Envoi

Summary

Poetry symbolically reflects reality, and acts as a preservative substance. As an ethical, aesthetic, historic artefact, old Latin poetry guided late Republican thought, and presented itself as an authoritative text. Within its own context, such “text,” according to Hayden White, was “an entity that once had an assuring solidity and concreteness, indeed a kind of identity that allowed it to serve as a model of whatever was comprehensible in both culture and nature.” Latin poetry’s significance in the Roman consciousness is affirmed by the degree to which it permeated Cicero’s own textual corpus: wherever Cicero’s own thoughts roamed, Latin verse was there as a touchstone or guide, offering a reassuring sense of continuity. Absorbed to such a degree, Latin poetry reentered the community in Cicero’s own authoritative utterances, filtered through the words and ideas of a cherished past. Materiality of text and power of performance each impacted Cicero’s vision of poetry: words found in books, studied by mentors, guided Cicero’s own intellectual practice; yet, he also experienced those same words, given electric new life on the Roman stage, in emotive, embodied forms.