conspicuously successful. This was a favorite medium of emotional expression, and shows a wide range of tone in the different works of Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid. In pastoral poetry there are the Eclogues of Virgil, which, with all their inconsistencies of scenery and not infrequent political drift, rank with the best of his work. In epistolography the Letters of Cicero are an exemplar of the best Latin style with its toga off; while the correspondence of Pliny, an imitation of them, furnishes us with many glimpses of a personality that, even if not constructed on a large plan, is not without its interesting sides. Nor is fiction altogether wanting, as the Satirae of Petronius bear witness, and a hundred years later the Golden Ass of Apuleius, which gives us both by content and by style signs manifest that the old order of things was at an end.

Of strictly original dramatic composition there was but little. In consideration of their satirical tendencies it might have been expected that native Roman comedy would have flourished. The work done, moreover, by Plautus and Terence in the adaptation of Greek plays shows clearly that vis comica was not lacking. Yet at a comparatively early period we find legitimate comedy hardly able to hold its own against the mime and other doubtful forms of comic entertainment. Neither can the Romans be said to have succeeded in tragedy. It is true that the adaptations of Greek tragedies which the first wave of Hellenism brought with it seem to have had, to a very considerable extent, dignity of characterization and dramatic effectiveness. This is the judgment of Quintilian, and the fragments that remain confirm it. Yet the later examples, the plays of Seneca written in the

age of Nero, show that even at that date tragedy had not escaped from its Greek leading-strings. Here again we have the same old themes of Greek mythology, and such changes of manner as we find in the introduction of lurid details and melodramatic situations, in the constant striving for epigrammatic and sententious effects, do not make for an increase in strength. The fundamental cause of this failure in the higher forms of dramatic expression is probably to be found in the Roman lack of creative power in art. This resulted in the production of plays which, adhering closely to Greek models, failed by the very remoteness of their subjects to hold audiences which were, for the most part, of a low grade of culture, and whose interest in gladiatorial and similar exhibitions, part of their heritage as a fighting people, was encouraged more and more by the ruling class.

In the selections that follow an attempt has been made to give a representation of Latin literature in English translations. That some authors, some works that might reasonably be looked for are not represented is due either to lack of space or to the fact that there are no good translations of them. Plautus, for example, does not appear, for the reason that, only a certain amount of space being available for comedy, it seems probable that one play printed in its entirety will give a better idea of the class to which it belongs than shorter selections from different authors. The Phormio of Terence has accordingly the double function of representing both its author and the type known as the Fabula Palliata. This plan of giving selections of considerable length and of as much integrity as possible has been followed

throughout. In Lucretius, the last part of the fifth book is the pièce de résistance; in Virgil the sixth book of the Aeneid; in Cicero, for the orations the second division of the Pro Cluentio, for the philosophical works a portion of the De Amicitia; in Livy, a series of chapters dealing with the career of Hannibal from his operations in Spain to his death in Bithynia. Where an author worked in several departments, these are represented, so far as their representation has been found to be compatible with the general plan of giving long selections. In the case of Cicero's orations one of the political speeches would have been preferred, but the Pro Cluentio has been substituted on account of the merit of the translation. In a few instances, where the translator's rendering seems somewhat more literal than the purpose of the book requires, changes have been made, for which the editor is solely responsible. Where the original is in verse, metrical translations have been regularly used, the only exceptions being the Phormio, where the version of the Roman Society of London has been drawn upon, and parts of Lucretius, where Munro's translation has been given. Throughout the book the aim has been to give the best translation, irrespective of the name or fame of the translator, and the fact that the renderings of the famous classicists of the eighteenth century have been very sparingly used is due to their seeming to be inferior to the more modern work.

GORDON JENNINGS LAING.

August 1, 1903.

TERENCE

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

A NATIVE of Carthage, born about 190 B. C., Terence came at an early age to Rome, where from the lowly position of a slave in one of the patrician households he rose to distinction as one of the great representatives of Roman comedy. He belonged to the literary clique known as the Scipionic circle, of which the younger Scipio Africanus was the most conspicuous figure, and which included among others Laelius, whom Cicero afterwards made the principal interlocutor in his dialogue On Friendship, Polybius the historian, Panaetius the Stoic philosopher, Philus, and Metellus, all of them men of broad culture and deeply imbued with a love of Greek literature.

His literary activity was confined to the production of palliatae, comedies the scenes of which were laid in Greece, and which obtained their name from the fact that the personages represented wore the Greek pallium. They were not original compositions, but were based on plays of Menander (342-292 B. C.), and other dramatists of the so-called New Attic Comedy, who, differing essentially in their aims from the playwrights of the Old Attic Comedy, avoided politics, and devoted themselves to the portrayal of social life. Their comedies were comedies of manners. In a majority of the plays the central interest is a love intrigue of more or less doubtful morality. The same types of character recur again and again: the tearful lover, the damsel in distress, the unscrupulous parasite,1 the intriguing slave,

1 The hanger-on, who in return for his support, assisted his patron in questionable transactions.