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34 Cards in this Set
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Ab urbe condita -EDIT |
Livy's Roman history from the origins of Rome to 9 BC in 142 books. Livy relied on literary sources; he did not regard it as his duty to consult documents/historical records. In books 31–145 it is clear that for events in the east Livy followed Polybius closely, adapting his narrative for his Roman audience and making additions—sometimes tacitly—and noting variants from the 1st-cent. Of the 142 books only 1–10 and 21–45 survive (and 41 and 43–5 have lacunae caused by the loss of leaves in the 5th-cent. manuscript which alone preserves 41–5). We also have two fragments of manuscripts of late antiquity: one, some 80 lines of print, has been known since the 18th cent.; the other, much damaged and containing parts of a few sentences of book 11, was discovered in 1986. We also have passages cited or referred to by later writers, and two kinds of summary of the history. First, there is the so-called Oxyrhynchus Epitome, covering books 37–40 and 48–55, and preserved in a papyrus written in the first half of the 3rd cent. Second, there are the Periochae (summaries) of all books except 136 and 137. |
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Agricola |
Biography by Tacitus of his father-in-law, the Roman governor of Britain (Gnaeus Julius Agricola). It is naturally not very informative concerning the geography and ethnography of Britain, but makes an account of continual rain and cloud and the long days and short nights of the north European summer. Tacitus' laudatory account of his subject emphasizes Agricola's sympathy and justice towards the provincials which enabled him to pacify the country, and Agricola's military skills, particularly his good eye for terrain, which helped him to extend Roman occupation some distance into Scotland. Agricola, though less epigrammatic in style than Tacitus' other work, includes phrases that have become memorable; for example, from the speech of the Caledonian leader Calgacus before the battle at Mons Graupius: omne ignotum pro magnifico est (‘what men know nothing about they see as wonderful’), and ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (‘when they create a desolation they call it peace’). |
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Annales [Ennius] -EDIT |
Ennius:
An epic poem chronicling Roman history in fifteen books, it occupied Ennius up to the time of his death. Fewer than 600 lines survive, which do no more than indicate the general scope of the work. The poem inaugurated a new era in Roman literature, being composed not in the Saturnian metre used by Naevius and Livius Andronicus, but in the Latin version of the hexameter of Greek epic. To emphasize the connection with Greek poetry Ennius begins his work by recounting a dream in which he has been told by Homer that he is the latter's reincarnation. The Annales presented the history of Rome from the fall of Troy to the wars of the poet's own day, including a series of descriptions of great Romans. The First Punic War was omitted, having been dealt with by Naevius. The events of living memory seem to have occupied the last six books of the work. It was from reading Ennius that Roman schoolboys learned about the heroes of old and the Roman virtues. The famous line on Fabius Maximus Cunctator: unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, ‘one man by his delaying restored the situation for us’, was much quoted. Clumsy though the hexameters are, the style is grave and sonorous and suited to the poet's grand conception of his subject. Ennius was regarded by the Romans as the father of their literature; Lucretius and Virgil were considerably influenced by him, Cicero admired and quoted him. He reputedly composed his own epitaph: nemo me lacrumis decoret neu funera fletu faxit. Cur? volito vivo' per ora virum. (‘Let no one honour me with tears or attend my funeral with weeping. Why? I fly, still living, on the lips of men.’) |
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Annales [Tacitus] -EDIT |
Tacitus:
(properly Ab excessu divi Augusti, ‘From the death of the late emperor Augustus’; the title Annales dates from the sixteenth century) Tacitus' history of the reigns of the Julio-Claudian emperors Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, written after his Histories. There is evidence that Tacitus was writing it in AD 115, so the last books were perhaps written c. AD 120. The surviving portions are books 1–4, a small piece of 5, 6, part of 11, 12–15, and part of 16. The work is notable for its style, concise to the point of obscurity, its sustained dignity and vividness, and its epigrammatic sayings, memorable for their irony or melancholy. The record is in the main gloomy and depressing, and although Tacitus bears occasional witness to the efficient civil administration of the empire, the emphasis is rather on the crimes, the sycophancy, the informing, and the oppression that marked this period at Rome. Tacitus claims to write without partiality and prejudice, to aim at saving worthy actions from oblivion while recording evil deeds for posterity (3. 65), but he has in fact a republican bias. It is generally recognized that the impression he gives of Tiberius is unduly dark, and the life of debauchery imputed to him in his last years at Capri inherently improbable. |
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Apocolocyntosis -EDIT |
