Augustan literature is the period of Latin literature

Latin literature

Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...

 written during the reign of Augustus

Augustus

Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...

 (27 BC–AD 14), the first Roman emperor

Roman Emperor

The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...

. In literary histories of the first part of the 20th century and earlier, Augustan literature was regarded along with that of the Late Republic as constituting the Golden Age of Latin literature, a period of stylistic classicism

Classicism

Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...

.

Poets of the period include Vergil, Horace

Horace

Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...

, Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...

, Propertius, and Tibullus

Tibullus

Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegies.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins. There are only a few references to him in later writers and a short Life of doubtful authority...

. Augustan literature thus produced the most widely read, influential, and enduring of Rome’s poets. Although Vergil has sometimes been considered a “court poet,” his Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

, the most important of the Latin epics

Epic poetry

An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

, also permits complex readings on the source and meaning of Rome’s power and the responsibilities of a good leader. Ovid’s work were wildly popular, but the poet was exiled by Augustus in one of literary history’s great mysteries; carmen et error (“a poem” or “poetry” and “a mistake” or “misguided thinking”) is Ovid’s own oblique explanation. Among prose works, the monumental history

Ab Urbe condita (book)

Ab urbe condita libri — often shortened to Ab urbe condita — is a monumental history of ancient Rome written in Latin sometime between 27 and 25 BC by the historian Titus Livius. The work covers the time from the stories of Aeneas, the earliest legendary period from before the city's founding in c....

 of Livy

Livy

Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...

 is preeminent for both its scope and stylistic achievement. The multivolume work On Architecture by Vitruvius

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....

 remains of great informational interest.

Questions pertaining to tone

Tone (literature)

Tone is a literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, guilty, condescending, or many other possible attitudes...

, or the writer's attitude toward his subject matter, are acute among the preoccupations of scholars who study the period. In particular, Augustan works are analyzed in an effort to understand the extent to which they advance, support, criticize or undermine social and political attitudes promulgated by the regime, official forms of which were often expressed in aesthetic media.

List of Augustan writers

• Publius Vergilius Maro
  Virgil
  Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
  
   (Virgil, spelled also as Vergil) (70 BC — 19 BC),
• Quintus Horatius Flaccus
  Horace
  Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
  
   (Horace) (65 BC — 8 BC), known for lyric poetry and satires
• Sextus Aurelius Propertius
  Sextus Propertius
  Sextus Aurelius Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium and died shortly after 15 BC.Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of Elegies...
  
   (50 BC — 15 BC), poet
• Albius Tibullus (54 BC — 19 BC), elegiac poet
• Titus Livius
  Livy
  Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
  
   (Livy) (64 BC — 12 AD), historian
• Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid) (43 BC — 18 AD), poet
• Grattius Faliscus, a contemporary of Ovid), poet
• Marcus Manilius
  Marcus Manilius
  Marcus Manilius was a Roman poet, astrologer, and author of a poem in five books called Astronomica.-Criticism:The author of Astronomica is neither quoted nor mentioned by any ancient writer. Even his name is uncertain, but it was probably Marcus Manilius; in the earlier books the author is...
  
   (1st century BC & AD), astrologer, poet
• Gaius Julius Hyginus
  Gaius Julius Hyginus
  Gaius Julius Hyginus was a Latin author, a pupil of the famous Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and a freedman of Caesar Augustus. He was by Augustus elected superintendent of the Palatine library according to Suetonius' De Grammaticis, 20...
  
   (64 BC — 17 AD), librarian, poet, mythographer
• Marcus Verrius Flaccus (55 BC — 20 AD), grammarian, philologist, calendrist
• Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
  Vitruvius
  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
  
   (80-70 BC — after 15 BC), engineer, architect
• Marcus Antistius Labeo
  Marcus Antistius Labeo
  Marcus Antistius Labeo was a prominent jurist of ancient Rome.He was the son of Quintus Antistius Labeo, a jurist who caused himself to be slain after the defeat of his party at Philippi...
  
   (d. 10 or 11 AD), jurist, philologist
• Lucius Cestius Pius
  Lucius Cestius Pius
  Lucius Cestius, surnamed Pius, Latin rhetorician, flourished during the reign of Augustus.He was a native of Smyrna, a Greek by birth. According to Jerome, he was teaching Latin at Rome in the year 13 BC...
  
   (1st century BC & AD), Latin educator
• Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus
  Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus
  Gnaeus Pompēius Trōgus, known as Pompeius Trogus, Pompey Trogue, or Trogue Pompey, was a 1st century BC Roman historian of the Celtic tribe of the Vocontii in Gallia Narbonensis, flourished during the age of Augustus, nearly contemporary with Livy.His grandfather served in the war against Sertorius...
  
   (1st century BC), historian, naturalist
• Marcus Porcius Latro
  Marcus Porcius Latro
  Marcus Porcius Latro was during the reign of Augustus a celebrated Roman rhetorician considered one of the founders of scholastic rhetoric. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a friend and contemporary of Seneca the Elder, with whom he studied under Marillius, and by whom he is frequently...
  
   (1st century BC), rhetorician
• Gaius Valgius Rufus (consul 12 BC), poet