The stern old Roman virtue despised such
sedentary employment as intellectual cultivation, and thought it unworthy
of the warrior and statesman. Some of the higher classes loved literature
and patronized it, but did not make it their pursuit. Lucilius was a Roman
knight, as well as a poet. His satires were comprised in thirty books,
numerous fragments of which are still extant. He was a man of high moral
principle, though stern and stoical; a relentless enemy of vice and
profligacy, and a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty.
After the death of Lucilius satire languished, until half a century later,
when it assumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put
forth its original vigor in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.
8. HISTORY AND ORATORY.--Prose was far more in accordance with the genius
of the Romans than poetry. As a nation, they had little or no imaginative
power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, and no acute perception of
the sympathy between man and the external world.
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