The first poets, then, are the priests. But behind the priests are the people—moved by the same religious beliefs and fears, but inclined, as happens everywhere, to make of their 'holy day' a 'holiday'. And hence a different species of poetry, known to us chiefly in connexion with the harvest-home and with marriage ceremonial—the so-called Fescennine poetry. This poetry is dictated by much the same needs as that of the priests. It is a charm against fascinum, 'the evil eye': and hence the name Fescennine. The principal constituent element in this Fescennine poetry was obscene mockery. This obscenity was magical. But just as it takes two to make a quarrel, so the obscene mockery of the Fescennine verses required two principals. And here, in the improvisations of the harvest-home, we must seek the origins of two important species of Latin poetry—drama and satire.

There was magic in the house as well as in the fields. Disease and Death demanded, in every household, incantations. We still possess fragments of Saturnian verse which were employed as charms against disease. Magic dirges ( neniae) were chanted before the house where a dead man lay. They were chanted by a praefica, a professional 'wise woman', who placated the dead man by reiterated praise of him. These chants probably mingled traditional formulae with improvisation appropriate to particular circumstances. The office of the praeficasurvived into a late period. But with the growth of Rationalism it very early came into disrepute and contempt. Shorter lived but more in honour was an institution known to us only from casually preserved references to it in Cato and Varro. This was the Song in Praise of Famous Menwhich was sung at banquets. Originally it was sung by a choir of carefully selected boys ( pueri modesti), and no doubt its purpose was to propitiate the shades of the dead. At a later period the boy choristers disappear, and the Songis sung by individual banqueters. The ceremony becomes less religious in character, and exists to minister to the vanity of great families and to foster patriotism. In Cato's time the tradition of it survived only as a memory from a very distant past. Its early extinction must be explained by the wider use among the Romans of written memorials. Of these literary records nothing has survived to us: even of epitaphs preserved to us in inscriptions none is earlier than the age of Cato. So far as our knowledge of Latin literature extends we pass at a leap from what may be called the poetry of primitive magic[3] to Livius Andronicus' translation of the Odyssey. Yet between the work of Livius and this magical poetry there must lie a considerable literary development of which we know nothing. Two circumstances may serve to bring this home to us. The first is that stage plays are known to have been performed in Rome as early as the middle of the fourth century. The second is that there existed in Rome in the time of Livius a school of poets and actors who were sufficiently numerous and important to be permitted to form a Guild or College.

The position of Livius is not always clearly understood. We can be sure that he was not the first Roman poet. Nor is it credible that he was the first Greek teacher to find his way to Rome from Southern Italy. To what does he owe his pre-eminence? He owes it, in the first place, to what may be called a mere accident. He was a schoolmaster: and in his Odysseyhe had the good fortune to produce for the schools precisely the kind of text-book which they needed: a text-book which was still used in the time of Horace. Secondly, Livius Andronicus saved Roman literature from being destroyed by Greek literature. We commonly regard him as the pioneer of Hellenism. This view needs correcting. We shall probably be nearer the truth if we suppose that Livius represents the reaction against an already dominant Hellenism. The real peril was that the Romans might become not too little but too much Hellenized, that they might lose their nationality as completely as the Macedonians had done, that they might employ the Greek language rather than their own for both poetry and history. From this peril Livius—and the patriotic nobles whose ideals he represented—saved Rome. It is significant that in his translation of the Odysseyhe employs the old Saturnian measure. Naevius, a little later, retained the same metre for his epic upon the Punic Wars. In the epitaph which he composed for himself Naevius says that 'the Camenae', the native Italian muses, might well mourn his death, 'for at Rome men have forgotten to speak in Latin phrase'. He is thinking of Ennius, or the school which Ennius represents. Ennius' answer has been preserved to us in the lines in which he alludes scornfully to the Punicaof Naevius as written 'in verses such as the Fauns and Bards chanted of old', the verses, that is, of the old poetry of magic. Ennius abandons the Saturnian for the hexameter. Livius and Naevius had used in drama some of the simpler Greek metres. It is possible that some of these had been long since naturalized in Rome—perhaps under Etrurian influence. But the abandonment of the Saturnian was the abandonment of a tradition five centuries old. The aims of Ennius were not essentially different from those of Livius and Naevius. But the peril of a Roman literature in the Greek language was past; and Ennius could afford to go further in his concessions to Hellenism. It had been made clear that both the Latin language and the Latin temper could hold their own. And when this was made clear the anti-Hellenic reaction collapsed. Cato was almost exactly contemporary with Ennius: and he had been the foremost representative of the reaction. But in his old age he cried 'Peccavi', and set himself to learn Greek.

