chapter 10 Flashcards
latin literature
Influence from Greece!
• Exposure to Greece through warfare and diplomacy
• Greek culture as booty
• Artworks
• Slaves
• Manuscripts
Earliest latin literature
• Theatre- a controllable genre
• Epic- praises heroic virtues and the state
Plautus, active early 2nd c. BCE
• Ca. 20 plays survive
• Comedies using plots from Greek comedies
• Sit-com styles
• Stock characters and situations
• Interest in low-status characters
Under Augustus: Golden Age of Latin
Literature
• Image of a new age under Augustus
• Call themselves the Golden Age
• Create masterpieces in the major genres
• Strong Greek influence
Vergil, lived 70-19 BCE
• From northern Italy
• Writing in Augustan period
• Most famous work is Aeneid
• The “Latin Homer”
The Aeneid, 12 books
•Written in 20s BCE
• Aeneas
-Ancestor of the Juli through son lulus
•Pietas: duty to gods, state, family
• Pius Aeneas
•Matches Augustus’ interest in religion
Horace, lived 68
BCE to 8 CE
• Son of a freedman
• Expensive education in Rome and Athens
• Became an equestrian
Horace’s poetry
• Satires
• Poetry (including love poetry)
• Letters (in verse)
Livy (historian), lived 64 BCE- 12 CE
• From northern Italy
• 142 books, written over 40 yrs
• From founding of Rome to death of Drusus, 9 BCE
Latin love poetry
•Catullus’ love poetry in
50s BC
• Emphasis on love, emotion
• Poet falls in love with married woman
•Woman controls relationship
• Code name for lover
Last of the love poets: Ovid
(43 BCE-18 CE )
• P. Ovidius Naso
• Grew up in Pax Augusta
• Love poetry to “Corinna”
• Metamorphoses: myths where someone is transformed
•Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
•De-emphasizes pursuit of married women
•Augustan laws on marriage and adultery