probably supplemented from the Greek collection independently formed by
Babrius about the same period.

Though Livy is the single great historian of the Augustan age, there was
throughout this period a profuse production of memoirs and commentaries,
as well as of regular histories. Augustus wrote thirteen books of memoirs
of his own life down to the pacification of the Empire at the close of
the Cantabrian war. These are lost; but the _Index Rerum a se Gestarum,_
a brief epitome of his career, which he composed as a sort of epitaph on
himself, is extant. This document was engraved on plates of bronze
affixed to the imperial mausoleum by the Tiber, and copies of it were
inscribed on the various temples dedicated to him in many provincial
cities after his death. It is one of these copies, engraved on the
vestibule wall of the temple of Augustus and Rome at Ancyra in Galatia,
which still exists with inconsiderable gaps. His two principal ministers,
Maecenas and Agrippa, also composed memoirs. The most important work of
the latter hardly, however, falls within the province of literature; it
was a commentary on the great geographical survey of the Empire carried
out under his supervision.

Gaius Asinius Pollio, already mentioned as a critic and tragedian, was
also the author of the most important historical work of the Augustan age
after Livy's. This was a _History of the Civil Wars,_ in seventeen books,
from the formation of the first triumvirate in 60 B.C. to the battle of
Philippi. Though Pollio was a practised rhetorician, his narrative style
was simple and austere. The fine ode addressed to him by Horace during
the composition of this history seems to hint that in Horace's opinion--
or perhaps, rather, in that of Horace's masters--Pollio would find a
truer field for his great literary ability in tragedy. But apart from its
artistic quality, the work of Pollio was of the utmost value as giving