Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos need only be named in this connection, while we pass to a more particular mention of Plutarchus of Chæronea. He was, probably, a few years senior to Tacitus, and also wrote under the reign of Trajan. Plutarch is the representative of popular biography; he stands between the historian, the poet, and the romancer, to catch the beautiful lights of all. His account of Theseus resembles a legend from an old chronicle, or a chapter of magic; memoirs as depicted by his hand are exceedingly picturesque, in the presence of which reading becomes sight, as some vivid touch lights up the centre and animates the whole. For instance, the white charger of Sylla, lashed by a servant who saw his danger, carries the rider with a plunge between two falling spears. Again, Pyrrhus, wounded and faint, suddenly opens his eyes on Zopyrus in the act of waving a sword over his neck, and darts at him so fierce a look, that he springs back in terror, while his guilty hands tremble. And how startling is the aspect of Cæsar in the senate house, surrounded by conspirators, and turning his face in every direction, to meet only the murderous gleamings of steel! The Roman prose writers excelled the poets in original worth. Their historical style, however, like their Corinthian order of art, was founded upon the Greek, but became much more florid than the original. Livy, for instance, the most perfect master of the Roman tongue as a national historian, is also the best illustration of this fault. Though excessively ornate in his emulation of the ancients, he yet retained something of their merit. Under the later Cæsars, history, that department of Augustan literature of most sterling worth, grew increasingly corrupt in matter, and deteriorated in style, until the fulsome meanness and insipidity of Velleius was reached, the lowest nadir of historic art. The advancement of the government in despotism is marked by a corresponding debasement in cotemporary writing. Seneca, for example, threw himself into the cold embrace of Stoicism, and becamed resigned as far as possible to the philosophy of endurance and the literature of despair.