15 - Uncertainties

Summary

Cicero was murdered by the soldiers of Antony and Octavian in December of 43 B.C. In the following year, according to the ancient tradition, Virgil began to write the Eclogues. A new age, in both politics and literature, had begun. The period between Virgil's début and the death of Ovid was one of extraordinary and unprecedented literary creativity at Rome. Perhaps no other half-century in the history of the world has witnessed the publication in one city of so many unquestioned masterpieces of enduring significance in so many different fields. Between them Virgil, Horace and Ovid imparted to most of the major genres of poetry what might appear their mature, even definitive, shape. Epic, lyric, elegy, bucolic, didactic, satire, all underwent this magisterial discipline. In prose one monumental undertaking, Livy's history Ab urbe condita, survives (in part) to uphold Ciceronian canons of historiography against the influence of Sallust and to leave a permanent mark on the tradition. Only drama and oratory languished in a society in which free speech, at least among the upper classes, was confined within increasingly narrow limits.

In some such manner, simplified by hindsight and the selective operations of taste and chance, what is conventionally called the Augustan Age of Latin literature tends to be presented. Contemporary reality was considerably more complex. The record of lost and fragmentary literature, added to the explicit testimony of our sources, provides evidence of much diversity and experiment, conducted to a counterpoint of sometimes fiercely outspoken criticism and controversy. All the best work of Virgil, Horace and Ovid was experimental and a good deal of it, in the eyes of their contemporaries, controversial.