change had been gradually going on: the wars, and even the civil factions, were continually wasting away the Roman population; while the usurpation of wealth and pride was as constantly keeping up its slow aggression, and filling up the void with the slaves which poured in with every conquest. The story of Spartacus may tell how large a part of the rural population of Italy was servile; and, probably, the nearer to Rome, in the districts formerly inhabited by the genuine Roman people, the change (with some exceptions) was most complete: the Sabine valleys might retain some of the old rough hereditary virtues, the hardihood and frugality; but at a distance from the city it would be their own local or religious traditions which would live among the peasantry, rather than the songs which had been current in the streets among the primitive commons of Rome.

Thus, both in city and in country, had died away the genuine old Roman people; and with them, no doubt, died away the last echo of national song. The extension of the right of Roman citizenship, the diffusion of the pride of the Roman name through a wider sphere, tended still more to soften away the rigid and exclusive spirit of nationality; and it was this spirit alone which would cling pertinaciously to that which laboured under the unpopularity of rudeness and barbarism. The new Romans appropriated the glories of the old, but disregarded the only contemporary, or at least the earliest, witnesses to those glories. The reverse of the fate of the Grecian heroes

happened to those of Rome-the heroes lived, the sacred bards perished.

The Latin poetry, that which Rome has handed down to posterity, was, like philosophy, a stranger and a foreigner.(3) She arrived, though late, before philosophy; at least she was more completely naturalized before philosophy was domiciled, except in a very few mansions of great statesmen, and among a very circumscribed intellectual aristocracy. It is remarkable that most of her early poets were from Magna Græcia. Nævius alone, the Saturnian or Italian poet, was from Campania, and even Campania was half Greek. Livius Andronicus was from Tarentum ;(4) Ennius from Rudræ in Calabria; Accius was the son of a freed-man from the south of Italy; Pacuvius was a Brundusian; Plautus, of the comic writers, was an Umbrian; Terence an African; Cæcilius was from the north of Italy. In every respect the Romans condescended to be imitative, not directly of Nature, but of Grecian models. Ennius had confined her epic poetry to the hexameter, from whence it never attempted to emancipate itself. The drama of Rome, like all her arts, was Grecian; almost all the plays

(33) "Punico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu,

Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram."

P. Licinius apud A. Gellium.

(34) Cicero, Brutus c. 18.-Livius was taken prisoner at the capture of Tarentum. It is supposed that he was a freedman of M. Livius Salinator. The Tarentines were great admirers of the theatre. Plaut. Menæchmi. Prolog. 29, et seqq.

Heyne Opuscul. 2, 225, et seqq. Livius represented his own plays. Liv. vii. 2; Val. Max. ii. 4.

(excepting here and there a tragedia prætextata) of Livius Andronicus, Accius, Pacuvius, Plautus, Terence were on Grecian subjects. So completely was this admitted by the time of Horace, that his advice to the dramatic poet is to study Grecian models by night and day:

"Vos exemplaria Græca

Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurnâ."

But, on the other hand, the wonderful energies which were developed in the universal conquests of Rome, and in her civil factions, in which the great end of ambition was to be the first citizen in a state which ruled the world, could not but awaken intellectual powers of the highest order. The force and vigour of the Roman character is manifest in the fragments of their early poetry. However rude and inharmonious these translations (for, after all, they are translations), they are full of bold, animated, and sometimes picturesque expressions; and that which was the natural consequence of the domiciliation of a foreign literature among a people of strong and masculine minds invariably took place. Wherever their masters in the art had attained to consummate perfectionwherever the genius of the people had been reflected in their poetry with complete harmony-there, however noble might be the emulation of the disciple, it was impossible that he should approach to his model, especially where his own genius and national character were adverse both to the form and to the poetic conception.

Hence, in the genuine epic, in lyric, in dramatic poetry, the Greeks stood alone and unapproachable. Each of these successive forms of the art had, as it were, spontaneously adapted itself to the changes in Grecian society. The epic was that of the heroic age of the warrior-kings and bards; the lyric, the religious, that of the temple and of the public games; the dramatic, that of the republican polity, the exquisite combination of the arts of poetry, music, gesture, and spectacle, before which the sovereign people of Athens met, which was presided over by the magistrate, and maintained either at the public cost, or at that of the ruling functionary-which, in short, was the great festival of the city.

But the heroic age of Rome had passed away, as before observed, without leaving any mythic or epic song, unless already transmuted into history. Her severe religion had never kindled into poetry, except in rude traditional verses, and short songs chanted during the solemn ceremony. The more domestic habits of her austerer days had been less disposed to public exhibitions; theatrical amusements were forced upon her, not freely developed by the national taste. No doubt, from the close of the second Punic war to the age of Augustus, dramatic entertainments were more or less frequent in Rome. The tragedies of Nævius, Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, as well as the comedies of Plautus, Cæcilius, Afranius, and Terence, formed part of the great games which were celebrated during periods of public rejoicing. The fame of Esopus and Roscius as actors implies great

popular interest in the stage. Still, as has been said, almost all, if not all, the tragedies, and most of the comedies, were translations or adaptations from the Greek. (3) The ovation and the triumph were the great spectacles of Rome; and when these became more rare, her relaxation was the rude Atellan farce, or the coarse mime; but her passion was the mimic war, the amphitheatre with its wild beasts and gladiators, the proud spectacle of barbarian captives slaughtering each other for her amusement. Rome thus wanted the three great sources of poetic inspiration-an heroic period of history, religion, and scenic representation. She had never-at least there appears no vestige of their existence-a caste or order of bards; her sacerdotal offices, attached to her civil magistracies, disdained the aid of high-wrought music, or mythic and harmonious hymns. Foreign kings and heroes walked her stage; (3) and even her comedy represented, in

(35) Lange in his " Vindiciæ Romanæ Tragædiæ," and Welcker ("Græcische Tragoedie") are indignant at the general, and, as they assert, unjust disparagement of Roman tragedy.

(36) Nine names of tragædiæ prætextatæ, tragedies on Roman subjects, have survived; more than one of which is doubtful: four only claim to be of the earlier age. I. The Paulus of Pacuvius, which Neukirch ("De fabulâ togatâ") and Welcker ("Græcische Tragedie"), p. 1384, suppose to have represented not Paulus Æmilius Macedonicus, but his father, L. Æmilius Paulus, who, after the battle of Cannæ, refused to survive the defeat (Liv. xxii. 49). Yet, noble as was the conduct of Paulus, the battle of Canna would have been a strange subject for Roman tragedy. II. The Brutus of Accius (Cic. ad Att. xvi. 2 and 5). Cassius Parmensis wrote also a Brutus (Welcker, p. 1403). See the Dream of Brutus in Cic. de Divinat. i. 22, and Bothe, Scenic, Latin., Fragm. i. 191. From this fragment Niebuhr, R. H. vol. i. note 1078, rather boldly concludes that these were not