For Latin Elegiacs. An Epistle, in the style of Ovid's Heroides, from Mary Queen of Scots to her son. [Dean Ireland's Scholarship, 1840.] Translate into Latin, and illustrate by references to classic authors, and notes in Latin. There was as yet no regular drama, for Livius Andronicus did not begin to exhibit his plays till after the first Punic war; but there were pantomimic dances performed by Etruscan actors; there were the medleys sung and acted by native performers; and there were the comic or satirical dialogues on some ludicrous story, in which the actors were of a higher rank, as this entertainment was rather considered an old national custom, than a spectacle exhibited for the public amusement. There were no famous poets, nor any Homer, to embody in an imperishable form the poetical traditions of his country; but there were the natural elements of poetry, and the natural love of it; and it was long the custom at all entertainments that each guest in his turn should sing some heroic song, recording the worthy deeds of some noble Roman. So also there was no history, but there was the innate desire of living in the memory of afterages; and in all the great families panegyrical orations were delivered at the funeral of each of their members, containing a most exaggerated account of his life and actions. These orations existed in the total absence of all other statements, and from these chiefly, the annalists of the succeeding century compiled their narratives; and thus every war is made to exhibit a series of victories, and all the most remarkable characters in the Roman story are represented as men without reproach, or of heroic excellence, But whilst literature was unknown, and poetry and even the drama itself were in their earliest infancy, the Romans enjoyed with the keenest delight the sports of the circus, which resembled the great national games of Greece, Every year in the month of September, four days were devoted to the celebration of what were called indifferently, the Great, or the Roman games. Like all the spectacles of the ancient world, they were properly a religious solemnity, a great festival in honour of the three national divinities of the Capitoline temple, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. On the first day Capitol through the forum to the Circus; there the sacrifice was performed, and afterwards the exhibition of the various games began, which was so entirely a national ceremony, that the magistrate of highest rank who happened to be in Rome gave the signal for the starting of the horses in the chariot race. Give a plan of the Circus, and the technical names of the different parts. [Dean Ireland's Scholarship, 1841.] For Homeric Hexameters. So spake the Son, and into terror chang'd At once the Four spread out their starry wings, That wish'd the mountains now might be again For Latin Lyrics. Metre, Iambic Trimeter and Dimeter acatalectic. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath the wat'ry floor; So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves, Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills, [Dean Ireland's Scholarship, 1841.] |