“the grandeur that was
Greece and the glory that was Rome”
Edgar Allan Poe

• 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
BC)
– The Punic Wars (ca. 275 BC-146 BC)
– The Civil Wars (ca. 146 BC-30 BC)
A Roman Road

• Roman Empire:
– 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:
– The Ostrogoths
– The Visigoths
– The Franks
– The Vandals
Ave Imperator, morituri te salutant
("Hail, Emperor, those who are about to die
– The Byzantines salute you")
– 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.

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.

• 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

• 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.

(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.

• 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.
1878 van de Britse schilder John Reinhard
• 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.
Weguelin, 1849-1927.

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, night is one long everlasting sleep.
Poem # 5
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.

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

• 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.

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.

• 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.

• 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,
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.
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.

• 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.

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.

• 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.).

• 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 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.

• 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'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).
.

• 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

• 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)

• 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.”

• 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 , 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.

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.]

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).

( 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 Epaminondas-
Scipio Africanus—no longer exists, and many of the remaining lives are truncated, contain obvious lacunae and/or have been tampered with by later writers.

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)

(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 .

• 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.

• 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

“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

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/article-
5644 .
"Roman Empire." Britannica Student Encyclopedia . 2005.
Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
8 Nov. 2005 < http://search.eb.com/ebi/article-9276779 >.
Oxford English Dictionary 2 nd 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 >

• 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