of ridiculous situations. This species of comedy had no chorus, and therefore its metrical form was mostly confined to those metres which the earlier dramatists were accustomed to employ in the dialogues. They appear to have marked in a striking manner, the various states, from the greatest composure to the most violent passions, by the different iambic, trochaic, anapaestic and cretic measures. The masters of this species, of whom only fragments and Roman imitations have been preserved, are Alexis (330), Menander (320), Philemon (300), and Diphilus (300).

It was chiefly these dramatic and mimetic kinds, which procured for Greek poetry a reception among the Romans. For the peculiar popular poetry, which is more ancient than the imitation of the Greeks, bore the general Italian character, and hence, though ruder than the Sicilian, in kind it was not unlike it. It is true the Romans also had a temple poetry, which however was in the highest degree inartificial, and appears at the same time never to have been the poetry of the people properly so called; it was rather the property of particular colleges of priests, which had their origin in Etruria. This poetry was continued for a long time but became more and more unintelligible to the people and even to the priests themselves. The original form of these sacred songs was the Saturnine verse, in which Saturn and Faunus communicated their oracles, as among the Greeks the gods used hexameters for this purpose. It seems that in this measure, verbal accents prevailed, but the quantity of syllables could not have been observed, because it was not developed until later, by the imitation of the Greeks.

The popular poetry which existed at the same time with this temple poetry was wholly rude and artless. The amoebaean and dialogue form is the predominant one, because, properly speaking, it sprang only from social conversation. The material is for the most part taken from the present; hence a mixture of merry tales, novelties of the town, descriptions, ridicule of well known persons or circumstances, pleasantries, wit, sage rules of life, but all without a definite plan, and this motley mixture was well expressed by the word Satura, Satire. The wanton jests of those who were assembled to celebrate a marriage or some other joyous festival, formed a subordinate species, called the Fescennine. The songs, which according to Cicero, (Tusc. I. 2.) the ancient Romans sang alternately to the flute, in which they cele

brated the deeds of the gods and of their ancestors, during public entertainments, which were appointed in honor of the gods, were of a more serious kind, but wholly destitute of poetical merit, and in no respect whatever to be compared with the Epos of the Greeks.

When learned Greeks began to translate Greek poets into Latin, and made Greek poetry accessible to the multitude, the Italian national poetry for the first time appeared in contrast with the Greek. The drama, especially the new comedy, formed the point of union. Livius Andronicus (240) translated Greek pieces and brought them upon the stage, and Cn. Naevius (230) and Q. Ennius (200) followed his example. The people were more pleased with the comedy because it was more easily understood and more resembled the prevailing Italian species. The rude multitude had less perception of tragedy. If anything attracted them, it was the external splendor with which it was represented; moreover, the mythic world, and the peculiar Greek life in which tragedy moved might well have been too foreign to give them much pleasure, although examples are not wanting, in which national materials were used, but the rarity of such phenomena creates the suspicion, that in spite of this the people were incapable of being inspired with any great delight in tragedy.

With the great favor which comedy enjoyed, it could not fail to happen that the Roman Satire also, which, to distinguish it from the later is called the dramatic, should undergo a transformation, and especially by making a fable or plot constitute a part of it. But that the genuine Italian form might not be at variance with the material, if that had been taken from the Greek comedies, the Atellan fables, a species of play which had long existed in Campania, in the neighborhood of Rome, were selected. The Atellanae, were mimes in which Campanian peasants played the principal characters. The plan of the fable must have been extremely simple, since those pieces, as well as the Satire, were only improvised; jests and the faithful delineation of reality always continued to be the principal part of the entertainment. Thus we find an opposition between the foreign and the national elements; but the more familiar the Romans became with the Greeks, the more they sought to Hellenize what was their own, and the more unimportant the distinction became. Thus the Atellanae acquired in later times a

Greek form through Pomponius, like that of the Greek comedy, and finally blended with the mime, to which the Romans had likewise given the Greek form. Another species similar to these, was the fabula togata, a kind of comedy which delineated genuine Roman manners and characters, while in the fabula palliata those of the Greeks were accustomed to be represented. The form of all these species was that of the new Greek Comedy; iambic and trochaic measures, anapaests, cretics, etc. One peculiarity is the Bacchic metre, which with the Romans took the place of the dochmius, which they seem to have used but little if at all. All these more vehement measures, were delivered in a musical recitative, and these portions were therefore called cantica: the more grave trochaic and iambic measures, as the metres of dialogue, were declaimed without a musical accompaniment. In the treatment of the verse, the Romans were much freer than the Greeks, manifestly because the verse always retained a certain degree of dependence on accent.

The most distinguished masters of these kinds of the drama are the following: in tragedy, Naevius, Ennius, M. Pacuvius (150), L. Attius (140); in the fabula palliata, Livius Andronicus, Naevius, M. Accius Plautus (184); Caecilius Statius (170), P. Terentius Afer (105); in the fabula togata, C. Afranius (134): in the Atellanae, L. Pomponius (94), Q. Novius (90); in the Mime, P. Syrus, and Decimus Laberius (40).