A clever and original piece of satirical burlesque on the death of the emperor Claudius, written in the form of a Menippean satire in a medley of prose and verse. Written by Seneca the Younger (4 BC - AD 65), it was formed from the words apotheosis, ‘deification’, and colocynta, ‘pumpkin’. Manuscripts give the further title Ludus de morte Claudii, ‘A joke about the death of Claudius’. It was written early in the reign of the emperor Nero (c. AD 54) in mockery of the deification of his predecessor Claudius; the pumpkin perhaps alludes to the latter's stupidity. It describes Claudius' arrival in heaven, the difficulty of finding out who he is because of his stammer, and the proposal of the deified emperor Augustus that he should be deported to the Underworld because of the murders he has committed. Here he meets his victims and is brought for trial before Aeacus. Following Claudius' own system, Aeacus hears the case against him and pronounces sentence without listening to the defence. Claudius is finally made clerk to one of his own freedmen. The work combines serious political criticism with literary parody. |
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Ars Poetica |
A didactic poem written by Horace that takes the form of a letter of advice on the pursuit of literature. In it Horace combined traditional precepts on drama and expressed Horace's personal standards and views on the poet's place in society. The work begins with the statement that every poem must be a unified whole and insists on such values as appropriateness, clarity, and artistic composition. |
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Atellanae -EDIT |
Atellan farces (fābulae Atellānae): Named after the town of Atella in Campania, ancient dramatic performances of Italian low life (the only Oscan literary form known to us; see Italy), apparently performed by masked actors. There were certain stock characters, Bucco the fool, Dossennus the hunchback (or the glutton), Maccus the clown, Manducus (‘with champing jaws’) the glutton, Pappus the greybeard, etc., who were probably introduced in ridiculous situations. Some of the later titles suggest burlesques of mythology. Atellan plays became popular at Rome, probably in the third century bc, and were acted in Latin, rather than Oscan, by amateurs. They were revived in more literary form, with the same stock characters but with a written plot in verse, by Pomponius of Bononia and Novius, who probably flourished early in the first century bc. These revivals, acted by professional comedians, were staged after the end of performances of tragedy, and seem often to have been tragic parodies. They continued intermittently until the end of the first century ad. According to Strabo, writing early in that century, they were performed at Rome in Oscan in his day. Only fragments survive.
(sc. fabula), in origin a native Italian farce. It was a masked drama, largely improvised, with stock characters. It became a literary form for a short time in the period of Sulla. Atellanae continued to be performed at least until the time of Juvenal. They seem to have been primarily low‐life comedies, often in coarse language, set in a small Italian town and giving a humorous portrait of rustic and provincial life; the familiar characters were shown in a variety of situations. |
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Bellum Alexandrinum |
A continuation of Julius Caesar's history of the Civil War, probably written by Hirtius (the style is comparable with the Bellum Gallicum book 8, not written by Caesar but probably by Hirtius). It describes the war of 48–47 bc in Egypt, where Caesar, following his pursuit of Pompey, remained to settle the Egyptian succession by restoring Cleopatra as ruler. It makes no mention of the liaison with Cleopatra or the birth of Caesarion, and ends with Caesar's victory at Zela in August 47. |
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Brutus -EDIT |
Treatise by Cicero ((1) 5) ‘on eminent Roman orators’. Written in 46 BC with the purpose of defending Cicero's own oratorical practice, it gives interesting details of his early life and training as an orator and his gradual rise to the highest position. It purports to record a recent conversation between Cicero, M. Junius Brutus, and Atticus, in which Cicero ends an introductory section on Greek orators by referring to the Attic, Asianic, and Rhodian schools of oratory, commending some of the qualities of the Asianists as well as of the Atticists. He reviews the long series of Roman orators up to his own times, starting from Brutus the Liberator, supposedly consul in 509 BC, but more particularly from Cethēgus, consul in 204 BC (‘the marrow of persuasion’ according to Ennius), giving a brief description of each. His requirements for an ideal orator are formidable: knowledge of literature, philosophy, law, and history; the ability to arouse emotion; to digress and expand where it is advantageous—and all to be done with wit and humor. Cicero regularly spoke last himself, so that he could leave the legal aspects to others. |
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Carmen Saeculare |
Latin choral hymn in the sapphic meter written by Horace in 17 BC at the command of the emperor Augustus. It was performed at the Ludi saeculares (‘Secular Games’) by a choir of 27 boys and 27 girls. A marble inscription recording the games and the part played by Horace still survives. The hymn, sung first at the new temple of Apollo on the Palatine and then sung on the Capitol, is in the form of a prayer addressed to Apollo and Diana, and the achievements of Augustus are commemorated. |
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Cena Trimalchionis -EDIT |
The courtier Petronius' picaresque novel, Satyrica, is a loosely Epicurean mock-epic, where the narrator appears to be pursued by a wrathful Priapus; but it is hard to find any strong moral basis when Encolpius himself is a victim of the decay he observes in society. The longest extended fragment, the ‘Cena Trimalchionis’, dissects a tasteless Saturnalian dinner hosted by an ex-slave. Seneca's (The Younger’s) Apocolocyntosis (‘Pumpkinification’) is an inverted apotheosis-myth, depicting the emperor Claudius as a carnival king, prematurely senile, with filthy habits and a penchant for dicing. It is significant that it was probably written for the first Saturnalia of Nero's reign, not during the lifetime of its subject. Two lines survive from the Flavian satirist Turnus, exposing one of Nero's own crimes, the murder of Claudius' son Britannicus, after the event.
