Latin literature, the body of writings in Latin, primarily produced during

the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, when Latin was a spoken

language. When Rome fell, Latin remained the literary language of the
Western medieval world until it was superseded by the Romance languages it
had generated and by other modern languages. After the Renaissance the
writing of Latin was increasingly confined to the narrow limits of
certain ecclesiastical and academic publications. This article focuses primarily
on ancient Latin literature. It does, however, provide a broad overview of the
literary works produced in Latin by European writers during the Middle Ages
and Renaissance.
Ancient Latin Literature
Literature in Latin began as translation from the Greek, a fact that conditioned
its development. Latin authors used earlier writers as sources of stock themes
and motifs, at their best using their relationship to tradition to produce a new
species of originality. They were more distinguished as verbal artists than as
thinkers; the finest of them have a superb command of concrete detail and
vivid illustration. Their noblest ideal was humanitas, a blend of culture and
kindliness, approximating the quality of being “civilized.”
Little need be said of the preliterary period. Hellenistic influence came from
the south, Etrusco-Hellenic from the north. Improvised farce, with stock
characters in masks, may have been a native invention from the Campania
region (the countryside of modern Naples). The historian Livy traced quasi-
dramatic satura (medley) to the Etruscans. The statesman-writer Cato and the
scholar Varro said that in former times the praises of heroes were sung after
feasts, sometimes to the accompaniment of the flute, which was perhaps an
Etruscan custom. If they existed, these carmina convivalia, or festal songs,
would be behind some of the legends that came down to Livy. There were also
the rude verses improvised at harvest festivals and weddings and liturgical
formulas, whose scanty remains show alliteration and assonance. The nearest
approach to literature must have been in public and private records and in
recorded speeches.

00:0603:02
Stylistic periods
Ancient Latin literature may be divided into four periods: early writers, to
70 BC; Golden Age, 70 BC–AD 18; Silver Age, AD 18–133; and later writers.
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Early writers
The ground for Roman literature was prepared by an influx from the early 3rd
century BC onward of Greek slaves, some of whom were put to tutoring young
Roman nobles. Among them was Livius Andronicus, who was later freed and
who is considered to be the first Latin writer. In 240 BC, to celebrate Rome’s
victory over Carthage, he composed a genuine drama adapted from the Greek.
His success established a tradition of performing such plays alongside the
cruder native entertainments. He also made a translation of the Odyssey. For
his plays Livius adapted the Greek metres to suit the Latin tongue; but for
his Odyssey he retained a traditional Italian measure, as did Gnaeus
Naevius for his epic on the First Punic War against Carthage. Scholars are
uncertain as to how much this metre depended on quantity or stress. A half-
Greek Calabrian called Ennius adopted and Latinized the Greek hexameter for
his epic Annales, thus further acquainting Rome with the Hellenistic world.
Unfortunately his work survives only in fragments.
The Greek character thus imposed on literature made it more a preserve of the
educated elite. In Rome, coteries emerged such as that formed around the
Roman consul and general Scipio Aemilianus. This circle included the
statesman-orator Gaius Laelius, the Greek Stoic philosopher Panaetius, the
Greek historian Polybius, the satirist Lucilius, and an African-born slave of
genius, the comic playwright Terence. Soon after Rome absorbed Greece as a
Roman province, Greek became a second language to educated Romans. Early
in the 1st century BC, however, Latin declamation established itself, and,
borrowing from Greek, it attained polish and artistry.
Plautus, the leading poet of comedy, is one of the chief sources
for colloquial Latin. Ennius sought to heighten epic and tragic diction, and from
his time onward, with a few exceptions, literary language became ever more
divorced from that of the people, until the 2nd century AD.
Golden Age, 70 BC–AD 18
The Golden Age of Latin literature spanned the last years of the republic and
the virtual establishment of the Roman Empire under the reign
of Augustus (27 BC–AD 14). The first part of this period, from 70 to 42 BC, is
justly called the Ciceronian. It produced writers of distinction, most of them
also men of action, among whom Julius Caesar stands out. The
most prolific was Varro, “most learned of the Romans,” but it was Cicero, a
statesman, orator, poet, critic, and philosopher, who developed the Latin
language to express abstract and complicated thought with clarity.
Subsequently, prose style was either a reaction against, or a return to, Cicero’s.
