Num igitur ex eo bello partem aliquam laudis appetere conaris? num tibi illius victoriae gloriam cum M. Crasso aut Cn. Pompeio communicatam putas?
Surely you're not trying to seek some part of the praise from that war with Spartacus? Surely you don't think that you should share in the glory of that victory, along with Crassus and Pompey?
(Cicero, In Verrem V.5)
Showing posts with label Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Show all posts
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Spartacus, Crassus and Pompey
Friday, November 07, 2008
Education at Rome
My year 8 class has recently been looking at what school would have been like in Roman times. Here is what my Oxford Companion to Classical Literature has to say about education at Rome:
"Education at Rome in the very earliest republican times was very limited in extent, and chiefly given in the home. There was a good training in religious cults, duty to the state, modesty of demeanour, and physical activity; an education calculated to produce frugal, hardy, patriotic industrious citizens, but intellectually narrow. Children were shown the imagines or busts of their ancestors and taught to read the inscriptions recounting their exploits. They were taken to hear the encomiums on great Romans who died. They learnt by heart the Twelve Tables of the law. We read that old Cato himself taught his son his letters, the laws of Rome, and bodily exercises.
"Later as a result of contact with Hellenic civilization, education was entrusted to a tutor or a school; the teachers were often slaves or freedmen, frequently Greeks, and the pupils were taught, among other things, sententiae or moral maxims, besides reading, writing, and calculation. A characteristic figure, introduced under Greek influences, was the paedogogus, a slave who attended the boy to school, waited for him there, and brought him home; he taught the boy to speak Greek and looked after his manners and morals.
"There was also the higher school of the grammaticus, where the teaching was literary, in Latin and Greek, language, grammar, metre, style and the subject-matter of poems. Under Greek influences music and dancing were introduced into education; these, and especially the latter, were not looked upon with favour by conservative Romans. The only physical training that they approved of was such as would fit young men for war.
"After a Roman youth had assumed the toga virilis, he might be attached as a pupil to an advocate or sent to receive training in oratory under a rhetorician. He might also study philosophy at Rome, or go for this purpose to Athens, Rhodes or some other Greek educational centre; Caesar, Cicero, Octavian, Horace, all went abroad for study. The effect of all the rhetorical education of later republican and early imperial times is seen even in Virgil, more in Ovid, and especially in Lucan and Seneca.
"It may be added that it was not until the middle of the 1st c. A.D. that the State attempted to any control of education; Vespasian instituted State professorships at Rome in Greek and Latin rhetoric, and Hadrian founded a chair of Greek rhetoric at Athens. The salary assigned by Vespasian to the professors was 100,000 sesterces, equal to the salaries in the second grade of the Roman civil service."
Tacitus gives us a good example of a traditional, conservative Roman attitude towards education, as practised by a range of famous Romans:
Nam pridem suus cuique filius, ex casta parente natus, non in cellula emptae nutricis, sed gremio ac sinu matris educabatur. Sic Corneliam Gracchorum, sic Aureliam Caesaris, sic Atiam Augusti matrem praefuisse educationibus ac produxisse principes liberos accepimus.
For in the good old days, every son, born from a chaste mother, was brought up not in the chamber of a hired nurse, but in the lap and bosom of his mother. We are told that Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi was in charge of their upbringing in this way, and in the same way Aurelia the mother of Caesar and Atia of Augustus, and that they produced children who became great leaders.
"Education at Rome in the very earliest republican times was very limited in extent, and chiefly given in the home. There was a good training in religious cults, duty to the state, modesty of demeanour, and physical activity; an education calculated to produce frugal, hardy, patriotic industrious citizens, but intellectually narrow. Children were shown the imagines or busts of their ancestors and taught to read the inscriptions recounting their exploits. They were taken to hear the encomiums on great Romans who died. They learnt by heart the Twelve Tables of the law. We read that old Cato himself taught his son his letters, the laws of Rome, and bodily exercises.
"Later as a result of contact with Hellenic civilization, education was entrusted to a tutor or a school; the teachers were often slaves or freedmen, frequently Greeks, and the pupils were taught, among other things, sententiae or moral maxims, besides reading, writing, and calculation. A characteristic figure, introduced under Greek influences, was the paedogogus, a slave who attended the boy to school, waited for him there, and brought him home; he taught the boy to speak Greek and looked after his manners and morals.
