Horace.—The second great poet of the time—Q. Horatius Flaccus or Horace (65-8 B.c.) is both the realist and the idealist of his age. If we want to know the actual lives, manners and ways of thinking of the Romans of the generation succeeding the over throw of the republic it is in the Satires and partially in the Epistles of Horace that we shall find them. If we ask what that time provided to stir the fancy and move the mood of imaginative reflection, it is in the lyrical poems of Horace that we shall find the most varied and trustworthy answer. His literary activity extends over about 3o years and naturally divides itself into three periods, each marked by a distinct character. The first— extending from about 4o to 29—is that of the Epodes and Satires. In the former he imitates the lampooning style of the Greek iambic writers, but the objects of his attack are all, or mostly, imaginary. In the Satires we find realistic pictures of social life, and the conduct and opinions of the world submitted to the standard of good feeling and common sense. The style is natural and familiar. The hexameter no longer, as in Lucilius, moves awkwardly, but easily and as if carelessly, as befits the colloquial tone. The next period is the meridian of his genius, the time of his greatest lyrical inspiration, which he himself associates with the peace and leisure secured to him by his Sabine farm. The life of pleasure which he had lived in his youth comes back to him in the idealizing light of meditative retrospect. He had not only become reconciled to the new order of things, but was moved by his intimate friendship with Maecenas to aid in raising the world to sympathy with the imperial rule through the medium of his lyrical inspiration, as Virgil had through the glory of his epic art. With the completion of the three books of Odes he cast aside for a time the office of the vates, and resumed that of the critical spectator of human life, but in the spirit of a moralist rather than a satirist. In his Epistles he combines the ease of the best epistolary style with the grace and concentration of poetry—the style, as it has been called, of "idealized common sense," that of the urbanus and cultivated man of the world who is also in his hours of inspiration a genuine poet. In the last ten years of his life Horace published his fourth, and poorest, volume of Odes under pressure of the imperial command. But his chief activity is devoted to criticism, vindicating the claims of his own age to literary pre-eminence, and seeking to stimulate the younger writ ers of the day to what he regarded as the manlier forms of poetry and especially to tragedy (Epistles ii. and Ars Poetica).
But the poetry of the latter half of the Augustan age destined to survive did not follow the lines either of lyrical or of dramatic art marked out by Horace. There now came to perfection an other vehicle for poetic expression, the elegy. Here the influence of Alexandria was great ; but the pupils seem to have surpassed their teachers. The greatest masters of this kind of poetry are Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid.
Tibullus.—Of the ill-fated C. Cornelius Gallus, their predeces sor, we have already spoken. Of the three Tibullus (c. 54-19) is the most refined and tender. As the poet of love he gives utter ance to the pensive melancholy rather than to the pleasures associated with it. In his sympathy with the life and beliefs of the country people he shows an affinity both to the idyllic spirit and to the piety of Virgil.
Propertius.—A poet of more strength and more powerful imagi nation, but of less exquisite taste in his art, is Sextus Propertius (c. so–c. 55). His youth was spent in Rome His passion for Cynthia (Hostia, probably a libertine) was the inspiration of his best work; and of her he has left a finished portrait. Sometimes heavy from too much Alexandrian learning, at times macabre, he shows more power of dealing gravely with a great or tragic situ ation than either Tibullus or Ovid, and his diction and rhythm at times approach sublimity.
Ovid.—The most facile and brilliant of the elegiac poets and the least poetical is P. Ovidius Naso or Ovid (43 B.C.—A.D. i8). As an amatory poet he is the poet of pleasure and intrigue rather than of tender sentiment or absorbing passion. Though he treated his subject in relation to himself with more levity and irony than real feeling, yet by his sparkling wit and fancy he created a litera ture of sentiment and adventure adapted to amuse the idle and luxurious society of which the elder Julia was the centre. His power of continuous narrative is best seen in the Metamorphoses, written in hexameters to which he has imparted a rapidity and precision of movement more suited to romantic and picturesque narrative tha.., the weighty verse of Virgil. In his Fasti he suc cessfully adapts to Roman themes the manner of Callimachus's Aitia. In his latest works—the Tristia and Ex Ponto—he imparts the interest of personal confessions to the record of a unique experience. Latin poetry is more rich in the expression of per sonal feeling than of dramatic realism. In Ovid we have both. We know him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weakm3s of his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except perhaps Cicero. For the next 15 cen turies or so. amatory poets and romantic versifiers learned their trade from him. His elegiacs are to Latin poetry what the Popian couplet is to English.
Livy.—The past of Rome had always a peculiar fascination for Roman writers. But it was in the great historical work of T. Livius or Livy (59 B.C.—A.D 17) that the record of the national life received its most systematic exposition. Its execution was the work of a life prolonged through the languor and dissolution fol lowing so soon upon the promise of the new era, during which time the past became glorified by contrast with the disheartening aspect of the present. The value of the work consists not in any power of critical investigation or weighing of historical evidence, but in the intense sympathy of the writer with the national ideal, and the vivid imagination with which under the influence of this sympathy he gives life to the events and personages, the wars and political struggles, of times remote from his own. He makes us feel more than. any one the majesty of the Roman State, of its great magistracies, and of the august council by which its policy was guided. The vast scale on which the work was con ceived and the thoroughness of artistic execution with which the details are finished are characteristically Roman. The prose style of Rome, as a vehicle for the continuous narration of events col oured by a rich and picturesque imagination and instinct with dignified emotion, attained its perfection in Livy.