This literary period was entirely destitute of lyric poetry, unless Niebuhr is correct in supposing that Lævius flourished contemporaneously with Lucilius.[290] Nothing is known of his history; and such uncertainty prevails respecting him that his name is constantly confounded with those of Livius and Nævius. It is not improbable, that some passages attributed to them, which appear to belong to a later literary age, are, in reality, the work of Lævius—for example, the hexameters which are found in the Latin Odyssey of Livius. He translated the Cyprian poems, and wrote some fugitive amatory pieces entitled Erotopægnia. They seem to have possessed neither the graceful simplicity nor the tender warmth which are essential to lyric poetry, although they perhaps attained as great elegance of expression as the state of the language then admitted. Short fragments are preserved by Apuleius and in the _Noctes Atticæ_ of A. Gellius.[291] CHAPTER X. PROSE LITERATURE—PROSE SUITABLE TO ROMAN GENIUS—HISTORY, JURISPRUDENCE, AND ORATORY—PREVALENCE OF GREEK—Q. FABIUS PICTOR—L. CINCIUS ALIMENTUS—C. ACILIUS GLABRIO—VALUE OF THE ANNALISTS—IMPORTANT LITERARY PERIOD, DURING WHICH CATO CENSORIUS FLOURISHED—SKETCH OF HIS LIFE—HIS CHARACTER, GENIUS, AND STYLE. Prose was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation they had little or no ideality or imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, no acute perception of the sympathy and relation existing between man and the external world. In the Greek mind a love of country and a love of nature held a divided empire—they were poets as well as patriots. Roman patriotism had indeed its dark side—an unbounded lust of dominion, an unscrupulous ambition to extend the power and glory of the republic; but, nevertheless, it prompted a zealous devotion to whatever would promote national independence and social advancement. Statesmanship, therefore, and the subjects akin to it, constituted the favourite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman, who sought a distinguished career of public usefulness; and, therefore, that literature which tended to advance the science of social life had a charm for him which no other literature possessed.