"There was also the higher school of the grammaticus, where the teaching was literary, in Latin and Greek, language, grammar, metre, style and the subject-matter of poems. Under Greek influences music and dancing were introduced into education; these, and especially the latter, were not looked upon with favour by conservative Romans. The only physical training that they approved of was such as would fit young men for war.
"After a Roman youth had assumed the toga virilis, he might be attached as a pupil to an advocate or sent to receive training in oratory under a rhetorician. He might also study philosophy at Rome, or go for this purpose to Athens, Rhodes or some other Greek educational centre; Caesar, Cicero, Octavian, Horace, all went abroad for study. The effect of all the rhetorical education of later republican and early imperial times is seen even in Virgil, more in Ovid, and especially in Lucan and Seneca.
"It may be added that it was not until the middle of the 1st c. A.D. that the State attempted to any control of education; Vespasian instituted State professorships at Rome in Greek and Latin rhetoric, and Hadrian founded a chair of Greek rhetoric at Athens. The salary assigned by Vespasian to the professors was 100,000 sesterces, equal to the salaries in the second grade of the Roman civil service."
Tacitus gives us a good example of a traditional, conservative Roman attitude towards education, as practised by a range of famous Romans:
Nam pridem suus cuique filius, ex casta parente natus, non in cellula emptae nutricis, sed gremio ac sinu matris educabatur. Sic Corneliam Gracchorum, sic Aureliam Caesaris, sic Atiam Augusti matrem praefuisse educationibus ac produxisse principes liberos accepimus.
For in the good old days, every son, born from a chaste mother, was brought up not in the chamber of a hired nurse, but in the lap and bosom of his mother. We are told that Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi was in charge of their upbringing in this way, and in the same way Aurelia the mother of Caesar and Atia of Augustus, and that they produced children who became great leaders.
(Tacitus, Dialogus 28)
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Verres
One of next year's HSC set texts is Cicero's fifth Verrine oration, one of a series of speeches (which were never actually delivered) prosecuting the corrupt former governor of Sicily, Verres. Here's a bit about Verres, taken from the Oxford Campanion to Classical Literature.
Verres, GAIUS, propraetor in Sicily 73-71 B.C., where he showed himself a cruel and rapacious governor. He was impeached by Cicero on behalf of the Sicilians in 70, threw up his case, and retired into exile. He kept some of his stolen treasures, and these, twenty-seven years later, attracted the cupidity of Antony. Verres was accordingly included in a proscription list and was murdered.Verres was charged with having embezzled 40, 000, 000 sesterces during his time in office. I'm not sure how much that would be in today's money, but it's obviously a lot. Corruption was quite common, and a political job in the provinces was a good way for unscrupulous politicians to make a lot money. Governors would expect to be prosecuted on their return to Rome, though it was not hard to avoid conviction. Verres himself said (according to Cicero) that an aspiring governor should keep the money he makes in the first year of office for himself. What he makes in the second year will be needed to pay for a good lawyer, and what makes in the third year can be used for bribing the jury.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Holidays
[Mt Ossa, Cradle Mountain National Park, Tasmania]I'm off on holidays again, so there won't be much posting action for the next fortnight. no exciting plans this time round, so I'll leave you with a photo of mt Ossa from my last trip.
Mt Ossa is the highest mountain in Tassie, named after a famous mountain in Greece. According to Greek mythology (and my trusty Oxford Companion to Classical Literature) Otus and Ephialtes piled Mt Pelion on top of Mt Ossa, and Mt Ossa on top of Mt Olympus in their attempts to overthrow the gods.
The phrase 'heaping (or piling) Ossa upon Pelion' is sometimes used today to refer to an extremely difficult, but ultimately fruitless, task.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Monsters
The Greeks were fond of introducing monsters of various kinds, many of them derived from eastern sources, into their myths. These monsters of various degrees of strangeness, can be classified according as they take the form of (1) human beings of merely exaggerated size; (2) human beings with some extraordinary feature, such as excess or deficiency of the normal limbs and organs; (3) creatures combining human and animal shapes; (4) creatures combining the shapes of two or more animals.
Class 1 consists of the Giants as primitively conceived, creatures of human form so huge that after the defeat of their attack on the gods they were buried under islands, Enceladus for instance under Sicily, and Polybotes under Cos; while Tityus in Hades covered nine roods of ground. But in course of time, to differentiate them from gods and heroes, their attributes became more terrific and they passed into classes 2 and 3. Giants, in the traditions of various races, were the personifications of violent forces of nature, such as volcanoes.
