Blest, who, when scorned, can change his passing heat;
The pleasures of translated bonds are sweet.
I can no other love; nor hence depart;
For Cynthia, first and last, is mistress of my heart.[74]
In an age of great poets many lesser poets are sure to be found. Ovid, in one of his letters,[75] mentions twenty-three poets of the Augustan age, and his list is not exhaustive. Lesser Augustan poets. Little is known of these lesser writers, and few of their works are preserved, even in fragments. Domitius Marsus, who lived from about 54 to about 4 B. C., and belonged to the circle of Mæcenas, wrote a series of epigrams, entitled Cicuta (poisonous hemlock), which enjoyed considerable reputation, some elegies on Melænis, an epic poem on the Amazons, and a treatise De Urbanitate (on refinement of expression). Albinovanus Pedo was also an author of epigrams and an epic poet. One of his epics, the Theseis, narrated the deeds of Theseus, another gave an account of a voyage to the ocean, probably the voyage of Germanicus, in 16 B. C. A fragment of twenty-three lines contains a vivid description of the stranding of some vessels in the night, which shows that the author was a poet of some ability. Of a poem on hunting (Cynegetica) by Grattius, five hundred and forty-one hexameters are preserved, which show little poetic merit. Only a few brief fragments remain of a poem on the Egyptian war of
Augustus, by Rabirius. Cornelius Severus wrote a poem on Roman history (Res Romanæ), and perhaps other epics. The longest extant fragment consists of twenty-five lines on the death of Cicero, and shows rhetorical rather than poetic ability. Ovid’s friends, Ponticus and Macer, and several others, wrote mythological epics. Iambic verses were composed by Bassus, and other poets gained more or less reputation for various kinds of poetry.
Gaius Melissus, a freedman of Augustus, from Spoletum, was by profession a librarian. The Fabula Trabeata. He was the originator of the fabula trabeata, named from the trabea, the distinctive costume of the equestrian rank. This was a national comedy, differing from the fabula togata of Titinius and Atta (see page [29]) in the rank of the persons represented, for the fabula togata had chosen its characters from the lower classes, while the fabula trabeata was a comedy of high life. Its popularity was brief, and it disappeared, leaving hardly a trace of its existence. Melissus also made a collection of humorous tales (Ineptiæ) in one hundred and fifty books, and appears to have been the author of some learned treatises.
A poem on astronomy and astrology (Astronomica), ascribed in some of the manuscripts to an otherwise unknown Marcus or Gaius Manilius, is a didactic poem of unusual merit. Manilius. As preserved it consists of five books, the last of which is incomplete. If, as is probable, a sixth book once existed, the whole work contained about five thousand lines. Even in its present condition it is the longest didactic Latin poem except the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. The poem is, as a whole, rather uninteresting, but contains passages of great vigor, showing independence of thought and remarkable power of expression. The author has an easy mastery of hexameter verse, in which he is superior to Lucretius; but with all his skill in versification, his earnestness, his learning, and his originality, he can not entirely overcome the prosaic nature of his subject. The poem is uneven, at times prosaic, sometimes rhetorical, not often, if ever, rising to lofty heights of poetic fancy, but serious and thoughtful. A large part of it is occupied with astrology, and other portions describe the heavenly bodies. In the introductions to the several books, and in digressions, theories concerning the origin of the world, the nature of man, and the power of fate are introduced, showing that the author accepts in the main the Stoic doctrines as opposed to the Epicurean teachings of Lucretius. So he maintains that the world is not the product of blind forces but of a divine will:
Who can believe that masses of such size