Latin Literature: History and Authors

• Latin literature encompasses essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings in the Latin language.
• Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC with the first stage play in Latin in Rome.
• Latin literature flourished for six centuries.
• The classical era of Latin literature includes Early Latin literature, The Golden Age, The Imperial Period, and Late Antiquity.
• Latin was the language of the ancient Romans and the lingua franca of Western and Central Europe during the Middle Ages.
• Latin literature includes works by Roman authors like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, as well as European writers such as Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Baruch Spinoza, and Isaac Newton.

History

• Formal Latin literature began with comedies and tragedies in Rome in 240 BC.
• This was one year after the end of the First Punic War.
• These initial dramas were adapted from Greek drama by Livius Andronicus, a Greek prisoner of war who was brought to Rome as a slave in 272 BC.
• Andronicus translated Homer's Odyssey into Latin using Saturnian meter.
• In 235 BC, Gnaeus Naevius produced dramas based on Greek originals, known as fabula palliata.
• He created a new type of drama called fabula praetexta, tragedies based on Roman myths and history, starting in 222 BC.
• Naevius wrote an epic poem in Saturnian meter about the First Punic War, in which he participated.
• Other epic poets followed Naevius.
• Quintus Ennius wrote a history.