so, um, this is what i've been doing recently.
I'm sorry -- I know none of you are even vaguely interested in this -- but, yeah, humour me.
The Big Gay ‘Poets of the Early Roman Empire’ Primer
(for those with either an urge to read teenagelogic’s Big Gay Horace/Virgil Sentence Fic, or just a general yen for some Ancient Roman goodness)
The fall of the Roman Republic in one sentence:
The Republic system worked really well when Rome was a little town by the riverside, but hundreds of years of steadily rising population numbers later, it Just Wasn’t Working Out; civil wars happened; lots of people ended up dead and/or very angry; some dude called Caesar got stabbed; Caesar-dude’s adopted son pwned Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium and then decided he would be the new king emperor “first citizen” of Rome.
Dramatis Personae:
Augustus
Sole ruler of Rome and Italy, to all intents and purposes, only don’t call him that because he’s trying to make it look like he didn’t seize power (and everyone’s letting him get away with it, because peace? Yes please, on any terms). Big on family values, peace, and all sorts of other nice things (like diplomacy with enemy countries, a police force and a fire brigade, for example).
Maecenas
Cultural advisor to Augustus. Facilitator of a patron-client relationship whereby prominent writers of the day endorsed Augustus in their work in exchange for land, money and general favour from the ruler.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
One such prominent writer. Penned a few books of poems about the countryside before Maecenas found him, but then came his great masterpiece, The Aeneid - a mythological story about the origins of Rome featuring none-too-subtle parallels with Virgil’s own age, and a truly admirable exercise in PR.
Varius (Lucius Varius Rufus)
Another of Maecenas’s poets; Virgil’s friend and editor. None of his poetry survives (though it appears from mentions of him in other writers that he was both talented and prolific); nor does the biography of Virgil which he is said to have written.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Another PR-poet, again of Maecenas’s circle, introduced to him by Virgil and Varius. Fought on the opposite side to Augustus in the Battle of Philippi (in Macedonia), but soon forgot this when the latter looked likely to give patronage to up-and-coming poets. He was educated in Athens, and liked Greek philosophy, especially the bits that went to the effect of “let’s all sit under a tree with some wine and talk about the meaning of life”. Big on moderation in all things.
Livy (Titus Livius)
Another of Maecenas’s men, but a prose writer in this case. Penned a War and Peace-length history of Rome, once again designed to make Augustus look good.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
Later, that poet who wrote the Metamorphoses and got himself banished to Romania forever in the same year after a terrible scandal. For now, though, cheeky young upstart writing rather naughty poems about the best ways to get girls.
Agrippa (Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa)
Augustus’s second-in-command, essentially - the go-to-guy for all tricky army business. Didn’t seem to have political ambitions and didn’t use his military power to his own ends - an unusual attribute which probably drew peace-loving (and power-loving) Augustus to him.
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Brilliant orator and lawyer (and mediocre politician) of the Late Republic - active in Rome while Horace was being educated there, but died soon after.
Quintilius
A friend of Horace’s and Virgil’s, who died young - in Horace’s lament for him, Virgil is described as “weeping profusely”.
Stuff That Really Happened:
Horace was the son of a freedman. He was born in the countryside but was educated in Rome and then Athens. After Julius Caesar’s death he joined the army and fought (not very well) under Brutus, who, to put it roundly, lost.
When Augustus declared an amnesty for everybody who’d fought against him (see? He was really nice), Horace returned to Italy to find his father’s estate had been confiscated while he was gone, his father presumably dead. The poverty of the period following this forced him to write some poetry and he never looked back: from then on his life consisted mostly of penning poems/letters/satires*, working himself up into mild annoyance at having to go into Rome, and peacefully enjoying the simple life at his Sabine Estate (a small farm most probably given to him by Augustus/Maecenas).
Virgil grew up on a farm and loved the countryside a lot. He was educated in Milan and then Rome, but continued to love the countryside a lot even as he came under Maecenas’s patronage (no, really, he lived in Rome and was friends with the Emperor’s inner circle and wrote a whole poem about bees. A long one). According to tradition, when his second volume of country-lovin’ verse was published (the Georgics, which followed the Eclogues), he and Maecenas took turns reading it aloud to Augustus. I won’t pretend I don’t love this image.
