A History of Western Society: Printed Page 159
A History of Western Society, Value Edition: Printed Page 150
A History of Western Society, Concise Edition: Printed Page 160
Many poets and prose writers were active in the late republic and the principate, and scholars of literature later judged their work to be of such high quality that they called the period from about 50 B.C.E. to 20 C.E. the “golden age” of Latin literature. Roman poets and prose writers celebrated the physical and emotional joys of a comfortable life. Their works were highly polished, elegant in style, and intellectual in conception. Roman poets referred to the gods often and treated mythological themes, but the core subject matter of their work was human, not divine.
Rome’s greatest poet was Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.), who drew on earlier traditions, but gave them new twists. The Georgics, for example, is a poem about agriculture that used Hellenistic models to capture both the peaceful pleasures and the day-
Look, the bull, shining under the rough plough,
falls to the ground
and vomits from his mouth blood mixed with foam,
and releases his dying groan.
Sadly moves the ploughman, unharnessing the
young steer grieving for the death of his brother
and leaves in the middle of the job
the plough stuck fast.2
Virgil’s masterpiece is the Aeneid (uh-
Arms and the man I sing, who first made way,
predestined exile, from the Trojan shore
to Italy, the blest Lavinian strand.
Smitten of storms he was on land and sea
by violence of Heaven, to satisfy
stern Juno’s sleepless wrath; and much in war
he suffered, seeking at the last to found
the city, and bring o’er his fathers’ gods
to safe abode in Latium; whence arose
the Latin race, old Alba’s reverend lords,
and from her hills wide-
As Virgil told it, Aeneas became the lover of Dido, the widowed queen of Carthage, but left her because his destiny called him to found Rome. Swearing the destruction of Rome, Dido committed suicide, and according to Virgil, her enmity helped cause the Punic Wars. In leaving Dido, an “Eastern” queen, Aeneas put duty and the good of the state ahead of marriage or pleasure. The parallels between this story and the very recent real events involving Antony and Cleopatra were not lost on Virgil’s audience. Making the public aware of these parallels, and of Virgil’s description of Aeneas as an ancestor of Julius Caesar, fit well with Augustus’s aims. Therefore, Augustus encouraged Virgil to write the Aeneid and made sure it was circulated widely immediately after Virgil died.
The poet Horace (65–8 B.C.E.) rose from humble beginnings to friendship with Augustus. The son of an ex-
The historian Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) was a friend of Augustus and a supporter of the principate. He especially approved of Augustus’s efforts to restore what he saw as republican virtues. Livy’s history of Rome, titled simply Ab Urbe Condita (From the founding of the city), began with the legend of Aeneas and ended with the reign of Augustus. Livy used the works of earlier Greek and Roman writers, as well as his own experiences, as his source material.
Augustus actively encouraged poets and writers, but he could also turn against them. The poet Ovid (AH-