§ 1. We now lead our novice to the studies of eloquence, to the orator—not so that he may approach private or public causes, but so that he may learn the things which he may afterward bring forth opportunely when practical experience demands them. Eloquence is twofold: copious and expanded, which inundates like a river and which they properly call eloquence; and contracted or compressed, as Cicero calls it in the book On Famous Orators, which is dialectic.
Again, each kind—but especially that more abundant kind, which resembles an open palm, not a fist—is divided into prose and discourse bound by rhythms, or metrical discourse. I say “especially,” for even the precepts of dialectic can be comprehended in meters; indeed, certain acute, brief, and exceedingly concise poems imitate dialectic by their pointedness. The sacred poems of David and Job are full of examples, as are some Latin epigrams, if we consult them.
If you weigh these things according to the common manner, you will divide them into three faculties whose perfection few have attained; but if you look to the nature of eloquence, you will understand one end: to teach, move, and persuade by speech, whether it drives or draws minds with a flood of words, or penetrates by pointed brevity and performs the office of an orator without commotion. I am indeed accustomed to wonder at those who measure eloquence by the ornament and majesty of words and thoughts. Whoever speaks suitably for persuasion is eloquent, whether he governs his words with Ciceronian eloquence or invades minds with Chrysippean subtlety. Not only experience but also the divine writings teach this.
Experience does so, for a brief admonition, a clear maxim, and a timely axiom are often more powerful than long speeches, since we see that the briefest speeches have possessed the greatest force. Second Kings, chapter 14, verse 5: “Alas, I am a widow, for my husband is dead. And your handmaid had two sons, who quarreled with each other in the field, and there was no one who could restrain them; and one struck the other and killed him. And behold, the whole kindred rises together against your handmaid and says, ‘Hand over the man who struck his brother, so that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he killed, and so that we may destroy the heir.’ And they seek to extinguish my spark which is left, so that no name or remnant may survive for my husband upon the earth.” And the king said to the woman: “Go to your house, and I shall give orders concerning you.”
And the woman of Tekoa said to the king: “Upon me, my lord king, and upon my father’s house let the iniquity be; but let the king and his throne be innocent.” And the king said: “Whoever contradicts you, bring him to me, and he shall no longer proceed to touch you.” She said: “Let the king remember the Lord his God, so that the blood relatives are not multiplied to take vengeance and so that they by no means kill my son.” He said: “As the Lord lives, not one of your son’s hairs shall fall to the earth.” The woman therefore said: “Let your handmaid speak a word to my lord the king.”
And he said: “Speak.” And the woman said: “Why have you devised a thing of this kind against the people of God, and why has the king spoken this word so that he sins and does not bring back his own banished man? We all die and flow away like waters upon the earth which do not return. God does not will a soul to perish but takes thought, considering that the one cast away should not perish utterly. Now, therefore, I have come to speak this word to my lord the king in the presence of the people. And your handmaid said: ‘I shall speak to the king, if in some manner the king may do the word of his handmaid.’ And the king heard, so that he might deliver his handmaid from the hand of all who wished to erase me and my son together from the inheritance of the Lord. Therefore, let your handmaid say that the word of my lord the king be like a sacrifice. For as an angel of the Lord, so is my lord the king, that he may be moved neither by blessing nor by cursing; hence the Lord your God too is with you.”
Thus she pleads before the king in the presence of the people—and eloquently, for she truly obtains what she sought. Abigail likewise, First Kings, chapter 25, verse 24: “Upon me, my lord, let this iniquity be. Let your handmaid, I beseech you, speak in your ears, and hear the words of your servant. Let not my lord the king, I pray, set his heart upon that wicked man Nabal, for according to his name he is a fool, and folly is with him. But I, your handmaid, did not see your servants, my lord, whom you sent. Now therefore, my lord, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, the Lord who restrained you from coming into blood and saved your hand for yourself—and now let your enemies and those who seek evil for my lord become like Nabal.
“Therefore receive this blessing which your handmaid has brought to you, my lord, and give it to the servants who follow you, my lord. Take away the iniquity of your servant; for the Lord will surely make for you, my lord, a faithful house, because you, my lord, fight the battles of the Lord. Therefore, let no malice be found in you during all the days of your life. For if at any time a man rises, persecuting you and seeking your life, the life of my lord will be guarded as in the bundle of the living before the Lord your God; but the life of your enemies will be whirled about as by the force and circle of a sling. Therefore, when the Lord has done for you, my lord, all the good things which he has spoken concerning you and has established you as ruler over Israel, this will not be for you, my lord, as a sob and a scruple of heart—that you shed innocent blood or avenged yourself. And when the Lord has done good to my lord, you will remember your handmaid.”
These passages show an altogether different eloquence, accommodated to the manners and character of human beings. I warn of this so that we do not judge so great a matter by fluency and elegance of words alone. We must therefore now speak of these things, and first of eloquence bound by rhythms, or poetry. For the purpose of all is to teach and persuade, and this is done by speaking well. He speaks well who speaks well in the judgment of the judges or hearers. For if they reject you, if they judge that you speak falsely, vainly, and without elegance, you will have spoken well to no purpose. Concerning poetry I have chiefly these things
to say: first, that it is useful to the state; next, what the method and system for it may be; finally, how varied it is.
§ 2. I easily show from many things that poetry is useful in the state. First, from its most praiseworthy antiquity, which always shone in well-established cities and kingdoms.
