"A fascinating insight into the most talented Latin poets to occupy the Papal throne after Pius II Piccolomini in the 15th century, this book offers translations of and commentaries on the major poems of the three popes (all Italians): Urban VIII Barberini, Alexander VII Chigi and Leo XIII Pecci. Their highly accomplished Neo-Latin poems owe much to the major Latin poets and are significant instances of classical reception, but also cast an interesting light on their lives, times and papacies"--

A fascinating insight into the most talented Latin poets to occupy the Papal throne after Pius II Piccolomini in the 15th century, this book offers translations of and commentaries on the major poems of the three popes (all Italians): Urban VIII Barberini, Alexander VII Chigi and Leo XIII Pecci. Their highly accomplished Neo-Latin poems owe much to the major Latin poets and are significant instances of classical reception, but also cast an interesting light on their lives, times and papacies. Urban (elected pope in 1623) published a mixture of secular and religious verse, drawing on the hexameter epistles of Horace and the lyrics of Catullus and writing Horatian material in praise of Alessandro Farnese, governor of the Netherlands for Philip II of Spain, and the Spanish martyr St Laurence. Alexander (elected pope in 1655) like Urban combines secular and religious themes and often uses Horatian frameworks, writing hexameter accounts of some of the journeys he made as a papal diplomat in Germany and an Horatian ode on the fall of the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle (1628). Leo's poetry was mostly religious and published during his papacy (1878-1903); his Horatian ode on the new millennium of 1900 was widely read, and other works include an elegy which links a shrine of the Virgin with the Battle of Lepanto; an Horatian satire on moderate diet; and hymns to saints which combine early Christian and Horatian forms.

Investigation of the Latin poetry produced by British poets from the sixteenth century onwards affords an indispensible insight into a dominant strand in the intellectual, cultural and educational life of the British Isles during this period. At this time, the composition of Latin poetry was a regular feature of school curricula and a popular leisure-time activity of the educated elite. Such examination also sheds light on the poetic principles and practice of major British poets (such as Campion, Cowley, Herbert and Milton) who penned a large quantity of neo-Latin verse in addition to their better-known vernacular works.

This volume approaches the broad topic of wonder in the works of Tacitus, encompassing paradox, the marvellous and the admirable. Recent scholarship on these themes in Roman literature has tended to focus on poetic genres, with comparatively little attention paid to historiography: Tacitus, whose own judgments on what is worthy of note have often differed in interesting ways from the preoccupations of his readers, is a fascinating focal point for this complementary perspective. Scholarship on Tacitus has to date remained largely marked by a divide between the search for veracity – as validated by modern historiographical standards – and literary approaches, and as a result wonders have either been ignored as unfit for an account of history or have been deprived of their force by being interpreted as valid only within the text. While the modern ideal of historiographical objectivity tends to result in striving for consistent heuristic and methodological frameworks, works as varied as Tacitus' Histories, Annals and opera minora can hardly be prefaced with a statement of methodology broad enough to escape misrepresenting their diversity. In our age of specialization a streamlined methodological framework is a virtue, but it should not be assumed that Tacitus had similar priorities, and indeed the Histories and Annals deserve to be approached with openness towards the variety of perspectives that a tradition as rich as Latin historiographical prose can include within its scope. This collection proposes ways to reconcile the divide between history and historiography by exploring contestable moments in the text that challenge readers to judge and interpret for themselves, with individual chapters drawing on a range of interpretive approaches that mirror the wealth of authorial and reader-specific responses in play.

This volume offers a wide range of sample passages from literature written in Latin in the British Isles during the period from about 1500 to 1800. It includes a general introduction to and bibliography to the Latin literature of these centuries, as well as Latin texts with English translations, introductions and notes. These texts present a rich panorama of the different literary genres, styles and themes flourishing at the time, illustrating the role of Latin texts in the development of literary genres, the diversity of authors writing in Latin in early modern Britain, and the importance of Latin in contemporary political, religious and scientific debates. The collection, which includes both texts by well-known authors (such as John Milton, Thomas More and George Buchanan) and previously unpublished items, can be used as a point of entry for students at school and university level, but will also be of interest to specialists in a number of academic disciplines.