36 - Poetry

Summary

The Latin epic had come to an end with the generation of Statius, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus at the end of the first century A.D. Personal elegy, that peculiarly Roman creation, had ended with Ovid. There is no trace of significant dramatic writing, whether intended for the genuine stage or for ‘concert performances’, after Seneca. Juvenal was the last of the Roman satirists. Many of the principal genres of classical Latin poetry had thus virtually ceased to be practised before the great break in the middle of the third century. The great works of the past had become school-books, embedded in a mass of linguistic commentary and factual exegesis. The younger Pliny might dabble in lyric poetry in the Horatian manner, which his third wife set to music, but it is his letters that survive. The age of Hadrian, the Antonines and Septimius Serenus was one of prose. What little poetry was written is known to us only by fragments preserved by grammarians and metricians. Annianus and Septimius Serenus wrote on pastoral themes. Alfius Avitus composed a poem, apparently of some length, on Roman history. Marianus was author of a Lupercalia. These poets are called ‘Poetae nouelli’ by the metrician Terentianus Maurus.