Reading for Friday September 14, 2007: Augustan Poetry and Propaganda
Norlin Reserve under “Week 4” Passages from Augustan Poetry (Vergil, Horace, Ovid)
in K. Chisholm and J. Ferguson
The Augustan age is commonly
referred to as the "Golden Age" of Latin poetry. Some of the most famous poets in all of Latin
literature wrote under Augustus and were in some way connected with him. It is worth our while to examine the these
poets in order to learn something about culture and society in the Augustan
Age.
We will begin with Vergil
(73-19 BC), arguably the greatest Latin poet ever. Much that we know of Vergil comes from the
short biography of Donatus which you will read:
he was not from Rome but Mantua, in north Italy; like many poets, he
worked his way into the good graces of Augustus through the patronage of the
wealthy aesthete Maecenas, one of Augustus' chief advisors; he never finished
revising his masterpiece, the Aeneid,
and actually wanted the manuscript burned, though Augustus himself intervened
to prevent this. Vergil's Aeneid, was an epic retelling of the
wanderings and wars of
Our second poet is Horace
(65-8 BC), the son of a freedman who describes for us his father's efforts to
educate him. As the Life of Horace (in our readings) indicates, he too enjoyed the
patronage of Maecenas, who later recommended Horace to Augustus as his own
equal. Horace's poetry is intricately
constructed using Greek meters and forms.
Though it can be difficult to pin down his meaning, his delicate verses
reveal much about the poetics of the age.
Many simply describe what Horace regarded as the good and virtuous life,
but others were more overtly political, like Odes 1.37 describing the battle of
Finally we are reading Ovid,
youngest of the Augustan poets (43 BC - AD 17).
Unlike Vergil or Horace, Ovid came from a senatorial background and
could easily have become a politician, as he tells us in the Tristia.
Instead he chose poetry.
Beginning with love elegies, he eventually composed an epic larger than
Vergil's which told mythical tales of transformation, appropriately titled the Metamorphoses. We will read the end of this poem, where he
describes the transformation of Julius Caesar into a star (i.e. an immortal
deity) upon his death. As we noted in
class, Augustus made much of the fact that he was the "son of a god (divi filius)." Despite his excessive praise of the Julian
family, Ovid’s relationship with Augustus eventually soured (partly because his
poetry was too racy, partly because of a possible tryst with Augustus’
grand-daughter Julia). As Tristia 4.10 reveals, he was eventually
exiled to modern
Questions
1. Do you see similarities
between Augustus and Aeneas? Why might
these be there?
2. What role do these poets
(particularly Vergil) ascribe to destiny in the foundation of
3. What values do we see
reflected in this poetry? What do we
learn about questions of morality, the past / history, future generations,
4. What role did poetry and
art play in the reign of Augustus? Is
this similar to or different from the role poetry and art play in modern
politics?
5. What role does mythology
play in Augustan poetry? Why might it be
so important? Can you think of similar
uses of “stories” which shape our understanding of power in the modern world?
6. Given that we know that
Augustus was connected with all of these poets, what can we say about poetic
patronage at the time? Did the poets
simply compose what Augustus wanted them to or did they have some freedom? Were they writing poetry or propaganda? Was it both?
Does it matter?
7. Do you see any hints of
criticism aimed at Augusus in this poetry?
Think especially about some of the moralizing poems of Horace, the end
of Aeneid 6 (gates of horn and ivory)
and the early poems of Virgil (Eclogues,
Georgics). What might this tell us
about what these poets were actually doing?