Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition

Fixed in diction and form, the tradition of ethnographical prose extends from fifth-century Greece through all of Latin literature. Issues such as situation, climate and fertility have a direct effect on the social and ethical status of a land's inhabitants, and it is this uniformity of purpose that motivates the strictly formulaic nature of ethnographical texts. In this volume, Professor Thomas examines the influence of that tradition on the poetry of Virgil, Horace and Lucan. At their hands it emerges as a vehicle for the expression of attitudes not only towards civilized Italian society, but also to landscapes and environments which are largely their own poetic creations, and which are to be viewed in contrast to the world of Rome. The work concludes with an examination of Tacitus' place both in the acknowledged prose tradition, and in the more allusive poetic tradition which this study has detected.