Lucan is certainly the chief poet of the time of Nero. [Sidenote: Calpurnius.] Less important is Titus Calpurnius Siculus, the author of seven _Eclogues_ in imitation of Virgil and Theocritus. Formerly eleven eclogues were attributed to him, but it is now evident that he was the author of only seven, the remainder being probably the work of Nemesianus, who lived in the first half of the third century. The _Eclogues_ of Calpurnius are close imitations of those of Virgil, but are far inferior to their prototypes. They are attractive, but so much less attractive than Virgil’s _Eclogues_ that they are little read. A poem _In Praise of Piso_ (_De Laude Pisonis_) is attributed with great probability to Calpurnius. The Piso whose praise is sung is without doubt Calpurnius Piso, the rich and influential man who headed the conspiracy against Nero and committed suicide in 65 A. D. This poem is full of imitations of Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. [Sidenote: Other poems.] The poem entitled _Ætna_ (see p. 141) and many of the anonymous poems preserved in manuscripts, some of which are not without merit, are to be ascribed to this period. The _prætexta_ entitled _Octavia_, preserved among Seneca’s tragedies, undoubtedly belongs to a slightly later time, as Seneca and Nero appear in it. So far as its style is concerned, it might almost be by Seneca, though the rhetoric displayed is somewhat less effective than that of Seneca’s tragedies. The play is interesting, chiefly because it is the only extant play of its class. Only a few unimportant fragments remain of the tragedies by the distinguished general, Publius Pomponius Secundus. [Sidenote: Petronius.] A work of unique interest is the novel by Petronius. This author is without much doubt identical with the Gaius Petronius, who was proconsul of Bithynia and afterwards consul, whom Nero admitted to his friendship and regarded as the _arbiter elegantiæ_ or judge of good taste, but who was accused by Tigellinus in 66 A. D., and committed suicide to avoid execution. The novel, known as _Satiræ_, originally consisted of some twenty books, and contained an account of the adventures of a Greek freedman, Encolpius, as told by himself. The adventures were strung together with no plot, except as the wrath of the god Priapus (a parody of the wrath of Poseidon in Homer’s _Odyssey_) may have served as a plot to some extent. The extant parts are from the fifteenth and sixteenth books. The form is that of a Menippean Satire, prose and verse in combination, but the longer parts are exclusively in prose.