Navigation Settings

Manuscript Annotations:
interlinear {...}
inline {{...}}
attached +{...}
footnote #{...}
unattached {...}
Editorial Annotations:

Correction Normalization
« 4457,14458,1»

[4457,2]  Horace's annosa volumina vatum may have been old poems of this sort: though perhaps they are also to be understood of prophetical books, like those of the Marcii; which, contemptuously as they are glanced at, were extremely poetical. Of this we may judge even from the passages preserved by Livy (ΧΧV. 12.): Horace can no more determine our opinion of them than of Plautus.) who moulded them into hexameters, and found matter in them for three books of his poem; Ennius, who seriously believed himself to be the first poet of Rome, because he shut his eyes against the old native poetry, despised it, and tried successfully to suppress it. Of that poetry and of its destruction I shall speak elsewhere: here only {one} further remark is needful. Ancient as the original materials of the epic lays unquestionably were, the form in which they were handed down, and a great part of their contents, seem to have been comparatively recent. If the pontifical annals adulterated history in favour of the patricians, the whole of this poetry is pervaded by a plebeian spirit, by hatred toward the oppressors, and by visible traces that at the time when it was sung there were already great and powerful plebeian houses. The assignments of land by Numa, Tullus, Ancus, and Servius, are  4458 in this spirit: all the favorite Κings befriend freedom: the patricians appear in a horrible and detestable light, as accomplices in the murder of Servius: next to the holy Numa the plebeian Servius is the most excellent Κing: Gaia Cecilia, the Roman wife of the elder Tarquinius, is a plebeian, a Κinswoman of the Metelli: the founder of the republic and Mucius Scævola are plebeians: among the other party the only noble characters are the Valerii and Horatii; houses friendly to the commons. Hence I should be inclined not to date these poems, in the form under which we know their contents, before the restoration of the city after the Gallic disaster at the earliest. This is also indicated by the consulting the Pythian oracle. The story of the symbolical instruction sent by the last Κing to his son to get rid of the principal men of Gabii, is a Greek tale in Herodotus: so likewise we find the stratagem of Zopyrus repeated * (dal figlio di Tarquinio a Gabii): (anche la storia di Muz. Scev. è greca, cosa non notata dall'autore neppure a suo luogo, e da me osservata altrove p. 4153 p. 4330; e greche sono quelle tante raccolte da Plutarco nel libro da me cit. altrove in tal proposito p. 4213) we must therefore suppose some knowledge of Greek legends, though not necessarily of Herodotus himself. * (5-8. Feb. 1829.).

« 4457,14458,1»