READING THE CLASSICS

The case for the Ancients, especially for Rome, was based in part on the demonstrable achievements of the parents of European culture, achievements, one theory held, no longer possible for the Moderns. The Ancients' world and its people were in their youth and vigor, and so strength of mind and body were superior to those in the subsequent world of decline. Little wonder that no more Homers or even Virgils could arise, since they were typical of unrepeatable greatness and reflected lost heroic ages. Dryden's Preface to his Plutarch (1685) exploits this theory of decline, bemoans the loss of varied strengths from the noble past, and laments the diminution of his own age. “How vast a difference is there betwixt the productions of those Souls, and those of ours!”

The world in its prime of course included the arts of war, in which republican Rome seemed peerless in both expansion and in alleviating the triumph of arms with the polish of civilization. In 1664 Abraham Cowley thus remarks that “the Roman victory / Taught our rude Land, Arts, and Civility.” Like the poetry of Katherine Philips, which he celebrates, Cowley says that Rome “overcomes, enslaves, and betters Men.”; Addison's Cato (1713) shows Juba, a Numidian Prince, telling his general Syphax that even martial virtues are a fraction of Rome's more important role.