Search results
goodreads.com
Verse comedies of Plautus
- The verse comedies of Plautus, the earliest surviving examples of Latin literature, are estimated to have been composed around 205–184 BC.
en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Latin_poetry
People also ask
What was the earliest form of poetry?
When did Latin literature start?
Which Latin poems were written in the late 4th and 5th century?
Which inscription is the second earliest known Latin text?
May 26, 2021 · The beginning of “Roman literature” is conventionally dated to 240 BCE, when the first performances of Greek-style drama at public games are recorded, but the epic Odusia of Rome’s first poet, Livius Andronicus, is likely to have been composed slightly earlier.
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.
- Overview
- Ancient Latin literature
- Stylistic periods
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 When Rome fell, Latin remained the literary language of the Western medieval world until it was superseded by the Romance languages it had generated and by other modern languages.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 Renaissanc...
Literature 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.”
Little need be said of the preliterary period. Hellenistic influence came from the south, Etrusco-Hellenic from the north. Improvised farce, with stock characters in masks, may have been a native invention from the Campania region (the countryside of modern Naples). The historian Livy traced quasi-dramatic satura (medley) to the Etruscans. The statesman-writer Cato and the scholar Varro said that in former times the praises of heroes were sung after feasts, sometimes to the accompaniment of the flute, which was perhaps an Etruscan custom. If they existed, these carmina convivalia, or festal songs, would be behind some of the legends that came down to Livy. There were also the rude verses improvised at harvest festivals and weddings and liturgical formulas, whose scanty remains show alliteration and assonance. The nearest approach to literature must have been in public and private records and in recorded speeches.
Ancient Latin literature may be divided into four periods: early writers, to 70 bc; Golden Age, 70 bc–ad 18; Silver Age, ad 18–133; and later writers.
Britannica Quiz
The Duenos inscription, from the 6th century BC, is the second-earliest known Latin text.
History of poetry. The Deluge tablet, carved in stone, of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian, circa 2nd millennium BC. Poetry as an oral art form likely predates written text. [1] The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to ...
For this edition of the Metamorphoses R. J. Tarrant has freshly collated the oldest fragments and manuscripts and has drawn more fully than previous editors on the twelfth-century manuscripts, the earliest extant witnesses to many potentially original readings. He has also given more scope to conjecture than other recent editors, and has been ...
The foil to that body of work is the classical Latin verse of the first century b.c.e. and especially the early Augustan era, the tradition’s golden noon, whose salient features are order, proportion, moral and political seriousness, and emotional weight.
