together on the Capitol, and consecrated by Q. Fabius Maximus and T. Otacilius Crassus, in B. c. 215.1

The defeat of Terentius Varro by Hannibal at Cannæ, the following year, was a still more terrible blow. The victor was hourly expected at Rome, and portents again agitated the public mind, especially the unchastity of two Vestals, Opimia and Floronia. One of these was buried alive at the Porta Collina, the other escaped the same fate by suicide. As a further expiation, after consulting the Sibylline books, two men and two women, of Greek and Gallic race, were buried alive in a stone vault in the Forum Boarium. The place, says Livy, was already imbued with human sacrifices, though he disclaims the practice as un-Roman.2 A more humane and cheerful way of propitiating the gods was by the institution of the LUDI APOLLINARES in compliance with the prophecies of one Marcius, though the idea of them appears to have been borrowed from the Greeks. They were celebrated in the Circus Maximus.

During the year which followed the disaster at Cannæ, Rome displayed every mark of grief and humiliation. The senate quitted the Curia, the prætor abandoned the Comitium, to deliberate and to administer justice near the Porta Capena, the side threatened by Hannibal. But it was not till B. C. 211 that Hannibal, approaching by rapid marches on the Via Latina, reached the Anio before his presence was suspected. The proconsul Fulvius had, however, preceded him, by forced marches on the Via Appia; and entering Rome by the Porta Capena, and marching through the city by the Carinæ, Fulvius pitched his camp on

1 Liv. xxii. 10, xxiii. 51; Cic. N. D. ii. 23.

2 Such sacrifices were abolished at Rome by a decree of the senate, B. C. 97; nevertheless we read of two human victims being decapitated in the Campus Martius, B. C. 46, by

order of the Pontifices, and their heads affixed to the Regia. Pliny mentions even in his age the interment alive of Gallic and other men and women. H. N. xxviii. 3. Cf. Dion Cass. xliii. 24.

the Esquiline,1 outside the agger, between the Porta Esquilina and Porta Collina. Hither came the consuls and the senate to deliberate. Arrangements were made for the defence of the city, and it was ordered that a tolerably full senate should remain assembled on the Forum, to give their advice on any emergency. The camp of Hannibal was now but three miles distant from Rome; and that commander ventured to make a reconnaissance round the walls with an escort of only 2,000 horse. But the imperturbable fortitude of the Roman people, the knowledge that, in spite of his presence, they had despatched several corps of cavalry to Spain, nay, that the very ground on which his camp stood had been sold at auction without any diminution of price, discouraged Hannibal as much as the loss of a battle. After the empty bravado of launching a javelin into a city which he could not take, he hastily raised his camp, and, marching to the sanctuary of Feronia at the foot of Soracte, consoled himself for his disappointment at Rome by plundering that wealthy shrine.2 Thus was the city delivered from the greatest danger which had threatened it since its capture by the Gauls.

Although the third century before the Christian era shows but little progress in the city of Rome, it was marked by a striking improvement in the literary cultivation of the Romans. The regular drama is not relished except by a people that has attained to a considerable degree of civilisation. It was the last sort of poetry brought to any perfection among the Greeks; and the same observation will apply, we believe, to most other nations. Thus Chaucer and Gower in England had written epic and other poetry two centuries before the establishment of regular dramatic entertainments. The drama, like all the more elegant arts of life, was derived by the

Romans from the Greeks, and was first introduced at Rome after the conquest of Magna Græcia. During the wars in that country, the poet Andronicus, a native of Tarentum, was captured and brought to Rome, where he became the slave of M. Livius Salinator, and derived from him the surname of Livius. Having sufficiently mastered the Latin language to be able to write in it, Livius Andronicus brought out a considerable number of plays, which, however, appear to have been little more than translations from the Greek. The first of them was exhibited in B. c. 240. But however rude and barbarous the language at least of these dramas may have been, they seem not only to have been extant in the time of Horace, but even to have been read in schools,1 whence it would appear that there must have been a sort of Latin literature before the time of those authors who are reputed to have been the earliest Roman historians.2 It must not be supposed, however, that there was any regular theatre at Rome at this period. The Roman aristocracy, like the English Puritans, set their faces against dramatic entertainments, as injurious to public morality. Although the building of a stone theatre had been commenced, P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, in his consulship in B. c. 155, induced the senate to order its demolition.3 Thus, even to the times of Plautus and Terence, plays were represented at Rome on wooden stages, or scaffoldings, resembling probably those on which the Mysteries and Moralities of the middle ages were performed, and the audience appears to have beheld them standing. Poets in the time of Livius were called scribes, an appellation which seems to show that the Roman public had no very exalted idea of the poetical vocation. A building on the Aventine appears, however, to have been assigned for the use of Livius and of a troop of

