Roman Literature: Eras, Genres, and Key Authors

Stages of Roman Literature

• Archaic: 5th Century BC - 1st Century BC (Cicero's Speech)
• Classical: 1st Century BC, with two phases:
  • Ciceronian (Republican)
  • Augustan (Empire)
• Postclassical: 1st Century AD - 2nd Century AD
• Decadent: 2nd Century AD - 5th Century AD (Marcus Aurelius, Fall of Rome)

Literary Genres

Prose and Verse

Epic

Narrates heroic deeds. Authors: Virgil, Ovid.

Theater

Coming to Rome after the conquest of Magna Graecia. Includes tragedies and comedies. Authors: Seneca, Plautus.

Lyricism

Transmits feelings. Subgenres emerged in the 2nd Century BC:

• Eclogue: Pastoral themes
• Elegy: Political and social issues
• Epigrams: Funerary inscriptions on monuments, and offerings in praise of gods and the dead
• Ode: Expresses elevated affairs of life

Satire

Attacks people, institutions, and customs.

Didactics

Seeks to instruct and indoctrinate. Subgenres: fable, scientific, legal, medical, technical. Authors: Lucretius, Phaedrus.

Oratory

Genuinely Roman character, development linked to the Republic. Author: Cicero.

History

Historical narratives of events with beautiful language. Authors: Julius Caesar, Sallust, Livy.

Novel

Subgenre frowned upon by society, tells fictitious or real events. Author: Petronius.

Philosophy

Practical character, followed the currents of Greece, not original. Authors: Cicero, Seneca.

Learning and Teaching Poetry

Desire to unite pleasure with plastic teaching. Nature themes. Presence of disciple/teacher to give invocations to deities for inspiration.

Fable

Animals embody human attitudes with a certain educational and moral purpose. Eastern origin, arriving through Greece. Metric and simple language. Two parts:

• First, the "example" where the theme develops.
• Second, the "morality" is learned.

Scientific and Technical Prose

A study of applied sciences, practical because they were relevant to society. Several topics: mathematics, astronomy, architecture, agriculture. Characteristics: encyclopedic character, without literary value (content over form), tends to mix morality with technique.

Narrative

Emerged in the middle of Rome as a collection of customs of an era characterized by crises that affected all scopes, and to satirize them. Characteristics: people with deep psychology protagonize a series of events, both normal and fantastic. Narratives in the first person. The main story includes secondary stories.

History and Caesar

Caesar as a historian who wants to be a model and defender against the acts that accused and criticized him. His work is a set of notes called "Commentaries" where he tells his experiences in the war. Works well with both reports from soldiers and his own. Explains the customs of the peoples he finds. Style: vividness, relative purity of language, without vulgarisms or archaisms. Third person and uses military vocabulary.