The Origin of Latin Literature

It seems that by around 700 BC, both the Greeks and the Romans had alphabets. But whereas in Greece written literature began to flourish very soon after the adoption of an alphabet, we know of very little writing in Latin from before 300 BC -- so little that it is is tempting to see these oldest examples of written Latin as freak occurrences rather than as parts of a pattern: A few words scratched here and there into a stone or a piece of pottery or jewelry.

Then, after 300 BC, Latin writing suddenly confronts us in a torrent, in tomb inscriptions, on public signs, on coins. And, all of a sudden, in the 3rd century and the early second, Latin literature is there: Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, and many others of their time are either preserved in whole works or fragments, or their memory is preserved by the praise of later authors.

So why, after having possessed knowledge of an alphabet for so many centuries, did the Romans wait so long before beginning to make what we would consider customary use of it?

Perhaps that is the wrong question, an anachronistic question, assuming that people from an earlier time would think of things a certain way merely because that's the way we think of them. Perhaps the question is, how, why and when did it first occur to someone to make such use of written Latin language? Perhaps the Romans were confronted with written Greek and written Etruscan, and thought of writing as something which belonged to those languages.

Much the same way that, many centuries later in Western Europe, writing was thought of as something which was done in Latin -- and, far away, by exotic, legendary people, in incomprehensible Greek, and perhaps, even farther away than that, in one or two other languages -- and not in vernaculars, until it occurred to someone that it could also be done in French, and German, and Castilian. The earlier writing in Anglo-Saxon, and, in one, isolated instance, in Gothic, could be seen from this vantage as aberrations, like the isolated instances of written Latin between 700 and 300 BC.

Perhaps more appropriate questions are: why did it occur to the Greeks so early after being introduced to the alphabet, to make such vigorous and extensive use of it? And why, around 300 BC, did it suddenly occur to the Romans to begin writing in Latin? Perhaps we should think of these beginnings not as matter of fact occurrences to be taken for granted, but as extraordinary, brilliant mental breakthroughs.

Was this sudden change in Roman behavior part of a broader reaction to the tremendously disruptive deeds of Alexander the Great and his regional successors?

In any case, it seems quite clear that even after the Romans did begin to write actual literature in Latin, they thought of writing as something Greek. Their imitation of Greek genres, motives, plots, myths and so forth makes this obvious.

Another interesting question is -- perhaps scholars have already extensively explored it, I don't know -- for how long before 300 BC, and in what numbers, had Romans been reading Greek literature?