Living in ancient Rome

Chapter 10 Marta among the Latin poets

After the hangover, I sit down and start receiving the poets.
I interviewed Virgilio.
We also talked about the "Aeneid", his masterpiece divided into twelve books which has a total of 9,896 hexameters.
This poem tells of Aeneas, who escaped from Troy, founds Rome on the coasts of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
He wrote this text to raise the emperor's power and make it clear how important it is.
We also talked about the "Bucoliche", a collection of ten poems called << eclogues >> (songs of the cattlemen).
Among these, the most important is certainly the first.  It is a dialogue between Titiro Melibeo, two farmers.
The first, thanks to the influence of a powerful man, remains home and fields while the second is forced to leave everything, which will then become the property of a soldier.  While he tells me this it seems that a tear is streaked down his wrinkled face;  probably sees itself in Melibeo...
To conclude, we discussed the "Georgics", a didactic poem that deals with work in the fields and has been divided into four books.
Juvenal and Petronius also spoke to me, but more than the first, Petronius only told me the name of his work, the "Satyricon".
Juvenal is a satirical poet.
His main amusement is emancipated women.  According to him, I'm the mess.  In fact in his writings about him, he describes them in a grim, bristling way.
In addition, another mockery of him goes to homosexuality, it is criticized by the poet and which he classifies in two ways:
The one for nature and the one for hypocrisy.
Furthermore, he considers the mythology ridiculous, as it does not conform to the society of his time.
I also had a chat with Horace and Ovid.
Orazio told me about the fleetingness of time, and how it does not give hope;  therefore it is important for him to make the most of the time we are given and to evaluate every moment as a gift that has been given to us.
He told me that he had influences from Sappho and Epicurus;  he told me that he too is the son of a freedman who moved to the capital for work, he is the collector of public auctions;  a work according to the poet "not very popular but fruitful".
He also made me recognize his works which I will now list:
The "Odes" or "Carmina" in Latin.  There are three books with eighty-eight compositions.  A fourth book, he told me that he published it in 13 BC.  and includes fifteen works.
The "Satires" or "Sermones" consist of two books that collect eighteen satires.
Finally we have the "Epistles" and the "Secular Poems".
Ovid, on the other hand, is a curious little man.
He wrote the "Metamorphoses", where he tells in fifteen books in hexameters and articulated stories, the "mythical" history of the world;  and the "Amores", where he tells the love story with Corinna (literary character) and how much he suffers from the woman's infidelity, and how jealous he is of the other suitors.
The last two with whom I spoke, I left them last because I believe that one of them is the most significant to remember.  I'm talking about Seneca and Lucretius.
Seneca, a great philosopher, wrote the treatises divided into: "Debeneis", De clementina and "Naturales questiones".
Seneca's philosophical prose is complex and can be seen in a characteristic way in the dialogues between characters and in his paratactic * writing style.
According to Seneca, one should not take care of the searched words but rather of the substance.
Lucretius, on the other hand, elaborated the "De rerum natura", a didactic poem in hexameters of an epic-philosophical genre, made up of six books.
After dinner, I come home at a discreet time and literally collapse on the bed fully clothed.
I wore a long white dress, with only one sleeve, the left, made of satin, while the right shoulder and chest are completely naked;
while my hair is styled in an elegant bun, surrounded by fake pearls.
* construction of the period based on coordinated propositions