The Portable Roman Reader

US: Penguin, 1977. Paperback. Good. The Romans conquered most of the known world and detailed their conquests i n calm, unapologetic histories. They were a supremely urbane people who lon ged poetically for the farming life. Valuing toughness and practicality in all things, they turned the love poem into a cynical rebuke and wrote trage dies in which the unfathomable actions of gods gave way to the staggering c ruelties of man. As the empire slid into decay, Tacitus pulled back the cur tain on the perverse intrigues of the emperors, and a Roman-educated Christ ian named Augustine recounted his spiritual awakening in what may be the wo rld?fs first psychological novel. This collection presents the essential writings of the Romans in their finest English translations: the comedies of Terence and Plautus; the histories of Julius Caesar, Livy and Tacitus; the oratory of Cicero; poems by Catullus, Virgil, Horace, and Martial; the philosophy of Lucretius and Boëthius, along with the stylishly narrated and often ribald myths of Ovid and Apuleius.