those in after times
who had any relish for originality and national spirit; and even we,
who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments
preserved discern in some measure that the writer "knew how to laugh
and how to jest in moderation." And as the last breath
of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed,
as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth,
the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament
should commend these his Menippean children to every one
"who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium";
and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature
as in the history of the Italian people.(27)

Historical Composition
Sisenna

The critical writing of history, after the manner in which
the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period
and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never
properly developed in Rome. Even in the field most adapted for it--
the representation of contemporary and of recently past events--
there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts;
in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important
contributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field--
the labours of Antipater and Asellius--were barely even equalled.
The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose
in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars
by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna (praetor in 676). Those who had read it
testify that it far excelled in liveliness and readableness
the old dry chronicles, but was written withal in a style
thoroughly impure and even degenerating into puerility; as indeed
the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible
details,(28) and a number of words newly coined or derived
from the language of conversation. When it is added that the author's
model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him
was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great
oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-
romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate
to recognize in Sisenna's celebrated historical work, not a product
of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay
in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite
with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts
life-like and