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The Romans
“the grandeur that was
Greece and the glory
that was Rome”
Edgar Allan Poe
The genius of the Greeks lay in art, literature,
science, and philosophy. The Romans were
best in warfare, engineering, and government.
Who Were the Romans?
• The time when Rome was powerful did not begin
until after the greatest powers of Egypt and Greece
passed.
• Roman history is usually divided into three main
periods:
– before the rise of Rome,
– the Roman Republic, and
– the Roman Empire.
• The Empire is usually divided up according to
who was emperor.
• Before the rise of Rome:
– Stone Age (to 3000 BC)
– Bronze Age (ca. 3000 BC-1000 BC)
– Etruscans (ca. 1000 BC-500 BC)
• Roman Republic:
– The early period (ca. 500 BC-300
A Roman Road
BC)
– The Punic Wars (ca. 275 BC-146 BC)
– The Civil Wars (ca. 146 BC-30 BC)
• Roman Empire:
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The Julio-Claudians (30 BC-68 AD)
The Flavians (69 AD-96 AD)
The Five Good Emperors (96 AD-161 AD)
The Severans (161 AD-235 AD)
The Third Century Crisis
Constantine and his family (312 AD-363 AD)
The Theodosians (363 AD-450 AD)
The Fall of Rome (476 AD)
• After the fall of Rome:
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The Ostrogoths
The Visigoths
The Franks
Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant
The Vandals
("Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die
salute you")
The Byzantines
The Lombards, the Pope, and Islam
• The foot of the boot and Sicily were Greek
outposts and centers of Hellenic civilization
in the 8th century BC.
• Remains of their beautiful temples, theaters,
and city walls still stand.
• In Tuscany the Etruscans made early
advances in the arts and conquered
neighboring peoples until they held a large
part of the peninsula (see Etruscans).
• To the south the merchants of Latium
settled on seven hills near the Tiber.
• This community became Rome, which rose
to supremacy and extended its power until
the Romans ruled the ancient world.
The Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum--“our sea.” The map indicates why they had good
reason to do so. The map shows that the empire extended from the British Isles in the northwest to Egypt in
the southeast and from Armenia in the northeast to Mauretania (now Morocco) in the southwest. The Roman
Empire thus encompassed the Mediterranean, ruled every civilized land in Europe and Africa, and extended
into Asia. The only other civilized countries in the world lay farther east, in Asia. Emperor Trajan extended
Roman rule into Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Hadrian, however, withdrew to the previous frontier.
The military conquest of Greece by
Rome in 146 BC resulted in the
cultural conquest of Rome by
Greece.
As the Roman poet Horace said,
“Captive Greece took captive her
rude conqueror and brought the arts
to Latium.”
• Actually, Greek influence on Roman
education had begun about a century before
the conquest.
• The Romans adopted the same general
educational strategies as the Greeks.
Discipline, however, was severe and the
primary means of learning was, again,
memorization.
• Originally, the Romans placed the
responsibility for a child's education not
with an experienced teacher outside the
home but with the child's parents.
• Most if not all of a Roman child's education
took place at home.
• If the father himself were educated, his son
would learn to read and would learn Roman
law, history, and customs.
• The father also saw to his son's physical
training.
• When the boy was older, he sometimes
prepared himself for public life by a kind of
apprenticeship to an esteemed older friend
of the family active in politics.
• Influenced by the Greeks, the Romans later
began to emphasize the art of public
speaking and the study of Greek in a system
of schooling outside the home.
• When they were six or seven years old,
boys (and sometimes girls) of all classes
could attend the ludus publicus, the
elementary school, where they studied
reading, writing, and counting.
• Often children of the upper classes studied
at home, with a Greek slave as a private
tutor.
• At age 12 or 13, the boys of the upper
classes attended a “grammar” school where
they learned Greek or Latin grammar, or
both, and studied both Greek and Latin
literature.
• The graded arrangement of schools
established in Rome by the middle of the
1st century BC ultimately spread throughout
the Roman Empire. It continued until the
fall of the empire in the 5th century AD.
• Although deeply influenced by Greek
education, Roman higher education was
nonetheless quite different. For most
Greeks, the end of education was to produce
a good citizen, and a good citizen meant a
well-rounded individual.
• The goal of Roman education was the same,
but for the Romans a good citizen came to
mean an effective speaker.
• The result was that they disregarded such
non-utilitarian Greek studies as science,
philosophy, music, dancing, and
gymnastics, basing their education primarily
on literature and oratory. Even their study of
literature, which stressed the technicalities
of grammar more than content, had the aim
of producing good orators.
• Because of this emphasis on the technical
study of language and literature and because
much of the language and literature studied
represented the culture of a foreign people,
Roman education often was remote from
the real world and interests of the
schoolboys.
• Vigorous discipline was therefore necessary
to motivate them to study.
• And the Roman boys were not the last to
suffer in this situation.
• When the empire fell, the education that
was originally intended to train orators for
the Roman Senate became the model for
European education and dominated it until
the 20th century.
A Worthy Roman Had. . .
• Piutus — Religious devotion "Dutifulness" — More
than religious piety; a respect for the natural order
socially, politically, and religiously. Includes the
ideas of patriotism and devotion to others
• Gravitas — "Gravity" — A sense of the importance
of the matter at hand, responsibility and earnestness.