Soon after this, he began The Aeneid; it’s a story of a very messed-up young man and his very big duty, which he doesn’t always cope with very well. (Trying to tell us something, there, Virgil?) It, too, has a lot of references to animals, farming and the countryside. Ten years later, when he thought he’d finished the massive thing, he went on a jolly to Greece to revise it, but died before he could get home (in the Italian port of Brundisium). He left instructions for The Aeneid to be burned, but Augustus ordered Varius (who, along with another poet, was in charge of executing Virgil’s will) to publish it with as few editorial changes as possible.
* Ancient Roman satire is a genre of poetry which, gently or harshly, pokes fun or chastises people & society for their shortcomings.
Other trivia which may or may not be critical to your understanding of my fic:
• A palaestra is a Greek-style area for sports and recreation, usually connected to the baths in Roman towns/cities.
• Saturnalia was a festival in honour of Saturn, held in mid-December and marked by tomfoolery. Often during the festivities, masters and slaves would 'swap places'.
• Many writers have attempted imitations of Horace, one of the most notable being the aptly titled Imitations of Horace by Alexander Pope. The Aeneid remains a fundamental part of Western literary canon
• Horace’s father was an auctioneer. For some reason, auctioneers were hated by the Ancient Romans (a bit like, say, tax collectors are hated today)
• Virgil was so aloof at school that his classmates nicknamed him Parthenias, which means “the maiden”
• Horace was apparently so shy that it took him nine months from first being introduced to Maecenas, and barely stuttering out a greeting, to being counted among Maecenas’s friends
• Virgil was a bit of a weakling by all accounts, and seems to have been ill for quite a lot of his life
• Neither Virgil nor Horace ever married, which is interesting since Augustus was pretty clear that he wanted everybody to get hitched and get busy (laws were introduced that made marriage easier, meant people with more children got certain legal advantages, and even punished divorced or widowed women who failed to remarry)
• Virgil is thought to have been queer, and apparently loved two slave-boys (though I’m not sure whether that means at the same time or successively)
• Horace seems to have been pretty straight - but let’s gloss over that, shall we?
Er, yes, I believe that’s everything. Oh no - the translation of the line of Latin which Virgil says is “if it were not settled, fixed and immovable in my mind”. It is from The Aeneid, and is said by Dido, who took a vow of chastity after her husband Sychaeus was killed. This didn’t stop her from rolling in the hay cave with Aeneas, though.
The Big Gay ‘Poets of the Early Roman Empire’ Primer
(for those with either an urge to read teenagelogic’s Big Gay Horace/Virgil Sentence Fic, or just a general yen for some Ancient Roman goodness)
The fall of the Roman Republic in one sentence:
The Republic system worked really well when Rome was a little town by the riverside, but hundreds of years of steadily rising population numbers later, it Just Wasn’t Working Out; civil wars happened; lots of people ended up dead and/or very angry; some dude called Caesar got stabbed; Caesar-dude’s adopted son pwned Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium and then decided he would be the new king emperor “first citizen” of Rome.
Dramatis Personae:
Augustus
Sole ruler of Rome and Italy, to all intents and purposes, only don’t call him that because he’s trying to make it look like he didn’t seize power (and everyone’s letting him get away with it, because peace? Yes please, on any terms). Big on family values, peace, and all sorts of other nice things (like diplomacy with enemy countries, a police force and a fire brigade, for example).
Maecenas
Cultural advisor to Augustus. Facilitator of a patron-client relationship whereby prominent writers of the day endorsed Augustus in their work in exchange for land, money and general favour from the ruler.
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
One such prominent writer. Penned a few books of poems about the countryside before Maecenas found him, but then came his great masterpiece, The Aeneid - a mythological story about the origins of Rome featuring none-too-subtle parallels with Virgil’s own age, and a truly admirable exercise in PR.
Varius (Lucius Varius Rufus)
Another of Maecenas’s poets; Virgil’s friend and editor. None of his poetry survives (though it appears from mentions of him in other writers that he was both talented and prolific); nor does the biography of Virgil which he is said to have written.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Another PR-poet, again of Maecenas’s circle, introduced to him by Virgil and Varius. Fought on the opposite side to Augustus in the Battle of Philippi (in Macedonia), but soon forgot this when the latter looked likely to give patronage to up-and-coming poets. He was educated in Athens, and liked Greek philosophy, especially the bits that went to the effect of “let’s all sit under a tree with some wine and talk about the meaning of life”. Big on moderation in all things.
