Versibus quos olim Fauni Vatesque canebant
Quom neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat,
Nec dicti studiosus erat.
Some in such verses wrote,
As sung the Fauns and Bards in olden times,
When none had scaled the Muses’ rocky heights
Or studied graceful diction.
Had the Saturnian been introduced from Greece, Ennius would not have denied to it the inspiration of the Muses, or have doubted that its birthplace was on the rocky peaks of Parnassus, nor would his ear, attuned to the varied melody of Greek poetry, have been unconscious of its simple and natural rhythm, and have entirely rejected it for the more ponderous and grandiloquent hexameter. The truth is, the taste which was formed by the study of Greek letters created a prejudice against the old national verse. As it was not Greek, it was pronounced rough and unmusical, and was exploded as old-fashioned. The well-known passage of Horace represents the prevailing feeling, although he says that the Saturnian remained long after the introduction of the hexameter, and that, even in his own day, when Virgil had brought the Latin hexameter to the highest degree of perfection, a few traces of that old long-lost poetry, which Cicero[[79]] wished for back again, might still be discovered:—
Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
Intulit agresti Latio. Sic horridus ille