From what we have now seen the reader will understand, and may learn with amazement, that one of the smallest nations which ever figured prominently in history produced a remarkable proportion of the world’s greatest literature, and indeed created nearly every branch of literature. Remember, too, that the Greek classics which we have are mere fragments of the whole. Literally thousands of important works of poets, dramatists, and thinkers have perished. Let us hope that we have the finest fragments. I have given as informing an account of these as my space allows, and will only add that if any reader who has access to a public library with collections of translations wishes to know a little more, without an extensive course of study, I would advise him to read a book of Homer’s _Iliad_, then the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, the _Medea_ of Euripides, the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, a few chapters of Herodotus, one of the orations of Demosthenes, and one (the _Timaeus_ or the _Phaedo_) of Plato’s Dialogues. The Roman literature is next in time to that of the Greeks and, in spite of the common misstatement that the Romans were a wholly practical and not an artistic people, it is next to it in importance. The Romans learned the fine arts from the Greeks, and at first they were content with translations of Greek works. Comedy especially appealed to them, and the first classical Roman writers were the great comedians Plautus (254-184 B. C.) and Terentius, or Terence (190-159). Plautus, using Greek and other plots, composed a hundred and thirty comedies, but only a score have survived the literary massacre of the early Middle Ages. The type of comedy he wrote may be understood from Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_, which is, like many plays of the Renaissance writers, based upon the _Menaechmei_ (a story of twins) of Plautus. Terentius, of whom we have six plays, writes purer Latin than Plautus and has more technical skill, but he has a less rich vein of comedy. He is the author of the much quoted line: “I am a man, and nothing human is foreign to me.” Apart from these there was no Roman writer who need be mentioned here--I wish to restrict the list of names as much as possible--until the first century before Christ, when what is called the Golden Age of Roman literature began. The art, as usual, reflects the economic conditions. Rome’s conquest of the world was almost over, and the Eternal City was congested with wealth and athirst for every luxury and refinement. Within two centuries there appeared the great poets Vergil, Horace, Ovid, Catullus, the historians Caesar, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, the satirists Martial and Juvenal, the orator and thinker Cicero, and the famous moralists Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. These are all classics, but we must confine ourselves to the chief works of the greater writers.