era of Dryden, Pope, Addison, Johnson, is in this sense the most Roman period of our literary history. To it, unfortunately, we owe all that personification of abstract qualities by the simple device of a capital letter; all that use of “nymph” for “woman” and “fire” for “love”; all that stereotyped phraseology, such as “reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire” for the “sun is rising,” from which we were delivered by Burns and Wordsworth. To the Romans themselves these terms were artificial enough, to the English they were doubly artificial. CONSPECTUS OF LATIN LITERATURE DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE. CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES. LATIN NAME. | ENGLISH NAME. DATE. CHIEF WORKS. THEIR RELATION TO GREEK LITERATURE. SOME INFLUENCES ON FOREIGN TRIBUTARIES TO ENGLISH LITERATURE. SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH WRITERS. Tragic Drama Gnaeus NAEVIUS | NAEVIUS fl. 230 B.C. Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS fl. 200 B.C. TRAGEDIES (only fragments extant). Crudely translated from the Greek, chiefly Euripides. Lucius Annaeus SENECA | SENECA ob. A.D. 65 TRAGEDIES, e.g., _Medea_, _Hippolytus_, etc. Imitating Greek subjects, metres, and treatment (chorus, etc.); but more rhetorical, epigrammatic, and moralizing. Served as type for Italian Renaissance drama and for the French declamatory tragedy of Corneille, Racine, etc. Little effect on English drama. Addison’s _Cato_ the best instance of attempt at the Roman “classical.” Comic Drama Titus Maccius PLAUTUS | PLAUTUS fl. 210 B.C. COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Aulularia_, _Menaechmi_ (20 extant). From Middle and New comedy, chiefly Menander; almost mere adaptations, but broader and rougher. The scene is always in Greek cities. Type for Italian comedy of Renaissance. Great influence on Molière, whose _L’Avare_ is from the _Aulularia_, and his _Amphitryon_ from _Amphitruo_. Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_ is from Plautus’s _Menaechmi_. Dryden’s _Amphitryon_ through Molière from Plautus. So Fielding’s _The Miser_ = _L’Avare_ from _Aulularia_. French comedy of intrigue (from Plautus and Terence) reproduced in Congreve, Farquhar, etc. Publius TERENTIUS AFER | TERENCE fl. 160 B.C. COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Phormio_, _Adelphi_, etc. (6 extant). As with Plautus, but less boisterous. As with Plautus. Molière’s _École des Maris_ is from the _Adelphi_, and _Les Fourberies de Scapin_ from the _Phormio_. English comedy of intrigue, after the Restoration. Epic Verse Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS fl. 200 B.C. EPIC (on Roman history and legend) called _Annales_. Copies the Homeric hexameter and borrows the Olympic deities.