competition; for while among the Greeks the poets were the most ancient
species of learned men--since Homer and Hesiod lived before the
foundation of Rome, and Archilochus[1] was a contemporary of
Romulus--we received poetry much later. For it was about five hundred
and ten years after the building of Rome before Livius[2] published a
play in the consulship of C. Claudius, the son of Cæcus, and M.
Tuditanus, a year before the birth of Ennius, who was older than
Plautus and Nævius.

II. It was, therefore, late before poets were either known or received
among us; though we find in Cato de Originibus that the guests used, at
their entertainments, to sing the praises of famous men to the sound of
the flute; but a speech of Cato's shows this kind of poetry to have
been in no great esteem, as he censures Marcus Nobilior for carrying
poets with him into his province; for that consul, as we know, carried
Ennius with him into Ætolia. Therefore the less esteem poets were in,
the less were those studies pursued; though even then those who did
display the greatest abilities that way were not very inferior to the
Greeks. Do we imagine that if it had been considered commendable in
Fabius,[3] a man of the highest rank, to paint, we should not have had
many Polycleti and Parrhasii? Honor nourishes art, and glory is the
spur with all to studies; while those studies are always neglected in
every nation which are looked upon disparagingly. The Greeks held skill
in vocal and instrumental music as a very important accomplishment, and
therefore it is recorded of Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the
greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute;
and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an
entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this
reason musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and
whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully instructed