to put them more on a level with the Greeks, is matter of no small astonishment. She was certainly a woman of great genius, learning, and beauty.

SALEIUS, a poet of great merit in the age of Domitian, yet pinched by poverty, though born of illustrious parents, and distinguished by purity of manners and integrity of mind.

SERRANUS, a Latin poet of considerable merit, who flourished under Domitian.

TERENTIANUS MAURUS, a Latin poet and grammarian, who flourished under Trajan, Adrian, and the Antonines. He was governor of Syene in Upper Egypt, about A. D. 140. He wrote a poem "De literis, syllabis, pedibus, et metris," published in Milan in 1497; and also in the " Corpus Poetarum Romanorum," Geneva, 1611, 2 vols. 4to.

LITERATURE.

TITUS PETRONIUS ARBITER, a great critic and polite writer, the favourite of Nero, supposed to be the same mentioned by Tacitus in his Annals, lib. xvi. He was proconsul of Bithynia, and afterwards consul, and appeared capable of the greatest employments. He was one of Nero's principal confidants, and the superintendant of his pleasures. The great favour shown him drew upon him the envy of Tigellinus, another of Nero's favourites, who accused him of being concerned in a conspiracy against the emperor; on which Petronius was seized, and was sentenced to die. He met death with a striking indifference, and seems to have tasted it nearly as he had done his pleasures. He would sometimes open a vein, and sometimes close it, conversing with his friends in the mean time, not on the immortality of the soul, which was no part of his creed, but on topics which pleased his fancy, as of love verses, and agreeable and passionate airs. Of this disciple of Epicurus, Tacitus gives the following character; "he was," says he, "neither a spendthrift nor debauchee; but a refined voluptuary, who devoted the day to sleep, and the night to the duties of his office, and to pleasure." He is much distinguished by a satire which he wrote, and secretly conveyed to Nero; in which he ingeniously describes, under borrowed names, the character of this prince. Peter Petit discovered at Iraw, in Dalmatia, in 1665, a considerable fragment, containing the sequel of Petronius's Trimalcion's Feast. This fragment, which was printed in 1666 at Padua and Paris, produced a paper war among the learned. While some affirmed that it was the work of Petronius, and others denied it to be so, Petit sent it to Rome. The French critics, who had attacked its authenticity, were silent after it was deposited in the royal library. It is now generally attributed

to Petronius. The best editions of Petronius are those published at Venice, 1499, in 4to; at Amsterdam, 1669, in 8vo, cum Notis Var. Ibid; with Boschius's notes, 1677, in 24mo; and 1700, 2 vols. in 24mo. The edition Variorum was reprinted in 1743, in 2 vols. 4to, with Peter Burmann's commentaries. Petronius died in 65 or 66.

PHILO, a Jewish writer of Alexandria, A. D. 40, sent as ambassador from his nation to Caligula. He was unsuccessful in his embassy, of which he wrote an entertaining account; and the emperor, who wished to be worshipped as a god, expressed his dissatisfaction with the Jews, because they refused to place his statues in their temples. He was so happy in his expressions, and elegant in his variety, that he has been called the Jewish Plato; and the book which he wrote on the sufferings of the Jews in the reign of Caius, met with such unbounded applause in the Roman senate, where he read it publicly, that he was permitted to consecrate it in the public libraries. His works were divided into three parts, of which the first related to the creation of the world, the second spoke of sacred history, and in the third the author made mention of the laws and customs of the Jewish nation. The best edition is that of Mangey at London, 2 vols. folio.

QUINTILIAN, the father of the celebrated orator, was also an orator, and wrote one hundred and forty-five declamations. Ugolin of Parma published the first one hundred and thirty-six in the 15th century; the nine others were published in 1563 by Peter Ayrault, and afterwards by Peter Pythou in 1580. There have been also nineteen other declamations printed under the name of Quintilian the orator; but, in the opinion of Vossius, they were written neither by that orator nor his grandfather.

