Feb 2010 Ancient Roman Literature

Feb 2010 - Ancient Roman Literature

Plautus - adapted Greek comic plays, re complicated love affairs, more realistic and sophisticated, quote: 'fortune favours the bold'.

Terence - 'On The Nature of the Universe' poet , interpretation of Epicurian (pleasure) science - philosophy (accepts evidence of senses, dismisses metaphysical abstractions, find wonder and pleasure in perceptible world - explains atoms, not to fear death. Translation in prose.

Cicero - statesman, orator, wrote speeches, letters, essays

Horace - Odes and Epodes - greatest Roman poet, famous in own lifetime, likeable man

Persius - satirical

Catullus - poetry - series of poems addressed to married lover chronicling affair, versatile but famous for love poetry, leading figure of new poets of the day and good fun

Virgil - The Aeneid (also Eclogues and Georgics)
The destiny of Rome, beauty and fertility of Italy, its morality and religion. Studies since Roman times. The story of Aeneus, who escapes the fall of Troy, travels with Athena's guidance to found Rome.

Lucan - Civil War - epic poem on civil war between Caesar and Pompey

Ovid - Metamorphoses (also Amores, Cosmetics, Art of love, Cure for Love) - entertaining and fun epic poem of transformations.

Juvenal - Satires - scenes of Roman life, bitter humour, like Jonathon Swift

Martial - Epigrams - short poems of single ideas, some obscene, like graffiti, humorous

Seneca - plays, based on Greek tragedies, bloodthirsty and ruthlessness

Petronius - Satyricon - very modern, low life, amoral, gay baths, pretentious vulgarity of millionaire, anti-heroes, disreputable but likeable

Apuleius - The Golden Ass - man meets witches, turned into ass, falls in with robbers, adventures, story of Cupid and Psyches, performing as turned back into man by goddess - strange, beautiful and moral

Propertius - poet, famous for Cynthia poems, striking visual imagery and strong personal characteristics

Pliny the Younger - letters on a range of subjects, a wealthy Roman, includes an account of the destruction of Pompeii

Caesar - The Civil War - general , statesman, dictator, refers to himself in third person

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Question: Was the story more accessible than you expected? Did anything surprise you?

I read these writers at University, and was particularly fond of Ovid and Catullus. The text known as the greatest is probably Virgil's Aenied. It was well studied when Latin was taught to all school students.

There are three things that stand out for me about Ancient Roman Literature.

Firstly, these texts would have been well known by all the dead white males who wrote the literary canon. Studying literature presumes a familiarity with the Judeo/Christian tradition (the bible) and classical (as in ancient classical) literature. Reading ancient Greek and Roman literature means you get the references in Shakespeare, and all the other big name writers.

The second striking thing for me is that reading these works puts the bible into a context. Ovid writes about the creation of the world. The Aeneid can be read as a Jesus story - the destiny of one man to found a new world and the distractions/hesitations on his journey to fulfil his destiny. The Golden Age of Ancient Greece was 5th Century BC. The Romans, of course, were around at the time of Christ. To know more about what was going on at the time that Jesus lived, and the literary context of the time that his life was documented, adds to a fuller picture of the bible.

The last thing that I find striking is how modern the stories are and how modern the storytelling is. Catullus' poems of his love affair could have been written yesterday. Ovid writes about love and cosmetics. Seneca's plays are brutal and gory. Petronius' antihero in The Satyricon is the bad boy we love as he drifts around the sordid nightlife. Apuleius' Golden Ass is like Francis the Talking Mule, with more adventures and more of a moral. And the story structure is circular (perhaps this is where Mary Shelly got the idea from?) Martial's poems are more like graffiti of insults that show that nothing much has changed in 2000 years. Really, there is nothing new under the sun!