Description
Book SynopsisThis edition includes a new preface and an updated bibliography.
Trade ReviewFantham offers a succinct but generous guide to recent scholarship in Latin literature. I heartily recommend her book to scholars of Latin literature, to instructors seeking a textbook for History of Latin Literature courses and to graduate students studying for exams. -- T. Keith Dix Sharp News
Table of ContentsPreface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Toward a Social History of Latin Literature
Author, Audience, and Medium
Ennius and Cato, Two Early Writers
New Genres of Literature, from Lucilius to Apuleius
Generic Preoccupations
Chapter One
Starting from Scratch
Drama—The First Literary Genre
Comedy: Naevius, Plautus, and Terence
The Tragic Tradition
Patriotism and History in Poetry and Prose
The First Latin History: Cato's Origines
From the Gracchi to Sulla: Lucilian Satire and the New Individualism
Catullus and Lucretius
Chapter Two
Rome at the End of the Republic
Roman Education, for Better or Worse
Literature and Nationalism
Literature and the Amateur
Literary Studies and the Recreation of Literary History
Literature and Scholarship: Cicero's Evidence for the Studies of Caesar and Varro
Chapter Three
The Coming of the Principate: "Augustan" Literary Culture
The Survivors: The New Poets Gallus and Virgil
The Roman Poetry Book, a New Literary Form
Private and Public Patronage
The Emperor as Theme and Patron
The Best of Patrons, and the Patron's Greater Friend
Performance and Readership
Spoken and Written Prose in Augustan Society: Rhetoric as Training and Display
The First Real Histories
Chapter Four
Un-Augustan Activities
The Literature of Youth
Love and Elegy
Ovid the Scapegoat, and the Sorrows of Augustus
Innocence and Power of the Book
Chapter Five
An Inhibited Generation: Suppression and Survival
Permissible Literature: Prose
Moral Treatises and Letters
Didactic and Descriptive Poetry
The Tastes and Prejudices of Augustus's Imperial Successors
The Divergence of Theater and Drama
Chapter Six
Between Nero and Domitian: The Challenge to Poetry
The Neronian Revival
Poetry and Parody in a New Setting
Vicissitudes of the Epic Muse
Professional Poets in the Time of Domitian
Chapter Seven
Literature and the Governing Classes: From the Accession of Vespasian to the Death of Trajan
Equestrian and Senatorial Writers: A Changing Elite
Choices of Literary Career: Fame or Survival?
Pliny's Letters and His Literary World
The Public World of the Senator and Orator
The World of the Auditorium
Chapter Eight
Literary Culture in Decline: The Antonine Years
Hadrian, the Philhellene
The Traveling Sophists
The Provinces and Latin Culture
Marcus Aurelius and His Teachers
Aulus Gellius, the Eternal Student in Rome and Greece
Apuleius, the Ultimate Word Artist
Chapter Nine
Classical Literary Culture and the Impact of Christianity
Tertullian and His Successors
Diocletian and a Generation of Political Change
Ausonius
The Controversy over the Altar of Victory: Symmachus and Prudentius
Claudian
The Maturity of Christian Prose: Jerome and Augustine
Macrobius: The Last Celebrant of Secular Literary Culture
Notes
Bibliography
Index
