Age of native minstrelsy, 753-250 B.C.: early poetry composed of hymns, festal and religious, banquet songs and funeral odes in commemoration of heroes, rude satiric verses, and, according to Niebuhr, epic poems surpassing the works of later times “in power and brilliance of imagination.” No remnants of all this literature.—In prose, a primitive oratory. CHAPTER II. _DAWN OF ROMAN LITERATURE._ As Italy received her first lessons in reading and writing from the Greeks, in law-making from Solon, in art from Phidias and Praxiteles, so in polite literature she drew her inspiration from the same source. The early Roman writers not only took their cue from Greek authors, but were in some cases downright imitators and mere translators. A Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who may be called the father of Roman classical literature, translating the Odyssey into Saturnian verse, introduced his captors to the literary treasures of his country. Enraptured Rome eagerly snatched the crown of letters as it fell from the head of her elder sister, and for a time the borrowed jewels sparkled on her brow. But she paid dearly for her brilliant ornaments; for, with Greek taste and culture, came also Greek effeminacy and vice. The aim of the first Latin writers was to give their tongue the same polish as the model from which they copied; but an excess of foreign graces was repugnant to the genius of their more stately language, and it was soon seen that the refinement of the Greek would prove fatal to the vigor of Latin. Accordingly the Roman orators set their faces against any further “Grecizing,” and struggled as manfully to preserve the purity of their vernacular as they did to maintain the moral purity of the nation, fast drifting into the dangerous quicksands of sloth and self-indulgence. The sixth and seventh centuries of Rome, the period covered by the present chapter, saw the birth of the regular drama and its decline; the earliest attempts at epic and satiric poetry; and the rise of a vigorous prose. Livius Androni’cus paraphrased Greek tragedies; Nævius and Ennius not only contributed to dramatic literature, but called epic poetry into being; Plautus and Terence set forth a feast of good things in their comedies; Lucilius, the father of Roman satire, lashed vice and corruption unsparingly in his hexameters; and Cato laid the foundations of Latin prose. DRAMATIC POETRY.