The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature PDF
Preview The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature
THE OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF ROMAN LITERATURE THE OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF ROMAN LITERATURE Edited by PETER E. KNOX and J. C. M KEOWN C Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature / edited by Peter E. Knox and J. C. McKeown. pages. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–19–539516–7 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–539515–0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Latin literature—Translations into English. 2. Latin literature—History and criticism. I. Knox, Peter E. II. McKeown, J. C. PA6163.O95 2013 870.8′001—dc23 2012036950 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS Preface Maps THE ROMAN WORLD OF BOOKS I. THE EARLY REPUBLIC Plautus, The Brothers Menaechmus Polybius, The Histories II. THE LATE REPUBLIC Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe Catullus, Poems Cicero, Against Catiline, In Defense of Caelius Julius Caesar, The Gallic War Sallust, The Conspiracy of Catiline III. THE AGE OF AUGUSTUS Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid Horace, Odes Propertius, Elegies Ovid, Amores, Metamorphoses Livy, From the Foundation of the City IV. THE EARLY EMPIRE Seneca, Medea Josephus, Jewish Antiquities Lucan, The Civil War Petronius, The Satyricon Pliny the Elder, Natural History Statius, Thebaid Quintilian, The Education of the Orator Martial, Epigrams V. THE HIGH EMPIRE Tacitus, Annals Pliny the Younger, Letters Suetonius, Life of Nero Plutarch, Life of Antony Juvenal, Satires Apuleius, The Metamorphoses Lucian, A True History Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Postscript Suggestions for Further Reading Chronological Table Glossary Art Credits Sources for Selections PREFACE T HE AIM OF THIS ANTHOLOGY IS TO PROVIDE A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO literature of the Roman world at its zenith, between the second century THE . and the second century . Two features of this extraordinarily fertile B.C A.D period in literary achievement will be immediately and repeatedly clear: how similar the Romans’ view of the world was to our own and, perhaps even more obviously, how different it was. On the one hand, we can easily trace the direct link between, for example, Plautus’s Brothers Menaechmus and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, written in close imitation of it nearly two millennia later. The novels of Petronius and Apuleius stand at the beginning of a tradition still thriving today. The emotional vicissitudes of lovers, as described by Catullus, Propertius, and Ovid, are still recognizable—perhaps disconcertingly so. Even atomic theory, a subject on which the modern age might expect to have a particular claim, was many centuries old before Lucretius expounded it in his great poem. On the other hand, whereas modern Western legal codes are largely based on the Roman judicial system, no trial lawyer nowadays would be allowed to indulge in the sort of vehement, and largely irrelevant, personal attack that Cicero directs against Clodia in his speech on behalf of Caelius. Pliny the Elder was the greatest source of scientific wisdom to survive in the West from antiquity, but his knowledge is often defective and his beliefs often incredible: strange beasts, such as the basilisk, the hippocentaur, and the manticore, and strange peoples, such as the Baltic tribe with ears so big that they wrap themselves in them instead of wearing clothes, or the mouthless people of India who live on air and the scent of fruits and roots, are unlikely to appear in a modern scientific text. We might well expect such differences to be vast and fundamental, given how alien so many aspects of Roman life in general were from those of modern times. Perhaps one-third of the population of Italy at the end of the first century were slaves. Women, regardless of the social status of their B.C.
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