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Recitationes were a literary practice of ancient Rome that involved one or more public readings (recitatio, pl recitationes) of a text. Some of these occurred in public places (theaters and baths), and even in the Roman Forum.
Before this public performance, authors would simply be known by their texts. These would be copied on scrolls by copyists, often freedmen of Greek origin, and were intended to be sold by these book publishers to wealthy people. [1] [2]
Starting towards at the end of the Republic, the recitations developed substantially under the Empire, especially under the reign of Augustus, thanks to the poet and politician Gaius Asinius Pollio who became well known because of the fashion for this new entertainment. The purpose of reading aloud in public was to make themselves known to an audience in order to obtain social and monetary protection: the recitations took place, for the most part, within privileged closed circles. [3]
Indeed, each person reciting was the protégé of a patron. The purpose of a reader was to secure his career by being the protégé of the wealthiest of patrons. The patron, a politician or wealthy public figure, paid his artist and commissioned works in which the patron was thanked; the latter could even appear as one of the characters in the text read. The orders were often intended to reproduce Greek works in Latin and in the Roman fashion of the moment. This Latinization of Greek literature was explicit: most Roman citizens, and at least all those who attended the recitations, were bilingual and knew Greek perfectly, a language of commerce and literature. Thus, in the Eclogues, Virgil takes up the Greek topos of the dialogue between shepherds of Arcadia and builds from there a poem in Latin meter.
Horace, Virgil and Propertius were all famous authors of recitations. Some famous verses of the Odes of Horace make clear the stake of a recitatio: to erect an artistic monument as did the Greeks and by taking again the elements of their literature; to remain for posterity as one who will have settled in Rome a Latin literature reproducing the Greek literature : [4]
Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme in poetry. It is traditionally associated with the quantitative meter of classical epic poetry in both Greek and Latin and was consequently considered to be the grand style of Western classical poetry. Some premier examples of its use are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Hexameters also form part of elegiac poetry in both languages, the elegiac couplet being a dactylic hexameter line paired with a dactylic pentameter line.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus. The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings written in the Latin language. The beginning of Latin literature dates to 240 BC, when the first stage play was performed in Rome. Latin literature would flourish for the next six centuries. The classical era of Latin literature can be roughly divided into the following periods: Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period and Late Antiquity.
Gāius Cilnius Maecēnās was a friend and political advisor to Octavian, who later reigned as Augustus. He was also an important patron for the new generation of Augustan poets, including both Horace and Virgil. During the reign of Augustus, Maecenas served as a quasi-culture minister to the Emperor but in spite of his wealth and power he chose not to enter the Senate, remaining of equestrian rank.
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid. A number of minor poems, collected in the Appendix Vergiliana, are sometimes attributed to him as well.
Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose cult, myths and mysteries were combined from those of Libera, an early Roman goddess of wine. In Greek she is known as Persephone and her mother is Demeter, goddesses of grain and agriculture. The originally Roman goddess Libera was daughter of the agricultural goddess Ceres and wife to Liber, god of wine and freedom. In 204 BC, a new "Greek-style" cult to Ceres and Proserpina as "Mother and Maiden" was imported from southern Italy, along with Greek priestesses to serve it, and was installed in Libera and Ceres' temple on Rome's Aventine Hill. The new cult and its priesthood were actively promoted by Rome's religious authorities as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, and may have partly subsumed the temple's older, native cult to Ceres, Liber and Libera; but the new rites seem to have functioned alongside the old, rather than replaced them.
Lucius Accius, or Lucius Attius, was a Roman tragic poet and literary scholar. The son of a freedman and a freedwoman, Accius was born at Pisaurum in Umbria, in 170 BC. The year of his death is unknown, but he must have lived to a great age, since Cicero writes of having conversed with him on literary matters.
Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century AD. His surviving Latin poetry includes an epic in twelve books, the Thebaid; a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae; and an unfinished epic, the Achilleid. He is also known for his appearance as a guide in the Purgatory section of Dante's epic poem, the Divine Comedy.
Gaius Asinius Pollio was a Roman soldier, politician, orator, poet, playwright, literary critic and historian, whose lost contemporary history provided much of the material used by the historians Appian and Plutarch. Pollio was most famously a patron of Virgil and a friend of Horace and had poems dedicated to him by both men.
Silvanus was a Roman tutelary deity of woods and uncultivated lands. As protector of the forest, he especially presided over plantations and delighted in trees growing wild. He is also described as a god watching over the fields and husbandmen, protecting in particular the boundaries of fields. The similarly named Etruscan deity Selvans may be a borrowing of Silvanus, or not even related in origin.
The Odes are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.
The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of Greek models. The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205-184 BC.
Lucius Varius Rufus was a Roman poet of the early Augustan age.
A poet is a person who creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be a writer of poetry, or may perform their art to an audience.
The gens Canidia was an obscure plebeian family at ancient Rome, first mentioned during the late Republic. It is best known from a single individual, Publius Canidius Crassus, consul suffectus in 40 BC, and the chief general of Marcus Antonius during the Perusine War. Other Canidii are known from inscriptions. The name Canidia was also used by Horace as a sobriquet for the perfumer, Gratidia.
In ancient Rome, the scriba was a public notary or clerk. The public scribes were the highest in rank of the four prestigious occupational grades (decuriae) among the apparitores, the attendants of the magistrates who were paid from the state treasury. The word scriba might also refer to a man who was a private secretary, but should be distinguished from a copyist or bookseller (librarius).
Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.
Three main sets of works are attributed to Florus : Virgilius orator an poeta, an Epitome of Roman History and a collection of poems. As to whether these were composed by the same person, or set of people, is unclear, but the works are variously attributed to:
The Epodes are a collection of iambic poems written by the Roman poet Horace. They were published in 30 BC and form part of his early work alongside the Satires. Following the model of the Greek poets Archilochus and Hipponax, the Epodes largely fall into the genre of blame poetry, which seeks to discredit and humiliate its targets.
Quintus Caecilius Epirota was a freeman of Atticus, a grammarian, and the first person to initiate the public teaching of Virgil’s poetry.
