As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the _Ino_ are the only passage among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved a second perusal(123). They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry. It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature, there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better models existed: “Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livi Esse reor, memini quæ plagosum mihi parvo Orbilium dictare; sed emendata videri, Pulchraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror: Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter; Injuste totum ducit venditque poema(124).” But although Livius may have been too much read in the schools, and too much admired in an age, which could boast of models so greatly superior to his writings, he is at least entitled to praise, as the inventor among the Romans of a species of poetry which was afterwards carried by them to much higher perfection. By translating the Odyssey, too, into Latin verse, he adopted the means which, of all others, was most likely to foster and improve the infant literature of his country—as he thus presented it with an image of the most pure and perfect taste, and at the same time with those wild and romantic adventures, which are best suited to attract the sympathy and interest of a half-civilized nation. This happy influence could not be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian verse, which led Cicero to compare the translation of Livius to the ancient statues, which might be attributed to Dædalus(125). The Latin Odyssey commenced— “Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum.” There have also been three lines preserved by Festus, which are translated from the 8th Book, expressing the effects produced on the mind by a sea-storm— —— “Namque nilum pejus Macerat hemonem quamde mare sævom: vires quoi Sunt magnæ, topper confringent importunæ undæ(126).”