ost always master in these as well.

[149] The jurisconsult Gaius says, "On provincial soil we can have
possession only; the emperor owns the property."

[150] "Great personages," says Epictetus, "cannot root themselves like
plants; they must be much on the move in obedience to the commands of
the emperor."

[151] A client's task was a hard one; the poet Martial, who had served
thus, groans about it. He had to rise before day, put on his toga which
was an inconvenient and cumbersome garment, and wait a long time in the
ante-room.

[152] Caesar gave also a combat between two troops, each composed of 500
archers, 300 knights (30 knights according to Suetonius; Julius, ch.
39), and 20 elephants.

[153] In an official discourse an orator thanks the emperor Constantine
who had given to the amphitheatre an entire army of barbarian captives,
"to bring about the destruction of these men for the amusement of the
people. What triumph," he cried, "could have been more glorious?"

[154] St. Augustine in his "Confessions" describes the irresistible
attraction of these sanguinary spectacles.

[155] A Phrygian relates in an inscription that he had made seventy-two
voyages from Asia to Italy.

[156] There were some sceptical writers, like Lucian, but they were
isolated.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ARTS AND SCIENCES IN ROME

LETTERS

=Imitation of the Greeks.=--The Romans were not artists naturally.
They became so very late and by imitating the Greeks. From Greece they
took their models of tragedy, comedy, the epic, the ode, the didactic
poem, pastoral poetry, and history. Some writers limited themselves to
the free translation of a Greek original (as Horace in his Odes). All
borrowed from the Greeks at least their ideas and their forms. But
they carried into this work of adaptation their qualities of patience
and vigor, and many came to a true originality.

=The Age of Augustus.=--There is common agreement in regarding the
fifty years of the government of Augustus as the most brilliant period
in Latin literature. It is the time of Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus,
Propertius, and Livy. The emperor, or rather his friend Maecenas,
personally patronized some of these poets, especially Horace and
Vergil, who sang the glory of Augustus and of his time. But this
Augustan Age was preceded and followed by two centuries that perhaps
equalled it. It was in the preceding century,[157] the first before
Christ, that the most original