Horace.

      Horace’s first poems were the Satires, modeled on Lucilius the founder of Satire, a Roman invention. Early Satire both attacked the guilty as well as shows something of the poet’s life. Horace is sharp critic who can laugh at himself. Later Satirists, such as Persius and Juvenal, have more bite and less compassion.

    His odes, extremely finely crafted short poems, are modeled after ancient Greek lyric poets, like Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon, etc. Some themes:

    Love, often with some melancholy. He too has his various girl and boyfriends.

    Epicurean enjoyment of life and friendship

    The tragic shortness of mortal life

    The praise of Caesar, his reforms and Roman history. He was honored to write the famous ‘Secular hymn’ for Augustus’ celebration

    Also sense of Rome’s crimes and fate.

    The goal of the ‘golden mean’ and the approval of simple pleasures as route to happiness.

    Enjoyment of Countryside and his Sabine farm.

Propertius - 5 books of elegies

    Brought Elegaic verse technique to perfection

    Like Catullus, wrote about his irregular relations with Cynthia, and more about himself and his emotions than her. He is clearly a rather neurotic young man, much more obsessive, self-pitying than Catullus.

    He also shows us the decadent life of the literary elite of the empire. Love is the fight he is interested in. Note how he rejoices at repeal of Augustus’ marriage laws.

    He claims to be the Roman Callimachus, - Horace called himself a Roman Alcaeus, - his poetry is very learned, sometimes in the wrong place; Book 4 particularly has poems about Roman origins, as Hellenistic poetry.

    His later poems, less successful, try to be more pro-Augustan and varied in topic.

    Tibullus was the other famous Elegaic poet.
 
 

Ovid

    Of a later generation than Horace, Vergil, Propertius, did not remember Civil War. 

    A very talented, natural poet, who wrote too much, his poetry shows humor, wit, playfulness, a certain striving for effect, and persistent irony. All life and even poetry is something of a game for Ovid. 

    His early poems concerned love:  Amores (Loves), Ars Amatoria (the Art of Love), the Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love). He, like Catullus and Propertius, has his girlfriend (Cynthia) but the treatment of the affair is ironic, funny, not obsessive or serious, as if he is just utilizing another poetic genre. He also gives us vivid images of life and customs in Rome. 

    Experiments that mimic the Hellenistic love of putting encyclopedic knowledge into poetic forms: Fasti , calendar that explained Rome customs and origins, De Medicamine Faciei (on painting the face), Halieuticon (on Sea Fishing).

    Also wrote  plays (the Medea), insult poems, (Ibis) consolations, and much more. 

    Most famous work is the Metamorphoses. It is a Hellenistic compendium of Greek and Near-Eastern myths about things changed into different forms, from the evolution of the world to the transformation of Julius Caesar into a God. It is something of Ovid’s anti-epic. While there is a general overall structure, these stories (which had been told countless times) allow Ovid to show his skill by telling them in new ways. He can make a story more sentimental, more violent, more lurid, more exotic, more romantic, fill it with passages of lavish prose and word magic, etc. For example, in the story of Apollo and Daphne, he makes Apollo a young lover with his first crush, who, like the elegaic poet, is trying unsuccessfully persuade a woman. This myth explains the origin of the Laurel tree and why it is sacred to Apollo.

    Apparently, Ovid was somehow involved with Augustus' daughter Julia and those she was linked with, and Augustus exiled him to remote Tomei, where he wrote poems such as the Tristia and Ex Ponto, which often tell of his sorrows and plea for his return. He didn’t. Some say Augustus blamed Julia’s habits in part on Ovid’s love poems.