Fourth Period : The Silver Age, A.D. 17 to 130..—For more than a century after the death of Augustus, Rome, though drawing from the provinces, remains the centre of the literary movement. The Silver Age, as it is called, is alternately over praised and undervalued, as taste swings from one extreme to another. In many respects it resembled the Alexandrian period in Greek literature, more especially in its verse. Here, alongside of great virtuosity and improvements in technical skill, we find a lack of real inspiration, a merely imitative continuation of old forms side by side with a restless search for new ones. In prose the story would be much the same were it not for the appearance of one very great writer, Tacitus. An interesting point is that enough of the work of this period survives to enable us clearly to trace schools and tendencies. We may say, as regards the former, that there was a Ciceronian and an anti-Ciceronian school in prose, a Virgilian school and one which, if not exactly anti Virgilian, was at least decidedly Ovidian, in verse. As in Greek oratory Atticism and Asianism strove with one another, so in Latin literature we may distinguish very clearly an anti-classical and a classicizing or archaizing school.
The Senecas, Lucan.—Under Tiberius and Caligula, literature did not flourish greatly. Apart from Manilius (see p. 752) those principates have left us nothing save the fables of Phaedrus, slight, graceful. and not especially poetical versifyings of the tra ditional Aesopic apologues by a Macedonian freedman with a mastery of Latin very remarkable in a foreigner, the historical compendium of Velleius Paterculus, a work which expands, when it reaches Tiberius, into a rhetorical panegyric of his military and political career, and one or two trifles like the collection of anec dotes by Valerius Maximus. We have no reason to suppose that the lost literature of the period included any works of first-rate importance. Cremutius Cordus, for instance, wrote a history rabidly republican in tone, which was made a ground for a charge of treason against him in A.D. 25. The public burning of his work, and his own suicide, increased the popularity of his writings enor mously, as might have been expected (Tacitus, Annal. iv., but there is no evidence that they were in themselves remarkable for style or content. The emperor Claudius was himself an author, if a dull and pedantic one, and had a genuine love of learning; under him the Senecas became prominent, particularly the young er, Seneca Philosophus, as he is called to distinguish him from his father, Seneca Rhetor, who has left us a most interesting collection of literary gossip and specimens of compositions then admired, the so-called Controversiae and Suasoriae. This was pub lished sometime between A.D. 34 and 41, and shows us, even in
the curtailed form in which we have it, how the taste of the day was formed and training in style given. Rhetorical instruction had long been in vogue, and to make speeches on imaginary topics, the more absurd and paradoxical the better, was the standard method of learning. As political oratory ceased to be necessary, and the great majority of forensic speeches (trials bef ore the Senate were an exception at times) were perforce short and busi nesslike, these schoolboy themes were cultivated for their own sake, and there were men who grew grey in declaiming, as it was called, but never made a real speech in their lives. This declama tion, being wholly artificial, was highly spiced. Cleverly-turned phrases (sententuze), ingenious setting of the facts in a particular light (colores), and all manner of tricks of language (figurae, aXili.tara) were its outstanding characteristics. This not only gov erned the prose style of that age, it pervaded its verse also. Here Ovid was a pioneer, for his works are full of clever declamations in verse, of which the letter of Phaedra in the Heroides and the debate of Ajax and Ulysses in the Metamorphoses may serve as specimens.
The elder Seneca was a great admirer of Cicero; his son, whether consciously or not, headed the anti-Ciceronian school. It is highly likely that political ideals had something to do with this; so outstanding a champion of the dying Republic was not likely to be persona grata with the Caesars, and at least one prominent Augustan writer, the historian Pollio had vehemently attacked him. But the altered literary tastes induced by too ex clusive a fondness for declamation had still more weight. The younger Seneca (L. Annaeus Seneca, about 4 B.C.—A.D. 65) was banished for a while under Claudius by Messalina's influence but recalled by her successor Agrippina, who made him the tutor of her young son Nero. From that day till his death in the con spiracy of Piso against his former pupil, he was almost literary dictator of Rome. He deserted the stately Ciceronian period for short, elaborately rhythmical, balanced clauses in the Asianic manner. His productions for the most part were essays and open letters on philosophic themes, and he is perhaps the most insin cere writer on ethics who ever lived. It is difficult to read without impatience the praises of poverty and simplicity from the richest subject of the Empire, and quite impossible not to be nauseated by the abject flattery of Claudius which, the moment that emperor was dead, gave place to the clever, but mean pasquinade against his memory known as the Apocolocyntosis. However, he is highly moral in tone, and later ages valued him for his morality as his own admired him for his style.