TENNEY FRANK LIFE AND LITERATURE IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1957 University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California Cambridge University Press London, England Copyright, 1930, by The Regents of the University of California Originally published as Volume Seven of the Sather Classical Lectures _Third printing_ (_First Paper-bound Edition, Second printing_) PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL FORCES 1 II. EARLY TRAGEDY AND EPIC 30 III. GREEK COMEDY ON THE ROMAN STAGE 65 IV. TERENCE AND HIS SUCCESSORS 99 V. THE PROSE OF THE ROMAN STATESMEN 130 VI. REPUBLICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND LIVY 169 VII. CICERO’S RESPONSE TO EXPERIENCE 197 VIII. LUCRETIUS AND HIS READERS 225 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL FORCES The story of intellectual pioneering, visualized with difficulty, has not the thrill of a Marco Polo diary, but to the intelligent it has a deeper fascination. Our records are, however, very brief, spanning a few thousand out of many hundred thousand years. What we can review is a small fraction of the whole story. If the human race is more than 300,000 years old, man’s artistic literature is less than 3000: our segment of sure knowledge is less than one per cent of the amazing tale. If the biologist is willing to pry into the strata of a hundred million years to trace the evolution of plant and animal life, it is hardly conceivable that the humanist should disregard any part of our pitifully meager record of spiritual endeavor. This is my excuse for inviting attention to the first efforts of the Romans to express themselves in literary form.