88 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



despite his protests of the dangers he had undergone during the tyranny, 

 could have written just as well under Domitian as under Trajan. The 

 Satires of Juvenal, however, and the Annals of Tacitus mark the near 

 approach to the ideal time "when a man might think what he wished 

 and say what he thought." 1 There is a strength and virility about 

 Juvenal, and a greatness and depth about Tacitus that imply freedom 

 of expression, although we trace, at the same time, a previous devel- 

 opment under repression and lack of freedom, such as characterize the 

 reign of Domitian. 



The poetical contests supported by the emperors apparently failed 

 during our period to develop in the aspirants anything except servility 

 and mediocrity. That competition and avowed rivalry might have a 

 healthy influence on literature, when other circumstances co-operated, 

 is shown most clearly by the abiding greatness of the Periclean drama. 

 But the festival at Athens had been the occasion for the expression of 

 all that was highest and best in the national life with its freedom and 

 vigor. Here, if anywhere, the divine afflatus might be strengthened 

 by human encouragement. The games at Rome in the time of Domi- 

 tian, however, were under the immediate control of the tyrant him- 

 self, and there could be little voicing of the soul of a poet, when the 

 prize must fall to polished and sounding verse lauding and magnifying 

 the friend of Pallas and the Muses who presided, a present deity, at 

 his own glorious festival. 



Another feature making for flattery of the reigning power was the 

 number, prominence and even predominance of writers from the 

 provinces. To these the empire could but appear in another light 

 than to the residents of the capital. The provinces had felt the benefits 

 of imperial rule, and as yet very few of its evils. Their condition was, 

 in truth, much better than it had been in the old days of the Republic 

 when they had been plundered by the arbitrary greed of the successive 

 officials much more oppressively than they were by the systematic 

 exaction of a strong central government. To the provincials the emperor 

 might, and often did, seem the embodiment of beneficent sover- 

 eignty, a being that they must respect and might even adore. The 



1 Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet. Tac, Hist., I, i. 



