The fact, also, that the Romans possessed no native term for a poet is highly significant. _Poeta_, which we find as early as Naevius, [6] is Greek; and _vates_, which Zeuss [7] traces to a Celtic root, meant originally "soothsayer," not "poet." [8] Only in the Augustan period does it come into prominence as the nobler term, denoting that inspiration which is the gift of heaven and forms the peculiar privilege of genius. [9] The names current among the ancient Romans, _librarius_, _scriba_, were of a far less complimentary nature, and referred merely to the mechanical side of the art. [10] These considerations all tend to the conclusion that the true point from which to date the beginning of Roman literature is that assigned by Horace, [11] viz. the interval between the first and second Punic wars. It was then that the Romans first had leisure to contemplate the marvellous results of Greek culture, revealed to them by the capture of Tarentum (272 B.C.), and still more conspicuously by the annexation of Sicily in the war with Carthage. In Sicily, even more than in Magna Graecia, poetry and the arts had a splendid and enduring life. The long line of philosophers, dramatists, and historians was hardly yet extinct. Theocritus was still teaching his countrymen the new poetry of rustic life, and many of the inhabitants of the conquered provinces came to reside at Rome, and imported their arts and cultivation; and from this period the history of Roman poetry assumes a regular and connected form. [12]
Besides the scanty traces of written memorials, there were various elements in Roman civilisation which received a speedy development in the direction of literature and science as soon as Greek influence was brought to bear on them. These may be divided into three classes, viz. rudimentary dramatic performances, public speaking in the senate and forum, and the study of jurisprudence.
The capacity of the Italian nations for the drama is attested by the fact that three kinds of dramatic composition were cultivated in Rome, and if we add to these the semi-dramatic _Fescenninae_, we shall complete the list of that department of literature. This very primitive type of song took its rise in Etruria; it derives its name from Fescennium, an Etrurian town, though others connect it with _fascinum_, as if originally it were an attempt to avert the evil eye. [13] Horace traces the history of this rude banter from its source in the harvest field to its city developments of slander and abuse, [14] which needed the restraint of the law. Livy, in his sketch of the rise of Roman drama, [15] alludes to these verses as altogether unpolished, and for the most part extemporaneous. He agrees with Horace in describing them as taking the form of dialogue (_alternis_), but his account is meagre in the extreme. In process of time the Fescennines seem to have modified both their form and character. From being in alternate strains, they admitted a treatment as if uttered by a single speaker,--so at least we should infer from Macrobius's notice of the Fescennines sent by Augustus to Pollio, [16] which were either lines of extempore raillery, or short biting epigrams, like that of Catullus on Vatinius, [17] owing their title to the name solely to the pungency of their contents. In a general way they were restricted to weddings, and we have in the first _Epithalamium_ of Catullus, [18] and some poems by Claudian, highly-refined specimens of this class of composition. The Fescennines owed their popularity to the light-hearted temper of the old Italians, and to a readiness at repartee which is still conspicuous at the present day in many parts of Italy.