[Sidenote: Prose writers whose works are lost.] The names of several orators of this period are handed down, chiefly in the reminiscences of the elder Seneca. The most noteworthy are, perhaps, Votienus Montanus, who was banished by Tiberius and died in 27 A. D.; Asinius Gallus (40 B. C.-33 A. D.) the son of Asinius Pollio; Mamercus Scaurus, who was forced by Tiberius to commit suicide in 34 A. D.; Publius Vitellius, who brought about the condemnation of Piso for the murder of Germanicus in 19 A. D., and who died in 31 A. D.; and Domitius Afer, from Nemausus (14 B. C.-59 A. D.), who held important offices under Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero. Among these orators, Domitius Afer was most prominent as a speaker in court, while Montanus was a teacher of oratory and a declaimer. Historians whose works are lost were Aulus Cremutius Cordus and Aufidius Bassus. The former published under Augustus a historical work in which he praised Brutus and spoke of Cassius as “the last of the Romans.” For this his books were burned by decree of the senate in 25 A. D., and he committed suicide by starving himself. Bassus wrote a contemporary history in rhetorical style, probably embracing the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, and possibly the end of the republic. Among the grammarians of this time, the most important was Quintus Remmius Palæmon, whose grammar (_Ars Grammatica_) was much used by the later writer Charisius. There were also several writers on special subjects, such as Cæpio and Antonius Castor, who wrote on botany, Julius Atticus and Julius Gracchinus, who wrote on vine culture, and Marcus Apicius, who wrote on cookery, though the extant cook-book ascribed to him is a work of the third century. These names show that even under Tiberius prose writing, although not so important as at other times, was not entirely neglected. [Sidenote: Philosophy.] Philosophy was much cultivated at Rome in this time, as it had been for at least a century, but the philosophical teachers under Tiberius and Caligula wrote for the most part, when they wrote at all, in Greek. Among them were the Sextii and Sotion, whose activity was in the later years of Augustus and the earlier years of Tiberius, Lucius Annæus Cornutus, and Gaius Musonius Rufus, both of whom were banished by Nero in 65 A. D. These men, and others of less note, whose doctrines were chiefly Stoic, exercised great influence upon Roman thought, but as their teachings were chiefly oral and their written works were in Greek, they must be passed over with a brief mention by no means commensurate with their real importance. Sotion was one of the teachers of the younger Seneca, the most important writer of the time of Nero, while Cornutus was the teacher of the satirist Persius, and Musonius of the powerful ethical preacher Epictetus.