The principal episode in book 15 is the Cena Trimalchionis, ‘Trimalchio's dinner-party’ (it appears in only one manuscript, not found until 1650). Trimalchio is a freedman, a vulgar nouveau-riche to whose dinner-party the adventurers obtain admission. He and his wife Fortunata present an ostentatious display of wealth in the decoration of the house and in the profusion of fantastic dishes set before the guests; there are grotesque incidents during dinner—a drunken brawl and a dog-fight—and ridiculous conversation; Trimalchio's absurd conduct as he becomes more and more drunk finally reaches a maudlin stage in which he describes the contents of his will and his future monument. Two good ghost stories round off the episode, one about a werewolf, the other about witches substituting a changeling made of straw for a boy. The whole is told with vitality and panache.
Of the Satyricon, a long picaresque novel with affinities to the Greek Hellenistic novel, only parts of books 14, 15, and 16 survive. The title alludes to the influence of satire, and perhaps, with irony, to the unsatyric sexual incapacity of Encolpius. It is in prose interspersed with verse, like the Menippean, and describes the disreputable adventures of the homosexual pair Encolpius (the narrator) and the younger Giton around the bay of Naples, fashionable with philhellenic Romans, and in the low haunts of the semi-Greek cities of southern Italy. They encounter a number of characters, including the unscrupulous Ascyltus. The three are completely devoid of morals but have a quick intelligence which sees them through their escapades, narrated with dispassionate realism. |
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Commentariolum petitionis |
An essay in epistolary form, c.5,000 words, on the technique of electioneering, purporting to be addressed by Quintus Tullius Cicero to his brother Marcus Tullius Cicero on the occasion of the latter's consular candidature in 64 bc. Its authenticity has been repeatedly impugned; the arguments against it are conclusive. The level of contemporary reference implies, at all events, much familiarity with the history of the period. The only plausible later context for the production of such a document would be that of a rhetorical exercise (declamation). The content is divided into three sections: first, the means necessary to overcome the disadvantage of being a novus homo; second, methods of building up support, (a) through personal connections and (b) through canvassing the popular vote, the latter regarded as less important; third, a short section on how to prevent or counteract bribery. |
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Cupid and Psyche -EDIT |
The Metamorphoses, sometimes called the Golden Ass, is the only Latin novel which survives whole. On an epic scale (eleven books) and full of narratological cleverness, erotic, humorous, and sensational by turns, it is a fascinating work. The story is that of the young man Lucius, who through his curiosity to discover the secrets of witchcraft is metamorphosed into an ass and undergoes a variety of picaresque adventures before being retransformed through the agency of Isis. This plot is punctuated by a number of inserted tales, which have in fact a close thematic relation to the main narrative; the most substantial and best ‐known of them is that of Cupid and Psyche (‘Soul’ in Greek), which parallels the main story of Lucius by presenting a character (Psyche) whose disastrous curiosity causes troublesome adventures before her rescue through divine agency. The last book provides a much discussed and controversial double twist: after his rescue by Isis, Lucius' low‐life adventures are interpreted in a new religious and providential light, and the identity of the narrator seems to switch from Lucius to Apuleius himself, a final metamorphosis. The novel's literary influences are various, including much Greek and Latin poetry; the main ass‐tale is partly paralleled by the Ass dubiously ascribed to Lucian, and the two may well have a common source. Many of the stories may derive from the tradition of bawdy Milesian Tales, and that of Cupid and Psyche, with its element of Platonic allegory, may owe at least something to a Greek source. |
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De agricultura |
The only work of Cato which survives intact. It is concerned not with agriculture as a whole, but principally with giving advice to the owner of a middle-sized estate, based on slave labor, in Latium or Campania, whose primary aim was the production of wine and olive oil for sale. It also includes recipes, religious formula, prescriptions, and sample contracts. The work is disordered and some have wondered whether Cato himself is responsible for the shape of the text as we have it. |
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De analogia -ADD & EDIT |
Caesar was a distinguished orator in the ‘Attic’ manner, believing in ‘analogy’ (on which he wrote a treatise, De analogia) and in the use of ordinary words (Aulus Gellius Noctes Atticae 1. 10. 4).
