her epic cycle transmuted into prose.

The probability that Rome possessed this older poetry, and the internal evidence for its existence, is strong, if not conclusive.

If from the steppes of Tartary to the shores of Peru-if in various degrees of excellence from the inimitable epics of Homer to the wild ditties of the South Sea islanders-scarcely any nation or tribe is without its popular songs, is it likely that Rome alone should have been barren, unimaginative, unmusical, without its sacred bards, or-if its bards were not invested in religious sanctity-without its popular minstrels; Rome, with so much to kindle the imagination and stir the heart; Rome, peopled by a race necessarily involved in adventurous warfare, and instinct with nationality, and with the rivalry of contending orders? In Rome everything seems to conspire, which in all other countries, in all other races, has kindled the song of the bard. therefore, we find the history as it is handed down to us, though obviously having passed through the chill and unimaginative older chronicle, still nevertheless instinct with infelt poetry, can we doubt where it had its origin?

When,

"The early history of Rome," observes Mr. Macaulay, "is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the fall of Hostus Hostilius,

the struggle of Mettus Curtius through the marsh, the women rushing with torn raiment and dishevelled hair between their fathers and their husbands, the nightly meetings of Numa and the Nymph by the well in the sacred grove, the fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, the purchase of the Sibylline books, the crime of Tullia, the simulated madness of Brutus, the ambiguous reply of the Delphian oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs of Lucretia, the heroic actions of Horatius Cocles, of Scævola, and of Clœlia, the battle of Regillus won by the aid of Castor and Pollux, the fall of Cremera, the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touching story of Virginia, the wild legend about the draining of the Alban Lake, the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many instances which will at once suggest themselves to every reader."(2)

But this poetic cycle had ceased to exist in its original metrical form long before the days of Livy and of Horace. We read of the old arval songs, of the Salian verses, of songs sung at triumphs, or at feasts, by individual guests, in praise of illustrious men, and at funerals. But these were mostly brief, religious, or occasional. Of the panegyric, or family songs, Cicero deplores the total loss. The verses to which Ennius alludes, as sung by the Fauns and Bards, the ancient verses which existed before there was any real poetry, any general inspiration of the Muses (Ennius, no doubt, means poetry in Greek

(26) Macaulay, Preface to "Lays of Rome."

vehicle of epic song, the hexameter verse. From Homer to Nonnus this verse maintained its prescriptive and unquestioned right to be the measure of heroic and narrative poetry. None, indeed, could draw the bow like the old bard; but even in their conscious feebleness the later poets hardly ever ventured to innovate on this established law of epic song. The Saturnian verse was the native measure of Roman, or rather of Italian poetry. This Saturnian verse was unquestionably very rude, and if we are to trust the commentator on Virgil, only rhythmical. (29) When, therefore, Ennius naturalized the hexameter in Latin poetry, it is no wonder that all eyes were turned on the noble stranger, who at once received the honours of a citizen, and from that time was established in supremacy over Latin as well as Greek narrative poetry. In this verse Ennius himself embodied all the early history of Rome; and we have only to look back from the fragments of his work, which, though yet indulging in certain licences which were dropped by Virgil and the later writers, have some lines of very free flow and cadence, to the few Saturnian verses which survive from the Punic War of his rival Nævius, and we shall not wonder that the Roman ear became fastidious and distasteful of its old native melodies. The ballads, if they had still survived in common currency, were superseded by the new and more popular poetic

(29) "Carmina Saturnio metro compta ad rythmum solum componere vulgares consueverunt."-Servius in Georg. ii. 385.