Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura/4455
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of Corsicam is not cut off). These epitaphs present a peculiarity which characterizes all popular poetry, and is strikingly conspicuous above all in that of modern Greece. Whole lines and thoughts become elements of the poetical language, just like single words: they pass from older pieces in general circulation into new compositions; and, even where the poet is not equal to a great subject, give them a poetical colouring and keeping. So Cicero read on the tomb of Calatinus: hunc plurimae consentiunt gentes populi primarium fuisse virum: (not. 635. Cicero, de Senectute, 17) we read on that of L. Scipio the son of Barbatus: hunc unum plurimi consentiunt R(omani) bonorum optumum fuisse virum.
The poems out of which what we call the history of the Roman Kings was resolved into a prose narrative, were different from the nenia in form, and of great extent; consisting partly of lays united into a uniform whole, partly of such as were detached and without any necessary connexion. The history of Romulus is an epopee by itself: on Numa there can only have been short lays. Tullus, the story of the Horatii, and of the destruction of Alba, form an epic whole, like the poem on Romulus: indeed here Livy has preserved a fragment of the poem entire, in the lyrical numbers of the old Roman verse (not. 636. The verses of the horrendum carmen, I. 26.
Duúmviri pérduelliónem júdicent.
Si a duúmviris provocárit,
Provocátióne certáto:
Si víncent, caput óbnúbito: