In the wars following Julius Caesar's assassination, a generation of Republican literary figures was lost. Cicero and his contemporaries were replaced by a new generation who spent their formidable years under the old constructs and were forced to make their mark under the watchful eye of a new emperor and his quasi-culture minister, Gaius Maecenas, who was a prolific patron of the arts. The demand for great orators had ceased, shifting to an emphasis on poetry. Other than the historian Livy, the most remarkable writers of the period were the poets Virgil, Horace, and Ovid.