Plautus And Catullus: A Literary Analysis

The oldest piece of Roman literature was written by Cato the Elder, however, Plautus, a plebeian wrote 130 plays, all of what was written in the Latin language (Matthews, Noble, & Platt, 2014). He relied on previous New Comedy playwrights, but he improvised into the current time period. Another playwright, Terence, was a slave but he was educated and eventually set free (Matthews et al, 2014). Unlike Plautus, he only created six plays. Plautus and Terence did not have any success, but two poets with different personalities and greatly influenced by Greek literature did: Lucretius and Catullus (Matthews et al, 2014). Lucretius and Catullus introduced new pieces of literature to the Romans.

During the Golden Age, the theme of literature mostly consisted of small public chapels, speeches of the Roman senators, and the political and military wars between the Assassination of Julius Caesar (Ancient World History Website, 2012). Poems during the Golden Age were about joys of life, love of nature, admiration of the Greeks, long lost loves, individualism, and negativity. From these early poems is where poets like Shakespeare and Chaucer were greatly influenced (Wasson, 2017). The Golden Age had some of the most classical authors during the Roman Empire such as Lucretius, Catullus, Julius Caesar, Horace, and others (Wasson, 2017). Virgil was …show more content…
Two main poets came from the Silver Age, Lucan and Publius Papinius Statius (Wasson, 2017). Lucan wrote about the civil war in Rome, whereas Statius wrote twelve books on the curse of Thebes (Wesson, 2017). Other writers wrote about inhumane treatments towards slaves, information about the animals, plants, and trees, the geography of locations, and even some pornography (Wasson,