CHAPTER VII.

FLORUS.

L. ANNÆUS FLORUS was in all probability the last survivor of the literary movement which expired in the second century. Some of the MSS. of his work gave his name as Julius Florus, a poet of the days of Hadrian, who rallied him on his work; a good many critics were disposed to insist that his name was Seneca, because Lactantius quotes Seneca as having distinguished the four ages of Rome which coincide exactly with the four ages of Florus. In fact, we may believe that he was connected both with the house of Seneca and with the Florus whom Hadrian knew; but he can hardly be the contemporary of either Seneca or Hadrian, as he speaks of an interval of nearly two hundred years between Augustus and his own day. Now Augustus only received that title in 27 B.C.; consequently Florus, if he used language with any accuracy, must have written between A.D. 148 and 173, even if we suppose that he dates from the accession of Augustus, after the battle of Actium, not from his decease, which would be the more logical way of putting it, as the author complains that, during the period of nearly two hundred years which he describes, the empire had been simmering away in old age, till, to the surprise of all the world, it renewed its youth for a season under Trajan. Augustus was a conquering emperor up to the defeat of Varus, and therefore the old age of the empire cannot be fairly dated from his accession. It is a more doubtful question whether the author wrote after Varus, whose not wholly barren campaigns might have ranked as another revival of the aged empire. There is one more clew to his identity which deserves mention. A certain [P.] Annius Florus, in the introduction to a lost discussion of the question whether

Vergil is to be considered an orator or a poet, condoled in the reign of Domitian with a friend who believed that the emperor had deprived him of the prize in the competitions of the Capitol, in a style which is very like the Epitome-there are the same airs of independence, the same tendency to windy. rhetoric; the author congratulates himself that he is what he is, an independent grammarian of Tarraco, without even a salary from the state, rather than anything else from a centurion up to an emperor, though everybody would think it great promotion for him to be made a centurion. All the MSS. of the Epitomist give either the prænomen of Lucius or none, but it is quite admissible that P. might stand for Poeta instead of Publius. The best MS. gives the principal name as Julius, and this again has been explained by supposing that it is a clerical error for Lucius.

The work itself falls into two parts, one of which deals with all the foreign wars down to the conquest of Gaul by Cæsar; the second deals with the civil strife from the days of the Gracchi to the battle of Actium, and one or two of the more important foreign campaigns of Augustus. The arrangement is curious, and does not harmonize very well with the four periods into which, after (the Elder?) Seneca, the whole history is divided: the years of the monarchy correspond to the infancy of Rome; the years in which the Italian peninsula was conquered correspond to the vigor of youth: it is in that age that Rome was most fruitful in great men; then comes the period in which Rome conquered the world, which is divided into two halves, marked by the fall of Carthage and the legislation of the Gracchi. The first is the true Golden Age: the second is a time of calamity within and even without; with the establishment of the empire under Augustus old age sets in.

The work was undoubtedly popular through the middle ages as a spirited compendium of ancient history: the writer, though grandiloquent, has a certain insight: he observes that the history of Rome is the history of the world: his way of saying that Rome conquered all known nations is to say that she pacified them. He is fond of philosophizing about the way in which mild climates destroy the energy of vigorous

races. He is curiously destitute of political opinions; he moralizes or pragmatizes about the struggles of the republic just as the writer of a modern schoolbook might do: he has no liking or disliking for the empire, nor much understanding of it. He tells us (ii. 54) that Augustus was made "perpetual dictator." One cannot tell whether he sides in the Civil War with Julius or Pompeius; almost his strongest expression of feeling is a regret that Julius did not succeed in stopping Pompeius at Brundisium, and so end the Civil War.

