that a special office,[31] _a studiis_, was established, which was
filled for the first time by the influential freedman Polybius. Claudius
lacked the saving grace of good sense, but in happier days might have
been a useful professor: at any rate his interest in literature was
whole-hearted and disinterested. His own writing was too feeble to
influence contemporaries for ill and he had the merit of having given
literature room to move. Seneca might mock at him after his death,[32]
but he had done good service.

Nero, Claudius' successor, was also a liberal, if embarrassing, patron
of literature. His tastes were more purely literary. He had received an
elaborate and diversified education. He had even enjoyed the privilege
of having Seneca--the head of the literary profession--for his tutor.
These influences were not wholly for the good: Agrippina dissuaded him
from the study of philosophy as being unsuited for a future emperor,
Seneca from the study of earlier and saner orators that he might himself
have a longer lease of Nero's admiration.[33] The result was that a
temperament, perhaps falsely styled artistic,[34] was deprived of the
solid nutriment required to give it stability. Nero's great ambition was
to be supreme in poetry and art as he was supreme in empire. He composed
rapidly and with some technical skill,[35] but his work lacked
distinction, connexion of thought, and unity of style.[36] Satirical[37]
and erotic[38] epigrams, learned mythological poems on Attis and the
Bacchae,[39] all flowed from his pen. But his most famous works were his
_Troica_,[40] an epic on the Trojan legend, which he recited before the
people in the theatre,[41] and his [Greek: Iion al_osis], which may
perhaps have been included in the _Troica_, and is famous as having--so
scandal ran--been declaimed over burning Rome.[42] But his ambition
soared higher. He contemplated an epic on the whole of Roman history. It
was estimated that 400 books would be required. The Stoic Annaeus