most strictly national development, the answer must be--the Ciceronian;
for while the advancement of any literature is more accurately tested by
its prose writers than by its poets, this is specially the case with the
Romans, whose genius was essentially prosaic. Attention now began to be
bestowed on physical science, and the applied sciences also received
systematic treatment. The rhetorical element, which had hitherto been
overpowered by the oratorical, comes prominently forward; but it does not
as yet predominate to a prejudicial extent.

The Third Period, though of long duration, has its chief characteristics
clearly defined from the beginning. The foremost of these is unreality,
arising from the extinction of freedom and consequent loss of interest in
public life. At the same time, the Romans, being made for political
activity, did not readily content themselves with the less exciting
successes of literary life. The applause of the lecture-room was a poor
substitute for the thunders of the assembly. Hence arose a declamatory
tone, which strove by frigid and almost hysterical exaggeration to make up
for the healthy stimulus afforded by daily contact with affairs. The vein
of artificial rhetoric, antithesis, and epigram, which prevails from Lucan
to Fronto, owes its origin to this forced contentment with an uncongenial
sphere. With the decay of freedom, taste sank, and that so rapidly that
Seneca and Lucan transgress nearly as much against its canons as writers
two generations later. The flowers which had bloomed so delicately in the
wreath of the Augustan poets, short-lived as fragrant, scatter their
sweetness no more in the rank weed-grown garden of their successors.

The character of this and of each epoch will be dwelt on more at length as
it comes before us for special consideration, as well as the social or
religious phenomena which influenced the modes of thought or expression.
The great mingling of nationalities in Rome during the Empire necessarily