If we repeat the most ancient memory, we shall understand that poetry excelled not only among the Jews but also among neighboring peoples and was the work of princes. Although the true poetry of the ancients is unknown to us, we cannot be ignorant that poetry existed, and perhaps anyone will understand without much difficulty that hymns are rhythmical if he is willing to run through the various species of poems and their mixtures. Scaliger in the Hyle, or Book 2 of the Poetics, chapter 6, enumerates various kinds of verses: catalectic, acatalectic, brachycatalectic, hypercatalectic, pure, and impure. In some of these, as in melic and dithyrambic poems, hyporchemes, scolia, and paeans, they aim only that strophes and antistrophes correspond, and that at different intervals. Parts of verses are connected with different whole verses. He indeed goes so far as to recognize a verse or a degree of a verse in one foot or syllable.
Since, therefore, there are so many kinds of pyrrhics, iambics, dactylics, trochaics, spondaics, anapaests, ionics, aeolics, and paeonics; so many mixtures of feet in one poem; and so many compositions of poems, either recurrent or non-recurrent, it will not be difficult to refer most Hebrew poems to those kinds. Or surely you will understand many Greek poems of such a kind that, if they are written in the form of prose, you would scarcely believe from their rhythms that they were poems. I shall give examples. Bacchylides in Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, Book 2:
Ἐλπὶς δ’ αὔξουσα φρένας, ἀναμιγνυμένα Διονυσίοισι δώροις, ἀνδράσι δ’ ὑψοτάτω πέμπεται μερίμνας· αὐτίκα μὲν πόλεων κρήδεμνα λύει, πᾶσι δ’ ἀνθρώποις μοναρχήσειν δοκεῖ· χρυσῷ δ’ ἐλέφαντί τε μαρμαίρουσιν οἶκοι, πυροφόροι δὲ κατ’ αἰγλήεντα νῆες ἄγουσιν ἀπ’ Αἰγύπτου μέγιστον πλοῦτον· ὣς πίνοντος ὁρμαίνει κέαρ.
And hope strikes the mind when it is mingled with Bacchic gifts, and projects the deepest cares upon men. At once he storms the walls of cities and thinks that he will be monarch of all human beings. Indeed, houses gleam with gold and ivory, and ships laden with grain carry most splendid and abundant wealth from Egypt, as the heart of the drinker imagines.
Who, moreover, would suspect poems where all the syllables are short, as in these lines of Pratinas?
Τίς ὁ θόρυβος ὅδε; τίνα τάδε τὰ χορεύματα; τίς ὕβρις ἔμολεν ἐπὶ Διονυσιάδα πολύπαταγα θυμέλαν; ἐμός, ἐμός ὁ Βρόμιος.
What is that tumult? What dances, what insolence, has invaded the altar of Dionysus, which possesses much clamor? My own, my own Bromius.
The scolion of Aristotle is better known, to which not a few Hebrew poems nevertheless correspond:
Ἀρετὰ πολύμοχθε γένει βροτείῳ, θήραμα κάλλιστον βίῳ, σᾶς πέρι, παρθένε, μορφᾶς καὶ θανεῖν ζηλωτὸς ἐν Ἑλλάδι πότμος, καὶ πόνους τλῆναι μαλεροὺς ἀκάμαντας· τοῖον ἐπὶ φρένα βάλλεις καρπὸν τ’ ἀθάνατον χρυσοῦ τε κρείσσω καὶ γονέων μαλακαυγήτοιό θ’ ὕπνου. σεῦ δ’ ἕνεκεν ὁ Διὸς Ἡρακλῆς Λήδας τε κοῦροι πολλ’ ἀνέτλασαν, ἔργοις σὰν ἀγρεύοντες δύναμιν. σοῖς δὲ πόθοις Ἀχιλλεὺς Αἴας τε Ἀΐδαο δόμους ἦλθον· σᾶς δ’ ἕνεκεν φιλίας μορφᾶς Ἀταρνέος ἔντροφος ἀελίου χήρωσεν αὐγάς. τοιγὰρ ἀοίδιμον ἔργοις ἀθάνατόν τέ μιν αὐξήσουσι Μοῦσαι, Μνημοσύνης θυγατέρες, Διὸς ξενίου σέβας αὔξουσαι φιλίας τε γέρας βεβαίας.
Virtue, much laborious for the human race, most beautiful quarry of life: for the sake of your countenance, maiden, death is a desirable fate in Greece, and so is the endurance of fierce, untamed labors. You cast such a fruit into the mind, immortal and more excellent than gold and parents and sleep. For your sake Hercules, son of Jupiter, and the sons of Leda suffered many things, hunting your power by their works. Through desire for you Achilles and Ajax also entered the houses of Orcus. Indeed, on account of your lovely countenance the ward of Atarneus was deprived of the light of the sun. Therefore, most celebrated in works, the Muses, daughters of Mnemosyne, will exalt him as immortal, increasing veneration for hospitable Jupiter and the reward of firm friendship.
See most of the poems of that man whom no one has emulated without mishap, that is, Pindar. Unless you divide individual things in him, even sever words, and assign one word to the preceding poem and another to the following, you will assuredly show me a poem only with difficulty; nevertheless, we infer the poetry from a more divine manner of speaking. Behold, I propose that you read it thus:
Ὁ πλοῦτος εὐρυσθενής, ὅταν τις ἀρετᾷ κεκραμένον καθαρᾷ βροτήσιος ἀνήρ, πότμου παραδόντος αὐτὸν ἀνάγῃ πολύφιλον ἑπέταν, ὦ θεόμορε Ἀρκεσίλα. Σὺ τοίνυν κλυτᾶς αὐτὸν ἐκ βαθμίδος σὺν ἀεὶ δόξᾳ μετανίσσεαι, ἕκατι χρυσάρματος Κάστορος, εὐδίαν ὅς μετὰ χειμέριον ὄμβρον τεὰν καταθάλψει μάκαιραν ἑστίαν.
Riches are widely powerful when some mortal man, fortune granting them, increases them tempered by pure virtue; they are companions who conciliate many friends. O Arcesilaus, you who have obtained a lot from the divine power, you surely exercise them from the highest steps of a renowned age, with glory, by the favor of Castor who is carried in a golden chariot, who after winter rain flashes tranquillity upon your blessed house.
