What is most likely is that practitioners of the theater had used Greek texts for dramas in their respective Italic mother tongues well before they arrived in Rome. If this is true, then the Romans did not actually imitate Greek literature directly but adopted from their neighbors the habit of translating Greek literature into an Italic language. The actual cultural transfer of literature, which has until now been ascribed exclusively to the Romans, had, in all probability, already been accomplished by other Italic peoples.