The Roman Poets of the Republic, 2nd edition

The work surveys the development of Roman republican poetry, tracing its indigenous Italian roots and extensive indebtedness to Greek models while arguing for distinctive Roman qualities such as national feeling, moral sentiment, and love of nature. It organizes the material into periods and treats major early figures and genres—epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, and lyric—offering close readings of Ennius, Lucilius, Lucretius, Catullus, and dramatists and discussing metrical forms, diction, and cultural context. The study balances literary description with historical and philological commentary to explain how imitation and originality combined in the formation of a Roman poetic tradition.