Thee, and has looked its last on Thracian wolds?
Sweetest of sweets to me that pastime seems,
When the mind drops her burden, when—the pain
Of travel past—our own cot we regain,
And nestle on the pillow of our dreams!
’Tis this one thought that cheers us as we roam.
Hail, O fair Sirmio! Joy, thy lord is here!
Joy too, ye waters of the Golden Mere!
And ring out, all ye laughter-peals of home![38]
Of the lesser poets of the Ciceronian period little need be said. Their works are lost, but for scattered fragments, except in so far as a few anonymous poems are to be ascribed to this period. The writers of mimes, Decimus Laberius and Publilius Syrus, have already been mentioned (p. 30). Matius, Lævius, Sueius. Gnæus Matius, who appears to belong to this time, wrote mimiambics in the manner of Herondas and other Alexandrian poets—lively reproductions of scenes of ordinary life—in choliambic verse, that is, iambic trimetres, the last foot of which is a spondee; Lævius wrote sportive love-poems (Erotopægnia); and Sueius composed idylls, two of which, the Moretum and the Pulli, are known by name, besides a book of annals. Matius also made a free translation of Homer’s Iliad.