But that all poetic creation and feeling were not entirely wanting to the age is shown by the numerous small poetic productions found on tombstones. Here true human feeling still revealed itself, and found an expression which speaks to the heart and is often deeply affecting. It is the same with the smaller poems in the Latin anthology; of course the ideas are not great and imposing any more than were the occasions which gave rise to them. But this much may be gathered from them, that the language of poetry could still appeal to the heart, and purity and correctness were still adhered to. Of the spread of poetic activity we can scarcely form too vast an idea; the study of poetry was now an essential part of education, and since Asinius Pollio had introduced the custom of public readings, there was an audience for every individual aspirant. And if the decline of the art of poetry was to be brought about, this impulse would have effected it more surely than the principate whose influence on the decline of the art may be only too easily and willingly overestimated. With the empire there came a change in the writing of history, inasmuch as freedom of thought and judgment was limited by the despotic rule, and the door was flung open to flattery and calumny; and in individual reigns it might have been dangerous to relate the history of the republic or of former emperors. But these circumstances alone cannot explain the insignificance of historical writing any more than the removal of the centre of politics to the imperial cabinet. The Romans have really never possessed histories in the true sense of the term, and consequently there was at this period no room for any considerable damage to that species of composition. T. Livius (59 B.C.-17 A.D.) affords distinct evidence of this. In his own time he received unqualified admiration and in subsequent ages his name sheltered itself behind that of history; in the later days of the empire his prestige continually increased, and finally almost the only works in Latin dealing with the period of the republic and the triumvirate, and the beginnings of the Augustan era, are transcripts and excerpts from his writings. Augustus offered no exception to the opinion of the day; although he called him a Pompeian, he not only granted him all conceivable freedom, but on all occasions testified his personal esteem for him. And yet Livy is no historian. He undertook the formidable task of writing a complete history of the Roman state up to his time, but in consequence of its formidable compass the work was necessarily unsuccessful, as older works were often wanting, and Livy had not the ability to turn the existing material to account.