Distrusted attempts to change.
• Auctoritas— "Spiritual Authority" — The sense of
one's social standing, built up through experience,
Pietas, and Industria.
• Industria — "Industriousness" — Hard work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue#Roman_virtues
Overview from the Norton
• With its military victories in North Africa,
Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, the social,
cultural, and economic life of Rome
changed profoundly.
• Literature in Latin began with a translation
of the Greek Odyssey and continued to be
modeled after Greek sources until it became
Christian.
• The lyric poems that Catullus wrote about
his love affair with the married woman he
called Lesbia range in tone from passionate
to despairing to almost obscene.
• Left unfinished at the time of his death,
Virgil's Aeneid combines the themes of the
Homeric epics: the wanderer in search of a
home from the Iliad, and the hero at war
from the Odyssey.
• Ovid's extraordinary subtlety and
psychological depth make his poetry second
only to Virgil's for its influence on western
poets and writers of the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and beyond.
• Probably written by Petronius, and probably
written during the principate of Nero, the
Satyricon is a satirical work about the
pragmatism and materialism of the Roman
empire that would soon be supplanted by
Christianity.
• After the fall of the Roman Empire, the
concept of a world-state was appropriated by
the medieval Church, which ruled from the
same center, Rome, and laid claim to a
spiritual authority as great as the secular
authority it succeeded.
Catullus
(ca. 84 BC – 54 BC)
• Catullus's reputation as one of the greatest
poets of all Roman literature is even more
remarkable because it is based on a
collection of poems smaller than a fourth of
Vergil's Aeneid (c. 29-19 B.C.E.; English
translation,1553) and because this collection
survived antiquity in only a single copy.
• The 113 poems range in length from
epigrams of two lines to a miniature epic of
408 lines.
• The near extinction of this great poet is
attributable to the audacious and racy subject
matter of some of his poems, which made
them unsuitable for use in the schools.
• Made his own way rather than follow the methods
of the Greeks.
• Wrote in a colloquial style.
• Because there is no known chronology, one good
way to perceive the work of Catullus is through
the people about whom and to whom he wrote his
poems.
• The social character of his poetry, much of which
is addressed to somebody specific, is also well
served by this approach. The most visible and
intense of the poet's personal relationships is with
a woman he calls Lesbia, mentioned in some
twenty-five of Catullus's love poems.
• Lucius Apuleius wrote that her real name was
Clodia, and it is generally believed that she was a
married woman ten years older than the poet.
The lyric poems that Catullus wrote
about his love affair with the married
woman he called Lesbia range in tone
from passionate to despairing to almost
obscene.
• Defining “obscene” points to the
intent of the author rather than a
work’s content.
• The desire of the artist to devalue
another human being is what makes
a work clearly obscene.
• Thus poems like “Lesbia let us live only for
loving” [#5] is clearly not obscene although
the relationship for a Christian is immoral.
• Furthermore the angry words of “You used to
say you wished to know only Catullus” [#72]
or “I hate & Love” [# 85] while angry at the
woman do not cross over into abuse.
• However “Aurelius & Furius, True
Comrades” [# 11] (not assigned), do seem to
cross this line even though they are also true
representations of the human heart in loving
despair.
1878 van de Britse
schilder John Reinhard
Weguelin, 1849-1927.
Some Examples
Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love,
and all the words of the old, and so moral,
may they be worth less than nothing to us!
Suns may set, and suns may rise again:
but when our brief light has set,
Poem
night is one long everlasting sleep.
Give me a thousand kisses, a hundred more,
another thousand, and another hundred,
and, when we’ve counted up the many thousands,
confuse them so as not to know them all,
so that no enemy may cast an evil eye,
by knowing that there were so many kisses.
#5
Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in uento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
(The woman says she'd rather marry me than anyone,
even should Jupiter himself come calling.
This is what she says, but what a woman tells to her
lover in desire might as well be written on air and
running water.)
Poem # 70
Once you said you preferred Catullus alone,
Lesbia: would not have Jupiter before me.
I prized you then not like an ordinary lover,
but as a father prizes his children, his family.
Now I know you: so, though I burn more fiercely,
yet you’re worth much less to me, and slighter.
How is that, you ask? The pain of such love
makes a lover love more, but like less.
Poem # 72
Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
(I hate and I love. You ask me how this can be;
I don't know: I only know that I feel it, and it
hurts.)
Poem # 85
Other Works
• Traditional serious poetry also exerted its attraction for Catullus.
In the course of what might be viewed as a licentious life of
pleasure and scandal, Catullus composed three long wedding
hymns (poems 61, 62, and 63) which show every sign of a deep
belief in the institution of marriage.
• In addition, there is an impressive long poem about the religious
frenzy of a legendary young Greek named Attis, who
emasculates himself in order to serve the Asiatic goddess
Cybele.
• Notwithstanding the emphasis of the Neoterics on short poetry
in a native poetic idiom, epic remained the medium of choice for
the highest achievement. Catullus's effort in this genre, the
miniature epic or epyllion on the wedding of Peleus and Thetis,
with its digression on Theseus's abandonment of Ariadne (poem
64), ranks with his best work. Parts of it, such as Ariadne's
lament, are unsurpassed in Latin literature.
