LATIN LITERATURE. Within the brief limits of the following sketch it will not ha. possible to describe fully the characteristics of single writers (for these special articles must be consulted); only a general history of Latin literature will • be given, with a summary esti mate of its value.
A division into periods will be found con venient, though such divisions in a continuous development must not be understood to imply abrupt changes.
1. The Prehistoric Period down to 240 B.C.— No complete writings from this period survive in their original form, but from frag ments and chance allusions it is known to have been a period of native beginnings, as yet un touched by foreign influences. In poetry, which from its nature takes form before prose, we possess partly modernized fragments of religious ritual in verse, the forerunners of a kind of lyric. A few allusions seem to indi cate the existence of the custom of chanting lays in honor of national or family heroes, which might under favoring conditions have flowed together into an epic, and many refer ences and some later fragments show that vil lage festivals, in Italy as in Greece, were cele brated with songs and dances of a mimetic and humorous character, out of which a subor dinate kind of drama actually arose, even after the introduction of Greek comedy. Semi ritualistic charms and farmers' maxims, of which Cato gives us specimens, might easily have been collected into a didacticem on agriculture. In prose the legal codifications were already well advanced, and the many forms of official record furnished the material for history and, indeed, dictated its earliest annalistic form. Oratory, as might be expected, was in constant use in the Senate, in popular assemblies, and for purposes of eulogy, and a speech of A,ppius Claudius Ca•cus, delivered in the Senate in 280 B.C., was still extant in the time of Cicero. Thus in several directions the germs of a native literature had appeared be fore the Greek influence was felt.
2. The Period of Greek Influence, Begin ning with 740 B.C. and Lasting for about a
Century.— Through the conquest of the Greek cities of southern Italy the Romans first' be came fully aware of the treasures of Greek literature, by that time practically complete. Its introduction into Roman life was due to a Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who translated plays of the Greek *New Corned? (Meander and others) for presentation at the Roman festivals and put the 'Odyssey> into Saturnian verse to be used as a reading-book in schools. He thus gave a new impulse and direction both to dramatic and to epic poetry and he was fol lowed in the drama by native Italians, Naevius, Plautus and Ennius, and in the epic by Naevius, who wrote a history of the First Punic War in the native accentual verse-form. Ennius, the most influential writer of the period, continued the epic still further by writing in hexameters a history of the Roman race, which remained the national epic until the appearance of the (X.neid.) Other dramatic writers followed, the tragedy being less original and less popular than the comedy. Ennius also gave literary form to satire, a peculiarly Italian product, written by him in various metres and on a variety of subjects and put into final form at p later period. The prose of this time was still mainly of a practical character. Cato the Censor wrote out, and published many of his speeches for use as political pamphlets, com posed a book of maxims drawn from his active life for the benefit of his son, some at least being in the form of letters, and wrote a treatise on farming' which, in a partially modernized form, is still extant. The writing of history had already begun, in the Roman annalistic form, though in the Greek language, but Cato wrote a history of Italian towns in Latin. There was also considerable activity in legal writing, though systems of juris prudence came somewhat later. This last was purely Roman and in general the Greek in fluence was less felt in prose, and the impulse to stylistic finish was less active than m poetry.