A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 597-1066. Volume I, 597-740

1969 ◽  
Vol 74 (3) ◽  
pp. 962
Author(s):  
William A. Chaney ◽  
W. F. Bolton
Keyword(s):  
1966 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
B. C. Dietrich

A brief glance into almost any modern history of Latin literature will show that the age of Silver Latin came to an end with Suetonius, whose death marked the beginning of two centuries during which Roman letters trickled away to nothing in a wind-swept desert. A sad fate for a great literature at such an early date, for Suetonius still belonged to the first quarter of the second century a.d. Fortunately we may beg to differ from our historians: there was yet life in the old body even after Suetonius.


1984 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 362
Author(s):  
William S. Anderson ◽  
E. J. Kenney ◽  
W. V. Clausen

Author(s):  
Philippe Le Doze

Attending to the historical and cultural background behind the desire to promote Latin literature allows us to interpret the partnership between Maecenas and the so-called Augustan poets without recourse to traditional notions of poets as instruments. This chapter argues that the poets’ activities, at once cultural and civic, were influenced by a philosophy of history of which Polybius, Cicero, and (in the Augustan age) Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus were exponents. The poets were also encouraged by a new idea, largely initiated by Cicero and supported by Athenodorus in the entourage of Augustus, that one could benefit one’s homeland not only through politics but also through writing. Maximum effectiveness, however, required the authority to be heard at the highest level of the state. In this context, Maecenas’ patronage was a weighty asset. His proximity to the princeps and his auctoritas allowed the poets a real freedom of speech.


2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-87
Author(s):  
Christopher Whitton

Cicero has a unique place in the history of Latin. A political and intellectual figure elevated to iconic status both by his own efforts and by posterity; author of more extant prose – dozens of speeches, the treatises philosophical and rhetorical, and nearly a thousand letters – than any other pagan Roman; model of good style and set-text author par excellence, from antiquity to modernity. So far, so uncontroversial. But when and how did he acquire this place atop the canon? It's a question that Caroline Bishop, Thomas Keeline, and Giuseppe La Bua have each asked, and one to which they offer some interestingly different answers.


1950 ◽  
Vol 43 (12) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
Harry E. Wedeck ◽  
Jean Chapman Snow

Author(s):  
Claude Baurain

This chapter focuses on the Punic literature of the Roman imperial period. Since Punic works have not survived from either the Punic city or the Roman city, investigations on Punic literature can only be based on indirect testimonies—including Neo-Punic epigraphy, a temporary survival of the Neo-Punic language and writing, and fragments in translation attributed to Mago the agronomist—or on a cautious assessment of the cultural mood in the Punic city and the role the neighbouring Numidian population may have played in the conservation of the Punic literary output. From this viewpoint, the fate meted out in 146 bce, just after the fall of Carthage, by the Roman Senate to the Agronomic Treatise written by Mago in Punic and to the libri Punici most probably written in Greek is worth special attention because these works could have been one of the stimuli for the Graeco-Latin literature that flourished in Roman Africa right up to the late imperial period. As for other writings in Punic, kept in the archives of Carthage in Punic times, they probably served primarily to preserve traditional knowledge. The contents and the long and turbulent history of the handwritten archives assembled much later in Timbuktu and elsewhere in Mali provide a glimpse into the diversity of topics treated in the Punic language and writing by Carthaginians who lived before 146 bce. As for the Roman city, there is nothing tangible that would support the idea of a ‘renaissance’ in Punic literary output.


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