ABSTRACT
THE lack of real intellectual vigour is well attested by the literature that was produced after c. a.d. 50. Its abundance distinguishes the period from that immediately following the death of Ovid (a.d. 18). The latter merely produced such minor works as Manilius’ poem on astrology; the rhetorical exercises of the Elder Seneca; the collection of historical anecdotes by Valerius Maximus; a sketch of Roman history by Velleius Paterculus; the highly rhetorical Greek works on Biblical exegesis by the Alexandrian Jew, Philo; the metrical paraphrases of Aesop’s fables by Phaedrus; a biography of Alexander the Great by Curtius Rufus; and the technical writings of Celsus, Pomponius Mela and Columella on medicine, geography and agriculture respectively.