As a poet, although uninspired, he was technically skillful. He edited the De
rerum natura of the philosophical poet Lucretius. Like Lucretius, he admired
Ennius and the old Roman poetry and, though apparently interested in
Hellenistic work, spoke ironically of its extreme champions,
the neōteroi (“newer poets”).
After the destruction of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BC, prosperity and
external security had allowed the cultivation of a literature of self-expression
and entertainment. In this climate flourished the neōteroi, largely non-Roman
Italians from the north, who introduced the mentality of “art for art’s sake.”
None is known at first hand except Catullus, who was from Verona. These
poets reacted against the grandiose—the Ennian tradition of “gravity”—and
their complicated allusive poetry consciously emulated the Callimacheans of
3rd-century Alexandria. The Neoteric influence persisted into the next
generation through Cornelius Gallus to Virgil.
Virgil, born near Mantua and schooled at Cremona and Milan, chose
Theocritus as his first model. The self-consciously beautiful cadences of
the Eclogues depict shepherds living in a landscape half real, half fantastic;
these allusive poems hover between the actual and the artificial. They are shot
through with topical allusions, and in the fourth he already appears as a
national prophet. Virgil was drawn into the circle being formed by Maecenas,
Augustus’ chief minister. In 38 BC he and Varius introduced the young
poet Horace to Maecenas; and by the final victory of Augustus in 30 BC, the
circle was consolidated.
With the reign of Augustus began the second phase of the Golden Age, known
as the Augustan Age. It gave encouragement to the classical notion that a
writer should not so much try to say new things as to say old things better.
The rhetorical figures of thought and speech were mastered until they became
instinctive. Alliteration and onomatopoeia (accommodation of sound and
rhythm to sense), previously overdone by the Ennians and
therefore eschewed by the neōteroi, were now used effectively with due
discretion. Perfection of form characterizes the odes of Horace; elegy, too,
became more polished.
The decade of the first impetus of Augustanism, 29–19 BC, saw the publication
of Virgil’s Georgics and the composition of the whole Aeneid by his death in
19 BC; Horace’s Odes, books I–III, and Epistles, book I; in elegy, books I–III
of Propertius (also of Maecenas’ circle) and books I–II of Tibullus, with others
from the circle of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, and doubtless the first
recitations by a still younger member of his circle, Ovid. About 28 or 27 BC Livy
began his monumental history.
Maecenas’ circle was not a propaganda bureau; his talent for tactful pressure
guided his poets toward praise of Augustus and the regime without excessively
cramping their freedom. Propertius, when admitted to the circle, was simply a
youth with an anti-Caesarian background who had gained favour with
passionate love elegies. He and Horace quarreled, and after Virgil’s death the
group broke up. Would-be poets now abounded, such as Horace’s protégés,
who occur in the Epistles; Ovid’s friends, whom he remembers wistfully in
exile; and Manilius, whom no one mentions at all. Poems were recited in
literary circles and in public, hence the importance attached to euphony,
smoothness, and artistic structure. They thus became known piecemeal and
might be improved by friendly suggestions. When finally they were assembled
in books, great care was taken over arrangement, which was artistic or
significant (but not chronological).
Meanwhile, in prose the Ciceronian climax had been followed by a reaction led
by Sallust. In 43 BC he began to publish a series of historical works in a terse,
epigrammatic style studded with archaisms and avoiding the copiousness of
Cicero. Later, eloquence, deprived of political influence, migrated from
the forum to the schools, where cleverness and point counted rather than
rolling periods. Thus developed the epigrammatic style of the
younger Seneca and, ultimately, of Tacitus. Spreading to verse, it conditioned
the witty couplets of Ovid, the tragedies of Seneca, and the satire of Juvenal.
Though Livy stood out, Ciceronianism only found a real champion again in the
rhetorician Quintilian.

Latin literature
KEY PEOPLE
 St. Thomas Aquinas
 Erasmus
 Horace
 Marcus Tullius Cicero
 Virgil
 Ovid
 Petrarch
 Tacitus
 Catullus
 Livy
RELATED TOPICS
  Literature
 Western literature
 Latin language
 Goliard
 Neōteros
 Fabula palliata
 Fescennine verse
 Fabula Atellana
 Menippean satire
 Hisperic style
Silver Age, AD 18–133
After the first flush of enthusiasm for Augustan ideals of national
regeneration, literature paid the price of political patronage. It became subtly
sterilized; and Ovid was but the first of many writers actually suppressed
or inhibited by fear. Only Tacitus and Juvenal, writing under comparatively
tolerant emperors, turned emotions pent up under Domitian’s reign of terror
into the driving force of great literature. Late Augustans such as Livy already
sensed that Rome had passed its summit. Yet the title of Silver Age is not
undeserved by a period that produced, in addition to Tacitus and Juvenal, the
two Senecas, Lucan, Persius, the two Plinys, Quintilian,
Petronius, Statius, Martial, and, of lesser stature, Manilius, Valerius
Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Suetonius.
