*HISTORY* OF *ROMAN LITERATURE,* FROM *ITS EARLIEST PERIOD* TO THE AUGUSTAN AGE. IN TWO VOLUMES. BY JOHN DUNLOP, AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF FICTION. FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. VOL. II. PUBLISHED BY E. LITTELL, CHESTNUT STREET, PHILADELPHIA. G. & C. CARVILL, BROADWAY, NEW YORK. 1827 _James Kay, Jun. Printer,_ _S. E. Corner of Race & Sixth Streets,_ _Philadelphia._ CONTENTS. [Agriculture] Marcus Porcius Cato Marcus Terentius Varro Nigidius Figulus History Quintus Fabius Pictor Sallust Julius Cæsar Cicero Appendix Livius Andronicus, Nævius Ennius Plautus Terence Lucilius Lucretius Catullus Laberius—Publilius Syrus Cato—Varro Sallust Cæsar Cicero Chronological Table Index Transcriber’s note *HISTORY* OF *ROMAN LITERATURE, &C.* *HISTORY* OF *ROMAN LITERATURE, &c.* In almost all States, poetical composition has been employed and considerably improved before prose. First, because the imagination expands sooner than reason or judgment; and, secondly, because the early language of nations is best adapted to the purposes of poetry, and to the expression of those feelings and sentiments with which it is conversant. Thus, in the first ages of Greece, verse was the ordinary written language, and prose was subsequently introduced as an art and invention. In like manner, at Rome, during the early advances of poetry, the progress of which has been detailed in the preceding volume, prose composition continued in a state of neglect and barbarism. The most ancient prose writer, at least of those whose works have descended to us, was a man of little feeling or imagination, but of sound judgment and inflexible character, who exercised his pen on the subject of _Agriculture_, which, of all the peaceful arts, was most highly esteemed by his countrymen.