The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete eBook

he gave unlimited scope to the exercise of an active and fruitful imagination.  In respect to composition, he is likewise liable to censure.  At one time he wearies, and at another tantalises the reader, with the prolixity or ambiguity of his preambles.  His prelusive sentiments are sometimes far-fetched, and converge not with a natural declination into the focus of epigram.  In dispensing praise and censure, he often seems to be governed more by prejudice or policy, than by justice and truth; and he is more constantly attentive to the production of wit, than to the improvement of morality.

But while we remark the blemishes and imperfections of this poet, we must acknowledge his extraordinary merits.  In composition he is, in general, elegant and correct; and where the subject is capable of connection with sentiment, his inventive ingenuity never fails to extract from it the essence of delight and surprise.  His fancy is prolific of beautiful images, and his (505) judgment expert in arranging them to the greatest advantage.  He bestows panegyric with inimitable grace, and satirises with equal dexterity.  In a fund of Attic salt, he surpasses every other writer; and though he seems to have at command all the varied stores of gall, he is not destitute of candour.  With almost every kind of versification he appears to be familiar; and notwithstanding a facility of temper, too accommodating, perhaps, on many occasions, to the licentiousness of the times, we may venture from strong indications to pronounce, that, as a moralist, his principles were virtuous.  It is observed of this author, by Pliny the Younger, that, though his compositions might, perhaps, not obtain immortality, he wrote as if they would. [Aeterna, quae scripsit, non erunt fortasse:  ille tamen scripsit tanquam futura.] The character which Martial gives of his epigrams, is just and comprehensive: 

    Sunt bona, sunt quaedam mediocria, sunt mala plura,
    Quae legis:  hic aliter non fit, Avite, liber.

    Some are good, some indifferent, and some again still worse;
    Such, Avitus, you will find is a common case with verse.

THE END OF THE TWELVE CAESARS

LIVES OF EMINENT GRAMMARIANS

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I. The science of grammar [842] was in ancient times far from being in vogue at Rome; indeed, it was of little use in a rude state of society, when the people were engaged in constant wars, and had not much time to bestow on the cultivation of the liberal arts [843].  At the outset, its pretensions were very slender, for the earliest men of learning, who were both poets and orators, may be considered as half-Greek:  I speak of Livius [844] and Ennius [845], who are acknowledged to have taught both languages as well at Rome as in foreign parts [846].  But they (507) only translated from the Greek, and if they composed anything of their own in Latin, it was only from what they had before read.  For although there are those who say that this Ennius published two books, one on “Letters and Syllables,” and the other on “Metres,” Lucius Cotta has satisfactorily proved that they are not the works of the poet Ennius, but of another writer of the same name, to whom also the treatise on the “Rules of Augury” is attributed.