morality. The Roman character had broken down before the gradual inroads
of an alien luxury and the opening of wide fields of empire to plunder.
It is an age of incredible scandal, of mob law, of _coups d'etat_ and
proscriptions, saved only from utter gloom by the illusory light shed
from the figures of a few great men and by the never absent sense of
freedom and expansion. There still remained a republican liberty of
action, an inspiring possibility of reform, an outlet for personal
ambition, which facilitated the rise of great leaders and writers. And
Rome was now bringing to ripeness fruit sprung from the seed of
Hellenism, a decadent and meretricious Hellenism, but even in its decay
the greatest intellectual force of the world.

Wonderful as was the fruit produced by the graft of Hellenism, it too
contained the seeds of decay. For Rome owed too little to early Greek
epic and to the golden literature of Athens, too much to the later age
when rhetoric had become a knack, and

the love of letters overdone
Had swamped the sacred poets with themselves.[51]

Roman literature came too late: that it reached such heights is a
remarkable tribute to the greatness of Roman genius, even in its
decline. With the exception of the satires of Lucilius and Horace there
was practically no branch of literature that did not owe its inspiration
and form to Greek models. Even the primitive national metre had died
out. Roman literature--more especially poetry--was therefore bound to be
unduly self-conscious and was always in danger of a lack of spontaneity.
That Rome produced great prose writers is not surprising; they had
copious and untouched material to deal with, and prose structure was
naturally less rapidly and less radically affected by Greek influence.