MARCUS AFER, a Roman orator. Some writers have attributed to him the " Dialogue of orators," which has been frequently printed with the works of Tacitus and Quintilian. He died about 83.

MARCUS FABIUS QUINTILIAN, a celebrated teacher of eloquence, was born about the year 42 of the Christian era, during the reign of the emperor Claudius. He is supposed to have descended from a noble family originally Spanish, but that his father, or grandfather, had settled in Rome. The place of his birth is not known, but it seems certain that he was educated in that capital, where he studied rhetoric under Domitius Afer, a celebrated orator. He opened a school at Rome, and was the first who obtained a salary from the state as a public teacher. After he had remained twenty years in his laborious employment, and obtained the applause of the illustrious Romans, not merely as a preceptor, but as a pleader at the bar, Quintilian retired to enjoy the fruits of his labours and industry. In his 3

retirement, he assiduously devoted his time to the study of literature, and wrote a treatise on the "Causes of the Corruption of Eloquence." Some time after, he wrote his "Institutiones Oratoriæ," the most perfect and complete system of oratory extant. It is, in truth, one of the most valuable remains of antiquity. It was composed for the use of his son, whose early death he had occasion to deplore, and is an institute for the education of an orator, whom he takes up from the cradle, and conducts through all the periods of instruction to the exercise of the proper art. It accordingly contains many excellent precepts with respect to education in general, especially the early parts of it, which are applicable in all times and countries, as being founded on the nature of the mind. The style of Quintilian is said, by critics, to exhibit tokens of the termination of the Latin tongue; but, on the other hand, it must be observed, that every deviation from the usage of the Augustan age has been too readily regarded as a deprivation. Quintilian was appointed preceptor to the two young princes whom Domitian destined for his successors on the throne; but the celebrity which the rhetorician received from the favours and attention of the emperor, and from the success which his writings met with in the world, were embittered by the loss of his wife and of his two sons, one of whom he describes as a prodigy of early excellence. It is said that Quintilian was poor in his retirement, and that his indigence was relieved by the liberality of his pupil, Pliny the younger. He is supposed to have died about the year 95. His "Institutiones" were discovered in the year 1415, in an old tower of a monastery at St. Gall, by Poggio Bracchiolini. The treatise on the "Čauses and Corruption of Eloquence," has not come down to us. The name of Quintilian is affixed to certain "Declamations," of which there are fourteen of moderate length; but as the style, method, and manner, are totally different from the rules laid down in the "Institutiones," no good judges attribute them to the name of Quintilian. Of the editions of Quintilian, some of the most valuable are those of Gessner, 4to. Gotting. 1730; of Lug Batavorum, 8vo. cum Notis Variorum, 1665; of Gibson, 4to. Oxon. 1693; and that of Rollin, republished in London in 1792. There is an English translation by Mr. Guthrie.

SECUNDUS CARRINATES, a poor but ingenious rhetorician, who came from Athens to Rome, where the boldness of his expressions, especially against tyrannical power, exposed him to Caligula's resentment, who banished him.

POMPONIUS MELA, an ancient Latin writer, who was born in Hispania Boetica, and flourished under Claudius. His three books of Cosmography, or De situ orbis, are written in a concise, perspicuous, and elegant manner. Isaac Vossius gave an edition of them in 1658, 4to. with copious notes.

ONOSANDER, a Greek author and Platonic philosopher, who wrote commentaries on Plato's politics, which are lost; but particularly famous for a treatise, entitled, " Of the Duty and Virtues of a General of an Army," which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and French. The time when he lived is not precisely known, but is imagined to have been in the reign of Claudius I.

