The works of Horace : with English notes, critical and ... - Cristo Raul

XXIV IIFE OF HORACE.
exceptions) was most complete ; the Sabine valleys might retain soma
ot the old rough hereditary virtues, the hardihood and frugality , but
at a distance from the city it would be their own local or reigions
traditions which would live among the peasantry, rather than the
songs which had been current in the streets among the primitive
commons of Rome.
Thus, both in city and in country, had died away the genuine old
and with them, no doubt, died away the last echo
Roman people ;
of national song. The extension of the right of Roman citizenship,
the diffusion of the pride of the Roman name through a wider sphere,
tended still more to soften away the rigid and exclusive spirit of na-
tionality ; and it was this spirit alone which would cling pertinacious-
ly to that which labored under the. unpopularity of rudeness and barbarism.
The new Romans appropriated the glories of the old, but
ilisregarded the only contemporary, or, at least, the earliest witnesses
to those glories. The reverse of the fate of the Grecian heroes happened
to those of Rome—:the heroes lived, the sacred bards perished.
The Latin poetry, that which Rome has handed down to posteri-
ty, was, like philosophy, a stranger and a foreigner.' She arrived,
though late, before philosophy; at least she was more completely
naturalized before philosophy was domiciled, except in a very few
mansions of great statesmen, and among a very circumscribed intel-
lectual aristocracy. It is remarkable that most of her early poets
were from Magna Graecia. Nscvius alone, the Satnrnian or Italian
poet, was from Campania, and even Campania was half Greek. • Livius
Andronicus was from Tarentum f Ennius from Rudise in Calabria
Accius was the son of a freedman from the south of Italy ; Paouvius
was a Erundisian ; Plautus, of the comic writers, was an TJmbrian
Terence was an African; Caecilius was from the north of Italy. In
every respect the Romans condescended to be imitative, not directly
of Nature, but of Grecian models. Ennius had confined her epic
poetry to the hexameter, whence it never attempted to emancipate
itself. The drama of Rome, like all her arts, was Grecian ; almost
all the plays (excepting here and there a tragadia priBtextata) of
Livius Andronicus, Accius, Pacuvius, Plautus, Terence, were on
Grecian subjects. So completely was this admitted by the time of
Horace, that his advice to the dramatic poet is to study Grecian
models by night and day. (Ep. ad Pis., 268, seg.) But, on the
other hand, the wonderful energies which were developed in the
universal conquests of Rome, and in her civil factions, in which the
great end of ambition was to be the first citizen in a state which
1.
" Punico bello secuudo musa pinnate gradu
Intulit Be bellicosam Eomuli in gcntcm ferani."
P. Licinius 'apud A. Gellium.
2. Cicero, Brptus, c. 18. Livius was taken prisoner at the capture of Tarentum.
It is supposed that he was a freedman of M. Livius Salinator. The Tarentines
were great admirers of the theatre. Plaut., MenGschmi, Prolog. 29, segg.j'Mei/ne,
Opusc., ii., ^5, seqq. Livius represented his own plays. Liv., vii., 2; Vol. Max.,
U. 4.
.
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