The History of Rome, Book III

Down to the period of the Hannibalic war there was no historical composition in Rome; for the entries in the book of Annals were of the nature of records and not of literature, and never made any attempt to develop the connection of events. It is a significant illustration of the peculiarity of Roman character, that notwithstanding the extension of the power of the Roman community far beyond the bounds of Italy, and notwithstanding the constant contact of the noble society of Rome with the Greeks who were so fruitful in literary activity, it was not till the middle of the sixth century that there was felt the need and desire of imparting a knowledge of the deeds and fortunes of the Roman people, by means of authorship, to the contemporary world and to posterity. When at length this desire was felt, there were neither literary forms ready at hand for the use of Roman history, nor was there a public prepared to read it, and great talent and considerable time were required to create both. In the first instance, accordingly, these difficulties were in some measure evaded by writing the national history either in the mother-tongue but in that case in verse, or in prose but in that case in Greek. We have already spoken of the metrical chronicles of Naevius (written about 550?) and of Ennius (written about 581); both belong to the earliest historical literature of the Romans, and the work of Naevius may be regarded as the oldest of all Roman historical works. At nearly the same period were composed the Greek "Histories" of Quintus Fabius Pictor[235 - The following fragments will give some idea of its tone. Of Dido he says:-Blande et docte percontat—Aeneas quo pactoTroiam urbem liquerit.-Again of Amulius:-Manusque susum ad caelum—sustulit suas rexAmulius; gratulatur—divis-.Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:-Sin illos deserant for—tissumos virorumMagnum stuprum populo—fieri per gentis-.With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:-Transit Melitam Romanus—insuiam integramUrit populatur vastat—rem hostium concinnat.-Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:-Id quoque paciscunt moenia—sint Lutatium quaeReconcilient; captivos—plurimos idemSicilienses paciscit—obsides ut reddant.-] (after 553), a man of noble family who took an active part in state affairs during the Hannibalic war, and of Publius Scipio, the son of Scipio Africanus (about 590). In the former case they availed themselves of the poetical art which was already to a certain extent developed, and addressed themselves to a public with a taste for poetry, which was not altogether wanting; in the latter case they found the Greek forms ready to their hand, and addressed themselves —as the interest of their subject stretching far beyond the bounds of Latium naturally suggested—primarily to the cultivated foreigner. The former plan was adopted by the plebeian authors, the latter by those of quality; just as in the time of Frederick the Great an aristocratic literature in the French language subsisted side by side with the native German authorship of pastors and professors, and, while men like Gleim and Ramler wrote war-songs in German, kings and generals wrote military histories in French. Neither the metrical chronicles nor the Greek annals by Roman authors constituted Latin historical composition in the proper sense; this only began with Cato, whose "Origines," not published before the close of this epoch, formed at once the oldest historical work written in Latin and the first important prose work in Roman literature.[236 - That this oldest prose work on the history of Rome was composed in Greek, is established beyond a doubt by Dionys. i. 6, and Cicero, de Div. i. 21, 43. The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law in the Latin language. But the latter treatise will not be attributed by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the Greek Annals of Fabius as well as of those of Acilius and Albinus, or whether there were two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor.The historical work likewise written in Greek, ascribed to Lucius Cincius Alimentus a contemporary of Fabius, seems spurious and a compilation of the Augustan age.]

All these works, while not coming up to the Greek conception of history,[237 - Cato's whole literary activity belonged to the period of his old age (Cicero, Cat. ii, 38; Nepos, Cato, 3); the composition even of the earlier books of the "Origines" falls not before, and yet probably not long subsequent to, 586 (Plin. H. N. iii. 14, 114).] were, as contrasted with the mere detached notices of the book of Annals, systematic histories with a connected narrative and a more or less regular structure. They all, so far as we can see, embraced the national history from the building of Rome down to the time of the writer, although in point of title the work of Naevius related only to the first war with Carthage, and that of Cato only to the very early history. They were thus naturally divided into the three sections of the legendary period, of earlier, and of contemporary, history.