Later writers
The decentralization of the empire under Hadrian and the Antonines
weakened the Roman pride and passion for liberty. Romans began again to
write in Greek as well as Latin. The “new sophistic” movement in Greece
affected the “novel poets” such as Florus. An effete culture devoted itself to
philology, archaism, and preciosity. After Juvenal, 250 years elapsed before
Ausonius of Bordeaux (4th century AD) and the last of the true
classics, Claudian (flourished about 400), appeared. The
anonymous Pervigilium Veneris (“Vigil of Venus”), of uncertain date, presages
the Middle Ages in its vitality and touch of stressed metre. Ausonius, though in
the pagan literary tradition, was a Christian and contemporary with a truly
original Christian poet, the Spaniard Prudentius. Henceforward, Christian
literature overlaps pagan and generally surpasses it.
In prose these centuries have somewhat more to boast, though the greatest
work by a Roman was written in Greek, the Meditations of the
emperor Marcus Aurelius. Elocutio novella, a blend of archaisms
and colloquial speech, is seen to best advantage in Apuleius (born about 125).
Other writers of note were Aulus Gellius and Macrobius. The 4th
century AD was the age of the grammarians and commentators, but in prose
some of the most interesting work is again Christian.
The genres
Comedy
Roman comedy was based on the New Comedy fashionable in Greece, whose
classic representative was Menander. But whereas this was imitation of life to
the Greeks, to the Romans it was escape to fantasy and literary convention.
Livius’ successor, Naevius, who developed this “drama in Greek cloak” (fabula
palliata), may have been the first to introduce recitative and song, thereby
increasing its unreality. But he slipped in details of Roman life and
outspoken criticisms of powerful men. His imprisonment warned comedy off
topical references, but the Roman audience became alert in applying ancient
lines to modern situations and in demonstrating their feelings by appropriate
clamour.
Unlike his predecessors, Plautus specialized, writing only comedy involving
high spirits, oaths, linguistic play, slapstick humour, music, and
skillful adaptation of rhythm to subject matter. Some of his plays can be
thought of almost as comic opera. Part of the humour consisted in the sudden
intrusion of Roman things into this conventional Greek world. “The Plautine in
Plautus” consists in pervasive qualities rather than supposed innovations of
plot or technique.
As Greek influence on Roman culture increased, Roman drama became more
dependent on Greek models. Terence’s comedy was very different from
Plautus’. Singing almost disappeared from his plays, and recitative was less
prominent. From Menander he learned to exhibit refinements of psychology
and to construct ingenious plots; but he lacked comic force. His pride was
refined language—the avoidance of vulgarity, obscurity, or slang. His
characters were less differentiated in speech than those of Plautus, but they
talk with an elegant charm. The society Terence portrayed was more sensitive
than that of Plautine comedy; lovers tended to be loyal and sons obedient. His
historical significance has been enhanced by the loss of nearly all of
Menander’s work.
Though often revived, plays modeled on Greek drama were rarely written after
Terence. The Ciceronian was the great age of acting, and in 55 BC Pompey gave
Rome a permanent theatre. Plays having an Italian setting came into vogue,
their framework being Greek New Comedy but their subject Roman society. A
native form of farce was also revived. Under Julius Caesar, this yielded in
popularity to verse mime of Greek origin that was realistic, often obscene, and
full of quotable apothegms. Finally, when mime gave rise to the dumb show of
the pantomimus with choral accompaniment and when exotic spectacles had
become the rage, Roman comedy faded out.
Tragedy
Livius introduced both Greek tragedy (fabula crepidata, “buskined”) and
comedy to Latin. He was followed by Naevius and Ennius, who loved
Euripides. Pacuvius, probably a greater tragedian, liked Sophocles and
heightened tragic diction even more than Ennius. His successor, Accius, was
more rhetorical and impetuous. The fragments of these poets betoken
grandeur in “the high Roman fashion,” but they also have a certain
ruggedness. They did not always deal in Greek mythology: occasionally they
exploited Roman legend or even recent history. The Roman chorus, unlike the
Greek, performed on stage and was inextricably involved in the action.
