Mter it came French; then Italian; and then the other European languages. When authors started to write in each of these new media, they told the stories and sang the songs which their own people knew. But they turned to Rome and Greece for guidance in strong or graceful expression, for interesting stories less well known, for trenchant ideas. As these languages matured they constantly turned to the Greeks and Romans for further education and help. They enlarged their vocabulary by incorporating Greek and Roman words, as we are still doing: for instance, television. They copied and adapted the highly developed Greco-Roman devices of style. They learned famous stories, like the murder of Caesar or the doom of Oedipus. They found out the real powers of dramatic poetry, and realized what tragedy and comedy meant. Their authors modelled themselves on Greek and Roman writers. Nations found inspiration for great political movements (such as the French Revolution) in Greece and Rome. This process of education by imitating Greco-Roman literature,

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PREFACE

emulating its achievements, and adapting its themes and patterns, has been going on ever since our modem languages were formed. It has a continuous, though very chequered, history from about A.D. 700 to 1949. No single book could give a complete description of the process. As far as I know, there is not even an outline of it in existence. This work is an endeavour to provide such an outline. There are a number of books which treat separate phases of this process. They discuss classical influence on the writers of one particular country, or in one particular period; or they describe the changing fortunes of one classical author in modem times, showing how the Middle Ages neglected him, how he was rediscovered in the Renaissance and much admired, how he fell out of favour in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and how he re-emerged, to inspire a new group of authors, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These works are extremely useful, and I am much indebted to their authors. It would be an enormous, a Sisyphean, task to compile a bibliography of the whole subject. At least a volume as large as this would be needed. However, I have mentioned in the notes a considerable number of books which I have found useful; and I have added a short bibliography of the most recent general surveys of various sections of the subject. From these it should be easy to branch off and follow any particular channel which seems interesting. A great deal of the territory is still quite unexplored. All book-titles and all quotations are given in English, unless some special reason intervenes. All translations (unless otherwise noted) are mine; the original text and the references will be found in the notes. In a book dealing with several different languages, I felt it might be distracting to have German phrases jostling French and Italian jostling Spanish. Many of my friends and colleagues have been kind enough to read and criticize various sections of this book, and many others have drawn my attention to points which I had overlooked. I should like, in return for their salutary criticisms and constructive suggestions, to express my warm gratitude to the following: Cyril Bailey; Jean-Albert Bede; Margarete Bieber; Dino Bigongiari; Wilhelm Braun; Oscar Campbell; James Clifford; D. M. Davin;

PREFACE ix Elliot V. K. Dobbie; Charles Everett; Otis Fellows; Donald Frame; Horace Friess; W. M. Frohock; Moses Hadas; Alfred Harbage; Henry Hatfield; Wemer Jaeger; Emst Kapp; J. A. Krout; Roger Loomis; Arnaldo Momigliano; Frank Morley; Marjorie Hope Nicolson; Justin 0' Brien ; Denys Page; R. H. Phelps; Austin Poole; Colin Roberts; Inez Scott Ryberg; Arthur Schiller; Kenneth Sisam; Herbert Smith; Norman Torrey; LaRue Van Hook; James Wardrop; T. J. Wertenbaker; and Ernest Hunter Wright. I am also grateful to a number of my pupils who have been so good as to make suggestions-in particular Isabel Gaebelein and William Turner Levy. I have further to thank the members of the staff of Columbia University Library, especially the following, whose expert bibliographical knowledge has saved me many hours of searching: Constance Winchell, Jean Macalister, Charles Claar, Jane Davies, Alice Day, Karl Easton, Olive Johnson, Carl Reed, Lucy Reynolds, and Margaret Webb. And I must express my thanks to the Librarian and the staff of St. Andrews University Library, who gave me the traditional Scots hospitality. One other debt, the greatest of all, is acknowledged in the dedication. G.H. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS like to express my thanks to the authors, firms, and representatives who have been kind enough to grant me permission to print quotations from the following works, in which they hold the copyright:

I

SHOULD

George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, from Lord Russell's A History of Western Philosophy; Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., New York, from The Art of History, by J. B. Black; Artemis-Verlag, Zurich, from Carl Spitteler's Olympischer Friihling; The Atlantic Monthly Press, Boston, from E. J. Simmons's Leo Tolstoy; C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich, from Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes; Cambridge University Press, from E. M. Butler's The Tyranny of Greece over Germany; A. S. F. Gow's A. E. Housman: a Sketch; A. E. Housman's Introductory Lecture of 1892 and his preface to his edition of Juvenal; J. E. Sandys's A History of Classical Scholarship; and A. A. Tilley's The Literature of the French Renaissance; Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London, from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad; Chatto and Windus, London, from Lytton Strachey's Books and Characters; The Clarendon Press, Oxford, from W. J. Sedgefield's King Alfred's Version of the Consolation of Boethius; Columbia University Press, New York, from D. J. Grout's A Short History of Opera; S. A. Larrabee's English Bards and Grecian Marbles; E. E. Neff's The Poetry of History; and G. N. Shuster's The English Ode from Milton to Keats; J. M. Dent & Sons, London, from the Everyman's Library editions of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and R. K. Ingram's translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Wiesbaden, from W. Rehm's Griechentum und Goethezeit (Das Erbe der Alten, 2nd series, no. 26); E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., New York, from the Everyman's Library editions of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and R. K. Ingram's translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; Editions Bernard Grasset, Paris, from Jean Cocteau's La Machine infernale and Jean Giraudoux's Electre and La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu; The Encylop~dia Britannica, Chicago, from J. B. Bury's article 'Roman Empire, Later' and D. F. Tovey's article 'Gluck'; Faber & Faber, Ltd., London, from T. S. Eliot's poems and S. Gilbert's James Joyce's 'Ulysses' ; Henry Frowde, London, from E. J. Dent's 'The Baroque Opera', in The Musical Antiquary for Jan. 1910;

