Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/339

 The Roman Empire to the Triumph of Christimiity 281 of the great State under which he lives, and the motive of the poem is to trace the origin of the house of Augustus from the Trojan heroes of old. Deeply admired by the age which pro- duced it, the ^neid has had an abiding influence on the litera- ture of the later world. These two names, Horace and Virgil, far outshine the numerous lesser lights of the Augustan Age, of whom there were later but too few. The Romans who enjoyed such writings as these had also begun to read Greek philosophy. Once obliged to read it in Greek, they could now peruse the essays and treatises of Cicero, in which Greek philosophy is set forth in Latin. Greek thought had now taken a practical turn, and endeavored to furnish the thinking man with rules of life by which he might shape his character and order his conduct. The two later schools of Greek philosophy, the Stoic and the Epicurean, are in this respect practically religions — systems of thought which furnish a reasonable basis for right conduct. The educated Philosophy Roman has now usually abandoned his beliefs in the old gods of Augustan Rome and has become a Stoic or an Epicurean. Such men came -^^e to find their gospel in the writings of Seneca, who wrote on the Seneca Stoic manner of life after Augustus's time. At the same time men of the greatest gifts were beginning to expand the narrow <r//y-law of Rome, that it might meet the Fig. 118. Portrait of an Unknown Roman This terracotta head is one of the fin- est portraits ever made. It represents one of the masterful Roman lords of the world, and shows clearly in the features those qualities of power and leadership which so long main- tained Roman supremacy (p. 285)