You will observe all these things in the choruses of Euripides, Aeschylus, and others. From them, therefore, we shall gather that poetry does not fail to appear in Hebrew because it does not exist, but because we do not possess its system. I certainly recognize verses in many passages. The oracle given by Israel to the twelve patriarchs in Genesis 49 was composed in verse:
Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength and the beginning of my sorrow, first in gifts, greater in dominion.
In Hebrew they are thus:
Ruben bchori, attha cochi
Verheschith oni,
Lether scheeth, veiether ghaz.
The remaining words, with some variation, can nevertheless be recognized as bound by rhythms. Antiquity also sang a song of victory when Sihon the Amorite had been conquered; its beginning is given in Numbers 21:27:
Come into Heshbon; let it be built, and let the city of Sihon be constructed.
The Hebrew words have this form:
Bou Chesbon Thibane
Veticonen ghir Sichen.
It is the form of an Anacreontic poem, or catalectic dimeter, except that there are spondees in place of iambs, for short syllables are rare among the Hebrews. The Song of Moses in Exodus 15 consists of the same mixtures of verses, although brachycatalectics are interposed there as well. The Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 does not differ much, although it intersperses very many brachycatalectics. But in chapter 33 he begins the blessing with verse, at verse 2: “The Lord came from Sinai and rose from Seir for us; he appeared from Mount Paran, and with him were thousands of saints, and in his right hand a fiery law.”
Those words in Hebrew give us this harmony:
Iehova Missinai — catalectic verse
Ba, vezarach mescheghir — catalectic
Lamo, hophigh meher Pharan — acatalectic
Veatha mirceboth codesch — catalectic
Mimino esch dath lamo, and the rest — acatalectic.
In precisely this manner Deborah and Barak sang in Judges 5. But the Orpheus, Homer, and Virgil of the Hebrews—if it is lawful to compare sacred things with profane—King and Prophet David, adorned their poetry most greatly. His poems are more pleasing to us by their meaning of piety and mysteries than by their rhythms; nevertheless, in very many I have observed a certain exact measure of syllables, as also in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, who took care to begin the openings with the same letters according to a fixed manner.
No one doubts that Solomon’s Song of Songs is sacred poetry, in which he sings the heavenly nuptial song of a blessed soul. Jeremiah, Job, and the Songs also have their own rhythms, pleasing by a certain more divine kind of speaking rather than by a perceptible sweetness of feet. For all recognize Pindar as the chief of lyric poets, and yet in him the system of verse is more often sought than felt. Thus Horace, who approaches nearest to him: “Whoever strives to emulate Pindar, Julius, relies upon waxen wings by the art of Daedalus, destined to give a name to the glassy sea. Like a river running down from a mountain, which rains have swollen above its familiar banks, Pindar boils and rushes immeasurably from his profound mouth, deserving to be presented with Apollo’s laurel, whether he rolls new words through daring dithyrambs and is borne along in rhythms freed from rule.”
That praise of Pindar is deserved: equally ἀμίμητος (inimitable) and ἄμεμπτος (blameless). Yet without discriminating the rhythms employed, you may read as follows:
Ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ ἅτε διαπρέπει νυκτὶ μεγανορῶς ἔξοχα πλούτου. εἰ δ’ ἄεθλα γαρύεν ἔλδεαι, φίλον ἦτορ, μηκέθ’ ἁλίου σκόπει ἄλλο θαλπνότερον ἐν ἁμέρᾳ φαεννὸν ἄστρον ἐρήμας δι’ αἰθέρος.
Water indeed is best, and gold, like nocturnal blazing fire, flashes excellently among proud riches. But, my soul, if you desire to tell of contests, do not now contemplate another star more splendid than the sun, shining by day through the empty ether.
§ 3. From these things I conclude that there was a use of poems among the Hebrews and that holy and great men were poets. Therefore, they were honored in the divine state and are not now lightly to be rejected.
Poets were once held in great honor among the Romans; among the Greeks I find them indeed cultivated excessively. Plato called them sons of the gods. An ingenious poet also said:
There is a god in us; when he stirs us, we grow warm; this impulse possesses the seeds of a sacred mind.
And:
That spirit comes from ethereal seats.
The sole reason why some denied poetry to the Hebrews is that they could find in that language no harmony similar to ours, but all things appeared similar to prose. Yet since the same thing must be conceded in the most eminent Greek poets, anyone will easily judge that what men admire in the Greeks must not be denied to the Hebrews.
Plato in the Cratylus, mocking philosophers and sophists, advises that poets be approached and an account of virtue sought from them. Democritus too believed that there was something divine in Orpheus, Homer, and others. Heraclitus says, τῷ ἀβεβήλῳ ἐντὸς περιῤῥαντηρίων ἡγνισμένος. “Holy with undefiled and sacred sprinklings.” They carried laurel as an emblem of divination when they sang their verses. Still others delighted even more in declaring a mystery in the fables of poets, to speak seriously. For since they defended everything in the fables, even foul things, as coverings of a more sacred philosophy, the result was that the majesty of nature was polluted by the foulness of the narratives, and many eagerly clung to the delights of the fables but did not understand—or indeed despised—the mysteries feigned to lie beneath them. But I shall speak of the abuse afterward.
These things were practiced in antiquity; but more cultivated ages procured greater honor for poetry. After Homer had been despised in death, cities contentiously claimed him:
Ἑπτὰ πόλεις διερίζουσι περὶ ῥίζαν Ὁμήρου.
Seven cities dispute concerning Homer’s stock.
