into the Revival of Greek Literature in Italy. 395 



Such being a slight sketch of the revolutions of Grecian lite- 

 rature, from the age of HOMER till the era of CONSTANTINE, it 

 will not be unimportant to consider for a few moments the se- 

 cond part of our first preliminary question, namely, To what ex- 

 tent does Grecian literature appear to have been cultivated in Italy 

 after Greece itself was incorporated as a part of the Roman em- 

 pire ? And, in \hefirst place, It is evident that the Roman people 

 had no opportunities of becoming familiar with the poetry or li- 

 terature of Greece during its first and most brilliant period. At 

 the death of ALEXANDER the Great, the Romans were a brave 

 but yet an infant people, or rather tribe, engaged in an obsti- 

 nate struggle with the Samnites, obliged to defend their territo- 

 ries against the invasion of PYRRHUS, and, after the subjugation 

 of both these rivals, embroiled in a most fierce and lengthened 

 war with the Carthaginians. Immediately after the commence- 

 ment of the third Punic War *, their legions, for the first time, 

 entered Asia, and, with that overwhelming impetuosity which 

 characterizes the progress of their arms at this period, overturned 

 the ancient kingdom of Macedon, reduced the Achaeans, and 

 soon became masters of Greece. It is at this period of the third 

 Punic War, that the earliest traces of a literary spirit are to be 

 discerned in the history of the Republic, that PLAUTUS, ENNIUS 

 and TERENCE began to imitate the masterpieces of Greece. 

 From this period of the dawn of Latin poetry, till the days 

 of AUGUSTUS, the literature and the language of Greece, if 

 not completely familiar td the nation in general, as some 

 writers have erroneously supposed, were certainly well known 

 to the poets, the orators, and the historians of Italy. It 

 may even be asserted, that, down to a much later period in 



* An. C. 149. 



