All nations own in thee their common land,
And e’en the guilty bless thy conquering hand;
One right for weak, for strong, thy laws create,
And bind the wide world in a world-wide State.[138]
The history of Roman poetry is virtually at an end with Claudian. Avianus. Sedulius. Dracontius. Other poets there were, but none whose works are living and breathing exponents of the ancient Roman life. About 400 A. D. Avianus published forty-two fables of Æsop in elegiac verse; about the middle of the fifth century the presbyter Sedulius wrote several religious poems, in which he shows acquaintance not with Biblical literature alone, but also with the Latin classics; and at the end of the century the African poet Blossius Æmilius Dracontius wrote a didactic poem On the Praise of God, in three books, a number of short epics, chiefly mythological, and several other poems. Dracontius is not unskillful in his versification and his use of language, and his poems prove that rhetorical training was still to be found in Africa. Moreover, his knowledge of the Roman classics is as evident as his knowledge of the Bible. But neither Dracontius nor the other poets whose works are preserved to us from the fifth century could do more than help to pass on to the Middle Ages something of the ancient feeling for beauty of form in literature. And even that had ceased to be understood by the people.
CHAPTER XXI
CONCLUSION
The end of the ancient civilization—Boëthius, about 480-524 A. D.—Later literature no longer Roman—Practical character of Roman literature—The first period—The Augustan period—The period of the empire—Our debt to the Romans.