- bellishments, to create an epic poem. Lucan and Silius
Italicus, in choosing, the one the misfortunes of Pompey, and the other the victories of Hannibal, considered themselves superior to Homer or Vergil, as much as they supposed Rome or Carthage superior to Ilium. But a just posterity, notwithstanding the prejudices of their panegyrists, has put them in their place. It has considered them merely the inventors of a kind of bastard poetry, which might be called historic poetry. This poetry, entirely separated from Eumolpœia, whose moral essence it is unable to realize, preserves only the material and physical forms of true Epopœia. It is a body without soul, which is moved by a mechanical mainspring applied by a skilful workman.
As to the poetic form in itself, its only point of variance with the Greeks and Romans was that of elegance. The verses written in the same manner, depended likewise upon a fixed number of time or of feet regulated by musical rhythm. If rhyme had been admitted there in the first ages, it had been excluded early enough so that there remained no longer the least trace of it. The Latin tongue, very far from the Greek in flexibility, variety, and harmony, for a long time treated with contempt by the Greeks who, regarding it as a barbarous dialect, only learned it with repugnance[1]; the Latin tongue, I say, unpleasing, obscure, not even supporting the mediocrity of ordinary elocution, became, through the laborious efforts of its writers, a tongue which in the works of Vergil, for example, attained such a perfec-*
- ↑ The Greeks looked upon the Latin authors and artists as paupers enriched by their spoils; also they learned their language only when forced to do so. The most celebrated writers by whom Rome was glorified, were rarely cited by them. Longinus, who took an example of the sublime in Moses, did not seek a single one either in Horace or in Vergil; he did not even mention their names. It was the same with other critics. Plutarch spoke of Cicero as a statesman; he quoted many of his clever sayings, but he refrained from comparing him with Demosthenes as an orator. He excuses himself on account of having so little knowledge of the Latin tongue, he who had lived so long in Rome! Emperor Julian, who has written only in Greek, cites only Greek authors and not one Latin.
