Studies in the Poetry of Italy, Part I. Roman

ROMAN

lmost unknown Roman neighbors were just emerging from tradition into history. There the atmosphere was altogether one of struggle. The king-ruled Romans, long oppressed, had at last swept away that crumbling kingdom, and established upon its ruins the you

surrounded by the cultured and pleasure-loving Greeks, as they listened to the impassioned lines of the popular favorite, unable to understand except for the actor's art-what a contrast was presented between these two nations which had as yet never crossed each other's paths, but which were destined to come together at last in mutual conquest. The grounds and prophecy of this conque

s this, literature could not take root and flourish. They were not, it is true, without the beginnings of native literature. Their religious worship inspired rude hymns to their gods; their generals, coming home, inscribed the records of their victory in rough Saturnian verse on commemorative tablets; there were ballads at banquets, and dirges at funerals. Also the natur

aking peaceful possession of Italy along the southeastern border. These Gr?co-Roman struggles in Italy, which arose in consequ

leted subjugation of Italy. Joined with these two influences was a third which came with the end of the first Punic War, a generation afterward. Rome has now taken her first fateful step toward world empire; she has leaped across Sicily and

Greek from Tarentum, who was brought to Rome as a captive upon the fall of that city. He came as the slave of M. Livius Salinator, who employed him as a tutor for his sons in Latin and Greek, and afterward set him free to follow the same profession independently. That he might have

t doubt, a translation into the crude, unpolished, and heavy Latin of his time, from some Greek original. His tragedies, of which only forty-one lines of frag

t a little younger than Andronicus, and who brought out his first play in 235 B. C.; through Ennius, who first established tragedy upon a firm foundation in Rome; th

great value which these plays would have to-day, not only from a literary but also from a historical point of view, we cannot but regret keenly their almost utter loss. In the vast majority of cases, however, the old Roman

this-her wonderful power to absorb and assimilate material from every nation with which she came in contact. Rome might borrow, but what she had borrowed she made her own completely, for better or for worse. The resulting differences between Greek literature and a Hellenized Roman literature would naturally be the differences between the Greek and Rom

ture. We have already seen how meager was the production of the fabul? pr?text?. With the rich national traditions and history to inspire this, we can account for the failure to develop a native Roman tragedy only

the development of the plot or the other essential characteristics of a drama. A play is not like an animal: it cannot be reconstructed from a single fragment. It wi

ng the destruction which her brother Paris is to bring upon his fatherland. It is said that Hecuba, queen of Troy, before the

tizens, and extinguish it. For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is gathering. It hurries

ll

d degree. It is a description of the first ship, Argo, as she goes plowing through the sea. It is supposed to be spoken by a rustic who from the shore is watching the vessel's progress. It sh

ty mass

-panting monst

aves, in eddyin

, besprinkli

y like backward

s the cloud-rac

ss of rock reft

s, or seething

the ever-r

Ocean crashes

om the cavern

h the swelling

to upper he

ll

f natural beauty which enters largely into a later age"; and quotes the following passage from the Oenomaus as "perhaps the first instanc

g forth the oxen from their rest into the fields, that they may break the red,

ller pictures of natural beauty which Lucretius and Vergil have left us, we