Dictionary
RUTILIUS LUPUS	200.00%
A Roman rhetorician who composed in the time of Tiberius (14-37 A.D.) a work upon the figures of speech, abridged from a Greek treatise by the younger Gorgias. Of this work two books (Schemata Lexeos) have been preserved. The value of the work consists in its translations of striking passages quoted as examples, mainly from the lost speeches of the Greek orators. It was used by the anonymous author of a later Carmen de Figuris et Schematibus in 186 hexameters.
GORGLAS	200.00%
Deprecated: Function split() is deprecated in /www/www-ccat/data/classics/myth/php/tools/dictionary.php on line 64 A Greek rhetorician of the second half of the 1st century B.C. He was tutor to the younger Cicero, and was the author of a treatise on the figures of speech, which is in part preserved in a Latin paraphrase by Rutilius Lupus. (See RUTILIUS LUPUS.)
NAEVIUS	21.48%
A Roman epic and dramatic poet. Born apparently in Campania, about 270 B.C., be served in the Roman army during the first Punic War; and, settling after this at Rome, he brought his first play upon the stage in 235, i.e. soon after the first appearance of Livius Andronicus. Owing to the license and recklessness with which he incessantly attacked the Roman nobles, especially the Metelli, he was thrown into prison, and though liberated thence by the tribunes of the people, was afterwards banished from Rome. He died in exile at Utica about 200. His poetical account of the first Punic War (Bellum Poenicum), written in old age in the Saturnian metre, made him the creator of the Roman national epic. The work originally formed one continuous whole, but at a later time was divided into seven books by the scholar Octavius Lampadio. The fragments preserved give the impression of its having been little more than a chronicle in verse. Indeed, even in its plan, it bears a close resemblance to the prose chronicles of the Roman annalists: for here, as there, the real subject of the poem was preceded by an account of the early history of Rome, dating from the flight of Aeneas from Troy. Naevius also made an important departure in the province of dramatic poetry by creating a national drama. Besides imitations of Greek tragedies, of which seven alone are known by name and by extant fragments, it was he who first attempted to adapt the materials of his country's history to the dramatic form handed down by the Greeks. Thus, in the Romulus or Lupus, he treats of the youth of Romulus and Remus; and, in the play Clastidium, of a contemporary historical event. From the number of titles of his comedies still preserved (over thirty), and from the verdict of antiquity, we may infer that his forte lay in comedy: he appears to have been no mere translator of his Greek originals, but to have handled them with considerable freedom. It was in his comedies especially that he introduced his attacks on men and events of the day.
ELEGY	12.28%
The general term in Greek for any poem written in the elegiac metre, a combination of the dactylic hexameter and pentameter in a couplet. The word elegos is probably not Greek, but borrowed from the Lydians, and means a plaintive melody accompanied by the flute. How it happened that the word was applied to elegiac poetry, the earliest representatives of which by no means confined it to mournful subjects, is doubtful. It may be that the term was only chosen in reference to the musical setting, the elegy having originally been accompanied by the flute. Like the epos, the elegy was a production of the Ionians of Asia Minor. Its dialect was the same as that of the epos, and its metre only a variation of the epic metre, the pentameter being no more than an abbreviation of the hexameter. The elegy marks the first transition from the epic to lyric proper. The earliest representatives of the elegy, Callinus of Ephesus (about 700 B.C.), and Tyrtaeus of Aphidnae in Attica (about 600), gave it a decidedly warlike and political direction, and so did Solon (640-559) in his earlier poems, though his later elegies have mostly a contemplative character. The elegies of Theognis of Megara (about 540), though gnomic and erotic, are essentially political. The first typical representative of the erotic elegy was Mimnermus of Colophon, an elder contemporary of Solon. The elegy of mourning or sorrow was brought to perfection by Simonides of Ceos (died B.C. 469). After him the emotional element predominated. Antimachus of Colophon (about 400) gave the elegy a learned tinge, and was thus the prototype of the elegiac poets of Alexandria, Phanocles, Philetas of Cos, Hermesianax of Colophon, and Callimachus of Cyrene, the master of them all The subject of the Alexandrian elegy is sometimes the passion of love, with its pains and pleasures, treated through the medium of images and similes taken from mythology, sometimes learned narrative of fable and history, from which personal emotion is absent. This type of elegy, with its learned and obscure maimer, was taken up and imitated at Rome towards the end of the Republic. The Romans soon easily surpassed their Greek masters both in warmth and sincerity of feeling and in finish of style. The elegies of Catullus are among their arliest attempts; but in the Augustan age, in the hands of Cornellus Gallus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, the elegiac style was entirely appropriated by Latin literature. Ovid in his Fasti showed how a learned subject could be treated in this metre. From his time onward the elegiac metre was constantly employed. In the later literature it was used, like the epic metre, for every possible subject, as, for instance, by Rutilius Namatianus in the description of his return from Rome to France (A.D. 416). In the 6th century A.D. the poet Maximianus, born in Etruria at the beginning of the 6th century, is a late instance of a genuine elegiac poet.