uence was more and more felt as time passed. The
primitive Christians held these writings of the Greek and Latin fathers
in great esteem, and in the second and third centuries Christianity
counted among its champions many distinguished scholars and
philosophers, particularly among the Greeks. Their writings, biblical,
controversial, doctrinal, historical and homiletical, covered the whole
arena of literature.

Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Eusebius, Athanasius, Gregory
Nazianzen, Basil, and John Chrysostom are only a few of the brilliant
names among Greek and Latin writers, who added a lasting glory to
literature and the Church.

ROMAN.

To the Roman belongs the second place in the classic literature of
antiquity. The original tribes that inhabited Italy, the Etruscans, the
Sabines, the Umbrians and the Vituli had no literature, and it was not
until the conquest of Tarentum in 272 B.C. that the Greeks began to
exercise a strong influence on the Roman mind and taste; but Rome had,
properly speaking, no literature until the conclusion of the first
Punic war in 241 B.C.

This tendency to imitate the Greek was somewhat modified by Roman
national pride. We catch sight of this spirit in Virgil and Horace, in
Cicero and Caesar. The graceful softening of language and art among the
imaginative Greeks, becomes in the Romans austere power and majesty,
with a tendency to express greatness by size. These early indications
of race characteristics never died out, as we may see by the contrast
between the Apollo Belvidere of the Greeks, and the Moses of
Michelangelo. The oldest existing example of Latin or Roman literature
is the sacred chant of the Frates Arvales. These latter composed a
college of Priests whose prescribed duty was to offer prayers for
abundant harvests. This took place in the spring, in solemn dances and
processions, not unlike the Bacchic festivals of the Greeks, although
the Roman dances took place in the temple with closed doors. The dance
was called the tripudium from its having three rhythmical beats. The
inscription of this litany of the Frates was discovered in Rome in
1778, and experts have agreed that the monument belongs to the reign of
Heliogabalus, 218 A.D. It is said to contain the very words used by the
priests in the earliest times.

"Most of the old literary monuments in Rome," says a modern writer,
"were written in Saturnian verse, the oldest measure used by the Latin
poets. It was