{"product_id":"writing-down-rome","title":"Writing Down Rome","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn a series of controversial essays, this book examines the Roman penchant for denigration, and in particular self-denigration, at the expense of Roman culture. Comedy in Republican Rome radically transformed both itself and the culture from which it sprang: in Poenulus, Plautus laughed at Roman depreciation of Carthage; in Adelphoe, Terence turned on his audience in provocation. The comic Roman poets played with self-mockery: in Eclogue\n\u003cbr\u003eIII, Virgil tests his audience's security in judging peasant unpleasantness; in Odes III.22, Horace sends up his own pious rusticity down on the farm. In the second half of the book, Roman verse satire is the subject: the genre\n\u003cbr\u003eof male bragging mocks its own masculine aggression. The great Latin satirists make fun of making fun: Horace, Satires I.9, shows up the politics of humour, unmanned by his own good manners; Persius nails his own weaknesses in fortifying himself against the world; Juvenal, Satire 1, loathes the literary scene he bids to dominate. The book shows a vital ingredient of Roman poetry to be an energetic surge of urbane banter directed towards Roman culure.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44157003596014,"sku":"9780198150770","price":275.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0630\/9612\/7726\/files\/9780198150770.jpg?v=1706258569","url":"https:\/\/bookland.com.au\/products\/writing-down-rome","provider":"Book Land AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}