History of the Origin of Rome

In the legendary period the history of the origin of the city of Rome was set forth with great minuteness; and in its case the peculiar difficulty had to be surmounted, that there were, as we have already shown,[238 - It is evidently by way of contrast with Fabius that Polybius (xl. 6, 4) calls attention to the fact, that Albinus, madly fond of everything Greek, had given himself the trouble of writing history systematically [—pragmatiken iotorian—].] two wholly irreconcileable versions of it in circulation: the national version, which, in its leading outlines at least, was probably already embodied in the book of Annals, and the Greek version of Timaeus, which cannot have remained unknown to these Roman chroniclers. The object of the former was to connect Rome with Alba, that of the latter to connect Rome with Troy; in the former accordingly the city was built by Romulus son of the Alban king, in the latter by the Trojan prince Aeneas. To the present epoch, probably either to Naevius or to Pictor, belongs the amalgamation of the two stories. The Alban prince Romulus remains the founder of Rome, but becomes at the same time the grandson of Aeneas; Aeneas does not found Rome, but is represented as bringing the Roman Penates to Italy and building Lavinium as their shrine, while his son Ascanius founds Alba Longa, the mother-city of Rome and the ancient metropolis of Latium. All this was a sorry and unskilful patchwork. The view that the original Penates of Rome were preserved not, as had hitherto been believed, in their temple in the Roman Forum, but in the shrine at Lavinium, could not but be offensive to the Romans; and the Greek fiction was a still worse expedient, inasmuch as under it the gods only bestowed on the grandson what they had adjudged to the grandsire. But the redaction served its object: without exactly denying the national origin of Rome, it yet deferred to the Hellenizing tendency, and legalized in some degree that desire to claim kindred with Aeneas and his descendants which was already at this epoch greatly in vogue;[239 - II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome] and thus it became the stereotyped, and was soon accepted as the official, account of the origin of the mighty community.

Apart from the fable of the origin of the city, the Greek historiographers had otherwise given themselves little or no concern as to the Roman commonwealth; so that the presentation of the further course of the national history must have been chiefly derived from native sources. But the scanty information that has reached us does not enable us to discern distinctly what sort of traditions, in addition to the book of Annals, were at the command of the earliest chroniclers, and what they may possibly have added of their own. The anecdotes inserted from Herodotus[240 - III. XIV. Knowledge of Languages] were probably still foreign to these earliest annalists, and a direct borrowing of Greek materials in this section cannot be proved. The more remarkable, therefore, is the tendency, which is everywhere, even in the case of Cato the enemy of the Greeks, very distinctly apparent, not only to connect Rome with Hellas, but to represent the Italian and Greek nations as having been originally identical. To this tendency we owe the primitive-Italians or Aborigines who were immigrants from Greece, and the primitive- Greeks or Pelasgians whose wanderings brought them to Italy.

The Earlier History

The current story led with some measure of connection, though the connecting thread was but weak and loose through the regal period down to the institution of the republic; but at that point legend dried up; and it was not merely difficult but altogether impossible to form a narrative, in any degree connected and readable, out of the lists of magistrates and the scanty notices appended to them. The poets felt this most. Naevius appears for that reason to have passed at once from the regal period to the war regarding Sicily: Ennius, who in the third of his eighteen books was still describing the regal period and in the sixth had already reached the war with Pyrrhus, must have treated the first two centuries of the republic merely in the most general outline. How the annalists who wrote in Greek managed the matter, we do not know. Cato adopted a peculiar course. He felt no pleasure, as he himself says, "in relating what was set forth on the tablet in the house of the Pontifex Maximus, how often wheat had been dear, and when the sun or moon had been eclipsed;" and so he devoted the second and third books of his historical work to accounts of the origin of the other Italian communities and of their admission to the Roman confederacy. He thus got rid of the fetters of chronicle, which reports events year by year under the heading of the magistrates for the time being; the statement in particular, that Cato's historical work narrated events "sectionally," must refer to this feature of his method. This attention bestowed on the other Italian communities, which surprises us in a Roman work, had a bearing on the political position of the author, who leaned throughout on the support of the municipal Italy in his opposition to the doings of the capital; while it furnished a sort of substitute for the missing history of Rome from the expulsion of king Tarquinius down to the Pyrrhic war, by presenting in its own way the main result of that history—the union of Italy under the hegemony of Rome.

