The accumulated literature of centuries of ancient Roman life, evenafter the loss of more works than have survived, is still so large that,were we to attempt to cover the whole field, the space allotted to thisvolume would suffice for only the most superficial mention of the extantauthors. The writer has therefore chosen to present to his readers thefield of poetry only, and to narrow the scope of his work still furtherby the selection of certain important and representative phases ofpoetry, namely, the dramatic, satiric, and epic.
These different phases of the Roman poetic product will be presented inthe order named, although it is by no means certain which class ofpoetry was first developed at Rome. It is more than likely that satireand comedy had a common origin in the rude and unrecorded literaryproduct of ancient Italy. Ennius, indeed, prior to whose time the extantfragments are exceedingly meager, produced both drama, satire, and epic.And the same is true, though to a more limited extent, of other writersof the same early period.
Each of these phases of poetry is treated separately in this volume,according to its chronological development. We shall, therefore,traverse the field three times by three parallel paths: from Andronicusto Seneca, from Ennius to Juvenal, and from Nævius to Vergil.
BOOK I. ROMAN
PART I. THE DRAMA
PART II. SATIRE
PART III. EPIC POETRY
"Whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own features,scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time hisform and pressure."
When Greece was at the height of her glory, and Greek literature was inits flower; when Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all within twobrilliant generations, were holding the polite wor