Much importance has been assigned by Niebuhr and others to the ballad literature that clustered round the great names of Roman history. It is supposed to have formed a body of national poetry, the complete loss of which is explained by the success of the anti-national school of Ennius which superseded it. The subjects of this poetry were the patriots and heroes of old Rome, and the traditions of the republic and the struggles between the orders were faithfully reflected in it. Macaulay's _Lays of Ancient Rome_ are a brilliant reconstruction of what he conceived to be the spirit of this early literature. It was written, its supporters contend, in the native Saturnian, and, while strongly leavened with Greek ideas, was in no way copied from Greek models. It was not committed to writing, but lived in the memory of the people, and may still be found embedded in the beautiful legends which adorn the earlier books of Livy. Some idea of its scope may be formed from the fragments that remain of Naevius, who was the last of the old bards, and bewailed at his own death the extinction of Roman poetry. Select lays were sung at banquets either by youths of noble blood, or by the family bard; and if we possessed these lays, we should probably find in them a fresher and more genuine inspiration than in all the literature which followed. This hypothesis of an early Roman epos analogous to the Homeric poems, but preserved in a less coherent shape, has met with a close investigation at the hands of scholars, but is almost universally regarded as "not proven." The scanty and obscure notices of the early poetry by no means warrant our drawing so wide an inference as the Niebuhrian theory demands. [4] All they prove is that the Roman aristocracy, like that of all other warlike peoples, listened to the praises of their class recited by minstrels during their banquets or festive assemblies. But so far from the minstrel being held in honour as in Greece and among the Scandinavian tribes, we are expressly told that he was in bad repute, being regarded as little better than a vagabond. [5] Furthermore, if these lays had possessed any merit, they would hardly have sunk into such complete oblivion among a people so conservative of all that was ancient. In the time of Horace Naevius was as well known as if he had been a modern; if, therefore, he was merely one, though, the most illustrious, of a long series of bards, it is inconceivable that his predecessors should have been absolutely unknown. Cicero, indeed, regrets the loss of these rude lays; but it is in the character of an antiquarian and a patriot that he speaks, and not of an appraiser of literary merit. The really imaginative and poetical halo which invests the early legends of Rome must not be attributed to individual genius, but partly to patriotic impulse working among a people for whom their city and her faithful defenders supplied the one material