42. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.

43. Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,

In the line before the last we should probably read multarum leges divumque hominumque.

44. Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,

This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe against the casters of horoscopes:

45. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

46. In the Telephus we find him saying

47. III. XIII. Luxury.

48. The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the Phoenix of Euripides:

In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:

This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet worked up his original poems. It is simply an expansion of the words which occur in the tragedy Hectoris Lustra (the original of which was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat between Hephaestus and the Scamander:

and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).

49. Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:

and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).

50. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.

51. III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians.

52. Besides Cato, we find the names of two "consulars and poets" belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4) - Quintus Labeo, consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581. But it remains uncertain whether they published their poems. Even in the case of Cato this may be doubted.

53. II. IX. Roman Historical Composition.

54. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

55. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

56. The following fragments will give some idea of its tone. Of Dido he says:

Again of Amulius:

Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:

With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:

Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:

57. That this oldest prose work on the history of Rome was composed in Greek, is established beyond a doubt by Dionys. i. 6, and Cicero, de Div. i. 21, 43. The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law in the Latin language. But the latter treatise will not be attributed by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the Greek Annals of Fabius as well as of those of Acilius and Albinus, or whether there were two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor. The historical work likewise written in Greek, ascribed to Lucius Cincius Alimentus a contemporary of Fabius, seems spurious and a compilation of the Augustan age.