Virgil
70 BC--21, 19 BC
• Virgil was regarded by the
Romans as their greatest poet,
an estimation that subsequent
generations have upheld.
• His fame rests chiefly upon the Aeneid, which tells the
story of Rome's legendary founder and proclaims the
Roman mission to civilize the world under divine
guidance.
• His reputation as a poet endures not only for the music and
diction of his verse and for his skill in constructing an
intricate work on the grand scale but also because he
embodied in his poetry aspects of experience and
behaviour of permanent significance.
Left unfinished at the time of his death,
Virgil's Aeneid combines the themes of
the Homeric epics: the hero at war from
the Iliad, and the wanderer in search of a
home from the Odyssey.
• Virgil’s work was shaped by
the chaotic time of his youth.
• He avoided the public life his
father had planned for him
(probably saving his life).
• At 26 BC Julius Caesar was assonated.
• The chaos that followed only confirmed Virgil’s
low opinion of things having to do with the state.
• He wrote about country life (probably thinking
back to his home town of Mantua by the Alps)
• Called the Eclogues, -- a major developer of the
Pastoral idea based originated by Theocritus:
– Shepherds and Shepherdesses living in an ideal place.
– Most of the individual poems are in the form of
conversations and singing contests between shepherds
and goatherds with names such as "Tityrus"
(supposedly representing Virgil himself), "Meliboeus",
"Menalcas" and "Mopsus".
– The poems are all carefully arranged, both as a whole
and individually.
The Eclogues
• Imitating the Greek Bucolica ("on care of
cattle",They were a collection of 10 pastoral
poems composed between 42 and 37 BC.
• Some of them are escapist, literary
excursions to the idyllic pastoral world of
Arcadia based on the Greek poet Theocritus
(fl. c. 280 BC)
• These escapist ones convey in liquid song
the idealized situations of an imaginary
world (Arcadia).
Meliboeus.
You, Tityrus, 'neath a broad beech-canopy
Reclining, on the slender oat rehearse
Your silvan ditties: I from my sweet fields, (just
And home's familiar bounds, even now depart.
Exiled from home am I; while, Tityrus, you
Sit careless in the shade, and, at your call,
"Fair Amaryllis" bid the woods resound.
Eclogue I
Tityrus.
O Meliboeus, 'twas a god vouchsafed
This ease to us, for him a god will I
Deem ever, and from my folds a tender lamb
Oft with its life-blood shall his altar stain.
His gift it is that, as your eyes may see,
My kine may roam at large, and I myself
Play on my shepherd's pipe what songs I will.
a sample)
Christian Message?
• The most famous of them is Eclogue 4 (PP Ecl.4),
which contains a prophecy of a future 'golden age',
which will be heralded in by the birth of a boy.
• While the identity of the child in question is
uncertain, later Christians read this as a Messianic
prophecy - one reason why Dante later chose
Virgil as his guide through the underworld.
• Some modern scholars have pointed to Virgil's
knowledge of Roman Jewish families as a possible
route for his near quotations of Isaiah in the poem.
Muses of Sicily, essay we now
a somewhat loftier task! Not all men love
coppice or lowly tamarisk: sing we woods,
woods worthy of a Consul let them be.
Now the last age by Cumae's Sibyl sung
has come and gone, and the majestic roll
of circling centuries begins anew:
justice returns, returns old Saturn's reign,
with a new breed of men sent down from heaven.
Only do thou, at the boy's birth in whom
the iron shall cease, the golden race arise,
befriend him, chaste Lucina; 'tis thine own
apollo reigns. And in thy consulate,
this glorious age, O Pollio, shall begin,
and the months enter on their mighty march.
Eclogue IV
Under thy guidance, whatso tracks remain
of our old wickedness, once done away,
shall free the earth from never-ceasing fear.
He shall receive the life of gods, and see
heroes with gods commingling, and himself
be seen of them, and with his father's worth
reign o'er a world at peace. For thee, O boy,
first shall the earth, untilled, pour freely forth
her childish gifts, the gadding ivy-spray
with foxglove and Egyptian bean-flower mixed,
and laughing-eyed acanthus. Of themselves,
untended, will the she-goats then bring home
their udders swollen with milk, while flocks afield
shall of the monstrous lion have no fear.
Thy very cradle shall pour forth for thee
caressing flowers. The serpent too shall die,
die shall the treacherous poison-plant, and far
and wide Assyrian spices spring. But soon
as thou hast skill to read of heroes' fame,
and of thy father's deeds, and inly learn
what virtue is, the plain by slow degrees
with waving corn-crops shall to golden grow,
from the wild briar shall hang the blushing grape,
and stubborn oaks sweat honey-dew. Nathless
yet shall there lurk within of ancient wrong
some traces, bidding tempt the deep with ships,
gird towns with walls, with furrows cleave the earth.
Therewith a second Tiphys shall there be,
her hero-freight a second Argo bear;
new wars too shall arise, and once again
some great Achilles to some Troy be sent.