Ennius said that he had three hearts, for he spoke three tongues—the Greek, the Oscan, and the Latin. And Roman poetry has, as it were, three hearts. All through the Republican era we may distinguish in it three elements. There is the Greek, or aesthetic, element: all that gives to it form or technique. There is the primitive Italian element to which it owes what it has of fire, sensibility, romance. And finally there is Rome itself, sombre, puissant, and both in language and ideals conquering by mass. The effort of Roman poetry is to adjust these three elements. And this effort yields, under the Republic, three periods of development. The first covers the second century and the latter half of the third. In this the Hellenism is that of the classical era of Greece. The Italian force is that of Southern and Central Italy. The Roman force is the inspiration of the Punic Wars. The typical name in it is that of Ennius. The Roman and Italian elements are not yet sufficiently subdued to the Hellenic. And the result is a poetry of some moral power, not wanting in fire and life, but in the main clumsy and disordered. The second period covers the first half of the first century. The Hellenism is Alexandrian. The Italian influence is from the North of Italy—the period might, indeed, be called the Transpadane period of Roman poetry. The Roman influence is that of the Rome of the Civil Wars. The typical name in it is that of Catullus—for Lucretius is, as it were, a last outpost of the period before: he stands with Ennius, and the Alexandrine movement has touched him hardly at all. In this period the Italian (perhaps largely Celtic) genius is allied with Alexandrianism in revolt against Rome: and in it Latin poetry may be said to attain formal perfection. The third period is the Augustan. In it we have the final conciliation of the Greek, the Italian, and the Roman influences. The typical name in it is that of Vergil, who was born outside the Roman ciuitas, who looks back to Ennius through Catullus, to Homer through Apollonius.

It is significant here that it is with the final unification of Italy (which was accomplished by the enfranchisement of Transpadane Gaul) that Roman poetry reaches its culmination—and at the same time begins to decline. Of the makers of Roman poetry very few indeed are Roman. Livius and Ennius were 'semi-Graeci' from Calabria, Naevius and Lucilius were natives of Campania. Accius and Plautus—and, later, Propertius—were Umbrian. Caecilius was an Insubrian Gaul. Catullus, Bibaculus, Ticidas, Cinna, Vergil were Transpadanes. Asinius Gallus came from Gallia Narbonensis, Horace from Apulia. So long as there was in the Italian municipianew blood upon which it could draw, Roman poetry grew in strength. But as soon as the fresh Italian blood failed Roman poetry failed—or at any rate it fell away from its own greatness, it ceased to be a living and quickening force. It became for the first time what it was not before—imitative; that is to say it now for the first time reproduced without transmuting. Vergil, of course, 'imitates' Homer. But observe the nature of this 'imitation'. If I may parody a famous saying, there is nothing in Vergil which was not previously in Homer— save Vergil himself. But the post-Vergilian poetry is, taken in the mass, without individuality. There is, of course, after Vergil much in Roman poetry that is interesting or striking, much that is brilliant, graceful, or noble. But even so it is notable that much of the best work seems due to the infusion of a foreign strain. Of the considerable poets of the Empire, Lucan, Seneca, Martial are of Spanish birth: and a Spanish origin has been—perhaps hastily—conjectured for Silius. Claudian is an Alexandrian, Ausonius a Gaul.[4] Rome's rфle in the world is the absorption of outlying genius. In poetry as in everything else urbem fecit quod prius orbis erat.