ABSTRACT
But the work is not more remarkable for its admirable delineation of the characters it brings out, than for the learning and perfect acquaintance of the habits and feelings of the times it alludes to; everything is truthful about it; it represents Rome as it was, and the Romans as they were, with all their insolence and recklessness, their idleness and improvidence. What we know through their poets and historians of the manners and daily life of the inhabitants of imperial Rome, even so, in every tittle, do we find our knowledge confirmed by these volumes, and, therefore, as an historical work, we can very highly recommend it. Its fiction even is founded upon truth, and perhaps no historical romance was ever published that is so entirely free from misrepresentation of facts, or that so entirely agreed with the assertions of history. The author, in his first work, has stepped into the first rank of romance writers.
