lished a book describing the technical forms of pleading and the rules for fixing the sittings of the courts-matters which the patricians had hitherto kept as the secrets of their order. Though the son of a freedman, Flavius was enrolled by his patron in the senate, and elected Curule Edile by the people. His work appears to have been the first that was written on Roman law. Of general literature, except the Pontifical Annals and the genealogical registers of great families, there was an absolute dearth; for the Hellenic impulse, to which all Roman literature owed its origin, with one remarkable exception, only appears for the first time in the tragedies of Livius Andronicus, himself a Greek, after the First Punic War. The only approach to dramatic composition was in the Fabula Atellana, already mentioned as borrowed from the Oscans of Campania,—a rude, coarse dialogue on some ludicrous subject. There was another form of indigenous poetry, not yet dignified with the name of literature, but destined to receive a brilliant development. Satire has been well described as a hardy, prickly shrub of genuine Latin growth, and by far the best product of the soil. It originated with the strolling minstrels or ballad singers, who went from town to town and from house to house, dancing to the music of the flute and chanting the medleys (satura),* which they either improvised or had previously composed on any subject suggested by their own fancy or suited to their hearers, in a peculiar metre called the Saturnian, which survives in the fragments of Nævius, and in some epitaphs of the age we are now describing. These ballads formed a part of the entertainments provided for the Roman people, in conjunction with musicians, dancers, ropewalkers, jugglers, and Etruscan pantomimists, at the Great Games, besides the chariot races which were the proper business of that great national festival, the origin of which is referred to the age of the Tarquins. Those games, preserved with religious reverence, and converted from an occasional into an annual festival, * The etymology of this word is still in dispute; but there seems no good reason for rejecting the obvious explanation derived from its use as a common noun. When Tennyson calls his "Princess" a medley, no one hesitates to seek (though not every one succeeds in finding) his meaning in the common sense of the latter word. So when we find satura, derived from satur (full), signifying a dish of various sorts of food, and when we are besides told by Dionysius that the poetical satura was made up of various kinds of poems, we can hardly doubt whence the satirists obtained the name of the dish they set before their hearers. There is no direct connection with the Greek Satyrs and Satyric Drama, though it is quite possible that the latter name came ultimately from the same root. B.C. 266.] GAMES OF THE CIRCUS. 335 when the curule ædiles were appointed to superintend them (B.c. 367), furnished the nucleus of a national theatre, especially when a stage was erected in the Circus Maximus, and a sum provided by the state for the exhibitions just referred to (B.c. 364). But, though a century had elapsed since that time, there was still a prejudice against the performers, both rooted in public feeling and embodied in the law. The art of the poet and mimist seems to have been despised as generally practised by low foreigners, Oscan and Etruscan, feared as an instrument of the enchanter, and disapproved as a weapon aimed at public order and private character. The Twelve Tables forbad alike the incantations of the sorcerer, the dirges of hired mourners, and the personal attacks of the lampooner; and Cato tells us that "in former times the trade of a poet was not respected; if any one occupied himself therewith, or addicted himself to banquets, he was called an idler ;" and the practice of such arts for pay was held as a special degradation. Performers were excluded by the censors from the army and the comitia. The magistrates sat in judgment on their performances; and the actor who presumed on the grudging patronage of the state might pay for his want of success with imprisonment and stripes. Such discouragements effectually postponed the rise of a national dramatic literature. None but persons of a low class would become performers; and these were for the most part Etruscans. On the other hand, the chariot races were held in the greatest honour, and presided over by the highest magistrate present at Rome. At first two chariots ran at a time, their drivers being distinguished by colours, which were supposed to have reference to the seasons, the white for the winter snow, the red for the summer heat two others were afterwards added, the green for spring, and the blue or grey for autumn. Each colour had of course its own eager partisans ; but it was not till the time of the empire that they became symbols of political factions, and at last the emblems of those feuds which deluged the circus of Constantinople with blood. The games of the circus must not be dismissed without a mention of that fatal symptom of degeneracy, the first exhibition of gladiatorial shows in the first year of the Punic Wars (B.c. 264) as a part of the solemnities at the funeral of D. Junius Brutus. The practice is said to have been borrowed from the Etruscans, as a substitute for the human sacrifices offered from time immemorial at the funerals of great men, as for example at that of Patroclus in the Iliad, that the deceased might not depart un attended by the souls of enemies or followers. It is supposed that the victims on this occasion were the Etruscan prisoners from Volsinii, the conquest of which city in this year completed the subjugation of Etruria. Such, in brief outline, was the condition of the republic at the close of what has well been called the spring-time of its existence. And it is most important to notice that Rome achieved the conquest of Italy just at the time when the kingdoms founded by the successors of Alexander in the East had reached their highest pitch. The place of Rome was now clearly acknowledged, as one of the great powers of the world, by the chief among those kingdoms. As the Italian expedition of Pyrrhus had derived its impulse from the conflicts that had been waged for half a century for the dominion of Greece and Asia, so his repulse naturally brought his conquerors within the sphere of Grecian politics. While the Epirot was exciting new alarm by his victories in Greece, an embassy arrived at Rome from Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, to propose an alliance with the republic (B.c. 273). The Romans, in return, sent an embassy of three of their most distinguished senators to Alexandria-then at the height of its political power and literary glory. The envoys would not have been Romans, if the sight of all this splendour, following upon their victory over Pyrrhus, had not roused in their minds the prophetic anticipation of an approaching struggle with the Hellenic race for the dominion of the world. But, before the decision of that question between the two branches of their common race, a long war had to be waged for life and death with the great Semitic power, which was the common enemy of both. Rome had to conquer Carthage in a struggle which brought herself to the brink of ruin, before she was prepared to subdue the kindred Greeks. |