s peculiar to the Romans
and was bequeathed by them to posterity.

Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school nothing
occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems translated from or
modelled on Alexandrian epigrams, which deserve notice not on their
own account, but as the first harbingers of the later epoch of
Roman literature. Leaving out of account some poets little known
and whose dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to
this category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652(25) and Lucius
Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657. The latter seems
to have been the first to circulate among the Romans various
geographical tales current among the Greeks, such as the Delian
legend of Latona, the fables of Europa and of the marvellous bird
Phoenix; as it was likewise reserved for him on his travels to
discover at Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which
might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before their
migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines--a discovery
which the Roman annals did not neglect devoutly to register.

Historical Composition
Polybius

In historical composition this epoch is especially marked by the
emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy either by birth
or in respect of his intellectual and literary standpoint, but who
first or rather alone brought literary appreciation and description
to bear on Rome's place in the world, and to whom all subsequent
generations, and we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of
the Roman development. Polybius (c. 546-c. 627) of Megalopolis in
the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman Lycortas, took part
apparently as early as 565 in the expedition of the Romans against
the Celts of Asia Minor, and was afterwards on various occasions,
especially during the third Macedonian war, employed by his
countrymen in military and diplomatic affairs. After the crisis
occasioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along with the
other Achaean hostages to Italy,(26) where he lived in exile for
seventeen years (587-604) and was introduced by the sons of Paullus
to the genteel circles of the capital. By the sending back of
the Achaean hostages(27) he was restored to his home, where he
thenceforth acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy
and the Romans. He was present at the destruction of Carthage
and of Corinth (608). He seemed educated, as it were, by destiny
to comprehend the histori