Greek World (London, 1981), who (p. 503) likens the behaviour of the rulers of the Empire to that of
vampire bats.
- Augustan Poetry And Society (By R.O.A.M. Lyne)
The Loeb Classical Library provides texts with facing translations of all the poets discussed in this
chapter. The following translations may also be recommended: Niall Rudd, Horace, Satires and Epistles
(revd. edn. 1979); W. G. Shepherd, Horace's Odes and Epodes (1983); Guy Lee, Tibullus: Elegies (2nd
edn. 1982), and Ovid's Amores (2nd edn. 1968); Rolfe Humphries, Ovid, The Art of Love (1957), The
Metamorphoses (1955).
Indispensable to a full understanding of Horace is E. Fraenkel's Horace (Oxford, 1957), but David
West's Reading Horace (Edinburgh, 1967) is perhaps the best introduction; comparably useful are
Margaret Hubbard's Propertius (London, 1974) and L. P. Wilkinson's Ovid Recalled (Cambridge, 1955),
abridged as Ovid Surveyed (Cambridge, 1962). Tibullus lacks any balanced introductory book; there is
Francis Cairns' Tibullus (Cambridge, 1979) and David F. Bright's Haec Mihi Fingebam, Tibullus in his
World (Leiden, 1978), but both these are idiosyncratic and the initiate is better served by the
introduction to Guy Lee's translation.
The following books treat the period and its poetry (or aspects thereof) more generally: R.O.A.M. Lyne,
The Latin Love Poets from Catullus to Horace (Oxford, 1980); K. Quinn, Latin Explorations (2nd edn.
London, 1969); L. P. Wilkinson, Golden Latin Artistry (Cambridge, 1963); G. Williams, Tradition and
Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1968), abridged as The Nature of Roman Poetry (Oxford, 1970).
C. O. Brink, Horace on Poetry, vol. iii (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 523 fF., offers a masterly overview of the
period, and vital illumination of the social background is provided by Jasper Griffin's Latin Poetry and
Roman Life (London, 1985).
- Virgil (By Jasper Griffin)
The standard text of Virgil is the Oxford Classical Text of R. A. B. Mynors. Dryden's translation is
splendid in rhetoric and verse, though it is often rather far from the Latin, and his rhyming couplets
inevitably impose a different movement on Virgil's hexameters. C. Day Lewis translated all of Virgil
into readable modern verse: Eclogues and Georgics, with Introduction by R. O. A. M. Lyne (Oxford,
1983); Aeneid, with Introduction by J. Griffin (Oxford, 1986). There are good versions of the Eclogues
by Guy Lee (Liverpool, 1980); of the Georgics by L. P. Wilkinson (Harmondsworth, 1982) and Robert
Wells (Manchester, 1982); and of the Aeneid by Robert Fitzgerald (London, 1984).
Virgil is the subject of an immense modern literature, much of it speculative and idiosyncratic. J.