Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals in depth with two main questions: the nature of "dread" and how it relates to "fear," and what the concept of "landscape" encompasses. It considers what Camilla Asplund Ingemark and Dominic Ingemark have termed "emotional topography," a concept that emphasizes the relationship between space and emotions. The book also teases out the elements of language and setting that might have caused dread in the readers. It focuses on how Roman authors manipulate language to allow domestic and natural landscapes to reflect contemporary anxieties related to Roman politics. The book argues that Horace uses specific words and phrases to conjure up a vision of Augustan Rome filled with apparitions of dread, using the theme of fear articulated through the landscape of Roman imperium to link the six poems.