unjust. Yet it produced a few men of genius, while even in the works of
those who were far removed from genius, the very fact that there is much
refinement of wit, much triumphing over technical difficulties, much
elaborate felicity of expression, makes them always a curious and at
times a remunerative study. But perhaps its greatest claim upon us lies
in the unexpected service that it rendered to the cause of culture. In
the darkness of the Middle Ages when Greek was a hidden mystery to the
western world, Lucan and Statius, Juvenal and Persius, and even the
humble and unknown author of the _Ilias Latina_, did their part in
keeping the lamp alive and illumining the midnight in which lay hidden
the 'budding morrow' of the Renaissance.



CHAPTER II

DRAMA


I

THE STAGE

The drama proper had never flourished at Rome. The causes are not far
to seek. Tragic drama was dead in Greece by the time Greek influence
made itself felt, while the New Comedy which then held the stage was of
too quietly realistic a type and of too refined a wit and humour to be
attractive to the coarser and less intelligent audiences of Rome.
Terence, the _dimidiatus Menander_, as Caesar called him, though he won
himself a great name with the cultured classes by the purity and