Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/31

 that was best in ancient Rome, succeeded for a while in investing the personal government of Augustus with a poetic atmosphere which corresponded little with its real nature. But they had no successors. Reposing gladly under the paternal sway of Augustus during his later years, Rome lost her ideals. She was peaceful, prosperous, and contented; the fiery spirit of the old Republican days gradually died away, and the majority of the citizens, finding that servility was the surest road to advancement, "preferred the security of the present to the hazards of the past." The patronage accorded by Augustus to men of letters may have done something to arrest the decay of literature; but with the close of the reign of Augustus and the accession of Tiberius the truth could no longer be concealed that the days of liberty were over, and the natural results followed in every department of human life and thought. Deprived of the inspiration of reality, literature and oratory descended from the public to the private stage, and lost alike their meaning and their manliness. Pursuits which could only be followed with danger soon ceased to be followed at all, and instead of being trained by public men among public concerns, the youth were now taught to exercise themselves in the schools of the rhetoricians, where they learnt to carry on subtle disputations on topics wholly remote from common life. xxvii