THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS,
B.C. 240-202.
The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar
contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum,
the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies
in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional
communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in
Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of
Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from
Epidaurus in B.C. 293, and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by
the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to
have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either
Greeks or men acquainted with that language[1]. The identification of
the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before Greek
literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius and
Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process. Greek
civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close
relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district,
such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of
by the Romans as 'Semi-Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum,
there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two
great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with
Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was
slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of
Rome began to attract the attention of Greek historians[2], and the
Romans, though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the
language and literature of Greece.
Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed
before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman
audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to
B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not
till the successful close of that war, and the commencement of
the following years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and
instruction was made familiar to the Romans.
Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis;
Et post Punica bella quietus quaerere coepit,
Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[3].
Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the
minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily
had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their
intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities
for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent
opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. There was
a theatre in every important town of Sicily, as may be seen in the
ruins still remaining on the sites of Segesta, Syracuse, Tauromenium,
and Catana; and the enjoyment of the drama entered largely into the
life of the Sicilian, as it had into that of the Italian Greeks. Many
Greeks also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of
Tarentum, and were employed in educating the young among the
higher classes. Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their
circumstances and education, to take interest in the legends and in
the dramatic form of literature introduced from Greece; while the
previous existence of the saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at
Rome, tended to make the new comic drama at least acceptable to the
mass of the population.
The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the
First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During
this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory,
history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of
five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The
whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered
people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved
upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and
great productive energy, but with little sense of art, and endowed
with faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of
life than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle
against the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art
and to the rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to
other disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass
of the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference
of the educated class for the more finished works already existing in
Greek literature.
Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and
such scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected
with the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity.
Naevius, the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native
poet, was actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the
time of his death; about which period his greater successor first
appeared at Rome. For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic
and tragic poetry. The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew,
Pacuvius. He, in the later years of his life, lived in friendly
intercourse with his younger rival Accius, who, again, in his old age,
had frequently conversed with Cicero[4]. The torch, which was first
lighted by Livius Andronicus from the decaying fires of Greece, was
thus handed down by these few men, through this long period, until it
was extinguished during the stormy times which fell in the youth of
the great orator and prose writer of the Republic.
The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the
tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest
introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all
the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the
comic writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and
Ennius. It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both
in form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on
the later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the
time. The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three,
is generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown
earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification
of the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius,
who was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius.
No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern
times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this
long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly
from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been
preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but
by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech
contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to
the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that
which really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting
fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient
poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can
be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity, be
incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a consistent
impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought and
sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic
worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their
antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral
and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the
strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time
when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness.
The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the
literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the
end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius. Of
the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are scanty
and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely as
illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius
and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older
dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are
not worth reading a second time[5].' The importance which attaches
to Livius consists in his being the accidental medium through which
literary art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and,
as is generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. He educated the sons
of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from whom he afterwards received
his freedom. The last thirty years of his life were devoted to
literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the Greek drama in a
Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been founded on Greek
subjects; most of them, probably, were translations. Among the titles,
we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Tereus_,
_Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be popular
with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved sufficient
to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of his general
mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from the scanty
remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and inelegance
of his diction.
In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian
verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is
spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under the
rod of Orbilius[6]. One or two lines of the translation still
remain, and exemplify its rough and prosaic diction, and the extreme
irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[7],
[Greek:
ou gar egoge ti phemi kakoteron allo thalasses
andra ge syncheuai, ei kai mala karteros eie],
are thus rendered:--
Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi
Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae.
He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second
Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter
novenae,' which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and
unpolished[8].
Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father
of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original
genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated
man. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign language,
and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to give the
direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a new
interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary that
the Romans should be educated before they could either produce or
appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a
brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study
and imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable
grace and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial
to the better side of Roman character.
Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the
first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of
original power. It has been supposed that he was a Campanian by
birth, on the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous
epitaph as 'plenum superbiae Campanae.' But the phrase 'Campanian
arrogance' seems to have been used proverbially for 'gasconade'; and
as there was a plebeian _Gens Naevia_ in Rome, it is quite as
probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. The strong political
partisanship displayed in his plays seems favourable to this
supposition, as is also the active interference of the tribunes on his
behalf. Weight must however be given to the remark of Mommsen, 'the
hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a citizen of
Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact
that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of
explanation.' On the other hand it has been observed that had he been
an alien the tribunes could not have interfered on his behalf. He
served either in the Roman army or among the _Socii_ in the First
Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before the year 241 B.C.
Cicero mentions that he lived to a good old age, and that he died
in exile about the end of the third century B.C.[9]. The date of his
birth may thus be fixed with approximate probability about the year
265 B.C. No particulars of his military service are recorded, but it
is most probable that the scene of his service was the west of Sicily,
on which the struggle was concentrated during the later years of the
war. If we connect the newly developed taste for the drama with the
intercourse of Romans with Sicilian Greeks during the war, we may
connect another important influence on Roman literature and Roman
belief which first appeared in the epic poem of Naevius with the
Phoenician settlements in the west of Sicily. The origin of the
belief in the mythical connexion of Aeneas and his Trojans with
the foundation of Rome may probably be attributed to the Sicilian
historian Timaeus; but the contact of the Romans and the Carthaginians
in the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx, may have suggested that part of
the legend which plays so large a part in the Aeneid, which brings
Aeneas from Sicily to Carthage and back again to the neighbourhood
of Mount Eryx. The actual collision of Roman and Phoenician on the
western shores of Sicily, of which Naevius may well have been a
witness, if it did not originate, gave a living interest to the
mythical origin of that antagonism in the relations of Aeneas and
Dido.