Cicero, For Archias: “And yet we have received from the greatest and most learned men that the studies of other things
consist in learning, precepts, and art; but that a poet has power through nature itself, is aroused by the forces of the mind, and is breathed upon, as it were, by a certain divine spirit. Therefore, by his own right, our Ennius calls poets holy, because they appear to be commended to us as though by some gift and bounty of the gods. Therefore, judges, among you most humane men, let this name of poet be sacred, a name which no barbarity ever violated. Rocks and solitudes answer their voice; savage beasts are often bent by song and stand still. Shall we, instructed in the best things, not be moved by the voice of poets? The Colophonians say Homer is their citizen; the Chians claim him as their own; the Salaminians demand him back; the Smyrnaeans indeed affirm that he is theirs. And so they even dedicated a shrine to him in their town. Very many others besides fight and contend among themselves.”
And it is certain that poets were valued among kings—not so much, I believe, because of any utility, although that also existed, as from a desire for glory and immortality; for many lack memory because they lack a sacred bard. Virgil was valued by Maecenas and Augustus; Archelaus of Macedon cultivated Euripides; Hiero, Aeschylus and Simonides; Dionysius, Philoxenus; Polycrates of Samos, Anacreon; Antigonus, Antagoras and Aratus; the Spartans, Tyrtaeus. As he was dying, Plato placed the books of Sophron beneath his pillow.
§ 4. But if we also regard the use of this most honorable and difficult art, it is certainly manifold. First, holy men employed verse in the praise of eternal majesty; then, by corrupt imitation, the gentiles employed it for encomia of idols. For the hymn is the most ancient kind of poetry. Many hymns of Orpheus and the ancients survive, and so both hymn-singers and hymn-makers were named. They composed a hypragon for Diana, a paean or hyporcheme for Phoebus, a processional song for both together, a dithyramb for Bacchus, and an iulus for Ceres. Scaliger enumerates more in the Idea, chapter 112.
The ancient theologians Orpheus, Linus, and Musaeus divided not only these powers, which are the greatest and primary, but also other, lesser powers in such a way that they established various and diverse divinities, whom they likewise called gods. Therefore, while they acknowledged Jupiter as the supreme God, they feigned him father of the others, from whom all things had proceeded. Thus they established Pallas, Mars, Vulcan, Proserpina, Venus, and Bacchus for those functions which are recognized by us as united in one. Therefore, it should by no means appear strange if they divided the nature of hymns into various kinds: ἱκετικούς, ἀποπεμπτικούς, φυσικούς, μουσικούς, γενεαλογικούς, πεπλασμένους, ἐντοπίους, ἀπευκτικούς, μικτούς—supplicatory, dismissive, natural, musical, genealogical, fictive, local, deprecatory, and mixed. If παιᾶνες (paeans) and προσόδια (processional songs) are not reduced to these kinds, species having different principles will be numbered with them. Didymus is authority that hymns with a cithara, τὰ προσόδια with pipes, were customarily sung by the Athenians at altars.
But we shall address a hymn to the one and only God, as that same excellent teacher of poetry rightly says. The praise of God should always occupy our entire mind and whole thought. Whatever you do without communion with him, do not judge that truly done; how much more must the mind be directed toward those modulations which receive as much of his divinity as they embrace of him, and become akin to those harmonies which have been assigned by the maker to the heavenly windings and proportions. The praise of God is called ὕμνος by the Greeks and celebratio by the Latins.
Since he is one and the same is three, a Christian man has the right either to sing of him alone or to celebrate the persons separately, adding their properties with reverence—not as morose disputants, but as pious poets have been accustomed to do. After many others, we too attempted this. For when we wrote a hymn to God the Father as creator of all things, we led it from the creation of the world itself down to us and our affairs. But we wrote of God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as savior of the human race; in him we led our mind away from the prison of the body to the free fields of contemplation, which was to transform me into him. Then the ineffable power of the most holy Spirit was celebrated with such ardor that, although the hymn had begun in the gentlest rhythms, it blazed up under a sudden assault of divine fire.
Whatever is in God is God himself; but through the weakness of our knowledge, by the example and image of these lower things, many things are as it were distinguished: intellect, from which comes will, and afterward power. Yet nothing is before or after; they are not only simultaneous but also one. From these the ancients derived the two greatest principles of things and actions, Nature and Fortune. For Nature is the power of God, but Fortune is his will.
§ 5. A second use is in praises of heroes and great men. Thus Jeremiah praised Josiah; thus David praised Jonathan; thus Prudentius praised the martyrs. In this matter, indeed, poems are now for the most part consumed. Nor is the abuse new by which poets flatter powerful men without shame whenever they please to make poems. You will find plainly few men like Philoxenus. Virgil himself inaugurated his name with exquisite flattery:
It rained the whole night; the spectacles return in the morning: Caesar possesses a divided sovereignty with Jupiter.
And our Lucan is thought deservedly slain by Nero because he flattered that monster so slavishly:
But if the fates found no other way for Nero’s coming, and eternal kingdoms are procured for the gods at great cost, and heaven could not serve its own Thunderer except after the wars of savage giants, now, heavenly powers, we complain of nothing. These crimes and this wickedness please us at this price. Let Pharsalia fill its dreadful fields, and let the Punic shades be sated with blood; let the final deadly battles meet at Munda. Let Caesar add to these fates the famine of Perusia and Mutina’s labors, the fleets which rugged Leucas crushes, and the servile wars beneath burning Etna. Yet Rome owes much to civil arms, because the business was conducted for you. When your earthly station is completed, you will seek the stars late; the palace of heaven preferred for you will receive you while the sky rejoices, whether it pleases you to hold the scepters or to mount Phoebus’s flame-bearing chariot and survey with wandering fire the earth, fearing nothing from the changed sun. Every divine power will yield to you, and nature will leave to your judgment which god you wish to be and where to place the kingdom of the world. But choose your seat neither in the northern region nor where the warm pole of the opposing south inclines, from where you may see your Rome beneath an oblique constellation. If you press upon one part of the immense ether, the axis will feel the burden. Hold the weights of balanced heaven in the middle of its sphere. Let that whole part of serene ether be empty, and let no clouds obstruct Caesar. Then let the human race consult its interest after laying down arms; let every nation love in turn; let peace sent through the world restrain the iron thresholds of warlike Janus. But to me you are already a divinity; and if I receive you in my breast as bard, I should not wish to trouble the secrets of Cirrha to move the god, or to turn Bacchus away from Nysa.