Then, when the mellowing years have made thee man,
no more shall mariner sail, nor pine-tree bark
ply traffic on the sea, but every land
shall all things bear alike: the glebe no more
shall feel the harrow's grip, nor vine the hook;
the sturdy ploughman shall loose yoke from steer,
nor wool with varying colours learn to lie;
but in the meadows shall the ram himself,
now with soft flush of purple, now with tint
of yellow saffron, teach his fleece to shine.
While clothed in natural scarlet graze the lambs.
“Such still, such ages weave ye, as ye run,”
sang to their spindles the consenting Fates
by Destiny's unalterable decree.
Assume thy greatness, for the time draws nigh,
dear child of gods, great progeny of Jove!
See how it totters--the world's orbed might,
. . .earth, and wide ocean, and the vault profound,
all, see, enraptured of the coming time.
Ah! might such length of days to me be given,
and breath suffice me to rehearse thy deeds,
nor Thracian Orpheus should out-sing me then,
nor Linus, though his mother this, and that
his sire should aid--Orpheus Calliope,
and Linus fair Apollo. Nay, though Pan,
with Arcady for judge, my claim contest,
with Arcady for judge great Pan himself
should own him foiled, and from the field retire.
Begin to greet thy mother with a smile,
o baby-boy! ten months of weariness
for thee she bore: O baby-boy, begin!
For him, on whom his parents have not smiled,
gods deem not worthy of their board or bed.
• In the Eclogues shepherds sing in the
sunshine of their simple joys and mute their
sorrows (whether for unhappy love or
untimely death) in a formalized pathos.
• Some of the eclogues, however, bring the
pastoral mode into touch with the real world,
either directly or by means of allegory.
• In this way Virgil gave a new direction to the
genre.
• They were a hit, and he made his famous and
rich at 33.
• Virgil followed up the Eclogues with the
Georgics, a book of poems about farming.
The Georgics
• One of the most disastrous effects of the
civil wars--and one of which Virgil, as a
countryman, would be most intensely
aware--was the depopulation of rural Italy.
• The farmers had been obliged to go to the
war, and their farms fell into neglect and
ruin as a result.
• The Georgics, composed between 37 and 30
BC (the final period of the civil wars), is a
superb plea for the restoration of the
traditional agricultural life of Italy.
• In form it is didactic, but, as Seneca later
said, it was written "not to instruct farmers
but to delight readers."
• The practical instruction (about plowing,
growing trees, tending cattle, and keeping
bees) is presented with vivid insight into
nature.
• Furthermore it is interspersed with highly
wrought poetical digressions on such topics
as the beauty of the Italian countryside
(Book II. line 136 ff.) and the joy of the
farmer when all is gathered in (II.458 ff.).
The Transforming Moment
• In 31 B.C., something happened that
completely changed Virgil's feelings about
Rome and about what he wanted to write.
• The Emperor Augustus (formally Octavian)
finally managed to end the civil wars that had
plagued the city for so long and restored order
and peace.
• For the first time in his life, Virgil had hope for
the future of his country, and he felt deep
gratitude and admiration for Augustus, the man
who had made it all possible.
• Virgil was inspired to write his great epic
poem, the Aeneid, to celebrate Rome and
Augustus' achievement.
• He had come a long way from his early days
writing about nature and hating politics.
• Virgil cleverly didn't just write a story about
Augustus.
• He wanted to make Romans proud of their
history and their vast empire.
• He also wanted to show how Augustus was
the most recent in a long line of great Roman
leaders- strong, dedicated to their city, and
willing to make great sacrifices for it.
The Aeneid
• THE AENEID is a national epic poem about
the beginnings of Rome.
• THE AENEID IS is a tribute to Augustus and a
celebration of the End of the Civil Wars in
Rome/
• THE AENEID is the story of Aeneas’ personal
search for a new identity.
• THE AENEID describes the struggles between
the forces of order and disorder in the world.
• THE AENEID describes the relationship
between people and fate.
Major Figures of The Aeneid
•
•
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•
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•
•
AENEAS
DIDO
TURNUS
JUNO
VENUS
JUPTER
ANCHISES
LATINUS
EVANDER
Aeneas
A great survivor, Aeneas is a cousin of King
Priam of Troy. A major question is
whether Aeneas great because his fate made
him great or is he great because he had
the courage and determination to live
up to the role fate handed him?
Dido
She has been called the only true original
figure in Roman literature. She's the most
human. She's beautiful, generous, kind, and
successful. Her passionate nature is both
attractive and dangerous (to herself).
Turnus
Turnus was a chieftain of the Rutuli whose
conflict with Aeneas is the subject of the
second half of the Aeneid.
He is the suitor of Lavinia of Latium (daughter
of Latinos) until Aeneas arrives. This rivalry
motivates the Latins to war against the
Trojans.
Because Turnus never really stops to think
about the consequences of his actions,
everything he does is incredibly destructive.
That's why Virgil always compares him to a
wild animal. And that's Turnus' great flaw.
Juno
Still furious with the Trojans over the beauty
contest she lost at Paris’ hands. She is the
patron goddess of Carthage which Rome is
destined to destroy. Tries to stop Aeneas by
encouraging the relationship between him
and Dido. Foolishly fights fate.
