e set
aside that almost comic official parallel between the Homeric
Iliad and the Ennian

Annals as easily as we have set aside the comparison of Karschin
with Sappho and of Willamov with Pindar; but no such development took
place in Rome. Owing to the interest of the subject especially for
aristocratic circles, and the great plastic talent of the poet, the
Annals remained the oldest Roman original poem which appeared to the
culture of later generations readable or worth reading; and thus,
singularly enough, posterity came to honour this thoroughly anti-
national epos of a half-Greek -litterateur- as the true model
poem of Rome.

Prose Literature

A prose literature arose in Rome not much later than Roman poetry,
but in a very different way. It experienced neither the artificial
furtherance, by which the school and the stage prematurely forced the
growth of Roman poetry, nor the artificial restraint, to which Roman
comedy in particular was subjected by the stern and narrow-minded
censorship of the stage. Nor was this form of literary activity
placed from the outset under the ban of good society by the stigma
which attached to the "ballad-singer." Accordingly the prose
literature, while far less extensive and less active than the
contemporary poetical authorship, had a far more natural growth.
While poetry was almost wholly in the hands of men of humble rank and
not a single Roman of quality appears among the celebrated poets of
this age, there is, on the contrary, among the prose writers of this
period hardly a name that is not senatorial; and it is from the
circles of the highest aristocracy, from men who had been consuls and
censors--the Fabii, the Gracchi, the Scipios--that this literature
throughout proceeds. The conservative and national tendency, in the
nature of the case, accorded better with this prose authorship than
with poetry; but here too--and particularly in the most important
branch of this literature, historical composition--the Hellenistic
bent had a powerful, in fact too powerful, influence both on matter
and form.

Writing of History

Down to the period of the Hannibalic war there was no historical
composition in Rome; for the entries in the book of Annals were of the
nature of records and not of literature, and never made any attempt to
develop the connection of events. It is a significant illustration of
the peculiarity of Roman character, that notwithstanding the extension
of the powe