Greeks of the later period were sometimes caustic in their criticisms on cotemporaries, but the great majority of their writers were too amiable to employ satire; and this only novelty in literature, of which they were happily ignorant, it was the equivocal honor of the Romans to invent. It was this form which comedy assumed among a people who could not appreciate the legitimate drama. Ennius was the inventor of the name, Lucilius of its substance. Persius used it for didactic purposes, and Terence and Juvenal gave increased reputation to this new form of lettered malice. But Horace alone seems to have understood the only useful end to which poetic sarcasm might be applied, by making it the vehicle of amusing narrative, and picturesque description. His sometimes elegant raillery at popular foibles, and inveterate vices, doubtless had a better effect than could have been reached by more serious discourse. A life of literary or artistic pursuits, was never in high estimation among the Romans. This is indicated by the frequent occasions Cicero employs to apologize for occupations which, at Athens, throughout her glorious career, so far from requiring excuse, would have been esteemed the strongest claim to popular regard. Virgil, too, in some of his most exquisite lines of the sixth Æneid, hesitates not to speak slightingly of the arts, and even of oratory; and to represent no pursuit as becoming the majesty of a Roman, but to hold the sceptre, dictate laws, to spare the prostrate, and humble the proud. Horace had a true feeling for heroic greatness, and would have produced writings worthy of himself, probably, had the rare gifts of his republican youth been exercised under the same auspices in their maturity. When the commonwealth was overthrown, he may have suffered many bitter regrets. Some charitably believe that the excess of his mirth is only the mask of unavailing grief. A happier inspiration occasionally emits jets of patriotic flame, but in general all the native fires of his genius were subdued to the base office of illuminating a palace he had too much reason to despise. Inclination, not less than conviction, may have prompted him to become the defender of free speech in perpetual support of democratic progress; but policy dictated that he should write as a royalist, and glorify the empire of force. When the great Cicero was sacrificed in a fitful effort again to be free, Horace was too cowardly and recreant to indite one word in his behalf, or even to mention his name. Imperial tyrants trampled on all the germs of free thought, till nothing but a barren field remained, and then such creatures as Lucan, once a professed republican, sank into the hireling's wealth, and splendidly crouched at Nero's feet. He found nothing near and national to commend, and so he praised the superseded Cato, with other heroes yet more remote. Persius pursued the same low trade, and completed the picture of an age thoroughly corrupt.