Thomas Heywood adapted the Amphitruo in his Silver Age (1613), the Rudens in his Captives (licensed 1624), and the Mostellaria in his English Traveller (1633).
Although there are some works of this so-called Silver Age of considerable and one at least of supreme interest, from the insight they afford into the experience of a century of organized despotism and its effect on the spiritual life of the ancient world, it cannot be doubted that the steady literary decline which characterized the last centuries of paganism was beginning before the death of Ovid and Livy.
Among the scholars of Italian birth, probably the only one in this age who rivalled the Greeks as a public expositor of their own literature was Politian (1454-1494), who lectured on Homer and Aristotle in Florence, translated Herodian, and was specially interested in the Latin authors of the Silver Age and in the text of the Pandects of Justinian.
It abounds not only in antitheses, but also in questions and exclamations, tropes and metaphors, and other mannerisms of the silver age.
The writers of the silver age found fault with his prolixity, want of sparkle and epigram, and monotony of his clausulae.4 A certain Largius Licinius gained notoriety by attacking his Latinity in a work styled Ciceromastix.
