Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain funeral poems, called _Naeniae_, originally chanted by the female relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations. The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no more than this,--that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of great men,--that they were of such length as to admit of several being sung in succession,--and that they fell into disuse some generations before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr. The evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical pieces, and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great banquets and funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of exhibiting the ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their origin to the patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have been animated by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved at all, they were thus more likely to have been preserved by members of the great houses living within the city walls, than by the peasantry living among the outlying hills and country districts. If ever there were any golden age of early Roman poetry, it had passed away long before the time of Ennius and Cato. The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and had any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult to believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination, pouring itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems, could have been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular poetry, not scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the possession of a great commonwealth--one most tenacious of every national memorial--could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the memory of men--as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the Iliad and the Odyssey--this early poetry could not have perished without leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth of poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force by which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from one generation of poets to another.