Cato’s Encyclopaedia

The state of science generally at this epoch is very distinctly exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed by Cato for his son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in short maxims what a “fit man” (-vir bonus-) ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist.  A distinction was not yet drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science; but so much of science generally as seemed necessary or useful was required of every true Roman.  The work did not include Latin grammar, which consequently cannot as yet have attained that formal development which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical sciences.  Throughout it was the directly practical element in science which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and simplicity as possible.  The Greek literature was doubtless made use of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled from the mass of chaff and rubbish:  it was one of Cato’s commonplaces, that “Greek books must be looked into, but not thoroughly studied.”  Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which, while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek acuteness and depth, but through that very peculiarity moulded the attitude of the Romans towards the Greek sciences for all ages.

Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature

Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into Rome along with the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of the age of Cicero: 

-Poenico bello secundo Musa pennato gradu Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram.-

In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with Greek comedy.  The question accordingly presents itself, whether, contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and Volturnus.  But all information on the point is lost, and history can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.

Hellenizing Literature

The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental life of Italy in that sixth century—­full of the din of arms and pregnant for the future—­during which its distinctively Italian phase closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient civilization.  In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which everywhere during this epoch