Flavian Literature

The Flavian age, though it lasted only twenty-seven years (69–96 ce), was of critical importance in the development of the Roman empire. The Flavian dynasty, which featured the emperors Vespasian (reigned 69–79 ce), Titus (79–81), and Domitian (81–96), followed in the path of the Julio-Claudian regime by fostering literary composition. The extant literature attests to the flourishing cultural, social, political, and economic environment of the Flavian era. Flavian literature includes not only Latin texts but also Greek. In fact, Greek writers, no less than their counterparts who wrote in Latin, are essential figures to consider when examining the full range of literary dynamics at play during the period. Some of the distinctive features and innovations of the Flavian age include the profoundly intertextual quality of its literature, which self-consciously interacts with both earlier traditions and contemporary works; Vespasian’s creation of salaried chairs of rhetoric, of which the first holder was Quintilian; Domitian’s creation of literary festivals, namely the quinquennial Capitolia at Rome and the annual Alban event, in which a poet such as Statius participated; the dispensation of patronage by the emperors and members of the senatorial and equestrian classes to Flavian writers, who in turn dedicated or addressed works to their patrons; and the fear of violence and civil war that pervades much of its literature. Scholars have published important work on how these Flavian writers communicated their ideas and related to their regimes, with much discussion occurring about the social and political stances they adopted and how they managed to navigate the sometimes murky waters of cultural and imperial politics. The result has been that modern critics are in disagreement about how to interpret passages by Flavian poets and prose writers who suggest meaning and express ideas in provocative and revealing ways both reminiscent of and different from their literary precursors. Both Latin and Greek writers of the Flavian era established themselves in a variety of genres with works that would exert a longstanding influence upon subsequent literature through the Middles Ages and Renaissance to the early modern period. Although for much of the 20th century scholars deemed the poetry and prose of the Flavian era to be secondary to the literature of the Augustan and (even) Julio-Claudian ages, partly because of Flavian writers’ adaptation and reconfiguration of literary conventions, diction, and motifs from these and earlier periods, critical appreciation and understanding of Flavian literature has increased dramatically in recent decades.