The last period is _rhetorical_: it has been called “the silver age.” It produced Rome’s only fabulist, Phædrus; the greatest satirist, Juvenal; the wittiest epigrammatist, Martial; the most philosophical historian, Tacitus; the most judicious critic, Quintilian; and a letter-writer, scarcely inferior to Cicero himself, the younger Pliny; and yet, notwithstanding these illustrious names, this is the period of the decline. These great names shed a lustre over their generation; but they did not influence their taste or arrest the approaching decay of the national genius: causes were at work which were rapidly producing this effect, and they were beyond their control. A new and false standard of taste was now set up, which was inconsistent with original genius and independent thought. Rome was persuaded, to accept a declamatory rhetoric as a substitute for that fervid eloquence in which she had delighted, and which was now deprived of its use, and was driven from the Forum to the lecture-room. This taste infected every species of composition. Seneca abused his fine talents to teach men to admire nothing so much as glitter, novelty, and affectation; and, at length, all became constrained, hollow, and artificial. With the national liberty, the national intellect lapsed into a state of inactivity: a period of intellectual darkness succeeded, the influence which the capital had lost was taken up by the provinces, and thus the way was paved for the inroad of barbarism.
Such is the outline of this work; and if the reader finds some features, which he considers of great importance, rapidly touched upon, the extent of the subject, and the wish to compress it within a moderate compass, must be offered as the author’s apology. In conclusion, the author acknowledges his deep obligations to those historians and biographers whose works he has consulted during the composition of this history. He feels that it would have been presumptuous to offer such a work to the public without having profited by the laborious investigations of Wolf, Bayle, Hermann, Grotefend, Bernhardy, Bähr, Schlegel, Lachmann, Dunlop, Matthiæ, Schoell, Krause, Ritter, Nisard, Pierron, Niebuhr, Milman, Arnold, Merivale, Donaldson, Smith, and the authors of the “Biographie Universelle.”