Some in such verses wrote, As sung the Fauns and Bards in olden times, When none had scaled the Muses’ rocky heights Or studied graceful diction. Had the Saturnian been introduced from Greece, Ennius would not have denied to it the inspiration of the Muses, or have doubted that its birthplace was on the rocky peaks of Parnassus, nor would his ear, attuned to the varied melody of Greek poetry, have been unconscious of its simple and natural rhythm, and have entirely rejected it for the more ponderous and grandiloquent hexameter. The truth is, the taste which was formed by the study of Greek letters created a prejudice against the old national verse. As it was not Greek, it was pronounced rough and unmusical, and was exploded as old-fashioned. The well-known passage of Horace represents the prevailing feeling, although he says that the Saturnian remained long after the introduction of the hexameter, and that, even in his own day, when Virgil had brought the Latin hexameter to the highest degree of perfection, a few traces of that old long-lost poetry, which Cicero[79] wished for back again, might still be discovered:— Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes Intulit agresti Latio. Sic horridus ille Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus Munditiæ pepulere: sed in longum tamen ævum Manserunt, hodieque manent vestigia ruris. _Ep._ II., ii. 156. Some passages of Livy bear evident marks of having been originally portions of Saturnian ballads, although the historian has mutilated the metre by the process of translating them into more modern Latin. The prophetic warning of C. Marcius[80] has been thus restored by Hermann with but slight alteration of the words of Livy: Amnén, Trojúgena, Cánnam fuge, ne te alienigenæ Cogánt in cámpo Díomedéi manús consérere; Sed nec credes tu mihi, donec complessis sangui Campum, miliaque multa occisa tua tetulerit Is amnis in portum magnum ex terra frugifera. Piscibus avibus ferisque quæ incolunt terras, eis Fuat esca carnis tua; ita Juppiter mihi fatus. The oracle which tradition recorded as having been brought from Delphi respecting the waters of the Alban lake[81] was evidently embodied in a Saturnian poem, probably the composition of the same Marcius, or one of his contemporaries, such as Fabius Pictor, Cincius Alimentus, or Acilius. This lay has also been conjecturally restored by Hermann.