POLYBIUS.
“Nothing happens without a cause.—Royalty, aristocracy, and democracy, must combine to make a perfect government.—Many know how to conquer; few are able to use their conquest aright.”
PLUTARCH.
“Absolute monarchy is a fair field, but has no outlet.—What one does not need, is dear at a penny.—Often, while we are delighted with the work, we regard the workman with contempt.—Dead men do not bite.”
MINOR WRITERS AND THEIR WORKS.
- Oppian (second century): didactic poems on fishing and hunting.
- Arrian (second century): masterpiece, “Expedition of Alexander the Great.”
- Dion Cassius, a Roman senator (born 155 A.D.): “History of Rome” in 80 books, from the earliest ages to 229 A.D.
- Ælian (second century): a zoölogy and a miscellaneous history.
- Appian of Alexandria (second century): a “Roman History” in 24 books.
- Hero’dian (180-238 A.D.): “History of the Roman Emperors.”
- Diogenes Laertius: his “Lives of the Philosophers” contains a valuable summary of the Epicurean tenets.
- Ga’len (second century), one of the world’s greatest physicians: medical treatises.
- Musæus (fifth century): the poem “Hero and Leander.”
- Tryphiodo’rus (fifth century): poems on the Battle of Marathon and the sack of Troy; a lipogrammatic Odyssey, from the first book of which, styled Alpha, the letter a was excluded; from Beta, the second, b; and so the several letters in turn through its 24 books. This work is lost.
- Quintus Smyrnæus (500 A.D.): his poem, “Things Omitted by Homer,” a continuation of the Iliad.
- Nonnus (sixth century): “the Dionysiaca,” an Epic on Bacchus in 48 books.
- Proco’pius (flourished 550), the Byzantine historian: “History of his Own Times.”
PART III.
ROMAN LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
LATIN AND ITS OLDEST MONUMENTS.
Italy Peopled.—While watching the rise, meridian splendors, and glowing sunset of Grecian letters, we have left unnoticed the dawn of literary taste in Italy, the sister of Hellas, peopled, as we have seen, by kindred Phrygian tribes who spoke dialects of the Phrygo-Hellenic tongue (p. 133). Whether they were the first of human kind to wake the echoes of the Italian solitudes, must ever remain a matter of doubt. Some believe that the Alps had proved an insuperable barrier to previous emigrants from the East; others, that the adventurous Pelasgians, on descending their slopes, found a Turanian population already in possession of the peninsula. If the latter theory be correct, the Turanian aborigines were speedily overpowered by the new-comers and became incorporated with their conquerors.
When Rome was founded, 753 B.C., the predominant Italian races were distinguished as Latin and Umbrian (embracing the Oscans); their languages were closely related, and have been called Italic. The Etruscans, who lived west of the Tiber, though probably of Aryan origin, differed in many respects from the Umbrians and Latins.