The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35) He first went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables.  He devoted his special attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine.  He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings and to ascertain in each case the “inventor,” and at the same time brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his research.  The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical, and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into things to his disciple Varro.

Rhetoric

The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might be expected, of a more subordinate kind.  There was nothing here to be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the need for them, partly on account of vanity and money.  Such a manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla’s dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.  Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet distinctly and even abruptly rejects all “the useless matter which the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science might appear more difficult to learn.”  The bitterest censure is bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics—­that “loquacious science of inability to speak”—­whose finished master, for sheer fear of expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to pronounce his own name.  The Greek school-terminology is throughout and intentionally avoided.  Very earnestly the author points out the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice in the Roman advocate-world.  It deserves attention, that the opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37) continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity and a greater usefulness.