Latin Literature: History and Key Periods

• Latin literature includes essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings in Latin.
• Formal Latin literature began in 240 BC, with the first Latin stage play in Rome.
• The classical era of Latin literature spans roughly six centuries, divided into:
  • Early Latin literature
  • The Golden Age
  • The Imperial Period
  • Late Antiquity
• Latin served as the language of ancient Romans and as a lingua franca in Western and Central Europe during the Middle Ages.
• Latin literature includes works from Roman authors like Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Horace as well as post-Roman Empire European writers.
• Examples of post-empire writers include Aquinas(1225–1274), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727).

History

• Formal Latin literature started in 240 BC with regular performances of comedies and tragedies in Rome.
• This began 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 came to Rome as a slave in 272 BC.
• Andronicus translated Homer's Odyssey into Latin using Saturnian meter.
• In 235 BC, Gnaeus Naevius, a Roman citizen, continued producing dramas based on Greek originals, known as fabula palliata.
• Naevius expanded on this by creating fabula praetexta, tragedies based on Roman myths and history, from 222 BC.
• Later, 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 an history