untry; editions of the religious romance of Euhemerus,(53) of
the poems dealing with natural philosophy circulating in the name
of Epicharmus,(54) and of the gastronomies of Archestratus of Gela,
a poet who treated of the higher cookery; as also a dialogue between
Life and Death, fables of Aesop, a collection of moral maxims,
parodies and epigrammatic trifles--small matters, but indicative
of the versatile powers as well as the neological didactic tendencies
of the poet, who evidently allowed himself the freest range in this
field, which the censorship did not reach.

Metrical Annals
Naevius

The attempts at a metrical treatment of the national annals lay
claim to greater poetical and historical importance. Here too it was
Naevius who gave poetic form to so much of the legendary as well as
of the contemporary history as admitted of connected narrative; and
who, more especially, recorded in the half-prosaic Saturnian national
metre the story of the first Punic war simply and distinctly, with
a straightforward adherence to fact, without disdaining anything at
all as unpoetical, and without at all, especially in the description
of historical times, going in pursuit of poetical flights or
embellishments--maintaining throughout his narrative the present
tense.(55) What we have already said of the national drama of the
same poet, applies substantially to the work of which we are now
speaking. The epic, like the tragic, poetry of the Greeks lived and
moved essentially in the heroic period; it was an altogether new and,
at least in design, an enviably grand idea--to light up the present
with the lustre of poetry. Although in point of execution the
chronicle of Naevius may not have been much better than the rhyming
chronicles of the middle ages, which are in various respects of
kindred character, yet the poet was certainly justified in regarding
this work of his with an altogether peculiar complacency. It was no
small achievement, in an age when there was absolutely no historical
literature except official records, to have composed for his
countrymen a connected account of the deeds of their own and the
earlier time, and in addition to have placed before their eyes
the noblest incidents of that history in a dramatic form.

Ennius

Ennius proposed to himself the very same task as Naevius; but the
similarity of the subject only brings out into stronger relief the
political and poetical contrast between the national and