tre, but
the pieces were wanting.

Rise of a Roman Literature

On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective
character was from the first and necessarily the result of such
an origin. All real art has its root in individual freedom and a
cheerful enjoyment of life, and the germs of such an art were not
wanting in Italy; but, when Roman training substituted for freedom
and joyousness the sense of belonging to the community and the
consciousness of duty, art was stifled and, instead of growing, could
not but pine away. The culminating point of Roman development was the
period which had no literature. It was not till Roman nationality
began to give way and Hellenico-cosmopolite tendencies began to
prevail, that literature made its appearance at Rome in their train.
Accordingly from the beginning, and by stringent internal necessity,
it took its stand on Greek ground and in broad antagonism to the
distinctively Roman national spirit. Roman poetry above all had its
immediate origin not from the inward impulse of the poets, but from
the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of
the stage, which needed Latin dramas. Now both institutions--the
school and the stage--were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary.
The gaping and staring idleness of the theatre was an abomination to
the sober earnestness and the spirit of activity which animated the
Roman of the olden type; and--inasmuch as it was the deepest and
noblest conception lying at the root of the Roman commonwealth, that
within the circle of Roman burgesses there should be neither master
nor slave, neither millionnaire nor beggar, but that above all a like
faith and a like culture should characterize all Romans--the school
and the necessarily exclusive school-culture were far more dangerous
still, and were in fact utterly destructive of the sense of equality.
The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the
hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used
the Latin tongue. Men might perhaps speak and write Greek and yet not
cease to be Romans; but in this case they accustomed themselves to
speak in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life
were Greek. It is not one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the
most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive,
facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its
course Hellenism struck roo