Roman Literary Culture: From Plautus to Macrobius

by Elaine Fantham

Ancient literature scholars have often focused on the works & lives of major authors rather than on such questions as how these works were produced & who read them. Roman Literary Culture fills the void by examining the changing social & historical context of literary production in ancient Rome & its empire. Fantham’s 1st edition discussed the habits of readers & developments in their means of access to literature, from booksellers & copyists to pirated publications & libraries. She examined the issues of patronage & the utility of literature & showed how the constraints of the physical object itself— ancient "books"—influenced practices of reading & writing. She also explored the ways in which ancient criticism & critical attitudes reflected cultural assumptions. Her 2nd edition expands the scope. In a new 1st chapter, she examines the beginning of Roman literature—more than a century before the critical studies of Cicero & Varro. She discusses broader entertainment culture, consisting of live performances of comedy & tragedy as well as oral presentations of the epic. A new final chapter looks at pagan & Christian literature from the 3rd to 5th centuries, showing how this period reflected its foundations in the literary culture of the late republic & Augustan age. This edition also includes a new preface & bibliography.

Genres: History

368 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2013

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elaine Fantham's misnamed Roman Literary Culture is, as she states, a “chronological survey of Latin literary culture” from the third century B.C.E. through the fifth of the common era. As such, it traces the self-conscious emergence of Latin literature from the Greek to the similarly self-conscious birth of a Christian literature, demonstrably maintaining a “continuity of style, form and content” (p. 274) with its pagan antecedents.
There is much to recommend this survey. Fantham, professor emerita of Latin at Princeton, knows her material thoroughly and pays due attention to the flowering of Latin culture in the late Republic and early Principate. She is also strong on demonstrating the relations obtaining between politics and culture, the surrender of oligarchical elites to central authority silencing diverse voices and restricting their forms of expression.
It is in drawing parallels between the obscure past and the present that Fantham provides many illuminating insights. Beyond the association obtaining between political suppression and free artistic expression in those days and ours she also parallels ancient patronage practices to contemporary academic mentorship (p. 90); youth culture, then and now (pp. 118 ff.); political cults (p. 135), the political utility of public sports and sports fanaticism (p. 159) and the introspectively, hyper-erudite sophistication of much Latin poetry to the self-referential appeal of such popular modern phenomena as the Star Trek sub-genre.
So, too, she illuminates some of the contrasts between their times and ours, describing how the exigencies of publication then favored listening to literature over reading it (p. 207) and how the education of elites favored attention to technique over content (p. 208).
Yet the bulk of the book is specifically literary, dealing with such themes as canon-formation (p. 140) and the transmission of influences, whether from Hellenes to Latins or from pagans to Christians or from author to author, circle to circle. Broader parallels, such as might be made between, say, literary and philosophical or literary a medical traditions, are not addressed.
The is not, authorial claims to the contrary, a book for the general reader. To fully benefit one should be familiar with Graeco-Roman history from Homer and Hesiod through Augustine and Jerome. Few dates are given, though a chronological order is roughly maintained. Pompey's status as a “pirate” in the eyes of some of his political opponents (p. 114) is unexplained as is “the withdrawal of the future emperor Tiberius in 6 B.C.E.” (p. 116)--it being apparently presumed that readers will understand the references. As might be expected, a very wide background in Latin literature is also presupposed—though, interestingly, not any familiarity with either Greek or Latin. A chronological appendix would have been handy as would be an index of the passages cited.
Most egregiously lacking, however, is context. This book is not about Latin literary culture, it is about the surviving remnants of such. No sense is given, no overview provided as to what we know or suspect to have been lost. Similarly, virtually no attention is paid to factors relevant to the determination of true text, to textual authenticity, nor to the reasons why some texts survived and others were lost. These materials, the variant holographs of this literature, come to us primarily through the hands of medieval copyists or from the sands of Egypt. How might the intentions and accidents of preservation and redaction skewed the evidence and, so, our picture of Latin literature?
Such criticisms notwithstanding, this book would be suitable reading for classicists, Latinists and those generalists exceptionally well-grounded in a conservative liberal arts tradition.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a new edition of Elaine Fantham's Roman Literary Culture, which had initially focused on Roman literary culture in the late Republic and early Empire. The main changes is that Dr.Fantham has added sections on early Latin Literature and the Late Roman period. The focus is not so much on the literature as the social/cultural context for Latin literature. As a result, it focuses heavily on literary criticism and history, which makes it an excellent source for the background to Latin literature in general.

This is a highly readable introduction to the topic which has been consciously updated. Dr. Fantham's knowledge of the sources is combined with with insightful analysis and links to the modern world. She is at her best, still, in the Golden Age material which is familiar to all Classics enthusiasts an students. Given that the sources are more numerous and more useful, that makes sense. She does try to appreciate other periods, but her heart is in the Golden Age. The treatment of the Late Roman material is rather cursory and one can sense the discomfort of the author, especially as she deals with Augustine. The last chapter is rather more summary than analysis, which is a pity, given the insights of the earlier part of the book.

An excellent introduction/background for those studying Latin literature.