Literature

The passion for empire building spilled over into the development of forms of Roman literature that would affect every literary development in the Western world for the next 2,000 years.

The first true Latin poet was Livius Andronicus (ca. 284-204 B.C.), a Greek slave who translated Homer's Odyssey into Latin, but abandoned the poetic rhythms of ancient Greek in favor of Latin's Saturnian rhythm. Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.) was the father of Roman epic literature; his Annales is permeated with a sense of the divine mission of Rome to civilize the world. Quintus's bitter rival was M. Porcius Cato the Censor (234-149 B.C.), who passionately rejected Rome's dependence on Hellenistic models in favor of a distinctly Latin literary form.

Part of the appeal of Latin literature was in the comedies performed in front of vast audiences. The Latin cadences and rhythms of Plautus (254-184 B.C.) were wholly original, and C. Lucilius (c. 180-102 B.C.) is credited as the first satirist, developing a deliberately casual, sometimes lacerating, method of revealing the shortcomings and foibles of individuals and groups of people (statesmen, poets, gourmands, and the like).

Latin prose and oratory reached their perfect form with the cadences of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.). A successful and popular general and politician, he is credited with the development of the terms and principles of oratory, which are still used by debating societies everywhere. His speeches and letters are triumphs of diplomacy, and his public policies are credited with binding Rome together during some of its most wrenching civil wars.

Poetry also flourished. The works of Catullus (84-54 B.C.), primarily concerned with the immediacy and strength of his own emotions, presented romantic passion in startlingly vivid ways. Banned by some of the English Victorians, Catullus's works continue to shock anyone who bothers to translate them.

One of the Roman republic's most respected historians was Livy, whose saga of early Rome is more or less the accepted version. Julius Caesar himself (perhaps the most pivotal -- and biased -- eyewitness to the events he recorded) wrote accounts of his military exploits in Gaul and his transformation of the Roman republic into a dictatorship. Military and political genius combines with literary savvy in his De Bello Gallica (Gallic Wars) and De Bello Civili (Civil War).

Ancient Roman literature reached its most evocative peak during the Golden Age of Augustus (42 B.C-A.D. 17). Virgil's (70-19 B.C.) The Aeneid, a 12-volume Roman creation myth linking Rome to the demolished city of Troy, has been judged equal to the epics of Homer.

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus; 63-.8 B.C.) became a master of satire, as well as the epic "Roman Odes," whose grandeur of style competes with Virgil. Frequently used as an educational text for princes and kings during the Renaissance 1,500 years later, Horace's works often reveal the anxiety he felt about the centralization of unlimited power in Rome after the end of the Republic. Many centuries later some of the themes of Horace were embraced during the Enlightenment of 17th-century Europe, and were even used as ideological buttresses for the tenets that led to the French Revolution.

Ovid (43 B.C-A.D. 17), master of the elegy, had an ability to write prose that reflected the traumas and priorities of his own life and emotional involvements. Avoiding references to politics (the growing power of the emperors was becoming increasingly repressive), the elegy grew into a superb form of lyric verse focused on such tenets as love, wit, beauty, pleasure, and amusement. Important works that are read thousands of years later for their charm and mastery of Latin include Metamorphoses and The Art of Love.

Between A.D. 17 and 170 Roman literature was stifled by a growing fear of such autocrats as Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and Caligula. An exception is the work of the great Stoic writer Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C-A.D. 65), whose work commented directly and sometimes satirically on events of his time and advocated self-sufficiency, moderation, and emotional control.

For several hundred years after the collapse of the Roman Empire very little was written of any enduring merit in Rome. The exceptions include Christian Latin-language writings from such apologists and theologians as St. Jerome (A.D. 340-420) and St. Augustine (354-430), whose works helped bridge the gap to the beginning of the Middle Ages.

From this time onward literature in Rome parallels the development of Italian literature in general. Medieval Italian literature was represented by religious poetry, secular lyric poetry, and sonnets. Although associated with Florence, and not Rome, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) broke the monotony of a thousand-year literary silence with the difficult-to-translate terza rima of The Divine Comedy. Called the first masterpiece in Italian -- to the detriment of Rome, the Tuscan dialect in which he wrote gradually became accepted as the purest form of Italian -- it places Dante, rivaled only by medieval Italian-language poets Petrarch and Boccaccio, in firm control as the founder of both the Italian language and Italian literature.

Rome, however, continued to pulsate with its own distinctive dialect and preoccupations. The imbroglios of the city's power politics during the 1400s and 1500s, and the mores of its ruling aristocracy, were recorded in The Courtier, by Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529), still read as a source of insight into customs, habits, and ambitions during the Renaissance.

From 1600 to around 1850, as the reins of international power and creativity shifted from Italy, literature took a second tier to such other art forms as music, opera, and architecture. The publication of Alessandro Manzoni's (1785-1873) romantic epic I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) in 1827 signaled the birth of the modern Italian novel.

During the 19th century, Rome's literary voice found its most provocative spokesperson in Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli (1792-1863), who wrote more than 2,000 satirical sonnets (I Sonetti Romaneschi, published 1886-.96) in Roman dialect rather than academic Italian. A statue in his honor decorates Piazza Belli in Trastevere.