Publisher Description

Traces the developing attitude of poets of the first century BC, considering why they came to write as they did.

The establishment of the Augustan regime presents itself as the assertion of order and rationality in the political, ideological, and artistic spheres, after the disorder and madness of the civil wars of the late Republic. But the classical, Apollonian poetry of the Augustan period is fascinated by the irrational in both the public and private spheres. There is a vivid memory of the political and military furor that destroyed the Republic, and also an anxiety that furor may resurface, that the repressed may return. Epic and elegy are both obsessed with erotic madness: Dido experiences in her very public role the disabling effects of love that are both lamented and celebrated by the love elegists. Didactic (especially the Georgics) and the related Horatian exercises in satire and epistle, offer programmes for constructing rational order in the natural, political, and psychological worlds, but at best contain uneasily an ever-present threat of confusion and backsliding, and for the most part fall short of the austere standards of rational exposition set by Lucretius. Dionysus and the Dionysiac enjoy a prominence in Augustan poetry and art that goes well beyond the merely ornamental. The person of the emperor Augustus himself tests the limits of rational categorization. Augustan Poetry and the Irrational contains contributions by some of the leading experts of the Augustan period as well as a number of younger scholars. An introduction which surveys the field as a whole is followed by chapters that examine the manifestations of the irrational in a range of Augustan poets, including Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and the love elegists, and also explore elements of post-classical reception.

In the Odes, Horace writes of his own work, “I have built a monument more enduring than bronze,”—a striking metaphor that hints at how the poetry and built environment of ancient Rome are inextricably linked. This fascinating work of original scholarship makes the precise and detailed argument that painted illustrations of the Trojan War, both public and private, were a collective visual resource for selected works of Virgil, Horace, and Propertius. Carefully researched and skillfully reasoned, the author’s claims are bold and innovative, offering a strong interpretation of the relationship between Roman visual culture and literature that will deepen modern readings of Augustan poets. The Museum of Augustus first provides a comprehensive reconstruction of paintings from the remaining fragments of the cycle of Trojan frescoes that once decorated the Temple of Apollo in Pompeii. It then finds the echoes of these paintings in the Augustan-dated Portico of Philippus, now destroyed, which was itself a renovation of Rome’s de facto temple of the Muses—in other words, a museum, both in displaying art and offering a meeting place for poets. It next examines the responses of the Augustan poets to the decorative program of this monument that was intimately connected with their own literary aspirations. The book concludes by looking at the way Horace in the Odes and Virgil in the Georgics both conceptualized their poetic projects as temples to rival the museum of Augustus.

An important contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of monster studies

The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age is a classic work by Andrew Lang and William Young Sellar that examines the work of Horace and the elegiac poets of ancient Rome. Lang and Sellar provide a detailed analysis of the poetry of these great writers, exploring the themes and techniques used by each. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of ancient Rome or the art of poetry. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The age of Augustus, commonly dated to 30 BC – AD 14, was a pivotal period in world history. A time of tremendous change in Rome, Italy, and throughout the Mediterranean world, many developments were underway when Augustus took charge and a recurring theme is the role that he played in shaping their direction. The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus captures the dynamics and richness of this era by examining important aspects of political and social history, religion, literature, and art and architecture. The sixteen essays, written by distinguished specialists from the United States and Europe, explore the multi-faceted character of the period and the interconnections between social, religious, political, literary, and artistic developments. Introducing the reader to many of the central issues of the Age of Augustus, the essays also break new ground and will stimulate further research and discussion.