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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Gallimard, Paris, from Andre Gide's CEdipe and Paul VaIery's Poesies; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., from D. Bush's Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (Harvard Studies in English 18); Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., New York, from Lytton Strachey's Books and Characters; William Heinemann Ltd., London, from E. Gosse's Father and Son; Henry Holt & Co. Inc., New York, from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and R. K. Root's Classical Mythology in Shakespeare; Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, from S. Gilbert's James Joyce's 'Vlysses'; Librairie Ancienne et Editions Honore Champion, Paris, from E. Faral's Les Arts poetiques du XII- et XIII- siecie (Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, sciences historiques et philologiques, fasc. 238); Librairie Armand Colin, Paris, from the Histoire de la langue et de la litt&ature jranfaise, edited by L. Petit de J ulleville; Librairie Hachette, Paris, from A. Meillet's Esquisse d'une histoire de la langue latine and H. Taine's Histoire de la litt&ature anglaise; Little, Brown & Co., Boston, from E. J. Simmons's Leo Tolstoy; Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., London, from G. P. Gooch's History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century; K. S. P. McDowall, Esq., for the quotation from E. F. Benson's As We Were, published by Longmans, Green & Co. ; Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London, from C. M. Bowra's The Heritage of Symbolism; J. W. Cunliffe's The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy; and M. Belloc Lowndes's Where Love and Friendship Dwelt; The Macmillan Company, New York, from C. M. Bowra's The Heritage of Symbolism; R. Gamett's and E. Gosse's English Literature, an Illustrated Record; A. S. F. Gow's A. E. Housman: A Sketch; and A. E. Housman's Introductory Lecture (1892); Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, from J. B. Black's The Art of History; John Murray, London, from Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men; New Directions, Norfolk, Conn., from H. Levin's James Joyce and from the poems of Ezra Pound; Nouvelle Revue Fran~aise, Paris, from Andre Gide's Reponse a une enqu€te de 'La Renaissance' sur le classidsme; Nouvelles Editions Latines, Paris, from Andre Obey's Le Viol de Lucrece; Oxford University Press, London, from G. L. Bickersteth's lecture 'Leopardi and Wordsworth', and to the British Academy, before which the lecture was delivered; from C. M. Bowra's A Classical Education; H. Cushing's Life of Sir William Osier; T. S. Eliot's The Classics and the M an of Letters; T. E. Lawrence's translation of the Odyssey; H. Peyre's Louis Minard (Yale Romanic Studies- 5); W. L. Phelps's Autobiography with Letters; Grant Richards's Housman I897-I936; A. J. Toynbee's A Study of History; and J. Worthington's Wordsworth's Reading of Roman Prose (Yale Studies in English 102); Pantheon Books Inc., New York, from Andre Gide's Thesee; Paul, Paris, from J. Giraudoux's Elpenor;

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Picard, Paris, from G. Guillaumie's J. L. Gmz de Balzac et la prose fratlf(lise ; Princeton University Press, from J. D. Spaeth's Old English Poetry; Putnam & Co., Ltd., and G. P. Putnam's Sons, London and New York, from J. H. Robinson's and H. W. Rolfe's Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters; Random House, Inc., New York (The Modem Library), from Constance Gamett's translation of Tolstoy's Anna Karemna, and James Joyce's Ulyssl!s; Rheinverlag, Zurich, from W. Rilegg's Cicero u:nd tier Humanismus; W. E. Rudge's Sons, New York, from J. S. Kennard's The Italian Theatre; Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, from Nicholas Murray Butler's Across the Busy Years; Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York, from Lord Russell's History of Western Philosophy; The Society of Authors, London, as literary representative of the trustees of the estate of the late A. E. Housman, for quotations from A Shropshire Lad; The State University of Iowa, from J. Van Home's Studies on Leopardi (Iowa University Humanistic Studies, v. I, no. 4); Stock, Paris, from Jean Cocteau's OrpMe; B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig, from U. von WilamowitzMoellendorff's 'Geschichte der Philologie', in Einleitung in die AltertumsfDissenschaft, ed. Gercke and Norden, and from T. Zielinski's Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte; University of California Press, Berkeley, Cal., from G. Norwood's Pindar (Sather Classical Lectures, 1945); University of Chicago Press, Chicago, from H. T. Parker's The Cult of Antiquity and the French Revolutionaries; Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tenn., from C. M. Lancaster's and P. T. Manchester's translation, The Araucaniad; The Viking Press Inc., New York, from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; The Warburg Institute, London, from the Vortriige tier Bibliothek Warburg, ed. F. Saxl; Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., from H. Peyre's Louis Menard (Yale Romanic Studies 5) and J. Worthington's Wordsworth's Reading of Roman Prose (Yale Studies in English 102); and to any other authors and publishers whose names may have been inadvertently omitted, and to whom I am indebted for similar courtesies.

CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS

xxxvii

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1-21 Our world is a direct spiritual descendant of Greece and Rome I This book describes th and a number of dialects: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Rumanian, Catalan, Proven