Latin literature
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[[Image:Hans Holbein d. J. 047.jpg|thumb|upright|Erasmus by [[Hans Holbein the Younger|Holbein]]]] | [[Image:Hans Holbein d. J. 047.jpg|thumb|upright|Erasmus by [[Hans Holbein the Younger|Holbein]]]] | ||
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:[[Giovanni Boccaccio]] | :[[Giovanni Boccaccio]] | ||
Revision as of 11:19, 31 March 2011
Latin literature, the body of written works in the Latin language, remains an enduring legacy of the culture of ancient Rome. The Romans produced many works of poetry, comedy, tragedy, satire, history, and rhetoric, drawing on Italic traditions and particularly on the literary culture of Greece, which was regarded by the Romans themselves as superior.
Latin literature is conventionally divided into distinct periods. Few works remain of Early and Old Latin; among these few surviving works, however, are the plays of Plautus and Terence, which have remained very popular in all eras down to the present, while many other Latin works, including many by the most prominent authors of the Classical period, have disappeared, sometimes being re-discovered after centuries, sometimes not. Such lost works sometimes survive as fragments in other works which have survived, but others are known from references in such works as Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia or the De Architectura of Vitruvius.
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Classical period
The period of Classical Latin, when Latin literature is widely considered to have reached its peak, is divided into the Golden Age, which covers approximately the period from the start of the 1st century BC up to the mid-1st century AD, and the Silver Age, which extends into the 2nd century AD. Literature written after the mid-2nd century has often been disparaged and ignored; in the Renaissance, for example, when many Classical authors were re-discovered and their style consciously imitated. Above all, Cicero was imitated, and his style praised as the pinnacle of Latin style. Medieval Latin was often dismissed as inferior; but in fact, many great works of Latin literature were produced throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, although they are no longer as widely known as those written in the Classical period. Three works survived to inspire architects and engineers in the Renaissance, the Naturalis Historia of Pliny the Elder, the books by Frontinus on the aqueducts of Rome and the De Architectura of Vitruvius.
Medieval world
For most of the Medieval era, Latin was the dominant written language in use in western Europe. After the Roman Empire split into its Western and Eastern halves, Greek, which had been widely used all over the Empire, faded from use in the West, all the more so as the political and religious distance steadily grew between the Catholic West and the Orthodox, Greek East. The vernacular languages in the West, the languages of modern-day western Europe, developed for centuries as spoken languages only: most people did not write, and it seems that it very seldom occurred to those who wrote to write in any language other than Latin, even when they spoke French or Italian or English or another vernacular in their daily life. Very gradually, in the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, it became more and more common to write in the Western vernaculars.
It was probably only after the invention of printing, which made books and pamphlets cheap enough that a mass public could afford them, and which made possible modern phenomena such as the newspaper, that a large number of people in the West could read and write who were not fluent in Latin. Still, many people continued to write in Latin, although they were mostly from the upper classes and/or professional academics. As late as the 17th century, there was still a large audience for Latin poetry and drama; it was not unusual, for example, that Milton wrote many poems in Latin, or that Francis Bacon or Baruch Spinoza wrote mostly in Latin. The use of Latin as a lingua franca continued in smaller European lands until the 20th century.
Although the number of works of non-fiction and drama, history and philosophy written in Latin has continued to dwindle, the Latin language is still not dead. Well into the 20th century, some knowledge of Latin was required for admission into many universities, and theses and dissertations written for graduate degrees were often required to be written in Latin. Treatises in chemistry and biology and other natural sciences were often written in Latin as late as the early 20th century. Up to the present day, the editors of Latin and Greek texts in such series as the Oxford Classical Texts, the Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana and some others still write the introductions to their editions in polished and vital Latin. Among these Latin scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries are R A B Mynors, R J Tarrant, L D Reynolds and John Brisco.