1 Epp. ii. 1, 69 sq.

2 Liv. vii. 2; Cic. Brut. 18; Sueton. De ill. Gramm. 1; Gell. xvii. 21. Liv. Epit. xlviii.

players; and after his death, 'scribes' and actors were accustomed to meet in the Temple of Minerva on that hill to celebrate his praises and offer gifts in his honour.1 The drama at Rome was continued by Nævius, who was probably a Campanian;2 but it belongs not to this work to trace the history of Roman literature, except so far as it may be connected with the history of the city and its inhabitants. We need, therefore, only further mention here, that Ennius, also a dramatist, but better known as the first great Latin epic poet, who also flourished soon after Livius Andronicus, towards the end of the third century B. C., lived in a humble dwelling on the Aventine, attended only by one female slave. That plebeian hill may therefore be regarded as the Helicon of the Roman muses, when they lived in republican fashion without much patronage from the great.

Besides the adoption of the Greek drama, the Romans likewise acquired a taste for Grecian works of art, imbibed, it is said, through the capture of Syracuse by Marcellus, in B. C. 212. That event likewise afforded the first precedent for ruthless spoliation both of sacred and profane objects under the pretext of the right of war. Marcellus placed part of the pictures and statues plundered from the Syracusans in the Temple of HoNos and VIRTUS, which he had founded near the Porta Capena. Nearly all of these had vanished in the time of Livy, a circumstance which that historian regards as a sign of the displeasure of the gods at such practices.3 Tarentum yielded almost as many works of art as Syracuse, although Fabius, its captor, showed more compunction in plundering them. In the war with Philip V. of Macedon, which broke out towards the end of the third century B. C., the Romans, though they professed themselves the friends of

the Greeks, brought away a great many pictures and statues from Eretria.1

But the influence of Greek civilisation was not powerful enough to counteract entirely the barbarous tastes of the Romans, to the majority of whom the gladiatorial combats were more attractive than the scenic beauties of the Grecian muse. That cruel entertainment was first introduced at Rome by M. and D. Brutus, at the funeral of their father in B. c. 264, when the gladiators fought in the Forum Boarium.2 The spectacle, however, was soon transferred to the Forum Romanum; and instead of being confined, as at first, to funerals, was extended to festive entertainments, and at length adopted by the magistrates as one of the most popular methods of celebrating public festivals.

Besides art and literature, another effect of conquest was to introduce at Rome new forms of superstition. The Roman, like most pagans, readily adopted the gods of other nations, as we have already seen from the introduction of Apollo, Esculapius, and other Greek divinities. Frequent showers of stones, a portent often mentioned by the Roman historians, could, according to the Sibylline books, be expiated only by bringing to Rome CYBele, or the Idæan mother. This deity was originally represented by an irregular black stone, reputed to have fallen from heaven; whence probably its efficacy at the present juncture. Attalus, king of Pergamus, an ally of the Romans, engaged to transfer this sacred object into their hands from its shrine in the town of Pessinus in Phrygia; and P. Cornelius Scipio, the youthful brother of Africanus, accounted the worthiest and most virtuous among the Romans, was selected to receive the goddess (B. C. 204). Having proceeded to Ostia in fulfilment of this mission, and received the sacred stone from the priests, he deli

1 Livy, xxxii. 16.

Liv. Epit. xvi.; Valer. Max. ii. 4, § 7.