The Satire, the genuine Roman mime, was thrown into the background by these kinds of drama. By degrees it wholly lost its dramatic character and approached the epicdidactic form. Satires were now written instead of being improvised, as they had before been. The satires of Ennius and Pacuvius however, appear not yet to have renounced wholly the dramatic form; Caius Lucilius (130) was the first to give them that epic-didactic form which they ever after. retained. We have only fragments of his works.

The epic and lyric poems, in which for the most part both form and matter were borrowed from the Greeks, were still more foreign to the nation than the above mentioned kinds of drama. Livius Andronicus introduced the Epos in Rome by his translation of the Odyssey in the Saturnine measure. Naevius wrote the second Punic war in the same measure, and Ennius reduced the ancient Roman History to hexam

eters.

The didactic poem was the most favorite kind. In this also Ennius made the first attempt: the most celebrated, however, is the poem of Titus Lucretius Carus (60) de rerum natura. The hexameter which these poets used, differed essentially by its more careless structure from the later artfully-wrought hexameter of the epic poets in the Augustan

age.

Among the species of Greek Lyric poetry, the Ionic and Aeolian found the most ready reception among the Romans, partly on account of the subject matter being easier and more intelligible, which must have rendered it also better adapted to imitation, partly on account of the simpler form, to which the less cultivated language of the Romans more easily conformed itself. The most famous lyric poet before the Augustan age is C. Valerius Catullus (48). His models are Sappho, Anacreon, Archilochus and Hipponax; the metrical form, therefore, of his poems, is exceedingly varied; he uses the hexameter in the small epic picture called the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis; the elegiac distich in the elegies and epigrams; in the smaller lyrical poems by turns iambic measures (especially the trimeter claudus), the hendecasyllabus, so called, the Priapean verse, the Galliamb, Sapphic and Glyconian Strophes.

The imitation of the Greeks flourished most brilliantly among the Romans in the age of Augustus. Men of distinguished intellect, full of learning and taste, studied Greek models, and sought to reproduce them in accordance with the character of the Latin language, not only with reference to the matter, but particularly in the form. The epic writers generally followed the Alexandrian poets, manifestly the best models of a rational and at the same time a learned imitation of classical antiquity. The most distinguished epic poets of this time are P. Virgilius Maro (d. 19, B. C.) by his Aeneid, and Publius Ovidius Naso (d. 17, A. D.) by his MetamorphoThrough them the Latin hexameter attained its highest perfection and beauty. In didactic poetry also, they both stand at the head of their contemporaries. Virgil's poem on agriculture, and Ovid's Art of Love, and Fasti, are the best that we possess of this kind from all antiquity. The idyllic Epos also found in Virgil a felicitous cultivator, although he remains far behind his model Theocritus.

ses.

The Elegy is an especial favorite, particularly after the model of Callimachus. Albius Tibullus (d. 18, B. C.) is

distinguished for delicacy, warmth and depth; Sext. Aurel. Propertius, (d. 15, B. C.) for learning and taste; Ovid for ease and wantonness.

The greatest master of the Roman lyric poetry, is Q. Horatius Flaccus (d. 8, A. C.) With all his dependence upon the Greeks, he is still himself a creator and inventor. This is most clearly manifested in the metrical form, to which he found the means of giving the character of vigor and dignity in keeping with the Latin language by extremely simple modifications. His models are the Aeolian lyric poets, Sappho and Alcaeus, and, in the Epodes especially, Archilochus.

With his varied abilities, Horace embraced also the last remains of a genuine Roman poetry, which still existed in the Satire, and brought it to its highest perfection. His Satires contain a treasure of genuine wit, of delicate observations on the condition of affairs at the time, on literature and manners, as well as of practical philosophy and rules of life of universal application. The Epistles, an original species of poetry unknown to the Greeks, resemble communications to friends upon the most various subjects, full of pleasantry and wit, in a light poetic garb. The form of both species is the hexameter, whose purposely negligent structure is suitable to the matter, which never goes beyond real life, and is calculated to make us forget, as much as possible, art and imitation of the foreign.

The drama also, in this period, was brought nearer and nearer to the Greek, by more careful imitation of Greek models. But what it gained in art, it seems to have lost in originality. As tragic poets, Lucius Varus (B. C. 18), and Övid, are distinguished, the one for his Thyestes, and the other for his Medea. Comedy found but few cultivators, evidently because pantomime, for which Augustus had a decided predilection, drove it from the stage.

After the death of Augustus, the traces of excessive culture, and consequently of the decline of poetry, become visible. The form is predominant,-to that all care is devoted. When the monarchical constitution had driven eloquence from public life, rhetoric took refuge with poetry, and exercised there a mischievous influence. Instead of true poetic inspiration, we often find nothing but declamatory bombast. The purity of language, as in general all scientific effort, disappears more and more after the time of Hadrian ; even imitators become more rare. The matter of poetry be