Eric Jacobsen claims rather sweepingly that translation is a Roman invention, and although this may be considered as a piece of critical hyperbole, it does serve as a starting point from which to focus attention on the role and status of translation for the Romans. The views of both Cicero and Horace on translation were to have great influence on successive generations of translators, and both discuss translation within the wider context of the two main functions of the poet: the universal human duty of acquiring and disseminating wisdom and the special art of making and shaping a poem.

The significance of translation in Roman literature has often been used to accuse the Romans of being unable to create imaginative literature in their own right, at least until the first century BC. Stress has been laid on the creative imagination of the Greeks as opposed to the more practical Roman mind, and the Roman exaltation of their Greek models has been seen as evidence of their lack of originality. But the implied value judgement in such a generalization is quite wrong. The Romans perceived themselves as a continuation of their Greek models and Roman literary critics discussed Greek texts without seeing the language of those texts as being in any way an inhibiting factor. The Roman literary system sets up a hierarchy of texts and authors that overrides linguistic boundaries and that system in turn reflects the Roman ideal of the hierarchical yet caring central state based on the true law of Reason. Cicero points out that mind dominates the body as a king rules over his subjects or a father controls his children, but warns that where Reason dominates as a master ruling his slaves, 'it keeps them down and crushes them'. With translation, the ideal SL text is there to be imitated and not to be crushed by the too rigid application of Reason. Cicero nicely expresses this distinction: 'If I render word for word, the result will sound uncouth, and if compelled by necessity I alter anything in the order or wording, I shall seem to have departed from the function of a translator.’

Both Horace and Cicero, in their remarks on translation, make an important distinction between word for word translation and sense for sense (or figure for figure) translation. The underlying principle of enriching their native language and literature through translation leads to a stress on the aesthetic criteria of the TL product rather than on more rigid notions of 'fidelity'. Horace, in his Art of Poetry, warns against overcautious imitation of the source model:

A theme that is familiar can be made your own property so long as you do not waste your time on a hackneyed treatment; nor should you try to render your original word for word like a slavish translator, or in imitating another writer plunge yourself into difficulties from which shame, or the rules you have laid down for yourself, prevent you from extricating yourself.