Class 2 includes such monsters as the Hecatoncheires (the Hundred-handed Giants); the three Graiae, having only one eye and one tooth between them; the Cyclopes, with a single eye apiece; the Medusa with her huge and hideous head and petrifying eyes; Argus, with eyes all over his body.
Class 3 embraces a very large number of monsters: the Giants, as later represented, with their legs terminating in serpents; Cecrops and Erechtheus, whose bodies also terminated in serpents; Typhoeus, a particularly terrible creature, with a hundred serpents’ heads; Echidna, with the head and bust of a young woman, the rest a serpent; the Arcadian Satyrs, goat-footed with horns and tail, and the Anatolian Satyrs with the ears, feet and tail of a horse. The Sphinx of the dramatic poets is a winged woman with the body of a dog or lion; she was derived probably not from Egypt, but from Chaldea. Scylla, a marine monster, had, according to Homer, twelve dangling feet, six long necks and a hideous head on each, with three rows of teeth, the body lying concealed in a cavern. The idea was perhaps derived from some kind of squid. Later she was given a more human form: Virgil describes her as having the body of a young woman, the tail of a dolphin, and a girdle of dogs’ heads. The Tritons were monsters combining a human body with a fish’s tail. The Centaurs had a human body, rising from the body and legs of a horse; in primitive representations the front legs are those of a man. The Minotaur had a human body with the head of a bull... Two types of monster, the Sirens and the Harpies, joined a woman’s head to the body of a bird, a widespread fantasy found in fables in all parts of the world. The Harpies were primitively represented as women with birds’ wings, later as birds with women’s heads.
In class 4 may be included the Dragons, though the dragon (Gk. drakon, L. draco) is not properly a monster at all, but merely a large serpent. It figured frequently as the guardian of shrines (e.g. the Python at Delphi slain by Apollo), as an attribute of Asclepius, or as a genius loci. But dragons were sometimes given monstrous peculiarities, such as wings or additional heads. Winged dragons drew the cars [chariots] of Triptolemus and Medea. Fire-breathing dragons are especially a product of Christian art. In the same class we have such monsters as Cerberus, with his three heads and hair composed of snakes; the Chimaera, combining the head of a lion, the body of a goat and a tail ending in a serpent’s head; and the Griffin, part eagle and part lion (see Tenniel’s illustration of the Gryphon in ‘Alice in Wonderland’). The Griffins were first referred to, we are told, by Hesiod (in a lost passage); according to Herodotus they guarded the gold in Scythia. One of the strangest monsters is the Hippalectryon: it had the head and forelegs of a horse, and behind these the legs, tail and body of a rooster. There are extant representations of it on two vases by Nicosthenes, and it is mentioned by Aristophanes (Ran. 937-8), from whom we learn that it (as also the Tragelaphus or goat-stag) was copied from Persian sources. It is not surprising that so inelegant a conception disappeared before long from Greek art and finds no place in Greek myth. The Hippocampus was a horse with fish-like tail, on which the gods of the sea are often represented riding.
Monsters made little appeal to the Romans. In the comparatively rare cases where monsters figure in their literature (e.g. Scylla in the ‘Aeneid), it is generally in imitation of Greek models.
Class 1 consists of the Giants as primitively conceived, creatures of human form so huge that after the defeat of their attack on the gods they were buried under islands, Enceladus for instance under Sicily, and Polybotes under Cos; while Tityus in Hades covered nine roods of ground. But in course of time, to differentiate them from gods and heroes, their attributes became more terrific and they passed into classes 2 and 3. Giants, in the traditions of various races, were the personifications of violent forces of nature, such as volcanoes.
Class 2 includes such monsters as the Hecatoncheires (the Hundred-handed Giants); the three Graiae, having only one eye and one tooth between them; the Cyclopes, with a single eye apiece; the Medusa with her huge and hideous head and petrifying eyes; Argus, with eyes all over his body.
