Latin poetry
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The history of Latin poetry can be understood as the adaptation of
History
Scholars conventionally date the start of Latin literature to the first performance of a play in verse by a Greek slave,
Ennius (239 – 169 BC), virtually a contemporary of Livius, introduced the traditional meter of Greek epic, the dactylic hexameter, into Latin literature; he substituted it for the jerky Saturnian meter in which Livius had been composing epic verses. Ennius moulded a poetic diction and style suited to the imported hexameter, providing a model for "classical" poets such as Virgil and Ovid.[2]
The late republic saw the emergence of
Horace, whose career crossed the divide between the Roman republic and empire, followed Catullus' lead in employing Greek lyrical forms, identifying with Alcaeus of Mytilene, composing Alcaic stanzas, and also with Archilochus, composing poetic invectives in the Iambus tradition (in which he adopted the metrical form of the Epode or "Iambic Distich"). Horace was a contemporary of Virgil and, like the epic poet, he wrote verses in dactylic hexameter, but in a conversational and epistolary style. Virgil's hexameters are generally regarded as "the supreme metrical system of Latin literature."[5]
See also
- Prosody (Latin)- the structural basis of verse in Latin
References
- ^ R.H. Martin, Terence: Adelphoe, Cambridge University Press (1976), pages 1 and 32.
- ^ P.G. McBrown, 'The First Roman Literature' in The Oxford History of the Classical World, J. Boardman, J. Griffin and O. Murray (eds), Oxford University Press (1995) page 450-52
- ^ Robin Nisbet, 'The Poets of the Late Republic' in The Oxford History of the Classical World, J. Boardman, J. Griffin and O. Murray (eds), Oxford University Press (1995) page 487-90
- ^ Peter Green, The Poems of Catullus, University of California Press (2005), pages 32-7
- ^ Richard F. Thomas, Virgil: Georgics Vol. I, Cambridge University Press (1988), page 28.
- Allen, William Sidney (2003). Vox Latina — a Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-37936-9.