You alone are sufficient to give strength to Roman songs.
Nor are there lacking modern flatteries of souls that are not only profitable but also cheap.
The use of verse in transmitting history, laws, and arts is no smaller. The ancient laws of the Athenians were written by Draco in three thousand verses; Pittacus wrote those for his Mytilenaeans in fewer, namely six hundred. History too is written most elegantly in verse, and morals are taught, so that poets are called the fathers of wisdom even by Plato. Solomon’s songs, τῶν ᾠδῶν, as the Septuagint translates, are numbered at five thousand; the Hebrew calls them three thousand parables, axioms, or distinguished maxims and, as it were, flowers of wisdom.
This is the primary purpose of sacred poetry: after praises have been sung to the divine power, to prepare the minds of men to approach God purely by a sweet melody which is readily retained. Horace attributes this to bards in Epistle 1 of Book 2:
The poet forms the tender and stammering mouth of the boy; even now he turns his ear away from obscene speech; soon he also forms his breast by friendly precepts, corrector of harshness, envy, and anger. He recounts things rightly done and instructs the rising age with famous examples; he consoles the needy and the sick. From where would the maiden ignorant of a husband learn prayers with chaste boys, had the Muse not given a bard?
In Aristophanes—otherwise a buffoon and a certain pus and poison of poetry—there is a useful conversation on this matter between Euripides and Aeschylus:
Αἰσχύλος: Ἀποκρίναι μοι· τίνος οὕνεκα χρὴ θαυμάζειν ἄνδρα ποιητήν; Εὐριπίδης: Δεξιότητος καὶ νουθεσίας, ὅτι βελτίους τε ποιοῦμεν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ταῖς πόλεσιν. Αἰσχύλος: Ταῦτα γὰρ ἄνδρας χρὴ ποιητὰς ἀσκεῖν. Σκέψαι γὰρ ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς ὡς ὠφέλιμοι τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ γενναῖοι γεγένηνται. Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ’ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε φόνων τ’ ἀπέχεσθαι, Μουσαῖος δ’ ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς, Ἡσίοδος δὲ γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος τάξεις, ἀρετάς, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν.
That is:
“Aeschylus: Answer me: for the sake of what ought a poet to be admired? Euripides: For skill and admonition, because we make the men of our country better. For poets ought to practice these things. Consider from the beginning how many of the noble poets have been useful. Orpheus showed us sacrifices and abstention from slaughter; Musaeus, cures of diseases and oracles; Hesiod, the working of the earth, the seasons of fruits, and plowing; divine Homer, the orderings, virtues, and armaments of men.”
Nature has indeed so arranged it that verses are heard more sweetly, cling more deeply, and move more readily. Hence we see not only philosophers but Paul too employ verses of noble poets. No one is more cultivated than Paul to whom many things of this kind are not already known.
Poets are not only pleasing and good teachers of virtue, but also the sharpest censors of vices; for what is more bitter, what more forceful, than satire? They alone lash the vices of magnates after steeping them in sharp vinegar. Then you may see:
Mighty Tituses tremble when poems enter their loins and their innermost parts are scratched by a quivering verse.
Finally, the precepts of almost all arts and of philosophy itself are found comprehended in verse. Astronomy, agriculture, wars, laws, and whatever comes into use—the writings of bards disclose them to us.
§ 6. Yet an ancient opinion recalls and draws some men away from this most liberal art: namely, that poetry obstructs prudence. Plato in the Phaedrus says:
ὃς δ’ ἂν ἄνευ μανίας Μουσῶν ἐπὶ ποιητικὰς θύρας ἀφίκηται, πεισθεὶς ὡς ἄρα ἐκ τέχνης ἱκανὸς ποιητὴς ἐσόμενος, ἀτελὴς αὐτός τε καὶ ἡ ποίησις ὑπὸ τῆς τῶν μαινομένων ἡ τοῦ σωφρονοῦντος ἠφανίσθη.
Whoever has knocked at the doors of poetry without frenzy, persuaded that he can become a poet by art alone, finds his attempt fruitless, and his poetry likewise vanishes.
They therefore think frenzy necessary, for:
Father Ennius himself never leapt forth to arms unless he had been drinking.
For drunkenness is a voluntary frenzy, as anger also is.
“The mind,” says Seneca, “cannot speak anything grand and above others unless it has been stirred. When it has despised common and customary things and risen higher by a sacred impulse, then at last it has sung something grander than a mortal mouth. It cannot attain anything sublime and placed on high so long as it is with itself.”
Hence the Platonists taught that poems were poured forth by inspiration and madness. Ptolemy asserts that the soul is thus stirred by the stars.
§ 7. But slenderness of ability keeps very many away from poetry. I judge that in this way a great injury is inflicted upon compressed eloquence through this calumny. The reason is that no one can be a poet unless he is gifted. And this is the first testing of young men: it belongs to anyone to recite lessons with a faithful memory, to remember expositions and the meanings of words, and to translate Latin into the vernacular; it belongs to the gifted to compose a poem. An orator can be made; a poet must be born.
