The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Roman Empire Read Online Free Page B

Catullus, Caesar, Lucretius, and Cicero. These authors synthesized Latin and Greek forms into a profound, powerful, and uniquely Roman literature. Their works are neither isolationist nor naively imitative in tone or technique but reveal a level of cultural confidence and sophistication in which authors master and combine elements of both Greek and Latin styles to their own satisfaction. This synthesis reached its zenith under Augustus. His reign ushered in a period of peace and stability that produced some of the West’s finest literature from authors such as Virgil, Horace, Livy, and Ovid.
The Silver Age (ca 41–180)
    After a bumpy start in imperial succession under Tiberius and Gaius (Caligula), Latin literature entered a period distinguished particularly by the quantity of literature. The literature is wonderful for its quality as well, but against the likes of Virgil and Horace, this later phase is known as the Silver Age. Authors from this period include Petronius (novel), Lucan (epic), Martial (epigram), Tacitus (history), Suetonius (biography), and Juvenal (satire). Most of the modern popular images of Imperial Rome come from these authors.
    The Silver Age was ended by another imperial succession crisis brought on by the death of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was himself an author of an influential work, the Meditations.
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    Â  Great Caesar’s Ghost! Robert Grave’s popular book (and the PBS series) I, Claudius was developed from the work of the Roman author Tacitus (ca 56–117). Tacitus was an aristocratic Roman who served under the Roman emperors. He wrote dark and incriminating histories of the Imperial Age that show great insight into character and the effects of power. His writings, however, are also marred by his own biases.
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The Literature of the Late Empire (ca 180–565)
    During this period, Greco-Roman education and literacy was still strong. Latin literature, however, began to show the strains of both the west’s decline and the turbulence of the struggles between Christian and pagan traditions. By the time theGreco-Roman world had lost the upper hand, however, both eastern and western traditions had been indelibly stamped with its literature, rhetoric, and thought. One can see where sacred and secular combine to remarkable effect in the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Boethius (480–524).
    Meanwhile, literature in Greek, both sacred and secular, remained more viable in the eastern Empire and continued into the next millennium under the Byzantine umbrella.
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    Â  Great Caesar’s Ghost! The Emperor Marcus Aurelius reflects the divergent cultural forces at work in the later Roman Empire. Born to wealthy Spanish parents in Rome, he was educated by, among others, the African rhetorician Fronto, the Greek rhetorician Herodes Atticus, and the Roman Junius Rusticus. Although a man of peace, as emperor he spent most of his time on the German and Parthian borders defending the Empire. It was during one of these campaigns that he wrote—in Greek—his reflections on the Stoic principles he admired and tried to live by. These reflections, called “Things for himself” ( Ta eis heauton ), became known as the Meditations .
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    Well, you’ve accomplished a lot already in this odyssey through Roman history and civilization! Besides thinking about some of the different aspects of “Rome” that we’ll be encountering, you’ve had a chance to look over a roadmap of Roman history and culture and learn a bit about some reasons for taking the trip. But before we hit the road, let’s go to Chapter 2, “Rome FAQ: Hot Topics in Brief,” for some of the perennial highlights for Roman explorers like you.
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The Least You Need to Know
To understand how our world got to be as it is today, you have to know something about the Romans.
Rome was a multicultural civilization that developed abstract concepts of civil and