has been turned into a reproach against him; but I am rather struck with admiration, that in this dreadful exile among barbarians, his freshness and liveliness forsook him so little. One of his contemporaries was Cornelius Severus, of whom we have a fragment which strengthens the opinion that had he lived longer, he would have become an eminent epic poet, infinitely superior to Lucan. Pedo Albinovanus must also have been distinguished. Whether he is the author of the poem to Livia on the death of her son Drusus, seems not to be so certain as is generally believed. Livy was born in the consulship of Cæsar, 693, and lived to his seventy-fifth, or seventy-seventh year;[35] he thus reached far into Tiberius’ reign. I have already spoken of him before. History was the only thing that one could then write in prose; eloquence had sunk into wretched declamation, or mere lawyer’s pleading. He was fifty years of age, or somewhat older, when he began to write his history. The unfavourable opinion which Asinius Pollio gave of him, certainly arose from party spirit, as the latter could not abide anything that was Pompeian. Livy’s great fame, in which no one of his day has equalled him, is all built upon his historical work; and this is the reason why he is not once mentioned in Horace: very likely, he lived at first as a teacher of rhetoric in complete retirement. A man came all the way from Cadiz to Rome to see him. In the literature of the Cæsarian period, I forgot to mention Dec. Laberius, who was very distinguished and original as a writer of mimes. If men like Laberius and P. Syrus acted their mimes themselves, these were evidently a kind of improvisation, a description of poetry which was akin to the _sermones_ of Horace, and partook very little of the peculiarities of dramatic verse. P. Syrus also ranked very high. Comedy had at that time quite gone off; we do not even meet with mediocrities. Of tragedies, the Thyestes of Varius only is mentioned.—Valgius also belongs still to the time of Virgil.