Roman Epic

History of Rome

753: Foundation of Rome

• date given by Livy but not historically accurate, start of Rome as a Roman-Etruscan kingdom

510: Start of Republic

• Purely Roman period

• The date is also debated, as it could be a date chosen due to Greece → the year Athens became a democracy

168: Conquest of Greece

• deep cultural implications for both societies

31 BC: Principate

• a system of government established by Caesar Augustus

410: Destruction of Rome

• the western roman empire → had been divided years before

1453: Conquest of Byzantium

• Eastern roman empire

What is the Gold and Sliver period

A devilish distinction coined by a German scholar and echoed in Anglo-saxon academia, but should not carry any judgment or value : a better or worse period

GOLDEN LATIN: 83 BC - 14 AD

• Cicero

• Caesar

• Virgil

• Horace

• Propertius

• Ovid

• Livy

• heavily influenced by the Greeks

• Height of roman lit

  • late Republic and early empire under Augustus

SILVER LATIN: 14 - 117 AD

• Seneca

• Pliny

• Valerius Flaccus

• Petronius

• Lucan

• Statius

• Tacitus

• Transitioning from the Empire’s height into authoritarianism

Who are the Pioneers

Livius Andronicus (280-200 BC) - Lucius

• Released Greek slave

• Comedies

• Epic Odusia (translation of the Odyssey)

• 1st roman author that we know off

• became a teacher of livius family and translated the Odyssey to Latin

• 47 lines left of the translation

Gnaeus Naevius (270-201 BC)

• born Roman

• Wrote Tragedies and comedies

• Wrote an Epic Bellum Punicum → Punic war between Rome and Carthage

→ these are the pioneers but hard to get anything from them because we hardly have any fragments left

Ennius

• 239-169

• the actual father of roman epic, introduced the hexameter in Latin

• Annales: history of Rome → chronological account

  • historic epic going from the fall of troy in 1184 to his own days, (myth that one of the Trojans that fled was the founder of Rome

  • father of the dynasty that would actually found it, Enneas as an ancestor of Romulus + Remus

  • Presents himself like Homer in a way

• Introduction of the hexameter risky sound effects:

  • ‘O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tyranne tulisti!’ ‘At tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit.’

Lucretius

• 99-55 BC

• First completely transmitted epic poem in Latin

  • (it’s unfinished but on his part).

• Wrote De Rerum Natura/On the nature of things

What is De Rerum Natura about?

• Didactic epic, not a narrative poem: no main hero character

• De Rerum Natura (55, not finished)

• Poetic expression of epicuraneism

• feat of strength because of

  • the rigidity of the philosophical material

  • lack of philosophical terms

Structure

• Book 1 & 2: basic principles of atomism

• Book 3: the material quality of soul & mind

• Book 4: sensory perception

• Book 5: history of the world and mankind

• Book 6: Natural phenomena

• A follower of epicureanism → explained in his work

• Lots of effort: philosophy is hard to transmit in verse + lack of vocab as it was developed

• has an abrupt ending by describing the plague of Athens

  • This is what make sus think it’s not finished → not really fitting of epicureanism, which is a “happy” philosophical school

• Tackled the human fears of Gods and Death:

  Gods

  • can sometimes be felt/seen so they might as well exists.

  • Gods are to be blissful, so they cannot/won’t associate with human suffering.

  • They do not care about us, for better or worse, nor do they live in our same universe

  Death

  • both our body and soul die = capacity to perceive

  • We will not perceive death, so it doesn’t have to scare us because it’s not going hurt

Virgil

• 70 BC -19 BC

• He became known in the circle of Maecenas after writing the Bucolica

  • pastoral genre

  • Maecenas sponsored several writers such as Varius, Horace or Propertius in exchange for them writing “favourably” of Augustus in their works. This is occasionally visible in the Aeneid.

• set roman virtues and values at the centre

What is the circle of Maecenas

• A circle sponsored to write favourably for Augustus

  • Varius

  • Virgil

  • Horace

  • Propertius

What is the Praise of Augustus

• a trend of praising Augustus in literature

• Birth of a ‘saviour’ in the 4th Eclogue and would bring peace to the world → Augustus did, by finishing the Civil War

• Echoed in Dante’s divine comedy due to Christian undertones → talk of a saviour

  • reason why he was copied in the Christian tradition

• Soul of Augustus seen in Aeneid 6

  • Jupiter predicts the greatness of Augustus

• Description of the battle of Actium on Aeneas’ shield feat of Marc Antony and Cleopatra at his hands)

• Reconstruction of the shield of Aeneas.

