rang
up the new idea of "humanity," as it was called, which consisted
partly of a more or less superficial appropriation of the aesthetic
culture of the Hellenes, partly of a privileged Latin culture as
an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek. This new humanity,
as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics
of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and
combined in itself, just like our closely kindred "general
culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive
character. Here too we trace the revolution, which separated
classes and blended nations.

CHAPTER XIII

Literature and Art

Literary Reaction

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of
view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we do not find in
the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of
the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively
authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest
sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the
soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and
historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of
the Punic wars. Much is only artificially transplanted, there
are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art
and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance
betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence
and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that
age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate
the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks.
It is otherwise in the epoch before us. The morning mists fell;
what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into the
difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own
talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work,
could not be carried farther now, when on the one hand the dull
sultriness of the approaching revolutionary storm began to fill
the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent
were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and
art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation.
The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated,