Un Augustan Activities
Transcript of Un Augustan Activities
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Un-Augustan Activities
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Approved patterns of behavior and life of educated Romans
o Period of military service as cavalry or infantry officer.
Career tracks: career soldier/membership of the Senate
through magistracies
o Public life: Advocates at Rome/magistrates in communitieswhere family estates were
o Partners in companies operating government contracts or in
private enterprise
Expectation: To marry within an approved circle, so as to increase
inherited alliances and produce heirs to perpetuate the family
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[Illustration: Costumes of Roman men, women, and children inthe procession of a peace festival. These reliefs formed part of
the outer frieze of the right wall of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace),
erected by Augustus and dedicated 9 B.C. This and another well-
preserved section are in the Uffizi Palace, Florence. One of two
other fragments in the Villa Medici contains the head and bust of
Augustus, and with the section here shown completes what is
supposed to be a group of the family of Augustus.]
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The Age of Catullus (ca. 84 BC ca. 54 BC)
Changes in society destabilize traditional expectations
Catullus treated with hostility military careerism
expressed the idealization of a love affair
insulting epigrams against Julius Caesar and his
military associates
abuse of the provincial governors Memmius and
Piso
no prudery about sex itself; sexuality becomes a
weapon to be used to enhance ones own image or diminish
that of another
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Statue of Catullus
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Love Elegy of the Augustan Age
Catullus set the style that would dominate the love elegy of the
Augustan Age
Writing in a new way: the glamorizing of love affairs with boys or
women expresses dissent and resistance to societys demands
Poetry about Clodia, an older woman in experience if not in
years (Lesbia is the poetic name he used for Clodia)
Catullus created personal love elegy: he treats Lesbia as a
dominant mistress to whom he is subordinated like a slave
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Love and Roman Elegy
From the time of Catullus on love poets write non just for the
immediate occasion, to offer their poems to their women, or to
read it to friends, but with the expectation that others would want
to buy and read the poems
Appropriation of the language of military service:
The love elegist presents himself as conquered by his beloved
in the war of love.
Ovid constructs one of his elegies on the paradox that every
lover is a soldier in his mistresss service
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Elegiac Counter-Culture
Propertius tells I was not born for glory or for warfare; He
supports his refusal to marry by the claim that no child of my
blood will be a soldier
Tibullus opens his first book of elegies with a negative picture of
the soldiers life, and the last poem of the book curses the inventor
of swords as an iron savage
Admission of being the slave of love: the poets mistress took on th
status of a commander or of a master
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The women featured in Roman Elegy (Catullus, Tibullus,
Propertius, and Ovid)
Manage to attain a singularly exalted stature
To be appreciated as people in their own rightThey are even casted in the active, masterful role customarily
played by men
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Augustus moral programme
Reaffirm the old Roman morality
Financial rewards for child production (purpose: replenishing
Romes depleted ruling elite, the senatorial and equestrian ranks)
Laws requiring intra-class marriage of upper class males andforbidding adultery
The Elegists could reject the idea of a supportive wife who bears
useful offspring in favor of an exciting, attractive and spiritually
inspiring female companion.
Youthful self-assurance, connection, high degree of intellectual
attainment, financial security enabled them to do so, and to displaycynicism about politics.
patria#puellae
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The feeling of the love elegists that they were not vitally needed in
the Roman governing and expanding process; the celebration of
the pleasures derived from their mistresses in the place of
celebration of the traditional Roman careers and awards.
Otium (free time), love and elegy are activities which in
importance rival accepted pursuits: the law, and politics, financial
acquisition, the military.
They use the language of established practices to speak of their
love affairs: they aim for comprehensibility; for the conversion of
others to their behavior: Ovid
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Roman puella
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Girl with perfume
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The Sorrows of Augustus
Daughter Julia (born to his first wife Scribonia in 39 B.C.)
Julias first marriage to Agrippa: two sons Gaius and Lucius,
two daughters, and a son Agrippa Postumus.
Augusts makes Gaius and Lucius his own sons by adoption in 17B.C.
Julias second marriage to Tiberius (Augustus stepson); they
separate
In 2 B.C. Augustus learns that Julia is involved in adultery; expels
her to a barren island (first domestic scandal); Julias two sons die
Tiberius returns to Rome and is adopted as Augustus heir
In A.D. 8 second domestic scandal: Julias daughter, the youngerJulia, is alleged to have been adulterously involved with five
noblemen
Ovid is exiled in Tomis