Somewhat later, probably, than the tragedies already mentioned were the three Roman plays, _Julius Caesar, Coriolanus,_ and _Anthony and Cleopatra_. It is characteristic of Shakspere that he invented the plot of none of his plays, but took material that he found at hand. In these Roman tragedies he followed Plutarch closely, and yet, even in so doing, gave, if possible, a greater evidence of real creative power than when he borrowed a mere outline of a story from some Italian novelist. It is most instructive to compare _Julius Caesar_ with Ben Jonson's _Catiline_ and _Sejanus_. Jonson was careful not to go beyond his text. In _Catiline_ he translates almost literally the whole of Cicero's first oration against Catiline. _Sejanus_ is a mosaic of passages from Tacitus and Suetonius. There is none of this dead learning in Shakspere's play. Having grasped the conceptions of the characters of Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Anthony, as Plutarch gave them, he pushed them out into their consequences in every word and act, so independently of his original, and yet so harmoniously with it, that the reader knows that he is reading history, and needs no further warrant for it than Shakspere's own. _Timon of Athens_ is the least agreeable and most monotonous of Shakspere's undoubted tragedies, and _Troilus and Cressida_, said Coleridge, is the hardest to characterize. The figures of the old Homeric world fare but hardly under the glaring light of modern standards of morality which Shakspere turns upon them. Ajax becomes a stupid bully, Ulysses a crafty politician, and swift-footed Achilles a vain and sulky chief of faction. In losing their ideal remoteness the heroes of the _Iliad_ lose their poetic quality, and the lover of Homer experiences an unpleasant disenchantment.