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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates

THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XIV - Literature and Art

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» Contents of this Chapter

Knowledge of Languages ||| The Stage under Greek Influence ||| Rise of a Roman Literature ||| Livius Andronicus ||| Drama - Theatre ||| Audience ||| Comedy ||| Character of the Newer Attic Comedy ||| Roman Comedy - Its Hellenism a Necessary Result of the Law ||| Political Neutrality ||| Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy - Persons and Situations ||| Construction of the Plot ||| Roman Barbarism ||| Metrical Treatment - Scenic Arrangements ||| Aesthetic Result ||| Naevius ||| Plautus ||| Caecilius ||| Moral Result ||| National Comedy - Titinius ||| Tragedies - Euripides ||| Roman Tragedy ||| Moral Effect of Tragedy ||| National Dramas ||| Recitative Poetry ||| Satura ||| Metrical Annals - Naevius ||| Ennius ||| Prose Literature ||| Writing of History ||| History of the Origin of Rome ||| The Earlier History ||| Contemporary History ||| Speeches and Letters ||| History of Other Nations - Uncritical Treatment of History ||| Science ||| Grammar ||| Rhetoric and Philosophy ||| Medicine ||| Mathematics ||| Agriculture and the Art of War - Jurisprudence ||| Cato's Encyclopaedia ||| Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature ||| Hellenizing Literature ||| National Opposition ||| Architecture ||| Plastic Art and Painting

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other nation. To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and its recreations during this period.

Knowledge of Languages

Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was especially the case in Rome. In a community where so much importance was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood.

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