talents in the prosecution of the enterprise. After an obstinate defence
by the Jews, that city, so much celebrated in the sacred writings, was
finally demolished, and the glorious temple itself, the admiration of the
world, reduced to ashes; contrary, however, to the will of Titus, who
exerted his utmost efforts to extinguish the flames.

The manners of the Romans had now attained to an enormous pitch of
depravity, through the unbounded licentiousness of the tines; and, to the
honour of Vespasian, he discovered great zeal in his endeavours to effect
a national reformation. Vigilant, active, and persevering, he was
indefatigable in the management of public affairs, and rose in the winter
before day-break, to give audience to his officers of state. But if we
give credit to the whimsical imposition of a tax upon urine, we cannot
entertain any high opinion, either of his talents as a financier, or of
the resources of the Roman empire. By his encouragement of science, he
displayed a liberality, of which there occurs no example under all the
preceding emperors, since the time of Augustus. Pliny the elder was now
in the height of reputation, as well as in great favour with Vespasian;
and it was probably owing not a little to the advice of that minister,
that the emperor showed himself so much the patron of literary men. A
writer mentioned frequently by Pliny, and who lived in this reign, was
Licinius Mucianus, a Roman knight: he treated of the history and
geography of the eastern countries. Juvenal, who had begun his Satires
several years before, continued to inveigh against the flagrant vices of
the times; but the only author whose writings we have to notice in the
present reign, is a poet of a different class.

C. VALERIUS FLACCUS wrote a poem in eight books, on the Expedition of the
Argonauts; a subject which, next to the wars of Thebes and Troy, was in
ancient times the most celebrated. Of the life of this author,