Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 44975-h.htm or 44975-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44975/44975-h/44975-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/44975/44975-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by plus signs is in bold face (+bold+). [Illustration: AUGUSTUS. Bust in the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston.] Twentieth Century Text-Books A HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE by HAROLD N. FOWLER, PH. D. Professor in the College for Women of Western Reserve University New York and London D. Appleton and Company Copyright, 1903 By D. Appleton and Company Printed at the Appleton Press, New York, U. S. A. PREFACE This book is intended primarily for use as a text-book in schools and colleges. I have therefore given more dates and more details about the lives of authors than are in themselves important, because dates are convenient aids to memory, as they enable the learner to connect his new knowledge with historical facts he may have learned before, while biographical details help to endow authors with something of concrete personality, to which the learner can attach what he learns of their literary and intellectual activity. Extracts from Latin authors are given, with few exceptions, in English translation. I considered the advisability of giving them in Latin, but concluded that extracts in Latin would probably not be read by most young readers, and would therefore do less good than even imperfect translations. Moreover, the texts of the most important works are sure to be at hand in the schools, and books of selections, such as Cruttwell and Banton’s _Specimens of Roman Literature_, Tyrrell’s _Anthology of Latin Poetry_, and Gudeman’s _Latin Literature of the Empire_, are readily accessible. I am responsible for all translations not accredited to some other translator. In making my translations, I have employed blank verse to represent Latin hexameters; but the selections from the _Æneid_ are given in Conington’s rhymed version, and in some other cases I have used translations of hexameters into metres other than blank verse. In writing of the origin of Roman comedy, I have not mentioned the dramatic _satura_. Prof. George L. Hendrickson has pointed out (in the _American Journal of Philology_, vol. xv, pp. 1-30) that the dramatic _satura_ never really existed, but was invented in Roman literary history because Aristotle, whose account of the origin of comedy was closely followed by the Roman writers, found the origin of Greek comedy in the satyr-drama.