[Sidenote: The relations of the emperors to literature.] Tiberius (14-37 A. D.) was a pupil of the Greek rhetorician, Theodorus of Gadara, and was familiar with Greek and Latin literature. He wrote Greek verses in the learned Alexandrian manner, a Latin poem on the death of Lucius Cæsar, and autobiographical memoirs in prose; but his own literary interest did not make him a patron of literature. His suspicious nature caused him to seek out and punish all real or imaginary allusions to himself in the works of contemporary authors, with the natural result that authorship became a pursuit too dangerous to be popular. Caligula (37-41 A. D.) had some ability as a speaker, and wished to be considered an orator, but his insanity led him to wish to destroy the works of Homer, and to remove the works and the busts of Virgil and Livy from the public libraries, on the ground that one of them was without genius or learning and the other was diffuse and careless. Although he did not systematically repress literature, his brief reign was certainly not favorable to its cultivation. Claudius (41-54 A. D.), who came to the throne at the age of fifty years, was a dull and learned pedant. He began to write a history from the death of Cæsar, but stopped at the end of the second book, owing to the objections of his mother and grandmother. He then wrote a history in forty-one books, probably beginning with the bestowal of the title of Augustus upon Octavian (27 B. C.), and continuing for forty-one years. He also wrote a history of the Etruscans in twenty books and a history of Carthage in eight books. Of all these works nothing remains. Some idea of his style may be derived from two inscriptions found at Lyons and Trent. The first is a speech delivered in the senate in 48 A. D., advocating the extension to the Gallic nobility of the _ius honorum_, or right to hold offices, the second a decree renewing the grant of citizenship to the inhabitants of the regions in the Rhætian Alps about Trent, and regulating their affairs. In both cases the style is confused and entirely without elegance or merit. Claudius also wrote a defense of Cicero against Asinius Gallus, the son of Asinius Pollio, who had maintained that Pollio was the greater orator. The addition by Claudius of three letters to the Latin alphabet shows his interest in linguistic matters, but was without permanent effect. Under this ruler literature revived somewhat after the persecutions under Tiberius. Nero (54-68 A. D.), the pupil of Seneca, wrote various short poems and an epic, entitled _Troica_, on the Trojan War. His jealousy caused him to be the enemy of other poets, but he paid little attention to literary attacks upon himself. On the whole, literature was not repressed during his reign, though after the discovery of the conspiracy of Piso, in 65 A. D., his wrath fell upon philosophers and men of letters.