A prominent rhetorician of the Augustan period was the elder Seneca, of Cordova, in Spain. Portions of his works (which consist of rhetorical exercises on imaginary cases, historical events, and circumstances in the lives of great men, written for the benefit of his sons) have survived; but nothing remains of a history of Rome ascribed to him.
The orators Messala and Asinius Pollio graced the early years of the first emperor’s reign; but, when political eloquence was interdicted, they retired to private life,—Pollio, to win new laurels by his tragedies and other literary compositions. Both were patrons of literature, and loved to gather round them the eminent poets of their day. Messala’s orations, known to us only by a few fragments that remain, were regarded as almost equal to Cicero’s; while Pollio, none of whose works have been preserved, was ranked by his contemporaries with Cicero as an orator, with Virgil as a poet, and with Sallust as an historian.
MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.
- Helvius Cinna (50 B.C.): author of the lost epic “Smyrna,” the fruit of nine years’ labor. In one of his Eclogues, Virgil compared himself in the company of Cinna and his friend Varius to a goose among swans.
- Licinius Calvus (82-47 B.C.): poet and orator; elegies, epigrams, and love-songs in the style of Catullus; an epic “Io;” no remains.
- Valgius Rufus, a friend of Horace: an epic and elegiac poet.
- Ælius Gallus: a noted jurist.
- Tu’bero (48 B.C.) the historian: contemporary with Sallust.
- Verrius Flaccus: a renowned grammarian; author of a voluminous Latin lexicon, which is lost. His work was subsequently condensed into twenty volumes.
- Vitruvius Pollio, the great architect of the Augustan Era: he prepared a comprehensive work on the science of architecture, long received as authority.
- Titus Labie’nus: an orator and historian.
NOTES ON EDUCATION, ETC., AMONG THE ROMANS.
Education never compulsory, as in Greece. Its chief aim in early times to make warriors and statesmen. Children usually grounded in the rudiments by their mother, the father occasionally doing service as a teacher of reading and writing. From the Greeks, the Romans adopted the custom of employing pædagogi to instruct their children or accompany them to and from school.
Private schools in Rome about 450 B.C.; Virginia insulted by Appius Claudius, while on her way to school. The youth instructed at these institutions in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and required to memorize the laws of the Twelve Tables. Grammar was next essayed; and a course in rhetoric and oratory completed the Roman boy’s education. Many continued their studies at Athens, Rhodes, or Alexandria.
The teachers often provincials or freedmen. In the golden age, Greek tutors very generally the companions and flatterers of the wealthy Romans. During the reign of Augustus, great schools at Cordova and Marseilles rivalled the academy of Flaccus at Rome, the favorite of the emperor, who paid Flaccus a salary of $3,600, and offered special inducements in the way of prizes to such as would join his school. Under Vespasian the first Roman college, the Athenæum, was established; botany, zoölogy, and mineralogy, now became favorite studies.
Rome had its booksellers in the golden age, to supply the demand for standard authors and school manuals. Books multiplied rapidly by transcription, and were cheap in proportion. At the beginning of the first century B.C., many private libraries in Rome; every noble took pride in his collection of manuscripts. First public library founded by Asinius Pollio, whose example was followed by others. (Consult Gove’s “Companion to School Classics.”)
Earliest known attempts at journalism, 59 B.C. The Acta of the senate and of the people, the first publications. The latter, a daily (diurna, whence journal), had an extensive circulation throughout the Roman territories. Stenography practised at this time by the Romans, and subsequently taught in their schools. A freedman of Cicero said to have invented the system of short-hand. Sympathetic ink in use for writing love-letters and secret correspondence. For this purpose Ovid recommends milk, which may be made visible by dusting powdered charcoal on the letters. To keep mice from gnawing their papyrus and parchment rolls, some Roman writers mixed wormwood with their inks.