Early literature
See Also Old Latin
Poetry
Tragedy
- Lucius Livius Andronicus (c. 280/260 – c. 200 BC)
- Gnaeus Naevius
- Quintus Ennius (239 – c. 169 BC)
- Marcus Pacuvius (c. 220 – 130 BC)
- Lucius Accius (170 – c. 86 BC)
Comedy
- Livius Andronicus
- Gnaeus Naevius (c. 264 – 201 BC)
- Titus Maccius Plautus (c. 254 – 184 BC)
- Publius Terentius Afer (195/185 – 159 BC)
Satires
- Gaius Lucilius (c. 160s – 103/2 BC)
Prose
- Cato – agricultural writer
Golden Age
See Also Classical Latin
Poetry
- Lucius Pomponius – Dramatist, a writer of the Atellanae fabulae
- Catullus – lyric poet and elegist
- Horace – lyric poet and satirist
- Lucretius – philosopher
- Ovid – elegist, didactic poet and mythological poet
- Propertius – elegist
- Tibullus – elegist
- Virgil – epic, didactic and pastoral poet
- Quintus Novius – Dramatist, a writer of the Atellanae fabulae
- Lucius Pomponius Secundus – Tragedian
Prose
- Cicero – orator, philosopher and correspondent
- Marcus Terentius Varro – writer on various subjects
- Publilius Syrus – writer of maxims
- Vitruvius – architect
History
Biography
- Cornelius Nepos
- Augustus – autobiographer
Silver Age
Poetry
- Gaius Valerius Flaccus – epic poet
- Lucan – epic poet
- Marcus Manilius – astronomical poet
- Silius Italicus – epic poet
- Statius – lyric and epic poet
- Juvenal – satirist
- Martial – epigrammatist
- Persius – satirist
- Phaedrus – fabulist
Prose
- Aulus Cornelius Celsus – physician
- Aulus Gellius – essayist
- Columella – agricultural writer
- Petronius – novellist
- Pliny the Elder – scientist
- Pliny the Younger – correspondent
- Quintilian – rhetorician
- Sextus Julius Frontinus – engineer
- Valerius Maximus – author of a collection of anecdotes
- Seneca the Elder – orator
History
Biography
Multiple genres
- Seneca the Younger – philosopher, correspondent, scientist, tragedian and satirist
- Curiatius Maternus – Tragedian and Sophist
Second century
Poets
- Hosidius Geta – Playwright
Prose
- Apuleius – novelist and philosopher
- Fronto – grammarian
- Aulus Gellius – essayist
- Tacitus – historian
Late Antiquity
Christians
- Augustine of Hippo – theologian, autobiographer and correspondent
- Ausonius – elegist
- Jerome – theologian and correspondent
- Marcus Minucius Felix – theologian
- Prudentius – Christian poet
- Sidonius Apollinaris – panegyricist and correspondent
- Tertullian – theologian
Non-Christians
- Ammianus Marcellinus – historian
- Augustan History – history
- Claudian – panegyricist
- Pervigilium Veneris – lyric poetry
Medieval period
See Also Medieval Latin
Theology and philosophy
- Pierre Abélard
- Aetheria
- Albertus Magnus
- Thomas Aquinas – Pange Lingua, Summa Theologica
- Roger Bacon
- Duns Scotus
- Meister Eckhart
- Gildas
- Gregory of Tours
- Siger of Brabant
- Thomas à Kempis – The Imitation of Christ
- Tommaso da Celano – Dies Iræ
- Venantius Fortunatus
- Walter of Châtillon
- William of Occam
- Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius – Consolation of Philosophy
Drama and poetry
History
- Albert of Aix
- Bede
- Einhard
- Fulcher of Chartres
- Matthew Paris
- Orderic Vitalis
- Otto of Freising
- William of Malmesbury
- William of Tyre
Pseudo-history
Encyclopedia
Multiple genres
Renaissance period
See Also Renaissance Latin
- Dante Alighieri
- Giovanni Boccaccio
- Erasmus
- Jean Buridan
- Thomas More – Utopia
- Petrarch
- William of Ockham
Neo-Latin
See Also New Latin
- Francis Bacon
- Jacob Bidermann
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- John Milton
- Baruch Spinoza
- Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski
- Elizabeth Jane Weston
Recent works
See Also Contemporary Latin
See also
- Ancient literature
- British Latin Literature
- Early Medieval literature
- I Tatti Renaissance Library
- Latin poetry
- List of Latin language poets
- Medieval literature
- Medulla Grammatice (collection of glossaries)
- Loeb Classical Library
- Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica (academic journal)
- The Latin Library
External links
- Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: texts, plus a comprehensive directory to texts on other sites
- Latin Authors on the Web: a directory
- The Latin Library
- Bibilotheca Augustana
- LacusCurtius
- Bibliotheca Latina
- Latinitas in tela totius terrae
- Corpus Grammaticorum Latinorum: complete texts and full bibliography
