A History of Roman Literature | Page 3

exile--Relations with Nero--His death--Is he a Stoic?--Gradual convergence of the different schools of thought--Seneca a teacher more than anything else--His conception of philosophy--Supposed connection with Christianity--Estimate of his character and style.

CHAPTER IV.
_The Reigns of Caligula, Claudius, and Nero._
3. Other Prose Writers.
Domitius Corbulo--Quintus Curtius--Columella--Pomponius Mela-- Valerius Protius--Petronius Arbiter--Account of his extant fragments.
APPENDIX.--Note I. The Testamentum Porcelli, " II. On the MS. of Petronius.

CHAPTER V.
The Reigns of the Flavian Emperors (69-96 A.D.).
1. Prose Writers.
A new literary epoch--Marked by common characteristics--Decay of national genius--Pliny the elder--Account of his death translated from the younger Pliny--His studious habits--The _Natural History_--Its character and value--Quintilian--Account of his book _de Institutione Oratoria_-- Frontinus--A valuable and accurate writer--Grammatical studies.
APPENDIX.--Quintilian's Criticism on the Roman Authors.

CHAPTER VI.
_The Reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian_ (69-96 A.D.).
2. Poets.
Reduced scope of poetry--Poetry the most dependent on external conditions of any form of written literature--Valerius Flaccus--Silius--His death as described by Pliny--His poem--The elder Statius--Statius--An extempore poet--His public recitations--The _Silvae_--The Thebaid and Achilleid --His similes--Arruntius Stella--Martial--His death as recounted by Pliny --The epigram--Other poets.
APPENDIX.--On the Similes of Virgil, Lucan, and Statius.

CHAPTER VII.
The Reigns of Nerva and Trajan (96-117 A.D.).
Pliny the younger--His oratory--His correspondence--Letter to Trajan --Velius Longus--Hyginus--Balbus--Flaccus--Juvenal--His life--A finished declaimer--His character--His political views--Style--Tacitus--Dialogue on eloquence--_Agricola_--_Germania_--_Histories_--Annals_ --Intended work on Augustus's reign--Style.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines (117-180 A.D.).
Era of African Latinity--Differs from the Silver Age--Hadrian's poetry --Suetonius--His life--List of writings--Lives of the Caesars--His account of Nero's death--Florus--Salvius Julianus and Sextus Pomponius--Fronto-- His relations with Aurelius--List of his works--Gellius--Gaius--Poems of the period--_Pervigilium Veneris_--Apuleius--_De Magia_--Metamorphoses or Golden Ass--Cupid and Psyche--His philosophical works.

CHAPTER IX.
_State of Philosophical and Religious Thought during the Period of the Antonines--Conclusion_.
Greek eloquence revives in the Sophists--Itinerant rhetors--Cynic preachers of virtue--The better class of popular philosophers--Dio Chrysostom--Union of philosophy and rhetoric--Greek now the language of general literature--Reconciliation of philosophy with religion--The Platonist school--Apuleius--Doctrine of daemons--Decline of thought-- General review of the main features of Roman literature—Conclusion.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
LIST OF EDITIONS RECOMMENDED
QUESTIONS OR SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS, &c.

INTRODUCTION.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century, and during nearly the whole of the eighteenth, the literature of Rome exercised an imperial sway over European taste. Pope thought fit to assume an apologetic tone when he clothed Homer in an English dress, and reminded the world that, as compared with Virgil, the Greek poet had at least the merit of coming first. His own mind was of an emphatically Latin order. The great poets of his day mostly based their art on the canons recognised by Horace. And when poetry was thus affected, it was natural that philosophy, history, and criticism should yield to the same influence. A rhetorical form, a satirical spirit, and an appeal to common sense as supreme judge, stamp most of the writers of western Europe as so far pupils of Horace, Cicero, and Tacitus. At present the tide has turned. We are living in a period of strong reaction. The nineteenth century not only differs from the eighteenth, but in all fundamental questions is opposed to it. Its products have been strikingly original. In art, poetry, science, the spread of culture, and the investigation of the basis of truth, it yields to no other epoch of equal length in the history of modern times. If we go to either of the nations of antiquity to seek for an animating impulse, it will not be Rome but Greece that will immediately suggest itself to us. Greek ideas of aesthetic beauty, and Greek freedom of abstract thought, are being disseminated in the world with unexampled rapidity. Rome, and her soberer, less original, and less stimulating literature, find no place for influence. The readiness with which the leading nations drink from the well of Greek genius points to a special adaptation between the two. Epochs of upheaval, when thought is rife, progress rapid, and tradition, political or religious, boldly examined, turn, as if by necessity, to ancient Greece for inspiration. The Church of the second and third centuries, when Christian thought claimed and won its place among the intellectual revolutions of the world, did not disdain the analogies of Greek philosophy. The Renaissance owed its rise, and the Reformation much of its fertility, to the study of Greek. And the sea of intellectual activity which now surges round us moves ceaselessly about questions which society has not asked itself since Greece started them more than twenty centuries age. On the other hand, periods of order, when government is strong and progress restrained, recognise their prototypes in the civilisation of Rome, and their exponents in her literature. Such was the time of the Church's greatest power: such was also that of the fully developed monarchy in France, and of aristocratic ascendancy in England. Thus the two literatures wield alternate influence; the one on the side of liberty, the other on the side of government; the one as urging restless