TENNEY FRANK
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1957
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
Cambridge University Press
London, England
Copyright, 1930, by
The Regents of the University of California
Originally published as Volume Seven of the
Sather Classical Lectures
Third printing
(First Paper-bound Edition, Second printing)
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
| I. | INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL FORCES | 1 |
| II. | EARLY TRAGEDY AND EPIC | 30 |
| III. | GREEK COMEDY ON THE ROMAN STAGE | 65 |
| IV. | TERENCE AND HIS SUCCESSORS | 99 |
| V. | THE PROSE OF THE ROMAN STATESMEN | 130 |
| VI. | REPUBLICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND LIVY | 169 |
| VII. | CICERO’S RESPONSE TO EXPERIENCE | 197 |
| VIII. | LUCRETIUS AND HIS READERS | 225 |
The story of intellectual pioneering, visualizedwith difficulty, has not the thrill of a Marco Polodiary, but to the intelligent it has a deeper fascination.Our records are, however, very brief, spanninga few thousand out of many hundred thousandyears. What we can review is a small fraction ofthe whole story. If the human race is more than300,000 years old, man’s artistic literature is lessthan 3000: our segment of sure knowledge is lessthan one per cent of the amazing tale. If thebiologist is willing to pry into the strata of a hundredmillion years to trace the evolution of plantand animal life, it is hardly conceivable that thehumanist should disregard any part of our pitifullymeager record of spiritual endeavor. This is myexcuse for inviting attention to the first efforts ofthe Romans to express themselves in literary form.
In attempting to tell a part of this story I havechosen to notice especially how the writers of theperiod responded to their environment, because thisaspect of the theme has been somewhat neglectedin recent studies of Roman literature. This is ofcourse not a novel method of approach. Taine, forinstance, drove the hobby of environmental determinismat a gallop that ought to satisfy the mostoptimistic behaviorist, and his immediate followers[2]never checked the rein. The method has since hadits more deliberate devotees. English classicists inparticular, who have usually studied history andliterature together, have gener