ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three of literary works, Horace’s Art of Poetry, Longinus’ On the Sublime and Plutarch’s On the Study of Poetry. In the late first century BCE, we enter the period in which the Roman Empire dominated the Mediterranean. Philosophy went through a change at about the same time; philosophical activity was no longer concentrated in the schools of Athens, but more widely spread throughout the region; but philosophers still largely identified with the traditions established in those schools. Platonism experienced a revival, which was to lead in the end to its becoming the dominant philosophy of the Greek world; Aristotelianism also became more prominent, while the Epicurean and Stoic movements continued. Horace was a leading Roman poet during the reign of the emperor Augustus, in the late first century BCE and early first century CE. Plutarch stands firmly in the didactic tradition regarding poetry, which sees its function as teaching, but interprets it very differently from Plato.