Contemporary History

Contemporary history, again, was treated in a connected and detailed manner. Naevius described the first, and Fabius the second, war with Carthage from their own knowledge; Ennius devoted at least thirteen out of the eighteen books of his Annals to the epoch from Pyrrhus down to the Istrian war;[241 - For instance the history of the siege of Gabii is compiled from the anecdotes in Herodotus as to Zopyrus and the tyrant Thrasybulus, and one version of the story of the exposure of Romulus is framed on the model of the history of the youth of Cyrus as Herodotus relates it.] Cato narrated in the fourth and fifth books of his historical work the wars from the first Punic war down to that with Perseus, and in the two last books, which probably were planned on a different and ampler scale, he related the events of the last twenty years of his life. For the Pyrrhic war Ennius may have employed Timaeus or other Greek authorities; but on the whole the accounts given were based, partly on personal observation or communications of eye-witnesses, partly on each other.

Speeches and Letters

Contemporaneously with historical literature, and in some sense as an appendage to it, arose the literature of speeches and letters. This in like manner was commenced by Cato; for the Romans possessed nothing of an earlier age except some funeral orations, most of which probably were only brought to light at a later period from family archives, such as that which the veteran Quintus Fabius, the opponent of Hannibal, delivered when an old man over his son who had died in his prime. Cato on the other hand committed to writing in his old age such of the numerous orations which he had delivered during his long and active public career as were historically important, as a sort of political memoirs, and published them partly in his historical work, partly, it would seem, as independent supplements to it. There also existed a collection of his letters.

History of Other Nations

With non-Roman history the Romans concerned themselves so far, that a certain knowledge of it was deemed indispensable for the cultivated Roman; even old Fabius is said to have been familiar not merely with the Roman, but also with foreign, wars, and it is distinctly testified that Cato diligently read Thucydides and the Greek historians in general. But, if we leave out of view the collection of anecdotes and maxims which Cato compiled for himself as the fruits of this reading, no trace is discernible of any literary activity in this field.

Uncritical Treatment of History

These first essays in historical literature were all of them, as a matter of course, pervaded by an easy, uncritical spirit; neither authors nor readers readily took offence at inward or outward inconsistencies. King Tarquinius the Second, although he was already grown up at the time of his father's death and did not begin to reign till thirty-nine years afterwards, is nevertheless still a young man when he ascends the throne. Pythagoras, who came to Italy about a generation before the expulsion of the kings, is nevertheless set down by the Roman historians as a friend of the wise Numa. The state- envoys sent to Syracuse in the year 262 transact business with Dionysius the elder, who ascended the throne eighty-six years afterwards (348)This naive uncritical spirit is especially apparent in the treatment of Roman chronology. Since according to the Roman reckoning—the outlines of which were probably fixed in the previous epoch—the foundation of Rome took place 240 years before the consecration of the Capitoline temple[242 - III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Transalpine Gauls] and 360 years before the burning of the city by the Gauls,[243 - II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome] and the latter event, which is mentioned also in Greek historical works, fell according to these in the year of the Athenian archon Pyrgion 388 B. C. Ol. 98, i, the building of Rome accordingly fell on Ol. 8, i. This was, according to the chronology of Eratosthenes which was already recognized as canonical, the year 436 after the fall of Troy; nevertheless the common story retained as the founder of Rome the grandson of the Trojan Aeneas. Cato, who like a good financier checked the calculation, no doubt drew attention in this instance to the incongruity; but he does not appear to have proposed any mode of getting over the difficulty—the list of the Alban kings, which was afterwards inserted with this view, certainly did not proceed from him.

The same uncritical spirit, which prevailed in the early history, prevailed also to a certain extent in the representation of historical times. The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the calm severity characteristic of him. Mistrust, however, is more appropriate in such circumstances than reproach. It is somewhat ridiculous to expect from the Roman contemporaries of Hannibal a just judgment on their opponents; but no conscious misrepresentation of the facts, except such as a simple-minded patriotism of itself involves, has been proved against the fathers of Roman history.

Science

The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of authorship relating to it, also fall within this epoch. The instruction hitherto given had been substantially confined to reading and writing and a knowledge of the law of the land.[244 - II. IX. Registers of Magistrates] But a closer contact with the Greeks gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of a more general culture; and stimulated the endeavour, if not directly to transplant this Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to some extent after its model.

