r on this globe. His
Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars are models of pure and
perspicuous prose, and his other work, voluminous but now lost, was
doubtless of equal merit. At the present time, passages of Caesar's
Gallic War are of especial interest on account of their allusions to
battles against those perpetual enemies of civilisation, the Germans.
How familiar, for instance, do we find the following passage from Book
Six, describing German notions of honour:

"Latrocinia nullam habent infamiam, quae extra fines cujusque civitatis
fiunt, atque ea juventutis exercendae ac desidiae minuendae causa fieri
praedicant!"

The next generation of authors fall within what has been termed the
"Augustan Age," the period during which Octavianus, having become
Emperor, encouraged letters to a degree hitherto unknown; not only
personally, but through his famous minister Maecenas (73-8 B. C.). The
literature of this period is immortal through the genius of Virgil,
Horace, and Ovid, and has made the name "Augustan" an universal synonyme
for classic elegance and urbanity. Thus in our own literary history,
Queen Anne's reign is known as the "Augustan Age" on account of the
brilliant wits and poets then at their zenith. Maecenas, whose name must
ever typify the ideal of munificent literary patronage, was himself a
scholar and poet, as was indeed Augustus. Both, however, are
overshadowed by the titanic geniuses who gathered around them.

Succeeding the Golden Age, and extending down to the time of the
Antonines, is the so-called "Silver Age" of Latin literature, in which
are included several writers of the highest genius, despite a general
decadence and artificiality of style. In the reign of Tiberius we note
the annalists C. Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus, the medical
writer, A. Cornelius Celsus, and the fabulist Phaedrus, the latter a
freedman from Thrace who imitated his more celebrated predecessor AEsop.

The satirist, A. Persius Flaccus (34-62 A. D.), is the first eminent
poet to appear after the death of Ovid. Born at Volaterrae of an
equestrian family, carefully reared by his gifted mother, and educated
at Rome by the Stoic philosopher Cornutus, he became famous not only as
a moralist of the greatest power and urbanity, but as one whose life
accorded perfectly with his precepts; a character of unblemished virtue
and delicacy in an age of unprecedented evil. His work, which attacked
only the less repulsive foll