Venus
Aeneas’ mother and the goddess of love.
She, in fact, demonstrates that love is not
always the positive emotion moderns think
of it as being. She is self interested and does
not restore order. At best she only counteracts Juno but she works with her as well.
Jupiter
He is the only god in the Aeneid who acts the
way most of us would think a god should.
He's calm, rational, impartial. But in one way
he's very different from what Christians expect
in their deity.
He's not particularly interested in goodness.
His major interest is to see that everything goes
according to fate.
Anchises
• As Aeneas' father, he is literally and
symbolically a burden to Aeneas. For
example he will not leave Troy until two major
revelations occur confirming Aeneas’ fate.
• Although Aeneas loves and respects his father
very much, the old man basically representative
of one thinks that the future will resemble the
past.
• Anchises must die and go to the underworld
before he will understand how different the
future will be.
• Anchises symbolizes the old life and the old
ways of Troy.
Aeneas carries
his father
Anchises, and
leads his son
Ascanius
by the hand
from burning
Troy.
Latinus
• The son of Faunus and the
nymph Marica. He was the
king of Laurentum in Latium
and ancestor of the Latini.
According to Roman myth he
had welcomed Aeneas, who
returned from exile, and
offered the hero the hand of
his daughter Lavinia.
• He is the king of the Latins, is
the first native king Aeneas
meets in Italy.
• The old king has heard many omens that his
daughter Lavinia is destined to marry a
stranger, and that together they will start a
new race that will rule the world. So Latinus
is well disposed toward Aeneas when
Aeneas first arrives.
• Latinus is an old man who has lost most of
his power. Thus he is as a symbol of the
weakness of the Latin society. Latinus'
inability to control his people strongly
suggests that the Latin people needed a new
leader. Thus Virgil can justify or overlook
the fact that the Trojans were invaders of
Italy.
Evander
• King of Pallanteum. His city is on the
exact spot where Rome will be built.
• Evander illustrates some of the
qualities of which the Romans were
particularly proud: simple and rustic, without
finery or luxury of any kind.
• Evander also becomes a substitute father
figure, replacing Anchises. Aeneas treats
him with great respect and his family loyalty
is transferred to a father with roots in Italy.
• Evander also shows the greatest of Roman
virtues: good political judgment. He knows
how and where Aeneas can find allies.
Let's be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray;
Or so devote to Aristotle's cheques
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have
And practise rhetoric in your common talk;
Music and poesy use to quicken you;
The mathematics and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves
you;
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Tranio from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew 1, i
43 BC--AD 17
Ovid
Ovid's influence on Western
art and literature cannot be
exaggerated.
The Metamorphoses is our best
classical source of 250 myths.
"The poem is the most
comprehensive, creative
mythological work that has
come down to us from
antiquity" (Galinsky qt. in
Brown)..
Ars Amatoria
• The Ars Amatoria ("The Art of Love") is a
series of three books by the Roman poet Ovid.
• Written in verse, their guiding theme is the art of
seduction.
• The first two, written for men about 1 BC to AD 1
, deal with 'winning women's hearts' and 'keeping
the loved one', respectively.
• The third, addressed to women telling them how
to best attract men, was written somewhat later.
• The publication of the Ars Amatoria may have
been at least partly responsible for Ovid's
banishment to the provinces by the Emperor
Augustus. Ovid’s celebration of extramarital love
must have seemed an intolerable affront to a
regime that sought to promote ‘family values
Metamorphoses
• The Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid is a
poem in fifteen books that describes the creation and
history of the world in terms according Greek and
Roman points of view. It has remained one of the
most popular works of mythology, being the work
best known to medieval writers and thus having a
great deal of influence on medieval
• Ovid emphasizes tales of transformation often found
in myths, in which a person or lesser deity is
permanently transformed into an animal or plant.
• The poem begins with the transformations of creation
and Prometheus metamorphizing earth into Man and
ends with the transformation of the spirit of Julius
Caesar into a star.
• Ovid goes from one to the other by working his
way through mythology, often in apparently
arbitrary fashion, jumping from one
transformation tale to another, sometimes retelling
what had come to be seen as central events in the
world of Greek myth and sometimes straying in
odd directions.
• There is perhaps little depth in most of Ovid's
portrayals. However, if others have written far
more deeply, few have written more colorfully.
• Instead, the recurring theme, as with nearly all of
Ovid's work, is that of love -- personal love or
love personified as Amor (Cupid).
• Indeed, the other Roman gods are repeatedly
perplexed, humiliated, and made ridiculous by
Amor, an otherwise relatively minor god of the
pantheon who is the closest thing this mock-epic
has to an epic hero.
• Apollo comes in for particular ridicule as Ovid
shows how irrational love can confound the god of
pure reason.
• While few individual stories are outright
sacrilegious, the work as a whole inverts the
accepted order, elevating humans and human
passions while making the gods and their desires
and conquests objects of low humor.
• Based on its influence, "European literature and art
would be poorer for the loss of the Metamorphoses than
for the loss of Homer" (Hadas qt. in Brown).
• Ovid was a major inspiration for Dante, Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton.