I interpret this so that I judge that a great ability, together with a knowledge of art and precepts, is necessary for poetry; small abilities knock at the doors of the Muses only with ridicule, middling ones without praise. Art and nature have great force if they are joined. Cicero, For Archias: “I also add this: nature without instruction has more often availed for praise and virtue than instruction without nature. And I likewise contend that when a certain systematic training and formation by learning has been added to an excellent and illustrious nature, then that unknown something glorious and singular customarily comes into being.”
Thus Horace too:
Whether a praiseworthy poem was produced by nature or by art has been asked. I see neither what study can do without a rich vein, nor what untrained ability can do: thus each thing seeks the aid of the other and conspires in friendship.
In other matters art can assist nature when it is deprived of aid; in poetry, without nature, art plays in a void. The same Cicero shows this in the passage already recited.
From the same opinion, therefore, comes what they write concerning a certain madness of ingenious men and poets, concerning which I have spoken in its place. This is also confirmed by the fact that a middling orator, a soldier neither timid nor very brave, and a certain mediocrity of industry in other matters are customarily commended. But among poets whatever is praiseworthy is magnificent:
Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers’ pillars have permitted poets to be mediocre. If he departs a little from the summit, he inclines to the bottom.
§ 8. But it is most difficult to be a distinguished, grandiloquent, polished poet to whom you would wish to add nothing and from whom you would wish to remove nothing. Cicero truly said that scarcely in each age has one good poet been found. Since, therefore, good poets are so few, there are nevertheless many who seek the honor of this name, which is to sound out great things. No ape fails to love its young, and even a bear despises death for offspring which appears an unformed mass and leaps over hunting spears. Likewise, no poet ever wrenched from his talent a poem so gaping in words or tasteless in sense that he did not love it desperately—ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν γάρ, says Aristotle.
And so in no matter have more men endeavored to display their ability than at limpid Hippocrene and chilly Parnassus. Hence those ineptitudes; hence so many verses which we marvel could have been made by sane men. Compare the matter with morals: scarcely one age receives one poet. But I judge that there are ten myriads of men who even at this time judge themselves good poets. Horace deservedly says of them:
Add poems now—that is, add oil to the furnace. If anyone made these while sane, you too act sanely.
Persius lashes the custom of his own age:
Shut in, we write: one man in rhythms, another with foot set free, some grand thing for a lung over-generous with breath to pant forth. Naturally, this is for the people, with hair combed and a fresh toga, gleaming at last in birthday white with sardonyx, reading from a lofty seat, when with liquid modulation you have gargled your mobile throat, languishing with a lascivious little eye. Here you may see mighty Tituses, neither in seemly manner nor with serene voice, tremble when poems enter their loins and their innermost parts are scratched by a quivering verse. Then, old man, do you gather bait for the ears of others— ears to which you, ruined in skin, may say, “Enough!”? What is the use of learning unless this leaven, and the fig tree once engrafted within, bursts the liver and comes out? Behold pallor and old age—O morals! Is your knowledge altogether nothing unless another knows that you know this? But it is beautiful to be pointed out with a finger and to have it said, “This is he.” Do you count it nothing that you were the lesson dictated to a hundred curled youths? Behold, amid their cups the satiated sons of Romulus ask what the divine poems tell. Here someone with a hyacinth-colored mantle around his shoulders, after speaking something rancid through his stammering nostril, filters out Phyllises, Hypsipyles, and whatever is lamentable among the bards, and trips up words with his tender palate. The men assent. Is not that poet’s ash now happy? Does not his tombstone now press more lightly upon his bones? The dinner guests praise him. Do not violets now spring from those shades, from that tomb and fortunate ember? You laugh, he says, and indulge your hooked nostrils too much. Will there be anyone who refuses to wish to have merited the people’s voice, and, after speaking things worthy of cedar oil, to leave poems which fear neither mackerel wrappers nor incense?
Among these, how many thousands are there whom it is harder and more laborious to hear than to work in the quarries, where all weariness must be driven from the body? Accordingly, good poets are few; many are, as Aristophanes jokes, ἐπεφύλλιδες καὶ φυλλώματα, χελιδόνων μουσεῖα, λωβηταὶ τέχνης: spurious excrescences which grow upon leaves, not clusters; chatterers, museums of swallows, disgraces of art. Refer here wandering beggar-poets and certain men who name themselves poets laureate. Because the race of bards is irritable, I certainly should not wish to irritate them. Yet it is necessary to acknowledge that many foreheads unworthy of so royal a foliage are shaded by it.
It is contrary to equity to impute the madness and stupidity of these men to true and prudent poets. Moses, Deborah, Barak, David, Solomon, Isaiah, and Jeremiah were most prudent men and nevertheless most excellent poets; their poems are sung daily to cast the seeds of wisdom and piety and to increase the virtues. Nor would you rightly call Homer imprudent in mind although blind. A bard is witness for a bard: Horace, Book 1, Epistle 2:
While you declaim at Rome, Lollius, I reread at Praeneste the writer of the Trojan War, who tells what is beautiful, what shameful, what useful and what not, more fully and better than Chrysippus and Crantor. Hear why I believe this, unless something detains you. The tale in which Greece is related to have collided with barbarism in protracted war on account of Paris’s love contains the passions of foolish kings and peoples. Antenor judges that the cause of war must be cut away. What of Paris? He denies that he can be compelled to reign in safety and live happily. Nestor hastens to settle the quarrels between the son of Peleus and the son of Atreus. Love burns the one; anger, indeed, burns both alike. Whatever madness kings commit, the Greeks are punished. Within and outside the walls of Troy men sin by sedition, deceits, crime, lust, and anger. Again, as to what virtue and wisdom can accomplish, he proposed Ulysses to us as a useful example: the conqueror of Troy, who prudently examined the cities and manners of many men and, while preparing a return for himself and his companions over the broad sea, endured many harsh things, incapable of being submerged by the adverse waves of affairs.
Inspect the subjects of Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, and others. If you remove the wicked and impure things, you will clearly find that nothing in political life lay hidden from them; indeed, they understood most of the philosophers’ deepest matters.
