Afterlives Of The Roman Poets

This innovative book reconceptualises Roman poetry and its reception through the lens of fictional biography ('biofiction').

The story of Maecenas and his role in the evolution and continuing legacy of ancient Roman poetry and culture An unelected statesman with exceptional powers, a patron of the arts and a luxury-loving friend of the emperor Augustus: Maecenas was one of the most prominent and distinctive personalities of ancient Rome. Yet the traces he left behind are unreliable and tantalizingly scarce. Rather than attempting a conventional biography, Emily Gowers shows in Rome’s Patron that it is possible to tell a different story, one about Maecenas’s influence, his changing identities and the many narratives attached to him across two millennia. Rome’s Patron explores Maecenas’s appearances in the central works of Augustan poetry written in his name—Virgil’s Georgics, Horace’s Odes and Propertius’s elegies—and in later works of Latin literature that reassess his influence. For the Roman poets he supported, Maecenas was a mascot of cultural flexibility and innovation, a pioneer of gender fluidity and a bearer of imperial demands who could be exposed as a secret sympathizer with their own values. For those excluded from his circle, he represented either favouritism and indulgence or the lost ideal of a patron in perfect collaboration with the authors he championed. As Gowers shows, Maecenas had and continues to have a unique cachet—in the fantasies that still surround the gardens, buildings and objects so tenuously associated with him; in literature, from Ariosto and Ben Johnson to Phillis Wheatley and W. B. Yeats; and in philanthropy, where his name has been surprisingly adaptable to more democratic forms of patronage.

"The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil" by W. Y. Sellar. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Originally published in 1923, this study outlines the aims and methods of roman poets as well as focussing on technique and subject. Sikes’ critique of the subject delves into the general character of roman poetry with the belief that it provides an insight into roman life and ideals by commenting on various theories, criticisms and themes found in Roman poetry. This title will be of interest to students of classics.

This volume explores the ways in which the tombs of the ancient poets - real or imagined - act as crucial sites for the reception of Greek and Latin poetry. Drawing together a range of examples, the collection makes a distinctive contribution to the study of literary reception by focusing on the materiality of the body and the tomb, and the ways in which they mediate the relationship between classical poetry and its readers. From the tomb of the boy poet Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, which preserves his prize-winning poetry carved on the tombstone itself, to the modern votive offerings left at the so-called 'Tomb of Virgil'; from the doomed tomb-hunting of long-lost poets' graves, to the 'graveyard of the imagination' constructed in Hellenistic poetry collections, the essays collected here explore the position of ancient poets' tombs in the cultural imagination and demonstrate the rich variety of ways in which they exemplify an essential mode of the reception of ancient poetry, poised as they are between literary reception and material culture.