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Updated: May 11, 2025
Rome was, what Greece was not, a state; and the mighty consciousness of this truth lay at the root both of the bold attempt which Naevius made to attain by means of history a Roman epos and a Roman drama, and of the creation of Latin prose by Cato.
A little lyric in the epos may be found in a side-journey to Bethel, a village which no one ever heard of, at least I never did, till now; but when we did hear, we heard so much and so well that we at once started on a tour of exploration, and found as Halicarnassus quotes the Queen of Sheba there was more of it than we expected.
The first part of "Gudrun" is evidently so; and we find, as well in many of the older poems of chivalry, as "Charles and Elegast," "Floris and Blanchefloer," as in the national epos, intrinsic proofs that the unknown authors were from the regions of the Lower Rhine.
All the species of pure art epos, drama, lyric poetry, history are worthless in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness as in its historiography. Literature Subsidiary to History Caesar's Report
In studying that portion of the European movement which burst forth into flame in France between the fall of the Bastille and those fatal days of Vendémiaire, Fructidor, Floréal, Brumaire, in which the explosion came convulsively to its end, we seem to see a microcosm of the Byronic epos. The succession of moods is identical.
On that plain were fought out, in prehistoric times, the fierce conflicts of ancient Aryan races, Pandavas and Kauravas, around which the poetic genius of India has woven the wonderful epos of the Mahabharata.
If the Romans had the germ of dramatic art in their yearly festivals, they had the germ of the epos in their lays upon distinguished warriors. But the heroic ballad never assumed the lofty proportions of its sister in Greece. Given up to women and boys it abdicated its claim to widespread influence, and remained as it had begun, strictly "gentile."
In the earlier books of the epos, the hero, not content with rejecting the proffered love of the Chaldaean Aphrodite, Istar, freely expresses his very low estimate of her character; and it is interesting to observe that, even in this early stage of human experience, men had reached a conception of that law of nature which expresses the inevitable consequences of an imperfect appreciation of feminine charms.
It was in 514, a year after the close of the first Punic war, that the first play was exhibited on the Roman stage. This creation of an epos, a tragedy, and a comedy in the Roman language, and that by a man who was more Roman than Greek, was historically an event; but we cannot speak of his labours as having any artistic value.
The poetical efforts of that early age may be grouped under national epos: the "Nibelungenlied;" art epos: the "Rolandslied," "Percival," etc.; the introduction of antique legends: Veldeck's "Aeneide," and Konrad's "War of Troy;" Christian legends "Barlaam," "Sylvester," "Pilatus," etc.; poetical narratives: "Crescentia," "Graf Rudolf," etc.; animal legends; "Reinecke Vos;" didactic poems: "Der Renner;" the Minne-poetry, and prose.
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