Plautus.—His younger contemporary, T. Maccius Plautus (c. 254-184), was the greatest comic dramatist of Rome, a thorough Roman despite his Umbrian origin, and possessing a range and vigour of wit almost Shakespearean, which breathes into the faded prettiness of New Comedy something of the heartiness of Aris 'The reliability of Livy's account is uncertain ; see Schanz-Hosius, p. 20, for the controversy.
tophanes. His work survives fairly complete. Apart from his merits as a dramatist, Plautus is of great interest to philologists, as the largest specimen we have of early Latin. Moreover, he was a very skilful metrician, showing an extraordinary power of adapting the foreign (Greek) metres in which he wrote to the rhythm, largely accentual, of spoken Latin. In consequence of this, careful examination of his text has led to the recovery, in con siderable measure, of the very cadences of ancient Latin speech.' Ennius.—Thus far Latin literature had some claim to be con sidered popular. But a new spirit, which henceforth became pre dominant, appeared in the time of Plautus. Latin literature be came the expression of the ideas, sentiment and culture of the aristocratic governing class. It was by Q. Ennius (239-169) of Rudiae in Messapia, that a new direction was given to Latin literature. Deriving from his birthplace the culture, literary and philosophical, of Magna Graecia, and having gained the friendship of the Scipionic circle, he was of all the early writers most fitted to be the medium of conciliation between the serious genius of ancient Greece and the serious genius of Rome.
First among his special services to Latin literature was the fresh impulse which he gave to tragedy. He turned the eyes of his contemporaries from the commonplace social humours of later Greek life to the contemplation of the heroic age. To judge from rather scanty fragments, he introduced into his Greek plots a genuinely Roman tone. Although Rome wanted creative force to add a great series of tragic dramas to the literature of the world, yet the spirit of elevation and moral authority breathed into tragedy by Ennius passed into the ethical and didactic writings and the oratory of a later time.
Another work was the Saturae, written in various metres, but chiefly in the trochaic tetrameter. He thus became the inventor of a new form of literature ; and, if in his hands the satura was rude and indeterminate in its scope, it became a vehicle by which to address a reading public on matters of the day, or on the materials of his wide reading, in a style not far removed from the language of common life. His greatest work, which made the Romans regard him as the father of their literature, was his epic poem, in 18 books, the Annales, a chronicle in verse of the whole history of Rome. The idea which inspired Ennius was ultimately realized in both the national epic of Virgil and the national his tory of Livy. Its metre, the hexameter (q.v.) was, although still rude, the first step in the development which culminated in Vir gil. As grammarian and poet, he fixed Greek rules of scansion upon the literary Latin. Although of his writings only fragments remain, these fragments are enough, along with what we know of him from ancient testimony, to justify us in regarding him as the most important among the makers of Latin literature before the age of Cicero.
Cato.—M. Porcius Cato the Censor was a younger contemporary of Ennius, whom he brought to Rome. More than Naevius and Plautus he represented the pure native, especially the plebeian element. His lack of imagination and his narrow patriotism made him the natural leader of the reaction against the new Hellenic culture. He strove to make literature ancillary to politics and to objects of practical utility, and thus started prose literature on the chief lines that it afterwards followed. Through his industry and vigorous understanding he gave a great impulse to the creation of Roman oratory, history and systematic didactic writing. He was one of the first to publish his speeches and thus to bring them into the domain of literature. Cicero, who speaks of 150 of these speeches as extant in his day, praises them for their acuteness, their wit, their conciseness. He speaks with emphasis of the impressiveness of Cato's eulogy and the satiric bitterness of his invective.