In addition to all this, the Latin poet had no encouragement to invent. He was not required to look abroad into nature, or strike out a path for himself. So far from this being demanded, Greek subjects were evidently preferred by the public— “Omnes res gestas Athenis esse autumant, Quo vobis illud Græcum videatur magis(362).” All the works, then, which have been hitherto mentioned, and which, with exception of the _Annals_ of Ennius, are entirely dramatic, belong strictly to what may be called the Greek school of composition, and are unquestionably the least original class of productions in the Latin, or perhaps any other language. But however little the early dramatists of Rome may have to boast of originality or invention, they are amply entitled to claim an unborrowed praise for the genuine purity of their native style and language. The style and language of the dramatic writers of the period, on which we are now engaged, seem to have been much relished by a numerous class of readers, from the age of Augustus to that of the Antonines, and to have been equally abhorred by the poets of that time. We have already seen Horace’s indignation against those who admired the _Carmen Saliare_, or the poems of Livius, and which appears the bolder and more surprising, as Augustus himself was not altogether exempt from this predilection(363); and we have also seen the satire of Persius against his age, for being still delighted with the fustian tragedies of Attius and the rugged style of Pacuvius— “Est nunc Brisei quem venosus liber Atti, Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur Antiope ærumnis cor luctificabile fulta.” In like manner Martial, in his Epigrams, mimicking the obsolete phrases of the ancient dramatists— “Attonitusque legis _terräi frugiferäi_, Attius et quicquid Pacuviusque vomunt.” Such sentiments, however, as is evident from Horace’s Epistle to Augustus, proceeded in a great measure from the modern poets being provoked at an admiration, which they thought did not originate in a real sense of the merit of these old writers, but in an envious wish to depreciate, by odious comparison, the productions of the day— “Jam Saliare Numæ carmen qui laudat, et illud Quod mecum ignorat, solus vult scire videri; Ingentis non ille favet, plauditque sepultis, Nostra sed impugnat—nos, nostraque lividus odit.”