We have already seen that some of the most prominent authors of the Silver Age were natives of the province of Spain. But now schools were established in the most distant parts of the empire, and the culture of the former age taught to the half-barbarian natives of the provinces. This, doubtless, had an important effect in disseminating learning, and in civilizing these rude peoples, but its effect on the Latin language and literature was the reverse of good, they being corrupted and debased in the minds of authors who arose throughout these newly civilized districts.

The language of the Romans, indeed, has pursued a very different course from that of the Greeks. The former has utterly vanished as a spoken tongue, flowing into the sea of modern thought like the Nile through its delta, in a series of separate channels, each widely different in character from the parent stream. The Greek, on the contrary, has manifested a wonderful power of self-preservation, flowing down through time in one undivided stream,― corrupted, it is true, but not transformed; its later authors, Lucian and Longinus, writing with the classic purity, and much of the genius, of the best writers of its palmy days.

To a modern Athenian the language of the days of Pericles is scarcely as difficult to read as is that of Chaucer to us; to a modern Italian the voice of ancient Rome speaks in a dead language. This difference in destiny springs, probably, from more than one cause. The histories of the two peoples are among the most powerful influences. The Greeks continued a compact, limited race, with a strong home feeling, and an unceasing pride in their old literature, and as ardent a pride in the language of these immortal works. The Latin tongue overflowed the world, was filtered through the minds of diverse barbarian races, and flowed back upon Rome in a changed and corrupted form. The conquerors of the imperial city and its provinces adopted it in part, diffused their own

dialects through it, and radically changed the pure Latin of the past into the early forms of the present Italian, French and Spanish tongues.

Another cause of this difference was the superior prominence of Greek as compared with Latin literature. The former was studied everywhere through the Roman empire in its classic purity, and its language escaped the degrading influences to which the Latin was subjected by being made the vehicle of common speech. Athens became, to a certain degree, a Mecca of pilgrimage for learned men, whose spoken Greek was the pure tongue of the old literature, and who must have exerted a powerful influence toward the preservation of this purity.

But

A third cause to which we may advert was the change in character of the peoples speaking the two languages. The Greek of to-day has much of the enthusiasm and imaginative force of his ancestors, and the soft, flowing language of the past is excellently adapted to his nature. the hard, vigorous, practical mind of the Roman is not reproduced in his successors, and we perceive an accordant change in the language. Its hard, unmanageable character has been transformed into the liquid ease of the Italian, the rapid, sparkling French, and the sonorous Spanish; all significant of the mental constitution of the speakers, but markedly different from the tone of the original tongue. Probably the English, in its Latin component, preserves more fully the spirit of the old tongue. than any of its more direct descendants; as the English race, indeed, preserves more of the hard, common-sense practicality of the Roman.

With a brief glance at the most prominent authors of this period of decline we will close our review of classic literature.

POETS OF THE IRON AGE.

NUMEROUS as these probably were, but few names survive accompanied by poems of any marked merit, and of several of the most noted of the latter the true period is exceedingly doubtful. We will here briefly glance at such as have the best title to be called classical, with an occasional selection from their poems.

First among them is Dionys'ius, the author of hymns which have by some been supposed to be nearly as ancient as the time of Pindar, but who was more probably an Ælius Dionysius, of Halicarnassus, who flourished in the reign of Adrian.

The Hymn to Apollo, however, from its splendid imagery, is worthy of the best age of Grecian poetry.

HYMN TO APOLLO.

"Hushed be all the space of air!

Mountains and woodland vales,

Earth, sea and rushing gales,

Echoes, and notes of birds, your sounds forbear:
Apollo comes; I see him nigh;

The God of flowing locks, the God of melody.
Father of morn! when, as her eyelids glow
Dazzling like driven snow,

Thou gladdened shakest thy locks of gold,
And drivest thy rosy car whose wheels are rolled
On foot-tracks light of wingèd steeds that fly
O'er the blue arch of yon unbounded sky;
Wreathed, as thou art, with many-circled beams,
Thou pourest abroad thy fountain streams;
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Thy fruitful splendor's flowing tide
Bathes the round earth on every side;
And rivers of immortal fire convey

From thee, its fountain head, the lovely day.
The troops serene of stars on high
Where blue Olympus props the sky,
Confused in countless dance around
Chorus full their host of sound;
Rejoicing ever, as they sing,

Oh, Phoebus! to thy harp's symphonious string.
The azured moon majestic leads the quire
Of Seasons, dancing to thy lyre;
While in her car she journeys slow,
Drawn by heifers white as snow;

And her mild spirit feels thy gladdening ray,
While rolling on her many-winding way."-Elton.

Op'pian, who flourished 211 A.D., has left poems of considerable merit on the subjects of hunting and fishing. His works manifest the minute care of a writer on natural history, yet have in them the fire and life of poetry, being embellished with apt similes, and displaying a rounded, flowing style.

They are dedicated to the emperor Antoninus Caracalla, which cruel monster, in a spasm of good taste, recalled the poet's father from exile, and rewarded Oppian for the poems with a piece of gold for every verse; whence they acquired the name of "Oppian's Golden Verses."

แ
EXTRACT FROM THE ELEPHANT."

"None of the forest kind so vast arise:

When swells the elephant before thine eyes,

Like some broad mountain's brow he spreads his form,

Or moves on earth, a cloud of blackening storm.

Fierce and untamed amidst the shady wood,

But mild with men, and of a gentle mood.

This rumor, too, a miracle I deem,

That strongest elephants with prescience teem;

And in their minds prophetical, await
Approaching death and unresisted fate.

Not midst the birds alone, with last sad strain,
The swans, prophetic of their end, complain;

This thoughtful brood of beasts, on nature's verge,
Themselves, with conscious bodings, groan their dirge."

Neme'sian, who dates 281 A.D., was a native of Carthage, and the author of a poem on hunting, and also of Eclogues. He was a great favorite in the eighth century, being introduced into the schools in the time of Charlemagne as a regular classic. He lacks the boldness of Oppian, but has a flowing and easy style and an air of impassioned tenderness in his eclogues.

SONG OF IDAS.

"Wretch that I am! Behold, deprived of thee,
Dark is the lily, wan the rose to me;

No fragrant leaf the bay, the myrtle wreathes,
Nor blushing hyacinth its odors breathes.

Come thou! but come! the rose again shall glow
With crimson flush, the lily shine like snow;
Its fragrant leaf the bay, the myrtle wreathe,
And blushing hyacinth its odors breathe:
And long as Pallas loves the brown-leaved wood,
Where the green berry swells with oily flood,
While Pales meads and Bacchus owns the vine,
The heart of Idas, Donace, is thine!"

Ti'tus Calpurnius, the Sicilian, was a friend and contemporary of Nemesian, to whom he inscribed his Eclogues. These are partly political, partly fanciful; they are classical in style, and have occasionally much picturesqueness and originality of imagery.

Quin'tus Smyrnæ'us, a writer of some epic merit, probably lived in the fourth century A.D., though everything concerning him, even his name, is involved in doubt. The poem ascribed to him is a "Supplement to the Iliad," which