“As a catalogue of finished products the volume will find use; as a text-book covering the technical preparation of asbestos it hardly merits consideration.”
+ − N Y P L New Tech Bks p35 Ap ’20 80w
SUMMERS, WALTER COVENTRY. Silver age of Latin literature. *$3 Stokes 870
The period covered is from Tiberius to Trajan. The preface says: “The term ‘Silver Latin’ is often applied loosely to all the post-Augustan literature of Rome: in this book it has been reserved for that earlier part of it which, in spite of a definite decline in taste and freshness, deserves nevertheless to be sharply distinguished from the baser metals of the imitative or poverty-stricken periods which followed.” (Preface) A chronological table is followed by discussions on: The declamations and the pointed style; The epic; Drama; Verse satire; Light and miscellaneous verse; Oratory; History, biography and memoirs; Philosophy; Prose-satire and romance; Correspondence; Grammar, criticism and rhetoric; Scientific and technical prose. There are notes on translations and an index.
“The book contains some smooth translations, of which, as might be expected, the renderings from the satirists are probably the most successful. Without stating any particularly fresh theory, Mr Summers covers the old ground very thoroughly.”
+ Ath p435 O 1 ’20 640w
“In ‘The silver age of Latin literature,’ we are given a text-book, admirably written and closely digested, that is an open door to a literature that often amazes us by its evident modernity.”
+ N Y Times p14 Ja 16 ’21 1500w
“Rather dull. But Prof. Summers is full of learning on the period which is not commonly mastered by classical students; and his record is so thorough that it should not be neglected.”