Latin Literature

LATIN LITERATURE. Pre-literary Period, to 240 B.C.—The germs of an indigenous literature had existed at an early period in Italy in forms such as we might expect in a people just emerging from barbarism. The art of writing was first employed in the service of the State and of religion for books of ritual, treaties with other States, laws of the Twelve Tables, etc. An approach to literature was made in the chron icles, public and private, funeral orations and tomb-inscriptions. A nearer approach was probably made in oratory, as we learn from Cicero that the famous speech delivered by Appius Claudius Caecus against concluding peace with Pyrrhus (28o B.c.) was extant in his time. Appius also published a collection of moral maxims and reflections in verse.

But it was rather in the chants and

litanies of the ancient religion, such as those of the Salii and the Fratres Arvales, and the dirges for the dead (neniae), and in certain extemporaneous effusions, that some germs of a native poetry might have been detected; these seem to have been in Saturnian (q.v.) or other rude and probably accentual metre. We may also mention the vates (bards or sooth.ayers), of whom the most famous was one Marcius, and the "Fescennine verses" (q.v.). There were also commemorative poems, accompanied with music, which were sung at funeral banquets, in celebration of the exploits and vir tues of distinguished men. The latest and probably the most important of these rude and inchoate forms was that of quasi dramatic saturae (medleys), put together without any regular plot and said to have consisted of jocular dialogue in verse,' ac companied with music (Livy vii. 2). These have a real bearing on the subsequent development of Latin literature. They may have contributed to the formation of the style of comedy which appears at the very outset much more mature than that of serious poetry, tragic or epic. They gave the name and some of the characteristics to that special literary product of the Roman soil, the satura, addressed to readers, not to spectators, which ulti mately was developed by Lucilius, Horace, Persius and Juvenal. First Literary Period: 240 to 80 B.C.—Livius Andronicus. —The historical event which brought about the greatest change in the intellectual condition of the Romans, and thereby exercised a decisive influence on the whole course of human culture, was the capture of Tarentum in 272. After the capture many Greek

slaves were brought to Rome, and among them the young Livius Andronicus (c. 284-204), who was employed in teach ing Greek in the family of his master, a member of the Livian gens. From that time to learn Greek became a regular part of the education of a Roman noble. In the year after the first Punic war (24o), when the armies had returned and the people were at leisure to enjoy the fruits of victory, Livius Andronicus substituted at one of the public festivals a regular drama, translated or adapted from the Greek for the musical medleys (saturae) hitherto in use. From this time dramatic performances became a regular accompaniment of the public games, and came more and more to drive out or transform the native compositions. The dramatic work of Livius was mainly of educative value. The same may be said of his translation of the Odyssey, which was still used as a school-book in the days of Horace, and the religious hymn which he was called upon to compose in 207 had no high literary pretensions. He was, how ever, the first to familiarize the Romans with the forms of the Greek drama and the Greek epic, and thus to determine the main lines which Latin literature followed for more than a century afterwards.

Naevius.—His immediate successor, Cn. Naevius (d. C. 200 B.C.), was not, like Livius, a Greek, but either a Roman citizen or, more probably, a Campanian who enjoyed the limited citizen ship of a Latin and who had served in the Roman army in the first Punic war. His first appearance as a dramatic author was in 235. He adapted both tragedies and comedies from the Greek, but seems to have been more successful in the latter. An attempt to introduce political satire (against the Metelli) led to his im prisonment, and henceforth personalities are absent or carefully veiled in Roman drama, save for a few very mild jests against persons of little importance. Even complimentary allusions are seldom very outspoken. Besides celebrating the success of M. Claudius Marcellus in 222 over the Gauls in a play called Clas tidium, he gave the first specimen of the tabula praetexta or tragedy on a Roman subject in his Alimonium Romuli et Remi. In his long Saturnian poem on the first Punic war, he not only told the story of contemporary events but helped to shape the legend of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium.