The second period is that of highest excellence in prose and poetry, the age of Cicero, Lucretius, Catullus, Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. This is the “golden age,” and may be dated from 80 B.C. to A.D. 14, a period during which the republic was passing into an empire, and when great men played their parts in great historical dramas; men like Sulla and Pompey, Julius Caesar, Antony, and Augustus. The latter half of this period, which extends from 30 B.C. to A.D. 14, and includes the names of Livy, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, coincides with the rule of Augustus, and is therefore called the “Augustan” age. In other words, the Augustan age is the second half of the “golden” age. It is from 80 B.C. to A.D. 14 that Latin literature and the Latin language are at their highest degree of perfection. But, unhappily, at least during the second half, it is also a time when writers and readers are coming more and more to form a special literary class, which stands far aloof from the great public and its urgent or spontaneous interests. The third period, the “silver age,” is that of the despotic and often tyrant emperors, when freedom of speech no longer existed, when the autocrat, a servile aristocracy, and a vicious populace occupied the capital. At this date literature is but a forced product without real motive or inspiration. It is characterized by declamation and rhetoric, by smart epigram, by cynicism and satire, by clever expression. Such is the period of Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Tacitus, Pliny, Juvenal. It may be put down roughly as extending from A.D. 14 to the year 150. These three epochs are peculiarly well defined; they are universally recognized, because so conspicuously recognizable. * * * * * The first real incentive to literature among the Romans sprang from the contact into which they came with the Greeks of southern Italy and Sicily when their conquests reached so far. This was in the third century B.C. Until the Greek influence was strongly felt, we meet only with a series of rude records, or of uncouth and clownish verses of a satirical or farcical sort. From the rude records there began to develop themselves histories and epics; from the farces and satirical verses were destined to come the drama of tragedy and comedy and the literary satire; this, however, did not occur till the communication with Greece was full and close, and Greek material at hand to be utilized. The first branch of Latin literature with which we need deal is the drama of comedy and tragedy. Practically this limits itself to the popular comedy of Plautus and Terence in the “iron” age, and the artificial and rhetorical tragedy of Seneca in the “silver” period.