M. Schlegel is of opinion, that had the Romans quitted the practice of Greek translation, and composed original tragedies, these would have been of a different cast and species from the Greek productions, and would have been chiefly expressive of profound religious sentiments.—“La tragedie Grecque avoit montré l’homme libre, combattant contre la destinée; la tragedie Romaine eut presenté a nos regards l’homme soumis a la Divinité, et subjugué jusques dans ses penchans les plus intimes, par cette puissance infinie qui sanctifie les ames, qui les enchaine de ses liens, et qui brille de toutes parts, a travers le voile de l’univers(354).” His reasons for supposing that this difference would have existed, are founded on the difference in the mythological systems of the two nations.—“L’ancienne croyance des Romains et les usages qui s’y rapportoient, renfermoient un sens moral, serieux, philosophique, divinatoire et symbolique, qui n’existoit pas dans la religion des Grecs.” There can be no doubt, that the Romans were in public life, during the early periods or their history, a devotedly religious people. Nothing of moment was undertaken without being assured that the gods approved, and would favour the enterprise. The utmost order was observed in every step of religious performance. We see a consul leaving his army, on suspicion of some irregularity, to hold new auspices—an army inspired with sacred confidence and ardour, after appeasing the wrath of the gods, by expiatory lustrations—and a conqueror dedicating at his triumph the temple vowed in the moment of danger. But notwithstanding all this, it so happens, that a spirit of free-thinking is one of the most striking characteristics of the oldest class of Latin poets, particularly the tragedians, and in the fragments of those very plays which were founded on Roman subjects, there is everywhere expressed a bitter contempt for augury, and for the _sens divinatoire et symbolique_, which they evidently considered as quackery: and the dramatists do not seem to have much scrupled to declare that it was so, or the people to testify approbation of such sentiments. Even the almost impious lines of Ennius, that the gods take no concern in the affairs of mortals, were received, as we learn from Cicero, with vast applause.—“Noster Ennius, qui magno plausu loquitur, assentiente populo—Ego Deûm genus(355),” &c. It is probable, however, that a tragedy purely Roman would have been written in a different spirit from a Greek drama, because the manners of the two people had little resemblance, and because the Roman passion for freedom, detestation of tyranny, and feelings of patriotism, had strong shades of distinction from those of Greece. The self-devotion of the Decii and Curtius, was of a fiercer description than that of Leonidas. It was the headlong contempt, rather than the resolute sacrifice, of existence.