d coincided in a peculiar manner with the
thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age. The later refined
Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period
with some degree of contempt; it should rather perhaps have looked
up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more
intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine
poetical art, than their more cultivated successors. In the bold
emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional
pride of the poets of this age there is, more than in any other epoch
of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are
under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to
it the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates
its praise:

-Enni poeta, salve, qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-

National Opposition

As the Hellenico-Roman literature of this period was essentially
marked by a dominant tendency, so was also its antithesis, the
contemporary national authorship. While the former aimed at neither
more nor less than the annihilation of Latin nationality by the
creation of a poetry Latin in language but Hellenic in form and
spirit, the best and purest part of the Latin nation was driven to
reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism
along with Hellenism itself. The Romans in the time of Cato stood
opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars
they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the
main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of
the Christian, community; the nobility of the nation and above all
the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile
power; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman
aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the
apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government.
In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the
vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The
Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum
of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad-
singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73) He and
those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured
on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure
are not unfrequently char