Caesar's lost treatise inspired by the teaching of Antonius Gnipho, written on a journey across the Alps (55 or 54 bc) and dedicated to Cicero. It defended the principle of ... |
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De consulatu suo -EDIT |
Little has survived of his famous autobiographical poems of self-glorification, the three books De consulatu suo (‘On my consulship’) written in 60. There remain a passage of 72 lines on his consulship and the two notorious lines which aroused the derision of his contemporaries for their old-fashioned-sounding assonance and boastful expression, cedant arma togae, concedat laurea laudi (or linguae) (‘Let arms submit to civil power, let military laurels yield to praise’ or ‘…to speech’), and O fortunatam natam me consule Romam (‘O happy Rome, born in my consulship’). In general his poetry was at least competent. |
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De lingua latina |
‘On the Latin language’ was a systematic treatise in 25 books on Latin grammar, dealing successively with etymology, inflexion, and syntax, a pioneer work showing occasional penetration, amid many absurd derivations. Books 5–10, much of which we possess, are dedicated to Cicero; the others have not survived . It was probably published in 43 BC. Written by Marcus Terentius Varro, he used analogy to set out his paradigms of Latin nouns and verbs. In this he was followed by later Latin grammarians, who eventually established the case endings of the five declensions as we now know them. |
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De re rustica |
Treatise on farming written in dialogue form by M. Terentius Varro when his eightieth year (37 BC) admonished him ‘that he must be packing his baggage to depart this life’. It is in the tradition of the De agricultura by Cato, with a preface celebrating the virtues of the agricultural basis of the early Roman state (up to the mid-second century BC). The treatise is in three books and takes the form of conversations, to some extent in a dramatic setting: the first conversation is interrupted by news of a murder, and the third by incidents in an election. Book 1 deals with the farm itself, its buildings and equipment, and the agricultural year in general; book 2 with cattle- and sheep-breeding; book 3 with the smaller livestock on a farm, aviaries, poultry, bees, game preserves, and fishponds. The work is enlivened by touches of wit and a fondness for country life. |
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De rerum natura -EDIT |
A didactic poem in six books of hexameters (some 7,400 lines), and is the fullest exposition we possess of the physical system of Epicurus, in which Lucretius was a convinced and ardent believer. His immediate sources are unknown, and seem not to include directly Epicurus' own great work, On Nature; but the poem owes something to other scientific works, such as Plato's Timaeus and the Hippocratic corpus. The purpose of the poem is to free men from a sense of guilt and the fear of death by demonstrating that fear of the intervention of gods in this world and of punishment of the soul after death are groundless: the world and everything in it are material and governed by the mechanical laws of nature, and the soul is mortal and perishes with the body. Thus most of the poem is devoted to an exposition of the atomic theory which Epicurus had adopted from the philosophers Democritus and Leucippus: that an infinite number of atoms moving about in infinite space collide and combine with each other to bring into existence the world in all its variety, and there is nothing in the world that is not material. However, Lucretius allows that men possess free will, and accounts for it by stating that atoms occasionally swerve from their path out of their own volition. He also touches upon Epicurus' moral theory that pleasure is the aim of life.
