Lays of Ancient Rome | Page 6

with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pactor, the earliest of
the Roman annalists. His account of the infancy and youth of Romulus
and Remus has been preserved by Dionysius, and contains a very
remarkable reference to the ancient Latin poetry. Fabius says that, in

his time, his countrymen were still in the habit of singing ballads about
the Twins. ``Even in the hut of Faustulus,''--so these old lays appear to
have run,--``the children of Rhea and Mars were, in port and in spirit,
not like unto swineherds or cowherds, but such that men might well
guess them to be of the blood of kings and gods.''
Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of he Second Punic War,
mentioned this lost literature in his lost work on the antiquities of his
country. Many ages, he said, before his time, there were ballads in
praise of illustrious men; and these ballads it was the fashion for the
guests at banquets to sing in turn while the piper played. ``Would,''
exclaims Cicero, ``that we still had the old ballads of which Cato
speaks!''
Valerius Maximus gives us exactly similar information, without
mentioning his authority, and observes that the ancient Roman ballads
were probably of more benefit to the young than all the lectures of the
Athenian schools, and that to the influence of the national poetry were
to be ascribed the virtues of such men as Camillus and Fabricus.
Varro, whose authority on all questions connected with the antiquities
of his country is entitled to the greatest respect, tells us that at banquets
it was once the fashion for boys to sing, sometimes with and sometimes
without instrumental music, ancient ballads in praise of men of former
times. These young performers, he observes, were of unblemished
character, a circumstance which he probably mentioned because,
among the Greeks, and indeed, in his time among the Romans also, the
morals of singing boys were in no high repute.
The testimony of Horace, though given incidentally, confirms the
statements of Cato, Valerius Maximus, and Varro. The poet predicts
that, under the peaceful administration of Augustus, the Romans will,
over their full goblets, sing to the pipe, after the fashion of their fathers,
the deeds of brave captains, and the ancient legends touching the origin
of the city.
The proposition, then, that Rome had ballad-poetry is not merely in
itself highly probable, but is fully proved by direct evidence of the
greatest weight.
This proposition being established, it becomes easy to understand why
the early history of the city is unlike almost everything else in Latin
literature, native where almost everything else is borrowed, imaginative

where almost everything else is prosaic. We can scarcely hesitate to
pronounce that the magnificent, pathetic, and truly national legends,
which present so striking a contrast to all that surrounds them, are
broken and defaced fragments of that early poetry which, even in the
age of Cato the Censor, had become antiquated, and of which Tully had
never heard a line.
That this poetry should have been suffered to perish will not appear
strange when we consider how complete was the triumph of the Greek
genius over the public mind of Italy. It is probable that, at an early
period, Homer and Herodotus furnished some hints to the Latin
Minstrels; but it was not till after the war with Pyrrhus that the poetry
of Rome began to put off its old Ausonian character. The
transformation was soon consummated. The conquered, says Horace,
led captive the conquerors. It was precisely at the time at which the
Roman people rose to unrivalled political ascendency that they stooped
to pass under the intellectual yoke. It was precisely at the time at which
the sceptre departed from Greece that the empire of her language and of
her arts became universal and despotic. The revolution indeed was not
effected without a struggle. Naevius seems to have been the last of the
ancient line of poets. Ennius was the founder of a new dynasty.
Naevius celebrated the First Punic War in Saturnian verse, the old
national verse of Italy. Ennius sang the Second Punic War in numbers
borrowed from the Iliad. The elder poet, in the epitaph which he wrote
for himself, and which is a fine specimen of the early Roman diction
and versification, plaintively boasted that the Latin language had died
with him. Thus what to Horace appeared to be the first faint dawn of
Roman literature appeared to Naevius to be its hopeless setting. In truth,
one literature was setting, and another dawning.
The victory of the foreign taste was decisive; and indeed we can hardly
blame the Romans for turning away with contempt from the rude lays
which had delighted their fathers, and giving their whole admiration to
the immortal productions of Greece. The