Positive Pride in Post-Augustan Literature

Abstract This chapter examines the consequences of Augustan experiments for the discourse of pride as a whole. Where one might have expected a coherent strand of positive pride to have emerged, this turns out not to be the case: the presence of positive pride in later Latin literature is minor, intermittent, and fragmented. The chapter analyzes the identifiable examples of positive pride in four groups, which differ in their organization: the continued expression of poetic pride; its eventual, if qualified extension into public contexts; and two related, but distinct strands that show weaker, less emphatic positive or neutral meanings, as a trope of a place proud of its product (or parent proud of a child) and as a generic epithet in Flavian epic, signifying nobility, luxury, and vague generalized greatness.