various quarters and districts; you have omitted mentioning none of the names, or kinds, or functions, or causes of divine or human things; you have thrown a great deal of light on our poets, and altogether on Latin literature and on Latin expressions; you have yourself composed a poem of varied beauties, and elegant in almost every point; and you have in many places touched upon philosophy in a manner sufficient to excite our curiosity, though inadequate to instruct us.
You allege, indeed, a very plausible reason for this. For, you say, those who are learned men will prefer reading philosophical treatises in Greek, and those who are ignorant of Greek will not read them even in Latin. However, tell me now, do you really agree with your own argument? I would rather say, those who are unable to read them in the one language will read them in the other; and even those who can read them in Greek will not despise their own language. For what reason can be imagined why men learned in Greek literature should read the Latin poets, and not read the Latin philosophers! Or again, if Ennius,[1] Pacuvius, Accius, and many others who have given us, I will not say the exact expressions, but the meaning of the Greeks, delight their readers; how much more will the philosophers delight them, if, as the poets have imitated Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, they in like manner imitate Plato, Aristotle, and Theophrastus? I see, too, that any orators among us are praised who imitate Hyperides or Demosthenes.
But I, (for I will speak the plain truth,) as long as ambition and the pursuit of public honours and the pleading of causes, and not a mere regard for the republic, but even a
- ↑ Cicero ranges these poets here in chronological order.
Ennius was born at Rudiæ in Calabria, b.c. 239, of a very noble family. He was brought to Rome by M. Porcius Cato at the end of the second Punic war. His plays were all translations or adaptations from the Greek; but he also wrote a poetical history of Rome called Annales, in eighteen books, and a poem on his friend Scipio Africanus; some Satires, Epigrams, and one or two philosophical poems. Only a few lines of his works remain to us. He died at the age of seventy.
Pacuvius was a native of Brundusium, and a relation, probably a nephew, of Ennius. He was born about b.c. 220, and lived to about the year b.c. 130. His works were nearly entirely tragedies translated from the Greek. Horace, distinguishing between him and Accius, says—
"Aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis; Accius alti."—Epist II. i. 55.
