Sallust.—In the simplicity of his style, the directness of his narrative, the entire absence of any didactic tendency, Caesar presents a marked contrast to another prose writer of that age— the historian C. Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (c. 87-36). Like Varro, he survived Cicero by some years, but the tone and spirit in which his works are written assign him to the republican era. He was the first of the purely artistic historians, as distinct from the annalists and the writers of personal memoirs. He imitated the Greek historians in taking particular actions—the Jugurthan War and the Catilinarian Conspiracy—as the subjects of artistic treatment. He wrote also a continuous work, Historiae, treating of the events of the 12 years following the death of Sulla, of which only fragments are preserved. His two extant works are more valuable as first-rate party pamphlets than as trustworthy narratives of facts. His style aims at effectiveness by pregnant expression, sententiousness, archaism. He produces the impression of caring more for the manner of saying a thing than for its truth, and his vehement bias in favour of Caesar colours every thing he writes. Of the other historians, or rather annalists, who belong to this period, such as Q. Claudius Quadrigarius, Q. Vale rius Antias, and C. Licinius Macer, the father of Calvus, we have only fragments remaining.
Varro.—The period also produced learned writers on philology and antiquities, whereof one is entitled to a separate mention. This was M. Terentius Varro, the most learned not only of the Romans but of the Greeks, as he has been called. The list of Varro's writings includes over 7o treatises and more than 600 books dealing with topics of every conceivable kind. His Menip peae Saturae, miscellanies in prose and verse, of which unfor tunately only fragments are left, was a work of singular literary interest.
Lucretius.—Since the Annals of Ennius no great and original poem had appeared. The powerful poetical force which for half a century continued to be the strongest force in literature, and which created masterpieces of art and genius, first revealed itself in the latter part of the Ciceronian age. The conditions which iLatine loqui elegantissime.
enabled it to come to maturity in the person of T. Lucretius Carus (96-55) were entire seclusion from public life and absorp tion in the ideal pleasures of contemplation and artistic pro duction. His De Rerurn Natura stands forth as the greatest philosophical poem in any language. Form and metre are Greek, and the subject is the philosophy of Epicurus; but all that is of deep human and poetical meaning in the poem is his own. Lucretius's death left the poem unfinished, and he did not possess the perfect poetical technique of Virgil. Yet, apart altogether from its independent value, by his speculative power and en thusiasm, by his revelation of the life and spectacle of nature, by the fresh creativeness of his diction and the elevated move ment of his rhythm, Lucretius exercised a more powerful influ ence than any other on the art of his successors, and particularly on Virgil himself.
Catullus.—While the imaginative and emotional side of Roman poetry was so powerfully represented by Lucretius, attention was directed to its artistic side by a younger generation, who moulded themselves in a great degree on Alexandrian models. Such were Valerius Cato, also a distinguished literary critic, and C. Licinius Calvus, an eminent orator. Of this small group of
poets one only has survived, fortunately the man of most genius among them, and probably the least Alexandrian, the bosom f riend of Calvus, C. Valerius Catullus He, too, was a new force in Roman literature. He was a provincial by birth, although early brought into intimate relations with members of the great Roman families. The subjects of his best art are taken immediately from his own life—his loves, his friendships, his travels, his animosities, personal and political. No poet has sur passed him in the power of vitally reproducing the pleasure and pain of the passing hour, not recalled by idealizing reflection as in Horace, nor overlaid with mythological ornaments as in Propertius, but in all the keenness of immediate impression. He also is perhaps the most polished and mordant lampooner in any language. His greatest contribution to poetic art consisted in the perfection which he attained in several lyric metres, and in the ease and grace with which he used the language of familiar inter course to give at once a lifelike and an artistic expression to his feelings. In his life and in his art he was the precursor of those poets who used their genius as the interpreter and minister of pleasure ; but he rises above them in the spirit of personal inde pendence, in his affection for his friends, in his keen enjoyment of natural and simple pleasures, and in his power of giving vital expression to these feelings.