us revere Ennius as we revere an ancient sacred grove, whose mighty oaks of a thousand years are more venerable than beautiful;” and, if any one is disposed to wonder at this, he may recall analogous phenomena in the successes of the Aeneid, the Henriad, and the Messiad.  A mighty poetical development of the nation would indeed have set aside that almost comic official parallel between the Homeric Iliad and the Ennian

Annals as easily as we have set aside the comparison of Karschin with Sappho and of Willamov with Pindar; but no such development took place in Rome.  Owing to the interest of the subject especially for aristocratic circles, and the great plastic talent of the poet, the Annals remained the oldest Roman original poem which appeared to the culture of later generations readable or worth reading; and thus, singularly enough, posterity came to honour this thoroughly anti-national epos of a half-Greek -litterateur- as the true model poem of Rome.

Prose Literature

A prose literature arose in Rome not much later than Roman poetry, but in a very different way.  It experienced neither the artificial furtherance, by which the school and the stage prematurely forced the growth of Roman poetry, nor the artificial restraint, to which Roman comedy in particular was subjected by the stern and narrow-minded censorship of the stage.  Nor was this form of literary activity placed from the outset under the ban of good society by the stigma which attached to the “ballad-singer.”  Accordingly the prose literature, while far less extensive and less active than the contemporary poetical authorship, had a far more natural growth.  While poetry was almost wholly in the hands of men of humble rank and not a single Roman of quality appears among the celebrated poets of this age, there is, on the contrary, among the prose writers of this period hardly a name that is not senatorial; and it is from the circles of the highest aristocracy, from men who had been consuls and censors—­the Fabii, the Gracchi, the Scipios—­that this literature throughout proceeds.  The conservative and national tendency, in the nature of the case, accorded better with this prose authorship than with poetry; but here too—­and particularly in the most important branch of this literature, historical composition—­the Hellenistic bent had a powerful, in fact too powerful, influence both on matter and form.

Writing of History

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