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LATIN LITERATURE

BY

J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford

A history of Latin Literature was to have been written for this series ofManuals by the late Professor William Sellar. After his death I wasasked, as one of his old pupils, to carry out the work which he hadundertaken; and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the memoryof my dear friend and master. J. W. M.

CONTENTS.

I. THE REPUBLIC.

   I. ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY.
        Andronicus—Naevius—Ennius—Pacuvius—Accius
  II. COMEDY: PLAUTUS AND TERENCE.
III. EARLY PROSE: THE SATURA, OR MIXED MODE.
        The Early Jurists, Annalists, and Orators—Cato—The
        Scipionic Circle—Lucilius
  IV. LUCRETIUS.
   V. LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS.
        Cinna and Calvus—Catullus
  VI. CICERO.
VII. PROSE OF THE CICERONIAN AGE.
        Julius Caesar—The Continuators of the Commentaries—
        Sallust—Nepos—Varro—Publilius Syrus

II. THE AUGUSTAN AGE.

   I. VIRGIL.
  II. HORACE.
III. PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS.
        Augustan Tragedy—Gallus—Propertius—Tibullus
  IV. OVID.
        Sulpicia—Ovid
   V. LIVY.
  VI. THE LESSER AUGUSTANS.
        Manilius—Phaedrus—Velleius—Paterculus—Celsus—
        Vitruvius—The Elder Seneca

III. THE EMPIRE.

   I. THE ROME OF NERO.
        The Younger Seneca—Lucan—Persius—Quintus Curtius
        —Columella—Calpurnius—Petronius
  II. THE SILVER AGE.
        Statius—Valerius Flaccus—Silius Italicus—Martial—The
        Elder Pliny—Quintilian
III. TACITUS.
  IV. JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PLINY, SUETONIUS: DECAY OF CLASSICAL LATIN.
   V. THE ELOCUTIO NOVELLA.
        Fronto—Apuleius—The Pervigilium Veneris
  VI. EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY.
        Minucius Felix—Tertullian—Cyprian—Arnobius—
        Lactantius—Commodianus
VII. THE FOURTH CENTURY.
        Papinian and Ulpian—Sammonicus—Nemesianus—
        Tiberianus—The Augustan History—Ausonius—Claudian
        —Prudentius—Ammianus Marcellinus
VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
        The End of the Ancient World—The Four Periods of
        Latin Literature—The Empire and the Church

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

I.

THE REPUBLIC.

I.

ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY.

To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two hundred years later,the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in thegeneration which passed between the first and second Punic Wars. Thepeace of B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman Republic hadbeen fighting for an assured place in the group of powers whichcontrolled the Mediterranean world. This was now gained; and the pressureof Carthage once removed, Rome was left free to follow the naturalexpansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and peace arecomparative terms; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation ofthe long and exhausting war with Carthage brought, that a leisured classbegan to form itself at Rome, which not only could take a certaininterest in Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it wastheir duty, as representing one of the great civ

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