Roman Literary Culture

Fantham offers a succinct but generous guide to recent scholarship in Latin literature. I heartily recommend her book to scholars of Latin literature, to instructors seeking a textbook for History of Latin Literature courses and to graduate students studying for exams. -- T. Keith Dix Sharp News

Elaine Fantham is Giger Professor Emerita of Latin at Princeton University and an honorary fellow at Trinity College, University of Toronto. She is former president of the American Philological Association and was awarded a Distinguished Service Medal by the association in 2009. She is a coauthor of Women in the Classical World: Image and Text.

Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Introduction Toward a Social History of Latin Literature Author, Audience, and Medium Ennius and Cato, Two Early Writers New Genres of Literature, from Lucilius to Apuleius Generic Preoccupations Chapter One Starting from Scratch DramaThe First Literary Genre Comedy: Naevius, Plautus, and Terence The Tragic Tradition Patriotism and History in Poetry and Prose The First Latin History: Cato's Origines From the Gracchi to Sulla: Lucilian Satire and the New Individualism Catullus and Lucretius Chapter Two Rome at the End of the Republic Roman Education, for Better or Worse Literature and Nationalism Literature and the Amateur Literary Studies and the Recreation of Literary History Literature and Scholarship: Cicero's Evidence for the Studies of Caesar and Varro Chapter Three The Coming of the Principate: "Augustan" Literary Culture The Survivors: The New Poets Gallus and Virgil The Roman Poetry Book, a New Literary Form Private and Public Patronage The Emperor as Theme and Patron The Best of Patrons, and the Patron's Greater Friend Performance and Readership Spoken and Written Prose in Augustan Society: Rhetoric as Training and Display The First Real Histories Chapter Four Un-Augustan Activities The Literature of Youth Love and Elegy Ovid the Scapegoat, and the Sorrows of Augustus Innocence and Power of the Book Chapter Five An Inhibited Generation: Suppression and Survival Permissible Literature: Prose Moral Treatises and Letters Didactic and Descriptive Poetry The Tastes and Prejudices of Augustus's Imperial Successors The Divergence of Theater and Drama Chapter Six Between Nero and Domitian: The Challenge to Poetry The Neronian Revival Poetry and Parody in a New Setting Vicissitudes of the Epic Muse Professional Poets in the Time of Domitian Chapter Seven Literature and the Governing Classes: From the Accession of Vespasian to the Death of Trajan Equestrian and Senatorial Writers: A Changing Elite Choices of Literary Career: Fame or Survival? Pliny's Letters and His Literary World The Public World of the Senator and Orator The World of the Auditorium Chapter Eight Literary Culture in Decline: The Antonine Years Hadrian, the Philhellene The Traveling Sophists The Provinces and Latin Culture Marcus Aurelius and His Teachers Aulus Gellius, the Eternal Student in Rome and Greece Apuleius, the Ultimate Word Artist Chapter Nine Classical Literary Culture and the Impact of Christianity Tertullian and His Successors Diocletian and a Generation of Political Change Ausonius The Controversy over the Altar of Victory: Symmachus and Prudentius Claudian The Maturity of Christian Prose: Jerome and Augustine Macrobius: The Last Celebrant of Secular Literary Culture Notes Bibliography Index