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8/14/2016 1:24 pm  #1


Roman Poets

Has anyone read the works of the ancient Roman Poets such as Virgil, Horace, Ovid(Art of Love, gotta read that one for sure), Lucan, Statius, Lucretius etc? I've looked into some of their lives/poems, and they look like interesting figures(a lot of philosophical ideas such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, Aristotelianism, and even Platonism are present in their works). Are there any monotheistic/classical theistic ideas expressed in their poems as well?

 

8/19/2016 8:00 pm  #2


Re: Roman Poets

I have read at least some of the works of Plautus, Virgil, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, and Seneca, mostly in translation. They are certainly worth reading. Each one perhaps for slightly different reasons. The same goes for Roman prose authors like Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Marcus Aurelius. They raise some interesting philosophical questions, as well as being important pieces of literature, and important in the history of Western culture. I'm not so sure they shed a lot of light on classical theism. Certainly, some of the authors show signs of a belief in an overarching divinity, whether expressed in Platonic or Stoic terms (one might mention Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius in particular), but I wouldn't say they contributed any like as much to this tradition as the Greeks or Philo or the Church Fathers.

 

8/20/2016 10:19 pm  #3


Re: Roman Poets

I know Ovid mentioned some form of henotheism/monotheism in his Metamorphose with a demiurge creating the world but I'm not sure if he took it seriously are not. I also read somewhere Horace in his later years went towards some form of philosophical monotheism but again I'm not sure how accurate this is of him. You're right about Cicero, and Seneca, but with Aurelius I think it's more polytheistic, and I can't tell with Virgil.

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8/22/2016 9:29 pm  #4


Re: Roman Poets

Well, Aurelius was a Stoic and believed in a supreme god, who is the rational order, or logos, of the cosmos. The Stoics, though, to a degree at least saw their god as material (if a subtle and spiritualised matter).

 

8/22/2016 9:36 pm  #5


Re: Roman Poets

You're probably right about Aurelius but do you know if monotheism is where Virgil, Horace, and Ovid went towards?

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