Beyond his aim to enlighten there is no specific treatment of the subject of moral conduct, but it is clear that Lucretius accepted the view of Epicurus. He believes that pleasure and pain are the only guides to conduct, but by pleasure he understands the calm that proceeds from absence of pain and desire, and freedom from care and fear. He is deeply moved at the thought of Epicurus' great contribution to the alleviation of human suffering, and he speaks of the philosopher with religious awe. Much of the subject matter does not lend itself easily to poetic treatment, and there are parts that make for tortuous reading, and others where the versification is heavy and clumsy. His hexameters have weight and dignity, though admitting metrical practices that later poets preferred to avoid. He had a wide range of literary models, and his style shows the influence of the old Latin poets, Ennius (particularly), Naevius, Pacuvius, and Accius. He freely uses alliteration, assonance, and even rhyme, as well as repetition, and archaic forms and constructions; and he does not hesitate to invent new words, complaining of the poverty of his native tongue. By recalling the examples of Parmenides and Empedocles as philosophical and scientific poets Lucretius made his own blend of poetic form and scientific content seem traditional. His main model is Empedocles' poem On Nature, chiefly because this work too was offering an important scientific explanation of the world to its audience. His great success both as a poet and as a scientist lies in the exactness of his imagery, which makes clear the complexity of what he is expounding. But perhaps a long-perceived conflict between the poetry and the philosophy still remains. After all, Aristotle in the Poetics did not think that using Homer's metre made Empedocles write like Homer: he remained a scientist. But poetry is important as the ‘honey on the rim’ of the cup containing the bitter draught of philosophy.
Lucretius aroused the admiration of Virgil (‘happy the man who was able to understand the causes of things’, felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas; see Georgics), of Statius (who speaks of ‘the towering frenzy of the learned Lucretius’, docti furor arduus Lucreti), even of Ovid. But he appears to have been almost completely forgotten in the Middle Ages; the text is based upon only two primary manuscripts. It is through Lucretius that the atomic theories of Epicurus are best known today. |
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Epistulae ad Lucilium -EDIT |
The younger Seneca's large collection of Epistulae morales (‘Moral epistles’), which are addressed to a friend and written informally and from a personal standpoint, but are not a genuine correspondence.
A collection of 124 letters addressed to his friend Lucilius, divided into twenty books.
are also in effect moral essays (the fiction of a genuine correspondence is only sporadically aimed at), and are written in the tradition of the philosophical letter (see letters [Latin]) or the diatribe. The nature of the subject matter—on happiness, the supreme good, riches, the terrors of death, and so forth—and the charm and informality of style, have made them the most popular of Seneca's works. They are persuasive, not dogmatic, in tone, and furnish interesting personal details about the author himself, as well as being illuminating about contemporary life. They were approved and made use of by early Christian writers. Seneca was thought in the Middle Ages to have been a Christian, and was believed by St Jerome and others to have corresponded with the apostle Paul. His treatises were studied by Petrarch (1304–74) and known to Chaucer (c.1343–1400). |
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Epistulae ex Ponto |
Four books of elegiac poems written by Ovid in the latter years of his exile at Tomis. Books 1–3 were published in ad 13; book 4 probably appeared after his death in ad 17. Like the poems of books 3–5 of the Tristia, these describe the rigours of his exile and plead for leniency; ‘writing a poem you can't read to anyone is like dancing in the dark', he complains to a fellow poet. They differ only by being addressed to individuals by name. Ovid's hopes seem to rest on the genial character of Germanicus, nephew and adopted son of the emperor Tiberius, who is addressed or mentioned in several places. |
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Germania -EDIT |
The name commonly given to an ethnographical monograph by Tacitus on the origin, geography, institutions, and tribes of the Germans (see Germany), published in ad 98. It describes the various tribes: their appearance, political and social customs, and dress; the organization of their army; their land tenure and religion (their human sacrifices are regarded with abhorrence); their sloth alternating with warlike activity; their drunkenness and gambling; the exemplary morality of their family life (contrasted by implication with the laxity prevailing at Rome). Tacitus then passes on to the geography of the area and the particular characteristics of the several Germanic tribes (including the Swedes and ending with the Finns), arguing that the Germans are racially pure and indigenous on the basis that no one would live there if it were not his native place. As an ethnological work Germania is somewhat incoherent and some of the material was out of date when Tacitus wrote it, but there may have been other motives underlying its composition—a desire to point out the corruption of Rome by contrast with the purer morals of the barbarian, and to emphasize the threat Germany posed to Rome's security: ‘Germany has afforded more triumphs than victories to Rome.’ |
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Heroides -EDIT |
Latin amatory poems in elegiacs by Ovid, in the form of letters purporting to be addressed by heroines of legend to their lovers or husbands, though they read rather like dramatic monologues. In the first fourteen letters women address men (the authenticity of the fifteenth letter, from Sappho to Phaon, is doubted); letters 16–21 are in pairs, the woman answering the man's letter. It used to be thought that this last group was not by Ovid. The first group was published between the two editions of the Amores, i.e. towards the end of the first century bc; the second group perhaps in the earliest years of the first century ad, before Ovid's exile in ad 8. He claimed that they constituted a new literary form, invented by him.
