With the war and pride in victory came also the need to write the nation’s history in enduring form. In Sicily the Romans had discovered that they had become the object of wide observation. The Greeks, not knowing how to explain the amazing power of this small group of barbarians, had invented the legend that they must be a remnant of the Trojans. That legend had already found a place in the history of the Sicilian Timaeus, and the Sicilian city of Segesta, which claimed a similar pedigree, had made haste to assert cousinship with Rome, thus winning a favorable alliance with the victors. A pedigree at once so flattering to the Romans and so useful could hardly be disregarded. In less than a generation it came to be the accepted story at Rome—and Naevius, comprehending its literary purport, set out to write the epic of Rome with this legend as his preface. Rome had become conscious and expressive, the third of the western peoples to begin literary creation. But progress in art is slow. In Greece there was a long silence after Homer. In England there were vast wastes with a few narrow garden spots in the five centuries between _Beowulf_ and Chaucer. Rome had a scanty population of hard-working citizens constantly being recruited for war. After the First Punic War there were frequent conflicts with Ligurians, Celts, and Illyrians. Then in 218 B.C. came the dreaded invasion of Hannibal. Every able-bodied man took up arms. The devastation of crops, the neglect of fields, the burden of taxes, the distressing gloom brought by a succession of defeats precluded all progress in literature. Only the theater continued to give one or two performances a year to grace the religious festivals.