has continued even to our own times, and is very marked in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. [Sidenote: The Apocolocyntosis.] In the _Apocolocyntosis_ Seneca appears as a political satirist. The title may be translated _Pumpkinification_, for the word is made from the Greek _apotheosis_, with the word for “pumpkin” substituted for the word meaning “god.” This joke does not, however, appear in the pamphlet itself. The Emperor Claudius, who had just died, is supposed to arrive at Olympus and claim admittance among the gods. The gods hold a meeting, at which Augustus speaks against the admission of Claudius, who is finally sent off to Hades, where he is met by those whom he has unjustly put to death. This is the only extant specimen of a complete _Menippean Satire_, a work written in prose for the most part, but containing also metrical portions. For that reason it has a certain interest, but its literary merit is slight. Nor are Seneca’s epigrams of any great importance. They are merely such verses as any cultivated man of letters like Seneca can write when the occasion offers. The age of Seneca produced no great poets, and few whose works have survived. [Sidenote: Persius.] The earliest of these is Aulus Persius Flaccus, who was born at Volaterræ, December 4, 34 A. D., and died at the age of twenty-eight, November 24, 62 A. D. At the age of twelve, Persius left his native town for Rome, where he attended various schools, among them that of the grammarian Remmius Palæmon. At the age of sixteen he attached himself to the Stoic Cornutus and became an enthusiastic adherent of the Stoic school. He was acquainted with many of the distinguished men of the time, among them Seneca and the epic poet Lucan. He was related to Arria, the wife of Pætus Thrasea, and his intimacy with Thrasea and his family doubtless strengthened his interest in the Stoic philosophy; for Thrasea was one of the many noble Romans who found in the Stoic doctrines some moral support amid the vice and corruption of their degenerate times. Persius belonged to a family of equestrian rank, and at his death left a large property. His library he left to Cornutus, who edited his poems, consisting of six _Satires_. Persius had written some notes of travel and a tragedy of the kind called _prætexta_, but these were not published. In the first satire he attacks the literary production of the time, and the prevailing love of notoriety. This is a real satire, in imitation of those of Lucilius or, rather, of Horace. In the remaining poems Persius discourses on subjects drawn from the doctrines of the Stoics. The second satire treats of prayer, the third of the contradiction between our conduct and what we know is right, the fourth of self-knowledge; in the fifth Persius gratefully praises Cornutus, who had trained him in Stoic philosophy, and passes on to describe true freedom, which delivers men from the tyranny of the passions; in the sixth