has been very differently received by critics, some speaking of it as puerile, others giving it high praise. Elton discovers in it a dramatic energy which is lacking in Virgil, and views it as formed on a more ancient and vigorous school, recalling the style of Homer in its strong pathos and the fertility of its images, while others find it quite devoid of poetical ideas, pathos or power of characterization.

Its fable seems to be borrowed from those epic poets who continued the "Tale of Troy" after Homer, and who have been entitled the Cyclic Poets, from their poems forming an epic cycle, or circle of events, relating to the Trojan war. The following simile has in it much of the Homeric ring:

"As when from some steep mountain's sky-capt ridge
A rock enormous rolls, which, high above,
Jove's untired arm with crackling lightning casts
Down headlong from the cliff: Shattering it bounds
O'er tangled thickets and long-clefted dells;
The hollow glens reverberate to the crash;
The flocks, low feeding in the wood, beneath
The rolling ruin, tremble and look up;
Or herds, or other living thing; and shun
The imminent destruction's furious shock;
So did the Grecians dread the charging spear
Of Memnon."

Auso'nius, dating 365 A.D., was a native of Gaul, and tutor to Gratian, the son of the emperor Valentinian. He has left a number of poems, consisting of epigrams, idyls and epistles, which display a certain degree of fluency and elegance, but cannot be praised as giving any strong evidence of genius or correct taste in the author.

Clau'dian, a writer of somewhat later date, is the author of a number of poems, partly composed of invectives and panegyrics, which fail to exhibit any superior poetic qualities. They resemble Ovid, but only in his faults, not in his facility or his imagination. He has, however, a gay fancy, and a command of agreeable, though somewhat gaudy,

imagery. It has been assumed, from certain sacred poems attributed to him, that Claudian was a Christian, but it is doubtful if these poems are his.

Avie'nus, a contemporary of Claudian, is the author of some geographical poems, and of a spirited translation of the Phaenomena and the Prognostica of Aratus. A series of fables, too, in the Esopian vein, have been attributed to him, but are probably the work of Avianus, a contemporary author. They are of no superior merit.

Rutil'ius, a native of Gaul, of date 417 A.D., has left an interesting poem, called the Itinerary. It gives the journal of a voyage from Rome to Gaul, and forms an easy and unambitious narrative, written with the simple elegance of style of an Augustan author.

Non'nus, an author of the fifth century, of whom we only know that he was born in Egypt, wrote an extensive poem, in forty-eight books, called the Dionysiacs, taking its title from Diony'sus, or Bacchus, who forms the central figure of its fable. He is also the author of an elegant poetical paraphrase of the Gospel of St. John.

The Dionysiacs forms an extensive collection of the emblematic legends of Egypt, the cradle of ancient mythology. It is, however, put together in a very confused manner, and with little idea of proper coherence of its parts. In style it is bombastic and inflated, yet is marked by good powers of imagery, softness of tone and minuteness of description. In these respects it resembles Ovid. We extract the following description from the arrival of Bacchus and his followers on the banks of the Hydaspes:

"Earth around them laughed;

The rocks reëchoed; shouts of reveling joy
Shrilled from the naiads; and the river nymphs
Sent echoes from their whirlpool-circled tides,
Flowing in silence; and, beneath the rocks,
Chanted Sicilian songs, like preludes sweet,

That through the warbling throats of Syren nymphs,
Most musical, drop honey from their tongues.

Shouts rang through all the grove; instinctive oaks
Grew vocal, and an airy music breathed

Like murmuring flutes. The dryads mixed their cries
Of jubilee; and, midst thick-foliaged boughs,
The wood nymph, half appearing, looked from high
And carolled on the tree. The flowing brook
Turned white with snowy milk, though in itself
A spring of waters. In the torrent's bed
The naiads laved their limbs in milky stream,
And drank the snowy milk. The steepy rock
Was purpled; spouting must of rilling grapes
From the red nipple of the shrubless stone,
And founts of pleasant beverage; and distilled
From its spontaneous clefts the luscious gifts
Of honey-dropping bees, that wanted not

Combs in the rocks; and, from new-bursting shoots,
The downless apple started into growth

Upon the prickly thorn.”

The beautiful poem of Hero and Leander has been fancifully ascribed to Musæ'us, the pre-Homeric Greek poet, but is in all probability the production of some unknown author of that name living in the fifth century, to which period its style seems to refer it.

It is a charming and impassioned production, combining the warmth and luxuriance of Ovid with the grace of Apollonius, and in the catastrophe rising almost to Homeric grandeur.

"None succoring hastened to the lover's call,

Nor Love could conquer fate, though conquering all.
'Gainst his opposing breast, in rushing heaps,
Burst with swift shock the accumulated deeps;
Stiff hung his nerveless feet; his hands, long spread
Restless amid the waves, dropped numbed and dead;
Sudden the involuntary waters rushed,

And down his gasping throat the brine floods gushed;
The bitter wind now quenched the light above,
And so extinguished fled Leander's life and love."

Colu'thus, a writer of the sixth century, and a native of Egypt, is the author of a poem of considerable merit, called the Rape of Helen. It is simple in its invention, and elegant and pathetic in its details.

Tryphiodorus, another poet of the sixth century, was also a native of Egypt. Nothing further is known of him. The poem by which he is known is called the Sack of Troy. It is formed on the classic models, but has little epic force. It gives in great detail the episode of the Wooden Horse, and the description of Helen's strategy with the Greek heroes concealed in the horse is its only portion that displays marked merit.

With this author the list of classic poets ends. There were many writers of ecclesiastical poetry, whose work, however, does not come within our scope.

PROSE WRITERS OF THE IRON AGE.

THIS period may be viewed as beginning with the reign. of the Antonines, and as having for its first author of note the celebrated emperor Marcus Aurelius. This monarch, the noblest and most liberal-minded of Roman emperors, and an impartial patron of literature and philosophy, was himself a writer of considerable merit. His Meditations contain as pure a code of moral precepts as is to be found in the works of any pagan author. They teach the immortality of the soul, not as a separate existence, but rather as a reunion with the essence of the Deity.

His liberal encouragement of science, philosophy and literature aroused to emulative efforts a host of writers, yet failed to bring forward any master mind to renew the fading glories of the past.

Among the chief authors of the period of the Antonines we may name Julius Pollux and Athenæ'us, the grammarians; Aulus Gel'lius and Apule'ius, the writers of miscellanies; and Galen, the celebrated physician.

Julius Pollux was a native of Egypt, being born at the city of Nau'cratis. His only extant work is the Onomasticon, a vocabulary of select synonyms. He is highly praised by Casaubon, being entitled "most excellent, useful and learned." He filled the rhetorical chair at Athens, and was the author of other works, now lost.

The extant work of Aulus Gel'lius may properly be called an ancient common-place book. It consists of a series of notes, from Greek and Roman literature, jotted down at random as he met them in the course of his read