Grammar

First of all, the knowledge of the mother-tongue began to shape itself into Latin grammar; Greek philology transferred its methods to the kindred idiom of Italy. The active study of grammar began nearly at the same time with Roman authorship. About 520 Spurius Carvilius, a teacher of writing, appears to have regulated the Latin alphabet, and to have given to the letter -g, which was not previously included in it,[245 - Plautus (Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their children -litteras-, -iura-, -leges-; and Plutarch (Cato Mai. 20) testifies to the same effect.] the place of the -z which could be dispensed with—the place which it still holds in the modern Occidental alphabets. The Roman school-masters must have been constantly working at the settlement of orthography; the Latin Muses too never disowned their scholastic Hippocrene, and at all times applied themselves to orthography side by side with poetry. Ennius especially—resembling Klopstock in this respect also—not only practised an etymological play on assonance quite after the Alexandrian style,[246 - II. IX. Philology] but also introduced, in place of the simple signs for the double consonants that had hitherto been usual, the more accurate Greek double writing. Of Naevius and Plautus, it is true, nothing of the kind is known; the popular poets in Rome must have treated orthography and etymology with the indifference which is usual with poets.

Rhetoric and Philosophy

The Romans of this epoch still remained strangers to rhetoric and philosophy. The speech in their case lay too decidedly at the very heart of public life to be accessible to the handling of the foreign schoolmaster; the genuine orator Cato poured forth all the vials of his indignant ridicule over the silly Isocratean fashion of ever learning, and yet never being able, to speak. The Greek philosophy, although it acquired a certain influence over the Romans through the medium of didactic and especially of tragic poetry, was nevertheless viewed with an apprehension compounded of boorish ignorance and of instinctive misgiving. Cato bluntly called Socrates a talker and a revolutionist, who was justly put to death as an offender against the faith and the laws of his country; and the opinion, which even Romans addicted to philosophy entertained regarding it, may well be expressed in the words of Ennius:

-Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis, nam omnino haut placet.
Degustandum ex ea, non in eam ingurgitandum censeo.-

Nevertheless the poem on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman -caput mortuum- of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course, due commendation of the simple ancestral habits), and, in the case of the book on Oratory, the speeches in Thucydides and more especially the orations of Demosthenes, all of which Cato zealously studied. Of the spirit of these manuals we may form some idea from the golden oratorical rule, oftener quoted than followed by posterity, "to think of the matter and leave the words to follow from it."[247 - Thus in his Epicharmian poems Jupiter is so called, -quod iuvat-; and Ceres, -quod gerit fruges.-]

Medicine

Similar manuals of a general elementary character were composed by Cato on the Art of Healing, the Science of War, Agriculture, and Jurisprudence—all of which studies were likewise more or less under Greek influence. Physics and mathematics were not much studied in Rome; but the applied sciences connected with them received a certain measure of attention. This was most of all true of medicine. In 535 the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Archagathus, settled in Rome and there acquired such repute by his surgical operations, that a residence was assigned to him on the part of the state and he received the freedom of the city; and thereafter his colleagues flocked in crowds to Italy. Cato no doubt not only reviled the foreign medical practitioners with a zeal worthy of a better cause, but attempted, by means of his medical manual compiled from his own experience and probably in part also from the medical literature of the Greeks, to revive the good old fashion under which the father of the family was at the same time the family physician. The physicians and the public gave themselves, as was reasonable, but little concern about his obstinate invectives: at any rate the profession, one of the most lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands of the foreigners, and for centuries there were none but Greek physicians in Rome.

Mathematics

Hitherto the measurement of time had been treated in Rome with barbarous indifference, but matters were now at least in some degree improved. With the erection of the first sundial in the Roman Forum in 491 the Greek hour (—ora—, -hora-) began to come into use at Rome: it happened, however, that the Romans erected a sundial which had been prepared for Catana situated four degrees farther to the south, and were guided by this for a whole century. Towards the end of this epoch we find several persons of quality taking an interest in mathematical studies. Manius Acilius Glabrio (consul in 563) attempted to check the confusion of the calendar by a law, which allowed the pontifical college to insert or omit intercalary months at discretion: if the measure failed in its object and in fact aggravated the evil, the failure was probably owing more to the unscrupulousness than to the want of intelligence of the Roman theologians. Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (consul in 565), a man of Greek culture, endeavoured at least to make the Roman calendar more generally known. Gaius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588), who not only predicted the eclipse of the moon in 586 but also calculated the distance of the moon from the earth, and who appears to have come forward even as an astronomical writer, was regarded on this account by his contemporaries as a prodigy of diligence and acuteness.

Agriculture and the Art of War

Agriculture and the art of war were, of course, primarily regulated by the standard of traditional and personal experience, as is very distinctly apparent in that one of the two treatises of Cato on Agriculture which has reached our time. But the results of Graeco- Latin, and even of Phoenician, culture were brought to bear on these subordinate fields just as on the higher provinces of intellectual activity, and for that reason the foreign literature relating to them cannot but have attracted some measure of attention.

Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was only in a subordinate degree affected by foreign elements. The activity of the jurists of this period was still mainly devoted to the answering of parties consulting them and to the instruction of younger listeners; but this oral instruction contributed to form a traditional groundwork of rules, and literary activity was not wholly wanting. A work of greater importance for jurisprudence than the short sketch of Cato was the treatise published by Sextus Aelius Paetus, surnamed the "subtle" (-catus-), who was the first practical jurist of his time, and, in consequence of his exertions for the public benefit in this respect, rose to the consulship (556) and to the censorship (560)His treatise —the "-Tripartita-" as it was called—was a work on the Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an explanation—chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible expressions—and the corresponding formula of action. While this process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek grammatical studies, the portion treating of the formulae of action, on the contrary, was based on the older collection of Appius[248 - -Rem tene, verba sequentur.-] and on the whole system of procedure developed by national usage and precedent.

Cato's Encyclopaedia

The state of science generally at this epoch is very distinctly exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed by Cato for his son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in short maxims what a "fit man" (-vir bonus-) ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist. A distinction was not yet drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science; but so much of science generally as seemed necessary or useful was required of every true Roman. The work did not include Latin grammar, which consequently cannot as yet have attained that formal development which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical sciences. Throughout it was the directly practical element in science which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and simplicity as possible. The Greek literature was doubtless made use of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled from the mass of chaff and rubbish: it was one of Cato's commonplaces, that "Greek books must be looked into, but not thoroughly studied." Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which, while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek acuteness and depth, but through that very peculiarity moulded the attitude of the Romans towards the Greek sciences for all ages.

Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature

Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into Rome along with the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of the age of Cicero:

-Poenico bello secundo Musa pennato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram.-

In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with Greek comedy. The question accordingly presents itself, whether, contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and Volturnus. But all information on the point is lost, and history can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.

Hellenizing Literature

The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental life of Italy in that sixth century—full of the din of arms and pregnant for the future—during which its distinctively Italian phase closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient civilization. In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and characterized the age of transition. No one of unprejudiced mind, and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand years, can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman literature. Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange-trees; both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them as parallel. This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman literature in a foreign tongue; to a very great extent the former was not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks, Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only acquired by study. Among those who in this age came before the public as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been persons of rank; and not only so, but none can be shown to have been natives of Latium proper. The very name given to the poet was foreign; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a -poeta-[249 - II. IX. Language]But not only was this poetry foreign; it was also liable to all those defects which are found to occur where schoolmasters become authors and the great multitude forms the public. We have shown how comedy was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact sank into vulgar coarseness; we have further shown that two of the most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen. In fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature of the sixth century—that poetry followed out professionally and destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of translations, that changeling of epos—we are tempted to reckon it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.

But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very partial sense. We must first of all consider that this artificial literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any national poetic art, but could never attain any such art. In antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life, creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth: without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the primitive stories of human gods and divine men. This basis of ancient poetry was totally wanting in Latium: where the world of gods remained shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry could not voluntarily ripen. To this falls to be added a second and more important consideration.

