d in Horace,
but lacked the gentle spirit, the genial humor, and the suavity of
expression that make Horatian satire a delight. In Juvenal, writing
under Trajan and Hadrian, the tendency of satire toward consistent
aggressiveness which is present in Horace and further advanced in
Persius, has reached its goal. With Juvenal, satire is a matter of the
lash, of vicious cut and thrust. Juvenal may tell the truth, but the
smiling face of Horatian satire has disappeared. With him the line of
Roman satire is extinct, but the nature of satire for all time to come
is fixed. Juvenal, employing the form of Horace and substituting for his
content of mellow contentment and good humor the bitterness of an
outraged moral sense, is the last Roman and the first modern satirist.

The _Odes_ found more to imitate them, but none to rival. The most
pronounced example of their influence is found in the choruses of the
tragic poet Seneca, where form and substance alike are constantly
reminiscent of Horace. Two comments on the _Odes_ from the second half
of the first century are of even greater eloquence than Seneca's example
as testimonials to the impression made by the Horatian lyric. Petronius,
of Nero's time, speaks of the poet's _curiosa felicitas_, meaning the
gift of arriving, by long and careful search, at the inevitable word or
phrase. Quintilian, writing his treatise on Instruction, sums him up
thus: "Of our lyric poets, Horace is about the only one worth reading;
for he sometimes reaches real heights, and he is at the same time full
of delightfulness and grace, and both in variety of imagery and in words
is most happily daring." To these broad strokes the modern critic has
added little except by way of elaboration.

The _Life of Horace_, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian,
contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character
regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are
beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some
elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a
recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are
spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides,
obscure, which was by no means one of his faults."

The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after
Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste,
the decline of language, the decline of intellectual i