Kitap 10
1.7
It is a positive disgrace to be content to owe all our achievement to imitation. For what, I ask again, would have been the result if no one had done more than his predecessors? Livius Andronicus Livius Andronicus, a slave from Tareotum, was the founder of Latin poetry. He translated the Odyssey, and produced the first Latin comedy and tragedy composed in Greek metres (240 B.C.) would mark our supreme achievement in poetry and the annals of the Pontifices The Annales Maximi kept by the Pontifex Maximus, containing the list of the consul and giving a curt summary of the events of each consulate. would be our ne plus ultra in history. We should still be sailing on rafts, and the art of painting would be restricted to tracing a line round a shadow thrown in the sunlight.
1.8
Cast your eyes over the whole of history; you will find that no art has remained just as it was when it was discovered, nor come to a standstill at its very birth, unless indeed we are ready to pass special condensation on our own generation on the ground that it is so barren of invention that no further development is possible; and it is undoubtedly true that no development is possible for those who restrict themselves to imitation.