Classical tragedy was seldom composed after Accius, though its plays were
constantly revived. Writing plays, once a function of slaves and freedmen,
became a pastime of aristocratic dilettantes. Such writers had commonly no
thought of production: post-Augustan drama was for reading.
The extant tragedies of the younger Seneca probably were not written for
public performance. They are melodramas of horror and violence, marked by
sensational pseudo-realism and rhetorical cleverness. Characterization is
crude, and philosophical moralizing obtrusive. Yet Seneca was a model for
16th- and early 17th-century tragedy, especially in France, and influenced
English revenge tragedy.
SIMILAR TOPICS
 English literature
 French literature
 African literature
 Arabic literature
 American literature
 Italian literature
 German literature
 Spanish literature
 Japanese literature
 Latin American literature
Epic and epyllion
Livius’ pioneering Odyssey was, to judge from the fragments, primitive, as was
the Bellum Punicum of Naevius, important for Virgil because it began with the
legendary origins of Carthage in Phoenicia and Rome in Troy. But
Ennius’ Annales soon followed. This compound of legendary origins and history
was in Latin, in a transplanted metre, and by a poet who had imagination and a
realization of the emergent greatness of Rome. In form his work must have
been ill-balanced; he almost ignored the First Punic War in consideration of
Naevius and became more detailed as he added books about his own times.
But his great merit shines out from the fragments—nobility of ethos matched
with nobility of language. On receptive spirits, such as Cicero, Lucretius, and
Virgil, his influence was profound.
READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC
biblical literature: The Old Latin version
The existence of a Latin translation can be attested in North Africa and
southern Gaul as early as the second half of the 2nd century

Little is known of the “strong epic” for which Virgil’s friend Varius is renowned,
but Virgil’s Aeneid was certainly something new. Recent history would have
been too particularized a theme. Instead, Virgil developed Naevius’ version
of Aeneas’ pilgrimage from Troy to found Rome. The poem is in part an
Odyssey of travel (with an interlude of love) followed by an Iliad of conquest,
and in part a symbolic epic of contemporary Roman relevance. Aeneas has
Homeric traits but also qualities that look forward to the character of the
Roman hero of the future. His fault was to have lingered at Carthage. The
command to leave the Carthaginian queen Dido shakes him ruthlessly out of
the last great temptation to seek individual happiness. But it is only the vision
of Rome’s future greatness, seen when he visits Elysium, that kindles obedient
acceptance into imaginative enthusiasm. It was just such a sacrifice of the
individual that the Augustan ideal demanded. The second half of the poem
represents the fusing in the crucible of war of the civilized graces of Troy with
the manly virtues of Italy. The tempering of Roman culture by Italian hardiness
was another part of the Augustan ideal. So was a revival of interest in ancient
customs and religious observances, which Virgil could appropriately indulge.
The verse throughout is superbly varied, musical, and rhetorical in the best
sense.
With his Hecale, Callimachus had inaugurated the short, carefully composed
hexameter narrative (called epyllion by modern scholars) to replace grand epic.
The Hecale had started a convention of insetting an independent
story. Catullus inset the story of Ariadne on Naxos into that of the marriage of
Peleus and Thetis, and the poem has a mannered, lyrical beauty. But the story
of Aristaeus at the end of Virgil’s Georgics, with that of Orpheus and Eurydice
inset, shows what heights epyllion could attain.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a nexus of some 50 epyllia with shorter episodes. He
created a convincing imaginative world with a magical logic of its own. His
continuous poem, meandering from the creation of the world to
the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, is a great Baroque conception, executed in
swift, clear hexameters. Its frequent irony and humour are striking. Thereafter
epics proliferated. Statius’ Thebaid and inchoate Achilleid and
Valerius’ Argonautica are justly less read now than they
were. Lucan’s unfinished Pharsalia has a more interesting subject, namely the
struggle between Caesar and Pompey, whom he favours. He left out the gods.
His brilliant rhetoric comes close to making the poem a success, but it is too
strained and monochromatic.
Didactic poetry
Ennius essayed didactic poetry in his Epicharmus, a work on the nature of the
physical universe. Lucretius’ De rerum natura is an account of Epicurus’ atomic
theory of matter, its aim being to free men from superstition and the fear of
death. Its combination of moral urgency, intellectual force, and precise
observation of the physical world makes it one of the summits of classical
literature.
This poem profoundly affected Virgil, but his poetic reaction was delayed for
some 17 years; and the Georgics, though deeply influenced by Lucretius, were
not truly didactic. Country-bred though he was, Virgil wrote for literary readers
like himself, selecting whatever would contribute picturesque detail to his
impressionistic picture of rural life. The Georgics portrayed the recently united
land of Italy and taught that the idle Golden Age of the fourth Eclogue was a
mirage: relentless work, introduced by a paternal Jupiter to sharpen men’s
wits, creates “the glory of the divine countryside.” The compensation is
the infinite variety of civilized life. Insofar as it had a political intention, it
encouraged revival of an agriculture devastated in wars, of the old Italian
virtues, and of the idea of Rome’s extending its works over Italy and civilizing
the world.
Ovid’s Ars amatoria was comedy or satire in the burlesque guise of didactic, an
amusing commentary on the psychology of love. The Fasti was didactic in
popularizing the new calendar; but its object was clearly to entertain.
Satire
Satura meant a medley. The word was applied to variety performances
introduced, according to Livy, by the Etruscans. Literary satire begins with
Ennius, but it was Lucilius who established the genre. After experimenting, he
settled on hexameters, thus making them its recognized vehicle. A tendency to
break into dialogue may be a vestige of a dramatic element in
nonliterary satura. Lucilius used this medium for self-expression, fearlessly
criticizing public as well as private conduct. He owed much to the Cynic-Stoic
“diatribes” (racy sermons in prose or verse) of Greeks such as Bion; but
in extant Hellenistic literature he is most clearly presaged by the fragments of
Callimachus’ iambs. “Menippean” satire, which descended from the
Greek prototype of Menippus of Gadara and mingled prose and verse, was
introduced to Rome by Varro.
Horace saw that satire was still awaiting improvement: Lucilius had been an
uncouth versifier. Satires I, 1–3 are essays in the Lucilian manner. But Horace’s
nature was to laugh, not to flay, and his incidental butts were either
insignificant or dead. He came to appreciate that the real point about Lucilius
was not his denunciations but his self-revelation. This encouraged him to talk
about himself. In Satires II he developed in parts the satire
of moral diatribe presaging Juvenal. His successor Persius blended Lucilius,
Horace, diatribe, and mime into pungent sermons in verse. The great
declaimer was Juvenal, who fixed the idea of satire for posterity. Gone was the
personal approach of Lucilius and Horace. His anger may at times have
been cultivated for effect, but his epigrammatic power and brilliant eye for
detail make him a great poet.
The younger Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis was a medley of prose and verse, but its
pitiless skit on the deification of the emperor Claudius was Lucilian satire.
The Satyricon of Petronius is also Menippean inasmuch as it contains
varied digressions and occasional verse; essentially, however, it comes
under fiction.
With Lucilian satire may be classed the fables of Augustus’ freedman Phaedrus,
the Roman Aesop, whose beast fables include contemporary allusions.
Iambic, lyric, and epigram
The short poems of Catullus were called by himself nugae (“trifles”). They vary
remarkably in mood and intention, and he uses iambic metre normally
associated with invective not only for his abuse of Caesar and Pompey but also
for his tender homecoming to Sirmio. Catullus alone used the hendecasyllable,
the metre of skits and lampoons, as a medium for love poetry.
Horace was a pioneer. In his Epodes he used iambic verse to express devotion
to Maecenas and for brutal invective in the manner of the Greek poet
Archilochus. But his primary aim was to create literature, whereas his models
had been venting their feelings. In the Odes he adapted other Greek metres
and claimed immortality for introducing early Greek lyric to Latin.
The Odes rarely show the passion now associated with lyric but are marked by
elegance, dignity, and studied perfectionism.
Martial went back to Catullus for his metres and his often obscene wit. He
fixed the notion of epigram for posterity by making it characteristically
pointed.
Elegy
The elegiac couplet of hexameter and pentameter (verse line of five feet) was
taken over by Catullus, who broke with tradition by filling elegy with personal
emotion. One of his most intense poems in this metre, about Lesbia, extends
to 26 lines; another is a long poem of involved design in which the fabled love
of Laodameia for Protesilaus is incidentally used as a paradigm. These two
poems make him the inventor of the “subjective” love elegy dealing with the
poet’s own passion. Gallus, whose work is lost, established the
genre; Tibullus and Propertius smoothed out the metre.
