epitaphs. These compositions, however, do not include all the productions
in verse of the common people of Rome. On temples, altars, bridges,
statues, and house walls, now and then, we find bits of verse. Most of the
extant dedicatory lines are in honor of Hercules, Silvanus, Priapus, and
the Cæsars. Whether the two famous inscriptions to Hercules by the sons of
Vertuleius and by Mummius belong here or not it is hard to say. At all
events, they were probably composed by amateurs, and have a peculiar
interest for us because they belong to the second century B.C., and
therefore stand near the beginning of Latin letters; they show us the
language before it had been perfected and adapted to literary purposes by
an Ennius, a Virgil, and a Horace, and they are written in the old native
Saturnian verse, into which Livius Andronicus, "the Father of Latin
literature," translated the Odyssey. Consequently they show us the
language before it had gained in polish and lost in vigor under the
influence of the Greeks. The second of these two little poems is a
finger-post, in fact, at the parting of the ways for Roman civilization.
It was upon a tablet let into the wall of the temple of Hercules, and
commemorates the triumphant return to Rome of Mummius, the conqueror of
Corinth. It points back to the good old days of Roman contempt for Greek
art, and ignorance of it, for Mummius, in his stupid indifference to the
beautiful monuments of Corinth, made himself the typical Philistine for
all time. It points forward to the new Greco-Roman civilization of Italy,
because the works of art which Mummius is said to have brought back with
him, and the Greeks who probably followed in his train, augmented that
stream of Greek influence which in the next century or two swept through
the peninsula.

In the same primitive metre as these dedications is the Song of the Arval
Brothers, which was found engraved on a stone in the grove of the goddess
Dea Dia, a few miles outside of Rome. This hymn the priests sang at the