ABSTRACT
The first two centuries c.e. fully realized the potential created by Augustus’ establishment of widespread peace within the Mediterranean core of the Roman Empire. Rome had become a giant magnet attracting trade and talent from every quarter and radiating its influence in all directions. The writers and artists of the Augustan Golden Age had created a common cultural frame of reference for the Empire’s urbanized upper classes. Socially and economically, the Empire reached great heights. With Italy and the interior provinces enjoying unprecedented peace and prosperity and with threats on the frontiers usually contained, foreign and domestic trade flourished. Poetry fared almost as badly as prose under Tiberius, although he himself was a poet in the Alexandrian tradition. Unable, it seems, to reconcile the illusions of the Augustan Principate with its reality, Tiberius did not encourage celebratory, patriotic historical epic in the tradition of Vergil.
