The Roman, in the olden times, had a high and self-denying sense of duty—he was ambitious, but his ambition was for the glory, not of himself, but his country; he thus lived for conquest: his motive, however, was not self-aggrandizement but the extension of the domination of Rome. When the state came to be merged in the individual, generals and statesmen sought to heap up wealth and to acquire power; but it was not so in the Republican times. Owing to these characteristic features, the Roman citizen conceived it to be his duty to devote his energies to the public service: he concentrated all his powers, mental and bodily, upon war and politics; he despised all other occupations and sources of fame; for he was conscious that his country owed her position amongst nations to her military prowess, and her liberties at home to the wise administration of her constitution.
Hence it will be seen, that there never was a period in which literature did not require to be fostered and protected by the patronage of the wealthy and powerful. Even tragedy never captivated the feelings or acquired an influence over the minds of the people at large as it did in Greece; it degenerated into mere recitations in a dramatic form, addressed like any other poetry to a _coterie_. Comedy formed the only exception to this rule. It was the only species of literature which the masses thoroughly enjoyed. Learning was a sickly plant: patronage was the artificial heat which brought it to maturity. Accius was patronized by D. Brutus; Ennius by Lucilius and the Scipios; Terence by Africanus and Lælius; Lucretius by the Memmii; Tibullus by Messala; Propertius by Ælius Gallus; Virgil and his friends by Augustus, Mæcenas, and Pollio; Martial and Quintilian by Domitian.
As the conquest of Magna Græcia, Sicily, and, finally, of Greece itself, first directed to the pursuit of intellectual cultivation a people whose national literature, even if it deserved to be so called, was of the rudest and most meager description, Roman literature was, as might be expected, the offspring of the Greek, and its beauties a reflexion of the Greek mind; and although some portions were more original than others, as being more congenial to the national character—such, for example, as satire, oratory, and history—it was, upon the whole, never anything more than an imitation. It had, therefore, all the faults of an imitation. As in painting, those that study the old masters, and neglect nature, are nothing more than copyists, however high the finish and elaborate the polish of their works may be; so in the literature of Rome, we are delighted with the execution, and charmed with the genius, wit, and ingenuity, but we seek in vain for the enthusiasm and inspiration which breathes in every part of the original.