The letters of the heroines are studies of love from the woman's point of view, based perhaps on Ovid's own observation but also on the rhetorical study of character-drawing; the sentiments and moral standpoint are those of Rome in Ovid's day. Applied to the tragic women of mythical times, this technique occasionally adds piquancy and touches of humour to their ingenious arguments. Euripides was clearly a source. The heroines are represented in various situations: betrayed or deserted (Deianeira, Phyllis, Medea, Ariadne, Oenone, Dido), neglected (Briseis), bound in a hateful marriage (Hermione), punished for their love (Hypermnestra, Canace), the victim of unlawful passion (Phaedra), or anxious for their husbands' safety (Penelope, Laodamia). |
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Messianic Eclogue -EDIT |
In Virgil’s Eclogue 4, which owes nothing to any Greek predecessor, the poet looks forward to the birth of a child who will inaugurate a new era. This poem has been more discussed than any other short poem in Latin. Throughout the Middle Ages it was accepted as a Messianic prophecy of the birth of the Christ-child given under divine inspiration. St Jerome was exceptional in expressing disbelief. Several contemporary children have also been suggested as the subject: a child of Pollio, a child of Octavian and Scribonia, even Octavian himself. The poem can be dated to 40 bc, near the time of the treaty of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian, sealed by the marriage of Antony to Octavian's sister Octavia. It may well be that the child is for Virgil simply the symbol of a messianic hope, drawing perhaps on oracles of the time, that some power or person would bring about the dawn of a new age. |
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Miles Gloriosus -EDIT |
Roman comedy by Plautus; there is reason for thinking it was produced c.204 bc and is therefore an early work. It is uncertain from what Greek comedy it was adapted; Plautus gives the name of his original as Alazon (‘Boaster’).
The boastful captain Pyrgopolynices (a name recalling Polyneices from the Greek myth of the Seven against Thebes, with the addition of pyrgos, ‘tower’) carries off the girl Philocomasium from Athens to Ephesus while her lover Pleusicles is absent at Naupactus. Pleusicles' slave sets off to inform his master but is captured by pirates and given as a present to Pyrgopolynices at Ephesus. The slave then writes a letter to Pleusicles, who comes to Ephesus and takes up residence with an old family friend next door to the soldier. By the ingenuity of the slave and the kindness of Pleusicles' host, Pleusicles and Philocomasium meet by passing through a hole in the party wall between the two houses. It is given out that the girl's twin sister has arrived, and this explains Philocomasium's appearance now in one house, now in the other. Pyrgopolynices is fooled into believing that Pleusicles' host has a young wife who is dying for love of him; he is therefore induced to dismiss Philocomasium in order to pursue this new love, and is lured into the neighbouring house, where he is well beaten as an adulterer, while Pleusicles and his mistress sail off to Athens.
The miles gloriosus was a stock character in Roman comedy (see the prologue to Plautus' Captivi). |
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Natural History -EDIT |
Written by Pliny the Elder ca. AD 77-79; The years of his procuratorships produced a 37-book history (ten volumes continuing Aufidius Bassus and covering the later Julio-Claudian period; and, dedicated to Titus. Vita vigilia est: Life is being awake. The Natural History is a monument to keeping alert, and to the useful employment of time. Pliny's energy and diligence astonished his nephew, were intended to impress his contemporaries, and still amaze today; they were, moreover, intended as an ethical statement. For all his defects of accuracy, selection, and arrangement, Pliny achieved a summation of knowledge, deeply imbued with the mood of the time, and the greatness of his work was speedily recognized. |
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Octavia -EDIT |
Roman tragedy, the only surviving fabula praetexta, a dramatization of the fate of the emperor Nero's first wife. It has been handed down in the manuscripts of the plays of Seneca the Younger, who is included as a character to protest against Nero's cruelty, but it cannot be by him: the ‘prophecy’ uttered by the ghost of Nero's mother about her son's fate is so true to fact that it shows the play was written after Nero's suicide (and Seneca's own death) in ad 68. The true author is unknown. The play contains too much lamentation and mythological display to be dramatically successful.
A tragedy attributed to Seneca, but probably not by him. This play is the only complete fabula praetexta. Octavia, after Nero divorces her for Poppaea, organizes a rebellion against him, but is defeated and executed. |
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Origines -EDIT |
A historical work by Marcus Porcius Cato, commonly known as Cato the Elder.