The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of Hellenism. The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations; and this primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of the Romano-Hellenistic literature. Not a single new and genuine work of art issued from its workshop, but it extended the intellectual horizon of Hellas over Italy. Viewed even in its mere outward aspect, Greek poetry presumes in the hearer a certain amount of positive acquired knowledge. That self-contained completeness, which is one of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for instance, was foreign to ancient poetry; a person unacquainted with the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy. If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current of the other myths,[250 - See the lines already quoted at III. II. The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia.The formation of the name -poeta- from the vulgar Greek —poetes— instead of —poietes— —as —epoesen— was in use among the Attic potters—is characteristic. We may add that -poeta- technically denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer for the stage, who at this time was styled -scriba- (III. XIV. Audience; Festus, s. v., p. 333 M.).] this knowledge must have found its way to the public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the Hellenic poetry. But still deeper was the effect—on which the most ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis—produced by the naturalization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek metres in Latium. If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror by art," the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language, so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to germinate; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little susceptible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture. Nor let it be said, that, by virtue of the widely diffused acquaintance with the Greek language, its literature would have sufficed for the susceptible Roman public. The mysterious charm which language exercises over man, and which poetical language and rhythm only enhance, attaches not to any tongue learned accidentally, but only to the mother-tongue. From this point of view, we shall form a juster judgment of the Hellenistic literature, and particularly of the poetry, of the Romans of this period. If it tended to transplant the radicalism of Euripides to Rome, to resolve the gods either into deceased men or into mental conceptions, to place a denationalized Latium by the side of a denationalized Hellas, and to reduce all purely and distinctly developed national peculiarities to the problematic notion of general civilization, every one is at liberty to find this tendency pleasing or disagreeable, but none can doubt its historical necessity. From this point of view the very defectiveness of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was chiefly translation or imitation; but, if the primary object of poetry was simply to form a bridge from Latium to Hellas, Livius and Ennius had certainly a vocation to the poetical pontificate in Rome, and a translated literature was the simplest means to the end. It was still less seemly that Roman poetry preferred to lay its hands on the most worn- out and trivial originals; but in this view it was appropriate. No one will desire to place the poetry of Euripides on a level with that of Homer; but, historically viewed, Euripides and Menander were quite as much the oracles of cosmopolitan Hellenism as the Iliad and Odyssey were the oracles of national Hellenism, and in so far the representatives of the new school had good reason for introducing their audience especially to this cycle of literature. The instinctive consciousness also of their limited poetical powers may partly have induced the Roman composers to keep mainly by Euripides and Menander and to leave Sophocles and even Aristophanes untouched; for, while poetry is essentially national and difficult to transplant, intellect and wit, on which the poetry of Euripides as well as of Menander is based, are in their very nature cosmopolitan. Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although not exactly in its richest or purest fields. On the whole, however innumerable may be the false accommodations and sins against the rules of art which we can point out in them, these were just the offences which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism; and they are, in a historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism. We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new gospel; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what, as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to the Roman poets of the sixth century. A fresh and strong sense of the power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to transplant the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of the sixth century, and coincided in a peculiar manner with the thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age. The later refined Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period with some degree of contempt; it should rather perhaps have looked up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine poetical art, than their more cultivated successors. In the bold emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional pride of the poets of this age there is, more than in any other epoch of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to it the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates its praise:

