A contemporary of Cesar. but of very inferior importance, was I). Laberius (me. 105-43), a 1Zoman egnes, who raised the mimes• or farce comedy, to a literary level. We have no more than the titles of his plays. A younger writer in the same line of work. Publilius Syrtis. of Anti och (?). was extremely popular for more than a century. The name of Lucretius is among, the most noted of this epoch; yet though a member of one of iZoine's noblest families and a unique poetic and philosophic genius. we know but little of his personal history. T. Lucretius Carus (e.99 33 n.c.) was the author of a profound didactic poem. De Burual Noturo, in six books, which is most fortunately preserved, and forms our best authority on the philosophic system of the Epi cureans. Lucretius himself explains his purpose in writing it; namely, to free the mind from the fear of the gods aml of death, and to combat the many forms of prevalent superstition, by a ra tional contemplation of nature. As poetry, the work is of a very high order. though varying in quality, for Lucretius died before it was per fected.
Cornelius Nepos (c.99-24 R.c.I was, like his friend Attieus, a man of letters who took no part in the political turmoils of the thne. While he wrote several works of a varied (Ammeter. he is known to us only by the surviving portion of his extensive biographical work De riris trams, in which separate sections (or 'books') were devoted to lives of illustrious Greeks and Romans. grouped according to profession, etc.
In the literary life of Rome at this time there was a group of poets bound together by friend ship and by a community of tastes and studies, and all thoroughly steeped in the Greek poetry of the Alexandrian School. (See GREEK LITERA TURE.) The greatest of these—and indeed one of the greatest in all Latin literature—was C. Valerius Catulhis (87-e.54 n.c.). a native of Ve rona. where his father lived, and often enter tained .Julius Caesar at his house. As a young man lie came to Rome. and being of good family. gifted. and of independent means, quickly gained access to the most fashionable society of the capital. here he formed the acquaintance of the most prominent persons of the time. A man of strong emotional instincts, of violent love and hate. his poems are pervaded with his own per sonality. In love, friendship and polities he shows himself full of zeal and enthusiasm or governed by the most venomous dislike,. He whs the last great poet of the free Republic. and certainly one of the greatest lyric geniuses that the world has produced.
Besides his shorter lyrics, Catullus wrote also longer poems of quite another character, a "Song to Diana:" two cpithalamia, or marriage-songs, one mythological in character, treating of the Marriage of PH, Ifs and Thetis, the other in honor of the actual marriage of Manlius and Vinia: wild study of the Phrygian Atys myth in the gall iambic metre: a translation of Callimachu,'s Coma Bereniets: and others. The poems in which be sings of his sorrow for the death of his brother, whose tomb he visited in the Troad, of his happy journey in Asia Minor. and of his joyous
return to his beloved Sirloin, with the eulogy of his yacht. PhasOns, are full of subtle charm.
The first Roman to treat historieal writing as an art. and thns to distinguish it from personal memoirs and annals, was C. Sallustius Crispus, generally called Sallnst in English (n.c. S6-34). He had played an active part in publie life, and thus brought to his work the experience of a man who had helped to make history. as well as to write it. After a somewhat checkered career he settled down into private life on his large estate just outside the walls of Rome, to enjoy the wealth he had acquired while proconsul in Africa and to devote himself to literary pur suits. Ile took Thncydides as his model, and followed him closely both in arrangement and style. His works were: (1) Btlinin Cat Ulna', an essay on the famous conspiracy of Caliline in 03; (2) 11(1lam lugurthinmn, an essay on the war with Jugurtha, king of Numidia, who was conquered by Marius: (3) Ilistoriw, in five books, an account of events from u.c. 78 to n.c. 67. The last. is preserved only in fragments.
B. TnE USTA N PERIOD (B.C. 4:1-A.D. The overthrow of Antonius at the battle of Actium (me. 31) and the gradual establish ment of the Empire mark a new order of things in Roman literature. The impulse communi cated to poetry in the last days of the Re public was carried, it is true, without inter ruption into the succeeding- age. The poems of are separated by only a few years from the Eclogues of Vergil, but a very different spirit pervades them. The frankness and fear lessness of the earlier poet, which are in har mony with the political activity and freedom of the time in which he wrote, have given place in the later one to a guarded restraint which seeks the approval of a patron or a monarch. In fact, the position of the aristocratic class to which literature had for generations owed its support and encouragement was now ehanged. No longer free to share in the conduct of national affairs, this class found its chief interests in the affairs of 'society' life, and expended its energies amid the enervating influences of the Court. The state of things had its' immediateeffect npon litera ture. Oratory lost its most stirring themes and degenerated into mere declamation: history. fear ing to deal unreservedly with the present, fell hack upon an artistic elaboration of the past; while poetry, though still on the upward path, tended to become disproportionately erotic. This period unfolds a list of brilliant writers whose works are conspicuous above those of other pe riods for their beauty of finish and artistic skill, and for a breadth of sympathy which brings them into genuine touch with human life the world over. It saw the perfection of the Latin hexam eter verse in the national epic of Vergil. of lyric poetry at the hands of llorace, and of elegiac verse in the works of Propertius, and Ovid. In the domain of prose, Livv did for the story of Rome what Vergil did in verse for the myth of its origin.