LATIN LITERATURE. In this article an attempt is made only to trace briefly the origin, development, and decay of Latin literature, with slight notices of the principal authors who aided in its growth and left the stamp of their genius on its progress. For further information regard ing the life and works of the various authors, the reader is referred to the individual articles in their alphabetical order. For convenience of classification, the story of Latin literature may be divided into six broad periods, of which three fall under the Republic and three under the Empire, as follows: I. The ]'re-literary Period. (Crude beginnings.) II. The Early, or Pre-classical Period. (From the end of the First Punic War, c.240 n.c., to Sulla, c.84 n.c.) III. The Golden Age, or Classical Period. (From Sulla. c.84 B.C., to the death of Augustus, A.D. 14.) Of this period there are two divisions: (a) The Cieeronian Period. (c.84-43 n.c.) (b) The Augustan Age. (n.c. 43-A.D. 14.) IV. The Silver Age—Period of Spanish Latin ity. (From the death of Augustus, A.D. 14, to the accession of Hadrian. A.D. 117.) V. The Period of African Latinity—Early Christian Writers. (From Hadrian, A.D. to the fourth century.) VI. The Period of Actual Decline. (From the early fourth century to the end.) 1. Tits PRE-LITERARY PERIOD. (Crude begin nings.) The native character of the Italic peoples, in contrast with that of the Greeks, was unimaginative and wholly practical. The agri cultural and pastoral life and the arts of war engrossed all their faculties to the exclusion of literary effort. Only in connection with their simple communal religious rites do we find the dawning of a literary sense, ;Ind this of the crudest type. While the Hellenic world, includ ing the powerful Greek cities of Southern ltaly, was steeped in the poetry of its great epic, lyric, tragic, and comic writers. Rome and Central Italy had not risen above the simplest ballads, farces, and mimes. Vet here we must seek the beginnings of Latin literature, the earliest germs of the drama. At the country festivals of the Latin and Oscan villages and towns, the native wit and repartee found its expression in simple public shows, where the young men sang, danced, and recited for the edification of the merry makers. These performances, at first sponta neous, gradually assumed loose plots, around which the actors were free to indulge to the full their spirit of ribaldry, abuse, and fun. They wore masks or painted their faces; their songs and dances were aceompanied by the notes of the tibia; and their dialogue was in the rough Saturnian metre, which from its looseness readily admitted of improvisation. Several varieties of these early farces are mentioned, all of which found their way to Rome, and some of which later assumed a really literary character. There were the (Versus) Fescennini among the Falls cans just north of Rome—full of abuse and coarse jokes; the (Pabula) Atellance of the Oscan peasants in Campania, uncouth and indelicate, with their comic descriptions of rustic life, gradually assuming a sort of plot with fixed characters ; the Sa t urir, perhaps native to Latium itself—more dramatic in style than the Fescennini and Atellancr—a sort of medley or `vaudeville' of songs and dances interspersed with stories; and the Mimi, probably introduced from Garcia, a sort of farce performed on a rude stage. These, with a few bits of early
ritual, such as the "Areal Song" preserved in the record of the Fra fres A rvalrs of the time of Elagabalus, represent the literary level of the Romans before an active and direct contact with Greek culture made them aware of their literary and artistic deficiencies.
TuE EARLY, OR PRE-CLASSICAL PERIOD.
(From the end of the First Punic War, c.240 n.c., to Sulla, c.S4 n.c.) With the end of the First Punic War and the humiliation of her enemy Carthage, Rome began to enjoy a period of repose, which, with a sense of her growing great ness among nations, and the rise of a leisure class, led to a realization of the crudity of life in Rome ands longing to know something of the beauty and culture of Greek life and art. The first attempts at real Latin literature were translations from the Greek into the rough Saturnian metre, the work of a Greek captive, tivins Andronicus (c.2S4-204 n.c.). brought to Rome after the taking of Tarentum in n.c. 272, and employed as a teacher of Greek in the family of his master, in all probability M. Livius Salinator. whose nomrn he took when freed. 'Flue work in question was a translation of 'Homer's Odyssey: and the fragments that hap pily survive show no high degree of genius, and demonstrate clearly that the rough native Latin metre was but ill adapted to express the versa tility and lightness of touch of the great original. The literary successors of Andronicus broke the ground along new lines; discarding the Saturnian metre, they attempted the far more difficult task of adapting the Greek metres to the heavy, archaic Latin speech, and instead of mere trans lations, produced new works based on Greek originals. The real founder of Latin poetry was Gnams Ntevius ( ?-199 n.c.), a native of Cam pania, writer of tragedies and comedies in the Greek hexameter verse. The majority of these wero derived from Greek sources; but in two of the tragedies we have examples of the so-called (Fabula) rwtexta, or plot derived from purely Roman events; namely, the Ciustidiunt, on the victory won at that place by A Marcellus in tt.c. 222, and the A limonium Rom uli et Rem i, dealing with the legendary events of the found ing of Rome. But Nrevius had the hardihood to attack in his plays the policy of the powerful Metelli, for which he was imprisoned and exiled. Besides his plays, he wrote also an epic poem in the Saturnian metre, the Bet/unt Pirnicum, re lating the events of the First Punic War, in which he had himself taken part. His works long remained popular at Rome; from the few fragments that survive we are able to detect the originality and force of his talent.