was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact
sank into vulgar coarseness; we have further shown that two of the
most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first
instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the
Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national
literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and
literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand
in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen. In
fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature
of the sixth century--that poetry followed out professionally and
destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation
of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of
translations, that changeling of epos--we are tempted to reckon
it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.

But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very
partial sense. We must first of all consider that this artificial
literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any
national poetic art, but could never attain any such art. In
antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life,
creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period
when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth:
without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets
we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the
primitive stories of human gods and divine men. This basis of ancient
poetry was totally wanting in Latium: where the world of gods remained
shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry
could not voluntarily ripen. To this falls to be added a second
and more important consideration.

The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of
Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible
to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher
and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of
Hellenism. The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a
revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable
for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations; and this
primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of
the Romano-Hellenistic literature. Not a single new and g