Latin Literature

This volume traces the beginnings of Rome’s literary tradition as the Republic emerged from the Punic wars. With peace and prosperity creating a new leisure class, educated Romans turned to Greek models, producing the first Latin translations of epic and drama. The pioneering work of the freed Greek slave Livius Andronicus, who rendered Homer’s Odyssey into Saturnian verse, marks the moment Latin poetry stepped out of humble hymn and festival song into a serious art form.

From this foothold a native tradition quickly grew. Gnaeus Naevius, a self‑made poet, expanded the stage with tragedies and comedies while wrestling with the demanding hexameter that Greek epics had introduced. His bold career, despite political opposition and eventual exile, cemented drama as a permanent feature of Roman culture and set the pattern for centuries of literary adaptation that the book follows in detail.