"Old Ennius here speaks of himself; nor does he carry his boast beyond the bounds of truth: the case being really as he describes it. For we had only an Odyssey in Latin, which resembled one of the rough and unfinished statues of Daedalus; and some dramatic pieces of Livius, which will scarcely bear a second reading. This Livius exhibited his first performance at Rome in the Consulship of M. Tuditanus, and C. Clodius the son of Caecus, the year before Ennius was born, and, according to the account of my friend Atticus, (whom I choose to follow) the five hundred and fourteenth from the building of the city. But historians are not agreed about the date of the year. Attius informs us that Livius was taken prisoner at Tarentum by Quintus Maximus in his fifth Consulship, about thirty years after he is said by Atticus, and our ancient annals, to have introduced the drama. He adds that he exhibited his first dramatic piece about eleven years after, in the Consulship of C. Cornelius and Q. Minucius, at the public games which Salinator had vowed to the Goddess of Youth for his victory over the Senones. But in this, Attius was so far mistaken, that Ennius, when the persons above-mentioned were Consuls, was forty years old: so that if Livius was of the same age, as in this case he would have been, the first dramatic author we had must have been younger than Plautus and Naevius, who had exhibited a great number of plays before the time he specifies. If these remarks, my Brutus, appear unsuitable to the subject before us, you must throw the whole blame upon Atticus, who has inspired me with a strange curiosity to enquire into the age of illustrious men, and the respective times of their appearance."--"On the contrary," said Brutus, "I am highly pleased that you have carried your attention so far; and I think your remarks well adapted to the curious task you have undertaken, the giving us a history of the different classes of Orators in their proper order."--"You understand me right," said I; "and I heartily wish those venerable Odes were still extant, which Cato informs us in his Antiquities, used to be sung by every guest in his turn at the homely feasts of our ancestors, many ages before, to commemorate the feats of their heroes. But the _Punic war_ of that antiquated Poet, whom Ennius so proudly ranks among the _Fauns and rustic Bards_, affords me as exquisite a pleasure as the finest statue that was ever formed by Myron. Ennius, I allow, was a more finished writer: but if he had really undervalued the other, as he pretends to do, he would scarcely have omitted such a bloody war as the first _Punic_, when he attempted professedly to describe all the wars of the Republic. Nay he himself assigns the reason. "Others" (said he) "that cruel war have sung:"