Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/214

 where childenchildren [sic] sub potestate, women in perpetuâ tutelâ, wives sub manu viri, showed how personal independence and character were still in communal leading-strings. While Roman life was socially ruled by the familia and politically ruled by patrician gentes, there was little opportunity for any literature save that of sacred hymns and religious law-books such as the priestly castes of the East have so frequently produced; indeed, if the clanless element at Rome had not been sufficiently strong to modify this social and political system, there is little reason to think that Rome, physically or intellectually, would have risen above the level of these Eastern priest-oligarchies. But, though the conflict between plebeian and patrician could not strike out Athenian intelligence, it saved the "urbs æterna" from such a fate; it struck out that vigorous political life of law-court and assembly in which Roman prose and jurisprudence were developed by a permanent progress remarkably unlike the sudden outburst and decay of Athenian genius.

When the personal relations of Roman citizens under the despotic system of the familia are clearly realised Rome's need of external aid in the development of her literature is manifest. Mommsen has said with truth that the culminating point of Roman development was reached without a literature; and two causes are sufficient to explain this fact—the rigid family system which among full citizens proscribed individualised action and thought, and the deadly enmity between these full citizens and the clanless proletariate, so far as it prevented an enthusiastic political union which might have made itself felt in popular song. If the conflict of plebeian with patrician was needed to break down gentilic exclusiveness, it at the same time retarded and perhaps altogether prevented the rise of a popular Roman literature. Not until the Persian