“The date of ‘Prusias’ is the latter half of the first century B. C. Rome is waging her tedious war with Mithridates. There are also risings in Spain, and the home army is badly depleted. Prusias comes to Capua as a learned Armenian, the tutor of a noble pupil in one of the aristocratic households. Each member of this circle is distinct. Some of the most splendid traits of human nature develop among these grand statesmen and their dignified wives, mothers, and daughters. The ideal Roman maiden is Psyche; but she has a trace of Greek blood and of the native gentleness. Of a more interesting type is Fannia, who might, minus her slaves and stola, pass for a modern and saucy New York beauty. Her wit, spirit, selfishness, and impulsive magnanimity might easily have been a nineteenth-century evolution. In the family to which Prusias comes are two sons, one of military leanings, the other a student. Into the ear of the latter Prusias whispers the real purpose of his coming to Italy. He is an Armenian and in league with Mithridates for the reduction of Roman rule. The unity which the Senate has tried to extend to the freshly-conquered provinces of Italy is a thing of slow growth. Prusias by his strategy and helped by Mithridates’s gold, hopes to organize slaves and disaffected provincials into a force which will oblige weakened Rome to make terms, one of which shall be complete emancipation and equality of every man before the law. His harangues are in lofty strain, and, save that he never takes the coarse, belligerent tone of our contemporaries, these speeches might have been made by one of our own Abolitionists. The one point that Prusias never forgets is personal dignity and a regal consideration for his friends. But after all, this son of the gods is befooled by a woman, a sinuous and transcendently ambitious Roman belle, the second wife of the dull and trustful prefect of Capua; for this tiny woman had all men in her net whom she found it useful to have there. “The daughter of the prefect--hard, homely-featured, and hating the supple stepmother with an unspeakable hate, tearing her beauty at last like a tigress and so causing her death--is a repulsive but very strong figure. The two brothers who range themselves on opposite sides in the servile war make another unforgettable picture; and the beautiful slave Brenna, who follows her noble lover into camp, is a spark of light against the lurid background. The servile movement is combined with the bold plans of the Thracian Spartacus. He is a good figure and perpetually surprises us with his keen foresight and disciplinary power. “The book is stirring, realistic in the even German way, and full of the fibre and breath of its century.”--_Boston Ev’g Transcript._ * * * * * =QUINTUS CLAUDIUS.=--A Romance of Imperial Rome, by =Ernst Eckstein=, from the German by Clara Bell, in two vols. Paper, $1.00. Cloth, $1. 75.