Class 3 embraces a very large number of monsters: the Giants, as later represented, with their legs terminating in serpents; Cecrops and Erechtheus, whose bodies also terminated in serpents; Typhoeus, a particularly terrible creature, with a hundred serpents’ heads; Echidna, with the head and bust of a young woman, the rest a serpent; the Arcadian Satyrs, goat-footed with horns and tail, and the Anatolian Satyrs with the ears, feet and tail of a horse. The Sphinx of the dramatic poets is a winged woman with the body of a dog or lion; she was derived probably not from Egypt, but from Chaldea. Scylla, a marine monster, had, according to Homer, twelve dangling feet, six long necks and a hideous head on each, with three rows of teeth, the body lying concealed in a cavern. The idea was perhaps derived from some kind of squid. Later she was given a more human form: Virgil describes her as having the body of a young woman, the tail of a dolphin, and a girdle of dogs’ heads. The Tritons were monsters combining a human body with a fish’s tail. The Centaurs had a human body, rising from the body and legs of a horse; in primitive representations the front legs are those of a man. The Minotaur had a human body with the head of a bull... Two types of monster, the Sirens and the Harpies, joined a woman’s head to the body of a bird, a widespread fantasy found in fables in all parts of the world. The Harpies were primitively represented as women with birds’ wings, later as birds with women’s heads.
In class 4 may be included the Dragons, though the dragon (Gk. drakon, L. draco) is not properly a monster at all, but merely a large serpent. It figured frequently as the guardian of shrines (e.g. the Python at Delphi slain by Apollo), as an attribute of Asclepius, or as a genius loci. But dragons were sometimes given monstrous peculiarities, such as wings or additional heads. Winged dragons drew the cars [chariots] of Triptolemus and Medea. Fire-breathing dragons are especially a product of Christian art. In the same class we have such monsters as Cerberus, with his three heads and hair composed of snakes; the Chimaera, combining the head of a lion, the body of a goat and a tail ending in a serpent’s head; and the Griffin, part eagle and part lion (see Tenniel’s illustration of the Gryphon in ‘Alice in Wonderland’). The Griffins were first referred to, we are told, by Hesiod (in a lost passage); according to Herodotus they guarded the gold in Scythia. One of the strangest monsters is the Hippalectryon: it had the head and forelegs of a horse, and behind these the legs, tail and body of a rooster. There are extant representations of it on two vases by Nicosthenes, and it is mentioned by Aristophanes (Ran. 937-8), from whom we learn that it (as also the Tragelaphus or goat-stag) was copied from Persian sources. It is not surprising that so inelegant a conception disappeared before long from Greek art and finds no place in Greek myth. The Hippocampus was a horse with fish-like tail, on which the gods of the sea are often represented riding.
Monsters made little appeal to the Romans. In the comparatively rare cases where monsters figure in their literature (e.g. Scylla in the ‘Aeneid), it is generally in imitation of Greek models.
[From The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature]
Monday, February 04, 2008
Horace
For my year 12 students, who have just started reading some the Odes, here is a bit of information about Horace:
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65-8 B.C.) was the son of a freedman of Venusia on the Aufidus in S. Italy, a Latin colony which had joined the rebellion of 90 B.C. and had then been granted the citizenship. It has been conjectured that the name Horatius was taken by his father from the Horatian tribe, in which Venusia was included. He was five years younger than Virgil. His father was a coactor exactionum, a collector of payments at auctions, and had acquired a small estate. He gave his son the best education obtainable, first at Rome under Orbillius, and later at Athens. The Civil War broke out while Horace was in Greece; he recieved a commission as tribune in the army of M. Brutus and fought (and, he says, ran away) at Phillipi (42 B.C.) Thereafter he returned to Italy and made his submission.
He obtained a clerical post in the civil service (he was one of the scribae quaestiorii or quaestor's clerks), but his estate was forfeited and poverty drove him to write verses. About 38 B.C. he was introduced by Virgil to Maecenas, who after some delay took him under his protection, admitted him to the circle of Augustan poets, and about 33 B.C., gave him the Sabine Farm (near Tibur, in the valley of the Digentia, now the Licenza) which was to be the source of much hapiness to Horace and the inspiration of some beautiful passages in his writings.
About 35 B.C. he had issued the first Book of his Satires. It was followed about 30 B.C., after Actium, by the second Book of the Satires and the Epodes (which include some of his earliest poems). The first three Books of the Odes, composed gradually in the course of some ten years and reflecting the political events of 33-23 B.C., were published in 23; the first Book of the Epistles about 20. The Carmen Saeculare appeared in 17, Book IV of the Odes about 15 B.C. There remain three literary essays, two of which form Book II of the Epistles, while the third is known as the Epistle to the Pisos, or more usually as the Ars Poetica. These are generally assigned to the last years of the poet's life; but the question of their date is undecided. The second epistle of Book II and the Ars Poetica are placed by some authorities as early as 19 B.C.
