The traditional account of the origin of literature at Rome, accepted by the Romans themselves, is that it was entirely due to contact with Greece. Many scholars, however, have advanced the opinion that, at an earlier epoch, Etruria exercised an important influence, and that much of that artistic, philosophical, and literary impulse, which we commonly ascribe to Greece, was in its elements, at least, really due to her. Mommsen's researches have re-established on a firmer basis the superior claims of Greece. He shows that Etruscan civilisation was itself modelled in its best features on the Hellenic, that it was essentially weak and unprogressive and, except in religion (where it held great sway) and in the sphere of public amusements, unable permanently to impress itself upon Rome. [4] Thus the literary epoch dates from the conquest of Magna Graecia. After the fall of Tarentum the Romans were suddenly familiarised with the chief products of the Hellenic mind; and the first Punic war which followed, unlike all previous wars, was favourable to the effects of this introduction. For it was waged far from Roman soil, and so relieved the people from those daily alarms which are fatal to the calm demanded by study. Moreover it opened Sicily to their arms, where, more than in any part of Europe except Greece itself, the treasures of Greek genius were enshrined. A systematic treatment of Latin literature cannot therefore begin before Livius Andronicus. The preceding ages, barren as they were of literary effort, afford little to notice except the progress of the language. To this subject a short essay has been devoted, as well as to the elements of literary development which existed in Rome before the regular literature. There are many signs in tradition and early history of relations between Greece and Rome; as the decemviral legislation, the various consultations of the Delphic Oracle, the legends of Pythagoras and Numa, of Lake Regillus, and, indeed, the whole story of the Tarquins; the importation of a Greek alphabet, and of several names familiar to Greek legend--_Ulysses, Poenus, Catamitus_, &c.--all antecedent to the Pyrrhic war. But these are neither numerous enough nor certain enough to afford a sound basis for generalisation. They have therefore been merely touched on in the introductory essays, which simply aim at a compendious registration of the main points; all fuller information belonging rather to the antiquarian department of history and to philology than to a sketch of the written literature. The divisions of the subject will be those naturally suggested by the history of the language, and recently adopted by Teuffel, _i.e._-- 1. The sixth and seventh centuries of the city (240-80 B.C.), from Livius to Sulla. 2. The Golden Age, from Cicero to Ovid (80 B.C.-A.D. 14). 3. The period of the Decline, from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Marcus Aurelius (14-180 A.D.).