§ 9. But many have judged that poets should be expelled from the city. I admit it is so. Augustine relates the reasons in Book 2, chapter 14, of The City of God: “Next we ask: the poets themselves, composers of such fables, who are prohibited by the law of the Twelve Tables from injuring the reputation of citizens, while hurling such disgraceful revilings against God—why are they not held dishonorable like actors? And by what reasoning is it right that the actors of poetical fictions and of ignominious gods should be defamed, but their authors honored? Is the palm perhaps rather to be given to Plato the Greek, who, when he fashioned by reason what a city ought to be, judged that poets should be expelled from the city as adversaries of the city? He both bore indignantly the injuries done to the gods and refused to allow the minds of citizens to be painted and corrupted by fictions.”
“Compare now the humanity of Plato, expelling poets from the city lest citizens be deceived, with the divinity of the gods demanding theatrical games for their own honor. Plato, lest such things should even be written, although he did not persuade the frivolity and wantonness of the Greeks, nevertheless advised it by disputation. Those gods, by commanding, extorted from the gravity and modesty of the Romans that such things should even be acted. Nor did they merely wish these things to be acted, but dedicated, consecrated, and solemnly exhibited to themselves. To whom, then, would the city more honorably decree divine honors: to Plato, who prohibited these foul and impious things, or to the demons who rejoice in this deception of human beings, whom he could not persuade of true things?”
There are two reasons: because they fashioned false gods—concerning which Augustine also complains in Book 18, chapter 14, of The City of God—and because they corrupted morals. By the best law, such men are expelled as corrupters of the state. In Book 2 of the Republic, Plato judges them to be expelled on account of the disgraceful deeds and crimes which they fasten upon the gods; and in Book 10, after Socrates has said many things against poets, he at last decides the suit by a just judgment in favor of good poets. For he judges that those poets should be retained whose poems induce courage and chastity. Pythagoras held no other opinion. From this it plainly appears that this corruption of morals was most ancient; indeed, the Sibyl too sang concerning them:
Ἑλλάδα τὴν τριστάλαιναν ἀνιήσει ποιητής.
Poets will afflict thrice-wretched Greece.
Epicurus indeed has less authority in this matter. Although he may perhaps have proscribed the songs of bad poets from the state as the deliriums of little old women, nevertheless, because he condemned all the liberal arts by one ballot, he did no peculiar insult to poetry. It was more honorable for her to be proscribed with the rest as an honorable matron than to be retained alone in the kingdom of pleasure like a little prostitute. Eratosthenes and others, however, punished not the thing itself but its vices with exile.
It was charged as a fault against Fulvius Nobilior that he had taken a poet into his province. For at that time, as Cato is witness, if anyone pursued this study, he attached himself to banquets and was called a marauder. Fulvius therefore acted badly in taking him into the province, as though he were a flute-player, for the sake of pleasure. Would that today too the magistrate awakened to this matter, proscribed obscene and blasphemous little books with a grave penalty, and punished their authors. But I have said enough about these things where I treated the preservation of chastity in the state.
§ 10. I shall show briefly what method there is for attaining this eloquence, which ought to be stricter in rhythms, freer in words, and more sublime in thoughts. Aristotle wrote concerning poetry, but neither suitably enough for the abilities of learners nor in a complete treatise. Horace teaches how to avoid faults more than he instructs the beginner, and in his customary manner acts the satirist. In our time Vida and many others occupied themselves with teaching that art. Julius Scaliger snatched the palm from them all by writing seven books to his son Sylvius. I judge this a finished work, by which alone he merited more nobility than if, with Italy’s approval, he had truly traced his stock to the family of the Scaligers of Verona.
But it was a great disgrace not only to poetry but also to philosophy and the other arts that Julius and Joseph, such famous alumni of those arts, labored with so persistent an imposture to insert themselves into another man’s race and family. If they had possessed the strength, they would have attempted something after the ancient manner. As it is, they vigorously accomplished what they could and avenged themselves with savage poems, as dogs do by barking. Joseph wrote an elegant but bitter poem against the Most Serene Republic of Venice, in which he arraigns the Venetians as though they had unjustly wrested Verona from his ancestors, although his ancestors were no more counts of Verona than Irus was king of the πτωχῶν (beggars) of all the Achaeans.
But these are the errors of men who dream of great fortunes; when they fall upon great and troubled minds, they also stir great movements, as when a great force of winds has lain upon the great Ocean. Yet however his morals may have conducted themselves, Julius explained the art more accurately than everyone else and was himself a great poet. Nevertheless, his manner and system of writing were accommodated more to perfecting a bard than to instructing a novice.
Our Pontanus therefore undertook this care and disclosed the whole matter in an orderly and learned manner. I have seen no book more useful for learning poetry. Yet if anyone, after reading it, seeks more and more recondite matters, let him seriously unroll Julius. If he labors over comedy or tragedy, let him read through all of Martin Delrio upon Seneca; for he not only shows the road but carries and conveys a man, as though on swan’s wings, to the high summit of Parnassus. Joseph Scaliger too, before their friendship was broken, preferred Delrio to everyone. Our Society imitates these authors in teaching poetry. I intend to place its method before the eyes.
§ 11. I said that in the middle grammar class an easy poet is explained and tender minds are thus gradually imbued with poetic rhythms; for although they do not know the system of verse, they are nevertheless delighted by measure and harmony.
In the highest grammar class, when they have now learned syntax, metrical art is learned. Thus the professor’s rule provides: “On alternate days, the general precepts of metrical art are to be taught, with the exceptions omitted. In the later semester, however, for at least two months, let that part of grammar which is proper to the first class be reviewed; and on alternate days let metrical art be reviewed by running briefly through the rules already explained and dwelling upon the others as much as necessary. When the repetition of grammar has been completed, let metrical art thereafter be explained daily, with the exceptions, kinds of poems, and the things transmitted concerning patronymics and accent added.”
