XXÜ EARLIEST LITERATURE AT ROME.
handed it down to Gaius, from whom again Lydus made his
extracts. These accounts, when carefully examined, agree
so perfectly with all historical facts, are so free from anything
which might appear doubtful, and are so consistent with one
another, that the results of my investigations must lead to the
conviction, that we are able to trace the history of the Roman
constitution back to the beginning of the commonwealth as
accurately as one can wish, and even more perfectly than the
history of many portions of the middle ages. The history of
Rome gives a moral confirmation to what has been said by
great men respecting the study of nature, that a superficial
knowledge makes man atheistical, but that a profound one
strengthens his belief in the existence of a God.
LECTURE IV.
Let no one imagine that the Romans were barbarians, before
they adopted the civilisation of the Greeks : their works of art
and their buildings prove the contrary. That people, which
under its kings constructed such gigantic sewers, which had a
painter like Fabius Pictor, which made a coffin like that of
Scipio Barbatus1 and, a hundred years before the Punic wars,
produced a sculptor able to execute a work like the Capitoline
she-wolf1, must assuredly have attained to a high degree of
intellectual culture, and cannot be conceived to have been
without some kind of literature, though, of course, different
from that of the Greeks. Form is something accidental; and
Roman literature may have had its own peculiar beauties.
There existed in the days of Cicero a poem of Appius Claudius
the Blind2, consisting of moral sentiments, of which I have
discovered some fragments, and which is of far more ancient
date than the beginning of what we now call Roman literature.
Cicero despised the ancient literature of his country, and knew
it only from hear-say. He was also acquainted with a speech
against Pyrrhus, delivered by the same Appius3 ; and we may
, Compare vol.iii. p.424.
s Cicero, Tuscul, iv. 2. Compare vol.iii. p.312, foil.
3 Cicero1 Brut. 16. Compare vol,iii. p.313.
NAEVIUS.
xxiii
be sure that, at a time when such speeches were written and
preserved, historical composition was not neglected.
But the first work which may be regarded as a history, and
indeed a contemporary one, though agreeably to the taste of
the age in a metrical form, was the First Punic War by
Naevius. If we had a history of this war like that of the
Hannibalian war by Livy, we should undoubtedly look upon it
as the greatest in ancient times. Its vastness and importance
are by ɪɪo means generally known: I hope one day to be able
to put it in its true light. Naevius had served in it and de-
scribed it, as Bernal Diaz did that of Cortez. Naevius wrote in
the Saturnian verse, in the form of a poem, which is charac-
teristic of the age ; and he who judges from internal evidence
must see, that he only did what all before him had done, and
that the history of former days still continued to be familiar to
the Romans through the medium of poetry. Godefrit Hagen
likewise wrote in poetry on contemporary events, merely
because no one was yet accustomed to German prose : prose
works were written in Latin. The history of the conquest of
Livonia by the German knights was described a short time
after the event in a poem, which is not yet published.4 Down
to the thirteenth century all traditional history in Germany
was transmitted in the form of poetry, and the same was the
case with the early period of Roman history. Naevius assuredly
wrote his work in the form in which he found so many histo-
rical events of the past described.
Concerning Naevius and his poems I shall here say but
little. The year in which he brought his first play upon
the stage, is uncertain ; two passages of Gellius5 contradict
each other on this point ; but we may suppose it to have
been about the year 520, ten years after the conclusion of
the first Punic war. Whether the piece which was then
performed, or the great poem on the first Punic war, was
the first he had written, is also uncertain. Naevius was a
4 Niebuhr here alludes to the chronicle of Livonia, written at the end of the
thirteenth century by Ditlcb von Alnpcke, at RevaL The MS. of it exists at
IIeidcIberg. Cod. 367, fol. 192, foil.
5 Inxvii. 21, Gellius says that Naevius appeared in the same year in which
Sp. Carvilins Ruga divorced his wife, that is, the year 519; but in iv..'3, he
places that divorce in the year 52.3, which thus produces a difference of four
years in the time of Naevius' first appearance. Com. Ritschl, Parerga Plmtina,
tom.i. pp. 68-70. ’