Livy (Titus Livius)
Another of Maecenas’s men, but a prose writer in this case. Penned a War and Peace-length history of Rome, once again designed to make Augustus look good.
Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso)
Later, that poet who wrote the Metamorphoses and got himself banished to Romania forever in the same year after a terrible scandal. For now, though, cheeky young upstart writing rather naughty poems about the best ways to get girls.
Agrippa (Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa)
Augustus’s second-in-command, essentially - the go-to-guy for all tricky army business. Didn’t seem to have political ambitions and didn’t use his military power to his own ends - an unusual attribute which probably drew peace-loving (and power-loving) Augustus to him.
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Brilliant orator and lawyer (and mediocre politician) of the Late Republic - active in Rome while Horace was being educated there, but died soon after.
Quintilius
A friend of Horace’s and Virgil’s, who died young - in Horace’s lament for him, Virgil is described as “weeping profusely”.
Stuff That Really Happened:
Horace was the son of a freedman. He was born in the countryside but was educated in Rome and then Athens. After Julius Caesar’s death he joined the army and fought (not very well) under Brutus, who, to put it roundly, lost.
When Augustus declared an amnesty for everybody who’d fought against him (see? He was really nice), Horace returned to Italy to find his father’s estate had been confiscated while he was gone, his father presumably dead. The poverty of the period following this forced him to write some poetry and he never looked back: from then on his life consisted mostly of penning poems/letters/satires*, working himself up into mild annoyance at having to go into Rome, and peacefully enjoying the simple life at his Sabine Estate (a small farm most probably given to him by Augustus/Maecenas).
Virgil grew up on a farm and loved the countryside a lot. He was educated in Milan and then Rome, but continued to love the countryside a lot even as he came under Maecenas’s patronage (no, really, he lived in Rome and was friends with the Emperor’s inner circle and wrote a whole poem about bees. A long one). According to tradition, when his second volume of country-lovin’ verse was published (the Georgics, which followed the Eclogues), he and Maecenas took turns reading it aloud to Augustus. I won’t pretend I don’t love this image.
Soon after this, he began The Aeneid; it’s a story of a very messed-up young man and his very big duty, which he doesn’t always cope with very well. (Trying to tell us something, there, Virgil?) It, too, has a lot of references to animals, farming and the countryside. Ten years later, when he thought he’d finished the massive thing, he went on a jolly to Greece to revise it, but died before he could get home (in the Italian port of Brundisium). He left instructions for The Aeneid to be burned, but Augustus ordered Varius (who, along with another poet, was in charge of executing Virgil’s will) to publish it with as few editorial changes as possible.
* Ancient Roman satire is a genre of poetry which, gently or harshly, pokes fun or chastises people & society for their shortcomings.
Other trivia which may or may not be critical to your understanding of my fic:
• A palaestra is a Greek-style area for sports and recreation, usually connected to the baths in Roman towns/cities.
• Saturnalia was a festival in honour of Saturn, held in mid-December and marked by tomfoolery. Often during the festivities, masters and slaves would 'swap places'.
• Many writers have attempted imitations of Horace, one of the most notable being the aptly titled Imitations of Horace by Alexander Pope. The Aeneid remains a fundamental part of Western literary canon
• Horace’s father was an auctioneer. For some reason, auctioneers were hated by the Ancient Romans (a bit like, say, tax collectors are hated today)
• Virgil was so aloof at school that his classmates nicknamed him Parthenias, which means “the maiden”
• Horace was apparently so shy that it took him nine months from first being introduced to Maecenas, and barely stuttering out a greeting, to being counted among Maecenas’s friends
• Virgil was a bit of a weakling by all accounts, and seems to have been ill for quite a lot of his life
• Neither Virgil nor Horace ever married, which is interesting since Augustus was pretty clear that he wanted everybody to get hitched and get busy (laws were introduced that made marriage easier, meant people with more children got certain legal advantages, and even punished divorced or widowed women who failed to remarry)
• Virgil is thought to have been queer, and apparently loved two slave-boys (though I’m not sure whether that means at the same time or successively)
• Horace seems to have been pretty straight - but let’s gloss over that, shall we?
Er, yes, I believe that’s everything. Oh no - the translation of the line of Latin which Virgil says is “if it were not settled, fixed and immovable in my mind”. It is from The Aeneid, and is said by Dido, who took a vow of chastity after her husband Sychaeus was killed. This didn’t stop her from rolling in the hay cave with Aeneas, though.