family, the brilliant general and idol of the people, is suddenly stricken
with a mortal illness. The crowds throng the streets to hear the latest
news from the sick-chamber of their hero. Suddenly the rumor flies through
the streets that the crisis is past, that Germanicus will live, and the
crowds surge through the public squares chanting:

"Saved now is Rome,
Saved too the land,
Saved our Germanicus."[82]





The Origin of the Realistic Romance among the Romans



One of the most fascinating and tantalizing problems of literary history
concerns the origin of prose fiction among the Romans. We can trace the
growth of the epic from its infancy in the third century before Christ as
it develops in strength in the poems of Nævius, Ennius, and Cicero until
it reaches its full stature in the _Æneid_, and then we can see the
decline of its vigor in the _Pharsalia_, the _Punica_, the _Thebais_, and
_Achilleis_, until it practically dies a natural death in the mythological
and historical poems of Claudian. The way also in which tragedy, comedy,
lyric poetry, history, biography, and the other types of literature in
prose and verse came into existence and developed among the Romans can be
followed with reasonable success. But the origin and early history of the
novel is involved in obscurity. The great realistic romance of Petronius