There are nations among whom the imagination is so predominant that they seem incapable of regarding things as they are. The literature of such nations will always be cast in a poetical mould, even when it takes the outward form of prose. Of this class India is a conspicuous example. In the opposite category stand those nations which, lacking imaginative power, supply its place by the rich colouring of rhetoric, but whose poetry, judged by the highest standard, does not rise above the sphere of prose. Modern France is perhaps the best example of this. The same is so far true of ancient Rome that she was unquestionably more productive of great prose writers than of poets. Her utilitarian and matter-of-fact genius inclined her to approach the problems of thought and life from a prosaic point of view. Her perceptions of beauty were defective; her sense of sympathy between man and nature (the deepest root of poetry) slumbered until roused by a voice from without to momentary life. The aspirations and destiny of the individual soul which had kindled the brightest light of Greek song, were in Rome replaced by the sovereign claims of the State. The visible City, throned on Seven Hills, the source and emblem of imperial power, and that not ideal but actual, was a theme fitted to inspire the patriot orator or historian, but not to create the finer susceptibilities of the poet. We find in accordance with this fact, that Prose Literature was approached, not by strangers or freedmen, but by members of the noblest houses in Rome. The subjects were given by the features of national life. The wars that had gained dominion abroad, the eloquence that had secured power at home, the laws that had knit society together and made the people great; these were the elements on which Prose Literature was based. Its developments, though influenced by Greece, are truly national, and on them the Roman character is indelibly impressed. The first to establish itself was history. The struggles of the first Punic war had been chronicled in the rude verse of Naevius; those of the second produced the annals of Fabius and Cincius Alimentus.