The Portable Roman Reader - The Culture of the Roman State

The great days of the Republic are here represented by Caesar and Cicero; the Augustan Age by Virgil, Livy, and Ovid. Petronius, Martial, and Juvenal reflect the Silver Age, with its accent on the accumulation of wealth; Seneca, Lucan, and tacitus speak for the heroic past; while the poets Catullus, Horace, and Lucretius mirror all time as well as their own ages, The `Pervigilium Veneris,' that too-little-known masterpiece, is given in full, and in other respects, also, the less familiar has been drawn upon to balance the familiar...