  • Reveals that the battle of Actium is on the shield that Aeneas takes to battle,

  • creates a direct line from Augustus to our mythological hero and suggests the apex of Rome’s destiny

What is the Aeneid about

• Tells the story of Aeneas, fleeing troy with his father and son, travelling to find Italy and finally establishing himself there.

• journey of trojan refugees and destined to settle in Italy, one of the descendants of Aeneas, leader will found Rome

• fortells the future triumphs of Rome and foreshadows Augustus in many ways

• narratvie allows for conflicts that end in loss and tragegy

• celebrates the greatness of Rome and her ppl

• Civil war is a theme

• can be classified as a national epic

  • Helped to track Roman roots to gods

    • Rome was born of love

    • Venus was Aeneas’ mother and Mars was the father of Romulus & Remus

    • Interweaved its history with myths & its historical figures were prophesized

• This representation of gods having a chosen people whose history they follow and becoming implicated in their history is more Christian than Greek-adjacent.

• Roman literature is designed to imitate (imitatio) & improve upon (aemulatio) Greek literature → thanks to the love & admiration they had for it.

Manifested by incorporating the two Homeric epics in a single book:

• Odyssey (the travels to Italy) & The Iliad (fighting the tribes that were there)

• ‘Arma virumque cano, qui Troiae primus ab oris’ (1st line of the Ae., refers to Iliad (arma) & Odyssey (virum)

• romans driven by imitatio and aemulatio

• My song is of arms and of a man → translation

Admiration for the Aeneid

Beauty of Latin, interaction w/ tradition + fine narration

• obscured by

  • implicit and explicit praise for Augustus

  • foundation of Rome as a goal that sanctifies the means

  • divine chosenness and justification for the violence

  • Antimilitaristic reading of the Aeneid not convincing

  • Ends in a sad & uncharacteristic note for pious hero: killing a defenceless enemy

    • (last word in the poem is umbras).

Who is Aeneas

• Aeneas is a very different hero because of his time

• supposed to incarnate Roman virtues.

  • He cannot be hotheaded as Achilles or a liar like Ulysses.

• Main trait: piety

  • he follows his duties to his family

  • an instrument of the divine intentions → gods were the ones who wanted Rome founded

Ovid

• Metamorphose

• banished in 8 AD because of “carmen and error”

What is Carmen et Error

• error relationship with Julia, carmen the frivolous Ars Amatoria

  • treatise about love and seduction conflicted with Augustus’s moral reform

• carmen et error hendiadys: the Ars Amatoria

• banishment fictitious (?

• maybe condemned because of the Ars Amatoria?) but it’s unclear.

• he made up to explore a certain genre of writing.

What is Metamorphoses about + characteristics?

an epic?

Traditional characteristics:

• dactylic hexameter

• elevated style & characters → including gods

• vehement emotions

• Innovation

  • alternation of smaller ‘little epics’

  • red thread is not a character but a theme

Other innovations

• no main hero

• a series of smaller epics, each of them with its own character or overarching plot → all tales are joined by the theme of the literal metamorphosis

• introduced innovations borrowed from Greek Hellenism.

• Chronological ordered → the structure will bring the origins of the cosmos to his own day

The metamorphosis is present on three levels:

• theme of its (many) tales

• a description of Ovid’s attitude towards the tradition → changed the myths

  • convenient way of combining a variety of colourful and vividly imagined tales from diff sources

• a turning point in Ovid’s career:

  • “In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora; di, coeptis (nam vos mutastis et illa) adspirate meis...” → the change of this pronoun makes the translation

  • “…forms that are changed into new bodies, gods inspire my work because you also changed it” → a change from elegiac verse to hexameter, seen in second verse

Lucan

• 39-6

• De Bello Civil/ Pharsalia

• historical drama, considered an epic because of meter, not theme.

• ‘anti-Aeneid’

  • takes the Republican side to the Civil War contrary to Augustus

• theatrical and rhetorical style

  • Theatrical, sometimes very macabre style, forced to kill himself after the War because of his political ideals.

• Loves digressions

• strongly influenced by Ovid

Statius

• 40-96

• Silvae (occasion poetry)

• Thebaid

  • delivers a tale of gruesome violence

• Achilleid (not finished)

• These two are epics with the traditional mythical theme. He was influenced by Statius on the more brutal themes.

• paints myth bg well = heroes can stand out in the cast of characters

Valerius Flaccus

90

Argonautica (not finished)

• intertextuality

  • An example of Roman intertext → referring to other poems & very conscious of its own lateness” to mythical tradition after Greek writing

• ‘belatedness’

  • used to subvert expectations from the reader and create irony→ the focus on Medea and Jason’s relationship