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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Latin Literature, by J. W. Mackail

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Title: Latin Literature
Author: J. W. Mackail
Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8894]

[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]

[This file was first posted on August 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN LITERATURE ***

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LATIN LITERATURE
BY
J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford

A history of Latin Literature was to have been written for this series of
Manuals by the late Professor William Sellar. After his death I was

asked, as one of his old pupils, to carry out the work which he had
undertaken; and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the memory
of my dear friend and master.

J. W. M.
CONTENTS.
I. THE REPUBLIC.
I. ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY.
Andronicus--Naevius--Ennius--Pacuvius--Accius
II. COMEDY: PLAUTUS AND TERENCE.

III. EARLY PROSE: THE SATURA, OR MIXED MODE.
The Early Jurists, Annalists, and Orators--Cato--The
Scipionic Circle--Lucilius

IV. LUCRETIUS.
V. LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS.
Cinna and Calvus--Catullus
VI. CICERO.

VII. PROSE OF THE CICERONIAN AGE.
Julius Caesar--The Continuators of the Commentaries--
Sallust--Nepos--Varro--Publilius Syrus

II. THE AUGUSTAN AGE.
I. VIRGIL.
II. HORACE.
III. PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS.
Augustan Tragedy--Gallus--Propertius--Tibullus
IV. OVID.
Sulpicia--Ovid
V. LIVY.

VI. THE LESSER AUGUSTANS.
Manilius--Phaedrus--Velleius--Paterculus--Celsus--
Vitruvius--The Elder Seneca

III. THE EMPIRE.

I. THE ROME OF NERO.
The Younger Seneca--Lucan--Persius--Quintus Curtius
--Columella--Calpurnius--Petronius

II. THE SILVER AGE.
Statius--Valerius Flaccus--Silius Italicus--Martial--The
Elder Pliny--Quintilian

III. TACITUS.
IV. JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PLINY, SUETONIUS: DECAY OF CLASSICAL LATIN.
V. THE ELOCUTIO NOVELLA.

Fronto--Apuleius--The Pervigilium Veneris

VI. EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY.
Minucius Felix--Tertullian--Cyprian--Arnobius--
Lactantius--Commodianus

VII. THE FOURTH CENTURY.
Papinian and Ulpian--Sammonicus--Nemesianus--
Tiberianus--The Augustan History--Ausonius--Claudian
--Prudentius--Ammianus Marcellinus

VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
The End of the Ancient World--The Four Periods of
Latin Literature--The Empire and the Church
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
I.
THE REPUBLIC.
I.
ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY.

To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two hundred years later,
the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in the
generation which passed between the first and second Punic Wars. The
peace of B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman Republic had
been fighting for an assured place in the group of powers which
controlled the Mediterranean world. This was now gained; and the pressure
of Carthage once removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural
expansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and peace are
comparative terms; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation of
the long and exhausting war with Carthage brought, that a leisured class
began to form itself at Rome, which not only could take a certain
interest in Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it was
their duty, as representing one of the great civilised powers, to have a
substantial national culture of their own.

That this new Latin literature must be based on that of Greece, went
without saying; it was almost equally inevitable that its earliest forms
should be in the shape of translations from that body of Greek poetry,
epic and dramatic, which had for long established itself through all the
Greek-speaking world as a common basis of culture. Latin literature,
though artificial in a fuller sense than that of some other nations, did
not escape the general law of all literatures, that they must begin by
verse before they can go on to prose.

Up to this date, native Latin poetry had been confined, so far as we can
judge, to hymns and ballads, both of a rude nature. Alongside of these
were the popular festival-performances, containing the germs of a drama.
If the words of these performances were ever written down (which is
rather more than doubtful), they would help to make the notion of
translating a regular Greek play come more easily. But the first certain
Latin translation was a piece of work which showed a much greater
audacity, and which in fact, though this did not appear till long
afterwards, was much more far-reaching in its consequences. This was a
translation of the _Odyssey_ into Saturnian verse by one Andronicus, a
Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum, who lived at Rome as a tutor to
children of the governing class during the first Punic War. At the
capture of his city, he had become the slave of one of the distinguished
family of the Livii, and after his manumission was known, according to

of 00

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