gathering a circle of acquaintances together to listen to the
recitations of a poet is said first to have been instituted by Asinius
Pollio, the patron of Vergil. There is evidence to show that all the
poets of the Augustan age gave recitations.[74] But the practice
gradually increased and became a nuisance to all save the few who had
the courage to stand aloof from these mutual admiration societies.
Indiscriminate praise was lavished on good and bad work alike. Even
Pliny the younger, whose cultivation and literary taste place him high
above the average literary level of his day, approves of the increase of
this melancholy harvest of minor poetry declaimed by uninspired
bards.[75] The effect was lamentable. All the faults of the _suasoria_
and _controversia_ made their appearance in poetry.[76] The poet had
continually to be performing acrobatic feats, now of rhetoric or
epigram, now of learning, or again in the description of blood-curdling
horrors, monstrous deaths and prodigious sorceries. Each work was
overloaded with _sententiae_ and purple patches.[77] So only could the
author keep the attention of his audience. The results were disastrous
for literature and not too satisfactory[78] for the authors themselves,
as the following curious passage from Tacitus (_Dial._ 9) shows:

Bassus is a genuine poet, and his verse possesses both beauty and
charm: but the only result is that, when after a whole year, working
every day and often well into the night, he has hammered out one
book of poems, he must needs go about requesting people to be
good enough to give him a hearing: and what is more he has to
pay for it: for he borrows a house, constructs an auditorium,
hires benches and distributes programmes. And then--admitting
his recitations to be highly successful--yet all that honour and
glory falls within one or two days, prematurely gathered like grass
in the blade or flowers in their earliest bloom: it has no sure or