Selected elegies of Ovid, Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius and the easier books of Virgil are joined to this explanation. One hour each day is assigned to explaining and reviewing these authors. Accordingly, when the system of poems has been learned, they themselves are also gradually taught to compose, or to restore verses dissolved into feet and rhythms; next to compose Adonics, heroic verses, and elegies, and not attempt greater things. It will be sufficient if a student possesses the rhythms in his own poem and recognizes them in another’s.
Thus instructed, he will be led to the humanities class, concerning which our method prescribes as follows: “The degree of this class, after the pupils have left the grammar classes, is to prepare, as it were, the ground for eloquence. This occurs in three ways: through knowledge of the language, some erudition, and a brief instruction in the precepts pertaining to rhetoric. For knowledge of the language, which consists chiefly in propriety and abundance, Cicero is used in the daily lectures, generally in those books which contain moral philosophy; from the historians, Caesar, Sallust, Livy, Curtius, and any similar authors; from the poets, chiefly Virgil, with the Eclogues and the fourth book of the Aeneid excepted; in addition, selected odes of Horace, likewise elegies, epigrams, and other poems of illustrious ancient poets, provided they have been purged of all obscenity. Erudition is to be employed moderately, so that it may sometimes stimulate and refresh the ability, not impede observation of the language.”
“A brief summary of the precepts of rhetoric from Cyprian will be transmitted, namely in the second semester. At that time, with Cicero’s philosophy omitted, some of his easier speeches may be taken, such as For the Manilian Law, For Archias, For Marcellus, and the others delivered before Caesar. That part of the Greek language which is properly called syntax belongs to this class. Care must moreover be taken that the pupils understand writers moderately well and know how to write something in Greek.”
The authors prescribed here will now be easy after the instruction of which we have spoken has preceded in the lower classes.
Here too, in the first semester, metrical art or prosody is expounded on alternate days with a historian so that it may cling more firmly to the mind; in the second semester, the precepts of rhetoric and a historian alternate.
There are besides exercises which are designated in these words:
“In the second morning hour, let the most recent lecture be repeated briefly and a new one explained for half an hour or a little longer; soon afterward let it be demanded, and if any time remains, let it be placed in mutual contention among the pupils.
“In the final half-hour at the beginning of the first semester, let a historian and metrical art alternate by days; but after metrical art has been completed, let a historian be treated daily. In the second semester, let Cyprian’s Rhetoric be either explained, reviewed, or disputed every day.”
Greek authors and syntax likewise; composition of poems. Because the precepts of rhetoric are also common to poetry—for the poet is neighbor to the orator—the ornament and method of verse and several precepts of the art are also expounded. Rule 5 comprehends the whole method: “Let the lecture be lightly sprinkled at times with ornaments of erudition, as much as the explanation of the passage demands. Let the master pour himself out rather wholly upon observations of the Latin language; upon the force and etymology of words, which he will seek from approved authors, chiefly the ancients; upon the use and variety of expressions; and upon imitation of the author. Nor let him judge it foreign to express something at times in the native language, if it is chiefly useful for interpretation or possesses something distinguished. But when he explains a speech, let him examine the precepts of the art. At the end, if it seems good, it will be permitted to translate everything into the native language, but as elegantly as possible.”
And Rule 6: “The subject for writing is to be dictated. In the first semester it is generally to take the form of a letter, word for word in the common speech. It will often be useful to compose it so that the whole has been torn from passages already explained in the lectures, here and there. About once each week, however, let them compose by their own effort, after some kind of letter has first been explained and letters of Cicero or Pliny pertaining to it have been indicated. In the second semester, let ability then be stimulated; and let chriae first, then proems, variations, and embellishments be composed when an easy and copious subject has been proposed. Let the master dictate the subject of a poem in Latin, with much variety of expressions. The method for a Greek theme will be the same as for Latin prose, except that it should generally be drawn from the author himself and the system of syntax shown beforehand.”
And Rule 10: “Let poems be affixed to the walls of the school about every other month to adorn some more celebrated day, to promulgate officeholders, or on some other occasion, with all the most select poems copied by the pupils. Indeed, according to the custom of the regions, let there also be something in shorter prose, such as inscriptions for shields, temples, tombs, gardens, or statues; descriptions, such as of a city, harbor, or army; narratives, such as of a deed performed by one of the saints; and finally paradoxes. Let pictures corresponding to the emblem or proposed subject sometimes be added, but not without the rector’s permission.”
Concerning Greek reading, Rule 9 provides: “In the Greek lecture, grammar and an author will be explained on alternate days. As to grammar, after briefly running through the matters transmitted in the first class, let the teacher pursue syntax and the system of accents. In the first semester, an author in prose will be taken from the easier writers, such as some speeches of Isocrates and Saints Chrysostom and Basil, some of the letters of Plato and Synesius, or something selected from Plutarch. In the second semester, some poem will be explained—for example, from Phocylides, Theognis, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Synesius, and authors similar to them. The explanation, as the level of this class permits, is to serve knowledge of the language rather than erudition.”
As the year inclines toward its end, the system of Greek syllables can be transmitted on alternate days with an author. Poems dissolved into prose order can also sometimes be composed anew.
Ancient poetry transmitted good precepts of morals and did not minister to wantonness. The more cultivated Greeks and Romans afterward made a prostitute from a virgin.
By this exercise a future poet or orator is not yet perfected, even if he possesses ability. For many precepts necessary to know are lacking, and especially practice, which requires a longer time; moreover, in our gymnasia the pupils’ age is frequently not yet mature for more difficult labors. Accordingly, there follows another class, which we call rhetoric.