He was fortunate, too, in his fame, for he was a favorite
when he lived no less than after his death. Before the end of his own
generation his works were introduced as text-books into Roman schools;
during the Middle Age he was the great poet whom it was heresy not to
admire; Dante owned him as a master and a model; and the people finally
embalmed him in their folk-lore as a mysterious conjurer and
necromancer. His _?neid_, written in imitation of the great Greek
poem on the fall of Troy, is a patriotic epic, tracing the wanderings,
the struggles, and the death of ?neas, and vaunting the glories of Rome
and the greatness of the royal house of the emperor.
Thus, through long ages the Roman wrote, and thus he was furnished with
books to read. For centuries he had no literature excepting those rude
ballads in which the books of all countries have begun, and all trace
of them has passed away. When at last, after the conquest of the Greek
cities in Southern Italy, the Tarentine Andronicus began to imitate the
epics of his native language in that of his adoption, the progress was
still quite slow among a people who argued with the sword and saw
little to interest them in the fruit of the brain. As the republic
totters to its fall, however, the cultivators of this field increase,
and we must suppose that readers also were multiplied.
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