• Ovid's extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth
make his poetry second only to Virgil's for its influence
on western poets and writers of the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, and beyond. (Norton)
• If Virgil is Rome's greatest poet, Ovid is the most
popular
– (even in his own time; Ovidian graffiti has been
found on the walls of Pompeii).(Brown)
Petronius
• It is probable that Petronius' correct name
was Titus Petronius Niger.
• From his high position in Roman society, it
may be assumed that he was wealthy; he
belonged to a noble family and was therefore,
by Roman standards, a man from whom solid
achievements might have been expected.
• Tacitus' account, however, shows that he
belonged to a class of pleasure-seekers
attacked by the Stoic philosopher Seneca,
men who “turned night into day”; where
others won reputation by effort, Petronius did
so by idleness.
• On the rare occasions, however, when he was
appointed to official positions, he showed
himself energetic and fully equal to public
responsibilities.
• He served as governor of the Asian province of
Bithynia and later in his career, probably in
AD 62 or 63, held the high office of consul, or
first magistrate of Rome.
• After his term as consul, Petronius was
received by Nero into his most intimate circle
as his “director of elegance” (arbiter
elegantiae), whose word on all matters of taste
was law.
• It is from this title that the epithet “Arbiter”
was attached to his name.
• Petronius' association with Nero fell within the
emperor's later years, when he had embarked
on a career of reckless extravagance that
shocked public opinion almost more than the
actual crimes of which he was guilty.
• What Petronius thought of his imperial patron
may be indicated by his treatment of the rich
vulgarian Trimalchio in the Satyricon.
• Trimalchio is a composite figure, but there are
detailed correspondences between him and
Nero that cannot, given the contemporary
nature of the work, be accidental and that
strongly suggest that Petronius was sneering at
the emperor.
• Tacitus records that Nero's friendship ultimately
brought on Petronius the enmity of the commander
of the emperor's guard, Tigellinus, who in AD 66
denounced him as having been implicated in a
conspiracy of the previous year to assassinate Nero
and place a rival on the imperial throne.
• Petronius, though innocent, was arrested at Cumae
in southern Italy; he did not wait for the inevitable
sentence but made his own preparations for death.
• Slitting his veins and then bandaging them again in
order to delay his death, he passed the remaining
hours of his life conversing with his friends on
trivial topics, listening to light music and poetry,
rewarding or punishing his slaves, feasting, and
finally sleeping “so that his death, though forced
upon him, should seem natural.”
The Satyricon
• Encolpius. The narrator and
principal character.
• Giton. A handsome sixteen-yearold boy, the lover of Encolpius.
• Ascyltus. A friend and traveling
companion of Encolpius, and his
rival for the affections of Giton.
• Trimalchio. A very rich freedman
who displays his wealth..
• Eumolpus. A pedant who prides himself on his
poetry, which no-one else can stand.
• Lichas. An enemy of Encolpius.
• Tryphaena. A woman infatuated with Giton.
• Corax. The hired servant of Encolpius.
• Circe. A woman attracted to Encolpius.
• Chrysis. Circe's servant, also in love with Encolpiu
Probably written by Petronius, and probably
written during the principate of Nero, the Satyricon
is a satirical work about the pragmatism and
materialism of the Roman empire that would soon
be supplanted by Christianity.
The Satyricon
• The Satyricon, or Satyricon liber (“Book of
Satyrlike Adventures”), is a comic, picaresque
novel that is related to several ancient literary
genres.
• Though it survives only in fragments, it is
considered to have been one of the most original
works of Latin literature.
• In style it ranges between the highly realistic and
the self-consciously literary, and its form is
episodic.
• It relates the wanderings and escapades of a
disreputable trio of adventurers, the narrator
Encolpius (“Embracer”), his friend Ascyltos
(“Scot-free”), and the boy Giton (“Neighbour”).
• In Dinner with Trimalchio, one of the longer fragments,
the thought of death slowly emerges from beneath the
epicureanism of Trimalchio and his friends.
• The surviving portions of the Satyricon (parts of Books
XV and XVI) probably represent about one-tenth of the
complete work, which was evidently very long.
• The loose narrative framework encloses a number of
independent tales, a classic instance being the famous
“Widow of Ephesus” (Satyricon, ch. 111–112).
• Other features, however, recall the “Menippean” satire;
these features include the mixture of prose and verse in
which the work is composed; and the digressions in which
the author airs his own views on various topics having no
connection with the plot.
• TS. Eliot refers to the Dinner with Trimalchio in his
famous The Wasteland making a modern connection to
decadent Rome.
Does Satire and Satyricon Come
from the Same Source? No
• [a. F. satire (= Sp. sátira, Pg., It. satira, G. satire), or directly ad. L.
satira, later form of satura, in early use a discursive composition in
verse treating of a variety of subjects, in classical use a poem in
which prevalent follies or vices are assailed with ridicule or with
serious denunciation. The word is a specific application of satura
medley; this general sense appears in the phrase per saturam in the
lump, indiscriminately; according to the grammarians this is elliptical
for lanx satura (lit. ‘full dish’: lanx dish, satura, fem. of satur full,
related to satis enough), which is alleged to have been used for a dish
containing various kinds of fruit, and for food composed of many
different ingredients.
