Corrugesque sinus gemmatis baltheus artet
Nexibus ——”
As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the Ino are the only passage among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved a second perusal[123]. They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry. It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature, there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better models existed:
“Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livi
Esse reor, memini quæ plagosum mihi parvo
Orbilium dictare; sed emendata videri,
Pulchraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror:
Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et
Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter;
Injuste totum ducit venditque poema[124].”