d even Greek verses. Such Greek authorship however by native Romans
remained a secondary matter and almost an amusement; the literary
as well as the political parties of Italy all coincided in adhering
to their Italian nationality, only more or less pervaded
by Hellenism. Nor could there be any complaint at least as to want
of activity in the field of Latin authorship. There was a flood
of books and pamphlets of all sorts, and above all of poems, in Rome.
Poets swarmed there, as they did only in Tarsus or Alexandria;
poetical publications had become the standing juvenile sin
of livelier natures, and even then the writer was reckoned fortunate
whose youthful poems compassionate oblivion withdrew from criticism.
Any one who understood the art, wrote without difficulty
at a sitting his five hundred hexameters in which no schoolmaster
found anything to censure, but no reader discovered anything to praise.
The female world also took a lively part in these literary pursuits;
the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and music,
but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked excellently
on Greek and Latin literature; and, when poetry laid siege
to a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered
likewise in graceful verses. Rhythms became more and more
the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes;
poetical epistles, joint poetical exercises and competitions
among good friends, were of common occurrence, and towards the end
of this epoch institutions were already opened in the capital,
at which unfledged Latin poets might learn verse-making for money.
In consequence of the large consumption of books the machinery
for the manufacture of copies was substantially perfected,
and publication was effected with comparative rapidity and cheapness;
bookselling became a respectable and lucrative trade, and the bookseller's
shop a usual meeting-place of men of culture. Reading had become
a fashion, nay a mania; at table, where coarser pastimes had not
already intruded, reading was regularly introduced, and any one
who meditated a journey seldom forgot to pack up a travelling library.
The superior officer was seen in the camp-tent with the obscene
Greek romance, the statesman in the senate with the philosophical
treatise, in his hands. Matters accordingly stood in the Roman state
as they have stood and will stand in every state where the citizens
read "from the threshold to the closet.