Propertius’ first book is still Catullan in that it seems genuinely inspired by his
passion for Cynthia: the involvement of Tibullus is less certain. Later,
Propertius grew more interested in manipulating literary conventions. Tibullus’
elegy is constructed of sections of placid couplets with subtle transitions. These
two poets established the convention of the “soft poet,” valiant only in the
campaigns of love, immortalized through them and the Muses. Propertius was
at first impervious to Augustan ideals, glorying in his abject slavery to love and
his naughtiness (nequitia), though later he became acclimatized to Maecenas’
circle.
Tibullus, a lover of peace, country life, and old religious customs, had grace and
quiet humour. Propertius, too, could be charming, but he was far more. He
often wrote impetuously, straining language and associative sequence with
passion or irony or sombre imagination.
Ovid’s aim was not to unburden his soul but to entertain. In the Amores he is
outrageous and amusing in the role adopted from Propertius, his Corinna being
probably a fiction. Elegy became his characteristic medium. He carried the
couplet of his predecessors to its logical extreme, characterized by parallelism,
regular flow and ebb, and a neat wit.
Other language and literary art forms
Rhetoric and oratory
Speaking in the forum and law courts was the essence of a public career at
Rome and hence of educational practice. After the 2nd century BC, Greek art
affected Latin oratory. The dominant style in Cicero’s time was the “Asiatic”—
emotional, rhythmical, and ornate. Cicero, Asiatic at first, early learned to tone
down his style. Criticized later by the revivers of plain style, he insisted that
style should vary with subject. But in public speaking he held that crowds were
swayed less by argument than emotion. He was the acknowledged master
speaker from 70 BC until his death (43 BC). He expounded the history of
Roman oratory in the Brutus and his own methods in the De oratore.
The establishment of monarchy robbed eloquence of its public importance,
but rhetoric remained the crown of education. Insofar as this taught boys to
marshal material clearly and to express themselves cogently, it performed the
function of the modern essay; but insofar as the temptations of applause made
it strained and affected, it did harm.
In the De oratore, Cicero had pleaded that an orator’s training should be in
all liberal arts. Education without rhetoric was inconceivable; but what Cicero
was proposing was to graft onto it a complete system of higher
education. Quintilian, in his Institutio oratoria, went back to Cicero for
inspiration as well as style. Much of that work is conventional, but the first and
last books in particular show admirable common sense and humanity; and his
work greatly influenced Renaissance education.
History
Quintus Fabius Pictor wrote his pioneering history of Rome during the Second
Punic War, using public and private records and writing in Greek. His
immediate successors followed suit. Latin historical writing began with
Cato’s Origines. After him there were as many historiasters, or worthless
historians, as the poetasters disdained by Cicero. The first great exception
is Caesar’s Commentaries, a political apologia in the guise of unvarnished
narrative. The style is dignified, terse, clear, and unrhetorical.
Sallust took Thucydides as his model. He interpreted, using speeches, and
ascribed motives. In his extant monographs Bellum Catilinae and Bellum
Jugurthinum, he displays a sardonic moralism, using history to emphasize the
decadence of the dominant caste. The revolution in style he inaugurated gives
him importance.
Livy began his 40 years’ task as Augustus came to power. His
work consummated the annalistic tradition. If in historical method he fell short
of modern standards, he had the literary virtues of a historian. He could vividly
describe past events and interpret the participants’ views
in eloquent speeches. He inherited from Cicero his literary conception of
history, his copiousness, and his principle of accommodating style to subject.
Indeed, he was perhaps the greatest of Latin stylists. His earlier books, where
his imagination has freer play, are the most readable. In the later books, the
more historical the times become, the more disturbing are his uncritical
methods and his patriotic bias. Livy’s work now is judged mainly as literature.
Tacitus, on the other hand, stands higher now than in antiquity. Though his
anti-imperial bias in attributing motives is plain, his facts can rarely be
impugned; and his evocation of the terrors of tyranny is unforgettable. He is
read for his penetrating characterizations, his drama, his ironical epigrams, and
his unpredictability. His is an extreme development of the Sallustian style,
coloured with archaic and poetic words, with a careful avoidance of the
commonplace.
