This book is perhaps an arbitrary one; no complete defence can be given for what it includes and what it leaves out. Above all, intellectual life in the Ciceronian Age without Cicero himself must be Hamlet without the Prince; but though his presence will be felt throughout the work, as the main source for the period and sometimes as a necessary point of reference, there is no direct confrontation with his great achievement. That has often been assessed. The same is true of Lucretius (materialistic Horatio to Cicero s Hamlet, perhaps); and the account of Varro, who was to Petrarch, after Cicero and Virgil, il terzo gran lume Romano, and indeed (with Cicero and in this case Lucretius) author of one of the three master-works of the recent age to his near-contemporary Vitruvius, could have approached completeness only after a lifetime s work. Since, however, Varro touches the intellectual interests of his time at almost every point, and since he is less well-known than his two great fellows, I have tried to deal with him. Many of Varro's works are undatable, and where he is concerned our temporal limit has to be his death in 27 B.C. (he is perhaps unlikely to have formulated radically new approaches in extreme old age). I have also strained chronology to include Vitruvius, who greatly improves the balance of the book in terms of subject matter - though it can be honestly argued that much of his material was put together in the early thirties if not the forties, though only published, with its dedication to Augustus, in the twenties. Diodorus Siculus is more easily accommodated; he started writing about 60 B.C., and published in the thirties. But in general I have not considered the important triumviral period in its own terms, or the younger authors who emerged then, though I have not been able to resist using Horace s Satires, primarily for social history, and some of the minor figures considered may in fact belong to this period. Fundamentally the book is concerned with figures of the second rank, and with general patterns. We read Cicero and Lucretius; we also read Catullus, Caesar (though not the fragments of his De Analogia) and Sallust; but we tend to know far too little of the intellectual, as opposed to the political, background to these writers. The Romans of this period had just learnt that, if one wishes to write about a subject, one must begin by defining it. Intellectual life is not altogether easy to define. I had a number of definite questions in mind as I worked, however. What were the basic opportunities and constraints in intellectual activity? For example, where were the books and other documents, and who could use them? How far could one do without written materials? Who were the men who pursued the different branches of study - from what backgrounds did they come and how were they financed? Which scholars were Greek, which Roman - and is there a strict dividing line? Which can be called professionals and which amateurs? What were the relations between these different classes? The role of the many learned Greeks who worked in Rome is, it emerges, not altogether easy to decide. Furthermore, what sort of activity was there outside the city, in the rest of Italy, and how closely integrated was any of it with what went on in the capital? While the last and most important task is to discover what intellectual objectives were pursued, irrespective of the breadth of the audience which might be expected, it is also vital to see what that audience in any case might be. And what changes came about in the period of over half a century with which we are dealing?
Description:
This book is perhaps an arbitrary one; no complete defence can be given for what it includes and what it leaves out. Above all, intellectual life in the Ciceronian Age without Cicero himself must be Hamlet without the Prince; but though his presence will be felt throughout the work, as the main source for the period and sometimes as a necessary point of reference, there is no direct confrontation with his great achievement. That has often been assessed. The same is true of Lucretius (materialistic Horatio to Cicero s Hamlet, perhaps); and the account of Varro, who was to Petrarch, after Cicero and Virgil, il terzo gran lume Romano, and indeed (with Cicero and in this case Lucretius) author of one of the three master-works of the recent age to his near-contemporary Vitruvius, could have approached completeness only after a lifetime s work. Since, however, Varro touches the intellectual interests of his time at almost every point, and since he is less well-known than his two great fellows, I have tried to deal with him. Many of Varro's works are undatable, and where he is concerned our temporal limit has to be his death in 27 B.C. (he is perhaps unlikely to have formulated radically new approaches in extreme old age). I have also strained chronology to include Vitruvius, who greatly improves the balance of the book in terms of subject matter - though it can be honestly argued that much of his material was put together in the early thirties if not the forties, though only published, with its dedication to Augustus, in the twenties. Diodorus Siculus is more easily accommodated; he started writing about 60 B.C., and published in the thirties. But in general I have not considered the important triumviral period in its own terms, or the younger authors who emerged then, though I have not been able to resist using Horace s Satires, primarily for social history, and some of the minor figures considered may in fact belong to this period. Fundamentally the book is concerned with figures of the second rank, and with general patterns. We read Cicero and Lucretius; we also read Catullus, Caesar (though not the fragments of his De Analogia) and Sallust; but we tend to know far too little of the intellectual, as opposed to the political, background to these writers. The Romans of this period had just learnt that, if one wishes to write about a subject, one must begin by defining it. Intellectual life is not altogether easy to define. I had a number of definite questions in mind as I worked, however. What were the basic opportunities and constraints in intellectual activity? For example, where were the books and other documents, and who could use them? How far could one do without written materials? Who were the men who pursued the different branches of study - from what backgrounds did they come and how were they financed? Which scholars were Greek, which Roman - and is there a strict dividing line? Which can be called professionals and which amateurs? What were the relations between these different classes? The role of the many learned Greeks who worked in Rome is, it emerges, not altogether easy to decide. Furthermore, what sort of activity was there outside the city, in the rest of Italy, and how closely integrated was any of it with what went on in the capital? While the last and most important task is to discover what intellectual objectives were pursued, irrespective of the breadth of the audience which might be expected, it is also vital to see what that audience in any case might be. And what changes came about in the period of over half a century with which we are dealing?