As for Ovid, there could be only one Ovid: the cleverest and most heartless of poets, he at once challenged and defied imitation. Satire alone was left with real chance of success: while the human race exists, there will always be fresh material for satire, and the imperial age was destined to give it peculiar force and scope. Further, satire and its nearest kin, the epigram, were the only forms of literature that were not seriously impaired by the artificial system of education that had struck root in Rome. Otherwise the tendency to artificiality on the one hand and inadequacy of thought on the other, to which the conditions of its birth and growth exposed Roman literature, were aggravated to an almost incredible extent by the absurd system of education to which the unformed mind of the young Roman was subjected. It will be seen that what Greece gave with the right hand she took away with the left. There were three stages in Roman education, the elementary, the literary, the rhetorical. The first, in which the _litterator_ taught the three R's, does not concern us here. In the second stage the _grammaticus_ gave instruction in Greek and Latin literature, together with the elements of grammar and style. The profound influence of Greece is shown by Quintilian's recommendation[52] that a boy should start on Greek literature, and by the fact that boys began with Homer.[53] Greek authors, particularly studied, were Aesop, Hesiod, the tragedians, and Menander.[54] Among Roman authors Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Afranius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence were much read, though there was a reaction against these early authors under the empire, and they were partly replaced by Vergil, Horace, and Ovid.[55] These authors were made vehicles for the teaching of grammar and of style. The latter point alone concerns us here. The Roman boy was taught to read aloud intelligently and artistically with the proper modulation of the voice. For this purpose he was carefully taught the laws of metre, with special reference to the peculiarities of particular poets. After the reading aloud (_lectio_) came the _enarratio_ or explanation of the text. The educational value of this was doubtless considerable, though it was impaired by the importance assigned to obscure mythological knowledge and unscientific archaeology.[56] The pupil would be further instructed by exercises in paraphrase and by the treatment in simple essay form of themes (_sententiae_). 'Great store was set both in speaking and writing on a command of an abundance of general truths or commonplaces, and even at school boys were trained to commit them to memory, to expand them, and illustrate them from history.'[57] Finally they were taught to write verse. Such at least is a legitimate inference from the extraordinary precocity shown by many Roman authors.[58] This literary training contained much that was of great value, but it also had grave disadvantages.