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AUGUSTUS.
Bust in the Museum of Fine Arts. Boston.
TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS
A HISTORY OF
ROMAN LITERATURE
BY
HAROLD N. FOWLER, Ph.D.
PROFESSOR IN THE COLLEGE FOR WOMENOF WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1903
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED AT THE APPLETON PRESS,
NEW YORK, U. S. A.
PREFACE
This book is intended primarily for use as a text-bookin schools and colleges. I have therefore given moredates and more details about the lives of authors than arein themselves important, because dates are convenient aidsto memory, as they enable the learner to connect his newknowledge with historical facts he may have learned before,while biographical details help to endow authors withsomething of concrete personality, to which the learnercan attach what he learns of their literary and intellectualactivity.
Extracts from Latin authors are given, with few exceptions,in English translation. I considered the advisabilityof giving them in Latin, but concluded that extracts inLatin would probably not be read by most young readers,and would therefore do less good than even imperfecttranslations. Moreover, the texts of the most importantworks are sure to be at hand in the schools, and books ofselections, such as Cruttwell and Banton’s Specimens ofRoman Literature, Tyrrell’s Anthology of Latin Poetry,and Gudeman’s Latin Literature of the Empire, are readilyaccessible. I am responsible for all translations not accreditedto some other translator. In making my translations,I have employed blank verse to represent Latinhexameters; but the selections from the Æneid are givenin Conington’s rhymed version, and in some other cases Ihave used translations of hexameters into metres otherthan blank verse.
In writing of the origin of Roman comedy, I have notmentioned the dramatic satura. Prof. George L. Hendricksonhas pointed out (in the American Journal ofPhilology, vol. xv, pp. 1-30) that the dramatic saturanever really existed, but was invented in Roman literaryhistory because Aristotle, whose account of the origin ofcomedy was closely followed by the Roman writers, foundthe origin of Greek comedy in the satyr-drama.
The greater part of the book is naturally taken upwith the extant literary works and their authors; but Ihave devoted some space to the lives and works of authorswhose writings are lost. This I have done, not because Ibelieve that the reader should burden his memory withuseless details, but partly in order that this book may beof use as a book of reference, and partly because the mentionof some of the lost works and their authors may impressupon the reader the fact that something is known ofmany writers whose works have survived, if at all, only indetached fragments. Not a few of these wr