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Urban Images of Roman Authors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Susan Fleiss Lowenstein
Susan Fleiss Lowenstein
Affiliation:
Syracuse University
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Extract

In this age of rapid urbanization, with all that that term connotes, it is revealing to view the familiar and ofttimes troublesome attributes of city life from the perspectives of the sophisticated urbanites of an earlier era. Our aim, then, has been to glean from the writings of the ancient Romans their personal images of, impressions of, and attitudes toward life in a metropolitan environment. The period covered extends from the time of Cato through the end of the First Century A.D. If the satirists seem overly represented in this distribution of authors, the explanation is simply that the satirists chose to comment upon the conditions of city life more frequently and more intensely than did other writers. Horace even suggests that satire is the literary form most appropriate for commentary upon the urban scene (Satire II. 6).

Type
Urbanism
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , October 1965 , pp. 110 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1965

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References

1 The Satires and Epistles of Horace, translated by Bovie, Smith Palmer (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 138Google Scholar. All future quotations from Horace are drawn from the same edition; the particular pages from which they are cited will be included within the parenthesis following the quotations. The listing of sources for material from each of the other Roman authors follows the same pattern. The Latin line notation is omitted only in those cases in which it was not provided by the translator.

2 The Satires of Juvenal, translated by Humphries, Rolfe (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1958Google Scholar).

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9 Ibid., p. 183.

10 Ibid., p. 184.

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13 A Virginia Farmer, op. cit.

14 Thomas, op. cit., p. 186.

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17 Ibid., p. 193.

18 Ibid., p. 193.

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21 Thomas, op. cit., p. 203.