PLINY the ELDER, or CAIUS CÆCILIUS PLINIUS SECUNDUS, one of the most learned men of ancient Rome, was descended from an illustrious family, and born at Verona. He bore arms in a distinguished post; was one of the college of Augurs, became intendant of Spain, and was employed in several important affairs by Vespasian and Titus, who honoured him with their esteem. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which happened in the year 79, proved fatal to him. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, relates the circumstances of that dreadful eruption, and the death of his uncle, in a letter to Tacitus. Pliny the Elder wrote a Natural History in thirtyseven books, which is still extant, and has had many editions; the most esteemed of which is that of Father Hardouin, printed at Paris in 1723, in two volumes folio. He also wrote one hundred and sixty volumes of observations on various authors, for which Lartius Lutinius offered him an enormous sum, equal to three thousand two hundred and forty-two pounds sterling, but it was refused.

ISÆUS, a Greek orator, who came to Rome, and who is mentioned with great applause by Pliny the Younger, who observes, that he always spoke extempore, and wrote with elegance, unlaboured ease, and great correctness.

VIBIUS GALLUS GALLUS, a celebrated orator of Gaul, in the age of Augustus, of whose orations Seneca has preserved some fragments.

PLINY the YOUNGER, nephew and adopted son of Pliny the Elder, was born in the ninth year of Nero, and the sixty-second of Christ, at Novocomum, now Como, upon the Lake Larius, near which he had several beautiful villas. Lucius Cæcilius was the name of his father. He showed very early talents. He wrote a Greek tragedy at fourteen years of age. He lost his father when he was young; and had the famous Virginius for his tutor, whom he has set in a glorious light. He frequented the schools of the rhetoricians, and heard Quintilian, for whom he ever after entertained so high an esteem, that he bestowed a considerable portion upon his daughter at her marriage. He was in his eighteenth year when his uncle died; and he then began to plead in the forum, which was the usual road to dignities. About a year after, he assumed the military character, and went into Syria as tribune; but this did VOL. II. H

not suit his taste, and he returned after a campaign or two. In his passage home he was detained by contrary winds at the island of Icaria, where he wrote poetry. Upon his return from Syria, he married, and settled at Rome, in the reign of Domitian. During this most perilous time, he continued to plead in the forum, where he was distinguished no less by his uncommon abilities and eloquence, than by his great resolution and courage, which enabled him to speak boldly, when scarcely any one else could speak at all. He was therefore often appointed by the senate to defend the plundered provinces against their oppressive governors, and to manage other causes of a like important and dangerous nature. One of these was for the province of Boetica, in their prosecution of Bæbius Massa, in which he acquired such general applause, that the emperor Nerva, then a private man, and in banishment at Tarentum, wrote to him a letter, in which he congratulated not only Pliny, but the age which had produced an example so much in the spirit of the ancients. Pliny relates this affair in a letter to Tacitus, whom he entreats to record it in his history, but with much more modesty than Tully had entreated Lucceius upon a similar occasion. He obtained the offices of quæstor and tribune, and fortunately escaped the tyranny of Domitian. But he tells us himself, that his name was afterwards found in Domitian's tablets, in the list of those who were destined to destruction. He lost his wife in the beginning of Nerva's reign, and soon after married his beloved Calphurnia, of whom we read so much in his epistles. He had, however, no children by either of his wives; and hence we find him thanking Trajan for the jus trium liberorum, which he had granted to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus. He was promoted to the consulate by Trajan in the year 100, when he was thirty-eight years of age; and in this office pronounced that famous panegyric, which has ever since been admired, as well for the copiousness of the topics as the elegance of the address. Then he was elected augur, and afterwards made proconsul of Bithynia; whence he wrote to Trajan that curious letter concerning the primitive Christians, which, with Trajan's rescript, is happily extant among his epistles. Pliny's letter, as Mr. Melmoth observes in a note upon the passage, is esteemed one of the few genuine monuments of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately succeeding the apostles, it being written at most not above forty years after the death of St. Paul. It was preserved by the Christians, as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is often appealed to by the early writers of the church against the calumnies of their adversaries. It is not known what became of Pliny after his return from Bithynia. Antiquity is also silent as to the time of his death; but it is supposed that he died either a little before or soon after Tra