In addition to the poets of whom we have already treated as writing under the Julian Dynasty there must have been many others of whom chance or their own insignificance has deprived us. But few names have survived,[405] and only two of these lost poets merit mention here, the erotic poet Lentulus Gaetulicus and the lyric writer Caesius Bassus.
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus was consul in 26 A.D.,[406] and for ten years was legatus in Upper Germany, where his combination of firmness and clemency won him great popularity.[407] He conspired against Caligula while holding this command, and was put to death.[408] Pliny the younger speaks of him as the writer of sportive and lascivious erotic verse, and Martial writes of him in very similar terms.[409] His mistress was named Caesennia, and was herself a poetess.[410] It is possible that the poems in the Greek Anthology under the title [Greek: Gaitoulikou][411] may be from his pen, but the only fragment of his Latin poems which survives is from a work in hexameters, and describes the geographical situation of Britain.[412]
More important is the lyric poet Caesius Bassus,[413] whose loss is the more to be regretted because of the very scanty remains of Roman lyric verse that have survived to modern times. Statius attempted with but indifferent success to imitate the Sapphics and Alcaics of Horace, while the plays of Seneca provide a considerable quantity of lyric choruses of varying degrees of merit. But of lyric writers pure and simple there is scarcely a trace. That they existed we know from Quintilian. If we may trust him, certain of his contemporaries[414] attained to considerable distinction in this branch of poetry—that is to say, they surpassed all Roman lyric poets subsequent to Horace. But when all is said, it is scarcely possible to go beyond Quintilian's emphatic statement, that of Roman lyricists Horace alone repays reading. If any other name deserves mention it is that of Caesius Bassus, but he is inferior to Quintilian's own contemporaries. Caesius Bassus is best known to us as the editor of the satires of Persius. The sixth satire is actually addressed to him:
admovit iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino? iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae? mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senex.[415]
Has winter made you move yet to your Sabine fireside, dear Bassus? Are your lyre and its strings and the austere quill that runs over them yet in force? Marvellous artist as you are at setting to music the primitive antiquities of our language, the manly utterance of the Latian harp, and then showing yourself excellent in your old age at wakening young loves and frolicking over the chords with a virtuous touch. CONINGTON.
The only information yielded by this passage is that Bassus had a Sabine villa, that he was already advanced in years, that he affected 'the simple and manly versification of antiquity', and that he dealt also with erotic themes. But few other facts are known to us. He wrote a treatise on metre—a portion of which has been preserved to the present day,[416] and he perished at his Campanian villa in 79 A.D., during the great eruption of Vesuvius.[417] The fragments of verse enshrined in his metrical treatise suggest that he wrote in a large variety of metres,[418] but they may be no more than examples invented solely to illustrate metres unfamiliar in Latin. The one quotation that is explicitly made from his lyrical poems is, curiously enough, a hexameter line. As to his literary merits or defects, it is now impossible even to guess.