The _Life of Horace_, written by Suetonius, the secretary of Hadrian,
contains evidence of another, and perhaps a stronger, character
regarding the poet's power. We see that doubtful imitations are
beginning to circulate. "I possess," says the imperial secretary, "some
elegies attributed to his pen, and a letter in prose, supposed to be a
recommendation of himself to Maecenas, but I think that both are
spurious; for the elegies are commonplace, and the letter is, besides,
obscure, which was by no means one of his faults."
The history of Roman literature from the end of the first century after
Christ is the story of the decline of inspiration, the decline of taste,
the decline of language, the decline of intellectual interest. Beneath
it all and through it all there is spreading, gradually and silently,
the insidious decay that will surely crumble the constitution of the
ancient world. Pagan letters are uncreative, and, with few exceptions,
without imagination and dull. The literature of the new religion,
beginning to push green shoots from the ruins of the times, is a
mingling of old and new substance under forms that are always old.
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