But in most cases the Romans copied from inferior poets of the Alexandrian age; and before the reader and I part company, it is of importance to insist upon this,--that the best of Roman poetry was often a mere version of third-rate Greek. By far the greatest of the Roman poets is Virgil; and if he alone remained, Latin would be worth learning for his sake. But even Virgil copies from second-rate Alexandrian poets, Apollonius and Aratus--from the latter to an extent which would be thought shameful in any independent literature. It may be true that the translations are in this case not only equal, but far superior, to the originals. I will not dispute this, as my case does not require any doubtful supports. For even granting that he can exceed a second-rate Greek model, what shall we say when he attempts to imitate Theocritus in his _Bucolics_? Here he is taking a really good Greek poet for his model, and how poor is the great Roman in comparison! Even therefore in imitating an Alexandrian master, we can see that the first of Latin poets cannot bear the comparison.
[Sidenote: Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry.]
§ 98. If I had not written fully on this subject in my recent _Greek Life and Thought_, and my _Greek World under Roman Sway_, I should fain conclude with some brief account of the after-glow of Hellenic genius, when the loss of freshness in the language and the life of the people had made pedantry and artificiality common features in the writing of the day. Yet these patent faults did not strike the Romans, whose poets, with only few exceptions, copied Callimachus and Parthenius as the finest models in the world.
From my point of view, though I have cited these facts to show what a superstition the preference of Latin to Greek is, I can urge them as but another evidence of the supremacy of Greece and its right to a spiritual empire over cultivated men. Even debased and decaying Hellenism could produce poetry too good for the ablest disciples to rival, too subtle for any other tongue to express. Can we conclude with any greater tribute to the genius of the race, with any higher recommendation of their history than this, that it is the history of a people whose gifts have never ceased to illumine and to sustain the higher spirits in every society of civilized men?