fashionable amusements of the day, the composition of pointed and unsavoury verse; for the standard of morality in writing was far lower than the standard of morals in actual life.[162] The poems repay reading, but call for little comment. They lack originality. The thought is thin, the expression neat, though scarcely as pointed as we might expect from such an author, while the metre is graceful: the treatment of the elegiac is freer than that of Ovid, but pleasing and melodious. At times powerful lines flash out. qua frigida semper praefulget stellis Arctos inocciduis (xxxvi. 6) Where the cold constellation of the heaven gleams ever with unsetting stars. shines out from the midst of banal flattery of the emperor with astonishing splendour. The poem _de qualitate temporis_ (4) closes with four fine lines with the unmistakable Senecan ring about them-- quid tam parva loquor? moles pulcerrima caeli ardebit flammis tota repente suis. omnia mors poscit. lex est, non poena, perire: hic aliquo mundus tempore nullus erit. Why speak of things so small? The glorious vault of heaven one day shall blaze with sudden self-kindled flame. Death calls for all creation. 'Tis a law, not a penalty to perish. The universe itself shall one day be as though it had never been. Cato (9) deliberates on suicide with characteristic rhetoric, artificial in the extreme, but not devoid of dignity-- estne aliquid, quod Cato non potuit? dextera, me vitas? durum est iugulasse Catonem? sed, quia liber erit, iam puto, non dubitas. fas non est vivum cuiquam servire Catonem: quinctiam vivit nunc Cato, si moritur.[2] Is there then that which Cato had not the heart to do? Right-hand, dost thou shrink from me? Is it hard to slay Cato? Nay, methinks thou dost hesitate no more, for thou shalt set Cato free. 'Tis a crime that Cato should live to be any man's slave; nay, Cato truly lives if Cato die. Cleverest of all is the treatment of the rhetorical theme of the two brothers who meet in battle in the civil war (72). The one unwittingly slays the other, strips the slain, and discovers what he has done--