in 
and Art. 
Literature 
33 
poets. In the time of Horace, the fatire of the Romans had reached its  
higheil degree of perfection. "Of the two other great fatirifls whofe works 
are preferved, Juvenal was born about the year 40 of the Chriltian era, 
and Perlius in 4.3. During the period through which thefe writers 
flourithed, Rome faw a confiderable number of other fatirifts of the 
fame clafs, whofe Works have perifhed. 
In the time oflnvenal another variety of the fame clafs of literature had 
already iprnng up, more artificial and fomewhat more indirect than the 
other, the profe fatiric romance. Three celebrated writers reprefent this 
fchool. Petronius, who, born about the commencement of our era, 
died in A.D. 65, is the earliett and molt remarkable of them. He 
compiled a romance, deiigned as a fatire on the vices of the age of Nero, 
in which real perfons are fnppofed to be aimed at under fictitious names, 
and which rivals in licenfe, at leaft, anything that could have been uttered 
in the-Atellanes or other farces of the mimi. Lucian, of Samofata, who 
died an old man in the year zoo, and who, though he wrote in Greek, 
may be confidered as belonging to the Roman fchool, compofed feveral 
fatires of this kind, in one of the molt remarkable of which, entitled 
" Lucius, or the Afs," the author defcribes himfelf as changed by tbrcery 
into the form of that animal, under which he paffes through a number 
of adventures which illullrate the vices and weakneifes of contemporary 
fociety. Apuleius, who was ccnfiderably the junior of Lucian, made this 
novel the groundwork of his " Golden Afs," a much larger and more 
elaborate work, written in Latin. This work of Apuleius was very 
popular through fubfequent ages. 
Let us return to Roman caricature, one form of which feems to have 
been efpecially a favourite among the people. It is difficult to imagine 
how the Rory of the pigmies and of their Wars with the cranes originated, 
but it is certainly of great antiquity, as it is fpoken of in Homer, and it 
was a very popular legend among the Romans, who eagerly fought and 
purchafed dwarfs to make domefizic pets of them. The pigmies and 
cranes occur frequently among the pictorial ornamentations of the houfes 
of Pompeii and I-Ierculaneum ; and the painters of Pompeii not only 
reprefented them in their proper chara8ter,but they made ufe of them f0? 
F the