SOURCE: “Roman Criticism—I. From Cicero to Horace” in Roman Poetry, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1923, pp. 27-65.

In the following excerpt, Sikes surveys the history of Roman literary criticism, examines theories regarding the function of poetry, analyzes the role of meter, and investigates the question of whether poetry is a product of genius or of art.

I

It is the veriest commonplace to call the Romans a “practical” race; and no one who knows their achievements in arms and law, in politics and architecture, would disagree. But this unimpeachable truth is often taken to imply that a genius for the practical must be opposed to poetry—an implication which Shakespeare's countrymen might well mistrust. There is, however, this much excuse for the antithesis (as far as Latin poetry is concerned), that Virgil's countrymen themselves felt the difficulty, and they have too often been taken at their own valuation. “Others...