dialects also there
must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement
Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with
Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with
Greek comedy. The question accordingly presents itself, whether,
contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like
the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and
Volturnus. But all information on the point is lost, and history
can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.

Hellenizing Literature

The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an
opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to
the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of
Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental
life of Italy in that sixth century--full of the din of arms and
pregnant for the future--during which its distinctively Italian phase
closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient
civilization. In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which
everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and
characterized the age of transition. No one of unprejudiced mind,
and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand years,
can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman
literature. Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles
a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange-trees;
both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them
as parallel. This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue
of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman
literature in a foreign tongue; to a very great extent the former was
not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks,
Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only
acquired by study. Among those who in this age came before the public
as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been
persons of rank; and not only so, but none can be shown to have
been natives of Latium proper. The very name given to the poet was
foreign; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a -poeta-(70). But
not only was this poetry foreign; it was also liable to all those
defects which are found to occur where schoolmasters become authors
and the great multitude forms the public. We have shown how comedy