History of Roman Literature from its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age. Vol. I

BY John Dunlop, AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF FICTION.
James Kay, Jun. Printer, S. E. Corner of Race & Sixth Streets, Philadelphia.
“Alas, for Tully’s voice, and Virgil’s lay,
And Livy’s pictured page!—But these shall be
It is the invention of the art of printing which has at length secured the widest diffusion, and an unlimited endurance, to learning and civilization. As a stone thrown into the sea agitates (it has been said) more or less every drop in the expanse of ocean, so every thought that is now cast into the fluctuating but ceaseless tide of letters, will more or less affect the human mind, and influence the human condition, throughout all the habitable globe, and “to the last syllable of time.”
With regard to the Romans, in particular, they are allowed to have been a civilized nation, powerfully constituted, and wisely governed, previous to the existence of any author in the Latin language. Their character was formed before their literature was created: their moral and patriotic dignity, indeed, had reached its highest perfection, in the age in which their literature commenced—the age of Lælius and Africanus. Except in the province of the drama, it always continued a patrician attribute; and though intellectual improvement could not have facilitated the inroads of vice and guilty ambition, it certainly proved inadequate to stem the tide of moral corruption, to mitigate the sanguinary animosities of faction, or to retard the establishment of despotism.

But whatever may be the advantages or imperfections of a literary subject in its own nature, it is evident that it can never be treated with effect or utility, unless sufficient materials exist for compilation. Unfortunately, there was no historian of Roman literature among the Romans themselves. Many particulars, however, with regard to it, as also judgments on productions which are now lost, may be collected from the writings of Cicero; and many curious remarks, as well as amusing anecdotes, may be gathered from the works of the latter Classics; as Pliny’s Natural History, the Institutes of Quintilian, the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, and the Saturnalia of Macrobius.