• Formerly often confused or associated with SATYR (see esp. sense
4), from the common notion (found already in some ancient
grammarians) that L. satira was derived from the Gr. satyr, in
allusion to the chorus of satyrs which gave its name to the Greek
‘satyric’ drama. The words satire and satyr were probably at one time
pronounced alike, as the derivatives satiric and satyric are still; and
the common use of y and i as interchangeable symbols in the 16th and
17th c. still further contributed to the confusion.]
Other Important Romans Not
Included in our Readings
Cicero (106 BC – 46 BC)
Marcus Tullius Cicero is generally perceived
to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient
Rome. He introduced the Romans to the chief
schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin
philosophical vocabulary, distinguishing himself
as a linguist, translator, and philosopher.
An impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero probably thought his political
career his most important achievement. During the chaotic latter half of the first
century BC, marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of
Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican
government.
However, his career as a statesman was marked by
inconsistencies and a tendency to shift his position in response
to changes in the political climate. His indecision may be
attributed to his sensitive and impressionable personality; he
was prone to overreaction in the face of political and private
change. "Would that he had been able to endure prosperity
with greater self-control and adversity with more fortitude!"
wrote C. Asinius Pollio, a contemporary Roman statesman and
historian
Today he is appreciated primarily for his humanism and
philosophical and political writings. His voluminous
correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has
been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter
writing to European culture. Cornelius Nepos, the 1st-century
BC biographer of Atticus, remarked that Cicero's letters
contained such a wealth of detail "concerning the inclinations
of leading men, the faults of the generals, and the revolutions
in the government" that their reader had little need for a
history of the period
Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)
Famous for his Ars Poetica (also known as
"The Art of Poetry", Epistula Ad Pisones, or
Letters to Piso), published c. 18 BC, was a
treatise on poetics. It was first translated into
English by Ben Jonson, Three quotes often
used in literary criticism in particular are
associated with the work:
"in medias res", or "into the middle of
things"; this describes a popular narrative
technique that appears frequently in ancient
epics, (remember The Odyssey?) and remains
popular to this day
• "bonus dormitat Homerus" or "good Homer nods"; an
indication that even the most skilled poet can make
continuity errors
• "ut pictura poesis", or "As is painting so is poetry", by
which Horace meant that poetry (in its widest sense,
"imaginative texts") merited the same careful interpretation
that was, in Horace's day, reserved for painting.
• Horace also served as a soldier under the generalship of
Brutus after the assassination of Caesar. He fought as a
staff officer (tribunus militum) in the Battle of Philippi.
• One of the most often quoted phrases depicting the mind of
a soldier is “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” This
is a line from Horace's Odes (iii 2.13). The line can be
rendered in English as: "It is sweet and fitting to die for
one's country.", "It is noble and glorious to die for your
fatherland." or "It is beautiful and honorable to die for your
fatherland.“ Wilfred Owen the British poet called it “the
old lie” but many feel differently. (Note: you can find this
quote on the Civil War memorial in Mount Vernon’s town
square here in Ohio).
Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65)
Luca Giordano, The death of
Seneca (1684)
• Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca
the Younger) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman,
dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin
literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. He was
later executed by that emperor for complicity in the Pisonian
conspiracy to assassinate this last of the Julio-Claudian emperors.
In point of fact he was ordered to commit suicide which he did,
Some feel he may have been innocent.
• Seneca remains one of the few popular Roman philosophers from
the period. His works were celebrated by Ralph Waldo Emerson,
John of Salisbury, Erasmus and others. Montaigne was considered
by Pasquier a "French Seneca" and Thomas Fuller praised Joseph
Hall as "our English Seneca".
• While his ideas are not considered to be original,
he was important in making the Greek
philosophers presentable and intelligible. His own
death shows a stoic temperament.
• Tacitus describes the death of Seneca this way
"Seneca embraced his wife and gently begged her
to live and temper her grief. But she chose to die
with him. With a single stroke of the blade they
sliced their arms. Seneca, hardened by frugal
living, did not bleed easily. He cut the veins of his
knees and thighs. But still he did not die. He asked
his doctor to dispense some poison Hemlock. He
drank it in vain. Finally, he was carried into the
baths, where he suffocated in vapor.“ (Tacitus,
Annales xv.63-64)
Tacitus (AD 58 – 117)
Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 56 – ca. 117)
was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The
surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals
and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman
Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned
in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span
the history of the Roman Empire from the death of
Augustus in AD 14 to (presumably) the death of emperor
Domitian in AD 96. There are enormous lacunae in the
surviving texts, including one four books long in the
Annals.
Other works by Tacitus discuss oratory (in dialogue format, see Dialogus
de oratoribus), Germania (in De origine et situ Germanorum), and
biographical notes about his father-in-law Agricola, primarily during his
campaign in Britannia (see De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae).
An author writing in the latter part of the Silver Age of Latin literature,
his work is distinguished by a boldness and sharpness of wit, and a
compact and sometimes unconventional use of Latin. Much of what we
know about other important characters of the time comes from him.
Even Jesus did not escape his notice.