Florus, like many other writers, imagines that the battles of Pharsalia and Philippi were fought on the same site: this proves that he is not exclusively dependent upon Livy. But he follows him in the main, and most MSS. and editions call his work an epitome of Livy's. He tries to improve upon his author occasionally-for instance, Livy, speaking of the first Etruscan campaign of Q. Fabius Maximus, says "he drew up towards the hills;" according to Florus, he "seized the upper ranges, whence he could thunder down at pleasure." His style is monotonous and tricky; he is much given to introducing figures with quasi, not so often with velut; he deals largely in frigid exclamations and questions, and often informs us that this or that taxes the resources of language. He uses horror and its derivatives almost as expletives in the way in which "awful" is used now. The marshes, the prison, chains, and exile, "horrificaverant Marii majestatem," "had added awe to his majesty." This and many phrases have a certain poetical color, as if verse were breaking down into prose-for instance, we have radiarentur, where a safer writer would have said illustrarentur, of the virtues of Augustus; and at rare intervals a broken phrase reminds us of Tacitus. With all his faults of style and arrangement, his compendium is spirited, and might be read with ease and pleasure by any one who, as the author intended, was gaining his first and only acquaintance with Roman history from it.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE JURISTS.

THE reign of Hadrian was marked by an important legislative change. Salvius Julianus, prætor A. D. 131, when he drew up his edict, codified the whole body of Roman equity as it then existed, and his work was sanctioned by an imperial constitution and a decree of the senate, and became binding on all his successors: they retained in theory the right of declaring how new points would be decided during their term of office, but they lost the power of modifying the law as a whole. Salvius Julianus belonged to the liberal and monarchical school of jurists, who traced up their tradition to Ateius Capito, who was consul A.D. 5. He did not attempt to work out legal principles for their own sake, and professed to build upon precedent and tradition; but he only recognized precedents which were sensible and convenient. He had the generosity and discretion to speak highly of his elder rival,' M. Antistius Labeo, who had declined the consulate which Augustus pressed upon him, though his republicanism was not too stiff to accept the prætorship. He died A.D. 13, at about the age of seventy, after writing 400 volumes, a task to which he devoted himself in the country for the half of every year. His text-book, which only occupied three books, was abridged by Javolenus Priscus. under Trajan, and his "Probabilia" are quoted in the "Digest." Capito's great work was the "Conjectanea." Two other lawyers of the Augustan age were Blæsus and Fabius Mela.

Neither Capito nor Labeo gave his name to the school which he founded. At first Labeo, as the cleverer writer and 1 A. Gellius, XIII. xii. 1.

the more independent character, seems to have had the more distinguished representatives. The first was M. Cocceius Nerva, the grandfather of the emperor, who was consul A.D. 22, a year before the death of Capito, and held such a high position that Tiberius was distressed by his suicide eleven years later. The heir of the learning of Capito was Masurius Sabinus, who was only a knight, and could not have ventured to enter what was rapidly becoming the close profession of a public teacher of law without the special encouragement of Tiberius. He was dependent upon his pupils for maintenance, so perhaps admitted more: at any rate he gave his name to his master's school, and his "Answers" were a popular text-book, upon which Pomponius, Paulus, and Ulpian all thought it necessary to comment. He also wrote three books upon civil law, which were introductory. Sempronius Proculus, the successor of Nerva, does not seem to have been of much more importance in the state than Sabinus. His first name is uncertain, but he overshadowed the reputation of Nerva's own son, who had also the ambition of being a jurisconsult, and gave his name to the school of Labeo. Both Sabinus and Proculus were succeeded by men of position, who in turn gave their names to schools they did not found. Q. Cassius Longinus, the pupil of Sabinus, consul A.D. 30, was excerpted by Javolenus Priscus, and gave his name to the Cassian school. Pegasus, the son of a captain in the fleet of Misenum, named after his father's figure-head, was appointed prefect of the city under Vespasian, and gave his name both to the Senatus Consultum Pegasianum, which dealt with trusts and legacies, and to the Pegasian school. The last conspicuous representatives of this school were Neratius, who filled high office under Trajan, and was thought of for his successor, and Juventius Celsus, who was celebrated for the brusqueness with which he replied to silly questions. Cælius Sabinus, who was consul suffect A.D. 69, and was the highest legal authority under Vespasian, wrote upon the edict of the curule ædiles. His successor was the learned and eccentric Javolenus Priscus, who had the misfortune to be disliked by the younger Pliny as much as anybody