litan.
Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that
the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the
Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but
sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although
not exactly in its richest or purest fields. On the whole, however
innumerable may be the false accommodations and sins against the rules
of art which we can point out in them, these were just the offences
which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous
efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism; and they are, in a
historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some
measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism.
We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new
gospel; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what,
as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to
the Roman poets of the sixth century. A fresh and strong sense of the
power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to transplant
the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of
the sixth century, and 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