- Augustan Poetry And Society
(By R.O.A.M. Lyne)This is perhaps the most eventful period of Roman history, witness to civil wars, revolution, and, eventually, an imposed
peace: Republic becomes Empire. Meanwhile, Latin literature produces its greatest works; Italy produces poets destined to
achieve immortality. The present chapter offers a sketch of this extraordinary time. First, three divisions within the period
must be identified.
Dates and Divisions
The triumviral period begins in 43 B.C., when the Roman world was put into the hands of Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus 'for
the purposes of setting the state in order'. Antony was defeated at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, but the first Augustan period
may be said to begin in the year 27 B.C. when Octavian's imperial role is effectively, but discreetly, defined and he himself
assumes the name Augustus. Another change is then discernible about 20 B.C.: Augustus exercises his monarchical power
more assertively, and this has a large effect upon literature. The works that will be considered below may now be assigned to
these three divisions, though some of the assignations are approximate and some insecure. Into the first, the triumviral period,
fall the Eclogues and most of the Georgics of Virgil, the Epodes and Satires of Horace; Propertius' Book 1 is published at the
beginning of the first Augustan period, but much of it may have been composed earlier. Propertius' Book 2, Tibullus' Books 1
and 2, Horace's Odes 1-3, and Virgil's Aeneid are all substantially works of this first Augustan period (though the Aeneid is
unfinished at Virgil's death in 19 B.C.); at the end of it we can place Horace's Epistles 1 and 2.1, and Propertius 3, and we can
detect signs of the atmosphere of the second Augustan period in those works. To this second Augustan period we may then
assign Propertius 4, and Horace's Odes 4, Epistle 2.2 (the Epistle to Augustus), and Ars Poetica. Ovid's Amoves straddle the
two Augustan periods, while the remainder of his works all belong to the second.
The Role of Poets
Our period sees the culmination of a process of change in the status of poets and poetry, a change of fundamental importance.
Traditionally-let us say in the second century B.C.-poets, unlike historians, had been of low social status (foreigners or
freedmen for example) and their works and profession were positively revered only in one particular respect, their power to
confer lasting fame. Drama was of course valued as entertainment, and dramatists unlike other poets were directly paid; but in
general philistinism towards poetry was endemic. Aristocrats with aesthetic taste and education like Scipio Aemilianus were
exceptions. Even by the time of Cicero things have not much changed: Cicero has to tread cautiously in his defence of the
poet Archias, presupposing philistinism in his audience. Nor is Cicero himself boundlessly aesthetic. Given a second life, he
said, he would still not bother to read the Greek lyric poets.
When upper-class Romans do start to turn their hands to poetry, one gets the impression of amateurs, more or less
condescending. Q. Lutatius Catulus and others toss off epigrams at the end of the second century, showing an acquaintance
with Greek precedents, probably from anthologies; but Catulus at least, consul in 102 B.C. with C. Marius, had better things
to do with his serious time. The satirist Lucilius is a much more significant figure (his literary floruit can be put in the 130s
BC). He is rich and of high rank, great enough to be friend and foe of the greatest men of his generation-great enough also to
utter his sometimes scarifying opinions on these great men, as well as on more humble figures, in his able and fluent verse.
His development of the genre of satire is important in the history of Latin literature; so is his assertively autobiographical
standpoint; so in particular is the importance he accords to the business of writing. Nevertheless I do not think we have in
Lucilius an instance of an aristocrat seriously adopting the profession of poet. It was what he said that mattered to him; and,
clothing his thoughts in a racy patchwork of Greek tags and often colloquial Latin and disposing all that in a range of metres,
he found an eye-catching and ear-catching way of saying what he wanted to say. It was the message that mattered for him; he
was a commentator on the contemporary scene rather than an artist-although as an artist he was, incidentally, pretty good.
In the shift in attitude towards poets and poetry it is the so-called Neoteric movement in the late Republic that is crucial: the