Writting Down Rome 'Satire Comedy and Other Offences in Latin Poetry '

In a series of controversial essays this book examines the Roman penchant for denigration and in particular self-denigration at the expense of Roman culture. Comedy in Republican Rome radically transformed both itself and the culture from which it sprang: in Poenulus Plautus laughed at Roman depreciation of Carthage; in Adelphoe Terence turned on his audience in provocation. The comic Roman poets played with self-mockery: in Eclogue III Virgil tests his audience''s security in judging peasant unpleasantness; in Odes III.22 Horace sends up his own pious rusticity down on the farm. In the second half of the book Roman verse satire is the subject: the genre of male bragging mocks its own masculine aggression. The great Latin satirists make fun of making fun: Horace Satires I.9 shows up the politics of humour unmanned by his own good manners; Persius nails his own weaknesses in fortifying himself against the world; Juvenal Satire 1 loathes the literary scene he bids to dominate. The book shows a vital ingredient of Roman poetry to be an energetic surge of urbane banter directed towards Roman culure.