-Enni poeta, salve, qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-

National Opposition

As the Hellenico-Roman literature of this period was essentially marked by a dominant tendency, so was also its antithesis, the contemporary national authorship. While the former aimed at neither more nor less than the annihilation of Latin nationality by the creation of a poetry Latin in language but Hellenic in form and spirit, the best and purest part of the Latin nation was driven to reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism along with Hellenism itself. The Romans in the time of Cato stood opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of the Christian, community; the nobility of the nation and above all the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile power; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government. In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum of the radically corrupt Greek people,[251 - Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles niake their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus (Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745). Moreover the most general outlines must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus (Merc. 467), Procne and Philomela (Rud. 604). Sappho and Phaon (Mil. 1247).] and the Roman "ballad- singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.[252 - "As to these Greeks," he says to his son Marcus, "I shall tell at the proper place, what I came to learn regarding them at Athens; and shall show that it is useful to look into their writings, but not to study them thoroughly. They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable race—believe me, this is true as an oracle; if that people bring hither its culture, it will ruin everything, and most especially if it send hither its physicians. They have conspired to despatch all barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it, that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us to ruin. They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the still more vulgar name of Opicans. I interdict thee, therefore, from all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art."Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the Italians by that term (I. X. Time of the Greek Immigration).] He and those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure are not unfrequently characterized by the bluntness and narrowness peculiar to him; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right, but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate line of mere negative defence. When his younger contemporary, Aulus Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even manufactured Greek verses—when this Albinus in the preface to his historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he was by birth a Roman—was not the question quite in place, whether he had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he did not understand? Were the trades of the professional translator of comedies and of the poet celebrating heroes for bread and protection more honourable, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now? Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he took Ennius—who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself with praise—along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of his future achievements? Had he not reason to revile the Greeks, with whom he had become acquainted in Rome and Athens, as an incorrigibly wretched pack? This opposition to the culture of the age and the Hellenism of the day was well warranted; but Cato was by no means chargeable with an opposition to culture and to Hellenism in general. On the contrary it is the highest merit of the national party, that they comprehended very clearly the necessity of creating a Latin literature and of bringing the stimulating influences of Hellenism to bear on it; only their intention was, that Latin literature should not be a mere copy taken from the Greek and intruded on the national feelings of Rome, but should, while fertilized by Greek influences, be developed in accordance with Italian nationality. With a genial instinct, which attests not so much the sagacity of individuals as the elevation of the epoch, they perceived that in the case of Rome, owing to the total want of earlier poetical productiveness, history furnished the only subject-matter for the development of an intellectual life of their own. Rome was, what Greece was not, a state; and the mighty consciousness of this truth lay at the root both of the bold attempt which Naevius made to attain by means of history a Roman epos and a Roman drama, and of the creation of Latin prose by Cato. It is true that the endeavour to replace the gods and heroes of legend by the kings and consuls of Rome resembles the attempt of the giants to storm heaven by means of mountains piled one above another: without a world of gods there is no ancient epos and no ancient drama, and poetry knows no substitutes. With greater moderation and good sense Cato left poetry proper, as a thing irremediably lost, to the party opposed to him; although his attempt to create a didactic poetry in national measure after the model of the earlier Roman productions —the Appian poem on Morals and the poem on Agriculture—remains significant and deserving of respect, in point if not of success, at least of intention. Prose afforded him a more favourable field, and accordingly he applied the whole varied power and energy peculiar to him to the creation of a prose literature in his native tongue. This effort was all the more Roman and all the more deserving of respect, that the public which he primarily addressed was the family circle, and that in such an effort he stood almost alone in his time. Thus arose his "Origines," his remarkable state-speeches, his treatises on special branches of science. They are certainly pervaded by a national spirit, and turn on national subjects; but they are far from anti-Hellenic: in fact they originated essentially under Greek influence, although in a different sense from that in which the writings of the opposite party so originated. The idea and even the title of his chief work were borrowed from the Greek "foundation- histories" (—ktoeis—). The same is true of his oratorical authorship; he ridiculed Isocrates, but he tried to learn from Thucydides and Demosthenes. His encyclopaedia is essentially the result of his study of Greek literature. Of all the undertakings of that active and patriotic man none was more fruitful of results and none more useful to his country than this literary activity, little esteemed in comparison as it probably was by himself. He found numerous and worthy successors in oratorical and scientific authorship; and though his original historical treatise, which of its kind may be compared with the Greek logography, was not followed by any Herodotus or Thucydides, yet by and through him the principle was established that literary occupation in connection with the useful sciences as well as with history was not merely becoming but honourable in a Roman.

Architecture

Let us glance, in conclusion, at the state of the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting. So far as concerns the former, the traces of incipient luxury were less observable in public than in private buildings. It was not till towards the close of this period, and especially from the time of the censorship of Cato (570), that the Romans began in the case of the former to have respect to the convenience as well as to the bare wants of the public; to line with stone the basins (-lacus-) supplied from the aqueducts, (570); to erect colonnades (575, 580); and above all to transfer to Rome the Attic halls for courts and business—the -basilicae- as they were called. The first of these buildings, somewhat corresponding to our modern bazaars—the Porcian or silversmiths' hall—was erected by Cato in 570 alongside of the senate-house; others were soon associated with it, till gradually along the sides of the Forum the private shops were replaced by these splendid columnar halls. Everyday life, however, was more deeply influenced by the revolution in domestic architecture which must, at latest, be placed in this period. The hall of the house (-atrium-), court (-cavum aedium-), garden and garden colonnade (-peristylium-), the record-chamber (-tablinum-), chapel, kitchen, and bedrooms were by degrees severally provided for; and, as to the internal fittings, the column began to be applied both in the court and in the hall for the support of the open roof and also for the garden colonnades: throughout these arrangements it is probable that Greek models were copied or at any rate made use of. Yet the materials used in building remained simple; "our ancestors," says Varro, "dwelt in houses of brick, and laid merely a moderate foundation of stone to keep away damp."

Plastic Art and Painting

Of Roman plastic art we scarcely encounter any other trace than, perhaps, the embossing in wax of the images of ancestors. Painters and painting are mentioned somewhat more frequently. Manius Valerius caused the victory which he obtained over the Carthaginians and Hiero in 491 off Messana[253 - II. IX. Censure of Art] to be depicted on the side wall of the senate- house—the first historical frescoes in Rome, which were followed by many of similar character, and which were in the domain of the arts of design what the national epos and the national drama became not much later in the domain of poetry. We find named as painters, one Theodotus who, as Naevius scoffingly said,