o celebrate their reunion, a banquet is held, which permits the
Ithacans to show their joy at their master's return. Meanwhile the
friends of the suitors, having heard of the massacre, determine to
avenge them by slaying father and son. But, aided by Minerva and
Jupiter, these two heroes present so formidable an appearance, that
the attacking party concludes a treaty, which restores peace to Ithaca
and ends the Odyssey.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: The quotations of the Odyssey are taken from Pope's
translation.]

[Footnote 4: See chapter on Venus in the author's "Myths of Greece and
Rome."]

LATIN EPICS

Latin literature took its source in the Greek, to which it owes much
of its poetic beauty, for many of its masterpieces are either
translations or imitations of the best Greek writings. There have
been, for instance, numerous translations of the Iliad and Odyssey,
the first famous one being by the "father of Roman dramatic and epic
poetry," Livius Andronicus, who lived in the third century B.C. He
also attempted to narrate Roman history in the same strain, by
composing an epic of some thirty-five books, which are lost.

Another poet, Naevius, a century later composed the Cyprian Iliad, as
well as a heroic poem on the first Punic war (Bellum Punicum), of
which only fragments have come down to us. Then, in the second century
before our era, Ennius made a patriotic attempt to sing the origin of
Rome in the Annales in eighteen books, of which only parts remain,
while Hostius wrote an epic entitled Istria, which has also perished.
Lucretius' epic "On the Nature of Things" is considered an example of
the astronomical or physical epic.

The Augustan age proved rich in epic poets, such as Publius Terentius
Varro, translator of the Argonautica and author of a poem on Julius
Caesar; Lucius Varius Rufus, whose poems are lost; and, greatest of
all, Virgil, of whose latest and greatest work, the Aeneid, a complete
synopsis follows. Next to this greatest Latin poem ranks Lucan's
Pharsalia, wherein he relates in ten books the rivalry between Caesar
and Pompey, while his contemporary Statius, in his Thebais and
unfinished Achilleis, works over the time-honored cycles of Thebes and
Troy. During the same period Silius Italicus supplied a lengthy poem
on the second Punic war, and Valerius Flaccus a new translation or
adaptation of the Argonautica.

In the second century of our own era Quintius Curtius composed an epic
on