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Notes:

1. With its military victories in North Africa, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, the social, cultural, and economic life of Rome changed profoundly.
2. After the fall of the Roman empire, the concept of a world-state was appropriated by the medieval Church, which ruled from the same center, Rome, and laid claim to a spiritual authority as great as the secular authority it succeeded.
3. Literature in Latin began with a translation of the Greek Odyssey and continued to be modeled after Greek sources until it became Christian.
4. The lyric poems that Catullus wrote about his love affair with the married woman he called Lesbia range in tone from passionate to despairing to almost obscene.
5. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Virgil's Aeneid combines the themes of the Homeric epics: the wanderer in search of a home from the Iliad, and the hero at war from the Odyssey.
6. Ovid's extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth make his poetry second only to Virgil's for its influence on Western poets and writers of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.
7. Probably written by Petronius, and probably written during the principate of Nero, the Satyricon is a satirical work about the pragmatism and materialism of the Roman empire that would soon be supplanted by Christianity.

Text:
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1. With its military victories in North Africa, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, the social, cultural, and economic life of Rome changed profoundly. Contact with Greek culture extended beyond the transformation of the comedies of Plautus and Terence to include vast economic reforms. The importation of slaves from captured areas, particularly to work farmlands, saw the creation of a large class of poor urbanites. At the same time, the rise of trade and crafts saw the rise of wealthy businessmen to a position of challenging the senatorial class. Later in the second century B.C., these developments laid the groundwork for sharp political conflicts and the eventual demise of the Republic. Due to civil conflict, a new arrangement of government emerged by which the emperor assumed executive power.
2. By the end of the first century B.C., Rome had transformed from a city-state to the capital of an empire that stretched from the straits of Gibraltar to the frontiers of Palestine. For two centuries, the empire governed and defended the Mediterranean from invaders from the north and east. Rome's success in consolidating and organizing conquered lands may be attributed to its great faculty for practical affairs and its valorization of conservatism. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the concept of a world-state was appropriated by the medieval Church, which ruled from the same center, Rome, and laid claim to a spiritual authority as great as the secular authority it succeeded. Under the endless invasions by peoples of the north, the empire collapsed in the third and fourth centuries A.D.; however, the Christian church helped to preserve much of the Latin and Greek literature that would serve as a model for the rebirth of the Renaissance.
3. The Romans did not write their history until they had conquered half of their world.Ý Literature in Latin began with a translation of the Greek Odyssey and continued to be modeled after Greek sources until it became Christian.Ý Borrowing from Greek sources by Roman writers was done openly and proudly. Virgil based his epic the Aeneid on the Homeric epics but chose the coming of the Trojan War as his theme.
4. The 116 poems by Catullus that survive include a wide variety of topics: imitations of Greek poets, long poems on Greek mythological themes, scurrilous personal attacks on contemporary politicians and private individuals, lighthearted verses designed to amuse his friends, and a magnificent marriage hymn. The lyric poems that Catullus wrote about his love affair with the married woman he called Lesbia range in tone from passionate to despairing to almost obscene. The poems are not simply a spontaneous outpouring of emotion, but are a carefully meditated portrayal of a love affair in which Catullus's persona and that of his mistress are characters.
5. Left unfinished at the time of his death, Virgil's Aeneid combines the themes of the Homeric epics: the wanderer in search of a home from the Iliad, and the hero at war from the Odyssey. With his devotion to duty and seriousness of purpose, Aeneas is the prototype for the ideal Roman. Though his life is unhappy and his death is miserable, he fights and suffers with the consolation of the future glory of his sons. Aeneas's future, a peaceful period in Roman history, was Virgil's present.
6. Born into the prosperity that followed civil strife, Ovid focused on themes associated with the sophisticated and racy lives of the Roman urban elite. As with Catullus, he adapted aspects of Greek Alexandrian works to his own ends. Ovid's extraordinary subtlety and psychological depth make his poetry second only to Virgil's for its influence on western poets and writers of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. Later exiled from Rome, Ovid's erotic poetry, particularly the Art of Love, may be read as a political critique of the moral reforms instituted by Augustus. With its unrelated characters, none of which represents state values in the way that Aeneas does, the Metamorphoses can be read as an anti-Aeneid.
7. Probably written by Petronius, and probably written during the principate of Nero, the Satyricon is a satirical work about the pragmatism and materialism of the Roman empire that would soon be supplanted by Christianity. Though it survives only in fragments, it is considered to have been one of the most original works of Latin literature. In Dinner with Trimalchio, one of the longer fragments, the thought of death slowly emerges from beneath the epicureanism of Trimalchio and his friends.