Romans shows us technical method as separable from the complex aesthetic
result, and therefore is an excellent guide in the art.

The traditional account of the origin of literature at Rome, accepted by
the Romans themselves, is that it was entirely due to contact with Greece.
Many scholars, however, have advanced the opinion that, at an earlier
epoch, Etruria exercised an important influence, and that much of that
artistic, philosophical, and literary impulse, which we commonly ascribe
to Greece, was in its elements, at least, really due to her. Mommsen's
researches have re-established on a firmer basis the superior claims of
Greece. He shows that Etruscan civilisation was itself modelled in its
best features on the Hellenic, that it was essentially weak and
unprogressive and, except in religion (where it held great sway) and in
the sphere of public amusements, unable permanently to impress itself upon
Rome. [4] Thus the literary epoch dates from the conquest of Magna
Graecia. After the fall of Tarentum the Romans were suddenly familiarised
with the chief products of the Hellenic mind; and the first Punic war
which followed, unlike all previous wars, was favourable to the effects of
this introduction. For it was waged far from Roman soil, and so relieved
the people from those daily alarms which are fatal to the calm demanded by
study. Moreover it opened Sicily to their arms, where, more than in any
part of Europe except Greece itself, the treasures of Greek genius were
enshrined. A systematic treatment of Latin literature cannot therefore
begin before Livius Andronicus. The preceding ages, barren as they were of
literary effort, afford little to notice except the progress of the
language. To this subject a short essay has been devoted, as well as to
the elements of literary development which existed in Rome before the
regular literature. There are many signs in tradition and early history of
relations between Greece and Rome; as the decemviral legislation, the
various consultations of the Delphic Oracle, the legends of Pythagoras and