The History of Rome. Book III

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).

50. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.

51. III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians.

52. Besides Cato, we find the names of two 'consulars and poets' belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4) - Quintus Labeo, consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581. But it remains uncertain whether they published their poems. Even in the case of Cato this may be doubted.

53. II. IX. Roman Historical Composition.

54. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

55. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

56. The following fragments will give some idea of its tone. Of Dido he says:

Blande et docte percontat - Aeneas quo pacto
Troiam urbem liquerit.

Again of Amulius:

Manusque susum ad caelum - sustulit suas rex
Amulius; gratulatur - divis.

Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:

Sin illos deserant for - tissumos virorum
Magnum stuprum populo - fieri per gentis.

With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:

Transit Melitam Romanus - insuiam integram
Urit populatur vastat - rem hostium concinnat.

Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:

Id quoque paciscunt moenia - sint Lutatium quae
Reconcilient; captivos - plurimos idem
Sicilienses paciscit - obsides ut reddant.

57. That this oldest prose work on the history of Rome was composed in Greek, is established beyond a doubt by Dionys. i. 6, and Cicero, de Div. i. 21, 43. The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law in the Latin language. But the latter treatise will not be attributed by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the Greek Annals of Fabius as well as of those of Acilius and Albinus, or whether there were two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor. The historical work likewise written in Greek, ascribed to Lucius Cincius Alimentus a contemporary of Fabius, seems spurious and a compilation of the Augustan age.

58. Cato's whole literary activity belonged to the period of his old age (Cicero, Cat. ii, 38; Nepos, Cato, 3); the composition even of the earlier books of the 'Origines' falls not before, and yet probably not long subsequent to, 586 (Plin. H. N. iii. 14, 114).

59. It is evidently by way of contrast with Fabius that Polybius (xl. 6, 4) calls attention to the fact, that Albinus, madly fond of everything Greek, had given himself the trouble of writing history systematically [pragmatiken iotorian].

60. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome.

61. III. XIV. Knowledge of Languages.

62. For instance the history of the siege of Gabii is compiled from the anecdotes in Herodotus as to Zopyrus and the tyrant Thrasybulus, and one version of the story of the exposure of Romulus is framed on the model of the history of the youth of Cyrus as Herodotus relates it.