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Virgil
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Dates
- Born: 70 BCE
- Death: 19 BCE
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Proscriptions
- Not only could you die legally
- Your land was confiscated
- Then a Broker would buy it
- Then sell it back to the
Government for Veterans
- First under Sulla
- Then under Antony/Octavian
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Real Name
- Publius Vergilus Maro
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Virgil's Lifetime
- The Fall of the Republic
- Beginning of the Empire
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Works
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The Aeneid
- Some of the greatest works of Art ever made.
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He considered it unfinished
- "Executors, burn it all"
- We know this because it's got 6 unfinished lines
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Book 1: Aeneas is blown off course by Juno
- Dido is founding Carthage
- Juno hates him
- So she tries to get him to stay
in Carthage.
- because he's a Trojan
- Venus loves him
- She knows he must found
a great city.
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Book 2: The Past: the Fall of Troy at Dido's banquet
- Iulus (Ascanius)
is kidnapped
and replaced
with Cupid
- Lost his wife in the burning city
- Creusa
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Book 3: they land on Sicily
- Anchises, Aeneas' father dies
- Then the book jumps back to the Storm
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Book 4: Aeneas' affair with Dido
- Why is it so complete?
- The Tragedy of Dido
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Aeneas
- Pius
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Dido
- Infelix
- Ill-Starred
- from the city of Tyre
- Her husband was
murdered by her brother
- So Dido founded Carthage
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Georgics
- Hesiod Model
- Fit into Augustan Reforms well
- In the doorway of the Pax Romana
-
Maeceanas didn't tell him to do it
- Significant artistic freedom
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Ecologues
- also known as Bucolics
- Ecologues based on the Greek "selections"
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10 books, 10 shortish poems
- about 100 lines each
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Model
- Greek Poet Theocritus
- Alexandrinen
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Historical Context
- Virgil's family was involved
in post-civil war land rush
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1st & 9th
- Politically Charged
- Weird since Pastoral is not a political poetic genres
- Controversial
- Characters
- Old Man
- Land Confiscated
- Young Man
- "A young man" got
him land.
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10th
- Messianic Poem
- A child will return to earth
- Now, 30s BCE, is 30 years before
Jesus
- Ehh, it's a common creation myth
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Horace
- Son of a Freedman
- Son of a former-slave
- Horace's success tells us about access to education
- Horace relied on Patronage
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Minor Poets
- Propertius
- Tibullus
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Ovid
- Tried Politics, didn't care for it
- Modeled himself on Virgil
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Pastorals by Virgil
- Amores by Ovid
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Didactics by Virgil
- Sexual Mock-Didactics by Ovid
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Aeneid by Virgil
- Metamorphoses by Ovid
- Samuel Beckett to Virgil's James Joyce
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One of the major questions is, why was he exiled?
- he is elusive
- "et error"
- Augustus was trying
to morally reform Rome
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Julian Hypothesis
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Julia and Ovid were exiled in the same year
- Julia, Augustus' daughter
and grand-daughter
- Maybe he got mixed up in her whorishness
- Ovid was free from Patronage, since he could support himself
- Publius Ovidius Naso
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Dates
- Born 43 BC
- Died 17/18 AD
- Exiled in 8 AD by Augustus
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Historical Context
- The "Golden Age" of Latin Literature
- The Augustan Age
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Ugly side
- Paranoia about heirs
- Paranoia about assassination
- Moralism
- Pax Augusta
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Maeceanas
- First word of Horace's
odes is Maeceanas
- Slipped out of the picture once
they become too famous
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Older Poets
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Hesiod
- Archaic Period
- 700 BC
- Wrote a Didactic Poem about Farming