The Golden and Silver Ages of Latin Literature – Quiz

1. Among Roman authors, the Epicurean philosophy is most clearly on display in the epic poem ___________, written in the first century B.C. by ______________.
2. Identify at least two of the Roman historians discussed in the lecture.
3. Identify both the ancient and modern sources of the “Golden Age/Silver Age” terminology
4. In addition to composing the Aeneid, Virgil wrote two important collections of poetry called the ________ and the _________.
5. In the Aeneid, what drives Aeneas to abandon his love affair with Dido?
6. Ovid’s epic ___________ is an important source of Greco-Roman mythology and an inspiration to many writers in the Western literary tradition.
7. The Silver Age poet Juvenal his best known for his development of what literary genre?
8. Which Roman Stoic advised the emperor Nero and also wrote tragedies?
9. _________ and ___________ were the great lyric poets of the first century B.C.

Show answers

1. On the Nature of Things, Lucretius
2. Sallust, Julius Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius
3. Ancient: Hesiod and Ovid, Modern: W.S. Teuffel
4. Eclogues, Georgics
5. His belief that he is fated to found a new homeland for his people
6. Metamorphoses
7. Satire
8. Seneca
9. Catullus Horace