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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Page 74

That the "multiform" poet executed all these tasks with equal neatness, that he elaborated hexameters out of a language of by no means dactylic structure, and that without checking the natural flow of his style he moved with confidence and freedom amidst unwonted measures and forms--are so many evidences of his extraordinary plastic talent, which was in fact more Greek than Roman;(48) where he offends us, the offence is owing much more frequently to Greek alliteration(49) than to Roman ruggedness.

48. The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the -Phoenix- of Euripides:--

-Sed virum virtute vera vivere animatum addecet,
Fortiterque innoxium vocare adversum adversarios.
Ea libertas est, qui pectus purum et firmum gestitat:
Aliae res obnoxiosae nocte in obscura latent.-

In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:--

-- -- -mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio,
Et Neptunus saevus undis asperis pausam dedit.
Sol equis iter repressit ungulis volantibus;
Constitere amnes perennes, arbores vento vacant.-

This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet worked up his original poems. It is simply an expansion of the words which occur in the tragedy -Hectoris Lustra- (the original of which was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat between Hephaestus and the Scamander:--

-Constitit credo Scamander, arbores vento vacant,-

and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).

49. Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:--

-- -- -stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,-

and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances. He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).

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