From the later years of Augustus, and the earlier of his immediate successors, we have no criticism of importance [Sidenote: _Petronius._] except Seneca’s. But the Neronian time has left us interesting approaches to the subject in the works of Petronius and Seneca the younger, as well as in the poet Persius; while, somewhat later, the satires of Juvenal and the epigrams of Martial are, the former not destitute, the latter full, of literary allusion and opinion. These, with a certain contribution from Pliny’s _Letters_ and the _Dialogus de Claris Oratoribus_ (usually included among the works of Tacitus, but not resembling him in style, and sometimes attributed to Quintilian), must be successively dealt with. Quintilian himself is of too great importance not to deserve a separate chapter. We can understand, as well from the character usually given of the _Arbiter elegantiarum_ as from the style of his curiously dismembered and rather disreputable written work,[303] that questions of literary criticism must have been of the first interest to him. If we had the entire _Satires_ (supposing that they ever were more entire than _Tristram Shandy_ or the _Moyen de Parvenir_), there can be very little doubt that this element would show itself in very large proportion. There must have been suppers less brutally vulgar and Philistine than that of Trimalchio; and literary discussion was as indispensable at a Roman supper of the better class as broiled bones at an English one—while suppers lasted. Even the Circes, if not the Quartillas, of the time were very frequently “blue” in the intervals of more exciting amusements, and Agamemnon, Eumolpus,[304] and others must have frequently spoken in character. As it is, the opening of the fragment as we have it, and a passage farther on, deal directly with the subject. Footnote 303: I use the smaller edition of Bücheler, Berlin, 1862. Footnote 304: There is a theory that the verses put in the mouth of Eumolpus are parodies of Lucan and Seneca. The opening passage is occupied with that denunciation of bombastic and “precious” language which seems to have been the favourite occupation of the critics of the time. The attack is at first directed against the practice of declamation, which almost inevitably tempted boys and youthful writers to bombast, but it so quickly glides into a general literary censure that it is worth giving in full.