Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal

Our knowledge of the life of the most famous of Roman satirists is strangely unsatisfactory. Many so-called lives of Juvenal have come down to us, but they are confused, contrad...

The drama proper had never flourished at Rome. The causes are not far to seek. Tragic drama was dead in Greece by the time Greek influence made itself felt, while the New Comedy...

Our information as to the life of P. Papinius Statius is drawn almost exclusively from his minor poems entitled the _Silvae_. He was born at Naples, his father was a native of V...

in mourning his death, seeing that he wrote thus concerning me? He gave me what he could, he would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater gift can one man give a...

360. Cp. _Nat. Quaest._ iii. 16. 4, _Aetna_, 302 and 303. But this may be due to the fact that both Seneca and the author of _Aetna_ get their information from the same source,...

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,[244] the poet who more than any other exhibits the typical excellences and defects of the Silver Age, was born at Cordova on November 3, in the year 39 A...

The _Aetna_ is a hexameter poem, 646 lines in length. The author laments the indifference shown by poets to the natural phenomena of his day. They waste their time on the descri...

The political tendency towards retrenchment and reform that marks the reign of Vespasian finds its literary parallel in a reaction against the rhetoric of display that culminate...

During the latter years of the principate of Augustus a remarkable change in literary methods and style begins to make itself felt. The gradual extinction of the great luminarie...

It is possible to form a clearer picture of the personality of Aulus Persius Flaccus, the satirist, than of any other poet of the Silver Age. Not only are the essential facts of...

The most curious and in some respects the most remarkable work that the Silver Age has bequeathed to us is a fragment of a novel, the _Satyricon_ of Petronius Arbiter, Its autho...

Titus Catius Silius Italicus[590] is best known to us as the author of the longest and worst of surviving Roman epics. But by a strange irony of fate we have a fuller knowledge...

After the death of Nero and the close of the Civil War a happier era, both for literature and the world at large, was inaugurated by the accession of Vespasian in 69 A.D. A man...

Marcus Valerius Martialis, like Quintilian, Seneca, and Lucan, was a Spaniard by birth, and, unlike those writers, never became thoroughly reconciled to life at Rome. He was bor...

i. THE STAGE. Drama never really flourishing at Rome, p. 23. Comedy, represented by Mime and Atellan farce, p. 24. Legitimate comedy nearly extinct, p. 25. Tragedy replaced by _...

Pastoral poetry, p. 150. Calpurnius Siculus; date, p. 151. Who was he? p. 152. Debt to Vergil, p. 152. Elaboration of style, p. 153. Obscurity, affectation and insignificance, p...

Epic in the Flavian age, p. 179. Who was Valerius? His date, p. 180. The _Argonautica_, unfinished, p. 181. Its general design, p. 182. Merits and defects of the Argonaut-saga a...

Life, p. 202. Character, p. 205. The _Thebais_; its high average level, p. 206. Statius a miniature painter, p, 207. Weakness of the Theban-saga as a subject for epic, p. 208. C...

Life, p. 287. Date of satires, p. 289. Motives (Sat, i), p. 291. Themes of the various satires; third satire, p. 293; fourth, fifth, and sixth satires, p. 294; seventh and eight...

Life, p. 251. The epigram, p. 258. Martial's temperament, p. 259. Gift of style, p. 260. Satirical tone, good-humoured and non-moral, p. 261. Obscenity, p. 263. Capacity for fri...

Vespasian and Titus, p. 166. Domitian. The Agon Capitolinus and Agon Albanus, p. 167. Literary characteristics of the Flavian age, p. 168. Saleius Bassus, Serranus, and others,...

Life, p. 97. Minor works, p. 99. His choice of a subject, p. 101, Choice of epic methods, p. 102. Petronius' criticism of historical epic, p. 103. Difficulties of the subject, p...

Main characteristics, p. 1. The influence of the principate, p. 1. Tiberius, p. 2. Caligula, p. 4. Claudius, p. 5. Nero, p. 6. Decay of Roman character, p. 9. Peculiar nature of...

Life, p. 236. Weakness of historical epic, p. 238. Disastrous intrusion of mythology, p. 239. Plagiarism from Vergil, p. 240. Skill in composition of early books, p. 240. Inadeq...

Authorship of _Satyricon:_ character of Titus Petronius, p. 125. Literary criticism, p. 127. Attack on contemporary rhetoric, p. 128. Eumolpus the poet, p. 129; laments the deca...

Life, p. 79. Works, p. 81. Influence of Lucilius, p. 83; of Horace, p. 84. Obscurity, p. 85. Qualifications necessary for a satirist; Persius' weakness through lack of them, p....