Roman Poets of the Augustan Age

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Young Sellar
Keyword(s):  
Augustan Age

The Pattern of Formal Verse Satire in the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

PMLA ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 80 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 394-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard D. Weinbrot
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Structural Design ◽  
Specific Recommendation ◽  
Rational Mode ◽  
Augustan Age

Though formal verse satire was a major genre in the Augustan age, students of satire have generally been reluctant to define its essential traits. Perhaps the most illuminating study is Mary Claire Randolph's “The Structural Design of the Formal Verse Satire.” She remarks that the satire of Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal was “bi-partite in structure,” that a particular vice or folly was attacked in “Part A,” and its opposite virtue praised in “Part B.” There is always more attack than praise in satire “since, paradoxically, in the very act of presenting the negative or destructive side of human behavior the satirist is establishing a positive foundation on which he can base his specific recommendation to virtue.” Whether introduced by direct exhortation, implication, or quotable proverb, the “admonition to virtue” is inevitably present in formal verse satire: “it must be there, spoken or unspoken, if the piece is to be more than mere virulence and fleeting invective. … In any case, whatever the plan, the positive rational mode of procedure advocated or unmistakenly implied in a satire will be the precise opposite of the vice or folly ridiculed.”

The Rise of the Centumviral Court in the Augustan Age

2019 ◽  
pp. 266-281
Author(s):  
Matthew Roller
Keyword(s):  
Political Order ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Civil Court ◽  
Augustan Age

Scholars rightly hold that the restoration of social and political order under Augustus involved restricting certain long-standing arenas of aristocratic competition. Less well known is that aristocrats generated new arenas of competition to fill the lacuna. This chapter examines the centumviral court, a civil court with jurisdiction over wills and succession matters. Virtually invisible in Cicero’s day, when the criminal courts reigned supreme, it emerged in the Augustan age as an important venue for aristocratic competition. This rise in status can be attributed to its continuing to offer large juries and large crowds (assisted by its installation in the refurbished Basilica Julia) even as the criminal courts lost prominence. Other new arenas for competitive eloquence (declamation, recitation, forensic oratory before the Senate or emperor) involved smaller, select audiences. The centumviral court therefore became ever more attractive to aristocratic orators aspiring to public visibility in the early principate.

Maecenas and the Augustan Poets

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-246
Author(s):  
Philippe Le Doze
Keyword(s):  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
The State ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Augustan Age

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.

The Alternative Augustan Age

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Hannah Mitchell ◽  
Kit Morrell ◽  
Josiah Osgood ◽  
Kathryn Welch
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Term ◽  
Constant Change ◽  
Augustan Age

“The Augustan Age” is a dominant term in historical, literary, and cultural scholarship, not to mention teaching. This introductory chapter highlights some of the limitations of thinking of a period of many decades and constant change in terms of a single “Augustan age.” It makes the case for looking beyond conventional “key dates” and the figure of Augustus himself to recover the alternative contemporary perspectives and processes of negotiation and compromise. Doing so (as the following chapters demonstrate) reveals the resilience of Roman (republican) culture and the extent to which individuals other than Augustus were able to shape the Augustan principate.

Musical Themes and Private Art in the Augustan Age

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Castaldo
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Models ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Augustan Age

Abstract Some musical themes represented in terra sigillata reflect the political propaganda of the Augustan regime, as in the presence of Apollo citharoedus, of Sirens and of Hercules with the Muses. This visual repertory shares many features with the Augustan poets (especially the elegists) and with other private art of the Augustan period. Arretine ware potters often included Dionysiac, symposiastic and erotic scenes in their repertory, moving well beyond Augustus’ official program. They recall formal and cultural models of the Hellenistic era.

Hume's Aristocratic Preference

1966 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-171
Author(s):  
A. J. Beitzinger
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Method ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Social Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
Philosophical Basis ◽  
Augustan Age

IT HAS often been correctly remarked that a pronounced aristocratic preference informed the political thought of David Hume. This paper will attempt to show: 1) the philosophical basis for an aristocratic approach to politics which Hume provided in his logic, ethics, and esthetics; 2) the manner in which this aristocratic preference influenced his political thought; 3) the fact that this preference represented, in its various manifestations, a normative intrusion upon his experimental method; and 4) the sources of this preference in Hume's personality and in the cultural and social values shared by “gentlemen” of Britain's Augustan Age.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document