THE PRE-LITERARY BACKGROUND

If blatantly historicizing reconstructions, like that of Livy, are excluded, our knowledge of a literature written in Latin begins abruptly in 240 B.C. with the reported performance of a play (probably a tragedy) by Livius Andronicus. This is curious; for knowledge of the history of the Roman people extends back at least three centuries before that, and, with the help of archaeology, much further. Was there no artistic composition in the Latin language before 240 B.C.? The proposition is incredible. For centuries the Romans had achieved considerable political sophistication, and that involved public debates with carefully composed speeches. Roman religion was a series of highly organized cults, with complicated ritual. Roman law had in the far past been codified, and was continually needing – and receiving – well-considered amendments and additions of great complexity. But of all this, little remains to antedate 240 B.C., and what there is has been carelessly preserved, for ulterior purposes, by late authors (mainly grammarians). Yet it is here that scanty and riddling indications must be sought of the background to the literature which seems suddenly to have sprung full-grown into existence in 240 B.C. This can only be done by a series of different approaches, all of them incomplete and uncertain.

Carmina

The word carmen (etymologically related to canere ‘sing’) was adopted by Augustan poets as the generic term for their own compositions. But this meaning of ‘poem’ and ‘poetry’ was a specialization imposed on a word whose meaning was originally much wider.