h possesses
both erudition and charm.

[6] What figures from the _Comedie Humaine_ of Roman society of the
first century throng the pages of Tacitus--Sejanus, Arruntius, Piso,
Otho, Bassus, Caecina, Tigellinus, Lucanus, Petronius, Seneca, Corbulo,
Burrus, Silius, Drusus, Pallas, and Narcissus; and those tragic women
of the _Annals_--imperious, recklessly daring, beautiful or
loyal--Livia, Messalina, Vipsania, the two Agrippinas, mothers of
Caligula and of Nero, Urgulania, Sabina Poppaea, Epicharis, Lollia
Paulina, Lepida, Calpurnia, Pontia, Servilia, and Acte!

[7] In Richard Greneway's translation, London, 1598, one of the
earliest renderings of Tacitus into English, this passage stands as
follows:

"When I heare of these and the like things, I can give no certaine
judgement, whether the affaires of mortall men are governed by fate and
immutable necessitie; or have their course and change by chaunce and
fortune. For thou shalt finde, that as well those which were accounted
wise in auncient times, as such as were imitators of their sect, do
varie and disagree therein; some do resolutlie beleeve that the gods
have no care of man's beginning or ending; no, not of man at all.
Whereof it proceedeth that the vertuous are tossed and afflicted with
so many miseries; and the vitious (vicious) and bad triumphe with so
great prosperities. Contrarilie, others are of opinion that fate and
destinie may well stand with the course of our actions: yet nothing at
all depend of the planets or stars, but proceede from a connexion of
naturall causes as from their beginning. And these graunt withall,
that we have free choise and election what life to follow; which being
once chosen, we are guided after, by a certain order of causes unto our
end. Neither do they esteeme those things to be good or bad which the
vulgar do so call."

Murphy's frequent looseness of phraseology, false elegance, and futile
commentary, are nowhere more conspicuous than in his version of the
sixth book of the Annals and of this paragraph in particular.

[8] Life, Love, Fame, and Death are themes of Petrarch's _Triumphs_.
The same profound sense of the transiency of things, which meets us in
the studied pages of his confessional--the Latin treatise _De Contemptu
Mundi_--pervades these exquisite poems. Du Bellay's _Antiquities_,
which Spenser's translation under the title of _The Ruines of Rome_ has
made familiar, were written after a visit to Rome in atten