oticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist
on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most
noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with
the regulation of orthography and of grammar. At the same period
we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the
historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy
annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors"
and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates," can hardly have been better
than their chronicles. Of more interest were the treatise on
the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as
the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable
for political objects,(34) and the metrically composed -Didascaliae-
of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the
Latin drama. But those early attempts at a scientific treatment
of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and
strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer-
Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but
a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.

Stilo

The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language
and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a
scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35) He first
went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on
the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables. He devoted his special
attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a
list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine.
He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the
origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings
and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time
brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his
research. The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is
attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical,
and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires
of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman
philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by
transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into
things to his disciple Varro.

Rhetoric

The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might
be expected, of a more subordinate kind. There was nothin