ORATOR AND POET, ACTOR AND DRAMATIST. 223 



&quot; Roman religion was a ceremonial for the priests, not for the peo 

 ple ; and its poetry was merely formulae in verse, and soared no higher 

 than the semi-barbarous ejaculations of the Salian priests or the Arvo- 

 lian brotherhood.&quot; 



The more elaborated forms of religious ceremony appear to 

 have been imported from subjugated countries the sacred 

 games from Etruria, and other observances from Greece. 

 Hence, the Romans being the conquerors, it seems to have 

 resulted that the arts, and among others the art of poetry, 

 brought with them by the captives, were for a long period 

 lightly thought of by their captors. Having no commission 

 from the gods, the professors of it were treated with con 

 tempt and their function entirely secularized. So that as 

 Mommsen writes: 



&quot;The poet or, as he was at this time called, the writer, the actor, 

 and the composer not only belonged still, as formerly, to the class of 

 workers for hire in itself little esteemed, but were still, as formerly, 

 placed in the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and 

 subjected to police maltreatment.&quot; 



&quot;With like implications in a later chapter he adds : 

 u Among those who in this age came before the public as poets none, as 

 we have already said, can be shown to have been persons of rank, and not 

 only so, but none can be shown to have been natives of Latium proper. &quot; 



More coherent evidence concerning the differentiation of the 

 poet from the priest is hardly to be expected where, instead 

 of a continuous evolution of one society, we have an ag 

 glomeration of societies, in which the conquering society 

 from the beginning incorporated other ideas and usages with 

 its own. 



679. When, from Southern Europe of early days, we 

 turn to Northern Europe, we meet, in Scandinavia, with 

 evidence of a connexion between the primitive poet and the 

 medicine-man. Speaking of the &quot; diviners, both male and 

 female, honoured with the name of prophets/ who were 

 believed to have power to force the ghosts of the &quot; dead to 

 tell them what would happen, 1 Mallet says that &quot; poetry 



