In entering upon a general survey of Classical Literature, that of Greece first engages the attention, not only as constituting the oldest literature of Europe, but as the source from which Rome derived all her mental culture. The literature of Rome was distinguished not by originality of talent, but by cultivation of taste. Rome owed to Greece all her genius for poetry, her knowledge of philosophy, her skill in historical composition. To Greece, then, the scholar first turns, in order to seek for the germs of that intellectual excellence, which, when expanded and matured, has influenced and formed the taste of the most civilized nations in Europe.