the Roman world of quality were, in addition to
Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius
(consul in 614) and Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius
Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius,
and the philosopher Panaetius. Those who were familiar with the
Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly
impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad
translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had
furnished and Pacuvius continued to furnish. While patriotic
considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the
native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed
shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions
of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of
Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius--all those poets "who appeared to have a
licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically"--are found in
the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written
at the close of this period. People shrugged their shoulders at
the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate
attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded
somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his
youth; despairing of the transplantation of the marvellous tree,
they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose
substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves
in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign
masterpieces. The productiveness of this epoch displayed itself
chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the
poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences. The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art
and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of
persons of culture became separated from the body of the people,
was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society
and the vulgar Latin of the common people. The prologues of
Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language
forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this
circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among