VERGIL AND HORACE
The half century included within the Augustan Age marks a real epoch in the history of Latin literature. The most famous poet of this period was Vergil. The Aeneid, which he undertook at the suggestion of Augustus, is his best-known work. In form the poem is a narrative of the adventures of the Trojan hero, Aeneas, [29] but its real theme is the growth of Rome under the fostering care of the gods. The Aeneid, though unfinished at the author's death, became at once what it has always remained—the only ancient epic worthy of comparison with the Iliad or with the Odyssey. Another member of the Augustan circle was Vergil's friend and fellow- worker, Horace. An imitative poet, Horace reproduced in Latin verse the forms, and sometimes even the substance, of his Greek models. But, like Vergil, what Horace borrowed he made his own by the added beauty which he gave to it. His Odes are perhaps the most admirable examples of literary art to be found in any language.
LIVY
The most famous prose writer of the Augustan Age was Livy. His History of Rome, beginning with Romulus and extending to Augustus, traced the rise and growth of the Roman state during eight centuries of triumphal progress. It did in prose what Vergil's Aeneid had done in verse.
TACITUS
The period of the "Good Emperors" saw the rise of several important authors, of whom one, the historian Tacitus, was a man of genius. The crowning labor of his life was a history of Rome from Tiberius to Domitian. Of this work, issued under the two titles of Histories and Annals, only about one-half is extant.
SURVIVAL OF ROMAN LITERATURE
Less than two hundred years separate Cicero and Tacitus. During this period Latin authors, writing under the influence of old Greece, accomplished much valuable work. Some of their productions are scarcely inferior to the Greek masterpieces. In later centuries, when Greek literature was either neglected or forgotten in the West, the literature of Rome was still read and enjoyed. Even to-day a knowledge of it forms an essential part of a "classical" education.