ABSTRACT
This chapter describes more particularly the practical influence of Stoicism. After the death of Brutus Stoicism ceases for a while to play a prominent part in Roman history; but its indirect influence is very marked in the two great poets of the Augustan epoch, Horace and Virgil. Still Virgil's picture must be regarded rather as an adaptation than as an exposition of Stoicism; it lacks the sharp outlines and the didactic tone of the poetry of Cleanthes or Lucretius, and other interpretations are by no means excluded. In the time of the next princeps it first finds Stoicism associated with an unsympathetic attitude towards the imperial government. As such it appears in the writings of Juvenal, who not only introduces into serious literature the Stoic principle of 'straight speaking, but actually expounds much of the ethical teaching of Stoicism with more directness and force than any professed adherent of the system.