This highly original work was the first prose history in Latin, and among the very first Latin prose works in any genre. Along with Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius and Plautus, Cato helped to found a new literature. According to Cato's biographer Cornelius Nepos, the Origines consisted of "seven books. Book I is the history of the early kings of Rome; books II and III the beginnings of each Italian city. This seems to be why the whole work is called Origines.” The city histories in books II and III of the work were apparently treated on an individual basis, drawing on their own local traditions. The last four books dealt with Rome's later wars and the growth in the city's power; they "outweighed the rest", according to one later reader. There were two existing historical works in Latin, by Naevius and Ennius, but they were in verse, not prose. There were two existing prose histories by Romans, Q. Fabius Pictor and Lucius Cincius Alimentus, but they were written in Greek. All four of these existing works focused on Rome throughout; moreover, the two poems wove Roman history inextricably into the adventures of the Graeco-Roman gods. In Origines, Cato evidently chose to do it differently. He felt no need to follow precedent, Roman or otherwise: I do not care to copy out what is on the High Priest's tablet: how many times grain became dear, how many times the sun or moon were obscured or eclipsed. —Cato, Origines. Cato's own achievements were not downplayed: he was "not the man to minimize his own achievements".The Origines included several of his own speeches verbatim. He made it a rule not to mention military commanders by name, yet the surviving fragments give the impression that Cato's campaigns were highlighted. Origines no longer survives as a complete text, but substantial fragments are known because they were quoted by later Latin authors.
Previous Roman historians, starting with Fabius Pictor, had written in Greek; Cato's Origines, begun in 168 and still in progress at the time of his death, was the first historical work in Latin. It consisted of seven books. The first dealt with the foundation of Rome and the regal period; Cato had little or nothing to say about the early republic. The second and third covered the origins and customs of the towns of Italy (the title of the work is appropriate only for these three books). His approach was probably influenced by Greek ktisis (foundation) literature and/or Timaeus. The remaining books described Rome's wars from the First Punic War onwards. Cato is said to have written in a summary fashion, though some episodes were given detailed treatment, and he devoted more space to the events of the period during which he was writing; the last two books cover less than twenty years. He chose to omit the names of generals and included at least two of his own speeches (those on behalf of the Rhodians and against Galba). |
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Periochae -EDIT |
There are the Periochae (summaries) of all books except 136 and 137 of Livy’s ab urbe condita. The Periochae were perhaps composed in the 4th cent. and are preserved in a normal manuscript tradition (the summary of the first book survives in two different versions). It is uncertain whether the authors were working directly from the text of Livy or from an earlier summary (or summaries). Conflicts between the summaries and the text of Livy himself can be attributed to errors by the epitomator or to the use of sources other than Livy. Comparison of the summaries with the extant books indicates that we cannot always assume that the summaries of the lost books provide a reliable indication of their contents. The summaries of the final books are very brief, reporting only some foreign wars and events concerning Augustus' family. Livy was also the major source for, among others, Florus, Eutropius, and Obsequens (the so-called ‘Livian tradition’). The whole work seems to have survived into the 6th cent. |
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Phaedra -EDIT |
Roman tragedy by Seneca (2), based on the Hippolytus of Euripides, with certain variations. Here it is Phaedra herself (not the Nurse on her behalf) who declares her love to her stepson Hippolytus; she then in person (not in a posthumous letter) slanders him to Theseus; and finally it is she herself who discloses her guilt, before she dies (not the goddess Artemis after her suicide).
