The two discussed by Aristotle as types are in fact seen as types to persist. The habits of drama have remained typically distinct from those of narrative, and have changed far less. To add Senecan tragedy to its Greek prototype, and to mark the distinctive traits of Latin comedy, will both fill out Aristotle’s summary and show in what forms classical influences came first to modern drama. Narrative in the ancient world developed along few lines. Its poetic art long remained epic. This art was at once followed by Vergil and recreated. The _Æneid_ is the great exemplar of all that is fruitful in literary influence. The Hellenistic art that Vergil rejected was cultivated by Apuleius and ran to seed in the Greek prose romances. Meantime it was practised with facile brilliancy by the Latin poet whom the middle ages knew better even than they knew Vergil—Ovid. Setting aside, then, all minor forms, and in the two major forms all but what is typical, we may venture to survey ancient poetic, first in Greek tragedy, with Senecan tragedy for contrast and Latin comedy for supplement, then in Vergilian epic, with Ovidian narrative for contrast and Apuleius for divergence. I. DRAMA A. GREEK TRAGEDY[1] At first glance Greek tragedy strikes the modern student as finished. Its historical period is definite. It grew; it matured; it died. Its strictly dramatic influence appears to be sharply limited. Inoperative as a mode of representation, indeed almost unknown, in the middle ages and the early Renaissance, it seems at first to have been revived in modern times only for archæological reproduction, as the models of Greek architecture in museums. Even if such a view were just—and it is not—Greek tragedy would compel attention by sheer artistic eminence. It can no more be ignored than Gothic architecture. It is one of the great artistic achievements of the human spirit. But no such artistic achievement is ever finished in the sense of being relegated to a museum. Its eminence constitutes a presumption of vitality. Gothic architecture, though held in abeyance and even forgotten for centuries, is again operative. It compels attention to-day not only in reproductions, but in creation. Greek tragedy has profoundly influenced modern playwriting. Its increasing reappearance to-day in revivals, and the distinction of certain imitations such as _Samson Agonistes_, are less important than its influence on modern dramaturgy, as in Racine and again in Ibsen and finally in certain striking plays of our own time. This vitality implies that the Greek experience, in especially happy conditions of stage and audience, through a period of extraordinary artistic competition, was fruitful not merely in skilful adaptation to those conditions, but in dramatic principles. (1). _Theater and Audience_