A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

3i8 Introduction to the Sources
Seneca.
Ancient
World, 467.
Petronius.
Pliny the
Elder.
fulness. Wordy and pompous, he is nevertheless fairly
accurate in his statement of facts; and for the principate
of Tiberius he enjoys the advantage of being our only
contemporary source. Undoubtedly sincere in his admiration
of the emperor, he overflows with eulogy, like a
partisan rather than a calm-tempered historian.
The progress of the Romans in morality and kindliness
under the early princes is well represented by Seneca. A
Spaniard by birth, a Stoic, and a rhetorician, he became
the tutor and afterward the prime minister of Nero.
His
essays on moral and philosophic subjects are mostly
presented in the form of Letters and Dialogues. With
Seneca we may contrast Petronius, "Master of Pleasures,"
at the court of Nero. He wrote a character novel
in perhaps twenty books, of which we have mere fragments.
The most important is the Dinner of Trinialchio,
a satire on a coarse, uneducated freedman who had suddenly
grown rich. It is of great value for social life.
Under Vespasian Pliny the Elder wrote a Natural History
in thirty-seven books.
In addition to the natural sciences,
Josephus.
Ancient
World, 46.
The Age of
the Goodj
Emperors,
96-180 A. D.
Tacitus,
about 55-120
A.D.
Ancient
World, 493.
it includes geography, medicine, and art. An encyclopasdia
compiled from two thousand different works, it
a g'-eat storehouse of knowledge. Not long afterward
Josephus, a Hebrew writer, composed two important
historical works, Jewish Antiquities and The Jewish War.
The sufferings of republicanism under Domitian, followed
by the happy reigns of Nerva and Trajan, produced
the last great writers of classic Latin, Tacitus and Juvenal.
One wrote history, the other satire, yet with a kindred
spirit. The Annals and the Histories ^ of Tacitus covered
* Of the Annals we have bks. i-iv, parts of v and vi, and xi-xvi, with
gaps at the beginning and end of the last group of books; of the
Histories there remain bks. i-iv and the first half of v.
is