Plutarch (AD 46 – 120)
Engraving facing the title page
of an 18th Century edition of
Plutarch's LIVES
Plutarch, was born Plutarchos (Greek: Πλούταρχος) then, on his
becoming a Roman citizen, was renamed Lucius Mestrius
Plutarchus (Μέστριος Πλούταρχος). While he was a Greek
historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist. his is
primarily remembered as one of Rome's greatest historians
primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia.
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly
called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies
of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common
moral virtues or failings.
The surviving Parallel Lives (in Greek: Bioi parallèloi), as
they are more properly and commonly known, contain
twenty-three pairs of biographies, each pair consisting of
one Greek and one Roman, as well as four unpaired, single
lives. It is a work of considerable importance, not only as a
source of information about the individuals biographized,
but also about the times in which they lived.
As he explains in the first paragraph of his Life of
Alexander, Plutarch was not concerned with writing
histories, as such, but in exploring the influence of
character—good or bad—on the lives and destinies of
famous men. The first pair of Lives—the EpaminondasScipio Africanus—no longer exists, and many of the
remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae
and/or have been tampered with by later writers.
And it came to pass in those days,
that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus that all the world
should be taxed. . .
Tacitus on Jesus & Christianity
"The founder of that sect, Christ, had been executed. His
death had briefly suppressed the destructive cult, but
again erupted, not only in Judaea, the birthplace of the
evil, but also in Rome where shameful atrocities fester
and spread."
(Tacitus, Annales xv.44)
Jesus of Nazareth
(7–2 BC—26–36 AD)
• Called ‘the Christ’—
Greek for anointed.
• The principal sources of
information regarding
Jesus' life and teachings
are the four canonical
gospels: Matt, Mark,
Luke and John
• Included in the Norton.
Jesus, Christianity and Rome
• Rome while distant is always in the background of
Christ and his kingdom.
• One of Caesar Augustus’ titles was “Prince of Peace”
since his reign marked the end of the civil wars. The
irony is not lost.
• The centurion whose servant Jesus healed was in charge
of at least 80 men, maybe more.
• Jesus was executed by Roman law for being the king of
the Jews when only Caesar was king.
• St. Paul was a Roman citizen and used that status often.
• Some scholars argue that other texts (such as the
Gospel of Thomas) are as relevant as the
canonical gospels to the historical Jesus.
• Most critical scholars in the fields of history and
biblical studies believe that ancient texts on Jesus'
life are at least partially accurate, agreeing that
Jesus was
– a Galilean Jew who was regarded as a teacher and
healer.
– was baptized by John the Baptist, and
– was crucified in Jerusalem on orders of the Roman
Prefect of Judaea Pontius Pilate, on the charge of
sedition against the Roman Empire.
Included in the Norton
• Luke: The story of his Nativity “Good Tidings” up
to him at 12 debating with the elders.
• Mathew: Sermon on the Mount (Words of the
Lord)
• Luke: Jesus’ parables
– Lost sheep,
– Lost piece of silver
– Prodigal Son
• Mathew: The Last Supper, the Garden (Peter’s
Denial) the crucifixion, and the Resurrection: Go
and Tell
Sites Cited
“Ancient Rome.” History for Kids. 8 Nov. 2005
<http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/romans/>
“Anthology of World Literature: Section 5 Overview”
W.W. Norton and Company. 8 Nov. 2005 <
http://www.wwnorto
n.com/nawol/s5_overview.htm#1>
Brown, Larry. “Ovid’s Metamorphosis an
Introduction”http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/fi
les/xeno.ovid1.htm 15 Nov. 2005
“Catullus: The Poems” Poetry in Translation (2001) S.
A. Kline ed.
http://www.adkline.freeuk.com/Catullus.htm#_Toc5
31846798 13 Nov. 2007
Drake, David “Ovid” http://david-drake.com/ovid.html
15 Nov. 2005
More Citations
Garrison, Daniel H. “Catullus - Roman Poet” Salem Press.
https://salempress.com/Store/samples/great_lives_from_his
tory_ancient_world/great_lives_from_history_ancient_wor
ld_catullus.htm> 16 Nov. 2006
Kenney, Edward John "Petronius Arbiter, Gaius."
Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica
Online. 21 Nov. 2006 http://search.eb.com/eb/article5644.
"Roman Empire." Britannica Student Encyclopedia. 2005.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
8 Nov. 2005 <http://search.eb.com/ebi/article-9276779>.
Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Ed.
http://dictionary.oed.com/entrance.dtl 21 Nov. 2006
"Virgil." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2006. Encyclopædia
Britannica Online.
16 Nov. 2006 <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9108776>
Not Cited but Interesting
• Mr. Donn.org 21 (Nov. 2006)
http://www.mrdonn.org/index.html. While not
intended for college academics, this resource for
teachers of K-12 has a number of helpful and
accessible presentations. Accessible is good!
• Mayer, Ken. Roman Decadence.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/pythian/courses/decade
nce/syllabus.html A syllabus for a class which
examines the decline as it has usually be defined of the
Roman Empire through its literature.
• The Illustrated History of the Roman Empire
http://www.roman-empire.net/index.html
• UNRN History http://www.unrv.com/
• The Roman Empire: The First Century
http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/index.html