Latin Literature

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J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford
A history of Latin Literature was to have been written for this series of Manuals by the late Professor William Sellar. After his death I was asked, as one of his old pupils, to carry out the work which he had undertaken; and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the memory of my dear friend and master. J. W. M.
I. ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY. Andronicus—Naevius—Ennius—Pacuvius—Accius II. COMEDY: PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. III. EARLY PROSE: THE SATURA, OR MIXED MODE. The Early Jurists, Annalists, and Orators—Cato—The Scipionic Circle—Lucilius IV. LUCRETIUS. V. LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS. Cinna and Calvus—Catullus VI. CICERO. VII. PROSE OF THE CICERONIAN AGE. Julius Caesar—The Continuators of the Commentaries— Sallust—Nepos—Varro—Publilius Syrus
I. VIRGIL. II. HORACE. III. PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS. Augustan Tragedy—Gallus—Propertius—Tibullus IV. OVID. Sulpicia—Ovid V. LIVY. VI. THE LESSER AUGUSTANS. Manilius—Phaedrus—Velleius—Paterculus—Celsus— Vitruvius—The Elder Seneca
I. THE ROME OF NERO. The Younger Seneca—Lucan—Persius—Quintus Curtius —Columella—Calpurnius—Petronius II. THE SILVER AGE. Statius—Valerius Flaccus—Silius Italicus—Martial—The Elder Pliny—Quintilian III. TACITUS. IV. JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PLINY, SUETONIUS: DECAY OF CLASSICAL LATIN. V. THE ELOCUTIO NOVELLA. Fronto—Apuleius—The Pervigilium Veneris VI. EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY. Minucius Felix—Tertullian—Cyprian—Arnobius— Lactantius—Commodianus VII. THE FOURTH CENTURY. Papinian and Ulpian—Sammonicus—Nemesianus— Tiberianus—The Augustan History—Ausonius—Claudian —Prudentius—Ammianus Marcellinus VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. The End of the Ancient World—The Four Periods of Latin Literature—The Empire and the Church
To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two hundred years later, the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in the generation which passed between the first and second Punic Wars. The peace of B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman Republic had been fighting for an assured place in the group of powers which controlled the Mediterranean world. This was now gained; and the pressure of Carthage once removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural expansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and peace are comparative terms; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation of the long and exhausting war with Carthage brought, that a leisured class began to form itself at Rome, which not only could take a certain interest in Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it was their duty, as representing one of the great civilised powers, to have a substantial national culture of their own.