One of the inescapable features of Latin literature is that almost every author, in almost everything he writes, acknowledges his antecedents, his predecessors – in a word, the tradition in which he was bred. This phenomenon, for which the technical terms are imitatio or (in Greek) mimēsis, is not peculiar to Latin; the statement I have just made about Latin writers would also be true very generally of Greek. In fact, the relationship between the Latin genres and their Greek exemplars may best be seen as a special case of a general Greco-Roman acceptance of imitation as an essential element in all literary composition. Of course, the business of translation was difficult, and victory over the patrii sermonis egestas a notable thing. The boast of having given Rome her own Aeolium or Ascraeum carmen was made with justifiable pride. But we must not make too much of this. The exemplaria Graeca of Horace (Ars poetica 268–9) were to be thumbed night and day not because they were Greek but because they were good. Horace (ibid. i32ff.) warns the would-be poet against slavish copying of tradition: