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For centuries the Romans had achieved considerable political sophistication, and that involved public debates with carefully composed speeches. This chapter discusses the genesis of poetry in Rome. The word carmen was adopted by Augustan poets as the generic term for their own compositions. This meaning of poem and poetry was a specialization imposed on a word whose meaning was originally much wider. The most extensive surviving carmen is a prayer quoted by the elder Cato. Early in the nineteenth century, the great German historian Niebuhr, anxious to give a basis to his reconstruction of the early Roman tradition, revived the theory that legends such as that of Horatius or Verginia had been preserved by oral tradition in great families in the form of heroic lays. The ancient Roman custom was to set a man's titulus over his grave. L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus's consul in 298 BC has epitaphs in Saturnian verse.

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3 - The genesis of poetry in Rome

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3 - The genesis of poetry in Rome

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