In this Introduction the point is underlined that no prior familiarity with Greek or Latin literature is taken for granted, nor are readers expected to know these languages: everything is translated. In this volume, literary interpretations are suggestive, not prescriptive. There is a brief discussion of the hazards of periodisation in any history of literature and a warning against accepting too readily the teleological view of Latin literature which one finds in ancient sources and, sometimes, in modern accounts. The difficulties inherent in dealing with texts that survive only as fragments – an unavoidable necessity when discussing republican literature – are discussed; fragments are preserved for a range of reasons: sometimes owing to a linguistic oddity, sometimes to a later writer’s literary or political agenda. Consequently, conclusions about fragmentary texts can only be provisional. This Introduction also furnishes guidance on various features of this volume.

This chapter investigates the reception of Lucian in Voltaire’s works and Giacomo Leopardi’s Operette morali. I argue that Lucian’s contamination of codified genres, especially clear in his Prometheus es in verbis, into a new satirical genre provided the two modern authors with a useful tool to innovate the literary conventions of their times and to create a hybrid, polemical, humorous prose – a previously uncanonised form of philosophical critique. Voltaire is influenced, directly and indirectly, by Lucian not only in his dialogues, but also in the creation of his conte philosophique as a form of mélange and in the use of defamiliarising devices such as cosmic travel and the dialogue of the dead. In Leopardi’s works, where Lucian is the most present ancient author and his influence is openly acknowledged, the imitation of Lucian is clearly part of a global effort by Leopardi to reform Italian culture and its literary conventions. Nevertheless, together with the problematic status of Lucian, the canonical status and literary reception of Voltaire and Leopardi in their national cultures helped eclipse Lucian’s model, as the two modern authors took his place in exerting their influence, while absorbing and innovating on Lucian’s hybridised writing.

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.

This chapter looks at Lucian’s intervention on the genre of comic dialogue through a discussion of one of the Dialogues of the Gods. In the dialogue between Aphrodite and Selene, Lucian imagines a sexy conversation between Aphrodite and Selene. The story of Selene and Endymion is well known, but in antiquity is almost always told in the barest of forms. Lucian tries to fill in the gaps by having Selene tell Aphrodite about her affair, but leads the reader towards the moment of revelation of what Selene does with Endymion only to pull shut the curtain at the last moment. Through this narrative, Lucian plays with the tradition of myth, with the reader’s sense of knowledge and knowingness, and with the erotics of the visual – in a way that amusingly makes the reader complicit with the author’s satiric fun.

The eighth chapter begins with the question of why monumental epic came to be written again after a period of neglect; it suggests that the epyllion provided a way forward. After a history of republican epics after Ennius, Vergil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses form the primary subjects of this chapter. Coverage focuses on what was innovative about them, language, plot, historical contexts, and style, and compares them to one another.

Assessments of Lucian’s attitude towards philosophy have tended to focus on how much he really knew about philosophy, which school he preferred, and if his texts can be read as philosophy. This chapter argues that Lucian’s attitude is best understood as reflecting the central position philosophy occupied in imperial elite culture. As Lucian satirises elite paideia from within that same paideia, criticising imperial philosophy implied assuming a philosophical stance or appropriating philosophical concepts and vocabulary. Lucian explores themes that were current in philosophical discourse of the Roman Empire, such as the expectation of matching doctrine and deed, salaries for philosophical education, and ancient wisdom. Whilst he shows awareness of technical terminology, his writings are mostly concerned with protreptic and the question if one has to dedicate oneself fully to a philosophical life. His ubiquitous satire, even in works deemed ‘more serious’, does not permit firm conclusions about Lucian’s own ideas and solicits multiple interpretations on the part of the reader.

The ninth chapter finishes what was started in the fourth, covering personal poetry of the Augustan period. It begins with Vergil’s Eclogues, first explaining why.The majority of the chapter focuses on the varied works of Horace, his long career, and his relationship with power. It ends with Ovid’s exile poetry, which is the last literature of the republic.

This chapter examines how Pindar and Bacchylides make use of early epic (esp. Homer) in their victory odes, from an explicitly ’intertextualist’ perspective. It discusses (inter alia) the meaning of ’Homer’ in the fifth century BC to the earliest audiences of Pindar and Bacchylides and adverts to the complexity and multiplicity of the audiences of their victory odes. It argues furthermore for the critical importance and benefits of intertextual analysis of Pindar and Bacchylides, especially the ways in which interaction with texts such as those of archaic epic should prompt a wider openness to intertextual investigation of victory odes.

This chapter concerns Lucian’s presentation of the contemporary display of literate knowledge and the practice of criticism and scholarship. That presentation is often obviously satirical, but Lucian’s tone and purpose also often remain elusive; Lucian’s voice is never easy to capture. Examples include Lucian’s account of the art of reading in On the Ignorant Book-Collector, and the posturing philosophers and ignorant grammarians of the Symposium; this latter case illustrates how Lucian’s concern with ‘the culture of criticism’ is always part of the ever-present negotiation with classical models which is a hallmark of his work, as of any major figure of the Second Sophistic. The same is true of the satire on Atticism in Lexiphanes. The final part of the chapter considers Lucian’s presentation of artistic technai, whether that be that art of writing history or the treatise on pantomime, On the Dance.