Abstract
This article centers, first, on the Roman reception of earlier Greek literature, which is considered less a simple “receiving” of foreign influence and rather an active “taking” and act of appropriation, and, second, on the effects that this process had on Imperial Greek Literature. Thus, it deals with the question whether Greek literature—at least in part—during the Imperial Period can be considered an autonomous, cosmopolitan, and many-centered phenomenon in its own right and impetus, with its independent production centers that constructed and defined their particular identity. Or, alternatively, whether in the Imperial Age up to the second century CE we encounter a dominating perspective in literary texts, which contributed to strengthen and redefine the Roman viewpoint and the center’s identity from the periphery. The Greek texts which are discussed in this essay invite the interpretation that the Post-Augustan Age, despite its locally diverse and multi-ethnical setup, monopolized a perspective, which encouraged the Greek elite to join the Imperial project, thus resulting in a Greco-Roman literature that appears to be beyond comparison.
Highlights
The last work of the Roman poet Horace contains a controversial and paradoxical statement
“Roman Perspectives” 103–105) call our attention to the strange fact that the Roman military conquest of the Greek world that took place especially in the third and the second century BCE did not lead to a subsequent Romanization of Greek culture— quite the reverse! Contrary to post-colonial assumptions, which are paradigmatically expressed by William Blake, according to whom “It is not Arts that follow & attend upon Empire, but Empire that attends upon & follows The Arts”, in Horace’s words the Roman conquerors’ cultural landscape became step-by-step Hellenized ever since their first contact with Greek education and learning
The texts that I have discussed in the previous sections of this essay can be put in the context of (Post-)Augustan Rome’s project of literary renovation and redefinition
Summary
This article centers, first, on the Roman reception of earlier Greek literature, which is considered less a simple “receiving” of foreign influence and rather an active “taking” and act of appropriation, and, second, on the effects that this process had on Imperial Greek Literature. Augustus motivated Roman authors to carry out a renovation of Latin Literature and to proclaim a new classical Golden Age of Roman arts, which clearly built on the absorption and the integrative use of Greek, Archaic, models (see Connolly 21–42; Mundt) By paralleling his own poetic practice with Augustus’ imperial mission, Horace gives a precise statement of Rome’s ways of appropriating Greek culture. Dionysius links the flourishing of Greek and Latin texts to the renovating power of the Roman Empire, confirming to the contemporary Augustan ideology that Rome under his guidance saw a universal renewal of artistic practices (Wiater 60–119) According to this Classicist Three-Period model, a bloom of rhetoric in Classical Athens (fifth and fourth century BCE) led to literary (and moral) decadence during the Hellenistic Age after Alexander’s death (i.e. from 323 BCE onward). Dionysius, who lived and worked in Rome, designed the city as a center of gravity and a literary hotspot which had become responsible for the flourishing and the expansion of ( Latin, and) Greek literature and its canon formation during the Augustan period
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