Identifier: historyofancient03good (find matches)
Title: A history of the ancient world, for high schools and academies
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Goodspeed, George Stephen, 1860-1905
Subjects: History, Ancient
Publisher: New York, C. Scribner's Sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
t that as many works of lasting famewere written in Greek as in Latin. One of the greatestTacitus. historians of antiquity, Cornelius Tacitus, belongs to thiscentury. His chief works are the Histories and the An-nalSj which deal with the Empire under the Julian andFlavian Caesars. Unfortunately, large parts of these workshave been lost, but what remains is our chief source ofknowledge for the times. Tacitus aspired to bring backto life and power just the ideas and institutions which thehistory of the Empire had shown to be fruitless and hope-less. He sought to exalt the senatorial nobility as overagainst the princeps, Rome and Italy as over against theprovinces. But so keen is his insight into characters andmanners at Rome, and so brilliant his way of expressinghis estimates of them, that his bitter and one-sided judg-ments have colored all subsequent views of the times.Two lesser works of his are the Agricola, an appreciationof his father-in-law, the general of Domitian, and the Ger-
Text Appearing After Image:
(4 O a. H> H O O w M H OO Juvenal and Plutarch 405 maniay a description of the Germans, in which their sim-plicity and purity of hfc are favorably compared with thedepravity of imperial Rome. Side by side with Tacitus juvenai.stands Juvenal, the satirist of the Empire. What theformer condemned as an historian, the latter held up toscorn and ridicule in his powerful verse. Hypocriticalphilosophers, parasitical clients, rich fools, ostentatiousluxury, fortune-hunting and the trials of poor men of let-ters are painted in strong and vivid colors. 472. Of Greek writers the most famous is Plutarch piutarch.(a.d. 46-120), who wrote the Parallel Lives, forty-six innumber, setting the biography of a Roman hero overagainst that of a Greek. He was a diligent collector ofanecdotes and used them shrewdly to show the traits of his characters. The book has ever been a storehouse ofinformation and at the same time a hand-book of morals—history teaching by the examples of the greatest menof the a

Note About Images