Horace died in 8 B.C., a few months after Maecenas, with whom he had maintained a friendship of thirty years. He was never married. We have a life of Horace by Suetonius, who describes him as short and stout. Horace speaks of himself as prematurely grey.
Horace's position as one of the greatest of Roman poets rests on the perfection of his form, the sincerity and frankness of his self-portaiture, his patriotism, his urbanity, humour, and good sense. His poems give a vivid picture of the Roman society, high and low, of his day. He has endowed literature with a multitude of happy phrases. If surpassed by Catullus in passion and force and by Lucretius in grandeur, he in turn surpasses both in the breadth of his interests, and Catullus in moral dignity. Quintilian calls him 'felicissime audax' ['most happily bold'], and Petronius refers to his 'curiosa felicitas' or 'studied felicity'.
Horace has been so universally read and admired that his influence on English poetry, both Lyrical and satirical, is almost all pervading. Of direct imitations the most famous and successful are Pope's adaptions of certain of the Satires and Epistles (1733-8). Milton translated his Ode to Pyrrha (I.5).
[From The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. Sir Paul Harvey]
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65-8 B.C.) was the son of a freedman of Venusia on the Aufidus in S. Italy, a Latin colony which had joined the rebellion of 90 B.C. and had then been granted the citizenship. It has been conjectured that the name Horatius was taken by his father from the Horatian tribe, in which Venusia was included. He was five years younger than Virgil. His father was a coactor exactionum, a collector of payments at auctions, and had acquired a small estate. He gave his son the best education obtainable, first at Rome under Orbillius, and later at Athens. The Civil War broke out while Horace was in Greece; he recieved a commission as tribune in the army of M. Brutus and fought (and, he says, ran away) at Phillipi (42 B.C.) Thereafter he returned to Italy and made his submission.
He obtained a clerical post in the civil service (he was one of the scribae quaestiorii or quaestor's clerks), but his estate was forfeited and poverty drove him to write verses. About 38 B.C. he was introduced by Virgil to Maecenas, who after some delay took him under his protection, admitted him to the circle of Augustan poets, and about 33 B.C., gave him the Sabine Farm (near Tibur, in the valley of the Digentia, now the Licenza) which was to be the source of much hapiness to Horace and the inspiration of some beautiful passages in his writings.
About 35 B.C. he had issued the first Book of his Satires. It was followed about 30 B.C., after Actium, by the second Book of the Satires and the Epodes (which include some of his earliest poems). The first three Books of the Odes, composed gradually in the course of some ten years and reflecting the political events of 33-23 B.C., were published in 23; the first Book of the Epistles about 20. The Carmen Saeculare appeared in 17, Book IV of the Odes about 15 B.C. There remain three literary essays, two of which form Book II of the Epistles, while the third is known as the Epistle to the Pisos, or more usually as the Ars Poetica. These are generally assigned to the last years of the poet's life; but the question of their date is undecided. The second epistle of Book II and the Ars Poetica are placed by some authorities as early as 19 B.C.
Horace died in 8 B.C., a few months after Maecenas, with whom he had maintained a friendship of thirty years. He was never married. We have a life of Horace by Suetonius, who describes him as short and stout. Horace speaks of himself as prematurely grey.
Horace's position as one of the greatest of Roman poets rests on the perfection of his form, the sincerity and frankness of his self-portaiture, his patriotism, his urbanity, humour, and good sense. His poems give a vivid picture of the Roman society, high and low, of his day. He has endowed literature with a multitude of happy phrases. If surpassed by Catullus in passion and force and by Lucretius in grandeur, he in turn surpasses both in the breadth of his interests, and Catullus in moral dignity. Quintilian calls him 'felicissime audax' ['most happily bold'], and Petronius refers to his 'curiosa felicitas' or 'studied felicity'.
Horace has been so universally read and admired that his influence on English poetry, both Lyrical and satirical, is almost all pervading. Of direct imitations the most famous and successful are Pope's adaptions of certain of the Satires and Epistles (1733-8). Milton translated his Ode to Pyrrha (I.5).
