Cicero denies to Rome the existence, before his own time, of any adequate historical literature. Nevertheless it was during this period that the annalists (q.v.) flourished, and formed the traditional history and chronology of Rome. There were also special works on antiquities, and contemporary memoirs and autobiographies such as those of M. Aemilius, Scaurus, the elder, Q. Lutatius Catulus (consul 102 B.C.), and P. Rutilius Rufus, which formed the sources of future historians. (See, further, ROME : History, Ancient.) So far, then, we find drama, which was not destined to play any leading part in the future literature, a fairly well developed, dignified prose style ; imaginative poetry, and its vehicle, the hex ameter, albeit rude and unmelodious as yet ; satire, using the hexameter as one of its media (it afterwards discarded all others) ; but, so far, no personal lyric and no elegy or none of importance. The influences of Greek literature to which Latin literature owed its birth had not as yet spread beyond Rome and Latium. The Sabellian races of central and eastern Italy and the Italo-Celtic and Venetian races of the north, in whom the poetic susceptibility of Italy was most manifest two generations later, were not, until after the Social war, sufficiently in sympathy with Rome, and were probably not as yet sufficiently educated to contribute their share to the national literature. Hence the end of the Social war, and of the Civil war, which arose out of it, is most clearly a deter mining factor in Roman literature, and may most appropriately be taken as marking the end of one period and the beginning of another.
Cicero.—Thus the speeches of M. Tullius Cicero (106-43) be long to the domain of literature quite as much as to that of forensic or political oratory. It is urged with justice that the greater part of Cicero's Defence of Archias was irrelevant to the issue and would not have been listened to by a modern jury. But it was fortunate for the interests of literature that a court of educated Romans could be influenced by the considerations there sub mitted to them. In this way a dispute about the status of an unimportant person has produced one of the most impressive vindications of literature ever spoken or written. In many other orations, the largeness of the issues involved adds interest and elevation. The Roman oratory of the law courts had to deal,
not only with petty questions of disputed property, of fraud, or violence, but with great imperial questions, with matters affecting the well-being of large provinces and the honour and safety of the republic ; and no man ever lived who, in these respects, was better fitted than Cicero to be the representative of the type of oratory demanded by the condition of the later republic. A patriot, a sensitive artist, a master of technique, he was also, if not exactly a dramatist, an excellent portrayer of the broad out lines of character. The Verres, Catiline, Antony of Cicero are living and permanent types. The story told in the Pro Cluentio may be true or false, but the picture of provincial crime which it represents is alive. Had we only known Cicero in his speeches we should, even so, recognize him as the master and perfecter of Latin style. But to his services to Roman oratory we have to add his services not indeed to philosophy but to the literature of philosophy. Perhaps no one, save Plato and Aristotle, has so in fluenced the views of later ages as this brilliant pleader, who gave part of his leisure to embodying, in an attractive form, ethical doctrines of which he had but a superficial and inaccurate knowl edge, but in whose practical applications he, like a true Roman, took a most lively interest. His works on rhetoric place him high among critics of prose style.
The Letters of Ckero are of at least three kinds : the mani festo or apologia in letter form; the official or semi-official com munique; and the genuine intimate letters like those to Atticus, in which we learn, not only the innermost thoughts of a complex mind, but the rich, varied and easy speech of a Roman of high education.
Caesar.—Among the many rival orators of the age the most eminent were Quintus Hortensius Hortalus and C. Julius Caesar. The former was the leading representative of the Asianic style of oratory, and, like other members of the aristocracy, such as C. Memmius and L. Manlius Torquatus, and like Q. Catulus in the preceding generation, was a kind of dilettante poet and a precursor of thy, poetry of pleasure, which attained such promi nence in the elegiac poets of the Augustan age. Of Julius Caesar (1o2-44) as an orator we can judge only by his reputation and by the testimony of Cicero; but we are able to appreciate the special praise of perfect taste in the use of language attributed to him.' In his Commentaries, by laying aside the ornaments of oratory, he created the most admirable style of prose narrative, the style which presents interesting events rapidly and vividly, with scarcely any colouring of personal or moral feeling, any oratorical passion, any pictorial illustration. While he shows the persuasive art of an orator by presenting the subjugation of Gaul and his own action in the Civil War in the light most favourable to his claims, he is entirely free from self-laudation or disparage ment of an adversary. The character of the man reveals itself especially in a perfect simplicity of style, the result of the clear est intelligence and the strongest sense of personal dignity. Rhetorical colouring is never used, or at least never displayed; yet the narrative is never cold nor dry.