The play opens with Hippolytus preparing for the hunt. After his departure Phaedra complains to the Nurse about the perpetual absence of her husband Theseus, and admits her passion for her stepson Hippolytus. The Nurse counsels self-control and reminds Phaedra of Hippolytus' vow of chastity. To Hippolytus the Nurse later recommends sexual experience in general terms, but he reaffirms his rejection of all women. Phaedra enters and faints; Hippolytus catches her. Phaedra seizes her opportunity and asks Hippolytus to satisfy her passion but he rushes away horrified, dropping his sword as he goes. This the Nurse picks up, realizing it can be used as evidence against him. Theseus suddenly returns, to a palace in confusion, and the Nurse tells him Phaedra intends suicide. When Theseus makes threats in order to extract the truth, Phaedra says that the owner of the sword has tried to rape her by force. Theseus recognizes the badge on the sword and curses Hippolytus, who subsequently is killed by a bull from the sea (see Hippolytus). Phaedra enters with a sword, confesses that she has lied to Theseus, and stabs herself. Hippolytus' remains are brought in, which Theseus prepares for a funeral pyre. Phaedra's body is to be buried deep in the ground. |
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Pharsalia -EDIT |
Latin epic poem by Lucan ( ad 39–65) in ten books of hexameters, on the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar (the title in the manuscripts is De bello civili, ‘On the civil war’: the name Pharsalia comes from Pharsalia nostra at 9.985). The poem was apparently not completed and ends abruptly in the tenth book with Caesar at war in Egypt. Lucan probably intended to continue the narrative to the death of Caesar, if not further. It was not his purpose to give a full, historical account of the war (for which see Caesar (2)), and apart from omissions there are a few notable departures from historical truth, as when he portrays Cicero haranguing Pompey on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus: in fact Cicero missed the battle because of illness. The poem may be seen as an inversion of the vision of Rome's triumphant development in Virgil's Aeneid book 6, an anguished portrayal of the self-destruction of the Roman republic, ‘an imperial people turned their victorious right hands against their own breast’ (1.3). There is no hero: rather there are two protagonists, with Cato the Younger as a third. |
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Res Rusticae -EDIT |
De re rustica (3 books: 37 bc; Varro), a treatise on farming in dialogue form, intended as an agreeable entertainment for men of Varro's own class. It deals with agriculture in general (book 1), cattle- and sheep-breeding (book 2), and smaller farm-animals (birds, bees, etc.: book 3). The work, which survives entirely and shows some amusing strokes of characterization, reveals very strikingly Varro's fondness for analysing his subjects into their parts, and those parts into their sub-parts: though this analysis is sometimes carried to unhelpful lengths, it also represents a new stage in the logical organization of prose at Rome.
Virgil's sources for the agricultural lore were various (L. A. Jermyn, G&R 1949, 50) but the most significant was Varro's Res rusticae, published in 37 bc and influential especially in books 3 and 4 (but note also Rust. 1. 1. 4–7 with the opening invocation of the gods in G. 1. 8–23, and Rust. 1. 69. 2–3 with the end of the first book). The didactic narrator is portrayed as a savioursage, taking pity on ‘the farmers … ignorant of the path’ (1. 41, with Lucretian overtones: cf. Hardie, 158) but the practical advice avoids technical precision (in contrast to the fragments of Nicander) and the addressee is the extremely unrustic Maecenas (1. 2, 2. 41, 3. 41, 5. 2; cf. also L. P. Wilkinson, The Georgics of Virgil (1969), 52–5; S. Spurr, G&R 1986, 171–5). As with the De rerum natura, the central concern is rather the place in the world of human beings and their possibilities of happiness. |
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Tristia -EDIT |
Latin elegiac poems by Ovid in five books, written in ad 9–12, following his banishment to Tomis in ad 8. The metre must have seemed appropriate, since elegiac was commonly thought in ancient times to have been originally the metre of lament (see elegy). The poems are in the form of open letters to his wife and unnamed persons in Rome, written to ensure that he was not forgotten. He laments his fate and prays for some mitigation of his anticipated future suffering. The poems appear to have been sent individually to Rome and then collected in groups for publication. |
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Twelve Tables -EDIT |
The earliest Roman code of laws drawn up by a special commission of ten men with consular imperium, decemviri legibus scribundis (‘ten men for writing out the laws’), in 451/50 bc, making the law of custom statutory. This was in response to the demand of the plebeians, in order to put an end to the monopoly of patricians and priests in interpreting the law, and was possibly part of the conflict of orders. No complete text of the code survives, and it is known only from quotations and references. According to tradition envoys were sent to Athens to study Greek laws before the decemvirs started work. The Twelve Tables were primarily concerned with civil actions and included only those criminal cases likely to affect an early peasant community. They were never abolished, but later enactments made them obsolete. As late as Cicero's day, although not for much longer, schoolboys still learned them by heart.
Acc. to Roman tradition, popular pressure led to the appointment for 451 bc of ten men with consular imperium, for writing down statutes, in order to put an end to the patrician and priestly monopoly of the law. They compiled ten tables, were reappointed for 450, and compiled two more, including the ban on intermarriage between patricians and plebeians, which was rapidly abrogated by the lex Canuleia of 445. An attempt to remain in office for 449 also failed. The fundamental consequence was that customary law was now enacted by statute and given legislative basis; and the Twelve Tables were seen as the starting‐point of the development of Roman law. |