[From The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. Sir Paul Harvey]
Monday, October 22, 2007
Lyric Poetry
The prescribed genre for Latin extension next year is Lyric Poetry. I was a bit unsure what qualified as Lyric poetry, so I checked the article in my trusty Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, and this is what it said:
Lyric Poetry
1. Greek Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry, meaning 'poetry sung to the lyre', is a term applied originally to songs accompanied by music; at first to Scolia or drinking songs, and to light songs of love; but always to to songs as expressing the untrammelled and personal sentiments of the poets, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poetry. Lyric poetry had its origin in the Aeolian island of Lesbos, with Terpander, Sappho, and Alcaeus, and in Ionia with Anacreon. It was accompanied at first on some kind of lyre. It employed a great variety of meters, of which the most characteristic were combinations of dactyls and trochees. It was chiefly developed among the Dorians, where Terpander, who migrated to Sparta, is said to have established it. It there took the more solemn and elaborate form of the Choral Lyric, accompanied by the flute as well as the lyre. This reached its greatest perfection with Pindar. The age of the great lyric poets ended about 452 B.C. when Pindar and Bacchylides wrote their last known odes. But by this time lyric poetry had found a new field in the choruses of the Greek drama. Greek tragedy was at first essentially lyric in character. The early tragedian Phrynicus was famous for the sweetness of his lyrics; and although as tragedy developed the chorus was more and more relegated to a subordinate position, the lyrical element continued a source of delight to the end of the period of the great tragedians. Lyrics are an important feature likewise in the comedy of Aristophanes, and there is often in his choruses 'a rush of real feeling and beauty, quickly apologised for and turned off with a laugh' (Murray).
2. Roman Lyric Poetry
The adoption in Latin of the Greek Lyric meters presented great difficulty, especially with the restrictions that the Romans introduced, and the number of great Roman lyric poets is small. Livius Andronicus composed a national hymn to be sung by a choir of maidens; and Laevius was another early writer of lyrics, but only fragments of his work have survived. The two chief Roman lyric poets were Catullus and Horace, and they had no important successors (except perhaps Statius). Seneca uses a variety of lyric meters in the choruses of his tragedies, Sapphics, Glyconics, Asclepiads; but without the metrical skill of the great Greek tragedians and without the variety of the strophic arrangement.
Lyric Poetry
1. Greek Lyric Poetry
Lyric poetry, meaning 'poetry sung to the lyre', is a term applied originally to songs accompanied by music; at first to Scolia or drinking songs, and to light songs of love; but always to to songs as expressing the untrammelled and personal sentiments of the poets, as distinguished from epic and dramatic poetry. Lyric poetry had its origin in the Aeolian island of Lesbos, with Terpander, Sappho, and Alcaeus, and in Ionia with Anacreon. It was accompanied at first on some kind of lyre. It employed a great variety of meters, of which the most characteristic were combinations of dactyls and trochees. It was chiefly developed among the Dorians, where Terpander, who migrated to Sparta, is said to have established it. It there took the more solemn and elaborate form of the Choral Lyric, accompanied by the flute as well as the lyre. This reached its greatest perfection with Pindar. The age of the great lyric poets ended about 452 B.C. when Pindar and Bacchylides wrote their last known odes. But by this time lyric poetry had found a new field in the choruses of the Greek drama. Greek tragedy was at first essentially lyric in character. The early tragedian Phrynicus was famous for the sweetness of his lyrics; and although as tragedy developed the chorus was more and more relegated to a subordinate position, the lyrical element continued a source of delight to the end of the period of the great tragedians. Lyrics are an important feature likewise in the comedy of Aristophanes, and there is often in his choruses 'a rush of real feeling and beauty, quickly apologised for and turned off with a laugh' (Murray).
2. Roman Lyric Poetry
The adoption in Latin of the Greek Lyric meters presented great difficulty, especially with the restrictions that the Romans introduced, and the number of great Roman lyric poets is small. Livius Andronicus composed a national hymn to be sung by a choir of maidens; and Laevius was another early writer of lyrics, but only fragments of his work have survived. The two chief Roman lyric poets were Catullus and Horace, and they had no important successors (except perhaps Statius). Seneca uses a variety of lyric meters in the choruses of his tragedies, Sapphics, Glyconics, Asclepiads; but without the metrical skill of the great Greek tragedians and without the variety of the strophic arrangement.
(Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, ed. Sir Paul Harvey, 1962)
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