better than at any other period of Roman history, and this knowledge we owe to Martial.
3. But it was under Nerva and Trajan that the greatest and most truly representative works of the empire were written. The Annals and Histories of Cornelius Tacitus (54–119), with the supplementary Life of Agricola and the Period of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian. Germania, and the Satires of D. Iunius Iuvenalis or Juvenal (c. 47–130), sum up for posterity the moral experience of the Roman world from the accession of Tiberius to the death of Domitian. The generous scorn and pathos of the historian acting on extraordinary gifts of imaginative insight and characterization, and the fierce indignation of the satirist finding its vent in exaggerating realism, doubtless to some extent warped their impressions; nevertheless their works are the last voices expressive of the freedom and manly virtue of the ancient world. In them alone among the writers of the empire the spirit of the Roman republic seems to revive. The Letters of C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus or Pliny the Younger (61-c. 115), though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their representation.
With the death of Juvenal, the most important part of whose activity falls in the reign of Trajan, Latin literature as an original and national expression of the experience, character, and sentiment of the Roman state and empire, and as one of the great literatures of the world, may be considered closed.
Later Writers.
What remains to describe is little but death and decay. Poetry died first; the paucity of writings in verse is matched by their insignificance. For two centuries after Juvenal there are no names but those of Q. Serenus Sammonicus, with his pharmacopoeia in verse (c. 225), and M. Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus, who wrote a few feeble eclogues and (283) a dull piece on the training of dogs for the chase. Towards the middle of the 4th century we have Decimus Magnus Ausonius, a professor of Bordeaux and afterwards consul (379), whose style is as little like that of classical poetry as is his prosody. His Mosella, a detailed description of the river Moselle, is the least unattractive of his works. A little better is his contemporary, Rufius Festus Avienus, who made some free translations of astronomical and geographical poems in Greek. A generation later, in what might be called the expiring effort of Latin poetry, appeared two writers of much greater merit. The first is Claudius Claudianus (c. 400), a native of Alexandria and the court poet of the emperor Honorius and his minister Stilicho. Claudian Claudian. may be properly styled the last of the poets of Rome. He breathes the old national spirit, and his mastery of classical idiom and versification is for his age extraordinary. Something of the same may be seen in Rutilius Namatianus, a Gaul by birth, who wrote in 416 a description of his voyage from the capital to his native land, which contains the most glowing eulogy of Rome ever penned by an ancient hand. Of the Christian “poets” only Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (c. 348–410) need be mentioned. He was well read in the ancient literature; but the task of embodying the Christian spirit in the classical form was one far beyond his powers.
The vitality of the prose literature was not much greater though its complete extinction was from the nature of the case impossible. The most important writer in the age succeeding Juvenal was the biographer C. Suetonius Tranquillus Suetonius. (c. 75–160), whose work is more valuable for its matter than its manner. His style is simple and direct, but has hardly any other merit. A little later the rise of M. Cornelius Fronto (c. 100–175), a native of Cirta, marks the beginning of an African influence. Fronto, a distinguished orator and intimate friend of the emperor M. Aurelius, broke away from the traditional Latin of the Silver and Golden ages, and took as his models the pre-classical authors. The reaction was short-lived; but the same affectation of antiquity is seen in the writings of Apuleius, also an African, who lived a little later than Fronto and was a man of much greater natural parts. In his Metamorphoses, Apuleius. which were based upon a Greek original, he takes the wonderful story of the adventures of Lucius of Madaura, and interweaves the famous legend of Cupid and Psyche. His bizarre and mystical style has a strange fascination for the reader; but there is nothing Roman or Italian about it. Two epitomists of previous histories may be mentioned: Justinus (of uncertain date) who abridged the history of Pompeius Trogus, an Augustan writer; and P. Annius Florus, who wrote in the reign of Hadrian a rhetorical sketch based upon Livy. The Historia Augusta, which includes the lives of the emperors from Hadrian to Numerianus (117–284), is the work of six writers, four of whom wrote under Diocletian and two under Constantine. It is a collection of personal memoirs of little historical importance, and marked by puerility and poverty of style. Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330–400) had a higher conception of the historian’s function. His narrative of the years 353–378 (all that now remains) is honest and straightforward, but his diction is awkward and obscure. The last pagan prose writer who need be mentioned is Q. Aurelius Symmachus (c. 350–410), the author of some speeches and a collection of letters. All the art of his ornate and courtly periods cannot disguise the fact that there was nothing now for paganism to say.
It is in Christian writers alone that we find the vigour of life. The earliest work of Christian apologetics is the Octavius or Minucius Felix, a contemporary of Fronto. It is written in pure Latin and is strongly tinged by classical Christian writers. influences. Quite different is the work of “the fierce Tertullian,” Q. Septimius Florens Tertullianus (c. 150–230), a native of Carthage, the most vigorous of the Latin champions of the new faith. His style shows the African revolt of which we have already spoken, and in its medley of archaisms, Graecisms and Hebraisms reveals the strength of the disintegrating forces at work upon the Latin language. A more commanding figure is that of Aurelius Augustinus or St Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo, who for comprehensiveness and dialectical power stands out in the same way as Hieronymus or St Jerome (c. 331 or 340–420), a native of Stridon in Dalmatia, does for many-sided learning and scholarship.
The decline of literature proper was attended by an increased output of grammatical and critical studies. From the time of L. Aelius Stilo Praeconinus, who was the teacher of Varro and Cicero, much interest had been taken in Grammarians. literary and linguistic problems at Rome. Varro under the republic, and M. Verrius Flaccus in the Augustan age, had busied themselves with lexicography and etymology. The grammarian M. Valerius Probus (c. A.D. 60) was the first critical editor of Latin texts. In the next century we have Velius Longus’s treatise De Orthographia, and then a much more important work, the Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius, and (c. 200) a treatise in verse by Terentianus, an African, upon Latin pronunciation, prosody and metre. Somewhat later are the commentators on Terence and Horace, Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio. The tradition was continued in the 4th century by Nonius Marcellus and C. Marius Victorinus, both Africans; Aelius Donatus, the grammarian and commentator on Terence and Virgil, Flavius Sosipater Charisius and Diomedes, and Servius, the author of a valuable commentary on Virgil. Ambrosius Macrobius Theodosius (c. 400) wrote a treatise on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and seven books of miscellanies (Saturnalia); and Martianus Capella (c. 430), a native of Africa, published a compendium of the seven liberal arts, written in a mixture of prose and verse, with some literary pretensions. The last grammarian who need be named is the most widely known of all, the celebrated Priscianus, who published his text-book at Constantinople probably in the middle of the 5th century.
In jurisprudence, which may be regarded as one of the outlying regions of literature, Roman genius had had some of its greatest triumphs, and, if we take account of the “codes,” was active to the end. The most distinguished of the early jurists (whose
