SOURCE: “The Beginning of Roman Literature—Livius Andronicus—Cn. Naevius, b.c. 240-202” in The Roman Poets of the Republic, Clarendon Press, 1881, pp. 47-61.

In the following excerpt, Sellar discusses the importance of Greek literature as the model for early Roman literature and praises Naevius’s Latin for its vigor and purity.

The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum, the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from Epidaurus in b.c. 293, and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by the Romans in still earlier times...