Different contributions, famous literary works, and important features of the Latin literature

Submitted by:

Maria Angela P. Mabasa

Latin LiteratureAncient Latin LiteratureThe genres, other language and literary art

formsTimeline

Outline

Latin literature, the body of writings in Latin, primarily produced during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, when Latin was a spoken language.

When Rome fell, Latin remained the literary language of the western medieval world until it was superseded by the Romance languages it had generated and by other modern languages.

After the Renaissance, the writing of Latin was increasingly confined to the narrow limits of certain ecclesiastical and academic publications.

Latin Literature

Ancient Latin literatureLiterature in Latin began as translation from

the Greek, a fact that conditioned its development. Latin authors used earlier writers as sources of stock themes and motifs, at their best using their relationship to tradition to produce a new species of originality.

They were more distinguished as verbal artists than as thinkers; the finest of them have a superb command of concrete detail and vivid illustration.

Their noblest ideal was Humanitas, a blend of culture and kindliness, approximating the quality of being “civilized”.

ComedyTragedy

Epic and EpyllionDidactic poetry

SatireIambic, Lyric, and Epigram

Elegy

The Genres

Rhetoric and OratoryHistory

Biography and LettersPhilosophical and Learned writings

Literary criticismFiction

Other language and literary art forms

The Timeline

c. 185 BCPlautus and Terence, in the second and third century BC, create a Roman drama based on Greek originals

c. 160 BC The Roman statesman Cato the Elder writes

Origines ('Origins'), a history of Rome which survives only in fragments

81 BC Cicero, whose speeches become models of

oratory, makes his first appearance in a Roman court

37 BC Virgil's reputation is established by his ten

Eclogues, influenced by the Italian countryside in the region of his birth near Mantua

c. 34 BC Maecenas buys a farm for Horace, in the Sabine

hills near Tivoli - the most fruitful of his many acts of patronage

27 BC Livy begins writing and publishing his History of

Rome, a task which will occupy him for forty years

23 BC The first three books of Horace's Odes are

published, written on his Sabine farm

c. 20 BC The excellence of the arts, particularly literature,

during the reign of Augustus Caesar causes it to be remembered as a golden age of culture

c. 20 BC A collection of witty love poems, entitled Amores,

brings Ovid an early success

19 BC Virgil dies just after completing the Aeneid, and

imperial command from Augustus Caesar prevents his executor from destroying the epic

2 c. AD The Golden Ass. The Metamorphoses of Apuleius — which St. Augustine referred to as The Golden Ass (Asinus aureus) — is the only Ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety.

8 ADThe Metamorphoses (Latin: Metamorphōseōn librī: "Books of Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem by the Roman poet Ovid, considered his magnum opus.

78 ADNatural History, or Naturalis Historia by Pliny, is a fascinating glimpse into the knowledge of the ancient world. Published in the Roman Empire, this work purports to cover all the knowledge known in the Roman Empire: astronomy, geography, botany, physiology, agriculture, mining, sculpture, painting, and more.

98 AD Tacitus begins his career with two specialized but

influential works of history, one on Britain and the other on Germany

c. 125 Suetonius, librarian to Trajan and personal

secretary to Hadrian, is well placed to research his racy Lives of the Caesars

c. 170 Marcus Aurelius is rare among emperors in writing twelve books of philosophical Meditations

c. 244 Plotinus, moving from Alexandria to Rome,

teaches the influential philosophy later known as Neo-Platonism

AD 397-400Confessions (Latin: Confessiones) is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by St. Augustine of Hippo, written in Latin between AD 397 and 400. The work outlines St. Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity.

c. 525 Boethius, in prison in Pavia and awaiting

execution, writes the Consolation of Philosophy

1509-1511In Praise of Folly by Desiderius ErasmusThis more modern Latin work was written in the year 1509 by

Desiderius Erasmus, a humanist and Catholic priest from the Netherlands. A highly religious figure, Erasmus wrote In Praise of Folly as a satirical work in which vices are celebrated. 

1595The writings of Matteo Ricci introduce Kung Fu Tzu to Europe under a Latin version of his name - Confucius

Non-prints:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_(Augustine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Ass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_literature

https://www.britannica.com/art/Latin-literature

http://www.historyworld.net/timesearch/default.asp?conid=1061&bottomsort=19981&direction=NEXT&keywords=Latin%20literature&timelineid=

References