ABSTRACT
As against the varied masterpieces of the preceding period practically all that the new age had to offer in the way of literary achievement were the stilted sensational tragedies of the younger Seneca, the epic experiments of Lucan, and the satires of Persius. So far authors have been considering Seneca's work as a critic mainly in the light of the information he supplies with regard to declamations and declaimers, and their bearing on the causes of the literary decline. With the elder Seneca, then, as they have seen, began the main critical activities of first century and in this field he was followed by the poet Persius, whose work likewise contained some amount of commentary on contemporary literature, though from a different angle. In the works of the elder Seneca, Persius, and Petronius will thus be found what is perhaps most significant, and certainly most interesting historically, in the criticism of the earlier part of the first century.
