THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC. oung BY W. Y. SELLAR, M.A. PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS, AND FORMERLY EDINBURGH: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 1863. 37207- (The Author reserves the right of translation) PREFACE. I HAVE endeavoured, in this volume, to trace the development of Roman Poetry from the origin of Latin literature to the fall of the Roman Republic. I hope to be able, at some future time, to carry on the subject at least to the end of the Augustan age. As my main object has been to show the native spirit by which the imaginative literature of Rome is animated, I have not thought it necessary to include the writers of Roman Comedy under this inquiry. In examining the first period of Roman Poetry I have made constant use of the editions of the Fragments of the early writers by Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach. I have availed myself also of the German histories of Roman literature, by Bernhardy, Bahr, and Munk, and of the chapters on the early Literature in Mommsen's Roman History. To the first of these writers I am especially indebted for many references to passages in later Latin literature, in which the works of the early writers are quoted or commented on. writing the second chapter, I derived much of my information from a small treatise on the origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen, and from the chapter in Sir G. C. Lewis's work on The Credibility of Early Roman In History, in which Niebuhr's hypothesis of a ballad poetry is discussed. During my whole study of the subject I have made constant use of Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. I have especially to acknowledge my debt to the articles, in that work, written by Professor Ramsay, which, besides nearly exhausting the ascertained information about the lives of the Roman Poets, contain the most clear and judicial summing up of all legitimate inferences on the subject with which I am acquainted. In quoting from Lucretius I have used the text of Mr. Munro's edition. I have to acknowledge also the help which I have got in understanding some of the difficulties in the philosophical argument of Lucretius from reading Mr. Munro's articles in the Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology. In quoting from Catullus I have generally adhered to the text of Rossbach. I have, in conclusion, to return my warm thanks to my friend, Mr. Theodore Martin, for his kind permission to make free use of his spirited and accomplished translations from Catullus. W. Y. S. ST. ANDREWS, May 1863. |