ABSTRACT
This chapter has two parts, the first sceptical and the second more positive. In view of persisting attempts to treat Augustan personal poetry as in some sense autobiographical and to elicit from it evidence for an anti-militarist counter-culture opposed in this respect as well as others to Augustan ideology, it seems timely to rehearse in language rather less flamboyant than that of Veyne (1988) the compelling reasons for treating such attempts with great reserve.1 In the second part I shall take a neglected text in Ennius with prima facie antimilitarist content, and plot its subsequent fortunes in ancient literature.
Make love, not war
