it. Whatever the merits of Augustus may have been as an author, of which
no judgment can be formed, his attachment to learning and eminent writers
affords a strong presumption that he was not destitute of taste.
Mecaenas is said to have written two tragedies, Octavia and Prometheus; a
History of (159) Animals; a Treatise on Precious Stones; a Journal of the
Life of Augustus; and other productions. Curiosity is strongly
interested to discover the literary talents of a man so much
distinguished for the esteem and patronage of them in others; but while
we regret the impossibility of such a development, we scarcely can
suppose the proficiency to have been small, where the love and admiration
were so great.

History was cultivated amongst the Romans during the present period, with
uncommon success. This species of composition is calculated both for
information and entertainment; but the chief design of it is to record
all transactions relative to the public, for the purpose of enabling
mankind to draw from past events a probable conjecture concerning the
future; and, by knowing the steps which have led either to prosperity or
misfortune, to ascertain the best means of promoting the former, and
avoiding the latter of those objects. This useful kind of narrative was
introduced about five hundred years before by Herodotus, who has thence
received the appellation of the Father of History. His style, in
conformity to the habits of thinking, and the simplicity of language, in
an uncultivated age, is plain and unadorned; yet, by the happy modulation
of the Ionic dialect, it gratified the ear, and afforded to the states of
Greece a pleasing mixture of entertainment, enriched not only with
various information, often indeed fabulous or unauthentic, but with the
rudiments, indirectly interspersed, of political wisdom. This writer,
after a long interval, was succeeded by Thucydides and Xenophon, the
former of whom carried historical narrative to the highest degree of