Suetonian biography apart, historiography thereafter degenerated into
handbooks and epitomes until Ammianus Marcellinus appeared. He was
refreshingly detached, rather ornate in style, but capable of vivid narrative and
description. He continued Tacitus’ account from Domitian’s death to AD 378,
more than half his work dealing with his own times.
Biography and letters
The idea of comparing Romans with foreigners was taken up by Cornelius
Nepos, a friend of Cicero and Catullus. Of his De viris illustribus all that survive
are 24 hack pieces about worthies long dead and one of real merit about his
friend Atticus. The very fact that Atticus and Tiro decided to publish nearly
1,000 of Cicero’s letters is evidence of public interest in people. Admiration of
these fascinating letters gave rise to letter writing as a literary genre. The
younger Pliny’s letters, anticipating publication, convey a possibly rose-tinted
picture of civilized life. They are nothing to his spontaneous correspondence
with Trajan, where one learns of routine problems, for instance with Christians
confronting a provincial governor in Bithynia. The letter as a verse form,
beginning with striking examples by Catullus, was established by Horace,
whose Epistles carry still further the humane refinement of his gentler satires.
Suetonius’ lives of the Caesars and of poets contain much valuable
information, especially since he had access to the imperial archives. His
method was to cite in categories whatever he found, favourable or hostile, and
to leave this raw material to the judgment of the reader. The Historia Augusta,
covering the emperors from 117 to 284, is a collection of lives in the Suetonian
tradition. Tacitus’ Agricola was an admiring, but not necessarily overcoloured,
biographical study.
Some of the most valuable autobiography was incidental, such as Cicero’s
account of his oratorical career in the Brutus. Horace’s largely
autobiographical Epistles I was sealed with a miniature self-portrait. Ovid, in
exile and afraid of fading from Rome’s memory, gave an invaluable account of
his life in Tristia IV.
Philosophical and learned writings
The practical Roman mind produced no original philosopher. Apart
from Lucretius the only name that demands consideration is Cicero’s. He was
trained at Athens in the eclectic New Academy, and eclectic he apparently
remained, seeking a philosophy to fit his own constitution rather than a logical
system valid for all. He used the dialogue form, avowedly in order to make
people think for themselves instead of following authority. Essentially, he was
a philosophical journalist, composing works that became one of the means by
which Greek thought was absorbed into early Christian thinking. The De
officiis is a treatise on ethics. The dialogues do not follow the Platonic, or
dialectic, pattern but the Aristotelian, in which speakers expounded already
formed opinions at greater length.
Nor were the Romans any more original in science. Instead, they produced
encyclopaedists such as Varro and Celsus. Pliny’s Natural History is a
fascinating ragbag, especially valuable for art history, though it shows to what
extent Hellenistic achievement in science had become confused or lost.
Literary criticism
Cicero’s Brutus and the 10th book of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria provide
examples of general criticism. Cicero stressed the importance of a well-stocked
mind and native wit against mere handbook technique. By Horace’s day,
however, it had become more timely to insist on the equal importance of art.
Some of Horace’s best criticism is in the Satires (I, 4 and 10; II, 1), in
the epistle to Florus (II, 2), and in the epistle to Augustus (II, 1), a vindication of
the Augustans against archaists. But it was his epistle to Piso and his sons (later
called Ars poetica) that was so influential throughout Europe in the 18th
century. It supported, among acceptable if trite theses, the dubious one
that poetry is necessarily best when it mingles the useful (particularly moral)
with the pleasing. Much of the work concerned itself with drama. The Romans
were better at discussing literary trends than fundamental principles—there is
much good sense about this in Quintilian, and Tacitus’ Dialogus is
an acute discussion of the decline of oratory.
Fiction
Republican and early imperial Rome knew no Latin fiction beyond such things
as Sisenna’s translation of Aristides’ Milesian Tales. But two considerable
works have survived from imperial times. Of Petronius’ Satyricon, a
rambling picaresque novel, one long extract and some fragments remain. The
disreputable characters have varied adventures and talk lively colloquial Latin.
The description of the vulgar parvenu Trimalchio’s banquet is justly
famous. Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) has a hero who has
accidentally been changed into an ass. After strange adventures he is restored
to human shape by the goddess Isis. Many passages, notably the story of Cupid
and Psyche, have a beauty that culminates in the apparition of Isis and the
initiation of the hero into her mysteries.