Where’er the battle bleeds, and slaughter lies, Thither, preventing birds and beasts, she hies; Nor then content to seize the ready prey, From their fell jaws she tears their food away; She marks the hungry wolf’s pernicious tooth, And joys to rend the morsel from his mouth: Nor ever yet remorse could stop her hand, When human gore her cursed rites demand. When blooming youths in early manhood die, She stands a terrible attendant by; The downy growth from off their cheeks she tears, Or cuts left-handed some selected hairs. Oft, when in death her gasping kindred lay, Some pious office would she feign to pay; And, while close hovering o’er the bed she hung, Bit the pale lips, and cropped the quivering tongue; Then, in hoarse murmurs, ere the ghost could go, Muttered some message to the shades below.” ROWE. The Flavian Era is memorable for a few writers of note. Pliny the Elder, called also the Naturalist, was an intimate friend of the emperor Vespasian; while the names of Martial, Statius, and Quintilian, are associated with the reign of Domitian, Vespasian’s son (81-96 A.D.). =Pliny the Elder= (23-79 A.D.) was born at Como in Cisalpine Gaul, and there passed his boyhood. We find him afterward at Rome attending rhetorical lectures, and still later in his career serving as a soldier in Germany. Nero made him proconsul of Spain, and at the expiration of his term he returned to Rome to find his old friend Vespasian invested with the purple. Pliny had already become distinguished as the author of a treatise on “the Use of the Javelin,” a “History of the German Wars,” and eight books on “Difficulties in the Latin Language.” He now devoted himself to the compilation of his “Natural History,” the only work we have left from his pen, which Cuvier pronounced “one of the most precious monuments that have come down to us from ancient times.” We might well wonder how, in the face of his onerous public duties, Pliny found time for literary pursuits so engrossing, did not his nephew, Pliny the Younger, describe to us his wonderful industry. His day’s work began at 1 or 2 A.M., even in winter; sometimes at midnight. Before sunrise he repaired to the palace to chat informally with Vespasian, who like him was accustomed to rob the night of a few hours; after which he applied himself to business and study, devoting every spare moment to the accumulation of knowledge. “No book so bad but that something good may be gleaned from it,” was his motto. To be without a volume and a portable writing-desk was a crime in Pliny’s eyes. A slave constantly attended him, to take down his words in short-hand; during his meals he employed a reader, and even in his bath he dictated or listened. “I remember his chiding me,” said his nephew, “for taking a walk, saying‘You might have saved three hours.’ Compared with him, I am an idle vagabond.”