Ancient Greece and Rome
Epistles in prose and verse were a major genre of literature among the Greeks and particularly the Romans. The letters of Cicero are one of the most important sources on the history of the late Roman Republic and preserve features of colloquial Latin not always in evidence in his speeches and treatises. The letters of Pliny the Younger likewise are studied as both examples of Latin prose with self-conscious literary qualities and sources for historical information. Ovid produced three collections of verse epistles, composed in elegiac couplets: the Heroides, letters written in the person of legendary women to their absent lovers; and the Tristia and Ex Ponto, written in first person during the poet's exile. The epistles of Seneca, with their moral or philosophical ruminations, influenced later patristic writers.
Read more about this topic: Epistle
Famous quotes containing the words greece and rome, ancient greece, ancient, greece and/or rome:
“All that grave weight of America
Cancelled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!”
—Louis Simpson (b. 1923)
“In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If I can catch him once upon the hip,
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It was modesty that invented the word “philosopher” in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit—the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Napoleon wanted to turn Paris into Rome under the Caesars, only with louder music and more marble. And it was done. His architects gave him the Arc de Triomphe and the Madeleine. His nephew Napoleon III wanted to turn Paris into Rome with Versailles piled on top, and it was done. His architects gave him the Paris Opera, an addition to the Louvre, and miles of new boulevards.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)