Ovid had just been sent into exile at Temesvar in Turkey--then called Tomos in Scythia. Cornelius Nepos was ending his days in the personal privacy and literary notoriety in which he had lived. Virgil had been dead a whole generation; so had Tibullus; Catullus, half a century; Propertius, some twenty years; Horace and Mæcenas, about as long. The grateful master of the _curiosa felicitas verborum_ had followed in three weeks to--not the grave, indeed, but--the urn, the patron whom he had immortalized in the first of his odes, the first of his epodes, the first of his satires, and the first of his epistles; and the mighty sovereign upon whose youthful court those three characters--a wise, mild, clement, yet firm minister, a glorious epic poet, and an unsurpassed lyrist--have reflected so much and such enduring lustre, had faithfully and unceasingly lamented their irreparable loss. Lucius Varius was the fashionable poet, the laureate of the day; and Mæcenas being removed, Tiberius sought to govern indirectly, as minister, all those matters which he did not control directly and immediately, as one of the two Cæsars whom Augustus had appointed. Velleius Paterculus, the cavalry colonel, or military tribune, (chiliarch,) a prosperous and accomplished patrician, was beginning to shine at once in letters and at the court. The grandson of Livia, grandson also of Augustus by his marriage with her, but really grand-nephew of that emperor--we mean the son of Antonia, the celebrated _Germanicus_, second and more worthy bearer of that surname--a youth full of fire and genius, and tingling with noble blood--was preparing to atone for the disgraces and to repair the disasters which Quintilius Varus, one year before, amidst the uncleared forests of Germany, had brought upon the imperial arms and the Roman name. Germanicus, indeed, was about to fulfil the more important part of a celebrated classic injunction; he was going to do things worthy to be written, "while the supple courtier of all Cæsars, Paterculus, was endeavoring to _write something worthy to be read_." Strabo had not long before commenced his system of geography, which, for about thirty years yet to come, was to engage his attention and dictate his travels. Livy, of the "pictured page," who doubtless may be called, next to Tacitus, the most eloquent without being set down as quite the most credulous of classic historians--I venture to say so, _pace Niebuhr_--was over sixty-eight years of age, but scarcely looked sixty. He was even then thoroughly and universally appreciated. No man living had received more genuine marks of honor--not even the emperor. His hundred and forty-two books of Roman history had filled the known world with his praises, a glory which length of days allowed him fully to enjoy. Modern readers appreciate and admire the thirty-five books which alone are left, and linger over the beauties, _quasi stellis_, with which they shine. Yet who knows but these may be