Coda

Summary

It is all too easy to view the achievements of the late republic and Augustan Age as pinnacles of Latin literature, and indeed many critics have done so. We are all entitled to our own tastes, but it is reductive if not actually misleading to think of Latin literature as something which evolves in ever more elevated stages from Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius to Vergil, Horace, and Ovid – or from the elder Cato to Cicero, Sallust, and Livy. Indeed, this was by no means the opinion of every Augustan reader, as we can see in Epistle 2.1, a poetic letter from Horace to Augustus. There the poet complains that the public prefers the classics of the second century to contemporary writing and urges Augustus to do something about this resistance to modern literature.