The earliest drama of Naevius was brought out in B.C. 235, five years
after the first representation of Livius Andronicus. The number of
dramas which he is known to have composed affords proof of great
industry and activity, from that time till the time of his banishment
from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than in tragedy, and he
used the stage, as it had been used by the writers of the old Attic
comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political warfare. A keen
partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence some of the
chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had passed into a
proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,--
Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules;
to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian,
Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.
In the year 206 B.C. Q. Caecilius Metellus was Consul, his brother M.
Metellus Praetor Urbanus, an office that held out an almost certain
prospect of the Consulship; and it has been suggested[10], with much
probability, that it was against them that this sneer was directed.
The Metelli carried out their threat, as Naevius was imprisoned, a
circumstance to which Plautus[11] alludes in one of the few passages
in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of Athenian
manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While in
prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which
contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was
liberated through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. But
he was soon after banished, and took up his residence at Utica, where
he is said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have
died, in B.C. 204[12], though the same author adds that Varro,
'diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was
still alive for some time after that date[13]. It is inferred, from
a passage in Cicero[14], that his poem on the First Punic War was
composed in his old age. Probably it was written in his exile, when
removed from the sphere of his active literary efforts. As he served
in that war, some time between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have
been well advanced in years at the time of his death.
The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most
favourable specimen of his style, is his epitaph:--
Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam,
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua.
It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest
against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to
Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the
life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame
and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to
disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly be
regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus, as
from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of
the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and
independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and
somewhat turbulent career.
He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except
the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector
Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as
the Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as
well as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken
in the Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the
Trojan War. The following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as
containing the germs of poetical diction:--
Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[15].
He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays,
founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or
_Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to
him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability,
attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows
considerable power of close satiric observation:--
Quasi pila
In choro ludens datatim dat se, et communem facit:
Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet;
Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem;
Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat;
Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[16].
The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his
dramas is the political spirit by which they were animated. Thus
Cicero[17] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii
ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time,
destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given,
Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[18].
The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him
in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which a
failing of the great Scipio is exposed[19]. Other fragments are
found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of
character:--
Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus[20]?
and this also[21]:--
Semper pluris feci potioremque ego
Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.
He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after
Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of
Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and
aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his
strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit
of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place
in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.
He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the
Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may
be regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the
Roman Senate ruled the world.
But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly
rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The
poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian
metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The
earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and of
Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court
of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the
poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main
substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and
tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from
the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and
literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic
representation.
Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem
of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil
followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius
(as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises,
leaving Troy in the night-time,--
Amborum
Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus
Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.
He represents Aeneas as having only one ship, built by Mercury,--a
limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which
the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the
storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus
complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of
the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's
epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He
speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there is
no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale
of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the
worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great
national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing
Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology
compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the
shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.
Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of
Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was
composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants
of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their
common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas
and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between
Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the
time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius,
that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter, and
promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the Romans
were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny. How
much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of
Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical
part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of
Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention, and
of a real adaptation to his main subject.
The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the
events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among
the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and
of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles
without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the
Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this
respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history,
and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The
slight and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the
poem, are expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with
the fidelity of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and
vigorous, but are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid
and graphic condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of
impetuosity in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and
energetic temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines,
Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram
Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[22].
But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford
ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some
evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was
written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be
inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every
fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old
grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he
could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as
a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong
testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one
place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[23].' In
the dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing
the idiomatic purity which distinguished the conversation of his
mother-in-law, Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of
Plautus and Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius
enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum
sermonis expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam
sic audio, ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis
ita recto et simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis
afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic
majores[24].' Expressions from his plays were, from their weight and
compact brevity, quoted familiarly in the days of Cicero, such as
'sero sapiunt Phryges' and 'laudari a laudato viro,' which, like
so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to express a
distinction that could not be characterised in happier or shorter
terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he assumes to
himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote the Latin
language.
Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and
fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be
gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented
the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman
character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as
a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national
feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a
strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed
great productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and
vigorous lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper
have left their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his
epic poem. Probably his most important service to Roman literature
consisted in the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin
language. But the conception of his epic poem seems to imply some
share of the higher gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head
of the line of Roman poets, distinguished by that force of speech and
vehemence of temper, which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and
Juvenal; distinguished also by that national spirit which moved Ennius
and, after him, Virgil, to employ their poetical faculty in raising a
monument to commemorate the power and glory of Rome.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 3: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]
[Footnote 4: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]
[Footnote 5: Brutus, 18.]
[Footnote 6: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]
[Footnote 7: viii. 138.]
[Footnote 8: xxvii. 17.]
[Footnote 9: Brutus 15.]
[Footnote 10: By Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College, U.S.
'On a patriotic passage of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.']
[Footnote 11: Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]
[Footnote 12: Brutus, 15.]
[Footnote 13: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired
to Utica till after it fell into the possession of the
Romans.]
[Footnote 14: De Senectute, 14.]
[Footnote 15: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king,
hasten straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is
of nature's growth, not planted by man.']
[Footnote 16: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses
about from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she
nods, to another winks; she makes love to one, clasps another.
Her hand is busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring
to look at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with
another corresponds by signs.']
[Footnote 17: The reading of the passage here adopted is that
given by Munk.]
[Footnote 18: De Senectute, 6.]
[Footnote 19:
Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.]
[Footnote 20: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by
the applause given to me, to think that any of these great
people should now dare to interfere with! How much better
thing is the slavery _here_' (_i.e._ represented in this
play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?']
[Footnote 21: 'I have always held liberty to be of more value
and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by
Munk.]
[Footnote 22: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this
poem, the action is generally represented in the _present
tense_.]
[Footnote 23: Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 24: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my
mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure
idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse
with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions),
in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to
Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural
and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or
imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and
her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De
Oratore iii. 12.]