ROMAN LITERARY CULTURE: From Plautus to Macrobius

Drama, comedy and tragedy in this, the second edition concerning the best-attested generation of Roman writers and the community around Cicero in the period from 50BCE when the autocratic control of Caesar as dictator forced the old elite out of politics and stimulated its intellectuals to new writing in the prose genres of historiography, antiquarian research, and philosophy. Cicero and Varro were the two most learned men and most voracious readers of their age who had been thoroughly educated in Greek and existing Latin literature and who wrote extensive works in several literary genres. Cicero began and made his career with court speeches but moved on to political advocacy then to dialogues and treatises on oratory and education for public life, on public science, theology and Roman history. Varro seems to have begun with lighter work - satiric usually dramatic sketches on Roman themes, then advanced to serious literary and historical research. It was enthusiasm for classical literature that led Petrarch and Boccaccio to seek out and copy texts of Cicero and Varro including informal letters. The book studies the texts of the Middle Republic, of Naevius and Ennius, Plautus and Terrance, Pacuvius, Accius and Lucilius and illustrates what happened to Roman secular literature after Apuleius and Gellius and how it was received even by committed Christian writers. The book covers nationalism, private and public patronage, the first real histories, love and elegy, Ovid the scapegoat and the sorrows of Augustus, didactic and descriptive poetry, the divergence of theatre and drama, Pliny's letters, the public world of the senator and orator, the world of the auditorium and more. And the book discusses the habits of Roman readers and their access to literature from booksellers and copyists to pirated publications and libraries. With a new Preface and updated bibliography, 340pp, illus. softback.